Miscellaneous Update Post for the coming February

Hey there, people.  I've been experiencing writers block lately, which means it's time for a random babble of a post.

I put four hours into the Stanley Parable, which I devoured like a great novel.  That game is so great.  I think I've about exhausted the narrative.  And I really wish there was more.  I worry about redundancy and over-marketing, but I would happily play a sequel to the Stanley Parable, and happily play through the games themes and methods again and again until they become tired.

I also want to mention that the Stanley Parable does a lot in terms of video games as art.  Thinking of Roger Ebert's famous dissing of video games as being devoid of artistic intent, the Stanley Parable plays with choice, and futility in a very special way.  Even though the Stanley Parable is like a choose your own adventure book, the fact that it is a video game, and not a book, goes a long way for my sense of immersion.  I love the way a good book immerses me, but the illusion of choice present in a video game is used very well in the Stanley Parable. I really think it qualifies as a work of art, and as a unique one.

On a different note, I've been volunteering a local thrift store lately.  Also at the bicycle repair co-op and the food co-op.  Good times.  I really like the thrift store - I'm in the book room.  I love books!  I love going through them, it's easy!  There is a TON of turnover in the book department, and we have to give away boxes full of books every day (and we receive at least as many every day).  It can be heart-wrenching getting rid of some of them, and I do my best to save the ones I think really deserve to stick around.  I think that I can do a lot of good there.

The books that we see the most of are Self-Help/Health Books, biographies and thrillers.  These books tend to be in great condition, as though they were only read once, or even never read at all.  Often times they are heavy slabs of pages and take up lots of space on the shelf.  I guess that the biographies are often bought as gifts, and generally bulky books are inconvenient to read and to store.

Umm,  in further stuff, I've started watching a show called 'Lost Girl.'  This Canadian show seems like a resident of the house that Buffy built.  A Faerie underworld full of people who feed on humans and have special powers.  The lead character is a succubus who feeds on sexual energy, leading to a healthy dose of fun sexy times.  But like any good show, what makes it good is the characters.  My favorites are Kenzi, Hale and Trick.  And the Morrigan.

Oh, also, today we got rain in Northern California.  First time in, idunno, sixty days?   This summer we had seven days in a row over 105 degrees, and in December we had seven days in a row below 32.  These were both records for this area.

And that's all the news fit to print.

-D

When Is A Game Too Much Game?

I have a queue of unplayed games and this time I'm not referring to just the games that I haven't played on Steam (although that list might be growing again due to Steam's Winter Holiday Non-Denominational Sale), but also the games for the PSP and 3DS that are patiently awaiting their turns to embed themselves in the emotional center of my brain.  This queue of games has recently gotten me thinking about the amount of time required to play all of these game to their conclusion. 

Now, when I say that I beat a game, I'm not referring to "completing" a game with every available character/car/plane, watching every ending and achieving every single achievement.  I just mean beginning a game and playing through until the credits finish rolling.  If I happen to unlock new features and earn achievements in the process, then bonus points for me.

I recently just completed Dead Island after playing roughly 62 hours.  That is a lot of time to spend on anything, let alone a video game.  Recently though, I have noticed that some games are becoming almost too long, or more likely, I am drawn to games that take up a lot of time.  Between the two of us, Conklederp and I have clocked in 571 hours on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and expansions; I currently have 115 hours on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and have only just completed the main quest, not to say anything about either the Bloodmoon or Tribunal expansions; on Final Fantasy XII, I spent around 125 hours and I still didn't finish all of the hunts or collect all of the Espers.  When Grand Theft Auto V was released last year, it was touted as having over 120 hours of game content.

When does game content become too much content?

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Dead Space took my about 16 hours each while Amnesia: The Descent took 18 hours, but Gone Home and Evoland both took only 3 hours.  Those were perfect lengths of time for their respective games.  Horror games are a hard thing to do for an extended period of time.  I have never played a horror game that lasted as long as, say Morrowind and maintained that level of tension and fright.  Is it possible to maintain that level of tension for 50+ hours?  I honestly don't know as I feel like game length is relative to both the game itself and the person playing the game.  

For myself, as long as the quests make sense, I don't really mind fetch-quests for which both Skyrim and Dead Island are pretty notorious for.  I understand the argument against them as they do eat up a lot of time, especially if fast travel is not an option, but again, I enjoy exploring and looking at the worlds that I explore.  But, as is the case with anything in life, too much can be annoying.  Too many fetch quests to gather supplies for an outcome that is never witnessed is too much. In Morrowind, I was tasked with taking 20 jars of sujamma (local liquor) to the middle of nowhere.  What irritated me was that I had to reallocate my inventory to accommodate 60 lbs of items and travel to a mine just so that some miners who were most likely slaves, could have their liquor.  What I didn't mind was that I was travelling to a part of Vvardenfell that I had not visited so I was exploring. 

So how long should a game be for it to be both entertaining and fulfilling?

I don't think there's a correct answer here.  

Some games work better as a five hour short story while other games, primarily sandbox games almost demand that they last 100+ hours.  And there-in lies one of my problems:  I like sandbox games.  GTA, The Elder Scrolls, I like these games and I like to experience the worlds and the people who populate them.  I recently just started the Assassin's Creed series and I can see Fable, Mass Effect and Dragon Age on the horizon and I know that I will spend as much time in those worlds as I have in others. 

What I have come to realize while putting down my thoughts, is that I am drawn to long, drawn out narratives.  While I do enjoy playing shorter games like Evoland, Dear Esther and Nightsky that may take up only a couple of hours, I also love spending hours upon hours being immersed in a world and it's fictional culture.  Sure, I'll play some games that I know that I can finish in an afternoon, but maybe with the exception of a few games that I cannot recall at the moment, but that doesn't make them any less worth playing.  Sometimes a game that can be played in short segments is just what I need between the doses of massive epic quests.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I'm Not Ready To Make That Kind Of A Commitment

First Impressions: The Stanley Parable

Wow.

The Stanley Parable is full of moments that make me say: 'This is the greatest game I have ever played.'

On the other hand, I've also had many moments where I've thought: 'Maybe this game isn't all its cracked up to be.' Fortunately, shortly after thinking that, I am usually rewarded with something clever and delightful.  

The best quote I ever heard about the Stanley Parable was "I'd describe the Stanley Parable to you, but that would be spoiling it."   This is true.  Please feel free read on, acknowledging that every detail may spoil the game a little bit for you.  Perhaps you should play it first.

I do think there is enough interesting content in the Stanley Parable that it would be tough to spoil completely. However, I've enjoyed playing so much that I would like to preserve the newness of experience for others.  Please come back after you have played the game.


The Original Stanley Parable
Here's a link to download the original Stanley Parable.  Turns out the version I've been playing is a 2013 update to the game.  I'll draw comparisons after playing through this one.  In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to play this, completely free to download version of the game?


Moving on, have you played it yet?  You really shouldn't be reading this if you haven't.  

The Stanley Parable is easily the most 'meta' game I have ever played. The narration is fantastic, isn't it?  You know, because you've played the game before, like I asked you to.

I love the way the narrator messes with the player, but even more, I love the way that sometimes I can mess with the narrator through the choices I make.  It's pretty great.  Love the broom closet!

Some obvious (to me) comparisons are Groundhog day for repetition, Portal for oppositional narrator and underbelly of gaming, Bastion for smart narrator and Thomas was Alone for British Narrator and inclusion of the name of the main character in the title.  I'm sure there are more comparisons I should make, but I just haven't got the time right now.  Onto the next paragraph.

I have found two approaches to playing this game so far, first: to save at every choice, and to avoid restarting the game.  second:  to restart the game frequently or to play through after any of the auto-restarts.

Essentially, the Stanley Parable is a choose your own adventure book, as a video game.  The design, writing, performance use of sound and visuals are all top knotch.  Fantastic game, Bravo!

-D

First Impressions: S. by Doug Dorst & J. J. Abrams

So first off, I have not read this book.  The Kid got me S. for Christmas and all I've been able to do is just look at it and flip through its pages.  Actually, I should reiterate that all I have  done is to carefully turn its pages, not to disturb the contents that are between it's pages.

S. is, or at least appears to be an interesting experiment.  First off, it is a work of fiction, in that it is written and designed to look like an older library book titled Ship of Theseus by V.M. Straka, complete with check out stamps dating back to October 6th, 1967 all the way up to October 14th, 2000.  I would not be surprised at all if at least some of the check out dates are either relevant to the story or world history in some way (go Wikipedia!).

Here is what I do know.  The fictional book, Ship of Theseus is the final book published by V.M. Straka.  That is the first story.  The second story is one that is related between two people who have found "something" within the story and its apparently mysterious author.  These two people have a conversation (regarding what specifically I do not entirely know, seeing as how I have not yet read the book) in the margins though out its entirety.  Plus there are footnotes by F. X. Caldeira and I have yet to decide if I want to read through first without reading the footnotes.  There are so many layers.

Now, here is where it really gets interesting.  Through out the book, there are various documents: postcards, newspaper clippings, photocopies, black and white pictures and cards containing Brazilian newspaper clippings from 1964.  There is even a compass/wheel cypher in the back of the book.  There has been so much work put into this book that it honestly boggles the mind.  Newspaper clippings are appropriately browned and have that old newspaper feel to them.  A copy of a local college's newspaper/newsletter is even not folded exactly in fourths, as how most people quickly fold a newspaper in fourths.  Even the ink that two (maybe more?) people conversing with each other in the margins changes color, possibly for a specific reason, or maybe because that is the color of pen that they had on the day they got the book back from the other.

I am honestly afraid to read this book anywhere except a table.  I am horrified to think of what I would do if the book were to fall and its contents fell out as I am certain that their placement within the book is very deliberate.  I am going to be that anal person that does not want some random person to pick the book up and start to fiddle with it, out of feat that items may get moved around.  I will not be taking this book to work to read it and I will not be reading it at night before going to sleep as I have the habit of falling asleep, quite literally with the book landing in my face (or the Kindle on Conklederps face, which has happened at least once).

Oddly enough, there is an ebook edition of S., and while initially I couldn't understand how it would work, I think that when there would be an inserted document, there would be a hyperlink to that specific document.  For me however, I want to be able to hold this postcard from Brazil or carefully unfold and examine that map written out on the back of a napkin (and yes, it real cafe paper napkin-type paper, logo of the cafe in multi-colored ink).  That is what I am talking about, total immersion.  The only thing that I can think of that would take me out of total immersion from the book, is that it smells like a new book.  There isn't that smell of a library and old pages that a book can only achieve after sitting on a shelf for no less than 50 years.  Do I often smell books?  If they are old, yes, I have been known to whiff a binding or two in my time.

I briefly looked at a review for the book over on Amazon (or was it Goodreads?) and the reviewer had their suggestion for how you should read the book.  You know what, I plan on reading the book in my own way without a walkthrough.  I want to discover the book in my own way.  I plan on reading the Ship of Theseus by V.M. Straka, then after I will go through the book again, reading the notes made by the two people passing the book back and forth, going through the various inserts.  Then maybe I will read Ship of Theseus a second time with all that has gone back and forth in my mind to see if I take anything away from the book/story that I did not the first time around.

To say that I am excited to start reading this book is a bit of an understatement and I love that this book was actually able to be published.  I have not even read any of it yet and I already want to recommend it to everyone.  So yes, not having read the book, I fully recommend picking up the hardbound copy.  Do not buy it used as there may be some missing inserts or they may be in the incorrect spot in the book.  And at least one point while reading, give the binding a whiff, just for me.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Could It Be, The Things I Need?

Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time - Updated (Android OS)

A while back, I'm not 100% sure when, but I want to say late last November (and it easily might have been early December, 2013), Plants vs Zombies 2: It's About Time updated on my phone.  My phone probably let me know that there was an update for the game and I thought, "Sure, go ahead, that's cool."  I'm not even 100% sure it did that as I recall, I opened my phone and noticed that the icon for the game had changed.  Maybe I just picked "Update All" and didn't pay attention.  Okay, let's assume that's what I did, as that makes the most sense.

so PvZ2 was updated.  And it wasn't just a simple update either.  This update was a complete overhaul of the game and the way it was played.  If you remember from my original look at the game, the world looked, I thought, like something out of Super Mario Bros. 3, which isn't a criticism, just an observation.

As you can see, there are multiple paths within the first world, Ancient Egypt.  You will also notice a few locked doors (you can tell they're doors because they have keyholes) along with Pyramid-Keys next to them.  These could be opened with said Pyramid-Keys which you earned randomly throughout the game, depending on which world you were in.  Ancient Egypt = Pyramid-Key, Old West = Some-Other-Key-I-Never-Got; you get the idea.

Now that the update has taken place, things not only look a bit different, but the fundamentals of how one plays the game have changed.  The gaming world, and we'll stay in Ancient Egypt, looks like this:

You will first off notice that the game is now very linear, not that that is a problem as the first PvZ was linear without a world map.  The world specific keys were turned into gold coins (10,000 I think for each).  A mini-boss level was introduced into each world stage where you have to fight the standard horde of zombies, but now Gargantuars have been thrown in for good measure.  You may have also noticed that a strange blue-orbal key has replaced the world keys.  These keys are supposed to unlock an as-of-yet released world and these keys, supposedly, can only be obtained in the Gargantuar levels, but are only dropped at random.

A minor addition to the game is that it's played a lot faster.  Suns now give 50 points instead of the usual 25.  Zombies enter the level a lot faster and they move faster, but your plants also attack faster, basically, everything is faster. And, if that's not enough fast for you, you also have the option to speed the game up further by pressing a "Fast-forward-type-button" in the upper right portion of the screen that doubles the game speed.  Not a bad idea until you realize that your reaction time is the same as before, but now the zombies are coming at you and twice their normal speed.  It would be like taking Ben and Barbaras experience from Night of the Living Dead and putting them into the Dawn of the Dead remake.  I've clicked it once and said, "Yup, they're faster," and promptly went back to standard (albeit faster than original) speed.

One other major overhaul to the game that I am not at all happy with, are the conditions to how a level is beaten/completed/finished.  In the first iteration of the game, you were given specific conditions in order to earn a Star.  Earning Stars just acted as additional challenges that increased in difficulty for a specific level.  Such conditions would be something like, "Spend No More Than 1500 Sun & Don't Lose Any Lawnmowers."  If you were to fail in any one of the conditions, you were still allowed to finish the level and often continued to earn coins, but no star was earned.  Now, if you fail to meet all of the conditions, the level ends the moment you fail.  Accidentally spend 1525 sun when you could only spend 1500, the level ends immediately.  It's kind of annoying and frustrating, especially with the lawnmowers.  Why bother even having them as an option if losing even one means you lose the level?

I actually feel sad that since this update has taken place, that I've lost a bit of interest in PvZ2.  A lot of the levels feel like they're trying to force the player to use up gold coins to buy power boosts.  There have been levels where I used any one of the boosts at least four times because I knew my defense that I had planted (sort of the whole point of the game) would not hold against what I was going up against.  Nowadays, all I look forward to are the Piñata parties, even though I wish I could turn off the costumes.

Initially, I would have given the game a "Must Play" rating, you know, if we did official ratings here.  Now, I would probably give an "You Could Live Without Playing."  Maybe I'm just becoming cynical in my old age.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Because You Don't Do Like They Think You Should

Gone Home ... .. .

Jaconian has already written about Gone Home, and I suggest you go read his article now.  I'm writing with his article in mind, he does a great job of not revealing too much, but highlighting the emotional content in a striking and appropriate manner.  He also provides all the background necessary to approach this (non)game.  Suffice it to say, we had similar experiences, so I will try not to be too repetitive, though I'm sure some things will bear repeating.  For example, the following line:

*CONTAINS SPOILERS*

This game is really sweet.  Not as in Totally Sweet! but a gentle kind of sweet.  The voice acting is excellent, and listening to Samantha's diaries is very affecting.  I love what a teenager she is, alienated, but excited by all these new things.  Also, I feel like the mixed-media approach to character building is special to video games.  In addition to her diaries, we pick up what kind of a person Samantha is through looking at her stuff, her room, her work assignments.

In particular the 'Menstrual Cycle: A Novella" is about the funniest damn thing I've read in a long time.  Simply fantastic.  A really neat detail is that later in the game: I found Katie's version of that assignment, and realized that Sam copied it entirely into her assignment, but wrote the story around it.  The tipoff was the last line "isn't it amazing what a womans body can do?" or something like that.  It was the only line that was not relevant to the assignment that Katie included, but Sam copied it verbatum.

One thing I want to note about the Journal entries is that the game is very lonely.  Both in play and as the character of Katie, there is a removal from the action that comes from being alone in a new place, after having been gone for a long time.  When the journal entries read, it's really nice to hear someone's voice.  Especially with how warm and happy Sam feels a lot of the time. I came to feel affection for Sam, both in my role play as Katie, and just as a player/viewer/reader/listener.

There's also a strange sort of voyeuristic intimacy that was mildly disturbing.  As an adult male, I questioned my right to this fictional teenage girl's private diaries.  

I wasn't a big fan of the setting as a dark and stormy night, it makes the whole process spooky, and I'm not sure I needed that.  I didn't understand this choice until I read Jaconian's review and he mentioned that it used a modified Amnesia game engine.    I suppose the spookiness was in homage to that.  Or maybe it was just in Homage to Portland.    Adding to the spookiness is the crappiness of my computer preventing smooth animation.  Can't blame the game for that.

One final *spoiler* - something I picked up from reading an article from clockworkworlds blog about Gone Home.  It reveals a darker story about Sam and Katie's father, and Uncle Vernon.  This is interesting, because of the content, and also interesting because a lot more detective work is required to piece this story together, as opposed to Sam's story, which is the central plot.  

Overall,  Gone Home really does all the things I hoped it would.  The emotional content and the attention to detail are fantastic. I dub this the Non-game-game of the year, 2013, retroactive!

-D

P.S.  just some odds, ends and ideas:

Another awesome detail was the note that said "Sam, don't leave all the lights on, you're as bad as your sister" - and of course, at that point I had left all the lights on.  Mostly because this place was flippin' scary! I love that the designers anticipated this.

I realize that Gone Home is very much like Dear Esther, though instead of a landscape, we have objects to examine, and in that way it is more complex than Dear Esther.  Dear Esther is more abstract.  But still, I am very hopeful for the future of games with Gone Home.  I hope that its success will tip off other developers for the future.  Also - must play Dear Esther again.

Imagine this kind of detective work in a supernatural game.  Like, imagine that the house is a stage in a game, that is actually a representation of a persons mind.  Like, professor X psychic style.  Gone Home is a short game, independently produced, but it could very easily be a chapter in a larger story.  This is definitely not the last I've said about Gone Home.  

Always Seems To Be A Work In Progress

Just to forewarn y'all, the post for today is going to ramble a bit.  And by ramble, I mean that from the overarching fact that I'm rambling, there isn't much coherency.

You know, I don't have a whole lot to go into today.  I mean, there are a handful (maybe multiple hands) of games that I'm playing, some because I've been meaning to play and others because I'm deep into that post-Steam-sale zone of GAMES ARE EVERYWHERE!?  It's also a Monday (my work-Friday), it's nice outside (nice for Portland anyway) and parenthese seem to be taking over (which isn't all that odd if you look back through some of the posts I've put up).

I've got some irons in the fire, some of those irons have somehow turned into styrofoam (whatever that means), while others are just gathering steam (pun not intended) and wondering when the damn train is going to be built.  I also finished reading (again) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Hogfather (again) within the last month and am nearly finished with Jingo, so I have British satirists running around in my head telling me that I'm doing it all wrong and don't sound anything like them.

I could start talking about late 19th century and early 20th century weird, horror, science fiction authors, two of which who are both not H.P. Lovecraft, but I feel they would warrant their own post without all this nonsensical nonsense that has been happening for the last 217 words that have occurred before the number 217.

Now that I think about it, I may just have too many irons in the fire (I was going to Wiki-link to the "irons in the fire" bit, but the Wiki page for that is just too silly).  I have (at least) two games I'm playing on my 3DS, one on the PSP, 10 or so games on Steam that I'm in the middle of and a couple that I play on my phone every-so-often.  Not to mention (except that I am) a stack of board games that haven't been played in Idon'tknowhowlong and a card game that has yet to be played because Idon'tknow.

Part of me knows better than to post drivel if I don't have anything to say, especially on these self-imposed deadlines, but that's just the way I am.  If I falter one day, I feel that I'll begin the habit of doing it on a consistent basis.

With that being said, I would now like to end the writings of today with a picture of the outcome from my first foray into the DayZ alpha:

I guess we all could use a little work.

JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Working On The Highway

Kinda like Rogue-like. Like.

The rogue-like genre is one I first heard of maybe last year or so.  The name comes from an old PC or Arcade game called Rogue.   The Genre is marked by a couple features:  One is procedurally generated dungeons, which means that the dungeons are invented by an algorythm, not created by designers piece by piece.  So the levels are different every time you play.  The other thing is permadeath.  When you die, you die.  No continues. Tough shit. 

That second feature is not so popular.  In fact, for example, probably one of the most famous Rogue-like-likes from our time is Diablo.  But there wasn't permadeath until Diablo II, which was dubbed 'hardcore.'  I think Blizzard realized that they could sell more copies of the game if it wasn't quite so punishing. 

If you have any interest at all in the genre, I highly recommend checking out the IndieStatik Roguelike-primer by Dominic Tarason.  It's an article that breaks down the best games in the genre into entry level, intermediate and expert.  And then there's a final bit for genre bending games like FTL.  

From the list in the above article, the games that stand out for me are: Dwarf Fortress, Unreal World RPG and Roguelike Doom (the id software classic reimagined as a roguelike).  

A quote from the blurb on Dwarf Fortress:

"I can’t think of many other games where you can deliberately twist an embedded blade to cause pain, hoping to drive your foe into unconsciousness."

I just really like that quote.  Moving on.

An exciting new entry into the Rogue-like genre is a game called Rogue Legacy.  Rogue Legacy was featured in Extra Credits - 'games you may not have tried 6'.  And the guys over at the Experience Points podcast listed it as a game of the year in 2013. Frankly, it sounds like a great game.  I love the generational aspect; it's a cool idea  that when you die, the next playable character is from the next generation of your family, and inherits all the money you earned in your last play.  This is doubly cool, because it is a side scrolling, castle-dungeon game, with a basic story that your family has tried through the generations to invade this particular castle and destroy the evil within.  

Well, holy shit.  This is basically the entire Castlevania series boiled down into one game.  It seems to me that Konami only has one available choice:  Rip this idea off completely, and create a Castlevania Rogue Legacy-like in which generations of Belmonts try to bust through the castle to kill Dracula.  Probably they should use a procedurally generated castle to keep the game fresh when starting different legacies.  Also, Alucard should be a hidden character somehow.  Yes.  Do this. NOW.

-D


P.S. uh oh! looks like someone already beat you to it, Konami!  But come on, it's not too late to show them how it's really done!

Game Scores: Castlevania 64 (N64)

Since 1986, Castlevania has been a staple for great baroque-esque music despite have different composers in almost every game until Michiru Yamane came on board with the franchise in 1994 with Castlevania: Bloodlines.  1999's N64 release of Castlevania 64 was no different in the franchise however with regards to the composers.  This time around, Konami went with three composers, Masahiko Kimura (who later worked on Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow), Motoaki Furukawa (who had previously worked on Castlevania X: Rondo of Blood) and Mariko Egawa (whose only work on work in the Castlevania series would be this title).

I had been in love with the games and music of the Castlevania series since I first played and Castlevania 64 was no exception.  I remember on my first run through of the game, I chose the "Easy" difficulty which turned out to stop about halfway through the game  which then required me to restart on the normal difficulty setting to finish the game.  Although on my second pass through the game I did not receive the "good ending" until I re-replayed through the game again for a third time using Reinhardt Schneider, (I was never able to get past the Tower of Sorcery's disappearing platforms with Carrie Fernandez).

It wasn't until after I bought the soundtrack that I realized how good the music for Castlevania 64 was.  I obviously liked it enough to purchase the soundtrack, but listening to the music outside of the game environment is a different experience.  I remember after listening to the CD for the first time that I felt that I had listened to a film soundtrack.  While the CD did not contain all of the tracks and some of the incidental music that I had enjoyed in the game, there was so much music that I did like.

For the entirety of this review, I will not be able to say specifically which of the composers wrote which piece.  And being a Castlevania game, Castlevania 64 does reuse themes from previous games in the series and despite the fact that the staple "Vampire Killer" is not present anywhere on the soundtrack, I do not find that this detracts from the overall quality and enjoyment of the album.

The opening track is entitled Introduction/Opening or more majestically, "Sign of Blood Relationship," and also uses the theme from Castlevania: Bloodlines' "Bloodlines."  The song not only fits perfectly into the existing Castlevania universe, but is a great introduction into this Castlevania game.

That amazing violin solo in the second half of the piece was performed by Tomokuni Katayama, and even being surrounded by a MIDI score, the track sounds amazing.

The track "Lamented Rose" is both a beautiful yet ominous piece that really surprised me both in-game and upon hearing it in the soundtrack.  In the game, the music happens when your character enters a room and looks upon a flower vase and is confronted (I think) by the first vampire you meet in the game that isn't Count Dracula.  The scene plays out really well as a cut-scene, but we're focusing on music here.

One of my favorite tracks, both in-game as well as on the soundtrack is the "Dungeon - Main Theme."  Like a lot of the music from the game it is fairly subdued compared to other musical cues from the Castlevania franchise, but it works for this game and the world that was created.  The music creates the feeling that you need to keep plodding onward and that you may actually survive and not be turned into a vampire.

Lastly, I wanted to highlight one of the liturgical sounding songs, which almost seems required for a Castlevania game.  "Stairway to the Clouds" happens on your approach to Dracula's tower while going up flight after flight of stairs.  How many games can you think of that have something this dramatic, just to walk up a flight of stairs?

If any/all of these tracks have interested you into either playing Castlevania 64 on that N64 gathering dust in the garage or perhaps to pop on over to eBay to purchase the soundtrack, then you've made my Friday or whatever day it is that you are reading this.  Happy weekend.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

While Capturing the Stench of Devine

Proteus Link Dump

As mentioned in my year in review post, 2013 was a year for non-games.  The biggest standout of which, for me, was Proteus.  And I think it came out in 2012, but, whatever.  This post is long overdue, but I have these interesting links all ready, I just have to dress them up.  This was one of my favorite games of 2013, so I think it's worth a revisit.  

Getting Lost in Proteus: An Interview with Ed Key
This nice interview with Ed Key includes pictures from his childhood backyard.  He focuses on the idea of wandering and getting lost when talking about Proteus.  He also mentions scrambling up mountains in Skyrim and getting lost at sundown in Minecraft.  He is searching, in video games, for the sublime experience of a majestic landscape.
Embedded in the interview are links to other articles about Proteus, if you are interested.  I know I am.  


Proteus: A Trio of Artisinal Game Reviews
Alright, if you somehow still are willing or interested in more info for Proteus, here is a link to a neat article by Ian Bogost, comparing three different reviews of the game.  This is heady, advanced stuff, much better than anything I can turn out.  
I like reviews 1 and 3 the most, even though I think the topic for 2 is the most immediately appealing, I don't particularly care for his take on it.


Ed Key has a lot of interesting postings in the news section of the Proteus website.  I've selected a couple of interesting ones for you here, but I encourage you to check it out if you are interested.  

Ed Key: What Are Games
Ed's response to the 'not-game' controversy.  Important to perhaps try to avoid the controversy as it's a bit of a whirlpool.

Ed Key: Seven Day Roguelike Challenge
On the news area of proteus, there is a link to a seven day roguelike challenge game by Ed Key.  The idea is that your forage in a forest and try to stay alive.  I like the idea.  Check it out.

My Time In Evoland (PC)

Dr. Potts already did a full-on review about Evoland, which you can read here, and I highly recommend it, and not only because we share the same space here in internetland, but because it's a good article.  I however, after only just finishing the game not 10 minutes ago (upon writing this, not publishing today on Monday January 6th, 2014), wanted to give my own thoughts.

I really liked Evoland, although knowing from Dr. Potts that it was a short(ish) game probably helped in the development of my feelings.  By "short," I expected the game to be somewhere between 2-5 hours in length, and it took me about 3.5 hours from start to finish, although some of that time was spent trying to raise levels only to realize that that didn't matter outside of overworld battles.

As the good Doctor stated, I too wish that more time was spent in the 2D pre N64/PS1 era.  There was an area where you reverted back to Legend of Zelda (circa 1985), but that was only after you had been playing in 3D-Land for a while.  One aspect of reverting back to 2D graphics, was that the music also switched back to the classic NES 8-bit tones, but the music itself was the same.  I enjoyed hearing how the layering of instruments changed based on what "era" you were in.

But game length is very important here.  I felt that 3.5 hours was a perfect length of time for what the game was trying to accomplish.  If the game had been longer, I definitely would have felt cheated by how much time was spent in the early 2000's (Final Fantasy IX and beyond).  If the game were to have been twice as long, I feel that more time would have been spent playing as Gameboy Clink, or maybe even started at an earlier point in gaming history, such as with the Atari or the Intellivision.

All of that aside, again, I really enjoyed Evoland.  I feel that I was able to pick up on most of the references to video game history.  Even non-video game history, but general fantasy works, such as including A'Tuin from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.  Other references  include Super Mario Bros., Diablo, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Final Fantasy VII and a whole helluva lot more, which is where I found a lot of the fun with Evoland.  I'm sure/positive that there were references that I didn't get, but I can't/won't mention them because I don't know what they were, hence the not getting the references bit.

It kind of reminded me of the way that "Weird Al" does his parodies.  They are often shorter versions of the original songs, but he gets his point across with what he's trying to do, although this is not always the case.

I will say that around the time that the game took on it's definite Final Fantasy VII and beyond tone, I did lose some interest.  Upgrades to the look and mechanics of the game became less and less and treasure chests which once held quips directed towards the video game industry and semi-ridiculousness of certain RPG rules, these chests started to contain Stars and Cards (Stars are there just to collect and Cards are used for a TCG, similar to the game card game used in Final Fantasy IX).  I felt as if I had reached the pinnacle of game development too soon as there was at least another hour of gameplay left.

Unlike Dr. Potts, I don't know if I see myself going through the game again, even  knowing what I now know about the overall length of the game.  The story was not very engaging, but I never felt that the story was a driving part of the narrative, or lack thereof.  It would be like playing Final Fantasy IV minus emotional investment and 50 hours of additional gameplay and story arcs.  So then why even play Evoland?  Because it's a game that knows who its target audience is and I like getting the references to other video games that I played 20 years ago.  In short, because Evoland is fun.

You know, I could easily see this concept used for other over-arching gaming genres such as Doom-style FPS' or even a Streets of Rage / Double Dragon type brawler-beat-em-up.  Although at the moment, it looks like Shiro Games is in development of a multiplayer adventuring game called Until Dark, which by the name and font alone sounds promising.  And now, a new video game development company to keep our collective eyes on.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
A Future That Ain't What It Used To Be

Swatting the Invisible Flies - Mario Paint and Internet Browsing

Sometimes when I browse the Internet, it feels  very much like that mini-game on Mario Paint where you swat the flies.  I usually bounce between my usual websites, email, facebook, chess games. And I usually don't finish one task before moving on to another, so before I know it I have several tabs open, and I'm bouncing between them,  quickly becoming overwhelmed.  Then I rush around to complete the tasks, ie: read the email or ignore it, delete the junk from my mailbox, type the status update, like the post, look at the pretty pictures.  And then there are longer tasks, like reading an article, or watching a five minute video.  Often I don't get to these, it all depends on the arbitrary, invisible time limit I place on myself, which is proportional to how much caffeine I have had in a day, or how badly I want to ignore something else in my life.  Opening and closing tabs, clicking my unread emails and liking things on facebook, my internet browsing becomes no more than swatting flies.

Things I Say When Playing Skyrim (That Would Sound Batshit Insane If I Said Them in Real Life)

Hi everyone! The elusive Conklederp here. I haven't been blogging, mostly because I really haven't done much in terms of gaming aside from watch Jaconian play his stuff...and he pretty much has you guys covered there. But today, after an unhealthy amount of hours spent playing Skyrim, I got to thinking. How insane does this stuff sound in a real-world context? I mean seriously. Take a look.

• "I just knocked that bad guy's head off with my mace!"
• "A beehive? Sure, I'll eat that."
• "Apparently I'm a cannibal now."
• "That bear gave me a disease."
• "Eh, I'll just send my follower to kill that guy."
• "I'm not allowed back in that town unless I pay my $10,000 bounty."
• "I sleep on average once a week."
• "Hm, she's not home. I'll just stand outside her house for 11 hours until she comes back."
• "Man, it sucks that I can only carry 600 lbs worth of stuff."
• "Ah shit, not another dragon!"

Happy new year, everyone! If you need me, I'll be out there fighting dragons and clearing caves of frost spiders :)

Pictured : an actual conversation 

Gog.com ~ Finally

I think I've mentioned Gog.com a couple of times and if I haven't, I probably should have.  Well, by the looks of it, both DRPOTTS and I have mentioned this video game consignment store (aka Take My Money) site before, but only in a rudimentary passing type of way, meaning that aside from links and little blurb, neither of us have seem to have brought this site up as extensively as it deserves.

So gog.com (Good Old Games) has been around since 2008 although I only became aware of the site since, maybe, the middle of 2012, who can say?  The point is, gog.com offers a lot of older PC games at frequently ridiculously low prices, which I won't specifically mention as I still sort of hold that stigma since our KDVS 90.3FM Freeform Radio days; non-profit radio cannot mention prices on air, at least we were told never to do mention prices.  They've also started offering newer games, possibly to compete with both Humble Bundle, Steam and Amazon's Indie Gaming Store.

I only bring up gog.com now, because a short while back, I picked up a game that I had heard about sometime last summer.  I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream is a psychological horror point-and-click game from 1995 that was based on a science fiction book of the same name and published in 1967 by Harlan Ellison.  While not available on Steam, gog.com had this game for, we'll just say exceedingly cheap.  Science fiction point-and-click psychological horror are three genres that I love, so it was really just a matter of not caring about spending less than $5.

After purchasing the game, I looked at my games shelf and was horrified at what I saw.  There were eight games on my shelf.  All said "New" in the upper right corner.  I immediately checked my credit card statement online as well as my email to see if I had accidentally purchase seven other games.  Now, if I had taken the time to actually look at the games, all my fears would have been alleviated.

These seven other games were free.  That's what the green banner across the upper left of the box art that spelled out "FREE" meant.  I didn't buy them, they just. . . came with my purchase?  These seven games are simply free from gog.com and you don't even have to sign up for an account, although by signing up, they are automatically added to your library.

Below will be a brief rundown of the games that were included with my purchase, because I want to find out about these games (and proclaim my ignorance publically) at the same time you find out, then feel free to shun me in whatever way you feel appropriate.

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.

Now, I'm familiar with this game, but only by name and the cover art.  I recall seeing this game as an NES cartridge at DRPOTTS' house.  I never tried playing it, knowing his family's penchant for not playing someone elses save files, and by the time I knew of this game, I had already developed a fairly decent etiquette when it came to video game save files.  If this game is anything like the only Ultima game that I've played, Ultima: Exodus, then I probably won't make it too far.

Tyrian 2000.

This is a top down spaceship shooter that came out back in 1999 from Eclipse Productions.  It basically looks like a mash up between 1942 and Gradius, which is a good thing.  I had fun playing both games although I was never a wiz at them, but this still sounds like a lot of fun.

Dragonsphere.

Dragonsphere came out on the PC back in 1994 from MicroProse.  The game is a point-and-click fantasy adventure game that looks like it was ripped straight out of a Dungeons & Dragons module from the same era.  And hell no that's not a bad thing.  For me, that's pure nostalgic fun.  And apparently it's a cult classic, which is a sign that I think always bodes well.

Warsow.

Warsow, released in 2012 by Chausser De Bots, by only looking at it, sounds like a Team Fortress 2 type multiplayer battle royale with a sense for camp.  I'll probably give the game a go, being free and all, but this genre really isn't my pint-of-stout mainly because I don't want/like to deal with online rage douches, but it's worth a try.  And, I don't think the same mean spirited 12 year old boys will be playing Warsow instead of Battlefield 4: Co-op Enemy Massacre Revenge: The Return of the Camped Out Revenge Killing Part IIa

Treasure Adventure Game.

Treasure Adventure Game, released in 2011 by Robit Studios  looks exactly like it's title proclaims: a retro style 2D platformer with a less violent Super Meat Boy thrown in because that seems to be a thing now-a-days.  I'll give the game a spin, but if it's as frustrating as Super Meat Boy, I may have to just pass after, say, 30 minutes.

Beneath a Steel Sky.
Beneath a Steel Sky was released in 1994 by Revolution Software.  It is a point-and-click science fiction adventure game.  I know absolutely nothing about this game (as opposed to the other six games that I know nothing about) and, I'm going to take a stab in the dark here, looks a bit like the film Dark City and Brazil with something else thrown in that I can't quite pin down (Shadowgate meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit maybe??).  Either way, whatever this game is, it looks like something that I will end up loving or never finishing because it's too avant garde.  As long as Eraserhead's babby doesn't show up, I might be alright. We'll wait and see.

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire.
Released in 1990 by Origin Systems.  I'm not even sure about this game.  I mean, the T-Rex's posture isn't correct and the flying reptile looks like it's a mix between Rhamphorhynchus and a Pteranodon.  Oh, and I guess the scantily clad savage woman next to the safari game-hunter seems out of place too.  So maybe an Ultima style game, but instead of high fantasy, it's high colonial steam-punk meats Journey to the Center of the Earth?  I am of course making some of this up.  I will of course try out the game.







One additional thing that I want to let shine on gog.com, is that even the free games often come with their own special features of sorts.  Ultima IV comes with an audio interview with Lord British, maps, manual and spell book; Warsow and Treasure Adventure Game both come with the soundtrack; I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream comes with a manual, soundtrack and a making of documentary pdf file.  This is a great place and I am sad that I only recently discovered how amazing it is, this land of the lost pc games.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Learning To Live