Weekly Check In #1

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Rituals are important!

I always liked the effect that the Long Grind posts had onto my week, but I didn’t like how it was limited to one and one topic only – and a pretty boring topic even, although it is indeed important to me.  So the long grind got an expansion pack and is now called the Weekly Check In. The whole thing’s still beta, so there might be changes down the road.

Anyway, lets just start:

Health

  1. Running makes me happy, but only if I actually do it. The siren song of my couch, strong it is.
  2. I’m back on watching what I eat again. Watching how much I eat makes me nutty, so thats not advisable. Eating better stuff fixed a certain health problem for me, which surprised me for some odd reason.
  3. After all this time, I still can’t differ between wanting to snack and being hungry. I still treat both like an important emergency – and that kind of behavior’s broken. Don’t know what to do about that yet.
  4. Food on weekend is still hard for me.
  5. This one post came exactly at the right time for me. Cue lightbulb and new understanding.

Art & Writing

  1. I’m doing to little of it, period.
  2. But I *did* fix my laptops writing environment so that I can sit back and actually write stuff.
  3. trarr.net slowly nearing completation and it might be done before the new months rolls around. I do like the page so far, but there are some minor quibbles  – for example the yellow of the links feels overpowering when applied to the black boxes and I was aiming for understatement with that page. Blue instead of yellow might fix it, gotta try it out. But I now do know what to do with the index page, so that’s a huge success.
  4. Still struggling with ToC’s slow beginning. It’s easy enough to fix – just cut out the prologue and replace the first three, four pages of chapter one with two new ones, but I’m not sure if I want to do it. I like the prologue! And here’s the hard decision. Is it a case of  “Kill your darlings” or one of “don’t give in into your perfectionism”? Hard to decide.
  5. Lots of unfinished art I should finish. Lotsa shoulds. Hard.

Games & Other Fun

  1. WoW 1: Our rag-tag tuesday 10-man group is still puttering around in ICC. We’ve got our first putricide kill. We’ve two-shotted Vampire Queen Sparkly Poo. We owned Ms. Healy-Dragon. Pretty good for a ragtag group mostly made up out of undergeared and newish raiders, isn’t it? Explanations and Voicechat’s the key – and of course the pitybuff, who gives us room to make those unavoidable learning experiences. Samus actually might get her Kingslayer title yet!
  2. WoW 2: I’m learning how to kite, even though kiting turns me into grumpy tank. (So do pugs, but well…) I’m HAPPY to stand infront of the boss, working my rotation and watching the dps scurry across the field, damnit! Anyway, they’ve made me kite around the ooze in the Rotface AND turn Barney the Dragon in Ruby Sanctum. It worked out eventually in both case, despite my Wurstfinger. Still haven’t killed Halion thanks to our raid having trouble with phase three, though, and well, the follow-up raid disintigrated. Ooops.
  3. WoW 3: I saw a nude warlock pulling 1.3k dps in heroic Violet Hold this sunday. That’s far more than some well geared players do (unfortionally… friggin slackers!), not to talk about the Deathknight who got out-dps’ed by his own ghoul. Mr. Warlock put his gear back on for the bosses – and pulled 8k. Colour me impressed!
  4. Metroid’s still fun, fun, fun. Pulled out Metroid Prime 3 again – and am seriously looking forward to Metroid Other M.
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On Metroid Other M, part 2 – Super Metroid’s legacy

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Originally this was intended to be only one post, but wall of text critted for 25k hp, so I broke it up for your – and my – sanity: part 1 • part 2  • part 3

(Attention, Spoilers ahead.
I know Super Metroid’s been out for 16 years, but don’t say I haven’t warned you.)
Super Metroid Title Screen

One of the most memorable events in Metroid’s history, the one that actually made me such a fan of this series, has been the final boss in Super Metroid and a very emotionally charged moment.  Honestly, the video’s nice, but doesn’t do it justice.  Simple because ingame you’ve spent HOURS building up to this boss, running around on a hostile planet and trying to save/get back that annoying not-so-little-anymore floating jellyfish, which had imprinted on you, ‘coz you were the first thing it saw after it hatched.  And then, it dies, because that friggin boss kicked your ass and the ‘lil bugger was to busy saving your life to defend itself – despite the fact that you’re the walking one-man army.

Yeah.

I remember my first time beating that boss pretty well. In less then ten seconds, I went from “Oh fuck, oh fuck, I’m going-to-die-die-die” over “YAY! METROID! YAY, YAY, YAaaaa…. WHAT?! NOOOOOOOOO!” to “BURN BITCH, BUUUUUUUURN! EAT MY WRATH”. I think it was the first (and only) time I actually screamed at the tv. I remotely remember that my mother came running into the living room, checking up on me. Heck, I was so upset, I failed at the following timed-escape scene and Samus died on me. I was fourteen back then. Or maybe fifteen. And man, I’ve been upset at that boss (stomping it felt so good!), the space pirates and the death of a bunch of pixels.

And yet, apart from the wonderfully creepy opening narration, Samus never uttered a word or has shown any facial expression (16bit sprite, remember?), all was done just with the flow of the game itself.  That huge emotional payoff on that boss? All the result of good and fascinating gameplay. They’ve set never set out to humanize the woman in the powersuit. They’ve never hit us over the head with her emotions or past. It just wasn’t necessary – the short opening recap set the tone and the rest was gameplay. You’ve beat the game, had fun while doing so and they sneaked the story right past you, directly into your brain.

And as small as this story was, it stuck.

For many of the older Metroid fans (including me) Super’s the game every other Metroid has to measure up to. The Metroid series consistently delivers high quality, true, but how good a single game is, that’s determined by the comparison to Super Metroid. It’s the holy grail. It’s been that good, that there wasn’t another Metroid for more than eight years despite the good sales, simply because no sequel would’ve been able to live up to it.

Will Other M manage to do what Super Metroid has done for me all those years ago? I don’t know.

Other M defintivly won’t be Super Metroid. Super’s a thing of the past. It’s a classic, yes, and it’s been very influental in it’s time, too -  But even I have to admit that there are parts of it that feel a bit… dusty. Time marched on and today’s audience expects different thing of a video game. A modern Metroid has to look differently. Other M has to come into its own if Nintendo wants it to be a commercial success.

And so they set out to show Samus Aran’s human side. Oy.

Super worked so well for me because the story got out of the way, but I know some people missed the fact that Super’s had a story at all. They’re going to try and fix that in Other M – but I’m afraid they go to far into the other directions. That their attempts at provoking emotion will turn out heavy handed and clumsy and will get into the way of good gameplay. That’s what usually happen when you try to focus on those things.

But I’m a cynic and I react agressive to drama for drama’s sake – the poor souls who tried to watch Buffy with me can attest to that. Maybe they do their job great, and it’ll be a true enrichment of the Metroid series. Maybe lots of people will like the game and it will still disappoint me – I cannot know.

Only way to find out is to buy and play it – and at least that I am looking forward to.

Fact is, Other M has to step out of Super’s shadow, especially because it’s a direct sequel  – something that never happened before 1. And I hope it does, because if Other M manages to finally outshine that sixteen year old game it will reunivate the  series itself.

That alone is a reason I’m so exited for it. Besides the basic “wee! more Samus!” reaction. ;)

Samus Aran

My fetish for muscled girls is alone Super Metroid Samus' fault...

Still, there’s one thing that might cause me to have some problems with Other M.  It’s personal and has nothing to do with Nintendo, and I’ll talk about that in the next part of this series.

Footnotes:

  1. The Prime series is a prequel and set between the original Metroid (better said, it’s remake Metroid Zero Mission) and Metroid 2, return of Samus. And while Metroid Fusion is set after Super it’s not a real sequel – and well, there’s a reason it’s one of the least liked Metroid games around. ↩
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Writing Annoyances

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

While working on trarr.net I realized the PROPER way to start the story is Siendes’ mug and not a friggin prologue, no matter how much I loved it as framing device. The lesson here: If you fall in love with that idea and it appears to be the bestes thingy ever, you might not have the emotional distance to intelligently judge that part of your art.  Remember to kill your darlings people!

Do people have the patience to klick through *does a quick count on the fingers* twelve pages before the main character actually appears properly?! Especially when the teaser features her prominently? Because that’s called “Bait and Switch” in marketing lingo.

I do know what would make things much better. The question is am I willing to pay the price?

In times like these I wish webcomics were easier to edit. It’s hard to straighten out a story if you have to make do with the art you already have.

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Muse Fodder: Just because it amuses me.

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Yay! Singularity!

This just makes me laugh. :)

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On Metroid Other M, part 1 – Introduction

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Originally this was intended to be only one post, but wall of text critted for 25k hp, so I broke it up for your – and my – sanity: part 1 • part 2 • part 3

So, there’s a new Metroid game coming up.  When I’ve heard about it, I might have squeeled like a four-year old that just  found a pony under the Christmas tree. Maybe. Well, at least until I got some of the details regarding this game.

The beauty that is Metroid

Metroid Other M

For those not in the know, Metroid is a Nintendo-only franchise starring your classical armed-to-the-teeth silent protagonist fighting against a whole zoo of evil-invading-aliens while traipsing through pretty and eerie landscapes, solving puzzles in order to pick up stuff that makes your character stronger and allows you to solve even more puzzles. There’s even a story (in the later games more than the first ones), but so far it rarely got into the way of “pew-pew-aliens!”

(If you own a Wii, you should pick up the Metroid Prime Collection. It’s really worth it. )

Some highlights of the series:

  1. life-sucking floating space jellyfish1
  2. Quality: depending on the installment you’ll have either a real good game or a grandiose masterpiece
  3. a space dragon
  4. its pretty, creepy, eerie, lonely and moody settings full of interesting puzzles
  5. floating space jellyfish!
  6. and what’s maybe the first never-been-kidnapped-and-actually-USEFUL-in-story woman in a video game ever, with her first game being published in 1986 on the old NES.

Anyway, since then Samus Aran has blown up two planets2, multiple space stations and a few space ships, nearly completly wiped out the titular life-sucking space jellyfish and countless of heavy armoured enemies. She is stated to be a legend of nearly mythical proportions in her universe.

Lots of boom, lots of pew-pew, lots of puzzles, lots of fun. Good games.

And now, they’re planning to show us the emotional side of Samus Aran.

Erh, what?

…

ABORT, ABORT!

Lets all ignore the fact that developing of a female character in a video game generally3 means turning  her a blubbering, useless crybaby 4 or into a lunatic and psycho5 -  I’m NOT playing the damn game to dvelve into the humanity of my main-character. I want to go pew-pew and solve puzzles!

Metroid Prime, Meta-Ridley

Pew pew. Shooting Aliens. Solve puzzles. See fantastic land scapes. Trudge through the ruins of long (and not so long) lost civilisations. Complicated bosses that make me memorize the patterns of how exactly I have to kill them. (I’m goooood at that) That’s what I play Metroid for!

Can you point what’s not on the list? Yeah. Humanity and Emotions.

I’m HAPPY with her being the lonely, silent protagonist!

I know, I know. Time marches on, they’ve gotta try new stuff, and fans always will whine. Yadda-yadda-yadda. QQ more. Facts of life.

And I might’ve just lied to you about the not-looking-for-emotions part. A little bit. I’ll tell you why in the next part.

Footnotes:

  1. It’s named after them! ↩
  2. Well, three, depending on how you count ↩
  3. Metroid has a T rating, so we can safely ignore two of the most common ways to “flesh out” a female character: rape and/or pregnancy. ↩
  4. Bonus points if that’s caused by a “love” interest. Jaina Proudmore, I’m looking at YOU ↩
  5. Sylvanas Windrunner, Amy Rose, pre-reset Lara Croft ↩
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