Moody blue twilight.
A bit over two weeks I managed to keep myself away from the game console, then I got bored enough to finish Tchia, which turned out to be a very short game to complete, around twelve hours in a very leisurely pace (though there are plenty of side quests afterwards to continue on with). Nice indie game with an interesting game feature of being able to “soul jump” into animals (inanimate objects work too), like a passing bird for a brief moment in order to fly up on top of a mountain quickly and jump back into human form.
I’ve also returned to grind Tactics Ogre. I have no idea what is going on with the twisting and hard to follow plot anymore, but at least it doesn’t matter with the actual game play. After 90 hours, I’m guessing I’m only half-way through.
Enjoying the sunset in Tchia.
Night at the cinema, opera and live venue
But it hasn’t been all video games. First, I went to see the old animation movie The Lord of the Rings (1978), which was as poor as I remembered it when I saw it on a VHS tape back in the day. Interesting movie relic, however.
Trivia: the artist of this poster also did the movie posters for Star Wars and … Plan 9 from outer space!
I also went to see yet another opera performance, this time Eugene Olegin. It was better than I expected, though there was a feeling some emotional connection is lost when I have to rely on surtitles to follow the story. Good performances from the cast anyways.
Finally, I saw Ryoji Ikeda again live after his previous gig in Helsinki eleven years ago. It was very good, I even swayed along the dry, static, pitch perfect beats most of the time. It was more of a lively set of music video exhibitions than an actual live musical performance, but I was very pleased with it none the less. Maybe I should buy a copy of his latest album Ultratronics instead of streaming it.
Poster for Ryoji Ikeda’s live set at Tavastia.
So, as far as cultural pastimes go, it was an eventful week. Which was nice.