Odd Picture Choice

Foreshadowing!

I had this idea to help myself update regularly by doing a weekly post that just talked about the various media I had consumed recently. This was a week or two ago. As you might guess, I've already let the schedule slip before it even really began. But Apple just crashed TF2 and I'm too bitter to play anything now.

The first order of business is Minecraft. After hearing good things about this game from multiple sources I gave it a go. And for a couple days I thought it was freaking brilliant.

You are placed in a world made up of cubes of various materials that can be harvested and turned into various items. Also at night monsters spawn and murder you rather effectively if you haven't built some shelter. Beyond that you are left to make your own fun (like Garry's Mod) in a world where basically everything wants to kill you (like Dwarf Fortress). Unlike these two games however, Minecraft is a lot more accessible (once you've browsed the wiki).

Here's some of the shenanigans I got up to while I played.
Since monsters spawn in darkness I decided to convert my house to glass in my spare time when I wasn't doing things such as...
...building a tower to the top of the sky. Unfortunately you cannot walk on the clouds. Naturally the next step was to dig to the bottom of the world which was considerably more difficult. At the bottom there's several nearly complete layers of unbreakable stone. If enough gaps line up the can reach the void beneath the world. So naturally I decided to link the tunnel containing the infinite abyss to the ocean of infinite and see if I broke the game:
Nope, but apparently stairs break the water physics.

I found a strange level of enjoyment linking the ocean to the tunnel. The inability to tell where you are in relation to everything lead to me making a series of tunnels coiling all around the place, and there was a sense of suspense because I never knew when I would strike a another tunnel, which may have been full of water.

Ultimately what turned me off the game was the lack of goals as I'm not obsessive enough to be one of those people that make huge scale structures and models. Once the multiplayer gets stabilised (the game is still in alpha) I will give it another look.

Since I'm running longer than intended I'll finish up with Highschool of the Dead. When visiting the Madman site for an unrelated reason I came across this show andwas intrigued by the idea of the Japanese take on the the standard zombie apocalypse scenario. Turns out it is the same as the western one except with lots more fanservice.

No seriously, lots of fanservice.

After getting over my initial disappointment that this wasn't a dark and slightly serious work that the first episode made me believe, I came to except the show for what it is: an entertaining romp full of bloody and breasts. It's not a work of genius but it still rates higher to me than most zombie fiction.

Oh right, I haven't actually really said anything about the show itself: great animation, adequate attempt at plot, one brilliant musical homage, serviceable action, mostly fast paced, no gore despite excessive violence and blood, fanservice (cannot stress that enough), possible second season.

The Silver Age Begins...

Now that I've got a scanner I can subject you all to the various pictures that I can't reproduce in MS Paint. Here's a brief comic showing my standard reaction to the presence of a cat:

Audiosurf Vs Beat Hazard

While working towards the last achievement in Beat Hazard it occurred to me that I'd never got around to doing a comparison between Audiosurf and Beat Hazard despite there being no good reason not to. After all I frequently lament the fact that I find it difficult to rate media in a vacuum or in relation to it's context at large, but not in a direct comparison. So why the hell haven't I done this yet?

Anyway, AS and BH share the same premise, using your music to generate the level, but take it in two different directions genre-wise. AS gives you a track the length relative to your song choice and you 'race' do it, collecting coloured blocks to make groups of 3+ whereas BH gives you a top down space shooter where the firepower is determined by your music. These are both games were basically the entire goal is to get a high score. For convenience I'm going to harness the ultimate power.....of subheadings.

Visuals

The great thing about superficial things is that they're generally easier to discuss. AS' visuals could be summed up as simplistic. There isn't much in the way of textures, so everything is rather blocky and reminiscent of virtual reality in older films. Not that there is anything wrong with this; you're a car collecting blocks for points, not some war-wearied soldier or something. While the objects may be plain, the colouring is actually important. The blocks are colour-coded for value, with hotter colours being worth more. Further more, the track and background take on a hue relative to the speed of song/track, with the slow sections being blue or purple, and the fastest, most intense parts red.

BH is probably the better of the two games in terms of actual visual quality. The spaceships have some detail, and there's plenty of bloom. The catch is there's too much bloom. You see, visual distortion is a deliberate game design choice.

Artist's representation of a climatic boss fight, probably.

Unfortunately BH doesn't take a note from AS and so colour is meaningless in the gameplay. With the exception of the grey ships and the yellow missiles, the colours of the various explosions, lasers and so forth all alternate through a neon spectrum with no apparent rhyme or reason.

Gameplay

AS can be rationalised into two different styles: combo and evasion. In combo you collect the various coloured blocks and the challenge is not getting yourself in a position where you can't make groups of 3+. You can select from several racers each with their own unique abilities which further varies the gameplay. In evasion there is only one colour to get, but there are also negative grey blocks, which hurt your score noticeably, so the challenge has a lot more focus on fast manoeuvring and less quick decisions. There is only one racer choice for this (because evasion style is really just a racer's ability).

BH has several actual gameplay modes, but the core challenge remains the same: you continuously shoot while dodging oncoming objects. Beyond that there's the choices of when to use a screen-clearing bomb and when to stop shooting to raise your point multiplier. This is what kills a lot of BH's longevity for me as all rounds play out basically the same, whereas AS as some variety.

Music Relevance

Despite being a fundamental part of both games, there isn't too much depth to the effect music has on the games. In the end it is really just the speed of the song that does anything. AS changes the gradient of the track based on the song, with slow parts being uphill and fast naturally being down.

In BH your musics speed effects both the size and power of your shots, and the frequency of the enemies. Your weapons will vary between a pea shooter and a death-beam that covers a quarter of the screen, and the idea is in the lulls where you guns are useless, the idea is to play evasively and raise your daredevil multiplier. Sounds pretty cool right? Just like communism, in theory it works. As far as I can tell which enemies spawn and in what amount seems to be all determined by the difficulty and not be the music at all. I've had plenty of times where I've had massive lasers but only a couple asteroids to destroy, and other times have been stuck with the pea shooter and had to survive against two bosses.

Longevity

These are both score-based games. There are no definite goals and accomplishments, as any success just means that now the bar is higher. Personally I'm really not interested in games like this; I want to have more concrete goals, and I can't stand that feeling that there is no ceiling, I could always do better.

AS has a noticeable lead over BH in this area, as each song has its own global leaderboard complete with comment, whereas BH has just a leaderboard for highest scores in general or something (I really don't know exactly, BH doesn't present it after a song unlike AS).

Conclusion

Whether these games are worth playing depends on how into the whole 'your music makes the game' idea. If you really like that then you'll probably be disappointed, but if you already like the genre of either game anyway, then you might get more enjoyment out of it than me.

What I would like is a game that is a cross between AS and Mario Kart. I like the idea of a song making the track but I hate the implementation. I want people to race against, I want weapons, I want the track to be a circuit rather than a straight line. But that's not going to happen. Or is it?



No.

Epic

It's been too long since I've actually finished and published a post.
It seems like a weekly ritual that I must start typing something, my head swimming with awesome sounding sentences, only to realise that I have no idea how to tie the increasingly mundane sounding sentences together, and that my central idea is flawed and limited. And then I close the window and another draft is orphaned.

But enough of that, I want to talk about James Cameron's Avatar.
First off I'll say that I was pleasantly surprised by the film. I was well aware of the cliche storm (and in fact knew the entire plot) and was prepared for a long unnecessary film full of visuals that I would not care about. And I got all that I had expected: weak plot, stupid message, CG vistas.
But what I didn't expect was the level of quality. Everything may have been unoriginal but at least it was adequately done. For instance I initially groaned when there was a voice over at the start, but it had both an in universe reason (instead of say some all seeing disembodied voice) and was present through out the entire film (none of that very beginning and then very end when the audience has forgotten crap).
If I had to give it a rating on the fly, I'd say 3/5. Not worth the decade of work or deserving of the hype, but much better than I had expected.

Now that I've got that done, I can get to the meat of this post: discussing the setting. Bear with me, this will be awkward.
When you look at sci fi worlds you can often hazard a guess as to whether they are built around established rules and their consequences, or whether it just follows the rule of cool. Avatar is an interesting film as I think it was conceived as just a bunch of awesome ideas (floating mountains, world trees, pterodactyl mounts) that then had reasons made to hold them all together. It's contrived but it's better than no reason at all.

So the planet Pandora is rich with Unobtainium, which is a multi-purpose material that is incredibly valuable and a tradition trope of sci fi universe. The presence of this substance (I assume, it better be fucking canon or else they've got one hell of a contrived coincidence) allows the development of basically a tree-based network that connects living creatures, acts as a pseudo-afterlife, and contains an alien god-mind. It's the cross between the internet and the Farplane.

What's the problem then? Remember the end battle, with the military about to win only for the forces of nature to arrive and wreck their shit up. Sure it's a deus ex machina but at least there's some foreshadowing; it's not completely out of nowhere.

No what bothers me is this: how does Eywa communicate with all the predators? Does the wildlife just plug into trees in their spare time? One could argue that there was some sort of wireless communication but that completely undermines the whole premise of the bio-USB's and is not hinted at what so ever. It happens purely because the plot needs it to.

This same level of reasoning occurs in two other situations. The first is the mind transfer bit at the Tree of Souls. Apparently Pandora's plants can connect to the human mind via our skin, kind of like how when your put a book next to a TV, the story is shown on the screen. Fine I'll ignore this one, it only happens twice so it's not in your face all the time mocking logic. The next point is though: the freaking avatars.

The drivers get in their tanning beds, see some stock swirling vortexes, and then bam! they are controlling an alien body. How is this possible? Are their brainwaves being broadcast between bodies? If so wouldn't the floating mountains interfere? A side effect of this slopping planning/design is that it trivialises the whole Pandora USB thing. Who cares about wired stuff when there's wireless.
Something I don't understand is how this problem even came up. They could have made it that the drivers have to get body modifications done on them, namely a one of the neural links. The drivers could be hooked up to their avatar and transfer bodies. We'd lose the possibility of a driver being disconnected whilst in their avatar, but we'd gain the threat of their human body being killed when their are out playing space elves.

I came up with this in idea in like ten minutes; Avatar was being designed years ago. Go figure.

My Day at Supanova

Having just got back from Supanova, I decided it was a blog-worthy experience. Since I don't have a particularly good camera on my phone, I'll be providing MS Paint pictures to compliment the text. Enjoy.

The morning started low key, as there's only so much excitement a person can have when they have no real expectations except that a lot of money will be spent. My only concern was who was coming with me and how we would get there.

Several weeks earlier I had mentioned Supanova to my group of friends, and there had been plenty of agreement, even from people I know would not enjoy going. As the days past I would occasionally bring up the approaching event in conversation when relevant but never managed to get a definite answer of who was going.

Finally I posted on Facebook in a last attempt to get clear responses. All I really got was advice that it would be better to go on Sunday than Saturday. Fine fine I though, this group doesn't do organisation well. Or at all. Everything will be done on the fly then.

So Sunday. I kill several hours waiting for some sort of communication from someone. Nothing, no phone call, no email, no Facebook message. Eventually I spy Keiran online only to discover that he had no money and thus was not going. Given that he was one of the people I moved the date from Saturday (which was better for me) to Sunday, at that point I lost it a little.

Just a little.

At this point I resolved to go alone, and hope everyone else has an unpleasant bowel movement.

The next part was surprisingly simple. Getting there was quick, parking was effortless (although expensive), and the line moved deceptively fast. And inside lay Supanova, my first convention.

The first thing that struck me was how comparatively normal I was. If there was a normalcy scale from 1 to 10, even with my attire (all black with an Ergo Proxy shirt and my Trilby hat) I would score an 8, beaten only by people wearing completely normal clothes (9) and people dragged there by their significant others (10).

This was my first experience with cosplayers. As a closeted one myself, I could not decide whether these people are brave (for having the guts to make a spectacle of themselves) or just sad (for not understanding that just because you want to do something, doesn't mean that it is a good idea). I found I have a similar response to cosplayers as I did to prostitutes: I'm not comfortable starring directly at them even though I'm allowed to, and I have a strong urge to ask them where they went wrong in their lives.

I can't bash the cosplayers completely. While most of them were generic mainstream characters (I'm not sure whether I saw more Naruto or Bleach characters) and girls in outfits that they could not pull off, them were some good/interesting ones. Two that come to mind are the fairly awesome xenomorph outfit, and a girl that I think was dressed up like some sort of representation of GLaDOS.

I wish I had asked her...

The sheer amount of people proved to be rather daunting so I sought out higher ground to get a good view of the entire convention. At this point I spied the guest autograph signing area and more importantly, Summer Glau. Not content to wait in the massive line, I nonchalantly edged towards the table. At about four metres I burst into a sprint, leapt the table, scooped up the rather startled actress and flew off into the sky. At about this point the fantasy ended and I went to look at more shops.

Not pictured: actual events.

Whilst wondering aimlessly I encountered some sort of Nintendo booth, complete with No More Heroes 2. After playing a Ranked battle and impressing at least one 12 year old, the nice lady at the counter informed me that I could buy the game for $25. given that I had bought the game several weeks earlier for around $80, I died a little inside.

After the monetary loss by technicality, to check out the Madman booth again for potential bargains. Naturally there was none as the only things that are ever cheap in life are things I already own. Since my quest for cheaper DVD's had been a complete failure, I bought Darker than Black and Rebuild of Evangelion 1.11 (at a slight discount when I mentioned that I already had bought the earlier edition). Why? Because like France I'm always ready to concede. Yeah that's right, I went there.

Aware that there was probably other stuff I'd like to see/buy, I decided to leave. With no one to make witty observations to, I didn't have enough interest to plunge into the crowds. But I left with a resolution, that I would return in several years time, only this time I'd have more money and a better group of friends. And it would be awesome.

To be continued...

Total spending:
$25 entry
$12 parking
$75 Darker than Black
$20 Rebuild of Eva 1.11

Wherein I like to use the word wherein

I should continue to set up my shiny new Facebook account, but frankly I hate where everything is and how it works so instead I'm going to do a blog post ie this one you are reading right now.

And hello I suppose to any newcomers via Facebook. Welcome to a world where quality is an afterthought at best.

This morning I finally got around to finishing Shadow of the Colossus. For those who don't pay attention to the pretentious video game culture, SotC is a PS2 game that apparently is one of God's children and doesn't get enough praise.

Ok I'll admit that looks awesome

The player character Wanda/Wander travels to a bleak land to raise a girl from the dead. To do so he is set the task of slaying the sixteen colossi. That's about all the plot for the majority of the game.
The gameplay is fairly simple as well. You trek through a vast, almost lifeless land till you find the colossus you're after. Combat consists of you climbing on the bastards to get to their weak points and commence stabbing. If the name didn't clue you in on it, the colossus for the most point are BIG:


After you work out the trick to scaling and killing a colossus you are are sent back to the central temple where you are given your next target. And that's pretty much the entire game. The only other thing to do in the big wide world is to hunt for lizards and fruit which get really small increases to your maximum grip and health gauges respectively, but that's only there for obsessive completionists and people who want to survive on hard mode.

Minimalism is pretty much the theme of SotC. The visuals of muted, the music is absent when you are exploring the world, and the dialogue is present only briefly. Not that any of this is a bad thing. The stark simplicity gives the game a unique feel and identity.

This is why SotC is so fondly reminisced about by many critics and gamers. What I don't like is how everyone forgets the game's flaws in light of this style.

Really there is only one relevant flaw, one that makes in anything else (awkward camera and horse handling, and the occasional physics glitches) fade in comparison. When you are climbing along the colossi, they will thrash around in an attempt to throw you off. Fair enough, I'd try my hardest to get a spider that was on back off. While they are doing this, Wanda can only hold on tight and wait for the colossus to stop. This prevents you from climbing further or charging up a stab.
Where I lose my patience is that there is sometimes little if any time between thrashes. All you can do is hang on and watch your grip bar slowly decrease, which naturally causes you to fall when it reaches zero. Several of the fights were dragged out purely because I wasn't getting an opening to attack. And this soured the SotC experience for me.

I can't get excited about an epic fight to the death because I know the last five minutes will be me hanging onto a giant's head and screaming in frustration. I can't feel saddened about the dead colossi in the end credits either.

I'm not saying that the entire game is ruined, but between the flaws and the internet's over-hyping, I just can't appreciate Shadow of the Colossus as much as everyone else.

Wherein I talk about trivial matters

When I signed up to Twitter I had the idea of doing mini-posts, only to discover the whole 140 character limit. I was hesitant to do it here cause it seems like a kind of tease, similar to how you are playing a game only for the the end boss and credits to jump out at like the two hour mark or something.
I'm going to do it anyway though, cause I've got vague thoughts and no one to humour me in real time.

Idle thought number one

Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 was finally released on DVD in Japan, so I'm downloading what I hope is a subbed rip. What I can't grasp is how Gainax seems to hate money and success.

1.0 was released in Japan in 2007 (screenings) and 2008 (DVD). It wasn't until 2009 that Australia got it on DVD. Now I could except this for an unknown movie or even one of middle-level popularity, but this is the anime equivalent of Watchmen; they should be getting this out as fast as possible.

Gainax, like a lot of Japanese companies, do favour the whole updated release thing which is suppose does milk money out of obsessive fans and collectors....like me.

The other cause for my bafflement at Gainax is the absence of inducing nostalgia. Other franchises have got nostalgia generation down to an art.
Recent Legend of Zelda games have made a habit of squeezing in music from previous games, Motoko Kusanagi can't go a movie/season without jumping off a tall building and cloaking midfall, and most of the Metal Gear series seems to be call backs to earlier instalments.

But despite remaking the original series in glorious high budget detail, no one has truly tried to deliberately get the fanbase screaming. Where are the homages and shout outs to iconic elements (actual plots and characters in the remake don't count).

Really the point of the last two paragraphs has been these two questions; where is a new version of Cruel Angel Thesis? and where is a new version of Fly Me to the Moon? They should be big and dramatic and orchestral. Look at what FF7's One Winged Angel has done to a generation. Evangelion could do that too. Twice!

Idle thought number two

Can't remember anymore.