The Last Sentence

Writing a commentary/review on a video game isn’t easy, and for me one of the hardest parts to write for any of my Late to the Party posts has been the last sentence of each writing piece. On a number of occasions I’ve gotten all the way to the end of the last paragraph, having fought a brutal battle of mental attrition to get there, and found myself completely stumped as to what to say in the last sentence. It seems like it ought to be easy—one final sentence with an overall opinion on the game and maybe some sort of flowery prose for effect—but for whatever reason that final sentence often bedevils me. Sometimes I achieve a breakthrough and compose a final sentence that satisfies me, and sometimes I’ve had to just scrape together a really awkward or cliché final sentence and just let it be. And the worst part is, because of my mental inability to see past the flaws of my own work, that bad sentence at the end is all I’ll be able to see when I click the publish button.

Late to the Party - Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until earlier this year that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition. This post was intended to have been published a week ago, however my job had me putting in ten to thirteen-hour days last week, so I simply wasn’t able to finish the game and write this commentary in time for that. But, on the plus side, I can say that I eventually got it done. I guess this is a case of better late than never.

Political Capital

Back on Election Day, my friend Ben over at Free Refills did a writing piece wherein he discussed his memories from the 2008 election when Barack Obama became president. One of the things he brought up was how Obama, who came into office with Democratic majorities in Congress, chose to put all of his political capital into getting Obamacare passed, rather than economic reforms to address the underlying causes of the Great Recession, and the political consequences that may have arisen from this choice. This got me thinking about what issue(s) Donald Trump will put his political capital into once he becomes president, seeing as how he will be in a similar situation to what Obama had in 2008. Will Trump suffer the same fate of investing everything in a single controversial piece of legislation, or will he spread his investments and try to achieve a broader swath of political accomplishments? Trump has Republican majorities in Congress, so theoretically he should be able to get a lot of legislation passed, but then again maybe the Republican Party won’t be unified enough to fulfill Trump’s goals. Also interesting to see will be how much of his campaign rhetoric becomes actual policy agendas, and which of his campaign promises/claims quietly disappear once he’s in office. Trump only has two years to get things done before another election threatens the Republicans’ hold on Congress, so whatever he plans on doing, he’ll need to be quick about it.

First Paycheck

My first paycheck from my current job was deposited into my bank account. I’ve been staring at those dollars that I received in exchange for my services, and thinking about how much I’ve been paying for them in terms of my physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. My life is draining away before my eyes, both in terms of time lost and the toll it is taking on me personally. Maybe if I was earning significantly more money with this job I could at least console myself knowing that I’d only have to be a slave for awhile before I’d have enough saved up to be liberated from this existence, but that’s not the case. I continue staring at those dollars. It’s not worth it—not at this pay grade and not with how much is being taken from me.

Final Fantasy XV Ride Together Trailer

Final Fantasy XV was released recently, and along with it came a new trailer for the game. The trailer, titled Ride Together, begins as you would expect for a high fantasy adventure game, with a series of dramatic sequences accompanied by a fittingly dramatic score, but then at about the 0:52 mark the trailer makes a hard left turn. Suddenly the trailer’s tone and tempo dramatically change and the soundtrack switches to the song Fast Lane, by Bad Meets Evil, featuring Eminem. This curveball was unexpected, to say the least. I don’t normally associate gangsta rap with Final Fantasy. At first I was flabbergasted by what I was witnessing. Then my inner critic was questioning who in the Final Fantasy marketing department thought this was a good idea for the trailer. But as the trailer continued I found myself starting to like it more and more, and by the end I loved it. The musical selection was unorthodox, and on paper sounds like a poor choice, but in practice somehow it works. It’s not the best trailer of the year, but Ride Together certainly is one of the most memorable, simply for pulling the rug out from under the viewer. Below is the trailer if you haven’t seen it yourself.

PSX 2016

I wasn’t able to watch last Saturday’s keynote presentation at PSX when it happened, but I did check out recaps of it later in the day when I had time. There were a ton of things revealed and showcased at this year’s keynote, more than I have time or interest to discuss in detail, but below are some quick thoughts on the items that stood out to me.

* Uncharted 4 is getting standalone DLC titled The Lost Legacy. It will star Chloe (from Uncharted 2 and 3) and Nadine (from Uncharted 4). Uncharted is one of my favorite series in all of gaming, so I’m looking forward to playing this whenever it comes out.
* Gameplay footage from the remastered Crash Bandicoot games was shown. I personally don’t care about Crash Bandicoot, but I know it’s a big deal to a lot of people who grew up playing the Crash Bandicoot games, so I’m glad that people are getting an old favorite brought back to life.
* A sequel to Knack is in development. Knack was the very first PlayStation 4 game I played (it was at a kiosk in Best Buy) and even though it’s supposed to be a mediocre game I’ve been thinking that one of these days I should play it to see for myself. Maybe I’ll include it in the second season of Late to the Party.
* Horizon: Zero Dawn got another trailer. I’m already sold on this game, and it just needs to come out already. Other than maybe a launch trailer, I think this game has sufficient hype behind it to not need any more media for it.
* The Wipeout racing games are being remastered for the PlayStation 4. I played Wipeout HD on the PlayStation 3, and despite being laughably terrible at it, I liked the game’s aesthetic and soundtrack. I may or may not look into this one when it gets released.
* Three PlayStation 2 games—Parappa the Rapper, Loco Roco, and Patapon—are coming out on PlayStation 4. All three of these are games that I missed on PlayStation 2, so it might be worthwhile for me to experience one or more of them to improve my gaming heritage and perspective.
* A new trailer for Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom was shown. I’ve heard from a number of people about how good the first Ni No Kuni was, but it’s never been something that grabbed my attention. Perhaps next year I’ll finally give it a try, and if Ni No Kuni 2 also gets a lot of praise then maybe I’ll play it too.
* PlayStation VR got its own section during the keynote. I don’t think I’m going to be buying a PlayStation VR any time soon, if at all. That’s not because I’m not interested, but because I don’t think I’ll have time to stack even more gaming experiences on top of the few ones I’m able to play right now. Also, I’m not one to be a first-adopter of new technology, so I may just wait for the second generation of PlayStation VR to be released, which I imagine will be during the PlayStation 5 console generation.
* Interestingly, the PlayStation 4 Pro doesn’t appear to have been discussed at all during the keynote, which I suppose makes sense since the people who attend PSX or watched online are generally the type who already know all about it. Sony may have made the calculation that talking about the Pro would have been a waste of time that could be spent showcasing other things.
* The keynote ended with a trailer for The Last of Us, Part 2, and as expected it was a masterpiece of a trailer. While I would have been completely fine if there was never a sequel to The Last of Us, I don’t doubt that developer Naughty Dog can create another legendary game. It was stated just before the trailer played that the game is in early development, so I’m guessing this game won’t be coming out until 2018 at the earliest (2019 sounds much more reasonable, as Naughty Dog doesn’t rush their games).
* Overall, PSX 2016 looked like a very strong showcase for the PlayStation brand. Even if a lot of things in the keynote presentation didn’t appeal to me, personally, it had content for just about every type of gamer, and good content at that. Though relatively young compared to the other big gaming conferences like E3, TGS, and Gamecom, PSX has proven it can stand with the big boys and deliver just as strong of a show as anything else.

The Next Adventure

I’ve been looking for mental anchors to hold me in place in the midst of the storm that has engulfed my existence since returning to the workforce. Lately the dominant anchor has been the thought of where my next extended overseas journey could take me, assuming I’m able to go. I could easily do a third trip to Europe, seeing as how there’s always new things to find and there are lots of places over there I’d like to return to, but I think it’s now time that turn around and move in the other direction. Instead of flying east to reach the West, I will fly west to reach the East. Japan and South Korea have long been places I’ve been curious to visit, so it’s as good a time as any to commit myself to reaching them. I even have two contacts that I could meet up with while I’m out there: an old roommate of mine is on Okinawa and one of my cousins lives in the Tokyo area. Like my journeys across Europe, I would need to do an extensive amount of research and planning before going. Rick Steves unfortunately won’t be able to help me on this one, so new sources of travel advice will need to be procured. The moonshot goal at this point would be to make the journey some time around September of next year. It probably wouldn’t be as long of a journey as either of the trips to Europe, but I’d like to try to get two to four weeks out of it. Anything less than two weeks would be hard to justify, given the amount of money I’m gong to have to spend just on the airfare to get there. Good thing I’m skilled at living frugally and saving up money.

To be sure, whether or not this journey actually happens is all up in the air at this point. It simply might not be practicable to do this or maybe an unexpected personal or world event will make travel impossible. Even if it never happens, however, the thought of it has been helping me get through the days of wage slavery. Every now and then I stop whatever soul-crushing tedium I’m working on and I think to myself a single word: Asia. And yes, I do it in the voice from that time on SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy where John Travolta is asked to name the continent of Asia. It’s a silly thought, and sometimes it cracks a faint smile on my face, which I suppose is a good thing considering the circumstances.

#Asia2017

Falling off the Pokémon bus

Despite never owning a Gameboy, I was able to play five of the early Pokémon games thanks to an emulator my older brother installed on the family computer. The specific games that I played were Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, and Silver, and in retrospect these were probably pirated copies that my brother had acquired, but my childhood mind wasn’t concerned about piracy—it was just happy to play games that I otherwise would have no access to. I played through each game at least once, but after Gold and Silver I left the Pokémon games behind and never returned to them.

One of the reasons I intentionally stopped playing the Pokémon games was because, in my mind, the Pokémon universe had gotten out of control. In Red, Blue, and Yellow, there were a total of 151 Pokémon. That’s a fair number of Pokémon, but not too much, and at the time I had all their names and basic info memorized. In Gold and Silver another 100 Pokémon were added to the roster, and I was okay with this too. Gold and Silver took place in a different part of the Pokémon world, so it made sense that there would be some new Pokémon that didn’t exist in the region from Red and Blue. However, as the years proceeded and more Pokémon games came out, it became apparent that this continual expansion of the Pokémon universe was never going to end. Each new set of games brought another slew of new Pokémon, and though in each game the introduction of new Pokémon made sense from a narrative perspective, for me it was a torrential downpour that struck me as wildly excessive. Hence, I’ve never bothered to try playing any other Pokémon games, and I don’t think I ever will. It’s not because the games are bad—I loved the five that I played and all the subsequent games appear to have at least been decent, if not good or better—it’s because my feeble brain can’t handle so many Pokémon. Just give me a Charizard and a few others from those first five games, and I’m good.

Climbing Mt. Gagazet

Being situated right at the foot of the mountains, the city of Boulder has quite a few hiking trails that lead out into the wilderness. I’m normally not one for hiking, but there is one hike that I take at least once per year up to a certain spot on the Flatirons (the distinctive local rock formations that are often used as Boulder’s emblem). This spot was shown to me by a friend about a decade ago, and I like to think of it as my personal place on the Flatirons since it’s rare for me to run into other people there. Of course, being who I am, I had to give that place a name, so I call it Mt. Gagazet, which is a Final Fantasy 10 reference. Mt. Gagazet looks out on Boulder and the surrounding lands. The only sounds up there are the distant hum of the city, birds chirping, and the occasional rock climbers scaling the cliff face. I also have a tradition that when I get up to my spot I play the song Learning to Breath by Switchfoot (no idea why I do this, but it seems fitting). For twenty to thirty minutes I’ll sit atop Mt. Gagazet, staring off into the distance and thinking about whatever’s on my mind, until I decide it’s time to leave and then I’ll start the trek back down. I don’t climb Mt. Gagazet often, but it’s a refreshing thing to do, and I never come back thinking that I’d wasted my time.

Suggested Readings

UPDATE: This feature is now active. Check it out on the right side of the page.

-----

With spam bots having forever warped the statistics of this blog’s popular posts, I’m thinking I’ll just remove that gadget and replace it with another one that lists posts I’ve selected myself. If I can get it to look the way I want I’ll call it something like “Suggested Readings” or something like that. The posts selected for it will be ones that stand out in my mind and I think would be worthwhile for others to read. Keep an eye on the right side of this blog for this new feature (if I can make it work).