Nostalgia Wins

So after thinking a long time on what I'd like to do next after Dungeon Siege 3, I realized that most people watching my videos seem to like watching content from the old games a lot more than the new games. I'm not sure if that's because there are more videos of the new games out there, or people just like watching older games for nostalgic reasons. That or there are reasons I don't quite comprehend or haven't thought of, which is probably the case.

My point here is that I know what I will be doing an LP of next. I will leave it a surprise. In the meantime, I will finish Dungeon Siege 3 and continue to post a series of micro videos highlighting my adventures playing an MMO. I don't play MMOs very often. When I do, I get bored fast. I have two great people to play with, and I find having them play is motivation enough to keep up in levels and look for better items. We've been playing the Neverwinter open beta, as mentioned in another post I believe, and it has been decent all around. So far, the difficult dungeons and PvP have been the most fun for me. I don't really care about items or getting my hands on the best stuff. The only reason I want decent items is so I can take on more challenging opponents. The best are those equally matched with myself. That way I don't feel bad about winning and I don't get frustrated for losing.

Anyhow, I picked out some of the clips that amused me the most, and hopefully they'll amuse you too. I worry sometimes that my humour is too strange or stupid for anyone to care for the jokes. And in some cases...they're really awful.

Like REALLY awful.

Like so awful that you want to rip out your own eyeballs with your bare hands and offer up your soul to the highest bidder because you have no use for its tattered remains.

That bad.

Imagine Dragons

Amazing concert by Imagine Dragons last night. Opening bands were fairly decent as well. I'll admit I liked the sound of X Ambassadors from New York. The lead singer had an amazing voice. Their flailing, head-banging and terrible "Canadian accents" were also very amusing. Probably added to my enjoyment overall, though probably not for the reasons you'd expect. Regardless, I'll be looking into their music more. The Envy Corps was the second band to open, and while they were a little more generic sounding than the first, I still enjoyed listening to their music. The most engaging part of their music was actually the introductions itself. I loved the bass they used, but the singing didn't do much for me.

The Imagine Dragons themselves, while coming out a little late, were fantastic. I have a feeling the delay was so the stage crew could move and set up a massive amount of drums and the full stage aesthetic, which included bare trees with glowing lanterns hanging from them. This was certainly one of the most pretty shows I've seen, and the fact that they're from Vegas really shows with their showmanship.

I was so happy when they opened with "Round and Round," one of my favourite tracks on their Night Visions album. The whole show included lights, amazing vocals and bass, and for their bit hit, "Radioactive," the lead jumped into a harness, rose above the stage and flew like superman to a drum suspended over the crowd. I'm still not sure if I found this more amazing or hilarious. A bit of both I suppose.

I loved the energy of the band, I loved the was the stage and light show in the background looked, and I loved the giant confetti balloons. Because balloons and confetti make everything better. Strangest part of the whole performance that evening? Nothing overly strange, stupid or crazy happened. It was a completely "normal" concert for me. No shady underground bars, no parking tickets, no money falling out of my pockets, no hail storms, no one spitting water over the audience (though the lead did open a bottle and throw water on the crowd), no super intense wide-eyed stage destroying singers, no drunk people tripping all over you being dragged across the room multiple times...just a couple of people smoking weed. That's pretty normal. That doesn't happen. Prepare yourselves. The apocalypse nears.

I'd definitely recommend the concert though, just be prepared for a 4 hour+ venture for the evening.

Lord of the Rings Concert

Turned into a Fellowship of the Ring movie screening with live music. Full orchestra plus about a 100 person choir, singing and playing on cue to the movie. It was spectacular. I never saw the Fellowship of the Ring in theatres (I was 11 at the time and I would be in Jr. High right before the release if The Two Towers before I learned of it) so this was really quite special for me. I love movies, and I love going to watch them in theatres with the perfect audience. These people were the perfect audience, laughing, gasping or being sad all at the right times. Also, about half the audience understood or knew of the many memes now associated with the movie, so I was quite entertained when half the audience started snickering at those points.

I was actually reminded of a drinking game my friends played on one of our ski trips watching the trilogy over three nights. I thought I'd share it here for those interested in such activities.

1. Drink whenever you see the ring.
2. Drink whenever Pippin screws up.
3. Drink whenever there's an "Oh-face."
4. Drink whenever one of the characters sheds a stoic man-tear/
5. If you hate your liver, drink whenever there's a "moment" between two characters (common one Sam/Frodo or Legolas/Aragron) - can be adjusted to be between only a few characters if you're worried about alcohol poisoning.

Special/additional rules:
-Drink once for every man-tear you or your friends shed for Boromir at the end of FoTR
-Drink once for every over-the-top trick Legolas performs
-Drink once for every character that arrives in Frodo's bedroom in RoTK at the end of the movie

If you play this game all the way to the end, especially in FoTR and RoTK, I can't guarantee you'll be alive at the end of the screening.


Meanwhile in video upload land. I need to record more Dungeon Siege 3 and get that posted. I think we're done with Amnesia-type videos for now. I still have a large amount of Left 4 Dead 2 videos to post as well as some new videos of the newer MMO, Neverwinter that I'm playing with my friends Shauna and Nick. I'll try to keep you all updated.

Because Nintendo Wasn't Making Enough Money

They decided to cash in a little more:

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/nintendo-takes-legal-action-against-its-own-community-claims-rights-over-yo

I haven't LPed any Nintendo games in the past, and wasn't planning to LP any in the near future, but this seems a little ridiculous to me. The article practically sums up my thoughts on the matter, but I figured I'd spread the word (as small as my audience is) and let other LPers know what was going on. I must say I am upset, especially because I really like a lot of Nintendo games (cough cough FIRE EMBLEM), but I certainly am not interested in LPing any of their games if this is the way they are going to act towards people that actually end up promoting their games at the end of the day.


Oh crap, I just realized the sound effects and possibly some music from my videos would technically fall under this category. Wonder if I'll be seeing some notices in the near future. Hmmmm

Drifting

All my marks are in from school, so now all I need to do is put on a silly robe, pick up a couple of pieces of paper and wait around for three hours while I wait for other people with silly robes to pick up their slips of paper. In the meantime, I will continue making LPs and other videos for YouTube.

I will be gone for a month and a half this summer, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to start new LPs after I complete Dungeon Siege 3. I am estimating that I'm a little over half done DS3, but it's been a long time since I was last at the part I'm thinking of AND I never actually finished the game last time. I got very mad about this one battle, which I am sure will make me very mad again. I have a ton of ideas for new LPs however.

1) Single Player LPs:

I am thinking of LPs I can do on my own time in the next while. I may return to the Dungeon Siege series to complete additional quests or do a showcase of pets and recipes, but ultimately I want to move on to new games.

My top options for LPs at the moment are: Half Life 1 (the original, not the overhaul it got last year), Diablo 1 (of which I have only completed once), Baldur's Gate (of which I already have three videos) and Overlord 1 (of which I started a text LP and then promptly gave up on it).

2) Multiplayer LPs:

I have a lot more Left 4 Dead 2 videos I can post, which people seem less interested in watching. My brother and I play most of them, but I have some friends join us in other campaigns, including another LPer, IskatuMesk, which I unfortunately didn't get the entire recording of the campaign for. Shauna and I are still debating whether we will do an Amnesia: Machine for Pigs LP, but you can guarantee that we will be doing more LPs, probably horror survival related, in the future. We are also contemplating joining up with another friend of hers to do a Neverwinter LP, but we haven't got the details of that one worked out yet. I also have multiplayer videos of Dungeon Siege 1, but I'm not sure what videos of that one are going to be produced.

3) Reviews, Compilation videos and Music:

I currently have a review of Amnesia: The Dark Descent done by Shauna and myself encoding on my computer. I plan to upload it tonight (if it cooperates. It is an hour and 7 minutes long, and would probably only target a few people, but I feel we give an in-depth analysis of the game. It's the first time I've done a video review and I may move on to do reviews of the Dungeon Siege series and perhaps some Fire Emblem games. I am not sure how these reviews will work yet, or even if it's worth doing. I'll have to see if people are interested in seeing them. As for compilation videos, I have another Left 3 Dead 2 one planned that I need to review a lot of video for. I currently don't have enough footage for another "Five Years of Flails" type video yet, so that will be a long time coming. As for music, I plan on making some more continuous tracks for video games, but I am not sure which ones yet. Probably Dungeon Siege 2 or and extended version of the Dungeon Siege 1 version.


Overall, I have a lot to work on. I will be asking any viewers interested what they'd like to see as an LP. If no one really cares, I'll do whatever the hell I want and hope for the best.

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2013: Sunday

Phew what a weekend. I feel exhausted, but it was certainly well-worth the time, money and effort. I am now significantly poorer, even though I held off on a lot of purchases this year. Anyhow, woke up a little late today as I desperately needed the sleep after a 12-hour day in heels on the Saturday. I decided that today was best spent in my slippers. So I wore my slippers to the con.

Creepy. Anyway, Oliver and I tried to get there for the Nathon Fillion Panel, but unfortunately we weren't there early enough and found that the giant sliding door to the corral area was closed and a man on a megaphone was basically telling everyone to bugger off. We may have been able to sneak in a side door, but we decided to just wander the con instead. We got to see a lot of cosplayers and merchandise at least. Some of which was rather...frightening.

I loved these pieces of art. They were foam stand-up pieces that were attached by magnet to their bases so you could transport them flat. They had all sorts of characters including Marvel, Avatar (anime), Axis Powers Hetalia, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead, Half Life, Fullmetal Alchemist and more. I would have bought a bunch of them, but I had neither the money nor the space to store them currently, so I passed this year. This is also one of the reasons I didn't buy any artwork as I don't have anywhere to display them.

Found another Katara today and an Aang to boot! A few feet away were Hiroshi Warriors, which I decided not to bother as there were a lot of people and Aang was trying to have a conversation with them. This gave Oliver a FANTASTIC idea for cosplay next year however. I would be the happiest person alive if we did it, but I'll leave it a surprise just in case.

Shortly after this I stopped at an artist's table to purchase a necklace that caught my eye. I looked up to see someone sitting there that looked extremely familiar. I read the tag around her neck and then I realized that I worked with her sister. I said hi and she told me the necklace I was buying was made by my coworker. Small world.

Thought this was pretty funny. In case it's hard to read, the artist had taken a sharpie to his sign and had written "beer," "hookers" and "I want all your money" on his sign. At least I THINK he wrote it. Either way, it's pretty amusing.

And then this. I'm going to have nightmares for a week. DOMO IS GOING TO EAT US ALL.

Tank Girl and Jet Girl! In civies. Met up with her and her friends for a little while before we headed our separate ways to do some more shopping.

Meanwhile, we stopped every so often to be evil geniuses. Muahahahahhaha, Yeah, we didn't get as many spotpasses as we'd have liked today as we arrived in the early afternoon and by then most people were beginning to leave. A lot of people go on the Sunday just to get their photos signed by the actors and other media guests as many of the autograph sessions were today. Still, I got about 40-50 passes, which is pretty decent.

While we were stopped in the place I took the 3DS photo, this fellow arrived. He was identified as "Brotherhood of Steel" to me, which is from Fallout 3. Never played the game (not yet), but it was still a sweet costume.

Companion cube <3

Oh and giant, expensive airsoft guns. Because why not?

We met up with some other friends and did a little more shopping together. I was very sad for this giant Yoshi in the corner by the boxes. He just looked so lonely. Guess no one had the space or money to take him home. That said, he was extremely top-heavy with his massive melon of a head.

A place offering "crystal healing" and "energy matrix recalibration" and "angel readings" among other services. I think this is all some kind of conspiracy. I mean, why else would there be a G-man sitting in their booth?

Another picture in the unfortunate timing series. I met up with my friend Loki here who we spent the rest of the day with. She was looking menacing while my other friend took a picture with my crackberry. She took a little long so her menacing face turned into a "have you taken it?" face. Meanwhile I was trying to look scared by her face, and ended up just looking like she had done something unpleasant instead. I REALLY apologize for this one, but it was just too funny.

Anyway, the con overall was great. Nerd Christmas is always one of my favourite times of year. The organization this year was leaps and bounds greater than last, and I met so many amazing people. Next year I'm hoping to see a lot of them again, and maybe try out some new cosplay ideas that we have. Thanks to everyone who ran it, all of the media guests, exhibitors and vendors that came, and to all the fans who make each comic con so much fun for me. See you all next year!

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2013: Saturday

As most of my pictures contain Tank Girl, I really could have dubbed this day the "Adventures of Tank Girl (and Jet Girl)." Jet Girl was just the photographer.

I stay up fairly late into the night working on a helmet that I think will be an essential part of my costume. It wasn't. Regardless, I was excited to be Jet Girl the next day. I'm not sure why I look like a serial killer.

I wake up and get ready for what would be one of the longest, most tiring days of my life. I'm definitely feeling it today as I write this. Especially in my legs and feet. It was a good day, but it was exhausting. I spent my day with Sarah aka "Tank Girl" who has upgraded her costume every year for the con. This year she added a RPG launcher and a couple of grenades to her costume in addition to a new coat of paint on her... torpedoes. My costume was certainly in the shadow of hers, but some people really appreciated that we had dressed up as two of the characters from the comic.

We immediately made our way to the centre of the exhibition building to sign in for the costume contest later that evening. Sarah had missed it the past two years (last year due a long admissions line and a lot of people wanting to take her picture), so we made sure to get there for her first. After being stopped about once every five feet for photos, we finally arrived at the booth. Somehow I figured that entering the contest as a team would be awesome and she liked the idea, so we registered together and were set to be in the contest. As I have stage freight and a lack of confidence, I really don't know what came over me. Regardless, we were in it. After leaving the booth we met Red Skull in the picture above. We saw him last year and it was good to see him out again. His costume is magnificent. 

We wandered around for most of the day taking pictures, doing some broken, ineffective browsing and shopping, and meeting up with people we knew at the con. Tank girl had a lot of connections, meeting up with volunteers that she knew while she looked for the friend that made her torpedo top and RPG. He is a part of the 501st Badlands Garrison group, making movie-quality props and costumes. I don't know if she ever met up with him, but we didn't see him while I was travelling with her. We did, however, run into another Tank Girl sporting a target top and fish net stockings. Wasn't sure what she thought of the rocket boobs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLdGo892gqs

I know what most other people thought however. We were very entertained by all the comments we heard such as "that's different," "that's interesting," "oh my god," "that, is awesome," "nice rockets," "are those real," and "wow." Tank Girl's catch-phrases were "lock up your sons," "bang bang," "p-p-p-pow," and "yup, these are real." We encountered this fellow here, which unfortunately I have no idea what he is from, but I liked the shiny lights and music. His shoes were also platform and had crazy lightning circles. A lady at a kiosk next to me said someone should be videoing it. Ironically enough, I was already getting the camera ready on my crackberry. My favourite part is when she just turns and poses for a guy taking a photo.

The random glitches in the video are from the flashes in people's cameras. I kind of wish some of them didn't put the flashes on, especially when we would stop in an area for a few minutes and a lot of pictures would be taken. I was blinded more than once. One funny instance was after about five photos were taken, I couldn't see for a few seconds, but when my eyes recovered the person standing right in front of me was someone I knew. So I must have looked super dazed before I said "OHI."

Met up with Captain Jack Sparrow, who would eventually go on to win Best Performance in his category later on in the contest. With good reason, he was in character all day. I love how later on we were sitting in the room waiting for the contest to start and I say to Tank Girl, oh look, Jack Sparrow is here. Without looking she says "what, the good one" and turns to see him looking surprised at her. Then she says "yup, the good one" to which he laughed. The woman next to him said "well at least he was the good one or that would have been awkward." And then we all laughed. And laughed. And promptly went back to ignoring each other for the time being.

Meant to get a picture of this guy on the Friday, but I missed my opportunity and the volunteers were shooing us out of the hallway. Found him again on the Saturday and asked for his picture. The Doctor from Assassin's Creed had a spring loaded needle that would pop up when prompted, He also had a cool detail on his back with vials filled with different coloured liquids. Was pretty fantastic. I love the little "Strange" sign above his shoulder for an added unintentional touch.

And then we blew up Lego Star Wars land. 

First of a couple photos taken with incredible (and accidental) timing. Wolf Cop came along to get a picture and they were in the middle of figuring out a pose as I snapped a picture. The facial expressions here are just priceless. Especially Wolf Cop. 

As Wolf Cop and Tank Girl finished getting their photos taken, this duo was pointed out to me. As Oliver put it: "Dad of the Year." I thought it was adorable, though I'm not sure why the kid was doing the splits. He was doing a bunch of poses before he decided that this was the best one. Clever idea regardless, and the kid seemed to be having a lot of fun.

One of two amazing Optimus Prime costumes that we saw that day. Both entered the costume contest later on, though I don't believe either one of them won anything as far as I can recall. Too bad too. They were both excellent and one of the guys broke a leg (an Optimus Prime leg) as he excited the stage. Thankfully some people were there to catch him as he fell while his costume dismantled itself. 

Later in the afternoon I start to hear horns and drums as the Vikings entered the exhibition hall and began marching around the outside aisles. They all stopped in the autograph building where we encountered the group of them. I asked Tank Girl if she wanted a picture with them, which resulted in one of the greatest costume contrasts I saw all day. Snapped the first one with her camera and moved to get mine just in time to get her leaving the group. I found the picture amusing as it looked like some epic confrontation or battle was about to begin. I believe these fellows were also demonstrating sword and shield combat outside throughout the day. 

One of my favourite moments yesterday was when we passed the Space booth and two men were in the midst of a discussion or interview when in the middle of a sentence the one guy yells "OH MY GOD IT'S TANK GIRL" and then continues with the conversation. The camera person looked so confused as she wasn't sure whether to turn the camera to look at Tank Girl or continue holding on the people talking. I look forward to seeing that interview sometime...if they don't edit it out. Anyhow, we passed the booth again later and these fellows that we did an interview with earlier (much to my dismay as I was part of said interview) spotted Tank Girl and asked if she'd like to do an introduction to their program. I got a lot of enjoyment watching her say the lines. I did get a video, but the voices are incredibly hard to hear, so I decided not to post it.

Shortly after we met Skeletor from He Man, so we got a few candid shots with him. The first is one of my favourites from the entire day as I just love Skeletor's facial expression. You can probably tell from the picture, but Skeletor was super tall. One of the tallest people I saw at the con, so he really stood out. Oddly enough, he also turned out to be one of the judges for the contest later. The child in front was getting his picture taken with a bunch of cosplayers at the time and he kept getting in all the pictures. Wasn't a big deal. At least he was a cute kid.

On our way outside Tank Girl had another battle, this time with Iron Man. Tank Girl insisted that she was winning (obviously). Iron Man ended up being at the con all three days. Kudos to him and his stamina. I cosplayed one day and now I feel like a truck hit me, ran me over a few times and then dumped the contents of the cabin's ash tray on my head before leaving me in the dust as road kill. Point is, the costume and the cosplayer was awesome. 

On our way to the Big Four building while Tank Girl was getting pictures taken I shuffled off to the side to get a picture of some characters from The Hobbit. There were a few good Saurumans running around the con, but this is the only Gandalf I ever saw. I did have the opportunity to have a couple pictures taken with Gandalf's staff (no comment) as I mentioned earlier, but I have yet to track down who has that photo. 

Had some supper in the food court, which thankfully wasn't packed full wall to wall with people as it was last year. It was rather spacious and included a bouncey house for the children. Though I couldn't help but imagine some of the cosplayers in there. I doubt the house (or some of the costumes) would have lasted long. Tank Girl also found another use for her torpedoes as a table/napkin holder. What was really nice about the food court was that people almost universally understood it to be the "we're taking a break here so don't bother us to take photos" zone. Was nice to sit down and take a break, especially for someone who doesn't normally wear heels. My feet were killing me. The salad was fairly tasty if not stupidly expensive.

Tank Girl and I split off for awhile at this time as I had a photo op to go to. I was so excited to meet Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard and Mitch Pileggi and get my picture taken with them. I'm not normally the squealing fangirl type, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't super happy to be there. They were all really nice, though saying I "met" them was stretching it a bit. The person I split the photo op with went back on the Sunday in the autograph line just to meet him and shake his hand. I was happy enough with the photo, though it would have been nice to say hello with her. 

So, as I mentioned before, Tank Girl and I had entered into the costume contest, of which we had to check in for at 6. My photo op was at 5, and the HIGHLY INTELLIGENT volunteers outside told us that no one was being allowed to line up for it. We asked twice and got the same answer. At 5 we approach another volunteer and he tells us that people began lining up 15 minutes before. We go in and end up being 5th last in line for the photo op. So I end up arriving JUST in time for the contest, running on my already destroyed feet, nearly breaking my ankle a couple times and we were ushered into a side room for pre-judging. 

Inside we had a chance to talk with a bunch of other cosplayers, some of which I have already mentioned. I was so impressed by all the costumes in the room and how friendly everyone was, even after a day dealing with hot, sweaty costumes, over-enthusiastic fans and annoying comments. I overheard the man who cosplayed Dr. Manhattan recalling all the ridiculous comments that he had received all day. The top three were "who were you in Avatar?," "are you one of the guys from the blue man group?" and something along the lines of "you're not a very silver silver surfer." (I can't really remember the last one). The one woman in a Samus suit (with lights and everything!) was saying how next year she'll be installing a fan because she was overheating in the suit (a common problem). She won the Novice category in the contest, so hopefully it was worth it. A man dressed as Flin Rider chatted with us (and scared us half to death) about his skit on stage. He was saying how he hoped his lines would be good enough to carry him through the competition. We thought we had to do a skit as well, and we hadn't prepared anything, but we were told we checked the "walk" option on our entry form, which meant we only had to do a couple poses. Anyway, I think he made a good Flin Rider. A guy playing Jack Frost from the Legends of the Guardian also talked to us about the con and some of his experiences with cosplay, which was interesting. We also met a new friend dressed as Cloud from Final Fantasy 7. She had an awesome home-made buster blade. Apparently she had cosplayed Shadow Link the day before and switched to Cloud for the Saturday contest. I want to be able to switch costumes like that some day. Regardless, we exchanged contact information and suggested that we look for each other in future cons. 

 Waiting to go on stage. First picture was for the judging and individual walks. Second picture was for the finale when we walked out as a group so the audience could take photos. Top photo includes one of the organizers in the Link costume, the kid in an R2D2 suit who was telling us how it started as a salad bowl and ended up as a Halloween costume out of control. I also had a good chat with his father about the Flames and their prospects for next season. On the right was a female assassin who won the Master level category of the competition. Her suit was fantastic. Bottom picture you can make out the Samus I mentioned earlier in the middle. To the left of her was Haytham, one of my favourite costumes of the con that I unfortunately didn't get a good picture of (or less blurry in the case of my camera). The red blob in the front was a custom Spiderman costume. The guy bought the base materials and did the designs and details on the suit himself. To put it in context, it looked almost exactly like the suit from the most recent Spiderman movie. 

Sitting, waiting for the photo session to come to a close and to find out the winners of the contest. As we waited a group of people working with the con did some stand-up and improv to entertain us. Look closely and you can see the giant sword Cloud was carrying and the light sabre of Darth Maul. Darth Maul, if I heard this correctly, took 7 hours to prepare his costume that day. He had to paint his body, glue horns and other aesthetic objects onto himself and ensure he had all the pieces to his costume. A lot of effort goes into these costumes that I never really knew about. Tank Girl herself took 2 hours to get dressed and ready for the con.

Probably my favourite picture overall from the con this weekend. Cloud, Tank Girl and Jet Girl unite! It was a long, tiring day, but we had a lot of fun, learned a lot about people and their costumes, and made a couple friends along the way. YEAH COMIC CON.