The Last Candle

Finally: five years after X, American gamers get XII today. And it is a Good Today, at that. The critics agree with me.

(For the Final Fantasy geek record, I don’t think the massively-multiplayer XI counted, and neither did the JPop X-2. Paul might take up that latter assertion with me later, though.)

Sadly, as much as I enjoy the series, it’ll be a while before Final Fantasy XII touches down in my system due to the Beating Old Games Project, and the debt goes even deeper: Okami, Bully, and this brutish beauty are newly waiting in the queue (to be bought, mind you). Can’t exactly complain about my choices.

Happy Halloween! I celebrated the spookiest of holidays (although, Christmas can be pretty spooky sometimes, but it’s a close second) by changing my team’s web page banner at work from one that was a 3D-ish blue water ripple to a orangey pumpkin overlayed on the 3D-ish blue water ripple. It was great.

No distributable sugary snacks here, though. The ‘ole apartment-stead doesn’t receive too many costume-clothed visitors. I was considering getting a couple monster-sized candy bars for the chillins who are brazen enough to somehow get in the locked entry, up the stairs, and start knockin’ around the second floor. Reward the young and courageous with a hefty slab of chocolate, peanuts, and nougaty goodness, that’s what I say!

But something tells me I’d end up eating those candy bars after a couple days, so it’s for the best that the candy stays at the store — in my case, at least. I know there’s at least a couple hundred kids out there that have reached the holy 2-lbs. mark on candy-bag weight. Ahh, those were the days….

As for Halloween entertainment, how ‘bout some, erm, Vampira?

Yeah, it’s been on this blog before. But it’s so…contextual now.

Ahh, the fruits of late-night gaming and goofiness.

Soon to be a feature film by hobbit philanthropist Pete Jackson.

Recent demands for time — an increasingly busy work season, guitar fiddling, and a bit of sleep here and there — have caused me to sadly put other interests to the wayside. These interests — time-tested and loved interests — have been neglected, but they have not been forgotten. Indeed, they are missed more than ever. And they will return.

It’s time to bring back the Beating Old Games Project.

That’s right: Too many games, too little time. Too many games on the horizon to buy, too many games I haven’t beaten in my current collection (and probably a wee bit too little willpower to not let the former stop the latter from inflating).

The goal of the Beating Old Games Project (or BOG Project) is simple: Complete all the games I have before buying new ones. That’s it. By keeping tracking of progress and Games To Go™, the list of unsatisfied entertainment is easy to monitor as it dwindles, as well as allowing the current gaming to keep a good pace. It’s like counting calories, except I’m counting hours of fun.

I’ve voluntarily taken part once before in a BOG Project, in the latter half of 2003 and into 2004. For that inaugral project, eight games across eight genres vied for my time and temporarily gave my bank account a little girth. The record of the previous project show decent success: five of the games were beaten, with only one (Timesplitters 2) left to languish forever in the halls o’ incompleteness. One game, Morrowind, was eliminated due to crappy savegame-eating software. And finally, just one game, the eternally-damned Daikatana, was removed from the Project because I just didn’t care to play it. (Hey, I’m not going to make myself play these games if finishing the BOG Project is the only reason to load ‘em up. That’d just be nutty.)

Considering I was in college back then, I might of, ahem, had a little more time to play back then compared to the five-day eight-hour hauls in my present situation. Nonetheless, much like late 2003, I’ve got some catchin’ up to do, and so a commitment must be plotted and made.

There’s no offical 2K6 BOG Project page (yet), but here’s the tally of what’s on the gaming menu for the upcoming months.

• Planescape: Torment: A true classic in adventure-RPGs, and noted among cult and critical circles as one of the best PC RPGs of all time. I’ve owned it for many years, but my first attempt to complete it several years ago resulted in the dreaded loss of my save games, and along with it my momentum and interest in completion.

  The time has come again for the Torment. It’s first in the Project, and the adventures of the Nameless One have already begun.



• Far Cry: The uber-acclaimed shooter that I picked up for a week and promptly put right back down for whatever reason. I even had a computer that could run it reasonably well at the time, too, so I don’t know what my deal was back then.


• Oblivion: The lack of completion for this one boggles my mind. I loved Daggerfall, with its blotchy 2D/3D graphics and tinny (but wonderful) soundtrack and copy-and-paste dungeons. Morrowind I liked less so, but I still poured 40+ happy hours into the game. And now there’s Oblivion, which is supposed to be the best of the bunch, with the critics to back up its greatness.

  But fate would have it that Oblivion was the game I was playing when my then-new and shiny video card was up and died. The disappointment acrrued by a much-anticipated game hanging a system repeatedly and without fail left the experience with a very sour and ugly odor. Even after receiving a replacement card (one that worked beautifully), a tinge of curdled defeat still marked the game, and I passed it on for other opportunities that had better histories.

  Oblivion’s just sat around since those days, but hopefully these couple o’ months past have lightened its aura up a bit.



• Deus Ex: Invisible War (XBox): Don’t laugh. I picked it up for four bucks last weekend, and I’m hoping it’s better on the ‘Box than the PC version (i.e., I hope it doesn’t suck). With the original being so damn enjoyable, I keep wondering if there’s something about this one that I’m missing, something that’s keeping me from enjoying it. I’ll find out once I pick Invisible War up again — for the fourth time — as part of the Project.


• Shadow of Destiny: An interesting PS2-only adventure game that involves lots and lots of death. No, really: All the episodes of the game begin with the main character dying, and then being sent back in time to try and stop his future demise. (Physicists would throw up their hands at the whole thing, but I bet quite a few good drunken discussions could arise from those workings.)

  What I played of Destiny before — a rental, several years back — revealed quite a good fairly decent plotted adventure game. Hardly any action, just a lot of story. Sounds like a good one to hunker down with inside for the upcoming cool months.



• Siren: Frustrating survival horror on the PS2. The atmosphere and tension in this one is terrific, but some of the gameplay mechanics are incredibly frustrating and repulsive to progress. As an example of the game’s poor design, I recall playing (during a rental of the game) through a certain level for a hour or so, and then making a single mistake that required me to begin the level all over again. And back to the rental store Siren went.

  But I bought it recently for a few bucks, so once again into Shibito-Creepsville we go.



• Sam & Max Hit the Road: Finally: a true point-and-click adventure game in the list! I’ve recently, erm, procured the entire old-school Lucas-Arts game collection. The general plan is to sweep through ‘em all and get through all the classics that were before my time. Sam & Max is first on that list, and so it ends up in the BOG project as well.


• God of War: I heard it was good. And from what little I played, God of War feels a little like Devil My Cry, one of my favorite actions games, so that’s worth an extra look in itself.


• Kuon: Another survival-horror outing on the PS2, but this time it’s obscure enough that Wikipedia doesn’t have an entry for it! I bought Kuon originally as a potential game for the occasional horror game-fest a bunch of pals and I enjoy, but another game (Echo Night: Beyond) made the cut for those merry expeditions instead.

  From what I played before it looked pretty dismal quality-wise, but I’ll need to give it a couple hours further run-through before deciding if it’s a real dud. My guess is that’ll Kuon will be the first game booted from the Project.



• MANHUNT: Who can resist this one, the video game equivalent of a participatory snuff film? Not me, evidently!

And there we go — the wheat of the upcoming games. I’m sad to say that there’s actually a few bits of chaff around the apartment that I have no foreseeable interest in playing.

But at least there’ll be no lack of gaming downtime in the next several months.

Over on his slice of the ‘sphere, Rodent’s laid out his voting booth game plan for the big ballot-a-thon that’ll be sweeping the Nation in a couple weeks. Me, I haven’t paid hardly any attention to the local or national battles going on prior to the contest — besides these ridiculous scandals that keep cropping up, of course. I don’t feel motivated to even vote due to the low feeling of efficacy for the current state of politics.

Blue, or red — either way, the country probably won’t end up in the black.

One of the proposals Rodent was strategery-ing about caught my eye, though. Or rather, as it should be, it tickled my tastebuds:

3. Allow the establishment of a hunting season for mourning doves – Yes

Too bad Sufjan Stevens already did a Michigan album — the material for a song about that would be as easy as shooting wingless squabs in a bucket.

In any case, peaceful, whimsical eulogy for a zenaida macroura or not, this proposal’s made out of real beef. As any voter would do in these circumstances, one has to weight the options and vote accordingly. That’s just the American way.

So: do mourning doves taste good?

Wikipedia, taking another grevious shot to its flank, has no idea. (Or, more likely, those who induldge in doves are keeping the secret to themselves. So much for the power of distributed knowledge.)

But Old Man Google comes in to save dinner, sending this (admittantly dove-hungry) constituent to Songbird Protection Coalition. The SPC has this to say about the savory aspects of doves:

[Doves] do not provide a viable human food source. Most recipes call only for dove breasts — the fastest and most popular method of dressing doves is referred to as “breasting-out.” A properly shot dove yields about one ounce of edible flesh. Dove recipes show breasts to be covered in sauces and heavy seasoning due to strong pungent citrus flavor.

Besides that this obviously pro-dove page is trying to lure the potential “No” vote away from the allure of dovey hors d’oeuvres, they’ve let slip the key hint that you can indeed get an ounce of meat out of these sorry birds.

So, a little math: one ounce of meat, multiplied by, say, two hundred birds in afternoon, or three hundred if you hit one of their cities. That’s over 12 pounds of meat right there, ready for some hot and saucy breasting-out.

This November 7th, vote “Yes!” on Michigan Proposal 06-3, and we’ll win this food fight.