Destiny: the final straw

When I played the Alpha, I thought DESTINY was going to be an amazing game.

When I played the Beta, I was sure I was going to love it.

When I started playing DESTINY after it was released, I had a blast. Whenever possible I teamed up with a couple of friends and had even more fun in the game. I loved the feel of the shooting, the movement, and especially the melee attacks. I thought the art design was outstanding and couldn't wait for every new environment I encountered. All too quickly, I finished the story missions and reached level 20 with my Hunter.

I began the post-20 grind, and even then still found myself playing a fair amount of the game. A quick note about me: I'm a 42-year old husband and father, so I really only get to play an hour or two at night after the rest of the family has gone to bed. So that's part of the reason why I've never been able to devote "serious" amounts of time to leveling up in DESTINY. At any rate, my in-game time continued to decline but I figured I jump back in with both feet when the expansions hit.

What I wasn't counting on, obviously, was how end-game focused first Crota and now House of Wolves are. How Bungie has, in a very MMO-like fashion, created content aimed specifically at those willing and able to go through the incredibly complicated process of reaching the level cap and acquiring the top of the line gear. So, a little disappointed, I resigned myself to only enjoying that content on a very limited basis. And up until this weekend, when I tackled the first House of Wolves bounty, I never really had a moment that made me consider stopping altogether.

So there I am, zooming along towards the Forgotten Shores as a level 29 Hunter, assuming that I would just spend some time exploring the area before my target showed up. Sure enough, after a few minutes I noticed two max-level players with the Objective icon over their names, so I popped over to see them killing waves of Fallen from drop ships that appeared every so often. Eventually, the Baroness descended, and the three of us chased her into a cave. I was doing barely any damage, but hung in there until she was dead. I happily saw the bounty completion notice, and then saw "Ether key 1:30" pop up and begin counting down. And that, my friends, is when I broke up with DESTINY.

That moment was the perfect illustration of how Bungie let me down with this game. Once again, the game introduced something for me to do/acquire without any context, instruction, or guidance. In a better game I would be told more or less what an Ether key is, what it's for, and where I'd need to use it. Yet, just like with so many things about DESTINY, Bungie seems to expect me to go figure it out via extra-game methods. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; this is a company that couldn't even be bothered to put the game's lore inside of the damn game itself!

I'm now at that place where so many other DESTINY players already reached: realizing that I don't have the time or inclination to go scour web sites and social media in order to understand the game. And I suppose there's a silver lining: I won't have another game competing for my attention when THE WITCHER 3 is released tomorrow.

The Dark Knight Returns, Rises, and keeps on going

I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises the other day (in IMAX!) and was really happy with it. It's not perfect, but it's a really enjoyable film and is an excellent conclusion to Nolan's Batman trilogy. One thing that really struck me was how Nolan, for a filmmaker who's given us one of the most "realistic" takes on comic book superheroes ever, borrowed heavily from a number of specific Batman comics stories for Rises. You can see elements from Knightfall, No Man's Land, Dark Knight Returns, and a few more. It shouldn't have surprised me, though, because when it comes to storytelling versatility, Batman is far and away the best superhero.

We're clearly in a golden age of superhero movies, with films good, bad, and everywhere in between reaching varying levels of economic success. Marvel's heroes in particular have, for the most part, done well on the big screen. Starting with Iron Man in 2008 right up through this year's outstanding job by Joss Whedon with The Avengers, the Marvel superheroes have been brought to life with style and substance (again, that's "for the most part", so let's pretend the Ghost Rider movies don't exist). If there's a common thread through the Marvel films, it's that they got the characters Right. That is to say, for Iron Man or Thor or Captain America, you can identify a set of characteristics that make up the ideal version of each character... and the films of the last few years nailed those characteristics. Heck, let's break them down:

• Iron Man: genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, using his high tech suit to atone for years of weapons manufacturing
• Captain America: noble and courageous paragon of American virtue faced with a country that struggles to live up to those values
• X-Men: mutants banding together to survive in and protect a world that hates and fears them
• Thor: demigod struggling to live up to his father's example, dealing with a jealous and deceitful brother while protecting a world of humans he's come to love
• Hulk: ANGRY HULK SMASH

Batman, on the other hand, is a little bit different. In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that Batman is unique among most of his contemporaries in that there are many different absolutely valid versions of Batman. How about:

• Dark, borderline psychotic loner for whom all joy was snuffed out when his parents were killed
• World's greatest detective, who uses his huge fortune to equip himself with cutting edge technology to fight crime
• A caped crusader, often teaming up with a young sidekick to take down the colorful villains that seem to constantly plague society
• Master of strategy and tactics, working with other heroes in the Justice League to take on world-threatening crises

Bruce Wayne can't let anyone in, because his parents' death shattered him at a young age. Bruce Wayne is a friend, mentor, and surrogate father to several boys. Bruce Wayne only confides in Alfred, his trusted butler and confidant. Bruce Wayne falls in love, marries, and has children of his own. His body is constantly bruised, battered, and broken. He is one of the world's greatest martial artists, gymnasts, and athletes. Batman is grim and gritty. Batman enjoys fighting crime.

It's all true, and it's all valid, and it has all combined to give us over 70 years of stories that range from predictable and pedestrian to entertaining, emotional, and exhilarating. It is the amazing adaptability of the character that ensures his continued relevance, and allows so many folks to enjoy him in different ways. Consider two of the several different takes on Batman which I count among my favorites: the Batman of the Rocksteady Arkham games (serious and intense), and the Batman of the Bruce Timm animated series and subsequent Justice League series (adventurous and human). Kevin Conroy's amazing voice work links them both, but the differences between the two are many. Still, I consider both of them as the Right versions of the character, just like plenty of people do for the Batman of The Brave and the Bold or the Batman of Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams.

Let's just not talk about All-Star Batman, okay? Man, that's just wrong.

Darksiders: Made from the best stuff on earth

Some of my favorite games are absolutely teeming with originality, even if they use familiar game play mechanics, environments, or themes. Take Bioshock for example: on one hand, it's a first person shooter and "spiritual successor" to System Shock 2 (see Kieron's brilliant take on that subject) that doesn't require the player to actually do anything they haven't done before in a game. On the other hand, well, if you've played it you know that the story, setting, combat, and moral choices combine to make for one incredibly original experience overall.

It's not on the same level of my personal gaming pantheon as Bioshock, but the first Darksiders game is one of my favorites for a very different reason: entirely because of the success Vigil Games achieved by making one of the most wonderfully derivative games ever. The game's structure and core mechanics? Yep, that's Legend of Zelda. The combat? God of War lite. The story? The bible (a very loose interpretation, obviously). Heck, they even threw in a little Portal for one of the dungeons! What's more, you don't even need to look hard to find these sources of inspiration; hell, if THQ had offered a green tunic and cap costume as DLC for the game, Nintendo might have sued.

And yet, they pulled it off. They took all those elements of great games & stories and did two things: they executed them with polish and precision, and they combined them in a way that made something new and fresh out of the familiar. In a way, Darksiders is like a DJ Earworm end-of-year mashup that lets you recognize a whole bunch of your favorite songs as they blend together into something that stands on its own. Even more impressively, they avoid the trap that some retro homage games fall into (I'm looking at you, 3D Dot Game Heroes) of being so slavishly devoted to the original that they fail to do anything new or worthwhile.

I should also admit that part of why I love Darksiders so much is due to its status as a "mature Zelda game". I think I've played almost every Zelda installment since the original, and long considered it to be one of my favorite game franchises... except that I realized some time ago that what I want more than anything is for Nintendo to radically shake up that series and do something NEW. Send Link into space. Make him and Princess Zelda fully grown adults in a relationship, not the cloying fairy tale-level romance the games usually reach for. Use the Unreal engine! (Just kidding.)

So, yeah, Darksiders is a top-notch mashup of video games that also dives into Judeo-Christian mythology in a fun way. And based on the first 5 or 6 hours of Darksiders 2, Vigil has hit the sweet spot again... only this time they've added a healthy dose of Prince of Persia to the mix. Oh, and Diablo. If there's kart racing in there somewhere, I may pass out.

Love those bricks

I have fallen in love all over again with LEGO. I've got them all over the house, here at the office, even on my keychain. I was a huge geek for them as a kid, but as tends to happen I drifted away from them for a long time. Recently, though, three factors have converged to bring my back into the fold:

1. LEGO video games - Probably the main reason for my personal LEGO renaissance is the almost decade-long run of high quality licensed games featuring LEGO versions of Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter, and other pop culture icons. They've ranged from fairly enjoyable to tons of fun and have actually gotten more impressive in the last year or so. I have two of the titles in rotation right now, and I'm very excited about the upcoming LEGO Lord of the Rings game.
2. A local LEGO store - There's something almost intoxicating about being surrounded by every conceivable size and shape of LEGO set in one location, much more than just walking down a single aisle at a toy store. And yes, I got my LEGO VIP card the first time we visited the store. Don't judge me.
3. My daughter - As my daughter gets older, I continue to look for ways that we can connect. And as a geek, it delights me that she enjoys Avatar: The Last Airbender, Tron Legacy, and Young Justice... and now LEGO as well. We've built several kits together, and even if she'd definitely put a Monster High doll on her Xmas list before an Avengers LEGO set, she still loves to play the games with me (both the video games and now the board games, which we've just tried and love).

So, yes, I'm almost forty years old, and I've got a LEGO Tie Fighter sitting on my dresser at home. I've got a bunch of clone troopers on the shelf behind me at work. And if I won the lottery tomorrow, you can bet your ass that $400 Death Star kit would be mine.

Reruns

In just a few days, the first big video game release of 2012's second half will finally arrive (hello, Darksiders 2!). We're still weeks away from new fall television (although most of our favorite shows are cable dramas like Justified and Mad Men, so fall premieres don't mean quite as much), and this year we've cut back on the number of summer shows we watch. So, I've found myself indulging in quite a bit of remedial viewing/watching. Some old favorites, some stuff I've missed, and a few items to refresh my memory in preparation of upcoming sequels.

I'd watched the pilot episode of Aaron Sorkin's latest show, THE NEWSROOM, and hated it like all right-thinking people. The upside, though, was that it made me go back to THE WEST WING... which upon re-watching is as fantastic as ever. All of Sorkin's tics and excesses are so much easier to overlook when wrapped up in liberal fantasy and performed by one of the strongest ensemble casts ever. Don't get me wrong, the way he treats his female characters was obnoxious even back then... but at least Allison Janney and Stockard Channing could be counted on to perform above whatever hangups Sorkin has.

After hearing good things about it for a while, I put LEVERAGE on our Netflix queue and we've started slowly working our way through its first season. I love a good heist story, and so far the show has been a lot of fun. I'm not entirely sold on the cast, though, and it sometimes suffers from the usual cable drama malady of having the most recognizable guest star be the secret villain. Overall, though, we're enjoying it far more than USA's slate of summer shows which seem to have all descended into mediocrity over the last couple of years.

I'd played through BORDERLANDS when it came out originally as a Hunter class character, finishing the main story and then completing a couple of the DLC expansions. I hadn't done a whole lot with the other classes, though, so I returned to my very low-level Soldier and have gotten him up into the 20's. The core gameplay and visual style are still outstanding, even if the flaws in some of the mission design and systems are much more evident now. Still, after reading about some of the changes they've made for BORDERLANDS 2, this little dip into the first game has me very excited about the sequel.

Finally, I picked up a few titles during the Steam Summer Sale. I grabbed some indie gems like MACHINARIUM, TRINE 2, and SPLICE... plus I also bought KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC. I'd played it a bit on the original Xbox, but got bogged down at some point and gave up. So now I'm taking a slow and deliberate approach, trying to enjoy the story and ignore the usual impulse to discover everything in a Bioware game. Plus, I know I won't have a ton of time to devote to it pretty soon.

There's a pale rider approaching, after all.

Quick thoughts about a change in tempo

I love songs that feature an interesting change in tempo. The music goes along at whatever pace and then BANG, it turns into something else entirely, shaking me out of whatever placid state I'd been in and firing up my imagination. One of my all-time favorites is "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand:

Man, when Paul Thomson's drums slow down and drive the song in a new direction, I can't help but start smiling. I love that they spend almost the whole first minute of the song with the guitar rhythms up front before surprising you with that heavy beat.

Perhaps the best known example in rock music is Eric Clapton's "Layla" (technically a Derek & The Dominos song, but let's just call a spade a spade, okay?) which makes an even more startling shift: from a classic guitar-driven rock lament to a sprawling, almost orchestral instrumental that amazingly manages to pick up the same emotional thread from the song's first half and make it even more heartfelt:

I'm not sure why I love a good tempo shift so much. Maybe it's the joy of discovery, something new popping up in the middle of things. Even in a song I've heard dozens of times before, the immediacy of music and sense of instant connection I experience when listening to a song I like leaves me unprepared even if I know the change is coming. Or maybe it speaks to something deep within me, an existential desire to send my life spinning off into a wild new direction.

Whatever it is, I love it.

The great wine getaway

Everyone's favorite blog took a brief vacation last week while my wife and I celebrated her recent milestone birthday (that's right, she finally turned 21!) with an overnight trip to the Finger Lakes. We were able to visit six wineries around Keuka and Seneca Lakes, stayed at the lovely Esperanza Mansion, and generally had a fantastic time. If you're considering a trip to the area, here are my thoughts and recommendations:

• We started by visiting Hunt Country Vineyards, near the northern tip of Keuka's west branch. Maybe it was because it was the first stop on our tour, but Hunt Country might have been our favorite of the wineries we visited. More likely, it was because they offered a wine & chocolate tasting (for my wife) and a pretty fantastic Pinot Gris (for me). It's a small, charming place, and the young man who walked us through our tasting was friendly and knowledgeable.
• Our next stop was at Dr. Konstantin Frank, whose wines have been among my favorites for years. Unfortunately, it was probably our least favorite tasting experience. Dr. Frank is such a big operation that they've evidently chose to put only minimal effort into their on-site customer experience. The tasting, the attitude of the employees, the facilities... they were all entirely adequate at best. Plus, my wife was pretty pissed from the start of our visit as a dog had been left in one of the visitors' cars in the parking lot. Sure, it had been left running with the A/C on, and you can certainly go through the tasting and a quick visit to the gift shop in about fifteen minutes, but leaving your dog in a car on a hot summer day is still an incredibly stupid thing to do.
• We then visited Bully Hill, which is pretty much the polar opposite of Dr. Frank in style and substance for visitors. A restaurant, a wine museum, an art gallery, a two-floor gift shop, and a winery tour make for an impressive slate of attractions, but the wine tasting was impressive in its own right. Bully Hill offers two different tasting options: the cellar bar, with a fixed list of wines, or a choose-your-own-adventure option that lets you select from their catalog. The people were very friendly, the facilities are terrific, and the location offers a beautiful view of the lake. The only negative was that Bully Hill's wines generally trend towards the sweeter end of the spectrum, which isn't our favorite.
• Before visiting the next winery, we stopped in the small town of Hammondsport for an ice cream and some window shopping. We got a chuckle out of the prominent banners and signs around town celebrating Hammondsport's status as "Coolest Small Town in America" by the noted arbiters of cool at Budget Travel Magazine.
• Our final winery visit on day one was at Heron Hill. With a beautiful building and gently sloping land all around, it was clear that Heron Hill is a popular place for weddings and other events. Arriving late on a Thursday afternoon, however, meant that there were only a few other visitors there. The wine tasting was excellent, with an impressively wide selection of options. I don't think I'd tried their wines previously, but a couple of them immediately became favorites. We even splurged on a bottle of their Riesling Reserve, which was phenomenal.
• We concluded our day by checking in to the Esperanza and having a (very) late dinner at their restaurant. I'm not sure if we just caught them on a bad day, but they were having a dickens of a time getting customers to finish their meals and turn over tables. Our outdoor reservation became an indoor one and the food service was agonizingly slow. However, when we did finally eat the quality of the food was superb. I'd be willing to go back and give the place another chance; at any rate, the Esperanza itself is lovely and the view of the lake is wonderful.
• We slept in a bit on Friday morning and then decided to drive over to Seneca Lake to check out a few of the wineries there. We started by visiting Fox Run, which was in the middle of setting up for their annual Garlic Festival to be held that weekend. Even in the midst of that chaos we had a wonderful tasting and even went on their brief winery tour. Walking through the vineyard and the wine making facilities was nifty.
• Last and honestly kind of least on our winery tour was Belhurst. Honestly, it's not really fair to compare it to the other places we visited; the Belhurst's winery is really just a gift shop and tasting bar attached to the inn and castle. By their own admission, they don't have their own vineyards and instead contract out for their grapes. Still, they have some nice wines, and the tasting was a very pleasant experience. The castle and grounds are lovely, and I can see why they are top choice for weddings in the region.

We wrapped up the trip with a quick stop at the Waterloo Premium Outlets, which made my wife pretty happy (even if we both acknowledged that there wasn't much in the way of "outlet pricing" to be had). Then we hopped on the thruway and were home by mid-afternoon. All in all, a wonderful grown-up overnight getaway.