Posts

Posted on

Abandoned NL: Glovertown Mill

DSC01780

Terra Nova Sulphite Co. Mill in Glovertown, NL.

For a solo trip across the province to attend a friend’s wedding, I opted to see if I could find a short detour along the way to an abandoned settlement for a potential photo opportunity. For a while now, the posts of Atlas Obscura, Narcity, Hidden Newfoundland and April Jay Photography have piqued my interest in seeking out some of these destinations. Ghost towns have always been a curiosity to me, but I’ve never pursued them despite quite a number of them existing in my own province.

Silent Silo

I managed to spend about 45 mins or so wandering the site, which was easy enough to find thanks to the wonderful article on Hidden Newfoundland.

Glovertown Mill

You would expect something that’s been abandoned for so long to be a pile of rubble, but in fact it’s quite a sound structure. The bones still stand, their surfaces renewed over the years with fresh graffiti.

Penis Applied to Archie

Paulo

A quiet, contemplative place.

Posted on

Discovery Day at Terra Nova (Featuring oTENTik)

Moonlit oTENTik II

During the Discovery Day weekend we went camping. Not only was it my first time in Terra Nova National Park, it was my first time using an oTENTik which is apparently the most ballin’ tent around. Full on bunkbeds and living space complete with solar-powered lights, wood stove and BBQ! To top it off, nearby was the nicest comfort station I’ve ever seen. Pure. Luxury.

Boarding the Spacecraft

By the end of the summer they should have these bad boys ready for the park as well. They look like something out of a Myst game or a Retrofuturism blog. Meant to mainly be a compact sleep space with the ability to view the stars from the skylights.

Malady Head Trail Panorama

All in all it was a great trip, despite an afternoon of rain. There was lot of BBQing and eating, a small hike, card games and just general laziness as we listened to a massive 24hr Spotify playlist called Growing up 90s: Canadian Rock Radio.

Highway listening for the drive over and back consisted of RuPaul: What’s The Tee?, Bill’s Monday Morning Podcast and WTF with Marc Maron.

Posted on

Mission Complete: Grim Fandango Remastered (PS4)

While I adored Lucasarts and Sierra adventure games growing up, I only played Grim Fandango until around Year 2 when it was first released. I’m happy to see that it and other Lucasarts adventure games are still thriving through emulation and remastering.

As I did originally, I loved the style and direction of the game. However, I found a lot of the puzzles unclear and baffling in their logic, requiring timed action that is not at all obvious during character animations. I found myself consulting guides way more than any other adventure game to get through it. The controls were also pretty clunky on console, even after replacing the tank controls. Yes, there was a run button but with the amount of backtracking you had to do in the game and the forced animations for various scene changes it did get quite tedious.

Either way, a classic adventure game restored for newer generations to enjoy, dated mechanics and all!

Posted on

Today’s Jam: Lost Highway Soundtrack

I bought this album when it came out because it contained the newest Nine Inch Nails song “The Perfect Drug” at the time. This was the first song post-Downward Spiral and after I had become a fan, so when I heard it on MuchMusic for the first time it lit a fire in my head. After the video was over, I immediately emailed The Wedge to see if they would take a request. While I watched that channel a lot, I made sure to stay glued to it as much as possible in the hope I could see the video and hear the song again. Thankfully it entered a pretty good rotation.

To this day it’s still one of my favourite Nine Inch Nails song, even though in hindsight Trent Reznor himself is not a fan of it as it was written during a musical transitional period for him and strictly for a soundtrack. All the same, I find it still fresh to this day. Different than most of his other work as NIN, but never straying too far from it.

As for the movie? I’ve only seen 10 mins of it. I believe when I rented it from Jumbo Video on VHS my viewing was interrupted, but that’s another story. I’d also never heard of David Lynch and missed the Twin Peaks movement entirely. I didn’t end up seeing any of his films until my early 20’s, starting with Dune.

Revisiting this album lately has been great. When I was younger I used to skip a lot of the score and stick to the NIN, Manson, Bowie and Pumpkins tracks. Apparently I still listened to the rest of it a fair bit as it was all still intimately familiar. I believe I’m a bigger fan of the score now.

Highlights:

  • Nine Inch Nails – The Perfect Drug
  • Smashing Pumpkins – Eye
  • Marilyn Manson – I Put a Spell on You
  • David Bowie – I’m Deranged
Posted on

Mission Complete: Life is Strange (XB1)

  • Date: 2017-03-04
  • Time: 18h13m
  • Achievements: 34/60
  • Gamerscore:

I can’t give this game enough praise. For its emotion, for its depth, and for what I assume is an accurate portrayal of modern teenage life with some obvious unique situations for dramatic effect. It’s the one of the best Telltale games that Telltale didn’t make.

I played the first half an hour of this game about a year ago and it didn’t immediately click with me. I’m at an age where the tropes of high school dramas cause me to constantly eye roll, but I am certainly happy I returned to give the game another try. If you feel the same way, hear me out and stick with it. You may continue to eye roll at some ridiculous behaviour as I did, but it’s worth your time.

I don’t want to speak too much about the plot or the gameplay itself, because I think the discovery of its unique features is important to the experience.

It’s got a great soundtrack that even made the transition from the game to my Spotify Playlist, where normally video game scores are reserved for very specific moods.

If you love a good episodic adventure, it’s one of the best out there right now.

Posted on

Mission Complete: Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (XB1)

  • Date: 2017-02-15
  • Time: 48h
  • Achievements: 38/74
  • Gamerscore: 755/1680
  • Warchiefs Killed: 7
  • Slaves Liberated: 1119

Fantastic game. The combat is awesome, beating Mad Max and the Batman games in my opinion. The art style and overall feel of the game world imitates the Lord of the Rings movies really well and the Nemesis system is such a refreshing gameplay feature.

You could take on a whole horde by yourself or stealthily take over a stronghold without being seen and feel like a badass doing either one. Great abilities and weapons to make both fun, and a lot of mission variety to keep things interesting. Also, watching Uruks run in fear is such a joy.

Gripes? As others have said, the final battle(s) were anti-climatic considering all you went through to get there. I also don’t like the Caragor-riding missions as I find the controls sluggish compared to your normally nimble character.

If you like the gameplay of Mad Max or the Arkham games, this one is highly recommended.

Posted on

Mission Complete: Murdered: Soul Suspect (XB1)

  • Date: 2017-02-09
  • Time: 13h17m
  • Achievements: 46/48 (86%)

After XCOM 2, I needed something a little lighter. Batman was a nice, light romp and this game worked too. I had bought this game a year or two ago when it was super cheap but never got around to trying it out until now.

Supernatural film noir murder mystery? What’s not to love? I really enjoyed the concept and mood of the game. It really had a bleak feel at times when you would encounter lost souls in your travels who wouldn’t understand that they were dead or couldn’t come to grips with their situation.

Nothing too difficult, it didn’t overstay its welcome and I enjoyed the clue system that moved the narrative along.

Gripes? It had a large collectible aspect to it, but I rarely had to work beyond my regular diligent searching to find just about everything. The lack of the world map meant that once I reached the end game and saw that I was missing about 10 items from my final collectible category, I opted not to continue the search. The stealth/action sequences were irritating at times but they were few and far between.

Solid adventure game.

Posted on

Mission Complete: XCOM 2 (XB1)

My first campaign run failed spectacularly on Normal difficulty, despite finishing Enemy Unknown years prior. It was a combination of too many dead/injured soldiers so my squad was perpetually made of rookies and not enough initial reading on research and facility build orders. The Avatar Project sped along as I was desperately struggling to get anywhere.

I did some reading on build orders based on how I wanted to play, and started a new campaign shamefully on Rookie difficulty. This combination made all the difference, as I still felt challenged and well-thought strategy was still very important. There were missions where I was flawless and others I squeaked out an evac just in the nick of time. I didn’t lose a single important high level squad member, but it was still a struggle to keep them out of the infirmary for long stretches of time.

I’m not sure when I’ll play it again as playing 1.5 campaigns was enough for me for a while. I got the PC version in a humble bundle, so maybe down the road when I’m in the mood to be thoroughly punished I’ll see what the Long War 2 mod is all about.

Posted on

I Love The 90’s Tour, here we come!

Thanks to a lovely presale email from Ticket Atlantic, I was able to score tickets to the I Love the 90’s tour in Halifax this May.

I Love the 90's

Pre-teen Darcy is super pumped, as all I pretty much listened to at that age was early 90’s dance and hip hop. The Rap Traxx 4 compilation cassette was played endlessly, along with Dance Mix ’93, Vanilla Ice, and MC Hammer.

Over a decade ago I went to a Ludacris concert at Mile One, happy to see Luda but mainly to see Maestro (Fresh Wes) open for him and perform Drop the Needle. I was ecstatic. When I was in California in 2009 I went to a classic rock all-day concert, and to speed up the time between bands performance they had a stage that would turn around after each set to show the next band’s equipment already ready to go. During one of those turns, Biz Markie happened to be on the other side and he played a short surprise set. I nearly jumped out of my seat when he introduced himself, and looked around to see most of the people around me were either off to get a beer or nowhere near as interested. He played Just a Friend and I couldn’t have been happier. I even recorded it!

As you can tell, I have a soft spot for the music of the early 90s. Normally, Vanilla Ice is one of the headliners for this tour but it looks like he’s not part of the Atlantic Canadian lineup. So, since he and I apparently follow each other on Twitter, I hit him up.

We’ll see if he replies!

Edit: While I’m at it, since Rap Traxx 4 doesn’t exist as a release on Spotify, I’ve made a playlist. Enjoy!