Manufactured Words

The arc word is 'embarrassing'. 

            Herein lies some of my attempts at poetry. True to my nature, the poems are followed by a brief contemplation on the nature of poetry and 'art' itself. 

The 'Feel' of a Game

Let’s get metaphysical about games.

                When I say that I am not a metaphysical person I mean that I do not believe in some greater power in the sky that throws down sunbeams and lightning at us, or occasionally pisses upon us, but I do rather enjoy believing in some immaterial things – no, I do not believe that the spirits of the dead still inhabit this world, even if they do I rather doubt someone will have more power dead than they did alive since I don’t think ‘spontaneous telekinesis’ is something you attain when you’re worm chowder or ashes or whatever – but I enjoy believing in there being a metaphysical layer to things and experiences, that indeed there is a subconscious lurking within every human and that our physical and social manifestations are but our persona to deal with the world while we have shadows that hide our own deepest, darkest and strangest desires from us, like a fetish for women in suits, and I do enjoy believing that our enjoyment of media goes beyond merely experiencing it.

Upping the Ante

It is time.

                This blog is a bit of a volatile thing, prone to explosions of content followed by aeons of silence. It’s also a fair bit volatile on the quality front, with some articles being pre-planned and carefully thought out and most articles being written on the fly using the secret technique of ‘rolling my face on my keyboard and then pressing F7’.

I just played... Super Metroid

In space, everybody can hear that the last Metroid is in captivity.

                I could say that I don’t get chills every time I hear Super Metroid’s main theme, but I could also say that I am the crowned Queen of India. I’d scarcely believe that a game such as Super Metroid would need much introduction because its reputation and the internet far precede anything I could say. I could introduce Hitler to you, but I wouldn’t need to because the world is overly aware of who and what Hitler was, so unless I had something extraordinary to add, like ‘Hitler reared a squadron of Attack Squirrels’, introductions would be rendered rather pointless. So yes, Super Metroid, it’s a game and you know you know about it.

Yet another stream-of-consciousness: Introversion

A state of being, but not being too much or near much.

I get to stay home and play games and read books and watch movies guilt free? Sweet!

                If we are talking in extremes then it is time for us to talk in bubbles. People exist in bubbles, and these bubbles vary in size and the general volume of things they encompass. An extrovert’s bubble is a rather large thing, encompassing quite a bit of space and possibly even encompassing other human beings within it, making it the extrovert’s state of being, but when the time comes for the extrovert to take a step back, clear her/his mind or just be refreshed, he/she will generally step out of the large bubble and go into the vast nothingness for a breather. An introvert’s bubble is rather small, you could call it a personal size, generally encompassing little beyond themselves and their core activities/passions and when the time comes for the introvert to take a step back, clear her/his mind or just be refreshed, he/she will generally step out of their personal bubble and go where things are voluminous.

Psychorner: A Slice of Dreariness

An unsavoury saviour.

Makoto Shinkai sure has a way of making dreary scenes look incredible. 

                There are many dreary things in this world, some big and some small. Ones of the small kind are the kind that get swept under the rug in terms of memorability and overall personal contentment. Why? Because they’re little things that end up being ‘a given’ in our minds, deservedly so because having a shower shouldn’t be something you consider a personal achievement. The bigger dreary things in life are the things we complain about, things that take up a chunk of time and effort and are also generally unavoidable, usually coming in the form of a ‘commitment’ or that contract to harvest the souls of the restless. Look at your daily life and you will surely find several activities that fall bang perfectly in this category: a commute, long work hours, compulsory attendance, cleaning your room/house/cow, wrestling invading bears, wrestling invading beers, purely tedious work and so on. If there’s something in common in between the things sequentially mentioned above in a string of words known as a sentence, it’s that these are all things we generally dislike doing, and what is another way to say ‘dislike doing’? ‘Dread doing’.

Let's Breakdown: Half-Life 2 [part 4 - Highway 17]

Vroom Vroom (it’s a car this time)

The main menu continues to keep you drawn in.

                Ah, Highway 17, my (personal) favourite chapter of the game because of its atmosphere and general ‘feel’, and that’s not taking into account the more enjoyable, open gameplay and numerous moments. In a sense it’s the game’s first chapter in which you are truly isolated, save for brief interactions with other Resistance members at the start and a little way in, otherwise it’s just you, your (well, Alyx’s) scout car, the antlions and a whole lot of combine. The coastline is long, barren and littered with antlion-repelling devices, which are essentially tall devices that constantly strike the earth, releasing tremors that repel the antlions. The coastline is also littered with Resistance bases be they abandoned or taken over, abandoned (or now infested) houses of citizens who lived along the coast and various temporary Combine bases

I just watched... Spirited Away

Strike three, for Miyazaki.

Late Post, originally written a while ago. 

                What is with this world and the number three? Why is the number three used as a number to define, decide and contain so many things? Trilogies are the most common format, forming a mass equivalent to forty-two blue whales if you try to somehow calculate the masses of forms of media. What is this fixation with the number three?

                Perhaps the easiest assumption to make is that it is smallest number with a ‘central’ value, since it is the smallest odd number which lets it form a ‘typical’ arc of Introduction – Build up – Climax that is usually how so many stories enjoy progressing, as it is the most basic and the easiest to digest format, and one that is rather ‘self-serving’ in many ways.

I just played... Shovel Knight

Let’s platform like it’s 1987.

                Nostalgia is an interesting thing and it’s the kind of thing we humans assume a lot of wrong things about. Is nostalgia a good thing? Is nostalgia a bad thing? Do we love something old because of the tertiary memories that accompany it? Do we love something because it harks back to things you truly liked? Do we love something because it harks back to things that aren’t done anymore? Nostalgia is a tricky little bugger, one that can often be responsible for the unnecessary clouding of our judgement and be responsible for the full blown love or hate for something.

Let's Breakdown: Half-Life 2 [part 3 - We don't go to Ravenholm]

To go where people don’t go anymore.

                We don’t go to Ravenholm

Atmosphere is one of the most important and one of the most underestimated parts of a game. A great atmosphere can do a LOT for a game – improve its gameplay, make it more memorable, give it a greater sense of identity and so on. I’ve spoken about the game’s excellent atmosphere and Ravenholm shows us one of the game’s other elements, the variety in atmosphere which is consistent yet changes things up rather often.