Beefy's Corner - The Off-Topic Chat Thread

Saw an advert for the film "2 Guns" and swore I heard a strange version of "All Along the Watchtower" in the background. Looked it up, and it turned out I was right.

Devlin ft. Ed Sheeran - All Along the Watchtower. Biggest insult to music I have heard. I won't even dignify it by posting it on here.

 

MotoGP's back today

 

My mates got me to listen to it as they knew I loved the Hendrix version, I couldn't get through 45 seconds before having to close it because of sheer fury.

 

I'm such a shameless Bob fanboy that I can't bring myself to say Hendrix's is the best version.

 

It is though. Admit it. I can't really think of a better cover.

 

Apart from Isaac Guillory at Cambridge Folk Festival 1974.

 

Fine. But I'll die before I give such credit to Guns N Roses.

 

They're terrible at everything.

 

It sure is. Mind you, the amount the BBC are promoting it as against F1 you'd think MotoGP had gone to another planet to be replaced by wall-to-wall car racing. I noticed after MOTD last night they trailered F1 for next week, yet there's a far more exciting Motorcycle Grand Prix race this evening at Indianapolis, and they totally failed to mention it. The Beeb have singularly failed in their feeble attempts to promote MotoGP, over many years, yet they ram F1 down our throats at every opportunity.

 

Can't beat Hendrix.

 

The Moto3 race starts at 4, doesn't it?

 

Asking a question here: I made the mistake of being on Youtube last night and just clicking on an remotely interesting video, which led to me looking up the whole series of Time Commander Battle programmes that used to be on BBC2. Must admit, I loved it when it was on, but it only lasted for a couple of series, probably because there are only so many ways to humiliate the average person. They also had some military personnel on the programme, who completely ballsed it up, if I remember correctly.

Now to my question. That programme used the game engine from the original Total War: Rome, PC strategy game. I wasn't interested in playing it at the time, but I think I wouldn't mind a go these days. Thing is, has anybody played it..? Was/Is it any good..? What were its sequels like..? Did they make a Naval one..? Any other relevant info..? Cheers

EDIT: To answer GBS:

Moto GP
Sunday, 18 August
Indianapolis Moto2 and Moto3, 15:45 BBC Red Button
Indianapolis MotoGP, 18:30 BBC Two HD

 

Rome: Total War? Yeah it's a great game, pretty old now though. But it was a great strategy game, spent countless hours playing it.

 

Rome 2 is coming out. It looks excellent.

 

Yes, a bit more than that would be helpful. I don't know anything about it.

 

Aha..! This will be why I stumbled over TW:Rome and thence Time Commanders. Cunning video placement. I've been properly done by Google and friends. Mind you, it only works if I end up buying a copy of TW: Rome or Rome II. And I might..!

 

Haven't seen the trailers to the new one. But I played the last one far too much.

 

I still play it, the battles are great fun, the campaign as a whole will start you as a Roman family controlling a city, with basically the whole of Europe, north Africa and the middle-east split up into nations and city states etc., you have to manage your cities and improve them, and build up armies to conquer the whole Empire. You can fight open battles pretty much anywhere, and besiege/defend cities. Great fun all in all, only problem is that after a while the battles become a bit formulaic (coax enemy infantry into the middle of the battlefield, flank with cavalry... win), although as you expand into north Africa and whatnot different troop types start to crop up which does make things a little more interesting, and you can try and mix up your armies with different configurations to keep things fresh. Also the management of the cities can become a bit wearisome once you have about 20 of them, but you can also just set them to be automatically managed by the AI and just concentrate on matters of blood and steel.

You can pick it up for about a fiver on Steam last time I saw, and of course it's widely available to illegally download. There are various other Total War games, but I've never played any of them so couldn't offer my thoughts on them, but the Shogun intallments, based in Japan I have seen met with a lot of praise.

The actual direct sequel, Total War: Rome II is coming out in about a month, and will include naval battles for (I think) the first time.

I'm sure in all the time I took the time to type that five other people will have said all the same things but I can't be bothered to open another tab and check so never mind!

*EDIT* Forgot to mention you can also just play individual battles outside of the campaign, historical battles, randomly created ones, and ones you can customise yourself. And there's a multiplayer I've never dabbled in.

 

Yeah, British media sports coverage is pretty pathetic outside of a few sports (Rugby, Football - and even then only for the Premier League), Cricket, F1 and for two weeks of the year, Tennis).

 

Finally found this to throw into the discussion:

[video]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GdBF0tLxzu0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGdBF0tLxzu0[/video]