Yes, I am wearing donkey ears and no I won't take them off.
The cutscenes are worth $24. I've been up to my waist in W3 for the past week or so since PCgamer made it the greatest PC game of all time. I'll get more in detail when I finally review the whole game for real as I honestly forgot I haven't done that yet. Suffice it to say, the game grew a lot on me before I dipped my toe into it's dlc. Now that I have? Well... holy sh*t hearts of stone is amazing. Holy. Sh*t.
Not to knock a game for being too heady at times, but Witcher 3 is actually helping me sleep! Each of the witcher contracts in the game are like bite sized mysteries. They won't dove tail into Geralt's politically dense main story but they won't leave you hanging like other side quests can.
They have beginnings, middles, and ends. Like a fun noire paperback on my night stand, I can thumb through a contract or two and not feel like I'm being dragged through too many gameplay loops. I can get my fix and stop whenever my eyelids get heavy. Witcher 3 isn't afraid of me putting it down for good. It knows I'll be back.
PlayStation is coming to pc. I... I don't know what to say. I would have bet my entire life savings on this never happening but now that it has (or is going to) I can see the logic. $60 a unit is no longer cutting it as budgets balloon out of control. I'm of the mind that $100+ special editions were a sly way of gauging just how much people were willing to pay for games. This move suggests the resounding answer to that question was "not more than 60 bones."
Well damn, if the subscription fee isn't insane I will definitely sign up for a month or two. Lord knows I won't want to hold onto PlayStation's back catalogue forever.
UPDATE: I've seen the list of games. I am unimpressed. Man... that was a fleeting high.
You can tell a lot about a composer's mettle by how they handle their montages. When almost the entire focus is on the music plenty can go wrong. The sad truth is the vast majority of soundtracks don't hold up outside the thrall of the film and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. A good soundtrack doesn't have to stand on it's own... but the great ones always do.
So what we have here is something very similar to the end credits suite but in a slightly lower gear. The 10 note theme still works marvelously and Bear always puts a new kind of crescendo in each reprise because he's a total eff'in pro like that.
There's always a story playing in my head. Sometimes it's something I've seen and sometimes it's something I've written. Either way, it demands music! Here's what the inside of my head sounds like this week:
If this becomes a regular thing, Bear Mccreary is going to be on here a lot. He's a genius and 10 Cloverfield Lane is already one of my favorites. The entire score is based around one 10 note (get it?!) theme and I should find it grating or annoying after a while but somehow I haven't. It's like a John Williams horror score, but not exactly. It has a bite Williams never had and yet it's got a sense of whimsy that honestly has no place in this movie. That's something Bear does sometimes. He puts moods and feelings into projects that shouldn't fit, but somehow they do. The lighter tones seem to speak to Howard's dangerously childish feelings toward women which serves to make his character all the more pitiful... and unsettling.
This is seriously one of the best horror/thriller scores I've ever heard and I hope you'll give this a shot. If soundtracks are at all your thing. Even for me, I'll admit this is pushing it. But goddammit you guys, I love soundtracks!
The internet is so full of people saying so much we can't find all the writing worth reading. But sometimes you're listlessly scrolling through a BMD comment section and sometimes someone holds up a nugget of gold: The most perfect summery of Bond's character arc in Casino Royale.
Sometimes your worst enemy is yourself. I just had a dream that it was 8 years in the future and I had spent it all working in a decrepit strip mall pet store. Have I mentioned my sub-conscience is a motherf***er? Well he is, and I got dem' blues sumthin' fierce. Still, I think I know how to fix em':
2 years on, The Stick of Truth has aged marvelously. Now that I've come to grips with it's length, given it's 4 year development I wasn't thrilled that it clocked in barely under 10 hours, I appreciate it for it's successes. Like how it's basically a 4 part South Park episode with a solid action RPG underneath. It's still so damn funny and that's exactly what I need right now.
Oh, also my boss was Jimmy Pesto from Bob's Burgers. Because dreams are dumb.
I may not have a dog in this fight yet and I won't until it costs at least half as much as it does now, but my friend got his hands on it and he's luvin' it. He regaled me with a tale of how he spent 45 minutes trying to escape from a hole in a mountain made entirely of gold. I'm not sold yet, but a couple more stories like that and I might ponder it. But over a year ago I wasn't convinced there would actually be anything to do in NMS. It's sad to see a butt-ton of critics and commenters concede that exact sentiment.
Somedays I get home from work and I'll try to bake something interesting. A ziti or this awesome teriyaki shepherd's pie that one time. Nothing truly "Awful" happened today but man... I'm done. I have a small tub of microwavable mashed potatoes and I have a simple 3 step plan for it. I'm gonna drown it in sriracha, tie my hands behind my back and just embarrass myself. Good day to you all!
Allegedly his review of No man's Sky is posted. But you can't see it. The promise of NMS, the idea that procedural generation has finally cracked "infinite" content has turned mere fandom into a cottage religion. When the release date was pushed back, the devs got death threats. When Jim gave a heavy sigh and said this wasn't his bag... they gave his site a dos attack. Classy as usual, gentleman.
I love me some pop philosophy. Seeing as the scant few "academic" philosophers I've meet were thick and elitist creeps (though I'm sure most of you are quite lovely) I've always wanted some of their better ideas to break into the main stream.
I'm still shocked learning about logical fallacies isn't part of the core curriculum. Just think how much harder politicians would have to work if every voter knew what an ad hominem attack was! Mike Rugnetta is the perfect host for what could easily devolve into navel gazing tripe no one cares to finish listening to. He's affable, seriously funny, and knows exactly where he's going to loose the audience so he can turn to the camera and tell everyone to bear with the material. Because it'll be worth it!
Making philosophy accessible is a thankless job and I salute his years of service!
I think I talked about Hardcore Game of Thrones a while back. It was cute seeing a guy managing to have an interesting lecture about all the stuff that happened outside the books. But he was mocking Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and since I'm deep in Inquisition (and I need a good podcast to make it through that game's grindier aspects) I thought I'd give his series on the lead up to the Cold War a shot. It was 4 hours long and it. Was. Awesome.
It's a bird's eye view of America's transition into foreign affairs and the fall of the Russian Czars. If you think you know everything about either of those events Carlin's editorial voice compares and contrasts them both in ways that are worth your time.
Bioware's DLC has always been up and down. Sometimes you get something as amazing as Shadow Broker or a place holding shrug like Arrival. It doesn't help that they never EVER drop in price and while I'm in rant mode, keeping ME2 dlc at where it launched at is ludicrous. I wouldn't buy the entire game at the price they're selling that stuff for.
But that being said, I've finally got around to playing Descent. I still don't know why I dropped $15 on this thing and didn't play it for 5 months (past-me is getting a stern talking to) because it really isn't worth more than $8. But now that I have it... it's a huge awesome dungeon! The kind I wish they had leading up to, oh I don't know, the finale? I'm sorry, butif the only thing beyond your game's point of no return is a single unremarkable boss fight you f**ked up. Rushed finales are a huge pet peeve of mine.
After the week I've had; a huge awesome dungeon that forces you to change up your tactics and makes you sweat running out of potions makes me happy. The Jaws of Hawken is up next. Let's see if I like it enough to buy Tresspaser and complete the set. Of course that would require me to care about Solus and his limp end credits betrayal. Sometimes having a character do one or two interesting things isn't enough to make up for how boring (and yet somehow irritating) they were before.
I've never tried to get this political on the crackpot before but I feel as if I've been carrying a weight on my shoulders for the past year. Not so much about Trump as what he represented. Was he the sign of a party's death throes as it cast out all it's moderates? Or was this the start of a neo-white power movement with a real shot at an entire branch of government? If recent polls and Nate Silver are to be believed (and aside from Trump in general his track record is as close to prophecy as we'll ever get) if the election were held today Hillary has a 92% chance of winning.
Let that wash over you. I honestly didn't think this many republicans could get over themselves to do the right thing. I thought this election would see 40% voting for a man who would give away all responsibility of the office and just sit on the oval throne. Occasionally venturing out to go boar hunting. I never seriously thought Hillary could hit these numbers. This time 4 years ago Obama and Romney were practically tied and even then the polls skewed too conservative. Also keep in mind there hasn't been a single debate yet!
The price of liberty is constant vigilance so y'all better not get too comfortable. If you don't want Trump you have to vote for Hillary. Simple as that. I don't care what you think about her, you can't say she's even remotely similar to him in terms of pure competence. It's sad it's come to this but here we are. Even still... I haven't been this proud of my country in years.
