As my posting has dwindled over the years it seems a little excessive maintaining an entire hosted site for irregular burbling. I’ve gone back to where it all started and dusted off the Blogger blog formerly known as MMO Musing, renamed it to Killed in a Smiling Accident, and (more or less) migrated the content from here to there. I’ll probably shutter things here, maybe re-point the domain if I can be bothered or leave a placeholder of some sort. Monthly-ish posts should continue if you have a burning desire to re-point feeds, bookmarks or what-not. So long, and thanks for all the fish ..read more

I know you all come here for the latest up-to-the-minute buzz from the gaming world, so, hey – have you heard about this little indie called Fortnite? I reckon it might get pretty popular, you know… My consumption of gaming news might generously be called haphazard these days, generally comprising A Random Subset Of Things Posted To The Site-Formerly-Known-As-Twitter (a rebrand that must be a source of constant joy to whoever came up with Consignia, safe in the knowledge that it’s no longer the worst rebrand in history) . In the year since The Event things have definitely fragmented; some folk ..read more

Hunkering down over Christmas to avoid spreading COVID did give me a chance to wrap up Cyberpunk: 2077. The game received another reasonably chunky update in December, adding a working metro system amongst other elements. I might have been mildly miffed if there was anything in there that would have made a significant different to my second playthrough, but after taking the train once and admiring the effort put into the system I never used public transport again, fast transport was just so much more convenient; maybe there’s some deep message there about public infrastructure (or rather more ..read more

Now I have a Spitfire, ho ho ho! GEEEEEEEEETTTTT dressed you merry gentlemen let nothing you dismay For it is Christmas Christmas Christmas Christmas Christmas day! Christmas 2023 hasn’t worked out quite as planned thanks to a couple of bouts of COVID; not serious, thankfully, but it put the kibosh on travelling to family. Oh well, nothing for it but hunkering down with Lyra the dog and perhaps the odd game or two. Could be worse! Hope everyone out there is enjoying the holidays and has a great 2024 ..read more

Phantom Liberty, the new expansion for Cyberpunk: 2077, seemed simple enough to begin with, our little band of misfit underdogs against the nasty warlord-type running Dogtown. Sneaking around, infiltrating swanky parties, swapping faces with amoral hackers, all very Mission Impossible. Towards the end things fell apart; betrayal, lies, treason, death… and that was just the teachers, ah!!1! And then I got off the bus! Having reached an unsatisfactory conclusion the first time I played through the base game I tried to do a little reading around the possible endings of the expansion without compl ..read more

After the somewhat disappointing conclusion to my first run at Cyberpunk 2077 I never did go back to an earlier save to try something different. With the announcement of Phantom Liberty I decided to start up a fresh game earlier this year and had made a bit of a dent in Act 1 before finding more details about the expansion, including a major overhaul of key systems in the whole game. As a result I parked up that second play-through until the full release, and by the time that came around a few weeks back I’d got so rusty I decided to start from scratch, again. It probably wasn’t the best decis ..read more

I always loved books, and therefore libraries, growing up, but got out of the habit of visiting after starting work. Most of my reading is digital these days, and while perusing a potential replacement for a trusty Kindle saw that one of the selling points of Kobo readers is integration with Libby, an app that allows you to borrow ebooks from your local library. I thought I’d have a look at what might be available, and was really impressed at the whole process. Signing up for a digital library card was very straightforward (fortunately our library uses Libby, not all do) and immediately unlock ..read more

I do like unlocking stuff in games. New characters, weapons, titles, cosmetics, commemorative tea towels, set me any old task and I’ll jump to it if there’s some geegaw to be had. The village is being threatened by an evil necromancer? Eh, I might try and save you all if I have the time. Someone’s offering a t-shirt with the slogan “I defeated 1,000 skeletons and boy am I BONE tired! BONE! Because skeletons are BONES, do you see?”, I’m off to the graveyard before you can say “we understood perfectly well, there was no need for a contrived example to demonstrate”. When used well tasks/achieveme ..read more

I was streaming music while walking the dog, an assortment of reggae and dub Amazon had come up with based on my previous listening, and a really catchy tune came on. For some reason I couldn’t immediately check the phone to see what it was – probably trying to stop Lyra hurtling after some cat/squirrel/moped – and after I remembered later there didn’t seem to be a track history to consult. I’d forgotten all about it until the Chalke Valley History Festival. Chalke Valley was excellent as ever with its combination of talks and living history – Al Murray, jousting, Ian Hislop, a Sherman tank, M ..read more

I try and maintain a range of interests apart from gaming, but that’s become a little harder recently. I’ve been a season ticket holder with London Irish RFC for just over twenty years, not always the happiest of times with the team being in the doldrums for a while, but things had started really clicking – the best season for years, a great crop of promising youngsters sticking with the club rather than moving on, exciting times. With things going so well on the pitch fate decided to stick its oar in; the club collapsed financially, the current owner unable to sustain ongoing losses and a pro ..read more