1) I have a newfound loathing for thunderstorms.
I used to love turning my wired world topsy-turvy by unplugging everything electronic and taking in the wonder of nature, or curling up with a book and flashlight, or taking an opportunity to chat with whoever was with me. After losing approximately 8-10 hours of potential wedding planning and blogging in the past four days due to keeping my computer off during one thunderstorm after another, I am on the verge of moving to Idaho, or whatever state has a law against thunderstorms only striking when I am about to attempt something productive on the computer.
2) I now understand why so many of the video games I've played in the last few years have dragged on--it's not because of the specific games so much as a prevailing game design mindset of superficial gameplay.
Playing Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance became my activity of choice while waiting in frustration for each thunderstorm this week to end, and as I play farther into the game, I realize more and more that this otherwise enjoyable game suffers from Artificial Replayability Syndrome. That is, by repeating room layouts and requiring backtracking through areas that are more linear than the branching paths would have you believe, the game successfully increases the time spent playing with a minimal increase in developer effort and creativity.
Thinking about it, this apparent developer thought process that games must be as long as possible to maximize player enjoyment has resulted in so many modern (and, honestly, older) games implementing quick, easy methods of extending gameplay without adding any real content. Now I'm annoyed at the whole game industry.
3) I have decided that chocolate creme-filled Oreos are not as filling or satisfying as the regular variety (read: Double Stuf), though still good.
4) I realized that the news stories on AOL.com's main page are so frequently depressing because when one terrible thing happens, whoever's in charge of the news reporting ensures that as many stories that follow are somehow similar to the big, tragic news they just covered.
I don't follow the news unless I hear of something directly of relevance to me, or unless the buzz is so great that I can no longer tolerate being in the dark about the only thing anyone is talking about. News of the Casey Anthony trial and its aftermath dominated AOL news for some time, and when that all began to subside, AOL kept the momentum going in the days that followed by featuring every story they could find about someone committing a disturbing act of violence against a family member. "If you liked this story about a woman who may or may not have murdered her child, you should check out these stories!" It sickens me to think that the media is encouraging our fixation on such things, and that we as a culture are so receptive to it.
5) The importance of sleeping is proportional to the length of my commute to work.
I moved. I previously had a four-minute commute to work. Four minutes. Fifteen if I walked briskly. Now I have a significantly longer commute to work, and I use up a lot more energy getting there and back again every day, as I have a lower tolerance for traffic than the average human being, I think. Sitting around in the car wears on me pretty heavily. Suddenly, midnight has changed from the marker of probably needing to go to bed, to the indicator that I'd better have a darn good reason for still being awake.
6) Video recording technology is more beyond me than ever before.
A friend of mine from YouTube and I tried to record a joint playthrough of a game this weekend, and were thwarted by a series of issues with the sound and video that neither of us could resolve after three hours or so. Moreover, my attempts to research and plan a video game marathon streamed live over the Internet resulted in a resolution to try thinking about the matter in another year, when everything would hopefully be magically easy. It's a wonder I ever made enough videos to become a minor Internet celebrity in the first place.
7) I've been feeling a strong urge to produce content for GameCola.
The thunderstorms have had other ideas, however.
8) I think I want to read the sequel to Dune once I'm finished with the book.
I've heard from one or two people that the sequel is terrible, which makes me all the more curious. I like to be entertained and intellectually stimulated, but I'm also fascinated by what makes things bad.
9) This blog featured two guest posts only a few days apart, a blog first.
One on the LEGO Movie video games from my wife-to-be, and one on the Marvel Cinematic Universe from my previously brother-in-law-to-be. Remember, we welcome your ideas for guest posts--drop us a line if you're interested.
10) I'm another week older.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Marvel Cinematic Universe
Wow, another guest post! This time, my brother-in-law is back with a response to my Marvel movie post from a few weeks back.
Imagine this: you plan on going to a movie. This movie is not only gaining its reputation for great directing, visual effects, beautiful scenery, extraordinary music and the like, but it is also the story of a great character embarking on a wonderful journey. Furthermore, this character happens to be the product of a brilliant scientific endeavor, or a freak accident, or a genetic mutation, or the son of a god. This movie exists as a fantastic achievement all on its own. Even if you saw no other movie, this one would be worth seeing.
Now imagine this: Not only did this movie make sense all on its own, as its own movie, but this movie exists in a network of other movies; a universe, perhaps.
Take the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for instance. Pirates exists in its own universe. The problem with these movies, however, is that you must see Movie #1 before you see Movie #2, and even though Movie #2 isn't worth seeing [Editor's note: BEG. TO. DIFFER.], Movie #2 must be seen before Movie #3.
In 2007, with the creation of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, Marvel has created what is called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The MCU includes the following movies: Iron Man 1 & Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America. You may wonder: X-Men, Spider-Man, and a few other movies with Marvel characters came out around that time; why not these?
You see, not all Marvel movies are Marvel Universe Movies. Marvel sold the rights to many of their characters to make some money. Blade 1 & 2, all of the X-Men series (X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and X-Men: First Class), Spider-Man 1-3, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, the first Hulk, and the two Fantastic Four moves were all produced primarily from other companies like 20th Century Fox, New Line Cinema, Universal Pictures, Colombia Pictures & Lionsgate.
It was not until 2007 that Marvel really stepped it up and decided to create their own Universe. Take a look at movie enterprises like Pirates of the Caribbean, or Star Trek, or Transformers, all with good and strong fandoms. These fandoms draw from of a string of movies, tied and connected in a series, and even a reboot or two. This I would call building a vertical universe where one story builds off of another.
MCU is more of a horizontal universe that will have vertical stories built in. Iron Man 1 is the predecessor to Iron Man 2, but it exists in the same world, the same universe as Thor, and Captain America. Each movie exists as a solid, coherent, fantastic movie in its own right. But it also exists in an ever developing universe of movies. Yes, we will still see vertical developments, movie upon movie and a reboot *cough* *cough* Star Trek. But now, there is a new giant entering the cinematic stage…
…but this one is not green when angry, nor is it the son of Odin. No. This movie giant is the combination of stories and heroes, the union of myth and magic, the joining of different characters from across the big screens to save our world once more.
I do have one caution, however: Do not be mistaken with another X-Men or the new Spider-Man reboot. They are still not a part of the MCU. The movie to look forward to is the movie that will literally unite their worlds: The Avengers!
Imagine this: you plan on going to a movie. This movie is not only gaining its reputation for great directing, visual effects, beautiful scenery, extraordinary music and the like, but it is also the story of a great character embarking on a wonderful journey. Furthermore, this character happens to be the product of a brilliant scientific endeavor, or a freak accident, or a genetic mutation, or the son of a god. This movie exists as a fantastic achievement all on its own. Even if you saw no other movie, this one would be worth seeing.
Now imagine this: Not only did this movie make sense all on its own, as its own movie, but this movie exists in a network of other movies; a universe, perhaps.
Take the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for instance. Pirates exists in its own universe. The problem with these movies, however, is that you must see Movie #1 before you see Movie #2, and even though Movie #2 isn't worth seeing [Editor's note: BEG. TO. DIFFER.], Movie #2 must be seen before Movie #3.
In 2007, with the creation of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, Marvel has created what is called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The MCU includes the following movies: Iron Man 1 & Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America. You may wonder: X-Men, Spider-Man, and a few other movies with Marvel characters came out around that time; why not these?
You see, not all Marvel movies are Marvel Universe Movies. Marvel sold the rights to many of their characters to make some money. Blade 1 & 2, all of the X-Men series (X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and X-Men: First Class), Spider-Man 1-3, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, the first Hulk, and the two Fantastic Four moves were all produced primarily from other companies like 20th Century Fox, New Line Cinema, Universal Pictures, Colombia Pictures & Lionsgate.
It was not until 2007 that Marvel really stepped it up and decided to create their own Universe. Take a look at movie enterprises like Pirates of the Caribbean, or Star Trek, or Transformers, all with good and strong fandoms. These fandoms draw from of a string of movies, tied and connected in a series, and even a reboot or two. This I would call building a vertical universe where one story builds off of another.
MCU is more of a horizontal universe that will have vertical stories built in. Iron Man 1 is the predecessor to Iron Man 2, but it exists in the same world, the same universe as Thor, and Captain America. Each movie exists as a solid, coherent, fantastic movie in its own right. But it also exists in an ever developing universe of movies. Yes, we will still see vertical developments, movie upon movie and a reboot *cough* *cough* Star Trek. But now, there is a new giant entering the cinematic stage…
…but this one is not green when angry, nor is it the son of Odin. No. This movie giant is the combination of stories and heroes, the union of myth and magic, the joining of different characters from across the big screens to save our world once more.
I do have one caution, however: Do not be mistaken with another X-Men or the new Spider-Man reboot. They are still not a part of the MCU. The movie to look forward to is the movie that will literally unite their worlds: The Avengers!
Saturday, August 20, 2011
I Have Standards, You Know
Yesterday I was weighted down by my own indecision, and couldn't commit to any one of the three topics I wanted to write about: wedding planning, video games, and comics. After the day I had yesterday and the night before, I've got a story that encompasses all three topics.
But mostly video games.
When I wrote yesterday's post on Thursday night, I found myself continually coming back to the question of what video game(s) I should play next. It is unusual beyond unusual for me to have no single-player games going, but such times are typically the only times when I'm willing to take a chance on something...different. Here's the breakdown of what I had been playing:
I'd just finished Back to the Future: The Game, having started back in December 2010, when the episodic PC game series first began. Each episode only took me a few evenings to a week to complete, but at the rate I was able to actually sit down and take the time to play, each new episode was released right around the time I was just coming to the end of the previous one. Given how little waiting I actually did between episodes, it genuinely felt as though I had taken eight months to finish this game, and that's quite an investment.
I had recently conquered the final boss of Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS, read about how I was totally missing out on a bunch of sidequests that I could only unlock by rounding up a group of ten friends and exchanging Friend Codes with them, and proceeded to free up another 20 hours of my life by taking the game out of my DS and putting it in a safe place where the obsessive completionist in me would be reluctant to lazy to look for it.
I had just wrapped up a few weeks of love-'em-and-leave-'em platforming, enjoying a brief fling with Tobe's Vertical Adventure, visiting my old flame, Mega Man (the PC game, which I'll be reviewing on GameCola before too long), and suffering though a mercifully short relationship with Mega Man's sororal twin sister, Mega Man III. (OH, THE GENDER CONFUSION, IT HURTS.)
Two lengthy commitments and a string of one-night-stands all at the same time leaves a guy ready for a break, so it was a welcome change to have nothing whatsoever on my gaming to-do list. For one night. Then I started to get antsy, and wanted to get at least one new game going. I considered polling our blog readers, or asking for opinions on the Racketboy forums I used to frequent, but I started to find that I was already formulating a list in my head.
Ideally, I like to have three games going at any given time. As a self-imposed requirement, I must at all times adhere to my Standards for Upholding Variety in Gaming. The Standards are met by ensuring that each game I'm playing represents a different item from both of the lists below:
Genre:
- Adventure/Puzzle
- First-Person Shooter
- Platformer (as my favorite genre, this can be counted twice)
- Roleplaying
- Other
System:
- Console (NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii)
- Handheld (Game Boy/Color, GBA, DS)
- PC
It should be noted that I become progressively more lax about adhering to the Standards once I have three or more games going at once. I can't tell whether this all sounds more like common sense or complete nonsense, but it's a system that has served me well for many years nonetheless.
My normal procedure anymore when choosing a new game is to consult my Backloggery, scroll around until I find inspiration, or let the site's Fortune Cookie feature decide on my behalf what game I should play. Normal procedure was thrown out the window when a tremendous thunderstorm hit, and I hurriedly shut down my computer and retreated to the couch to read Dune for a while.
When the lights began to flicker, I shut off my lamp and sat in the dark for a moment, accepting my fate: I had no other suitable source of light on hand by which to read, and I wasn't about to put my PC or TV at risk of electrical overload. I had no recourse but to fetch my Game Boy Advance.
My initial thought was to try out Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. I'd been seeing a lot of references to the pink puffball on the Internet, and it had gotten me to think about how the most modern Kirby game I've played was released in 1995, when Bill Clinton was still in his first term as President. As I lifted the game out of my travel case, I noticed another game below it I had completely forgotten about--the Castlevania Double Pack.
I've played Castlevania, half of Castlevania II, and about an hour of Super Castlevania IV, and I can tell you right now that it's almost my type of game series. I'm a sucker for platformers, and the distinct game physics give the series a unique feel (which gets less painful the farther away you get from the original), and this is a big series that people like to talk about--so on one level, I'm curious. Still, it's a series featuring vampires and zombies and mummies and all those things people love around Halloween time, and I don't like Halloween. Ah, but the music is terrific.
It's a toss-up.
Much like I bought Kirby & the Amazing Mirror to get a handle on where the Kirby series has been in more recent years, I picked up the Castlevania Double Pack (featuring two games from 2002 and 2003, respectively Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow) to see what the Belmont clan was up to some twenty years after the days of Simon Robo-Belmont. Curiosity got the better of me.
Alone in my living room, pitch black except for the occasional flashes of lightning, utterly silent aside from the sudden cracks of thunder, I sat down to play a video game crawling with every possible iteration of the undead.
It was fantastic.
As far as I've observed, Castlevania has always been just creepy enough to have atmosphere and character without being over-the-top scary, and that held true for the twenty minutes I got to play Harmony of Dissonance before the Game Boy ran out of power. I was having a blast exploring Dracula's castle with a responsive character who could level up and be decked out with fancy equipment. It was so nice to have RPG elements without being a full-blown RPG like the ones I'd been playing for the past two years, with their interminable cutscenes and endless random battles.
I finally understood what people meant when they called the newer games Metroidvania, and the simple satisfaction of discovering new areas and collecting powerups without any stupid gimmicks or aggravating game design decisions to detract from the experience suddenly made me feel that much more unfulfilled by the last official Metroid game. Everything was fun because everything worked. Well, aside from the part where the game stopped working.
The timing of my Game Boy's battery failure was awkward. It was almost time for me to consider going to bed, which is both too early to go to bed and too late to do anything other than continue playing Castlevania on my Nintendo DS, which I knew still had some battery life left. Not that I had many options other than bed or video games, but still. Awkward time.
More awkward: Having your DS tell you that there is no game inserted in the game slot, when you have very clearly just loaded the Castlevania Double Pack. Maybe two games was just too much for the system to handle. I was annoyed, because I was in the middle of one of the best gaming highs I'd had in a while, but I was willing to settle for a time-waster DS game, like Metroid Prime Pinball or Tetris DS. If the GBA game slot wasn't being recognized, at least the DS game slot would be.
Or not.
I can only assume that my DS is affected by the weather, because none of the games I shoved into it were recognized during the thunderstorm. I chalk it up to that, or to fumbling around in the dark with sensitive electronic equipment. Two portable gaming systems rendered completely useless for totally different reasons. At least I now had a substitute flashlight; the DS screen glows pretty brightly. Except I was too angry to strap the DS to my head so I could have enough light to read. "Fine! I'll go to bed!" was my response.
Last night was worse, yet somehow better. My plan was simple, as plans that fail always are: get home from work, watch a few YouTube videos over dinner, do some vital wedding planning (see, I told you there'd be wedding planning), call my family to say hello, and then do some writing before capping off the evening with more Castlevania.
What ended up happening was that I got halfway through dinner, received a phone call that led to another phone call that had me talking with my family during that awkward time where you want and need to talk, except your dinner is getting cold, and then hung up the phone to hear that another thunderstorm had overtaken the neighborhood. I died a little inside, turned off my computer, and brought my dinner into the living room, where I still dared to leave a lamp on in the midst of the cataclysm outside. Doggone it, I was not going to bed at 7:30.
It also occurred to me that I should plug in my Game Boy, if only for a few minutes, to ensure I still had something to do if the power cut out. I made a mental note to buy a proper reading light this weekend, along with five other Game Boys as backup. For the moment, though, I had ample light for reading, so I fetched a Star Trek trade at random from my bookshelf and sat down to read The Modala Imperative over dinner, and until the storm cleared. (See? I told you there'd be comics.)
I was a few paragraphs away from the end of Walter "Chekov" Koenig's introduction when my apartment lost power entirely. I unplugged the charging Game Boy, flicked the On switch, and panicked for a moment when it didn't turn on. I flicked the switch again, and all was well again. The battery light seemed to indicate I might not have to go to bed at 7:30 after all. I settled in for almost two hours of pure gaming, and I would've stayed there until the battery died on me again if the storm hadn't eventually cleared up and permitted me to get back to the wedding planning and blogging I had been meaning and needing to do.
I had officially found my first new game, though, and I hadn't (and haven't) been this enthusiastic about playing through a game since I picked up (and quickly finished) VVVVVV back in January. It looks like there are enough secrets to keep me busy awhile, but I'm still making excellent progress. Now I need two more games to add to my active roster.
I'm thinking that, to satisfy my Standards for Upholding Variety in Gaming, I should go with a 3-D platformer for the Wii and an adventure/puzzle game for the PC this time. Specifically, I'm looking at either Donkey Kong Country Returns (which is technically a 2-D 3-D platformer) or Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, and Police Quest III: The Kindred for the PC.
There's a third and fourth aspect of my Standards that I'm taking into consideration here: Games that were given as gifts by friends or family should be part of the lineup whenever possible (which is the case for the Wii games), and games that bring me closer to writing an Exfanding post about a series are encouraged (which is the case with Police Quest).
However, I'm open to suggestions--the universe seems to be telling me to play The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, for example; I was toying with the idea of installing it (and its two expansion packs) on my computer when I found I had no more active games to play, as this might be the only time I'd be willing to sign myself up for what will probably be the lengthiest RPG experience I've ever undertaken. I dismissed the idea, citing to myself that I'd been playing RPGs continuously for the past two years, if not longer, few of which were completely worth the time spent playing them. Then I got a message from another Backloggery user who was currently playing Morrowind and Castlevania, and then my Backloggery fortune cookie also told me to play Morrowind.
I think it's going to be a matter of which install CD I find first--Morrowind or Police Quest. Though, as I said, I'm open to suggestions.
But mostly video games.
When I wrote yesterday's post on Thursday night, I found myself continually coming back to the question of what video game(s) I should play next. It is unusual beyond unusual for me to have no single-player games going, but such times are typically the only times when I'm willing to take a chance on something...different. Here's the breakdown of what I had been playing:
I'd just finished Back to the Future: The Game, having started back in December 2010, when the episodic PC game series first began. Each episode only took me a few evenings to a week to complete, but at the rate I was able to actually sit down and take the time to play, each new episode was released right around the time I was just coming to the end of the previous one. Given how little waiting I actually did between episodes, it genuinely felt as though I had taken eight months to finish this game, and that's quite an investment.
I had recently conquered the final boss of Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS, read about how I was totally missing out on a bunch of sidequests that I could only unlock by rounding up a group of ten friends and exchanging Friend Codes with them, and proceeded to free up another 20 hours of my life by taking the game out of my DS and putting it in a safe place where the obsessive completionist in me would be reluctant to lazy to look for it.
I had just wrapped up a few weeks of love-'em-and-leave-'em platforming, enjoying a brief fling with Tobe's Vertical Adventure, visiting my old flame, Mega Man (the PC game, which I'll be reviewing on GameCola before too long), and suffering though a mercifully short relationship with Mega Man's sororal twin sister, Mega Man III. (OH, THE GENDER CONFUSION, IT HURTS.)
Two lengthy commitments and a string of one-night-stands all at the same time leaves a guy ready for a break, so it was a welcome change to have nothing whatsoever on my gaming to-do list. For one night. Then I started to get antsy, and wanted to get at least one new game going. I considered polling our blog readers, or asking for opinions on the Racketboy forums I used to frequent, but I started to find that I was already formulating a list in my head.
Ideally, I like to have three games going at any given time. As a self-imposed requirement, I must at all times adhere to my Standards for Upholding Variety in Gaming. The Standards are met by ensuring that each game I'm playing represents a different item from both of the lists below:
Genre:
- Adventure/Puzzle
- First-Person Shooter
- Platformer (as my favorite genre, this can be counted twice)
- Roleplaying
- Other
System:
- Console (NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii)
- Handheld (Game Boy/Color, GBA, DS)
- PC
It should be noted that I become progressively more lax about adhering to the Standards once I have three or more games going at once. I can't tell whether this all sounds more like common sense or complete nonsense, but it's a system that has served me well for many years nonetheless.
My normal procedure anymore when choosing a new game is to consult my Backloggery, scroll around until I find inspiration, or let the site's Fortune Cookie feature decide on my behalf what game I should play. Normal procedure was thrown out the window when a tremendous thunderstorm hit, and I hurriedly shut down my computer and retreated to the couch to read Dune for a while.
When the lights began to flicker, I shut off my lamp and sat in the dark for a moment, accepting my fate: I had no other suitable source of light on hand by which to read, and I wasn't about to put my PC or TV at risk of electrical overload. I had no recourse but to fetch my Game Boy Advance.
My initial thought was to try out Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. I'd been seeing a lot of references to the pink puffball on the Internet, and it had gotten me to think about how the most modern Kirby game I've played was released in 1995, when Bill Clinton was still in his first term as President. As I lifted the game out of my travel case, I noticed another game below it I had completely forgotten about--the Castlevania Double Pack.
I've played Castlevania, half of Castlevania II, and about an hour of Super Castlevania IV, and I can tell you right now that it's almost my type of game series. I'm a sucker for platformers, and the distinct game physics give the series a unique feel (which gets less painful the farther away you get from the original), and this is a big series that people like to talk about--so on one level, I'm curious. Still, it's a series featuring vampires and zombies and mummies and all those things people love around Halloween time, and I don't like Halloween. Ah, but the music is terrific.
It's a toss-up.
Much like I bought Kirby & the Amazing Mirror to get a handle on where the Kirby series has been in more recent years, I picked up the Castlevania Double Pack (featuring two games from 2002 and 2003, respectively Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow) to see what the Belmont clan was up to some twenty years after the days of Simon Robo-Belmont. Curiosity got the better of me.
Alone in my living room, pitch black except for the occasional flashes of lightning, utterly silent aside from the sudden cracks of thunder, I sat down to play a video game crawling with every possible iteration of the undead.
It was fantastic.
As far as I've observed, Castlevania has always been just creepy enough to have atmosphere and character without being over-the-top scary, and that held true for the twenty minutes I got to play Harmony of Dissonance before the Game Boy ran out of power. I was having a blast exploring Dracula's castle with a responsive character who could level up and be decked out with fancy equipment. It was so nice to have RPG elements without being a full-blown RPG like the ones I'd been playing for the past two years, with their interminable cutscenes and endless random battles.
I finally understood what people meant when they called the newer games Metroidvania, and the simple satisfaction of discovering new areas and collecting powerups without any stupid gimmicks or aggravating game design decisions to detract from the experience suddenly made me feel that much more unfulfilled by the last official Metroid game. Everything was fun because everything worked. Well, aside from the part where the game stopped working.
The timing of my Game Boy's battery failure was awkward. It was almost time for me to consider going to bed, which is both too early to go to bed and too late to do anything other than continue playing Castlevania on my Nintendo DS, which I knew still had some battery life left. Not that I had many options other than bed or video games, but still. Awkward time.
More awkward: Having your DS tell you that there is no game inserted in the game slot, when you have very clearly just loaded the Castlevania Double Pack. Maybe two games was just too much for the system to handle. I was annoyed, because I was in the middle of one of the best gaming highs I'd had in a while, but I was willing to settle for a time-waster DS game, like Metroid Prime Pinball or Tetris DS. If the GBA game slot wasn't being recognized, at least the DS game slot would be.
Or not.
I can only assume that my DS is affected by the weather, because none of the games I shoved into it were recognized during the thunderstorm. I chalk it up to that, or to fumbling around in the dark with sensitive electronic equipment. Two portable gaming systems rendered completely useless for totally different reasons. At least I now had a substitute flashlight; the DS screen glows pretty brightly. Except I was too angry to strap the DS to my head so I could have enough light to read. "Fine! I'll go to bed!" was my response.
Last night was worse, yet somehow better. My plan was simple, as plans that fail always are: get home from work, watch a few YouTube videos over dinner, do some vital wedding planning (see, I told you there'd be wedding planning), call my family to say hello, and then do some writing before capping off the evening with more Castlevania.
What ended up happening was that I got halfway through dinner, received a phone call that led to another phone call that had me talking with my family during that awkward time where you want and need to talk, except your dinner is getting cold, and then hung up the phone to hear that another thunderstorm had overtaken the neighborhood. I died a little inside, turned off my computer, and brought my dinner into the living room, where I still dared to leave a lamp on in the midst of the cataclysm outside. Doggone it, I was not going to bed at 7:30.
It also occurred to me that I should plug in my Game Boy, if only for a few minutes, to ensure I still had something to do if the power cut out. I made a mental note to buy a proper reading light this weekend, along with five other Game Boys as backup. For the moment, though, I had ample light for reading, so I fetched a Star Trek trade at random from my bookshelf and sat down to read The Modala Imperative over dinner, and until the storm cleared. (See? I told you there'd be comics.)
I was a few paragraphs away from the end of Walter "Chekov" Koenig's introduction when my apartment lost power entirely. I unplugged the charging Game Boy, flicked the On switch, and panicked for a moment when it didn't turn on. I flicked the switch again, and all was well again. The battery light seemed to indicate I might not have to go to bed at 7:30 after all. I settled in for almost two hours of pure gaming, and I would've stayed there until the battery died on me again if the storm hadn't eventually cleared up and permitted me to get back to the wedding planning and blogging I had been meaning and needing to do.
I had officially found my first new game, though, and I hadn't (and haven't) been this enthusiastic about playing through a game since I picked up (and quickly finished) VVVVVV back in January. It looks like there are enough secrets to keep me busy awhile, but I'm still making excellent progress. Now I need two more games to add to my active roster.
I'm thinking that, to satisfy my Standards for Upholding Variety in Gaming, I should go with a 3-D platformer for the Wii and an adventure/puzzle game for the PC this time. Specifically, I'm looking at either Donkey Kong Country Returns (which is technically a 2-D 3-D platformer) or Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, and Police Quest III: The Kindred for the PC.
There's a third and fourth aspect of my Standards that I'm taking into consideration here: Games that were given as gifts by friends or family should be part of the lineup whenever possible (which is the case for the Wii games), and games that bring me closer to writing an Exfanding post about a series are encouraged (which is the case with Police Quest).
However, I'm open to suggestions--the universe seems to be telling me to play The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, for example; I was toying with the idea of installing it (and its two expansion packs) on my computer when I found I had no more active games to play, as this might be the only time I'd be willing to sign myself up for what will probably be the lengthiest RPG experience I've ever undertaken. I dismissed the idea, citing to myself that I'd been playing RPGs continuously for the past two years, if not longer, few of which were completely worth the time spent playing them. Then I got a message from another Backloggery user who was currently playing Morrowind and Castlevania, and then my Backloggery fortune cookie also told me to play Morrowind.
I think it's going to be a matter of which install CD I find first--Morrowind or Police Quest. Though, as I said, I'm open to suggestions.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Pick a Post
I've got three posts in mind for today, but I can't seem to commit to one.
I've got wedding stuff on my mind, but anything I'd write would be more for me trying to vent this building panic over being severely behind on a few key things.
I also find myself thinking about what video game to play next, as this is the first time in I can't remember how long that I am not currently playing anything, save for LEGO Batman, which was discussed yesterday. However, half of this week's posts have been about video games, and I like to maintain a little bit of variety when I can.
Lastly, I've got an inkling about how I can get back to writing about comics a little bit more frequently, and while this topic is the most appealing of the three, it's also the least-formed in my mind.
The first thing that occurred to me was to put up a poll about which topic I should write about...tomorrow. Sorry excuse for a filler post, and high chance for failure, given that we tend to get more comments when we don't ask for them. The second thing I considered was writing all three posts at once, combining them into a hilarious mishmash of nonsense, but then I wondered...what would be the point? Lots of probable effort for hopefully funny fluff. Didn't seem like the potential payoff was worth it.
Sometimes I think ideas themselves are better than following them through to a completed work. Maybe that's the delegator in me talking--let the ideas people come up with the ideas, and let the people most qualified for the job go out and apply the ideas. Today, I'm feeling more like an ideas person.
So, I've got wedding planning and new video games and my ongoing comics self-education in mind. I'm open to suggestions...but I won't ask.
I've got wedding stuff on my mind, but anything I'd write would be more for me trying to vent this building panic over being severely behind on a few key things.
I also find myself thinking about what video game to play next, as this is the first time in I can't remember how long that I am not currently playing anything, save for LEGO Batman, which was discussed yesterday. However, half of this week's posts have been about video games, and I like to maintain a little bit of variety when I can.
Lastly, I've got an inkling about how I can get back to writing about comics a little bit more frequently, and while this topic is the most appealing of the three, it's also the least-formed in my mind.
The first thing that occurred to me was to put up a poll about which topic I should write about...tomorrow. Sorry excuse for a filler post, and high chance for failure, given that we tend to get more comments when we don't ask for them. The second thing I considered was writing all three posts at once, combining them into a hilarious mishmash of nonsense, but then I wondered...what would be the point? Lots of probable effort for hopefully funny fluff. Didn't seem like the potential payoff was worth it.
Sometimes I think ideas themselves are better than following them through to a completed work. Maybe that's the delegator in me talking--let the ideas people come up with the ideas, and let the people most qualified for the job go out and apply the ideas. Today, I'm feeling more like an ideas person.
So, I've got wedding planning and new video games and my ongoing comics self-education in mind. I'm open to suggestions...but I won't ask.
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