I have a on-again/off-again relationship with modular synth music. The majority of what’s out there is just arty-types feeling like they’re scientists as they twist knobs and “experiment.” This record bucks my stereotype by actually having a purposefulness to the songs. The theme of this record is to revel in sound in “all its glory.” The three main tracks combine sound design, rhythms, and spoken word into throbbing meditations on how a sound can evolve into music. “The Siren Is a Simple Device” is my favorite. It literally turns air raid sirens into instruments all while explaining the physics of the siren itself. “Sonic Sculpture” yearns to hear the sound of a piano falling down the stairs. I guess Colin Newman’s “Slowfast (falling down the stairs with a drumkit)” wasn’t extreme enough. These days, Umor Rex has become my go-to label for new music.
This is part of a five game package of Might and Magic games that GOG.com goes on sale for like three dollars every few months. I gave the first game the old college try but that was pretty painful even with third-party mods. The second game seemed like more of the same. This third game is probably the first one that’s even remotely accessible to a modern gamer.
It showcases a rather large graphical jump up to VGA. The character designs and pixel graphics are pretty great:
The game may look like Eye of the Beholder but it plays more like The Bard’s Tale. You control a party of characters who you recruit from a guild, and then you map your way through grid-based dungeons and towns fighting monsters and picking up text clues. The combat is a simple turn-based system that barely requires much strategy aside from knowing when to cast healing spells. If your team is powerful enough, you can just click attack, attack, attack and you will burn through most foes. That is, until you can’t. In some areas the enemy difficulty ramps up exponentially.
Where Might and Magic III begins to set itself apart from The Bards Tale is its large open over-world. This is also where the game begins to fall apart for me. The world is expansive, with many places to map out and explore, and yet you are given very little guidance as to what your goals are. After spending countless hours walking everywhere I realized I still had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. That’s when I just gave up. There were quests here and there within the towns but there was no meat to the story. Say what you will about simple “kill the evil wizard” RPG plots, but at least they give you a reason to continue playing. The satisfaction of leveling up kept me in there for a while and that might be enough to sustain hardcore role-players, but not me.
It’s Portal with cubes! Not quite, but it’s still a spacial puzzle game in which you are trapped in a bleak lab environment and must puzzle your way to the exit. This tenth anniversary edition adds a story via voice over communications with outside entities. It helps to give some context to the levels, but it’s not really critical to the game.
The main course is the puzzles. The idea here is that there are various colored panels that perform distinct actions: red creates a pillar, yellow a platform/staircase, blue a springboard, and green generates a moveable cube (with magnets! How do they work?). The first dozen or so levels are ridiculously easy. Eventually new twists are added like rotating walls, magnets, guide-able laser beams, rolling objects, and automatons. You slowly build up the skills to manipulate these new elements using those initial four building blocks. By the end, some of the puzzles can get pretty spatially mind-bending. The minimalist story comes to a nice little conclusion that makes it all feel worthwhile.
You probably don’t notice anything different, but I have switched Web hosts. MediaTemple was acquired by GoDaddy and very quickly their service turned to crap. GoDaddy incessantly tries to up-sell stuff and they charge for just about everything you can get for free anywhere else. Most annoyingly, they phased out unlimited e-mail addresses that MediaTemple would always offer. GoDaddy sucks. Avoid them like the plague. Giving Namecheap a try and so far they’ve been great.
Also: I’m just now discovering that many of my beloved em-dashes were converted into curly-apostrophes when I migrated off of drupal. This will require a post-by-post search of the database with some clever regex tokens.
This one is a giant Dover paperback with glorious, near actual-sized reproductions of most of William Hogarth’s prints. But, because I am a glutton for punishment, I read all the accompanying text. The introduction was a solid history of the artist, but all the plate blurbs are just literal descriptions of what we are already looking at. It’s like one of those DVD commentaries that Arnold Schwarzenegger would record.
The Last Story is billed as an RPG but it’s really a third-person action game with very limited options for “action.” I remember this being listed on Amazon for $29 but that was too much for me at the time. My thinking was that I’d just wait until it drops below $20. Turns out it was one of the final Wii games released and the price never dropped. So here I am playing it in emulation. This was probably the wise move as save states and other conveniences make this a far less painful experience.
Sure buddy, as long as it doesn’t involve accurate depth perception.
The game is heavily story-based. So much so that it feels like it’s 70 percent cut-scenes. To be fair, there are some pretty good characterizations of all your compatriots. They each have a little backstory and unique personalities. And the perpetually drunk Syrenne appears to be a fan favorite.
I think you have a problem
I was surprised by how effective the initial setup of the relationship between Zael and Calista is built up. You are introduced to her with a side mission involving being chased through the narrow city streets, hiding her in your local tavern, and finally ending the evening gazing at the stars. You know what, I actually may have given a crap about these two for a little bit. Unfortunately, this forbidden romance plot thread is quickly sidelined for a standard “big evil green guy vs. the world” with a dash of environmental conscientiousness JRPG plot.
love, exciting and newa marriage made in Japanshippers of the world rejoiceThe Drunken MasterWii graphical powerhouseglowy doorboss combatnon-interactive combatthe teamtalking to nerdswetnesscut-scenes galore!the baddiecan’t remember what this was aboutshe’s wrong
When the game decides to actually allow you to control your character things start to break down. At it’s core, the combat is just a matter of pointing Zael towards and enemy and watching him swing his sword. The only choice you have in the matter is when to dodge/block and some positioning strategy.
I smell something too
Eventually you get more options to pause the combat and control party members actions, but there again, the options are pretty limited. Most of the time leaving your teammates on autopilot works just fine. Your job is to act like a magnet drawing enemies away from your spell-casters and then dashing into the spell effect area to boost the spells. Not until the last quarter of the game do the battles start to offer any challenge. There is so little agency offered to the player that some of the “epic” final battles descend into tedium as you rotate through your 2-3 options and dodge persistent attacks only to face yet another, tougher boss form evolution. But then again, this is pretty par for the course in JRPGs. Otakus love this crap.
For all my complaints I did stick with it to the end. And, for the record, this game has an extended epilogue ending that puts Return of the King to shame. The story becomes a somewhat confusing mess but it’s the individual character arcs that kept me interested. Overall, The Last Story was pretty good for a Wii title, but just okay in the grander scheme of things.
A classic western that doesn’t hold up against my beloved spaghetti westerns. The acting is stilted and the continuous refrain of “Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling” is a bit much for my modern cinematic sensibilities. The idea of the lone man willing to stand up for what’s right is fine, but the plot is literally Gary Cooper trying to recruit a deputy every ten minutes, failing, and then going to the next guy until the gun fight at the end.
This image was printed from a block of end-grain maple on to a 10¼ x 8½ sheet of Kitakata paper. The paper has an ever-so-slight reddish buff color which makes it very hard to accurately scan.
Process Photos
Preparatory drawingThe cut blockInked blockFull print with paper borders
I have finally gone back to wood engraving into a properly manufactured wood block. This print was engraved into a traditional end-grain maple block. Maple certainly doesn’t hold as much detail as resingrave but it is much easier to print and is more accommodating to various drawing transfer methods.
I don’t have much to say about the imagery here, just that I have been in the mood to draw monsters these days.
Process Photos
Prepatory DrawingTransferring the imageStain the blockEngraving early progressInked block before printingPrints hanging to dry
I’m slowly working my way through the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. I think I liked this better than L’Avventura, but it is still a plot-less excuse to glorify middle-aged men and their barely-legal muses. The movie opens up with a loveless married couple visiting a dying old friend in the hospital and ends with them making out in the sand trap off the eighteenth green. The whole thing seems to symbolize an entire marriage over the course of a single 24 hour period. There’s lots of brooding and extramarital dalliances, and it’s all shot in a beautifully velvety black and white style (especially all the “notte” scenes). There’s also a long sequence of an exotic dancer balancing a wine glass on her head. Deep stuff guys!
