Albums that Made Me: Nimrod

 

I purchased Green Day's Nimrod sometime around 1998, when I was thirteen or so. I can't recall my exact impressions of the album at the time, but I remember liking it a great deal, although I did kind of think that Green Day was perhaps past their time of cultural relevancy, though of course my teenage ass wouldn't have put it that way. Green Day was cool, but they were on their way out. This is mostly bullshit; Green Day have more or less stayed a popular act throughout their entire career, but Blink 182's Enema of the State would soon be released two years later in 1999, and Blink 182 would end up being the more popular punk/pop band of the millennium. Which is a shame, really. Blink 182 took the snotty adolescent angst that Green Day popularized and dumbed it down for the Attitude Era, and although I have never really listened to their discography besides their big hits, they never seemed to expand their sound or evolve beyond a shitty-Green Day knock-off. Anyways, I just listened to Nimrod again after not hearing it for two decades, and man, it's a kick-ass album. Nice Guys Finish Last and Grouch are the clever sort of punk you expect from Billy Joe, whereas the pure power-pop of Redundant and Haushinka feel like songs taken from the early Sixties, with their deft touches of major/minor melody and simple pop chords. There is even a little surf instrumental, entitled Last Ride In. Of course, Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) would be the biggest hit, and while its inclusion in every graduation procession since has ruined it as a stand alone piece of music, it was a pretty big departure for the band at the time. While I'm not a big fan of American Idiot, latter day Green Day, with their concept albums and wider sound, wouldn't have been possible without the experimentation of Nimrod. For one of my first records, it holds up really well, definitely better than Hootie and the Blowfish's second album (which I barely listened to, since I can't recall its name) or The Mighty-Mighty Bosstone's That Impression that I Get (which is still probably one of the greatest one-hit wonder singles ever).

New Music Video: Wish There Were Some Air

 

An old ballad that makes little literal sense, but works emotionally. I believe I wrote Wish There Were Some Air for an apocalyptic concept album that also featured Heat Wave. I dunno. Who remembers? Not I.

Video Game Review: The Callisto Protocol

Did you know that The Callisto Protocol cost over 160 million dollars? Why so much cash was spent on a game heavily indebted to a series that hadn't produced a new title since 2013 (EA's Deadspace remake would be released early 2023) is anyone's guess. Survival horror is still somewhat of a niche genre, with only Resident Evil games really selling in the millions. Those suits don't know what's up, do they? Anyways, you can tell that money was spent on the graphics. The Callisto Protocol is a very nice-looking Unreal Engine 4 title, with excellent lighting, textures, and character work. Unfortunately, the ray-tracing implementation is extremely CPU-heavy and accompanied by heavy stuttering, making it more or less unusable, not unlike Jedi Survivor. You play as Jacob (Josh Duhamel, who I recognized but couldn't name), a smuggler who crash-lands on a prison planet and is promptly made a prisoner. Very quickly, necromorphs (oh wait, that's Deadspace) overrun the prison and you have to escape. The big innovation that differentiates the Callisto Protocol from Deadspace is the addition of a melee system. It's pretty simple, with specific monsters all having the same attacks, which you dodge by switching between the directional keys. It's only a pain when you're out of ammo and getting mobbed, which happens just a little too often early on. Once Jacob gets his Deadspace suit and starts manufacturing weapons, you engage in inventory management while using your telekinetic glove to toss enemies into spiked walls or off cliffs. Combat is pretty fun, and very similar to Deadspace, although your weapons never get very creative. Monster design is pretty lacking as well, although the xenomoph egg thing with a human head and a telescopic neck is pretty rad. You'll do a lot of crawling through vents and squeezing through crevices, probably because the Callisto Protocol released on last gen consoles, which lack the speedy ssds of the current gen and PCs. Plotwise, every cliche in the book is utilized, from your allies conveniently being disposed of after they've outgrown their use as a deus ex machina, to Jacob frequently being separated from people by collapsing buildings. At the end, when you face a Resident Evil-inspired heavy, you'll roll your eyes at the lack of originality in this game. Why then did I enjoy it so much? Well, space survival horror is pretty much the Callisto Protocol, Deadspace, and Alien:Isolation, so any entry into the genre is welcome. And despite wearing its influences on its sleeve and much of its shirt, the Callisto Protocol does what it sets out to do very well, with a budget we don't often see outside of anything not a major triple-A franchise. It runs pretty great now on PC maxed out (without ray-tracing), and you can currently play it on Game Pass. Just don't expect high art.

Screenshots:

 

A Poem for JD Vance

 

Big White Teeth a-chomping

Grin a grin

    of everlasting shit.

Creature of vampires;

Hypocrite supreme.

 Grow the beard

  to hide the jowls,

 to cover 

   the baby-fat cheeks.

As a Marine,

  You swore to defend

 The Constitution.

As a politician,

You make deals with devils.

Fool.

    Don't you know

    That Satan's oaths

    Are binding?

Will you grin that grin

When he comes to collect?

    You may be interested to know

    that honor

   Isn't a four-letter word.

 

Bad Poetry: A Week's Worth of Poems

 

10:00 PM

What am I doing

right now

but worrying

about the state of the world

Questioning

my place

at this very moment

this slip of time

that is always

sliding away

just as I am.

What did I do today?

I wrote it down

and maybe I’ll read it

In a week

a year

or never.

Did the writing help?

Everything helps

To cement the idea

of a person.

We’d all like to be someone

and not

a bunch

of passing

urges.

Nighttime Thoughts

nighttime

thoughts

are

just

the

worst.

Advice

Live in the moment,

For the moment

is all

you have.

Sure I sound

like some hippy shit

who doesn’t have a brain.

Who said a brain

was a good thing to have?

Jellyfish don’t have a brain.

You know how many millions of years

Jellyfish have been around?

Is the point of life

To stick around?

Or is it to reproduce

And fuck off for all eternity?

I dunno, man.

Just like

Live in the moment.

True Gold

Steven says that true gold

Doesn’t fear the test of fire.

I think he heard this from some anime.

Why Steven?

Why?

WTF

Theo’s birthday party

was an occasion

filled with Legos,

plastic dinosaurs,

and bouncy combat suits.

Someone shot Trump

through the ear

but missed his heart

or head,

likely for obvious reasons.

Is it possible to have a normal day

In the year 2024?

Peaches

Hot

  Yellow

  Squishy

Sticky

  Sugary

   Sweet

But

  Goddamn

   Do

  People

  Love

Them

I Was Wrong about Game Pass

 

The Callisto Protocol, what I'm currently playing on Game Pass.

Back in February, I wrote a post about the questionable value of X Box Game Pass. My argument was that the sheer volume of titles available through Game Pass encouraged sampling and premature abandonment of many games that the subscriber may have finished if they had spent more than the 18 bucks Game Pass Ultimate costs monthly. While I certainly tried many games and abandoned them (Cocoon, Diablo 4, and Lords of the Fallen come to mind), I completed or spent over ten hours with the following: Sunset Overdrive, Resident Evil 2 Remake, Lies of P, Dead Island 2, Vampire Survivor, Evil West, Doom 2, Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, Gears of War Ultimate Edition, and Still Wakes the Deep. Below I have what the aforementioned titles would cost on Steam:

Resident Evil 2=39.99

Sunset Overdrive=19.99

Lies of P=35.99

Dead Island 2=59.99 (PC, not X Box)

Vampire Survivor=4.99

Evil West=17.49 (on sale, regularly 49.99)

Doom 2=4.99

Warhammer 40,000:Boltgun=21.99

Senu’s Saga: Hellblade 2=49.99

Gears of War Ultimate Edition=not on Steam

Still Wakes the Deep=34.99

Total=290.04

 

I ended up only paying 54.54 for 7 months of Game Pass, due to a gift card and Microsoft Rewards points, which can be redeemed for a month of Game Pass Ultimate. You have to do quests, most of which are simple (Play Game Pass on PC; Earn an Achievement) and are earned easily if you play Game Pass frequently. Had I not had a gift card or done any quests, the total for 7 months of Game Pass is 127.26, still 162.78 dollars cheaper than buying all of those games on Steam. Sure, some of those titles probably went on sale the last few months, but I strongly doubt you would've saved 162 bucks. Something I haven't even mentioned is that my son also plays on my X Box account, albeit on an actual X Box (I use my PC). He gets about an hour or so of video game time a day, and he's played games such as Super Mega Baseball 3, Roboquest, Brotato, Plants versus Zombies: Garden Warfare, and MLB: The Show as well as countless others. For a multigaming household, the value is undeniable. One thing to mention is that Microsoft is making Game Pass more expensive, with only the Ultimate tier getting same day releases on console (PC Game Pass still gets them), while costing two more dollars a month (18 to 20). I think I might opt out of my subscription come August, since nothing is really on my radar, and God of War: Ragnarok is coming out in September (not on Game Pass). But for a hardcore gamer in a multigaming household, Game Pass is still an incredible deal.

Video Game Review: Still Wakes the Deep

 

In Still Wakes the Deep you play as Caz, a Scottish man working on an oil rig in the North Sea in the 1970's. This being a survival horror video game, the shit hits the fan, and all your old buddies and enemies start turning into fleshy tentacle monsters similar to the creature in The Thing, while alien growths begin overtaking the oil rig, ripping it apart. You never learn what the horror is exactly; Caz and a small group of survivors are focused on keeping the oil rig from capsizing, which means you'll be crawling through flooded chambers, climbing wet towers, and hide in vents as you attempt to advert total catastrophe. Caz keeps hallucinating interactions with his wife Suz, who he abandoned while on the run from the law after a barfight turned bad. The dialogue and crew interactions are highlights; Still Wakes the Deep is more like an interactive film than a stealth-action sneaker, a la Alien Isolation. Although you'll hide from several monsters, most of the time you'll just traverse the wreckage of the rig. All of this is rendered in Unreal Engine 5, and while it's not quite as impressive as Hellblade 2, the lighting and water effects are really cool, and I found myself frequently pausing to take screenshots. For some reason, the Game Pass version of Still Wakes the Deep doesn't support DLSS upscaling, so I had to use UE5's TSR upscaling, which looks good most of the time, although there will be some blurriness on occasion. Still Wakes the Deep is a very short game, lasting only five hours or so, but it's an excellent narrative experience, and I found it on par with Hellblade 2. Is 2024 the year of walking simulators?

Screenshots:

New Music: Lazy Afternoon

 

I've been working on this piece of music for a while, although the recording is a little loose and maybe sloppier than I'd like. Still, it's the jazziest thing I've written, and although I've always been an admirer of musicians like Miles Davis and Kenny Burrell, my simple rock 'n' roll background has made playing that type of music a challenge. I think Lazy Afternoon is more in the vein of Burrell, whose laid back style is always a charm to hear. I'll keep working on my jazz chords in the meantime.

Video Game Review: Gears of War Ultimate Edition

 Gears of War was one of a handful of titles I played on my shared X Box 360 back in my college days. Unreal Engine 3 looked amazing, and Gears was one of the last titles with graphics that truly impressed for the time. The Ultimate Edition is a Unreal Engine 4 makeover of the original title, and I played through it on PC. The porting process was not perfect; I had to cap my frame rate to 60 in order for the game to feel smooth. I'm not sure if it's a CPU bottleneck or what. Still, the game look impressive remade in a newer version of Unreal and much closer to my memories of it. Gears of War utilizes the Half-Life 2 strategy of making a single player game: always give the player something new to do. It establishes a very strong gameplay loop of finding cover, peaking out to aim, and the retreat back behind to reload or let your health regenerate. The guns are meaty, punchy-sounding things, and there is plenty of audio feedback, like the wonderfully wet pop a Locust's head makes when you nail a headshot. The art style is top-notch, with Sera's Romanesque cities crumbling and beautiful, providing a perfect background for the war. The Locust are toothy brutes who display a surprising amount of AI. They'll rush you from cover and pop back behind a wall when you aim at them. They're quite satisfying to shoot.

As I mentioned, Gears of War will mix up its basic loop very often. You'll have to dodge a huge Locust called a Berserker, who is invulnerable to conventional weapons, and lure it outside to be destroyed by the Hammer satellite by rolling out of its way before it can reduce your body to a pile of gibs. You'll briefly drive a huge tank through the ruined streets, shining a spotlight on the Krill, flying piranhas that'll attack you in the dark. The ending sequence has you storming a runaway train, disconnecting cars and battling Locust as you race toward the final confrontation with General Ramm, a massive Locust surrounded by Krill who wields a turret like a machine gun. It's all good stuff, performed by manly men with football player sized necks and hands as big as dinner plates. The early-aughts were a time for testosterone, folks. Sometimes I actually miss it!

Gears of War Ultimate Edition is a good way to experience the original classic. If you have Game Pass, it's worth a playthrough. You might be surprised how well it holds up.