How to Judge a Game

Hey y'all.  So I was thinking, and I decided that if I had to vote for the greatest game of all time, it would be Donkey Kong Country 2.  This game has awesome gameplay, graphics, and music.  The controls are simple and the experience is fun.  It's a game anybody of any age can really enjoy.

But then it occurred to me that this may not be an objective opinion.  After all, I haven't played all the games in existence.  So how do you judge a video game and whether it is good or bad?  Well, the most objective way possible is to go through all the characteristics of a game and judge it by each of them.  Let's start with...

1. Graphics

Write Club: Inspiration

Hey y'all.  Guh.  I haven't been feeling good today.  I've been forcing myself to drink a lot of liquids: a hot tea, three glasses of hot water, a coffee, a coffee with egg nog (try it!), a creme de menthe latte, and an orange juice.  Probably in the next minute or two I'm going to fix myself some hot egg nog with cinnamon.

But that didn't stop me from having a Write Club meeting tonight!  It would have, if two new people weren't coming.  But oh well.  Things are turning out alright all the same.  I had enough adrenaline to go tonight, and so it was all good.

So for the first part of the meeting, we had a little exercise where I handed out the things that I've collected this past year: stuff people leave in their used books.  I had several items: a Christmas card, a newspaper article, a drawing of a cat, someone's writing of a movie quote, a postcard with german on it, a couple of black and white photos, etc.  Each person picked out what they liked and wrote a little story for the person who left it there.  One member wrote a cute bit about a little girl who drew her own book illustrations.

As you can guess, the meeting was about inspiration.  So for the next exercise, I had them look at a member's drink cup.  Then I told them it wasn't a cup, and they were supposed to say what it was instead.  Here are some of our more interesting substitutions.

- An umbrella (think the straw and lid)
- A mutagenic drink that turns you into a zombie
- A dungeon for little people
- A telephone that looks like a drink cup
- A monster that sucks out your brain if you try to drink it.

The next one we did was about a big metal vent that protruded into the coffee shop where we meet.

- A toilet paper roll
- A baseball bat
- A large cannon
- The mast of a ship
- Stadium seating for small aliens
- A giant inhaler.
- A monument to an incompetent space "hero".

Once this was done, I had them pick their favorite substitution for the vent and do a little background on why it was there.  One member had it so a storm sent a ship crashing into the shop, and it would be too costly to get rid of so they just left it there.  Another said it was there to suck out the scent of coffee.  Yeah, he doesn't drink the stuff.  How dare he blaspheme the name of coffee???

I'm kidding...though seriously, coffee=goodness.

Honestly, it was a real casual meeting tonight.  That's good.  There's just so much stuff that can't come across in a blog that does come across in person.  We need to be a group that likes each other and can nerd it out over each other's stories.  Y'know?

But what does come across is this: you can take inspiration out of absolutely everything.  So, when you're bored, pick something, and decide what really is.  'S fun.  I've never been properly bored in years.

Being Invisible

Hey y'all.  So I was wondering....does anyone else do this?  Become invisible, I mean.  It's not just a matter of raising your hands in class and not getting chosen.  I've literally been two feet away from someone, and she turned in my direction toward someone else and asked where I was.  Similar events have happened many times, where I'd be a few feet from someone and then they suddenly turn to look for me.

It's happened a lot.  I was sitting in the front seat of a car once, and someone who was going to be carpooling with us just suddenly opened the door to get in with me sitting right there.  The biggest invisibility incident I've ever had was a time when I was in Texas, in a living room with some other people.  They were talking amongst themselves, about five feet away.  I added something to their conversation, when one girl turned around and started looking for me, even though I was sitting right in the middle of her line of sight.  She literally asked, "Who said that?"

Seriously, does anyone else do this?  Anyone have any invisibility stories to tell?

Top Ten Top Tens: Video Game Music

Hey y'all.  I had a lot of fun trying to figure out the top ten creepiest characters in people's opinions.  So, I'd like to try it again, but this time with video game music!  I love VGM, especially back in the old days when they didn't put rock music in, but had MIDI sounding bleeps and bloops.  My favorite genre of VGM is Mega Man, as you may have already guessed, and I'll probably do a Mega Man Top Ten in the future.

Now, a few ground rules.  Note that my source for this list is Youtube, and every song that gets a mention in a top ten video gets one point.  It doesn't matter how high or low that song is on the list.  If someone's song list is more than ten videos, then only the top ten will count in my survey.  I'm not going to videos that refer to a specific game; no "top ten Mega Man" or "top ten DBZ" for me.  Also, there's no "top ten creepiest" or "top ten most sad".  I will only be counting, "my top ten favorite", "top ten best", "top ten most epic" or similar titles with open reach and the potential to count all types of songs and games.  While I may do the "top ten best soundtracks" later, that's too big for the scope of this list.

So let's get to it!  How does one define best?  Is it the song that takes the most effort?  The one that entertains the most, or is the most iconic?  How about the one that gets stuck in your head the most?  The ones you'll want to listen to when you're not playing a game?  It's really hard to tell.  But, whatever your definition of best, this is what ranks on youtube.

Let's start this up.  For a while I was worried, because people were just mentioning various games, and I was having a heck of a time just getting two votes for the same song.  However, over time patterns began to form, and finally I have a top ten.

My Top Ten Favorite Video Game Songs

Hey y'all!  I finally, finally got done compiling information for my "Top Ten Top Ten: Video Game Music" blog.  I now have all the final votes I need to present a complete and proper list of everyone's top ten favorite game songs.  However, it's gotten really late, and I'm tired and cranky.  Don't worry, it'll be up soon

As for now, here are my ten favorite video game songs!  No, I won't be counting them as a part of my "top ten top ten", because even if my list made sense, that would just be unfair.  So, here we go!

Nitpickery: Serenity Movie Review

Hey y'all.  It's about time I actually posted my nitpicky review of the Firefly series movie, Serenity.  For years, before I'd seen hide or hair of Firefly, I'd see the Serenity poster and wonder if it was a good movie.  It appeared really sci fi and cool, other than the chick with the stereotypical movie poster glare on the front.  I kept telling myself that I'd see it eventually, but never did.  Sort of like the Animorphs books.

But eventually I did see it, primarily due to my ex-boyfriend and his man-crush on Nathan Fillion.  And I was disappointed.  Of course, it's easy for me to be disappointed because I nitpick and enjoy it, but honestly, all I expected was an adequate sci-fi story.  Something with a plot and actors that were decent or at least bad in a funny way.  Basically just a regular sci-fi that you might see on TV.  For some reason, none of the characters in Serenity felt very science fiction.  It felt...forced.  But since that's an intuitive observation and can't really be logically explained, let's go into what can be logically explained.

The last episode of Firefly.

Write Club: Week #6 -- Poetic Basis

Hey y'all.  I've been noticing that in my group that while we do a lot of fun exercises, what we don't do is work on our own stuff.  So this week's meeting was pretty casual.  I did do a few beginning exercises, just because it's fun and you get to see how people think.

The exercises this week had to do with poetic basis.  Basically, symbolism.  If you notice, all good poetry is more or less symbolic, and by this I mean saying something without actually saying it.  So we practiced a little with a few subjects.

The first subject was a monkey.  So, we had to say mention a monkey without actually saying the word monkey.  It's really cheap to say something like, "a long armed primate with fur" or something bland like that.  The point of the exercise is to learn to say something unique, so that when you get to a spot in your narrative where you find yourself bored in writing, you go around the boredom by describing it another way.  For example, in the Sherlock Holmes series, Holmes tells someone that he could be hanged.  But does he say "you'll be hanged"?  No, he says that the British people will create a new tavern called "the Dangling Prussian".  Now isn't that unique?

So back to monkies.  How do you describe one this way?  Here's a couple examples.

- The primitive beast looked out at me with almost intelligent eyes, but its covering of furr clearly distinguished it from my brother.

- Darwin's symbol, representing the most eloquent symbol of science, flung its poo at the zoo director.

So yeah.  What I did here was attach the monkey to two different things: the character's brother and Darwin.  This is how you add it to your writing.  You connect seemingly unrelated things, just as Sherlock connected hanging to a bar.

In the second exercise, I had us describe a monastery without saying it, because that's the setting for one of my writer's stories.  Here's what I wrote:

- Oh delightful castle of untouched bachelors! ...All too preoccupied with reading and praying to pay much attention to the lonely single girl.  Caught up in the raptures of ancient, philosophic literature, what could the presence of a woman do but bring them down from those lofty heights?  I kicked at the stone pathway, bitter at each cloaked monk.  Was I really less appealing than Gregorian chants and puttering around in a vegetable garden?  That's what these not particularly eligible singles did all day, in their centuries old house of stone.

You'll notice that I was not just describing a monastery, but how the character felt about it.  Namely, bitter and jealous.  This is a useful technique in spicing up your long narratives: instead of just explaining what the character sees (which is fine from time to time, especially at important settings), you use them to show attitudes or foreshadow the future.

For my third example, I chose an abstract concept, loneliness.  This is of course very difficult, because it exists in several different situations and can look any number of ways.

- Drifting off in space, the battleship spun gently.  Friction was gone in the quiet, worldless expansion.  Bits of shrapnel flew around, the only remnant of the battle squadrons.  Derek stayed near the window, keeping his grasp on one of the bars installed on the wall in just this circumstance: the loss of gravity.  He did not try the communications system.  He didn't look out the window in the hopes of seeing a friendly ship.  And he didn't look behind him to see if any of his crewmates remained; he wanted to retain memories of them as living people, not as bodies floating about.  All Derek did was stare outside, watching the stars his mighty war vessel, now a crippled bucket of metal, drifted into forever.  He said nothing and thought of nothing, especially not the faint, half-powered alarm bell that meant oxygen levels were dropping rapidly.

This is quite a troublesome example, yes?  One member's example was no better.  She described loneliness as being trapped in a field where no one would hear you if you rotted to bones.  Apparently we both associate loneliness with death.  Lovely.  But in any case, if you find yourself getting stuck on a story, you can pick a related emotion and build the setting around that emotion.  For example, drifting shrapnel in space has a lonely feeling, as does bones in a prairie.

So where are you stuck?  Pick an emotion, a metaphor, or your character's attitudes, and spice up your scene.  You can do it!