Resonance: Secunda

The older I get, the more in-tune with game music I become. For so long I all but ignored the music of most games. A few notables stuck (Super Mario World, Super Metroid), but by and large, up until a few years ago, game soundtracks seemed nearly indistinguishable to me. Now, I’m working to fix that. This post on Virtual Bastion focused on a hauntingly beautiful tune from Skyrim called “Secunda.” This lovely piano melody proves to be the perfect accompaniment to Skyrim’s quieter moments.

VIRTUAL BASTION

For no terribly good reason, I recently took a new trip through The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I played through the game only once when it was new(ish), and at the time, the experience didn’t leave much of a lasting impact. I couldn’t say what exactly brought on the inkling to pick up the game again a few weeks back, but I’m glad I did. With Skyrim, it’s common to hear from players that they wish they could wipe their memories of it and play it again as if it was new. I started playing through the main story, but then veered off into a long side quest involving the Dark Brotherhood. And I get it. Though familiar with the Skyrim universe, that part of the game was completely new to me, and it was incredibly enjoyable. Now that my Wood Elf has become a full-fledged member of…

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Ruling the Desert in Fallout: New Vegas

As far as cleaning out my backlog goes, I can honestly say that completing Fallout: New Vegas was a personal triumph. Not only was the game brilliant and amazing, but it helped rebuild my interest in the Fallout franchise, generally. (After my initial misfired with Fallout 4, I really wasn’t sure if the games were for me.) In this post for United We Game, I put my New Vegas thoughts down on “paper,” with minimal gushing.

VIRTUAL BASTION

Image by Flickr user Midhras (CC)

With the arrival of Fallout 4 in late 2015, I figured it was high time I get myself a piece of all that post-apocalyptic action that had been capturing everyone’s attention. And things started out well enough. I created my character, experienced the horror of nuclear annihilation (fun!), and started my new life on the other side, in wasteland called the “The Commonwealth.” Unfortunately, my relationship with the game petered off for no discernible reason. I became interested in other games, and that was that. I made a couple half-witted attempts at getting back into Fallout 4 at various points over the course of 2016, but they hardly resulted in any significant progression.

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Play or Pass: The Elder Scrolls and The Secret of Monkey Island

Welcome to the next post in my year-long series “Play or Pass” that takes on the proverbial “must before death” theme with video games. Every other week I will be covering one or two games from “32 Video Games You Have To Play Before You Die,” a list compiled by BuzzFeed based on a reader poll. I will not be critiquing the list itself, but rather I’ll be discussing each game or games in whatever manner feels fitting and will attempt to answer a couple simple questions: Have I played [insert game name here]? If yes, do I consider it a “must” and why? If no, do I want to play the game before I die? I’ll be going through the games in the order in which they appear on the BuzzFeed list. Good? Good. Let’s get on with the games!

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Week sixteen: (20) The Elder Scrolls and (21) The Secret of Monkey Island

First up in Play or Pass this week is…”The Elder Scrolls.” Huh. This is, uh, interesting. Because The Elder Scrolls is a series, and no game in the series is singled out so… should I go with the notion that the entire series is a must? Because that seems a little extreme. The only Elder Scrolls game I’ve played is Skyrim, so perhaps I can riff off the following question: “Having played Skyrim, would I want to go back and play other games in the series?”

Maybe. I think?

UWG on YT: Fallout 4 (PS4) – Screenshot Theater

My final (for now) Fallout 4 video for United We Game’s YouTube channel isn’t really a video at all. Rather it’s a collection of screenshots that I collected over the course of my first 20 or so hours of play, stitched together with narration. Think of it like a tour through vacation photos, only those photos feature the Wasteland instead of Bermuda. So…better than vacation photos.

I don’t know when I’ll be back in the Commonwealth, as I have one too many gaming promises on my plate right now (not to mention being busy with real life). Something had to give, and being the beast of a game that it is, it had to be Fallout 4. But I will be back, no doubt about that, someday, sometime. And Grace will be waiting.