What happened to the last year?

I’ve been looking over my blogs and I haven’t posted anything new for a year now.  Granted, it has been a bad year; a lot has happened.

Anyway, I’m missing splurging my thoughts onto the screen – even if nobody reads it and even if it is self-idulgent.

I’ve also decided to consolidate all my blogs into a single one: this one.  As this is the general geekiness blog and my others are specific geekiness blogs, I may as well fold them both into here.  If I become a very frequent poster then I may reactivate the older ones – unlikely in the extreme.

So there will be general nerd blogs here, but it’s mostly going to be mmo related, as that’s what I spend most of my time doing anyway.  I may even reboot the Questless project, phe4r not, fans of that blog.

We’ll see how it goes eh?

Simple Pleasures

Sometimes the simples pleasures are the greatest.  And what could be simpler than something not being awful like you expected.

Here is the scene:  My wife loves going to the cinema.  She would happily go every day if we could, and watch pretty much anything.  I don’t really pay attention to what’s coming out, so when she asked me if I wanted to go and see ‘Clash of the Titans’, my immediate reaction was, “urgh, remake.  No thank you”.

However a break from our newborn son won the day(we do love him but it’s nice to get away).  So off we went.  I expected disappointment, which I know is impossible; if you expect disappointment, then when something is bad, you aren’t disappointed.  I really thought this would be the worst film ever.  I was expecting the story to make no sense, some bad acting, some unnecessary comic relief-style character and so on.  You get the idea, we’ve all seen films like that.

From start to finish, I was completely entertained, not bored once and would quite happily watch it again.

It’s not the best film I’ve ever seen, not by far.  But there is merit in not being awful, some of my favourite things are in my top 10 list due to the fact that they surprised me by rising above my low expectations.

Games That Hooked Me

If you are reading this, then I imagine you have played a few video games yourself.  We’ve all been addicted to one game or another, and seeing a game to completion is certainly one benefit of not being able to put it down.  Most of the time, once I’ve finished a game it is placed back in its box and on the shelf and forgotten about for a couple of years.  At that point I might dig it out and play the first level again before getting bored and moving on to the flavour of the month.

But what about those games that won’t let you go?  This doesn’t happen often, but there are some games that I’ve played again immediately after finishing it the first time.  I’ve been known to complete a game then crank up the difficulty for another run through.

During my first time playing Call of Duty 2, I abandoned my game and started again on veteran difficulty.  It took a while to finish, but Iwas helped by the fact that my wife was studying to be a teacher at the time and I had the tv to myself mostly.  She doesn’t teach any more, possibly due to the fact that planning lessons is forever linked in her mind with my swearing at the tv.

Some games grab us even more than that.  Have you ever played a game and loved it so much that you invented your own rules and played it again.  Freedom Fighters caught me like that and never let go. For those who have never played it, it’s a squad based shooter with the number of people in your squad limited by the number of objectives you have met.  Each objective gives you experience and when your bar fills up, you get another space to fill with an eager volunteer.  If one of your allies perishes, don’t worry, simply find another group hanging around and recruit one of their number.

Not content with finishing Freedom Fighters on the highest difficulty settings, I played it again.  This time I thought I’d get up to a full squad in each level, but wouldn’t replace anyone who died.  This was a blast, having to take care of the lives of your soldiers adds new depth to the game.  I haven’t played FF in a while possibly due to the fact that after I finished it with that set of rules, I decided I’d play through it solo.  No back up, no squad at all to help me defeat the commie threat.  After a gruelling couple of nights, I was done and America was saved.

That was the last time I played it.  I mean, where do you go from there?  How does one top saving the USA single handedly?

I suppose I could do it using only the pistol.  Hmm…

To Sub or Dub

I’ve been watching a bit of Otogi Zoshi recently.  I bought it on impulse thanks to decent reviews and a low price from Play.com.  I’ve just started the second disc, and so far I’m enjoying it.  I’ll probably write about it more when I’ve seen a few more episodes.

What I really wanted to write about was the English dub.  After putting in disc two I thought it would default to Japanese with English subs, but, no, this was not to be.  I was subjected to some of the most irritating voice acting ever.  For fans of anime this is nothing new.  There seems very little that sits comfortably between the two extremes. On one end of the spectrum you have exceptionally well voiced shows, but these are balanced out by some of the most cringe-worthy speech found on this side of nativity plays.

Sometimes I can be something of a purist.  I’ll play shows subtitled without even giving the dub a try.  I like to hear the japanese dialogue and sometimes I can even pick out a word or two. However there are times when I’m tired and want to put something on to fall asleep to, then it’s dub all the way.  This isn’t really a good practice as I’ve been known to watch the same episode at least half a dozen times, much to the annoyance of my wife.  That can be interesting as I have to piece the story together from the parts I was half awake for.  I imagine this is what being an amnesiac is like when important events start coming back to you.

I don’t think there really is a winner in the ‘which is best: Sub or dub’ debate.  As an example, if I’m watching a comedy anime, I prefer listening to English/American voices.  If it’s well acted, the humour comes across better than reading it (for me anyway.  I’m sure there are many who are appalled by that last statement).  Azumanga Daioh is a show I could never imaging watching with subtitles. It’s just so entertaining and well acted in English.

For a more serious show, I’d usually go for subtitles.  Except for ‘Cowboy Bebop’ which is my absolute favourite show, by the way, and I’m sure I’m not alone.  This is so well voiced that one time I did try the subtitled version and turned it back half way through.  I’m so in love with this show that when my wife and I watched Samurai Champloo.  She prefers dub, however, I was constantly put off by Steve Blum’s voice.  For me, he will always be the voice of Spike, and when I hear him voice anything else, it just seems wrong to me.  This is unfair, I know, as Steve is a very talented and hard working man, judging from his imdb page.

There are many vocal advocates for both sides of the argument.  I like a bit of both depending on my mood or the quality of acting.  I know I’m not alone in this, and I’d even go as far as to say that I’m part of a majority, which is, for the most part, silent.

I Love Hate

The ‘Hate Annual’ by Peter Bagge has been on my bedside table now for over a week, it’s cover art depicting a Screaming Lisa.  Daring me to read it.

I’m a big peter Bagge fan.  I try to pick up anything I see that he’s done.  My favourite comic of his has always been ‘Hate’.  I was heartbroken when the regular title finished so it’s always an exciting day when I see the annual come out.

The latest issue doesn’t really feature Buddy Bradley much.  It’s a Lisa episode, which is not as terrible as when that is applied to ‘The Simpsons’.  I have to say though I prefer the comic to be about Buddy, with Lisa’s insanity crashing in on his life.  The new Buddy seems very mellow and not the shouty frustrated guy I grew to love.  He’s very understanding and patient with the madness going on around him, and even seems to be a good father to Harold Jr.  I guess even though I’ve mellowed, I expected Buddy to remain the same so I can recapture my twenties through him.

I suppose it’s good that Buddy has grown up.  He seems very content now.  In fact we seem quite similar.  Maybe if he still behaved like he did in the old days, I’d level my typical accusation of “trying too hard” at the comic and dismiss it.

I love Peter Bagge’s artwork, there’s so much energy there, even talking heads panels seem dynamic.  The downside of this is that I get carried away with the pace of the comic.The frantic energy in the panels encourages me to readit too fast and I end up not taking in the artwork at all.  I read it again though and took my time, so everything is right again.

The back up stories include one-page strips about mad scientists.  Overall these were entertaining, even though they seem to be mostly about the frustrations of dealing with other people.  A lot of his work seems to me to deal with the topic of  “hell is other people”.  I could be wrong about his intent, but that’s what I get from it anyway.

Thanks, Peter, for releasing another issue.  It’s certainly brightened up 2010.

It’s Been a While

My geekiness has been on holiday for some years.  I’m still fairly geek-like, but I’ve been limited to mmos, playing them to the exclusion of almost all else.  Over time my comic, book, offline game and dvd activities have taken a dive.

I now have a new born son, and during his long feeding sessions, I’ve found myself with no spare hands so I have begun watching dvds again.  Then I started to miss the old ways, so I’ve reigned in my WoW and EQII playtime to enjoy some of the things I used to do.

Today my wife and I started playing ‘Beneath a Steel Sky’.  I got this from Good Old Games.  If you like old pc games and haven’t checked this out, I heartily recommend heading over to gog.com and get yourself a little slice of retro pie.

‘Beneath a Steel Sky’ is a game I missed out on first time around, due in no small part to coming late to pc gaming .  I always had my eye on it though, coveting the lovely Dave Gibbons visuals.  When I saw it on gog.com I deliberated whether I should get it or not, but then I saw the price:  Free!  That’s right, zero pounds and nil pence.  Everyone loves a bargain so I snatched it right up.

The other great thing about Good Old Games is that once you’ve downloaded your game, it works.  No tweaking, no patching, no mess, no fuss.  Just launch and play.  Admittdly I’ve not tried all the games on offer, but the ones I have all ran on Vista with no bother.

Playing a point and click with a partner is one of videogames true pleasures.  As long as you are both giving and patient, it’s very rewarding.  It’s great having someone’s input, picking out things you may have missed or to take over the clicking duties while you play backseat puzzle-solver.

We haven’t got very far yet, but we did at least get past the first tough puzzle without looking it up.  A small but important victory.  I look forward to seeing how the rest of the game pans out.

Until next time, make mine retro.