Today, I officially become a homeowner again. Only this time, I’m doing it alone, and it’s a convenient (if tiny) little condo instead of a whole house. Good for me!
I’m not exactly moving in today, rather I’ll be slowly migrating my belongings in over the next week. Or couple weeks. I mean, my internet isn’t even going in for a few more days. Why would I want to live anywhere that doesn’t have internet?
Stay tuned for more news and stuff or whatever!
Yes, I’m still at it, spending bits and pieces of my free time slowly whittling away at the massive backlog of games that I have sitting in my Steam account. Today, we’re going to take itty-bitty peeks at a couple that I didn’t feel really stood up to snuff. Or at least, I felt no satisfaction from playing and opted to just pass on them before investing too much time. And then also one really good game, because I don’t want to be a complete Negative Nancy.
We begin with Red’s Kingdom. The game opens with an evil king squirrel barging into Red’s house and stealing his acorn stash right out from under him, and then you have to go out and reclaim your acorns. This… seems familiar. Oh, it’s Donkey Kong Country. Probably countless other games, as well, but it makes me think of DKC.
Then you get onto the gameplay, in which you roll Red around the stages, avoiding obstacles and collecting nuts. It’s exactly like those slippery-slidey mazes in so many video games (there’s at least one in every core Pokémon game) where you move in a direction and get locked moving that way until you hit something. You know the type. I’m describing it badly, but you know it.
It’s an entire game of just that. I find those puzzles extremely aggravating when they make up one room or part of a dungeon, so you can imagine that I was not smitten with the idea of putting up with it for a whole game. Nope. I was willing to give it a shot, but 20 minutes in, I could feel my aggravation levels rising far past the recommended level, so I called it quits.
To its credit, Red’s Kingdom is a very pretty game, with really nice, colourful graphics. The cutscenes are cute and mildly humorous, and it seems like as you progress, there will be more depth to the gameplay than just sliding around from one room to the next. I’m sure that for many people, this could be a great game, but it’s definitely not for me.
Candy Thieves: Tale of Gnomes is another obvious port from a mobile phone game. The awarding of an up-to-three-stars ranking at the end of each stage is a dead giveaway. And it’s one of those mobile phone game ports that was very clearly not developed by an English-speaking team. Because the translation is a little shoddy, you see. Not the worst I’ve seen, but the grammatical errors definitely stand out.
The tale, in this case, is of a family moving into their grandfather’s house after he mysteriously disappeared. I’m sure that will be resolved in a happy ending, because so far this has seemed like a family-friendly kind of game. I don’t know, maybe it’s like Frog Fractions and goes completely off the rails after a while. In which case I’d be sad that I gave up on it after only ten minutes. But I guess I’ll never know anyway. So whatever!
Uh, back to the plot, the young boy who is our protagonist finds a mysterious box under his bed that magically produces candy. He is initially elated, but then gnomes show up and try to steal the candy. So I guess what happens is that he goes on a chase though a mystical fantasy land to stop the thieving gnomes. Again, I gave up on this one, so I really have no idea.
The gameplay is this: drag jelly blobs to the machines in the corner to produce a candy. After so long, gnomes will start pouring out of the set dressing to try to steal candy from your pile. You click on gnomes to pop them. Sometimes they have balloons or fishing rods to aid in their thievery. So it’s basically a tower defence game, except that if you pop a gnome who is absconding with a candy, you can drag that candy back to the safety of the pile. It’s a little more forgiving that most games in the genre.
There’s also a feature where you can lay out traps to help defend against the gnomes, but I got bored before earning more than the basic spring, which launches any gnome that steps on it to his doom. Honestly, I think I may have had slightly more fun with this if I’d played on an iPad or something. It’s definitely designed with the idea that you’ll be poking and swiping with your fingers, not a mouse cursor. But even then, it’s just so bland and boring that I can’t imagine that it would have held my attention much longer even on the intended computing machine.
Lastly, we have VOI. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be pronounced “voy” or “vee-oh-eye.” I suppose it really doesn’t matter, since this thing is written and nobody would know if I’m pronouncing it wrong anyway.
V-O-I has something in common with the two other games on this list. You’ve probably already guessed it: this is a port of a mobile phone game. Or at least that’s what I’m assuming. It has all the hallmarks: minimalist design, gameplay made for touch controls, a simple UI, and bite-sized puzzles. There’s no way this wasn’t an iOS darling for a week at some point.
However! VOI also has a significant feature that separates it from Red’s Kingdom and Candy Thieves: it’s actually fun to play. The puzzles are simple and most of them took me less than a minute to solve, but I was hooked almost instantaneously. And then once the game started pulling out some of its trickier puzzles, I found myself in a wonderland of puzzley goodness.
Despite the game’s simplicity, VOI’s gameplay is a little more complex to describe. It’s a little like tangrams, but instead of mashing all the pieces into a larger shape, you have to layer them on top of each other to replicate a pattern. But it’s not that simple! When you lay one of the black pieces on top of another, any area where they intersect becomes white. Add a third piece to the pile, and it becomes black again. So you have a sort of mix-and-match thing going on where not only do you have to align the black pieces correctly, but you also have to make sure that certain parts get whited out.
Like I said, it’s not overly challenging, but it feels very rewarding to solve these puzzles. I will admit that on a couple of them, I resorted to somewhat brute-forcing my way through, just randomly slapping pieces down to see what happens. For the most part, though, I was able to look at the pattern and pieces and visualize what went where.
I had so much fun with VOI, in fact, that when I finished the 66th and final puzzle, it hit me like a ton a bricks and I was left a little disappointed that it was already over. I still think that if you have a buck-fifty burning a hole in your pocket and an hour to kill, VOI is an excellent way to spend both your extra time and money. Highly recommended!
I don’t know if this is going to become a regular thing or not, but I’m trying out something new. Well, a new spin on something I’ve been doing for years, anyhow. You know that Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up post that you ignore every month? Well, there’s one for movies now.
On the upside, I watch very few movies, so at least this should be a fairly light feature.
Power Rangers – The reboot that came out earlier this year, that I really wanted to see, but nobody I know gives a flip about Power Rangers. This is probably more on me, because I barely know any people at all. Anyway, I finally watched it, now that it’s available on home video.
Anyhow, I went in expecting the worst, and I was… well, it exceeded my expectations. I enjoyed it overall, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The Power Rangers are now straight-up superheroes, which is fine, Jason has a sword-arm, which is awesome, and Alpha 5 was somewhere between terrible and hilarious. I also liked the characterizations of the new rangers, how they all come from vastly different backgrounds and have actual depth instead of being one-note stereotypes. My biggest question about the movie is how in the heck did they land Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Banks?
So what was wrong with it? It’s the worst kind of origin story. The kind of origin story that runs over two hours (yes, really), but all the action is crammed into the last ten minutes. The Megazord looked too much like a Michael Bay Transformer, and for some reason the Mastodon Zord had eight legs. Also, during those final moments, Angel Grove suffers destruction relative to how badly Metropolis got torn apart in Man of Steel. Not quite razed to the ground, but for a smallish town, you wonder if the residents are even going to bother trying to rebuild.
Three-Headed Shark Attack – Many years ago, I watched a film called Two-Headed Shark Attack, and I remember absolutely nothing about it, other than Carmen Electra was in it literally just to be eye candy. Unlike Sharknado, it left no impression on me, so I wavered a bit before deciding to watch the sequel.
But then I did anyway, and it’s one of those sequels that has nothing in common with the previous movie except for a vague theme. Or specific theme? Mutant sharks. I guess that’s not especially vague. This movie is about a bunch of environmental researchers and hippies working near a massive island of garbage off some unmentioned coast. Turns out the pollution is mutating local animals, the biggest of which is our title monster: the three-headed shark.
The shark somehow destroys the research facility and then attacks a booze cruise that happens to be passing by. The research station survivors desperately try to save the ship, but pretty much everyone dies. Danny Trejo shows up and lops a head off the shark, seemingly killing it. Then it’s discovered that the shark will regrow two heads for every one that it loses, like the mythical hydra. Eventually the shark defeats itself when the many heads end up fighting for food and bite each other to death. Somehow.
Guys, don’t ever watch this. Unless you’re doing a bad movie podcast or something.
Wonder Woman – It’s great. It’s just great. Excellent. I never gave a damn about Wonder Woman, because I’m not really into anything DC outside of Batman, but holy cow I sure do care about the Wonder Woman cinematic universe now.
For one, it gets everything right that Power Rangers flubbed. It’s an origin story, but it’s gripping the whole time and you don’t have to wait until the very end to actually see the hero in action. There’s a bit too long of a lead-in with the background lore, but there’s still a huge battle within the first 15 minutes. And then a journey to collect a ragtag group of mercenaries to stop a foe that may or may not even be real.
I should mention that both Gal Gadot and Chris Pine are superb in their roles, and I really just want to go on more hilarious adventures with them. That’s not to take away from any of the supporting characters, though! Everyone was great and the whole movie was just about perfect. The one thing that I need to gripe about is the fact that the lasso effects did not look very good in combat. But that’s it! that’s literally the only thing I disliked about this movie! Crazy!
Satanic – And so with all that gushing about how great Wonder Woman is, we come to our last film of the month, which was unfortunately pretty bad. Of course, like all the bad movies I watch these days, this was a Netflix recommendation that missed the mark.
In this one, we follow a foursome of young people out on a road trip, who stop in LA to check out some historic Satanist sites or whatever. Along the way, they “rescue” a young lady from a Satanist cult. However, it turns out that the cult wanted her out because she was too crazy, and the young lady curses the group just before slitting her own throat. And so our heroes are stalked by an unseen force that traps them in a nightmare world and kills them one by one.
I feel like there might have been potential here, but every character is unlikable and the acting is terrible, so you want to see them die. But all the kills are off-screen, and the movie ends with the main girl trapped in an empty, black cube, her mouth sewn shut and her limbs amputated. There is no precedent for this. It makes no sense. It’s just there as a weird, shocking thing to end on. Super lame. Also, it’s another one of those movies that just spends so much time building up that all the “action” at the very end, only there’s no real payoff. None of it means anything. Blech.
My youngest brother is in the process of cleaning out his bedroom, tossing or selling all of the things that he’s willing to part with. There have been many unfortunate losses, but I simply can’t re-adopt that Nintendo Power collection that I gave to him so many years ago.
Among other things that he has opted not to keep are the first three seasons of Criminal Minds on DVD. Now, I do very much enjoy Criminal Minds -it swiftly became one of my favourite TV shows after I was introduced to it- so I eagerly gave them a loving home in my own DVD shelf. The thing is, Criminal Minds was never one of my shows, if you get my drift. I always watched it in certain company, and as a result it has a lot of emotional baggage tied to it.
Now I sit here, looking at these DVD sets, completely unsure about what to do. On one hand, I know I’d like to watch them, because I sure do love that show. On the other hand, it’s got a loaded history and I might have a complete emotional breakdown if I try to watch them.
Today’s lesson is this: never get attached to people, only get attached to things.
I was reviewing my bank account the other day and nearly died laughing when I saw this credit card payment entry:
(If you’re not aware, a merkin is a wig for your genitals.)
This came about because you aren’t allowed a ton of characters in a transaction description, so I often truncate it… this payment happened to be for Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and my ticket to The Merkin Sisters.
Mighty Gunvolt Burst (Switch) – I really adore this one. Played through twice now, as both Beck and Gunvolt, and then just kept playing. Also, the Ekoro DLC came out late in the month, so…
Vaccine War (PC) – I wrote a thing. Kinda meh.
Blaster Master Zero (Switch) – They’re releasing more DLC characters now so I opted to go back and play with the already-out DLC guys. Gunvolt is awesome and makes the game feel new!
Until Dawn (PS4) – I try not to use this word about video games, but I loved this one.
Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (NES) – The Netflix series and a nice My Nintendo discount inspired me to try one of the few ‘Vania games I’ve never played. Decent, but steeped in bulls**t.
Citadale: Curse of Darkness (WiiU) – Second chapter in the trilogy, solidifying the Casltevania “homage” by using an exact Castlevania subtitle. Perfectly average in all ways.
Super Mario 64 (N64) – I did something new this time and finished the game in a single sitting. Only to the requisite 71 stars, but hey, I’m not some kind of superman.
Tales from the Borderlands (PS4) – I wasn’t impressed with Episode 1, to the point where I was calling it Tales from the Snore-derlands. However, it got so much better once Gortys showed up.
BioShock Infinite (360) – A significantly more interesting tale than the original BioShock, but for some reason the gameplay still feels hollow to me, and I can’t figure out why.
Azure Striker Gunvolt (3DS) – Bought this in August of 2014 when it originally launched, haven’t played it until now. Massive oversight. It is excellent, but very difficult to actually be good at.
Resident Evil HD (PS4) – You know, initially I figured I’d do a one-sitting run of this. And then said run took nearly two months to complete. Damned distractions.
Red’s Kingdom (PC) – Quit playing after 20 minutes because I wasn’t having any fun.
I currently have two albums pre-ordered, both of which release in August. That’s about the end of what they have in common. They literally could not be any more different.
Firstly, we have Brendon Small’s Galaktikon II: Become the Storm, which is a follow-up to one of my favourite albums of all time. The original Galaktikon is a masterful metal album that tells the story of a divorced intergalactic super hero who must rescue his ex-wife from his nemesis. It’s beautiful and unique and given the subject matter, a few songs hit surprisingly close to home. Most important of all, it knows that its premise is ridiculous and goes to great lengths to really ham it up. Oh, and also the music is terrific and every song on the album is a winner.
Galaktikon II has been said to have a somewhat different objective: to be a new Dethklok album, only without the Dethklok name. This is awesome because I love Dethlkok, but at the same time I also wanted a straight sequel to Galaktikon. Fortunately, Brendon Small seems to have split the difference, as the two currently released tracks from Galaktikon II each have distinctly familiar sounds. “Nightmare” is something that sounds absolutely like a Galaktikon song, but is wholly new and is actually pretty creepy. “My Name is Murder” on the other hand, you could easily mistake for a Dethklok track. I don’t know how to explain it properly, but I can absolutely tell you that without a doubt, we’ve got Nathan goddamn Explosion on vocals here. So yeah, Galaktikon II looks like it’ll be the best of both worlds, and that’s really the most that anyone could ask for.
Our other album is Rainbow, Kesha’s re-debut after being freed from the tyranny of… whatever that whole deal was. I know she was in a huge lawsuit with her old producer, but I didn’t follow it closely enough to be able to write about it with any certainty. And we all know that I’m not going to be doing the research. Anyway, I am absolutely in love with her last album, Warrior, which as you may recall is another one of my all-time favourites. So I’m looking forward to seeing what she’s got to offer with a little more freedom to do what she wants and (ostensibly) a lot less corporate meddling.
Like Galaktikon II, I’ve listened to two tracks off of Rainbow already, and again, they showcase two different sides of the album. “Praying” is a song that obviously is very close to Kesha’s heart, as it is a half-jab at her old producer or whatever. It’s a mature response, though, as it’s more about she grew stronger through her trials, and how she forgives ol’ what’s-his-face for all that he put her through. “Woman” on the other hand, is a straight-up celebration of Kesha’s pride at being a strong, independent woman. And why shouldn’t she be? All women should aspire to that. All people should aspire to be strong and independent. It’s a bumpin’ track that gets me shouting along as Kesha belts out the “I’m a motherf**kin’ woman!!” hook. Love it. Rainbow is going to be more of a gamble than Galaktikon II, I think, but I’m still very optimistic about it, based on my historical adoration of Kesha and the tracks that have already been released. And, you know, I’ve already pre-ordered the damn thing, so.
Rainbow will be released on August 11th, and Galaktikon II follows shortly after on August 25th. Both are available for pre-order in digital and physical formats through various retailers.
A couple days ago, I went to see my very first Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival show. It was called The Merkin Sisters and I have no idea where to even start.
While my immediate reaction upon being asked to go to the show was “ugh, not some hipster amateur-hour bulls**t,” I took a few minutes to think it over, and decided that it would be something new and different to do. If nothing else it would likely be something vaguely interesting to talk about, if by some chance another human were to engage me in conversation.
Then I learned that it was a comedy show, and I was 100% on board.
Now, comedy is… not an entirely accurate descriptor. There were many laughs during the show, for sure, but it was more like a series of weird performance art pieces that just happened to elicit laughter from the audience. This was a bizzare show, a strange combination of interpretive dance, puppets, giant wigs, and some sort of weird menstruation bit involving a pink sweater and a red scarf. It was like a cross between sketch comedy and a hallucinogenic drug trip.
A show more about physical comedy and just being weird, the actresses (is that the right word?) were weirdly robotic throughout the show, often moving in quick, stilted motions and barking out lines emotionlessly in that weird way that performance artists do on TV. It was somehow even weirder after the show when they dropped their stage personas and acted like regular human beings as they thanked the audience, recommended other shows, and presented their merch.
I think that the nicest way to sum up my feelings about the experience is that I’m not smart enough to have really “gotten it.” It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did. I just felt confused and bewildered more than anything. I was acutely aware that I wasn’t laughing as much as the rest of the audience, which makes me a little sad. I wanted to like it more than I did, but what can you do? I’d definitely recommend seeing The Merkin Sisters though, as it is absolutely unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. Maybe I didn’t get all the lulz, but I’m still glad that I went.
I had the week off work last week, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I did enough with it. I mean, usually that’s how I spend my time off anyway because I’m poor and can’t afford to go anywhere on vacation, except for maybe a day trip to Selkirk. But for some reason I feel as though I should have “accomplished” more, even though I did get a handful of important things done, and had plenty of fun.
Monday was a good day, but not productive in any way. Edwin and I spent nearly the entire day clearing Super Mario 64 in a single sitting, and banging our heads against Syphon Filter. Not the usual write-off, because I spent the day playing video games with a friend instead of all by my lonesome. I also briefly visited with a number of out-of-town relatives in the evening, as there was a gathering and dinner at my grandparent’s place. Mmmm… delicious steak. Also I put gas in my car for the first time in probably two months. Closed out the evening by staying up too late after purchasing Citadale: the Legends Trilogy and hacking my way through the second chapter.
Tuesday morning was spent finishing off the final episode of Tales From the Borderlands, which was as excellent as the first episode was boring. In the afternoon, I had a very successful dentist appointment. No new cavities, and they showed me before and after photos so that I could see exactly how much crap was piling up between my teeth because I don’t floss. Also I finally made appointments to get a crown placed on my tooth that got a root canal two years ago, so that’s nice. Later on, watched The Bachelorette with my family, as we do. As for the rest of the evening? Probably spent watching Mike Tyson Mysteries or Game Grumps. I’m sure I stayed up way too late again, because I distinctly remember thinking “Welp, I’m definitely not going to feel like accomplishing anything on Wednesday morning.”
Wednesday came along, and much like Tuesday evening, I have no recollection of how I spent it. I know I played a few stages in Azure Striker Gunvolt, but where the rest of that time went is a mystery. ARMS, maybe? I had to take my brother to a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon, after which we picked up pizza for lunch and then I finally began playing Final Fantasy XV. That evening, like most Wednesday evenings, I spent hanging out with Edwin again. On our quest to find dinner, we discovered that the Freshii by my parents’ house was finally open, so we opted to try it out. Then came a notable amount of progress in BioShock Infinite, which I am so torn on. I am quite enjoying the world and the story, and almost wish that there wasn’t any combat, because it’s really more of an annoyance than anything.
Thursday was the day I feel like I really accomplished something. I woke up early and took my car into the shop, as it had recently become very loud. Turned out that it just blew a gasket, not the whole muffler, so it was a relatively cheap fix. I got some exercise by walking home after dropping off the car, and even made a belated phone call about getting free internet in my new condo on the way. Then I ran back once the repairs were done, which pretty well burned me out. I spent the entire afternoon with FFXV, though I did take a short break to go out for another half-hour run. Then, dinner and more FFXV. It was that night when I realized that FFXV was going to stop me doing anything productive until it was done.
Friday morning was very busy! Splatoon Day! Zack and I drove all over creation looking for amiibos and the fabled Splatoon 2 pro controller for Switch. We found most of the amiibos, but no pro controllers, although we did luck into stumbling across a good birthday gift for my dad. By the time we were done, we had been out shopping for so long that on the way home we picked up Fatburger for lunch. I took in a couple episodes of Bob’s Burgers while I ate, and then spent the afternoon playing Splatoon 2, which had easily been my most anticipated Switch game. Then a couple hours break to log some more time in FFXV, and then back to Splatoon 2. I played Salmon Run all evening, only stopping because my Switch’s battery died and the wi-fi signal in my room is spotty at best, so TV play is currently not an option for online games.
There were a number of other grown-up things I could have accomplished during my week, but put off in favour of having fun. Even a lot of fun things got sidelined. No movies, no reading, no drawing; all put off in favour of sinking more hours into Final Fantasy XV. In the end, though, I had a good week. I spent way too much money on junk food and amiibos, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, I suppose. At least when you’re me.
