#which makes me so glad that some emulators have a way to mimic just closing ur ds . this is THE only game ive seen thatd need that

[ajdrawshq]

thrilled to announce that twewy still goes hard as fuck

[happymetalgirl]

Opeth - In Cauda Venenum

Opeth's fan base still seems to be reeling from Åkerfeldt and company's stylistic departure from the very progressive death metal they helped pioneer and build a huge reputation on and to the growl-less retro-prog they pivoted so sharply to on 2011's Heritage and onward. I mean, Damnation and the softer gothic acoustic folk rock ballads sprinkled throughout their catalog should have at least cushioned some of shock to Opeth fans, but it still caused one of metal’s more prominent uproars of this decade and there seemed to be hopes for Åkerfeldt's growls and the death metal elements to return in some degree on the two albums that followed, and it seems to me at least that Opeth's fan base has only now come to accept that this cleaner prog rock retrocelebration is the band's solidified direction in this later stage of their career.

While I, like many other Opeth fans, revere and prefer the band's brilliant balance of death metal and prog rock on their pre-Heritage work, the band have certainly more than earned their opportunity (if you’re of the mindset that a band has to earn it), and fans' patience, to try out something new for them. Like most fans though, I have felt that this new direction has only halfway played to Opeth's strengths, and often come off as indulgent 70's prog worship rather than a fresh Opeth-unique take on it, which was most evident on the band’s most recent “observation” before this one. While it started off really well with its title track and "The Wilde Flowers", the band's 2016 effort, Sorceress, was a painfully unignorable exhibition of this lapse in songwriting to prop up this old-soul prog aesthetic and probably my least favorite Opeth album to date. I mentioned Opeth earning our patience earlier though, and this album is why.

While it was a trilogy, Pale Communion was my favorite of Opeth's prog-rock-era albums, but In Cauda Venenum has finally found them putting a more expressive and intriguing spin on this growl-free progressive rock sound they've been cultivating and is definitely the best album they've released in this style. While the past three albums, even in their better moments, have been rather laid-back and content to mimic prog legends, Opeth finally get back some of that grandiose instrumental ambition that lit up momentous and often conceptual albums like Blackwater Park, Still Life, Ghost Reveries, and My Arms, Your Hearse. The dual release of the album in Swedish and English editions makes the band’s larger artistic investment quite apparent just on the surface, as Opeth’s contextual gesturing often tends to be, but the band do follow through in the meat of the project too.

Once again, In Cauda Venenum plays with the growls and death metal on the bench (not fully retired for this analogy since they still stay true to their older songs’ original style at live shows) and with Åkerfeldt’s smooth clean singing and Joakim Svalberg’s synth playing taking more of the spotlight in their place, as the drumming avoids excessive double-bass and blast beats and the guitars rely not on on/off distortion to drive the loud/soft dynamic of the band’s more tempered prog rock sound. Opeth's quieter songs and their prog rock albums have highlighted their gothic flair, but this album takes it to a more exuberant level that I am glad to hear getting the spotlight again. The opening song, “Livets trädgård” (“Garden of Earthly Delights”), dims the lights for the album’s show through a smooth build of synth-orchestral ambiance before the pre-released single, “Svekets prins” (“Dignity”), breaks through the silence with bombastic, Devin Townsend-esque choral gusto and into a dynamic and deliciously riffed gothic prog ballad. The little touches like the chimes and the synth strings in the back do a lot for the song's various sections soft and loud, and the sludgy drums help give the harder sections this monolithic feel, while Åkerfeldt's hums give the softer sections their extra haunting edge. The album's lead single, “Hjärtat vet vad handen gör” (“Heart in Hand”), follows along a more traditionally heavy progressive rock/metal pattern, but with similar instrumental grandeur; the chugging riff underlying Åkerfeldt's soaring vocals and the faster, flashier guitar playing across the rather consistently turned-up, yet still adventurous, instrumental work (until the honey-sweet acoustic outro) show how even in this style, Opeth are not just reliant on loud/soft dynamics to drive their prog.

The song “De närmast sörjande” (“Next of Kin”) sways through a roller coaster of smooth rock fusion and explosive synth symphonics and guitar dazzling that give the song such a cinematic feeling to it, like it belongs in the climax of a Tim Burton movie. The somber piano balladry during the verses of “Minnets yta” (“Lovelorn Crime”) really turns up the drama in a way that Opeth don't often go for, and, while I wish it carried over to the more instrumentally enhanced sections, I'm loving it here. The strings that come in later to boost the heartfelt sorrow of the song and Mikael Åkerfeldt's harmonized vocals are absolutely gorgeous here. I kind of wish the band put the prog on hold just for this song and stuck to the somber gothic balladry they were playing with so beautifully, but the song still is a highlight for the album as it is.

The song “Charlatan”, for me, is another particular highlight because it captures a mesmerizing Meshuggah-esque groove in its prog-rock, something even djent-focused imitators can't seem to capture the essence of very often, if at all, even with 8-strings. Yet Opeth have done it here with your regular bass guitar and a little distortion. But aside from that, the dissonant synth work is a cool bit of flair for the track, and the band do well again to play excitingly with relatively heavy instrumentation all throughout the song's main portion before its hymnal outro.

“Ingen sanning är allas” (“Universal Truth”) finds the band kind of back in old habits with the acoustic prog worship again, though the swelling strings shine again through the relatively meager composition the band comes through with this time around. Despite showing off some high range, Åkerfeldt's mostly monotonous vocal melody feels more at home with Sorceress than the lush orchestration that carries this song. The creepily slinking bass-range piano melody of “Banemannen” (“The Garroter”) brings the album a sense of welcome darkness and tension akin to being followed through the woods. The woodwinds and the fluttering guitar embellishments sprinkled atop the lighter strings help give the song a sense of enveloping atmosphere, but it's the constantly shifting keys that give the song its attention-holding uneasiness as it shifts back and forth from paranoia to self-assuredness.

The 12-string acoustics and the prominent woodwind melody of “Kontinuerlig drift” (“Continuum”) are probably the only real differentiating elements on the track as the band find themselves slipping back into Sorceress mode again for a bit. I do like the more bombastic solo section in the song's middle, but Åkerfeldt sounds pretty tuned out by this point unfortunately, and the song could have used a bit more of the fantastical imagination that the previous tracks are so strengthened by. The closing song, “Allting tar slut” (“All Things Shall Pass”), fortunately ends the album on a theatrical and conceptual note with huge bursts of orchestral instrumentation and cymbal crashes backing thematic calls back to "Minnets yta" ("Lovelorn Crime") as Åkerfeldt's passionate vocal delivery guides the climactic and lush arrangement toward a fulfilling conclusion.

If they needed to, Opeth have certainly justified their shift away from death metal and into more bona fide progressive rock for the past eight years with this record, and it's because they finally stopped focusing so much on emulating their prog idols and trusted their own prog rock instincts and chemistry to bring out a unique and vibrant form of progressive rock. They've always been about going big and putting a lot into their music, and the massive orchestral instrumentation here helps fill the void the growls and blast beats left behind. And in a way, it feels very much like an old-school Opeth album just without any death metal involved. It's a heady, super-moody prog-fest with all sorts of twists and turns that feels like they have purpose and build toward a wonderfully fulfilling experience. Only time will tell, but I hope that this album serves as a breakthrough for the band, an artistic oasis after years of wandering through the desert of 70's prog imitation. I hope this guides them going forward as a blueprint for success in the absence of death metal. I hesitate to say they should have been doing this for the past three albums, but I don't know if they necessarily had to go through Heritage and Sorceress to get here, as this album builds on much of the signature dynamic from their classic albums with a sonic pallet far more expansive than anything explored on the past three albums. Regardless, I sure hope this is the album they chart their course with, as it is undoubtedly the more advanced form of their prog rock evolution.

Heritage's deliverence/10

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 323: Ultizurk II: The Shadow Master (1992)

          Ultizurk II: The Shadow Master

United States

Independently developed and published

Released in 1992 for DOS

Date Started: 26 March 2019

“This is the one–this is the one I’ll be remembered for,” Ed Wood says, completely unironically, as he revels in the cheesy opening monologue at the premier of Plan 9 from Outer Space. This happens in Tim Burton’s film, anyway, but it’s entirely in keeping with the personality of Wood–a man so in love with making movies that he didn’t much care how he made them, whether anyone ever saw them, or whether they were any good. If you’ve ever seen Plan 9–and if you haven’t, you really should–you probably agree that, as bad as it is, there’s an inescapable earnestness about the thing. That’s why it makes all those “so bad it’s good” lists.

I think of Ed Wood occasionally when I encounter an RPG developer who kept cranking ’em out despite what must have been virtually no audience, and Robert “Dr. Dungeon” Deutsch of Allentown, Pennsylvania, must be preeminent among these. Ultizurk II is not his second game but something like his twentieth: the series went through at least nine Zurks (maybe 10) and three Heritage of Zurks before the first Ultizurk, and he had other series called Gork, Babysitter, and Spookhouse. I think Ultizurk I was his first non-text game, but it’s tough to get information on a lot of them. Whenever you see a ludography for Dr. Dungeon, it tends to include a lot of games that were unfinished or existed only as a title.            

The Shadow Master begins with a sci-fi framing story.

           There is evidence that Deutsch, unlike Wood, eventually got good at his craft. By Ultizurk III (1993), he’s managed to nearly mimic the Ultima VI engine, and his re-release of Madman! (2017) plays a bit like a combination of Ultima VII and Diablo. (Both of them are still pretty weird, but we’ll deal with that when we reach them.) But in these first couple of Ultizurk games, he’s just starting out with graphical interfaces, learning as he releases, and he has quite a bit to learn. Ultizurk I had monsters that couldn’t move from their squares. He’s conquered that–perhaps overly so–in time for this game, but it still has plenty of problems. And yet, like the first one, there’s a kind of goofy earnestness about the game that makes me like it more than it deserves.           

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Despite sounding like parodies, both the Zurk and Ultizurk series are completely straight games that pay homage to, rather than make fun of, their inspirations. Both series feature the same persistent protagonist, who (I gather) becomes a “grandmaster” over the course of the Zurk series. But every time he arrives in a new world, the teleportation process has stripped him of his skills and knowledge, and thus he has to build himself up from Level 0 again. In the first game of this series (which I played about a year ago), he helped King Eldor combat an invasion of monsters by re-powering an ancient race of servant robots. At the end, the protagonist’s efforts to return to his own world are interrupted by an old enemy called the Shadow Master (the antagonist in Zurk II, I gather) who has his own intentions for the Grandmaster.

The introduction to Ultizurk II sets the game, like the first one, in a blend of fantasy and science fiction. The computer at Andromedan Relay Station #5 is in the middle of a report to its superiors, indicating that “eco-system project 1752RG9 is entering phase 11 decline” because of an imbalance in the water cycle. The life forms on the planet are dying. The computer is advising that the project be terminated, when suddenly its monitor beacons show that two “unknown bipedals” have arrived. It cancels the termination to monitor the events.             

The character arrives.

             There’s no character creation. The Grandmaster begins with 85 hit points, no experience, 50 sling stones, and 5 rations of food. Nearby, he finds the Shadow Master, or a projection of the Shadow Master, who says that they are on a planet in the “Arcturian Star System,” although somehow in parallel realities. Each one of them will be working on a quest to power up some machines with crystals, which will somehow get them back to Earth, and whoever achieves it first will become the new Guildmaster. The Shadow Master suggests that the two competitors confer now and then to trade clues.              

Despite the planet’s water crisis, the Shadow Master is standing next to an overflowing fountain.

           The opening area turns out to be a small, deserted city teeming with monsters that the player must dodge while desperately trying to find some equipment. Eventually, among the buildings, you find some more rations, sling stones, a sling to go with them, and a club. Monsters are pretty tough, partly because their movement is tied to the game clock rather than to the passage of rounds. Thus, depending on the speed of your machine (or, of course, emulator), monsters might flit all over the screen in between any two of your own movements or attacks. But you don’t want to set the speed too low because it seems to exacerbate the game’s persistent failure to read many of your inputs. But it also caches every keypress that it does read, meaning that you don’t want to hold down any of the movement keys because that will lead to a situation where your character bumps into an object for 40 minutes while you write your blog entry and periodically check back to see if the buffer has cleared yet.           

Hurling sling stones at a “rock troll.” Other enemies include “desert gryphons” and “sand stabbers.”

        Another problem is that the author had not yet figured out how to realistically block ranged attacks with obstacles. Monsters capable of missile attacks–and a lot of them seem to spontaneously acquire this ability–can hurl rocks or whatever through trees and walls and even from off screen. If you don’t want to waste your own limited supply of sling stones, you have to make your way to them under bombardment and beat them with your club. I died a lot during the first couple of hours. Fortunately, “death” has you immediately resurrected next to the Shadow Master with no loss of items or attributes.             

Finding items in the opening city.

            During your explorations, you come to realize that many of the plants on the ground can be harvested for their herbs, yellow and blue ones healing you and green ones causing monsters to freeze for a few rounds. Other items that you find include a tent, a watch, and a map. Using the map gives you a little auto map of the area. Using the tent has you sleep for the night and restore all hit points. This is something that you want to do every night whether you need it or not, because the game simulates darkness (a la the early Ultimas) by having the window close in around you, making it a nightmare to try to find anything. Best to just sleep until morning. Resting also levels you up, which gives you more hit points and I guess maybe combat skill.           

Camping with the tent at night.

         There are other issues with the interface. My character icon looks like a woman in a track suit. Half of the screen is wasted until you bring up the inventory. The inventory screen only lets you “ready” one item at a time, meaning that either it doesn’t support armor (I haven’t found any yet) or you just have to trust that armor items in your inventory are doing something. If you pick up an item, you can only ever drop it on a tiled floor, where it will then block movement. On the positive side, the game follows the Ultima convention of mapping each action to a key and also displays valid current commands on the screen. Targeting, for both attacking and using the “Look” command, works pretty well, although I wish the game remembered the last enemy you targeted.         

The game tells me that the object in front of me is a “sign” but offers no command for reading it.

         Eventually, you exhaust anything to do or find in the first city. Other than the Shadow Master, there are no NPCs to talk with, although the manual suggests they’ll show up eventually and will (as in the first installment) respond to the Ultima IV prompts of NAME and JOB.

Once you’ve explored enough, conferring with the Shadow Master gives more clues to the main quest. He believes that returning to Earth requires you to find five orbs and place them in a machine in a nearby building. Furthermore, he believes that each orb will be found by using a “mind machine” to briefly enter some kind of dreamworld. (As with Ultizurk I, there’s a faint Martian Dreams influence on the plot.) The mind machines, in turn, run on crystals found in the dungeons. I’m glad he figured all that out because I never would have gotten it.            

He’s basically the most helpful person to ever have the title “Shadow Master.”

           Ultimately, the game world consists of several outdoor areas, or cities, linked by long, winding, maze-like dungeons. In dungeons, the problems with enemies is multiplied. They can fling missiles at you through walls that take you hundreds of steps to circumvent to bash their skulls. I discovered the hard way that I needed to level up several times and bring plenty of herbs before attempting the dungeons.            

Wandering the dungeon. All of these enemies can attack me at range despite the walls.

            Weirdly, the map itself doesn’t work in the dungeons, but “mixing” a yellow herb produces an automap. The mechanic is so illogical that I feel the programmer must have been compensating for some inability to port the same code used outdoors to the indoor environment, but for the life of me I can’t imagine what the problem would have been. Anyway, the map just shows the dungeon layout, not exits, so you still have to wander around to find those. With the movement issues I described above, I found it easier to save at the entrance and reload when I hit dead ends rather than retrace my steps.         

You think he could have made the map fill more of the screen?

           Ultimately, I found the first three crystals in the first three dungeon levels, titled Coprates Chasm, Australis Tholus, and Albor Tholus (all features on Mars and thus strengthening the Martian Dreams connections). I also found a huge cache of rations and sling stones. Not having to engage enemies in melee combat is a big bonus. I returned to the surface, figured out how to drop the crystals in the mind machine in the right order, and entered the dream world.            

Using the crystals in the mind machine.

         The dream world was a thin set of catwalks through a firmament. To get to the orb, I had to find two “magic star carpets,” which create bridges across the void. I had to use them strategically to reach an otherwise isolated area. Soon, the first orb was mine.            

Laying carpet to reach the first orb.

         By now, it was clear that, unlike its predecessor, this wasn’t going to be a single-entry game, so I’ll have to continue exploring in future entries. I’ll make a prediction now, though: The Shadow Master will get back to Earth first because I’ll sacrifice time (or some other resource) helping this planet with its water problem. Nonetheless, despite technically losing according to the rules, I’ll get a bunch of extra points for Gryffindor for “having done the right thing” and thus end up the Guildmaster anyway.

I know my description makes the game sound pretty bad. But while the interface issues should make Ultizurk II essentially unplayable, occasionally the developer pulls an original idea out of a hat and manages to lure me along for the next chapter. This is not the one he’ll be remembered for, but there’s still something memorable about it.

Time so far: 4 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-323-ultizurk-ii-the-shadow-master-1992/