Edward's September 2016 Mix

Still working oodles of overtime (most Saturdays) but still making time for getting my fair share of gaming in. But not all is sitting at my computer desk. Having Netflix is the perfect excuse to exercise, and I make the best of it. Nothing beats sitting on the bike and spinning while losing myself in an episodic serial. I turned another year older this month, but sometimes I wonder if my mind is one half frame step out of synch with my body. Most people my age converse and cogitate about mutual funds and retirement looming on the horizon. All I think about is beating the next level of an RPG, or how long it’s going to take for me to beat XCom. Ah, the perks of being a gamer!

1.      Wolfsheim Spectators/ Casting Shadows on CD: Composed of two members who unofficially disbanded (and took each other to court with a 2004 ruling that neither member could perform as Wolfsheim without the other, this synthpop band reminds me of a band that hatched in the 1980’s (which they did) and then continued on making the same style of music into the oughts. Their legacy is a true testament to the fact that not every band needs to constantly progress or improve. If a band can continually produce great music in the same vein over and over, why change? If not for my friend Memri Hunt who introduced me to the band in the virtual environment, Second Life, I never would have heard of them. If you’re curious check out “Find You’re Gone,” on Youtube. The video is as interesting as the song. Thank you, Memri.

2.      Lost: Season 3 on Blu Ray: So now I’m about halfway through the third season which is the midpoint for the whole series. Like I mentioned before, the show seems to have switched focus concentrating more on “the Others,” and I’m not as captivated by them as I am the original survivors, still, I find their stories entertaining. I still like Sawyer’s constant allusion to literary characters, he’s a man after my own heart in that regard. And I like John Locke’s intimacy with nothing but bad luck and the redemption he seems to have found in or on the island. But the main star of the show, for me, anyway, is still the island itself. If I lived at such a beautiful place, why would I ever want to leave?

3.      The Complete H.P. Lovecraft on Amazon Kindle: Just finished this tome of Lovecraft’s complete tales. He had a penchant for mood and setting, but as far as being a master of the macabre, I’m not so sure. He wrote in the same vein as his heartfelt fan, Robert Howard, the creator of Conan. Actually, I should say Howard wrote in Lovecraft’s vein since Lovecraft was more established as a writer when the two of them corresponded through letters. But honestly, I found Howard’s Conan stories more entertaining. Lovecraft’s stories are repetitive, usually involving an educated man (a college professor more often than not) who either through dream or invitation in the physical world finds himself in strange places, a mountain top or deep within caves housing relics and remnants of a lost civilization home to otherwordly creatures, fiendish monsters that had little use for mankind. And then our fearful protagonist discovers a pocketful of these wicked denizens still prospering and barely escapes with his life. Howard P. Lovecraft was an important contributor to modern horror, and I feel accomplished having digested all of his works, but I’m not his biggest fan.

4.      Assetto Corsa on PC: Still, again . . . yet again, my go to PC racing sim. I’m 57% through the “campaign” of t the game. I’m in the GT BMW Z4 GT3 Series which puts me behind the wheel of a monster BMW road course car. The car is capable of straightaway speeds of 160 mph, and it gets there rather quickly. In this series, the races are longer, going from 5 laps to 8 laps, but the lap times are faster which makes the races seem to be much quicker. The sunlight on the pavement looking like hot flashes of searing light in the distance, the blur of verdant greenery of grassy hillsides and trees rushing past the side windows, and the engine powerhousing beneath the hood sounding like a captive Grizzly Bear. This is as real racing gets from a computer desk affixed with a Racing Sim wheel/shifter/paddle set

5.      Hell on Wheels: Season 4 on Netflix: I just finished this acclaimed season, which, like I said last month was the best season in the whole series so far. I couldn’t believe what happened to Ruth, the church lady. And despite Bohannon’s distant treatment of his Mormon wife, we now find him searching for her after the village he left her in for safekeeping is ravaged by smallpox. As luck would have it, we find him working for the railroad once again, but this time in competition against Durant. This is the best and the most authentic modern western I’ve seen since 1998’s venerable movie, Tombstone.

  

6.      Grand Theft Auto IV on PC: $800 million dollars in its first day. 1 billion in its first three days. Guinness Book of World Records for the most lucrative entertainment in modern times. 92% score rating in PC Gamer Magazine. The game is stunningly gorgeous with infinite draw distances and frame rates that kill the 60 fps bullcrap promulgated by consoles. (Thank goodness for my GTX 970 card.) The open world mechanic of the game is incredible. And despite the learning curve involved with switching from mouse/keyboard to Xbox 360 controller, I’m even having fun with the challenge of that. But . . . I don’t like this game. Yes. Seriously. I just don’t like it. The game takes misogyny to all new heights, and the character, Trevor Phillips, is so over the top in his shallowness he’s simply incredulous. The game is irreverent seemingly for nothing more than the sake of irreverence. I feel there’s an inside joke that I’ve been left out of. It’s as if the Rockstar teams who developed this game were helmed by a thirteen year old who suffered a lack of parenting, and found bathroom graffiti and flattened roadkill guffaw hilarious. I’m not a prude, or at least I never thought I was, and admittedly I’ve never laughed out loud while playing any PC game, but this game doesn’t even having me cracking a smile.

 

7.      The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton I’m only 75 pages into this tale about a poor family in the deep south narrated by a young girl, a simpleton overlooked by everybody in her family. Hamilton’s writing voice is compelling, and her prose almost lyrical. I’m looking forward to progressing in the novel.

8.      PC Gamer Magazine: I’ve been a loyal reader since 1996, and a subscriber since probably 2001. It seems to have changed a lot since its inception, now having writers and editors proffering their political allegiances (not a good thing.) But it now the only PC dedicated vehicle in print now. They just released their Top 100 PC Games of All Time. Not surprisingly, The Witcher III heads that list, and no small wonder since CDProjekt is so PC friendly anyway. I know one day PC Gamer will go the way of its brethren publications, Computer Gaming World and Computer Games Magazine, which is online only, but until that day comes, it’s still a special joy to go out to the mailbox and find a fresh issue waiting for me.