Media Recap: May, June, July and parts of August 2014

Posted on Mon 11 August 2014 • Tagged with Media Recap

Since I skipped the last two month, this will be a longer post, summarizing both May, June and July 2014, probably even some entries from August, just so they’re written down somewhere.

Games

  • Guild Wars 2 - Got back to GW2, had a lot of fun, found new guild members, almost finished the story, joined the living story, did fractals, conquered dungeons, crafted. I’m playing it on a Windows partition since the Mac Beta client is still lacking in terms of performance. Honestly, I expect it to stay this way, being powered by Wine under the hood.
  • Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Freedom Cry - gameplay wise there are little changes; however, its music is exceptional even for an Assassin’s Creed game. I bought the official soundtrack on its (delayed) release day.
  • Assassin’s Creed Revelations - Played again, as part of our companion gaming. I thought about visiting Cappadocia.
  • Assassin’s Creed 3 - Got it as a gift from a good friend. Have not yet finished it. Often I found myself tuning out when Connor was talking his native language. In contrast to an Italian or Turkish accent it was not that relatable, especially when more than half of a dialogue was not in English. The game itself is huge. I haven’t seen everything yet but I’m already impressed by the sheer scale of the game world and the variety of activities implemented. It does not suffer from TES IV: Oblivion syndrome though, where each and every thing is more interesting than the main quest itself.
  • Mass Effect 2 - A quick game and a few missions to entertain the girlfriend who has yet to see the story of ME2 and was bored with the ME1 Let’s Play she watched.
  • Road Not Taken - Impulse buy after having watched the expert video playthrough on its Steam page. The game is adorable, challenging, yet not frustrating. I find it a lot of fun to play. Randomly generated puzzles are a nice idea.

Novels

The Book of Deacon series

I came across The Book of Deacon as promotion from the Story Bundle newsletter and was curious. It has a rich fantasy universe which is not too far off and caught me with its interesting characters - enough that I bought both the remaining books of the trilogy as well as the additional ones set in the same universe. The author of this series is Joseph Lallo.

The Witcher series

The Witcher is something I love to talk about even considering that I didn’t like the first video game. I have not yet tried the second and the third has not yet been released. Some years ago I was in Cologne at the Role Playing Convention when I noticed the author was also there due to a promotion. They sold games with a map which I wanted to have but I already owned the game and asked if it was possible for me to purchase a copy of the book with the map. It was possible and I still have both map and book - even with the author’s signature on it.

I bought the last book of the series some years ago as a paperback novel however I never really took the time to re-read the complete series. Recently I was abroad for a period of time and bought all the books again as ebooks. Being able to read them whenever I wanted without lugging the whole seven books with me on the plane helped me read them again. I enjoy the Witcher universe which was created by Andrzej Sapkowski. It’s a pity the first game’s combat makes me cringe every time I need to rhythmically click enemies to death.

Podcasts

I started using Overcast without its IAP since I wanted to see whether I really need a third-party podcatcher to replace Apple’s one. Also, I tend to like Marco’s apps, so I needed to try this one too.

Movies

  • Maleficent - We rarely go to the cinema, mainly due to me complaining about other people and not liking movies a lot. After this visit I could add another point to that list of negative impressions: Along with the movie we watched we were forced to watch about 14 ads. 14. That’s almost the same amount we paid in Euro for the tickets for both of me and my girlfriend combined. You should watch this movie though. It’s interesting, fairly well done and not being overly kitschy. I’m not a fan of Angelina Jolie either but the overall impression was very positive.
  • Youtube: a little history on harvest moon
  • Youtube: Tim Minchin’s Storm the Animated Movie
  • Extra Credits: Extra Credits - Why the Vita Failed - PlayStation’s Lost Gamble

Overview videos