2013-08-21 Entertainment Update

I have a bit of free time right now and I'd like to actually do something else but at work, I kinda shouldn't have anything that looks like fun on my screen. Incredibly, writing a blog post fits because it looks like I'm doing work and I'm also able to talk crap, have fun and waste time.

Well, here's a random update. I said I'd probably do these every so often. I'll use the title as it appears above. That's pretty much what it is, I'd say.

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"Current and recent" section:

Games:
So only now, upon starting this post, I realise that I haven't played Plants vs Zombies in a long time.
My poor plants haven't been watered in ages! THEY'RE PROBABLY BONE-DRY. SHRIVELLING UP AND GASPING. USING THE LAST WATER IN THEIR SYSTEM TO SHED A TEAR!
Anyway, so, I have become, once again, addicted to "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul" which I play on my Gameboy Advance Emulator. (Yes, that's why I posted that "comic" a little while back.)
As with most card games, a quick game (or "duel" in this case) can be played in a minute or two whenever you have free time, so it's pretty convenient. Plus, I've always loved the Yu-Gi-Oh card game as well as the anime.

Music:
Much to Verushka's dismay, the song that I currently can't get out of my head nowadays is J.Cole and Miguel's "Power Trip"
My taste in music varies quite a bit, okay. JUST... OKAY? (Cavie and Verushka will know why "varies" is in italics)

Series:
Finally got around to continuing with How I Met Your Mother. I didn't get to watch Season 8 till this month.
I'm quite glad I got back to it. Verushka and I will probably finish it within the couple weeks.



Movies:
Finally got to watch Oz: The Great and Powerful and I thought it was awesome. I am quite fond of James Franco. Still not sure whether I liked the idea of the black and white intro but it definitely made you notice the colour and beauty of the Land of Oz.
Favourite quote: "Look what you've done to me!" - Evanora
[Grins at Verushka]

Miscellaneous:
I may sorta be receiving my Samsung Galaxy S4 within the next couple hours...
I should have got it ages ago, but thanks to some egging on by someone, I finally filled in all the forms, sorted out my bank account and talked to the relevant people.
I've had a BlackBerry Bold 9780 till now and I'm still gonna keep and use it but Yay, I'll be glad to have a new phone to mess around with, jailbreak and probably brick it.
(I shouldn't make this joke because I joked about this with Cavie shortly before my PSP was bricked.)

Aaaanyway... I think that's about it for today.
KAY, BYE.

Clients and Problems (Visually Expressed)

Ib Paints a Wonderful Picture

Hello, readers.

To those of you who don't already know what this post is about from the title, see my post, What? Posts are Evolving!, for a tiny mention of this game.
If you do want to check out a description etc, here's a less spoiler-filled page (there's a download link there. v1.05 is the newest version), but if you really wanna ruin it and find out everything, here's the Wiki page.

So, yeah. I decided to chat a bit about yet another Indie game.
This time, it's a horror game called Ib, created by "kouri".
It's amazing how this game has the graphics of a SNES RPG but it made me jump way more than Slender ever did.

You play as Ib (pronounced "Eeb"), a 9-year old girl who goes on a fun trip with her parents to the art gallery. Naturally, as with any Japanese game, this does not stay as a simple trip to the art gallery (No, it's not porn). After Ib does some exploring and fiddling (not in a pornographic way), everything goes very, very wrong and Ib ends up trapped in the gallery. All you have to do is get out. Sounds simple, right? Well, it would be except that the artist who created everything in the gallery seems to be a deranged psychopath who wanted everyone to die. Maybe I'm judging him unfairly and it's just his creations that like to scare people to death.

Either way, if you're a fan of games, the Japanese, art and crapping yourself, I'd highly recommend this game.
And if you're still thinking about this being porn... Come on, she's NINE. No, Adolf. I'm not summoning you.

I initially, though briefly, mentioned this game a while ago, but I never got around to finishing it... because it was dark... and I was alone at home... and stuff... AND I TOTALLY HAD OTHER STUFF TO DO... AND STUFF.

Anyway, I thought this was an awesome game and it deserved its own post. Play it. Lemme know what you think in the comments, if you want.

The Posting of the Post about The Binding of Isaac

So this post is about another Indie game called "The Binding of Isaac".
I don't know to what extent a game remains in the "Indie" category, but this one became so successful that you can now find it (and its expansion, "The Wrath of the Lamb") on Steam!
So I mentioned this game recently in my post What? Posts are Evolving! but I thought it was really interesting and awesome (apart from being a horrible concept).

The game sorta jumped out at me because it plays a lot like a dark, gory and emotionally-scarring version of The Legend of Zelda. It was desiged by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl.

Yes, that's the main image of the game. Pretty much sums up the game as well.

The Binding of Isaac is based on the biblical story of the same name. So the basic storyline of the game (you'll find out the same thing in the intro) is that Isaac is a cute, loving little kid that lives with his mum... "Mom".
His mum seems to be a nice lady. You find out she's also pretty religious. Maybe a little too religious.
She sorta proves this when God speaks to her and tells her that her son, Isaac, is a sinner, is being influenced by the world around him and should be sacrificed in order to prove Mom's love for him (where "him" = God).
Mom... as any loving mother would do... obliges. She locks Isaac away, takes away all his toys and even his clothes and prepares to sacrifice him. Naturally, Isaac manages to escape into the basement (or we wouldn't have a game to play, would we?). But has he really escaped? Maybe going down wasn't the best place to go.

In my opinion, this game is basically an incredibly harsh way of saying that you shouldn't blindly follow your religion. It might be a bit difficult to see that behind all the horrible gameplay. If you have a very open mind and actually play the game, it's pretty addictive and if you're an achievement whore, you'll love this game (especially the "Wrath of the Lamb" expansion).

I thought that this game deserved its own post even though I mentioned it before - Purely because I spent quite a while playing it.

Checked it out? Horrified? It's okay.
You'll feel much more comfortable when you play the game in my next post. :)

Yu-Gi-Oh on VisualBoyAdvance (Visually Expressed)

And so, I've decided to occasionally post comics as well as posts. (Yes, the term "Comics" might be slightly vague but it's what I'll keep the category as.)

 

What? Posts are evolving!

Congratulations!
Posts evolved into PostsWithUpdates!

So I've written a fair few posts already, but I realise that a few of the things I've always changed have not been mentioned.

WARNING: EXCESSIVE BLABBING ALERT

Starting from now, I'm gonna include current and recent stuff that I was interested in. (see bottom of post)
I figure that'll be at the bottom of my posts from now on?
This might not feature on ALL my posts, but I'll see what happens.
Seems like a plan.

Otherwise, work has been pretty busy recently. (Not today, obviously, or I wouldn't be writing this post.)
Verushka's been really busy recently, hope she's alright. (She's in Richard's Bay at the moment.)
Her dogs have warmed up to me quite nicely recently and I've become quite fond of them.
Verushka and I managed to see Cavie, Sean and Adrian recently. I was happy about that.

My PSP broke a couple weeks ago because I dropped it during a software update :(
Unfortunately, it's bricked so I can't do much with it, but when possible, I'll need a friend's PSP to help me fix mine. I actually initially wanted to update the software because I had a PSP version of Cave Story (see Games section below)

I recently started using an internet browser called Torch. It's a modified version of Chrome, but peaked my interest with some helpful features like ripping media from webpages, a torrent manager, a built-in Internet Accelerator and more.
I know Cavie is sighing in disapproval here, but I haven't thrown away Firefox. In fact, I've felt uncomfortable with little things that I'm used to. Mostly the fact that it renames images to "download" when saving them. That's been bugging me quite a bit since I love saving pictures from Memebase. #FirstWorldProblems #IDontHaveOCD

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"Current and recent" section:

Games:
I'm currently addicted to Plants vs Zombies again and I already finished the Adventure mode. I'm incredibly glad I have a USB mouse to plug in or I'd never be comfortable playing it.

I've played a lot of Indie games recently. Most of them were creepy and/or dark and/or disgusting (forgive me). I'm not gonna warn or explain anything since some of them are very arty or abstract concepts until you realise what's going on. Play them and check for yourself. Some of them can be finished within a minute but will make you think a bit. Some of them will not be fun for you if you're easily offended or squeamish. Then again, half this blog might offend you too. So deal with it.
A few Indie titles I enjoyed recently were:
- Cave Story
- Ib
- The Binding of Isaac
- An Untitled Story (Check out the whole page. There's some cool little games there.)
- Eversion
- Knytt Stories
- Chalk
- Kaipuu
- Jumpman
- The "Karoshi" series
- Tower of Heaven
- Inquisitive Dave
- Prior
- Depict1
Honorable mention:
- Corrypt
- Lightmare
- Coma
- Loved
- Silver Stitch's "Colour My ..." series *
- Meat Boy *
- Terraria

* (Hope I put the correct links there. The network at the office restricted access to Newgrounds)

I'll probably add to this list since I enjoy retro games as well as thought-provoking ones.

Incidentally... I've also been working on my own game for a while. It's called Blue (title may be subject to change). I'll release a Beta demo in a post when I'm satisfied with it.
Watch this space. → [ ]
... Okay, you may stop watching that space now.

Music:
I've been happy listening to two new albums recently:
- Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
To be honest, I much preferred Daft Punk's music before this album. But I liked it anyway.
- Shortstraw - Good Morning, Sunshine
Shortstraw is a South African band that I recently came across when I heard their title song "Good Morning, Sunshine"
I quite like them. Somehow most of their guitar work sounds very local. I'm not sure how to explain it.

Series:
Game of Thrones
Okay, so I FINALLY got around to watching this... after being egged on so much that it felt like I was being pushed out of a window.
I know I joined the party a little late, but at least I'm not as late as Ned Stark.
Incidentally, I'm now finished with Seasons 1, 2 and 3.
"Hodor" - Hodor

Movies:
Man of Steel (Yes, that Superman movie)
DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW MY OPINION AND POSSIBLY SPOIL THE MOVIE
I personally thought the acting and character design were carried out well. I thought the cast was decent. I thought that the special effects were pretty damn fine... And THEN I felt like the director, producers, etc took all that and stuffed it in a box without any planning and put it on the big screen. Really, guys? Honestly, I think that if they went down this road, they should have made a Superman Origins, and then this movie. But it felt very segmented and didn't flow and that ruined it for me.

Miscellaneous:
Virtual DJ
I started using this again after ages. I haven't really messed around enough to enjoy it properly but I will do so soon

Game Maker
In the middle of making my RPG, I noticed a few games made with this software so I checked it out and I think it looks awesome. When I have time, I might make a couple simple games with this as well.

So um... yeah. Will chat more soon.
KAY, BYE.

It's been a busy period

For those of you who instantly thought of a hard-working menstrual cycle after reading the title, shame on you.
But I high five you for your punny and filthy thoughts.

But really, these last couple months have been pretty damn busy.
I did lots of work and got a lot more responsibility in my job.
I didn't get to say a few things here.
Had an awesome birthday. Verushka spoilt me. :)
Met the guys at The Pavilion ON THE BUSIEST DAY OF THE YEAR or something. Took forever to find a parking. We had some lunch and stuff. It was good. I miss those guys on a daily basis.

I had some interesting training in Johannesburg.
All about Audio/Visual equipment and the science behind it. WENT INTO OHM'S LAW AND EVERYTHING.
WUT.

I started The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time again. In my opinion, still one of the best games ever made.
I'm a fan of the Legend of Zelda franchise and I played most of the games... unfortunately I haven't gotten to play the Gamecube, Wii and 3DS games...
Anyway, Ocarina of Time. Yeah, I've been trying to 100% it (That's right. It's a verb now.) but there's so many sidequests that take patience, many attempts or just searching so hard for things that it becomes quite a mission.
My favourite boss from the game is Bongo Bongo. (Thought I'd mention that.)

I've also finally watched some of Game of Thrones after being harrassed for years (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE). I do like it. I think it's a cool concept and that the slight supernatural mix with the relatively realistic take on that time period seems pretty awesome. However, I do admit that it lost its novelty very quickly with me. I've been hooked on series before. Scrubs and Friends are two long-running series that I've watched completely from start to finish in a month (or less) each. I've even more-or-less done this with Heroes and one or two other series (so yeah, not just comedy). But I don't think I could do this with Game of Thrones for some reason.
[Winces apologetically as Cavie falls to his knees, letting out a resounding "NOOOOOO!"]
^ Wouldn't be the first time I've brought Cavie to his knees though.

I'm sorry, Bloggy. I didn't forget about you. I've just been really busy and stuff.

Blog:
It's okay, babe <3 I love you

What??

Blog:
... Nothing. BYE. [click]

... Okay... Anyway.
Well, yeah. So, I'm still alive. Verushka's been really busy recently so it's been a little difficult. But she's been awesome and she's tried to make sure I'm not neglected etc.
Right now she's in Swaziland (since last Monday. She'll be back next Friday) and I miss her. Thankfully she's had some communication privileges. So I've been able to chat and occasionally phone.
She'll be back soon and I'll be happy to see her. Naturally, she ran into some trouble, but here's hoping it gets sorted out. [Raises coffee mug and promptly drinks from it]. The coffee was ice cold. GODDAMMIT.

Anyway, hope everyone's doing well. Good luck with exams to those who are writing. Good luck with results to those who are waiting for results.

See you in issue 48! Until next time, warriors!