Magic Thoughts: Splatoon

Greetings one and all!

Well, rather than blather on about it being a while. I wanna share something quite fun.

Splatoon.

I didn't get it on launch as I wasn't too sure if I'd like it or not. Sure it was a fun shooter but would it hold my enjoyment?

Well. I'm 4 hours and a half in and I think it will.

Splatoon for any who haven't seen it yet is a shooter by Nintendo.

Nintendo? Aye.

Shooter? Aye

Nintendo came out with a shooter? Yup

It's also mostly multiplayer focused.

Okay okay don't faint, I was pretty sceptical too. That's why I didn't get on launch however I did grab it a week later and I can get why people whose opinions I think are alright have been giving the game praise. It's fun running around small arenas on teams of four covering as much ground and your enemies in splatty paint in contrasting bright colours for a few minutes at a time and then you win depending on which team has painted the most ground.

Yup. That means that although you can cream the other team members, it's not the focus and I will say that this was a pretty damn spiffy way of Nintendo to go about doing a multiplayer shooter. There's so many which are purely based on how many of the other team you've wiped out it's refreshing to see one that isn't.

That said as I typed that last paragraph I was strongly reminded of why I liked Team Fortress 2 so much. My favourite gamemode in that is Payload. Get the bomb into the enemies base. I was never a fan of the 'capture all the points' or the 'KILL EVERYONE' modes. I quite liked the 'Capture the Flag' one but my heart was really in the Payload.

Which comes to another point I want to raise.

I'm not a huge fan of multiplayer shooters. I'm also not very good at them on the whole either making it even less fun.

Splatoon seems to acknowledge that the people likely to buy this AREN'T going to be the worlds best and as such, it gives you a basic premise 'PAINT EVERYTHING' and takes away the ability to scream and shout at each other, gives you a level and tells you 'have at it' and I like that.

I also like the single player, it's fun and bright and joyful and also gets you used to the very basic principals of the game and it has platforming too! Well it's a Nintendo game so there was gonna be some wasn't there. (Note this is not a complaint)

So yeah. I'm enjoying the game so far and I'm gonna play some more tomorrow. I'm only playing in about 2 hours splurts though because of my 1 complaint with the game. It uses the WiiU Controller. Which obviously it should, however after about 2 hours my arms start to ache a little as it's a bit heavy. Guess my wimpy little arm's aren't ready for a marathon of Splatoon yet.

I'll get there!

That's all for now.
Have a lovely evening!

Comments

Greetings one and all!


In a recent discussion with a friend, a thought came to mind.
I like it when I receive comments.

I REALLY like it when I receive comments.

Why?

Well.
When you get a comment you know for sure that not only did someone take a look, but they were interested enough to actually engage with you ABOUT that.
That thought makes me smile.
I hope I'll get more comments on my blog or on my youtube video's in the future.

Now, before I sign off all happy like, I'm WELL aware that the comments section of youtube can be a cesspit of hatred, bile, and general asshattery. I'm not 'big' enough or 'important' enough to garner that kind of attention. I'd probably be quite happy if I never got that big to get that kind of attention. But then, if I DO start getting that kind of nasty stuff coming my way?
Oh well.
I'll deal with it then.

Have a lovely evening all!

Crypt of the Necrodancer

Greetings one and all!

During the Steam Winter Sale one of my friends did a really awesome thing.
They bought me a game.
That game, was Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Now, I'd added it to my wish list not too long before it was acquired for me because I quite liked the idea of it. I'd barely seen any gaming videos OF the game, but the idea caught my brain and left a lingering idea that this was both a very daft but possibly very cool idea.

Today I installed and played some of it.
As of writing this, Saturday 10/01/15 I've only played 35 minutes of the game.
I was right. It's very daft and very cool.
It's also bloody hard!

It's been a long time since I really played any rhythm based games, I believe the last one I did with any sincerity was Elite Beat Agents... and although it was brilliant I did have a few issues with certain songs note QUITE hitting the beat with the touches. Just... so very close but off enough for me to avoid a perfect on certain tracks and thus driving me up the wall.
This one?
Well...
Crypt of the Necrodancer isn't a full release. It's in ... alpha or beta, I forget which one the game told me and that means there's room for things to change. That's cool! The game is very cool. I'm not doing TOO bad, as I'm still getting used to the mechanics and how the enemies move (VERY important in game) however on that first level I can't quite get into the rhythm of tapping my arrow key in time with the beat and CONTINUOUSLY tapping with the beat.
This is an odd sensation when the game is laid out like a rouge-like and my brain naturally wants me to stop and give the approaching enemies a quick look over and assessment however if you wanna keep that multiplier up then you have GOT to keep moving.
So I go around in little circles, or back and forth, to keep that beat going.
Which then distracts me from the oncoming enemies and keeping in time with their particular move sets.
Which leads to death.

It's a learning curve I most certainly was NOT ready for!
And you know what?

I'm REALLY loving it.

Also everyone seems to have forgotten that this game does in fact have some story to it!
It's right there in the opening cinematic!
I like it.

And I will be playing more of it!


That's all for now.
Have a lovely evening!

Out of the darkness

Greetings one and all!



Out of the darkness cometh a new player to the youtubes!

Into the light of the online plethora of youtubers (myself included) comes someone with a wit that is sharp, a humour that is varied and, so far, two puppets to give their distinct views on stuff.

I present:
RUGGANOID
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCn9O4ANAF72TCJX-TyFEqw

Seriously people, go check out their stuff. It's better than mine.

That's all for now.
Have a lovely evening!

Mind boggling weirdness

Greetings one and all!

Something that's been bugging me for ... at least the last 6 to 10 months is just how much of my stuff sucks.
It's nothing specific. It's just sometimes after recording I start editing it to be ready for going onto youtube and I just ... I'm not feeling it. It's not brilliant, it might have some funny moments but the thing as a whole just doesn't ... feel as good as it should?
I realise that trying to explain this with words is like trying to quantify love, or beauty. Though this is just like trying to pin down why a poem just doesn't quite work. You know that there's the potential there, but it's just not .....quite.....right.

I realise that the old adage that you are your own worst critic is completly right and that as the stuff I've recorded is still good stuff I should release it anyway. Hell I chuckle at some points on a video or two I've got waiting to be edited and uploaded.
I just haven't...because of this niggling feeling that it's not quite right.

I will get over this feeling and upload them before long, and if anyone has any idea as to how to tweak the ones that get uplaoded so they actually ARE hitting that....thing, please let me know.
But thi sis why I keep having pauses or breaks in uploading.

Another blog to go up tomorrow for those interested as I wanna give a shoutout to a friend whose started and totally deserves more likes/views/subscribers and the like because they're awesome.


That's all for now.
Have a lovely evening!

On Piano's Decline

Greetings one and all!

I've noticed something in the last few days.
I seem to have stumbled over more than a couple of articles bemoaning the lack of piano playing kids in this modern age.
Now... when reading said articles I notice that most of that pointing finger of blame is pointed right at how overwhelmed with electronics the modern world is, and how no kids want to sit and play a real piano with it's variable noises depending on how hard the key is pressed.

Yet... there seems to be ONE key point all of these articles have avoided.

Piano's are loud.

I realise that this is surely obvious but whether you've got a Grand Piano or a standup. Piano's are loud instruments.
Far louder than a recorder, or a violin. Maybe not as loud as a set of drums mind you but loud nonetheless.
Now yes all of these articles state that kids are much more likely to play a musical electric keyboard rather than a piano and how it doesn't compare.
I'd agree, it DOESN'T compare.
But you know what an electric keyboard has that a real piano doesn't?
A headphone slot.

Which is far as I'm concerned is the REAL reason kid's aren't playing the piano anymore.
Well, that and price. A real piano is sodding expensive to buy in the first place, expensive to maintain and even more expensive to move. The kids whose parents aren't minted, or live in a property where the nieghbours can't hear a piano at all hours would be more likely to look towards an electric keyboard than a piano.

And as my parents and grandparents used to drum into me when *I* played instruments as a kid.
You've gotta practise. (which funnily enough means you have to have ACCESS to said instrument at all times of the week incase it's decided for you that now is practise time, or you're in the mood)

Sorry the ranting today, I just needed to get it off of my chest.

That's all for now.
Have a lovely evening!

(Oh for reference, through my school years I had lessons on: recorder, violin, clarinet. Never had piano but thought about it. My nan (currently in her 80's) STILL plays and has violin lessons as has my whole life)

Something...odd

Greetings one and all!

I noticed something very odd today.

I seem to, so far, end up with consistantly more views of my blogs than my videos.
Now yes, I realise that part of the problem with my video's is that I don't really release many.
Yet... the blogs STILL get more views in comparison.

I'm probably not going to give up doing videos, despite it looking like I have at the moment, I just genuinely haven't felt the... something... that tells me inside that today is a day I'm going to make a good video.

I do have some planned. Like finishing Spyro 1 for example.
I also have an end of year video planned but that one's gonna take some making and it'll be interesting to see how that turns out... speaking of I might need to start working on that now actually.
Regardless.

I simply spotted that my view count for blogs is higher per blog than my videos.
Not quite too sure why, and not sure if I'm even going to try and work that one out.
Just thought I'd share a little thing that popped into my head not 5 minutes ago.


That's all for now.
Have a lovely evening! 

NaNoWriMo and me

Greetings one and all!

 Today, I'm gonna write about my thoughts on NaNoWriMo and what it means to me.

First off, for those not in the know NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.
From my understanding it started years ago as a writing challenge to write a novel of 50,000 words in length by tackling it in dayly chunks of about 1,667 words from Nov 1 to Nov 30.

Obviously that's a lot.

Now, in the past I've said I'd give it a go and I think my record was about 3000 words over a couple of weeks. I've just not been able to settle down with an idea and roll with it for the whole month.
Am I going to try again this year?
Well, I think this year I'm going to just try and WRITE something every day. Regardless what it is, whether it's tied into something else, a random idea or a whole story based plot. Or even just a re-write of something I've written before.

Why?

To encourage myself to get BACK into writing. By writing something every day, regardless of length, it'll start to bring back a habbit I've sadly gotten out of and keep [i]saying[/i] I'll get back into but just seem not to actually do.

(That said at the time of writing this blog post, this is my 3rd in a row so something's obviously going right in my head!)

So yeah. Whilst there are people I know who are going to give it an honest go, I'm going to challenge myself to write SOMETHING every day of November. Whether that is in an online typed document or on a notepad that ends up tucked in a drawer somewhere.

I might even say how it goes, we'll see :)

Wish me luck!

That's all for now.
Have a lovely evening! 

Harvest Moon

Greetings one and all!

Just a fore-note.
I started this blog post several months ago but never wrote anything beyond the opening and the closing which I'd just copied and pasted from the rest of my blogs.

Since then this topic has been milling around in my brain on and off and driving me nuts.
Why?
Because I overthought the issue.

I thought about how I wanted to write this blog, where to start, where to end. Which games from the Harvest Moon franchise to include, which games that I've played to mention. Any specific game mechanics or story points I wanted to go over.

Which just lead to more delays and more worrying over it all. So fresh off of writing my last blog post about my brain being weird on writing, I thought that it was about time I just got over myself and wrote this blog.

SO!
TLDR: I started it a while ago, never finished due to my brain being weird.


Harvest Moon.
For those not in the know this is a series that started off on the SNES back when that was a thing and is a farming simulator.
Anyone trying to bring the game Farming Simulator 20xx into this conversation will be slapped with a wet fish.
You boot up the game and from the cinematic you learn you are a young man sent away by his parents (mother is tearful) to run a farm. Through the help of the local townsfolk (2 screens away and one of them is very small) you learn how to turn the run down weed filled farm into a place your proud of!
You can grow crops! Raise animals! Even get married and have babies! Or not and woo all the girls into loving you and get an ending where they all chase you.
Yes. This game has an end, 2 and a half years after you start. (I'll admit I had to look this up as I'd forgotten how long and thought it was 3 years) Once that time is up your parents come back and the game is over, you get to enjoy some ending cutscenes depending on if you have achieved certain criteria in the game.
I'm not going into them, I was quite happy with the lot I could get when I played it.

So why do I ramble about this game?
I really enjoyed it.
It was short enough to keep you running around trying to get everything done in the time you had, for that money doesn't grow on trees and if you want to be able to extend your house you need the money! Want that money? Gotta grow those crops or raise those animals or both! Want that wife? Well you better make sure to give her lots of gifts and do NOT make a mess of her specific festival related activity, oh and don't dance with the wrong girl... that just makes a whole mess of things.
So yeah, sort, fun, to the point and well polished.

I've played several Harvest Moon games since then, and I've never enjoyed them anywhere NEAR as much as this first one.
I think the first problem is that they seem FAR too long and laborious, the towns you interact with are so much bigger and feel much more restrictive in what you can do, and the wilderness areas are so very big that you have to unlock certain areas by getting so far with your farm.
Now... I remember in the first Harvest Moon that there was a cave you couldn't get to until the first winter, and another area you couldn't access until you got the upgraded axe because there was a tree stump in your way.
Well. That seems so much nicer than say blocking off whole features of the game (mining) until you've upgraded the whole TOWN so many times AND by a certain point. Oh and it would help if your animals won certain competitions but we won't tell you the best way to do this despite us insisting we have a fantastic in game help feature (Seriously, this thing doesn't tell you WHAT you feed the chickens and you have to actually go to the next day before the game goes 'oh you need to feed them, here it's this, and yes they missed a days feed because we weren't gonna tell you.)

I ramble.
Again.

Because of the want to play a Harvest Moon game I nipped into town and grabbed a 2nd hand copy of Harvest Moon 3D A New Beginning. And though I've been trying to slog through it, I've basically put the game down and probably won't be picking it up again soon. The mention above regarding help function which is pretty much useless? That's from this game. I'm in autumn in that game and getting fed up with the animal festivals because I'm not winning them despite doing everything I believe I can to get the animals 'love' for me as high as possible. Also the same with the crop festivals. I mean how much sodding fertilizer do you have to pour on this stuff (100g a bag btw!) before I win a damn festival. That stuff isn't cheap!
Also the only way to open the new areas is to have a new person move into town, meaning you have to build them a home, and then you have to play hunt the song sheet. Then hit tree stumps in colour coded note relation to the song and THEN you get a brief cut scene showing something blowing up and OMG new area...
Yeah no... this isn't what I wanted from a Harvest Moon game.
I think I'm just gonna give up on the modern ones and just replay the SNES one as that seems to keep it to the point, and although smaller, I find it works.

That said.
Whilst thinking about Harvest Moon I did a couple of searches on the net for PC Harvest Moon-esque games and came across this following upcoming game:
http://stardewvalley.net/
I'm following that and fully intend to look into it when it's released.
Why?
Because I think it's gonna get that right blend between Harvest Moon, and the current love for games like Terraria. Hopefully without going over the top.

Because you know what? Some games are BETTER for being shorter.

Well, that's my ramble over with, thank you if you've managed to stick with me all the way through to the bottom.


That's all for now.
Have a lovely evening!  

Creatively Stumped

Greetings one and all!

Something a little different today.
Go back 10+ years and I used to daily write creatively. No hassle, just words flowing from finger to paper/screen. Now... that's gone way downhill and now I'm lucky to write a page a month. I find I just can not settle on something to write about and my brain always tells me that I must have SOME fixed idea of what I'm writing about. I can't be allowed to just write whatever comes to mind, it HAS to have a purpose, a character, a story or just a REASON.

Now, coming from this I've been doing a lot of thinking as to WHY I have developed this issue and while I think I'm nowhere close to answering that issue. I have had a thought on something else.

In my head, characters don't have hair colour/eye colour, height, weight, facial structure.
Now... that sounds odd. However that drew me to a deeper realisation about myself.

You see. In real life, I can have trouble defining a person by their physical features. It matters when I first take a look at someone but really, what matters to me is how they speak, how they act, their demeanour, their personality and their tone. All of that lot tells me FAR more about the person than the colour of their skin, their eye colour, their hair colour or all of the rest. Yeah I take note on if they are my height, taller or HOLY HECK YOU ARE A GIANT COMPARED TO ME. But this I think then feeds back into my writing.

Because when I think back over projects I wrote 10+ years ago, whether full stories or just little things I blurted out... I rarely go into things like height and weight, sometimes into the hair and eye colour but usually only to say something about social status (as with the hair) or the look IN someones eyes more so than the colour.

I'm not entirely too sure what to take from this, as it only came to me clearly today, but it's a thought. An interesting one. A telling one.

Hmm... This didn't end quite where I wanted it too...
Ah well,

That's all for now.
Have a lovely evening!