Finalists Of The 2023 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Finalists of the 2023 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Dispute by Jacek Stankiewicz from Kraków, Poland: 'I caught this scene while watching birds in the Bialowieza Forest. Young greenfinch was still fed by parents. However, from time to time birds looked like having argument. My friends interpret this scene in two ways: A young naughty kid is arguing with a parent. Or one kid is reporting to the parent that its brother did something wrong: "Look he has broken the glass in the window"'

'Excuse me sir but I think you're a little too young to be smoking' by Dakota Vaccaro from Victor, United States: 'While I was working deep in the Virginian woods, a family of grey foxes took up residence under the deck of the abandoned cottage next to my work housing. One day while practicing their hunting skills on bits of moss and branches, one of the kits lunged at a small chunk of wood and started rolling around with his prize. Tired after his hunt the kit lounged on his belly still holding the wood in his mouth which gave the strong resemblance of a cigar. I was very envious of the kit at this moment cause who wouldn't want to just lay around all day relaxing'

The Rainforest Dandy by Delphine Casimir from Brussels, Belgium: 'This picture was taken in the monkey forest in Ubud, Bali. This place is a crazy place where monkeys are king! Sometimes they give a show, sometimes they climb on you to look for fleas or steal the piece of biscuit you are trying to eat'

Otter Ballerinas by Otter Kwek from Singapore: 'An arabesque smooth coated otter'

Picture me! Picture me!! by Dikla Gabriely from Yokneam, Israel: 'A brown bear in Finland who definitely did everything to make me pay attention to him and focus on him and not the other bears'

Boing! by Lara Mathews from Melbourne, Australia: 'Taken at Westerfolds Park, a beautiful and surprisingly wild pocket of land in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, famous for its kangaroo population. The mob was enjoying some morning sunshine when this joey decided to get silly and try his hand at boxing'

Living the Moment by Kawing Chiu from Staten Island, United States: 'Relax, lay back and enjoy the warm sun... This seal is scratching its face and it is seen lying on the side while his head is supported by his flipper. This image makes the seal like the reclining Buddha statue'

2/17 寒い地域

The Two Trees of Valinor (Roger Garland)

While I’ve already given my opinions on Gundam Build Metaverse the series (tl:dr, it’s shit), I would like to give a small update on two of the model kits:

The 00 Diver Arc is (surprise, surprise) based on the 00 Diver kit, which is itself based on the original 00 Gundam Kit. While you can’t swap to the original chest parts (since they’re not included) you should be able to exchange the outer shell of the head for that of the original 00 (they share the face, but a lot of the outer parts are new so it should be a simple changeover). Though of course, this assumes that the 00 runners aren’t replaced (I’ll update this post if I find out they are).

What I’m trying to say is; It’s still a build fighters kit, so you can probably change a few parts around if you want to.

The other kit is the Shin Burning Gundam (Left), because I realised it’s literally just the Kamiki Burning Gundam with wings and a new V-fin slapped on. So if you missed out on the Kamiki, the Shin’ll probably scratch that same itch. (We’ve had four Build Burning Gundam’s now, wild). Though it may come with different effect parts.

would you download a gundam?

And now for something a little different from your regularly scheduled programming.

*This post and any others like it will contain spoilers*

*General spoiler-free advice for anyone looking to try the game out will be listed at the bottom*

I recently realised I had basically every Assassin’s Creed game I really wanted to play, so I figured I’d play through the entire series until I either got bored or distracted, starting with the Original game for the Xbox 360, which I had never played before. I got into the series via AC: Brotherhood and AC: Revelations and I have a bad habit of starting a game, getting most of the way through, then just stopping, so I was determined to see at least the first game through to the end.

I’m going to go through my specific highlights of the game, low points and just generally talk about the parts that interest me. I’ve played multiple Assassins Creed games in the past, predominantly Brotherhood, Revelations and IV: Black Flag.

Highlights

Characters! I absolutely love how everyone has an actual personality and acts and reacts as actual people. I’ll probably go further into this in another point but most every character you interact with is different (barring the guards and pedestrians), and give the impression of goals, motivations and an entire life that you only have a brief window into.

The Bureau Leaders are probably my favourite example of the above. Jabal, Malik and…. the other fellow are Altaïr’s main points of contact in each city and their relationship with him changes as you progress throughout the game, parallel with how Altaïr himself develops.

Speaking of; Altaïr. He starts the game as an entitled prick of the Assassin Order, promptly fucks up horribly, and spends much of the game making amends for his mistake and ultimately growing as a person and understanding the philosophies of the Assassin Order. Their creed, if you will. He has real development and makes mistakes, but you emphasise with him for most of it because you learn things at the same rate he does.

The single Templars dotted about the map - functioning essentially as mini-bosses, there are Templar Knights with red helmets standing guard at various points throughout the maps. Though I never searched them out, it was gratifying to be presented with a single target where the only objective was to kill them. In one memorable encounter, I ran full pelt at a Templar and was able to stab them seven times before they could even get their sword out.

The actual Templar assassination targets are also all pretty good, character-wise. Certainly some are better than others (I’m not really a fan of the penultimate boss(es), nor Majd Addin), but it’s overall a very good showing, some managing to elicit sympathy, others showcasing how far they’re gone.

I like how the three cities are each distinct in their colouration and architectural style - Acre is a dull grey and has numerous churches and destroyed buildings, reflecting its recent seizure by King Richard and the Crusaders. Damascus is a warm orange and is dotted with mosques and gorgeous towers with scripture all across them. Jerusalem is a delightful green and has numerous gardens, lending it an earthy feel. I admittedly found Acre the weakest of the three, but it was nonetheless nice how I could easily tell which city I was in.

Low points

The fucking timed assassination missions. I like the flag hunts, those are nice. It’s a good test of your free-running ability and it feels like you’re strutting your skills to the novitates. But the timed assassination missions are just you running around stabbing people and desperately hoping there aren’t any guards you haven’t seen. They’re the only missions I ever had to retry.

Speaking of the guards - There’s roughly three kinds, varying in competency and damage. With three cities and multiple different armour designs, it can be difficult to distinguish which are the actual threats in any given fight. This can lead to Altaïr being thoroughly brutalised in a very short period, since you can very easily not notice how much health you’re losing until it’s too late. Furthermore, the guards tend to crowd around you and attack sequentially. Though rare this can sometimes lead to you getting what I termed “Ultra Combo’d” during my playthrough - multiple guards will attack within a very short window, each knocking you into the next swing and leaving you little opportunity to parry or dodge.

Speaking of the guards, during the final parts of the game you essentially have to wade through multiple combat encounters with well-trained enemies. So unless you’ve rigorously practiced with the combat system beforehand it can be very easy to get killed. It bothers me specifically because it’s just been one aspect of the game until now, but it just becomes the main part right near the end, so if you don’t have the combat down pat, then you’re gonna have a bad time.

Saving Citizens is fine, but I wish they had more than five lines to thank you with, even if some of the line deliveries are really good. Also I didn’t use the vigilantes much (barring one memorable assassination where they restrained a target for me)

General points

The beggars are fairly obviously designed to be annoying and get in the way, which is reinforced by their behaviour and almost mocking voice lines. However there’s one in Jerusalem that appears to randomly have a far softer voice that elicits far more sympathy.

I was surprised by how much of Desmond’s story is in this - particularly given that later games apparently decided to drop that entire plot. I find it far more interesting than I expected to, particularly how Desmond grows from experiencing his ancestor’s past life and how you know absolutely nothing about the modern Assassin Order (Desmond and Lucy’s conversation about how Abstergo found him is particularly interesting).

Though it’s something of an old game now, I was surprised by how resonant I found many of its themes - the Abstergo and the Templars are explicitly mentioned and shown to excercise information control and censorship - one of your assassination targets is in the process of leading a book burning when you kill them which is a relevant theme to, well, basically all modern media. The Assassins and Templars both seek peace, but the Assassins aim to teach people to comprehend the truth, whereas the Templars seek to obfuscate the truth and control people by presenting an illusion of the world. Freedom through knowledge versus Order through Oppression. It’s also interesting that this is what the Assassins seek as a group, rather than a focus on individualism.

Similarly to the above point, I like how Brotherhood is emphasised as a theme - Altair succeeds in his tasks due to the help of his brothers, but it’s them working towards a common goal, not some “power of friendship” thing (for the record, I don’t dislike “power of friendship” but it’s very easy to do wrong).

The Ending…… I like, but it does feel anticlimactic, and I find it’s very easy to pick up on some of the twists just through the landscape and the design of certain areas. That said, I think it’s a good set up for a sequel (even though they probably couldn’t have known it at the time). I can however see why they made the decision to excise Desmond’s plot later - though I very much like Desmond’s plot (at least so far), it kinda clashes with the historical Assassin storyline. Though I do love how eagle vision becomes relevant right at the end.

The Freerun system - it’s in the other points column because, when it works, it’s amazing. You feel like a masterful assassin, free and able to effortlessly outrun your pursuers, striking down targets as you need. When it doesn’t work, it’s just a massive frustration, as you try get Altair’s chaffinch brain to grab something as ten guards bear down on you. Mixed results, essentially.

Tips for new players

So you hear about that new Assassin’s Creed *Insert Title Here* and wanna see how it all started do you? Or maybe you just think this particular one sounds cool. Here’s some stuff I picked up during my playthrough:

Throwing Knives are amazing, use them. Just one little blade and a guard is no more. However, you do need to ensure there’s nothing between the two of you and it’s difficult to refill them without returning to Masayaf.

The Hidden Blade, as long as you just do the slow walk assassination and don’t do the big fancy jump, a target killed by the hidden blade will take a few seconds to die, thus granting you time to escape before the guards notice.

Citizens around the streets will spawn either vigilantes or scholars after being saved. If you’re struggling to get in places, then look around for a citizen that can get you some scholars. Vigilantes will distract guards for you, but they don’t really come up much unless you run towards them when being pursued.

Some Story assassination missions are designed to degenerate into chases or combat. When in doubt, just gun for the assassination target.

Speaking of Combat, some later enemies will counter your attacks, but you can counter their counters. A good strategy is to attack then immediately counter as the animation plays - if there’s no counter then it doesn’t cancel anything, but it will immediately counter the enemies counter if they attempt one.

You lose synchronisation by punching beggars and lepers/madmen, but not drunkards. Do with this information as you will.

Try to get all the Eagle Vision synchronisation points in the Kingdom on your first visit to each city. Guards get tetchier later in the game, and it makes navigation much easier to have them all.