TV Review: Revolution Season One

Today I move away from video games and will be discussing a TV show.  A show created by Eric Kripke, produced by J.J. Abrams, Jon Favreau, Bryan Burk et cetera, and with music by Christopher Lennertz.  For me, that's a pretty decent line up.

Revolution is a post-apocalyptic science fiction drama that takes place on Earth with the primary story happening 15 years after the "blackout."  Now if this didn't sound like a concept that would be cancelled halfway through the first season (especially if it had been on Fox), then I'm not a TV consumer.  Which I'm really not, mainly due to my rotating four-on-two-off 2pm - 10pm schedule, which doesn't allow for consistent on-air program watching.  But that's why I don't work in television, because I would greenlight the first season and order at least two additional seasons of the show, just based on the premise.

Everything in the (long) following article is all just speculation and I'm not pulling anything from chatrooms, message boards, forums or other forms of internet chatter.  This all comes from me watching the first season, minus three episodes (episodes 13, 14 & 15) and drawing my own conclusions, none of which are groundbreaking or revolutionary (eh, eh!?).  On with the show, but be warned, THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD!

Let's get to the meat.  The primary story of the show takes place 15 years after the "blackout" (the night all power on the planet Earth seems to have disappeared. "All power" meaning anything that runs on electrical, battery power, anything operable by solar power, ALL power.  One of the characters even brings up the absurdity of this in the first episode in a "school-lesson-type" scene saying something along the lines that physics went wrong and stopped working when it shouldn't have, for no reason.  I like that the show acknowledges this fact.  So yes, 15 years after the power goes out is when the TV series starts.

What have people been doing for the last 15 years?  They've been building communities/hamlets and trying to get by without the use of "power."  Revolution does a good job keeping away from Mad Max imagery although it does bear some resemblance to The Postman, which isn't a bad thing.  Apparently 15 years after an apocalyptic event is when people start getting their shit together.  This is one thing that I had a problem with.

Episode one (Pilot) starts with some members of the Monroe Militia (antagonists) assaulting the little village where most of our main characters live.  The Militia is looking for Miles Matheson, brother of Ben Matheson and uncle to Charlie (F) and Danny (M).  Ben is killed, Danny is taken as "payment/hostage" and before dying, Ben tells Aaron (school teacher-guy who has the problem with physics hiccuping) to find Miles who might be in Chicago.  The word is that this Miles guy might know something about how to get the power back on. So Aaron, Charlie and Charlie's step-mom Maggie set out to Chicago to find Miles to help them get Danny back.

So where is the problem that I have with this show?  Season One is essentially a character building story for Charlie, who is roughly 19-20 and very, very naive in how dangerous the outside world is out there.  She has a very optimistic and unrealistic view of how "real" people act in this world.  "Because we're family!" quickly becomes her mantra/catch-phrase for the first half of the season and becomes a bit annoying at times.  She almost comes across as a Pollyanna-type, trying to help everyone along the way who needs help, which doesn't work when you're trying to save someone who is constantly on the move and away from you.

I feel I know why the creators had the story take place 15 years after the blackout.  So that out protagonist, Charlie, would be old enough at the beginning of the blackout to have lived a life with all of our modern conveniences for those memories to be distant, almost dreamlike.  But because this is a character building story, she now has to be old enough for the audience to believe that a woman would travel out in search for her brother with the very probability of ending up dead.  And for her to eventually fall in love with the obvious love interest as well as kill a fair amount of people (when she reaches that level in her development) without the viewing public giving outcry about children murdering others.  I get that.  I get that it's easier for an audience to follow a 20 year old woman than following, say, a nine year old.

So in the Pilot, Charlie and gang set off for Chicago.  They encounter some dangers, but ultimately make it safely.  And in the same episode, they find Miles Matheson.  Whom the Monroe Militia has been looking for, apparently for a number of years.  In the first episode.  No build up.  I personally would have liked it if the journey to Chicago had taken a couple of episodes since they were travelling on foot, you know, to help establish the perils of this world and to show some scope.  While there were some nice vista shots, ultimately Chicago was reached, Miles found, Miles joined the party ("because we're family!") and successfully defended himself and party against a squad of Militia members in order to establish that he's a bad-ass.  I get that by finding Miles so early on, that the audience is immediately thrust into the world and the surrounding conflict.  I personally would have liked to have spent some time getting to know our initial characters, the world a bit more and not have it so easy for someone to be found right off the bat, especially in a world that is being established.

Back to the 15 year thing, in episode 5, "Soul Train," it is introduced that the Militia are bringing steam locomotives back into use.  15 years without power and no one thought to use trains?  I don't remember if it was in this or an earlier/later episode that it was mentioned that trains/boats/planes were dismantled to be used for their parts to build. . . other things I guess, I don't remember. 

One last thing, is that apparently, in 15 years, aside from the children, no one appears to have aged at all.  I'm not saying that different younger actors should have been brought in for Ben, Miles, Monroe, Rachel (Ben Matheson's first wife), you know, the adults, but it doesn't seem like there was made any effort to made the actors at least appear 15 years younger.  Flashbacks are obvious because there are lights on.

Well, after ragging on Charlie for the better part of the article, I feel like she deserves some praise, which she does.  By the end of the first season, she's a much more likeable character.  I do not think that I would have believed she was capable of where she is at now if she did not have the journey that she had.  I just had to sludge through half a season of being annoyed with her before she started to grow on me as somewhat likeable.  Her journey is necessary.

I also want to mention Christopher Lennertz's score for the show.  I was honestly a little disappointed that there weren't as many melodic pieces, but I think that might be more a TV thing than his personal style.  Maybe it is his style as the only music of his that I am familiar with has been the score from Gun, which was pretty awesome epic-western themed.  I can pick up hints of that particular style here-and-there, but overall, the music fits as atmospheric and driving music for those scenes and the world.

I admit I was surprised that this show wasn't cancelled, partly because I liked it and because the last pseudo-post-apocalyptic show I was watching, Flashforward, and the last Bad Robot Production's show, Alcatraz, were both cancelled after their respective first seasons.  I am very happy that Revolution was renewed for a second season of 22 episodes.  The DVD/Blu-ray will be released on September 3rd of this year with the second season premiering on September 25th.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

Special Edition: Precursor Games presents "Shadow of the Eternals" for Wii U & PC Kickstarter

Yes, Precursor Games previously tried to do a $2,500,000 kickstarter a while back to "kickstart" their "spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem that didn't go over too well.  Speculations aside, they've started it up again and hopefully this time they will succeed, especially coming out of San Diego Comic Con with a lot of positive reviews and a lot of public interaction and gameplay.

I was going to pin this on the end of the post I just put up (the one right below this), but felt I would do it better service just to put up a separate post about the kickstarter campaign.  This campaign will run from yesterday (Thursday July 25th, 2013) through Friday August 23rd, 2013.  Already, after one day, they have just under $10,000 of their previous earned amount after 24 days of crowdfunding.  Things are looking up.

I feel that I could say a lot about Precursor Games and their handling of redoing a kickstarter, but I'll just direct you to their Kickstarter page for you to do as you will.  Do I want to see this game made?  Very much so yes.  Will I be bringing it up every post?  No, but I'll be putting the banner I made (using their artwork) at the bottom of my posts as my way of supporting and promoting something that I would like to see.

That's that.  Have a good Friday.  It's my Monday and I'll see you all again in a couple of days, being next Monday, which will be my Friday.  It's all good.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Cell Qui Sirias

BIT.TRIP.RUNNER: Game Music vs. Original Soundtrack

As I've recently said, I've been playing a lot of BIT.TRIP.RUNNER in an attempt to finish the one game in the BIT.TRIP series that I feel I actually can beat.  I'm not holding out at all that I'll beat VOID or CORE, so RUNNER it is.  With so many hours spent on the last two levels of the third world (Triumph), I've had a lot of time to think about how the music changes subtly each time you start back at the beginning and how that can change the music experience for each person.  Tack onto that the then difficulty of making a soundtrack for a game where the player can ultimately decide how they want the song to develop.

Especially in the third world, you are offered multiple paths, some lead to more gold bars which have their own musical tone/cue while others might lead to jumping a gap and sliding under a flying chunk of rock, which again, has their own musical tone.  Add onto all of that if you picked up the + which further develops the music.  In 3-10 "The Beginning of the End," I started to intentionally miss the first + because I preferred the way the song developed after the long hallway with the triple beats-from-hell.  I was basically creating a song while playing a video game.  That my friends, is pretty awesome.

Let's get back to the official soundtrack now (which you can listen to in it's entirety over on Gaijin Games' bandcamp page).  Aside from Anamanaguchi's title track "Blackout City," and "Mermaid" which plays over the credits track, the remainder of the music is a reimagining of sorts of the music heard in each of the worlds.  There are elements from the main song in each world, but they don't seem to be as developed as the songs are in-game.  The songs do progress along a similar path though, from rough/basic beats to full on melody to finish with the calming tones of the EXTRA level of Commander Video.

Upon first listening to the soundtrack, I admit that I was a little disappointed that the music I was hearing reminded me of the game, but I didn't feel the same excitement as when I was playing.  I wanted to hear the music that I had created while playing.  What I could do is find a "walkthrough" on youtube (where there's no bloody talking!) and just rip the audio and boom, I've got a copy of the music straight from the game.  But, where's the fun in that?

Part of the experience of B.T.R. is creating entertaining and catchy music while playing a very challenging rail-platformer.  The music from the soundtrack is just foreplay to me sitting down and playing the game, which I just put down after 20 minutes on 3-11 "Rusty Warren."  This is something that is very much apart from most other music/rhythm games which punish you if you don't play the song exactly as it is supposed to be played.  Yes, B.T.R. is very much a challenging game that is ripe with punishment, but it only punishes your lack of reflexes, not your desire to create and develop.  And again my friends, that is awesome.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental


P.S.  Precursor Games started

First Impressions: Half-Life (PC)

Half-Life is a game developed by Valve Software and released on the PC all-the-way-back in 1998.  By this point, my experience with FPS' was limited to Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (1997) and GoldenEye 007 (1997), so I know the quality for games developed in and around 1998.  I only first heard about Half-Life and the Half-Life series sometime in the mid-2000's and all I could tell you was that it was apparently a really good game with a protagonist who looked like Hugh Laurie.  What type of game is it?  I thought it was an science fiction adventure game, maybe akin to a Resident Evil game but without the survival horror-ness.  It was only a year and-a-half ago that I found out that Half-Life was an FPS when I saw a GoldenEye mod for Half-Life 2.

Right before Steam started their Super-Düper-Summer-Sale, the Half-Life series went on sale for 75% off so I told myself I should go ahead and purchase the beast (all 11 games including Team Fortress Classic).  And, I figured, what better place to start than at the beginning.

Presently I've put in 3 hours into Half-Life and my proverbial socks have yet to be blown off.   Graphically, Half-Life looks a lot like what I would expect from an FPS from the late 1990's although it has a lot of spoken dialogue, but I chalk that up to it being a PC game with a larger capacity than a game cartridge.  

I initially felt that my "meh-ness" was due to the fact that I was killing/defending myself/standing my ground against weird alien creatures who seemed hell bent on killing me after they were transported to the Black Mesa facility.  Sure they're aggressive.  Sure they seemed to be perfectly designed to kill/devour/digest humans.  But they're probably just scared.  Scared demonic aliens designed to kill/devour/swallow your soul.  I'm not a big fan of FPS' that focus on aliens, or at least non humanoid aliens.  That being said, I just entered the 3rd (4th?) chapter and I'm now killing military personnel  so my feelings on the game might change in the next couple of hours of gameplay.

I also do not seemed to have reached the level of immersion that I've recently read a lot about.  Sure it's a first person game so you're in the head of the protagonist so there is a certain level of "forced" immersion, but I don't feel immersed in the world.  Yet.  My initial confusion cropped up in the beginning of the game while wandering around the Black Mesa facility trying to figure out what to do/where to go in a place where Gordon Freeman apparently works on a regular basis.  For that reason, I was not immersed.  Maybe if Gordon had been a new hire so there would be reason for the player to not immediately know the layout of the facility. 

My main point is, is that I'm just sort of whelmed with Half-Life.  If I didn't know that this was (supposed to be) an amazing game, I don't know if I would continue playing it, although I probably would anyway because it's not a bad game, just not the "Game of the Year" that I was promised it would be.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Pushing onwards

Game idea: Gardening Simulator

Alright, I've heard of 'Farmville,'  so please don't remind me about it.  My official stance on Farmville is:  I don't care.  I don't care about Farmville.  I tried to play it for about a day and I stopped caring pretty quickly.  Which, of course is the death of any good farm and or garden.  You have to care.

I do, however, have a garden in my back yard.  I've got tomatoes, basil, marigolds, kale, chard, lemon cucumbers and yellow squash.  Or at least, I have the plants for them-- they haven't yielded much in the way of fruits.  Anyhow, I enjoy gardening.  It really isn't much different from certain types of gaming.   I think of tower defense, RTS, and Sim City.  You plant your units, you maintain your units against the ravages of enemies, bent on beating them to the ground.  Each unit has a different property, and many times they will require certain appropriate conditions to upgrade them and turn out different results.  

Gardening is very much like that.  The sun, while an important ally, is also an enemy.  It will dry out the plants and burn them.  You have to keep them steadily supplied with water in order to compensate for the heat of the sun.  However, it is important not to over manage the garden.  If you water too much, you will rot out the roots, and kill your plants that way.  The balance is delicate.  I can't say I've seen this feature in an RTS or other sort of game;  a way to overwater, or otherwise worry a unit to death.

Oh, here's a two dollar idea for you:  an app or a widget or whatever, for your phone or desktop, that is just a houseplant that you have to water.  Just a stupid, simple game to keep a person mildly entertained once a day, twice a day, however.  The benefit of a computer plant is that you can track your watering schedule.  In fact, the system could double as a tracking system for your own watering -- you just have to be consistent about feeding the virtual plant whenever you feed your actual plant.  It might work.  I certainly know I'm on my computer and phone way more than I spend time with my plants.

Another element of the garden is pests.  These buggers are... so buggery!  And it's really tough to combat them.  Marigolds have the property of being attractive to pests, and hardy.  So they can divert some of the bugs to eat them.  In addition, plants like Chard can usually take a beating from the slugs and the aphids.  They're hard to kill, and usually produce a lot.  But still, after all that, the fucking bugs can screw things up for my other plants, the once I want to eventually eat!  It's a really tough balance, too, because if you want to eat something, it's really probably not a great idea to cover it in poison.  But poison seems like the most effective method of driving the point across to those damned hungry bugs.  There's also ladybugs, and apple slices and eggshells and other products.  Nothing is perfect though.

And the bane of my existence, there are cats.  Fucking stray cats.  I love cats, don't get me wrong.  I even love strays.  But god dammit, I hate cat shit.  I hate it in my garden.  It smells bad, it's disgusting to think that a cat (probably my cat) is shitting around the tomatoes *I plan to EAT*  and to make matters worse, there's toxoplasmagondii.  Great.  It has a name; why I shouldn't eat plants sitting in cat shit-soaked soil.  Apart from 'ewwwww!'

Finally, there's the attention.  It is very easy to slip out of consistency with gardening.  Simply become distracted for a few days.  It's not hard-- I do it all the time.  Actually, a gardening tracker app would be useful to me when this happens, because I could pull up my phone and see my thirsty plant, and know it's been three days since I watered.  It's not an exact science, but it's pretty darn ballpark.

So that's it for this idea.  In summary, I would like a game that combines RTS and Sim City.  Choose a plot, clear it, fertilize, plant.  Water, fight bugs.  Harvest.  Find out what you did wrong.  Seems pretty simple to me, and I think it's a series of mechanics that can be refined to a deep level.  This is why I like the thought of making games:  I can combine learning about a thing, with trying to express it using programming systems and graphics.  Now I just need to work on that programming... And that graphics.

-D

Who's this, and why is he posting here?

Hi everybody,  I thought I'd stop by and drop a post on this here blog, just to let you know I'm still around, and I'm alright.  Through a series of shifting priorities, I have lost touch with my posting schedule.  After work I feel about as creative as a slug, and these days on weekends, I tend to have plans.  Saturday mornings were always the best time for me, I'd wake up early, make some coffee, play a few moves in my online chess games and then I'd start writing.  Sometimes I'd finish up a post I had been brewing for a while, other times I would just crank one out cold.  Sometimes I'd do both, and then pick one to publish now and one to publish later.

Well, all of that has been screwed up lately.  The floating cloud of shit passed through the giant jet engine at my work, right around June 1st.  Though for a couple months before that we were all saying: 'what's that?  I think it's a giant cloud of shit!  shouldn't we turn around?  Umm.. Guys?"  which was pretty stressful as it was.  Stress is a funny thing, you might think that writing helps me relieve stress, and it sometimes does.  But the high levels going on there pushed me past healthy stress relievers, like writing, jogging, rock climbing-- and straight into bad stress relievers like late nights and booze.  Woops.  Anyway, suffice it to say, my rhythms are all screwed up.  

But I haven't lost touch completely.  I'm here to say I care.  really, I do.  I want, nay, need you all to know this.   See how desperate and pleading this post has become?  That's what I'm talking about.  (Coffee always helps with hyperbole, I've noticed.  Been drinking a ton of that as well, lately!)  I guess it hasn't been all bad.  I went camping, hiked at Horsetail falls, and tomorrow I'm hitting up Mt. Tam.  So, that's pretty sweet.  Which reminds me of something video game related.  Someone once called Proteus a 'hiking simulator' -- I'm totally down with that description.  

Here's a short list of video game related things I've been meaning to write about, but can't seem to gather my consciousness into a focused ball, and project into script:  Sequels, what makes a good sequel? (inspired by my love for Zelda II); RYUU fantasy card game (really want to research this one, it looks pretty cool); Steam greenlight game: residue; Meta Tetris (you figure this one out); Ti99 games: Wumpus, Amaze-ing; Word/Number Munchers!  Atlantica Online; Reus; Online Rental; Ultima PC vs NES.

I take these notes all throughout the day.  I really to enjoy spending time meditating on a particular topic, doing web research (the web is AMAZING for research) and then writing.  Funny thing is that even when I am writing regularly, I often have a hard time being patient enough to write and edit a posting to my complete satisfaction.  It's sort of this way with all my hobbies, though.  

Okay, so, that's all for now.  Thanks for checking in,  I'll be back.

D


P.S.  The World War Z movie suuuuuuuuuuucked!

Contemplations on BIT.TRIP.RUNNER (PC & 3DS)

I've been playing a lot of BIT.TRIP.RUNNER recently, mainly because during the Steam Sale, I purchased BIT.TRIP Presents. . . Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien and played through the stages on the first level.  The fact that the game contains a continuing storyline that takes place after the first game (somewhat unlike the previous games in the BIT.TRIP series) compelled me to attempt to finish Runner.  I should also mention that in both the PC and the 3DS version of BIT.TRIP.RUNNER, I initially became stuck on 3-1 Paradise Lost.

The third area of the game takes place in a city that's apparently under constant construction, which is perfect for a rail-platformer set to ever developing music.  The problem that I initially had was that I couldn't tell what was an obstacle and what was part of the background, especially when CommanderVideo dipped below street level or right when you come up from below ground..

Oh, you mean that pipe is an obstacle and not part of the scenery?

For level 3-1, I probably spent a good 30 minutes trying to figure out the music, pattern and how to not die/trip every fifteen seconds.  Maybe it didn't take half-an-hour, but it sure felt that long with all the restarts that I had to go through.  Eventually I did make it past that bastard of a level, which renewed the belief that I infact do not suck at video games and don't necessarily belong back in the kitchen making sandwiches and having babies.

So I began to progress through the third world/level and as is the case with most levels, I could get to a certain point, "tripped" then passed the previously tripped section before immediately tripping again.  And then this level happend:

Thankfully this pain-in-the-ass section happened at the beginning of the level 3-9, aptly named "The Gauntlet."  I must have easily spent about two hours on this one stage, not all in one sitting mind you, before finally passing it earlier yesterday (Friday 7/19/13) afternoon.

Then, I went to the airport with Conklederp to fly down to SoCal, which is where I'm at for the next couple of days, and I brought along my trusty 3DS (aka: why don't more people have these in airports so I can meet more Mii's!?!).  And, since I have a copy of BIT.TRIP.SAGA, I popped that sucker to give the third world another go on a smaller screen.  This is when I first experienced any kind of lag in the game and noticed some loss is graphics.

The lag was really noticable when I had the 3D slider turned on.  Even the slightest bit and if felt like the game was skipping frames, which really isn't what you want in this kind of a game.  I turned the 3D off and it was barely noticeable.  Did I feel that the game was unplayable because of this?  Nope, I was still able to beat a handful of levels and on one particular level (3-5 Congestion) I collected 14/15 gold bars and I know that I missed the same one in both PC and 3DS versions.  The loss in graphics isn't noticeable either unless you know what it is that you're looking for.  On the 3DS, I never would have noticed this little bit of graffiti that is legible in the PC version:

Is that Meat Boy jumping out of a taco?

Knowing it's there is funny, but not knowing what the words say in the 3DS version isn't going to kill you.

The point is, BIT.TRIP.RUNNER is still a very fun game even if some levels (3-9 & 3-10) are a god damn pain in the god damn ass, but it's really the music that keeps me playing.  I'll even sometimes trip myself up if I miss a powerup that develops the music, but only if I'm replaying a level.  Until I pass a level, I don't care what I miss, I just have to pass it first then worry about all the gold bars, power ups and total points not earned.

The ultimate question then should be, "If I beat either the PC or 3DS version of the game first, will I beat the other one as well?"  We'll just have to see how the rest of 3-10 and 3-11 go.  Oh, and I would also like to point out that 3-10 has a section of the damnable dots (exactly like in the second picture) IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE!  It's now just a waiting game now to see who cracks first. . .me or the jump button on the controller.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

Steam's Summer Sale 2013 Part IIb: The Collectible Card Game: Special Executive Limited Edition #13,847/29,835,627

If you haven't noticed already, Steam's Summer Sale is in full swing.  From July 11th (which is now in the past) through July 22nd, Steam will have sales on too many games that I kind of want to play but because it's now 75% off and is now $4.99, I have to buy it.  Right now.  If there ever was an online event where the Shut Up And Take My Money meme was intended for, this surely seems it.

Recently Steam has also introduced a collectable card game-type thing for a select number of games.  The cards don't really do anything aside from just being there.  Let's take Portal 2 for example.  As you play Portal 2, you can randomly acquire cards during "drops," which are then viewed only after you close down the game.  You'll be notified that you have something new in you InBox and then you can view your pretties.  Each game has about eight available cards and once you have acquired each card, you're able to "craft" them into a badge, something that Steam has already been doing for a while.  

For Portal 2, this is what my screen looks like:

Notice the blue typescript "No card drops remaining."  So how do I collect the rest of the cards?  By trading and/or buying them.  You might also notice the "I'm A Potato! 100XP."  That's part of the badge system-thing too.  Each Steam account has an associated "Experience Points," that. . . um. . . do something?  Steam says that "Your Steam Level [XP] is a summary of your badges and participation in Steam events.  Each badge earned increases your XP, and earning XP progresses you towards the next Steam level."  That's like saying the definition of "Difficult" is saying that, "it's something that difficult."  Thanks Steam.

As for the cards themselves, you can acquire more than one of the same card and when/if this happens, you can do a couple of things with your duplicates.  1) Do nothing and just have multiples.  2) Trade them with your Steam friends.  3) Put them up for sale.  

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to sell three duplicate cards for a grand total of $0.85, but that was because I was selling the cards for about $0.05 less than the average asking price.  That "earned income" then went to whatever it was that I recently purchased during SSS; it might've been BIT.TRIP Presents. . . Runner 2: Legend of Future Alien or the Complete Half-Life collection.  The last four days have been a bit of a blur really.

I only have a slight problem/issue with the whole cards thing.  It seems/feels kind of gimmicky.  Back when Mafia Wars was in it's heyday, there were events/sales/missions where you could acquire a super-special-awesome-weapon with killer stats (pun intended) that you can only acquire if you complete this mission that you can only complete if you have a lot of friends to help out and if you recharge your energy at an exorbitant rate, which you can only do if you spend real money to buy energy refills which you then use up trying to get that one damnable item that works like an untraceable cellphone but is special-event specific and you know that you may not have enough to complete the overall mission before the end of the special event runs out.  You know, one of those type of things.  Anyway, that's kind of what the cards and badges thing feels like to me.  I'm not going to spend real money for these.  

Now, I might spend money that I make from selling cards, but that's just real fictional money anyway.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Enjoying My Burrito

First Impressions: Infinite Space (DS)

Infinite Space is a game that came out back in 2009, developed by Nude Maker and Platinum Games and published by SEGA.  I recall finding out about the game from an article in the December 2009 issue of Nintendo Power.  The glowing praise from the article coupled with seeing Vorlynx play hours on Eve Online and explaining game mechanics (despite my general dislike of MMORPG's), I really wanted to play Infinite Space.  

Being the person that I am, I naturally waited too long before picking the game up and it seemed to fall into relative obscurity.  I was able to find it on eBay, but the frequent "RARE" or "Out of Print!" tag that went along with the game's title always seem to drive up the cost of the game.  While living in Northern California, any Gamestop that carried Infinite Space always seemed to be just far enough away that made the idea of travelling 100 miles round trip, just too damn far.  For a while I'd given up ever trying to locate a reasonably priced copy of Infinite Space until one afternoon I was in a Gamestop up here in Oregon and happened to see a used copy for ~$12.  I snatched that up faster than something that snatches up things really fast.

Presently I have put in 4h38m of play time and 6h21m of game time.  Why the discrepancy?  Because there have been times when I've been forced into combat and didn't come out alive, which was usually 20 minutes after having saved.  I also started the game twice.  The first time was shortly after I brought it home and played for about 30 minutes.  A couple of weeks ago I came back to it and rather than try and figure out what I was doing, I just started over.

Right now in the game, I really feel like I'm playing a video game version of Firefly that was done better than a licensed Firefly game could pull off.  In general terms, you are the pilot of a spaceship that you purchase after hawking a family heirloom.  As the game progresses, you come upon new ships to purchase/acquire and are able to establish/build your crew by assigning them to positions that they are best suited for (each character has individual stats such as Engineering, Command, Medical, et cetera).  I am travelling from planet-to-planet looking for work from bartenders.  Thankfully my ships are refuelled/repaired every time I dock with a station while orbiting a planet free of charge, otherwise it would be too much like Firefly.

One thing about the game that stuck in my mind was that it apparently had a very steep learning curve.  Like the harmonica, it's easy to learn to play, but you'd better learn quickly or you'll find yourself in a battle of the bands against John Popper if you're not careful.  Or if you haven't saved in the last 30 minutes.  This has happened to me a couple of times.  Each time you come across a planet, you have the option to save.  While travelling to other planets, celestial objects, you have a chance/risk of running across hostiles.  Most of the time you have the option of battling x number of ships or escaping.  A few times I've been forced into battle against people I am assuming are pirates and I cannot escape.  Each time was following a battle that I was able to win although suffered plenty of damage to my ship, thus my ship was destroyed along with the money and experience I gained from the previous successful battle.

That's the thing with this game, you have to pay attention.  During the battle sequences, you may be battling three other vessels who are all equipped differently and have differing ranges of fire.  The battle screen is set up as such:

The vertically slashed area at the top shows the position of your ship (green bullet shape) to the enemy ship (yellow /green/red bullet shape) that you are currently focused on (which is selected at the top of the bottom screen), regardless if the ship you've selected is the closer of the x number of ships to you.  The green/yellow/red meter shows which type of attacks you can perform on the ship you've selected, but only if they are within range; if you're not in range, you can't attack.

Within this linear space, you can move your ship forward or backward to put yourself within range or move yourself out of range of the ship that you've selected, all the while keeping in mind that the ships that you're not focusing on fighting can still fire at you if you are within their range, which is not displayed.

At the point I am at in the game, I do not have the special "Spcl1" command or the "Melee" option available to me.  In fact, I just learned "Command 2" which allows me to have more than one ship under my command while in combat.

As I look this over, I can see that I would still have a lot to cover, even in a Full Review and I may have to break that up into two parts, like I did with The World Ends With You posts.

The last thing I will bring up is the music.  The music itself is pretty good, about what you would expect from a science-fiction outer space RPG.  The sound quality though seems a bit lacking.  The music and sound effects often sound like there is a layer of static in the forefront.  I only really notice this staticiness when I'm playing the game around people and I feel like I have to apologize for the strange noises emanating from my non-phone-gaming device.

So yes, I am currently very happy with my purchase of Infinite Space, even if it was published without blast processing.  It's a very fun space RPG that is consistently reminding me of Firefly, and even if Kaylee isn't my chief engineer, at least I haven't come across any Reavers.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

She Screams In Scilence

MMORPGs - are they for me?

Or do I just want to play Ultima forever?  What's a cranky gamer to do?

I have a confession to make:  I have very little experience with Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.  Given that Role Playing Games are my favorite genre, and I write for a blog about video games, and MMORPGs are like, the biggest thing to happen to video games in a decade - I think this represents a pretty substantial hole in my game playing experience and perspective.

Now granted, I did play FF XI to about level 20 or so, and gained dual class.  And I've watched 5 seasons of 'The Guild.'  Also - I once lived in a house where three of my roommates split their rooms up so that they all slept in one room, and then the other room was dedicated to WoW.  During that time, I picked some of the MMO experience through osmosis.   So I'm not utterly without knowledge of MMOs.  But I do realize that the MMO experience goes deep, and I just float above the surface, making observations.

But maybe i'm like a pelican or a kingfisher, maybe I can float above the surface, but dive in and grab a fish every so often.  The metaphorical fish being some sort of intellectual point that I want to make, somewhere, somehow.  Anyway, this topic came up because I was writing some thoughts about a game called Ultima: Exodus and going on and on and on-- as I am wont to do-- when I came to a point where I wanted to make a comparison to MMOs, and then make a series of claims about MMOs.  At this point, I felt I should break this subject off to its own post, and focus in on MMO vs Ultima: Exodus.

It isn't unusual to talk about the Ultima series in context with MMORPGs.  Ultima Online is widely credited as the first successful MMO.  In addition,  there's this great article about the Ultima series,  humbly making the claim that it is the most important game series ever.  And giving the series credit for a lot of what became genre tropes for MMORPGs.  For example, open world gaming and multiple choice conversation mechanics. 

In addition, outside of said article, I have made my own observations from playing Exodus.  One is the sort of 'guild' element:  the option to have up to 20 custom made characters with which to build a party. This element served my household well, as there was enough space for me, my two sisters and my Dad to all have four seperate characters.  In practice, this led to a lead party, the original party that we delved into the game with.  This one would have the highest levels, the strongest gear, and progress the furthest.  Then there were the splinter groups:  characters we would make just because making characters was fun.  They might not progress very far, or gain much gear.  But if we liked a particular character or party, we could boost them up with some grinding, into a legitimate party option for the lead team.  This actually turned out to be a pretty good idea, as there are certain class differences that can become primarily important in the game.  For example, I think the Mystic Sword may only be able to be equipped by a Fighter or Barbarian.  I remember getting to a point and realizing that I couldn't equip it to anyone in my party.   In addition, you may find that your party just needs a bit more brute strength or a bit more magic to accomplish a given goal.  So it is really helpful to have additional characters leveled up.

All of this contributed greatly to a 'team effort.'  The younger kids might not be up to the task of raiding the tougher dungeons, but we were a match for the goal of grinding away and raising characters to decent level.  This allowed our family team to, in effect, accomplish multiple goals at once.  Similar, I think, to MMORPGs of today.  Though, of course, Exodus was neither massively multiplayer or online.  But it was Multiplayer on a small scale, it just required taking turns rather than simultaneous play.  And why not?

So this brings me to confront my ignorance about MMORPGs.  Like, do any MMOs have similar elements to what I described above?  The only example that pops into my head is "Realm of the Mad God."  Which does a lot of things right.  I like the 8-bit graphics.  I like the team play.  I'm not wild about the shmup style action.  I know it sounds strange, but I kind of wish for a turn-based MMO, even if that seems counter-intuitive.  Also, Mad God doesn't do much for customization, as far as I can tell.

Alright, at this point, I should mention that I am feeling very rigid.  Like, what I really want is just for Ultima: Exodus, NES version, to be online so I can play it with my friends in exactly the same way I played with my family.  I realize this is not going to happen and it borders on delusional.  But I still want it.  I mean, what are video games if not escapism?  What's more escapist than a deluded fantasy about reliving my own childhood- today?  Anyway, maybe there's something deeper in there, but if you'll excuse me, I've got to go to work.  

-D

P.S. Big Congrats to Jaconian and Conklederp for being awesome!

Foruming Exclusivity

First of all, sorry for not having this up yesterday and while I'm at it, sorry for not having something up last Friday.  Now, on with the show.

The Last of Us came out a short while ago (Well, almost a month ago) and from what I've heard about, it would be a game that I would love.  Something about a post-apocalyptic world (and the title suggests something akin to The Road) which if done correctly, will get me pretty much every time.  Once I started hearing good things about The Last of Us is when I tried looking the game up on Steam.  That's when I found out it was a PS3 exclusive.  That's also when I became annoyed.

Console exclusivity has been a thing since the beginning of video gaming so the concept/practice is anything but new.  Personally I find it to be annoying, especially if there exists a game I would like to play, like The Last of Us, but I do not own a PS3 and the two people I know who do own them probably wouldn't be too keen on having me sit in their living room for the 14-20 hours it would take to complete the game.  Which then makes me wonder how often people buy a gaming console because a particular game is not released on any other system.  I understand the draw/appeal when a console is launching, but for exclusivity this late in a console's life, I can't see as a selling point.

Admittedly however, I did buy a PSP because Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions was coming out and I bought a PS2 from Doc Torpotts after he won one from a Coke bottle cap back in 2005 because I wanted to play the upcoming Final Fantasy XII..  All the other systems I've bought (Nintend0) were because I liked the company and liked the games that were being released, exclusive or not.  And, while it's true that I do have a number of exclusive games (Eternal Darkness, The Legend of Zelda, Shadows of the Empire, Timesplitters, Bushido Blade, et cetera), I bought the games long after I owned the consoles.

Now onto message boards.  I get message boards.  I get why they exist and why there's one up for almost every company that says they care about how they interact with their fans/the public.  I've posted on a handful of message boards, each time thinking that the experience will somehow be different and I wouldn't be as much of a thread/post killer as I have been in the past.

Turns out this is still the case.

Back in June I joined the forums for the Shadow of the Eternals game that Precursor Games is in the process of developing.  I started posting pretty early on in the forums and all was going well.  Then I didn't visit for a couple of days and when I returned, it was that lost feeling I used to get when I went back to school after being sick for a couple of days.  Threads had taken off, new topics six to seven pages in had started, developed and been completed.  In other cases, I would add my thoughts to a thread and the thread would then die/not be replied to.  I'm not saying it was a bad/negative/insulting response, it just happened to be the end of the conversation.

This kind of thing has happened a number of times before, on the Reaper Miniature forums, the IMDb message boards, the Draconian forums and even the [Enforcer] forums.  And then there's Reddit. . . blarg.

Often times, I don't respond as I become very self conscious about what is being said and how my response will be over analysed.  There's a part of me that would like to be more active in forums, especially with companies that I really like and would like to promote, but often times I get distracted or forget to visit the forums and when I came back, I would feel disconnected from whatever the discussion has been about.

Maybe this is just me sounding sorry for myself, but it's been something that I've been thinking about recently, especially with the games that I've helped fund via kickstarter and Indiegogo, each having a forum/message board/discussion area.  I just don't have the time/energy/chutzpah to be as active as I want to be with all the things/people/places that I like.  As it turns out, time is a commodity.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Leave It All To Me Because I'm Feverish, Devilish and Irrelevant

Full Review: The Starship Damrey (3DS)

I saw The Starship Damrey sitting all by itself a while ago in the Nintendo eShop.  The title by itself sounded interesting, but it was the description of the game that caught my attention.  I was told that The Starship Damrey was essentially a point-and-click game, but you are given no introduction. “With no tutorials, explanations, or hints provided, the game was created with the intent that self-discovery and experimentation be an integral part of the experience.”  How to do things is all learned by "doing" in this game.  As the disclaimer for the game says:

There are no explanations as to what button does what, the game is all trial and error.  I realize that can be a turn off to some gamers, but to me it was a selling point.  That's what I like, that the developers, Level 5 (Professor Layton series, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch), have faith that the player will know what to do and if they don't that they will not be afraid to experiment.  Now, with all that in mind, let's get down to our review.

Gameplay

The Starship Damrey is basically an old fashioned point-and-click game, like Shadowgate or Deja-vu,  with the main difference is that you play in a three dimensional environment.  The majority of the game is spent controlling a robot via remote with audio/video capabilities.  You are able to "point-and-click" various objects around the ship although where you're going and what your mission is, is pretty much unknown for most of the game.  One major departure from other point-and-click games is that the robot you control is only able to hold one item at a time.  This might seem like a hinderance, but the issue only comes up once or twice in the game where you wish you could just learn to hold three things with your mechanized arm/hand.

There was one point in the game where I couldn't figure out how to "click" something that I knew I needed to click and had to look it up on gamefaqs, but I don't see it any differently than if I had asked a friend, "Hey, how do I do this one thing that I can't seem to do?"

Story

I'm going to leave this section almost blank as finding out the story is part of the game and the experience.  I will say that the story is pretty well done for a short-ish three hour game.  I will say though that the story was pretty engaging and everything that I initially had questions about while playing the game were answered by the end.  Like, why the hell are you stuck in a box for the whole game?

There were only two instances during the whole game that I was forgetting about the story because I couldn't figure out what to do.  It did take me out of the game as I started thinking about the mechanics of the game and tried to think like a game designer, such as "Now what would be the purpose of having a robot carry around a cookie tin filled with oil?  If I were a game designer, where would I want the player to put this?"  I'm not going to cite the game for that as it's supposed to be difficult and there were times when I went around to every room I could access and looking at every screen/view I could, trying to figure out what to do with that damned oil.  Eventually I did figure it out (on my own) and felt very accomplished once I located, um, what it was that I was supposed to locate.

Graphics

I thought the graphics in the game looked great.  I was very impressed, considering it was an $8 download game, albeit from a reputed developer like Level 5.

I don't know really what else to add about how the graphics were/looked.  I was impressed; I thought they looked good; I felt the art fit the world and didn't seem out of place.  It was a good looking game.

3D Effectiveness

The 3D effects in the game never felt overdone, blurry or even out of place.  There wasn't anything that was flying out of the screen at you and I felt having the 3D slider at 50-75% helped to add depth (pun not intended) to the visuals.  The game could be played just fine without the 3D effect turned on.

Most of the effect was in the visual screen of the robot in the foreground with the environment pushed out in the background.

Music/Sound

There is a very distinct lack of music in The Starship Damrey, which works very well.  With the exception of one or two musical cues, all the sound in the game is ambient background noise and practical sounds.  Everything that makes noise in the game sounds how I imagine a robot aboard a space vessel would sound.  It was a pretty minimalist score.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed The Starship Damrey.  It was a fun game that updated a style of gameplay that isn't made too much anymore.  Because games of the early '80s had many limitations, point-and-click were pretty common, so to find that type of game today and not only looks great and plays great, but also expects a lot from the player and doesn't treat them like a novice, that's something that I really like both about the game and Level 5.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental