The Bear and Outlander: Blood of my Blood

Two good dramas with vastly different styles. 

The Bear

This currently four season drama follows a top chef (played by Jeremy Allen White) who returns to Chicago to run a failing sandwich shop. It very much captures the stress of that hospitality business and mixes it with what is basically foodporn and a light dash of comedy. Which is good because most of the time the plot is pretty heavy and overlapping screaming matches are common but it paves the way for some really interesting character growth. Recommended.

Outlander: Blood of my Blood

This currently one season prequel series set in Scotland follows two pairs of star crossed lovers, with one pair being displaced in time as is the theme of the original Outlander show. The acting and casting, especially for the people who would be related to the later cast of Outlander, is great and the story is quite interesting. That said if you liked the original Outlander series, this currently has less sexy times and horrible violence which isn't bad. But if you didn't like the original Outlander series then you'll probably want to keep away from this one as well. 

Cthulhu: Death May Die - Ritual Heist

Saving the world with armed robbery.

A board game session from Cthulhu: Death May Die.

Apparently Hastur's yellow sign was much harder for Rasputin to recover from than the "usual death", so it was up to the Kid (mom) and John (DL) to head to Chicago to stop cultists performing a summoning inside a bank vault (props for creativity)!

Knowing they'd need help they also recruited an African amazon Adilah (wifey), timid little axe murderer Borden (me), and a well connected a priest (Juris) who manages to hire two mob bosses to assist in the job.  

Since John has psychotic tendencies he soloes the shorter path to the vault, taking on cultists and an elder thing en route while the others go the long way, fighting through tcho-tchos and a star spawn that Borden lures away while Adilah's special focus ability (which she chose Borden to pair) means when one rests so does the other (even out of turn) is great to counteract the multiple marked tokens the pair are receiving.

"Did you miss me?"

With the priest's gangsters, it is John breaks through the vault doors to interrupt the ritual summoning an angry Cthulhu upon himself and manages to fend off the attack which kills all the extra allied gangsters while the kid provides fire support from the next room before being swarmed by tcho-tchos.

This causes Cthulhu to flee right into the priest who badly wounds the elder one with his holy relics before a freshly summoned star spawn eliminates the man of god. John then charges the room and wounds Cthulhu enough to make him flee again.

This time, all alone on the dimly lit street, Cthulhu is ambushed by improvised explosives Borden had brought and is summarily chopped into pieces by the axe murderer - who gains so many extra free hits when there is only a single opponent sharing the space.

MISSION SUCCESS (first try though it was looking dire there for a bit. Recruiting gangsters at the start was quite annoying)!

Insight: Most mobsters demand payment before you can hire them, and if you can't you often get the "marked" condition which really sucks - think of it as random life draining so keeping your HP up is mandatory!

Watch Dogs: Beginner Tips

I thought I'd just put up six quick tips to help people survive ctOS Chicago in Watch Dogs.

1 - "Open your World"
Lots of your cooler and more useful skills will be locked until you complete the act one mission with this name, so unlike the Assassin's Creed series where you probably should do all the side stuff as soon as it becomes available, just power through the main story until you get to it (it's near the start) before doing any of the side missions.

2 - Silence is Golden
You can almost clear out an entire gang base if you use your silenced equipment (which mostly means the starter pistol at the beginning) and aim for the head, which always nets a kill unless you are shooting someone with a helmet. Civilians also have less chance to call the cops since they don't hear gunfire (unless you keep missing). Use focus once you've unlocked it to help steady your aim.

3 - The Destroyer of Criminal Convoys
Once you do enough criminal convoys (10 I think) you get to unlock this rifle (called "The Destroyer"). Choose those first 10 missions wisely as some are much harder than others but once this gun is in your hands none should pose a problem. One hit from a rifle disables a vehicle and since NPCs NEVER get into a car that they didn't start with it makes all the chase x person tasks much easier as you can force your prey to be on foot. A head shot from this will also kill the heavily armored guys, just aim for the goggle section. Once again, focus is your friend.

4 - Bad boys go to the beach, and sleep in their cars
The Chicago police are ridiculously aggressive, willing to kill bystanders to get to you. While unlocking your magical phone abilities to use the city infrastructure against them is certainly a good way to slow them down, an easier method is to head for the nearest marina and catch a boat since they are incredibly allergic to water and will not chase you there. The helicopters will, but your magic phone can disable them. And if they have snipers well, bullets (especially from the Destroyer) can help with that. If there are no boats nearby a good alternative is to use a blackout doohickey (or cause one the old fashioned way) then hide in your car, especially if you have the related bonus skill. I've managed to hide in the middle of a freeway, with a police cruiser right beside me. It looked at my smoking wreck of a vehicle for a bit then drove off. :P

5 - "Steal a Vehicle" contracts need Skill
The "steal a vehicle" fixer contracts were the hardest ones in the game for me, since you can't really get out of the car for longer than 20 seconds. You'll definitely want as many/all of your skills unlocked before attempting them, along with pockets full of consumable items. Being familiar with how various vehicles handle and the various short cuts and back road ramps as a player is also handy.

6 - Be Crafty
Crafting stuff is great, but since its a pain to go buy equipment or collect them it might help to know what stuff is used most (or at least, what stuff I used most). The number one item is: Jam Communications, followed by Blackout, followed by Focus pills. Frags and IEDs had some rare moments, mostly during campaign missions but I didn't really use any of the others so unless your play style widely varies from mine, save your resources! I found lures to be especially useless, but perhaps have some value to those who want a "no kill" play through (yeah, good luck with that).

That's it, hopefully it's of use to someone out there! :)

Watch Dogs

Where you play as a gun-toting wizard with a magical mobile phone.

Ubisoft has a thing for open world games, and in this one you get to explore modern day Chicago as a very flawed, hypocritical and ultimately boring murdere vigilante with a magical cell phone. This is to make up for his lack of parkour ability when compared to the other well known Ubisoft open world series: Assassin's Creed. The many nods to that game here are pretty funny.

The city is huge, and as expected there are a good number of mini-games to do and skills to unlock while exploring it. Fortunately getting around via train, car or boat is pretty easy once you get the hang of it - complete with a decent enough selection of radio music to listen to while traveling. Another thing to get a hang of is the magical phone which simply gives too much information on the many NPCs. You can turn off the profiler, but most/all the good things only happen when its up.

Doubles as a handy cultist finder!

While it is certainly an entertaining game (and possibly addictive if you like Grand Theft Auto type chaos) there are a number of things that I found annoying. First it's a soft game audio wise, I needed to turn up the volume a bit to hear anything. Also, the protagonist and most of the other characters (specifically those related to him) are morons. I guess it runs in the family? Some tasks fail because you killed the main target, despite killing all his henchmen, some civilians and possibly some police officers in the process, while others it's ok to just go on a killing spree? 

Also half the missions are working as the exact type of person the protagonist is supposed to hate (killers), but if you want total completion then... oh well? There's also one part where you run the same map three or so times (because plot device), when really if you just did the "third" time first it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. At least the difficulty (on Realistic anyway) is good, but there's just something lacking. A likable protagonist maybe? I didn't really give a crap about him or his feelings throughout the entire game.

The game is alright for one ride but pretty much becomes "meh" soon after the first act. I give it two and a half stolen cars out of five. If you want an open world title where you actually care for the protagonist, try Assassin's Creed: Black Flag instead. Edward Kenway is awesome.