The hall of fame
Yesterday I completed, for the first time in a while, a new video game. I have a few games, new and replay, that are ongoing and haven't finished them. I've been about 2/3 through Starcraft II for a year, maybe a tenth through Bioshock 2, I halted my China playthrough of Hearts of Iron III (though I beat it as the USA), I'm about half down with a replay of the second part of Half-Life 2 and almost done with a replay of Half-Life 1, and seriously, Chakan is going to take Forever, Man. I'm currently probably 2/3 through Borderlands 2. I've been jumping around a lot. It happens, for example I got Starcraft 1 in 1999 or 2000, only beat the base game in 2009, and beat it with the expansion levels in 2012. Heck, I got Sonic 2 for Game Gear in 1992 and only beat it, with tips from the internet, in 2006.
Anyway, at the beginning of the month, on the recommendation of JJ McCullough, a former Canadian political cartoonist, currently a TV pundit and now also youtube reviewer, and a proud member of generation 1984, listed his favorite things of 2015, which included the mobile game Crossy Road, which I got as the first game for my new iPhone, and PC game Undertale, a brand new (Sept 2015) game which I'd heard of in the fall, well, I encountered people on message boards fighting about whether the hype was worth it or it was just another crappy retro game emulating Earthbound and coasting on the success of Mega Man 9's using classic 8/16 bit graphics and prioritizing story & mechanics.
I can recall certain games when I was younger absolutely blowing me away with their story and atmosphere, Final Fantasy 7 and 9 and Starcraft in particular. Some of these games don't hold up today and their awkward, developing graphics have not helped them remain what they were. Some benefited strongly from the way things are just that much better or worse when you're later. Some of the few games that affected me strongly recently were Portal 2 (which I did not play, but sat with Michelle on her playthrough) and Bioshock 1 (only the first half though) but this one was simply incredible.
I'm not very good at articulating why I like the things I do. I've tried writing some reviews for Metal Archives because I have strong feelings about my favorite style of music, but my reviews aren't as good as some others and are received as "passable" and not "great" by the editors. Michelle has asked me for input on her graphic novel and regular novel and I've struggled to say what I like and don't. It's partly because I know that it's Michelle's compromises my objectivity, but it is hard to say why "this makes me really feel what these characters feel here."
Nonetheless there's lots of types of work that mean a lot to me and I've wanted for a while to write about why. Probably not about heavy metal, at least bot right away, even though Persistence of Time, Burt Offerings, Ride the Lightning, The Dark Saga and So Far, So Good, So What?! mean as much as much as anything else to me. Know what, maybe I would write about them. The "groups" of things I'm considering covering include:
-Video games, probably broken up by genre because there's so many of them.
-The incredible Sci-Fi/Fantasy Action & Horror film run from Star Wars (1977) to Jurrasic park (1993).
-The nuclear war scare films, mostly of the mid 60's, early 80's and early 90's.
-Nuclear war scare music.
-Other special metal albums (new!).
No one really reads here anyone, except for Madelyn and Michelle and only sometimes, but this is stuff I churn over in head along with everything else, and it's more external, and I want to re-establish the cultural connections that helped me become who I am.
Anyway, at the beginning of the month, on the recommendation of JJ McCullough, a former Canadian political cartoonist, currently a TV pundit and now also youtube reviewer, and a proud member of generation 1984, listed his favorite things of 2015, which included the mobile game Crossy Road, which I got as the first game for my new iPhone, and PC game Undertale, a brand new (Sept 2015) game which I'd heard of in the fall, well, I encountered people on message boards fighting about whether the hype was worth it or it was just another crappy retro game emulating Earthbound and coasting on the success of Mega Man 9's using classic 8/16 bit graphics and prioritizing story & mechanics.
I can recall certain games when I was younger absolutely blowing me away with their story and atmosphere, Final Fantasy 7 and 9 and Starcraft in particular. Some of these games don't hold up today and their awkward, developing graphics have not helped them remain what they were. Some benefited strongly from the way things are just that much better or worse when you're later. Some of the few games that affected me strongly recently were Portal 2 (which I did not play, but sat with Michelle on her playthrough) and Bioshock 1 (only the first half though) but this one was simply incredible.
I'm not very good at articulating why I like the things I do. I've tried writing some reviews for Metal Archives because I have strong feelings about my favorite style of music, but my reviews aren't as good as some others and are received as "passable" and not "great" by the editors. Michelle has asked me for input on her graphic novel and regular novel and I've struggled to say what I like and don't. It's partly because I know that it's Michelle's compromises my objectivity, but it is hard to say why "this makes me really feel what these characters feel here."
Nonetheless there's lots of types of work that mean a lot to me and I've wanted for a while to write about why. Probably not about heavy metal, at least bot right away, even though Persistence of Time, Burt Offerings, Ride the Lightning, The Dark Saga and So Far, So Good, So What?! mean as much as much as anything else to me. Know what, maybe I would write about them. The "groups" of things I'm considering covering include:
-Video games, probably broken up by genre because there's so many of them.
-The incredible Sci-Fi/Fantasy Action & Horror film run from Star Wars (1977) to Jurrasic park (1993).
-The nuclear war scare films, mostly of the mid 60's, early 80's and early 90's.
-Nuclear war scare music.
-Other special metal albums (new!).
No one really reads here anyone, except for Madelyn and Michelle and only sometimes, but this is stuff I churn over in head along with everything else, and it's more external, and I want to re-establish the cultural connections that helped me become who I am.