Month: December 2011

Lands of Lore: no laughing matter (Get it? Get it?!)

Good Old Games is in the midst of its 50% holiday sale and I took the opportunity to pick up a game I had on my first PC back in the olden days of 1994 when PCs still came with floppy drives and monitors were massive 14 inch wonders.

That game is Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos and when I first had it I made it all the way to the climactic battle against the evil Scotia but never quite finished the game. I’m not sure why. It may have been that I ended up getting a new PC and moving saved game files was sometimes a tricky thing back then. Or it could have been an obscure, game-stopping bug that was never patched (that was also a tricky thing back then. I still recall 1998’s Baldur’s Gate as being the only computer game I owned that truly and utterly defeated me. It would consistently crash 10-15 minutes in no matter what I did. I eventually gave up and shipped it off to a friend who, of course, played it without issue). Whatever the reason, I didn’t complete the game and used this as a handy excuse to justify the nostalgia in picking it up, knowing full well the chances of me completing it now were pretty darn slim.

Much to my surprise, once I set the game to windowed mode and shrank it down to 800×600 it ended up not looking too bad. The pixelated graphics are quite acceptable when shrunk down appropriately. Even better, the actual game is is easy to pick up. The interface is clean and straightforward and the copious voice work helps to compensate where the graphics falter. For example, most signs are just a bunch of VGA scribbles (unreadable) but clicking on one results in your party leader reading it aloud in a crisp tone. Handy!

I still don’t know how far I’ll get. As you can see in the shot below I am just starting out and only have one of the eventual three party members. At this point I’ve solved one simple puzzle, beat up an attempted thief, beat up a mean boar and had the castle guards tell me to get lost. Not bad but not exactly saving the world — yet!

I’ll follow up within a month’s time to report on whether the purchase (a whopping $2.99) boiled down to an hour or so of play or whether I’ve actually made real progress. Odds are it will be the former but every once in a while you can go back.

I am musically unhip

The current issue of The Georgia Straight has a story on the Top Albums of 2011. Almost without exception I am not only unfamiliar with the albums, I’ve never even heard of the performers. Looking through each critic’s selection (nine critics, ten albums each), here are the artists I actually recognize:

  • Tom Waits
  • Jay-Z and Kanye West
  • Paul Simon
  • Foo Fighters
  • George Thorogood & the Destroyers
  • The Jeff Healey Band
  • Wilco
  • Tori Amos
  • Björk
  • PJ Harvey

I have never owned an album from any of these people. Actually, looking over the list I’m surprised that there were that many names I recognized. Still, with 90 picks, I only recognize 10 artists, cementing my place as musically out of touch. Hey, I bought an Animal Collective album last year, that has to count for something, right?

1979 (not The Smashing Pumpkins song)

Here’s a photo of myself, my cousin Dan and some midget dressed up as Mickey Mouse. Those red pants with the big white buttons always bugged me. That may be why I’m not smiling, because I’m thinking how much those stupid giant buttons are bugging me. Dan is holding a pack of cigarettes. Okay, maybe not. I believe his t-shirt is a depiction of birds in flight whereas mine is a groovy rainbow-colored advertisement for Zion National Park, which was a pretty cool place, even for a relatively lazy out-of-shape kid like myself (I was 14 at the time the picture was taken).

Dan’s big smile is ironic because he came down with a nasty 24 hour flu bug that same day and threw up in the Circle-Vision theater as it was playing the film “America the Beautiful”. As far as I know he was neither making a politcal statement nor trying to start an international incident. He was just throwing up.

I was going to recount some of the highlights of 1979 but the Wikipedia page on the year is entirely depressing. McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal and smallpox was eradicated. Other than that it appears 1979 mostly sucked.

Also, that is hair on my head, not some small furry animal.

 

Skyrim, Skyrim, Skyrim!

How you can tell a game is popular, Quarter to Three version:

Skyrim: mods and tweaks
Do you consider Skyrim the best RPG, maybe even the best game, of all times?
10 reasons why I hate Skyrim
Do you still play Skyrim?
Skyrim: The Post-Release *Spoiler-Free* Topic! NO SPOILERS HERE!
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim announced
Skyrim: The character thread
Skyrim: The Post-Release *Spoiler-FILLED* Topic! CHOCK FULL OF SPOILERS!
Does Skyrim need its own subforum
Do you consider Skyrim the best RPG, maybe even the best game, of all times? (duplicate)
Skyrim: The Builds Thread!
Skyrim – Why is it such a succes? (Sorry!)
Skyrim: Why aren’t you playing yet?
If you could change Skyrim’s melee combat, what would you want?
Skyrim: Great game and all…but why’s the menu looking like windows 98’s?
Don’t miss these moments in Skyrim
Bethesda: Fix the Skyrim bugs!
Enchanted Weapon/Armor Names in ~Skyrim~

Combined, these threads add up to somewhere around 10,000 or more posts. That is a lot of words for one game. It currently rates 94 out of 100 for the PC version on Metacritic (96 and 92 for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, respectively) and has spawned no less than two annoying memes, making it the Portal of 2011 (even moreso than Portal 2, which also came out this year):

I took an arrow to the knee
FUS RO DAH

Do searches on these phrases, if you dare. The Internet will obligingly turn up many examples for you to enjoy(?).

The game is still listed at $59.99 which is way beyond my current gaming budget, plus I know that I wouldn’t do more than piddle about with it if I got it now, anyway, as I have a gaming backlog that stretches nigh unto infinity as is. Still, as a pop culture event, there is no denying Skyrim has left an impression. And made moneyhats for Bethesda.

Revisting old games, Part 93: City of Heroes

I recently jumped back into City of Heroes as it’s gone free-to-play and my vet status meant most of the game’s features were unlocked right up front. CoH is an MMORPG that launched in April 2004 and as anyone who has played one of these games will tell you, MMOs are designed to be massive time sinks. It gets even worse because the typical $15 monthly fee makes you feel obligated to login and do something even if you don’t particularly feel like it because, dammit, you’re going to get your money’s worth! That’s what’s nice about free-to-play (F2P) — you can play as little or as much as you like and saunter along at your own pace. There are usually some things you can’t do without paying (obviously the publisher needs to generate revenue somehow) but it’s easier to fork over $5-10 whenever you feel like it instead of being on the hook for $15 every month or no super hero (or villain) for you!

The best part of the game is probably still the character creator. Here are a few I’ve made recently, as making endless alts is pretty much a required part of the CoH experience. I’ll elaborate a bit on the game’s current incarnation in another post.

Punch Bull

Punch Bull continues the fine tradition of names based on terrible puns. He’s a level 20 super strength/willpower brute. His specialty is punching things really hard. As you can see, his main costume is a boxing outfit, a raging bull, if you will. His tail wags.

Mint Laser

My latest in a series of robot-like characters, Mint Laser is a level 20 beam rifle/electric manipulation blaster. His specialty is shooting things with extremely loud beams of energy. If those things get up in his grill he can switch to punching them with glowing fists of electricity.

His second costume will be something delightfully retro (and extra minty).

Frank Lee Feathered

Finally (for the moment) there is Frank Lee Feathered, a level 14 plant control/earth assault dominator. I originally had given him wings but I found them a bit distracting, so while he looks like an eagle he acts more like an ostrich. Further underlining that is the fact that most of the earth powers require him to be on the ground to work. His second costume will probably have wings.

More on how these kooky characters play and what the game is like with the hybrid F2P/subscription model soon™.

Day 51 of 84

I am officially 33 days away from my next run. I’m pretty certain I will not be trying out a test run two months in (which would be just a few days from now) even though I’m sure my ankle is recovered, mainly because I want to get better at cycling first. I mean, I can cycle, of course but this crazy bike and its fancy braking system are still very new to me and I still feel far from comfortable changing gears and such. I want to become one with the bike. In a zen monk way, not a ‘bike wrapped around me after slamming into a pole’ kind of way. To that end, I am going to avoid cycling near poles.

Jeff’s schedule is all clogged up over the next few days so I’m contemplating heading out on my own on one of the nearby granny trails. I fully expect it to snow if I do so.

The Twilight Zone ‘I’m a jerk’ episodes

I’ve been watching the original run of The Twilight Zone (1959-64) the last few months and recall that Rod Serling once divided up the episodes as pretty good, average and crappy in equal quantities. I think he was being unduly harsh as the number of outright clunkers is pretty low. Weirdly I managed to watch two back-to-back tonight and they both shared the same problem.

The first is What’s in the Box which is about a bickering couple, a weird TV and a creepy TV repairman. The husband watches on channel 10 as he sees himself fight with his wife, punch her out the window to her death, go on trial and then go to the electric chair for her murder. It’s like personalized reality TV. As one would expect, the all-knowing TV is correct and all the events it depicts happens. The episode ends with the TV repairman (Sterling Holloway, the voice of Winnie the Pooh) breaking the fourth wall by looking at the camera with a big ol’ smirk.

The problem here is none of these characters are likable. He’s a bastard, she’s a harpy and you really don’t care what happens to them. The framing device of the TV repairman giving them their just desserts isn’t fleshed out enough to resonate so it’s just 20+ minutes of bickering, weirdness and then BAM, out the window! This may be a rare case where an hour long episode would have worked better.

The next episode is Spur of the Moment, a fairly ridiculous effort from the otherwise reliable Richard Matheson. Here it seems he came up with a pun-tastic title then tried to hang some kind of story on it so we get a young woman on a horse being chased by a scary older woman dressed all in black, complete with black cape. As the story unfolds we discover that the black-caped lady is the woman’s older self trying to warn her younger self not to marry the guy without the bow tie. You see, the younger woman is all set to marry a nice man with a bow tie but is still in love with a ne’er-do-well who doesn’t wear a bow tie. He is also blond and you know that means trouble. The episode shifts back and forth between 1939 and the present (1964) with older lady realizing she was seeing her younger self but forever being unable to catch up to her. Possibly because if you’re going to warn something it’s best not to dress up like a cartoon villain, pose like a vampire and screech incoherently and charge at the person you’re trying to warn as if you are trying to kill her.

Seriously, if you saw her approaching, would you wait for what she had to say?

Diana Hyland plays the woman and chews the scenery throughout but especially as the older woman (she was 28 at the time), though the script greases the way for her, employing the subtlety of a jackhammer, right down to her character explaining everything that is happening and or has happened. Exposition ahoy! Apart from the nerd with the bow tie, everyone in the story is a loser, so you’re left wondering why you should give a flying fig about what happens to them. I don’t need a character to be virtuous or even all that likable but there has to either be something that lets me connect to them in order to to sympathize with their plight or the plight better be awe-inspiring in its scope so I can just enjoy the spectacle.

Here we just have a spoiled brat blaming her dead dad for being so screwed up and whose idea to warn someone is to act like someone auditioning for the part of The Wicked Witch of the (Wild) West. And they sped up the film in the horse chase scene to make them look like they were riding really fast. Convincing!

Anyway, it was odd that I ended up watching two bad episodes back-to-back, so I thought it was worth reflecting on why they stunk.

May the random name be with you

I’m a sucker for random name generators and came across one that can convert your real name into an authentic* Star Wars one.

Below is the handy code/link the site provided by the site for my name. Yes, I am Giantdream Atotos. Atotos has a pleasant ring to it but I’m not convinced yet on Giantdream. And a clone? I wanted to be a bounty hunter. Bounty hunters are cool. Clones are not. Unless it’s a cool clone, in which case all of them would be cool.

* as authentic as you can get in a silly mashup of science fiction and fantasy, anyway

Day 48 of 84

It’s a palindrome.

Surprisingly, my legs were not sore at all from yesterday’s bike ride. This surprises me. My butt, however, was pretty sore. This does not surprise me as it was starting to get sore even before the ride was over. The world’s most comfortable bike seat it is not.

After finally burning off some calories through exercise, I blew it all by pigging out on junk food today. I am bad. But I promise to do better for the rest of the week or I swear, I will eat a box of Pop-Tarts un-toasted.

Wait, that’s not right.

Oh, and the ankle still feels fine. Stupid ankle.

Why I need mini-windshield wipers -or- My bike ride in the rain

For the first time in about a thousand years I rode a bike. Jeff and I had been planning on doing this for awhile and after Jeff grabbed me a helmet a couple days ago, we made our plans. Naturally the weather was brilliant all week up until our bike day. As we started out there was a low mist hanging in the air, brimming with the promise of rain. Fortunately the rain was light and only persisted for a portion of the ride. Still, lacking the titular windshield wipers for my glasses, visibility was not quite what I hoped.

We rode the 7-11 Trail, which despite the name does not feature any 7-11s, Slurpees or Big Gulps. This trail runs parallel to the Expo SkyTrain line and we took the train to Patterson, riding back through Burnaby and New Westminster. The vital stats were as follows:

Total distance: 15.76 km
Total time: 1:04 hours
Average speed: 14.8 km/h
Highest speed: 32.4 km/h

Much like my old bike ride home from John Sherman Agencies, the toughest part of the trip (a good portion of which is downhill when going from west to east) was the last few blocks before getting back. I am happy to report that even with my out-of-shapeness I was able to peddle up each hill without stopping. This was made even more impressive because of my natural tendency to shift gears down when I meant to shift up and vice-versa. I’ll get the hang of it eventually.

The bike I’m using belongs to a friend and co-worker of Jeff and it’s significantly lighter than my bike was. It also has actual suspension so when I ride it over a curb it doesn’t feel like it’s going to fly apart. The kooky racing-style gear changers (incorporated into the brakes) took a bit to get used to and there was one instance where I slammed on the brakes when I enthusiastically attempted and failed to switch gears. I remained on the bike and not over the handlebars, though, so hooray for me!

While I feel fine now, I did note all of the muscles that were burning during the ride and anticipate glorious stiffness come the morning. Still, I didn’t crash, the weather was not as bad as it could have been and I finally got a little exercise, so I consider it a successful first outing.

 

7 Days of Shaved Head

No, it’s not the title of a Pearl Jam B-side (does the concept of a B-side even exist anymore?), it’s been seven days since I shaved my head and the verdict is in: I like it! Never having hat hair alone has made it worthwhile. I tried using shampoo but it really didn’t do much. Soap seems to work better now. Drying my hair takes two seconds with a towel — if I’m slow. It’s all around what I’d called darned convenient.

I tried a few more times to get a decent pic but mostly failed. Here’s one, anyway. Chances are I will update this at some point when I eventually manage a better shot. Nonetheless, the non-hair is clear.

This was taken on December 2nd, the day I I turned my hair into a tribble. My chin looks a bit scrunched up because I was holding the camera out in front of me.

Review: Skyline

Remember how there were two asteroid movies that came out close to each other (Armageddon and Deep Impact) and two volcano movies that did the same (Dante’s Peak and the creatively-titled Volcano)? This past year has seen the same thing happen with alien invasion movies set in L.A., namely Skyline and Battle: Los Angeles.

I watched Skyline and it was mediocre at best. The effects were decent and the alien design was competent if uninspired (the usual weird organic/machine hybrids, much like those seen in The Matrix sequels) but the movie overall was limp. The opening has some promise — a series of mysterious blue lights drop down from the sky — but once the alien reveal is made and the assault begins in earnest the movie lumbers along with its ultimately uninteresting band of survivors trying to escape the luxury beachside tower they are holed up in. Inevitably their numbers get whittled down as they get plucked off/sucked into the light or the hungry maw of an alien one by one. When it was down to the young couple who have both been exposed partly to the magic alien transformation light I realized I didn’t care about their fate. It’s suggested that their partial exposure (and the woman being newly preggers) may have saved them and even though the man goes through the whole transformation and becomes a big glistening alien hulk thing with blinky lights for eyes, he still retains enough of his human self to save the woman from being turned into an alien snack. To what effect I don’t know, since the coda also establishes that the aliens have pretty much trashed every city across the world and a nuke dropped on L.A. only made them even more ticked off.

It was a better ending than uploading a virus into the mothership, so I will give the filmmakers credit for that.

As with so many alien movies, the reason behind the invasion is so much poorly-explained, unbelievable nonsense. It seems that humans are being caught and used to ‘hatch’ new aliens, which begs the question of what the aliens did before they arrived on Earth. It’s not even worth pondering more than that.

Thumbs down, although the lead actor was kind of cute, so on a scale on one to ten aliens, Skyline rates three aliens and one mutant alien/human offspring. For having a cute lead actor in a bad movie, Skyline rates a six.