There was once a time, many years ago, when I used to go to the movies a lot. For a long time, I used to go at least once a week. Eventually, both time and money became an issue, and going to the movies just didn’t happen very much any more. Sure, I’d get out to anything that had the name Marvel stamped on it, but by and large, trips to the theatre became much rarer. In 2015, I think I probably saw a total of three movies in the theatre.
It seems like I’ve been going to significantly more movies as of late (this Friday will be the fourth Friday in a row that I’ve gone to the theatre), and while the experience is obviously a little different from how it used to be, there’s one relatively minor change that’s really bugging me.
Back in the day, the pre-show used to feature a music segment where one of the hosts would talk to some musician or another about their upcoming or recently released album. These would almost always be Canadian indie musicians that nobody has ever heard of, and almost never would their musical styles appeal to me back then, but I think that nowadays I’d definitely look up some of the artists that were featured.
Now, there are just commercials for whatever mass-produced pop garbage is hot at the moment. Not even interviews, just the same commercials that you’d see on TV or YouTube.
Why did it disappear? I have no idea, really, but a little Googling suggests that the music segment was sponsored by SiriusXM. Presumably the sponsorship deal came to an end and the music interviews got axed in the process.
Like I said, I never really cared for most of the indie stuff that was featured before, but I definitely held a certain appreciation for the segment. It highlighted music that is underrepresented and tried to push people in the direction of finding something new. It was nice to see a mainstream media avenue give exposure to non-mainstream music; a painless way to introduce people to the idea that music exists outside of radio garbage.
Of course, the interviews were never long or in-depth, because it was just a short segment during the pre-show, but it was easily the most interesting segment. But that’s dead now. Instead, we just get told to buy the godawful new Ariana Grande album. It’s so disheartening.
The music segment wasn’t the only thing to go either. Nearly every segment with any sort of thought put into it has been axed in favour of more commercials and Toys R Us ads hosted by the most obnoxious kids on the planet. There aren’t even periodic trivia bits any more. I used to try to get to the movies early because I enjoyed the pre-show, but now I just get there early to make sure I get a decent seat.
*There are some light spoilers in this wall of text. If you care, read at your own risk.*
When it was first revealed, Bravely Default seemed like a true renaissance of old-school Final Fantasy-styled gameplay with a very pretty coat of paint. The online circles that I run in were all atwitter about how it looked like it would be the game they had been longing for since the days of the SNES. It took a year and a half, but finally it was localized for North America. And then things went horribly wrong. It was love at first, but then as people got deeper into the game, they began to bellyache about how dumb the plot was and how the second half was nothing but repetitive padding, among other things.
My story begins many years later. While I was interested in the game from the very beginning, I didn’t hop on board the Bravely Default train right away. I played the demo and loved it, but not quite enough to buy in. I waited staunchly for a price drop, but after a year had passed and it became clear that the price was etched in stone for all eternity (it was published by Nintendo outside of Japan, after all), I gave in and pulled the trigger.
Right out of the gate, choosing to wait was a massive boon to me. BD has a streetpass/online feature that lets you sync up your characters’ job levels with those of your friends. So right from the very beginning of the game, I had access to every ability for every job. I still had to level up the jobs on my own to gain their stat bonuses, but having those abilities put me at a great advantage. You can also call upon your friends in battle to dish out an attack that they have chosen to share, which, if a strong enough attack was recorded, could wipe out early-to-mid-game bosses in a single hit. You can only summon each friend once, though, so that was a little less broken.
Speaking of jobs and bosses, I believe that the battle system is the one thing that everyone who played Bravely Default agrees on. Agrees that it is amazing, that is. The job system is ripped nearly wholesale from Final Fantasy V, which means that you have a huge list of jobs which are acquired at predetermined points, and you can switch each character into any job you like at anytime outside of combat. Every job has a list of 14 abilities, one of which remains in effect at all times that a character is using that job. Otherwise, abilities take the form of actions you can perform in battle, or passive skills that give you persistent bonuses like higher attack strength or HP recovery after battle.
Crunch the numbers here: 24 jobs with 14 abilities each, and four characters to build. That’s a lot of options at your disposal. There may be one perfect combination that will carry players from the beginning to the end of the game, but I never bothered to check. Most of the fun in a game like this is throwing together your own builds and seeing what works. The game is built in a way that encourages you to try out all of your options, and it really is exciting to finally put together a build that stomps a boss you’ve been having trouble with.
The plot is where things start to get a little bit shaky. Many would argue that all video game stories are bad, but let’s just take it on its own terms for now, okay? The basic setup is that the world’s four crystals have lost their power, which is causing all sorts of terrible environmental problems, and you must journey to reinvigorate them. Of course, there’s an evil empire out to stop you at every turn because ?????, as evil empires are wont to do. Oh hey guess what THAT’S A FINAL FANTASY ALRIGHT. A little mundane, sure, but not particularly offensive in any way.
Then you get to the second half of the game. This involves travelling through four parallel worlds and reviving all four crystals in each. Which is less repetitive than it sounds, but still a fairly shoddy way to pad out the back half of your game. Along the way, there is a theme of how you shouldn’t always just blindly do what you think is right (hence, bravely default), but it gets a little bit muddled in the melodrama and world-hopping nonsense. I do think that the first half of the story could have made a fine game on its own, but the big twist really didn’t do it any favours.
The one upside to having to repeat your quest five times is that in each subsequent world, you get to fight all the bosses who you’d previously earned jobs from (“asterisk holders”) again. In the first two repeat worlds, they’re just stronger, but in the fourth and fifth worlds they start teaming up and it makes from some really interesting battles. You also get a little more backstory for each asterisk holder in every world, which makes nearly all of them more likeable, but then you stop to consider that they’re all alternate versions of themselves, so there’s no actual character building and it’s all moot.
Okay, so the bad guys were mishandled, but what about the main characters? Sadly to say, it’s a 50/50 split. Agnes and Tiz, who are arguably the mainest characters, are both boring and show exactly zero development over the course of the story. Edea and Ringabel, who are mostly just tag-alongs, are super lovable. They are both overflowing with personality, and have actual character arcs in which they grow as people and come to realize things about both themselves and the world they live in. It’s a little shocking how night and day the character pairs are.
So yeah, it’s got its ups and downs -like any game, really- but I think that at the end of the day, Bravely Default is definitely worth playing. The gameplay is polished to a perfect shine, and if you really can’t bear the plot, nearly every cutscene can be skipped. It took me over a year to bring it to a conclusion, but it was quite a ride. If absolutely nothing else, I was elated when my big, dumb face became a background element in the final battle.
I don’t know how or why, but by some strange twist of fate, EB Games slashed the price on Code Name S.T.E.A.M. to $5 yesterday. Five dollars. The last time a Nintendo game got slashed down to bargain bin price was Metroid: Other M, and even that bottomed out at $15. The only other case I can think of is when Toys R Us was clearing out Chibi-Robo! Park Patrol for like $3. I still kick myself for not grabbing a copy.
Really, this almost never happens with Nintendo-published games. They may go on sale slightly, but they generally retain their full value until they’re re-released under the Nintendo Selects banner.
What this likely means is simply that Code Name STEAM (I’m not writing in all the periods every time) is probably the most ignored Nintendo game in history. I can see why, what with it being the complete opposite of what people expect from Nintendo: It’s not part of an established franchise, it’s all about guns (goofy as they may be), and it’s really difficult.
But -and I only have experience with the demo so far- it is an awesome, awesome game. It’s basically a Nintendoized version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Like, what more could you ask for? It’s just too bad it had to die such an underwhelming death. At least the other experimental new IP that Nintendo launched in 2015 was met with resounding success. Sometimes she goes, sometimes she doesn’t. Just the way she goes.
I can’t believe that I did something noteworthy and forgot to mention it for… three days.
Last weekend, I got the chance to play with an HTC Vive for a few hours. My cousin’s husband had pre-ordered one, and it arrived on Friday so he invited me and my brother to come over and check it out.
Now, I have been pretty staunchly apathetic about VR gaming. Not because it doesn’t appeal to me for any particular reason, but simply because I don’t want to care about it. I really don’t need to get dragged down that rabbit hole. Alas, a man can only remain wilfully ignorant for so long, and it’s easy to break down when the Vive’s gaming experience is unbelievably cool
First off, you really have no idea what it’s like until you’re in there. It really is like being sucked into another world. A world where you’re bashing into non-existent walls and ceilings because you’re way too absorbed in the VR experience, but another world no less. If you plug in earbuds as well, you’re as good as dead to the real world. It is amazingly immersive, and I actually felt really odd every time I took off the headset and returned to Earth.
The problem, of course, lies in the fact that you need a huge amount of real-world space to use the thing properly. The sensors measure out your range of real-world movement, which creates an in-game box in which you can flail around freely. You can then move said box around the larger game world via a process called “blinking,” which is far too hard to describe concisely, so I won’t even try. We were playing in a fairly small corner of a basement, and while it was workable, I can’t help but feel that a larger field of movement would have enhanced my experience. The less blinking around, the better.
I started off in a simple tutorial (hosted by a not-Wheatley spheroid robot) that showed me where all the buttons were, and allowed me to shoot lasers, fire off confetti blasts, and inflate balloons to my heart’s content. It was simple and cute. Then I moved into the Wii Sports of VR, Valve’s The Lab. I only played three of the eight available mini-games, but each really spoke to me in a different way.
First was Robot Repair, which puts you in a cute little office where you start by playing around with a few drawers and switches to get used to moving around and interacting in virtual space. Then an overhead door opens and one of the multiplayer robots from Portal 2 stumbles out, ostensibly in need of repair. This is where the “reality” part of virtual reality really started to shine.
When you see a huge robot lumbering at you unsteadily, even when you know it’s a pretend thing, you get the heck out of the way. It is an involuntary reaction, because even though this is all just images being beamed into your eyes through a crazy expensive headset, your brain is being tricked into thinking that it’s real. Of course, it got much, much worse when I failed to repair the robot. It fell apart, and then the office fell apart, giving way to a massive factory. Then GLaDOS (who is massive and terrifying; I nearly fell over when she appeared) came out of nowhere to harangue me, seal me in a cube and then smash me into a fine paste.
Robot Repair is defintely the best way for anyone to experience VR for the first time. I’ve embedded a video of it below, but it loses a lot when you aren’t completely immersed.
I moved on to another mini-game called Slingshot, which was more or less Angry Birds, only viewed from the slingshot’s perspective. You load up these spheres, and then try to launch them to break as many boxes as possible. Red boxes explode, and blue boxes give you another sphere. Oh, and also, every sphere talks to you while you’re aiming, and they all have unique personalities. I found it very difficult to figure out where I was aiming, and generally had to launch one sphere as a baseline, and then adjust my shot with a second and possibly third sphere. I didn’t do great, but my brother absolutely killed it.
The last mini-game that I played in The Lab was Longbow. It is a simple tower defense game, where you’re standing on a castle wall, and you have only a bow and arrow to defend against adorable little silhouette invaders. I got really into this one, and by the second wave I was firing arrow after arrow like a madman (though I wasn’t a great shot). There are also little torches off to your sides so that you can shoot flaming arrows. I could see myself playing this one until I had achieved absolute mastery.
Next, I tried out a game called The Brookhaven Experiment. It is incredibly simple and incredibly familiar. You stand in the middle of a dark field, and then spin around and shoot zombies as they stumble towards you. It would be boring as all heck in any other situation, but actually being in the game made it all the more thrilling and intense. It took me a while to get used to aiming, because your gun swivels around realistically, instead of being aimed perfectly straight ahead like in every other game. So I had to learn to line up the sights to make accurate shots.
Once I figured that out though, it got really easy. Zombies go down from one good headshot, though big zombies take three or so. You also get a flashlight to help cut through the darkness, though it does have limited batteries. Like Longbow, I got really into this one, and learned to hold my flashlight under my gun, at once illuminating the area in front of me and steadying my shots. By the fourth wave, I had stopped bothering to use the flashlight at all.
It is a really easy and simple game, but the true thrill comes when you let zombies get too close. Again, even though it’s obviously fake, when you turn around to a zombie all up in your biz, your heart rate quickens and you do start to tense up. On more than one occasion I actually did fall backwards because my body was simply reacting to get me out of what it perceived as harm’s way.
The last game I played was The Gallery – Episode 1: Call of the Starseed. It has a terrible name, but it was a very cool game. The Gallery was very different from the other two games: it was a legitimate adventure games with all sorts of random junk to pick up and puzzles to solve. I wasted a lot of time just wandering around interacting with things to see what they could do (never very much), and mostly just enjoyed drinking in the atmosphere.
There isn’t a lot else to say about it, because it’s very short and there isn’t a lot that you can actually do, but it is a really cool glimpse into the future of VR. I’ll really be sold on this when they start making games where you can interact more deeply with the world and objects can do more than one scripted action. What I’m looking for is just a big virtual toybox, really.
Overall, I was incredibly impressed with the Vive. It delivers a truly unique, amazing experience. The biggest problem with it is that it’s got a massive barrier for entry. The price tag ($1,300, not including high-end gaming PC) is enough to make one queasy, and then there’s the need for an entire room devoted to the thing. It’s a very cool new technology, but it’s going to be a very difficult thing to introduce into the mainstream. The costs of getting and using the Vive could easily cause it to become an even shorter-lived success story than motion controls.
I really do look forward to seeing what people come up with when they start making really high quality games for VR, but as it is, there’s nothing that really makes it a must-have toy. Aside from bragging rights, I guess. Having experienced it first-hand, I’ve definitely been converted into a believer, but it’s going to be a while before I literally buy into virtual reality gaming.
It’s been quite a long tine since I’ve written up one of these, longer than gaps between my migraines used to be. To be perfectly honest, I was kind of hoping that maybe the cause of my migraines was gone (if you know what I mean), but I am in the middle of an attack, so that’s not the case.
This one, specifically, impaired my ability to spell and form coherent sentences. It look me nearly half an hour to write that last paragraph.
I woke up Friday morning feeling overtired but otherwise okay, as is the usual lately. I went to work, and all was fine until I arrived. I turned on my computer, and noticed that I was having a very difficult time focusing on the screen. It’s hard to explain, but I could only see a small portion of the screen that was dead ahead, and the rest was totally blurry. I knew something as wrong, as I could see everything fine besides my monitor.
Then my right arm started to get all tingly. That’s when I knew for sure that it was a migraine. The feeling lasted for about five minutes, and then moved up into my jaw for maybe a minute.
About 40 minutes after arriving at work, my ability to read my monitor had come back, and I hit what was sort of the calm before the storm. The “aura” ended completely and it seemed like my body was getting ready to go back to normal. Less than five minutes later, the true migraine began.
Overall, it was significantly less painful than migraines before. While it was still very difficult to focus and my head was throbbing like crazy, it was bearable enough that I toughed it out and stayed at work instead of going back home to sleep it off. The big disappointment this time around is that I had not kept any ibuprofen available at work, and the neared drugstore didn’t open until 10 AM, so I had to sit and suffer for a few hours, and by the time I could go out to grab some pills, I could already feel the pain slowly beginning to subside and didn’t bother.
Start : 7:55 AM (aura), 8:45 AM (migraine)
End : 11:30 AM
Aura: Inability to see computer monitor, inability to spell/write coherent sentences, brief tingling in right arm and jaw, difficulty thinking/speaking
Possible triggers: Exhaustion, mostly. Maybe not eating properly?
What do I think about it? Aww, so kind of you to ask!
My knee-jerk reaction was that I did not like any of the new Pokémon designs, but that I was absolutely in love with the Hawaiian theme (not going to marry it). Trainer customization seems to be back, but even if it’s not, I think the girl trainer design is perfect and won’t complain. Plus, it at least allows you to choose your skin tone, so that’s good.
Over the course of the morning, and with some persuasion by amazing official art, I have sort of come around on Popplio. I’d probably be choosing it by default anyway because I never take the grass-type starter and I really don’t like Litten. The truth is that I really do like Rowlet, but as I said, I just can’t choose the grass-type, no matter how awesome. If Turtwig couldn’t do it for me, nothing can.
The new legendaries aren’t the worst, I guess. A little too much going on in their design, but majestic and mysterious enough to justify their place as the cover art. Mostly I just want to know what their place is in the plot and then I’ll proceed to never care about them again, like all of the cover legendaries that came after Lugia and Ho-oh.
Based on the Hawaii Land setting, I also spent a good portion of my morning coming up with appropriately-themed Pokémon. I’ll probably draw a bunch of them and post images here. If I don’t, just know that I’ve basically done six months worth of fan speculation in under six hours.
Also most of my ideas are “Existing Pokémon but Incorporating a Pineapple Somehow.”
I went to see the Ratchet & Clank movie with my brother last week. It was totally out of left field because I had no idea that they were making a movie, and also I’ve never played a single second of any of the Ratchet & Clank video games. But the little bro is a big fan, and I’m always down for a movie (as long as I have gift cards in pocket), so off I went.
It was not a bad movie. In fact, I might dare to say that I liked it, for the most part. The characters were fun, although I must admit that Clank is like the polar opposite of what I was expecting from a little robot sidekick. I thought he’d be like the comic relief to Ratchet’s more serious heroic role. But no. In fact, Clank was the only character who was not constantly trying to be hilarious (oh and also John Goodman, but I forget what his guy’s name was).
And therein lies my only real beef with Ratchet & Clank: it’s constantly trying to be funny, and failing at nearly every turn. Like, it’s always on. The never-ending gags are more exhausting than anything, and we were less than ten minutes in before I started wondering to myself if it was ever going to dial it down.
In all fairness, I chuckled a few times and there were a couple of legitimately funny jokes, but most of the time it was just stupid things that were in no way funny. On the other hand, the few Playstation references were very subtle and well-placed, and I really appreciated those. Some jerk in the theatre appreciated them way more than I did, as he would holler out in excitement every time.
“OH MAN, THAT’S THE BOOT-UP SOUND FROM THE ORIGINAL PLAYSTATION! HA HA HA HA AWESOME! EVERYBODY LOOK HOW SMART I AM ABOUT PLAYSTATIONS! I AM IRRESISTABLE TO WOMEN, BUT I AM MAKING THE CHOICE TO BE SINGLE!”
Alright, so maybe I’m exaggerating. But only a little.
In conclusion, Ratchet & Clank isn’t horrible, but nerds are.
Nintendo released a “free-to-play” game on both Wii U and 3DS last week. That game is Mini Mario & Friends: Amiibo Challenge. I put free-to-play in quotations there because while the software can be downloaded at no cost, you can’t actually do anything but stare at the title screen without an amiibo figure. Womp-womp.
Scanning an amiibo gives you a little wind-up version of the character you scanned to play the game with. As long as that character is from either the Mario or Donkey Kong family. Also Wario doesn’t count for whatever reason. If you scan any other amiibo, you get to play as a little cube robot named Mini Spek. For reasons that I will get into right away, you don’t want to be Mini Spek.
You can see above that the amiibo I scanned is named Barky. It’s my Wolf Link amiibo. I think it’s a good name. Also my Bowser amiibo’s name is Mittens.
When you scan a Mario character amiibo, you get a fancy little robot toy with a special ability. For example, Mini Mario can do wall jumps, Mini Peach can hover over short gaps, and Mini Bowser Jr can cross over spikes unharmed. These special abilities can be used to collect amiibo tokens scattered about the stages and enter special character-specific doors.
The doors unlock small worlds off the main path, which essentially means that you’re limited to about 11 stages if you don’t have the correct amiibos. Mini Spek is completely unable to enter (or even reach) the character doors, as he has no abilities whatsoever. His game will be over before you know it. Stages unlocked by Mario amiibos account for more than half the game, and nearly all of it when you consider that amiibo tokens unlock the Star World stages.
That sounds pretty bad, yeah? What’s even worse is that the gameplay is actually really fun, so you’d better already have those amiibos, because that’s some really expense DLC if you’re comparing content to dollars spent (an amiibo figure costs $15.99). And if you don’t want to collect those Mario amiibos? You might as well just skip this game. The stages you can play with Mini Spek are good, but ultimately they just made me hungry for more.
Each stage is a little puzzle where you have to get your toy character to the door at the end. You have a certain number of items, like girders and trampolines, to move around the stage to avoid obstacles, and there are coins scattered about to bump up your score. Imagine Lemmings, except you manipulate the environment instead of the character. Figuring out the path to the exit is usually easy enough, but collecting all the coins and finishing the stage fast enough will earn you a trophy, and that takes a little more finesse.
It’s really too bad that Amiibo Challenge is shackled to amiibos, but I suppose that was never intended as a surprise. It is right in the name, after all. The upside is that if you don’t want to spend $160 on amiibos to get all that this game offers, Mario vs Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars (available as a cross-buy on Wii U and 3DS) has the exact same gameplay at a much lower cost. So I think I’ll probably check that out, because like I said, Amiibo Challenge has really only just whet my appetite for this kind of puzzle game.
We all know when Bruce Banner says “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” that he’s correct. I mean, at least in theory. I like the Hulk, but I don’t think I’d like to actually be around the Hulk. Or, maybe I would. I don’t know. I think we could be buds.
Anyway, I really blew that transition.
What I was originally going for is that you would like a Burger King Whopper when it’s angry. And even more so when it’s angriest.
Yes, I tried the Angriest Whopper, so you know what that means…
~Now it’s time for… How Did This Get Made?~
Wait, no. That’s not right. Geez, I am really off today.
I have no idea when this thing first came out, but I only learned about it last week, and was immediately in love. I am already a huge fan of the plain ol’ Whopper, and a version that comes on a bright red bun would be enough to send me over the moon. Unlike the black bun they did for Halloween, the red bun actually has hot sauce baked right into it. Hot sauce! Into the bun! Right in there! It’s amaaaaaaazing!
In addition to that, there is also hot sauce on the sandwich. That’s double the hot sauce! Spicy stuff! Then there are spicy onions and delicious jalapenos on there to bump up the heat even more. All that on top of the usual Whopper fixin’s make it an absolute flavour sensation. Also, easily the hottest burger I’ve ever eaten. It was wonderful.
In summary, I love the Angriest Whopper. I’m not gonna marry it, but I would if the law recognized man-sandwich unions. It is by a very wide margin the best fast food burger that I’ve ever eaten, and I literally cannot stop thinking about it. It has been nearly a week since I ate it, and every day I strongly consider finding my way to Burger King to get more. The problem is that it’s a very expensive sandwich. At $8, it’s definitely a “special occasions” kind of burger.
