Spring is here, freaking finally. The old Earth has awakened from her zombie like slumber and wrapped herself in zeal and vim. It's the time for new beginnings. It's also time for me to trim my rosebushes that at this point look like giant skeletal hands with outstretched fingers, and time for me to break out the ladder and clean the old leaves out of my gutters (something I should have done in the fall!) but how can I when the days are intimating the approaching summer and I just can't resist the temptation to saddle my Vespa up and hit the road? And then there's so much good stuff coming out keeping me busy indoors? Have you seen the new collector set coming out for Wolfenstein: The New Order? Egads! I've never bought a collector's edition for anything because a hundred plus bucks is just too much to pay for something like that. But, hmmm . . .that Wolfenstein set may be my first. Oh, wait. I lied. I bought Star Trek Online, the collector's edition (and paid $80.00) for it, and guess what? The game was a dud. How could I have known? I mean, come on, this was Star Trek!! Oh well, will I ever learn? The answer is no, probably not. I've never played a Tropico game before, but I have officially added Tropico 5 to my Steam wish list. And I'm embracing the changes the developers are making to Assetto Corsa on a regular basis. Each new patch on this most awesomest car racing simulation makes it feel like a new game. This is one early access game I've fully bought into. The gutters and the rosebushes can wait. After all, why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?
1. Walt Disney's Peter Pan on DVD
2. Deus Ex: Invisible War on PC
Like my cousin, Justin Rexroad is fond of saying, PC Gamer Magazine is my bible. But I'm not sure I agree with them in awarding Deus Ex the best PC game of all time. True, it was innovative for its time, and its clunky AI was probably the very first instance of emergent gameplay in the history of PC gaming, but after playing through it a few years ago, and the not so distant creation of the remarkable Deus Ex: Revolutions, I knew I had to tackle Deus Ex: Invisible War, which is basically Deus Ex 2. Like I said in last month's post, the game didn't quite live up to the merits of the original. And I can say this with credibility since I have now beat the game. The game was a narrow corridor experience at best, with interminably long load screens and bland graphics that look like the developers who created the game for the consoles were forced to stay over late and get some overtime in to port the game over to the PC. There was a saving grace, however. I liked the multiple endings (a trait carried over from the first game.) All that I considered sacred I finally destroyed in the end because I thought it was the best decision. I was simply being true to my school. And the end result, the product of my final decision made the game worth playing through.
3. Far Cry 3 on PC
When Far Cry came out in 2004 it got its thunder shoplifted by Doom 3, which was unfortunate because I thought Far Cry was a much better game. My mouth dropped open when I approached the opening of the first cave and I experienced the postcard vista of peering out of the cave at the island which became the real character of the game. (The game began its life as a tech demo to show off Nvidia technology to business developers.) And then when I encountered the rusted out hulk of the aircraft carrier which was almost big enough to be the standalone environment for the whole game I realized this would be a game I would never forget. The series leveled the awe factor with Far Cry 2 which became the longest FPS I've ever played, clocking in at an astonishing 74 hours. It employed truly immersive mechanics such as bringing a compass or a map up to the player's face in real time as he or she were driving or walking. There was none of the ESC key bullcrap that paused the game and let you catch your breath. I'm about 30 hours into Far Cry 3, and at this point I'm eschewing the story missions to scoop up relics and lost letters scattered around the map like hidden Easter eggs. I'm drawn in, however, so much so that the $12.00 I spent on the game in a Steam sale easily trumps a $2,000 vacation to a Caribbean Island. Speaking of Steam, I wish this game had Steam achievements instead of Ubisoft's also ran "UPlay" interface where I have no friends and I feel as if my trophies go unseen hanging on a wall in my villa on Mars.
When Far Cry came out in 2004 it got its thunder shoplifted by Doom 3, which was unfortunate because I thought Far Cry was a much better game. My mouth dropped open when I approached the opening of the first cave and I experienced the postcard vista of peering out of the cave at the island which became the real character of the game. (The game began its life as a tech demo to show off Nvidia technology to business developers.) And then when I encountered the rusted out hulk of the aircraft carrier which was almost big enough to be the standalone environment for the whole game I realized this would be a game I would never forget. The series leveled the awe factor with Far Cry 2 which became the longest FPS I've ever played, clocking in at an astonishing 74 hours. It employed truly immersive mechanics such as bringing a compass or a map up to the player's face in real time as he or she were driving or walking. There was none of the ESC key bullcrap that paused the game and let you catch your breath. I'm about 30 hours into Far Cry 3, and at this point I'm eschewing the story missions to scoop up relics and lost letters scattered around the map like hidden Easter eggs. I'm drawn in, however, so much so that the $12.00 I spent on the game in a Steam sale easily trumps a $2,000 vacation to a Caribbean Island. Speaking of Steam, I wish this game had Steam achievements instead of Ubisoft's also ran "UPlay" interface where I have no friends and I feel as if my trophies go unseen hanging on a wall in my villa on Mars.
4. Mission Impossible: Season One on Netflix
I'm still in season one enjoying the predicaments the Impossible Mission task force gets into. I clearly see where the show is easily the paradigm for such wonderful things as MacGyver, No One Lives Forever and even Austin Powers. Martin Landau is brilliant in his role, and Greg Morris as Barney is the perfect complement. I believe the show ran seven seasons; I can see why. Even the theme music quickens my heart. If you have played Monolith's wonderfully crafted No One Lives Forever on PC, or you like James Bond flicks, you need to check this series out.
5. Bad Company: The Original Bad Co. Anthology on CD
Sticking out like a ruby in a haystack, I recently picked up this twin CD slipcase set at my local Half Price Books. How could I not pick it up? I didn't realize when the band formed in 1973 they used Led Zeppelin's privately owned studio and rubbed shoulders with the band on a regular basis. Paul Rodgers has one of the most appropriate voices for rock and roll music, and he ties with my other favorite voice of rock music, Joe Elliot of Def Leppard. This band's name says it all, a name that matches their badassery.
6. Star Trek: Original Series Season One on DVD
I've watched this series in its entirety at least once, and I've watched some episodes a half dozen times over the years. My last year home I remember watching the series with my stepfather and I recently loaned him the series for nostalgia's sake. And wouldn't you know, I've been going to his house to watch the episodes with him. It's deja vu all over again, just 34 years later, yet Spock's logic and amiability and Kirk's very human ability to lead a starship remain unchanged. The year I left home I enlisted in the US Navy, and I hated it, a dour experience, I refer to it as my four year deep hell hole, but the one good thing through it all is it put me on that strange but common ground with the crew of the Enterprise.
7. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
I'm only in the first 130 pages of this book, but I can already tell I never want it to end. It has that same powerful effect as Fannie Flagg's magical, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café or Peter Hedge's compelling What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Gruen writes from a male perspective and she pulls it off as if she were a red blooded American male in a past life and never forgot the experience. Her characterizations come across so well I feel as if I'm watching a stage play rather than reading a book. Her power of description puts me right in the circus train sleeping on wet hay, moonlight spilling over me through the slats, and the stink of animal manure penetrating my nostrils.
8. Train Simulator 2014 on PC
Trains have always been in the background of my life. At eight and nine years old I lived down the street from a train yard. I used to lie awake at night and cry myself to sleep to the sound of those lonesome train engines winding up and crawling down as they moved cars back and forth building consists. Christmas at eight years old I got an electric train for Christmas, a tiny N scale jobbie that was a world in miniature for me. My mother herded my sister and I up in an act of near violent desperation and we left my alcoholic father in the middle of the night. I remember glancing back at the house, my electric train left behind forever. My ninth birthday my mother tried to make it up to me, being a single mother on a very limited income she bought an HO scale electric train from a local Montgomery Wards store. It was a customer return, a typical, "purchase as is." It didn't work. That train set got left behind too, but that's another story. But who needs electric trains anymore, anyway, when you've got Train Simulator 2014 on your computer? Deemed the most expensive PC game ever made (buying the all inclusive DLC can run up a bill of $2,000) I only buy the locales, routes and trains I want. And although the sim gets a large number of haters on the Steam forums, I find the game almost a religious experience. People think driving a train is nothing more than controlling a throttle lever and going forward and reverse. There are sections of track with varying speed limits, and crossings, and the comfort of passengers to consider while taking sharp curves, etc. It can become all engrossing, and this simulation proves it. Sitting in a locomotive with the tiny interior gauge and button lights sparkling like Christmas tree decorations in the night, pouring rain outside and knowing you have a hundred miles to make before morning, this is simulation software at its best.
