Spring Is Here?
This is crazy. It’s the middle of March and we’re sitting around with all the windows open in the house. Heck at work we’ve even fired up the AC already. We always try to hold out as long as we can at home before breaking down and turning ours on. If this early spring is any indication though, we might not be able to hold out as long as we usually do. I can’t remember a March day in the past that’s ever had a forecast high of 85.
Lately I’ve been talking about how I need a project to do, and something that doesn’t cost a whole lot of money. Well I think I found something. I decided this year I’m going to plant a garden. I’ve already started tearing up some ground in the back yard, which is some hard work, but very therapeutic I’ve found so far. I guess it’s kinda my way of communing with past generations. There’s so much technology everywhere I go, that it’s nice to put some effort into something so primal. I find it interesting to think about that something I’m now doing for fun in my spare time, was a basic necessity for life 100 years ago. Pretty sure that my ancestors knew how to cut sod a lot better than I do!
The garden will have quite a bit of diversity. I picked up corn, onions, potatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, carrots, and even some watermelon and pumpkins! I’m going to pick up some tomatoes later in the season too. If you don’t count the tools I bought, all the seeds cost me a total of $15. And that should make a LOT of produce. I dunno what we’ll ever do with 80 onions….
Andrea is not a big vegetable fan. I was trying to think of something I could plant that she would enjoy, and thought maybe strawberries, but she wasn’t too crazy about that. I even saw some blueberry and raspberry bushes for sale, thought for a couple moments… then decides I wasn’t ready for something like that!
So I’ll look forward to getting at least the potatoes and onions in the ground this weekend. I beat Super Mario 3D Land the other night, so I’m officially not working on any games right now, and might take a weekend off of gaming and focus on the rudimentary art of agriculture. I’ll probably still sit down and write up my final thoughts on 3D Land this weekend though. One of the best Mario Games I’ve played… since the last one, they’re all just awesome!
Podcast – Beat Skyward Sword!
It took long enough… yet I wish it wasn’t over! An outstanding game from start to finish. And you can listen to me expound and gush upon it in this podcast!
Topics
- Time Change
- Skyward Sword
- Skyward Sword vs Ocarina of Time
- Skyward Sword SPOILERS
- Skyward Sword Experience
- Skyward Sword Story
- Podcast Music (feat. Skyward Sword)
- Mystery Song
03.11.12
A Look Back: The World Is Not Enough
I need to set the stage a bit for this review. This game came out in 2000 which was right in the pinnacle of my James Bond fanaticism, and also well past the point that gaming had pretty much become the de facto use of my spare time. So while this game had everything it needed to become the most awesome game for me ever at the time, it unfortunately was not.
Here’s the back story. When GoldenEye came out in 1997, from the moment I had beaten that final Cradle mission… I was ready for a sequel. Rare Studios, which developed GoldenEye however, had a track record of releasing a title for the N64 about once every two years it seemed. There was a lot of silence on the GoldenEye sequel front for a long time. Then when the silence broke, it was announced that Electronic Arts had picked up exclusive rights to the Bond franchise. This meant… if there was going to be a sequel to GoldenEye, it would definitely not be a James Bond game. The game that eventually came out was Perfect Dark. A game that really beat GoldenEye in every way… except for James Bond content.
This game still had one thing going for it though. It was the next James Bond game on the N64. It was still a first person shooter, and not a weird third person shooter like Mission Impossible. And so far really had no indication that it was going to be terrible. My anticipation of taking on the role of 007 once more meant I was willing to give EA the benefit of the doubt here.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the pre-release of this game, because honestly I remember that as much if not more so than actually playing the game! After all, Perfect Dark was only 6 months old when this game released. We were still death matching and scheduling Perfect Dark Events at that time!
At a certian point the different colored carts were uncommon and pretty cool. The gold carts for Zelda, or the black cart for Turok 2. Those were pretty spiffy. But this late in the N64’s life cycle, not only could you get the system itself in six funtastic colors, but it seemed like every new game had it’s own colored cartridge for no apparent reason. So by this time the blue cart for TWINE was nothing new.
Okay, I feel like I’ve been pretty harsh on this game so far. In truth that’s not really fair. I sat down for this re-review and wanted to do two things. One I wanted to compare this game to GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, because that is unquestionably the measuring stick I used to judge this game originally. But also, after I looked around at some other reviews that were written at the time of release, I found that it got fairly good feedback. So I decided I was going to sit down and judge the game completely of its own merit.
That proved more difficult than I thought. And again after all these year brought to light the reason I just can’t get into ANY console FPS anymore. And that is the controls. Not that the controls are bad. Infact playing this game, I found that it was really pretty smooth and accurate. But here we are… 15 years later, and I hesitate to spend too much time with another game like this, for fear that I will get used to the way this game controls, and un-learn and dull my GoldenEye skills. I mean it’s been 15 years! Let it go!
But if you had any idea how many hours I put into 007 and Perfect Dark… You know how sometimes people can accomplish amazing things by pouring all their energy into just one thing? Honing their skills and using their time and efforts to create something truly remarkable. For instance out in Colorado, there’s a stone castle built by one man… all by himself. An entire castle! While not nearly as meaningful, tangible, or remarkable… GoldenEye and Mario Kart… that’s my castle.
So I may not be the most objective person to ever review this game. Be that as it may, I believe the game did have some shortcomings other than just not being GoldenEye. One thing the game touted at its release was the starring role of Pierce Brosnan, not only in likeness, but also using his voice. However if there’s one thing that I’ve learned replaying these games its that heavy use waveform audio on the N64 is almost universally a bad idea. With possibly the only exception being StarFox 64. You have to realize that the largest N64 cartridge available was only 64MB. TWINE was shipped on a 32MB cartridge. For comparison sake, 32MB = about 3 minutes of CD quality audio. And that’s if audio is the ONLY data on the cartridge. But you have to have all of the maps, textures, animations, physics engines, graphic engines, lighting effects, game menus, etc all on that 32 MB cartridge too. The result is HIGHLY compressed audio. What is left is very fuzzy and flat sounding.
With the limitations in audio fidelity also came limitations in audio length. The game rigidly followed the storyboard of the movie, and scenes that are fleshed out over 5 or 6 minutes, are forced to be summed up in 15 to 20 seconds. What’s left are scenes that just feel very rushed.
“Thanks for getting my money, 007! OK, see ya.”
“That was Robert King. We go way back”
“Wonder why he is involved?”
BOOM
“King, the money!”
I suppose I don’t have to say that in retrospect, this game could have been a lot more immersive had the characters used on screen text only and skipped voice over audio all together.
As cheesey as the cutscenes are forced to be, the game itself, honestly isn’t that bad. Again the game follows the story very strictly, and does a good job of recreating the scenes from the movie and taking control of 007. Infact as I was playing this game, I found myself compelled to go back and watch the movie!
Honestly, this wasn’t a bad game. The limitations the game had technically, were also the same limitations every other game had at the time. The controls are solid, and I just wish I had a little more customization over them so I could get them set to my familiar settings. Levels are fairly linear, but well laid out and plenty of objectives. And the graphics, are really this game’s strongsuit. Other than the resolution limitations of the N64, this is really a pretty good looking game!
For me though… this will always be a filler game. A game in between the great games to pass the time until the next one is released. And I just can’t find a whole lot of reason now to play this when I could be playing GoldenEye or Perfect Dark instead.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pAtlZy6HIw]
Sorry, Mom
All these toys WERE in the little toy box. Sorry, Mom for every time I did this. Haha!
03.6.12Podcasterrific
I was a batchelor over the weekend while Andrea and Luke were out of town. I talk about that. Skip the first few minutes if you don’t want to hear me complain about work. I would recommend it.
Tech Music
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWkUFxItWmU]
02.25.12Restless
I’m really itching for a project of some sort. I have some ideas, but they all would cost a fair amount of money that we don’t really have to spend. So I’m trying to think of what I can create using pretty much stuff I already have.
One medium that comes to mind is video. I’ve got a cheap HD camera I borrowed from work and I’ve got all the video/audio editing software already. But I’m completely coming up empty when it comes to content. I really enjoy watching Classic Game Room and would love to do something like that, but I don’t really want to just emulate something someone else has done already. Though heavens knows I have enough old games to get started.
Another topic I thought of was using video to document a project build, though that puts me back into the lack of funds category.
A long term goal of mine is to get all of my vintage systems off the HDTV in the den to a more period correct setup. Kinda like a dream setup from 1995. Haha! I want to make them all easy to pick up and play without having unplug wires and power adapters to get the system you want working. Just select the system on a switcher, turn on and play. I think I can knock that out fairly cheap, but I’m going to have to take advantage of Garage Sale season which I plan on hitting the circuit hard this year!
For now I’ll just keep the gears turning. When I break through, hopefully it’s something I can go full blast into. Or maybe I’ll discover something completely new and fall in love. Who knows.
02.21.12Roots
Okay, so this picture is not what it seems at first glance. While I did get a picture of him holding the controller perfect (complete coincidince) I didn’t get that AND the screen in the same shot. So this is some fancy Photochop scripting to make it work.
It was pretty fun. I was sitting there listening to the podcast music and decided to pull out the game from the mystery song. We were playing that for a while and then switched to Galaga. Andrea and I had fun challenging each other’s scores. I remember Mom could get perfect scores on the “Challenging Stages” in between the levels. We didn’t do that good! Hehe.
It was a night of good old school fun!
02.21.12Crusin’ Podcast
Okay, other than the intro music, this Podcast has nothing to do with the Crusin’ series.
Topics include:
- Waking Up
- Busy Saturday
- Vanquishing
- Drivers in a hurry
- Podcast music
Again another mystery game music challenge at the end of the podcast. This one should be fairly easy.
02.20.12Weekend is Over
Well it was a good weekend all things considered. I had planned on not leaving the house at all, but that didn’t work out as I got called to do a computer sidejob. Seems a computer all on its own reset itself back to the factory default, wiping out everything. I’ve never heard of a system recovery being done automatically, but I guess with computers you never rule anything out. Tough I’m often more inclined to believe computers do what you tell them to, which may not always coneincide with what you want them to do.
I did re-affirm one of my long standing beliefs though. Never delete your e-mail. Ever. I dug up an e-mail from 20 some months ago that I had when I’d worked on this same computer before. And without that I’d have been on the phone with software vendors trying to get keys back. Because no one saves any documentation with their computer! Nay, that would be foolish.
At any rate, that was the only real hiccup on the weekend. Andrea, Luke and I just chilled here at the house mostly and played a lot of Guild Wars. We didn’t get everything vanquished that we had hoped, but we probably got 3/4 of the way in. Andrea’s been logged in for over two days now, and if mine hadn’t crashed mine would have too.
There were some casualties over the weekend though. My old reliable SOCOM headset finally bit the dust. That thing gave me a decade of reliable and quality service and was almost never used for the game SOCOM. I’ll be sad to see it go, but maybe I can use this as an excuse to get a new microphone.
So here’s some screens from the weekend of vanquishing. Be sure to click read more if you want to see them all!
