We hiked a lot this year in the mountains! I figured I’d throw together a quick list of the hikes with some links to the trail maps and reviews. I’d recommend all of them, but details can be found in the previous blog post thingy.
Back at the beginning of October (which feels like forever ago), Rob and I took our now-annual week-long trip to the Blue Ridge to get some cooler weather, changing leaves, a bunch of hikes, and a ton of good food. I’m sick today so I figured I’d brush the dust off of these notes and post a little journal-style entry of the highlights. Enjoy, and feel free to reach out if you need any recommendations or want to hear about anything else!
We started out the trip with a rather fortuitous stop: the Amazon Treasure Truck was in tourist-town Orlando with SNES Classics. Despite putting us a little behind schedule, it was such a relief to snag one of those on launch day. And it turned out to be a huge boon for the trip! Over the week, we played through Star Fox, Mega Man X, and Super Mario World (all 96 exits!). Rob made it through most of Link to the Past, but we couldn’t quite clear that one entirely. It was an awesome dynamic; outdoor activities in the daylight and classic gaming at night.
Join me on a journey back through one of my favorite video game experiences: Riven: The Sequel to Myst! Watch at 1.5x, and don’t miss my previous Myst Retrospective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp1jkGEKnCU
Despite being one of my favorite game series ever, I dropped off the Myst train after Myst 3. In an attempt to get back on and get some motivation to see through Myst 4 and 5 (and maybe Uru) before mainlining Obduction, I wanted to revisit Myst, Riven, and Exile and share my thoughts in some form.
The above video is my attempt for Riven, which featured a whole webcam just for my notes! I had a ton of fun with this one; it’s so much harder to related the game through a thorough playthrough (as the puzzles and world are much less modular than Myst). Enjoy!
Join me on a journey back through one of my favorite video game experiences: Myst! I talk about Myst, why I did this video, why Myst is special, and then I skate through all of realMyst: Masterpiece Edition! Save yourself some time and watch at 1.5x.
Despite being one of my favorite game series ever, I dropped off the Myst train after Myst 3. In an attempt to get back on and get some motivation to see through Myst 4 and 5 (and maybe Uru) before mainlining Obduction, I wanted to revisit Myst, Riven, and Exile and share my thoughts in some form. The above video is my attempt for Myst. The Riven video is being edited and is coming soon!
I haven’t made one of these in awhile, and some friends encouraged me to do another one, so here it is! It’s a bit of a throwback mix with a lot of tracks I felt were too played out in years past, and the result feels like a warm blanket of dance music from my past with little notes from the present. Enjoy!
Tracklist
Shakedown – At Night
Freemasons – Love on My Mind
Junior Jack – Stupidisco (Hott 22 Main Vocal Mix)
Mylo vs. Miami Sound Machine – Doctor Pressure (Dirty Club Mix)
Armand van Helden – I Want Your Soul
Paul Oakenfold – Faster Kill Pussycat
Delta Heavy – Punish My Love VIP
The Similou – All This Love (Tonite Only F**K Tomorrow Mix)
Freemasons – Rain Down Love (Walken Extended Mix)
Tyken – Every Word
Cedric Gervais – Spirit in My Life
ATB – Never Give Up (Stefan Dabruck and Tocadisco Remix)
Oliver Heldens – Gecko (Overdrive)
Junior Jack – Thrill Me (New_ID Remix)
Mat Zo – Sinful (Louis La Roche Remix)
Nero – Reaching Out (Booka Shade Remix)
Booka Shade – In White Rooms
The Aston Shuffle – High With You
Robyn – With Every Heartbeat (Tong and Spoon Wonderland House Mix)
I recently turned 32 (October birthdays, woo!), so here are 32 stream-of-consciousness topics that came to me as I forced myself to write about 32 topics.
Jason Schreier (kotaku.com), a veteran of the video game beat, weaves together several historical narratives from primary sources that describe in often-painful detail the difficulties most every game befalls on its way to launch, from the single-man production of Stardew Valley to the large-team blockbuster Uncharted 4.
The writing is approachable for non-enthusiasts but fills in knowledge gaps for even the most well-read fan. The chapter on Destiny is particularly special, building on the success of Kotaku’s excellent reporting to finally bring the details of that game’s late-stage reboot together into one coherent (if maddening) story.
The book left me with a renewed desire to check out The Witcher 3, another reason to dislike George Lucas, and a much healthier respect for the kinds of experiences Kickstarter enabled. Having lived through and managed a number of product launches over the past decade (though none nearly as intense), these chapters stoked memories of ownership conflict, poor management decisions, troublesome tooling, and the intense ups and downs of being a cowboy coder. The common thread of “crunch”, of working yourself to the bone to finish even somewhat on time, was all too familiar, and the picture Schreier paints of it being an almost essential ingredient in game development is simultaneously tragic and human.
It’s not entirely about failure, though. It was likewise a real treat to read about the Diablo 3 team consoling a downtrodden Destiny team after launch woes, showing how common some of these growing pains can be even from teams with radically different pedigrees. These stories, while bleak, are just as much about turning a lonely coder into a multi-millionaire and allowing a team of burned out and bored friends to risk it all and strike gold.
There’s a fairly ubiquitous quote by Shigeru Miyamoto: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” Blood, Sweat, and Pixels shows that in today’s industry, any finished game at all is a special thing. Highly recommended.
I digested a good chunk of this in the shade of a local Chick-fil-A. It’s amazing how quickly things return to normal after a major hurricane. I’ll miss this about Florida one day, I’m sure.
Irma’s finally gone. I’ve lived through the “threat of an oncoming hurricane” phase enough times in my life to have lost count, but the harbinger period of the last week felt like an eternity. Even as early as the day after Labor Day, local stores were mostly out of bread and water. Newscasters love to talk about Floridians’ “hurricane amnesia,“ but it was pretty clear there was a good bit of healthy fear for this one.
I waffled between dismissive optimism and speculative anxiety all week, well after we stocking up on tons of food, water, gas, batteries, and flashlights. By mid-week, we’d decided to pack valuables in plastic tubs, move furniture and electronics away from the windows (I even plastic-wrapped our dining room PC and desk), and set a milestone for deciding to evacuate or stay. I was even able to take advantage of my parents’ Christmas gift of a drone to take some video of the roof and surrounding area, just in case. You can only do so much of this kind of preparation work before the dread sets in.
As fate-tempting as it felt, we enjoyed a rainy day at the Magic Kingdom on Friday, mostly to take advantage of the strange opportunity and to try to cut through the anxiety we were all feeling leading up to landfall. When things started closing around mid-afternoon on Saturday, you could really feel the unease set in everywhere you went. Back home, we focused on completing Overcooked (fantastic) and Tomb Raider (better than Uncharted, fight me), but as I went to bed that night, I knew, finally, tomorrow was going to be “the day.”
The games I’ve been playing have been piling up in my “to review” queue, so let’s flush that queue with some mini reviews! This is also a wonderful distraction from our collective impending doom at the hands of Hurricane Irma.
Ratchet and Clank (PS4): Damn near perfect remake. Looks absolutely drop-dead gorgeous (and somehow even better on a PS4 Pro), controls fantastically, has plenty of compelling, fun progression and exploration hooks, and is loaded with diverse, playful weapons and tools. It’s an absolute must-buy for any PS4 owner.
Sly 2: Band of Thieves (HD Collection, PS3): On my continuing quest to be better informed about raccoon video game history, I recently finished the main story in Sly 2. The game, like its predecessor, offers smooth framerates, tight controls, and somewhat-muddy cel-shaded graphics. This iteration adds more playable characters and attempts more one-off mechanics, mini-games, and scenarios, and really doesn’t seem much better for it. Each game world is now an “open” world, which really just adds padding time of having to walk to each mission and little else. There’s still unskippable cutscenes and tutorials, atrocious turret controls, unnecessary upgrades, and the artifact of PS2-era character-driven platformers. It’s sad that these early 3D games that pushed the envelope are going to fall apart over time, but I’m glad the HD collection exists. I know this game is old, and feels like it would have been the best thing out there when it first came out. Recommended for raccoons and video game historians.
Axiom Verge (PS4, Vita, XB1, Wii U, PC): A Metroid clone that is too much Metroid and not enough Super Metroid. The game stands on its own with a decent story, interesting world, and lots of diverse weaponry to track down and utilize, but it leans on too many of the outdated, hardcore mechanics and traditions of the original, NES Metroid. Environments are forgettable, bland, repetitive, and often indistinguishable. Character movement is slow, every enemy encounter can be deadly, but the game requires lots of mindless backtracking and aimless wandering. Death is very painful (and annoying) when traversal isn’t fun. It was more fun on subsequent playthroughs for trophy hunting, but it’s hard to recommend to anyone outside of die-hard retro Metroidvania enthusiasts.
Risk of Rain (PS4, Vita, PC): I was a little late to this party, but thanks to Toya and Riloh, our household got a bit addicted to this marvelous little rogue-like. The pixel-art style is fantastic (it’s still my MacBook’s background). The characters and power-ups offer an exciting and insane amount of customizable and randomized variation (maybe too much). But the music is perhaps the best part and had me humming for days after each hours-long play session (a game is somewhere between 10 and 60 minutes).
It’s gamer Christmas again! With the Microsoft press conference about to kick off (5pm EST; larger schedule here), I wanted to jot down some personal hopes and dreams for possible announcements during the week:
A PS4 port of PixelJunk Monsters. It’s really just unfair at this point.
Nintendo, give us a truly stellar 2.5D Metroid game. Zero Mission is about as close as we’ve gotten to a Super Metroid-caliber
release, but even it was a little heavy-handed with the direction and a
touch too linear for my taste. I’d also take a Metroid Prime Triolgy
Switch port, or a new entry in the series.
If we can’t have Metroid (not holding my breath), at least let’s get an MS announcement for Shadow Complex 2.
I enjoyed Resident Evil 7 more than 5 and 6, but I’d really like to see some news on a traditional RE game. The RE2 remake is in the pipeline somewhere, but really anything in the vein of the GameCube REmake would be fantastic.
We’re getting some premium new hardware from Microsoft, so I expect we’ll see a matching price drop for the PS4 models (and maybe the PSVR?). I would love to see Scorpio land around $400, but it’s really unlikely for the kind of powerful machine they’re producing. If they settle on $500, hopefully the pack-ins will make up for the higher sticker price.
With HD remakes popping up all over the gaming landscape, I wouldn’t mind seeing another game redone in the Ratchet and Clank series. The PS4 variant of the original is one of the best games on the system, and I’d love to see similar efforts for the other good games in the series.
I would die to play Mario Galaxy or Mario Sunshine on the Switch. Port those suckers. Or really, you know, anything more about the Switch. Maybe a true Pokémon game? F-Zero? Even old SNES-era Final Fantasy ports would be okay (since there are already iOS variants).
It feels like it’s flown under the radar a bit, but a Below release date for Xbox One would be excellent. Cannot wait to check that out!
A new Alan Wake game, or at least a UHD re-release of the original with DLC. I would take any excuse to replay that game, and what better way than on Scorpio in 4K?
A true Banjo-Kazooie sequel? Yooka-Laylee had the hype train behind it but ultimately left a pretty sour taste in my mouth, mostly because it wasn’t as good as the original inspiration (even today). A long shot, but hey, Microsoft probably still owns the IP!
What ever happened to that ReSpawn Star Wars title?
Obduction port for consoles? I’m grasping here.
I hope we don’t hear anything about Death Stranding. In an age where Fallout 4 was announced months before release, enough with the news on games that haven’t even been designed yet.
It’s pretty overcast and rainy here in Florida–perfect weather for an afternoon of E3 press conference watching! It’s hard to explain how excited this time makes me; there’s so much possibility in the air, and the bombast and spectacle of it all is really energizing.
I’ll try to blog some post-E3 thoughts as well.
I hope everyone see’s something checked off on their own wish list, and have a great E3!
Ringtail Quest 