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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Combating Depression with Audiosurf

I am probably clinically depressed. Yeah, that doesn't sound so good but I know that the situation is escalating and it needed to be addressed. The spouse wholeheartedly recommends that I see the shrink but I just have a feeling that if I actually go, I would probably be prescribed with some anti-depressants. Because what else can the shrink do? Hang out with me while I am gaming and pretend to understand the reason behind me crying during the evolutionary bits in the last stage of Rez? Well, maybe the latter and it would not even be pretend but at this point, I just don't think that seeking psychological help is going to alleviate the situation. My solution? Well, let's combat a gaming related problem with gaming? Sounds so bloody meta right? So much so that it just had to work!

Audiosurfing the depression away...

Believe it or not, the number of activity that I would normally go to when I am feeling sad is not video gaming. As a matter of fact, when I am feeling blue, it takes away my desire to play video games because I know that I won't be able to commit to playing them - thus the situation at hand. When I am sad, I would actually listen to music. Not cheery music of course, listening to those when I am sad can lead to vomiting. Not that I have a lot of uplifting music within my reach to begin with. To just marinate myself in that whole damp and sticky atmosphere of darkness from these sorrowful and depressing songs, I usually found myself walking away confident that everything will be okay. There is just something about embodying a bit of self-pity - which of course, not something that I would recommend anyone to participate in casually - that would eventually make me realize how repulsive that place can be and I would always reach that inevitable conclusion during the aforementioned musical binge session. I have decided to use the ultimate music game, Audiosurf, to facilitate my current music therapy sessions and surprisingly, it's a rather potent concoction. I have done this before in the past but never this extensively. As you may know, Audiosurf lets you experience your music in a deeper sense where you can actually see and feel the music. So the effectiveness of just listening to the music to calm my nerves is actually doubled and maybe even tripled when Audiosurf is added into the equation. So I have been playing a lot of Audiosurf lately to let myself be drown by the wonderment of it all. So is this remedy working? Somewhat. I do feel a bit better after every session though that brooding, lingering loneliness is still somewhat there, following my every step. It may take a while for a complete recovery so I just have to keep at it for now.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Random Game Room Moment

The evil cube is back! It's purple and ready to claim my gameplay time.

Steam Music? Oh No...

Steam is the absolute best place to game, there is no doubt about that. There is absolutely nothing anymore that the console world could offer that would take that away from Valve, ever. Nintendo should definitely start to work on that eventual transition to Steam sooner so that they can start making some real money. Still, not every single feature that Steam pushes out is going to be incredible. The Big Picture mode is highly misleading - since you can always just play your Personal Computer games on the big screen without it - and this new "Steam Music" that was introduced today is also another misguided feature.

I suppose developers should stop paying composers to make music for their games.

I don't understand why many people rather listen to an outside sound source while playing video games. Even when a game soundtrack is lacking or bad, I always want to stay true to a game's original design. A majority of broadcasters on twitch play popular music in the background and whenever I come across those channels, I normally switch to something else because it's quite annoying to me. You can pretty much open a media player or website of your choice and let your custom song list play in the background right now without Steam Music so this is going to be all about a slicker implementation of that within the confines of the Steam client itself. I won't be using it and unlike the Family Sharing feature, missing out on the usage of this one doesn't bother me one bit.

Games Played 01/27/2014 - 02/02/2014

- 01/27/2014 -
League of Legends - PC

- 01/28/2014 -
Border Down - Dreamcast
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria - PlayStation 2

- 01/29/2014 -
League of Legends - PC
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Demo - PlayStation 3
Sparkle 2 Evo - PC

- 01/30/2014 -
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - PC
League of Legends - PC

- 01/31/2014 -
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - PC
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - PC
Legend of Grimrock - PC

- 02/01/2014 -
Audiosurf - PC
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - PC
Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F - PlayStation 3
League of Legends - PC

- 02/02/2014 -
Audiosurf - PC
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - PC
Long Live the Queen - PC
Shadowrun Returns - PC


Screenshot of the Week:

Weep now dragons of Skyrim for Alexander the Conjurer is back!
The Elder Scrolls V (Personal Computer)

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Cheer Me Up, Video Games

I am trying my hardest to get out of the funk that I am currently in but nothing seems to be working. It's hard to even boot up a game these days and when that actually happens, I don't enjoy them as I used to. At the risk of sounding seemingly ungrateful, apparently having access to these many video games at my fingertips didn't secure a steady level of happiness in my gaming life. What is going on with me? Maybe I need to see a shrink but I am just hoping that this thing will run its course soon, without taking too much away from me. I can at least say one thing though, DanceMasters on the X-Box 360 did make me smile:

Was I just oblivious in the past? Has the ignorance been washed away?