Travel Journal: Spectrum Live 2014

Forest Rogers - A talented sculptor...
and fellow admirer of Baba Yaga

Dear Reader: If you don’t know what Spectrum Live is, please check out my post about Spectrum from last year.

The Journey to Kansas City

We brought Batman with us again

It hardly seemed like a full year had passed on the evening of May 2nd, but as Kaitlin and I attended the senior showcase at the Ringling College of Art and Design it was clear that Spectrum Live was just around the corner. We observed our normal weekly routines, cleaning the house, watching Game of Thrones, and working on our respective creative projects during the late night hours seemingly unaware that we were a mere 48 hours away from an amazing cross-country road trip.

Fields of flowers

We shopped for food, packed on the evening of Tuesday, May 6^th, and departed shortly after 11am the following morning. We observed the ancient traveling traditions of quietly waiting for a few moments in the doorway before departing (a tradition designed to help people remember if they forgot to pack something) and stepping on each other’s feet (we’re not really sure what this one is supposed to do, but we do it anyway) before loading up the rental, a white Ford Fusion hybrid, and departing for Kansas City, MO. With the box of semi-perishable food items like single servings of soy milk, peanut butter, honey, bread, cereal, cereal bars, pickles, nuts, and the like we felt pretty pro at traveling until we realized that we forgot to pack floss.

This is the place we got sick last year...

This year we avoided the Subway that gave us food poisoning, instead opting for Quiznos and drove without incident straight to Birmingham AL… A quick aside about the Ford Fusion: It’s a pretty awesome car with many interesting quirks that I thoroughly enjoyed for the 41+ hours of driving we endured. The colored HuD had the same color scheme as my comic book (a fairly uncommon color scheme), and the battery charging mechanic shows you how much power you’re able to store every time you apply the brake, making a little mini-game out of slowing down. All in all it was a pretty cool car and for the first time ever, Ford has impressed me.

Colorful HuD of the Ford Fusion
...and no, I didn't take the picture.

We passed wild flowers, familiar signs from the previous year, cows, rivers, farmland, the” Waffle King”, an aviation museum, an alligator farm, the rest stop we’d stopped last year to get sick, and our GPS navigated us to a Macaroni grill that was no longer in business for dinner. Perturbed we drove 2 additional miles out of our way through traffic to a Panera Bread and had a pretty awful experience there: Ultra cold air conditioning combined with soups containing scant portions of food. No meat or noodles in my chicken noodle soup and an utterly underwhelming garden vegetable soup for Kaitlin. We enjoyed the day’s drive though, listening to the No_Sleep short-story horror podcast that’s really grown on us and a Librivox rendition of Don Quixote, a story I found to be much more depressing than expected. We ended the night at around 10pm CST, in a Day’s Inn with an extremely slanted parking lot but with a very friendly staff and patrons.

The charm of the hotel was lost as we got to our room, had difficulty getting through the front door (due to a key-card issue everyone else also seemed to be experiencing too), and endured the rank stench of pot, heavy in the air.

This photo does not accurately depict just how slanted the parking lot really is.

At 8:30am the next morning we drove through a really pleasant part of Birmingham, saw a miniature statue of liberty, conducted business for work that I can’t really discuss here in a closed restaurant, and promptly drove off for O’fallon IL. We passed goats, more cows, gigantic fields of yellow and purple flowers, a giant rocket, and a number of familiar rest stops we remembered from last year. We had a wonderful little picnic at the TN welcome center & rest stop, consisting of peanut butter and honey sandwiches with pickles & chocolate soy-milk. We drove on while listening to more of the No_Sleep podcast, which is something we really enjoy when driving because the stories keep you awake and present. Around the time I took a wrong turn just north of Nashville, followed by another wrong turn, I got some insanely good news about a series of upcoming performances with my band and Video Games Live and had to stop myself from speeding while discussing the details with the man in charge. I’ll probably talk about these performances (happening this weekend) in a future blog post so I won’t go into details here.

Picnic!

We saw more interesting sights and when we arrived in O’Fallon at about 7pm we were treated to a delicious dinner by friends, and introduced to a show called River Monsters while playing Munchkin and chatting about the horrors of retail work until the late hour of 11pm, CST.

Early Morning in O'Fallon is brighter than expected

The following morning at about 8am we departed for more business related activities in the St. Louis area that concluded at around 11am. From there, we passed the familiar old buildings of St. Louis, the comically well intentioned ‘Jesus Saves’ billboard next to Larry Flynn’s, and stopped for gas at an old style general store in Missouri that sold food, clothes, guns, gas, and antiques, all in the same building! The dog outside of the store really sold us on the idea that it was perhaps an old general store from the 1900’s or earlier that had simply adapted over the years to stay in business. It was pretty cool and we both regretted not spending more time/money there on arrow heads, boots, shotguns, and fresh fruit.

Yep... We're tourists...

Within Kansas City itself we stopped at Café Gratitude for a quick lunch and in addition to the meal, we learned far too much about the people sitting on either side of us. The food was great though! We checked into the Aladdin Hotel (which, despite being slightly less classy than the Hyatt is a lot more convenient to get in and out of), and eagerly walked to Spectrum!

Spectrum Fantastic Arts Live III

We arrived at Spectrum just past 3pm and checked in. A number of Spectrum attendees had remarked on their own blogs last year that it was good to actually speak with the people that they worked with regularly (via computer) in person and I found myself mirroring their thoughts as I caught up with the artist I’d met last year and have been working with since: Eirich Olson.

Darlene Nelson creates fantastic creatures out of sticks, stones, and bones!
[If anyone can find her website or Fb page let me know so I can put a link here]

It’s sort of difficult to put this into words but our experience from one year to the next has really shifted our perspective of the event. Last year we were outsiders experiencing a strange new world. This year we frequently found ourselves speaking with artists we’d met last year, gotten business cards from, had purchased books by, read books by, or interviewed. We could also visually see what some of them had worked on over the last 12 months or how they had grown or changed their style. While we noticed the absence of certain artists we had enjoyed meeting last year, there were also many new faces, both of artists and attendees alike. Attendance seemed to have grown as well. We walked row by row, each booth brimming with talent, and it seemed like there was hardly enough time to see even half of the exhibit hall before the doors closed at 6pm… Because there wasn’t.

Colin Nitta paints a woman

About 30 minutes later we took part in the artist meet and greet, being social and chatting with the people who stood nearby. To our right was one of the designers for the upcoming game Lichdom Battlemage, and to our left were a few concept artists who work for Red Storm Entertainment (This is a big deal for me as I used to be on the top 1000 on the R6V & R6V2 leaderboards and am generally a huge fan of Tom Clancy games). To clarify: These were just regular folks with the “attendee” badges that I was able to freely chat with, who I probably would have waited in a line at any other festival/convention to watch give a panel. The environment of Spectrum Live is pretty magical like that and you never know who you might be talking with. Later the same evening I seemed to further prove this point to myself by chatting with Frank Cho about traveling to Spectrum before realizing who he was (admittedly on the following day).

Many friendly faces at the Meet and Greet

We got back to the hotel around 8pm, ate an extremely light dinner in the room, and decided that we would take a short nap before returning to the evening’s events, which started up again at 10pm... Instead, we wound up sleeping through all 3 alarms and woke up the next morning at about 8am. We had a quick breakfast and arrived at Spectrum a full hour before the exhibit hall opened, primarily due to my watch still being on Eastern Standard Time. I recognized Cathy Fenner, who we got to chat with for a few moments, and who was kind enough to offer an official statement for MF magazine.

Throughout the day various artists traded off their work on 1 of 3 sculptures

As the doors to the exhibit hall opened we interviewed three really interesting artists (the interviews will be posted here at a later date), and caught two panels: one on being a female artist, one on figuring out how to price the pieces of art you’re selling. I often watch panels at other conventions to be amused or in the hopes that I might learn a single tid-bit of information that might be relevant, and found the panels at Spectrum to be significantly more informative. The panel speakers were extremely knowledgeable industry professionals, freely telling it like it is and answering questions from the audience. You can also freely approach them after the panel is over if you have any additional questions free of formalities. It doesn’t get much better than this.

From artist to art director, each person above
offered a unique perspective on being a woman in the art industry

The rest of the day was spent trying to see all of the remaining booths in the exhibit hall, purchasing some great art pieces, and chatting with the people we met. I really can’t stress just how incredible it was to be able to speak with the artists themselves about their works. The best example from the weekend was when we passed a series of sculptures I didn’t really understand or have an appreciation of at first glance. I causally asked the artist what they sculpts meant to her, how she’d made them, and the answers she gave me, the passion with which she spoke, and the subtle details which I’d completely missed really gave me an appreciation for her work. I wasn’t hearing someone’s interpretation of what they thought the artist was trying to accomplish in the work, I was getting a very personal account of exactly what she was thinking when she made them, and also picked up that one shouldn’t just look at a sculpture in the same way you’d look at a painting (a misconception I’m admittedly guilty of), but instead observing it from many angles and perspectives. While she didn’t outright say this it was something I picked up based on her making some of her sculpts appear as if they are different creatures when observed from different angles.

This is the same sculpt visible on the far right of the other picture...
Later the same day

On a fairly personal note I bumped into someone who works at my favorite comic book publishing company, who offered some extremely valuable advice on how to go about submitting my comic book. I also talked with a seasoned veteran of the comic book industry who also offered some really fantastic advice that changed my entire release strategy… It was the sort of detailed information you can only really learn by doing yourself or talking with someone who has.

Dan Chudzinski - Easily one of the most interesting people I've ever met

It took us until 5pm to finish all of the above. We departed and caught a quick meal at Café Gratitude’s bar. Again, the food was fantastic and after we noticed that the person sitting next to us was wearing a Spectrum Live badge, we wound up talking with an aspiring young artist with a lot of talent, passion, and an impressive portfolio.

Downtown Kansas City, MO

A few hours later we found ourselves at the Midland Center for the Saturday award ceremony. Last year we sat there alone, not really knowing anyone, and quietly observed the events unfolded as outsiders. This year we saw a number of familiar faces from this year and the previous one, talked with a few of them, and were genuinely rooting for people we’d met or talked to as the awards were announced. In short, it feels like we’re slowly becoming a part of the Spectrum community and it’s pretty awesome. Notably, during the nominations for the “Unpublished” category we recognized a piece we’d seen the previous week at the Ringling Showcase! We stayed a little bit after the ceremony, said our goodbyes, and promptly went to sleep. Due to the sudden shift in events for the next week we would be forced to depart Spectrum Live a full day early.

The historic Midland Center... A truly massive and impressive place

We left the Aladdin Hotel by 7am because we had at least 20.5 hours of driving ahead of us. It’s funny how you can watch your GPS change its estimated time of arrival with each MPH you speed up or slow down on long trips like that… The drive itself was fairly uneventful, save for Siri navigating us again to a restaurant that didn’t exist. Highlights included goats, cows, discovering how to use cruise control, the No_Sleep podcast, random sing along sessions with our iPods, and passing through eastern Tennessee around dusk, which was so beautiful that the phrase “purple mountains’ majesty” would have been an appropriate descriptive phrase. We sadly passed I-75's scenic RockFalls, vowing to return as tourists one day, accidentally explored the pleasant architecture of Chattanooga while looking for a Moe’s South-West Grill, and stopped for the night just south of Macon in a very nice hotel. We arrived home the following day at around 2pm. And then, before we knew it, Spectrum Live III was over. However, the creative effects it had on us were only just beginning to take form.

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.