November Monthly Update

Image taken from:  http://www.videogameobsession.com/videogame/merchandise/posters_flyers_stickers_etc/Nintendo_Calendar_1990/index.htm

I haven't played much games lately.  Mostly I've been working my ass off.  Also:  staying on my sisters couch in her tiny house.  And quite frankly, she tends to say judgmental things about video games which discourages me from playing them.  Even though I get a lot of alone time, I also feel compelled to work during that time, to help prepare her house for her upcoming wedding reception.  I have this little mean elf-goblin-thing on my shoulder that says 'you don't want to be the lazy ass that plays video games all day and doesn't work enough, you unemployed piece of shit!'  The elf looks kind of like my sister.  But I'm likely projecting.

Anyway, it's down to the wire, and I'm fighting these bad feelings more, and playing a bit more, y'know, to relax.  Trying to get through Mirror's Edge. I'm pretty far.  I think I might have enough new data to generate a full review, but the short version is:  Fun game, deeply flawed.  So very close to awesome.

I'm also playing Anodyne, which is pretty rad.  That's the one that's got my attention, and the one I think of when my thoughts are wandering.  I doubt it's too long.  I expect maybe four or five hours.  Creepy Zelda clone; like it!

I sort of left Fez out of the story.  I will return to it, but I think I want to do so under circumstances when I can really put a lot of attention into it, rather than playing while looking over my shoulder for judgmental sisters. (It's crazy how these dynamics pursue me into adulthood.  It doesn't hurt that I've got no steady source of income and have placed myself in a position to be somewhat dependent on her.)

Alright, so far I've:  torn down a wall of drywall, put up a wall of wood, hacked down way overgrown backyard, dug out a chinaberry bush, dug up a thirty foot driveway and am in the process of laying out four cubic feet of gravel on said driveway.  And I don't have a metal rake, just a floppy piece of shit leaf rake.

I'm done with manual labor for a while.  I'm taking breaks so I don't hurt myself.  Or anyone else.  On to Anodyne!  ... Yep, it's still cool, getting better as I play it!

-D

P.S. here's an article called "Plagiarize This" from a new (to me) website called Gameological Society.  The article is about particular game mechanics that you'd like to see used more often.  There are some cool ideas in the article and more in the comments.  Check it out, if your into that sort of thing (I'm really into that sort of thing!)

Game Scores: Final Fantasy USA - Mystic Quest (SNES)

If you're like me, then you might have been one of the many people who initially scoffed at Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.  I mean the cover of the game touted that it was an "Entry-Level Role Playing Adventure."  Entry-Level?  I'd been playing RPGs since Dragon Warrior.  I didn't need to have my hand held while fighting off monsters on my way to save the world.  I only played it because the game belonged to The Kid, although I can't remember if I bought it for her or she bought it herself.  Well, as it turned out, it was a pretty decent game and what surprised me the most was the music, which is why we are all here today.

I acquired this soundtrack over 10 years ago while buying something on eBay and this came as a "bonus gift."  It was one of five video game CDs to choose from and the only one that I had played, so I figured why not?  After listening through the whole CD, I discovered that I recalled the music more than I thought I would and that I actually enjoyed the music as well.

The music composed for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was not written by then Squaresoft mainstay Nobuo Uematsu, but instead by Ryuji Sasai and Yasuhiro Kawakami.  To give you an idea of where this soundtrack is coming from, previous works from these two composers include Final Fantasy Legend III (Gameboy 1993) and Tetris (Arcade 1988).

So what makes this soundtrack surprisingly good?  We'll get there later, but first, let's start off with the main theme for the game which is played during the opening titles and is used for the overworld theme.

It's poppy.  It's bouncy.  It's upbeat.  Not really what you would expect from not only a Final Fantasy game, but from a game in a series where the threat of global destruction or evil overlordship is just on the horizon.  In almost any other J-Pop RPG, this theme might work, but upon first listen, Final Fantasy doesn't come to mind.  Is the song bad then?  Not really, just not something you would at first expect.

Now onto another theme heard throughout a large portion of the game.  This track is titled "Beautiful Forest."  Upon listening, I tend to find all the elements in the song needed to drum up the idea of a serene forest.  There might be enemies here, there might not.  Not too much to worry about.  There's probably also beams of light streaming through breaks in the trees.  Most likely a fair amount of moss.  You get the picture.

Ready for an adventure that sounds a lot cheesier than it actually is (kind of like that sentence)?  The track "Fossil Labyrinth" exemplifies this sense of adventuring in a questionable place then picks up the pace a bit as you get to the magnificence and awe portion of your exploration and finally, like any good RPG loop, you're dropped off again at the beginning of the track.  All of this occurs within 41 seconds.  You can't even microwave a Hot Pocket in that time without it catching on fire.

By now I hope that you're able to see where I'm coming from when I say that the music in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is actually quite good, considering it's self label as an introductory RPG for beginners.  The final track is an arranged track that is found on the OST (Original SoundTrack), although the song itself is final dungeon music (Last Castle), this specific arrangement is not.  And, while I usually don't go for remixes of music from video games (not including orchestral arrangements), as this song is officially sanctioned and because of the song's quality, I am perfectly secure in my liking of this next song:

So, if any of today's tracks have intrigued you, I highly encourage you to give the whole soundtrack a listen to and if you feel additionally inclined, give the game a play.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

First Impressions: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (PC)

I've talked a bit about the people at Frictional Games and The Chinese Room a number of times over the past year, be it about either the Penumbra or Amnesia series.  Last August, the newest game in the Amnesia series, A Machine for Pigs was available for preorder.  This was the first game that I have ever pre-ordered through Steam.  For the first few weeks after pre-order I was always checking back to the store page to see if the game was somehow released early, which it wasn't.  Then I seem to have forgotten about it.  I guess I thought that there would be some type of notification or the game would automatically download.  It didn't.

So over a month ago, on September 10th, 2013, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs went live (is that the correct verb?) and I did not notice.  It wasn't until two days ago that I found I could install the game and begin playing it already.  So I did.

A:AMfP, which forthwith I will just call Pigs, uses Frictional Games/ HPL2 engine, which I've talked about a couple of times regarding Amnesia: The Dark Descent and the Penumbra series.  So keyboard moving and mouse looking.  The mouse is also inverted.

But for why you're really here, not to read about me talking about control schemes, but for the pictures and my thoughts.

First off, this game is beautiful.  There was some concern as to whether or not my system could handle playing the game but I have it running at near optimum with only the shadows at medium, because that's what the game suggested based on the hardware I'm using.  I would then like to say that the game is running just fine.  I have only experienced lag once or twice and was very minimal and while I did notice it, I didn't find it distracting.

With three hours in, there are a couple of things that I've noticed and forewarned, I bring up some things that might be considered by spoilers by people who don't want to know anything about the game before playing.

Appearance of gramophones a reference to Amnesia ~Justine~ ??

First, the game feels somewhat familiar to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, you play a character named Oswald Mandus who is looking for his two children who seem to be lost, but talking to you either telepathically or via some other supernatural force.  Since you are thrown into this world without knowing anything about it, you discover story points and back story by locating documents that are scattered throughout the buildings.  I have a feeling that I will be slightly confused as to the overall story until the final act, just as I was with A:TDD.  I had previously read from the creators that Pig while it is not a direct sequel to A:TDD, it does take place in the same universe.

Second, while you do have the infamous lantern as a primary light source, since the game takes place in 1899 London, your lantern is electric and at least presently, does not run out of power.  This is something that I am both thankful and only slightly annoyed about.  I'm thankful because of all the hunting I had to do in A:TDD for lantern oil and tinderboxes.  However, at the same time, I feel this may have been done because of the same reason that I was thankful.  At the moment, I have no fear about running out of fuel.  Similar to what Resident Evil 4 did with removing the need of typewriter ribbons in order to save your game.  And speaking of saving the game, in Pig, you can save at anytime and don't have to look for one of those odd artifacts.

Thirdly, you have no inventory for items.  What inventory you do have is dedicated to personal journal entries and notes that have been discovered.  This has me questioning how certain mechanics in the game will work.  No more collecting items?  Will you now have to carry every single item from one room to another?  I however think that both Frictional Games and The Chinese Room know that since they've created an inventory-less game, that these types of go-to/standard puzzles won't work or at the very least will be very tedious.

Fourth(ly??), I have noticed that I cannot interact with the world as much as in previous Amnesia and Penumbra games.  Books, bottles, tables are all stationary.  For whatever reason, you are able to move any chair you come across and you can turn lamps on/off, but you cannot move them.  There might be a reason for this that hasn't been made apparent yet, but I am a little sad by having my actions limited when before they felt almost limitless.

It's never a good sign when the game reminds you how to run away.

Lastly, because Pigs was also developed by thechineseroom who did the artistic game Dear Esther, combined with the lack of a usable item inventory system, I do wonder at times how threatening the world is.  True, I have jumped a couple of times, but I have yet had to run away from anything chasing me.  I am not sure if Pigs will be taking a Silent Hill / Monty Python and the Holy Grail "Run AWAY!!" approach to enemies/aggressors as I have yet to come across anything hostile, but I feel that time is coming very soon.

I am very intrigued with the story and my love for what both companies have accomplished is helping to fuel my quest through this world.  Part of me is waiting for that gut punching moment when all the story bits fit together and I can no longer run from the horrors of the world.  And I am hoping that from past experience, that I will not be disappointed when that moments arrives.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Somewhere Fate Went Wrong

First Impressions: Anodyne

Here's a song from the game for you to listen to

an·o·dyne
ˈanəˌdīn/

adjective
1. not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.
"anodyne New Age music"

noun
2.a painkilling drug or medicine.

Anodyne is a 2-d, top-down Zelda clone.  They even include the 'stop when you strike' feature that I think is pretty neat.  It is a Zelda clone by engine, but not by theme.  Unlike Zelda, the game is immediately eerie, dark and strange, and there are reasons to distrust what you are told.  There is an ambient soundtrack through the first portion, and as the world expands, the soundtrack seems to want to expand, but can never quite become a fanfare in that bright, Zelda style.  I should mention I'm a big fan of Zelda clones.  

The gameplay is not as complex as Zelda games.  For example, it wasn't until about two hours into the game that I gained an ability beyond the basic attack.  On the other hand, the basic strike has a secondary use, which is to pick up and drop bits of dust.  These bits of dust have been used in a few different ways.  The designers have used these few abilities to craft some interesting puzzles, and the combat can be tough.  The enemy movement and projectile patterns keep me on my toes.    

The game appears to be open-world and non-linear, though there are clearly established 'zones.'  I have no idea if I'm going to the right place at the right time, and that aimlessness seems to be a part of the design. One thing I like is that there is a moment where you find a road sign, the first in the game, and it is too unclear to read. I don't know why, but I really like that the first road sign you see has no content. It stands out as something to read, but too bad, it's faded, and you can't make it out. Where to from here. The good news is:  I have yet to get stuck.  I think this speaks to a sense of care on the part of the designers.  

If you have a hankering to play a well-designed clone of early Zelda games, but with a creative and creepy vibe, then I recommend giving Anodyne a look.  I'm going to play through the rest, and try to craft a more thorough posting.  

-D

P.S.  I originally heard of Anodyne from Indie Games Magazine.  They've got this great little Android App that I use to read about games while waiting in lines.   I picked up Anodyne from a recent Humble Bundle.  If you aren't hip to the Humble Bundles, I suggest you check them out.  I've already given you a starter by embedding a link in the previous sentence.  Also, they have a very intuitive website address, and if you ask google about Humble Bundles, I'm sure it will help you.  Humble Bundles are a big part of why I started gaming again, after taking a many-year break.

  

First Impressions: Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition (PC)

I've played three games in the Ace Combat series, all on hand held devices: Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy and Ace Combat: Joint Assault.  I however have  not played any of the games that have come out for consoles.  So I come from a background that likes this series from Namco and Project Aces.  I watched the trailers a couple of times and liked what I saw.  So, last summer when this game went on sale for 75% off, I jumped at it like a school boy who jumps at something he really wants.

I initially thought about playing this game with the keyboard and mouse, then decided that I liked the controller layout of the hand held games, so why mess with a good thing when I kind of knew what I was doing.  So I plugged in my 360 controller and was prepared to show the AI my impressive dog fighting skillz. (It also turned out that you cannot use the keyboard and mouse as control schemes, so I lucked out on this one).

Well, that didn't happen as quickly as I would have thought.  Apparently, AC:AHEE is one of those games that the gaming world feared when the Xbox One was announced, in that it requires that you be logged into Windows Live in order to play the game.  And before I could play the game, I had to create a Windows Live account.  It was at this time that I feared I would have to have the equivalent of an Xbox Live membership in order to play.  That would have been a quick end to a $7.50 game purchase.  I had and have no interest in paying a monthly subscription fee to play a game I already purchased "the rights" to play.

My fear however was not the case.  I created my account/profile, then made my Windows Mii equivalent Avatar, all in a separate window and exited out, finally returning to AC:AHEE after having spent roughly 40 minutes creating the account, confirming the account through my email, creating the Miiesque figure and updating the account and updating the game to the latest version.  

Finally, I am at the login screen when this happens:

At this point, I was again, very close to saying a quick "fuck it all to hell and back" and never reaping what my $7.50 was able to purchase.  My eyes saw "delete" and my brain interpreted that as either deleting the 40 minute profile and/or deleting the AC:AHEE.  Naturally, I tried not to panic, so I just powered the game down and restarted it, thinking that maybe I needed to give Windows Live and the game a few minutes to communicate.  Or something.

Five minutes later when I booted up the game, I was able to actually play the game.  Whew!

As with other games in the Aces series, I began my first run through of the game on Easy, just to get a feel for the game and the control setup as well as the new flying abilities such as the Close Range Assault's Dog Fight and Air Strike modes.  Plus I want to enjoy the game before I try to Ace-it-up the enemy's ass. . . as bad as that sounds.  So call me what you will for playing the game on Easy.

Some basics about the game first.  Like Ace Combat: Joint Assault, AC:AHEE takes place in the real world, albeit two years in the future, but the countries, locations, factions are more-or-less real.  At the moment all the planes are either real or based on actual planes.  I've yet to run into a Falken, which will not be very fun at all.  Missions are interspersed with full motion video cut scenes that occasionally let you split mission paths, as in other Ace Combat games. 

The first thing I noticed was that the missions in AC:AHEE are long.  In the previous Ace Combat games I've played, a "long" mission/level meant you had up to 15 minutes of fuel before you no longer could complete the mission.  In this game, long is upwards of 40 minutes in a multi stage/checkpoint mission.  For me, that's a bit too long.  10, 15 minutes?  That seems to me at least, the ideal length for a mission, but again, that's just someone from the ADHD generation talking, so what do I know.  And I'm not even talking about missions where I frequently died or failed and was no longer mission capable.

I easily heard this guy scream these lines at me at least 15 times.

It's true that in AC:AHEE, you not only control fighter planes, but also act as the gunner in helicopters and bombers and I thought I would love it.  As it turns out, piloting a helicopter is a pain in the ass.  I kept having to invert the Y-axis then switch it back depending on my camera angle.  If I wanted 1st person view, I had to have the Y-axis inverted; for 3rd person view, non-inverted.  One might ask why I switched between camera angles then.  I honestly don't remember exactly, but it had something to do with having a wider field of vision and I hunted enemy combatants versus firing upon moving trucks as they approached the above compound that I was supposed to be guarding.  Pain. In. The. Ass.

I should probably also talk about the cut scenes.  They are all full CG acted, moving parts and all, as opposed to the narrated stills from the hand held games.  Yes they're pretty, but I don't feel any closer to the characters and the story than I did with the other iteration of story telling and if anything, it's sometimes distracting.  Just give me the mission parameters and let me blow up some bogies.

Presently, I have six hours spent playing the game and I am only on the 5th mission where some serious shit goes down and you have to fight an ass-ton of enemies.  In this mission, in particular, the AI seems to be abnormally high.  I've even noticed this in other missions, that the enemy AI is agressively high for playing on Easy difficulty.  It is becoming somewhat frustrating trying to get past the same three minutes of a dogfight and only making it so far each time before giving up and saying "I'll get back to in later today or tomorrow."  I mean why do I even have regular missiles if the enemy dodges them 90% of the time if I'm not in one of the special Close Range Attack modes or if I successfully perform a counter maneuver which can only happen after an enemy locks onto me!?  If I wanted the level of challenge that I seem to be getting from the AI, I probably would have started out on Hard.  I'm almost afraid to see what Normal difficulty is like.

I know I'll get back to playing Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition, I just don't know when that day will be.  The safety of the world will just have to wait a little longer.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Immortal Ones

The Alamo Drafthouse!!!

Alright, down to brass tacks.  tax?  Anyway.  Time to tell you about one of the best things in Austin.  Something that sets a precedent for all.  I'm talking about the Alamo Drafthouse.

What is the Alamo Drafthouse?  Well, put simply, it's a movie theater where you can order beer and food.  Yep, the legends are true!  And they are alive in Austin.  As a matter of fact, I just watched Serenity last week at the Alamo drafthouse -whaaaat?!  You read me right.  They also play retro and cult classics.  I'm hoping to catch a showing of Ridley Scott's Alien, for Sci Fi/Horror October!

My first experience at the Alamo Drafthouse was in, maybe 2005, when I visited Austin for the first time.  A friend and I watched Black Snake Moan, a forgettable movie starring Sam Jackson and Christina Ricci and Justin Timberlake.  It was about a girl who had a compulsive sex addiction, and a reclusive former blues musician who helps her break it by putting a big chain around her waist.  And also her sort of unstable fiancee home from the war.  I'll let you guess who played what roles. It was okay, I guess.  But what made the biggest impression on me was what they showed leading up to the movie.

We were seated your standard 15 minutes early; as soon as they let us in.  And as we waited for the movie to start, they played different old clips of blues musicians performing.  Some in color others in black and white.  I distinctly remember John Lee Hooker, who had passed away a few years earlier and was a favorite of my Dads.  So cool!  No shit-tastic movie-tunes that rule the horrible candy-box theaters of today, but a customized set of clips designed to set the stage for the movie.

Similarly, when I saw Serenity last week, there were clips from sci fi movies and from westerns.  Also occasional Joss Whedon clips.  There was Brisco County Jr.  There was Star Trek, there was Barbarella, Dr. Horrible (freeze ray),  and this hilarious clip of Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris in a doctor's office.  And then there was an actual preview, but it was for the Sci Fi retro-specials that month at the draft house.  

Another custom feature of the Alamo Drafthouse is to include is Public Service Announcements to keep your phones silent and not to talk in the movie.  They have all sorts of great PSAs to warn you.  One from Michael Madsen.  One form Homestarr Runner.  Joss Whedon, etc, etc, etc.  I'm telling you, this is quality stuff.  They have a one-warning system.  You get your warning and if you keep jabbering, you get thrown out.  Ruthless.  Perfect.  

I have always hated that about movies, people talking.  My most distinct memory of this frustration is when Jaconian and I went to see the Blair Witch Project.  Now, granted, that movie has become a bit of a joke now, but at the time, we were both really excited.  It was a new and creative horror movie!  Kind of out of nowhere, and I think we were the right people to appreciate what they had to offer.  Unfortunately, I will never know if that movie is any good, because these fucking people, RIGHT BEHIND US, talked through the whole. damn. thing.  This completely ruined the immersion and any sense of suspense, which I felt was a necessary part of the film.  I tried to watch and enjoy it anyway, and or the record: I still liked it.  But I just know that this movie could have been so much more in silence.  ugh.  Well.  The good news is:  that will never happen at the Drafthouse. 

Oh --- one more thing - if you actually *like* talking in movies, they've also got the opposite:  Quote-along movies! Usually comedies, they'll show Monty Python, or Mel Brooks or some Will Ferrel movie, and the idea is to quote all the time.  It's sort of a Rocky Horror style production, with noises and all that sort of bullshit.   I haven't been to one, but I think it sounds almost as awesome as their normal programming.  

Wow, I haven't even talked about the food yet.  Because, really, it's not that big a deal.  But they have a good system.  In front of every row of chairs is a bar, maybe a foot wide, with a lip.  You write down your order, clip it to the front, and a wait staff will come by intermittently and snatch it up, then bring you your food back.  The first Drafthouse I went to had perfected this system.  They used stadium seating, so the wait staff was a full food and a half to two feet lower than the viewer.  I usually didn't notice them.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for every Drafthouse.  The place I saw Serenity, I was in the front row, and it was not stadium seating.  The wait staff had to hunch and run by quickly.  It's unfortunate, and I hope they try to avoid this whenever possible.  Oh well.  It is nice to drink a beer at a movie, I'll tell you that much.

In conclusion, if you love movies: so do the people at the Alamo Drafthouse.  If you really love movies, then I think it is worth making Austin a destination in your travels.

-D


P.S.  I almost forgot:  I'm going to make an appeal to the friends of the State Theater to use an Alamo Drafthouse style business model.  It's worth a shot!  They just need a way to get the college kids out there.

The Smartphone As A Portable Gaming Device

A lot of what I would want and could say about this topic has already been gloriously covered by Extra Credits from season 6 episode 18 titled, "Designing for a Touch Screen."  Now, if you haven't seen it, the episode looks at touch screens in the development of games for all touch screen devices.  Right now, I'm going to take one step more and look at specifically smartphones and since I've had a smartphone now for less than a month, I am an obvious expert on this topic.  What else is the Internet for?

I don't have a whole lot of experience in this arena, only what I've played on one of Conklederp's iPhones and her iPad.  Oh, and I've played a bit of Tetris and Snake on an old Nokia, but those weren't "smart"phones, so moving on.  Game-wise, there's been Fruit Ninja, some ice cream balancing game, Tiny Wings, Angry Birds, Bejeweled Blitz, you know, games that came out a number of years ago.

When thinking about smartphones, you have to take into account the size of the screen as most are anywhere between 4 - 5.5 inches, any larger than that and you're delving into tablet sized platforms.  Granted the smartphone I have is titled a "Mini" although it has roughly the same size screen as an iPhone 4, so it's not really miniature.  I didn't acquire a smartphone because I wanted a new gaming platform, but because I would be paying nearly the same as for my previous phone.

Taking into account the size of my hands which measure 6.5" x 7.5" and the area each thumb takes up (.77312 sq in).  Let alone just the size of my thumbs when pressed up against a screen, that's 13% of the screen covered if I'm just using my thumbs on touch buttons in the corners of the screen.  With this in mind, imagine that you're playing a console game, and two football keep moving in front of the screen at the corners.  The standard response would be some variation on "Move!"  This is all taken for granted with touch screen games that there will be something obscuring the screen for at least a portion of the gameplay.

Taking all this into context, I was considering purchasing the Dead Space mobile game, at first on Conklederp's iPad then on my phone when I saw it was available through the Google store.  I was excited at first, then I watched the trailer to see how the game would look on my phone.  That's when it dawned on me that I would most likely not want to buy the game on my phone but on Conklederp's iPad (with her permission of course).  Dead Space is a game that deserves to not only be played, but to be explored and looked at.  I mean there were elevator service checklists in the first game.  I want to look at those and be immersed in the world.  I don't see that happening with my fingers/thumbs covering 13% of the screen; depending on the control set up for touchscreens. 

Presently I have 10 games installed, six of which are from Humble's recent Mobile Bundle 2 and of those six games, only two really take advantage of touch screen controls, and just barely at that.  Are the games themselves any good?  I'll get to that later.  Three of the games I got for free (Bejeweled Blitz, Angry Birds and Angry Birds: Star Wars) make perfect use of not only touch screen controls, but also the fact that the screen is only 4.8 by 2.5 inches and not 32 inches.  My finger (not my thumb!) is on the screen for only a portion of the time spent playing the game.  Another perfect usage of a touch screen device.  The last game Words with Friends I got because I plan to piss off flight attendants, but not really.

So in answer to my title, which really was not a question: no, my smartphone will not replace my 3DS as my portable gaming device of choice.  And developers could take a lot from the people at Extra Credits.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I Could Bare This Burden With You

Game Scores: Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (NES)

When you think of the NES game Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, the first thing you might think of is the "debacle" between the Nintendo Power cover and coverage and the actual release of the game four months later.  Okay, maybe it wasn't that much of a debacle that I seem to remember, and that's not even one of the first things that comes to my mind.  I never even received that issue as I had forgotten to renew my NP subscription and this was the issue I missed.  (I recall this happening again and didn't get the Rescue Rangers issue either).  

Back to RH:PoT which was developed by Bits Studio and Sculpted Software and released by Virgin Games back in November of 1991.  The game itself was a lot of fun as it incorporated multiple modes of play.  There was the Legend of Zelda top down exploration mode, there was the side view mode for story specific duals (John Little being a god damn pain in the proverbial ass) and a massive melee mode where all the members in your party engaged in an overhead combat area against a lot of enemies.  It was quite, I think, revolutionary for an NES game near the end of the NES era.

But the reason I bring up this game, is because of the music, composed by English musician Paul Webb.  His credits are somewhat extensive and honestly, his score for PoT is all that I have that he has written, partly because I didn't have access to the soundtrack until a couple of years ago (downloaded from FF Shrine) as there was never an official release of the soundtrack.  So as you can imagine, the audio is just ripped from a port of the game, but it's still 1991 NES quality music, which might be a turn off to some of you reading this, or maybe not, because you are reading this.

Being a huge fan of the Kevin Reynolds' adaptation of the Robin Hood story, I wanted to play the game, and for Christmas in 1991, that dream became a reality.  But again, the music, which you will notice bares no resemblance to the music that Michael Kamen (What is dead may never die) composed for the feature film.  That doesn't mean that the music isn't any good as his music most likely wouldn't translate well for this kind of a game.  Paul Webb's music however, fits the world of 12th century England portrayed in a 1991 NES game as evidenced by the opening title music:

Great stuff.  The music for the melee battles I also really enjoy.  To me, it sounds like a mix between music that you would find in the first Gauntlet game and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  So basically a lot of enemies coming at you all at once that you have to fight off with your friends/companions.

Another short piece that you would often hear is the overworld music once you make your way back to merry olde England.  As with most overworld tunes, they have to be catchy, memorable and able to be repeated indefinitely.  So if you find yourself in 8 bit 12th England, and wandering from one screen to the next, we've got the music for you!

All-in-all, Paul Webb's score for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is not very extensive.   Comprising only 6 minutes 16 seconds of non-repeating music, not including 42 seconds comprising three tracks (one song and two jingles) of unused music, you certainly wouldn't know it by playing the game.  It doesn't span the length of an Nobuo Uematsu or Howard Shore score, but it does fit the setting of the game and it works.  And in the end, that's all I ask for when thinking about video game music.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

Mid-month update without purpose or direction. Hi!

Right now, it's pouring the-fuck down rain in Austin.  Which has provided me an excellent setting to do some writing.

Another thing about Austin:  Mosquitos.  At least the part I'm in.  There are a lot of f-ing mosquitos.  Like an increase of a factor of 10 over where I'm used to living.  So many that I don't like to be outside.  Like, five minutes is too many.  Which really sucks when I want to sit on the porch for a few minutes, because it's stuffy in the house, or perhaps to make a phone call.

That actually reminds me of a game idea: Mosquitos.  That is to say, if you are traveling in a region that is ripe with them, then maybe you receive 1 damage every few seconds, like a really mild poison.  I don't know why, but I'm frequently thinking in terms of weak status ailments in a mid 90s JRPG game.  Probably because my teenage years were the peak years of gaming for me.  Now that I'm twice as old, I guess I'm just living in the past.

Another thing to mention is that I'm listening to the experience points podcast, which I've mentioned before.  I really like this podcast.  The hosts are articulate and critical, and they're pretty good speakers.  Not a lot of 'ums' and 'uhhhhs' in the podcast.  I just listened to their review of 'the last of us' which is a majorly hyped game, and I really like how they break it down.  I get a sick joy from hearing that it's not 'the greatest game ever' and more of just a great game that does some things really well and other things really mediocre.

I'd also like to mention that out of nowhere, I had a stage theme form TMNT for the nes stuck in my head.  If you'd like to listen, it's the first portion of the stage theme link I've provided, and it goes on for 30 minutes, in case you just can't get enough! hah.  Also, this reminded me that the mini boss theme really is rad.

Also, here's an idea for gaming difficulty:  Start a game on nightmare difficulty - no choice, there is only one setting.  After the first 5-10 deaths, you unlock 'very hard.'  And then after another 10-20 deaths, you unlock 'hard mode'  and so on until you unlock easy mode.  I think that might be a fun way to balance difficulty in a game.  The first difficulty setting change would have to come early, so the player wouldn't just give up.  I'd like to see how this would work with test audiences.

-D

P.S.  Check out this short episode of RadioLab about Quicksand.  I'll give you a teaser:  Apparantly kids aren't really afraid of quicksand anymore.  wha?

In Defense of Buying Final Fantasy VII (Again)

D'Octopotts will probably be one of the first persons to tell you that I am part of the camp that finds Final Fantasy VII to be one of the most overrated games in video game history.  So, why is it then, that I bought the game when it first came out on PC back in 1998 and again less than a week ago?  Why did I also buy Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII on the PSP?  Why have I started to wait for the price to drop over at Amazon?  I will tell you why.  Because despite having played FF VII three times, I have yet to beat it, the world intrigues me and I really like the music (no shock there).  My last play through (2006) I was, at what I think was right before the final battle with Sephiroth.

Let's start where all stories that end up being either way too long or too vague start, at the beginning.

Coming off of the high that was Final Fantasy III (III in the U.S., VI in Japan as we all now know), I was exceedingly excited about Final Fantasy VII, although sad that it was only coming out on the new fangled Playstation and not on the N64.  I remember sitting in D'Octopott's room as he started the game (I don't know if it was the first time he booted up the game, but it was the first time I saw it).  I'm sure most people reading this would remember the opening.  The breathtaking visuals.  Uematsu's score.  It was all there.  I never saw D'O complete the game, which is what lead me to buying my own copy for the PC when I bought my own laptop post high school in the fall of 1998.

I don't remember how far I got during that first play through.  I do remember becoming lost shortly after acquiring your first airship from Cid, the Tiny Bronco.  There was something about finding a sword, or a guy who could make a sword. . . I don't remember.  I found myself going back to Cosmo Canyon because I didn't know what else to do or where to go and I really liked the theme for the area.  So I wandered around, fought enemies and listened to music.  I eventually made it to just after the snowboarding scene, then something happened, possibly life-wise, I don't remember, but I stopped playing as I'd lost interest.  And, I was irritated that Cloud and Co. had tried to stop a legitimate attempt to destroy Sephiroth's asteroid and save the planet, all because said company wanted to save the materia (history/memories of the Ancients) instead.

In 2004 I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and even though I hadn't finished the game, I felt I knew enough of the main story and the characters to know what was going on in the movie.  I watched it twice.  Once with D'O and his roommates and once in a Japanese language class I was taking at the time.

Jump ahead to 2006, four years later and I found the FF VII discs and loaded them onto my computer.  Playing commenced.  This time I made it through the game up until fighting Sephiroth at the end.  I was stalling because I didn't feel that I was at a high enough level.  That, or I just wanted to get above a certain level although I don't remember what level that was.  Then I moved from Sacramento back to Davis and have since lost one of the discs and I no longer have the computer/hard drive that my save files were on.

In 2008, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII was released on the PSP.  At first I wasn't too interested, possibly because of the lackluster reviews for Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII and because I had no way of playing the cellphone release of the other prequel Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII.  Then the reviews started pouring in that Crisis Core was actually a good game that helped expand the lore of the FF VII universe.  So I bought Crisis Core and loved it.  I loved playing out events that were hinted at or briefly mentioned.

For a couple of months now I've had Final Fantasy VII sitting in my cart in my Steam account (along with 24 other games) periodically (daily) checking to see if there was a price drop.  Last week, there was a 50% off drop on FF VII and knowing that Conklederp would dig some nostalgia and me wanting to finish the game (finally), I decided that $5.50 was an okay price to pay for a game that I enjoyed on a certain level (certain story elements, music) and genuinely wanted to finish.  So everything that you have just read went through my head in a manner of seconds before I clicked the "purchase" button.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Ghosts That Linger

P.S.  I'll come out with a First Impression of the game later although it will probably be more about the transition from PS1 to it's current iteration on the PC.  I may even talk about why I feel that FF VII is one of the more overrated games, but that topic may be over done at this point, so perhaps I won't afterall.  

Lone Star and Barf

Howdy Y'all,  I'm writing these days from the great state of Texas.  The Lone Star State.  Keep Austin Weird.   Don't Mess With Texas is the motto of the state department of transportation.  The idea was a campaign to prevent littering.  But now people use it to puff up their chests.  

What am I doing here?  So far a lot of yardwork and housework.  I'm sleeping on the couch of a little two bedroom house, one of which is under construction.  And I'm working to earn my keep.  I haven't been here long, and I'm still getting established.  I'm saying this by way of excuse for why I'm not writing much lately.  I'll get my feet eventually.  Just today I wrote two pages on a wacked out dream I had, and yesterday I wrote three pages on how cool crowbars are.  They're really cool, everybody.  

Austin is a really cool town.  There are so many bike paths that I can avoid car traffic pretty effectively, and I feel very safe riding my bike.  It's also really big.  I'm a 40 minute ride from downtown, yikes!  And it takes at least 15 minutes to get to any commercial establishment.  Everything is bigger in Texas, I guess :P

But in general Austin is great.  Not much different from other college towns I've been in, except for all the Texas flags everywhere.  Not as many accents as I expected.  In fact, if this place weren't surrounded for miles and miles by Texas, I'd love to live here.  But... yeah..  the Texas thing... 

Also, I got lucky and missed the heat.  When I was here in July of last year, it was over a hundred degrees every day for a week.  And that was not a heat wave, that was just normal.  

Okay, this is just a spit of a post.  Adios, Amigos!

-D

First Impressions: Dead Island (PC)

I picked up Dead Island during Humble's Deep Silver Bundle which included a bunch of games that I've since forgotten about, and Dead Island with Dead Island: Riptide.  I started Dead Island one afternoon last month after playing L4D2 and wanting to play something else that I already had that contained those wacky zombies.  I remembered about Dead Island and remembered that amazing trailer from two years ago.  You know the one, not the E3 trailer, but the announcement trailer.  How could a game (an FPS at that) possibly live up to that trailer?  It can't.   There's too much good stuff that belongs in a TV miniseries or in a feature length movie that will not translate well into an FPS zombie video game.

The actual game on the other hand, I've really enjoyed, but there was a brief moment when I thought I would not make it past the hotel.  I played for just under an hour, which included time to tinker with the keyboard layout (inverting the mouse, changing the keys to more towards a L4D2 scheme) and making the 'jump', 'kick', 'crouch' keys more intuitive than the default settings.  Oh yes, the game is an FPS and no, I have not suffered from FPS yet.  I was also concerned with the sluggishness of the mouse in the menu screens.  Yes, I know about altering the mouse sensitivity, but in-game the mouse is perfect.  I was also worried because I couldn't sympathize with any of the characters, which I mounted up to the fact that I've never been to an island resort so I had no memorial-emotional attachment to the setting or the people who would inhabit said setting.  Does that make me a bad person?  I don't think so.

Well, 23 hours later, you could say that I've gotten over any and all initial hang ups I thought I would have with the game.  Having now entered Act II (of V), I have some brand new hang ups.  Let's bullet list this!

• Nearly everyone (zombies and non alike) is either in swimwear or ripped.  It is hard for me to sympathize or empathize with this particular group of people.
• However, in Act II when you move into the city of Moresby, people are dressed how you would expect them to dress in a 
• Dying is too "MMO" for my tastes.
• When you die, you loose a percentage of your money and respawn 7 seconds later at a nearby checkpoint/location.  Dying isn't so much something to fear as it is an inconvenience.

Okay, that's really my only hang up, now that I'm in Act II, which takes you from the beach front resort area to the inner/downtown city area of Moresby.  It's there that groups of zombies are introduced, compared to the very few and far between groups in the resort area.  In Act I, I died twice.  In Act II, I've died a lot more.  Even on "easy" fetch quests, I died four times climbing down a ladder that seemed to constantly have fast moving infected constantly respawn after every time I respawned, which I guess is only fair, but still frustrating.

There are a couple of other small things that I don't really like, such as randomly equipping bottles of alcohol when picking them up; it is difficult to "button" switch away from a firearm after throwing a combustible (propane tank); 

As for things that I really like about the game are thus:

• Combat is based heavily on melee weapons.
• Weapons become dull and damaged over a short amount of time, each with their own durability rating, but can still be repaired.
• Granted repairing a weapon costs money, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's suspension of disbelief during a zombie apocalypse.
• There are different classes of zombies, somewhat based on their degradation.  People who have been infected but haven't turned yet are fast moving (a la 28 Days Later).
• There are a couple other "classes" such as ones who seem to be releasing a lot of smoke/fumes who are very flammable, large bro-types who do more damage and take more damage to kill and some hulking ones in straightjackets who are basically like L4D2 Chargers.
• I feel the game doesn't take itself too seriously considering that snack bars and energy drinks are the most common form of health replenishers.
• The cast of characters (both zombie and non) are very diversified.  I can't see Techland getting into hot water over having to kill any kind of ethnic group or gender.  Everyone gets the chance to die and be killed in this game.
• I like the nods to other zombie-lore, such as:

being a reference to:

And, and, and, the standard walker/roamer/zombies are slowish moving in classic Romero style.  I really like that.  This was most likely done because so much of the game (at least Act I & II) is based around melee combat so having fast moving zombies a la L4D would make the game if not impossible, then at least very frustrating.

So that's where I'm at right now.  27 hours (I've played 4 hours since starting writing this) in now and I've got to get back to Banoi (which is one of the most real sounding fictional islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea that I've ever heard) and save the day, except not.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Falling Towards Nightly Terror