Audioddity
At work, I have the luxury of being able to listen to my iPod all day. The only drawback is that I have to keep one ear open so that if my boss is trying to talk to me over the cubicle I can hear her. Having only one earbud in causes a lot of audio loss, excluding me from all the sounds that are specifically piped through one given side. Usually, as long as I’ve got the bud that hosts the lead guitar I’m fine. There are a few albums that don’t use both channels, but those are few and far between.
Anyway, the point of the story is that I was listening to A Night at the Opera the other day, and all was going well until “You’re my Best Friend” came on. It seemed normal at first, but then I noticed a very prominent omission: Freddie’s vocals were only audible on the bud that was not in my ear! The backing vocals were all pumped through my active bud, but I couldn’t hear the main lyrics at all. Actually, it was only for a single verse, so it wasn’t a terrible loss. The song has a somewhat unique stucture lyrically, so I guess it’s the second verse? The one that starts with “I’ve been wandering round” anyway.
I’m used to instruments going to one side or the other, but not the lead vocals. There are harmony parts in “The Prophet’s Song” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” that have lead and backing vocals singing back and forth between channels, but that makes sense. A single verse sung through one side only? A little less usual.
It was a bit jarring, but it seems like it was an isolated incident. I kind of want to listen to the song through the other bud to see if the vocal track used the other channel exclusively at any point, or if it was maybe a mixing error that went unnoticed. I can only assume it was intentional, but it seems like a senseless separation to me.
Xenoworld
I’ve put about a day’s worth of play time into Xenoblade Chronicles since its release date, and it never stops amazing me. There are plenty of great things about the game, but the one thing that keeps hitting me over and over is the gigantic world environments.
Exactly why I’m so impressed by these is beyond me; it’s not a new feature to video games. Hell, I think that in February I spent more time in Skyrim than I did in the real world, and that game is all gigantic world.
It might be that I’m just now starting the really appreciate these huge environments. Hitting the wide open Gran Pulse after spending countless hours of being funneled through linear environments in Final Fantasy XIII was an absolutely exhilarating experience, and the effect wasn’t lost on me. When I first stepped out onto the Bionis’ Leg (pictured above), I got really excited and thought to myself “Oh man! This is the Gran Pulse of Xenoblade! Already! It must be huuuuge!” and then I remembered that I’d just spent almost 13 hours playing in the equally humongous environment of the lake and hillsides around Colony 9.
Colony 9, for those who aren’t yet on the Xenoblade wagon (shaaaaame), is the starting area of the game. And it is humongous. Like I said above, I spent roughly 12-13 hours playing around in there alone, doing sidequests, exploring the hillsides, challenging too-strong monsters. How many JRPGs give you such a large place to play around in right off the bat? Not too many. Unlike Skyrim and its cousins, Xenoblade doesn’t give you free access to the entire world right off the hop, but it does give you a big new playground after every few story bits.
The downside is that even though you have these huge environments to play around in, there isn’t a whole lot to do in them. There are truckloads of sidequests if you have the patience to stalk the townsfolk long enough, but most of them are monster-slaying requests or monster-loot fetch-quests. Monsters in any one area come in many shapes and sizes, but can generally be sorted down into two groups: ones you can kill and ones you won’t be able to kill for a long time. In the Colony 9 area, there are monster groups ranging from level 1-10 and then they rocket up to 70+; nothing in between. So unless you want to grind those weak mooks forever, there is sort of a ceiling to character development, at least in the early areas.
There are also no treasures in the field. Sort of. There are little collectible baubles that randomly appear all over the place as blue wips that you can pick up. You can log one of each in your colletopaedia, and when you complete a category of items or location page, you get a special stat-buffing gem. Once you’ve logged one of each type, these doodads are just good for selling and bartering with NPCs. Monsters drop loot too, including armor and weapon, but they mostly seem to be crap compared to the local shop stocks.
The real reward for running around the world is the thrill of adventure, discovering new places, and looking at those beautiful landscapes. The Bionis’ Leg area alone is so majestic and verdant that I don’t think I could ever get bored of running to the top of cliffs and looking down on the scenery. It also helps that the field music tracks are fantastic and I could listen to them forever. This is most likely because the uber-talented Yoko Shimomura is one of the composers of the game’s soundtrack. I desperately want to import a copy of said soundtrack, but with an Amazon price tag of $75, I can’t convince myself to pull the trigger on this one. It would definitely be the crown jewel of my video game soundtrack collection though…
And that’s all I’ve got to report for now. I’m not very far into the game yet, so I’m willing to bet you that there will be more thoughts on it in the future.
Twist and scarf
To the right of this test box is an image of a bag of Twistos, my new favouritest cracker. If the bag is to be beleived, they’re pretty new in general, too.
You see here the bruschetta flavour, and there are a couple other cheese-themed varieties, but they aren’t worth remembering because bruschetta is the best of the bunch, hands down. The other ones aren’t bad, mind you, they just pale in comparison to the deliciousness of the crumbelievable bruschetta flavour.
The crackers themselves are more like little bits of toasted bread than your traditional cracker, incidentally giving them a very similar texture to actual bruschetta. They’re have a very satisfying crunch to them but aren’t nearly as tough as bruschetta, and they pose little to no threat of tearing up the roof of your mouth. In fact, now that I think of it, they’re almost like croutons, just repurposed to be a stand-alone product.
The really best thing about these Twistos is that they are a semi-healthy snack and they’re cheap! Usually you only get one of those benefits, but the Twistos have got it all. There really isn’t much to them nutrient-wise, but they’re relatively low in sugars, which is my big problem area. They aren’t necessarily the healthiest snack in the grocery aisle, but they’re still worlds better than the crap I usually stuff in my gullet.
I had no idea what company produces these bad boys, and a quick Google search revealed that they were originally a Spanish-language snack that only recently made its way to North American shores. Either that or PepsiCo is ripping those guys off like there’s no tomorrow. There are other snacks in the Twistos catalogue, but give the fact that our version doesn’t have a subtitle, I doubt PepsiCo intends on bringing the other types over anytime soon. Doesn’t bother me though, because those other ones don’t interest me terribly.
I just wrote 300+ words about crackers. New low?
Good job, zombie arm!
The woman and I went to see The Cabin in the Woods last weekend. Perhaps you’ve seen the trailer? It’s the one where it starts out looking like just another slasher flick, but then a bird crashes into an invisible wall of future-technology and explodes into a fireball. Maybe there’s something more to this…
Since I love cheesy slasher flicks, the interest was already there for me. But then there’s the fact that there’s a whole other level there that we don’t really know anything about, and also it’s written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard? Effin’ sign me up, man! I did read a (very convincing) review in the paper on the Friday too, which at that point was just preaching to the choir.
The Cabin in the Woods was even better than I’d hoped for, and might even beat out Drag Me to Hell as my favourite “horror” movie. If you’ll recall, I really liked Drag Me to Hell. I’d have to watch them both again, but regardless, they’re both amazing films, and I heartily recommend them both. That’s a little too straight to the point though; let’s talk a little more about The Cabin in the Woods.
The movie is played off in the trailer as a pretty generic slasher flick, where four sexy teens and Topher from Dollhouse head off to a creepy, secluded cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway. Does that sound like a million other movies? Yeah, a little. But there is a second plot! It involves professionally-dressed men (and Whiskey from Dollhouse!) in some kind of fancy complex monitoring and ever-so-slightly controlling the fates of our cabin-goers. It’s not a spoiler, because it becomes apparent that this is happening within the first half-hour of the film.
Eventually the stories truly intertwine, and we see that they’re two sides of the same coin, equal parts of a bigger picture. This is still sounding a little generic, but there’s a lot of subtext here, and the whole movie is really one big deconstruction of the horror/slasher genre. But all pretension aside, what matters at the end of the day is that The Cabin in the Woods is hilarious. Sometimes in a tongue-in-cheek way, sometimes ironically, and most of the time very blatantly.
This is a movie about making fun of other movies, and it is a beautiful thing. You know all those terrible [Genre] Movie parodies that are terrible and should be forgotten from human history? The Cabin in the Woods is exactly what those movies wish they could be. It is poking fun at many, many other movies, but not doing it with an endless stream of references and fart jokes. The closest thing to a reference in this movie is… ah, I don’t really want to spoil it. But I will say that there are a couple short scenes that will leave Hellraiser fans grinning. Anyway, The Cabin in the Woods is funny and very smart, but it’s not inaccessible, which is what puts it head and shoulders above pretty much every other parody ever.
The Cabin in the Woods even spends a lot of time satirizing the people who go to the kind of movie it’s ripping on. Yeah, me. And that’s cool. There’s an element of reality TV parody here too, and I found it to be much more entertaining than the other movie doing that, The Hunger Games. But that’s another story entirely.
So again, The Cabin in the Woods is great. Go see it, and be ready for copious amounts of hilarity and blood. Also a unicorn.
Let’s Play MegaMan X – Spark Mandrill
The rain won’t let up
I have finished Silent Hill: Downpour twice now. One more run and I’ll be part of the 1000/1000 club. You may have gotten the impression that I really liked the game last time I talked about it, and to that end, you’d be right. It’s exactly what a Silent Hill game should be: creepy, atmospheric, mysterious, and mind-bending. It has all the best qualities of a classic-style survival horror game, but cuts off most of the cruft to make it a more brisk, enjoyable game.
There are, however, a few downsides. Pobody’s nerfect, and the Vatra team is no exception to that rule. They did a really excellent job for a relatively inexperienced studio, but there are a few things that made my playtime less than optimal. The most obvious flaw with Downpour is the horrible, horrible lag. On my first run it wasn’t really an issue until I was wrapping up a few side quests near the end. Because I was taking my time and looking into every nook and cranny, the game had more than enough time to get everything loaded up and keep the framerate at a decent level. Only when I started motoring back and forth across town did I start to notice that the engine was having a lot of trouble keeping up with me, and things got really choppy. My second playthrough was even worse, because I was basically gunning it to wherever I needed to be next, and that is apparently not how you’re supposed to play. I worry about how my third run will go, since it’s essentially going to be a speed run to pop the last three cheevos.
The other thing that really got under my skin is that there’s only one save file. I’m not such an obsessive gamer that I save over multiple files in one run, but I do like to have more than one save on hand at times. Especially since there is a point of no return near the end of the game. Aside from that though, there isn’t really a need to have more than one save in this game, but I’d like to have the option available so that I could say, have a save game that leads right into the joke ending. Downpour is also the type of game that auto-saves. And it only auto-saves. There are checkpoints everywhere, and even if there isn’t an obvious one around, you can always go into a building to save. I feel like it would just be a lot more convenient to have a button on the menu to save though. Is it really that hard? The auto-save slavery still beats having to find an actual save point, I guess.
Aside from the framerate issue, these are very minor complaints though. Having multiple save slots and a manual save option would be nice, but the game works fine without them. Other than that, I am pleased as punch with Downpour. The sentiment doesn’t seem to be too popular with the rest of the internet, but nuts to those guys. Vatra took Silent Hill in a great direction, and Tomm Hulett is most definitely still in my good books for the work he’s done with the franchise. Here’s hoping that the next one is just as good.
Let’s Play Megaman X – Boomer Kuwanger
The Star Wars Mega Egg
I love Star Wars.
Let’s pause for a moment to let that sink in. I feel like after the prequel trilogy, a lot of the love for Star Wars has waned. Not without good reason, but still! Me, I still love Star Wars. I make sure to watch A New Hope at least once a year. Ideally I’d make time to watch the original trilogy once a month (and the prequels once a year), but I have tons of other stuff on my plate, be they things I am required to do or just other frivolous time-wasters. So I generally don’t watch the Star Wars movies more than once a year.
It should be noted that this fanboy love is directed almost entirely at the original trilogy and works that spin off from those three movies. I have played very few Star Wars games that don’t star Luke Skywalker and friends, and I’ve only read a handful of Star Wars novels, in most of which the main character is Han Solo. This one time I thought about playing Knights of the Old Republic, but I didn’t own an Xbox and my PC was not equipped to run it. I only own the prequel trilogy because they came packed-in with my blu-ray copies of the first three films.
All that said, I’ve never seen the Clone Wars movie, nor have I watched the equally fugly Star Wars: Clone Wars television series. I own the DVDs of the (comparatively beautiful) 2D animated Clone Wars series, but that’s about all I’ve ever had to do with whatever happened between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. So if I hadn’t been actively seeking a curiosity to write this article about, I wouldn’t have given this Star Wars Mega Egg a second glance. Heck, I might not have even noticed the durned thing at all.
The rest of the label is curiously devoid of any more mentions of a possible surprise, but it does go to great lengths to scientifically describe exactly what the candy gift will be. Of course, I’m no scienceist, so I have no idea what any of that jargon means aside from the fact that it’s all just chunks of sugar. That’s pretty much all I expect from candy gifts though, so I’m sure it’ll be great! Acceptable, at the very least.
I won’t lie, I’m pretty darned excited about the jelly candy that’s rumoured to be inside. You have no idea the jellified wonders I’ve got parading around in my mind.
Apparently the Mega Egg wants me to join the Official Star Wars Fan Club. I’m not certain, but I have a feeling that the Star Wars website that the provided web address is pointing me to is of a very different demographic than I would expect. My idea of a Star Wars fan club is a bunch of fanboys (and maybe a girl) poring over their favourite series of movies, trading various cards and/or comics, showing each other their fan art and home-made costumes, and other such nerdly activites. You know, somewhere I’d really feel at home. The Mega Egg is likely just to attract eight-year-olds who think the Clone Wars TV show is the bomb (or whatever the kids say these days) and have no idea that the original movies exist.
Upon actually typing that link into my browser, I have discovered that the Official Star Wars Fan Club no longer exists. Well, visiting the site just proved that the site was gone, the actual discovery came from a cunning Google search and the skimming of a brief FAQ.
Either way, the OSWFC is gone and I now understand why the Force has felt so sorrowful for some time now.
Back to the matter at hand, the Mega Egg has a trio of holes in the top. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t candy generally sealed in airtight packages? Do sugar chunks need to breathe? Is my candy gift more than I’d bargained for, or is that surprise going to be even more surprising than I’d expected? Man, I’m getting way to into this Mega Egg.
Guys, it’s opening. It’s opening!!
I suppose that this would be a good point at which to give you a little better feel for the Mega Egg you see before you. To keep you on the edge of your seat, you see.
The Mega Egg, as far as surprise-bearing eggs go, is pretty big. It’s roughly three to four times the size of a regular Kinder Surprise egg. I had originally intended to take a picture of the Mega Egg next to another object -ideally a Kinder Surprise egg- to better illustrate its Meganess, but alas, I didn’t feel like combing Zellers’ candy aisle for a Kinder Surprise egg, and I forgot to take a comparison shot whilst taking all these other pictures.
The large size of the egg is also why I feel so compelled to capitalize the words “Mega Egg” every time I type them. It would be wrong not to give the Mega Egg the distinction of being a proper noun. I feel almost like I should be capitalizing every letter, to further glorify the Mega Egg, but it seems like the kind of thing that’s only funny for a paragraph or two. Besides, if I’d done that, I’d be out this great filler paragraph.
I’m a little worried about this, guys. It… it kind of looks like the Star Wars Mega Egg is just full of a bunch of the same packets of candy. That can’t be right. Surprise bags aren’t full of a bunch of the same thing, they’re full of different things! A surprise egg should be held to the same standard!
Speaking of surprises… I don’t see one here. Just packets of samey-lookin’ candy. Guys, I’m scared. The surprise… It’s gotta be under the candy, right? That’s what’s going on here. Yeah, that’s it.
Well, colour me disappointed. I’m not sure what colour that would be, exactly. Possibly a shade of blue? Not out-and-out sad blue, but maybe a faded blue, to show that I’m sad and also my joy has faded and been replaced with cold, gray disappointment. Yep, a faded blue would definitely be the right colour for disappointed.
This is not what I look for in any type of surprise package, be it a bag, cone, egg, or crate. Not since the Peter Puck surprise bag have I been so disappointed. What’s that? Why don’t I have a link to the Peter Puck surprise bag article? Because there isn’t one! The Peter Puck surprise bag was just several packets of puck-shaped candy and a plastic puck in which to place the candy. And every single one is the same! The Star Wars Mega Egg just barely avoids being so disappointing by containing three different kinds of candy, but I’m betting all the Star Wars Mega Eggs are the same. This is almost as big a let-down as The Phantom Menace.
Why? Because my twice-touted “surprise” is a stupid little sheet of stupid little Star Wars stickers. I suppose that when whatever candy company Lucasfilm contracted to make this thing was deciding on a demographic, they probably opted to shoot for a younger crowd. A crowd that would piss their pants in excitement when they saw that they got a buttload of candy AND more Star Wars stickers than they can count. I’m not part of that demographic.
My negative emotions are somewhat swayed by that cool C-3PO sticker though. His knee joints are monstrously oversized, but still, how could I be mad at Threepio?
Being an adult, I have absolutely no need for a copious amount of tiny Star Wars stickers, so I just mashed them all over the Mega Egg. It was looking a little naked and ashamed after being stripped of its flashy packaging.
I don’t really have a need for a huge plastic egg covered in tiny Star wars stickers either, but let’s not go splitting hairs here.
The Threepio sticker, being the biggest and bestestist sticker in the bunch, was given the honour of gracing the name tag on my lunch bag. I think it’s a pretty great spot to wear my love for Star Wars, and there really isn’t any other surface in the immediate vicinity of my computer desk where I felt like placing a sticker wouldn’t be a waste. I guess that since I’ll be moving out soon I could have pasted them all over my walls to cause my parents a minor annoyance, but I feel like they’d probably make me pull them all off. I’m not in the business of finding ways to annoy myself.
So that’s about it, I guess. No, wait. I didn’t try the candy. Let’s go have a taste, shall we? I mean, you won’t because you’re on the wrong side of the internet, but I’mma go enjoy some sugar lumps now.
I was let down immediately by the jelly candies. Mostly because they were the ones I was looking forward to the most and there ended up being only two packets of them. Also because they came exclusively in lemon flavour. They weren’t that bad, but I feel like the confectioners missed a huge opportunity by not making them all delicious red and green. Possibly blue.
The hard candy, shaped like stars, was pretty boring all around. They were all red and yellow, but both colours tasted pretty much the same. That taste, BTW, could be best described as “bland, with a hint of nothing.” Lastly, the minty-looking candies, which I assumed would taste minty as well, were not minty. I have no idea what the flavour is called, but they were pretty yummy! They weren’t overly tasty, but they certainly beat the stars. Another plus is that the stars and the mint-looking things were quite a bit softer than I’d imagined. They were still technically hard candies, but they put up just enough resistance so that chewing them didn’t hurt my feeble little girl teeth.
Overall, the Star Wars Mega Egg was a pretty big bust. That’s what I get for buying a surprise dealie from a big chain instead of a dollar store that never left 1983. I have a burning curiosity to see if there are any other possible “surprises” in the Star Wars Mega Eggs, but I don’t feel like risking another $3 for what will most likely be the exact same contents. I might luck into better-flavoured jellies, but at that point it might just be better to buy a $1 bag of jellies. They don’t come with the thrill of the surprise, but there’s also that lack of crushing disappointment, which some might consider a perk. I’ll have to think long and hard about this one…
As a little side-note, Kinder Surprises generally aren’t especially surprising, but there was a pretty neat little line of hippos dressed as Star Wars characters in them at one point. As far as I can tell, the line never reached Canada, but by that point in time I was already too old to care about Kinder Surprise toys, even if they were hippos cosplaying Star Wars characters. My point here is that this is how you whore out your brand, not with boring junk like the Mega Egg.
Here I go a-counting
Oh my goodness you guys, accounting.
So I do that now. Professionally. Semi-professionally. Training to be able to work in the field with an air of professionalism. It is my position title. It’s repetitive, and tedious, and really, really not at all exciting. I love it. I’m the kind of person who can while away hours days grinding experience in old-school RPGs, so this really is a good fit for me.
I only recently realized a possible subconscious reason I’ve been so gung-ho to get into accounting. And I am taking that knowledge to the grave. Let’s say it’s an “unfinished business” kind of thing.
And that’s awesome and all but there’s nothing really interesting to say about my days at work: I plug in some numbers and then plug in some more numbers. Rinse and repeat. Once in a while I stop to pay some bills, which results in more number-pluggage. Anything I do think would be type-worthy information is Top Secret. I suppose it’s notable that riding the bus to and fro again has been considerably more pleasant than I’d expected, aside from occasional bouts with light motion sickness. I’m a little disappointed that it’s been a dry well for StreetPasses so far. But I’ve only been bussing for a week, so maybe everyone who rides with their 3DS was on vacation over the last week.
In other news, I’m doing something completely crazy: I’m writing an article. Yeah, you know, those silly things this website used to be built on? Maybe you don’t know. It’s not a thing I really do much anymore. Anywho, it’s a classic-style article. I don’t want to give anything away, but I will say that it is not about video games. SHOCKER! The only problem left is that I seem to have completely forgotten how to write at length about silly things that are not projected onto my television/computer screen. This could be a terrible idea.