Adam Oster's Blog, page 16

Video Game Review: Groundhog Day – Like Father Like Son

Fans of the 1993 Bill Murray film, Groundhog Day, have all been chanting from the rooftops in unison since the day that film came out about how much this film needs a sequel, specifically in the form of a virtual reality video game. Well, it only took 25 years, but back in 2019, those dreams were met when Groundhog Day – Like Father Like Son was released.

Okay, but for real though, who in the world actually thought Groundhog Day needed a sequel? A sequel almost feels like you’re missing the whole point of that movie, or at the very least, didn’t see how beautifully encapsulated it was into one simple story that really shouldn’t need any continuation.

That being said, almost the same second my wife came home with a VR headset for me, I had a copy of this game on my hard drive, which I then began playing nearly immediately. So, you know, I’m one of those idiots who would have totally watched a sequel if it had been produced, thereby proving once again that I am unable to kick my addiction to Hollywood’s bleeding beloved franchises dry.

But here’s the thing, this silly little video game, which relies far too much on obnoxious mini-games, especially the spray painting one which feels like it should have gone through a few more years worth of development before still being thrown out of the end product, does something I would have never expected. It actually manages to improve the first movie. I’m not suggesting that it improves on the first movie, as that movie was a far better specimen than this game could ever be, but the twists and turns you go through in this game actually manages to highlight a new perspective on the first movie, giving us additional details on Phil Connor’s life past the infamous repeating day of the groundhog, and ultimately doing a superior job of explaining the reasons for Phil’s being stuck in a time loop outside of finally getting Andie MacDowell into bed.

I’m a little ashamed to admit that the final revelations in the game brought more than a few tears to my eyes as I realized that this story about Phil Connors’ son ended up becoming a story about fatherhood and how difficult it is to be the man you want to be for your kids.

The story was surprisingly, sweet. The actual gameplay, on the other hand, was really nothing more than a distraction from that. While some of them were fun distractions, such as the dance contest you get to have with Needlenose Ned, others were truly obnoxious and impossible, like the previously mentioned spray painting one, or the guitar one, and then there was the one where you try to make a rock sculpture which gives nearly no information on what to do, only for you to find out that it really requires almost no effort.

I think this game had a truly missed opportunity in allowing for the manic actions we see Bill Murray go through in the movie, where he’s trying everything to get out of the loop. Heck, even just having a battle with a groundhog would have added some more fun to the story. Instead, you very quickly try to be as good as possible just so you don’t have to hear the same dialogue over and over again. In a story about how you can do simply anything without repercussions (outside of having to live the day over again), you’re incredibly limited in what you can do, or when you can do it. Sure, you can throw bacon at your brother’s head while he’s telling you about how much he needs his cappuccino, but that doesn’t do anything outside of cause him to stop talking for a half second to call you a name before he continues on with what he’s doing anyway. You can’t even hit anybody with your enormous disembodied hands. Really, the worst you can do is to get drunk at the end of the day, only for the new day to start immediately after having your first drink.

This is where I think the developers really failed. One of the best things about VR is the ability to do things you can’t do in reality. I can burn the pancakes just fine on my own, but it might be nice if they had, instead of spending so much time on things like the coffee grinding mini-game, they had thrown in the opportunity for me to, I don’t know, go on a driving rampage through town before Thelma and Louise-ing myself off a cliff with the groundhog at the wheel.

The story hidden within this game is truly spectacular, but the game itself just doesn’t quite go far enough into what makes the reality of a time loop fun.

So, I’m on the fence. While it’s certainly a good introduction into VR itself, as it has a bunch of little mini-games that can help you understand how a lot of VR games work, and you can screw around here and there with some places that allow you to interact with your surroundings, the truth is that in a platform that should allow for the freedom that a time loop game mechanic would thrive in, they really botched allowing you to do anything, meaning this game is a far cry from what it should have been, even if I’ll still suggest it just for the feels that you’ll get by the end.

But seriously, that spray painting mini-game was the worst.

An Ode to Masks

As a child, I dreamed of wearing a mask; something to obscure my identity while I followed in the footsteps of the heroes of my favorite books and save the world. This concept of being anonymous while also putting good into the world, it was an ideal dream.

As I got older, I continued in this dream. Superheroes became more and more prevalent in the world I lived in and I saw so many people suddenly in love with this idea I held so dear as a young one. The biggest movies in the world for all time involve these people who wear a mask while saving lives. We have become obsessed with these characters. These heroes. These gods.

And suddenly, we reached a time in our history where we could quite literally save lives by simply wearing a mask. I’ll admit, I was hesitant to follow along. Something about it made me feel like by wearing a mask I was showing fear for a little disease. Afraid of getting sick. This surely couldn’t be an opportunity to show strength, could it? And they’re uncomfortable. And I have to smell my own breath. And it gets too warm. And I don’t wanna!

But, slowly but surely, we become accustomed to anything new we add to our daily routine. And yes, for those of us who chose to mask up, it wasn’t really that bad. Besides, the pure joy of ripping off a mask as you step outside of a store can’t be beat, as you feel the fresh air against your skin and feel like a human again, while also reveling, just a little bit, in your superhero moment. You just saved some lives and not a single person even realizes it!

By all accounts, we don’t have much longer in which wearing these superhero-like coverings will save lives like it can and does today. We may very well have this whole mess of a pandemic in our rear view mirror before we have to switch over to our new calendar. Which means, it won’t be long before our time as superheroes is over.

It won’t be long before it’s not nearly as easy to do so little and actually save lives.

So, wear a mask. Save lives. While you still can.

Planning Sucks

I live in this weird place between being a planner and being someone who absolutely wings it. This holds true in my writing as much as it does in my life. But within my life, those few times that I do actually get to the point where I plan ahead, it really freaking sucks when those plans just can’t seem to work out.

I have a feeling that this is what I tend to play it by ear more than I do any real planning. While I hate the absolute inanity of trying to make decisions on what to do with a free day with the family as they all argue over what would be the best thing to do, even though they all agree that any of the ideas would be fun, it is just so much worse to have an idea and then have to try to reconfigure it because of something going wrong.

For instance, we had recently planned to go to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, an annual event where you get to hang out in an outdoor shopping mall gussied up to look like medieval England. Okay, sure, I’m not being fair. There are plenty of other things to do. It’s got a few human-operated rides. You can ride on an elephant, watch jousting, there’s a maze in the woods, fairies, a small petting zoo, street performers, and a whole host of things that try to make this into a true eventful day worthy of driving to Shakopee, Minnesota and making the long trek across the ever-increasing strip mine.

But let’s be honest, most of the time is spent looking through the shops at the leatherwork and seeing if there’s anything cool enough worth buying that won’t break the bank.

Anyways, we were planning on doing this. The kids were super excited. And this was also the only day we had available to do this before they close down for the season, which meant it was highly important we do it, especially since they were closed down last year for the usual reasons.

The kids were so excited that they got dressed up in their weaponry and cloaks before they even put on pants.

We got out of the house a little later than planned, which was, in part, due to me just not being in too much of a hurry, and in part due to my kids being too excited about their weapons to put on pants, and we ended up in a little bit of traffic heading in to the event.

More than a little. In fact, we found ourselves in a pretty severe back up of cars on the highway a mere five miles from our destination. So severe that our two hour car trip was suddenly taking twice as long, and every time we inched a little bit closer, Google told us it was actually going to take even longer.

When we were a mere half mile away and Google said it was still going to take thirty minutes to get to the parking area, not to mention parking and walking across the mine and getting tickets and finally getting into the park before needing to immediately find food (which was already really necessary based on the decreasing mood of the interior of my car), we finally gave up, recognizing that our season passes for the nearby amusement park would serve to make this trip not an entire loss.

And I think we managed to have some fun, but it still felt as though everyone in the car, who had prepared to have an amazing day watching all the fancy-dressed people pretend being a fairy in public isn’t weird, was still wishing there was some way they could have made things work out.

Of course, a lot of that was lost when my middle child screamed his face off as he rode a ride that was a little more intense than he had remembered and had to remind himself that he was having fun.

Having to change plans sucks, and I’ve been finding myself in that same place with regards to several things in my life as of late, and I’ve been struggling to find the amusement park alternative which might allow for me to find a little bit of joy in the changing atmosphere of my plans not working as planned.

Maybe soon I’ll get on that thrill ride and manage to get my mind rebooted so hard that I forget my plans to play in the mud with the medieval mud wench and just recognize how much fun I’m already having.

I hope.

The Heartbreak of Writing

I recently finished a book that I have spent the past six years writing. It started with a very different concept than it ended with, has gone through countless revisions, and is a book I’ve dedicated myself to making something far and above better in its writing than anything else I’ve written, even if no one else will ever read it.

I honestly believe I succeeded on that last note. It might not be nearly as The Agora Files, or as funny as The Legend of Buddy Hero, or as twist-filled as The Long Chron, but at the same time, it’s a combination of all those things. It’s slower paced, it’s folksy, it’s based in the real world, and it probably means more to me than any of the other books or stories I have ever written.

And I’m done with it. I’ve completed it to the best of my abilities and now am at the crossroads of what to do with it.

My intention is to find a partner, an agent or publisher, who will help me make it into the book it needs to be to find an audience, someone I can team up with who knows the ins and outs of the market to bring this book to more people’s hands.

But there’s a part of me who knows that the chances of that ever happening are incredibly slim.

And here’s where the real heartbreak comes in. While I write primarily for myself, to express ideas and emotions that I don’t know how to fully express otherwise, I also write because I want people to be able to experience those ideas and emotions, because I want to reach out and touch someone with the words I’ve placed on the page. And, because the publishing industry is such a harsh mistress, I fear my abilities to do so are so slim my dream may never happen.

While I never expected to make money as an author, there has always been a part of me which believed it would be simple to find people to read my books. I’ve used countless different methods to try to build that audience, and at times have garnered a not-insignificant readership, but I guess no matter how many readers I have, the sheer act of pouring my soul into a piece of art means it never feels like enough.

So, this is my love song to my newest book to say, like a child, I want to find a way to help you achieve everything you could ever dream of, and mostly hoping that I won’t fail you along the way of getting there.

Musical Theatre is Hard Work

I have spent a lot of time on or around the stage over the years. However, although I don’t remember a time in which I didn’t love performing, it wasn’t until 2003 when I would find a group which would allow me to get on that stage and do so many crazy incredible things. It was then where I was irrevocably addicted to the stage and what all it meant.

For the next few years, I would spend as much time as I could on the stage, even jumping from theatre troupe to theatre troupe just to make sure I would get the maximum time up on that stage so I could sing, dance, and act.

It was an amazing time of learning about myself and my limitations as a singer/dancer/actor. Ultimately, this is where I learned about my need for creative expression and what it meant to me. It’s where I met my wife. And it’s ultimately the reason that I write today. While I definitely wrote prior to this experience, learning more about my own creative expression, as well as my need to do so, is what brought me to the point where I would actively work toward finding new ways to express myself through new mediums.

It’s also why I have been enjoying writing for the stage of late. Having such a strong connection to the artform has caused me to feel as though writing for the stage is probably where I should have been from the start, perhaps moving toward books after I had honed my art more.

For the past ten+ years, I haven’t spent that much time on the stage. There have been a few shows that I’ve actively pursued being a part of, but most of the time I’ve been on the stage in the past decade has been when someone has reached out to me saying they need someone to fill a part, and I’ve found a way to cram the rehearsal schedule into my busy schedule. While I’d obviously enjoy the opportunity to do something more than being a background character to fill space, I simply haven’t felt like I’ve had the time to put my all into a role and really run with it, not to mention I’ve become a bit more self-conscious in recent years, something I’ve been actively working on getting better about.

So, when I was approached to be a part of a new production about a month ago, and told it would only require six rehearsals, I decided that I could really use some time outside of the house, and agreed to be a part of a big musical number that would require all sorts of singing and dancing, which are both things I haven’t done in pretty much ten years.

And I forgot how much work they are to do, especially together.

My 40-year old body might not know how to handle moving and singing at the same time anymore. While I’m never going to claim I was particularly good at the two, I never felt so absolutely out of breath doing such simple moves and light singing. A number of years ago I did a show where I was singing and dancing for the entire 1.5 hours of a show and never felt it was this difficult. Last night, during rehearsal, just going through the five minute song meant I was falling over from sheer oxygen deprivation. And sure, I can blame the mask, which might account for some of my issues, but the truth is, I think I might be out of shape.

And who knew that it required being in good shape to do musical theatre? I thought it was an artform for the nerds who didn’t want to do sports.

All the same, if you want to see me dressed in a fat Santa suit, dancing around like an idiot with a bunch of other dudes in fat Santa suits, I might have an idea of where you could make that happen…

TV Review: Veep

In case I haven’t made it completely obvious prior to now, I’m incredibly behind on my television or movie watching, which is why I’m here to talk about the television show Veep. I’m currently watching the second season, so no spoilers please :).

If you’re unaware, this show went off the air in 2019, after its seventh season, just as an indicator of how far behind I am on entertainment.

For a politics-themed comedy, being so far behind on watching it from when it was originally produced should probably mean a lot as to whether or not I can actually appreciate it, considering I’m watching a show about the politics of 2013. With everything that has happened in politics since that time, it really feels like this show should have aged. I guess this speaks to the brilliance of the writing of the show, as they don’t focus much on specific politics, although they spend a lot of time on filibuster reform, which is unsurprisingly still in the news today, but on the characters themselves and what it might look like if we got to see the actual incompetence surrounding a politician.

In short, I think this show is incredibly well done. Looking at the long list of awards this show has won over the years, I’m obviously not alone. But the characters they put together into the office of the vice president who are constantly battling against the press to make sure their candidate doesn’t look like a normal human who has foibles, well, it’s pretty amazing. These people don’t really like each other, but they all have the job of trying to keep the office of the VP sacred.

I could go on and on about specific performances from the different actors, or wax poetically about how one of the main actors is my childhood crush Anna Chlumsky, or simply just note the depths of which the writers will go to dredge up ridiculous scandals for this team of spin doctors to fight against. But the truth of the matter is that there isn’t any one thing which makes this show great. It’s just a fantastic piece which highlights how we expect our politicians to be perfect, while getting upset at the lengths to which they will deceive us to appear that way.

Also, we get to see how most of them are far from perfect and are, in fact, just the worst people on the planet, but luckily for the show, that’s not the main crew in this show. Mostly…

What Happens When You Return Something

In some locations in this country, you’ll find places which deal specifically with reselling items that have been returned to giant marketplaces like Amazon. There are all sorts of iterations of this business strategy. Some will sell the items at a discounted price, but still operate like a standard store, others use auctions to try and get the best price they can on their items. There’s a small franchise in South Carolina my family likes to go to where you can sift through giant bins of random items that have been return to online marketplaces and, depending on the day of the week you’re visiting, pay anywhere from $1-$5 for whatever you find. It’s like an exciting little treasure hunt where you dig through piles and piles of absolute (and sometimes literal) rubbish, hoping to find something cool.

Something about this idea of reselling items that have been returned feels like the pinnacle of what capitalism and consumerism can mean.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the treasure hunt. I’ve been known to peruse the shelves of thrift stores and yard sales to try and find something someone else has discarded which just so happens to be exactly the type of thing I’ve been looking for. And I enjoyed sifting through the bins of returned items just as much, even if the whole process of digging through them while elbow to elbow with other treasure hunters while trying to keep my kids from running absolutely rampant throughout the warehouse was frustrating at best. It was fun. A weird little form of entertainment. Based around shopping. It only works around the idea that you can get a deal that you wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere for something you probably don’t even need or would have considered wanting prior to finding it hiding in the piles and piles of junk. Sure, I may have only had to pay $2 for the smart plugs I found, but just the idea that I would spend an hour digging through bins hoping to find a good deal, well, it seems to speak a bit to the materialism of our age, and probably not in a good way.

But at the same time, a portion of this seems to speak tons about the throwaway culture we have in our country.

I’m not blaming the people who are returning stuff to Amazon or the other marketplaces which serve to fill these shelves of these new types of stores. Sure, there were definitely enough things within the piles I dug through to show that people are abusing the system by either using things before returning them, or by returning completely empty boxes, but those felt like the exceptions. Most of these items were purely things people decided didn’t suit their needs, or were somehow less than pristine for being purchased new.

But I do struggle with the fact that these online marketplaces basically treat all of these returns as garbage. These were things they sold on their own storefront, the smart plugs I purchased were still in a sealed package. Yet, they were throw into an enormous box with all of the other returns, to be liquidated as one big pile of junk that some treasure hunter will put down money for, hoping to score big, and probably throw nearly half of it away. If you start digging into the culture of the online returns liquidation process, you find that you can purchase pallets of Amazon returns for a fraction of the estimated worth of the items. There are countless unboxing videos of people online showing them getting brand new televisions and computers and all sorts of items still in sealed packages that are placed on these pallets along with toilet paper rolls and empty boxes.

Amazon is off loading computers with toilet paper simply because it’s more effort for them to try to sell a possibly used item than it is for them to just put everything in a big box and sell it as a bundle. Heck, Amazon doesn’t even have a quality check on their return policies, or at the very least it appears to be rather lax, considering how many of these laptops and gaming consoles and other expensive things end up in the return bins, but are actually empty boxes where someone obviously returned an empty box so they could get their item for free.

The worst part of it all is that the math obviously works in Amazon’s favor. If you have all of the absolutely random crap that Amazon does, like a cardboard cutout of Pope Francis, a lot of that stuff is probably pretty hard to offload if you mark it as being used. It’s probably hard enough to sell as new. But Amazon doesn’t charge restocking fees, they just have these enormous piles of crap that, well, if they put cardboard cutouts in a box with the possible promise of a treasure like a laptop, they can actually probably make more of a profit off of their returns than they would have if they had tried selling them.

Which means our consumerist and capitalist tendencies have put us in this place where we are literally willing to buy a pile of absolute garbage with the hope that something good is hiding inside.

And so, this past weekend, my wife and I bid on a couple of pallets in an online auction, and ended up with an enormous pile of sporting goods now sitting in our garage waiting for something to be done with it. And you know what? If we actually put the time in on selling these things, we should be able to make our money back, and then some, while also pocketing a few choice items for ourselves.

I guess, at the very least, we can live happy knowing that we’re doing at least a little bit to try to keep some of this stuff out of the landfill. But at the same time, I can’t help thinking we’ve somehow become a part of a problem that our country has with stuff.

When the Cat’s Away…What do I do?

It doesn’t happen incredibly often, but every once in a while the stars align and my wife and kids all decide to go do something for a weekend while I’m stuck at home working. And while for some this might seem a sad affair, and to be sure, I hate missing out on doing things, there’s a great deal of excitement that comes from having a quiet house for a few days.

And right now, I’m in the midst of a quiet weekend. They’re going to be back on Saturday, but yesterday, today, and tomorrow will be days where I will get to not have to deal with a bunch of folks wanting me to be anything. I can just exist. Yes, I have a pile of homework to get done and I really need to polish up this murder mystery script, and I’ll probably want to do a bit of work on figuring out what my new project of focus will be, but that’s part of the excitement. With the new job impending and now here, I’ve been so focused on work for the past few weeks that I haven’t even had a moment to really sit back and think about those things that I want to be thinking about.

So, that’s what the next few days are for. To get things done.

And, admittedly, I’ll probably get a bit of video game time in as well.

So, I’m not planning on wasting any more of my time here talking to you, I’m going to get stuff done. Maybe. Or, a nap might be nice.

The Reality of VR

Yeah, the image quality is bad, but that’s actually young me flying through Agrabah in the 90s.

I vividly remember the first time I experienced the majesty that is virtual reality. It was the early 90s and my family was in Florida visiting Disney World. We started at EPCOT, always my favorite, and decided quickly that we would skip the Magic Kingdom on the following day because of how much fun we were having exploring the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

Because EPCOT in the 90s was pretty sweet. There were roaming robots, the Figment ride was still the cool one, Horizons was still taking us into the future, and Innoventions was filled with almost nothing but video games. And I remember learning about how they had some virtual reality games there and was so incredibly excited to check them out, only to find them out of order.

BUT! There was this other thing hiding in a corner of Innoventions called the Walt Disney Imagineering Labs (no, I didn’t remember the name, I had to look it up), which promised a tour around some of the cool things that the Imagineers (the people who come up with the rides and experiences and whatnot at the Disney Parks) were up to. We got into this room which showcased this big sprawling model of Agrabah and the surrounding deserts and were then told this story about how they were creating a digital version of Aladdin’s world.

While that isn’t nearly as impressive today, considering anyone with a relatively good computer and access to the Unity Engine can create a digital anything, it was mind blowing at the time. They weren’t talking about making a video game where you go along on prescribed paths, but a living world where you could explore everything.

And then they said they were doing it in VR.

And that a lucky few in the room would get to try it out in the next room.

And…I didn’t get chosen.

But, my dad was as impressed with the idea as I was and made sure to ask the attendant what it would take to be one of the cool cats with the heavy helmets. They replied that all it took would be to be at the front of the line for the next tour.

And so, one of my sisters, my dad, and I did exactly that. And before I knew it, while my mom and my youngest sister were watching the fireworks, my sister and I were flying on magic carpets through the city of Agrabah. And it was amazing.

I mean, you could look down at your hands and see you had those cool cartoon gloves. And Iago talked to you. And people yelled at you if you flew too close to them. And you could go flying way up high only to zoom right back down at the ground at high speed.

They had some game where you were supposed to be looking for rubies or something, but I really didn’t care. All I wanted to do was to explore this new paragon in experiential entertainment. And it went by far too quickly.

I actually got to ride the magic carpets again over a decade later when my wife and I explored this place called DisneyQuest when in Florida on our honeymoon, and it wasn’t nearly as impressive. Computer graphics had become so much better and the hardware was obviously well past its prime, meaning I didn’t have quite the awe-inspiring experience then as I did the first time.

But, last week, my wife bought me an Oculus Quest 2 (yes, I know, but Facebook already knows everything there is to know about me anyways). And just last night all of my kids spent a considerable amount of time scrubbing floors in a virtual house. Because, the truth is, it is crazy how immersive this stuff can get, and how much technology can really do today, even if this is all based on the same stuff I got to experience over twenty years ago.

Now if only I could find a version of those carpets I can ride on my new headset.

You are Awesome

Can I just take a second to let you know that I think you’re awesome?

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. And you’re wrong. Because you absolutely are indeed awesome. You are the most awesome to have ever awesomed.

If you’re like me, you probably struggle with self-confidence on the regular. It’s really easy to shrug off any form of compliment as being nothing more than a person simply trying to make you feel better, instead of anything grounded in reality.

But you know what? The truth is, you’re just awesome.

Just take it. Acknowledge to yourself that you are, indeed, awesome. That you may not always do all the things you wish you had done, that maybe there are things you regret, but you are just another human here on this planet we call earth and you are doing the best you can, and that’s pretty darn awesome.

Like, how easy would it be to phone it all in and give up and live life at its most minimal? To just let life happen around you without any sort of ambition or dreams.

But that’s not you. You have things you’re doing. And maybe you’re not always putting all of your effort toward them, but you’re doing them.

And that makes you awesome.

Humans are cool in that we always dream for more. We have ambition. We know that we can be more than we are today. That’s how all of the greatest innovations on this planet have ever come about. And you, even if you don’t come up with the next sliced bread, are a part of that grand tradition.

Also, just think about the person who came up with sliced bread and how little of a thing it probably felt to them. Like, it’s just bread, but in pieces. Yet, it’s the marker by which we gauge all great things today.

Maybe your thing will go down in history as the next sliced bread. Perhaps your little side hustle is going to be something that someone sees and inspires them to do their own thing.

Maybe you’ll never get anywhere yourself, but you’ll spark someone else to do something amazing. And that alone makes you awesome.

So, keep doing you. Even if doing you means that you’re going to sit on the couch today and do absolutely nothing.

You deserve it. Because you’re awesome.