I enjoy obsession. It heightens the experience, unlocks edge abilities and provides clarity of purpose. Like any state, it can be taken too far but with understanding it can be transformed from affliction to strength.

I started World of Warcraft in the beta, many years ago. Before that the strategy games and in one particular modem game even told my future wife I loved her for the first time. Warcraft as you see is very much a part of my history.

The game totally catered to my personality. Obsession with game mechanics, leveling, gearing up and endless side goals took their toll. With increasing focus came new levels of things to tweak, endless rewards for a brain that liked certain buttons pushed.

Even worse that the addiction to the game was the reliance on the game in order to socialize with my friends. It didn’t matter if I got bored of the game, how could I leave my friends? So I would stay a bit longer… maybe it would get better.

But it didn’t. My level of obsession meant overplaying and burning out. It happened many times. Enough that people would joke, “oh, when are you coming back” and “oh, when are you leaving again”.

The problem with “quitting” WoW was that I wasn’t. I was postponing, delaying and pausing. Like a reformed drunk who still keeps his liquor cabinet stocked, secured with the flimsiest of locks. Always there… waiting for that tiny moment of failure.

So after a time, I would feel good again. I could try World of Warcraft again but this time I’d be reasonable. Maybe only an hour a day.

A month later and I’d be raiding, grinding, dying in real life while my avatars gained everything. Seven to eight hours a day and more on the weekends. A horrible cycle I was deathly aware of yet powerless to break out of.

I’d improved so many aspect of my life. A tireless optimizer born from a dysfunctional past. Why couldn’t I break free of WoW? I had made such wonderful gains during my frequent excursions. I wanted to do more, so much more.

The revelation that followed was completely devastating.

After recovering from the initial concept everything became clear. A proper conclusion to WoW. The ending I never had before. Such a simple gesture would set me free.

Getting my virtual affairs in order was a calming. A wonderful time to reflect on all I had done. Soon after, I made sure everyone knew my plans. I would be deleting all my characters. I would not be coming back to World of Warcraft. Reactions were, as you might expect, mixed.

Some people were supportive, others baffled and a few were oddly quiet. I recognize the last state as a valid tactic for dealing with pain so no hard feelings.

It became an event. Come raid with Poof one last time. Come PvP with Foof to celebrate our time together. Come take a screenshot and say goodbye. It was a lovely time of talking, merriment and a celebration of adventures together.

Each one of my characters received their own special ending. Each one a part of my personality and deserving of their own finale. Screenshots of these moments bring me great joy when I reminisce.

Looking back no longer evokes a time wasted, it conjures pleasant memories, shared experiences and pride for all the people I met. So many things we did and so many good times we had.

Looking forward, my gaming experiences do not weaken like I had feared. In fact, they strengthen me.

When you see me coming, I could be Poof the Druid, Foof the Warrior, Old Snake, Commander Shepard or any number of personas that are part of me.

I am a hero, I always was and now that I know, I always will be.

Sincerely,

Poof · Foof · Soof · Daniel · Odn · Shepard · Spock · Sgt Dildo · ForestMist · Neptuna · Old Snake

Tali'Zorah knows that even in the future, corded headphones are the way to go.

I really enjoyed Mass Effect 2, so much so that I like to imagine talking to people with a choice selector near the bottom of my vision. I usually choose paragon options but I know the usefulness of a well placed renegade response. Be careful with the interrupts though!

Like many good games, I find myself drawn to the soundtrack as a way of reliving our times together. I went searching for it but unfortunately they only released it in MP3 and M4A formats so far.

Call me a snob but I think our future should be filled with upgrades and that means something better than or equal to the sound quality of a Compact Disc.

No worries though because with a bit of patience you too can…

Make your own Mass Effect 2 Soundtrack

These instructions assume you are using the PC version of the game.

• Download
  • Mass Effect 2 .AFC extractor | mirror
  • Audiokinetic Wwise RIFF/RIFX Vorbis to Ogg Vorbis converter | mirror
  • Extract, Convert and Rename scripts.
• Unzip everything into a new folder.
• Copy “C:\Games\Mass Effect 2\BioGame\CookedPC\*Music.afc ” to the new folder.
  • Your path may be slightly different depending on where you installed the game.
• Run “Extract, Convert.bat”
• Run “Rename.vbs”

Epilogue

Now you can enjoy 508 pieces of Ogg Vorbis encoded music while you wait for EA to release a proper Compact Disc.

Oh and special thanks to Extirpator for the original instructions on how to accomplish this.

There are too many good songs to choose from so here are some of my favorites.

• Angel Witch
  • Angel Witch
• Anvil
  • Tag Team
• Black Sabbath
  • Children of the Grave
  • Symptom of the Universe
• Brocas Helm
  • Cry of the Banshee
• Budgie
  • Zoom Club
• Crimson Glory
  • Queen of the Masquerade
• Dragonforce
  • Through the Fire and Flames
• Judas Priest
  • The Hellion, Electric Eye
• Manowar
  • Die For Metal
• Motley Crue
  • Dr. Feelgood
  • Kickstart My Heart
• Nitro
  • Machine Gunn Eddie
• Ozzy Osbourne
  • Mr. Crowley
• Scorpions
  • Blackout
• Tenacious D
  • Master Exploder

Seems like a long list until you realize that there are 107 songs which when played end to end will shred your soul for up to 8 hours and 40 minutes! I haven’t experienced such an epic soundtrack since the seven disc Grand Theft Auto: Vice City OST.

The problem is… you can’t really buy the Brütal Legend soundtrack.

With a bit of patience, equipment and software you can however, make your own.

How to roll your own Brütal Legend Soundtrack

I’m going to be very specific about my own hardware here but the concept is certainly applicable to a very wide range of setups.

PlayStation 3

Plug in an optical audio cable to your PS3.

Settings >Sound Settings > Audio Output Settings

Choose Optical Digital, use the defaults for Linear PCM and save your settings.

Load Brütal Legend.

Change your sound sliders so everything is muted except for music.

Load your latest save, summon the druid plow and then press up on the direction pad to get to the built-in music player.

Computer

Plug in the optical audio cable from your PS3.

I’m using an Audigy Platinum eX since it has a nice breakout box with all sorts of connectors.

Change your recording source to Optical In, S/PDIF or some other similar terminology.

The official Creative drivers would only allow me to listen to the optical in so I had to switch to the kX Audio Driver for recording. Bit of a hassle but the kX software does unlock a lot of special abilities.

Fire up Audacity or your favorite audio editor.

Make sure you recording device is set to the optical port and then change your default sample rate to 48000 Hz.

Hit record and then play whatever song you want to capture on the PS3.

Export your recording to your favorite audio format like FLAC, AAC or MP3.

Bonus Tips

Make sure to unlock all the songs you want to capture before starting this endeavor. The Brutal Legend Item Map by Achievement Hunter makes this task bearable.

Make sure to stay in the druid plow when recording otherwise your audio will become positional to the vehicle.

Recording level too low? Try normalizing to -1.5 dB before you save.

Epilogue

Video game music can be infectious, repetitious, evocative or just plain fun. No matter your reaction, listening to game music can be the best link to your memories of playing them.

Like that one time in Seventh Saga at 3am when I kept dying and that @#$%^ battle music was drilling a hole through my skull and … *EXPLOSION*

One of the better demos that actually has me thinking about whipping out ye olde plastic is Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War. Not a perfect game really, strategy is pretty simple, standard tech tree stuff and oh yeah… you get to run around in third person during the battles. Not constantly of course since you have stamina that acts as your health and energy but plenty enough to have lots of fun shooting people with bows or cutting wide swaths through enemy troops as if you were a minor god of war.

Low on stamina? No problem, jump back to RTS mode and let your hero rest up for when you need them the most. Luckily its not a race for resources and massive base building (which I loved in Total Annihilation) so you have plenty of time to size up your enemy and plan an attack.

Complaints? Well, Cleopatra in the demo is kinda the typical overly sexy female with one tweak… she has the chest size of a man. I mean, she could probably inflate a hippity-hop to explode with air handlers like that.

Other annoyances were paths that you just couldn’t walk through in third person mode. Felt like I was still an AI unit how couldn’t figure out how to go around a boulder or something. Oh and don’t ever attack a building with your melee weapon in hero mode. Once the building falls it triggers some logic to automatically kill anyone who was in it… and touching it, including you! Doh! Thanks for not including a save function, had to start that map over a few times.

Anyway, complaints aside, its a really fun demo and a possible by… if you don’t play WoW all day that is.

The first is the multiplayer browser. You have your standard features such as no empty servers, map size preference and sortable columns but the game frequently locks up as it tries to ping servers. Sometimes it will clear up in a few seconds and sometimes the game will just hang. When it hangs I was shocked to see that the game was eating up 500+ megs of memory and I was just in the menu systems, ridiculous!

Oh and once you do find a server with low ping that look interesting, prepare to wait. Loading, loading, loading. By the time the game is ready you are already having second thoughts about what you are doing with your life.

Once you are in it can be quite fun. All sorts of different classes are available to suit your individual playing style and its rather easy to complement other players instead of going lone wolf. The problems during normal game play are sadly the same that plagued the first game. Really bad vehicle controls, especially for the helicopters and planes which fall prey to bad networking code which causes short teleports when you least suspect it. This is really most evident in vehicles vs. running around on foot.

If this game was a home brew project I would have to laud it, unfortunately its a EA behemoth so I have to sadly shake my head and wonder were they put all the development money. A 500 meg menu system maybe?

Sorry folks, its time to uninstall this monstrosity as I won’t be wasting any more time on it. I learned that lesson the hard way with promises in the first game.

You probably should try out the Battlefield 2 Demo for yourself. I can be highly biased when hurt before.

I won’t even talk about the generic oil driven story line in the demo. Bleah!

The whole game was a good experience. I can’t rave enough about the control and how everything makes sense. It’s an inspiring story and makes me yearn to work in the video game industry.

I think I’ll just relax and savor the moment instead of jumping on to the next task.

Tomorrow is going to be a nice day because my group at work is going to a training session (week long) for our new content management system. I have a lot of good feeling about the software and the direction we are going in for the past year. Everything is set for success and even better things. It’s all about making people happy really. It’s something I think I’m pretty good at.

That’s right. You may have heard about Dance Dance Revolution (one of my all time favorite games along with Dune II and Sam & Max) but you haven’t HEARD nothing yet.

Karaoke Revolution! Yes! Sing into your PS2. Use your falsetto. Sing like a muppet. Do Weird Al lyrics instead of the normal ones. The skies the limit when you open up yourself to social embarrassment.

I personally enjoy making up alternate lyrics on the spot. It’s a lot like rapping, you have to come up with a rhyme and quick. Plus, it better flow with your previous lines or it’s not going to flow.

I had Parr laughing her butt off tonight in case you were wondering.

So, I had a blast, sonically maimed some songs, got a few platinum albums (mostly when I sing Bizarre Love Triangle, love that one) and almost blew out my voice.

My voice is only level 1 right now but it’s gaining xp really fast. I’m sure eventually it will be harder to gain levels or even catch up to Parr since she started her character with Chorus Class skill.

DDRMAX2 is the sequel to, yes you guessed it, DDRMAX aka Dance Dance Revolution. You know, the game you’ve seen in the arcade but are too embarrassed to try. Well now you can embarrass yourself at home or in front of friends without dropping all those quarters. You get something like two hours of music, game modes, workout modes (keep track of your calories) and other functions. Plus the game keeps rewarding you with even more music as you progress. It’s quite a nice system and not very different from any of the previous Dance Dance Revolutions. Of course if they just kept releasing ye olde DDR with different songs I would’ve bought that too but no they had to go and add real music videos playing in the background and dancing character modes! Wooo!

If you need me I’ll be on the dance floor in Parr’s room.

Odn plops down onto the floor near the computer and starts dragging his body toward the dance mat using only his arms.

Lots and lots of shiny things!

All in all part 2 is a really great game, not a perfect 10 but very near the 9 range. I consider the first Homeworld to be a perfect game, it’s music, cinematics and gameplay combined in such a perfect way to create a universe you really cared about. The second game while not departing from the first does have a different, larger feel. Not quite as emotionally griping but still good. I’m not complaining mind you, just reminiscing about the first.

Speaking of the first Homeworld, it’s only 10 bucks in stores right now. I highly suggest you pick yourself up a copy of the original if you haven’t played it yet. Then get part 2 cause you’ll be addicted.

After an hour of being grumbly I finally realized it was going to be ok and that I could, gulp, survive the entire end of the week without it. Gotta get ready for our trip to Choco’s wedding anyway. There I reasoned my desire away…for now… muhahahhaa.

Shopping tonight wasn’t a total loss though. Parr got some minty floss and I got some minty… no just regular flavor shoes.

I’ll think of you often dear Homeworld even though we will be apart a little longer.