Mixing Bits

In my last post I talked about how I had been listening to the Zelda Symphonic soundtrack that came with my copy of Skyward Sword. Well in lieu The Legend of Zelda having it's 25th anniversary it's not a big surprise that video game remixing communities would choose to celebrate this landmark as well. This brings up the OC Remix album 25 Year Legend.

The free album is a bit over an hour long, and it not only incorporates many of the most recognised tracks from the Zelda series; But it also coves a large range of styles, such as dubstep, techno, piano, and the traditional band sound. I'm enjoying it, and I think if you're reading this, you should too.



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A Legend of Twenty Five Years

I picked up my collectors copy of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on Sunday. Part of the package was a CD with orchestrated music from 25th anniversary Zelda symphony. While the total album length is a bit short, it's still a great extra that I thoroughly enjoy. Music plays an enormous role in how I feel and express myself through the motion graphics I make. Thus listening to tracks that sum up several games of a long running series is exhilarating.

Below is one of the shorter, and better, tracks from the anniversary album; Gerudo Valley. It's not my top favourite, but it's still truly up there for one of the best songs from the long running franchise.




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Backlog in HD

Back when I was still in high school, and the PS2 was the number one console on the market, I racked up a collection of games, stockpiling them in my room. That stockpile still exists today, and many of the titles I still haven't played. The reason? I could never get my dad off the TV, and the terrible glare from the living room windows. Thus my games were left to collect dust, and I ended up spending nearly all of my time on the family computer watching series after series of anime.

Today I have a backwards compatible PS3 and my own TV, so nothing has been keeping me from playing those games. Except myself, and modern games. By the time I had my own personal AV equipment I had already been bitten by the HD bug. Then as time went by, I became attached to PC games over console based ones. Thus my problem is I can't stand the old fuzzy graphics of all those PS2 titles. I've been playing off my backlog lately though.

There's a program called PCXS2 that literally functions like a PS2 for your computer. It emulates the functionality of the greatest last gen system, allowing you to pop a disc into the drive and boot up old games in HD resolutions. Granted the textures are still fuzzy, and not all games run smoothly. But it's nice to finally be playing off old games that I bought for top dollar back in the day.



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Sandbox Power Five

Wow, has it really been three years since Grand Theft Auto IV was released? I can't believe that much time has already passed. And now the sequel has been officially announced with a new in game trailer.

I'm very surprised by how much better they've been able to improve the look of the GTA series on this console generation. Here I thought it couldn't get much better with the available hardware. Just goes to show how adept developers are getting with squeezing everything they can out of today's consoles.



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So Two Soldiers Walk Into a Bar...

I watched this video yesterday and couldn't believe how awesome it was. A lot of the real voice talent for the characters were used in this video. And while I can't pin down weather or not those actors also played the physical roles, I have a pretty good feeling they did.



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Death of a Visionary

On October 5, 2011 Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind the enormously successful Apple corporation, died of Cancer.
As one of the few dedicated Mac & Windows users out there I am unbelievably sad to hear this news.



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The Fate of One Begins at Zero

Hmmm...
Some time ago I blogged about a story called "Fate/Stay Night". I talked about how the story and character's just wouldn't go away despite their age. That post was more than a year and a half ago, and here I am talking about it again. Why? Because the prequel story "Fate/Zero" has been made into a new anime series that started airing this week.

I'm more or less left in awe of how this is still going. Not to say I'm claiming it shouldn't, it's just that the whole thing seems unstoppable. The the first Fate story was a visual novel released back in 2004. It's now been six whole years, getting close to seven, and the franchise just doesn't show signs of slowing down. I'm simply just amazed, and now I'm wondering if it'll continue long enough to hit the decade mark.



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Animate the Avatar

First off in light on the blog flat-lining when I changed the look, I've changed the background again to hopefully appeal to most of anyone still coming around.

Now on the note of the look I chose, I decided on another Persona background. The reason? Because the game is being made into an anime this season!
I'll just keep this short and say, I'm a pretty big Persona fan (though not die-hard). And I'm really looking forward to watching this show, especially some of the scenes like the kings game and the camping trip.



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Done With the Dunmer Land

After playing the game Morrowind on and off for five years, I have finally completed the game in it's entirety. Everything from the main story, to the multiple faction quests, to the two expansions packs; I've finished it all. Unfortunately though, I can' say I've left no stone unturned. I know there are still various miscellaneous missions and quests floating around in the game's confines; And I may go back to conquer them one day too. However, as it stands I know for a fact that I have completed at least 80% of the game's content, if not more which I think is the case.

I feel happy, I feel satisfied, and now there's only one thing left to do...

Go back and play it again >=D

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Debating on Bonus

Over on Game Trailers the most recent episode of Bonus round (a panel discussion show about games) featured two of my favourite game directors, Ken Levine and Todd Howard.

During this episode an interesting debate broke out about story telling in games. Seeing as how my last video blog was about this exact subject, I was quite surprised, and riveted at the same time. Even though the third panel member, David Jaffe, was both long-winded and unsavoury in how he put his thoughts forward, one thing was agreed upon by all three panel members.

Games and movies are not the same thing, if you want to tell a story through cut scenes go make a movie.

I didn't say this explicitly in my video, but I was pointing toward the idea the whole time. Games are all about interaction, not about story. If that wasn't true people wouldn't spend hours playing multiplayer matches, or grinding through levels in MMOs. For that reason interaction should never suffer for the sake of story. Therefore the story in a game should be intertwined with the gameplay, and not presented in a hands off cutscene format.

If your' interested in watching the episode of Bonus Round that this whole post has been about, then check the link below. Sorry but there's no embed code for the video.

Bonus Round With Ken Levine, Todd Howard, and David Jaffe

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New Style

Not much to say other than I've updated the layout of the blog. I've kept the same look since I created it back in late 2006, and occasionally changed the background. I figured it was about time to abandon the old look, and fully update the coding.
I've also changed the style to reflect my recent video blogs I've been putting up.

Hope you like the new design.

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It's How You Tell the Story

I thought of this topic while reading comments on last weeks video.



If it wasn't for audience feedback I wouldn't keep getting new ideas. So many things to cover. So many things that affect a game.

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The Sound of Silence

I could elaborate, but I'll let the video talk for itself.



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Type-Moon

Visual novels are a form of video game that saturates the Japanese interactive market. How exactly such an unorthodox, and old type of game genre (which largely became popular due to how easy they were to make publish to any device), has remained popular is beyond me. However that doesn't mean I don't respect the work that goes into writing the stories found in them.

This bring me to a visual novel production company called Type-Moon. They're responsible for making some the the better VNs out there. But moreover their work tends to become anime sooner or later, and those shows more than often are worth the time to watch.

SO when I first watched the video below two words came to mind: Kick Ass.



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Stars and the Saddle

Over the weekend I went out and saw the movie Cowboys and Aliens, and for what it's worth the movie feels like an authentic videogame inspired film. It felt like the games Red Dead Redemption and Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta both ended up in the same screenplay, and I was watching the result.
Granted I'm sure those two games had some sort of influence, but probably not as much as it felt they did. None the less the movie was great for that reason alone. After all if anything reminds you of other great works of art in a positive way, it means you're experiencing something good.



I'd advise anyone who has Played RDR and FO3, to go see this movie.
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Wasteland Love

Much more in-depth than the last few videos, that's for sure.



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B10g - Borderlands

Hopefully I can keep making these on a semi regular basis.



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B10g - FarCry 2

I'll save you the text, and let my video do the talking.



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Dusty Pixels

Y'know it's funny how you can lose track of old games with how large computer storage has become today. I was just recently looking over the contents of one of my hard disks, and discovered some relics of gaming history. Amongst the files, I found full working installations for the following games.

• The Elder Scrolls: Arena
• Diablo
• Diablo II
• Doom 3
• Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna
• Fable: The Lost Chapters
• Fallout
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy VIII
• Shuffle
• Rise of Nations

A real blast from the past, epically since many of those games have received sequels within recent history. While checking to see if the games were still working (obviously these files survived multiple data transfers from a very old computer of mine), I realized something. Nearly every game has something that many games today lack, a life bar or health gauge. I know that they've been gone from most games for some time now, but not until today did I realize just how much harder games without regenerating health really were!
After playing the old titles, and realizing this through experience, I kinda feel like I've gone soft.

Nothing more to say.
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The Insulted Hunt

Y'know what I love about open world games? The long exploration encouraged collection quests. I remember playing Zelda games back in the day and scouring Hyrule for heart pieces. Then Grand Theft Auto came along, and I fell in love with the search for hidden packages. On that note I've collected all of the hidden items in all of the GTA games from the PS2 era. Anyway my point is no matter what I've loved open world games mostly for the ability to explore and collect. However, collection missions have always been the same thing. An experience of keeping heightened senses in order to see what has been hidden. Well that's not the case in Fable III.

While there are the typical silent hidden collectables (in this case silver keys), the more interesting hidden items are gnomes. Yes that's right gnomes, but not just any gnomes. We're talking evil gnomes, who insult you when you're nearby!



I just laugh when I hear them.

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Dexterity Delving

Gonna try something a bit different here, and blog by video for once. Just watch and enjoy.



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Synthetic Form

Ever since I learned the term otaku I've qualified myself to be one. However, by no means have I ever considered myself as an extreme otaku, or even mediocre one. Why? Because, I lack the interest and drive to throw tons and tons of cash at things I simply don't need. Being a higher tier otaku (at least in my mind), means collecting things beyond the game, the dvds, and the manga. It's buying the figurines, the bed sheets, the mugs, etc etc etc. Doing something like that just isn't worth it in my mind. It also creeps into the area which I consider to be unusual and/or creepy.
All of that being said I can still appreciate the work that goes into the creation of those products.

Of all the products I'll never purchase anime figurines the category I respect the most. Even though I find them to be a total waste of money since they are fully nonfunctional; I consider the level of detail they have to be amazing.



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Threshold of a Dream

I've spoken in past posts about a website called OC Remix, which is dedicated to remixing the music of video games. The site's effort is mostly artistic, with many contributors and even collaborative work appearing from time to time. While group efforts are infrequent, when they do show up they usually take form as an album which remixes the bulk of the music from a specific game. Several albums have come and gone, and while each has it's pros and cons most of the games that receive attention are land mark titles such as the final fantasy series, castlevania, and chrono trigger. All the while though some of the more noticeable titles have gun unnoticed, amongst them being the legend of zelda.
That changed with the release with the recent album Threshold of a Dream which is the remixing of the game Link's Awakening for the game boy.

While most remixes conform to an orchestrated film interpretation "Threshold of a Dream" is a bit different. Instead the project is more geared toward keeping the tracks similar to the original music from the game, albeit less eight-bitty. While I'm not certain weather or not this remix attempt, and unique project style, is a success I am certain that I'm happy the Zelda series has finally received a remix album. Here's to hoping another one in the form of a movie soundtrack will be made at some point.



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Lick of the River Styx.

Over the course of the latter half of December there was an enormous two week sale on Steam. It was during this joyous software sale that I picked up far more games than I have time on my hand to play, and amongst them was a little title called Death Spank.

Death Spank is one of those games you play, and never take seriously. Even though it's fun and can eat up hours of your time, you spend more time laughing at jokes in the script than struggling to reach the end. It's a fun game to be sure, but Death Spank sells itself more so as in interactive comedy than a hack and slash game; Even though it's combat mechanics are solid.

Keeping the story short Death Spank can be described in one sentence.
Forgettable, but worth every penny for the laughs to fill spare time.

This trailer can communicate some of the humor.


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