Halloween pictures

As promised I'm posting pics of my halloween decorations.  It won't really be done until Halloween proper.  I've more spiderweb to add and more props to set up, so I'll take some final photos in a month.  I might even do a video of the motion activated props, if I can get my camera to cooperate.  I apologize in advance for the night time shots.  I have two lights that make the yard look really cool, but its hard to get night shots to turn out.  I did my best!  I'm off to play Witcher, hope you guys enjoy.

    I'm sure you've all heard Konami is no longer making AAA titles.  I'm a big fan of Castlevania, so his makes me very sad.  I decided to change the background of my blog to a Castlevania theme in protest.  I'm sure that will make them change their minds and make more Castlevania games.  Not.  Oh well.  I never did finish the sequel to Lords of Shadow, so I'll have to give it another crack.  It was a disappointing game to be honest but I have to get my fix somehow.  Maybe I'll just replay Symphony of the Night instead!  I really can't believe that they're going to drop a series as popular as Metal Gear Solid is, or was.  I've heard the new game is struggling to sell units, so perhaps it's not as popular as it once was.  It'd make sense financially for Konami to sell the rights to another developer, so maybe we'll see more games in the future?  Probably not but I'll keep my fingers crossed.
     To mention something totally unrelated next Thursday is the 1st of October so I'll be decorating for Halloween.  Its my favorite holiday so I go all out, I'll post pics when I get everything done.  One crappy thing about living in the south, Halloween isn't a big deal.  Actually a lot of people refuse to celebrate it, which really sucks.  But anyways I'll get pics up if anyone is interested, probably by Friday. It takes two days to decorate so hopefully it'll be done by then.  If anyone wants to share their Halloween photos, or anything gaming related, they're welcome to post them to my facebook page.

Destiny the Taken King first impressions

 I know I said I wasn't going to start anything new until I finished up some old games, but I
couldn't resist getting the Taken King.  I'm glad I did, for the most part.  Bungie obviously put a lot of effort into telling a better story this time around.  The cutscenes are one of the best parts of the Taken King.  Cayde is by far my favorite character, and of course it doesn't hurt that he's voiced by Nathan Fillion.  I do love Firefly!  The new content is a lot of fun, and they've added a lot more variety to the missions than the standard run and gun.  They also gave me a lot of free stuff, more than I expected.  I got a couple of free guns, armor shaders, new class items, and a new vehicle.  That being said, its still way too short.  It took me less than an hour to do the main missions.  Granted I still have miscellaneous quests to do but for $40 I expect a little more content than that.  Still its a step in the right direction and hopefully future expansions will be even better.  

Thoughts on Ethan Carter

 I finished the Vanishing of Ethan Carter tonight.  Very good game, if you haven't played it it's definitely worth a buy.  Its short but the story makes up for it.  The graphics were gorgeous, if the town hadn't been abandoned, creepy and a little depressing I would've wanted to visit!  But the best thing by far was the story.  If you haven't played it yet you might want to stop reading here, cause there will be spoilers.  It's a pretty heavily influenced by a few things, to the point that it could be described as unoriginal.  In fact it borrows from so many sources that its quite a list.  Lovecraft, Shakespeare, Poe, the Sixth Sense, and a short story I'm sure most people have read, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.  If you haven't read it you should give it a try, its short and worth the time.  It was required reading at my high school, I spent an hour googling it because I couldn't remember the name!  I'm sure it has other influences I didn't pick up on but those are the ones I caught.  There isn't much action, other than running away from a creepy guy at one point.  The focus is on the story rather than gameplay, and it does have the twist ending that's become somewhat standard.  The ending can be interpreted a few different ways.  Was Ethan the sleeper?  Was Paul his imagination or something else?  Did he die at the end or did his family save him?  There's more than one way to interpret it, which is pretty standard for the genre.  But Ethan Carter manages to pull it off without feeling like a carbon copy.  The game is definitely multi-layered and worth a closer look.  I'll know I'll be playing it again, just to see if I can get anything else out of it.

Just a heads up, Gamer's Oracle is on Facebook.  I do post random stuff/thoughts on there, if anyone is interested.  Clicky -----> Gamer's Oracle

I stayed up til 3am this morning watching Supernatural.  I love that show.  I know its not the best show on tv but the actors and writers put a lot of heart into it.  I don't get to watch a lot of tv, as I don't have much free time.  But Supernatural is one of the two shows I'll actually sit down and watch(the other being Black Sails).  I love the music, and the car, and everything about it really.  Did I mention the car?  If they would just get rid of Castiel, and put Crowley in his place.  I know I know everyone loves Castiel, I'm just not a fan.  I love Crowley's wit and he has really good chemistry with Sam and Dean.  I think it could work!  Maybe I should send the idea to the show's writers....

So it's been awhile since I've written a new post.  I took a break from gaming for awhile, except to play Witcher 3 off and on.  One of the best games I've played in a long time.  I'm really excited for the new expansion that's coming out next month.  And I just learned that it has a limited edition that comes with two gwent decks, so I'll be calling Gamestop first thing to see if I can pre-order.  I have a feeling its not available in the US, but I'll keep my fingers crossed!
     I've been trying to clean up my backlog to get back into gaming, I still have a few games I'd really like to finish up before jumping into anything new.  I'm working on Shadow of Mordor at the moment, I'd forgotten how much fun that game is.  Mowing down a crowd of orcs is insanely satisfying and a little addicting.  After that I just need to finish Mass Effect 3 and AC Rogue and I'll be good to go.  I'd like to jump into the Taken King at some point, but to be honest Destiny is too much of a time suck.  I don't have a lot of free time so I have to use it wisely!  And I wasn't that impressed with House of Wolves.  It was an improvement in a lot of ways, and POE was a blast, but they really need to do something about that grind.  People got other stuff to play!
     Also I did rent Elder Scrolls online, just to see if I was missing anything.  It was pretty bad.  I love the Elder Scrolls series, but I'll wait for the next installment to come out.  I kinda wish I had seen how the PVP worked, cause the combat...I just don't see how that works in PVP.  Maybe I'm spoiled by WOW or perhaps it gets better as you level up.  I don't know and I don't care enough to find out!
     Other than AC Syndicate there's not a whole lot of games I'm excited for this winter.  The new Metal Gear game looks awesome but I've never played any of them so I'm a little leery of diving into the series at this point.  No Man's Sky and Dishonored 2 are the games I'm really looking forward to right now, hopefully we'll actually get to play them next year.  What are you guys playing at the moment?  Anything good coming out this winter that you're excited for?