Buy a new camera?

Amongst all the research and planning I’m doing for my trip to Japan and Korea later this year I’ve been thinking about buying a new camera. I got my current camera back on Christmas in 2011. It’s a point-and-shoot camera and it’s what I took with me on both of my journeys across Europe (along with the camera in my phone). While it’s served me well for the past six and a half years (and dare I say, has taken some darn good photos) for this next overseas journey it feels like it might finally be time to upgrade. The exact type of camera I might buy is undecided as of yet. Mirrorless cameras have caught my eye, with their easier portability than traditional DSLR cameras—a significant plus in my book, given how mobile I tend to be while engaging in photography during travel. Right now the main thing I’m trying to sort out in my mind is whether I’ll buy an entry-level camera or a mid-range camera. An entry-level mirrorless camera, like the Sony a6000 would cost me about $500-$600 plus the cost of an additional lens, while with a mid-range camera I’d be looking at more like $1,300-$1,7000, plus the cost of lenses. I’m not averse to spending the money required for the mid-range camera if I’ll get a lot of years and usage out of it, but it’s really hard to look into the future and see how an investment like this will pan out. Whenever I make my decision I’ll be sure to let you know what I go with.

Am I upgrading to a PS4 Pro?

This year’s E3 reminded me that I should be thinking about upgrading my PS4 to a PS4 Pro. The PS4 Pro came out last year, and now I think we’re finally starting to see a significant enough number of games that will noticeably benefit from being played on a PS4 Pro as opposed to a standard PS4. Thus, I think it’s been settled that I’ll be getting a PS4 Pro eventually. Certainly I won’t be buying one until after I get back from Asia, but maybe around Christmas. Hopefully with the upcoming release of the Xbox One X, Sony will decide to give the PS4 Pro a temporary price cut during the holiday season to keep it competitive.

Call of Duty WW2 multiplayer and historical realism

Another wave of fake Internet outrage swept over the gaming world recently regarding the multiplayer of the upcoming Call of Duty WW2. While in the game’s singplayer campaign you play as a Caucasian American soldier fighting the Nazis across the Western Front of 1944 and 1945, in multiplayer you can customize your soldier’s race and gender, meaning that you could potentially be playing a multiplayer match as a black female paratrooper. Internet commenters were up in arms, decrying the absurdity of this and other historically inaccurate soldiers being potentially playable in multiplayer. Personally, I have I have no issue with customizing a player’s avatar in WW2’s multiplayer. If a person wants to criticize WW2’s historical accuracy, they ought to be scrutinizing the singleplayer campaign, which is actually trying to tell a historically plausible story. Multiplayer, on the other hand, is not trying to tell a serious story and is inherently implausible by its very nature. There’s hardly anything realistic in multiplayer, so throwing a fit about customizing a player’s a race and gender in it strikes me as just silly. Then again, these are Internet commenters we’re dealing with here, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re making a fuss, especially given the fact that it’s still quite fashionable to hate on Call of Duty games.

Replaying the Classics - Sound Shapes

As a gaming enthusiast I’m always interested in new gaming experiences, but every once in awhile I feel compelled to go back and put in some serious time replaying some of my favorite games from the preceding years. In that spirit, I have created a new series of writing pieces titled Replaying the Classics, wherein I discuss the games that I have replayed recently. Unlike my Late to the Party series, my goal with these writing pieces is not so much to give a strong analysis of a particular game, but rather to give an informal recounting of a game and to try to convey to the reader why it’s one of my favorites. I do not come to you this time as a game reviewer, but merely as a friend wanting to have a casual chat about what he’s been playing. Today, let’s take a seat in our comfy chairs and talk about Sound Shapes.

Am I sold on the Xbox One X?

Not quite, but it might not ultimately matter. I liked everything I heard from Microsoft about the Xbox One X, other than the price, and seeing as how I currently don’t own an Xbox One I could see myself splurging on the X model just so I know I’ll be getting the best experience on any games I play on the Xbox One. Also, Ima Fire Tiger would probably throw a fit if I bought the S model instead.

Who “won” E3 2017?

That’s a good question. This year I got to the end of the E3 press conferences and didn’t have a clear winner in my mind. It’s proving to be much harder than anticipated in deciding which of the publishers put on the best conference, so let’s go through each of the ones I watched and see where we end up.

EA
Definitely not this year’s winner. As much as I like Battlefront and was interested in some of their other offerings, the EA conference itself was just average.

Microsoft
This year Microsoft had a new console and a ton of things to show for it. Maybe a little too much. Anthem was a great game to end the show with, and there’s plenty to like about the Xbox One X, aside from the price, but I do think Microsoft’s conference was too long. Still, Microsoft had a good show overall.

Bethesda
Even with my bias against Bethesda games I don’t see how one could argue that they were the best conference. If Bethesda had announced something on the level of the next Elder Scrolls game, then maybe we could talk about them winning E3. Maybe. The whole Bethesdaland thing was a novel idea for a conference, however, and I hope other publishers take a nod from Bethesda and maybe try something unique in their future presentations.

Ubisoft
The Ubisoft conference is a legitimate contender for the best show this year, which is something I didn’t think I’d be saying prior to the start of E3. The show mostly went well, Ubisoft had some good games, and they ended the conference with a huge announcement that fans have been craving.

Sony
It’s no secret that I do most of my gaming on PlayStation, but as much as I would love to see Sony take the E3 crown for the third year in the row, I can’t in good conscience say they were the best this year. Yes, there was good content in their conference, but a lot of it came from games that we’ve known about for awhile and they lacked a true megaton announcement to set the world on fire. If the Sony conference had ended with the reveal of Bloodborne 2, then I might be telling a different tale.

Nintendo
I hesitate to include Nintendo in the running for the winner of E3 because their conference is not a traditional show like those of the other publishers, but it feels even more wrong to leave them out, so I’m throwing them into the ring along with everyone else. This year’s Nintendo conference delivered a lot of announcements on core Nintendo titles and has their fanbase frothing at the mouth, so I’d call their show a success.


With all of that said, I think we can narrow the contenders for the winner of E3. EA, Bethesda, and Sony are out, leaving Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Nintendo still in the running. Of these three, Microsoft strikes me as weakest, mainly because they overstayed their welcome with a conference that was over 90 minutes long. The sticker shock of the Xbox One X’s price doesn’t help them either. That brings us to a title fight between Ubisoft and Nintendo. The victory here will be by mere inches, and I can already hear the fanboys on both sides sharpening their knives to kill me if I make the wrong call. Hmmm… whom do I pick? Both had good content and big announcements. Both had shows that flowed fairly well. Oh man, this is a tough call. Uh, alright, I’ve made my decision. This year’s winner of E3 (according to me) is…

Ubisoft

As I thought about this, both Nintendo and Ubisoft were going close to blow-for-blow with each other until we got to Ubisoft’s final announcement. The reveal of Beyond Good and Evil 2 I think is a bigger deal than anything Nintendo had to offer. Also, two of Nintendo’s big reveals—Metroid Prime 4 and the next core Pokemon installment—were nothing more than announcements of games in development and showed absolutely nothing of the games themselves, so they don’t pack quite as much of a punch. Thus I give a small edge to Ubisoft and declare them the winner of this year’s surprisingly bloody E3 slugfest. Congratulations to Ubisoft on emerging victorious. I’m sure that being declared the winner of E3 by a no-name writer on an obscure website means the world to them.

Also, if anyone knows of a bunker where I can hide from the Nintendo fanboys for a few weeks, let me know.

E3 2017 Conferences Recap, Part 2

Last week was E3, one of the largest video games expos in the world, which is held annually in the Los Angeles area. One of the highlights each year are the press conferences held by several of the major gaming publishers, and I, like many others, took the time to watch them and enjoy the spectacle that is E3. Yesterday and today I’ll be giving brief, bullet-point style overviews of the things I saw that caught my eye during the conferences I watched, which were the ones from EA, Microsoft, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Sorry, but I didn’t watch the Devolver Digital presentation or the PC gaming show. Today I’ll recap what I found notable about the Ubisoft, Sony, and Nintendo conferences.

E3 2017 Conferences Recap, Part 1

Last week was E3, one of the largest video games expos in the world, which is held annually in the Los Angeles area. One of the highlights each year are the press conferences held by several of the major gaming publishers, and I, like many others, took the time to watch them and enjoy the spectacle that is E3. Today and tomorrow I’ll be giving brief, bullet-point style overviews of the things I saw that caught my eye during the conferences I watched, which were the ones from EA, Microsoft, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Sorry, but I didn’t watch the Devolver Digital presentation or the PC gaming show. Today I’ll recap what I found notable about the EA, Microsoft, and Bethesda conferences.

Asia 2017: Planning the Route

With each passing day I gain a little more knowledge about where I’ll be traveling in Japan and Korea, and at this point I think I have a rough idea of the route I’ll be taking. Of course, it’s still very early, so a lot can change between now and my departure in September, but I thought I’d share where my mind is at currently.

After landing in Tokyo, I’ll spend about five or six days there and then start moving westwards through Japan. Kyoto and Nara will definitely be on the path, and Osaka seems very likely. Kanazawa might also make the cut, though I’d have to detour north to get to it. After finishing the area in central Honshu, I’ll keep moving west to around Hiroshima, and then I’m thinking I’ll do a short loop around Shikoku before going back into Honshu and continuing west. I’ll definitely get to Kyushu, but I don’t know which places I’ll be in before I fly to South Korea. If I’m doing ok on time I could go all the way down to around Kagoshima, but if time is short I might just do Fukuoka and then fly from there.

My time in South Korea is still hazy right now because I haven’t done as much research on it as I have on Japan, but I’m hoping to dedicate at least a week to it. At minimum I’ll spend a few days in Seoul. With more time I’d like to hit some other cities, maybe even going down to Busan. Actually, now that I think of it, maybe it would make more sense to fly into Busan and then go north to Seoul. Or maybe going to Seoul first makes more sense since I could by flying to Okinawa after my time in Korea, and I could maybe start in Seoul and then work south to Busan and fly out of there.

Okinawa is a part of the trip that’s currently up in the air and I really don’t know yet if it will happen. The whole reason I’d like to go there is that a friend of mine is stationed on Okinawa with the Marines and his birthday will be around the time of my visit, so I’d like to pay him a birthday visit. If I’m not able to get to him then I could add another two or three days to Korea. In either case, I’ll be flying back to Tokyo at the end of the trip to spend a few final days there before flying back to the USA.

To help visualize the journey as it potentially might look, below is a map of the region with some poorly drawn arrows I edited onto it so you can see a possible route as it stands now. You might need to enlarge the image to see it clearly.

One thing you might notice is that I’m currently not planning on getting to northern Japan. As much as I’d like to do all four of Japan’s main islands, I suspect I may not have time to route myself north. That said, it’s still early and maybe after some more research I can plan a path that lets me go north, even if only for a few days. Maybe I could do a quick visit to Sapporo and then fly to somewhere else in the country. Whatever the case, later this summer I’ll probably give another update with a revised travel plan.

The same age my father was

Last week my friend Ben over at Free Refills published a writing piece about being the same age as his father was when he was born. This got me thinking about my own father’s age when I was born, and it turns out that I’m in the same position as Ben. Right now I am the same age my father was when I came into the world. At the age I am now my father laid eyes upon his third child. I can’t even begin to imagine what it felt like for him, seeing as how my life circumstances are so much different than his were at my age. He was married, on a career path, and already had two children prior to me. I, on the other hand, am single, don’t have a (paying) career, and am childless. Our respective situations at this age were very different, but even so I suspect that we had at least one thing in common. I think that both of us at this age were dreamers looking to make our mark on the world, however big or small that mark turned out to be.