Monthly Update: July 2014

I know I usually put these out on the first Monday or Friday of the new month, but I decided to make an executive decision to post this today, the last day of June and looking forward to the first and last July of 2014.  

Woooooooo!  I just finished Bioshock 2 and by "finished," I mean that I saw the end cinematic after going through the game.  I just started the Minerva's Den DLC so I have not finished-finished, but you get the picture.  I may or may not write up an article about the game as it is five years old and there are literally dozens of reviews for the game out there in Internetland.  So in the meantime, I will simply say that I thoroughly enjoyed my time back in Rapture and I look forward to seeing what new places will be explored in the DLC.

I think I am also very close to finishing Mirror's Edge as well but there might end up being ten more hours of running my ass off (figuratively speaking since running is achieved by pushing down the W key) followed by confusingly looking around a rooftop wondering where to go next.  While being shot at by the Blues.

In the wake of finishing Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, I decided to plunk Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy back into my 3DS, having been probably a year or so since I last played the game.  I did this partly because, again, I had not played it in a while, but also to decide how I would feel about the sequel that is coming out on September 16, 2014.  All of my same potential fears for the release of the game and the announced 221 songs from the existing series and now including music from Final Fantasy Tactics (no word if the FFT Advance games will be included), Advent Children: Final Fantasy VII et cetera.  I am really just hoping that the game is similar yet different enough from the first game that I will not feel ripped off by already having access to half of the songs in the sequel; obviously I expect some repetition, but variation would be gladly accepted.  In other news, I should probably play/finish one of those other 3/DS games that I have/have not finished/played yet.       /

Steam's Summer 2014 Sale ended yesterday and I am proud to say that I was able to restrain myself.  I did purchase a couple of games but in total, I spent less than $15, which could mean that I now have 15 more games, but in truth the count only went up by four, one of which was the absurdly yet accurately titled Goat Simulator.  I am not entirely sure what I am expecting this game to be, either from what I have already heard about the game and from what the trailer told me, but I anticipate to be entertained.  At least it will still be a better love story than Twilight.  Yes, I just jumped on that train.

In the book front, because last week I talked a bit about books and my reading plans for the rest of the year, I began The Poetic Edda, translated by Lee M. Hollander to cover the "Poetry Collection" tile for BINGO.  Sure, it's not your normal collection of poetry to Tennyson, Plath or Wordsworth, but it is still poetry and it is a book that I have had on the shelf and have been meaning to read for a while.  Additionally, last week I also started reading Shadow Star by Chris Claremont and George Lucas, which is the third part in trilogy of books that takes place after the events in the film Willow.  Without going into a review of the entire series right now, I will post something later in the month (?), but I will say that the world from Willow has been greatly expanded, but at a cost.

Lastly, I finally got around to playing Settlers of Catan last week with Conklederp, Chreekat, Chreekat's Mom and her friend.  I know what you are thinking and believe you me, I thought the exact same thing.  And no, I did not win.  I had too much wheat and not enough wood.  Never enough wood.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
The Day Is Much Too Late

Skyrim = Sinkhole of Time

My experience with The Elder Scrolls games has been very limited, so much so that I've only witnessed a former roommate playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  All I could say about the game was that the guy's character jumped everywhere, occasionally killed a city guard and that it was an FPS-type game.  I wasn't overly impressed.  My own personal experience with first person (POV) hack-and-slash swording fantasy games was limited to an old arcade game that I thought was in a Neo-Geo cabinate, but I can't find anything about it anywhere.  So there's that.

During Steam's most recent Fall/Autumn/Thanksgiving sale, I purchased The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.  I did this for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, the game was 50% off, which still meant that it was $30.  The second reason comes in three parts, but is part of the larger whole, which is that I'm lacking in fantasy realms to be in.  I'm not a subscriber to HBO so I don't/can't watch Game of Thrones until it's released on DVD and Amazon just gave a release date for season 2 as February 13th, 2013 (assuming the world doesn't end in a few weeks).  I'm also reading Shadow Moon, which to pretty much everyone, is the first book in a trilogy that takes place in the same world as the film Willow.  The third part of the second reason is that I'm eagerly awaiting the release of The Hobbit.  So as you can see, I needed a medieval high-fantasy world to play in.

So yes, Skyrim was purchased.  But that is not the point.  The point is, is that I've only played the game for two days, which were my two days off this week, and I managed to clock in about 13 1/2 hours.  Jump ahead two more days and I've now clocked in just over 19 hours.  Granted probably about 30 minutes of that was just creating my character.  I can also figure out how/why I've been playing for this long.  

I don't know if it's something in current large world RPG's and I know I've seen it in a few other games, but Skyrim allows you to in a sense, warp between locations you've already been to.  The required amount of time will pass during your split second journey as if you actually walked it, but you'll be as fast as it takes for the loading screen to finish loading.  I'm not a fan of this "fast travelling" nonsense, something that I felt plagued Final Fantasy XII, but I'm not getting into FFXII right now.  If I'm going from one village to a cave on the other side of the mountains, by golly, I'm going to have my character run the whole god damn way!

A big (as in fucking huge) part of this game for me, is looking at the environment (pun sort of intended).  Anytime I'm travelling, I'll back the camera out to a 3rd person view so that I can rotate the camera and just watch the gorgeous scenery:

Keep in mind that I'm running this game at about mid-level so there aren't all the textures and layers that could be there if I were running on Alienware or something equivalent.  There are mods available designed to make the game look even better, but I'm not going to touch those, again because I don't have the set up for it.  There is this guy though who apparently has 100+ mods running at any given time for some amazing visuals.

The gist is that I like walking.  I like exploring.  So what if I get sidetracked from the main story line and want to find out what's on the other side of that mountain and end up swimming in a lake.  I love being able to look at a mountain range way off in the distance, run towards it and seeing it get larger and larger until there I am, running up the side of it.  I will admit thought that I have on a couple of occasions "Fast Traveled" to a location, but that was because I was strapped for time and knew I wouldn't be able to make the trek to the city to disenchant my non-usable gear before I had to leave for work.  Because in this world, work comes first.

At the moment, I don't see this game taking as much time as say, Goldeneye 007 took, as that was the only game I played on the N64 for just over six months after I bought it.  Some people will scoff at that satement, but I do plan on playing other games, both on my computer and either on the 3DS or PSP if I'm not playing Skyrim.  And besides, I've still got to get through Penumbra Overture.  You hear that Skyrim, you're  not the only game in the box!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Now If Only They Would Listen

P.S.  And in case you're wondering, I created a female Wood Elf named Allinesea.  She's based off a character I created for a D&D campaign that I have never run.  I also thought it would be more interesting having the lead character as a woman rather than the stereotypical male fighter character.  Although I've also thought about doing a male character and having him be a mage...... I'm sure I'll come up with something later.

And just because, here's a picture of Barbas the wolf hound photo bombing one of my pictures:

Game Scores: Willow (NES)

Willow, on the NES was a game that I bought for a couple of reasons.

1. I loved the movie.
2. It was by Capcom, and they made Mega Man, so it must be awesome.
3. There was a box label that said it was $10 off (but only after you bought one or two additional Capcom titles).

I hadn't heard much about the game aside from what I read in the November/December 1989 issue of Nintendo Power.  So I bought the game (sadly found out that I didn't immediately get the the $10 discount) and played it.  I was introduced to the game with this awesome intro movie sequence and amazing score.

(For those of you who never played Willow, it was like a combination of The Legend of Zelda, but you gained experience and could equip various swords, shields, armors and spells).

Now back to the music.

The composer/programmer for Willow was Haruji Fujita who also composed the music for Ghosts 'n Goblins, Gargyole's Quest, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, and others.  Basically, she knows her shit.  Sadly, there isn't a whole lot of information about Haruji Fujita's compositions for Willow, so we'll just have to admire the music as is without any sub-context, which is perfectly fine as the music is awesome and stylistically varied.

The overworld music, which is probably the piece that's heard most often, is a great "We're going on an adventure!" theme:

The theme for Nockmaar Castle starts out as this beautiful medley then moves into a harpsichord/Baroque-esque that doesn't sound quite right, as if the music were trying to show you the glory that Nockmaar Castle once held before it fell into ruin and overrun by evil.  And, for me at least, the music makes me a little uncomfortable, which is great because it's the last area of the game before you defeat General Kail and Bavmorda:

So that's my brief go around with some of the music from Capcom's 1990 NES release of Willow, which I would recommend playing, both for the music and because it's a really fun game.  If you have a functioning NES, pick it up,otherwise download for an emulator.  There's plenty of music (well, 15 additional tracks) that I didn't list here that are all equally as beautiful as what was written for the game and again, highly recommended.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Peck, Peck, Peckpeckpeckpeckpeck!