Friday, January 17, 2014

Edward's January 2014 Mix






Another year is upon us. And another year swirls down the whirlpool into time past. Actually 2013 was a good year for me. I finished 18 games and set a new record for games finished. I've come a long way in my personal history of gaming. In 1990 when I first started gaming I remember buying one game and tenaciously playing it night and day until I finished it. Now I buy games on Steam with reckless abandon, having no idea when I'll get around to playing them. I still have games from a Steam summer sale two years ago I've not played. Yet, I'm setting records for finishing games in a given year. This, my friends, is the dictionary definition of the word paradox. It has been an interesting month though, nothing new really. I've just been concentrating on finishing some games so I can clear them out of my inventory and install new ones. I did make one drastic exception, however, with a long happy trip down memory lane, and one, not so drastic exception, just a return to an old friend.


1. Battlefield: Bad Company 2  on PC

I blazed through the single player portion of this game back in 2010 when it came out on autopilot, like Denzel Washington in the movie, Flight flying the passenger liner, high on tequila, his eyes covered by Ray Ban Aviators and sheets of paper as his 737 careered along at 30,000 feet. It was a fun little romp, very arcadish actiony, a direct ripoff of the enormously anemic Call of Duty campaigns. But when I started playing online, that was when this game came alive for me. The enjoyment I got from the sniper maps actually exceeded the ebullience that engulfed me when I played Battlefield 2, one of my all time favorite games. And now, in twenty degree Indiana weather where everybody is coughing and walking around white skinned, gloomy and ghostly, I can jump into the Laguna Presa map with my friend Dave Tidwell, and his son and nephew, whilst talking in TeamSpeak, being surrounded by leafy green tropical plants, lemon yellow sunshine, ambient exotic birds and it's oddly like going home. I get steamrolled in BF3, and I've not jumped onto the BF4 bandwagon yet, BF2, which will always own my heart is ancient history, but in BFBC2, I've found a sense of place.
2. Hammock Maybe They Will Sing for US Tomorrow on CD


I've posted this here in posts past, but I believe music is the one common denominator we'll share with our ethereal bodies in the sweet hereafter. We may not eat, we may not see or smell, but we will listen to music. And it will be as beautiful of an experience as dreaming about music I've never actually heard before in my waking life, awakening with filled eyes and a mouth agape trying to hold onto that fading tune, digging and clawing to determine where in the world I've heard that song before. And then it disappears into the canyons of my subconscious, gone forever. Well, this album is very close to that experience, with the beautiful exception that it's a tangible thing I can hold and flip over, all shiny and rainbow brilliant like a giant dime. Sliding it into the CD tray is like revisiting that musical dream.I heard a cut of this on Pandora and instantly went to Amazon and picked it up. When I popped it into my car's CD player and the first unearthly great instrumental song came to life I was teleported to another world. And I go there each time I listen to this CD. If you want a taste of what I'm talking about visit Youtube and look up the titular, "Maybe They Will Sing for US Tomorrow." Imagine an old man, snow white hair, denim jacket and worn cowboy boots. He's walked long desert highways, rainy evergreen  roadways, and lonely country roads surrounded by hay fields. He's walked these distances to give you something. And without saying a word he proffers his hand and drops it into the palm of your hand. You glance down at this thing that hurts your heart with its beauty and changes your life forever. You're at a loss for words, yet you look up anyway and your mouth moves. The man turns his back to you, and walks back the way he came. There's a feeling of kindness and sacrifice that surrounds this odd stranger like an aura, and you're suddenly filled with the ultimate joy of living on this earth as a human being. This song is the sound of that.
3. Northern Exposure Season 3 on DVD
 I gave up on network television many years ago. I simply refuse to watch commercials. Of course, you all already know this about me. I consider it America's great dumbing down, the fact that we sit there and tolerate something as asenine as television commercials. So, when this series aired back in the early 90's it quickly zoomed in under my radar. But now that I'm watching them on DVD I realize I missed out on something great. Well, not entirely, I haven't missed out, I'm just late to the show. As much as I hate Indiana winters, this show makes me want to embrace the cold. It makes me want to grow my beard and buy a snowmobile. I want to ride along as a passenger on the Iditarod. I really want to move to Cicely, Alaska and wake up to Chris in the morning on the radio, and make business deals with Maurice, and drink a beer at Holling's place and be served greasy French Fries by his beautiful, airy wife. I suppose the great sadness about this wonderful series is knowing that there's an end to it. 

4. North by Northwest on DVD

Alfred Hitchcock supposedly once said, "The more interesting the villain, the more interesting the movie." I watched this movie years ago and James Mason became very intriguing to me. And then I watched him as Captain Nemo in Disney's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and he became my favorite actor. He had little onscreen time in this Hitchcock vehicle. Most of the limelight focused on Cary Grant, who, I think was okay, but the major star of this movie, which, in typical Alfie fashion is one man pitted alone against hostile elements, is the plot of the film. If your significant other isn't acquainted with Alfred Hitchcock, this is the movie that will have him or her biting their nails and edging forward on the sofa. (Psycho, perhaps the scariest movie ever made, is another grand choice.) Alfred Hitchcock's genius emanates like lens flair in this Hollywood feature extravaganza. His knack for characters with fatal flaws and odd but effective camera angles, his plot devices in which the bad guys more often than not get their comeuppance. It's all here. 

5. Citizen Soldiers: The US Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany by Stephen Ambrose

We all know and love Spielberg's epic, Saving Private Ryan. This book details what happens the next day. I have more than a passing familiarity with such gems as Brothers In Arms, Combat Mission, EA's venerable Medal of Honor series and all of the other wonderful WWII games I've played. This book, however, is like twirling the mouse wheel though and zooming into a freckle's eye view of the men who were there and getting their stories. Did you know the Germans loved American Jeeps? Despite that they thought the tiny cars were "gas guzzlers," the Germans captured every one they could and used them. Erwin Rommel very much admired the American soldiers and called them quick studies. An American commander who faced Germany's Fallschirmjager, the famous German paratroopers claimed, "Those Germans are the best soldiers I ever saw. They're smart and they don't know what the word "fear" means. They come in and they keep coming until they get the job done, or you kill 'em." If you like playing WWII computer games and watching WWII movies, you won't be disappointed with this book.

6. F1 2012 on PC

This was the first racing game I installed when I got my new system. The F1 car that sits there on a showroom floor like a beautifully painted bullet looks like you could simply reach out and run your fingers across its sleek glossy surface. Even the black rubber wheels begged to be felt and patted. And taking a car out on the track is a feeling of pure bliss. The cars truly feel like bodily extensions. I accrued almost 75 hours into this game and then I encountered something that caused me to uninstall the game and write a letter to Codemasters (the game's distributor.) The game's stringent penalty system makes it unplayable. There was nothing so frustrating as getting trapped in a corner with a gaggle of other cars, boxed in, and then getting a blue penalty flag signifying that you acquired a penalty pit lane lap for "illegal blocking." And then to come out that pit lane which has added another ten seconds to your lap time, and having a car driven by the AI bump you, lose its front wing, and then you're awarded another penalty lap for "unsportsmanlike behavior." I browsed the forums, and as my suspicions became validated I realized this game was a waste of time. Codemasters admitted the AI penalty system was a broken game mechanic, and they claimed to have fixed it in F1 2013. Why couldn't they have patched F1 2012 with this fix? There is no excuse for not fixing a game that has a flaw like this. 

7. Arcade Fire Reflektor on CD

This unusual Canadian group caught my ear on Pandora. I listened to this album in its entirety on Spotify and soon picked it up from Amazon. Okay, brace yourself because this is going to sound weird, but it's the best way I know to describe it. Imagine, if you will, a measuring cup filled halfway with KC and the Sunshine Band, and then 1/4 filled with The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper and the Lonely Heart's Club album, and then the final 1/4 filled with a night sky dotted with tiny ice chip stars, this pretty much describes this band to me. The band sounds like nothing I've heard before, but then it sounds like everything I've ever listened to in a giant mixing bowl. This, from Wikipedia.org,
"The band plays guitar, drums, bass guitar, piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, xylophone, glockenspiel, keyboard, French horn, accordion, harp, mandolin, and hurdy-gurdy, and take most of these instruments on tour; the multi-instrumentalist band members switch duties throughout shows."
If you have a good sound system and you want to take your ears to an aural Disneyland, treat them to this. For a good example, go to Youtube and look up "Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)" and step onto a musical merry go round. 

8. Company of Heroes on PC

Remember the long happy trip down memory lane I mentioned in the introduction of this Mix? Well, this is what I was referring to. Company of Heroes is without exception, the best real time strategy game I have ever played. Nothing I've played since has even come close. I'm not alone in this mindset. Computer Games Magazine and PC Gamer Magazine both awarded it their "Game of the Year" for 2006. (It came in 2nd place in Computer Gaming Word where Oblivion took top honors.) The game is muddy looking, ugly, and stark. And this art style works beautifully. I often lose games because I get overwhelmed because instead of pulling back and utilizing the big picture, I spend too much time zoomed in to check out a pack of cigarettes in a soldier's pocket or the rust on his MP40. The details aren't simply visual either. The game won numerous awards for its sound design. There is nothing so menacing as the sound of a German King Tiger Tank squeaking along, its treads sounding metally and mechanical as the behemoth is obscured from view because of the fog of war element in the game. I have played my fair share of online games of Company of Heroes, and I usually got steamrolled. Yet I still had a blast. I can't say this about too many other games. Relic's servers aren't even ghost towns anymore, they are things of memory, but praise be to Steam for taking over hosting duties, this game continues to live. I rebought the games over Steam's Winter sale; I couldn't pass up the opportunity to score all three games for ten bucks. And I thought I'd play the single player game all over again. Pick this game up so we can play. It's as much fun to clobber each other as it is to co-op with a buddy and take on the AI. This is a game that will always live on my hard drive.

9. Klipsch S4 Image in-ear monitors

A month ago I was an ignorant cuss as far as great sound goes. Well, listening to great sound, anyway. And then I became educated. I found a pair of these great monitors (a month ago I would have called them "ear buds," sheesh.) Ear buds are the cheap foamy ear devices that sit in the bowl of your ears. They're never bassy, and they are affected by the acoustics of the architecture of your ear shape. In-ear monitors, on the other hand look like slimmed earplugs, mini torpedoes that stick directly into your ear nestled up not far from your ear drums. Sound doesn't get any more purer than this. I stumbled across these in an audiophile magazine, and when Men's Health magazine deemed them the best in line monitors money could buy I was immediately intrigued. And then I found them on Amazon for $30 (on sale from $90.) The instant I put them in and gave them a listen might very well be, that at fifty-one years old, the moment I was born, from a musical standpoint, anyway. I now look forward to going to the doctor or the dentist. Need an oil change or a tune up? I'm there! There isn't a waiting room that doesn't feel like magnetized Velcro to me now.

 


Friday, January 3, 2014

2013: A Year in the Life of a PC Gamer


2013: A Year in the Life of a PC Gamer
 
 
      The beginning of 2013 was an impending explosion trapped in a bottleneck. I had been gaming on a PC I bought in 2009, and everything I put on it was starting to resemble a slide show at an old folks' home. If everyday is New Year's Day in the world of computerdom, then my old E7200 processor equipped Antech 300 was something that emerged from the Jurassic era. I spent about everyday for weeks doing virtual builds of new PCs on DigitalStorm, Cyberpower and IBuyPower sites. I researched like a medical scientist attempting to discover a cure for cancer. And then I stumbled upon a Youtube video that showcased a PC building firm called Ironside Computers. I hit them with a real life game of Twenty Questions on their site, and they were quick and efficient in answering every one of them. They even talked me out of buying extra items that were unnecessary in a build I had been constructing on their site. They sold me. And then they sold me a PC.
 
      I got the PC in March, and the impending explosion burst through the bottleneck. The energy could have soared a Saturn V rocket to the next galaxy. I ended up playing over 40 games in 2013, and I finished a record setting 18 games. Although, I noticed indie games stealing more and more of the forefront in 2013 I managed to play a variety of games.
      I gave my system a little bit of a workout with Battlefield 3 and SimCity (who's debacle launch had to be one of the darkest sour points of the year.) I also (for once) played a game mere months after it had released, Bioshock: Inifinite. This is probably one of the most beautiful games I've ever played. This is a game you call your friends, family and neighbors over to say, "Hey, look at this, look what my computer can do."
 
      Despite what I said earlier about indie games rearing their ugly and not so ugly heads to the forefront, I got my hooks into some of them as well. Zeno Clash was a struggle, but I finally beat it. It will probably go down in history as one of the greatest punching simulators ever made. I tackled Bastion which turned into another struggle, however, the ending made it all worth it. The strange novelty of having a narrator describing your every move in real time makes this a game experience everybody should partake in. And I have to admit, the Xbox controller mechanics and the body English maneuvers to get my character to jump over to the next ledge, tree, mushroom, whatever, all vanished by the wayside as I got enmeshed in the story itself. I played through Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the main attraction being its claim to be one hella scary game, and the fact that none of my friends had finished it because it was too scary. I played it, and I beat it. Boo-yah! It was fun, but there were some puzzles that were extremely difficult and quickly pulled me from the suspension of disbelief. Yes, the game was in fact quite scary, not the monster in the closet jumping out at you kind of scary, but more like a sense of dread kind of creepiness when you see movement in the shadows.
 
     Being many years removed from my callow teen aged years I often find nostalgia in the strangest of things. My own PC was the portal to my own gaming nostalgia in 2013. (Try to get nostalgic with those wonderful old Metal Gear games with your new next generation console. Not going to happen.) I played through 2004's lauded Doom 3 again after all of these years. The game still looks good. I thought it repetitive and clichéd, but it was a fun romp. I can see why it was such da bomb when it came out, though I always thought Far Cry was the much better game at the time. I also reinstalled Tron 2.0 and finished it this time. That should renew my geek cred for at least another whole year. I also reinstalled Mirror's Edge and finished it this time. This game had jaw dropping visuals when I first played it back in 2009. That hasn't changed. When Splinter Cell came out all of the gaming periodicals talked about its wonderful use of lighting. I think Mirror's Edge had it beat in that department. I was greatly frustrated right before the ending when I first played it. I got through it this time, and I'm honored to have completed it. The idea that there will be a Mirror's Edge 2 is music to my ears. I also played through Sid Meier's Rails! a second time. That game was certainly no Railroad Tycoon, but it still exuded a certain charm that made it irresistible. I never could get it to work for very long in Windows Vista, but it seemed to warm right up to my Windows 7 64 bit.
 
     I dabbled in Civilization V throughout the year. It's a game that really does scare me. It frightens me how life suddenly fast forwards when I play Civ 5. I can glance at the clock, and in no time two hours have flown by. No matter what time I start playing it, it's always dawn when I finish it. I don't even boot it up during the work week. It's just way too tempting. "Argh! Just . . one . . more . .turn!"
 
     Simulations is truly what drew me to PC gaming way back in 1989. I got to revisit some of that love in 2013 with a few select sims. I reinstalled Rise of Flight which ran like a choppy 56K slide show on my old Intel E7200. It was amazing to be able to run the game at max settings on my new rig. But it wasn't until I picked up Saitek's outstanding X52 Flight Control System that Rise of Flight really took on a new life for me. The game is still no pushover. You'll be lucky to obtain Ace in a simulated career, but having a powerful gaming rig and a flight stick and throttle stick to match definitely can put the odds in your favor. Speaking of hardware, I also picked up a Logitech G27 Wheel/Paddle set in 2013, and I bought Euro Truck Simulator 2 at a Steam sale to put the peripheral through its paces. Man, oh man, oh man, oh man. This game and wheel\paddle set is a marriage. The game was made for the Logitech system, or is it more like the Logitech system was made for this game. I don't know, I just know when I've got my headphones on listening to that wheeze of the turbo diesel emanating from my truck's twin stacks, and I've got European Trance on the radio, and I see hayfields and quaint pastoral houses in the distance I just feel like I've come home. That, my friends, is the magic of PC gaming.
 
     I don't expect 2014 to be as bold of a year in my gaming indulgences. First, there won't be anything as dramatic as upgrading to another rig. Secondly, I have numerous longer games lined up to play. I don't anticipate getting anywhere near 18 games finished. The Witcher 2 and Dragon Age 2 are both on my plate. I take twice as long as you do playing an RPG, I'm sure of it. But the Steam Winter Sale just ended, and as usual, it was an embarrassment of riches for me. I spent way too much on games that I have no idea when I'll get around to playing. But hey, this is the dawn of a brand new year sprawled out before us. I guess it's time to get cracking.