Remember last week when I wrote a thing about Final Fantasy V: The Ancient Cave and how I was going to do a video Let’s Play of it? No? Then nuts to you; do a better job of reading my blog.
Anyway, that’s a thing now. Enjoy. (And if you know anything about FFV, drop a comment to help me out!)
The guy who is way too into spelling in me is going nuts right now. On a short trip away from my desk yesterday to seek out some throat lozenges and lunch, I came across something I’d never seen before: Cadbury Screme Eggs.
I’ve been mostly out of the candy scene for a few years now, only occasionally browsing dollar store candy aisles in hopes of finding something that has some sort of ridiculous quality to it. Barring the Star Wars Mega Egg -which I’d file under “Star Wars” or “Disappointing Garbage” before “candy”- it’s been over three years since my last candy article. And another three years to the one before that. I need to get out of my video game writing rut.
Hey, maybe three years from now I’ll rustle up the will to write another one.
Let’s get this straight right away: I don’t always have the best judgement of when something’s a good idea, and when it not. But neither do you, so shut up.
Over the last couple weeks, Talking Time has been all abuzz about rougelikes. For any that might not know, roguelikes are games that are like a really old game called Rogue. Distilled down to their base elements, they are games that feature randomly-generated dungeons and make you start back from zero every time you’re killed. Most are on the PC, with Nethack being the big fish in that pool, and Chunsoft’s Mystery Dungeon series has carved out a pretty well-renowned name for itself as far as console editions go. Spelunky is a side-scrolling action variant on the normally turn-based RPG nature of the genre.
The kids at TT have always been into roguelikes, because Parish (our fearless leader) told them to. Lately, the mania has resurfaced because of a ROM hack, of all things.
A delicious, ice-cold Pepsi, that is.
Yesterday, Brickroad’s YouTube account was terminated without cause or warning. This is sad for many, many reasons. The most obvious being that Brick was one of the very few video Let’s Players that I could stand to watch for a whole video*. The other big one being that despite the fact that I own the game, I will probably never see the end of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge now because he hadn’t finished uploading that particular LP series before his account was banned. Now I’m actually going to have to go back and play the game. Who even does that anymore?
It should be noted that his current Shiren The Wanderer LP was pretty damn entertaining too. Made me buy a used copy of the game just so I could get in on the action.
But this is a real shame because Brickroad was good at what he did. He was a font of knowledge about most of the games he played, and I am incredibly envious of just how much he knows about some games. I don’t know nearly as much about any one game as he did about several of the games he had LPs of. I wish that there was just one game I could rattle off trivia about throughout a whole playthrough, or that I knew one game well enough to play through at 150% speed. Of course, even if I had the knowledge or skill for that kind of LP, I still wouldn’t be funny enough to keep people hooked. I think I’ve got the reactive humour down, but I’m not nearly as witty as I’d like to be.
I like to think that Brickroad’s influence shines through fairly obviously in my Let’s Plays. Both in style and substance. Just look at my video descriptions: a total ripoff of the Brickroad three-bullet-point system. I dressed it up a bit, but it’s unmistakable.
I’m still not really into reading or watching LPs in general, but there’s no doubt that I’ll pay attention to any new Brickroad projects. That is, assuming they happen. Hopefully this YouTube debacle doesn’t stop him from playing video games for the amusement of others.
The last thing I want is for this post to double as an eulogy.
*As it turns out, most of the Talking Tyrants who do video LPs are pretty decent too. Better than me, at any rate. You’d do well to check them out.
I’ve somewhat randomly decided to start playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga again, partly because I had some strange desire to actually use my Game Boy Micro, and partly because I wanted a bus game. By that, I mean a game which I play exclusively whilst riding the bus. Since I spend at least 80 minutes on the bus each day, it seemed like a pretty good idea.
Only problem here is that I seem to have some kind of mental block when it comes to playing video games on the bus. I have no idea why, but I have a terribly difficult time even pulling a handheld out of my pocket, never mind turning it on and actually playing the stupid thing. Totally inverse of where I was when the first DS debuted, when I’d take any opportunity to whip that baby out and get some portable gaming done. Maybe I’m subconsciously ashamed of being an adult playing video games in public. I blame my location. I generally don’t even get StreetPass tags when I walk around with my 3DS, never mind actually see other people play video games in public. Roughly 50% of the bus riders I see have got their noses in iPads, but not a one has ever been playing a game. Never, have I seen anyone over 10 years of age brandishing a DS or PSP when not at Comic-Con.
I should move to Japan.
But the thing I originally wanted to post about is that Superstar Saga is driving me crazy. And it’s not really the game itself that I have a problem with. No, it’s just as enjoyable as it was (almost) a decade ago. It’s the controls that are getting to me.
You know how every game that’s ever been made by Nintendo uses the Start button (in Wii’s case, the + button) to pause? Not this game. In Superstar Saga, the Select button is the pause/menu button. And Start is the button you use to swap between the Mario bros. There is a lot of swapping required, and because of the silly button reversal, I end up going into the menu every few seconds. It’s so incredibly frustrating that I kind of want to stop playing.
But I won’t, because Superstar Saga still hits all the right notes where buttons aren’t concerned. It’s a fun, breezy romp with a battle system that keeps you engaged. The music is wonderful (but who would expect any less from Yoko Shimomura?) and I still have to stifle my laughter at the often humorous dialogue. If I can get past this silly Start/Select inversion, I’m sure it’ll be a wonderful time for everyone involved.
So me. It’ll be a wonderful time for me.
As a homeowner and husband, I’ve recently been forced to learn how to use a kitchen. Not that I have a problem with that. Cooking has always been something I’ve been interested in, but never bothered to pursue at any length. Prior to the last couple weeks, most of my food preparation skills points had been allotted to toast and Kraft Dinner. Also chocolate strawberry banana pancakes, that one time.
Now I’m branching out little by little, and I’m starting to learn things about making foods that are not associated mostly with single men. Nothing super facny so far, mostly just learning to not ruin the premade stuff that has a more complicated heating process than “microwave = win.” So yeah. Most of my accomplishments can be summed up now by “put stuff into boiling water and wait.”
But! Last week I did something a little more elaborate. And by that, I mean I put stuff in boiled water and pan-fried some beef. Aaah yeah. Here’s a picture of what I did.
I’m very proud of this dish. Not only because I found it edible, but because The Wife also really enjoyed it. So mission accomplished there. I guess I’m pretty happy that rice is so easy to cook too. I can’t think of any examples, but I seem to recall hearing many people over my life claim that rice is hard to get right. But I did it. On my first try. It’s as easy as reading the back of the box!
The beef, I went a little crazy on. I popped it up on the frying pan and tossed a little water and butter in there to give it a little smoothness. I’m sure there’s a term for this, but I have no idea what it is. I actually made this meal two days in a row, too. The second time around I dribbled a bit of soya sauce into the pan as well, in hopes that the beef would absorb the flavour, and then liberally sprinkled some ginger on top to add one final punch. Then I chopped up a few carrots and tossed them in so that the dish would contain some trace of vegetable.
When all was said and done, I globbed on a bunch of sweet & sour sauce, and mixed that baby up. You may think that I put too many flavours into this bad boy, but that’s not the case. Aside from the ginger, each flavour had its place and I can only describe the result as “tasty.” It certainly wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever eaten, but it was far and away the best thing I’ve ever prepared on my own.
…crap like this is why nobody takes you seriously.
And the fact that it took me ten days to post this is why nobody takes me seriously.
I was casually skimming the Globe and Mail at work yesterday, when I saw a tagline that had “Sherlock Holmes” and “mommy porn” in the same sentence. I needed to read whatever caused that. Frankly, I was also a little surprised that the universe hadn’t been ripped asunder by such a contrast of ideas.
What I found was this article. What a horrid, horrid thing. If you don’t want to read it, the idea is that some jerkoff is plugging sex scenes into classic literature. Yeah, take a moment to digest that, and then come join me in finding and lynching this dude and whoever is funding him.
This is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. And the worst part is that the article’s author defends this abhorrent practice. He justifies it by suggesting that all throughout history we’ve re-writeen stories to better suit our needs. Yes, Disney retooled The Little Mermaid so that kids could enjoy it. They did that because the original is a horrifying and gruesome story. They pretty much changed it entirely. They made it accessible. What Total E-Bound is doing here would be like if Disney had just stuck a song and dance number into the original Little Mermaid. Shoehorning something into a piece of work that it doesn’t belong in is not something to be championed. Nevermind the fact that this butthole is turning Sherlock Holmes gay. Stop changing established characters! It’s not that I even have an issue with gayness in general, it’s just if I’m reading a Sherlock Holmes story and he starts spankin’ it to thoughts of Watson, I’m going to stop reading Sherlock Holmes.
The light at the end of the tunnel is that the article’s author suggests that it’s okay because fan fiction has been doing it for decades. Well, I guess then that these books will just be discredited and the “author” of the sex content derided. I’m sorry, but nobody takes fan fiction seriously, and everybody makes fun of fan fiction writers (with the possible exception of other fanfic writers). Did you just completely miss the internet?
If you want to sell classic literature to a new audience, market it to that audience. Don’t smut it up in hopes of enticing the lowest common denominator. I’ve never read Jane Eyre, but Sherlock Holmes stories are intelligent and exciting enough to stand on their own. The series didn’t need homoerotic fantasies to become a classic, it damn well doesn’t need them to maintain that status.
Also, anyone who uses the term “mommy porn” without any hint of irony or sarcasm needs to be smacked. Hard.
(It does delight me to some extent that The Wife is even more pissed off about this than I am. Being that she’s a huge bookworm, I shouldn’t have been surprised.)
Hey so it’s Monster Hunter time. If you’re not interested in reading what I have to say about Monster Hunter, now would be the time to go enjoy what exists of the Articles archive.
I spent pretty much the entirety of last weekend playing Monster Hunter 3. For some reason, I felt compelled to go back and hunt Cedaeus, the final boss of the offline mode. I thought that maybe time and experience and better gear would make the fight less frustrating. Not so. Underwater hunting is still awful, and is exacerbated by the fact that Cedaeus is a gigantic (and surprisingly speedy) whale monster. It took three separate outings to get him, but I did it. It’s strange, I guess I’ve never slain him before either, because my hunt log says I only have one Cedaeus kill to my credit. Oh well.
Following that, I got annoyed that my Jaggi+ armor set still wasn’t strong enough, and decided to go online to challenge some high rank monsters, whose item drops would allow me to create better armor.
Monster Hunter 3’s online mode has a ranking system that governs what levels of hunts you can play, called Hunter Rank. I’m currently stuck at the point where I can only play up to 4-star hunts, which is the first tier of high rank quests. What that means is that it’s the beefed-up versions of the easy(ier) boss monsters. The problem here is that you need quite a few HR levels to unlock the next star level, and you need a lot of experience points to go up a rank. Also, hunts take about half an hour in general, and don’t dole out a whole lot of experience. So if you want to play MH3 to its full extent, you’ve got a lot of grinding in your future.
That’s not so bad though, because Monster Hunter is pretty darn fun.
