Being the sound guy...

...is just like being a tank in groups. Allow me to explain.


Last week I was, relatively last minute, asked to do the sound for the second and third year vocalists' exams. Now, I'm used to do being the sound guy for the conservatorium's weekly lunch concert on Mondays. I'm expecting to do it next year as well when I start my masters - which by the way will prevent me from diving in to Warlords of Draenor until the summer holidays many months after it launches.  But I digress.

While, as always, a few things went wrong, as time went on I started to feel this infuriating friction build up within me. I was doing this task entirely by myself, which is unlike the lunch concerts. I basically couldn't really take a break until all the second years were done. Folks were happy as long as everything went ok. I was basically a non existant entity enabling them to project their voice into the room.
Of course when something went wrong or there was any discontent, it would be made clear to me.

I was tanking. And because I'm a pretty big noob at doing sound, it was exactly like my story from earlier posts trying to tank with my DK/Pally in WOTLK. Due to time constraints, I never have a chance to try/practice things for the lunch concerts and improve my soundguy chops. Nope. Denied. So that was wonderful.

Another typical thing was that, even though I hadn't changed the settings, when the third years came along all of a sudden the backing vocals couldn't hear themselves or this or that. It was totally different. And that's weird 'cause it wasn't the same 3 people doing backings for the second years either. But whatever, classic tanking scenario where what you did that was fine for one group was great, and the next group the same shit doesn't cut it at all.


Now to be fair, no one actually got angry at me. The power of the internet gives us anonymity and people's rage plays in to that; enabling it. But I'm pretty sure that in the halls folks will be talking behind my back saying I'm the worst. But hey, at least I got to do my job without shit flinging fresh from their arse like it happens in MMO's. Where tanking is like eating a raw lemon, the sound guy gets to eat a lemon but go through the sour punch in the face after the job.


And as icing on the cake, three second year students, while I was working on the thirds, came up to my den of high temperatures thanked me with a lovely gift. I genuinely didn't expect it, it's the first I think I'd gotten something other than a gift card and was very thankful. A peek inside and I saw drinks. I was still genuinely thankful and humbled by their token of appreciation. No sarcasm here.



.....but I don't drink alcohol....

What's in a Spoiler?

Spoilers. One of the worst thing in the world, it sucks the fun out of most things that can entertain you including books, movies and yes, games.
Thing is, for the most part people say that all spoilers are story related. But while this rings mostly true for books and movies, I find it's far easier to 'spoil' games. And by that I mean the element of surprise.

A recent example: Diablo 3's expansion #Reaperofsouls. While the vanilla game had an ok story that was flawed in its execution, the twist with Leia was one I hadn't forse
The story in RoS was pretty disappointing. The first game many complained was bad and in hindsight I thought so too but a few things aside I enjoyed the ride. Some jerk did spoil a major twist in the Youtube comments which damned most of the suspense the story had, but all the other things were alright.

In hindsight I wouldn't have cared much if anyone spoiled anything of the story because quite frankly the only interesting thing story wise happens at the opening cinematic: Malthael takes on the evil guy hat.
The spoilers that I care (more) for are the actual contents.

Monsters, boss fights, abilities and environments are a pretty big part of games. If I had seen pictures of every last zone in Super Mario World 3D then the whole element of surprise and discovery is taken away. It mutates into a waiting game, patiently waiting until you get to see what you've seen before, but be in control of it yourself this time. The magic is mostly gone.

These days trailers in movies but also preview articles for games really give away a lot about what they're showing off. Developers and/or publishers need to find a healthy balance of showing off what they need to for folks to get interested in their game, but assure that there are still other mechanics and whatnot left to discover. I think Assassin's Creed IV and inFamous Second Son did this quite well.

Getting there Diablo...getting there...

Well this is interesting. I've been having quite a lot of fun with Diablo 3 lately. The addicting and meaty combat system now rests atop a much improved loot system. I also managed to snatch the game for a much more reasonable price (EUR 30,-) which means I'm on board for getting RoS as it launches.

There are still a few things I'm not sure I agree with in the game like Critical hit Damage. It's fun to have a stat that can make you do so much more damage but it quickly becomes mandatory for higher difficulties. It's also just extremely alluring as soon as you get ~15% crit chance from gear and skills - which isn't very hard. It makes upgrading gear awkward. Some things that should be an upgrade because it's quite a few levels higher and has a lot more of your primary stat won't give you more DPS because it lacks or has inferior crit damage.
But we'll see how that turns out.


There's also the question of how long I'll stay interested in the game. Good thing then that I'm making sure not to spoil a thing about the game. And I mean quite frankly everything. I've only seen extremely brief moments of Act 5 and its environments, the demon enemies we'll face there and even what might be the most uninteresting quests out there. Heck, I don't even know what the grand majority of Crusader skills/runes and gear look like.

But there will be a post about spoilers in general soon. A very interesting topic if I do say so myself.

First steps in to FF14: Realm Reborn

It happened! The FF14 beta process has begun on PS4. I always wanted to try out FF14 but there had been no opportunity to play briefly without plunging my wallet for some dough. This was a pretty good chance as I've always wanted to give playing an MMO with a controller a chance. Let's briefly talk about these things.

The controls

I'm happy to report that it actually wasn't so bad! I do think that it will always be inferior to keyboard/mouse, but there are some upsides. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, they are similar to why one might prefer Diablo 3 on console.

Movement and combat feels more tangible. Your hands are closer together and you have that wonderful thing known as analog control. Moving a character just feels better with the thumb stick. Even if you're playing a game that only uses a D pad to move a character, I find it still feels more solid than WASD on a keyboard.

Combat also changes to feel more like an action game than your typical hotkey MMO feels out to be. Perhaps it also has to do with what class I chose (Pugilist, henceforth known as Pug because I love pugs) although, be it due to a bug or design choice, there is no rumble which is a missed opportunity to potentially convince some to switch to Dualshock 4 - which I love by the way. Such a fantastic controller!

All in all, it took a while to get used to and there are still some things that I miss. It goes without saying that the perfect control you generally have over the camera with a mouse and any situation where you need to type something is going to be better on PC. The entire UI seems to be just as customizable as the PC version (if you hook up a mouse/keyboard the game switches UI so it should really all be there)  though some text is incredibly small to be read on a big screen at a considerable distance.

Overall it's been more good than bad and less of a curve than I thought it would be. It just feels very foreign and clunky in some inherent areas but it's certainly doable. I'm really glad I gave myself  the chance to try it out.

 Pugs are awesome. Deal with it.

 First impresions

Then there's the actual experience. Well, as many have said before, it's a very pretty game. For a beta on a console that's only been out for a short time it runs quite well. I'm not convinced that my PC could provide the same FPS and graphics settings with the dozens upon dozens of people that were everywhere.
Yes, let me get this out first before I continue. There must have been hundreds of people on my server. A LOT of folks. I didn't think there would be this much passing interest in the game for PS4 users. I'm very curious to see how many will stick around at and post launch. But I digress.

Unfortunately the game leaves a generally disappointing impression. After an intro sequence that's kind of neat, you're left in a HUGE city you know nothing about, sent on quests that merely have to talking to people, being their errand gopher, getting to know the (entire!) city which I quite frankly don't care about. Why should I? I know nothing about it! Nor do I find it possible for me to give a crap about the NPC's mundane problems and solve them.
It's a good thing that they let you get to know the cities, but they're so huge. It shouldn't be necessary to cram this knowledge into the player's head first thing they get in. It should be introduced gradually as needed. As a result, there's so much to take in I actually still don't know much.
There's also a lack of ambiance sounds to make seemingly busy parts of town actually feel busy. You should hear NPC's laughing, glasses going  *clink!* in a bar, merchants talking in the trade quarter.

Music is all over the place. It's pretty much constantly playing, but there are huge epic parts in the score(s) that don't suit what you're generally doing in the city. Stormwind's theme has a pretty epic feel to it, especially when you enter the city on foot and you're passing those huge statues. But it's not too grand so as to be unfitting for if the score starts up while you're cleaning up your bank, doing some auction business or just standing around.




I won't throw in the towel just yet though. FF14 is on Steam for 50% off at the moment so I'll activate that key when I have more time. Based on my impressions I get now that it's an MMO that at least starts very slow. People play this game, and it must be for good reasons and I hope that those will rear their heads after I get through some of this drivel. Let's see if I can dig up the good side of the game.

Are piano solo skills relevant in jazz?

I used to love playing long solo improvisations on piano. Sometimes as an intro, but mostly as a standalone, independent piece that would evaporate as it was played.
The fantasy is that people like it, are interested by it, and get swept away. Luckily for me, I was pretty good at it by the time I started studying at the conservatory and received praise from fellow students and peers, but there was always a hint of 'meh' in the air. And I'm positive it's not because they were giving false praise. It was more like a "cool story bro" kind of meh.

The trigger for this was probably a masterclass I had in my second or third year from Tamir Hendelman. On records and live, he's an excellent pianist but plays it relatively safe. But at the masterclass we had a splendid 'lab' session where various crazy things were experimented with. It's been a few years since then so I don't remember it well but I recall he did some weird thing with an ostinato.
Everything that went on during that lab was a great learning experience, but most of it, in hind sight, actually feels irrelevant. It probably has some sort of influence on a sub-consciousness level, but it's very rarely immediately noticeable. The main teacher at the Conservatory I go to is one of the very rare cases where you hear this lab stuff actually get implemented, be it solo or in a band.

And so I come back to my initial thing. Solo improvisations on piano can be some of the most powerful music ever - Keith Jarrett's Kohln Concert is the best sold piano solo music in the world - but it's also the least called for.
As such, I haven't been arsed to play that stuff in the past year or three. When you get to a point where you mostly need to busy yourself with studying material you actually (are going to) use, it's hard to justify setting time aside for what crumbles down to the hobby side of the profession.


It's almost unavoidable though that I will restart it again, as my teacher will insist that I play off the wall things should I go for my master's next year. But then I will likely be learning to play them in a more directed way, so the experience can be used as an intro for a tune with a singer.

Getting back in to an MMO

I've recently picked up SWTOR again to play with my brother. I always wanted to finish the Empire story with at least one character but I had burned out on the game by the time we arrived on Balmorra. This happened a month or two after the game launched so that's quite a long time. On top of that, it's been a long time since I played an MMO that wasn't WoW for quite a long time so it took some getting used to.

After having been in to action games like Muramasa Rebirth on Vita, Metal Gear Rising and DMC the slow pace of an MMO caught me off guard. I know some are faster paced than others or at least have a different picture of their dynamics, I'm convinced that these games are generally slow(er) paced.
This time around it was even worse than usual as story is a pretty big thing in SWTOR. I had to figure out where I was, what I needed to do, how to play my character, set up my UI (which had changed a bit) and figure out what to do with all those lovely cartel coins I had apparently accumulated from merely having an authenticator hooked up to my account. I still paid for a month of subscription time though as I want to make sure I can play whatever character I want and not have to deal with the nickel and diming you have to put up with at times with this game.

It also makes me appreciate certain steps Blizzard has taken over the years to make it easier for players to jump back in to WoW after months or even years of having not played. Tutorials are often too spammy and cover many things that are obvious (how to move, control your camera, use or  learn skills) and skip or don't properly cover more hidden features and mechanics of the game. Luckily it is for the most part a WoW clone and as I play with my brother everything except the class quests for which we always split up so as to not spoil anything is fairly easy to zap through.


I must say though, the game has gotten me interested again. The conversation system, voice acting and setting (Star Wars!) for the most part still suffices to hide even the most redundant of kil ten rats quests, though when you're out actually doing these it's not so great. The goal quickly becomes: "Quickly get this over with so we can talk to people again!".

It's also fun to play good-guy Sith. I never got around to playing enough of the bad guy on my Republic characters, but it feels like I'm sabotaging the Empire by being a boy scout. It's also nice because it's something you never saw in the movies or games - that I can remember anyway. The bad guys are always bad, and some good guys go bad and that's it. Quite refreshing!

I hope I get through to the end this time. Cheers!

Not this time Blizzard - Diablo 3: RoS

Looking back, I've bought every Blizzard game at launch in the past decade or so. Be it Starcraft, Warcraft or Diablo games. But for the first time I have a negative feeling about buying one on its first day, and that is Reaper of Souls.


I played a fair bit of D3, though by now the majority of active players have well eclipsed my ~500 hour mark. For all its problems and my sudden lack of interest in the game over a year ago I got my money's worth. I even got my mitts on the collector's edition as a symbol to the many hours I wasted away on D2 as a young teenager. And I'm still happy I bought it, I don't regret my time played with D3 as there was definitely some fun to it.

But there are fundamental issues with the game, mostly in its one-sided itemization. It's a completely different beast to Diablo 2 with its amazing expansion. There are many many many many threads on forums and reddit that discuss the issues so I won't bore you with them here, but it's clear that I'm far from the only one who has a negative outlook on RoS.

I'm not even sure they're going to keep to their current release date, although by now we know that Blizzard has no qualsm with releasing the game and then continue to tweak and change, sometimes some pretty big things, post launch. Patch 1.0.5 and 1.0.8 are examples of this.
I'm very curious to see the public reception. D3v sold many millions of copies in the first week or two but I'm not convinced this expansion will follow suit.
Much like Nintendo, I think they need a shake up that's actually noticeable: in their wallets. Then the message will be crystal clear.

Jazz - I finally understand Coltrane Changes

Time to do this blog's name justice. No vid (yet) but I finally have something to talk about on Jazz!

I can't believe it took me so long. But I finally 'get' the Coltrane change. I could never get a grip on what folks would mean if they told me "play coltrane changes over D." which thankfully never happened but it's still something I feel is important to know. Thankfully that switch has finally flipped.


All I did was look at two tunes: Tune Up by Miles Davis (he probably didn't write it) and Countdown by Coltrane. Then I looked at the first four bars of  both pieces and tried to keep what my teacher once said about the changes in mind. He mentions that it's a substitute for I-VI-II-V-I changes that has you going through major related keys. I actually get that, but I didn't understand in what way the major relations worked because it's not immediately clear in Giant Steps, the tune everyone thinks of and references when it comes to the Coltrane change.

But it's actually quite simple! Again, looking at Countdown, the basic idea is you jump to each major third relation in a descending manner, implementing dominants before playing each related key. Sounds harder than it is, here's an example:

Dude tells you to play these changes on Bb.
Major related thirds to Bb are Gb and D. As a side note, major third relations are always in sets of three. In this example, by learning them in Bb you also know to execute the changes in D and Gb. Just the order is different.

So the goal is to go to Gb and D major keys in that order (remember, you're descending!) before landing on Bb again. In total you get:

Bbmaj7 - Db7 - Gbmaj7 - A7 - Dmaj7 - F7 - Bbmaj7

To be clear, and this is where I always got confused, the above is what you can play if you see a regular I-VI-II-V-I progression over Bb major. The slight variation in Countdown is where you would play Cm7 instead of Bbmaj7 in the example above. There's also one in Giant Steps where you play full II-V's to go to each major key, say for example Em7 A7 Dmaj7 instead of just the A7 alone. It amounts to the same though so I wouldn't worry about it.


I expect no one to get any of this, but I'm glad I got it off my chest because this is one switch I'm thrilled to finally have flipped. Now to practice (read: grind) until I'm fluent in all 12 keys.

My top played games of 2013!

I've never really made a top X list for myself at the end of a year so I thought I'd go through a few games that really stood out for me. Some of these may not have come out in 2013 but I did play them this year. Some games will be mentioned but due to them being rather fresh and frequent in other lists they'll just be mentioned without a dedicated part. I like them for largely the same reasons others do.
So without further ado and in no particular order, here's my list!

Mark of the Ninja

Probably the best ninja game I've ever played to date. Despite only being a side scrolling 2D game, Klei Entertainment managed to make stealth feel visceral. Sneaking past dudes feels rewarding, even without the floating texts adding to your score. The animation probably has a hand in this as it too is stellar. This game oozes style and polish in just about any and every way possible.
Story is often a thing that ninja games trip over but even that managed to be quite good with a surprising twist at the end. Ironically they did it so well that they had to figure out how to do DLC for the game as fans clamored for more! Sure enough, while very short and perhaps a bit overpriced despite its sweetness, they at least managed to tell a meaningful story that didn't feel entirely tacked on. If it's on sale though I can highly recommend the DLC if you liked the base game.

Totalbiscuit often praised this title for actually making you feel like a ninja (he really knows what that feels like?!) and while I had my doubts before trying it, I quickly understood what he meant and completely fell in love with this game. I believe I can echo something he said: "If you have any passing interest in ninja games and/or stealth games, buy this now!"

http://store.steampowered.com/app/214560/?snr=1_7_15__13

Uncharted 1-3..sort of

When I bought my PS3 about three years ago I did so partially with the wish to check out what all this hype was about with Uncharted. Sure, it looked pretty with decent voice acting. But it otherwise seemed rather generic. This is, IMO, mostly true for the first game of the series. Once the game introduced 'zombies' I was rather disappointed but wanted to know how the rest went on so I retired from playing it and looked to Youtube - which by the way there are some really good montages that really make the games work well as a movie, I can highly recommend it if you don't have a PS3 or plan on buying the games but have a passing interest!

Long story short, it was alright. Uncharted 2 I played entirely and that was a masterpiece. That is the game that convinced me "Ok, I get it. This is really something special." So many of the set pieces are amazing. And with an outstanding eye for detail to boot.

I'm currently in the middle of trying to finish Uncharted 3 but for some reason I find myself running in to the same problem I had with the first game. The hook, that unyielding gravitational pull to play the game isn't there for me. It is without a doubt a beautiful game that once again demonstrates Naughty Dog's understanding of the hardware they had to work with. The voice acting is splendid and the story keeps me glued to my chair. But the adhesive is absent for my hands to actually play it.
I wouldn't be surprised if I looked to youtube for this one again, because I definitely want to see how it ends!

Fire Embelm: Awakening

The first real buy for my 3DS and, together with the announcement of Pokemon coming later in 2013 and the next title of this list, one of the primary motivators to me for buying the system. I was really in the mood for a good RPG around February, especially a grid based one like this. So it was rather annoying that the European release date was as late as it was. But it was worth the wait. A fantastic cast of characters, beautiful art (cut scene animations!) and some good writing was to be found. It's also very approachable as someone who is generally horrible at games like Final Fantasy tactics by allowing you to disable perma death and setting an easier difficulty.

My only qualm with this game was probably the rather large amount of (paid) DLC they produced for it.

Luigi's Mansion 2

Although the first game scared the crap out of me (I'm very bad with scary or even spooky stuff) I loved the original NGC game. Luigi's Mansion 2 is a prime example of Nintendo's sense of level design and clever use of mechanics. Without spoiling anything, you're given a very limited set of tools to go ghost busting but the game manages to remain fresh, inventive and quite challenging throughout the entire campaign. It's a shame that I couldn't get multiplayer to work, it looked like a good hour or two of fun.
It is also within this game that I think Charles Martinez gets to flex his voice actor talents. One cannot help but smile and laugh when Luigi hums along with the music in a spooked manner.

Gunpoint

A charming game that reminds me of the old days of DOS games in part due to its relatively poor production values. Text is portrayed as if it was stuck their with a text box from Paint. 
Being someone that is relatively bad at puzzle games I was quite intimidated by its complicated mechanics. To my surprise I got a hang of simple things like making guards open doors in their face, knocking themselves out. That and rigging their guns to ridiculous things never got old.
You can dumb problem solving down or make it rocket science as you wish, and it's really satisfying to figure out a cool way to get your way through missions.
Gunpoint also carries one of the most decent jazz soundtracks of recent history that totally fits the feel and setting of the game.

List of other Stellar games:

Last of Us
Bioshock Infinite
Tomb Raider
Tearaway - this game deserves a dedicated paragraph but this post is long enough

Blog ate my drafts

In yet another turn of unfortunate events, blogger seems to have consumed my drafts, including one about Contrast that was rather difficult to write as it hits home on a few fronts. Especially now I happen to have family issues with my parents which has also been taking more of my time and energy than I'd like it to. I had to rewrite several parts and was going to finally publish it soon.

I'll try to do a post on it nonetheless because it's a cool game with a soundtrack that's different from most things out there but certainly has its fair share of flaws.

Nostalgia and why it's so hard to beat Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time

It's pretty much inevitable that every time a new Zelda or Mario game comes out, Super Mario 64 and Zelda: The Ocarina of Time are brought up. There are great reasons for thinking that these games are the best ever.
But I can't help but think of one important aspect that makes these games unique; eternally so.
Super Mario 64 in particular as it was a launch game for the N64. After so many Mario games that were all 2D side scrollers, all of a sudden this game stood out. It was everyone's favorite mustachioed plumber in 3D where you could run around and perform various different jumps, slide around and everything!
I believe that an important component of the nostalgia that people associate with SM64 is this transformation to 3D that simply will never happen again. Only kids who you bring up playing the old 2D classics and suddenly expose them to the next 3D mario game could you reproduce that same awe.

It's kind of funny how it's similar to how some jazz musicians wish they could forget more about their musical training. To have less knowledge upon which to improvise on. Kurt Rosenwinkel once said that to him, improvising is like taking everything you've learned and bringing it to an altar to sacrifice. I have recordings of many of my lessons at the conservatory and while my playing was wonky and lacking in many places, there are many concepts I now hear and think "wow, that was actually a really neat line!" and wish I could play with whatever was going on in my mind.

I wonder how it would be if I could erase my experience with certain games and play newer incarnations of its series, like the recent Super Mario 3D World - which by the way I'm not planning on buying as I'm biding my time with other games until Mario Kart 8 and Bayonetta 2 release for the Wii U.
How would it be to have had Twilight Princess, Wind Waker or even Spirit Tracks on DS as my first ever Zelda experience?

Is this the perspective of those old folks who wish they could be kids again?

Ad addendum: TL;DR clicky

Blog update

'lo

Just a quick update here before I put up a proper post. I got my laptop back and am trying to get all my software to run again. I'm looking to post a simple jazz tune to see if most of the stuff works before continuing on with the game music stuff. Sorry for all the delay, it's not fun for me either =(

I'm picking up a PS4 this Friday, I'll see if I can put a fancy link to my twitch channel for if/when I stream on the side of my blog. But just in case you want to follow my channel or what have you, it's right here. And yes I'll have a camera so you might catch me with my mug up on screen! I'm not responsible for any damage done to your eyes or monitor as a result of having my face projected to either one.

What's with all the bugs this year?

This might be a rant post, but I can't help but ponder about the level of polish some of this year's AAA games have launched with. This year's CoD looks and runs bad on PC, EA's Battlefield 4 is flooded with stability related bug reports, I'm stuck in the loading screen going out of the Batcave to anywhere else in Batman Origins and this year's Need for Speed (on PC, at least) is atrocious. I'm probably missing a few.


The launch of two next gen consoles has to take some of the blame as a lack of focus in development is never good. So many games this year are coming out on a lot of platforms: PC, 360, X1, PS3, PS4 and Wii U is a pretty basic and automatically assumed setting. And considering the install base of the last generation this situation could keep going for quite a bit longer. If it goes on for too long we will be stuck with smaller worlds to immerse and get lost in. But there's been a first light ray of hope in the past week of news.
A trademark for Fallout 4 was made, and we all know how great that was. I have to confess that I never finished that game, nor did I clock many hours in to it. It's on my backlog, but I know I loved what little I had played.

After having played over 15 hours of Batman: Arkham Origins I'm still on the fence. It has a slight sense of new and/or refined elements, phenomenal writing paired with a generally boring and straightforward story, slightly enhanced but very familiar visuals and the polish is everywhere and nowhere. I really wish they had simply waited until around now to start development on a new Batman game, making it next gen only. Instead it denies Arkham City being the last great game of its series on last gen while also denying itself an amazing entry to next gen.
And in that aspect I'm kind of happy that they got a more lukewarm reception from the press and gaming community because hopefully that will get the message across and get their stuff sorted out.

The Fit Meter

 I thought it'd be nice to do an article about a game (if you can really call it that) that surprised me, and a little gadget that surprised me even more.

Paying attention to yourself

There's plenty to criticize the whole Wii Fit stuff for, and a lot of it is quite justified. The emphasis on BMI in the body test can give an awful experience if it doesn't make sense for your body like if you're already a mass of muscle. Which I'm not, though I'm by no means obese either.
There's also the issue that the game doesn't take your entire form into consideration when doing some of the workouts where you'd really need it like Yoga. I think most fitness coaches who have checked out any of the Fit games have said that it's far from perfect, but it does do a great job of getting you interested in personal health. And that's where I have grown to embrace it.

The fit meter is great. It's small and low profile that I can attach it to my belt, hidden under my T-shirt. But it's a lot like Street Pass on 3DS. I don't want to leave the house without it. I almost always take the stairs instead of an escalator with it on. I didn't think it would affect my way of moving around so much as it has.
In the short time I've had this little gadget it's become a part of my standard kit when leaving the house - wallet, keys, phone, fit meter...okay, good to go!


The best part is that together with actually doing the workouts in the game, I already have results. My weight has mostly stopped going up and my belly is starting to deflate again. For a dude, I had a pretty good figure but as always you take those things for granted and miss things when you don't have it anymore.


Yes, I'm one of the twelve people that own a Wii U. I never thought I'd get a Fit game, let alone like it and get anything out of it.
If the whole offer of getting a Fit Meter sync'd with your system lets you keep the game forever hadn't existed, together with getting a bargain on a Balance Board wasn't a thing I wouldn't have jumped in to this so soon.
So for the relatively little the Wii U has done for me in its first year in the living room, it's managed to change my life a bit on the long term and I feel thankful for that.

I'm looking forward to next year's warm days for new plethora of reasons now!


Man, I never thought I'd blog about this...

Grrrr(video update)

My Macbook Air is one of the bad lemons of the bunch, the SSD has died and my visit to the Apple Store in Amsterdam yesterday was useless and I needed an appointment. As I use this machine to do my video editing, I don't know when I can actually get back to work on that. This is incredibly frustrating.
The good news is I think I can bring it in tomorrow at a different place so hopefully the delay won't be so bad. If they can't do it, I will be without a machine for at least 2 weeks more. The agony!!


Next post could be about Wii Fit U (the Fit Meter to be precise) or Pokemon! Coming soon(tm)

Blog update

Alrighty! I'm finally back from Suriname and I survived the intial wave of business I had to take care of upon returning.

First thing is first: a big Thank You! to the NBI for awarding me for the Most Interesting Content prize. I'm pretty surprised the jury awarded me this. I will do my best to respect the interest my blog concept has sparked and write regularly. I'm thrilled at the thought that even a few people are interested in these subjects.

The plan

 I'm going to shoot for about three posts a week. I'm looking to get the jazz part of the blog introduced this week or the next, with my Final Fantasy cover upload being delayed due to issues with the video and audio; I've decided to just rerecord the whole thing so that will take another week or so.

I thought about posting about Blizzcon but I'd rather wait and really get my head wrapped around the things they've announced, rewatching some of the VoDs available with the virtual ticket. But I'd like to do a quick run down on some things.

WoW

• New Raid Structure: Had this come around in Cataclysm I'd probably still be raiding today. And with more people that I've known since the beginning or close to it. The flex tech is apparently fabulous and it's great to see their drive behind using it to fix what is essentially a social problem. Very stoked!
• Draenor, the story, etc: A bit bummed that we're not done with Garrosh yet. I hope that we won't be fighting Orcs and Ogres during the entire expansion. Nor do I want to see an entire raid tier with some level of dedication to trolls again. But something tells me the Burning Legion will get some focus, perhaps in the second raid tier (6.1 or 6.2) before moving on to whatever it is we fight at the end. At least we've been assured that it's not Garrosh that awaits us at the end of the expansion. Phew!
• I can't get excited about the zones. At least not yet. The premise of exploring Draenor before it all went to crap is cool though. I had no idea Black Temple had that kind of history (spoiler: It wasn't such an evil place) and I always love a good snow zone.
• Lots of little things like bag management, (auto distribution, no more quest loot, heirloom UI etc) item overhaul, item squish and the fact that they're not adding lots of new buttons!
• Garrisons a.k.a player housing! Some cool ideas there that once again can expand on what they already have.
• I'm skeptical of the insta level 90 thing. Hopefully the flood of people that have no idea how to play their class will be somewhat limited and/or mitigated after a while.

D3: RoS

• I was rather underwhelmed. A lot of the info was old news from Gamescom earlier this year.

  • It was clear that the audience was very hard to get super excited for Diablo 3 anymore. If you compare the enthusiasm for things demonstrated back before the game had orginally come out you can feel the difference. Even as someone who wasn't there! If someone was there and this wasn't the case though, let me know! 

  •  I'm still hopeful for D3 though. The basic gameplay is fun; I've spent countless hours as a teenager playing D2 and I managed to get my money's worth out of its sequel. They're on the right track, but as I'm sure everyone else feels, we have to really see the finished product to believe it. The brand is quite damaged. 

     

      I still have to let Heroes sink in; see more of it. Nothing really to talk about as far as Hearthstone is concerned. It's an awesome game and it's fantastic that they're moving to open beta by the end of January along with the announcement of an Android release.

Part Two of the MoP Pre-Post Mortem: Raids

Disclaimer: Still in Suriname so I can't go around taking pics to make the post fancy /cry

Raiding...in LFR

Hah, yes it's laughable isn't it? The grand majority of raiding I've done in this expansion was with LFR. What was left of Adrenaline was able to finish Mogu'shan vaults, then we managed to down the first two bosses in Heart of Fear. After that the guild had to permanently end official raiding activities; we just couldn't get the people together again.

Back in Burning Crusade I wasn't able to raid due to the time difference and my stubbornness of not wanting to switch to the EU servers. I get very attached to friends, you see. Very attached. But I know that in TBC I wanted to see the raiding content to wrap up the stories told while questing and doing the dungeons. I constantly wished there was some way I could experience those things, and any kind of streaming video service couldn't really provide either.

So now with LFR in Mists, I wasn't too sad about losing raids. Once I get back home I'll probably re-up for a month to see the rest of the Siege of Orgrimmar and wait until the next expansion comes around.

But I'll tell you what, I definitely miss 'it'. Yeah, 'that'. If it's one thing I've managed to realize for myself from this it's the essence of why I love raiding. The story is definitely a part of it. Watching a 'tube video of all the bosses going down, with any RP that goes on between NPCs and the like is one thing, but experiencing it for yourself just brings in that DIY element you can't get elsewhere. 

But 'that' is the learning experience.

I suspect that the element dulled on me because I consider myself to be quite competent at raiding. I suck at a lot of video games but I've seen WoW as being a relatively easy game to play when it comes to execution. I learn pretty fast, and I'll admit that it was kind of frustrating when after 25 wipes across multiple raid nights the strategies still don't click with everyone to complete an encounter.

But now I know that what I love about raiding is the social experience of learning things together. I remember now that, despite how high school went for me, I loved to learn stuff. Always a sponge for learning new things. And after an expansion full of LFR I think I'm not the only one that has seen through this. I'll touch on flex raiding a bit later on. First...

What I didn't like and still don't like

I get that professions should have some roll in the game, but honestly I've always disliked consumables. Heck, if there's one thing I'm bad at in MMOs it's handling cool downs. I'm a pretty conservative person IRL (not in a political way) so I feel very walled up when it comes to using buttons with longer cool downs. But that's not the point, I can learn to use that stuff. I'm still pretty horrible at it but I have improved.

What I hate is the preparation. Getting the gold/mats together for flasks, chanting new gear, gemming, food. All this nonsense. I just want to get to the meat of the game. LFR lets you do this, but to my knowledge you need all these things to be in tip top shape for every other form of raiding.

But in regards to this, I must say that Mists has made the best effort to make this part of the game somewhat enjoyable. When being level 90 meant you were hip the game was insanely overwhelming, professions included. But the facilities were there to make your outside-of-raiding-life easier. And for that I'm thankful.

I'm curious to see what they'll do in the future to support these systems. I'd love it if they continue to use the Pandaren farms, it gives the continent that much more relevance in the future of the game. And let's be honest, Pandaria is a pretty cool place to be!

Flex Raiding - Our Savior?

"And they said unto the Lord: "How the hell did he do that?"..."

Really, hats off to Blizzard. Once again the introduce some ballsy system no one thought would work. Flex raiding has, for the relatively short time it's been out, been heralded as a saviour of raiding and probably even guilds. It fundamentally taps in to the philosophy of bringing the player. If you wanted to do 25 man raids you needed 20-23 really good players, 25 if you want to do the more challenging heroics. Now a system is in place that allows you to forgo a diluted experience and instead make something aimed at a very pure experience. This is quite a good development. 

When I return I really want to make an effort to do a Flex raid to try it out. It should bring back the element of learning encounters (hell, even trash!) and interacting with people in a more consistent structure. And when it comes to preparing consumables and the like I will just have to bite through the sour apple. That's a dutch expression, in case you're wondering.

Next?

Well I'm actually a little stuck on whether or not I should do another part. I don't do PvP. Perhaps I'll dive in to the Legendary quest series once I actually manage to complete it. I've had horrible luck with those Runestones!

If there's a system you'd like me to cover in WoW, I'm totally up for writing about it in more depth. That way we can have some active discussion! Perhaps a question like "Why did Blizzard do this? Change that? Implement this crazy thing?" I love those kinds of questions; I see on fan site forums and the official forums plenty of people that don't get the picture of why Blizzard at least tries certain things out.

NBI: Poetry Slam

Lady Syl comes up with some interesting ideas sometimes.

If I was at my desktop right now with an active WoW susbscription (it ran out) I would post a screenshot of the lovely poem she sent me. I sent her a wonderful Christmas present in the mail with a an equally adorable poem attached to it. She replied in a suitable manner.


Here's a handful of things I've come up with. I had a damn good haiku in the plane to Suriname but I was sleepy and didn't bother writing it down. A familiar mistake I make all too often with composing music, too.
So without further ado, here are my contributions.

A Wind Waker at Sea

Sailing upon a vast sea

An innocent Bokoblin stands

Who does he think he is, with that silly spyglass?

"Give me your Joy Pendant!" I plea

____

Warcraft Behavior

Bustling city here

Much to do and see in town

Just stand and idle

___

Galaxies

In a Galaxy, far far away

There was a Mon Calamari

who healed and played music each day

Always running with a carbine at hand

Always jealous of the Teras Kasi band

A harvester here, a harvester there 

the burden of being a Combat Medic had him grow hair!

This fish ends his tale in a humble house called home

where memories of planets and hunting can be found in a tome

In Suriname

Hello everyone,

I've not been able to post anywhere near as much as I want to,  I apologise I will be in Suriname (a small country in South America) until November 4 for work. But I will be posting as much as possible despite the situation.

As Mr. Iwata says: "Please understand."

Being late to the party in Wotlk Dungeons

So, I'm going to start of by saying something a bit strange about wotlk's dungeons: they were hard. You may have had a different experience, but they were actually challenging. Of course, this is assuming you didn't have that fancy LFR buff I think they implemented sometime (or was that Cataclysm?) or you're decked in epics. Mostly the latter.

How it all began

So here I am, freshly leveled Paladin at the lovely new cap of 80.  I did what you had to back then, get decked out in blue items and whatever relatively easy to get epics you could. That basically meant crafting and 5 man normals. So far everything's cool. Once I was fully prepared for doing heroic five mans...I apparently wasn't.

"OMG this is taking forever. You suck."

In I go, tanking gear at the ready. I actually do quite well, making normal pulls that I feel comfortable with. Unfortunately, everyone else is decked out in epics and is only interested in getting to the end a.s.a.p for their precious Justice/Valor. Here's an example, I remember it vividly.

In Halls of Stone - yes that dreadful place - there is a room with about three sets of dark iron dwarf pulls. The room itself is like a hub, splitting off to towards 3 different wings, the tall lady, the cave place with the giant dude and the exhibition of Brann's poor hacking abilities.

Now, I don't know about you, but these pulls hurt. When the game was fresh, I remember you had to line-of-sight pull each one separately. And to pull two or more packs either meant a lot of cooldown usage, stress and panic, or a timely demise. And it's from this perspective that my Paladin should be played. Of course, by this time the norm was to pull the whole room. Anything less is unforgivable, a clear lack of skill and it is made clear that you are a blight among the community of WoW players.

"Well do a run with guild mates then!"

Yes I wish I could have. Unfortunately the reality doesn't allow this. At least not in Adrenaline at the times I played. And chances are there was a fat chance of it happening in your guild either. Most of our guild members didn't log on outside of raid times, and I sure as hell am not quitting my most beloved guild and healing team because I can't have some fun with my alt(s).

To sum it up

So there you have it, the story of my life. Well not really. It comes down to this: if entry level content is kept relevant to highly geared characters, the effective balance of the dungeons breaks as you get characters of the entire gear level spectrum trying to do them. This, in my experience, leads to an almost disgusting after taste. In fact, so far the only other thing that has really felt revolting to do in this game was the PvP quest of the legendary series of this expansion where every second of just having it in my log was blegh!

But I have to wonder, was I alone in this? Because that was the other awkward thing: I seemed to be the only one with this problem.