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thegnasticious · 4 months
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Rainy Day Music
My whole life I’ve had to wonder, what is my favorite kind of music? Not being much of an Autumn guy, nor Winter, nor necessarily Summer, Spring or Fall, I find myself not preferring a season to my breed of music, rather a weather. Fleetwood Mac is a perfect example of ‘rainy day music’ or take early Interpol, or even Led Zeppelin (i.e. The Rain Song) and you catch my drift.
In my opinion ‘rainy day music’ is the echelon of music, the creme de la creme of what you want as a recording artist. Why? Because it sells. It’s not loud nor quiet, it’s not in your face, and you still want it. You might even turn it up. It’s the loose descendants of old Rhodes and Wurlitzer tones, meshing with a feeling of uncertainty. Usually these songs are more about break-ups than get togethers, but something about the emptiness leaves you whole inside, even on a grey, cold rainy day.
Elliot Smith is rainy day music, many different Dylan tracks, the kind of music that seems to fall with the rain around you. Radiohead in general is great storm music. Add in a vinyl hiss meshing with the static outside and you get a strange sonic symphony, that sometimes digital can’t capture.
Rainy day music is important. In your life, when you see a storm coming, or feel it brewing, what do you listen to, to either summon or calm it?
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thegnasticious · 5 months
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Am I Ready Yet?
Women. You know, you want to go somewhere, and they have like two thousand things they discovered about their hair that is keeping you from hitting the road.
They are never quite ready, and especially when you need them to be. Being in a relationship, especially long-term with a woman requires steadfast tolerance of this usually daily impedance.
For myself, telling if I’m ready, is rarely a bathroom orientated situation. Just last night I twiddled around for 5-6 hours on a bass track, that when I finally picked up the bass to track, I put it down. Why? Because I was tired, and you could feel it in the track I was doing. Within seconds of monitoring, it was more than apparent. I did not want that. Bass back in holster, back in bed until I could stop being a poo-na-nee.
What baffles me, is some days under the same circumstances and attitude, that same session can last 10-20 hours. It’s as if some part of the environment tells you ‘hey, you’re ready now’ and it just happens. Like magic. The same thing happens in adverse, like last night with me. My personal and physical issues were bleeding into the track, and something about the room told me to take a break and start it up tommorow.
Was I ready last night? No
Sometimes you can go weeks without being ‘ready’ and for a musician to experience this, is like a woman never getting her bathroom time before leaving the house. You feel like you forgot your make-up, your hair is all over, you likely stink, and it feels like everyone is going to notice. Until you get that melody or message out, it eats and eats at you why you can afford to do anything else. It becomes an obsession. And when it’s unattainable, it becomes a nightmare.
Judging whether a mix is ‘ready’ or not, I usually compare it with others in an alike genre or tonal composition. Judging on these merits, and usually my cheapest pair of headphones, I can decipher the quality by contrasting it. Much of my editing career, in movies and music, was mostly self-taught. I found in later years, I was adopting my photography methods into other pursuits. Using methods that are more akin to producing photos than music. This is because my goal was not entirely music, but a soundscape.
What is a soundscape? Well take a panoramic photo, it gets a wide shot of an overall area condensed in a way that visually encapsulates the 180-360 degree movement used to take the photo. A soundscape, conceptually is like taking the whole thing, maximizing it, then condensing the outside frills to make what is a panoramic mix.
I think this approach is also important, considering revision and remastering nowadays, the original should be as pure and maximized as possible.
So before I judge if something or someone is ‘ready’. I first try to feel if what they are doing makes sense, and to that effect in the world around them. I think many people jump right into deep water, not even thinking about the concept of preparation or organization. These people drive me nuts in the studio. I’m not exact in everything I do, but I don’t just believe in being a complete ass to every sense of order, so I do have processes (at the same time when I lift weights, I never decide what machine I’m using before, I just walk in there).
Well that’s about all for now
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thegnasticious · 5 months
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Doors....doors.....doors
So this post is dedicated to.... doors. I want to highlight their particular function in video gaming, and how judging a door’s particular coding can determine the function of a whole game.
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So let’s go back to Goldeneye. Most of the doors that aren’t password locked open really quick, like space-ship doors. Subsequently there isn’t much play-time behind locked doors (except in a few levels). You are rushing from room to room looking for the next conflict. There is mines and traps in terms of maybe gating someone, but with no peek or cover feature, there isn’t much more than rush n’ clear.
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Halo is another game guilty of this, and you notice the games heavier in quicker default doors, tend to have less decision making in their combat. Less sniping, less space, more rushing and spraying over and over again (usually enticing campers).
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Titanfall is another one with very little in the way of locked doors. I find it ironic that in the future they can have robots as tall as buildings, but not doors that lock.
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Battlefield (modern) is an interesting in-between. Featuring destructible environments, it allows players to attempt to hold up places, but since most emphasis is on objective orientated gameplay, it can be easy to form down and not find anyone interested enough to spring your traps.... which is boring.
Rainbow Six first pioneered this type of gameplay in Black Arrow. Now painfully outdated, it’s hard to see how it was the turning point of duck and cover/room siege gameplay, but it was. It was the first of its kind.
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Then you have the PUBG types which I’m sorry to say it, but your game is nothing more than Counter-Strike on steroids without a money system. (If payday didn’t exist we’d still have new Counter-Strikes) PUBG like Counter Strike featured a team elimination system of one-life, sometimes objective based gameplay before development split IP into separate game. The door system in PUBG works like Battlefield, doors can be shut or opened, and parts of doors can be destroyed allowing attackers to breach without fully opening doors.
Bad Company 2 was the first Battlefield to feature fully destructible, functioning environments. Still a hallmark for that reason, it set a gold standard for what was expected of a fully destructible environment; the whole thing can be leveled.
Before this you had the Red Faction games, going back to Nintendo 64. This game series, though ugly now, pioneered destructible environments as well as doors.
Much of the duck n’ cover system likely started when you had House of The Dead games and Time Crisis in arcades. Though they were on-rails, it’s easy to see how open-world integration of these systems were likely inspired by on-rails shooters. (Some other notables, Alien, and Jurassic Park)
Doors seem to be a definitive factor in determining the gameplay that occurs. It can be a more immersive feature for some games and for others it can detract from the overall gameplay.
So to close, before you make a buying decision on a game, check it like you would a house. If the doors are no good, chances are you won’t enjoy your time there (Sorry, Jim)
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thegnasticious · 1 year
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I left Home today
I left home today;
That old rent finally priced me and sent me away
I wonder about those years that went away,
Countless dinners and words shared,
All going away.
The warmth of summer dying with my youth today,
As I sit on the corner,
Clouds and storms gather.
A futile god dances above,
Kicking the clouds into puffs of fog
Bursting through buildings.
Each movement has its own wind,
Scattering leaves on a vacant street below.
A vagabond I might be,
Depending on some force I can’t see.
Sent with little to eat,
Little to drink,
And hardly a person to see.
The giants above pay no attention to people like me below,
Dotting streets to and fro.
Continuing to push fog,
Dancing in ecstasy.
As the night grows old,
It’s movements push an air so cold.
Blowing my way, until I can take it no more.
I freeze from the inside out and all that’s left
Is a funny flame
Flickering, and strong.
Something that was there all along,
It couldn’t of been born,
Only lit as the night goes on
I tend to follow it,
Forgetting the person once brought by it
And becoming a flame,
hidden deep in my soul
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thegnasticious · 1 year
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Farewell The Walking Dead
This is not much an expository piece as much of it is an opinion. A relatively popular show in recent history is known as The Walking Dead. It is finally coming to a grinding halt at its 13th season, likely to open up room for spin-offs, and rival production teams to branch off. It should also be noted The Walking Dead is now a title on Disney + (UK)
The original seasons of The Walking Dead traversed parts of Atlanta, showing Rick’s character in a sort of singular conflict. This as with the later Darryl focused episodes, tredded better ground than ones which seem to focus on the group, jumping from the conflicts of a deaf person to all sorts of stuff (even a 3D tiger). In my opinion the earlier show is what drove the popularity, the later institutionalization of it, led to a jumping over the shark effect. If Fonzie jumped the shark some 18 more times in individual episodes after. Like Gilligan and the island, TWD relied on tropes usually limiting or altogether hampering a lead character’s ability to seemingly escape the show. Rick and The Junkyard lady are the only early escapees, and after he leaves the show, the show really lost its grips. For a while it tried to course back on track, but would fall victim of crowd-funded script decisions, that were usually more in lieu of driving individual actor’s careers than the whole show.
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TWD has an interesting presence still, even given its room for ridiculous redundancy, and occasionally good acting performances, as well as bad. The current show is definitely a strange joke of what it once was, but maybe beating the dead horse is the proper ending to such a mess of a mid-show conflict. I recall the show getting particularly stupid after the Rick/Negan stained glass attack. But I still sat it through, and I plan to watch it to the end, no matter how stupid it gets. And believe me from the child narrated flashbacks every episode, it gets real stupid.
I think most true fans of the show want to see it ended. It can’t do much more, and arguably the show was mostly over when they discovered the disease center in that arena place. I would say that about surmised the show. The current show is so lost, that even a conclusion won’t setup for an easy transfer, that’s why hopefully a lot of these supporting characters die off somehow. The story has way too many driving elements, and every character has been given way too much room for survival. Obviously by the spin-offs announced it can be assumed Negan, Rick, Michonne, Darryl, Carol, and a few others will be making it out. I forecast Eugene is gonna go the way of Abraham, he has had a really long go, and all he keeps doing is things in reflection of self-interest (love in the apocalypse is sweet, but shit man isn’t there better things you can be focusing on). He also puts the safety of the group at risk multiple times for what turns into some, “be sorry for me, I just love her”, or whatever. I’ve kind of had it with his arc, and I hope him and the commonwealth go their own way. Also those Stephanie reaction shots look like they were taken out of a smooth jazz adult film.
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I’ve noticed that most of the episodes done by Bear Mc and Greg Nicotero on set, tend to be the best. These had a sort of gritty realness, that seems intentionally sapped in later episodes. Be this for a sensitization of hopes of a child-centric series, I’m truly not sure what they going for here. My favorite arc of the show was the Darryl arc with his brother. To me that was the most powerful, and the earlier conflicts without leading tyrants, tended to have more impact. Almost all of the leading bad guys have their bad acting moments in the show. From Lance’s over-done eye movements, to the Governor’s stale presence not many of the bad guys were as well-acted as the main characters (besides Negan of course, phenomenal performance all through-out, even when show is doo doo butter).
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In recent shows, TWD has had a really long run. It didn’t quite break the record, but it definitely set a standard for any zombie show to come. I personally hope the show goes back to its roots through spin-offs, and away from things certain producers who joined the show wanted to do, many of these things being deviations from the core show. Maybe the later show is just a result of too many chefs in the kitchen, it is unsure why such a mixed meal came from so much work. Overall ending it and starring individual teams and pursuants for those IPs seems to be the best route. Not sure what’ll come next, but the show being freed from itself can only be a good thing
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thegnasticious · 1 year
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Scariest Movie Time
It is coming to that time of season where things get cold, some things start to go bump at night and scary movies adorn both on demand and broadcast television. It is almost, if you haven’t guessed it, the eve of October, and/or the time for watching scary movies. So to go right in, I feel that Carnival Of Souls (1962) is my personal scariest movie. 
The whole vibe of the movie is ominous, from the drab color scheme, to the strange lingering organ throughout. I found myself most troubled by the organist’s situation initially, being a musician, I felt relation from sometimes wanting to make something more beautiful than what a band or group set out to make, and getting persecuted for deviating and trying to do what was me. Her subsequent alienation, and puzzling situation, with a fixation to an aging monolith, forms the rest of the mystique of the movie. I don’t want to spoil too much, but it’s a fascinating piece of both writing, directing, acting, and historical documentation (The Saltair has since burned down). 
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Something about the emptiness of it is both troubling and fascinating, and even though there is something also obviously dark and forbidding, it has a draw. You can see why people years and years ago were drawn to the original resort, and why it was a great choice for a filming location. The 4K restoration is even more haunting, showing details as if the place was still around. I hate to be a bummer, but all that’s left is the memories, maybe the foundation of a few piers, and likely a really gross eggy smell. So 4K is much safer than a physical visit, also the old grounds are owned by the Mormon Church so I’m not sure if it’s trespassing to go there. Either way the closest one can likely get to that old place is likely the new restoration of this piece. The physical history of The Saltair is fascinating in itself, and could be a movie alone.
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Scariest Movie: Carnival Of Souls (1962)
Runner-up: Wicker Man (1973)
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thegnasticious · 2 years
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Man in the Machine
‘Can a machine be haunted?’
The thought replays in my head, as the final frames of a heated high-score session of Donkey Kong flash out on an old cabinet machine.
An old dust permeates from the corner, creating a viewbox that has worked in my advantage more than twice.
A strange coding seems to take place, one where the AI is almost always ahead on the frame, its split second timing is almost impossible to beat.
As the barrel hits, my mind travels to a point when I was much younger, before I obsessed over this funny machine in a corner store arcade.
I hadn’t even known of Donkey Kong, or the arcade. It was a hot summer day, my ice cream was melting all over a new shirt. I looked in a store window to make sure no one saw, and funny enough, peering out from an old Donkey Kong arcade cabinet was what looked like a Man’s face with static yellow eyes. Little did I know, I had seen a ghost that day, in broad daylight. It didn’t quite effect me, other than that it drove me to investigate the old machine, trying to trigger that screen again, in hopes to prove it wasn’t a hallucination.
Try as I might, most of my efforts ended in vain. I’d be in the store until close again, the workers perplexed by my obsession. Hour by hour the quarters would dissapear and I would grow more restless, until one day, I gave my last quarter.
The machine played out one of the best games I’ve ever had, and at the peak, it shut to black completely. I smacked its side, and tilted it, hoping to get it back to life. My efforts were in vain. It looked as if the circuit fried completely, and I was finally about to break the score on this go. I walked out of the arcade distraught, a strange old man laughed at me as I left, I wasn’t sure when he entered, I didn’t remember seeing him.
I returned the next day to find an ‘OUT OF ORDER’ sign on my favorite machine.
The old man now sat in a booth of sorts, it was a closed closet before. He had a little dog with him. It was awfully quiet without the machine running.
“Do you know when it’ll be up and running again?” I asked the man
“When you’re up and running again”.
He grumbled.
I walked off and assumed it to be nothing.
For years I never returned to the machine,
Never really even thought of it.
The machine itself, thought much of this boy, now suddenly turned man. He has lived years and years, playing a perpetual game, to set a nonexistent score in a world that, outside of the cabinet’s function, does not exist to it.
As the old man, is truly this boy, and neither him nor the machine or the little dog exist at all. Like the game, it is all coding writing itself, and much of that to a point, becomes completely nonsensical.
So what’s to say of this man in the machine, trapped in a constant state of confused youth and coded morality. In the end can you blame the man in the machine for the machine, when he himself is trapped in it?
At a point, even the old man comes to pass, and when he does, it’s as if the machine never broke at all. He sees from its old dust stained window, the confines of the world around him, and his younger self, briefly spilling ice cream all over his shirt.
As the boy comes to machine and grasps its old controls, the old man briefly feels young again. In this way, he is that final frame, and he hopes that the boy might never find him, never set that score, never know that being on top is always a new bottom. Hopefully never
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thegnasticious · 2 years
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Objective Piece: Episode Ardyn in FFXV
After a long writing hiatus, I want to start on an objective piece on what was supposed to be a capping DLC that would lead to a bigger endgame. Instead what was given at the end of the FFXV project, is Episode Ardyn. The Episodic content was albeit a bit redundant, trying to cover loose holes that were in some ways forced in cliche manner to the main plot line. I found myself asking during Prompto, who the F wanted a 007 snowmobile section? Not to mention the addition of third person shooting mechanics, which do not accent the game’s system as well outside of support units. Gladio was challenging, but in ways that the main game hardly challenges a person, even in the final battle. Thus the pacing in much of the DLC feels either too easy, or ridicuolously hard. Most of the reward content isn’t that usable because by the time you get it, the main game is basically over. Ignis on the other hand, his episode seems to show things the game could of done, if Episode Ardyn hadn’t eaten the end game. Ardyn is just an asshole, the kind of guy who would make-out with your wife well you’re in the other room, and fart at your re-entry. Or steal your last Cheetos, or revise your favorite game to have him as the new epicenter. The guy stinks. He is the main villain, and yet again, who the fuck wanted to play as him and why. Add in this ridiculous track about people in clown costumes (rap) nothing like Uematsu, and you have a big piece of what looks like American Japanese crap, which is still unfinished, no matter how development tries to Ardyn it. I get it that I probably don’t see the big joke or whatever, but it troubles me to this day, that such a steaming pile of shit could possibly be wrote off as the explanation. That is why I refuse to play Episode Ardyn, and I hope Square Enix takes the note that the majority of people don’t want to play the bad guy. Let the bad guys do it themselves
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Maybe someday the game will redeem itself by making a full ending. One where if Noct accumulates all the Royal arms he could live on to a better DLC maybe, there is a lot of open ends, and broken level cap that’s hardly tested in the main game.
A lot of gaming development recently hit a hitch, probably starting around Cyberpunk. This is another game in need of endgame work, to prolong the game’s lifespan. I always envisioned a sort of civil war leading to the city being occupied by a military presence. Causing the player to have to reclaim it from them and the scavs, from likely the desert, or junkyard. The game seemed to lean towards this but backed of. This would likely be an entirely separate data set, alike to evil Hyrule in Zelda. Maybe even have the possibility of a resurrected Johnny Silverhand gone bad, now nemesis. Sooner or later cyberpunk will likely go live action, I can only hope this benefits the founding game’s development.
FFXV could follow an alike formula with success, showing an inverted Insomnia, one where the power governing the magitek, finally flips the reality itself, in lieu of Ardyn’s untimely death. This would be a seperate ending than Ignis, but would follow in an alike manner that both would likely have the same resolve. Again this ending would require some groundwork for the player, and it would lead to an endgame fit for level 100+. Though this is wishful thinking, these groundworks are good beginnings for possible single to meta-player games, which seems to be the future of gaming. Both seemed to stop shy of that, for what seems to be unexplained reasons.
Another case of unused flying cars
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thegnasticious · 2 years
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Something Like You
I’d draw you a sunrise,
With only the lines
But likely you’d forget to color them in.
Older but not smarter
I miss when days were longer
When my biggest worry would be the next call on the phone, or what party was happening tonight.
Now it’s death, debts, due dates, and worrying about inevitable inadequacy
Forgetting that invisible quotient that once sensitized reality. Believing that it, you and me, will likely never be.
I thought when I was younger it’d all be about now, being older
But now that I’m older, I wonder why I didn’t enjoy being younger
I wonder why I can’t be satisfied with here, no matter when or how that is
I wonder why some people seem to be stuck on repeat, like broken machines
Is it religion that seems to automate me?
I look for miracles and revelations
Inevitably tricked by my reservations
These broken places lost in separate times,
Repeating the same crimes.
Yet still I look at old pictures,
Searching for my familiar nooks,
Brief feelings, and chapters, inherent to my identity.
And as time grows on and on,
More and more of me seems
To be dissapearing,
As if lacking a former fidelity.
At first I assumed it was me,
Then the technology,
And last, reality.
But all together it was something different entirely,
Something more than me
Something that in the end
Made me miss those days of drawing colorless sunrises, for a person I hardly knew
Something like you.......
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thegnasticious · 2 years
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Touch of God
It’s such a selfish thing,
Life death and all it brings.
To find it odd that one might covet the land inbetween,
More than what appears as it seems,
Shouldn’t be out of normality.
You come back to a land thrown by age and architecture
A recycled nod to a loss of memory
The frills taken by phantoms yet to be,
And it’s hard to find sensicality
You want that bridge to your dreams
Always open
But something seems to keep it closed,
Dormant and empty.
A lesser man might think this plague to be himself,
But in reality, its an overdeveloped mimic that lived much longer than it was supposed to be.
A touch of god is something different, something that can’t be sold or told. It is only briefly felt, then lost to a cosmos of forgotten memories. As we may try to hold that touch of god, it’s all too often fleeting in a human reality.
It’s hard to not tell people of such a prophecy, a touch of god proving that what’s real and fake is all preceptory.
Do we become the temple or the wind that walks it alone?
Or do we venture out into a world strange and new,
Not worrying about the places and people we just passed through...
It seems vain to me, to openly ignore all that pain
It only makes it more apparent where humans played god, and wrote a New Testament to endorse a deeper ignorance, catering to luxury and sin;
Not focusing on the way things have actually been.
As a people, we are raised to be complacent, not to question the touch of god, or its apparent absence, that ushers in seemingly inevitable deterioration and age.
It seems all we can do to help this process is become unaware of it, but as life progresses, the line between life and death tends to blur, and it makes it hard to make what was once a normal, appeasing choice seem the same.
In some rare instances, thinking can be harder than knowing, and sometimes the thought and the knowing literally coincide. This eben flow is truly the touch of god, be it golden silence or what you will call it, it is the collective synergy of inadequacy making a design of reality.
And it really works sometimes.
I suggest you try it
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thegnasticious · 2 years
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Particleur
Every state drives something
To put its name out in the open.
Enter an estranged particle accelerator in Illinois
It happens to be completely abandoned
There is not one word of how or why.
The tests for that day were still running, and multiple commands were still guiding the machines, but all the scientists and ground’s workers are nowhere to be found.
Some disappeared right out of bed, leaving a haunting memory for the ones with spouses, as all they found by the next morning was their worn clothes.
But somehow the plant still runs, as if they are trapped there.
As a federal investigation goes underway,
The plant is sealed from the public,
And anybody involved with the dissapeared is kept under tight wraps.
Something or someone, wanted it that way.
The first suspects would have been the owner’s of the residing energy company, had they not hit the road at least 3 years in advance, staging a company sellout, claiming it was in change of ownership.
Even the power that ran it seemed to be a shell, down to the city of conductors nearby, which after the last unauthorized test, seemed to disconnect themselves, cutting the lifeblood of the plant. Still the tests continued, as if the plant was powering itself.
This was done by no phantom but a temporary groundsworker on his last day.
The information in regards to this says the plant has been under construction for nearly 20 years and any time it’s claimed to be beginning operation is abided by the words 2022.
But the world it resides in never seems to reach the point it’s operating again. So what’s the point?
This was the question federal agents asked as they overlooked the plant’s numbers, still operating well without any workers.
They looked over the main power source as well, and numerous components waiting for assembly had no feasible origin company or constructor.
As if parts building the plant were beginning to appear from the plant itself.
To this day, the old accelerator sits abandoned.
It is now covered by vegetation and overgrowth.
Its giant circular grounds are enforced with firm warning signs, and urban legend has it that anyone who crossed that fence onto the old grounds, did not cross back.
Strange weather phenomenons litter the area, and people are said to have left the grounds, who never entered.
The government it seems, rather than shutting it down, put it under a looking glass, there is numerous suspicions to this, but many feel that the company’s actual owner, isn’t the man who ran off.
His mortal shell stayed on the confines, trapped one day in his own machine, he had to overload it to try to break out again, and it resulted in the whole company disappearing. What devastated him most was that after the overload, something besides himself repaired the confines. And like a dream, everything was operating the next day.
David, as he would like to be called, is alone there to this day. Waiting for someone to connect his puzzle so the machine will again activate. Hoping that there is a world outside of his imagination, he dreams of someday escaping that circle of existence, and not having some trivial matter trap him back, it’s all he can do until 2022 comes, and if it did, he wouldn’t have a clue.
He walks under the incomplete power lines still, waiting for the day they charge again, so he can ride the wave of electricity to a new shore, somewhere he’s never been before
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thegnasticious · 2 years
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Thank God
I thank god every day
That I can’t fit back in the hole I’d call my childhood
I like to feel young, but I never liked being young
To choose to be old is dust, algae, and mold
To be fresh and new is something
We all should do
To renew and fortify
Upgrade or revert
I thank god that I have options
I thank god that I’m alive
I’m a spiritual person,
That’s for sure
But to god, I look for something more.
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thegnasticious · 2 years
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Elden Ring vs. Dark Souls
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So if you haven’t heard of Elden Ring by now, you must of been crushed by a rock. From Software is the maker of Elden Ring, partnered with George RR Martin (specifically on world building and lore) you have a collab that’s set for a perfect game. So what’s perfect about this game, and what’s not?
Elden Ring unlike Dark Souls, uses a slightly less masochistic formula. In Elden Ring your character is ‘Tarnished’ ie. ‘Hollow’ but that is where similarities end. There is no concurrent way to undo Tarnishing, no Humanity, no Embers, etc. etc.. In lamen’s it won’t help or hurt you. Due to the open world aspect of Elden Ring, it’s very hard to break your ending/game. This is another very un-Souls like element, as Dark Souls would almost entice you to ruin your game. Many decisions in former Soul’s games could ultimately throw out your 40+ hour playthrough in a very simple mistake. Therein lies what drives and kills both games, you basically bet on your ability to play by how you risk your runes, and if you have a big loot, in an unknown territory, better to take it back to the grace. Even with this advice, I shudder to see how much I’ve lost along the way playing Elden Ring. In this category it kicked my ass, but like Souls, the game cheeses you as much as you cheese it.
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Cheese cheese cheese, as much you please
Being a veteran of 3 Souls games I can say you should not feel guilty cheesing the AI. From Software gives the AI a nuclear bomb in arsenal, and you arthritis and a funny stick. The game is relentless, I found in the Fringefolk/Hero graves, and lake of rot, a feeling of ‘the devs must be fucking with me’ and literally wanting to stop my journey all together. It just gets that real. That’s what about Souls and Elden Ring is about. Not what you want to do, but the things you weren’t going to. In this way it abuses and encapsulates the user’s experience, and it can be a relentless game if you don’t try to see out of its mechanics.
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One of the leading issues in both Souls and Ring, is the message system. Though I’ve used it here and there to get forward, I found there to be double to triple, the obscene comments to fruitful ones. The devs should really take disapraisals into account and remove the trashy messages from an obviously insane player or developer.
On subject of this, Soul’s development was pretty in line. Elden Ring made me convinced that things were changing. For better or worse there is summonable horses, allies, and numerous ways to break the linear approach. This differs from Soul’s masochism, it becomes obvious that the next generation needed an easier Souls. So you have the new developers fighting with the old (what’s new?) and along the line there is some things that are unrealistically difficult and others you can pass right through on your trusty steed. Is using the ancestral Horse cheap, probably, but again it allows you to cheese the cheeser. The horse also introduces massive issues with AI as it seems to have to re-evaluate the player on horse, allowing an ability to stall some bosses and cheese their detection. This short of another player summon, was just not possible in Souls, and is why many veteran Soul’s players are much more prepared for the onslaught then people who have been catered with the steed.
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My excuse towards cheesing with the steed is that I’ve been through three of these fucking games, and seen every ending in the last couple. I’m tired of the game in general, I love Souls but playing Lake of Rot yesterday I realized that even Elden Ring has been guilty of beating the dead horse. With a name like Martin’s adorning it, you should know that it doesn’t always aim to please, but it does entertain.
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What makes Elden Ring different, has yet to be fully determined. If they can develop a feasible endgame, repostulate the ending based on player run-throughs, and make a trading system that entices players to get rid of old, then try new things, the game can have a very long lifespan. I’ve put in around 90+ hours, and I’m nearing the end apparently.
So what do I feel........
Tired.
It’s not that it’s a bad game,
It just doesn’t focus on a lot of good, albeit this is definitely Soul’s vibe.
And I have played these titles wayyy (100% 1, 2, and 3) too much.
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Like Halo Infinite I had to turn off the cheesy music to make the game stomachable. I suggest 60’s hits. I just hate the fanfare sync’d with an overpowered AI, it is pure rage fuel. Sometimes in Series X game tests, specifically in AI, I’ve felt the developers give the AI way to much leverage. Elden Ring suffers from this along the way, causing some players to over-level and almost break their experience over what is something that should be approached later, there is no warning system really, and the user messages get less and less helpful as time goes on.
Will I play another Soul’s title? Not sure, Elden Ring made me convinced that it’s not fully my thing, but I do enjoy the art direction and design of the world and characters. What I don’t like is the brutality, not that it should be watered down, but balanced in a way that makes sense to the content and not the mass appeal. When one outweighs the other, it inevitably impedes on development. Like Halo, Souls seems to have a nasty chip on its shoulder, still, and seems to punish a player for playing. Maybe this is a new developer issue, and all it needs is a new owner to shine it up and find what it can be. It’s not to say it wasn’t made right, but it was made to be in the hands of people who will continue to work on the old idea, so the new developers can continue on. It has the potential to be a timeless game, but something about it left me feeling very empty. It could be a feeling I’ve been there before, played and worked on it, some kind of Deja Vu, but as The Matrix says, even that’s coded.
Don’t let this deter you, working on endgame Souls is a task made to make you hate video games, but this is where the game could and should really shine. Hopefully it returns to its roots and allows the player an infinite experience, I did NG+ like 7 times on DS3, each playthrough got tougher, and more enemies were added each time.
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Overall, I will say that Elden Ring feels like Dark Soul’s greatest hits. If you want an encapsulating experience but don’t want to go to the cemetery so to speak, Elden Ring is a much better choice. Dark Souls is a great series but I don’t find myself revisiting the games much after learning the endings. It makes me wonder if I miss the point of the game. I don’t know. What entices me is the challenge, but it also ruins my sense of enjoyment. Some of the best Elden Ring moments were the ones I was not conscious of, little things like the exploration before finding the horse, though frustrating, drove me to continue trying to figure this seemingly endless game out. Too much bewilderment, on the contrary, led me to set the controller down. Elden Ring can in some ways be therapy for Souls (aside from endgame content).
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What I dare a person to do, is try this game with no online help, and see how long your playthrough is. I am positive it’ll total over a hundred hours.
If I had approached this game in the past, I apparently had given up. This is the only thing I say not to do, if you’re gonna start it best to finish it the right way and finish it all the way.
Overall I give it a 9/10, once balancing, DLC, and endgame patches are introduced, it should bump it to a 10
Now, how to open those doors in the roundtable hold?
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Tips for starting your journey
Leave the optional bosses alone at beginning
Focus on getting graces first
Follow the grace paths
Get the ancestral steed right away
Always cash in at level up, don’t risk extra runes on mindless exploration. It may be enticing but that’s where they get you
Get maps then explore areas
Do not kill all NPCs some even resemble enemies and if hit will act like one (be careful!)
Patche’s, Diallo’s and Rya’s quest should be completed/started before Liurnia’s end.
In regards to the above, if you think Volcano manor factors into endgame, then do not rush through the upstairs portal to Rykard. I did this and lost the dialogue to turn into completed assasination contracts, as well as Rya dissapeared without leaving Talisman etc (I checked Periscope, Ruins, Secret room and drawing rooms to no avail)
If you want a powerful ally, definitely complete Alexander Iron fist’s quest
Always pick up ingredients, you might not need them then, but they’ll definitely help later
Watch your inventory, higher weight will adversely effect stats
You can always respec, once you get to Raya so don’t worry about a bad build, the game at least allows reversal of that.
Sins of Absoution do not pertain to Questline errors, it will reset the NPC’s mortality, but not their dialogue
Keep a written guide nearby, the game gets awfully complicated and if you believe there is still an undiscovered ending (every Soul’s game has had one) then you are working for the greater puzzle beyond endgame, and crazy as it might seem, that’s the way to really Elden Ring
Almost all Soul’s games trap the player into NG+, don’t take it personally
Focus on competitive more in NG+
If you lose runes, and have screwed your point system, you can always use someone else’s world
There is few points of no return, and the ones that are there are pretty obvious. Wait until you get to the final battle to make your final decision, and keep in mind that some advice might actually ruin your game (I’m trying to help, personally, but the people writing those ‘jump’ messages are perfect examples of who not to listen to
Good luck! Don’t let the game play you, and play it in increments, you won’t beat it in a day. Trust me (100+ hour 1st play-thru)
Cheese the enemies, and don’t feel bad about it. They will always outcheese you if you don’t cheese them first
Last note, before starting new journey check the 4 Belfries. Also optional/secret bosses are easy to miss
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thegnasticious · 2 years
Text
The Middle Ground
Deep in the Saharan desert,
A war over an expanse of land
Rich with oil, rages.
Throughout days and night,
Shells ring out as soldiers and civilians
Get caught inbetween.
Bodies litter the desert sand,
Staining it with a foreign crimson that shimmers in the daily light.
The sun fades the reds from a bright hues to a brownish muck, that almost appears like mud.
The bodies that aren’t swept away, decay with the intrusion of desert animals eating the remains to and fro.
In an everlasting heat, this seems to constantly repeat.
The soldiers maintain their attacks, set on gaining that rich oil, the bloodline of what they call home.
The resource seems to cloud their judgement,
And they don’t realize the people inbetween.
These people, both soldiers and civilians, shifters of identity, play the middle party.
They hold no allegiance, and to those who know war, they know the higher war is this party.
Some of the soldiers notice the familiar faces amongst their enemies, once friends, supposedly dead, now coming and trying to kill their own instead. The ones who are smart, instead of killing, wonder, is it some force fighting inbetween, to kill the fighting instead?
An alien force, that helps neither party, eventually killing both.
These warriors of no conscience, come with an eternity of grey and fog. Sorcerers of war, building no man’s land evermore, supplying an army of those who are no more,
Occupying an unseen middle ground,
Shooting round after round
Until every body and the land itself,
Becomes a mound
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thegnasticious · 2 years
Text
Haunted By Yourself
We’re all haunted by something
Be it a house, something you lost, or something you never found
We’re all haunted by our memories
The thought of, was it just my imagination,
Or no, I’m truly haunted by some old man in my kitchen,
A man who could someday be me,
If I let those years and things hiding in the darkness
Eat me alive
Someday, sometimes I resemble him, though he’s not my Father or a man I know
But a stranger who waits outside for those moments I’ll leave
He plays my Friend, Father, Mother, and Wife
But one thing I won’t be distracted by is his sense of strife.
Even in a woman’s skin, he can’t hide his masculinity.
And the last thing he can be or do, is what you remembered.
Maybe this demented old man is myself,
Maybe we share these thoughts because it’s all one in the same,
And when I leave him in the old places and memories, I used to be,
He’s right at home when I’m leaving
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thegnasticious · 2 years
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Charlie’s Ghost
Chicago is a different world during the winter.
The once busy streets are drained and sparsed,
Christmas lights blink and shine about the streetlights.
A man named Charlie, walks through the lonely streets to catch the last train of the night.
An assistant curator to a major city museum, he holds some very special merits.
This particular night, the museum had him stay late, to load in special artifacts from the Tutankhamen dig. Most of the museum staff began the night with him, but he left alone.
What had happened before his lonely walk home seemed to be a blur to him, but there was a quicker step and a feeling of lightness, it brought a feeling of youth to his old bones.
Nearing around 60, Charlie was starting to feel the weight of his years. Having trouble getting up the museum stairs earlier that day, was a sobering moment for him, made him wonder how long he could do the job.
When he was put on special duty with the dig artifacts, he was convinced it would be his last job. There was rumors abound of the dig being cursed, and some of the original archaeologists responsible were turning mysteriously ill.
Considering his condition, he figured it couldn’t get much worse, and decided to take the extra tasks for it.
Showing up after-hours, he was surprised to find he was the only person who made it out. Apparently someone had done his task already, though he was given no detail as to who or why, as the exhibit was already unloaded and put in place.
To keep an accurate log, he decided to stay out the hours, as if he had set up the exhibit. Sitting in a nearby lobby, he counted the seconds on a clock, and focused on the little noises within the dark museum.
It wasn’t longer than 15 minutes and a loud crash sounded from the Egypt exhibit. It sounded like glass cracking and a quick stamp of feet, but no one was found in or around the exhibit.
As Charlie neared the room, he could see a man on the ground, he rushed over to the unconscious man, and turned him over. The man’s face was his own. Blood trickled from his head, and he seemed to be gasping desperately for air, it was apparent that even with medical accommodation he would be dead very shortly.
A tableau lie cracked next to the man, as if someone or something within the exhibit, cracked him over the head and left.
All Charlie could do was sit there, and watch himself slowly die on the museum floor.
As his former self breathed his last breath,
Charlie noticed his reflection in a nearby display case, holding himself, and shrinking, clothes and all, into a Younger man’s body.
When he returned to his wife of thirty years, who had seen him through wars, famines, and hardships beyond comprehension, she denied his insistence that it was truly him. He then pulled out their wedding ring, which was the only item that did not change size. Recognizing its details and enscriptions, she knew it couldn’t be a copy.
She said nonetheless, the man she knew would never of stood for such a thing, ‘he would of died old and stayed that way’ she declared.
Charlie went on to explain that he had no clue how it started, and he couldn’t go back to being old again, it just wasn’t possible.
The next week, papers would read that Charlie Black, veteran curator at Chicago’s field museum, was found deceased after hours in the Egypt exhibit. The head contusion was said to of resulted from the impact of a loose tableau that fell overhead.
There was no report of anyone exiting or entering the museum, as for the whereabouts of young Charlie today, he apparently started a new life over again, and gave the assets of his last life to his widow.
From time to time he is said to of returned to her, late at night, but he is always gone by the morning.
Seeming no more than a ghost of himself,
And now going by Charles rather than Charlie
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thegnasticious · 2 years
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GOTY: MSFS
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“MS flight is just something you have to experience for yourself. Instead of being a simulator of the flight and freight patterns, it approaches a flight Sim exactly as it should; everything is about flying.”
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Why I choose to highlight this game of the many released this year is because, it is a perfect meditation of what gaming should be. It focuses on the experience primarily, and puts the advanced controls and functions secondary as well as allows the user an almost developer-like level of control in the game. Instead of forcing the player through mundane progressions and objectives, it gives the whole game at the get-go. You are allowed your own sense of progression, instead of being forced through a linear format game that does not take the user’s immediate experience into account.
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The game is still on console, in a form of development and a lot is being added daily, mostly optional updates to add things to the world if you so choose. The flying is very comprehensive, I use the Xbox Series X HOTAS with the game. It works really well, but the throttle (ext.) could be a little more sensitive, but this is another thing you can basically fine-tune within the game’s settings if you so choose. In terms of setting you can change weather, time of day, season, etc. allowing a non-live input flight. From a developer’s perspective, this game has been through many evolutions on consoles, and along the way some updates were backlogged to original bugs, because it looked prettier.
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The aircraft library is huge, and I personally like the propeller planes. I’m waiting on a B17. The digital Earth is amazingly detailed and it’s astounding any game could fit a whole Earth in its data set with live satellite updates. The game feeds streamed off Google, and Google follows international and military bounds, as some areas (I.E. Area 51, Old Saltair, etc.) are humorously omitted.
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My favorite thing is just to drop in anywhere, usually water, so I can say screw the airport and float where I’m done. My favorite plane so far is likely the DLC Junker, but I wish it had retractable gears. The cockpits in all the planes are detailed down to the finest spec, and every function corresponds as it should. The only things missing from the game are along the lines of extra integrations to further link players together. I enjoy occasionally jumping in on a live player’s flight, or an in-flight modeled path on live planes. There’s a lot of approaches that the game allows to flying and exploring, and with a world that changes every day, the game never quite ends. That’s why I feel MSFS is the GOTY
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Runner Up: Elden Ring (review soon)
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