Prologue to today’s three things: I’ve had an incredibly stressful week, day job-wise, and yesterday was perhaps the roughest of all. I was in no mood to make music; I kinda just wanted to play with my kid, have a drink after he went to bed, and then sleep. On the bright side: I did end up making music, AND I had a drink, AND I played some games and read. But I was not in the best of ways, I guess you could say.
GAMES: As noted above, I was in a rough mood. I did happen to come across Patrick Klepek’s video/article about Grow Home during one of the quieter moments during yesterday’s storm, though, and that did seem to be the sort of thing that might alleviate some stress. For those of you that don’t know – Grow Home is an experimental game that Ubisoft just announced only two weeks ago, a prototype thing that they were working on based on procedural animation techniques (and which we’ll probably see an adaptation of in the forthcoming Assassin’s Creed games, I’d bet), and in it you play as a charming little robot named B.U.D. who climbs a gigantic plant. I was certainly charmed by it, though for some reason the game wasn’t working with my 360 controller, and so I had to use mouse/keys, which was a bit more difficult and not particularly intuitive. Nevertheless, it was a welcome breath of fresh air; pure platforming, exploration, minor environmental puzzle solving, charming art style and sound design. Hard to pass up for $7.
After a music session (which I’ll get to in a second), I then ended up finishing Far Cry 4; well, I saw the credits roll, at least, though I still have the very last fortress to conquer and a Golden Path epilogue to watch. (And all the other side stuff to do, of course, none of which I will be doing.) Kinda screwed up the ending, though. I’ll try to talk about it in as non-spoilery a way as possible: after the climactic battle, I was given the opportunity to confront the big baddie, and then, after a speech, I was given a choice to either do something or wait a bit longer, and because I was tired and a little impatient and perhaps somewhat distrustful, I did that thing instead of waiting, and now I kinda wish I’d waited. I’m certainly not going to go through all 30 hours of that game again just to get the preferred outcome (I’m sure I could look it up on YouTube) and I don’t necessarily regret my course of action (as I simply didn’t care enough about the plot or the characters), but I do kinda wish I’d been a little more open to the idea of seeing what might happen.
What can I say about FC4 that I haven’t said over the last 2 weeks? It is the same exact game as Far Cry 3 except more bland and far less risky, filled with superfluous side content that doesn’t really mean anything, some occasional, unnecessary nudity that somehow feels more obligatory than gratuitous, and a whole lot of shooting people and animals until they die. Now that I’m more or less done with it, I’m sure that the only time I’ll ever think about it going forward will be when Far Cry 5 inevitably arrives.
MUSIC: Again, as noted above, I was in a rough mood. Really didn’t want to work on music; all I wanted to do was space out and relax and not be required to think. But eventually I did relax, and realized that I owed it to myself to stick with this RPM Challenge thing and do it anyway, especially since I’d be missing tonight and tomorrow. To that end, I decided that instead of working from scratch, I’d try to reinterpret one of my older songs that had never been given a proper recording. This particular song is a bit tricky, given that it goes from 7/4 to 4/4 a few times; it’s also tricky in that I’d always played it on guitar, but decided this time to try it out on piano. I only laid down one verse and chorus; I never figured out a bridge for it in the past, and in any event I’m not sure if it will make the final cut. At the very least I’m glad to have learned how to switch time signatures in Logic.
BOOKS: I remain flummoxed by the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy; that’s pretty much all I can say at this point.
Shouts From The Couch 