Monthly Update: August 2013

Happy August everyone!

I'm playing a couple of games right  now (story of my life), some that I could (and should) be writing about and others that I haven't spent enough time to warrant a sit down and interview.  I have a First Impressions in the work for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind that I haven't actually played in a month or two due to a possible glitch that keeps crashing the game; I've also put some hours into Ace Combat Assault Horizon: Enhanced Edition, Torchlight, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D and Scribblenauts Unlimited.  

Then there's the Shadow of the Eternals Kickstarter that started off strong and in the last couple of days seems to be slowing down.  It really saddens me that this game might not get made (again).  After seven days the Kickstarter is at 25%, which is still on track, but their gain went up so much in the first couple of days that they've now reached the point where they're going backwards against the daily average needed to reach their goal by Friday August 23rd.  (It started out that they would need $25,000/day and now they have to average $26,700/day).  I guess I'm just ever the pessimist, but I would love, LOVE to see this game made.

This last weekend ( by weekend I mean the last two days I had off, which were Tuesday & Wednesday) Conklederp and I saw Pacific Rim, which initially didn't interest me when I first saw the poster a couple of months back.  Then I saw it was directed by Guillermo del Toro and that Ron Perlman was in the film as well.  That sold me.  Then, I was listening to the Nerdist Podcast #273 and director Guillermo del Toro stated (old news) that he had contacted Valve to see if he could use the voice of GlaDOS in the movie.  Then a former KDVS Metal DJ posted a link to the soundtrack (composed by Game of Thrones fame Ramin Djawadi)  and I knew it had to be seen.  Now, I've never been into Mechs of any kind, so the fact that Pacific Rim was as entertaining as it was says something about it.  Conklederp even liked it and she's not one for loud action movies.  We also saw The Conjuring the week before, which was a solid ghost-ish type movie that takes place in 1971 with excellent kid actors (which is important when there are five of them).

I also haven't forgotten about "Demo Time" either.  Sometimes it can be hard to find time to sit down and play a game I know that is a demo that may take anywhere from 10 to 45 minutes when I have a game right over here (Half-Life, Infinite Space, BIT.TRIP.RUNNER, Torchlight, DKCR 3D) that keeps reminding me to play them.  First World Problems, I know.

And finally, it the time that I have been typing this out, the Shadow of the Eternals Kickstarter has gained an additional $976, so there's still hope.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

The Xbox One Reveal & Demo Time

The video game blogosphere was all a-buzz last week with Microsoft's announcement of the Xbox One and all that it can and is designed to do.  When I first saw the pictures of the system and controller, I liked it.  I thought it was a classy looking approach to a video game console that didn't shout out, "I play video games!"  I thought it looked a lot like a DVD player or cable box.  And I'll be honest, in that brief moment, I actually considered the purchase of the One.  That was before I watched the video on Kotaku (via Darkbeatdk) telling me all I needed to know about Xbox One.

Then, I remembered that I really/probably/most likely don't want one, what with all the "everything needs to be on" thing, and the Xbox Live pay accounts.  One last (amusing) thing about the Xbox One reveal, was the mention of the "newly redesigned D-pad." Wait, what?  Directional pads like that have been around since the mid 80s, and I personally, haven't liked the tinkering that was done for almost every non-Nintendo D-pad (Dreamcast aside).

That's all I'm going to say about this since I'm very much out of my league when it comes to most/all things related to the Xbox; I can honestly say that I've played/used an Xbox less than ten times.  Ever.

A couple of months ago, I did an article about the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate demo with the header of "Demo Time."  I would really like to turn this into a "thing."  While some games may not warrant an entire article, there will be times when I combine a couple of games that have similar themes or feel like two games are one-in-the-same, just with a different pair of underwear on the outside.

There will be some games that are obvious as to why I would play them, while others I won't fit within a single target area of a game's demographic.  The point is, there have been some games that I've been surprised by and others that I thought I might like and turned out to be a boring slice of dried cheese.  I will state thought that I may or may not play every available demo.

I currently do not have any plans to release Demo Time posts on any day in particular, but they will appear here and there.  Possibly when I don't have anything else on my plate or if there is a particularly engaging demo that I feel the need to share.


Lastly, I don't feel that it's any surprise that my goto for what a video game blog/article should be is Penny Arcade.  For a long time, I thought the phrase at the end of Jerry/Tycho's posts were little cryptic sayings that had to do with the article, even when they were labeled "instrumental;" in my head there'd be a dramatic movie music cue ready to go.  That all changed (last year?) when Jerry started actually hyperlinking the end phrase to a song, which is what the phrases were related to.  

Yes, I'm copying on some level, although I did something very similar with in-office emails when I worked for the State (of California).  I would have little taglines, something like "The marmots are really just framing the ferns until someone notices."  Nonsensical things with the intention of making people scratch their heads.  It's not as funny when you don't work with "professionals."  Although, back during the Myspace era, whenever I wrote a note/blog post, I would use a mozilla extension (FoxyTunes I think it was) to paste information on whatever song I was last listening to when I finished the posting.  For a while here I've been doing something very similar, although I would usually alter the song title or some of the lyrics to better "fit" at the end of a posting.  I will continue this practice and now, I too will hyperlink.

I've used too many words and should probably stop tippa-tapping now.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
He, The Aethyr

Demo Time: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (3DS)

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate was released for the Nintedo 3DS three days ago on March 5th, 2013.  I recently had a chance to play the demo, which was available through Nintendo's eShop.  After spending 37 minutes on a single play through of the demo, I feel like it did it's job.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect having only watched the trailer that was released during the 2012 E3 and while there wasn't a whole lot of game play footage, I was still very excited about a new Castlevania game.  The biggest downside for me though, was that this is a sequel to a Castlevania game that I have never played.  I'm assuming that the "Lords of Shadow" tagline will be present in all the subsequent re-boots that began in December 2010 with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow released exclusively on PS3 and XBox 360.  And as it turns out, the development company of the Castlevania reboot series is not specifically Konami, but Spain based MercurySteam, so kudos to them first off for not only creating a reboot of a Japanese standard, but apparently doing it successfully enough to warrant more than one game.

I still find it interesting and on some levels annoying that a series will have different games available only on certain systems.  Take this Castlevania series for example.  C:LoS was released on PS3 and 360, C:Los-MoF will only be released on the 3DS and later this year, C:LoS2 will be released on PS3, 360 and for the PC.  It's one thing for a series like Final Fantasy, which do not have connected storylines to have their games on different platforms, but for someone like me who likes continuing stories and to not have a system that a game is on, it just makes me sad.  And, at the moment, I'm not so hard up to play Lords of Shadow to go out and buy a PS3 or 360.

Anyway!  The Mirror of Fate demo, that's why we're here.  Upon downloading, the demo lets you know that you have 30 play-throughs, which is quite a lot when you consider that it took me 37 minutes to complete a single play-through.  There wasn't any lead in, intro or explanation as to who you were or what you were doing and where.  But let's be honest, you don't always need that in a Castlevania game.  The demo consisted of four areas and two boss type characters that reminded me a lot of the original NES Castlevania game: start outside of the castle, cross a drawbridge, go through a church, go underground then battle outside of the main castle.  There were skeletons throwing bones, knights wielding axes what I might suspect to be Flea Men although they didn't attack, but were just there. 

The music too seemed very Castlevania-y, although it didn't sound like Michiru Yamane, the frequently used composer for the Castlevania series.  The tone of the music was more "background" although it did a great job in setting a dark, semi-serious tone.  I can't think of the music though at the moment, meaning I wasn't memorable as "Vampire Killer," but that's that.   the composer for the games in the Lords of Shadow series has been Oscar Araujo and from what music is "available" in the demo, it fits very well.

The game play itself reminded me a lot of God of War, in that you had a basic whip attack, a slightly slower whip attack and when you combined those with the jump ability, you could perform different types of attacks.  For instance, when you jumped and power attacked, you would flip with your whip out and hit whatever it is that is under you mid jump; when you power attacked then jumped, you would spin in a circle creating a cyclone-like whip attack.  Other Castlevania-y type things that went on were using your whip Indiana Jones style to swing across gaps and special sub-weapons, which included in the demo was a boomerang-type blade reminiscent of something from Blade II.  That in mind, the demo played very much like any other Castlevania 2D side scrolling platformer, which while it is not entirely new or inventive, it is still fun and familiar with just enough new elements to keep the game interesting.

Now onto the 3D aspect of the game.  Overall, the 3Dness of the game was very well done and looked great, although there were some times when the 3D blurred a bit, possibly from the rotating camera and I wasn't properly adjusting, or I was just being too excited and kept moving the screen closer or farther away.  During both of the boss fights though, I turned the 3D slider "off" so that I could focus on trying to kill the creature and not dying.

All-in-all, the demo was a lot of fun and even though I died frequently figuring out the controls, the weapons, the enemies and such, it definitely got the point across and has made me eager to purchase the game, which is the whole point of demos being available.  Success on the Castlevania front from MercurySteam.  Good job all.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

This Music Makes Me Sad, But That's It's Job