Game Review: Far Cry 3: The Co-Op Campaign

I often subscribe to the "if you don't have anything nice to say..." mentality but when I sat down this Thanksgiving weekend with my friend Keegan to play coop video games for the few days of free time we both had this year (while recovering from the flu) we had no reason to suspect that we were in for anything but good times. We blew through the coop mode of the new Splinter Cell, we rocked Terrorist Hunts in a personal favorite, Rainbow 6: Vegas, and then we excitedly set up the Co Op Campaign for one of our mutually favorite games of all time, Far Cry 3. For those of you who've never played it, Far Cry 3 is an intense immersive journey of survival. It features one of the best video game villains of all time, a strong story that even Zero Punctuation gave praise to, one of the best free-roam stealth systems I've played, realistic mechanics for wildfires, terrifying and detailed wildlife, stealth-kills, and is a top-notch first person survival-shooter. Lured in by the promise of a "completely new story" and with the high expectations given to us by the main game and subsequent release of Blood Dragon we didn't expect that the co op mode could be anything but a great time.

About as deep as the plot gets

Plot: The introduction video that plays when you start the co op mode is very much in the vein of Far Cry 3, showcasing the main characters being sold out by their former employer, a ship captain known as The Captain. In short, the Captain took their money, sold the main characters to pirates, and left them high and dry. This much is learned from the video. What the Captain didn't expect the main characters to do was survive the pirate attack, get armed, team up, and cut a bloody path of carnage that would make Rambo blush. I found the introduction video to be exciting, enjoyable, and an indication of good times to come. Keegan and I seemed equally pumped and it came as a large surprise to us to find out that the video would be the most plot-intensive part of the entire game. 

Each of the six co-op missions has a plot, sort of, but the plot really doesn't seem that well thought out, executed, or relevant to the main story of "getting revenge." It sort of just felt like a bunch of pirates incidentally got between the main characters and their prey, the Captain, so the main characters decided to murder them all for laughs and go through places they didn't really need to go through to accomplish their common goal. Each of the six missions, including the last one, didn't really feel like a quest for revenge and felt more like an attempt at finding less than creative ways to murder pirates on an island. Even the last mission where you actually get a go at the Captain (who is entirely absent throughout the other missions) didn't feel fulfilling in the least, and though I won't spoil the ending for you, I'll say that I felt cheated of any true resolution. The "interesting" characters that you get to play as never get developed further than skin deep and you shouldn't expect any insight into their lives or back stories beyond what you can find on the Far Cry 3 Wiki.

As for the four main characters you play as [left to right]: 

Callum: the Scottish thug. I honestly couldn't understand anything he said except the curse words and found him useful only as comic relief. He lacked any sort of real likability and I had no idea what his personal goals were or why he was even working with the other characters. It seems like he would honestly just ditch them at first opportunity and I was surprised that he was playable after the first mission.

Leonard: the crooked cop. I found this sexist thug to be devoid of any value or interest whatsoever. He's greedy, selfish, and while he delivers one of the best lines in the game in the final act I felt no progression or motivation for him beyond "I can't wait to kill this guy and be rich," which was boring.

Mikhail: the Russian hitman. Mikhail was the most interesting character in the Co Op because he had things the other characters all seemed to lack... Relatability and a conscience. Mikhail is ex-mob with a wife and daughter who just wants to start a new life. Sadly beyond the introduction you really don't hear anything more about his life.

Tisha: the ex-soldier. On the surface, Tisha seems like she's going to be relatable like Mikhail, a soldier with a tough upbringing who left the Marines for doing the right thing in a bad situation. However, where Mikhail quietly kills his prey and seems to get no real enjoyment out of the things he has to do to get off the island Tisha seems to relish in the violence and goes from noble Marine martyr to bloodthirsty thug. I felt like this was one of the biggest areas where the creative team really dropped the ball.

Without spoiling the "story" there is also a 5th character, one you don't play as who acts as your guide to the island. I found this character to be one dimensional, stupid, slow, greedy, and entirely unhelpful. There were a few times (like when he ran me over with a truck on accident or when he decided the best course of action would be to drive straight through the enemy encampment at 5 miles per hour) that I questioned if he was really on our side and why he wasn't cut from the game entirely.

The most exciting moment in the entire game...
Is in the first mission.

"Freedom/Gameplay": For a franchise known for allowing a player to accomplish a given task a dozen different ways and allowing players to explore acres of open-world environment the coop mode can only be described as a FF XIII style hallway from which you cannot possibly avoid conflict with every enemy on the map. Keegan and I are both traditionally stealth shooters, running through the tall grass with silenced scoped rifles, pistols, and a knife and killing only as many enemies as are required to accomplish a given task, if any at all. Given the fact that you're not allowed to walk more than a few paces off the main road for cover (you lose if you get caught "leaving the map" kind of like playing Marco Polo in a narrow swimming pool), the fact that you're not allowed to leave an area until you kill every person in that area (literally), this tactic is entirely nonviable. They also reduced the effectiveness of close combat attacks, which you can normally chain in FC3 and do a number of fairly awesome things with.

You start each level by selecting one of four basic layouts: Silent, Assault, Close-Assault, and Sniper, and beyond the ability to pick up the weapons of dead enemies (mostly AKs or weapons from other layouts), you're entirely unable to evolve or adapt your loadout. This is particularly bothersome when you encounter the armored bad guys who can take 3 sniper rifle shots to the head, 4 frag grenades, an unlimited supply of normal gunfire to anywhere but the head, and are all but immune to rocket launchers (which earn the "most useless" award for FC3 Coop) and are immune to futile close combat attacks. None of the guns except for the sniper rifle come with a scope either, and only two classes can use grenades. 

There are basically 4 enemy types: Gunners, molitov throwers, snipers, and men armed with machetes. They recycle the same few models throughout, throw dozens of each at you for each of the 6 levels with an occasional dog or armored heavy gunner/flamethrower, and that describes every enemy in the co op... All of them... No joke... While the mechanics of the game were mostly fluid, matching FC3, the removal of character evolution, stealth, scopes, and multiple ways to accomplish a task were infuriating. The worst moment for us was when we were told to "sneak through a base", we snuck through the base without being spotted, and then were told we needed to kill everyone in the base to proceed through the secret tunnel because Callum just felt like killing everyone. This is the sort of BS the game throws at you.

The joke here is that there are no animals in the Co Op,
so this scene isn't a part of the game...

Feel: The FC3 Coop is clunky and extremely awkward. By mission 4, the only reason we were still playing was so we could see if there was any sort of triumph felt in finally killing the Captain, whom the main characters talked about but whom we never saw. The missions felt like they weren't all that well thought through as the general idea for each mission was "sneak" into this area by killing everyone on the way there, push a button that operates something noisy, and defend the spot for a few minutes while the noisy thing happens. Of course there was the occasional mission of "pick up this object that suddenly causes enemies to spawn all around you and bring it across the map by walking down the middle of the road." Between the drudge of shoot-em-up missions were moments of relief akin to mini-games where you and your friends compete to see who can shoot more people with a sniper rifle, who can drive a jet ski better, or who can drive a jeep better. They felt awkward but were preferable over playing through another shoot-em-up mission that would have filled the space.

The FC3 Coop was incredibly glitchy. 

Even though we only played through it once, here's an example of what we had to endure to complete it:

The enemy spawning was abysmal and I'd often watch enemies appear feet in front of me, just in time to murder me with a 1 hit kill machete to the face.

After each checkpoint, our guns wouldn't reload.

The guns often glitched and vanished from thin air, making it look like we were only holding a barrel.

The textures and lighting as we went indoors and outdoors would often clash, get confused, and reverse on us, giving us a dark cave suddenly lit with brighter than day lighting.

The truck we had to escort often would drive too slow, too fast (at one point running me over), or just stopped altogether, forcing us to restart the mission.

Enemies we'd kill would often continue talking or shooting guns during the closing cinemas to each mission, so we couldn't hear the scarce dialogue of the main characters.

A key zip-line ceased to be for my character, forcing me to fall 30 feet to my death on jagged rocks from which I could not be rescued. We had to use the zipline on the right after restarting from the checkpoint, which was about 10 minutes of gameplay back.

Art: This is actually the area I have much praise for the FC3 coop. While it's a glitch hallway style shooter it had some really solid visual character design. The main team felt unique visually, and while they lacked depth they looked cool and had good voice acting. For the most part the visuals in game matched the quality of FC 3, which is great, though for some reason the water seemed to be visually lacking during one of the mini games (perhaps just another glitch?). The music was unmemorable for the most part which I feel is a negative in a game that linear, and the audio design failed in that the world didn't feel truly like it was a part of the outdoors. There was also no visual or audio cue when you killed someone unless it was a Kill-Assist, which made progression frustrating... Correction, there is an audio cue, but it's often muffled by, and seems like it's part of the games soundtrack.

Closing Thoughts: They took out stealth, exploration, wildlife, wildfire, wind, close combat, the bow, arrows, scopes, and the plot. Shy of the name and tropical setting it didn't really feel very much like a Far Cry game at all. It was unenjoyable to play, unfilling to complete, and more glitchy than I thought to expect from such a large franchise. While it started off a great concept with an intriguing introduction video I can't recommend this game to anyone except truly hardcore fans of coop shooters devoid of plot or completionist fanatics of the Far Cry franchise.

Disclaimer: I understand that it's a huge undertaking to make a video game. I understand that I don't have any of the talents required to make a video game like Far Cry 3. I understand that rough timelines, budget cuts, and general corporate griminess can lead to a great idea turning into something less than stellar. I mean no disrespect towards the makers of this game with my review, nor do I hold any of them responsible for the problems I have with it as it very well could have been the product of corporate resource mismanagement, clashing ideas at the highest level (even a stellar team can't make conflicting ideas from their bosses into something good), or some other unknowable constrictions placed on the creative team.

Distant Worlds (A Final Fantasy Orchestra)

Thoughts on Distant Worlds.

Back in March there was an announcement that the Final Fantasy orchestra known as Distant Worlds would be performing in Miami, so I purchased tickets the same day and eagerly waited 8 months to see the first orchestral production of my adult life. (Disclaimer: I saw an orchestra when I was 7 but have long since developed an appreciation for music) The four hour drive to Miami wasn't too bad and by the time we arrived, roughly an hour and thirty minutes before the performance, over a hundred people were already waiting outside the building dressed in sharp suits, nice dresses, cosplay, and the occasional person in regular day-clothes. As the event was a special date for my girlfriend and I, and as Distant Worlds is an orchestra, we opted to dress sharply which fit in with the population, generally made up of people in their 20's and 30's. We brought our 3DS, which many other well dressed people openly sported, and were not disappointed when we acquired 50 or 60 street passes before the doors even opened. It was a truly classy gathering of nerds.

We were briefly interviewed for a website, got our tickets from Will Call, picked up physical copies of the Distant Worlds I & II CD's and found our seats near the front of the stage. As we chatted and watched the people around us, as one by one musicians slowly took the stage. The musicians seemed generally older, in their 40's or 50's perhaps, and my mind spun as I heard them each practicing parts from various songs that have been ingrained in my subconscious for decades. I heard a brass instrument practicing Man with the Machine Gun, a violin play a part of Clash at the Big Bridge, and for once in my life, these people were actually practicing the songs I thought I heard them practicing, not simply something that sounded similar.

As the stage nearly filled I noticed a man in a man holding a violin who the other musicians seemed to look at for cues. I suspected that he was the local coordinator for Mr. Arnie Roth, the conductor of Distant Worlds. I was once told that orchestras don't generally physically travel from show to show, but that a few key members do, and that the rest of the performers are locals who specialize in being very good at learning and performing the music of another conductor. This seemed to add up, because most of the musicians looked local (as opposed to from Japan or Stockholm), and the excitement on the face of the coordinator was plain to me. It seemed like he'd been waiting for this day for a very long time and was proud of his orchestra. As a performing musician I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of instruments on the stage. An entire music store worth of string instruments, a drum set, brass section, wind section, and a harp! I silently contemplated how difficult I thought it was to arrange a song written for the 4 layers of a Nintendo cartridge to fit a 5 or 9 piece band, much less an orchestra of that size. In one brief moment, seemingly out of nowhere, Nobuo Uematsu took to the stage and the roar of cheers was almost deafening, pulling me from thought. As Uematsu walked back stage and Arnie Roth took the main stage there was more cheering, midst Arnie's calm but proud (in the good way) introduction to the music and the orchestra.

For those of you who don't know Arnie Roth, he's the guy who put together Distant Worlds, Play! (a video game symphony), and is involved with the band Mannhein Steamroller (do yourself a favor and check out Creatures of Levania). He's also collaborated with many well known video game composers and is known for staying true to the composers and to their music. Though most of the audience didn't notice until he was formally acknowledged, Uematsu himself humbly sat in the 10th or 15th row of the general audience to watch the performance unfold. 

Arnie Roth & Nobuo Uematsu

After a moment of powerful silence the first song began, a medley of songs from Final Fantasy 1 through 4 called "Medley 2002." The music, the combined efforts of dozens of talented musicians working in perfect tandem, was truly magical in quality. It's a shame that words like "masterful" and "perfect" are as overused as they are within our modern vocabulary because they truly describe what I saw and heard. This talent, combined with the fact that the songs being performed were incredibly important in me personally caused me to literally tear up and miss out on the well executed video that accompanied the first medley. I should mention that the videos throughout the evening were a mix of concept art by Yoshitaka Amano, gameplay, and cinematic footage that fit the theme and game of the music being played. 

A list of songs I can remember being played include the Medley 2002 (which includes the FFI: Overworld theme and FFI: Matoya the Witch), FF IV: Battle with the Four Fiends, FF VIII: Eyes On Me, The Final Fantasy Victory Theme, FF VI: The Phantom Forest, FF X: To Zanarkand, FF XII: Kiss Me Good-bye, FF VII: Opening - Bombing Mission, FF VII: Aerith's Theme, FF XI: Vana'diel March Medley, FF VIII: Man with the Machine Gun, FF IX: Melodies of Life, FF V's Main Theme: Ahead on our way, FF VIII: Don't be Afraid, A Chocobo Medley that included what I think was Mambo de Chocobo, an amazing new Battle Medley that included Clash on the Big Bridge, Fight With Seymour, and FF VII's Battle Theme (Which Arnie called Still More Fighting), and the Final Fantasy Main Theme (the Credits roll).

Highlights for the evening included first class performances by Susan Calloway (the singer songwriter who Nobuo Uematsu personally hand picked to work with), a completely unexpected arpeggio added to the Phantom Forest, and the entire battle medley (which was amazing). In one of the most beautiful songs of the evening Nobuo Uematsu himself came on stage to play keyboard as Arnie Roth played lead violin for what we were told was the world premiere of Distant Worlds' FFVI: Dark World. It was hauntingly powerful and it's the only rendition of the song I've ever heard outside the game. Another pleasant surprise was an encore of One Winged Angel where Arnie informed us that they didn't have a choir so the audience would get to sing lyrics with Uematsu himself! It was a larger than life moment where not everyone was sure if he was joking or serious. It wasn't until the end of the first chorus that most people actually started singing but the underlying message was clear... Distant Worlds would not have been possible without the support of the people in the audience, or the greater audience that's supported Square Enix's fantastic franchise, Final Fantasy. There was a lot of excitement in the room (two people got engaged during the show, earning a cool thumbs up from Arnie), and though those present were from many walks of life we all shared in a common interest, a passion for the music of Nobuo Uematsu.

Myself and Kaitlin
with Susan, Arnie, and Uematsu

Sitting so close to the performers I was able to occasionally hear Arnie humming parts of the songs aloud, see the growing of a subtle grin on the face of the coordinator (the gentleman with the violin) each time the audience cheered, the sound of Nobuo Uematsu solo-whistling the Victory Theme, and the words that were spoken that didn't reach the microphone. Words of congratulations between Arnie, Susan, Uematsu, and the coordinator. Words of thanks to the audience that never reached the microphone.

Kaitlin and I were able to meet and congratulate the trio after the concert, still glowing with joy (which is amazing considering Arnie had been conducting for over two hours!). They signed our CD's, took a picture with us, and thanked us for coming to see the show. Having an appreciation for what Arnie had put together, for Susan's talent, and for Uematsu's profound influence on my life, I wanted to say more but I completely choked up upon meeting them and instead of "thank you for one of the best nights of my life" I was only able to get out the words "thank you." Before I knew it, we were already out the door, back in the car, back on the highway, and back home. Distant Worlds Miami was an experience I will never forget and one that I hope many more people will get to enjoy.

Gaming Review: Playstation 4

Note: Feel free to skip below to the picture of the PS4 if you don’t want a story.

Winter 1997

It feels like ages ago when the Playstation first came out in 1994. I’d looked at magazines article about it, played one at a friend’s house, begged my parents for one (with Final Fantasy VII), and somehow, in 1997 I was fortunate enough to get one for Hanukah… FF VII the following night of Hanukah… and a memory card the night after that (still Hanukah)… You can see that my parents have a good sense of humor. When I first turned on the Sony Playstation I was impressed at the graphics, the flashy visuals on my demo disc, the audio CD-playing capabilities (the first instance of a gaming console that did something that wasn’t directly video game related), the quality and diversity of the music on the games I subsequently played, and the added depth and storytelling capabilities this new machine could produce. I experienced fear through Resident Evil, sadness and frustration through Final Fantasy VII, and I loved every moment of it. Though the controller was strange, and the whole external memory card thing was a new and frustrating concept in the N64 era, I was willing to look past this for games like Tekken 3, Parappa The Rapper, Metal Gear Solid, and Resident Evil 3.

Driving to school in my tank during the PS2 Era.
It was a different time...

By the time announcements were being made for a Playstation 2 I was well aware of just how significant of an upgrade it would be. Playstation 2 games looked significantly better than anything the Nintendo 64 was capable of, the upgrade to dual shock controllers meant the FPS was now a viable genre on the console (as opposed to N64 and PC only), and I’d already had my sights on Red Faction, the first game that advertised a “completely destructible environment.” There were even talks of the PS2 being able to one day play games online somehow but almost no one seemed that interested in that feature at the time. As I was still young and gaming hadn’t really become a mainstream thing, my parents somehow acquired one and completely surprised me on Hanukah with a PS2 and Red Faction (in one night because the PS2 didn’t come with a demo disc), followed by a memory card (the following night), and for a second time Sony raised the bar on what we could expect from video games. This was a clear improvement over the Playstation and is widely viewed as one of the most successful consoles ever made. Even well into the early life of the PS3 massive hits like God of War II were still being released on the PS2 and I’ll fondly remember it for its broad diversity of inexpensive games.

Cue the Playstation 3, which I had been hearing about even before rumors were being whispered in my social circle. It, combined with its competitor: the Xbox 360, would truly be the next generation of gaming, complete with cutting edge graphics, internal memory, online gaming that worked, social elements like “Trophies”, a wireless controller that didn’t eat AA batteries in under a day, and the ability to cure cancer (through the Folding@Home application everyone was encouraged to download)! As a poor college student I really wasn’t able to afford the PS3 until well after the preorder units were sold out, so I did what I thought few others would do and camped in line outside my local Best Buy for 3 days to pick one up.

Happy Folks with new PS3's
(Dan on the far right)

The experience of the line could be described as a cold Florida winter, complete with hot Florida afternoons, sunburn, mosquitoes, and plenty of rain. Even though I was 23^rd in line (The first person in line waited 7 days!) I was able to keep my spirits up because I was there with my friend Daniel, and a few other people I knew from college. We somehow got electric power, finished our finals papers (it was finals week), occasionally played Playstation 2 games on one person’s generator, read books, camped in literal tents, ate food out of cans, and shared stories around the light of a mosquito repelling wick. The memories from that week will always stay with me, especially combined with the news that I’d passed my calculus final which I’d taken just before leaving school to wait in line. Though most of the people in that line sold their PS3’s for a quick buck, Dan and I lovingly kept our PS3s. Since the initial release I’m told that PS3’s are no longer backwards compatible, but mine still is, a treasure and testament to my trial. A few weeks later I was also able to pick up another PS3 for my brother-in-law, Frank (one of my friends subsequently got hired by Best Buy and told me when the shipments were), as it was apparently impossible to get a PS3 in the state of New York.

It’s hard for me to realize just how long ago the PS3 release was because in many ways that winter in 2006 was the beginning of my adult life, so as people started mentioning rumors of a Next Generation of gaming consoles I’ll admit that I was entirely uninterested. The graphics from the Playstation 3 already impressed me, and I was content with the controller’s decent layout, the integration of blue-ray, internet services, and the free online network (PSN).

To clarify why I'm a bit Sony biased: In addition to not having to shell out $15/month for a PSN+ subscription just for Netflix I often prefer(ed?) to play games on the PS3 over the Xbox 360 because somewhere between Rainbow 6: Vegas, R6V2, Uncharted, God of War, Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed 2, Dead Space, Demon’s Souls, Battlefield 3, and countless PS1/PS2 games I can still play on my PS3, an Xbox controller just feels foreign to me. I should mention that I also own an Xbox 360, play it with some regularity, and I'm not someone who only likes Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft products. They all have unique aspects I appreciate.

An actual slide from the Sony Playstation 4 E3 Presentation

As someone who’s been playing and loving Playstation games for over a decade I decided to give Sony a chance to explain why they wanted to phase out a system I thought was already pretty good in favor of one that wouldn’t be backwards compatible (even for new PS3 games!), and finally watched the various reports from E3. Despite being one of the most painfully one-sided “debates” (the Xbox One presentation vs the Playstation 4 presentation) in gaming history I tried to remove myself from the extraneous information (SONY SUCKS! XBOX SUCKS! Etc.) and focus on what the new generation of consoles meant. 

The new generation?

With a virtually identical lineup of games (I’m not a fan of zombie games), a $100 price tag difference, the lack of video camera (I’m not a big fan of having a video camera that’s attached to the internet in my bedroom), and a controller that I prefer, I decided that I was going to go with the Playstation 4.

The Playstation 4 promised:

•  Better Graphics.
• A larger storage space on the Hard Drive (from 60gb to “500”gb [actually closer to 410gb])
• More processing power [speed]. (roughly 2.5 times more)
• More Memory [another component of speed]… Than my computer.*
• An improved online network (PSN+).
• Easier online interactivity with friends through screen streaming/sharing integration.
• New games that my PC can’t run (Dragon Age: Inquisition, Thief, Watch Dogs, etc)

*I should clarify here that I’m not a huge PC gamer and that beyond Starcraft 2 at low-spec my computer has serious issues running most games.

Victory!

I didn’t see that huge of an improvement in the graphics from the PS3 to PS4 (or 360 to Xbox One for that matter) in the videos, didn’t have much money, and felt like I could live with what I had (Pokemon on the 3DS!!) until either Dragon Age or Thief came out, so I didn’t plan to get a Playstation 4. However, a week before the release of the PS4 I got an urgent message from my sister asking if I could use my awesome contacts to pick up a PS4 for Frank (the same Frank). I told her my friend had been fired from Best Buy years ago but that I’d stand in line for her on the release day to pick one up. The day before I stood in line, my sister (who has a track record of being awesome) told me to pick one up for myself too as a Happy Hanu-Christma-Ka-birthday-thank-you present. So, at about 5pm on release day my girlfriend and I went to Walmart and asked where the line was. We were surprised to find that we were the first ones in line! It seems that preorders were managed much better for this generation of games, that they made more of them to go around, and that people who really wanted one didn’t have to quit their jobs to pick one up. A mere 7 hours of waiting (indoors!) later we walked away with two Playstation 4’s! Because we are responsible adults we refrained from trying to play one of them until after work on Friday. 

The following is my report:

Photo by Mon Dean

The first thing that impressed me was the size of the Playstation 4 and its sleek design. Half glossy/reflective-black, half flat-black, and half the size of the original Playstation 3 it’s aesthetically pleasing and something you’ll WANT to showcase. Though people have already made fun of it for a supposed “wobbling issue”, unless you live directly next to a train station or on a boat the average person won’t notice that it wobbles slightly when intentionally wobbled. When I plugged it in, a colored light crossing the top of the PS4 caught my attention and the guide book informed us that the color of light is used to indicate different things, like if it’s overheating. The Playstation 4 controller is also a significant improvement over the Playstation 3 controller, offering improved triggers, better grip, a touch pad, a “share” button (that allows you to easily share your screen with friends or the internet), and a few features that require a PS4 video camera attachment to use. It's hard to quantify in words just how much better this controller is so I found a picture:

The new controller

Though there was a “Day 1” patch that took all of 5 minutes to download/install and a bunch of terms and conditions to agree to, I was ready to play in under ten minutes from plugging it in. However, an issue with the PSN not working prevented me from logging into my old PSN account. In this age it’s to be expected that a launch console might not have working internet capabilities on the day of its release (like Diablo 3 or the Sims), so I was impressed that it was up and fully operational by Saturday morning. Luckily you don’t need the PSN to play games, and gaming happens to be the reason I wanted a PS4 in the first place. Regarding the basic interface, they’ve condensed a lot of the menus that used to be scatted across my PS3 “desktop,” like putting all of the video viewing services (Huloo, Netflix, etc) into one tab. It’s fairly convenient and while subtle these are the sorts of things that made me feel good about the PS4.

Once I was able to log in I took a few minutes to also look at the PSN+ (the PS4 comes with a 1 month free subscription to the Playstation Network +), and felt like it was almost identical to the way it was when subscribed on a Playstation 3. This was the only technical “shortcoming” I’ve experienced thus far in the things that were promised though I’ll admit I’m not much of an online gamer so this has little effect on my opinion of the system. However, despite the PSN+ requiring a monthly fee, Netflix and other video-services do not require you to subscribe to the PSN+ fee to be used. This was a surprise and a clear advantage over the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, which both require you to pay for a Gold Subscription each month (~$15) in addition to your monthly Netflix/stream service fee.

IN GAME GRAPHICS!

The only game I own for the Playstation 4 is Assassin’sCreed: Black Flag so I have a limited perspective to share. For starters, the notorious Assassin’s Creed Series loading times were dramatically reduced. I can’t begin to express how happy this made me. When the first loading screen for the vast open world appeared and went away in under 15 seconds I understood that even without vastly superior graphics the PS4 is a vast improvement over the last generation. Once the world loaded, most of the important visuals of the game, the water, the scenery, and the weather looked fantastic! Thought the character models often resembled good PS3-level graphics (which isn’t a bad thing at all) I noticed subtle improvements to detail like actually having stray pieces of hay fall off the main character after brushing through a hay pile, or splinters of wood flying off a boat after it gets battered with chain-shot. I also noticed that the backgrounds were actual locations you could visit, as opposed to two dimensional painted pieces of scenery!

Who knows what new adventures await?

It’s just the start of the new generation so don’t know if the Playstation 4 will show as vast an improvement in graphics as the jump from the launch PS3 games to the latest releases, but I’ll attest that I’m already happy with how it looks, the huge reduction in load times, the capability for a higher particle/model count, and the improved controller. While there are probably people who will knit pick at this generation of consoles for one small thing or another there is no doubt in my mind that the Playstation 4 is the best console I’ve played. Though it doesn’t boast an enormous array of titles, the ones available are massive blockbusters that will easily take as much time to complete as Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario 64, Luigi’s Mansion, or a Halo game (the major launch titles from previous generations). I’ve already started having a good time and I think that the vast majority of people who get one will feel the same way.

For a more detailed review on the PS4 check out this page.
To read about how they made the PS4 check out this article.

Comic Production: Editing & Art Direction

"Work Harder!"
An early concept by Adam Cartwright

We're only 8 days into November (at the time of writing this) and I know I've already spent well over 30 hours editing the comic book series. We're still storyboarding the final third of the series, and while I can't change a whole lot about what I've written, I've been asked to go through and revise all of the dialogue in the series with a fine-tooth comb, character by character. So I've had to go through the script, character by character, and modify each person's speech to be unique from the others. Most of our characters come from different places in society, don't have a very diverse vocabulary, and generally won't use words with more than three syllables, while others never use conjunctions, or intentionally use big words to confuse everyone else and take advantage of them.

More complexity is added to the situation because the world we've created is extremely phonetic, literal, foreign (different planet), and has to lack all modern idioms/references. So as I scour the pages of the script for instances of "makes sense", "make sure", "make yourself at home", etc, i'm also looking out for things in the social context of our series, like the various perceptions of how to measure time, how numbers are perceived/measured, or if a character believes in evil/good or moral ambiguity. I also have to avoid any modern terms or phrases like "fish in a barrel," "bull crap," or anything else that refers to plants or animals because they don't exist in the comic. It was a surprisingly more difficult task than initially expected and much of the speech patterns feel truly foreign to English. I had to create rules for a phonetic low-class language early on to make it understandable, while still not resembling good English, and remaining phonetically true to how I'd like the words spoken. For example, one character almost never uses "the", instead opting for " a'." While I could have opted for 'da (as in, 'da bomb) instead of a' the character doesn't use the "D" sound much, so it wasn't true to the phonetic rule. Hopefully what I've got passes the final editor's approval and is easy enough to understand. This sentence summarizes much of my work, how "I brought some mercenaries here as insurance to make sure that didn't happen" becomes "Got some friends here ta’ make sure ‘at didn’ happen."

Tattoos for Tarot

On the production side, I generally look at the last week's art and mark things that need to be changed. These are things like making sure that everything in the script that was important was included (continuity), that excess frames are cut, that characters don't look stiff, that with no knowledge of the script I as a reader can understand the visual motions happening in the scene without explanation, and that a given characters' expressions and body language fit the character. We've been working on concepts and thumbnails (basically storyboards) for the last few months so it's important that I suggest large artistic revisions before we get to the sketching phase. Our methodology is admittedly abnormal in the regard that we're working to finish the storyboards for the entire series before we move on to the sketching phase but otherwise we're following a fairly traditional model. 

Effective Pacing?
That is the question

Pacing is another one of those tough spots that separates a good artist from a good sequential artist. There is a balance between cutting a scene short versus dragging it out for too long and it's the difference between an interested readership, boredom, and being confusing. It's also fairly hard to convey subtle motion gestures like a "nod" in sequential art without spending too much time on them, so you need to improvise around certain gestures. Here's an example of the sort of things that sequential artists think about.

Illustrate a character picking up and eating an apple.

Idea 1 

Frame of the character eating an apple.

We skipped half of the job by not illustrating the character picking up the apple. Was it important to show them picking up an apple? Maybe not, but if so, the reader has no idea where the apple came from and there is not enough information in the single frame (without additional points of reference) to assess much of anything about it's origin. Perhaps the character was carrying it, perhaps it was in his/her pocket, perhaps they just found it. Most readers will assume it's clean because the character is eating it, unless the character itself looks dirty. However, this example has not conveyed a character picking up AND eating an apple, just the eating part.

Idea 2 

Frame of an apple, close up. 

Frame of character eating an identical apple.

This is still not very effective because we don't know where the apple that the character is eating came from. We are left to assume that the apple is the same one from the closeup frame (background can help sell this idea) or else the artist likely would not have focused on it for a full frame... Unless it's an apple not yet consumed (still in the background), implying that the character is eating many apples and that perhaps something bad/good will happen when they reach the one from the closeup. Poison apple?

Idea 3 

Frame of an apple, close up, or alternatively an establishing frame of the character and the apple apart.

Frame of a hand moving towards an apple. 

Frame of a character (with a matching hand) eating the apple.

This is fairly effective and can be made more effective by use of color on the hand or by perhaps giving the character a long-sleeve shirt or unique identifiable quality that's visible in the last two frames.

Idea 4 

Frame of an apple, close up. 

Frame of a hand reaching towards the apple. 

Frame of a character matching the hand from frame 2 looking at the apple. 

Frame of the character blowing on the apple. 

Frame of the character wiping the apple on their sleeve. 

Frame of the character looking at the apple to make sure it's clean. 

Frame of the character eating the apple.

While intentionally extended to 7 frames for emphasis, you can see how this sequence of events could easily detract from the main story... Unless the point of the scene was to imply that life is moving slowly, or to give an internal monologue, or perhaps to make a seemingly important statement about the character's nature that couldn't otherwise be presented in a different scene. The point here is that this example wastes 7 frames, possible 2 full pages (pages = $), to show something that doesn't progress the plot, doesn't make a statement, and is possibly boring to look at. This isn't to say that you can't add other elements like the aforementioned monologue, or perhaps to use this as a visual dynamic while a conversation is taking place, but on its own this is probably excessive framing.

So this week's post ends with the sort of joke you'd find in an action film.

Frame 2: Anarchist: "What's the password?"

Frame 3: Glasses Guy: "Huh?"

Frame 4: Gun: JAM*

Frame 6: Gun: click click

Frame 7: Anarchist: "Nice joke, eh?"

Frame 7: Text Box (bottom of frame): *There are few things more upsetting in life than a gun jam.

Technical Difficulties: A Very Personal Tale of Terror

Obligatory Halloween Post
Also... I made the Pumpkin on the left!

More than a decade later, System Shock 2 still delivers thrills, terrors, and hours of riveting game play that rivals more recent titles in the survival horror sub-genre. However, the most terrifying moments of my play through System Shock 2 were further enhanced when the lines between reality the the virtual world were blurred...

Sarasota, FL, USA

Summer, 2012

It was a dark, rainy morning when the CD arrived, a new copy of System Shock 2 I'd purchased off Amazon earlier in the week. As I opened the packaging I noticed a hand-written note stuck to the disc,"Good Luck. You'll need it. She'll get you," scrawled in barely legible pen . Chuckling at the ominous message, I loaded the CD and installed the game onto my computer, completely unaware of the horrors that awaited me. After a remarkably short installation I started the game, running through a fun tutorial mission. This is where I first noticed that something sinister was afoot. Over the last decade computers had evolved to allow dual core processing and sadly my copy of System Shock 2 couldn't comprehend such an innovation. Within 5 minutes of starting the game my processor would gradually speed up until it would run so fast that my computer would crash in a 1990's style blue screen of death. After scouring the internet for a solution I discovered that it was possible to play the game for 15-25 consecutive minutes by opening dozens of programs to try and slow down your computer. I used this method and Quick-Saved my progress in the game every few seconds but the rapid fire Quick Saving also made things difficult because I rarely remembered to use the main save feature. That means that if I Quick-Saved at the wrong time i'd be forced to relive a death which I could not avoid and was forced to repeat dozens of times in a row. Now the survival part of the game meant a lot more to me because recovering from an untimely death could take upwards of an hour, and I wasn't sure how many hard reboots my computer could handle before possibly dying.

As morning turned to gloomy afternoon my roommates left for the weekend. I watched them brave the storm outside from my gaming chair, positioned in front of a giant window. We live on a few acres of wood, in the middle of nowhere, so I would be getting the ultimate experience by playing a survival horror game alone during a storm. With no other humans within sight or sound I turned up the volume and immersed myself in the game. This was where things got weird...

A picture from one of the new Graphic Update Mods!
Looks pretty...

At one point in the game, the ship's AI, S.H.O.D.A.N. (voiced by the extremely friendly and talented Terri Brosius) reveals itself and taunts you. It/she talks to you regularly after that point in the game, however, it turns out that the frequencies in SHODAN's voice (which also contain various electronic sounds) are also the same frequencies that control the remote-control fan in my room in the real world. The overall effect was that she'd threaten to send minions after me, I'd see movement in the reflection of my computer monitor, panic, and realize later that it was only the reflection of my fan turning on again. It would get frustrating because enemies in that game also have a tendency to sneak up on you in the dark confines of the Von Braun in much the same manner. The few times I didn't notice the fan turn on visually I was hit with a strong blast of chilly air and the feeling that someone was actually in the room with me. The thought froze me to the bone each time until I'd turn around, realize no one was there, get up, turn off the fan via wall-switch (the remote was dead and hadn't ever worked for me), and run back to my computer before the game either crashed or killed me. Of course, once I got used to this strange new phenomenon, a new one had to occur, so pretty soon the only source of light in the room, the light on my remote controlled fan, also succumbed to a strange System Shock. Every so often, seemingly at random, the light would just turn off, enveloping me in total darkness, freaking me out, and again forcing me to run to the wall switch to turn it back on again. This would happen a few times each hour.

As if playing System Shock 2 home alone, in the middle of the woods, during a storm with these weird additions wasn't scary enough, it gets worse. I don't have surround sound but I noticed that I kept hearing bumps and various noises coming from other rooms of the house. In a few instances I thought I heard someone talking too. It was extremely unnerving because I had a view of the long driveway and could clearly see that no one was home, save for myself. On two separate instances, after the game crashed, I went through the house, room by room, with my lucky nail-bat, a prop from a film I'd made, until I was sure that no one was in the house. I re-secured the locks, the windows, grabbed a snack, and returned to my computer to finish the game. It was night by this point, still stormy outside and I was nearing what I suspected was either the end (it wasn't), or else very close to the end of the game. As I got into a particularly spooky derelict hallway filled with creepy cyborg women, running extremely low on ammo, I felt something physically jump on my chair in the real world. I'm not exactly sure how I intended to react but the end result was that the chair flipped. I landed on my back as my cat, Evanrude, fled the room in terror. He'd been so quiet throughout the day (or had he?) that I'd forgotten he was home. I think he thought my reaction was amusing, because he kept jumping onto the back of my chair intermittently for the next couple of hours, despite being fed prior to the first incident.

Finally, as I thought the game had nothing left to scare me with in the real world, I committed to sit through the final stretch, to overcome randomly being thrown into darkness, evil cyborgs, monsters, cats, fans, computer-reboots, quick-save issues, and spooky sounds throughout my home. I'm not sure how many hours passed but I finally reached what I'm certain was the end of the game. It was at that time when it happened, as S.H.O.D.A.N., the most advanced computer AI in the world and myself were about to square off after destroying and avoiding an army of her terrifying creations. It looked like I was finally going to kill her and/or escape and beat the game, and it was at this point that S.H.O.D.A.N. threatened to kill me. Naturally I expected my fan to turn on, and it did, by this point I also expected my cat to do something to distract me, which it tried to do, but what I didn't expect was for lightning to strike nearby, right as S.H.O.D.A.N. finished her sentence, cutting all power to my house and neighborhood off, enveloping me in total darkness for a few hours... Which is precisely what happened. 

A few days later I had the courage to try the final fight again, only to discover that my save file had corrupted. In a way S.H.O.D.A.N. had been true to her word, killed my virtual character, and won... and that was the last time I played System Shock 2.

Nerdapalooza 2013 Review: The Careless Juja Live Band

The cover image of www.Nerdapalooza.com

The past two months have been a colossal exercise in multitasking and time management as I've done everything within my power to put together a cohesive band from scratch, while at the same time maintaining a pre-existing band, a few day jobs, and a functional life.

Our story begins with a semi-serious application sent to MAGFest and Nerdapalooza in February or April on behalf of a semi-fictitious "10 person" Careless Juja Live Band. The idea behind the application was that I had some free time at the beginning of the year and I was very interested in opening dialogue with some friends (and family) I'd been doing recordings or collaborations with over the years who I normally had little excuse to talk to. I listened to the best tracks that Juja and I had made over the years and counted the number of instruments needed to fully bring them to life, concluding that 3 guitars, 1 flute, bass, drums, accordion, glockenspiel, piano, and violin would be "required." I called Juja to see if he was on board and after promising to cover his airfare he reluctantly agreed to play a single show with a "CJ [Careless Juja] Live Band", in the rare event that we were accepted to perform at either venue. I also checked with the aforementioned friends who happened to play the various instruments listed above and got a similar response: If we happened to get accepted, that they'd agree to play.

The application was very laid back as a result, because even though I came up with the idea I really didn't expect us to get accepted. Here's an excerpt:

"We enjoy horse rides (don't judge it), walks on the beach, painting tabletop miniatures, sex, non-lyrical music, video games, rescuing orphans from bulldozers, cats, good television,  consecutive 18+ hour non-stop recording sessions fueled by a potent mix of energy drinks, propane, and King of the Hill."

My response from Nerdapalooza came in record time: "No." The application guy happened to be a friend of mine and did this every year whenever I applied as Random Encounter. I got a more formal rejection email a few weeks later from Nerda, along with a formal and friendly rejection from MAGFest. I specifically remember informing everyone in the "band" that we'd gotten both rejections and thanking them for being on call for my crazy idea... Then on August 12th, a mere two months, and one week prior to the festival, I got a phone call while was driving through North Carolina in hellishly warm clothing (a suit for work), on a hot summer day, in a truck that didn't have very good air conditioning. The call was from Nerdapalooza, asking if we were still interested in playing and if we'd still be able to pull off the show. I was in the denial phase, thinking the call to be a joke, so I confidentially told him that we could easily put together a half hour set (of music) from scratch, and it was only after the phone call ended, about 5 minutes past the point where I expected someone to reveal that the offer was a joke, that the gravity of the situation hit me. I immediately called all of my new band mates to verify that they could still be involved, and some were now unable to commit learning that much music in that short a time frame. It took about 3 days for Juja to understand that the application was serious and it wasn't until we were officially listed on the Nerdapalooza Website, a full week later, that we were able to confirm the band's full membership. I immediately commissioned the incredibly talented Jaime Kittens to make a logo for the new band that would give us a distinct look and feel from Random Encounter, whose toes I did not want to step on in the slightest.

I really wanted to start arranging the new band's music immediately, but I was already using all my free time to record an album, and playing shows as Random Encounter, which absolutely had to come first, so I didn't get to start arranging for CJL until a week and a half after we knew who as in the band. As I trudged through the first track, about a month and a half prior to the show itself, I had the very hard realization that arranging music for 9 instruments from scratch (in MIDI) was fairly time consuming work. This is the first song I put together, Cave Story: To Grass Town, where I envisioned all of the band members walking up on stage in a specific order to join in and add to the song, making it sound gradually more full. It took me over 6 hours to put together. As I was departing for Belize I downloaded Mixcraft 6 on my laptop so I could work from Central America and spent most of my nights there arranging without any way of effectively communicating with the rest of the band. Juja arranged two songs from his end and when I finally reached a steady internet connection I asked the 88 facebook fans of Careless Juja if they had any requests, because we still had about 4 minutes of music yet unpicked. Someone (I forget who) messaged me with "a song from Goldeneye" and by this point in the arranging/MIDI process I was getting very efficient to the point where I could put a song together in under an hour. At the very last minute Juja added the Game of Thrones theme and a mere month before the show the band mates were all given demos with their respective parts. A partial delay in the arrangement process was when one of the members of the band told me he couldn't commit to the show because a month wasn't enough time for him to deliver a quality performance. I admired his honesty and found a few extremely talented guest artists to take over his parts during key songs but in truth we were now an 8 piece band.

AdamOne's Setup

The practice phase for this band new 30 minute set should have taken every waking hour of my days, but Random Encounter had an album release show, an Escapist Expo, and a Nerdapalooza to practice for, which had to always come first as it's my life's work and passion where Careless Juja is more of my free time and an enjoyable hobby. As a result I focused the bulk of my practice efforts on key moments of the CJ show: the part where I'd reveal to the world that I'd been taking violin lessons for the last year, the part where I'd perform the ridiculously complex Professor Layton accordion solo, and the entirety of the Game of Thrones theme, which is my girlfriend's favorite song and the one people will most clearly recognize if I've screwed up. I was more or less on call for 4 weeks as band members would periodically check in with arrangement questions, transportation issues, or important realizations at odd hours of the night, like the fact that none of us owned guitar amps or a full sized keyboard. As I borrowed practice guitar amps from friends, rigged my computer speakers to accept a guitar input (yep, it came to that), upgraded my room-mate's guitar, and bought a glockenspiel stand, I started to feel excitement as the greater plan started to come together. The musicians I was working with were incredibly talented and if it was not for their collective and individual prowess I don't think we could have pulled it off. The band consisted of:

Ben, Chris, Juja, AdamOne
"Who Ya Gonna Call?"

Juja - One of my best friends, though he lives in Utah, who's just as quirky and into the music as I am. We only met once in person for two weeks but record music together regularly for Dwelling of the Duels.

H3lios - A piano-major in college who created Random Encounter with me many years ago. I see him less than once a year and he's all but my brother.

JY - H3lios's better half, a professional grade concert pianist from South Korea, and a dear friend.

AdamOne - A living, breathing metronome, and the original drummer for Random Encounter. He's now a father of two, a husband, a visual artist, co-worker, and a drum instructor with a few school-level music manuals under his belt. As a drum instructor his qualifications for glockenspiel, an incredibly unforgiving instrument, were perfect. He also can translate my gibberish into music-speech and doesn't get to interact with people our age often due to his occupations.

Lord Pike - A true rock drummer involved in quite a few awesome bands including: The Returners - VGM, and Lords of Thunder! I greatly admire Pike but for some reason we never get to hang out.

The Chris - Another fairly new friend, he is the bass player for Gimmick! and a fellow obscure-game enthusiast i'm sure I'd be extremely good friends with if we lived closer than a 17hr car ride apart.

Ben - The singer/songwriter/guitarist of Space Camp Dropout and my nephew. I can still remember the day he was born and though we sometimes record stuff together, we've never formally worked on anything publicly.

Lord Pike, JY, Helios

Walmart Quest!

The week before Nerdapalooza I'd easily logged over 11 hours into practicing the 20 second solo part for the Prof. Layton song, and still hadn't learned Warcraft 2 or Sword Master at all. I fully expected to have some time to practice the following week and was caught off guard when Ben showed up on Monday ready to learn the set. Suddenly the prospect of free time to learn my own parts, or to go for a relaxing swim was gone. My heart sort of plunged, I think I went pale, and taught him everything I could for as many waking hours as we could fit into each day. Juja arrived the following day, greatly helped speed up the learning process, and by the time the next installment of the band arrived on Thursday Ben knew the entire set. I'll credit him that he was able to pull it off and learn everything before they arrived. As Helios and JY arrived and went to sleep, fresh from a 17 hour drive from Texas, Juja and I left for a 6 hour drive to and from Orlando to practice songs with Random Encounter. We got back well after midnight, practiced our set with just the two of us, and fell asleep at about 2am or 3am on the morning of Nerdapalooza. At some point during all of this I'm told that we went shopping for food and that I cooked two or three meals by myself, that I didn't light anything on fire this time, and that they tasted surprisingly good, despite me failing at cooking at every moment prior to food coming out of an oven.

Sort of like an engagement photo but they're already married

Later that morning, after a hearty breakfast and we practiced as a half-band with AdamOne (who drove over from Tampa). An hour or two later Pike and Chris arrived (with Jen and Jen) and the band met in person for the first time. No one actually knew anyone else in the group except me, so it was a pretty neat experience watching everyone I personally knew interact. AdamOne started talking and snapping poly-meter beats (two different time signatures that line up and are done at the same time!) with Ben, JY was laughing with my girlfriend (who was an extremely good sport about all this much noise on a Friday morning), and Chris was telling stories about some bad RPG's he'd played, while I recalled a few cautionary repossession tales. This was all during a lunch break we took because the rest of the day was spent practicing the hell out of our 10 song set list from 11 or 11:30 through almost 5pm. Then we packed up and departed for Nerdapalooza. Notably I thought I forgot to pack my 3DS, though I just hid it well within one of my bags, and missed out on two days worth of street passes.

A short (~3hr) ride through traffic later we arrived at the official Nerdapalooza hotel. The lady at the front desk was either very friendly or hitting on me, i'm sort of oblivious to the finer points of social interaction, but either way I got the hotel room keys, parked next to a truck with 4'' steel spikes on its wheels, and climbed up the 4 stories to the hotel room. Juja, myself, Ben, Clay, and Prophet (who drove in specifically for the practice) stayed there until around 9 or 10 practicing [video link]. We left immediately after, unloaded our gear at the band room, parked at what I thought was the closest parking lot to the event, spent another 20 minutes walking to Nerdapalooza, got our badges, and immediately started seeing people we knew. People from the Random Encounter album release show, people i'm friends with on the internet, people i'd met at Megacon, at MAGfest, at Nerdapalooza the years prior. All of them were genuinely friendly and every person we passed with the 3DS made me curse my careless nature. We were able to catch the majority of Professor Shyguy's set, which was very energetic, and to both my and my girlfriend's enjoyment he played the Simple Pop Song, and Doctor Who am I?. He also did a song from Tool (a band I don't really know, but other people seemed to really feel it). During the set I noticed that the calm and collected Ben, who previously had no care in the world for geek culture or music, went wide eyed as Shyguy proceeded to play a guitar solo while simultaneously playing the keyboard. It was the first sign of happiness i'd seen him show all week.

View from the Green Room between sets

The rest of the night was sort of a blur and besides bumping into a dozen other people I knew, and giving all of the members of the CJL band tee shirts (which were hot off the press from earlier that day due to a shipping error), I only really remember a horrible restless night of tossing and turning in the hotel bed. I was utterly terrified about how the next day would go down. If we lost our place at any point during the set, none of us (save AdamOne) had any reference as to where we could come back in, especially during the more progressive songs. Before the lights went out Juja mentioned that he wasn't even entirely sure where his guitar solo fit in Tristram or Warcraft 2, and asked that I cue him somehow for both. At about 2am I woke up in a cold sweat realizing that we never figured out how we were going to end the Prof. Layton Song either. I tossed and turned, waiting for 3am, 4am, 5am, then 6am. An eternity of anticipation later and it was somehow Saturday and I was already exhausted.

Photo from the show, not the sound check

We had apples and peanut butter for breakfast, rallied everyone, and showed up at the OCCC promptly at 10am. It turned out that TMBG [They Might be Giants] (specifically their tech crew, not the actual band) was doing a sound check, so Lauren and I got in some last minute practice... because I now realized that she had never practiced with anyone from the band before. As we practiced in the hallway near the stage, John Flansburgh walked by and tried to open a door that I'd previously discovered was locked. I think I must have said something stupid, maybe a horrible pun about the doors or locks because he stared at me for a moment as if I was crazy before the door somehow opened for him. This now marks the second time I've left a not so awesome impression with J.F., and though I'm sure he forgot the moment I'll embarrassingly remember for the rest of my life. Lauren and I followed John out (we had been locked out for awhile) and watched as TMBG sound checked to Rhythm Section Want Ad. About 20 minutes before we were supposed to start our show, we were given the green light to load onto the stage and set up gear for 11 musicians in record time. The sound-guy asked if we could cut one of our songs and we obliged without question.

The Careless Juja Live Band

The show itself was sort of weird, sort of fun; A lot like how the old-school Random Encounter shows used to go. I'd spent the last two months envisioning the moments on stage, planning, plotting, practicing, preparing, and once I got on the stage it didn't go exactly as I'd planned and sped by as if I were but a passenger on a roller coaster. For starters we didn't have time for any sort of grand entrance, just a "You've got 25 minutes, go!" so much of the suspenseful visual stuff I'd planned for the first song, where everyone got up one at a time, was lost for the sake of not cutting more songs. This really wasn't anyone's fault except my own. Sound checking is time consuming work and I didn't want to start our show until I was confident that we sounded great. I'd already made the mistake of trying to play a full set without a proper mix two years back and it didn't go so well. Two other moments that didn't go quite as planned was when I pulled out the violin, played it with the best intonation I've ever managed, and later found out that none beyond myself could hear it because I forgot to sound check the violin into the vocal microphone. Lastly, due to a false start on the Prof. Layton song, band members got confused and the solo i'd spent the bulk of the last month practicing never happened. These three incidents aside the show was a complete success by my standards. I was personally ecstatic as I got to hear the songs I'd been working on for two months (in MIDI) performed with real instruments as the band I had no idea would ever exist actually performed a show! We started and ended the set strong. We kept peoples' interest. We got through the most important/difficult songs well. We nailed Sword Master, Goldeneye, and the crucible of Tristram. All of the members of the band had fun and all of the fear left me as we reached the end of the set. In many ways I was surprised that the set was already over, feeling that way even as we started the last song. We broke down the equipment, cleared the stage, and finished loading all of our gear just in time for the Lords of Thunder. Rasputan, a former RE member who I'm still good friends with, helped us out a lot on Saturday and between him, AdamOne, and Helios we were back in time to revel at a masterful execution of the Perfect Dark Ending Theme (a song we'd recorded as RE but never completed) by LoT. Special thanks are also due to Clay, Jen, Jen, David, Konami, Prophet, Lauren, my parents (who showed up!), and the guy who bought one of our tee shirts.

The first time we got to hear To Grass Town with the full band was on stage

My sense of time after watching the fantastic Lords of Thunder gets a bit warped. I remember getting food with the CJL band, talking about how Lauren and Juja were absolutely beaming during our set and how even Helios had cracked a smile for a few moments. For JY a live show with other musicians was something she'd never experienced, and Ben finally understood what we were all about, and a bit about what the whole nerd-culture thing was like. He referred to it as a sort of "hidden world" akin to the wizard's world in Harry Potter, located just behind the trudge of daily life. We traveled through the vendor/artist areas and spoke with almost everyone we passed. There was a lot of talent there and AdamOne/I began talks to commission one of the artists. I also got to finally meet the extremely friendly and stylish Jaime Kittens (who made the Careless Juja Live image!). We caught the OneUps with brentalfloss set and enjoyed their classy renditions of brentalfloss songs, which are video game songs with often comical (but sometimes serious) lyrics. As I watched the end of the set, people from the side of the stage hurriedly motioned for me to get ready to load my gear next to the stage. Oops... I forgot about that. So, I quickly ran to get my accordion and regretfully missed the end of their set.

Katamari on the Rocks w/ brentalfloss

The Random Encounter was almost entirely stress free for me. All my nervousness was long gone from the CJ set, we (RE) already had a huge crowd of friends sitting front row as we were sound checking, and i'd overpracticed all my parts for a show I could have played with my eyes closed. Just before we were ready to get on Juja was fussy and wouldn't get off his 3DS, but the awesome fog effects (a mere 5% of their total fog abilities I was told) again distracted me from noticing too much. Dead Labs went amazingly well, and I was surprised to see people singing along. I think that's my favorite song we've done so far. Katamari also went very well, and it was awesome to share the stage with brentalfloss again. My only complaint for the set was that I found myself wishing the stage wasn't so high so we could interact with the audience more. Just as we were getting to the part where we intended to play Death of a Friend I had the sudden realization that I hadn't seen Dr. Wily, the lead vocalist for the song, arrive. It turned out that he'd driven to the wrong venue, the Social, about an hour away (parking and walk included) and missed our show by mere minutes, so we played Terra instead. The rest of the set went without a hitch, except for me making a great miscalculation at the end and totally toppling Rook's Korg keyboard off the stand, key side-down in front of everyone, and running from her (she's also wireless) through an area of the stage I certainly shouldn't have run through (lots of delicate gear almost got destroyed by me) but that I couldn't really see until it was too late. I got yelled at for that as well, made two genuine apologies, and felt oddly down for completing an otherwise good show. It's not every day you can leave two negative impressions with your favorite band in a row. Still, getting to see and talk with all of our friends/fans/family after the show helped cheer me up. I was also later told that the TMBG roadie who I spoke with had actually enjoyed our set and felt kind of bad about yelling at me, so perhaps I didn't leave such a bad impression after all.

A rare photo of Jeff Douglas, the guy who takes awesome photos of the bands

I packed my gear quickly, did my best to stay clear of Rook, and followed Clay to some kind of green room that overlooked the main room. There was also a lot of walking before this, and a dinner in a strange restaurant with giant replica animals, but I don't remember how we got there or what we ate. Ben, Clay, Juja, my girlfriend, and I all found ourselves in the otherwise empty green room a few hours later, too exhausted to rock out with the incredibly talented Moon Hooch: a sax duo that circles each other while playing and makes their performance look a lot like a 1980's knife fight musical. We got to briefly chat with the drummer from Green Jelly, who had some neat stories, and Schaffer the Darklord, who had completely forgotten/forgiven the time I'd accidentally screwed up his name at a show two years ago. Schaffer is a pretty chill guy and I felt bad for missing his set. In addition to being a solid performer, the last time I'd seen him he'd given me some musical ideas I'd implemented into my own original works.

Who's that Icky guy?

We (joined by Chris, Jen, and "Mad Hatter" Jared of The Gekkos) entered the main room about the time a crowd started to form and were able to get within 10 feet of the stage for They Might Be Giants! This was the closest i've ever been to them at a show and it was easily one of their best shows to date. They always put on an incredibly live performance, this time starting with Istanbul, going through a lot more of their newer songs (which was awesome). I'm pretty sure J.L. glanced down at me at smiled at one point, which made me feel much better about any negative impressions I might have left with them in the past. It makes no logical sense but if being starstruck makes me feel better about the weekend that works for me. I had a blast and it was only after physical exhaustion started to take its toll on us that we reluctantly departed from the scene, as stickers were being handed out after the show. A quick thanks should be mentioned as Mrs. Douglas saved one of our number from a case of actual heat exhaustion that evening. All of us slept really well on Saturday night, and I forgot to mention but Helios + JY already started their drive back to Texas earlier that evening.

The Returners!
[The only band that my camera-phone was able to get a good picture of]

Sunday was kind of a hangover style day for us. We stumbled out of our hotel rooms by 11am, checked out, admired the Ben-Hurr spikes on the truck next to us (again), and got to Nerda in time for the best (non-TMBG) set I saw all weekend, The Returners - VGM. They rocked a FF VI medley, they rocked Echo the Dolphin, and Lauren sang the Metal Gear Solid ending theme AND the Phantom of the Opera "inside my mind" song! It's not just that they picked good songs to perform, it's not just that it was my first time seeing them in person, or that I'm friends with most of them; It's that they played well, they surprised me with something I didn't expect (singing!), they were cohesive, fairly diverse in style, and everything they played was well arranged. They were also soft enough for my girlfriend to enjoy (she generally dislikes rock), which gives me some kind of +7 synergy bonus to my own enjoyment. Even Ben, who had previously hated VGM (video game music) was smiling up and applauding the Returners by the end of the set.

The Gekkos

A few minutes later, as Under Polaris took to the stage (I was only able to be present for a few songs sadly. Those guys are a fantastic example of what synth/chip-rock should be and their front-man is the very definition of a High Energy Act!), I talked to the Gekkos and discovered that they wanted me to play accordion for a few parts of their set... as much as I could learn and transcribe to tab form in ~47 minutes. Their accordion player, Jarred, had been in a brutal bus accident that i'm told might not allow him to play accordion ever again (I really hope that's not true), and the day before he was told by a doctor that he wasn't allowed to play accordion for the show, regardless of if he could muscle his way through the pain. As a brother in the ever-secretive League (of accordionists) I transcribed as much of the set as I could and played with them for maybe 6 songs, clapping and singing along (sans microphone) during the other songs. They ended the set with my favorite song of theirs, Pokemon League of the Living Dead and by all accounts that show was without real incident. As I got into an issue with the OCCC parking security the OneUps played a great set, and after that we were semi-forced to load up and head home to watch the rest of the festival via stream. We said our goodbyes quickly (from a tow-away zone) and got ice cream on the way home. The reason I mention the ice cream was that it was served by my roommate's girlfriend (of a few months, who is at my home every week), only I couldn't recognize her outside of the context of where I live, which was sort of amusing because she couldn't recognize me either until after she served us ice cream. We watched the rest of the livestream of Nerdapalooza as Juja and I thought up more ways to advertise our Kickstarter for the new Careless Juja Album. Then, just like that, in the blink of an eye, Nerdapalooza 2013 was over... but it's effects were not...

During the course of the week Ben had gone from an apathetic guitar mercenary, playing music he didn't really care about (so we could spend some time together), visiting a "weird and nerdy convention" he didn't identify with, to becoming one of us. It started with Shyguy's multiple instrument solos, the subtle references to Nerdy things Ben was familiar with but didn't realize were nerdy. It expanded through some genuine and friendly conversations with people we met at Nerda (and the CJL band mates). All night on Saturday (and all Sunday morning) Ben complained that he didn't have a 3DS, after Chris had talked to him at length about how 3DS's work, so I lent him mine to use on Sunday (after finding it) and Ben had a lot of fun picking up street passes and battling armored ghosts. By the time he saw The Returners, their blend of VGM covers with the addition of vocals and the non-vgm song pretty much won him over. Now whenever Juja and myself would hum a tune from the CJ or Returners set, Ben would join in (as opposed to cringing and putting a headset on, which happened earlier in the week)! Ben claimed that Juja and I were popular in the VGM scene and was surprised when he, walking all by himself, was approached by someone we didn't know to autograph a poster. I don't that's ever happened to him before and it left a big impact on him, realizing that he was now a part of the community he didn't think he would like. Later that night, at his request, we went to Best Buy to get Ben a 3DS XL and a copy of Animal Crossing, which he swears his friends in NY will never know about. I smile every time I think that he's become one of us... and as I dropped Ben off at the airport on Monday there was actual sadness from both of us because we'd had fun and wanted him to stay. Nerdapalooza had it's magical affect on him, and I've been getting text all week about how there are certain hotspots in his home town, or how he's frustrated that the stores near where he lives are sold out of Pokemon X and Y, and how he just got Pokemon Y and a copy of Monopuff. Nerdapalooza 2013 was a special time for all us. For Juja it was a chance to really shine, in his words: perhaps the only chance he'll get. For JY it was a time to meet friends from her new home town in Texas. For all of us it was a great time with friends... and for me, it was a chance to bond with my nephew for the first time in over a decade.