Glad to hear good things about Wind Rises. Now that I think about it, I don't think a Miyazaki movie has made me cry yet. Not that it needs that to be a great movie though.
Wind Rises, Borderlands 2, and Prof. Layton
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 On 03/03/2014 at 02:48 AM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
I started the day by watching The Wind Rises in the theater. I knew I was going to cry like a baby all throughout and, sure enough, I did. There were several other people there, so I had to contain it to a certain extent.
It was an incredibly beautiful film about Jiro Horikoshi, the Japanese designer of the famous A6M “Zero” fighter aircraft of WWII (see pic above) and others. I used to build plastic models of that airplane as a kid. I always had a fascination with WWII hardware: tanks, planes, ships. I loved the designs even though they are all weapons of destruction. It makes me think of the conflict between art and real world demands. Jiro certainly put a great deal of art into his design only to see it be used as a weapon.
Parallel to the history of Jiro’s career is his personal life which takes a tragic turn. It’s weaved very expertly throughout and serves to echo the equally tragic nature of being an airplane designer in Japan during the build up and aftermath of WWII.
Jiro’s dreams are also a major part of the story and recur frequently throughout the film.
The movie is a true masterpiece. I’m so glad I caught it in the theaters because I cancelled Netflix this week and who knows when I would've had time to see it otherwise.
Then I played a whole bunch of Borderlands 2 and felt, with all the Varkid insects attacking me at one point, that I was really playing EDF 2025. I’m up to 76 hours and level 46. I have to say, playing on True Vault Hunter mode is quite the challenge. Any mission labeled “Normal” is probably closer to “Hard”. My friend and I were dying left and right especially in the Caustic Caverns which is full of Threshers and Varkid insects. Luckily it doesn’t cost you any skill points to be revived, just cash, and not a whole lot of that.
Also, I noticed some uneven leveling between me and my friend. I seem to be leveling very quickly and him somewhat slower. I was wondering if maybe it’s that he needs to change his difficulty level on his character page to match mine. I’m hosting, and I set mine to True Vault Hunter, but he probably has his set to “Normal”. This shouldn’t matter because, you would think, because the difficulty should be set by the one who hosts, but I’m not sure if it works that way. I also wondered if maybe the host of co-op play gets a bit more experience. It sure seems like it.
I’m working on the achievement that you get for getting at least level 1 on all non-location specific challenges. There are only a few left I haven’t done, but they are a pain. One is getting 200 splash damage kills with a rocket launcher to unlock another challenge in that category; and another is point-blank kills with the shotgun. You need 750 of those to unlock a locked challenge in that category. I’ll finish the rocket kills soon, but the shotgun ones are going to take some special techniques especially since I’m an Assassin and don’t have any related skills. I think I’m going to have to equip four shotguns of different damage type and run through the game on “Normal” just point-blank shooting everything that moves. That actually might be some fun now that I think of it.
Then I continued some Professor Layton and The Azran legacy when I got home and felt like I was still in the same world as The Wind Rises with being in an airship at the beginning of the game (see pic above). It’s more of the same stuff you would expect from a Prof. Layton game. You get some story, then a puzzle, then a screen to run a magnifying glass over for hint coins and clues; rinse and repeat. I have heard there are some mini games somewhere, so I look forward to those. The graphics are great, the music is incredibly charming, and the puzzles a lot of fun to solve.
I got a little bit nervous the other day over the news that Nintendo was shutting down online play for games on Wii and DS. Chris Kohler on Wired’s Game/Life podcast mentioned that the DS Prof. Layton games have extra DLC puzzles and that you should get them before the shutdown. Well, I loaded up the four games and realized that you don’t get a menu screen right away and can’t just go download the extra stuff. I think you have to play the game a while or even finish them to get to the menu. Seems kinda weird, but I wasn’t willing to spend a lot of time playing those games to get to a menu screen. Nothing lasts forever, and I may never get those extra puzzles, but maybe it’s not so important really.
I did boot up my Wii yesterday and downloaded Super Mario RPG with some Club Nintendo reward points. I also checked my wishlist for any WIiWare or DSiWare games I wanted. I don’t think the stores are being shut down though, just online play for the games that have that.
Anyway, I was going to keep this short today, but, as usual, I’ve rambled on over 800 words. As Ace Ventura would say, “Bye bye then.”
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