#1 - Jak and Daxter Collection
Friday, June 29, 2012
Ok, fine.
#1 - Jak 3
If I was stuck on a desert island for the rest of time and I only had one video game to play forever, this would be it. Well, I suppose if I was in that situation I might pick something online, so I could use the game to get help, but you get the picture.
Jak 3 is a fitting ending to a great series, it ties up loose ends, it completes the story line leaving the player satisfied, while leaving the series open for the developers to make more games. At this point I'm not holding my breath for Jak 4, but never say never.
This is another series that I cannot wait for release day to come, and will spend full price on anything that says Jak and Daxter on it. I still remember my trip to Marketplace Mall the day that Jak 3 came out. I went with my then girlfriend to get it, and then we went to Taco Bell and while we ate, I poured over the book that came with it. I kept pointing out cool things to her that I'd be doing soon, like driving around the desert, or using new Light and Dark powers to fly, or slow time down.
It was Jak 3 day.
Oddly, we broke up soon there after. I wonder if there was any correlation.
To understand what made Jak 3 so great, we have to start at the beginning...with Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy.
Jak 3 is a fitting ending to a great series, it ties up loose ends, it completes the story line leaving the player satisfied, while leaving the series open for the developers to make more games. At this point I'm not holding my breath for Jak 4, but never say never.
This is another series that I cannot wait for release day to come, and will spend full price on anything that says Jak and Daxter on it. I still remember my trip to Marketplace Mall the day that Jak 3 came out. I went with my then girlfriend to get it, and then we went to Taco Bell and while we ate, I poured over the book that came with it. I kept pointing out cool things to her that I'd be doing soon, like driving around the desert, or using new Light and Dark powers to fly, or slow time down.
It was Jak 3 day.
Oddly, we broke up soon there after. I wonder if there was any correlation.
To understand what made Jak 3 so great, we have to start at the beginning...with Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy.
The whole point of the Jak and Daxter series was to do what Crash Bandicoot did for the PS1 to the PS2. To show off the platforming potential of the system, and give the console a mascot. To do so, Sonly called on the exact same people as before and had Naughty Dog create a new series for their new platform. Right off the bat, you pop in Jak and Daxter and you are greeted with an ancient and wizened voice telling you about the rocks and the earth and how it speaks to you and can teach you...yadda yadda yadda. Already this world is steeped in history and mysticism. This goes on for a bit and then the voice becomes angry at the insubordination of our hero and you know this game is not a cute Sonic or Mario game. This game is different.
The controls are silky smooth and the level design is gorgeous. They also did something new. No load times. To this day I have not heard how they did it. I think it has something to do with streaming level data in and out as you move from one location to another, but basically as you move from challenge to challenge there are no load screens, there are no level place cards, you just exist in this world, which is very engaging.
And then there's the story line. I always have to come back to that, don't I? Because that's what drives me. The story isn't anything fantastic (not yet at least), but the buddy comedy on screen between Jak and Daxter was enough to keep me entertained to the end.
Jak 2 took all that, and made it a little more age appropriate. They aged Jak, introduced some adult themes (like revenge and booze. Get your mind out of the gutters!) and added this whole time traveling mystery thing. They took the series from a romp through a vibrant countryside to mucking around in the gutters and freedom fighting the evil Baron Praxis. They took us from only moving forward to criss crossing and revisiting locations our way through a huge urban setting.
But Jak 3 took all of that, completed the story while giving us an even bigger open world to play in. We had a huge desert with secrets to uncover, a desert city with many challenges inside, PLUS the same city huge city from Jak 2.
The themes were way more adult, we saw locations from the first game (an idyllic brightly colored egg collecting romp) worn down, overused, and outdated. It really brought things full circle and made the whole series seem connected. The driving sections were fun, challenging, but not impossible. I hate driving games, but this was ok. The driving was so much fun they actually made a game based totally around that mechanic (Jak X).
And with two PS2 games under their belt at this point, they really had learned alot about how to pack alot of information onto a disc. The game was long, and they had alot of story to tell, and alot of ground to cover, and they managed to get it all in there. They did not sacrifice any part of the story
So just like Uncharted (Surprise! It's another Naughty Dog franchise.) I'll ask, should you play ever single game in the series? No. They made a slew of off shoots, and a few times they licensed out the characters to other companies to make games, and those...those had the spirit of a Naughty Dog Game, but not the execution. The core set however is excellent. There's comedy, there's romance, there's action and adventure. This game has it all, and they just re-released all three games in HD for the PS3, so you have no excuse not to get it.
Also, remember this guy from Doogie Howser?
You can't beat celebrity star power like that!
Whelp, that's it. 10 games that I love, along with 10 stories about how they affected me or what was going on at the time I got them. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming
Also, remember this guy from Doogie Howser?
Yeah, he voices this guy in the games.
You can't beat celebrity star power like that!
Whelp, that's it. 10 games that I love, along with 10 stories about how they affected me or what was going on at the time I got them. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming
Labels: review, video games
Cookie Monster on the CTA?
This guy was the conductor on my commute this morning. You know how you can't see your conductor cause he's in a train car like five cars up? Well that was the case here, so I just assumed the picture was accurate, you decide:I seriously expected him to say "We will be standing momentarily while ME TAKE COOKIE BREAK! We should be moving shortly."
Seriously brightened my day.
#2 - Uncharted 2
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Remember how I said I was stingy when it came to games, and I never buy on release day due to the cost always dropping? I've shelled out 60 dollars (full price) for every game in the Uncharted series, that's how awesome they are.It's not often that the sequel to a game is actually better than the original. And Uncharted: Drakes Fortune really set the bar high. Not only was it like playing a movie, but it was like playing a game.
The entire Uncharted Series had a great balance of exploration, combat, quick-time events, and platforming. While the inclusion of quick-time events usually is the mark of a bad game, here they were interspersed and used sparingly. Just enough to keep us involved in the cinematic parts of the game, but not too much that the whole game became button mashing to keep the movie rolling on screen.
The Uncharted series plays heavily off the old tv serials that Indiana Jones was based off of. That means you can pick up any of the three titles and you won't be lost, but if you have played others, there are little things in each that tie the larger story together. It also means high adventure, daring feats, menacing bad guys, and a mystery steeped in real life events with a pinch of mysticism mixed in.
And you are in control of all of it.
Now my brother will say the writing is cheesy and uninspired but I think that's the point. The old serials had cheesy writing. At the time it was not cheesy. At the time it was fresh and all that the writing in the Uncharted series does is manage to play to those sensibilities. I think it was an artistic choice, rather than flawed writing.It's great, and one feature I like is that the game adjusts itself to your play level. If you keep dying at a certain point, the game will eventually ease up a little, or if it really is too hard (and it should not be), you can on the fly reduce the difficulty, and then raise it back up. It's clear the developers of the game wanted you to enjoy the story, not get frustrated with the game play, and if it has not become clear at this point in the countdown, I love story over gameplay every time. Caring about the characters and wanting to see what happens next is what drives me to keep going in a game, not being better than some 15 year old kid at head shots.
All that is is about the series as a whole, so why did I choose Uncharted 2: Among Thieves over the other two games in the series? Because Unchated 2 took everything that was great about Uncharted and made it better. The characters were more fleshed out, the adventure was of a higher octane, and the backdrops it was set on were huge. The scene where you are trying to escape a hotel that's crumbling around really gets your adrenaline pumping.The inclusion of a little more back story on Drake was great. They took this guy from the first game and for the first time we saw that there was more to him than just a daredevil hero. They really fleshed out his character by giving him an ex, and then having his current interest show up. The locations were varied, in Uncharted you were on an island. That's it..just one island. In Uncharted 2 you travel the world, from ancient cities, to frozen caves, to a forgotten jungle city.
So why not Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception? The combat. Simple as that. They story concluded (sorta), I'm not sure how they did it but there was even more action, everything about Uncharted 3 was great...except the game play. They switched from gun based play to a more fist fighting style. Sure they still had guns, but it was often simpler to snap a neck or beat a guy down than to try and pick him off from a distance. This made the combat repetitive and more of a chore that I had to get through, rather than a fun thing to break up all the puzzles and platforming.Should you play all of them? in order? and buy the DLC motion comic from the PSN? Absolutely. And if anyone wants to loan me their Vita so I can play The Golden Abyss, I'm all ears. More Nathan Drake in my life cannot be a bad thing, but Uncharted 2 is the best of the best in the series.
Labels: review, video games
You were supposed the destroy the Sith, not join them!
Back when I first started working Saturdays at Simplified Computers, I worked with a kid named Levi. Levi was a cool kid who was a little bit star struck with me. I'm not sure why, all I did was joke around with him.Perhaps it was my ability to make working fun, or the fact that I treated him like an adult. I don't know. Whatever the reason was he liked me, and we got along swimmingly. It was a sad day when he went off to college and I had to "train" a new employee on how things went down on Saturdays.
So Levi went off to college, and started a music career, and then moved out to California, and I have kept up on all of this over Facebook.
Then he was on sTORIbook Weddings, you know that TV show where Tori Spelling makes ridiculous weddings happen. Yeah, he was on that show getting married. It was a fun surprise to see someone I knew on a TV show.
All of this was great I thought. The kid is mad talented and super creative. All this was shown off in his music. He clearly has a love of art as well, he married a dancer for Christ's sake! Art and creativity and going against the grain were all this kid stood for.
Well, you gotta grow up sometime I guess. Put on a suit and get paid. Apparently after all that he started an online marketing business and this is where things go sour. I saw this in my feed the other day:
My heart dropped. See I know in the back of my head the whole point of the web is to make money but websites are also an art. I belong to the school of thought that web pages are art. You can use them to deliver a message, that's fine, but first and foremost they should be beautiful and functional. For the record I feel the same way about traditional advertising. I think you can deliver a message on a billboard or magazine, but still make it beautiful. There are advertisers who just put big red letters all over everything and say "SALE SALE SALE" but then there are advertisers who take the time to think about the font face, and the shade of red, and the kerning of the letters, and the message is the same, but the delivery is beautiful.
I'm not anti-advertising/marketing. I'm anti-lazy advertising/marketing.
Forcing me to "like" something before I read it is disingenuous to everyone who reads your article based on my "like." It's evil, and it propagates bad information around the web.
Step back from design for a second, and think about the code of the web. This creates bad information. This article has been tagged with a like, and it could be an article about broccoli. I don't like broccoli. Now Facebook has it in it's head that 32 year old, college educated, white guys like broccoli.
The whole point of liking something is so that Facebook can get a better idea of who I am and target ads to me even better. I get that, I've accepted it, even if I don't like it (pun intended). So now advertisers are wasting their dollars advertising broccoli to me because Levi forced me to like something just so I could read it.
This practice should be shunned by Facebook and Google, as they are relying on the user deciding if they like it to provide relevant search results and targeted ads.
Actually this practice should be shunned by the very marketers who are implementing it! In the long run they will waste their clients money buying keywords and targeting ads to people who really don't like what they think they like.
Marketers are bottom line people. They want a pie chart with a big slice on it, or a line graph with an upward trend, what they don't think about is the big picture. They need to think about how this practice is actually polluting the very data they rely on to do their jobs.
I wrote many responses, but they all came off as very harsh, or not witty enough, or just downright mean. I settled on this:
My hope was, of course, to persuade him that this was a bad idea, but then again, I'm sure there is a study that was done that proves that the amount of people who won't jump through your hoops is tiny compared to the amount of people who will "like" stuff before they read it, therefore giving you way more impressions and your PPC drops and your ROI increases like mad.
It was a hopeless battle, but one I had to try and fight. In the end, this describes perfectly how I felt:
Labels: breakup, buzz kill, Facebook, meme, Simplified Computers
#3 - Final Fantasy 6
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
I remember that Chris had played a game called Final Fantasy. Remember how I said we didn't have a 8-bit NES? We didn't but once they were way outdated, he managed to borrow his friends who had put it in storage after upgrading. So we had a NES in the house for a few weeks, and he had borrowed Final Fantasy. I was entranced. You moved this little guy around and talked to people, you were told a story and then you could level up your characters, making them better.
I remember Chris was having a hard time beating one particular fire boss in the game. Well I took the game over to my next door neighbor's house to show him this cool game. I showed Max my brothers saved game cause that's all that you could do...play the one saved game.
So I'm wandering through this maze, killing guys, and showing Max how the magic and combat system works...and I get to the boss and kill it.
I just looked at Max and was like "What do I do?" on one hand, I knew Chris was having a hard time beating this boss, but on the other hand, he probably wanted to beat it himself, not just have it beaten for him. I think i ended up saving it and telling him about it as soon as I got home. If I remember correctly, he could have cared less about me beating a section of the game for him, and I had just made it into a much bigger deal than I should have.
But that's Final Fantasy. This is Final Fantasy 6. First off the characters were bigger. Bigger personalities, and bigger sprites. Sprites were typically 16x16. You can't get alot of detail in those kinds of sprites. FF6 went to 48x48 sprites and it was beautiful. Of course the number of colors went up dramatically which helped with sprite detail. Additionally each character had a distinct personality, and a personal reason for being on the mission. In the past it had just been "you are the chosen warriors, it's your destiny to overthrow this evil man killing the planet." But this was a story about a greedy government who in their lust for power, had but an insane man in power. You can see it was not the typical "kill the dragon" type game.
Past Final Fantasies had been about getting new vehicles that would open up new areas to you. So while it seemed like it was a massive world all connected, you could clearly see how each zone was for a specific level of character. The same was true of FF6, but they gave you total freedom early on, which was confusing to players of the series. "How short IS this game, if I already have an airship?!" was what I was thinking. Then they DESTROYED THE WHOLE WORLD 1/2 way through the game, taking away that freedom you had earned, and forcing you to find your friends and reconnect.
They also managed to push the SuperNES to it's limits. There was not alot that the machine COULD do that had real wow factor. The two big things were it's music engine and its ability to scale images on the fly (they called it Mode 7). While unimpressive now, this stuff blew my mind as a kid.
Here's an example of both the narrative and the sound from this game. At one point your crew is trying to catch a love struck gambler. He plans to steal the lead from the opera DURING the performance. Thankfully one of your party members looks just like her, so she takes over, and sings this beautiful opera all created out of chip tunes. Of course the player gets the double meaning to this song, from her interactions with other people and her back story...but you will just have to appreciate the art and music of having an opera in your game.
Oh and you want even more movie quality story elements? Later in the game, when it seems like all hope is lost the same girl who has now lost all her companions, and the world has died off, looses her last friend, and the only person left alive on the whole planet as far as she knows. They weave the opera music back into the game as with nothing left to live for, she throws herself from a cliff.
Holy crap this game has it all.
The narrative alone was reason enough to play this game. I have since gone back and played every Final Fantasy in order leading up to this one. There were some great moments in each game, but it was pretty simple. Get strong, move to the next town and beat a boss in a cave or forest nearby. The reason for you to go to the next place was usually just someone in a town saying "you know..you have a submarine now, maybe you should go to that sunken island now." However in FF6 you were motivated to go to the next area because your castle had been raided by the government, and you had to flee to safety, or you had been seperated from your friends and needed to reconnect. That was the big innovation in FF6, friendship and and overbearing government (a theme they would use again in FF7) and I strongly feel they spent five games perfecting the art, the battle system. With all that mastered, they could focus on story, and emotion. That's why this is the best Final Fantasy of all.
This was the genesis of great story telling and great character development in a role playing game, yes FF7 was a technological leap and had a great story and was super fun to play, but so was this, and it came first, and in my opinion, did it all better.
They also managed to push the SuperNES to it's limits. There was not alot that the machine COULD do that had real wow factor. The two big things were it's music engine and its ability to scale images on the fly (they called it Mode 7). While unimpressive now, this stuff blew my mind as a kid.
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Here's an example of both the narrative and the sound from this game. At one point your crew is trying to catch a love struck gambler. He plans to steal the lead from the opera DURING the performance. Thankfully one of your party members looks just like her, so she takes over, and sings this beautiful opera all created out of chip tunes. Of course the player gets the double meaning to this song, from her interactions with other people and her back story...but you will just have to appreciate the art and music of having an opera in your game.
Oh and you want even more movie quality story elements? Later in the game, when it seems like all hope is lost the same girl who has now lost all her companions, and the world has died off, looses her last friend, and the only person left alive on the whole planet as far as she knows. They weave the opera music back into the game as with nothing left to live for, she throws herself from a cliff.
Holy crap this game has it all.
The narrative alone was reason enough to play this game. I have since gone back and played every Final Fantasy in order leading up to this one. There were some great moments in each game, but it was pretty simple. Get strong, move to the next town and beat a boss in a cave or forest nearby. The reason for you to go to the next place was usually just someone in a town saying "you know..you have a submarine now, maybe you should go to that sunken island now." However in FF6 you were motivated to go to the next area because your castle had been raided by the government, and you had to flee to safety, or you had been seperated from your friends and needed to reconnect. That was the big innovation in FF6, friendship and and overbearing government (a theme they would use again in FF7) and I strongly feel they spent five games perfecting the art, the battle system. With all that mastered, they could focus on story, and emotion. That's why this is the best Final Fantasy of all.
This was the genesis of great story telling and great character development in a role playing game, yes FF7 was a technological leap and had a great story and was super fun to play, but so was this, and it came first, and in my opinion, did it all better.
Labels: review, video games
Some days I wish I was a kid again
Let's combine all the themes from the past few posts into one big mega post? It will be like that joke that's not so funny but then the stand-up comedian keeps coming back to it, and by the time the bit is over, you are rolling in the aisles at how funny it is. This is writing at it's finest.So we have video games, we have Kendle leaving on trips/Wendys, we have the Skokie Library, and we will throw in a dash of teamwork. Let's do this thing!
I went to the Library last Sunday, and I discovered that not only do they have a small selection of video games for checkout near the dvd's they have a large selection of video games for checkout in the children's section. Color me surprised to discover they had Ratchet and Clank All 4 One, a brand new (Currently selling for 60 dollars) title that I can just check out and play for free.
Now as you can tell from the title, and maybe from the box art this game is a four player cooperative game, and unlike every other multi-player title out there, they have a two to four player on the same TV, chillin' in the same room, blasting robots and saving each other's asses co-op mode. That's kinda unheard of in this post invention of the internet era.
So I go home and play the first level of the single player mode, and it's fun, but it's clear to me that this game would be a blast playing with another human being, and not some computer AI companion.
So has hard as it was for me, I went ahead and turned off the game. I hauled out my second controller and dug around for a second charging cable and I made sure both controllers had a full charge.
I mean, I had a pretty good idea how this would go. I didn't think that Kendle would jump at the opportunity to play this game, but on the off chance...I put the game down and saved it for her.
Well everything went as expected and I still have not continued my adventures in All 4 One. Now Kendle is gone for the next two days so there will certainly be enough time to play it, and of course I foresee some Wendy's in my future so I'm a pretty happy camper, but I kinda wish I was a kid again so I could just call up the neighbor and say "Hey, I got this sweet game, we should play it together." But being 32 and the neighbor being 5...well that's just creepy. Plus who has time to drop what's on their schedule to play video games anymore? I barely have time.
Labels: Kendle, team, video games
#4 - The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Whew, that last one was long, thankfully I've already talked about this game before, so it should be a little shorter. We all know I love this game. I'd link to the article I already wrote about it, but that site died. I can however link you to my archive where I have it saved as a PDF.Combat system was superb, they really spent alot of time with the sword play system. The cell shaded graphics were excellent to a guy who loves animation, and the world felt alive and exploreable. All that is in the other article.
So let's not go over how everyone seems to hate it, and I seem to love it, or the reasons that people hate it are EXACTLY the reasons I love it, cause I already wrote that. Let's talk about how the mechanics were something I could wrap my head around, and this is the only Zelda game that works like this, and that's why it's the greatest Zelda game ever.
Every Zelda game that I have played has some mechanic where you are switching back and forth between two states. In Occorina of Time, you would skip through time, young Link had access to certain tools, but could not use others that older Link could. An old broken bridge in old Links time may actually be functional in young Links time.
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| The same screen in four different seasons, can you spot all the differences?! |
In Oracle of Seasons, it was the ability to change the seasons, so a lake in the summer would be impassible, but just change the season to winter and you could walk over the frozen lake. You get the idea.
I hate that shit.
I hate remembering all the little things that saw in passing while you were in one state, that you have to remember to come back to later when you have a new tool, or are in a different state.
Those kinds of puzzles are not for me. In Windwaker, there was one state. Additionally each island was self contained and memorable, so when I finally had the ability to blow up rocks, I could go back to all islands that had rocks to blow up...and blow them up! I didn't have to warp to the dark world or move through time to get to the rocks...I just sailed over to them.
It also got the series back to its roots. Exploration was encouraged and rewarded but it was also unnecessary. There was a clear path through the game, and while you could wander off to that random island and get powered up, it wasn't really necessary to beat the game to do those things. Other entries in the series tend to reward you for exploring, but they make some of that too complex with all the back and forth they have with multiple states.
I will say that at the time of writing, I have not played Skyward Sword, but from what I have seen, there is no transforming, or warping, or time travel, so I expect it follow along the lines of Windwaker mechanics wise, so this could lose it's place depending on how they execute that one.
Labels: review, video games
My Commute
Every day, twice a day, I get to enjoy some pretty cool sights. I went ahead and recorded it for you all to see.Kinda makes the comute worthwhile.
Now think about this, I spend two hours a day riding that train, and then I came home and edited video of the train ride for two more hours. Oh the sacrifices I make for your enjoyment :)
So I get the video done, and I show it to Kendle and she says "What, are you sponsored by Apple? Why did you choose that music?"
"Oh I don't know, it sounded like good traveling music." I replied.
"What about that Kermit the Frog song you put on our travelin' music CD (yeah...we have a CD full of songs about traveling. I made it for Kendle, and it has enough music to get you from Champaign to Monticello and back without repeating). You should put that music to the video" she demanded.
So I loaded up the video on youtube and qued it up to the point where the music starts, then I loaded up my QuickTime video and placed it over the YouTube video and muted it. Then I hit play on both, so we had the audio from YouTube and the video from the CTA ride. I didn't like it as much, but then the ending audio kinda matched up pretty perfectly, and Kendle was pretty psyched about it, and we are a team now, so I give to you...the audio swap:
Labels: Chicago, downtown, Kendle, team, travel, youtube
#5 - Ultima 9
Monday, June 25, 2012
Me being introduced to this games series coincided with a time when my brother was the coolest guy I knew. He was in High school and I was not yet, and his friend came over and installed Ultima 7: The Black Gate onto our computer for us. For some reason when he came over my brother was not home, so he hung out with me. I guess the reason this stuck out in my mind is because it was the first time I played a game before Chris, and if I'm remembering properly, I actually got to show him the game, rather than him showing me something.
I eventually showed it to our next door neighbor. All we ever did was run from town to town trying to steal all the gold and get the best weapons with out being caught by the town guards. We never really played the storyline. Ultima 9 came out at a time where I had grown out of my childish ways and I could appreciate the goals that the developers had put in place for me.
But back to the subject at hand, Ultima 9 was World Of Warcraft before there was World Of Warcraft. The Ultima series was the first to pioneer the open world feel to a game. Before them, you would walk onto an icon of a town, and a new map would load up and you would be in a a town. As far back as Ultima 6 and every game after you would just be walking down a road and you could come across a house, and then a field, and then over a bridge and the road would become paved and then you would just BE IN TOWN. Games have this as a default now, but at the time Ultima 9 was the first to do this in 3D, and it was amazing. Even Final Fantasy 9, which came out a year after this still used town icons on an over world map.
This really helped to immerse the player in the world and the story. You weren't constantly changing from a little tiny guy walking around on the over world to this larger than life character wandering around town. You were always the same guy in an uninterrupted world.
Ultima 9 brought things out of sprite based tile built levels, and brought the world of Britania into full explorable 3D. Imagine going from this:
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| Ultima 8 (1994) |
to this:
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| Ultima 9 (1999) |
For the first time ever, we had an entire three dimensional continent to explore, and we could walk from the northern forests to it's southern islands...once you got far enough to unlock everything. That was the biggest complaint people had. Previous entries into the series allowed the player complete freedom. You could go anywhere right after loading the game up. Here they guided you from zone to zone, but you could backtrack and visit places you had been before. I liked this system better because you didn't wander into a dragons cave and die because he was way to powerful, which happened countless times to me in previous Ultima titles.
Ultima's were also notorious for making you eek every bit of RAM and processing power out of your system, and Ultima 9 was no exception. Full day and night cycles, weather, and a sky that changed with all of this. Each drop of rain was actually a tracked object that could be modified. This means that if the wind blew and pushed the rain, you would see that effect. Before this, rainfall was just a filter/animation that was put over the viewers view and removed when the rainstorm was over.
The story, however, was weak (the other big complaint). This is the one time you will see me pick amazing graphics over story. It's the exception that proves the rule. There was no real incentive to move forward other than to see what was over the hill or through the cave. There was not an engaging story line or memorable characters, even with this being the first fully voice acted entry into the series. The driving force was there were 8 dungeons that you needed to go into and cleanse of evil, but there was no mystery, and no story to drive me from one location to the next.
The game was designed for Windows XP and as such, runs fine under normal systems today. No modifications necessary, but I will urge you to download the official 1.18f patch and then the unofficial 1.19f patch, to allow you to use Direct3D, a system widely used now, but at the time GLIDE was the way to go, so the D3D support was weak. This patch is rumored to have been written by an actual Ultima 9 developer who wanted to support the game for the fans long after the company had abandoned the product.
The fun thing is there are tons of other patches you can use to make the game look or play better. There is a patch that removes all the "locks" on the different areas, giving that open world feeling right from the start, there is a patch that balances the economy and combat, and there is a patch to add thousands of pieces to the sets of the world to make it look better.
See all that sweet foliage, and the draw distance has increased? It doesn't look so impressive today, but its a massive upgrade to what was super impressive at the time of release.
Graphics cards at the time could not pump out all the geometry but newer cards can handle it no problem, so a dedicated group of fans have gone through each section of the world and added more grass, rocks, trees, better leaves...a more beautiful Britannia.
So yeah, that's my dirty little secret, #5 on the list is all about pretty graphics over game play or story. They can't all be gender challenging works of art :)
Labels: review, video games
Stuff I do when Kendle leaves
People always tell me about the crazy things they do when their wives are away. I believe it was Colin who say "It's like Lord of the Flies when Kristin leaves," so let's take a look at the horrible horrible things I do.First thing I always always always do...almost as soon as she's out the door, is I'll pee with the bathroom door open. This has a few purposes.
1) It show's the house who's running the show now
2) It's liberating
3) I have ALOT of stuff to do, I save so much time not dealing with opening and closing doors
Next up...I head to Wendy's for a 71 combo. That's 1 #7 combo (Spicy Chicken Sandwich), but you have to sub in chili instead of the fries. You have to. Then you add in ONE Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger. 7 and ONE is 71. A 71 combo.
I always eat the burger first, and think to myself "Self, you should have just gotten three of these, they are so damn good" but then I get to the chicken, and I remember that I made the right choice. Last time she left, I took a 15 minute El ride just to get Wendy's. Tie that in with waiting 10 minutes for the train to show up, that's 1 hour round trip just for some spicy chicken. Worth it!
So once I'm sufficiently full of delicious Wendy's, I'll go to the movie store/Library depending on what's open, and get a real crappy Sci Fi movie. Something she would never want to see, and then I go back home.
Finally I'll cap my "time off" off with as many video games as I can possibly fit into the time left. I will sit in front of my Playstation/Wii/Xbox for a minimum of five hours.
So typically I have something in the neighborhood of 24–48 hours to get all this taken care of, but last Sunday, I got it all done in eight. Kendle went to Pride downtown at 9am and by the time she returned at 5pm I had done it all!
Labels: Kendle, movies, video games
#6 - Sonic 3
Friday, June 22, 2012
Sonic 3 was a game I bought, or maybe it was bought for me. Either way the point is it was my game. It always felt a little weird buying games for the Genesis because the system itself was Chris's. He had done all the leg work and research and had actually saved all the money to buy the thing, so it was a little weird buying games for someone else's system. Especially when that someone would be leaving for college and taking it with him.
But 1994 was well of from any college acceptance letters, so I got it. It was no surprise that it was an excellent game. Sonic the Hedgehog was a breakthrough platformer that looked better than anything Nintendo had put out at that point. By the the time Sonic 3 rolled around we had a 16-bit Mario game, but to me it felt like catch-up. Sega was way out ahead at this point.
So what makes Sonic 3 the best in the series? Lot's of things.
1) Shields that do things
2) Varied locations
3) Awesome music (un-credited but written by the King of Pop)
4) Huge boss battles
Sure Sonic 1 and 2 had some of these things, but they didn't do it as well as they did in Sonic 3. I also liked the ability to select your level once you had beaten it. This save feature made it possible to put the game down and not have to play from the start to the end in one sitting. But let's get back to the list.
Previous Sonic's had shields, but all they did was protect you from a hit, the shields in Sonic 3 were a tactical advantage, collecting rings, protecting you from all fire attacks, or allowing you to breathe underwater. They all gave you one extra hit, so it was a no brainer to get them, but which one you got gave you some choices. For instance the lightning and fire shield would be lost if you entered the water, so you would have to avoid water once you got them, but they allowed you to do things like double jump or speed forwards, so it was easier to avoid these things. The shields added a new level of tactics to the game that the previous titles lacked.
2) Varied Locations
Sure, all Sonics have this, but the first two adventures still felt like they were based off tiles. IE, the developers had built the levels by dropping down predefined images, and all the levels were were a different mix of all these images. In Sonic 3, the levels felt fresh, and things you saw in the beginning didn't repeat near the end. Almost as if instead of building the stages out of blocks, they just drew one big image that you moved through, so each area was unique.
3) Awesome music
I cant stress enough how great the music from the Carnival Night Zone, and the Icecap Zone. Really all of it was great, but those are the two zones that stand out most in my memory.
4) Huge boss battles
From the first boss battle where you first have to out run a giant air ship dropping bombs on you, to the final battle with the multi-stage flying fortress battle, the final bosses on each stage were imaginative and frustrating, until you figured them out, and that's the most satisfying thing a game can do to you. First make you feel like an idiot, but then make you feel like the smartest kid ever for cracking the code.
I hear Sonic 4 is pretty ok, and takes the series back to it's 2D roots, but in High Definition, but again, my stinginess tells me to wait till they release all of the episodes in a bundle...to save money.
Well we are 1/2 way through our countdown and we have seen some pretty amazing games so far. If Sonic 3 (arguably the best title on the Genesis) couldn't even crack the top five what absolutely amazing things will we see next week?!
Labels: review, video games
Absolutely Amazing Animation
From the actual animation, to the sound design, to the subject matter, this short has it all. I'm so glad I live in a time when someone can make these wonderful things and share them with the world within seconds of its completion.
#7 - Wonder Boy in Monster World
Thursday, June 21, 2012
As they came out with squeals, they added some RPG type elements (collecting money, buying upgrades, etc) but things were still confined to a linear path. Level 1 -> Level 2 -> etc. And if you didn't have enough money when you came across that level's store...well you just missed out on it, and had to wait till you found the next levels store.
Enter Wonder Boy in Monster World. They finally perfected their RPG elements but added the ability for you to go backwards once you finished a "level." By adding this simple tweak they went from a level based action RPG, to a full fledged open world exploration type game, and it was FANTASTIC.
Every zone you went to you got a different little buddy. Each one would help you through the zone, by opening doors, or flying you places, or just fighting by your side. The areas you explored were huge, and varied. There was a beach, a castle, a cave, an ice town, a desert, and a cloud based zone. Each one had a distinctive soundtrack that added to the atmosphere, and each one had a unique boss battle that made use of your companion and the weapon you could buy in each zones town.The visuals were interesting. This game came from Japan, so everything was was done in a manga style. Big eyes, blue hair (you gotta have blue hair), and a quirky translation that gave it the same feel as a poorly translated cartoon.
I loved it. Like I said at the beginning of this, we didn't have a Nintendo. I had never played Legend of Zelda, which was the original open world exploration game.
After much research, a heck of alot of saving money, and a well written letter to Mom, Chris convinced Mom to let him get a Genesis. So I never played Mario, or Zelda, or Donkey Kong or really any of those Nintendo exclusive titles. I skipped right over those. This was my first experience with an action RPG, where you have to have have the skill to dodge attacks, but the option to upgrade your armor and make your character better as well.%2520%255Bf1+C%255D.png)
It took me years but I did finally beat it. You can buy it still on the Virtual Console, so if you have a Wii and want to play it, it's still possible. They just released Monster World 4 as well, which is confusingly the 6th title in the series. That was a Japan only title till just now, but it's been translated and is on the Virtual Console as well.I played through a bit of it, the animations are slick, the cartoony feel is back, but I has a distinct "Level" feel to it, while they don't go so far as to say "Level 1....Start" when you enter a dungeon, I did not get the sense that you would ever need to go backwards, or re-trace your steps to unlock some power up, like you did in WonderBoy in Monster World, and that's why it's the best of the series, and #7 on this countdown!
Labels: review, video games
The Skokie Library
So I walk into the Library, and clearly this is where every tax dollar is going. The place is ginormous. Two floors, the first one contains all the fiction a guy could want. The second floor has current non-fiction books. And by current I mean, I'm not looking at an in depth book on Flash 4, but and up to date book on Maya 2012, or a book about jQuery that was written in the last year! It's amazing.
Back downstairs is the movie section. They have a full 1/8th of this huge building devoted to digital media, and the crown jewel of it all?
You can fucking checkout video games.
They don't just have random video games either, like someone donated their old games or something. In looking over the collection, they have...artistic games. Games that challenge barriers, tell a story, or blend the lines of art and entertainment. Things like Disgaea 4, a super popular puzzle game in Japan, and Catherine, a game as much about relationships, cheating and guilt, as it is about platforming and puzzles.
Needless to say I was excited, but then I wandered over to their animation section. The animation section at the library is large. They have more space devoted to animation than most video stores, and they store them like you store them at home...with the thin part facing out, not like they do at the video store, where they put the big long attention grabbing cover art facing out.
And what would a library be without events? Well it would be like most Libraries I've been to before, where they are like "WHAT...we have books, what else do you want?"
They have computer classes, rooms devoted to book discussion groups, and a movie series running all summer long. I've signed up for a digital publishing how-to class already, and I could not be less excited.
The only downside so far is that of the six movies I've rented so far, two of them cut off due to scratches. Unfortunately we got up to the last 20 minutes of The Cell (yeah...with Jlo) and it skipped over about 10 minutes of the movie. So we scoured the local rental places and eventually ended up buying a copy of it (for $3.33... that's right, I paid 33 cents a minute) just so we could watch the last bit of the movie. That's what I for trying to save a buck by getting the shitty movies out of the library for free.And on the subject of The Cell, why would any casting director put Vince Vaughn and Vincent D'onofrio in a movie together. Not only are their names too similar, they look the same. It's confusing.
Labels: animation, book, movies, review, Skokie
#8 - Assassians Creed 2
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
So Assassins Creed came out and got rave reviews. Everyone loved it, but it didn't look like it was for me. Stealth games are not really my thing. Sneaking up on someone is always less satisfying than running in guns blazing and taking out everyone.
But I gave it a whirl. Hated it.
Everything seemed weird. Running around on rooftops, I couldn't figure out how to sneak up on people, the setting was pretty drab, just some dusty middle eastern town. Very gray and yellow and...deserty.
I put it down and eventually came back to it. Why would I come back to it? I got on a kick where I wanted to beat all the games I had bought because that seemed like wasted money sitting up on the shelf. So I gave it another shot, and this time everything clicked. All of a sudden I had complete control over the guy on screen. I could get him to run around and leap from rooftop to rooftop, raining down vengeance all while reaming unseen, but you don't see Assassins Creed in the title up there do you? We still have a very drab setting and an uninspiring protagonist, but the cliff hanger ending made me want to get the next one.
Assassins Creed 2 is set during the Renaissance, you run around fully developed cities like Venice, Florence, Forli, San Gimignano, and the Tuscan countryside. It's alive, it's vibrant and they added an element where you are actually rebuilding the city, so alot of famous places in those towns were run down until I came along and renovate them. It added to the game play, but it also added to the visuals, as I could see my efforts as I ran around the game. The main character is a charmer. He's a Renaissance Playboy who loses everything and then drags himself out of the gutter and rebuilds his life for his mother, sister and to clear the family name. He's a likable character, and you want to see him succeed.That brings me to another point. This game's attention to detail is great. I was telling Poppa Hunka all about this game awhile back, and he pulled out a book of Florence architecture. I could identify all the famous buildings as buildings from the game. It's important to get the big monuments right, I get that, but then we looked at some random street shots, and those matched up too. You get a real sense of being in those cities.
AC2 spawned two sequels. AC: Brotherhood, and AC: Revelations, where you continue and resolve the story of Ezio, the main character in the game. They are all set in the same time period, but I liked the first one the best. Each sequel added a little to the game play, but nothing quite like the advancements they made from AC1 to AC2. Additionally what they added unnecessarily complicated the game play.AC3 comes out soon. It's set during the Revolutionary War, so maybe I can get Momma Hunka into it? The whole series is great, due to their historical accuracy, and winding their own story into real events that happened. I can't wait to see what they do with George Washington and the British attatck, but Assassins Creed 2 will always stick out in my mind as the best of the series. It's uncomplicated, it's fun, and it has amazing visuals and story.
Assassins Creed 2 is a current gen system game, and is available for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, but seeing as how it's super popular and also three games old, you can probably pick it up for under 10 dollars at your used game retailer of choice.
Labels: Momma Hunka, Pappa Hunka, review, video games
Community Meeting
So if you live on Concord Lane (or as I will refer to it from now on..."The Lane") you apparently join some sort of gang. They have meetings. And not just like "come over meet your neighbor" meetings, but rather "We have the Chief of Police, your elected officials in charge of budget as well as street's and sewer maintenance making presentations, oh and...you know, come meet your neighbors" kinda meetings.It was interesting. I've never seen a group of individuals who were so into their community. It was a nice change of pace. Of course anytime you put elected officials in a room with retired people, the conversation quickly devolves into "why can't you fix this" or "why isn't the budget bigger."
Yeah, that's right. We are the youngest couple on the lane, and only one of two households who's average age is under 45 years old. But I don't mind. I like having all these old smart dudes around. You know who knows how to fix things? Old dudes. They don't just call someone when shit's broke, they just stick their head in there and figure out how to fix it. I can get down with that for sure.
After the meeting was over people hung out for a bit and then eventually spilled out onto the lane. Some folks who had not been at the meeting were having a fire in their fire pit, and people started to gather there. It was kinda nice.
You may not know this about me but all I really want to do is live in the 40's or 50's. I'm sure my idealized version that I've seen in movies and TV shows is way off, but damn it all if I just want to go down to the malt shop with my Letterman jacket and noogie some nerds.
Whenever I bring this up, Kendle reminds me that I would not have a job as home computers and the internet were not even being dreamed about yet, and that I would probably be the nerd getting the noogies, not the jock handing them out.
But in this fantasy, everyone knows everyone, the chief of police is a main character in the plot and shows up often and people just hang out in their front lawns and converse with people passing by.
And that's kinda what last night was like after the meeting. There were people gathering and talking, there were people strolling down the lane back to their houses, and just for a second the TV show that plays in my head was a reality.
Labels: Skokie, taxes, The Lane
#9 - Jill of the Jungle
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
ALWAYS.
Well back in the early 90's there were no digital distribution channels for games like Steam or Origin, so to get traction, game publishers would release 1/3 of the game for free, and if you liked it, you could buy the rest of the game.
I love this sales model.
I got to play so many games for free, but this game. This was the first one I played the free version over and over again so many times that I finally asked my mom if we could buy the full version.
Of course as always with my parents, I had to save up enough to buy it twice, one time to actually purchase it, and the other was put into a savings account. 30 dollars was ALOT to save back then. I think I made about 10 dollars a week off mowing, so it took just under a month.
To make matters worse, you couldn't go to the store and buy it off the shelf. You had to write the company and mail them a check, and they mailed you a floppy disk back. So I needed a parents help on this one.
I remember waiting for the mail to come every day and it took so long that I eventually forgot that I had ordered it, so it was a shock when I got this big envelope in the mail one day.
Oh what joy. After playing the first "episode" 100's of times, I finally got to see what new trouble awaited Jill, in Episode 2...Jill Goes Underground, and it all wrapped up in the final episode "Jill Saves the Prince." Those two were ok, but did not add anything new that the original didn't already have, so I have to name that one, the best of the series.Jill of the Jungle is a side scrolling action platformer, each episode contains 15-20 levels to explore. The object is to get to the exit, while collecting power ups like super jump, or different items that give you varying amounts of points. You get different weapons, transform into different creatures with different powers, and explore many different types of terrain. It was a feast for the eyes. Look at those glorious 256 colors!
They used digitized speech too. Every time you grabbed a power up, someone yelled "Yeah!" All of this was new, and really helped to grab the attention of young gamers. The music was bouncy, and the environments changed. Even within the level, you could go from flying above the clouds, to running through a cave. It was all very exciting for my little self.
The game was simple, two button controls, get from point A to point B. It was fun and I loved it. It also starred a female lead (are you seeing a theme yet?)! So when people say things like "That Ben, he really respects women" or "I've never seen a more sensitive guy" we know it all started with video games.
You can still download the free version I played back then here, but it's designed for DOS, so you will need DosBox for your respective OS to get it runnig. What really cracked me up is that the company that took over for distributing these old games relies on the same method of delivery as the original company did in 1994. You can order the full retail version by sending a check into some company and they mail you a disk.
Classic!
Labels: review, video games
That spare room...thingy...in the basement
So as you know we had that party over the weekend? Well as people arrived at different times we kept having to haul them all over the house and give them the tour. The tour always ended in the basement. If you have never been to the house (why the fuck haven't you been to the house yet?) the basement is deceptively large. There is this whole area behind some doors that would make a great guest room. The problem being is there are no windows, so it's not technically a real bed room, but it's a large room off the TV room, carpeted and you can open the doors and then you get all the sunlight and open feeling so you are not in a dungeon anymore.
Anyways, everyone goes down stairs, and they see the big TV and the table and the washer and dryer room, and they are all very impressed. Then Kendle pulls open the spare room doors and every single time they go "Oh! This basement is so large, I figured that would be a closet or something, but there's a whole other room here!"
and then they turn to Kendle and say:
"You know what this would be good for? A playroom." Then they quickly look to me with a worried look in their eyes and start back pedaling.
"Or you know...a workout room or a guest room...whatever."
I don't know, maybe it's me? Maybe I have some sort of disproving look on my face or something? But it's ok to talk about babies to a dude, I'm just saying. I don't know what social norm got made that makes it OK to assume the lady will be having babies but the minute the man is in the room, we have to tip toe around the fact that humans reproduce, and typically sometime between their mid 20's and early 30's.
So yeah, when you come over, you don't have to tip toe around the issue with me. Babies will happen, barring any complications due to me having a cell phone mere inches away from my nuts for the past 11 years. That room is gonna be a play room. Also you can stop calling the other bed rooms "guest rooms." I didn't buy a three bed room house so you all could come over and comfortably have your own room to stay in.
I bought a three bedroom house so I could have somewhere to send my kids when they bug me too much while I'm trying to play video games.
Labels: babies, family, Kendle, party, rant
#10 - Phantasmagoria
Monday, June 18, 2012
This game hit right around the same time CD's and Full Motion Video were all the rage, so we got to see real actors on our computer screens for the first time.
This game holds a special place in my heart because it carried a suggested rating of "Mature" and even came with a sticker on it that said you should be 17 before you could buy it. I loved all of Roberta's Kings Quest games I had played, and the idea that a point and click game could be so shocking meant I had to see it. I was 15, so I was old enough to have my own cash, but too young to drive, or even have an ID really. I surely didn't want to ask my mother to take me to get the game, so I made Chris take me to Best Buy.
We had this whole plan worked out where if the lady asked for my ID at the register, Chris would come back and buy it later. I was so worried, I must have looked speciousness as hell up there at the register. Of course, game ratings are just suggestions, or at least at the time they were, and were not enforced, so I got the game without a hitch, and mom was never the wiser.
I mean, look at the cover to the game cover up there. There's a big splash of blood, something that looks like wings on a....on a who cares, it's AWESOME looking! What 15 year old would not want this game?
Why would I hide a game from my mother? Boobs:
This game got alot of press because of the use of Full Motion Video and real actors instead of the typical pixel art used up until this era of gaming. I think people were concerned about the realistic direction videogames were moving. This game also had a rape scene where the demon-possessed husband is completely overcome by the devil inside and forces himself on his wife.
For what it's worth, it's pretty tame compared to what's on broadcast TV these days, but again, at the time it was unheard of.
The game came on 7 CD's and chronicled the seven days it took for her husband to completely give into the demon and go crazy. It's a pretty dark game and it's scary. I assume this is where my love of the Saw franchise was born. This was shock horror before shock horror was a genre...and you were in control of it.
There were alot of creepy ways to die if you made a wrong move, typical of the genre of game, but amplified by the the fact they were painstakingly captured onto digital film with all the special effects of a big budget movie.
There was a mystery to uncover, and a husband to save, so it was actually pretty progressive. The typical damsel in distress idea was flipped on it's head, and it had a strong, smart female lead, rather than a handsome man.
**Spoiler Alert**
The most interesting thing about the game was that you could not save your husband...in fact you had to kill him! So there was this real feeling of hopelessness that you were left with at the end of the game. Sure, you survived but your in game life was ruined, and you were mentally scarred, having killed your loved one.
**End Spoiler**
I think they did a great job of setting the stage of this loving couple who moved into an old house. I was confused as the main character when her husband started acting strange, and I had a real sense of loss when it was all over.
Emotion, that's why this game get's a place on the list, it evoked a real emotion and left a strong impact on me.
Also, the sequel was terrible, and they just took all the press they got from the first one and ran with it. More boobs, more gore, and an ending that made no sense. Just terrible.
You can download and play this game even today so long as you have Windows XP or above. GOG has packaged it up so that it will run on modern systems easily.
Purchase Digital Download of Phantasmagoria
Labels: review, Saw, video games
How to make your house feel like a home
But the real deal was Saturday. Kendle's aunt and cousins all came over for lunch. They brought their baby and for the first time, the house felt like a home. Maybe it was just that we finally had enough people over to warrant the size of the house, or the fact that there was a baby crawling all over, or possibly the simple fact of multiple conversations happening in tandem, but whatever the case was, things just felt right and homey.
I think we finally got unpacked as well over the weekend. We had a couch for the basement delivered, and a kitchen table and hutch (buffet?) for the kitchen, which was the last piece of the puzzle as near as I can tell, because we could not unpack all the stuff that goes into the kitchen till we had that stuff in there. There is still the matter of the two guest rooms, but as we never had those before, we don't have anything to unpack in there.
So there are no more boxes to unpack, and after this week, no more recycling bins full of wrapping paper and cardboard boxes.
Sunday I cut a bunch of holes in my carpet.
Wait...what?
Yeah, with the couch in place, I could finally setup my surround sound system, and rear speakers have always been the trickiest. We decided to just cut a small hole behind the tv and then another small hole under the couch and fish the speaker wire through. It actually ended up looking pretty professional, you can barely feel the wire running under the carpet. But now that I've said that, the first thing everyone will do when they visit will be to run downstairs, and try and feel the wire under the carpet.
So the man cave is coming along, I have a projects/gaming table, a 55 inch HDTV and surround sound, and a couch...with short part for sitting, and a long part for laying down. Life is good.
P.S.
See Barb...there's no reason to leave for two weeks. Two posts a day means you can avoid the countdown but still get the regular stuff you are used to. But also, how are you gonna wanna miss today's countdown post where you can read all the juicy gossip of how I snuck around behind my mothers back and bought a game rated for people quite a bit older than I actually was!
Labels: home improvement, Skokie
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