Hey Friends! It seems that I have gone from being one of the most prolific bloggers to one of the least prolific in record time. I am still more or less trudging through hell on the work front, and as a result it has sapped any energy that I once had for creative endeavors. I miss you all greatly and this time I carved out of my life to talk to you. I need to figure out a way to return to some semblance of normality and maybe attempting to blog again is a good method to get there. The prolific era of this blog was actually spawned as a counter reaction to one of the worst periods of my life up to that point. Part of me is hoping that after I get on the far side of this current phase… I will have a similar upwelling of creative desires.
For those who are not used to this construct, the idea is simple. I create a mixtape and share it with you. For me however the act of creating a mixtape is way more than just throwing a bunch of songs together. I am old school in that nature in that I am trying to build an experience that is enjoyable to listen to in its whole. Back in the day I used to refer to albums that were built in this manner as “listen throughs” which I admit isn’t terribly creative, but they were albums I could just throw on and let play without feeling the desire to skip tracks. My goal with this project is to share with you tiny bits of myself in musical form. I was a creator of mixtapes then and I find the process more or less translates smoothly to an online playlist.
Thinly Veiled Crisis
A lot of the tracks that I have been sharing with you are fairly old at this point dating from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. With Thinly Veiled Crisis I am cherry picking from some of my favorites in modern rotation but even then there is a bit of a theme. A lot of these tracks remind me of an earlier era, namely in many cases they have this throwback flair to the “New Wave” era of the 80s. Others just sorta felt like they fit into missing pieces. I have been working on this list for a month, adding and removing songs here and there until it reached a point where I thought it was ready for listening.
Hard Times – Paramore
Once in a Lifetime – All Time Low
Blinding Lights – The Weeknd
Such Great Heights – The Postal Service
Oh My My – Blue October
Comeback Kid – Sleigh Bells
Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked – Cage the Elephant
Kiss This – The Struts
Deadline – Grouplove
Level of Concern – Twenty One Pilots
Serotonin – Girl in Red
Soul Meets Body – Death Cab for Cutie
Are You Bored Yet? – Wallows feat. Clairo
Listen on Spotify
Listen On YouTube
This one is a bit different than most of what I have been sharing, but still very much represents a slice of my musical tastes. I have to admit one of my favorite parts of this experiment has been the comments I have received. Even if I can’t do other posts right now, I am hoping to keep this going because I enjoy the process greatly.
The post Mixtape Mondays: Thinly Veiled Crisis appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we have a second show in a row, which given the state of Bel right now is pretty miraculous. We are down a Kodra for assorted reasons but we have one of our shows where we have only the thinnest of topics and make a show out of them. Bel talks about experiencing how polarizing Army of the Dead is apparently as we discuss the expectations of genre films. From there we talk about Diablo games on the phone and more Mass Effect discussion. We clear the deck of the topics we have had for a while as we go through the limits of accessibility, scaling content and how rough catch up in games can be at time.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we prove that we totally do exist and you get to listen to a very tired Bel. Bel gives a slight explanation of why we did not record the last two weeks and why nothing is certain in the coming weeks either. We talk a bit about how we are in this weird new era of “Must See TV” which is a phrase that only us “olds” will know but Disney is absolutely creating destination television again. From there we talk about the Mass Effect Legendary re-release and how Bel is coming to love Jennifer Hale’s Shepard. We talk a bit about the news coming out for FFXIV Endwalker and how Dark Knights are no longer the TRUE edgelords. Finally we talk a bit about PSO2 New Genesis Beta.
My world is still very much in a fucked up state right now, but occasionally I get home early enough in the evening to play a little bit of something before falling asleep and starting the process all over again. Right now I am leaning heavily on two experiences, one of which I know EXTREMELY well at this point and with the recent release of the “Legendary” edition it Mass Effect 1 has represented the majority of my game time. I’ve played through the game a number of times at this point including playthroughs where I link all three games up together like I am doing right now. I am still in the first title but I am in that spiral of events that leads towards the end right now.
The key differentiator this time however is that I am playing as “FemShep” or the female version of Commander Shepard voiced by the very excellent Jennifer Hale. I opted to go with Vanilla Shepard because if given my druthers I am almost always going to create a red headed character when I am creating female characters. I know from past experiences with the character creator… that it is very easy to create something that looks kinda fucked up in cinematics.. my first Shepard appearance was this way so I thought it safest just to go with what the experts created for me.
The weird part for me right now with this playthrough, is that for the last decade I have been told by friends that I trust and admire… that I chose the wrong Shepard to play in picking the male Mark Meer voiced version. So I had this built up in my head to be this earth shattering experience that was going to change my perspective on the franchise. The truth is… it feels almost exactly the same to me? I notice the better graphics with the Legendary edition and better mechanics, but the voice actor doesn’t seem to really matter that much to me. I still find myself hitting space to speed up the dialog because I can read so much faster than the actor can deliver the dialog. I still have that general feeling of “yeah yeah, lets get back to the fighting” that I did with Mark Meer at the helm.
I’ve also been told that I would appreciate Kaidan Alenko more as a female character… but no he still annoys the fuck out of me. I think I might just hate Raphael Sbarge because I also hate Carth Onasi. Incoming spoilers if you have never played this game… skip the rest of this paragraph. Last night I played through Virmire and I already feel like I chose the wrong choice. Like Ashley Williams is racist as fuck but I take pleasure it telling her to shut the fuck up about it and stop being so horrible when the game gives me the option. Kaidan on the other hand never stops being this wet blanket character that I actively want to push out the airlock, and mistakes basic human decency as me wanting to snuggle up with him. Mass Effect is a game about me hanging out with a bunch of interesting Aliens and as a result I NEVER use any of the human characters in ME1. In ME2 we get Jacob and Jack which are both awesome… but still I mostly run around with a bunch of Aliens.
The Mako is much better than it was in the original release of this game… but the Mako levels are still the worst thing about the experience. Legendary edition significantly helped Mass Effect 1 feeling more in line with the rest of the franchise, but it still feels clunky but a more reasonable version of clunky. Instead of feeling like an odd throwback to an earlier time… it just sorta feels like playing a game from a B Tier studio like Spiders. The pretty is appreciated but I guess there was only so much they could do with the way the game felt and performed mechanically without doing a port to one of the newer engines.
I did apply a field of view mod to the game and you can see the difference between this screenshot and the one earlier. This game defaults to a FOV that is zoomed in way the hell too close and makes me feel claustrophobic. If you are interested the mod supports all three games, which should allow me to have a similar FOV in each of them. My basic takeaway is that I am having a lot of fun playing the game again and experience it all over with a fresh coat of paint. The sub summary is that apparently the voice actor and gender of the protagonist doesn’t matter that much to my overall experience. I couldn’t have a decent beard with “HimShep” so I really didn’t have much attachment to that version of the character or at least no more or less than I have so far with “FemmeShep”. Both were very much me playing someone else in a video game and not me creating a character that represented me.
The post Mass Effect Legendary Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
