Count_Zero

This time I’m doing a one-month belated-due-to-technical difficulties Vlog ( Vlog because I don’t want to get clobbered under ContentID) of my thoughts on the 5 things I was sold and unsold on from this last E3. Please support my Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor Member of The Console Xplosion Network: http://www.theconsolexplosion.com/ Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor/ Filed under: Video games Tagged: E3 2017, vlog

After leaving Aya, we talk to a bunch of the crew members. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

After having rescued the Moshae, we are finally able to return to Aya and explore the city on our own. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

It’s been a while since I did a review of a music documentary – the last one that comes immediately to mind is a documentary review on the career of Pink Floyd. Well, this year is the year that the Beatles concept album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band has it’s 50th anniversary, and the BBC did a documentary on the album, which also broadcast on PBS, which is where I saw it. In broad strokes, the documentary goes briefly into where The Beatles career was before the album came out, before getting into the album itself, both in terms of the mechanics of how the album was put together, and the artistic influences of the album. In particular – this is the first album the Beatles put out after they stopped doing live performances. They had experimented with the process of building an album in the studio before (in Rubber Soul), and other performers and producers had been inspired by that (as with Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and Pet Sounds). However, the thesis that the show puts forward is that Sgt. Pepper was meant to be an album that would basically justify to their fans the end of The Beatles touring – you’re going to get an album that could never be replicated live – and it’ll be worth it. The documentary from there goes more or less track-by-track through the album, with only “Fixing a Hole” being omitted from discussion, and the title track and “Lovely Rita” getting the shortest discussion time. The documentary goes in depth on the influences (getting song concepts from newspaper articles and – in the case of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” a Victorian Circus poster) and the details of how the album was put together, especially considering the recording technology of the time. Unlike most music documentaries, the presenter – Howard Goodall, is on camera for a large portion of the documentary, and as he has some musical talent himself, he uses that to illustrate particular points of the album – breaking down several musical parts into their relevant tracks, and how they overlap to get the final result. We don’t get any new interview footage with the surviving Beatles. Instead, their voices are present either through archival interview footage or through audio from the studio recording sessions. Probably the most interesting part of the documentary is a discussion of the song “Within You, Without You”, where the documentary delves into Ravi Shankar’s earlier career, George Harrison’s time with Shankar, and how the track merges Western song structure with traditional Indian instrumentation, complete with studio audio of Harrison talking with the Indian musicians as the track was laid down. The documentary makes for a really interesting portrait of the Beatles creative process, and how albums were put together in the late ’70s, making for a spectacular documentary – especially for those interested in music history, not only people who are interested in the Beatles. The documentary has yet to receive a physical release. Until then, should it come up on reruns on your local PBS station (which you should totally support), or on the BBC (for any UK readers), you should definitely check it out. Filed under: film, music Tagged: Documentary, music, pbs, The Beatles

When I reviewed the first Log Horizon book, I mentioned that were a few plot concepts that were set up in the next book in the series – a general malaise filling Akiba, along with the state of food in the world – and in turn a new discovery by Nyanta related to that. With the second installment of the series, the book dives further into that, and shifts genres somewhat. In the previous book, we learned that while living in the world of a MMO – the titular game “Log Horizon” has it’s perks – you can’t die, you’re living in a land of fantasy adventure with phenomenal powers, there’s a lot of things that suck. For starters, the food – all of the food, tastes like ash. That’s not a misspelling of “ass” – food simply doesn’t taste like anything. Further, the fact that the game is no longer really a game has put a crimp on things as well, with various bad actors causing problems throughout Akiba – though nowhere as bad as they were in the North in the last book. So, Shiroe, Nyanta, Akatsuki, and Naotsugu have to work together with several of the other guilds to put together a plan to save Akiba – a plan that (without getting into spoilers) based on the fact Nyanta has discovered how to make food taste like food, and which requires a lot of money, and will require the unity of the majority of Akiba’s guilds. The narrative is great, with author Mamare Touno, who also wrote Maoyuu Maou Yuusha, doing a great job of building up the economics of this world. After the last volume was a conventional adventure story, this gets into more of his traditional fare of a (for lack of a better term) a fantasy economic thriller. This arc generally played out the same way that it did in the anime, though the anime tells the story in a much more compressed fashion than the book does. Also, some of the character traits in the book are much more exaggerated in the anime. For example, Naotsugu makes less risque jokes, Henrietta’s obsession with Akatsuki is less creepy, and so on. As with any good light novel, it also tells a mostly self-contained story, with a few hooks set up for future works: we learn that the People of the Land – the NPCs – are now self-aware and sentient, Shiroe has started his own guild (the titular Log Horizon), and we learn a little information about the group that Shiroe and Naotsugu were part of – the “Debauchery Tea Party”. And there are still some lingering mysteries that the series can get into: How did the players get caught in this world, why were they brought here, and how can they get back. Log Horizon Book 2 is available from Amazon.com & RightStuf. Filed under: Books Tagged: Books, fantasy, light novels, Log Horizon

That last mission ended on a very heavy note, so it’s time to sit and talk with the crew. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

The time has come to rescue the Moshae – so we head off with a team to get her out. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

This time we travel into the ancient past of the Star Wars universe with Tales of the Jedi. Opening Credits: Star Wars Theme from Super Star Wars on the SNES. Closing Credits: Chiptune Cantina Band from Chiptune Inc. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope footage property of Lucasfilm Ltd., a division of the Walt Disney Corporation. Used under Fair Use. Please support my Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor Member of The Console Xplosion Network: http://www.theconsolexplosion.com/ Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor/ Filed under: comics, Star Wars Tagged: comics, Dark Horse Comics, Star Wars, Star Wars Expanded Universe

We head back to Voeld to prepare for a hostage rescue, and get lost inside a base. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

We discover that there was more to the founding of the Andromeda Initiative than we first thought. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

Probably one of the first sourcebooks put out for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was Deities and Demigods, a book with a collection of beings that would provide something for your Cleric to be, well, a cleric of. However, it doesn’t really hold up very well, particularly compared to later deity books for later editions of AD&D and D&D. The problem with the book lies with the fact that the book is very much at odds with itself. The first chapter or so of the book talks about the nature of deities, how they can be used in game, and admonitions about using the book as a de-facto monster manual to sic your players on. And then, unfortunately, the rest of the book’s descriptions of gods are written up in the same format as the Monster Manual and Fiend Folio, with the deities written up using the same stat blocks, and descriptions focused entirely on physical appearance and their battle tactics. This is a shame, because later editions of AD&D and D&D would get much more in depth of what effects deities have on player characters, in terms of their agendas, and in terms of what it means to worship them. We don’t get information on in what ways gods prefer to be worshiped (and how frequently). If my cleric of Tyr prays to his deity before every battle, will that actually get his favor (which will help my party in battle), or will that annoy the crap out of him – or is praying before every battle the default state and I will be penalized if I don’t seek his favor? By comparison, later editions of D&D put a lot less focus on the idea of the Heavens (and Hells) as the ultimate epic level dungeons, and instead put more focus on the hows and whys of worship – why would you be a cleric of this god, and how do you show reverence to this being? In particular how do you properly worship this deity in a manner that fits with the adventurer’s lifestyle? This is especially the case with the introduction of spell spheres in AD&D 2nd edition – a little bit of added crunch that tags spells with keywords that in turn are attached to various deities. Clerics who worship a particular deity get (depending on the edition and GM) a spell list related to those spheres that you are either limited to or which provided additional spells you can choose from. The 1st Edition version of Deities and Demigods, on the other hand, leaves players with significantly more grunt work to do… so much more grunt work that you’re almost better off not picking up a copy of the book and instead just researching the pantheon you want to incorporate in the game. If you want to pick up the book, the revised edition (which excises the Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythoi) is available from DriveThruRPG and the Dungeons Masters’ Guild. Filed under: Role Playing Games Tagged: AD&D, book review, Dungeons & Dragons, Role Playing Games

I enjoy a good haunted house film – like Poltergeist and the Woman in Black. When this film, adapting a novel by Richard Matheson which was in turn inspired by a Shirley Jackson novel, came up on my radar. The plot is pretty basic. An eccentric millionaire, Mr. Deutsch (Mr. German – cute), hires a selection of people with various talents to investigate a haunted house that has come into his possession, but not just any haunted house, but the ostensible “Mount Everest of Haunted Houses” – The Belasco house. The previous owner, Emeric Belasco, called “The Roaring Giant” reportedly held orgies and engaged in various other forms of debauchery before his mysterious disappearance following the deaths of everyone else in the house. A previous attempt to investigate the house in 1950 resulted in the entirety of the team being either killed or driven mad, with the exception of the team’s physical medium – Ben Fisher (Roddy McDowell). Deutsch has roped Fischer into returning to the house, along with Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), a Spiritual medium, and physicist and parapsychologist Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill). Barrett’s wife, Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), has also chosen to come along with her husband. As they investigate the house and attempt to get to the bottom of the haunting, and to hopefully “cleanse” the house, the ghost – or ghosts – within the house begin to fight back through various means. The film has an incredible (though very small) cast, with Revill, McDowell, and Franklin at the forefront. With the cast being so very small – effectively just four people, it’s important for the cast to have strong chemistry – which they do. Their performances do a remarkable job of overcoming some of the film’s other issues, especially related to effects. McDowell’s performance is particularly great – as a person who was incredibly traumatized by his experience in the last expedition, who doesn’t want to be here because he knows exactly what this house is capable of. Similarly Franklin does an excellent job putting forward Tanner as a character who is involved in this (as she’s also a minister) because she’s legitimately concerned about the souls involved in a haunting, and wants to help them pass on. That said, having seen Poltergeist and The Woman in Black, I have to say that this film has one tremendously fatal flaw – it’s just too well lit. It’s not that there aren’t scenes in shadow – there are, it’s that far too often the haunting takes place in a well lit room. This can work if you’re confident that of your haunting look good in clear lighting. Unfortunately, a lot of the effects of the poltergeist are basically stuff being thrown at the main characters from off camera which, due to the framing, lighting, and some of the continuity, makes the effects a little rough. Also, while this film has a balance between male and female members of the cast, the female characters are not treated well. Both female characters, over the course of the film, are sexually assaulted by the ghost. One is compelled to sexually come on to one of the other investigators, and another is raped as an avenue for a partial possession. A possession that, I should note, predates the release of The Exorcist. So, keep that in mind going into the film. I still thought the film was good, but it didn’t exactly scare the pants off me the way The Woman in Black did. The Legend of Hell House is available on Amazon.com on Blu-Ray and on Amazon Video. Filed under: film Tagged: film, Film Review, Horror film

We check out one more star system and return to the Nexus to do some side-quests. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

We have a couple more missions to finish on Havarl. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

This time I’m doing a Vlog-style review of the fourth Dragon Quest game, and the first of the older titles to get re-released on the DS in the US. Please support my Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor Member of The Console Xplosion Network: http://www.theconsolexplosion.com/ Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor/ Filed under: Video games, videos Tagged: Dragon Quest, Nintendo DS, Video games, video review

Finally, it’s time to take on the Havarl vault. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

We finally get the third Havarl monolith online. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

This time I’m finishing up the run of DC’s The Shadow Comics – at least the ones that I own a copy of, with a story arc that goes back to some of the character’s original pulp roots. The premise of this arc, on paper, should make for a gloriously macabre crime thriller, taking a mix of the pulp genre and combining it into the exploitation genre. This arc pits The Shadow and his agents against the Finn family, a group of brothers involved in organized crime, selling drugs, arms, and smuggling diamonds, while secretly disposing of the bodies of the people that they kill through their operations through the hot-dog plant of the one brother in the family who has gone legit and who is unaware of the rest of the family’s dirty deeds. Instead, the book turns it into a dark comedy… and it’s not funny. The Finn gang is effectively made up of a group of complete morons, with perhaps the only reason why The Shadow and his Agents haven’t mopped them up already is because they’re assuming that their opponents are competent, when instead they’re idiots, making stupid decisions. For example, a central plot event in the series has the Finn Brothers getting the bright idea, “There’s this one psychotic who thinks he’s an agent of The Shadow – let’s unleash a bunch of Hollywood Psychotics from a mental institution – put them under the control of a Libyan general (as tensions with Libya were already at a high) we’re selling guns to, and let them smoke out The Shadow.” In turn, the Libyan takes his army of psychotics and sets out on a plan to unleash a deadly chemical weapon on New York, to wipe out the city, because He’s Libyan. I’m not sure if this is better or worse than, just a few months later, Jim Starlin having Ayatollah Khomeini make The fucking Joker Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations, as part of the Death in the Family storyline. While the storyline itself is a failed farce, this arc does some things right. the first two story arcs – Howard Chaykin’s original run, and Andy Helfer’s Shadows and Light arc, felt incredibly over-crowded. They were shoving too many plots into too few of a number of issues. Here the book basically sticks with only one plot. The narrative focuses almost exclusively on the work to bring down the Finns, and once The Libyan gets involved, he also becomes the focus of the plot, with the Finns then reacting to how things have gotten out of hand, rather than driving the plot from the villainous side of things. Artist Kyle Baker does a very good job of taking over the art, following in the footsteps of Bill Sienkiewicz in the “Shadows and Light” arc. His work fits, thematically, with Sienkiewicz’s work, but with his own twists. It does become overly comedic at points, but that’s more or less a reflection of the story. That said, if you’re a fan of the pulps, or The Shadow in general, this story will probably rub you the wrong way, as Baker’s writing, especially in this comic, has that vibe of “I think this character and this comic are stupid, and so I will write the character accordingly.” On the one hand, it’s better than just not caring, but on the other hand, considering that The Shadow as a character can and has had interesting dramatic stories told with them, I can’t help but feel that potential is squandered here. This arc ends with The Shadow dead, and his sons taking his body back home with him returning attached to a cyborg body, while his agents attempt to carry on without him – at which point everyone gave up on the comic and canceled it, so I’ll stop here. If for some reason you want to read this mess, it’s available from Amazon.com. Filed under: comics Tagged: comics, DC Comics, The Shadow

I’ve previously covered the first two books in Martha Wells’ Books of the Raksura series – The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea. I’ve finished reading the third installment of the series, and I want to give my thoughts on that. Well, in short, if the Books of the Raksura series ended here, I’d be okay with that – not because this book is bad, or because I’m not interested in more stories with these characters. It’s because this book really ends with a satisfying feeling, with a sense of closure, though with some new questions, while also answering some of the major questions from previous books. The Siren Depth starts off with Indigo Cloud getting further settled in their Mountain Tree a few months after retrieving the seed in the events of The Serpent Sea, with protagonist Moon attempting to have a clutch with Jade, sister-queen to the court, and who has claimed Moon as her consort. However, to the surprise of almost everyone -word comes a neighboring court that they have discovered Moon’s home court, Opal Night, (which he had presumed was destroyed when he was a fledgling), and when they found it, Moon’s court announced that they want him back. Further, they turn out to be kind of a big deal, so Jade can’t do the Raksuran equivalent of telling them to take a flying leap, without going through steps to contest their claim. Before that can happen, Moon ends up getting to know his birth court, and ultimately finds out what lead to the destruction of his home and his abandonment. However, a chain of events will also lead to a discovery on why the Fell have been breeding cross-breed Fell/Raksura (as we saw in The Cloud Roads). The Siren Depths, much as The Cloud Roads, puts a lot of narrative focus on Raksuran society, which is probably why it makes for such a satisfactory book-end to this first trilogy of books. In The Cloud Roads, Moon knew exactly fuck-and-all about not only Raksuran society, but Raksura as a species, and his journey of discovery mirrored that of the reader. By this book he’s much more familiar with Raksuran society – and so are we as an audience, but our familiarity is through a smaller court, and though we’ve had glimpses of larger courts (as we had in The Serpent Sea), we – and Moon – have no experience of those family dynamics. Thus, we get to see those political dynamics played on a much larger scale. Wells paints an incredibly vivid picture of Opal Night, building on what we’ve learned from the last two books to set up the dynamics of a court which is both familiar but also very different. We also see a bunch more about Fell “society”, with a climax in an environment that, much like the Mountain Tree and the Leviathan in The Serpent Sea, I am probably going to have to yoink for an RPG campaign at some point. I absolutely enjoyed this book – I already have the fourth book in the series and fully intend to read it, but had Wells chosen to stop here, I would have been okay with that. While everything isn’t tied up in a nice little bow or anything, there’s a sense of closure here that makes this a good place to wrap up. The Siren Depths is available in print, Kindle, and Audiobook editions from Amazon.com. Filed under: Books Tagged: book review, Books, Books of the Raksura, fantasy

We have to deal with some very xenophobic Angarans. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

We unlock a new area of the map as we try to bring the Vault back online. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

This time we’re covering issue #51 of Nintendo Power for August of 1993 “Goof Troop” Footage Courtesy of World of Longplays PushingUpRoses’ Review of King’s Quest V for PC Watch out for Fireballs Episode on Zombies Ate My Neighbors Please support my Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor Member of The Console Xplosion Network: http://www.theconsolexplosion.com/ Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor/ Games Reviewed: Street Fighter II Turbo – Capcom Zombies Ate My Neighbors – Konami Alien 3 (SNES) – LJN Goof Troop – Capcom Speedy Gonzalez – Sunsoft Star Trek: The Next Generation (GB) – Spectrum Holobyte Jurassic Park (NES) – Ocean King’s Quest V – Konami Filed under: Video games Tagged: Game Boy, NES, Nintendo Power Retrospective, Retro Gaming, SNES, Video games

In order to figure out how to fix Havarl’s ecosystem, we have to consult with the Sages – which means climbing a tall building, which means platforming. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

We find some of the survivors from the Turian Arc, and help tag some of their debris, so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Filed under: Let's Play Tagged: Let's Play, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Video games

I don’t know if you know this, but I like tabletop RPGs. I really like tabletop RPGs. So, when I learned of the massive amount of scholarship going around RPGs and the history thereof, I got really excited. Though not the first book on the topic that I picked up (that being Of Dice And Men, which I reviewed in the fourth issue of my fanzine) this is one of the first, and one that warrants some discussion. Empire of the Imagination is a biography of E. Gary Gygax – co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons along with Dave Arneson. There are two competing documentaries on Gary in the works, but as none of those have been completed yet, this is our first real look at Gary as a person and his life story. I’m not going to recap the book itself, but instead get into the presentation. The book is set up in a series of chunks, going through Gary’s life from his childhood in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where TSR was founded and GenCon was originally based, to his death. In-between sections, there are interludes semi-fictionalizing aspects of Gary’s life in the style of a fantasy epic – which are in turn covered in more serious and grounded detail in the following section. Having never had the opportunity to meet Gary, the book gave a very good portrait of Gygax as a person and as a creator, keeping the focus entirely on Gary. When it comes to Gary’s creative output, the book focuses on his time at TSR, both in terms of game books, novels (the Gord the Rogue series), and attempts to get a Dungeons & Dragons film started, to be directed by John Boorman and starring Orson Welles. In particular, the book gives a whole bunch of attention to the books Gary read that lead him to create D&D. Also, the book gets into the early sessions Gary ran as he was creating the game, with the sessions in the Castle Greyhawk campaign, both for some of what would become the first employees of TSR, as well as some of Gary’s kids. However, after Gary’s forced departure from the company he founded, the biography moves more into more broad strokes. It gives me the impression that author Michael Witwer felt that the part readers care the most about is the material leading up to D&D, and Gary’s ouster from TSR, and nobody cares after that. That’s kind of frustrating for me, because that is the part I want to hear about the most, because aside from the games Gary ran for his friends and family before D&D became popular, that’s the part that’s told the least. I did enjoy this book, and I’d definitely say that this was a story that bore telling, but there were little chunks of it that I wish got more attention. Empire of Imagination is available in Kindle, hardcover, paperback, and audiobook editions from Amazon.com. Filed under: Books, Role Playing Games Tagged: biography, book review, non-fiction, Role Playing Games