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BrainStream
May. 10th, 2006 10:19 pmMost of my LJ entries tend to be stream-of-consciousness things, without much rhyme or reason and certainly not much in the way of organization. I tend to ramble and I tend to go on tangents, except for 'theme' posts like the 'Amusing Game Quotes' or 'Me, Myself, and a Sith.' Sometimes I just write to write, to put down some prose which struck my fancy. So, this one is no exception.
I was leaving work tonight. The air was moist and damp with an faint drizzle, a kiss of rain that teased rather than drenched. The air was bordering on warm, with a faintly nipping wind that added a chill. Across the street from the mall, a yearly carnival had been set up, and they would be there for the next week or so. A ferris wheel, a small roller coaster, some games of chance, that sort of thing. As I am wont to do, my mind tried to put together all those disparate elements and bring forth memories of where I had been before with that stimuli. Atlantic Highlands? Maybe. The boardwalk there... a mile or two long, with carnival rides and attractions, with the crash of the surf drowned out by thronging crowds; the sea-salt air filled with the scent of carnival food that was insanely bad for you and yet indescribably tasty; rushes of chill, damp air from over the water being driven off by the heat of sodium lights and grills and diesel generators.
But that was not tonight. No, the carnival outside the mall was too small, too miniscule compared to Atlantic Highlands. Then driving home it hit me, where this combination of air and scent had come to me before: On the Atlantic crossings when I was in college, in my first training cruise, when I was on bow lookout duty in the dead of night. It's achingly, crushingly lonely on the bow of a ship at night. All the lights are out, and the wind cuts through your hair and sends a moist chill upon you no matter how hot it was during the day. The wind is a mighty rush, too, even on calm nights going at well over fifteen knots. And there seems to be absolutely nothing else in the universe except for you. You, the wind and the waves, the sky and the sea. At the same time that the world seems impossibly large, you shiver and focus and in the same moment the universe seems to consist solely of you, alone in a great dark expanse, with perhaps the stars to keep you company unless they've been cloaked by clouds in a sky so dark you cannot tell that it's overcast; on such nights, you doubt that there is even a world that exists beyond the deck of the ship, for the horizon is invisible, a blending of sky and sea which seems to defy the most ancient of deific pronouncements, where the heavens and the vasty deep seem to be one, once again after eons of separation, come together solely to mock you and whatever belief in a higher power or higher calling you might believe in. A silent sundering of the firmament, and you start to wonder what Leviathan might be lurking within the Abyss and looking back up at you through the depthless fathoms.
On somewhat lighter notes, tomorrow I thankfully have a day off to gird myself for the weekend.
Mini-game review: Warship Gunner 2. Brought to you by Koei, the same people who brought you Dynasty Warriors 2 Many Sequels. Warship Gunner 2 takes the "storyline" such as it was, of Naval Ops: WG1 and animifies it to the twelfth power. You've got angst, you've got soldiers solemnly doing their duty, you've got attempted suicide, you've got characters with secrets, you've got a hyper-perky female officer, you've got dying soliliquies that rival Gundam's (and that's saying something!), you've got cool-as-ice German scientist bombshell, you've got every stereotype of every anime character you can think of, you've got rampaging superweapons that threaten All Life As We Know It. Whew. Oh, yeah, and you have the spiritual successor of Beachead and Missile Command.
One thing I've discovered I like about games, is options. Don't just give me an RPG or an RTS or an FPS, no matter how beautiful the graphics are. (Okay, I'll have to give props to Final Fantasy, Shadow Hearts, and Magna Carta, which I'm going to give a go at.) As I've mentioned before, games like Soul Calibur III and Dynasty Warriors "N": Empires (since they released an "Empires" expansion for DW5) have something that I very much like: A create-your-own-character option. There's something immensely satisfying about making your own character in the game world, built to your specifications. This I think is one reason why I really appreciate Oblivion, too: you can do a heck of a lot with it as far as self-customization.
Warship Gunner 2, like it's predecessor, allows you to make your own warship and sail it into battle. Do you prefer to hit your enemies with several hundred VW Beetles-worth of high explosive shells in near-triple-digit diameters? or do you prefer racks of Gatlings? Or are missiles your forte? and what kind? Perhaps you prefer to stand back and let your zoomies and airdales take off from your carrier and wreck havok on your foes? Maybe instead of a lumbering behemoth of naval death you prefer something smaller, lighter, faster, quicker -- fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee! Or perhaps you prefer to run silent, run deep, and sail about the ocean unseen and unheard until you unleash hell from the depths? The nice thing is that WG2 generally accomodates all these preferences based upon what kind of warship you want to sail. Now, that being said, the battleship is generally going to come out ahead in just about any engagement. You'll survive longer against the Wirbelwind if you're in a heavier ship rather than a small destroyer. And deployed aircraft don't have nearly as much hitting power as, for example, a few shots from 60cm, 75 caliber naval artillery. And you can't always sail in a sub. Still, you get an impressive amount of choice in the design and outfitting of your warships. I wish more games were of this general ilk. Games like Stella Deus and Sly Cooper are pretty and fun but I can forsake some of the storyline for more flexibility in creating a character. Kudos still have to go to SC3 for their custom character creation and "Chronicles of the Swords" mode, i.e. Soul Calibur Tactics Lite.
Anyway, not much else to go on about. Maybe more tomorrow. Pax.
I was leaving work tonight. The air was moist and damp with an faint drizzle, a kiss of rain that teased rather than drenched. The air was bordering on warm, with a faintly nipping wind that added a chill. Across the street from the mall, a yearly carnival had been set up, and they would be there for the next week or so. A ferris wheel, a small roller coaster, some games of chance, that sort of thing. As I am wont to do, my mind tried to put together all those disparate elements and bring forth memories of where I had been before with that stimuli. Atlantic Highlands? Maybe. The boardwalk there... a mile or two long, with carnival rides and attractions, with the crash of the surf drowned out by thronging crowds; the sea-salt air filled with the scent of carnival food that was insanely bad for you and yet indescribably tasty; rushes of chill, damp air from over the water being driven off by the heat of sodium lights and grills and diesel generators.
But that was not tonight. No, the carnival outside the mall was too small, too miniscule compared to Atlantic Highlands. Then driving home it hit me, where this combination of air and scent had come to me before: On the Atlantic crossings when I was in college, in my first training cruise, when I was on bow lookout duty in the dead of night. It's achingly, crushingly lonely on the bow of a ship at night. All the lights are out, and the wind cuts through your hair and sends a moist chill upon you no matter how hot it was during the day. The wind is a mighty rush, too, even on calm nights going at well over fifteen knots. And there seems to be absolutely nothing else in the universe except for you. You, the wind and the waves, the sky and the sea. At the same time that the world seems impossibly large, you shiver and focus and in the same moment the universe seems to consist solely of you, alone in a great dark expanse, with perhaps the stars to keep you company unless they've been cloaked by clouds in a sky so dark you cannot tell that it's overcast; on such nights, you doubt that there is even a world that exists beyond the deck of the ship, for the horizon is invisible, a blending of sky and sea which seems to defy the most ancient of deific pronouncements, where the heavens and the vasty deep seem to be one, once again after eons of separation, come together solely to mock you and whatever belief in a higher power or higher calling you might believe in. A silent sundering of the firmament, and you start to wonder what Leviathan might be lurking within the Abyss and looking back up at you through the depthless fathoms.
On somewhat lighter notes, tomorrow I thankfully have a day off to gird myself for the weekend.
Mini-game review: Warship Gunner 2. Brought to you by Koei, the same people who brought you Dynasty Warriors 2 Many Sequels. Warship Gunner 2 takes the "storyline" such as it was, of Naval Ops: WG1 and animifies it to the twelfth power. You've got angst, you've got soldiers solemnly doing their duty, you've got attempted suicide, you've got characters with secrets, you've got a hyper-perky female officer, you've got dying soliliquies that rival Gundam's (and that's saying something!), you've got cool-as-ice German scientist bombshell, you've got every stereotype of every anime character you can think of, you've got rampaging superweapons that threaten All Life As We Know It. Whew. Oh, yeah, and you have the spiritual successor of Beachead and Missile Command.
One thing I've discovered I like about games, is options. Don't just give me an RPG or an RTS or an FPS, no matter how beautiful the graphics are. (Okay, I'll have to give props to Final Fantasy, Shadow Hearts, and Magna Carta, which I'm going to give a go at.) As I've mentioned before, games like Soul Calibur III and Dynasty Warriors "N": Empires (since they released an "Empires" expansion for DW5) have something that I very much like: A create-your-own-character option. There's something immensely satisfying about making your own character in the game world, built to your specifications. This I think is one reason why I really appreciate Oblivion, too: you can do a heck of a lot with it as far as self-customization.
Warship Gunner 2, like it's predecessor, allows you to make your own warship and sail it into battle. Do you prefer to hit your enemies with several hundred VW Beetles-worth of high explosive shells in near-triple-digit diameters? or do you prefer racks of Gatlings? Or are missiles your forte? and what kind? Perhaps you prefer to stand back and let your zoomies and airdales take off from your carrier and wreck havok on your foes? Maybe instead of a lumbering behemoth of naval death you prefer something smaller, lighter, faster, quicker -- fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee! Or perhaps you prefer to run silent, run deep, and sail about the ocean unseen and unheard until you unleash hell from the depths? The nice thing is that WG2 generally accomodates all these preferences based upon what kind of warship you want to sail. Now, that being said, the battleship is generally going to come out ahead in just about any engagement. You'll survive longer against the Wirbelwind if you're in a heavier ship rather than a small destroyer. And deployed aircraft don't have nearly as much hitting power as, for example, a few shots from 60cm, 75 caliber naval artillery. And you can't always sail in a sub. Still, you get an impressive amount of choice in the design and outfitting of your warships. I wish more games were of this general ilk. Games like Stella Deus and Sly Cooper are pretty and fun but I can forsake some of the storyline for more flexibility in creating a character. Kudos still have to go to SC3 for their custom character creation and "Chronicles of the Swords" mode, i.e. Soul Calibur Tactics Lite.
Anyway, not much else to go on about. Maybe more tomorrow. Pax.
