Edward's August 2014 Mix

This will go down as one of the most unusual Augusts in the history of my world. It's nothing as monumental as the end of the world, or the dissolution of the Republican and Democrat parties, ushering in a much more sensible age of Libertarianism, no, nothing like that. I'm talking about a sea change in my personal life. I've had to shatter old habits and learn a new way to live. And so far, it's not been as bad as I thought it would be. My house is empty now, and though I swear I see ghosts and hear distant voices of the ones who once graced this place I am on my own now. Oh well, I've got to keep my sanity, and what better way to keep one's sanity than to lose oneself in a plethora of games or departing the outside world and becoming swallowed in the ambience of a good set of tunes or a movie!

1. Wing Commander on PC.  I'm revisiting this true classic thanks to GoG.com. There is no handholding, and no difficulty settings. The only thing this game offers is a great hurling out into the deep throes of space. And in 1990 this game did it so well. This game wooed everybody when it came out and pretty much made for a paradigm shift as far as the new VGA graphics standard and what exactly a PC sound card was capable of. It was the first game that made me feel so much more than as if I were simply playing a game. Being launched into space and looking back at the Tiger's Claw, my mother ship, I truly felt alone in the great abyss. I had been married 3 years when this game came out and I had a one year old daughter. It feels very strange going back to play this game. The graphics look like mud now, and there's a huge cheese factor in the storyline, but you're not a PC gamer until you have this one under your belt.  

 

 

2. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing on PC. This is quite simply the best ARPG I've ever played. I labored through Torchlight's mazeful and endless depth dungeons, and despite that I finished Path of Exile, I lost interest in it long before I saw the closing credits. I'm not even close to finishing Van Helsing yet, and I'm already looking forward to rerolling another class character and starting over when I reach the end. The whole Transylvania 1800s setting adorned with full moons and Steampunk make this a refreshing getaway from the bleak dungeons found in most ARPGs. Steam offers it on sale sometimes, and I highly recommend it if you weren't lucky enough to get it for next to nothing in the recent Humble Bundle offering.  

3. Far Cry 3 on PC. I really need to finish this game, and I would have beaten it long ago if not for my silly OCD tendencies to gather every memory card, relic and letter the game has neatly (and not so neatly) ensconced in its bevy of hidden places. I took a break for a while, but then I managed to hear the game's original soundtrack recording in its entirety, and now I'm hooked all over again. Yes, you're going to think I'm weird, but I've actually been driving around with this soundtrack CD in my car stereo. Outside of Jeremy Soule's brilliant OST to Guild Wars 2 this is my favorite soundtrack. If you want me to make a believer out of you go to Youtube and look up the Far Cry 3 soundtrack. You'll want to listen to track 6, "Journey into Madness." This is the song that accompanies the game's protagonist, Jason Brody: A man who awakens on the beach and realizes he's got to cowboy up and go back and save his friends. This tune is the theme of that transformation, and it's perfect.               

     4.   Countdown by Deborah Wiles. It's not often I reread a book. I had to make an exception for this young adult novel. It concerns a young girl on the even of teen angst while the world holds its breath during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This book wonderfully reveals that history can come from the most interesting sources, not necessarily the scholastics and the conquerors.

 

     5.   Blade Runner on Blu Ray. I never tire of watching this movie. As a matter of fact I have two favorite movies. This is one of them. And as my friend, Vic Berwick, will attest, we generally put this movie on when we haven't seen each other for a long time. I've owned this movie in all of its incarnations, and the DVD collector set was nice, but Blu Ray is the way to see it in its full glory. It's one movie that transcends the Philip K. Dick novel it was based on. Supposedly Ridley Scott is in talks to do a sequel (prequel?) I think well enough should be left alone. This movie stands alone, as it should.

 

      6.   Ennio Morricone: Film Music Maestro on CD. You may not realize it, but you already know who Ennio Morricone is. It goes without saying he's one of the masters of movie music creation. His theme from The Untouchables is still used by Paramount when it's previewing new releases on DVD. This is the man who became the icon for Spaghetti western music. There have been great Western themes over the years, but none that evoke the loneliness and sparseness so effectively as Morricone's works. And who can forget the haunting harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West?

 

      7.   4 Film Favorites: Draculas on DVD. This is quite a good collection of Hammer Films all starring Christopher Lee as the infamous count. Though many liberties were taken from the original Bram Stoker novel, the Hammer movies do it with the most fun. As always, their sets are grandiose and authentic. The characters take the roles seriously, and Anthony Hinds, the producer, and John Elder, the screenplay writer of most of these movies created them with an affection you don't quite see anymore in movies. Seeing Christopher Lee turn from a seemingly amiable lord of a castle to the fiendish Count Dracula, Prince of Darkness is a sight to behold. Lee will always be Dracula in my mind.

Edward's July 2014 Mix

 

This has been a July for the record books as one of the coolest July months in recorded history. A slight tinge threads through the air portending the upcoming autumn. And if that wasn’t enough, our local Hell Mart has stocked shelves full of school supplies. It’s fair time for our fair city, but backed by this unseasonable coolness, our small town’s   denizens are more intent on ushering in the fall season. That’s fine by me. Bring on the cool weather, my perfect excuse to stay inside and lose myself to my media whoredom.

 

1.      House of Cards Season One on Netflix: The roller coaster ride is starting to take off. Francis Underwood, the congressman so effectively played by Kevin Spacey is really getting to be a character I’m fond of, despite his wiley and unctious ways. His nuggets of wisdom so elegantly dropped in his southern educated drawl is the main attraction. I’ve not been fascinated by a character as much since Doc Holliday in the movie, Tombstone. Spacey’s ability to think ever so quickly on his feet, standing in rapid contemplation, and then being taken by a thought, like a wide receiver catching a touchdown pass, he takes the thought and runs with it. Sometimes it ends in disaster. But this is a man whose confidence always threatens to outpace him. And just when you think he’s a real scoundrel, he goes to his old college campus where they unveil a library named after him. He stands stoic at the podium and throws out his speech. He glances at his old group of classmates, and then back at the library and says, “Nothing lasts forever, this is all transitory. . . I wish I had the word . . . harmony, that’s the word that keeps coming back to me. An individual voice joined by others for one brief moment. A moment that lasts the length of a breath.”

 

2. F1 2013 on PC: I’m somewhat taking a break from Grid 2 to get back to what is the finest F1 simulation produced by Codemasters to date. I’ve just graduated Young Driver’s School, and got the achievement for it. Now I’m tackling some of the driver scenario challenges before I delve into the whole Grand Prix career enchalada. It’s a perfect match for my Logitech G27 wheel/paddle set. The devil is in the details in this one. The HD lighting, the rays of God streaming through the billboards and grandstands, the dust particles kicked up by the car in front of you, this game is easily the most gorgeous car racing simulation I’ve ever played.  

3. Double Star by Robert Heinlein: Lorenzo Smythe, a down on his luck actor is tricked into what he thinks could be the acting gig of his life. Instead he’s whisked off to Mars to double as an important politician who’s been kidnapped. The only problem is, Smythe abhors Martians. He has terrible bodily reactions when he’s around them, and now he must mingle with the masses of them! This is good vintage Heinlein. This was actually written three or four years before Starship Troopers, which in my opinion was when Heinlein was in his prime.  

4. Tik Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum on Kindle: Who would have thought a man who used racist terms and wrote editorials encouraging genecide of Native Americans could be such a beloved hero to our nation’s children? Ah, but he was! In this, his 8^th Oz book we meet a  minor princess in a minor province in the far reaches of Oz who decides to gather an army and march on the Emerald City. This book bears the same sort of repetition it shares with his other Oz stories. But it doesn’t grate nor does it bore the reader. In his usual manner, Baum keeps the violence on the down low, despite that terrible things happen to his characters.  

5. Magic: The Gathering collectible card game: I originally quit the game because of  Wizard of the Coast’s manner of constantly coming out with new decks of cards making all prior decks obsolete. It made me wonder if their employees wore t-shirts that said, “Cash Cow” on it. (Or if I should be wearing a t-shirt that said, “Sucker” on it while playing the game.) Oddly, this game is pretty much what’s consumed me in the month of July. The blessed reunion started with a new game store that opened in town. I entered a sealed booster deck tournament and ended up going undefeated, winning the tournament. And now I’m creating new decks, comprised of  expensive foil cards. Not only is this game consuming me, it’s consuming me in style.