Have some Electro-Swing. :D

Heyo,

i'm looking for a free, open-source, lightweight backup software that mirrors folders of my choosing with another drive on my PC.

Any suggestions?

It's been some time since i used LJ to write something down - i just haven't found any experience important enough to justify a post. But since i bought and played "Journey" (PSN) this weekend i thought it would be a good time to make an exception from my LJ hiatus.

I won't write this like a usual review, since normal "game" mechanics hardly apply to games from "ThatGameCompany" (their last game was "Flower"). I rather try to sum up my experiences in this post - and yes, they are unique, intense and yet unmatched in my 25 year-lasting-gaming-life. That being said i have to emphasize that this "review" is spoiler heavy and the game is very short but intense. Don't read on if you intend to play this by yourself. Just a word on advice for your journey: Play in a dark room, make sure you don't get distracted, turn up the volume and play this pearl in online-mode. You'll get a much MUCH richer experience from that.

So what is Journey? At first I couldn't answer the question myself - i just bought the game largely unbiased and tried it. My only impressions were from some screen shots and short videos which instantly remembered me about the rich experience i got from playing "Flower". Games like that are very experimental, artistic, hard to grasp in their concept - and often very hard to enjoy for a majority of gamers. In my case i just tried to look beyond the rather bland first impressions: boring-looking desert sceneries, reduced colors, not much visible gameplay - and boy was i rewarded for that.

Journey is excactly what the name implies. You are a nameless, shadowy and lightweight figure that goes ventures on  for yet untold reasons. The story is only delivered in small voiceless parts and all you see from the beginning is your main goal in form of a high shimmering peak. How you reach it, how fast you pace yourself and where you go first on your way is completely up to you. But depending how well you perform you will find secrets that speed up your travel and add further grace to your movements - which are btw unmatched to anything i have yet experienced in games. Surfing sand dunes and floating in mid air looks stunningly graceful and remains perfectly controllable throughout the whole game - which is impressive when you consider that this game is controlled with only the analog stick and two buttons (one being reserved for "communication", but i'll get ot that later). All this comes with a rich grafical experience which reduces the visual aesthetics to a bare minimum but still keeps your jaws wide opened for the whole Journey. It's hard to explain this, but when you just open yourself to all those sensations - the animations, fluidity and ambient lights and sceneries accompanied by a great score you understand what i mean.

Which brings up the next and most important point in this game: Emotions. Very much like "Flower" you will be confronted with different moodsets - and new to the series - other real players during your Journey. If you manage to "find and befriend" each other you will both experience the same world and solve the same riddles. All you have to communicate is one button which emits sound depending on the lenght pressed. And what's most intriguing about this simple concept is the fact that it actually works!

In my case the fellow stranger barely took notice of me, minding his own business until i followed around for a while. Instinctively we started developing combined strategies and shared effort to solve riddles, helped each other to find secrets. On the way we started to create a form of communication out of the reduced set of noices you're able to emit, which is astounding when you consider that speech is considered as such an important way to communicate. But what struck me most during our journey was the set of emotions i experienced with that unkown companion. We waited for each other, shared joyful experiences and (through the harsher parts in the game) i even felt sorry and even stomach-cramped when my partner was in trouble. I played with that unknown person from start to end, after which the game finally told me his PSN-name. We instantly sent each other messages to talk about this rich common experience, which is a rare occurrence on its own!

Journey is really hard to wrap in words. Your experience may vary greatly, but if you manage to see past that initial bias you might be rewarded with one of the greatest gaming experiences of the last few years. The game is very VERY short, but after completing it once you will soon want to do it again as you may experience something completely new on the way.

As seen on http://dumbrunningsonic.tumblr.com/ XD

Dammit, where did i put that last quarter!?



This is an LJ sized 30 FPS (30 kb) animation.

Here's a close-up:


A cookie if you can guess her weapon. ;)

Today i realized that Photoshop CS3 has some awesome new animation features. I really love how this almost came out with flash-like fluidity and still has around 30kb size. :D



The char is my beloved Psy, drawn by the awesome Neogeenneogeen.:D

Skrillex - Syndicate [HD] Enjoy :D