February 2014 – Minor's log

The marked one

Mark of the ninja has now a special place within me. This game showed me that video-games don’t need extreme graphics, high tech environments, super real details. A simple 2d world with well thought mechanics, a OK story, nice artwork and bam! A high enjoyable game.

It made me remind of the old school games from the 8bit and 16bit generations. Like Sonic, Mario and a hell lot of others.

The game even made me enjoy a new (for me) style of game, the stealth one. Not everything is about going on forward and slash everyone. No more “kill!kill!kill!kill!kill!”. It was different for me. I’ve playing survival games, Silent Hill series for example, and I think they helped a lot to enjoy this less-action oriented style of game. I’ll talk about Silent Hill later.

I’ve not finished the game yet, but it’s cool, so fun to play it that I felt I needed to write about it.

The sounds, oh the sounds. Steps, rain, thunder, foe’s voices, the kills. They are so well made that I really felt being there, even it’s a 2d world. The ambiance is perfect, the gameplay and the movements make you fell like a real ninja!

MOTN made me not want to kill by just slicing the foes right way. Now I want grab them and hang so the other can be terrorized, I want to sneak in airs ducts and kill from behind, I want to drop the chandelier and make it seems like an accident. Bravo to this game. Bravo to the devs, bravo to Klei Entertainment.

Once I finished the game I’ll write a little more (or not).

Steam link: http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/214560/

Official site: http://www.markoftheninja.com/

Everybody lies

It took almost 5 years for me to watch all seasons. Worth it.

By the third season it got a little boring. Too much of the same plot. Then the fun begins. Team changes, more personal plots involved, the story arch got more attention than the episode arch.

With House M.D. we can see how important is to focus. Test problems and solutions may bring up new perspectives. Sometimes give a break and let the mind just flow also helps.

Personal contact could may alter your judgment, changing your thoughts and you may lose objectivity. It’s hard to take risks when a friend or a loved one is the end middle of the process.

Lies. Everybody lies. When somebody starts to analyze you, diagnostic you, even if is not for medical reasons, you’ll try do hide what you think. Could be a something that makes you be shamed of, something that you believe is wrong or other people may think it is, or fuck up you and/or people related to you. It’s like dating or meeting new people. We always try to restart something, like “bad things” never happened. The worst case is when these lies hide something that is very important. Details. Details are simple things, but simple things are the one that make life worth (or in the House M.D. world, can save you).

To pay attention at simple things can be hard sometimes, we’re all drowned in the life’s routine, drowned in stress, sorrow or frustrated. It became something really hard to notice.

As a song by 30 Seconds to Mars: “Tell me, would kill to save a life?”. Well, would you LIE to save a life? Who has the control of your life decisions? Can you say that with a lie is worth to living it just for the sake of being alive?

Living in pain can also be an option. Would you take it? Everyday in physical pain, would you? I believe that pain and suffering can bring personal grow, but is it necessary to be everyday? Even if it’s not physical, but emotional pain? Where’s the equilibrium gone?

Results. Does results matter more than the path we walked? Maybe. As it might be not only one, we may have not only one thing to deal with at the end.

And why we only try find time to other people when we know our last day’s date? Everybody dies, but does knowing the exact day may change you?

I hope to enjoy all that I can.

p.s.: if I would have to make a hero list, Gregory House is the newest addition to it.

Minor’s presentation

Minoralph is my first and main character (or toon as some may call it) in the game World of Warcraft (WoW).

Actually it is the second one when I count the one that I created back in the demo version. The demo version toon was named Cunha and was a male night-elf hunter.

Well, Minoralph is a human warrior. He is named after the name of my young brother’s toon, Gradalph. Gradalph is the name of a sword in the universe of the anime/game Digimon. It’s an adaptation from the original name of the sword: Gradalpha. So, as we decided to role-play as brothers in the game, I took the opposite of grad: Minor. Put the “alph” after it and then Minoralph was born.

Warriors in general are a common class in tons of games and they are supposed to be a flat/balanced role/class to start with. So I thought: let’s go with it just to “see what happens”. Turned out I still playing with him (actually I’m not currently playing WoW at the time I write this, but it’s a temporary call off). The warrior class is not easy to master. It seems to be a “hack n’ slash” option, but to top it’s mechanics requires a good time playing and reading about it to finally achieve.

It’s been 3 years since I started to play WoW. I Learned a lot with it. I met very nice people and expanded a vast number of skills. Maybe in the next expansion I might log in again.

The first year and a half playing WoW I’m pretty sure that I didn’t play other game. WoW has a lot of objectives to complete, lot of activities that keep you playing again, over and over. In that year and a half I played only with Minoralph. My favorite time was when I joined the raiding group. Gathering with 9 other people to slay “internet dragons”? Hellyeah! One of the best moments ever! Specially when those 9 people don’t speak your native language. What a challenge! And a learning experience at the same time.

I would love to see Minoralph, or Minor as the raid leader used to call him, joining a group of people willing to have fun while smashing the keyboard keys against digital monters and talking about many kind of things. Good times.