14 Apr

Mega Ultra Blast Cast Ep.39 – Back from (another) hiatus

Posted by vagrantesque in MUBC. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .


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After aaaages the Mega Ultra Blast Cast returns to the studio, with the standard trio reuniting to discuss over a month worth of conversation material! Shane regales us with tales of his recent Malaysian adventure while Delaney recounts his transformation into a fervent Bloodborne player, with all the costs to his soul that entails. We also talk about Nintendo’s really odd recent moves, the use-by date of Evolve, and the joys of pool sweat. As a bonus, there’s hardly any Heroes of the Storm talk, because Delaney hasn’t had a PC for the last little while.

If you feel so inclined, go for a run, take a scenic drive, jazz up your afternoon commute or just curl up on the couch and play some games while you listen to the opinions of three fired up Sydneysiders.

You can play the whole episode right off this page if you like:


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Or you can go to the Soundcloud site/app and listen from there:
https://soundcloud.com/mega-ultra-blast-cast/mubc-39-back-from-another-hiatus

(To download and listen offline, follow the link and then click the download tab)

As always if you enjoy what you hear please share the cast with your friends – Until next time!

1 Apr

…Not.

Posted by vagrantesque in 3DS, Games, PC.

Sorry LoL, the Monado is waiting.

1 Apr

Why I’ve Decided to Give Up All Other Games and Just Play League of Legends

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, PC. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

My dear friends, I am tired.

I’m tired of videogame release after videogame release, all vying for my attention and my increasingly dwindling pool of time. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last several hectic months of my life, it’s that there is such a thing as spreading yourself too thin. If you play too many games, regardless of your good intentions, it becomes near impossible to do justice to any of them.

So I’m done.

Not with games per se, but with playing so very many games. The Final Fantasies, Legend of Zeldas and Call of Duties of the world will hardly miss me if I leave them in my past in order to focus on new horizons. New and insanely popular horizons. Yes, the world’s most played game is calling my name, and its name, of course, is League of Legends.

I may only have dabbled in the game in the past, but what I have played is enough to convince me that I’m making the right call here. There just isn’t a more replayable game out there – it just flat-out doesn’t exist. Every game of LoL is different, and though it’s surprisingly easy to get your head around at first, its sheer, near-bottomless depth, constantly shifting metagame and regular content updates have made it one of the biggest eSports on the planet. And, i mean, have you seen an official League of Legends eSports broadcast? They are so polished I sometimes can’t tell whether I’m watching a traditional sporting presentation or not.

It’s bananas, yo.

I’m not saying I’ll ever be any good at the game, but I’m starting to see what all the hype is about, and it’s just about time to take the plunge. Faced with less free time than I’ve ever had in my life before, League of Legends offers me what other games cannot – an experience that never truly ends, but can be enjoyed in bite-sized pieces. 27 million daily players cannot be wrong.

See you online.

 

21 Mar

60 Changes in Zelda Majora’s Mask 3D From the N64 Original

Posted by vagrantesque in 3DS, Games, N64. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I totally, completely underestimated how long it would take to write this. Blame Monster Hunter.

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So I finished The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D on 3DS a couple weeks back, and my oh my, it was quite an experience. This is a game I once called my favourite of all time, so I wanted to make sure I devoted the proper amount of time to revisiting the whole thing. After 36 hours of gameplay (according to the Activity Log app) I had completed the Bomber’s Notebook, collected all the heart pieces and beaten the final boss. As soon as the cartridge was out of my 3DS, what was the first thing that comes to mind about the game?

They sure did make a swag of changes to Majora’s Mask for this remake.

You see as it turns out, ever since Nintendo partnered with co-developer Grezzo to release the 3D remaster of Ocarina of Time in 2011, they were apparently working on this follow-up. Even as Zelda fans went back and forth on the idea that a remake of MM even existed, the developers were tweaking away, rebuilding the creepy, unique game piece by piece. But unlike with Ocarina of Time, which only received a sprinkling of non-visual changes, Eiji Aonuma and his team saw in Majora’s Mask a game with some issues, particularly with regards to a quest structure that may not have been friendly for the generation of gamers who missed out on the N64 original.

As a result, Majora’s Mask 3D is one of the most comprehensive remakes I’ve ever played. It’s still pretty much the same game, don’t get me wrong, but while playing I managed to jot down no less than sixty changes I think are worth mentioning, ranging from miniscule to massive, over the N64 original. And if you ask me, the vast majority of them are for the better. If you’ve played the game before and are tossing up whether to play it again in this new form, this list may help you decide on a purchase. If you’re new to MM, most of these probably won’t make any sense to you, and I may end up in spoiler territory. Regardless, here they are, in the rough order I discovered them.

Continue reading

10 Mar

Mega Ultra Blast Cast Ep.38 – Introducing Baby Barlow

Posted by vagrantesque in MUBC. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .


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It’s a special, limited edition sort of time, because in the absence of Delaney my brother Cameron joins Shane and I on Episode 38 of the Mega Ultra Blast Cast, where we discuss the best superpower, Kinect horror stories, memories of Mario Party, loose wizard physics and a tiny bit of League of Legends. We also revisit the topic of the rise and fall and maybe-rise-again of Square Enix, why the latest Monster Hunter game may be the best one yet and the sheer ludicrousness of Starwhal. Enjoy.

If you feel so inclined, go for a run, take a scenic drive, jazz up your afternoon commute or just curl up on the couch and play some games while you listen to the opinions of three mix-and-matched Sydneysiders.

You can play the whole episode right off this page if you like:


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-.-.-.-

Or you can go to the Soundcloud site/app and listen from there:
https://soundcloud.com/mega-ultra-blast-cast/mubc-38-introducing-baby-barlow

(To download and listen offline, follow the link and then click the download tab)

As always if you enjoy what you hear please share the cast with your friends – Until next time!

6 Mar

Ahead: 2015

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

OK, Oscars are done, our stupid movie release schedule overlap with the USA should be catching up, and the dry months of videogame releases are coming to a close. Let’s get hyped.

Well, here we are at the real beginning of a new commercial year of entertainment media, and it is astonishingly clear in terms of confirmed release dates or windows, particularly in light of the murky waters of the last two uncertain years. If I see one theme running through the suite of upcoming movies and videogames, it’s “Anything 2014 can do, 2015 can do bigger”. Yes, there are some real giants waiting to be awoken in 2015, most of which have not reached saturation point with audiences just yet. And they look positively mouth-watering. The question remains, however – will bigger equate to better in 2015? Here are my top ten most anticipated movies and games for this year.

NOTE: Because I’ve already devoted an entire post to Nintendo’s 2015 lineup, I’m going to disqualify them from my games list. Because, well, that wouldn’t be fair.

MOVIES

10. Chappie


Might as well start with a movie that’s actually really close to coming out in cinemas – next week, in fact. I certainly wasn’t alone in enjoying Neill Blomkamp’s Best Picture-nominated science fiction racism metaphor District 9, and I was more positive on his wealth gap themed follow-up Elysium than most people. But I do have to admit that the movies had a very similar feel, and from the looks of things Chappie is very much cut from the same cloth. It will need to do something pretty cool to stand out, and I look forward to finding out if it does.

9. Ant-Man


As the only superhero movie of 2015 that isn’t a sequel or reboot, Marvel’s Ant-Man could go one of two ways – it could expand Marvel’s ever-expanding Cinematic Universe with yet another breakout character, or it could flop and finally give the anti-superhero subsection of film critics some real ammunition. Losing a director as unique as Edgar Wright must not have been easy for the production, and it has everything to prove. Yet Marvel Studios has yet to really let fans down, and so Ant-Man well and truly has my attention.

8. The Good Dinosaur


After three consecutive years of huge (and really good) Boxing Day releases, Disney Animation Studios is taking a well deserved year off in 2015 to let Pixar take the 3D animation spotlight, with a pair of films to boot. The Good Dinosaur is half of said pair, and it seems to be taking an unorthodox approach to the well-worn prehistoric setting of animated family movies, asking the question of how things might have gone had dinosaurs lived alongside early humans with sufficiently less intelligence than themselves. It’s the less interesting of the two 2015 Pixar outings for me, but I’m ready to be optimistic about Pixar again, so bring it on.

7. Tomorrowland


Speaking of Disney, George Clooney’s Tomorrowland is also coming this year. Intentionally shrouded in an advertising campaign that seems to be giving nothing away, Tomorrowland is refreshingly mysterious for a Disney movie at the time of writing – scratch that – it’s refreshingly mysterious for any big movie in today’s day and age at the time of writing, and it seems poised to deliver a wondrous fantasy experience. I just hope that was the last of the trailers.

6. Jurassic World


Though I wouldn’t call myself the world’s biggest Jurassic Park fanatic, I definitely enjoyed the movies as a kid, and fourth film in the series Jurassic World is generating so much hype at the moment that it is taking on “event movie” status, and therefore attracting me like a moth to a flame. It hits right around the middle of the year and seems to be filled with set piece moments ripe for discussion. Oh, and Chris Pratt. count me in.

Continue reading

28 Feb

My Take on the Big Films of the 2015 Oscars

Posted by vagrantesque in Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

So now I’m caught up on this year’s Oscars, but rather than break down what I thought of every award like I’ve done in the past I’m going to quickly run down my thoughts on the handful of Oscar-nominated films I’ve actually seen, because I just need to put something to the keyboard before I can move on.

Serious movies, yay!

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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Won: Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki), Best Original Screenplay, Best Directing (Alejandro G. Inarittu), Best Picture
Nominated For: Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Actor (Michael Keaton), Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Best Supporting Actress (Emma Stone)

I wouldn’t quite give my personal Best Picture nod to Birdman, but the sheer number of ways in which it tosses up a unique gimmick and nails it means I can hardly begrudge it the adulation it receives. The script is a tad pretentious, to be sure, but the movie does a lot of things very well, and any other winner in the Best Cinematography category would have been a tragedy. Emmanuel Lubezki, whose exemplary work in Gravity certainly did not go unnoticed, makes the film feel like it’s all one continuous take, and he does it extraordinarily well. I feel like the movie should have won some kind of audio award for its amazing improvised drumming soundtrack, and Edward Norton should count himself unlucky that he was in such a strong field for Supporting Actor.
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The Imitation Game

Won: Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated For: Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Original Score (Alexandre Desplat), Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Best Supporting Actress (Keira Knightley), Best Directing (Morten Tyldum), Best Picture

A fascinating real life set-up provides the stage for everyone’s favourite Hollywood name to dominate the screen as genius social outcast Alan Turing, the man chiefly responsible for creating a machine capable of decoding the encrypted radio messages sent by the Nazis every day of the Second World War. The Imitation Game balances an exploration of the troubled man beneath the arrogant, awkward exterior of Turing and the grave task he and his team have to complete, all the while avoiding the temptation to run for too long. The script, however, is the real star, thoroughly deserving of its Oscar. From its hilarious opening interview to its heartfelt final conversation, the film is tight, concise and entertaining. I’m not sure why Knightley was nominated, though. She doesn’t get a whole lot to do.
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Whiplash

Won: Best Supporting Actor (J.K. Simmons), Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing
Nominated For: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture

I only just watched the much-hyped Whiplash today, and it is indeed very, very good. J.K. Simmons’ monstrous turn as the short-tempered Draconian jazz teacher who torments a young drumming prodigy is well-deserving of his Oscar win, and indeed all the other awards he picked up for the role as well. Miles Teller, as said prodigy Andrew Neiman, gives one hell of an intense performance too, and his drumming, combined with some incredible award-winning editing by Tom Cross, lights the film on fire in the breathtaking final 15 minutes. Palpable tension permeates Whiplash, and its narrative is as unpredictable as Simmons’ venemous character. Great stuff.
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Interstellar

Won: Best Visual Effects
Nominated For: Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Original Score (Hans Zimmer)

This one is the least fresh in my mind, as I saw it when it was still in cinemas last year. To me Interstellar was disappointing enough to sneak onto the tail end of my Top 10 Disappointments list of 2014, not because it’s a bad film (it isn’t), or even a boring one (it isn’t), but because its uneven tone and frequently distracted shifts of focus make it seem a little out of place alongside Christopher Nolan’s excellent suite of individual films in the past, chief among them Memento, the Prestige and Inception. It does have strong visual effects, but I believe Rise of the Planet of the Apes was the more deserving nominee from that category.
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The Grand Budapest Hotel

Won: Best Original Score (Alexandre Desplat), Best Production Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Costume Design
Nominated For: Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, Best Directing (Wes Anderson), Best Picture

This charming movie was released a very long time ago in Oscar terms, which renders its incredible nine nominations a little surprising, though nonetheless deserved. I only saw it last week, so the film is still vivid in my memory, and it is positively delightful. It would actually be my pick for Best Picture out of the Academy nominees, with Whiplash a close second. Its near-complete sweep of the major visual awards is hardly surprising, as its endlessly creative aesthetic is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Quirky, star-studded, memorably acted (particularly in the cases of Ralph Fiennes, Jeff Goldblum and the shape-shifting Tilda Swinton) as well as mercifully brief, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a Wes Anderson movie through-and-through, and you should definitely watch it.
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Big Hero 6

Won: Best Animated Feature Film

I just want to say that while I think How to Train Your Dragon 2 deserved this award more (It was my second favourite movie of last year, after all), I am still very happy about this. That’s all.

 

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Notable Nominees/Winners I Haven’t Seen at Time of Writing

The Theory of Everything

American Sniper

Boyhood

Still Alice

Selma

Foxcatcher

24 Feb

A Decade of Dual Screen Splendour

Posted by vagrantesque in DS, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Turns out I couldn’t do my normal Oscars thing this year because of work commitments, which saddens me. Nevertheless, as pathetic as it might sound, I’ve been waiting for this very day for years now, just so I could put this article up.

The original model – A thing of stunning beauty that made you want to throw up a little with just one look.

It is truly astonishing that a decade has already passed since the release of the Nintendo DS in Australia. On this very day in 2005, almost three months after its American release, the Big N bestowed a truly ugly yet quietly revolutionary portable gaming device on the PAL region for the first time, with a European release to follow a few weeks later. This hefty silver beast came packing not one but two screens, one of them touch-enabled, along with an unassuming microphone for voice input, more buttons than Nintendo had ever put on a handheld before, a built-in instant messenger app and full backwards combatibility with Game Boy Advance games. It was a thoroughly weird hunk of plastic and metal (this was still years before the iPhone, after all) that initially appealed to little more than Nintendo’s faithful.

I was one of said faithful, and my sister and I were there on launch day to pick up our first run versions of the DS, complete with that bundled-in demo cartridge of Metroid Prime: Hunters tantalisingly known as “First Hunt”. Between such a tasty graphical showcase and the joy of Super Mario 64 DS, Nintendo’s fresh console represented a huge step forward in graphical muscle over the GBA, and my teenage eyes lit up at the prospect of what experiences could possibly be on the way for the bizarre clamshell. Many of my friends were bewildered at the very sight of the monstrosity and my attempts to explain its appeal initially sucked, but I didn’t particularly mind if the system wasn’t popular, visually pleasing or particularly comfortable to play for long stretches – I knew it would bring great games to the table.

Well, I was right about that last part at least.

After all, just shy of 18 months later the DS Lite was released. Bringing with it brighter screens, a much smaller form factor, swathes of games with a wider range of appeal than ever before and some deviously clever marketing, the infinitely better version of the DS grew steadily in popularity until it exploded into the mainstream alongside the Wii in the latter half of the decade. The rest is history – the DS became Nintendo’s highest selling console of all time and the success of simple touch screen games paved the way for a smartphone gaming revolution. And unlike with the Wii, the release of so-called “casual” games on the DS did not affect the ongoing creativity and quality of meatier games on the system. All throughout the console’s life cycle, from the original model to the Lite to the camera-enabled DSi to the supersized DSi XL, great games just kept coming out. Some of my favourite videogames ever made their home on the DS, and so without any further rambling, here are my personal favourites. No less than 20 of them, in fact.

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20. Trauma Center: Under the Knife

I’m going to start with the entry on this list that I’ve most recently discovered. As good an argument as any for the extraordinary staying power of the DS’ unique library, I started playing this gem only a few months ago after picking it up for dirt cheap on a whim. And it’s awesome. Though typically weird for an Atlus game and just as typically difficult, the first in what is apparently a series of Trauma Center games is engaging and rewarding in a way I’ve not seen in any other videogame. The relatively unique stress of performing surgical tasks while your patient’s vital signs rapidly tick away, all against the backdrop of an insane science fiction story, feels fresh even in today’s wonderful climate of creative indie experiences.
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19. Metroid Prime Hunters

Though I have much stronger nostalgic feelings for the aforementioned demo of the game, the full version of Metroid Prime: Hunters was certainly nothing to sneeze at. Arriving over a year after said demo, Hunters built on the experimental foundations of the Gamecube’s Metroid Prime 2: Echoes to deliver a gorgeous competitive multiplayer-centric title where the campaign was just the thing you played when you had no buddies around. With a diverse selection of alien bounty hunters from which to choose, each packing a different transformation for mobility and stealth, Metroid Prime Hunters was crammed with ideas way ahead of its time, and honestly represented a concept too ambitious for the limits of the DS hardware. I’d really like to see a sequel on a console with more than one directional input. People who claim the controls of the 3DS’ Kid Icarus Uprising stopped them from playing probably never owned Hunters.
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18. WarioWare Touched!

A quirky launch title for the DS, WarioWare Touched! was my entry point into a Nintendo franchise I now regard as one of my top five of all time. I was positively floored by how much fun could be garnered from a stack of basic-looking microgames lasting mere seconds with only the vaguest of instructions to point the player in the right direction. Touched! was one of the absolute best indications early in the DS’ life of the insane potential of touch screen gaming (it even did Fruit Ninja before Fruit Ninja) and its incredibly bizarre personality shone through every manic twist and turn. There are better WarioWare games out there, but this one is really special to me.

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23 Feb

Mega Ultra Blast Cast Ep.37 – What does a game’s length mean to you?

Posted by vagrantesque in MUBC. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .


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With the recent controversy over the length of The Order: 1886, Shane,Delaney and I knuckle down and get stuck into a heated debate over the importance of game length on the latest episode of the Mega Ultra Blast Cast! We also talk plenty about our experiences with Evolve, the gigantic Spiderman news in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the rumoured live action Zelda TV show, the amazing first gameplay trailer of Persona 5, the “2-1-3” sequel theory and whether a zombie apocalypse could actually happen in today’s world. It’s hard-hitting and real – it’s the Mega Ultra Blast Cast.

If you feel so inclined, go for a run, take a scenic drive, jazz up your afternoon commute or just curl up on the couch and play some games while you listen to the opinions of three jazzed Sydneysiders.

You can play the whole episode right off this page if you like:


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-.-.-.-

Or you can go to the Soundcloud site/app and listen from there:
https://soundcloud.com/mega-ultra-blast-cast/mubc-37-what-does-a-games-length-mean-to-you

(To download and listen offline, follow the link and then click the download tab)

As always if you enjoy what you hear please share the cast with your friends – Until next time!

13 Feb

Movie Review: Kingsman – The Secret Service

Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Back into the swing of things with a nice tame film review! JK Matthew Vaughn.

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Starring: Colin Firth, Samuel L Jackson, Michael Caine
Director: Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class)
Rating: MA15+
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As far as spy movie send-ups go (and there are many), Kingsman: The Secret Service is not the kind of straightforward spoof you might expect going into the cinema. Yes, it’s got fine suits and fancy James Bond gadgets and a larger-than-life villain, and it certainly pokes fun at those things, while also kind of doing them really well. But it’s also a Matthew Vaughn film through and through, which means if you didn’t enjoy his irreverent, stylishly ultraviolent, occasionally uncomfortable 2010 film Kick-Ass, it’s unlikely you’ll fall for Kingsman. However, if that movie was your cup of tea, you can expect a good time with the Brit’s latest.

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