~I trust you implicitly doctor nothing bad has happened to me under your care
UMO recording! It goes
Liam "The Lemming" Hesse - Super Acid Block Attack - Tearing Up Space Time
Electric Concerto - Super Metroid - My Minute
TheWingless - Super Metroid - Edenal
The person before me ran late, so this one's a bit shorter than usual. :O
Anyway, last night or so I played an HL2 mod called Dear Esther, "award-winning, critically acclaimed, experimental first-person game". The same people also did another game called Korsakovia, which I played a while back. You can actually watch a playthrough here if you're curious. It's short.
Anyway, I found myself rather unimpressed with Dear Esther on the whole. The graphics and backgrounds were fine (they seem to be remaking it with much prettier graphics, and the new ones are very pretty), although the level design was annoyingly vague at points. I wandered around trying to find where I was supposed to go (there are no hints given about this) until the game randomly decided I had gone too far and had me suddenly drop dead. Which was great.
Not knowing where to go wasn't helped by the random "come back" that pops up for no reason regardless of what you're doing. Trying to follow that voice did not help.
Anyway the island is big and you are slow, and a lot of it looks the same. You can navigate it alright if you're patient, it's just annoying not being sure where you're going or why.
The atmosphere of the game was pretty effective though, although making the birds sound like someone running up behind you is cheating, I think. The random writing on the walls is suitably eerie, and some areas combine weird imagery and music very effectively to make some freaky moments. There are no enemies or other characters, and you never see yourself. So what else is there?
The writing is what lost me.
This may just be personal preference but my god I found the narration in this game obnoxious. Not the narrator himself, but the wording and phrasing of what he was saying. I automatically didn't want to get involved or care about this guy or what he was talking about, just rolled my eyes in irritation whenever he rambled on and on about some thing or another. Everything he said just annoyed me more and more. Here are some examples.
There was once talk of a wind farm out here, away from the rage and the intolerance
of the masses. The sea, they said, is too rough for the turbines to stand: they clearly
never came here to experience the becalming for themselves. Personally, I would
have supported it; turbines would be a fitting contemporary refuge for a hermit: the
revolution and the permanence
When you were born, you mother told me, a hush fell over the delivery room. A great
red birthmark covered the left side of your face. No one knew what to say, so you
cried to fill the vacuum. I always admired you for that; that you cried to fill whatever vacuum you found. I began to manufacture vacuums, just to enable you to deploy
your talent. The birthmark faded by the time you were six, and had gone completely
by the time we met, but your fascination with the empty, and its cure, remained.
The mount is clearly the focal point of this landscape; it almost appears so well
placed as to be artificial. I find myself easily slipping into the delusional state of
ascribing purpose, deliberate motive to everything here. Was this island formed
during the moment of impact; when we were torn loose from our moorings and the
seatbelts cut motorway lanes into our chests and shoulders, did it first break surface
then?
We are not like Lot’s wife, you and I; we feel no particular need to turn back. There’s
nothing to be seen if we did. No tired old man parting the cliffs with his arms; no gifts or bibles laid out on the sand for the taking. No tides turning or the shrieking gulls overhead. The bones of the hermit are no longer laid out for the taking: I have stolen them away to the guts of this island where the passages all run to black and there we can light each others faces by their strange luminescence.
I find myself increasingly unable to find that point where the hermit ends and Paul
and I begin. We are woven into a sodden blanket, stuffed into the bottom of a boat to
stop the leak and hold back the ocean. My neck aches from staring up at the aerial; it
mirrors the dull throb in my gut where I am sure I have begun to form another stone.
In my dreams, it forms into a perfect representation of Lot’s wife, head over her
shoulder, staring along the motorway at the approaching traffic, in a vacuum of
fatalistic calm.
The vegetation here has fossilized from the roots up. To think they once grazed
animals here, the remnants of occupation being evidence to that. It is all sick to
death: the water is too polluted for the fish, the sky is too thin for the birds and the soil is cut with the bones of hermits and shepherds. I have heard it said that human ashes make great fertilizer, that we could sow a great forest from all that is left of your hips and ribcage, with enough left over to thicken the air and repopulate the bay.
Dear Esther. This will be my last letter. Do they pile up even now on the doormat of
our empty house? Why do I still post them home to you? Perhaps I can imagine
myself picking them up on the return I will not make, to find you waiting with daytime
television and all its comforts. They must form a pile four feet high now, my own little
ziggurat; a megalith of foolscap and manila. They will fossilise over the centuries to
follow; an uneasy time capsule from a lost island. Postmarked Oban: it must have
been sent during the final ascent.
I had kidney stones, and you visited me in the hospital. After the operation, when I
was still half submerged in anaesthetic, your outline and your speech both blurred.
Now my stones have grown into an island and made their escape and you have
been rendered opaque by the car of a drunk.
JUST SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP UUUUUUUUUUUGH
you know maybe this style of writing just isn't FOR me but UGH I HATED LISTENING TO THIS GUY
I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR INCOHERENT RAMBLING ANGST OR YOUR POETIC METAPHORS
JUST SHUT UP
POEToast summed it up pretty good i think when I linked him to this video
Toast: I would love to hear a lunch order done like this
Toast: I WILL GATHER THE GRILLED CHICKEN AND SMOTHER IT IN VINEGAR
Toast: THE BREAD WILL OBEY THE WHIM OF THE KNIFE
Toast: AND CHIPS WILL BE NOT TOO FAR BEHIND
The story is unremarkable. It's vague and incoherent and hard to piece together, but what little is there isn't hugely unique or memorable. More manpain over a lady's death, reminiscient of SH2. YAWN.
But what can I say for it? The soundtrack is AMAZING, that's what. Mostly piano focused and beautiful and haunting. Incredibly atmospheric and what really contributed to the game for me was the music kicking in at key points. It's a GREAT soundtrack and I'd really recommend picking it up. It's just growing on me the more I listen to it.
Also as a nitpick, the subtitles didn't work, which bugged me. I like having subtitles.
And since I'm talking about this group anyway, why not talk about Korsakovia! It's another experimental type thing, although it's notably freakier than Dear Esther and also has enemies, for one thing. Unfortunately most of the time the enemies in Korsakovia are more irritating than frightening or challenging.
The writing in Korsakovia still had some of the annoying tics above, but I think it worked better for the psychological-horror setting this time. Either that or I can't remember them as clearly, either way. The level design is interesting, although sometimes confusing (intentionally so I think) and I hope you're good at platforming because there are a LOT of fiddly jump puzzles in Korsakovia. Also, occasionally obtuse level design as mentioned above where it's very hard to know where you have to go.
Korsakovia feels more like an actual game than Dear Esther though, possibly because there are enemies and clear stages and all that. As I mentioned the enemies are more irritating than anything else though, and the jumping bits can be frustrating, and sometimes getting through an area relies on luck, and it can be hard to know what to do.
It does however create a very solid atmosphere that can be pretty creepy at points, so that was done pretty well. The weird disjointed story works a bit better in this situation than in Dear Esther too as mentioned, although it does suffer from metaphor overloads at times. It definitely had some problems, but there are some really great moments in it that made up for them, I think. Definitely some OMG :O type things that are worth experiencing.
SADLY THE ENDING WAS A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT. But it's worth checking out, since it's free and all.
ANYWAY THOSE ARE MY THOUGHTS ON VIDEO GAMES FOR NOW I'M SURE YOU WERE FASCINATED
OH YEAH I ALMOST FORGOT if you were a big fan of Zelda Oracle of Time/Ages, then HEY THERE IS A REMIX ALBUM OUT FOR YOU!!
RIGHT HERE!!
I never played either Oracle of Time or Oracle of Ages BUT I KNOW SOME OF YOU DID SO PERHAPS YOU WILL ENJOY THIS
Oh yeah
Day 10 - A song that makes you fall asleep
Arkimedes - Dreaming While I Wake always does the trick. :B Add Massive Attack's What Your Soul Sings and Everywhen and Assemblage 23's Lullaby and Wingless's Aphrodite Oceanus and Chronosis's Time Voyager and most of Enya's stuff and you're set. :B
Liam "The Lemming" Hesse - Super Acid Block Attack - Tearing Up Space Time
Electric Concerto - Super Metroid - My Minute
TheWingless - Super Metroid - Edenal
The person before me ran late, so this one's a bit shorter than usual. :O
Anyway, last night or so I played an HL2 mod called Dear Esther, "award-winning, critically acclaimed, experimental first-person game". The same people also did another game called Korsakovia, which I played a while back. You can actually watch a playthrough here if you're curious. It's short.
Anyway, I found myself rather unimpressed with Dear Esther on the whole. The graphics and backgrounds were fine (they seem to be remaking it with much prettier graphics, and the new ones are very pretty), although the level design was annoyingly vague at points. I wandered around trying to find where I was supposed to go (there are no hints given about this) until the game randomly decided I had gone too far and had me suddenly drop dead. Which was great.
Not knowing where to go wasn't helped by the random "come back" that pops up for no reason regardless of what you're doing. Trying to follow that voice did not help.
Anyway the island is big and you are slow, and a lot of it looks the same. You can navigate it alright if you're patient, it's just annoying not being sure where you're going or why.
The atmosphere of the game was pretty effective though, although making the birds sound like someone running up behind you is cheating, I think. The random writing on the walls is suitably eerie, and some areas combine weird imagery and music very effectively to make some freaky moments. There are no enemies or other characters, and you never see yourself. So what else is there?
The writing is what lost me.
This may just be personal preference but my god I found the narration in this game obnoxious. Not the narrator himself, but the wording and phrasing of what he was saying. I automatically didn't want to get involved or care about this guy or what he was talking about, just rolled my eyes in irritation whenever he rambled on and on about some thing or another. Everything he said just annoyed me more and more. Here are some examples.
There was once talk of a wind farm out here, away from the rage and the intolerance
of the masses. The sea, they said, is too rough for the turbines to stand: they clearly
never came here to experience the becalming for themselves. Personally, I would
have supported it; turbines would be a fitting contemporary refuge for a hermit: the
revolution and the permanence
When you were born, you mother told me, a hush fell over the delivery room. A great
red birthmark covered the left side of your face. No one knew what to say, so you
cried to fill the vacuum. I always admired you for that; that you cried to fill whatever vacuum you found. I began to manufacture vacuums, just to enable you to deploy
your talent. The birthmark faded by the time you were six, and had gone completely
by the time we met, but your fascination with the empty, and its cure, remained.
The mount is clearly the focal point of this landscape; it almost appears so well
placed as to be artificial. I find myself easily slipping into the delusional state of
ascribing purpose, deliberate motive to everything here. Was this island formed
during the moment of impact; when we were torn loose from our moorings and the
seatbelts cut motorway lanes into our chests and shoulders, did it first break surface
then?
We are not like Lot’s wife, you and I; we feel no particular need to turn back. There’s
nothing to be seen if we did. No tired old man parting the cliffs with his arms; no gifts or bibles laid out on the sand for the taking. No tides turning or the shrieking gulls overhead. The bones of the hermit are no longer laid out for the taking: I have stolen them away to the guts of this island where the passages all run to black and there we can light each others faces by their strange luminescence.
I find myself increasingly unable to find that point where the hermit ends and Paul
and I begin. We are woven into a sodden blanket, stuffed into the bottom of a boat to
stop the leak and hold back the ocean. My neck aches from staring up at the aerial; it
mirrors the dull throb in my gut where I am sure I have begun to form another stone.
In my dreams, it forms into a perfect representation of Lot’s wife, head over her
shoulder, staring along the motorway at the approaching traffic, in a vacuum of
fatalistic calm.
The vegetation here has fossilized from the roots up. To think they once grazed
animals here, the remnants of occupation being evidence to that. It is all sick to
death: the water is too polluted for the fish, the sky is too thin for the birds and the soil is cut with the bones of hermits and shepherds. I have heard it said that human ashes make great fertilizer, that we could sow a great forest from all that is left of your hips and ribcage, with enough left over to thicken the air and repopulate the bay.
Dear Esther. This will be my last letter. Do they pile up even now on the doormat of
our empty house? Why do I still post them home to you? Perhaps I can imagine
myself picking them up on the return I will not make, to find you waiting with daytime
television and all its comforts. They must form a pile four feet high now, my own little
ziggurat; a megalith of foolscap and manila. They will fossilise over the centuries to
follow; an uneasy time capsule from a lost island. Postmarked Oban: it must have
been sent during the final ascent.
I had kidney stones, and you visited me in the hospital. After the operation, when I
was still half submerged in anaesthetic, your outline and your speech both blurred.
Now my stones have grown into an island and made their escape and you have
been rendered opaque by the car of a drunk.
JUST SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP UUUUUUUUUUUGH
you know maybe this style of writing just isn't FOR me but UGH I HATED LISTENING TO THIS GUY
I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR INCOHERENT RAMBLING ANGST OR YOUR POETIC METAPHORS
JUST SHUT UP
POEToast summed it up pretty good i think when I linked him to this video
Toast: I would love to hear a lunch order done like this
Toast: I WILL GATHER THE GRILLED CHICKEN AND SMOTHER IT IN VINEGAR
Toast: THE BREAD WILL OBEY THE WHIM OF THE KNIFE
Toast: AND CHIPS WILL BE NOT TOO FAR BEHIND
The story is unremarkable. It's vague and incoherent and hard to piece together, but what little is there isn't hugely unique or memorable. More manpain over a lady's death, reminiscient of SH2. YAWN.
But what can I say for it? The soundtrack is AMAZING, that's what. Mostly piano focused and beautiful and haunting. Incredibly atmospheric and what really contributed to the game for me was the music kicking in at key points. It's a GREAT soundtrack and I'd really recommend picking it up. It's just growing on me the more I listen to it.
Also as a nitpick, the subtitles didn't work, which bugged me. I like having subtitles.
And since I'm talking about this group anyway, why not talk about Korsakovia! It's another experimental type thing, although it's notably freakier than Dear Esther and also has enemies, for one thing. Unfortunately most of the time the enemies in Korsakovia are more irritating than frightening or challenging.
The writing in Korsakovia still had some of the annoying tics above, but I think it worked better for the psychological-horror setting this time. Either that or I can't remember them as clearly, either way. The level design is interesting, although sometimes confusing (intentionally so I think) and I hope you're good at platforming because there are a LOT of fiddly jump puzzles in Korsakovia. Also, occasionally obtuse level design as mentioned above where it's very hard to know where you have to go.
Korsakovia feels more like an actual game than Dear Esther though, possibly because there are enemies and clear stages and all that. As I mentioned the enemies are more irritating than anything else though, and the jumping bits can be frustrating, and sometimes getting through an area relies on luck, and it can be hard to know what to do.
It does however create a very solid atmosphere that can be pretty creepy at points, so that was done pretty well. The weird disjointed story works a bit better in this situation than in Dear Esther too as mentioned, although it does suffer from metaphor overloads at times. It definitely had some problems, but there are some really great moments in it that made up for them, I think. Definitely some OMG :O type things that are worth experiencing.
SADLY THE ENDING WAS A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT. But it's worth checking out, since it's free and all.
ANYWAY THOSE ARE MY THOUGHTS ON VIDEO GAMES FOR NOW I'M SURE YOU WERE FASCINATED
OH YEAH I ALMOST FORGOT if you were a big fan of Zelda Oracle of Time/Ages, then HEY THERE IS A REMIX ALBUM OUT FOR YOU!!
RIGHT HERE!!
I never played either Oracle of Time or Oracle of Ages BUT I KNOW SOME OF YOU DID SO PERHAPS YOU WILL ENJOY THIS
Oh yeah
Day 10 - A song that makes you fall asleep
Arkimedes - Dreaming While I Wake always does the trick. :B Add Massive Attack's What Your Soul Sings and Everywhen and Assemblage 23's Lullaby and Wingless's Aphrodite Oceanus and Chronosis's Time Voyager and most of Enya's stuff and you're set. :B