Virtual Tourist - ABZU 10/27/19

Morning!

October has turned out to be a very chaotic and tiring month. Loads of crazy stuff at work. The weather also just turned, so we've had lower temperatures and rain this week. But is the heat really done with us yet? We shall see!

Mini Movie Reviews

Gemini Man - Hubby and I had thought this would be Will Smith and his son, but it was all Will Smith. The film was great fun. Impressive stunts and fight scenes with some surprising moves. Gorgeous locals and cinematography. They even play with camera perspectives - enough to make it interesting, but not so much it disturbs the viewer. Rating: 3.5 out of 4 (Hubby's Rating: Pay Full Price to See Again!)



The Current War: Director's Cut - I'd never heard of the film until about a week ago. Per IMDB it was initially released in 2017. The title is horrible (If you don't know what it is, you'd think it was an actual war movie.) The film is about Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse and the fight/race to light up the US with either DC or Alternating Current. A lot of history gets sanitized for the history books. Here's a chance to get a taste of what they don't tell you. Great acting, fascinating history, and you get a feel for how truly revolutionary the concepts being thrown about are to the people of that ear. Rating: 3.75 out of 4 (Hubby's Rating: Worth Full Price.)

Virtual Tourist

ABZU

ABZU is a visually stunning puzzle game. The music and art are great, but I will say it was really short (only a little over 3 hrs of gameplay), and the character movement underwater is so awkward that it proved frustrating and horribly distracting from the beauty around you. Just about the time I finally felt I got the hang of it, the game was over. o.O

A fast-moving current underwater.

The awakening.

That's us. You become aware floating facedown in the water.

The first area - there are several species of fish to meet. :)

Each area is different, and through your explorations and solving of puzzles, the area themselves can change. You start getting the feeling something terrible happened here, and you're trying to fix it.

You will find a statue like this in each new area. You can sit on it and meditate. In meditation, the camera will attach to a nearby fish and follow it around, showing you the name on the bottom right.

As you complete the puzzles, you will enter this energy temple area and give energy to it.

The central area of the energy temple.

Once you give the energy for the area you completed, the energy temple will go through a growth sequence.

This occurs after the change at the temple, transforming the garden and releasing new creatures into the sea.


Have a great week!

Virtual Tourist - Seasons After Fall 10/13/19

Morning, all!

Fall seems to have officially arrived here in Texas. Weather flip-flopped, and we went from 100 down to the 70's with one morning being a super chilly 54. But will it stay? :P

Mini Movie Review

The Addams Family - Super adorable and nostalgic film. Even better, they actually show when Morticia and Gomez got married and how Lurch became part of the family. Also, how they found their home. This helps build the neat two-mirror-sided plot of the film when, after 13 years of cutting themselves off from the world, the world pushes back in. The movie was a lot of fun. Rating: 3.5 out of 4 (Hubby's Rating: Worth Full Price to See Again!) (No additional bits in the credits though.)

Virtual Tourist

Season After Fall

This is a super cute 2D game. Short duration (though I've not finished it yet), but super cute and something of a mystery.

I forgot to take any pictures of the energy seed into. DOH. This is where the energy seed (the player) gets integrated into a nearby fox. A young, mysterious voice is asking us to help it with a project.

The integrated fox and seed. If you home in, you can see the fox's eyes now glow. The area on the photo is where the energy seed came out. The four stones and the floor area seem to be all that remains of the ruins of the place.

We're heading off to the first guardian. I am to retrieve a piece from each one.

A beautiful sea to look at on the way.

There ate items to interact with to let you progress in certain areas. For this, you bark. This limb was coiled until you do so. Now I can make the jump! (Some things you run across look like something to use, but you can't yet. There's a reason for that. :P)

Stone totems made by the first guardian. As you come near, their eyes light up.

The first guardian. It seems he sleeps a lot of the time. :P

When you get the shard and try to go back, you find you can't get past a particular area. Something was said to you as a hint, and I was able to work it out. If you bark twice near the shard (it is an energy ball and floats - see the floating blue ball on the left?), the whole weather of the area changes to something else.  So we went from spring to winter! So you change the weather to affect things. A rather ingenious idea for a puzzle game. (The weird thing on the right previously looked like an empty, dead flower pod. Now it will gather and throw out a giant snowball, allowing me to reach the tree limb on the left!)

When I get close to our starting point, the way back towards the just visited guardian is closed.

Once we return to the temple ruins, the young voice has the seed assimilate the energy shard. Then we merge once more with the fox.


Have a great week!