Author: Jeremy Voss

Musician, wanna-be writer, suburban husband and father. I'll occasionally tweet from @couchshouts. You can find me on XBL, PSN and Steam as JervoNYC.

Alive And Well And All Moved In (almost)

So I was hoping to write up a big thing here talking about the events of the last few weeks – specifically, the move – but today’s been so absurdly busy that there simply hasn’t been any time.  It’s 3:19 as I type these words and this is literally the first time all day I’ve had more than 10 consecutive non-interrupted seconds to write.

Given that I’m not 100% sure what’s in store for the rest of the afternoon, let me make this quick:

1.  The new house is awesome.  The move itself went very smoothly (aside from a guy crashing his car directly into the back of the moving truck without hitting his brakes, and it’s amazing nobody got hurt), and the kid was a champion (although the poor dogs were locked in bathroom doors so as to avoid antagonizing the movers / pee on everything), and we even got the bulk of the necessary repairs fixed while we were both off work last week, which is a huge weight off our shoulders.  Really, all that’s left at this point is a few miscellaneous boxes in the office and the hanging of pictures and artwork.

1a. Also the mancave needs a new thing for the TV, but that’s not something I need to get right away.

2. Also we bought new HDTVs.  Let me tell you – we bought two Vizio 48″ LED HDTVs and the mere fact that both of them, combined, cost less than $1000 is astounding, considering that I’d bought my old 40″ Samsung about 8 or 9 years ago for over $2000.  But the TVs themselves are pretty great, too.  There’s a part of me that’s curious about 4K, but the more realistic part of me knows that we don’t really have any 4K content right now, and it seems silly to shell out that much money when a 48″ TV for less than $500 is already getting the job done.

3. Given how busy the last two weeks have been, there’s not been that much opportunity for gaming/reading/watching things.  That said, of course we found time to watch Wet Hot American Summer – First Day of Camp, which we loved.  It’s true that the transformation of a 90 minute movie into 8 30-minute episodes means that it’s not as easily digestible as a whole, and it requires more work on our part to absorb it in the same way that we did the film, but it should also be said that it was also a really funny and silly way to spend a few evenings when we were exhausted from unpacking.  I don’t really understand why anybody would watch this that hasn’t seen the original film, especially since so much of the show is surreptitiously designed to show how the film’s events and characters got to where they are, and when I think about it now there’s a few not-quite plot holes that don’t necessarily add up (like how, given the events of the Netflix show, Gene would already know about the talking vegetable soup can, whereas in the film it comes totally out of left field – as it should, when you think about it), but whatever – it’s an inspired bit of silliness, and everybody gets more screen time, and at the end of the day I’m honestly just glad it actually exists.

4. The little gaming I’ve done has mostly been cleaning up various contracts and side quests in Witcher 3, if only to be as fully prepared for the New Game + mode, whenever that starts.  But I’ve also been kinda helplessly devoted to Rocket League on PS4, which is maybe the most fun I’ve had in multiplayer since Burnout 3 (no joke).  I don’t even care that I’m not particularly good at it, or that if I’m hanging back on defense and the ball comes my way I start feeling the same sort of anxiety I used to feel when I was 6 years old playing soccer, and I’ve started getting used to and accepting that certain feeling of inevitability that comes when I miss the open ball or accidentally re-direct it to the opposing team who immediately scores.  I can live with that; I can live with myself.  (I also play online without headphones, so I can’t hear if any of my teammates are calling me names, which is highly recommended.)

Beyond that – I gotta say, I like the train in the morning.  I’ve yet to take the train home, so who knows how that’s going to work, but this morning’s commute was downright pleasant.  I even got to sit down, which hasn’t happened in maybe 20 years.

I can’t yet speak to the suburban pace, given that I’ve only been there a week and that first week was largely spend indoors, dealing with cardboard boxes and tape.  I can say that our town has a ton of cute little parks, and our son is INFATUATED with playgrounds, and so it’s really nice to be only a 5-minute drive from any number of them, none of which are filled with hundreds of people.

In any event – you are all invited to our backyard, as soon as I learn how to grill.  Also I need to buy a grill first.

Tomorrow is the release of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, which has been high on my to-play list all year, and so I’m hoping to play that and write something up later this week.

Prep To Move

If all goes according to plan, we close on our house this coming Friday, and we move the following Saturday, August 1.

I left for work this morning and as I walked down the street I started becoming hyper-aware of my surroundings – the view of the Hudson from the top of my hill, the sketchy hourly-rate hotels that are inexplicably littered along my street, the greasy-bacon-and-eggs smell from the diner on the corner, the stifling heat of my subway stop – and couldn’t help but observe to myself that I’m only making this specific walk 3 more times after today.

I’ve been doing this same thing for the last few days – I can count on one hand the number of my remaining trips to the laundromat, the grocery store, the coffee shop.  We can only eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant a few more times before the trip becomes impractical (it’s a great place, but we’re not driving 45 minutes through Staten Island traffic for it).

I’ve also been feeling a lot less melancholic than I’d anticipated, regarding this move.  An old work colleague had posted something – “17 Quotes Every New Yorker Should Live By” – and after reading it I found myself inexplicably feeling somewhat hostile.  Quite a few of them required a response:

4. “The city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience—if they did they would live elsewhere.” —E. B. White

That’s true, and that’s partially why I’m moving.  I’m ready for a different tempo.

8. “Every true New Yorker believes with all his heart that when a New Yorker is tired of New York, he is tired of life.” —Robert Moses

Oh fuck you.  I’m still working here; I’m just sleeping in a town where motorcycle gangs and 16-wheelers aren’t drag-racing outside my 2-year-old’s window every night.

9. “If you want to become a real New Yorker, there’s only one rule: You have to believe New York is, has been, and always will be the greatest city on earth. The center of the universe.” —Ellen R. Shapiro

I still do believe this with all my heart.  I just don’t have to live here to know it.

16. “When you leave New York, you ain’t going anywhere.” —Jimmy Breslin

Again – fuck you.  I’m gonna be a 30-minute train ride to Penn Station.

All that aside, I can’t help but wonder – am I losing part of my identity if I’m no longer a full-time New Yorker?  I was born here, I went to college here and I’ve been a full-time resident since 1996; does all that go away once I become… *gulp*… a resident of… *gasp*… NEW JERSEY?

I am suddenly aware that my long-standing email address – not to mention my gamertag across each and every gaming service – JervoNYC – will no longer be 100% accurate.  There’s a part of me that wonders if I should change it.

*     *     *

Posting’s going to be light for the next few weeks.  For starters, I’m not really playing that much right now besides replaying Tomb Raider on Xbox One, for some reason*; I’d also rented the new EA Golf Game but it hasn’t yet shown up, and given its poor reviews, I’m not really all that committed to playing it even if I happen to receive it.

After the closing, I won’t be back at work until August 10.  I’ll have internet access pretty much the whole way through (minus one brief hiccup immediately following the move), and I’m sure I’ll need to decompress at some point after the unpacking, but I’m probably not going to be doing any posting here beyond a simple “I am here and my internet works”.

* That reason is simply that the definitive edition is currently on sale for < $10.  I’ve already beaten it twice, on both PC and PS4, and I’m not really sure what prompted me to buy it again beyond that it’s a fun game and it was cheap and I hadn’t used my Xbox in a while, and maybe I’m more addicted to Achievements than I care to admit.

Wrapping up the Knight, and Looking Ahead to the Fall

1.  I’ve been toying with the idea of reviving my personal WP blog, which I’d impulsively shut down a few years ago for reasons I can’t quite recall anymore.  But I did want to revive two specific lists – my top 50 albums of the 80s and 90s.  I liked writing those lists, and they still feel more or less accurate, and I figured they ought to resurface.  (Speaking of which – please let me know if, for some reason, those links don’t work for you; I’m not 100% sure I’ve figured out how to mass-edit privacy settings.)

2.  Unlike games, which I have no problem giving up on if I’m not enjoying them, I am debating giving up on Joshua Cohen’s “The Book of Numbers“.  It’s a difficult book, but usually that’s not that big a problem; it’s more that I started reading it right before work got crazy, and I put it down, and when I pick it up now I’m totally clueless as to what is going on and, to the extent I remember any of the characters, why I should care about them.  I’d like to get back to it at some point – he’s extraordinarily gifted with words and phrases – but I think I need to read something a little bit less obtuse.

3.  I finished the main Scarecrow-centric Batman Arkham Knight storyline the other night, and yet I’d only completed 64% of the game.  I took a much-needed sick day yesterday and ended up finishing almost everything else – there’s only one or two more militia-themed sidequests to finish, as well as some kidnapped firemen to track down – which brings me up to around 91% completion.  That said, I’ve only found 25% of the Riddler’s question marks, and if I have to find all of them in order to fully activate the Nightfall protocol, I’ll just watch it on YouTube.  Can’t be bothered with that bullshit.

Overall – I think it’s fair to say I liked it, though I did find it tedious and repetitive at times, and almost all the militia-themed quests are straight-up filler and get super-ridiculous towards the end.  (The bomb quests in particular, where you eventually have to fend off 50+ drones, are just flat-out stupid.)

It’s hard to discuss the story without spoiling everything, but I did find it both effective and affecting; if this is indeed Rocksteady’s last Batman game, they went about as all-out as they possibly could, and I commend them for that.  I don’t know that I’ll find myself itching to play it again, though, the way I did with Asylum.

4.  Speaking of what to play next…. I’m looking at the release calendar and it looks pretty goddamned depressing.  Next week is the new EA golf game (which I can’t not call Tiger Woods, just out of habit)… and then:

  • Mad Max (I want to hope this isn’t terrible – there was an interesting-looking preview video a little while ago that suggested it was a bit more ambitious than you’d think – and the fact that it’s telling its own story and isn’t necessarily a naked licensed cash grab seems promising – but I haven’t seen any coverage about it since that video in April, and its September release date isn’t that far away)
  • Metal Gear Solid V (I’m renting this and I fully expect to send it right back.)
  • Forza Motorsport 6 (I missed Forza 5; I’m curious as to whether or not I’m going to like this, given how much I prefer the Forza Horizon games.*)
  • Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 (wouldn’t it be great if this game didn’t suck?  I miss the old THPS games like crazy.  I have little faith that this won’t be a piece of shit, but little > none, so…)
  • Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (I’ll play this for at least a little while, I suppose.  It’s gotta be better than Unity, right?  I just need to figure out its nickname; AssSyn?)
  • Halo 5: Gaurdians (I’m at least renting this because I own an Xbox One and I feel obligated to, but I haven’t enjoyed a Halo game since maybe Halo 2.)
  • Fallout 4 (I cancelled my PipBoy preorder, mostly because I couldn’t figure out which system to get it for – has anyone confirmed whether the PS4 is getting mod support the way that the XB1 is?)
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider (This and FO4 are the only two games I could see knocking Witcher 3 out of the top spot in my GOTY ranking.  For some reason – perhaps simply my desire to play a good, fun action/platformer – I think I’m going to like this one more than Fallout 4.)
  • Star Wars Battlefront (I’m not really a multiplayer shooter kind of dude, but I loved the original games, and I’d like to think this would be fun enough for a little while)
  • Just Cause 3 (sure, why not)

And then there’s a bunch of remastered editions which I may/may not check out purely out of graphics-whore-ishness, like Uncharted, Gears of War and God of War.

* I forgot to mention that I tried the PS+ edition of Driveclub the other day; I did about a lap and a half of the first race and couldn’t figure out whether it was meant to be arcade-y or a sim, and while it’s pretty it didn’t grab me, and I promptly uninstalled it to make room for future HD installs.  Much ado about nothing, I guess.

the first few hours: Batman Arkham Knight

Every year I tell myself to stop apologizing for long blogging absences, and every year I almost immediately backtrack and apologize for even the smallest hiccup.  Given that I haven’t posted here since June 22 – a 2-week hiatus that did not involve a vacation – I feel compelled to explain what happened:  my day job involves working as a legal secretary for a corporate law firm, and the two associates I support work in the real estate department, and the end of June is a particularly busy time for corporate real estate.  Point being:  I was here until 1:30am pretty much every night for the week and a half – including the weekend – and was basically a shambling wreck.  I did not read books, I did not listen to music, and I certainly did not play any games that weren’t on my iPhone.  It’s only now, after the craziness has subsided and after some much-needed during the 3-day weekend, that I can finally start talking about whatever I talk about here.

So, then:  if I were to pick up from my last post, I’d say that the ending of Witcher 3 was perhaps a bit of a letdown compared to what had come before it, but I’d also put some of that on myself for having rushed through it (knowing that I wanted to have a fresh slate for Arkham Knight, and also because I had somewhat of an inkling that I’d have – to put it mildly – limited access to my consoles for the following few days, and that if I didn’t finish the story before having to put it down, I’d be thoroughly lost and confused if I ever came back to it).  There’s been a few post-release DLC things that have come out and I don’t think I’d touched any of them; I’d like to get back to them at some point, perhaps during the next few weeks when notable new releases are still few and far between.

In any event, I agree with my earlier assessment; it’s the best game I’ve played since Portal 2 and/or Red Dead Redemption, and it’s my clear front-runner for Game of the Year.

But what of Batman: Arkham Knight?  I’ve been able to sneak in some time here and there over the last few days, and if the percentages are correct I’m about 2/3rds of the way through the main story.  The best word I can think of to describe my experience thus far:  exhausting.  Which is not to say that I’ve not had a good time – I’ve very much enjoyed what I’ve played so far (with one notable exception*), and I’m looking forward to finishing the story and perhaps a few of the side things.  I don’t even really mind the Batmobile, though I still prefer the grapple-and-soar approach to traversal.  And the studio’s decision to focus solely on PS4/XB1 development clearly paid off on the presentation side of things (PC port notwithstanding); I’m hard-pressed to think of a better-looking game I’ve played on the new consoles.

That being said: I’m with Kotaku on this one.  There’s way too much stuff to do.  There’s so much stuff to do, in fact, that at one point, after running a bunch of story missions in a row, the game actually stopped me from progressing (by saying that Lucius Fox needed some more time to develop new gadgetry) and then gave me 5 or 6 more side storylines to do (in addition to the 5 or 6 other side storylines I’d already accumulated).  Let’s also leave aside the however-many hundreds of Riddler challenges and trophies there are, which is something I’ve already decided I’m not going to bother finishing.  If you somehow finish a mission and don’t immediately pick a new one, and decide to just wander around, you’ll come across a new mission within seconds.  It’s almost as if the game refuses to let you stand still; which is a shame, since the game is absolutely fucking gorgeous and I’d like to be able to look at the scenery every once in a while.

It’s hard to not keep thinking about Arkham Asylum when playing Knight, or any of the other sequels for that matter.  I hesitate to use the word “perfect”, but Asylum got pretty much everything right – it was paced incredibly well, it had a clear sense of progression, it used its smaller and self-contained size to its fullest advantage by utilizing nearly every inch of available real estate, and even if the final boss battle was a little silly it still didn’t matter in the grander scheme of things; I’ve played that game to 100% completion on both the 360 and the PC and had an absolute blast both times, and that final boss battle took 5-10 minutes each time.  Every minute of that game felt like it meant something.  Here, though, in Knight, it’s easy to feel that there’s all this stuff to do because the developer felt that there had to be that much stuff to do; it’s hard to know if any of it actually matters.  And when you can’t tell if something really matters in a game, it becomes even harder to justify the actual, literal act of playing it; sure, each activity is “fun” in and of itself, but it feels like a hodgepodge as opposed to a cohesive whole.

Ironically, I didn’t necessarily feel this way while playing Witcher 3, and even though I beat that game and did a fair amount of side stuff I still have a ton of leftover things to do, and I look forward to getting back there and doing them.  It might be just busy work, but it felt justified in the context of Geralt’s character and profession.  In Arkham Knight, the main thrust of the story is that Scarecrow is trying to deploy his fear toxin all over the Eastern Seaboard, and he must be stopped.  But also: Two-Face is robbing a whole bunch of banks!  And Penguin is hoarding weapons!  And there’s an opera-obsessed serial killer!  And Firefly(?) is torching buildings!  And firefighters are being held hostage!  And there’s a weird mutant flying creature that’s doing weird mutant flying creature shit all over the city!  And Riddler needs me to drive my Batmobile through all these obstacle courses in order to free Catwoman!  Etc. etc. etc.  Each of these things starts to feel a bit silly and ridiculous as this endless night drags on and on, and it’s hard to feel invested in any of the urgency that these tasks are supposed to impart.  I usually only end up doing this stuff if the game happens to tell me that I’m right next to one of them, and it’s only because I’ve been going all over the place that I’ve done as much of it as I have.

I’m tired enough as it is.  I’m kinda hoping that part of the game’s season pass DLC has Bruce taking a little bat-nap.

* The one notable exception is the last Batmobile race you have to run before (presumably) freeing Catwoman.  I say “presumably” because I haven’t beaten it yet.  Lap 3 of that goddamned race is a whole bunch of cheap-ass bullshit and I beat my head into the wall for a good 45 minutes last night before saying “enough is enough” and moving on with the rest of my life.  There’s some combat sections that are tougher than others, and there were a few other things that I had to restart several times before finally solving them, but that one lap is a motherfucker and I hate it and I have better things to do with my life right now.  Catwoman can – and will – wait.

Weekend Recap: The Crunch

[Apologies in advance; this post was written in a very haphazard manner over a period of several hours and whatever thesis I was trying to make when I started has been completely lost by now.]

I have a friend who can, somehow, read several different books at once; I don’t know how she does it, because I certainly can’t.  My reading time is generally on the short side as it is, and it occasionally can be a struggle just to remember where I am if I have to put a book down for a few days.  (For whatever it’s worth, I’ve already read 22 of the 30 books in my Goodreads challenge, so at least I’m ahead of the curve in that regard.)

I bring this up because, just as I can’t read more than one novel at a time, I can’t play 2 AAA, story-driven games at once; my brain can’t handle the distraction (nor can it adjust well to different control schemes).  I can play one AAA game and also, say, a driving or sports game just to cleanse the palate, but that’s really about the extent of it; if I’m playing a capital-G Game, that’s about all my brain can handle.

So I am desperately trying to finish The Witcher 3 before tomorrow, when the new Batman comes out.  I’m almost there, and yet I’m also very much aware that I’m procrastinating a bit.  I don’t want it to end.  And unlike a book, where you kinda just have to keep turning the page, there is almost always a “?” on the Witcher map that’s somewhat nearby where I’m standing, and so I’ll head over there to see what it is.  Or maybe there’s a monster-hunting contract that I’m finally sufficiently leveled up for that’s nearby, and so I’ll do that instead.  (At this point, though, I’m level 33 and there’s almost nothing I can’t handle beyond falling off a staircase.  It is amazing to me that Geralt can survive a dragon fight but dies instantly when falling off a 10-foot ledge, which is especially annoying when the fall is due to an accidental geometry clipping issue.)

I don’t like this feeling of rushing.  I don’t understand why I’m not allowing myself to take as much time as I want or need.  I have no professional obligation to finish this game; none of the posts I’ve written about it here have generated more than, say, 20 hits at a time, and it’s doubtful this post will do any better.  And the thing is, Batman’s gonna be downloaded and ready to go and I can start it whenever I want.   I am a grown-ass man, goddammit!  I can play it when I’m good and ready!

Of course, starting tomorrow, people on the internet will be talking about Batman instead of Witcher and I want to be a part of that conversation.  This is absurd, because I’ve been playing Witcher for the better part of a month and almost nobody is talking about it; granted, E3 had a lot to do with it, but even so, almost nobody on my PS4 friends list is playing Witcher 3, so if there is a conversation about it, I’m clearly unaware of it.

I suppose it would be premature of me to make some sort of hyperbolic statement regarding how I feel about Witcher 3 without technically having finished it; there’s always the possibility that the story’s conclusion will be an utter trainwreck.  I am hopeful that’s not the case.

On the technical side, there’s a more distinct possibility that I’ll run into some sort of bug that breaks the game completely; the game’s already crashed to the PS4’s dashboard more times than I can remember, and I’ve also noticed that towards the end of long sessions (and not even really that long – most of my recent sessions have only been 1-2 hours long) the level geometry will start breaking – last night, I had to restart one particular story mission several times, from a manual save point I’d made right outside a door, and each time I opened the door something bizarre would appear on the screen – the walls wouldn’t be formed, bodies would not have heads (or, more nightmarishly, heads wouldn’t have bodies), etc.  So there’s that.

Still, I am prepared to say that Witcher 3 is, for all intents and purposes, the best game I’ve played since 2011’s Portal 2 or 2010’s Red Dead Redemption.  And as I would put either of those 2 games in my all-time Top 10, I suppose you can see where I’m going with this.  It’s been an absolute joy the whole way through, and it does so many things right that it could very well ruin Fallout 4 for me.  Which is fine, honestly; I’d rather a game be that fucking good than not, and it’s been an awful long time since I felt this strongly about anything.  To think that, just days before this game arrived, I’d nearly given up on gaming altogether!

E3 2015: What Are We Excited About, Really?

I’ve always wondered who cheers and claps their hands and loudly yells “WOO!!!” during E3 keynote presentations; I’d been under the impression that they were press-only events, and even if “common folk” were allowed entry due to winning a contest, they’d still be outnumbered by the press by a wide margin.

But, then again, here are some of my Tweets during the Microsoft and Sony press conferences the other day:

in response to Microsoft announcing backwards compatibility:

in response to a Cuphead trailer:

in response to the Minecraft/HoloLens demonstration:

in response to the beginning of Sony’s press conference, before we realized we were seeing Last Guardian footage:

in response to the No Man’s Sky demo:

in response to FFVII Remake:

in response to Shenmue III:

So, yes, in the heat of the moment, I was very much jumping up and down and hooting and hollering, and if I’d been in the actual room surrounded by actual journalists, I probably would’ve forgotten myself and jumped up and down and hooted and hollered.   GUILTY AS CHARGED.

But now that it’s been a few days, and I’ve had some distance and some time to process everything we all saw, I’m feeling… well, maybe I’m still a bit pessimistic.

For starters:  almost all of Sony’s announcements, as dramatic and breath-taking as they were, did not contain any release dates – and when they did, almost none of them were for this year.

For another:  almost everything I hooted and hollered about above involved a known quantity.  I’ve already played Final Fantasy VII (well, the first 8-10 hours of it, I suppose); I’ve played ICO and at least half of Shadow of the Colossus and so while Last Guardian is technically “new”, it’s certainly somewhat familiar; I’ve played Shenmue 1 and 2 (and I have more to say on that in a bit); my primary reason for being excited for Xbox 360 compatibility (and cross-save support) is only because I love Red Dead Redemption too much to let it die (as do a lot of other people, too, apparently).

I’m very excited about what we saw of the new Tomb Raider; I’m hoping that Uncharted 4 doesn’t disappoint me the way that U3 did.  (The gameplay shown of each game at their respective presentations goes a long way towards explaining why I feel the way I do; both were exciting, but in very different ways – Tomb Raider’s slice was a very exciting and tense environmental gauntlet, whereas Uncharted 4’s slice began with gunfire and a car chase.  My favorite parts of both of these franchises are the non-combat environmental platforming, and Uncharted seems to be putting more emphasis on shooting people, and this is disappointing for reasons I’ve already talked about.)

I suppose I’m excited about Fallout 4, but when push comes to shove, I gotta say:  The Witcher 3 has raised the bar so fantastically high in terms of open-world RPGs that I’m not really 100% sure that Fallout 4 can hack it.  (And this is coming from someone who has devoured all of Bethesda’s big games, at least since Oblivion; the first time you play them, they’re quite stunning, but when you come back to them later they feel awfully stiff and archaic and janky as hell.)

I was impressed that Sony followed the Last Guardian reveal with a brand-new IP from the makers of Killzone, and which stars a female protagonist; I’ve already forgotten the name, and I don’t really know what it actually is.  I’m still really anxious to get my hands on No Man’s Sky, though even after the presser’s demo I’m still not 100% sure I know what that game is, and/or how I won’t eventually get bored with it.

And Shenmue… yeah.  We should probably talk about that.  I feel more than a little weird about the Kickstarter, as do a lot of people; on the one hand, I’m glad that people are giving it record-setting amounts of money, and I’m glad to know that I’ll eventually be able to play it, but it seems more than a bit strange that Sony would announce it in the form of a Kickstarter without also disclosing that they were going to contribute to its development.  I don’t pretend to know anything about Yu Suzuki or what he’s been up to for the last however many years, but up on that stage he looked like a man who’s been through hell, and the Kickstarter felt like some sort of strange attempt at maintaining pride and dignity.

And when I think about Shenmue 3…. do I even know what it is that I’m hoping for?  I finished the first game and got a few hours into the second one before getting incredibly frustrated by the controls and putting it down; I have no idea how the story ended.  Did I love the first game?  No, not particularly – I bought it because I owned a Dreamcast and I was contractually obligated to buy it, especially since its pre-release hype was breathtaking and deafening and I wasn’t yet properly cynical of these sorts of things (I have a memory of reading about its development – probably in the Official Dreamcast Magazine – and read something about how the game was so detailed that when Ryo went to drink a can of soda, the soda itself was motion captured), and yet it’s stuck with me in ways that many other, better games haven’t.  Something about it deeply resonated with me, even as I’m at a loss to explain what it was.  I remember it being somewhat stiff and clunky (especially Ryo’s voice acting), and I remember wanting to explore the city but always feeling pressured by the real-time clock and my in-game curfew; I remember the combat being better than expected, and the QTEs being interesting and innovative (Shenmue might’ve been the first game on that sort of grand scale to use them to their greatest effect), but also some ridiculously absurd forklift business towards the back third.  (Which, in a way, reminded me a little bit of GTA V‘s big heist, wherein part of Michael’s subterfuge involves literally mopping the floor.)   Above all else, I recall that Shenmue felt very honest and sincere about its intentions; it wasn’t being clever with its technology, but rather tried to be generous and inviting.  It had a story to tell and a world that the story inhabited, and the game very much wanted you to live that story in a way that no other game I’d played to that point had ever tried.

Time and technology have changed rather dramatically since those first two games, of course; I was 24 when I last played the first Shenmue, and when Shenmue 3 comes out – which, if it holds to its Kickstarter promise and is released in December 2017 – I’ll be 42.  I am curious; that’s about as optimistic as I can allow myself to be.

Heading Off Into the Wild Blue Suburbs

1.  First thing’s first – I’m in a much better mood today.  We had our house inspection yesterday, and it went far better than we could’ve hoped – the first house’s inspection was an utter disaster, and this inspection was really almost perfect – and basically now we’re just waiting for the bank to hold up their end, and for there to be no more hiccups between now and the closing date.  We even got to meet our neighbors, and they’re super-sweet and awesome, which is a huge relief.  And so if all goes well – I’m not naive enough to say that nothing could go wrong, but I’m hopeful – we should be moved in to the new digs in the first weekend of August.

1a.  It occurs to me, suddenly, that my gamertag for the last howevermany years is going to be out of date.  How can I continue to call myself JervoNYC when I’m living in New Jersey?  It also occurs to me that I’m gonna be 40 in December and I think it’s safe to say that I no longer give a shit about other people think.

2.  The Steam Summer Sale is happening and here’s how out of it I am – I had no idea it had even started until late last night.  I’m not particularly going out of my way to check out the deals.  Sure I’ve got a bunch of games on my wishlist that are dirt-cheap right now, but I’m so thoroughly consumed by Witcher 3 at the moment that it seems silly to spend money on games that I’m not going to get to for months (not to mention that my PC backlog right now is utterly, ludicrously huge anyway – I’m so, so sorry, Invisible Inc.).  If Pillars of Eternity comes down by more than 40%, I might pull the trigger; otherwise I’m going to sit it out.

3.  Re: Witcher 3:  I’ve played enough of it by now (currently level 22, most likely on my way out of Skellige) to know that I’m never going to 100% it, and I’ve accepted that reality, and it’s totally OK.  In the early going, I was doing nearly every sidequest and monster contract and treasure hunt I could get my hands on, and now I’m at the point where I’m at least 7-8 levels above the recommended level for the main story quests, which is maybe not the best way to experience that content, especially as the rewards I get for those quests aren’t necessarily all that hot anymore.  All the questing I’ve done so far has been enjoyable, in and of itself; it’s just that the rewards are starting to become less impressive, and that’s solely because I’ve done possibly too much questing.  (An additional bummer is that I’ve got a whole bunch of crafting recipes for enhanced items, which are sadly useless since I never found the recipes for the original, vanilla items.)

There are some minor nit-picky tweaks that I’d like to see implemented in future patches, especially when it comes to crafting (which I’m finding myself spending a lot of time doing), such as:  if there’s a recipe for something where you currently lack an ingredient (i.e., a silver ingot as part of a sword), but you do have the materials to craft that missing ingredient, you should be able to directly jump to the missing ingredient and craft it and then jump right back to the original recipe.  I’m also holding on to, like, a bazillion flowers and monster parts that I’m not sure I’m ever going to need, especially since any alchemy item I craft is auto-replenished after a meditation period; it’d be nice to have the game tell me as much, or at least let me sort my items by relevance.

And while we’re at it, re-loading saves TAKES FOR-FUCKING-EVER.

Still – these are very minor concerns.  The overall experience is nothing short of breathtaking.  This is the most into a game I’ve felt since probably Red Dead Redemption, and I’m doing my best to savor each and every moment I can with it.  You know that feeling where you’re reading a book and you love it so much that you literally can’t put it down, not even when you’re half-asleep?  That’s how I’m feeling with Witcher 3.  It’s my GOTY and I’ll be very, very impressed if anything can knock it from the top spot before the year’s end.

4.  I still kinda can’t believe that E3 is next week.  My day job is going to be nuts, and so I’m pessimistic that I’ll be able to follow any of the main press conferences beyond a cursory nod every once in a while.  I’m sure my wishlist is the same as yours (i.e., Fallout 4 gameplay footage), and I’m also sure that my dream wishlist (i.e., any news whatsoever about Red Dead 2) will most likely remain a dream.  But I’m also becoming more and more wary of E3 and similar events, where the hype is so overwhelming that, at the end of the day, it’s hard to know what I’m actually cheering for, or even why I’m cheering in the first place.  Most of what we’re gonna see next week is going to get delayed until 2016 anyway, and a great deal of it will have changed radically between next week’s reveals and the final release code.  So I’m going to be looking at next week’s news with a highly cynical eye.

That’s it and that’s all.

On Self-Imposed Exile

Yeah, I know, I’m not writing much these days.  I try to keep writing here as much as I can, but some days it’s harder than others.  Some days it’s crazy busy; some days my brain simply isn’t working; and some days – like today – I find myself in this weird, stupid brain trap where I want to write while also, at the same time, feeling very much like shutting up and never writing again.

This happens to me every once in a while, and I deal with it in different ways each time.  Some times I fight it head-on, hoping that I’ll work my way out of whatever the issue is simply by the process of writing, regardless of whether or not I hit the “Publish” button; sometimes I hide behind a Tumblr-reblog spree; and other times I simply give in and withdraw completely.  No posts anywhere – not on Twitter, nor Tumblr, nor Facebook, nor here.  I vanish.  I hide.  Oh, I keep reading; whenever I announce that I’m taking a break from social media, more often than not what I’m actually saying is that I’m going to lurk.  And even then, there’s varying degrees of lurking.

Today is a day where I’ve been so busy that I simply haven’t been paying attention to the internet; and when I’ve had a few moments of relative peace, I’ve chosen to only look occasionally.

The trouble with writing is that it’s hard to call yourself a writer if you’re not giving anybody anything to read.

The trouble with composing is that it’s hard to call yourself a musician if you’re not giving anybody anything to listen to.

The trouble with being a good friend is that it’s hard to call yourself a good friend if you’re consciously withdrawing from other people.

It’s very easy to invalidate yourself; it can be very difficult to successfully reclaim yourself after you’ve walked away from what you tried to build.

I’m writing this because I’m in this weird stupid head space where I’ve been living for the better part of 2 weeks and it’s annoying and stupid and childish, and it’s my fault that I’ve chosen to put myself in this head space, and I very much want to get out of it.  There are exciting things happening in my life that I’m genuinely excited about – like tomorrow’s home inspection of what will hopefully (fingers crossed) be our new home, later this summer.  Like the album that I’m still working on (even though I’ve been sidetracked and distracted by this whole home-buying process).  Like my son, who is amazing, and who makes my heart smile even during my darkest hours.

But I keep sliding back into this self-imposed exile, this recursive loop of withdrawing, and it’s endlessly frustrating.

Anyway – I’m here, and I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, and I’m sorry if my recent silence has caused you any undue concern.  Here’s hoping that tomorrow’s inspection goes amazing, and that on Friday I’ll be ready to talk about E3 and The Witcher 3 and You Must Build a Boat and other such things.

Asleep at the Wheel: E3 2015 prognosticaions and other ramblings

1.  Now that Fallout 4 has been officially revealed – and a new Gears of War game has been very strongly implied by the formation/re-naming of its development studio – it was put to Twitter to determine what unannounced game could possibly upstage those two.

I have two answers:  Red Dead Redemption 2, and/or Portal 3: Cake or Death (co-starring Eddie Izzard, obviously).

I’d of course love to see release dates (and gameplay footage) for Mirror’s Edge 2 and the new Crackdown, and certainly I’d like to know what Criterion is up to (as well as what Three Fields is doing (the new studio formed by Criterion’s founders)).  No Man’s Sky should be getting a more thorough rundown, and I’d love to get more information about The Witness.  I’d be incredibly surprised and pleased to hear more definitive information about the new Mass Effect game (and less surprised but certainly intrigued by a seemingly inevitable ME original trilogy HD remaster, and I’d buy that in a heartbeat if I could somehow import my save data from my 360 playthroughs).

On that note, now that the Uncharted HD trilogy has been more or less announced, one wonders what other last-gen games will be announced at E3 for a current-gen treatment.  I still maintain that a Bioshock HD trilogy is a no-brainer, though perhaps it would make sense to release closer to whatever’s next for that franchise; I also maintain that a Rockstar remastered box set of Red Dead 1, GTA4, Max Payne 3, and/or L.A. Noire is an impossible (but near-orgasmic) dream.

As I write this, I see that the first official Steam Machines will be coming out this fall.  If the specs are good, I might end up getting one of these – my current PC is starting to show its age, and it’d be nice to keep my gigantic Steam library as part of my rotation.  (I will hopefully be moved in to the new house by then, too, and so having a Steam Machine will make my gaming man-cave more or less complete.)

Beyond that, I’m kinda just curious to see how it goes.  I have no real expectations.  I am hopeful that I can live-blog my impressions of each press conference, though that may be impossible for various real-world reasons.

2.  A whole bunch of boffo iOS games have come out lately.  Last night saw the release of You Must Build a Boat, the sequel to the much-beloved 10000000, as well as Hitman: Sniper, which is very much like that PC demo from a few years back.  I’ve also been playing the shit out of Lara Croft Relic Run, which might be the most ambitious endless runner ever made; and I’m also helplessly addicted to Ball King, which is a free basketball shooter with lo-fi graphics but really good physics, which makes hitting tough shots ridiculously satisfying.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Twenty, which is a maddeningly addictive hybrid of Drop 7 and Threes.

3.  I’ve taken a 2-day break from The Witcher 3.  I’ve been meaning to write about it all week but haven’t been able to put my thoughts in order.  (I’m about to hit level 15, and I’m kinda just messing around with side-quests in Novigrad.)

My original thesis was that I loved it to death, and that I loved it specifically because I didn’t feel alienated by how it goes about its business (the way I felt about, say, GTA V or Far Cry 4 or any other AAA game of recent years).  Witcher 3 scratches a lot of the same itches that Red Dead Redemption does (which is great), and it also solves some of Red Dead’s narrative problems by making Geralt exactly the sort of person who would do random things for people – that’s his job.  And I also love that when he’s given stupid stuff to do, he’s really funny about it – for example, there’s an early story sub-quest wherein you have to find a goat for the local witch doctor.  Geralt rolls his eyes but knows he has to do it, and when he finds the goat (by ringing a little bell), he says something very much like “Hurry up and follow me, you stupid piece of shit”, which is something that had me literally laughing out loud right up until we both got jumped by a bear.  I love that each person you meet has their own quest line, which makes you feel more invested in what they have to say and how they’re helping you along in your own quest.  I said this before but it bears repeating – I love that the conversation system isn’t always obviously good/bad, which makes role-playing that much more immersive; more often than not, Geralt will have an option to say the thing that I personally would say, and I appreciate the level of nuance that the writers have carefully crafted into each situation.

That being said, I can’t help but notice that everybody is white, and that all the ladies with speaking roles have their boobs hanging out all the time.  I suppose I can appreciate the argument that, while more diversity in games is necessary, it isn’t always appropriate, but I can’t not notice that of the hundreds and hundreds of digital people and dwarves and elves and monsters and fiends and such that I’ve come across in Witcher 3, not a single one of them is a person of color.  Again – I appreciate that this is a Polish-made game that reflects Slavic mythological fantasy, but I also note that nearly every speaking voice is that of a Brit, and that this game was built to be sold to a Western audience.

On the lighter side, I do hope they patch in a photo mode.

4.  I finished Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves earlier this week; I’m not about to write a full review of it here, but the short version is that it’s my favorite thing he’s written in quite a long time.  It has more than a few spots where it’s a little dry, and the subject matter of the final third is a bit…. hmm… troubling?  Is that a good way to describe eugenics, even if it’s done out of necessity and not out of some sort of Hitler-inspired craziness?  In any event, it’s stuck with me ever since I put it down, and I may end up needing to read it again soon.

The First Few Hours: The Witcher 3

I want to write but I’m in a bit of a medication-induced brain-fog, and in any event I feel like it’s too soon for me to talk about The Witcher 3.  Even though I have a specific blog category that’s literally called “the first few hours“, and even though I’ve played maybe 1-2 hours of it so far – very deliberately and slowly – I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface’s surface of what Witcher 3 is all about.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the entire Witcher franchise.  I own the first two Witcher games on PC:  I played through the three different openings of Witcher 1 and thought it was interesting, maybe a little cumbersome, and figured I’d get back to it at some point (but never did); I tried playing Witcher 2, both before and after the big patch that added a tutorial section, and while I was certainly impressed with the world-building (and the world itself), I couldn’t actually get past how obtuse its mechanics were.  Most of what I know about the Witcher franchise was from listening to old Giant Bombcasts.

So I’m really only able to judge this game – or at least form my own first impressions – on its own merits.  And even then, I feel like I should wait until the first few patches come out.  The first mega-patch is supposedly on its way towards the PS4 next week, and another patch that would fix the incredibly small text is in the works.  I’ve not yet run into any terrible bugs, though in some of the “detective” quests I tend to get stuck because I can’t find the last highlighted item, which sometimes requires a restart from the last save.

Here’s what I can say in the very limited time that I’ve spent with it:

  • I really like how the conversation system isn’t so obviously skewed towards “good” and “evil” responses.  It’s much easier for me to simply respond as I’d like and see what happens – in other words, I can actually “role-play”, because I’m not constrained by any sort of artificial morality slider that I’m trying to skew.  Whenever I’ve played other games like Mass Effect or KOTOR or Fable or the like, I deliberately lean heavily to one side and then, if the game’s worthy enough of a 2nd run, I’ll play that 2nd run all the way to the other side.  Here, though, I’m happy to simply answer questions in the way I’d like – mostly positive and supportive, in the dozen or so conversations I’ve had thus far – and I’ve not felt like I missed something important as a result.  Maybe I have – maybe I’ve already cut myself off of half a dozen side-quests – but there’s already so much to do and see and explore that I’m not going to worry about it.
  • Even though I’m still in the very first tutorial town, the people I’ve met and helped out have been far more diverse and interesting than possibly all the people I met in Dragon Age: Inquisition.   I’d rather not spoil this, so I’ll just say that talking to everyone is ultimately a rewarding experience, and seeing the world react to conversations I’ve had with random people is incredibly gratifying.  And if the writing is this deep, this quickly, then BOY OH BOY.
  • The melee combat system seems mostly intuitive and familiar, though it’s going to take me some time to get used to the magic signs – I just wish they’d use “Fire” instead of whatever made-up word they’re using.  One might argue that using English words would ruin the immersion, but I counter that argument by saying that me fumbling through a menu and squinting to read the description of each spell is absolutely more disruptive than if they just said “Fire” or “Defense” or “Push” or whatever.  In any event, in my 1-2 hours or so, I’ve only ever used magic by accident.  (Though, in fairness, it did help kill the griffin.)

I’ve only had two play sessions with it thus far; the first night was kind of just a warm-up, getting a feel for the controls and the world, and I turned it off because I was tired and I wasn’t 100% sure I knew where I wanted to go next.  The second night – last night – I turned it off because I knew that if I didn’t, I’d be marathoning it and calling in sick to work and I’d probably still be playing it right now.  Now I understand that I have to be careful going forward, because tomorrow is my 11th wedding anniversary and we’re going house-hunting and buying some toys for the 2-year-old, and if I get sucked into The Witcher right now I’m going to be sleeping on the couch.

(Well, the couch is where the PS4 is, so….)