Edward's January 2017 Mix

December was quite the busy month for me. Crunch time at work, my daughter coming up for a much needed (and long overdue visit), and the holidays. I got little time for gaming and actually closed the year out completing a paltry 8 games! That’s pathetic. Last year I finished 20. I need to get on the ball. The throes of winter have been frightful, and this being the start of a new year it’s the perfect time to step up my game. (So far I’ve finished two games this year, not a bad start.) I’m still trudging through XCom: Enemy Uknown and Dark Souls, but I have started a few new games. We’ll see where that takes me.

1.      The Appleseed Cast Mare Vitalis on CD: I purchased The Appleseed Cast’s 7^th album, Sagarmatha after hearing one song on Pandora or GooglePlay (don’t remember which now) but the whole album was love at first listen. It was the best post rock band I’d ever heard. The 3 man ensemble has some of the prettiest chorus/reverb guitar out there. So, I took a gamble and picked up this, their second album released in 2000. To my dismay, it sounds totally off kilter with Sagarmatha. The band, originally from Lawrenceville, Kansas started as an “emo” band. And I do love the way they blossomed out from that into a post rock band. But I think this release leans much more to their emo roots. Definitely not my thing. It pains me to do this, but this album is eBay bound.

2.      Lost: Season 3 on Blu-Ray: I just wrapped this up about a week ago. In traditional Lost fashion, the series ended on a cliffhanger. And boy, was it! Are our much loved island denizens being rescued? It would seem as much, but of course with 3 more seasons to visit, I’m sure a rescue is out of the question at this point. This season revealed so much about ‘The Others,” and how there really isn’t black and white good and bad on the island. I’ve seen John Locke who I thought was the strongest character on the island suddenly quite vulnerable and indecisive. And I’ve seen my first brush with the enigmatic facet of the show where we see Jack and Kate in an alternate existence outside of the island. And then, Charlie’s demise. Heart rending.

 

3.      Dirt 3: The Complete Edition on PC: I thoroughly enjoyed racing through Dirt 2 with its splashy graphics and exciting “sim-arcade” physics. Shoot, even the music was good (and prompted me to buy two CDs by bands who performed on the game’s soundtrack. But this game is somewhat lackluster. It’s still fun with an Xbox controller, but I absolutely abhor the “Gymkharta” antics in which you perform car acrobatics in sport arenas with drifts, donuts, sign bashing, and aerial jumps in near impossible time constraints. To me this is just total killjoy, and its saving grace is being allowed to dumb down the difficulty level on the fly. Fortunately, this game is only four short seasons and then it will be over with.

4.      XCom: Enemy Unknown on PC: I’m still struggling in this acclaimed TBS game. I’m not sure whether I’m progressing or not, truth be told. I’m attacking my first alien base and so far each bout is a less than epic failure. Most of the major countries in the world are still under Project: XCom’s control, so I must be doing something right. Still, if I could just take this one alien base! I have a feeling once I accomplish that the game will take a turn for the better and I will have broken through a strong slow point. The game despite its difficulty is fun. PC Gamer magazine said this about XCom 2 and it really holds true in this game as well, "This is your favorite action figures battling it out in the living room on a Saturday morning." Wonderful summation of this game.

5.      The Wake of the Red Witch on DVD:  John Wayne, always the white hat good guy, brings to the screen something different. A sea story in which Wayne’s character is more like a movie version of Jack London’s harsh and cruel-like whaler, Wolf Larson in his great novel, The Sea Wolf , John Wayne is anything but good. He double crosses the merchant he sails for, scuttling the rich merchant’s ship and sinking millions in gold bullion. Interestingly, not out of greed, but over a broken heart. The woman Wayne loved fell into the clutches of the merchant and became lost to the sea captain forever. This movie isn’t quite swashbuckling jolly roger pirate fun, but close enough. And it’s the third movie I know of where John Wayne dies in the end.

6.      Running Blind (Jack Reacher #4) by Lee Child. Former military cop, Jack Reacher is still enjoying a settled life with a Wall Street lawyer girlfriend and a nice house bequeathed to him from the girlfriend’s father when a series of unfortunate events trap Reacher into being blackmailed by FBI agents and coerced into helping them track down a killer who preys upon military service women who’ve brought up sexual harassment charges against their male counterparts. Child’s Reacher novels are difficult to put down once started, and this one is no exception. Part Leroy Brown, part Big Bad John, seemingly part T-1000 Terminator, and as tactical and fast thinking as Angus MacGuyver in an enemy fortress, Jack Reacher is a hero for the modern man.  

7.      The Brothers Johnson Right on Time on CD: Back in 1977, being the invisible kid as a sophomore in high school, I fell in love with a song on the radio by these two esteemed godfathers of funk, The Brothers Johnson. That song, “Strawberry Letter 23,” epitomized that year in high school for me, accompanying my friend Mike White who worked as a pizza deliverer on Friday nights, going to English class after gym class, my hair still wet from the shower, always picking pizza and fries to eat in the cafeteria instead of eating the nutritious stuff. Back when the Saturday Night Fever disco soundtrack blocked the horizon, this duo exuded much more in the cool factor department. Propelled by famed producer, Quincy Jones, this is a band I’m honored to say contributed to the soundtrack of my youth. This CD is as pure as it gets with the aforementioned, “Strawberry Letter 23,” and “Brother Man” unremixed, unremastered and virtually untouched by a “Sound Wars” engineer.

8.      Fallout on PC: I had the original big box and the stoutly manual back in 1999 two years after its release by Interplay.(Which now sells for well over $100.00 on eBay.)  I started the game, but didn’t get far. I was too captivated by the likes of Half Life and Rainbow Six. I started it again some years later, but got snagged in a game crashing bug and stopped playing it. And then I installed Fallout 3 and loved every single moment of it. Being the purist I am, I don’t have the heart to undertake Fallout 4 with having another college try at the game that started it all, the one game my favorite former Computer Gaming World Magazine writer, Jeff Green quipped as “the best RPG on the planet.” With its third person isometric over the shoulder view and its action point movement/combat system and its default difficulty, definitely not a game for the squeamish. But like the hellishly difficult Dark Souls, this is one you can truly be proud to say you’ve finished. Hopefully, I’ll get there.

9.      Penny Dreadful Season One on Netflix: Recommended by my friend, Neil Campbell, this darkly disturbing series has seduced me into its sinister spell. I remember reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the 8^th grade, and I immediately discerned I was way in over my head. I remember spending most of the book with an accompanying dictionary, but then years later as an adult I tackled Bram Stoker’s Dracula and found it wonderfully entertaining. Now, couple those great books with Jack the Ripper’s Victorian slummy London, and insert Oscar Wilde’s self incarnation in the guise of Dorian Gray who is also a character in this series and it makes up a compelling serial. There is a scene in episode 3 that’s really stuck to me, and not in a good way. Dorian Gray takes the show’s main character to a shady underground club in which we see a rat terrier tossed into a pit with a hundred rats. The dog chomps, shakes, and eviscerates the entire group of rats in minutes. Digital trickery has become the new magic of the medium because the scene looks so real I can’t stop thinking about it. And Josh Hartnett, the aforementioned character who is a former Indian fighter who is led to watch this spectacle has to leave to go to the bar to chase two whiskeys. The cruel sport is even more than he can bear.

10.  Wolfenstein: The New Order on PC: I remember delving into Wolfenstein 3-D way back in 1994. I don’t even think I beat it entirely, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. And then in 2002 I played through Return to Castle Wolfenstein twice. 2009 saw the release of Wolfenstein which I also revered, although I do remember a horribly difficult final boss fight I struggled to beat. And now I’m playing an alternate version of Wolfenstein occurring in an alternate universe where the Nazis win WWII. This game is why I love First Person Shooters, and in that they offer a sense of place for me quite unlike anything else. I can come home from work, dim the lights, don the headset, and suddenly I’m actually in a bleak gray stone castle commandeered by Nazi henchmen. This game has all of the trappings that make my high end system glow, and yet it’s a homage to its old school roots to Wolfenstein 3-D, often called “the grandfather of FPS games.”