#LoveYourBacklog Week

I have been really struggling to get any content for my blog recently because I’ve been pretty busy this year so far and just haven’t had a lot of time to start a new game. Instead I’ve been focusing on Spyro, which is the perfect game to dip in and out of and there’s absolutely no pressure to finish it, however I’ve said all I can say about that for now… Or have I? Stay tuned!

Just as I was starting to write a few panicked posts just for the sake of having content, none of which I was happy with (and you guys deserve only the best Tea Party action) along comes my saviours: the amazing Later Levels and Livid Lightning with this #LoveYourBacklog event!

What is the Love Your Backlog event? Well, for this week (and yes, I’m very late publishing it but it’s still within the week) I’ve displayed a badge on my site to show I have less than 100 unplayed/unfinished games in my backlog (just 27! I thought it would be much worse than that… It’s a small backlog but it’s still a backlog), today I’m going to decide on a game for each of the following categories:

• Game most likely never to be played
• Shortest game
• Longest game
• Game which has spent the most time on backlog
• The person responsible for adding the most entries to your backlog

Finally, in March I’ll be participating in #MaybeInMarch where I try to complete the game from the ‘game which has spent the most time on backlog’ category in the month of March.

I’m not sure if ‘Backlog’ means only games that I have bought and not played at all or games that I have started and not finished, I would take it to mean both really. Another one is that I am only including my Playstation 4 and Nintendo 3DS as I don’t don’t currently have any other consoles and my laptop wouldn’t be able to handle games (it’s an old lady now, can barely handle my blog let alone a game.) So with that in mind let’s get started…

Game most likely never to be played

There were a couple of contenders here but Mario Maker on 3DS wins it. I was so excited to get Mario Maker after it had so much hype through Let’s Plays but as I didn’t have a Wii I had to wait for it to come out on 3DS (I know! Woe is me) and… What a disappointment. I mean, I’m terrible at Mario games anyway but I do generally have a bit of fun with them. This was just awful though, I couldn’t figure out how to play any courses other than the top 10, and after that I gave up and just never touched it again and most likely never will.

Shortest Game

I don’t really know which is the shortest as I haven’t played some of them but after a quick Google I would say it’s probably Another World, which I acquired through the PS+ monthly free games ages ago. Apparently it’s about 2.5 hours so maybe I should give this a go when I have a free afternoon. I don’t know much about it really, just that it’s older than I am, and it’s a platform survival game… Which, due to my platformeritis, probably means I’ll take much longer than 2.5 hours to finish it, if at all. Honestly I am not sure I’ll like it but it was free so it’s worth a shot, right?

Have you played Another World? What do I have to look forward to?

Longest game

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. I have started and restarted this game over and over but I can never get very far. First of all I don’t like the combat controls in the game, I find it incredibly difficult, which is strange because that style is generally right up my street. I also get incredibly overwhelmed when you unlock the large map and there’s just stuff everywhere. You look at it and know it’s going to be a lot of running, a lot of fetch missions, and a whole lot of “what the hell was I actually doing before this 20 part quest to the other end of the map…?”. The fact that so many people love it makes this all the more frustrating. I just don’t understand what I’m missing.

Game which has spent the longest time on backlog

Definitely The Last of Us. I got this with the Playstation 4, played through the first section but I found it incredibly hard, scary and stressful. I ended up using YouTube walkthroughs way more than I wanted to which basically made the game more of a play-along and I just wasn’t having fun anymore. Like Witcher 3, this is another one I feel very bad for not finishing as it’s meant to be so wonderful… Maybe in March that will change as this is the game I’m supposed to try and finish. Oh dear.

The person responsible for adding the most games to my backlog

Can I choose myself? Or Playstation +? I always get at least one game in the PS+ free monthly games and so many of those are unplayed. I think that usually I at least like to try and get my money’s worth with a game, and I’m generally quite good at only getting games I really, truly want. The fact that these are free means I don’t feel so guilty about letting them sit there.

So there’s my backlog, it may not be that insane but I imagine if I had a gaming laptop it would be way worse.

What’s your backlog like? Have you played any of the games I’ve mentioned?

Film and Comic Con Bournemouth

Having recently moved down to Dorset and therefore being a little out of the way of big, geeky events in London that I had had the pleasure of attending while I briefly lived there (MCM London Comic Con, Rezzed 2017…) I had heard talk of a Bournemouth Comic Con. I wasn’t expecting it to be anywhere near as big as London Comic Con (and I was right) but I do love any excuse to dress up and I don’t really mind how big it is as long as I have a good time, because of that this post will mostly be me being a bit cosplay indulgent but then I’ll write about the event as a whole nearer the end!

Cosplay

To start the plan for my cosplay I Googled the date of the event to give myself a deadline but what is this??? The 28th/29th August? Aaaah!!! A week away?! (At the time of Googling) There was no way my Mei costume would be ready in time (yes, the Overwatch obsession continues and is now making it’s way into my sewing room). I do have my Link costume from my last Comic Con adventure but that shield was heavy and being a bit of a smaller event I wanted to scope out the cosplay caliber first and do something a bit more casual. Luckily, being the fancy dress fan that I am I have a fancy dress box and I soon dug out my Splicer costume (from Bioshock) that I wore for Halloween last year (although Alice in Wonderland and Unicorn were also on the cards). Unfortunately I had thrown my Splicer dress away thinking I wouldn’t need a torn up dress any more. Foolish past me. Amazon Prime to the rescue, I ordered a cheapy chips dress at the last minute then Dan and I got to work ripping our clothes up the night before the event, we even took them outside and partially burned them, I bet the neighbours loved that. We went with another two splicers as well, one of which looked pretty scary and got very into character, small children did not like walking past us, that was until it was just Dan and I sat down and a small child walked past us and excitedly yelled “BUNNY RABBITS!!!”.

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As you can see from the slideshow above, I don’t do scary very well.

Lots of people took pictures of us though, in fact I think that almost as many people took my picture there as they did when I put loads of effort in and dressed as Link for London Comic Con. Maybe that is because there weren’t as many cosplayers so it was a bit more of a novelty to see us, but of those that were there there were some really good ones, here’s a little slideshow of some of the ones I saw.

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There was a cosplay masquerade too, which I believe was a little show where the cosplayers got to show off their costumes, but because the guys wanted to go out and travel across almost the entirety of Bournemouth in search of food at lunch time rather than just buy a sandwich at the event, and also because we couldn’t really figure out where to go to actually sign up, we didn’t get to go. Nevermind! I know for next time now. It wasn’t very well sign posted anyway though, we didn’t even know about it until someone asked if we were going to enter, they could have done with handing out leaflets or something with a timetable of events and where to find what but I noticed they didn’t do that at London Comic Con either.

Guests

The most high profile guests were John Rhys-Davies (aka Gimli from Lord of The Rings, the role I know him for) and David Prowse (Darth Vader, the body not the voice), I didn’t get an autograph or any pictures as I don’t really know them for anything other than that so it didn’t seem right where as when I met Catherine Tate I have seen loads of stuff that she does, not just Doctor Who.
There were also some Cosplay guests, one day I hope to be that good at cosplay, it’s amazing what people can make. I got a few cards so if you’re interested here’s a link to some super col cosplay people:

• Tinufel Cosplay
• Kitschy Cosplay
• Alphabety Cosplay
• Nice N Nerdy Cosplay
• Weatherwax Cosplay

 

Shopping!

Once you’ve seen 1 generic geeky merch stall you’ve seen them all really haven’t you? It’s the artists that really bring these sort of events together, selling things that they’ve handmade themselves and there were a lot of them in Bournemouth that were very talented. I’m not really one for art, I appreciate it and I’d like some to display on my walls but I don’t have the personal interest to maintain a full attention span for a long number of hours, after a while I just don’t really care, in London I was so exhausted wandering around that everyone’s work just seemed to blend into one and all I wanted was to go home, in Bournemouth though I was happy to wander round having a nice long look at everyone’s stuff. Most of what I bought was edible, I bought a brownie and cupcake covered in edible glitter and Butter Beer, being edible they did not survive long enough for me to get a picture… Oops. I also bought a unicorn ear cuff and spent an embarrassingly long time debating whether to buy an alpaca plushie wearing a top hat or not, in the end I decided against it because I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted it or if it was just me getting caught in the event hype. It was super cute though…

These seem to be all the rage at the moment

Here are some links to those lovely shops I saw:

• Glitterica (they sell lovely glasses covered with geeky logos and icons made in glitter)
• LolaArt (some art inspired by movies)
• Lauren Cox (some really cool drawings)
• T-Baggin (super cool nerdy t-shirts, and how cool is that shop name They have the DC Bombshells on t-shirts and I really want one)

In Summary…

I had a really nice time, and I didn’t set out to compare the two events at all but you know what? I actually enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the London Comic Con. I would definitely go again, in fact I may forgo London Comic Con in the future to go to the smaller ones instead, London’s not that far away from me I guess but the stress, cost and organisation of it really takes it out of me, this one was just so easy though! London has a much better chance of having special guests that are a bit more relevant to my preferred fandoms though. Having said that all our really famous English actors and celebs seem to end up in American conventions rather than their home turf. One day I’ll get to go to San Diego Comic Con…

Have you been to any geeky conventions recently? Would you prefer going to a smaller one or a bigger one? Are you planning any cosplays in the future that you’re going to show off?

Hyeeeh, kyaaah, HYAAAAAH! (or The Comic Con Legend of Zelda Meetup)

In my previous Comic Con post I mentioned how I went to a Legend of Zelda meet up at but that I didn’t have the pictures. Now I do! They were taken courtesy of Celery Moon Designs, she was lovely and has provided me with one of the best pictures taken of me for a loooong time, and I’m an awkward model so that is quite an achievement. Have a look at her page to see more Comic Con pictures and more of the album that the below are from (and some awkward ones of me trying to look tough).

At the group meetup there was an interesting split between Breath of the Wild and the ‘old’ games so there was a lot of diversity. We had some individual pictures and then a big group one, then by game, good characters, bad characters… It was really fun and it was great to meet everyone. Keep an eye out for the Midna’s and Princess Leia-Link, I had slight cosplay envy.

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I have to say the best LoZ cosplay in my opinion (other than myself, obviously) was a Wind Waker Link that turned up with Medli in a full size King of Red Lions boat. She was actually driving it around the convention like a little go-kart, it was incredible and it looks absolutely perfect too. She has a Facebook page called StarKey Studios with some other incredible cosplays she’s done, they look amazing. If you take a look at the page there is a video of the boat in action driving around with Captain Jack Sparrow on it while onlookers sing the Pirates of the Caribbean theme tune. It’s pretty awesome.

I seriously can’t get over how awesome this boat is

Finally, while we’re sort of on the subject of Nintendo, when I was writing my last post with the links to artists at the bottom I was desperately searching for the business card of one of my favourite stands whom I bought a realistic Pokémon bookmark from but I couldn’t find it and I had to publish the post without it. Turns out I had put it in clear view the whole time but due to my messiness I was sorting through piles of clothes and bags thinking I wouldn’t have tidied it away. Anyway, here is a picture of my gorgeous bookmark (unpopular opinion: Bulbasaur was my favourite starter) and the artwork on the back of her business card, I really like the colours and the realistic twist. Check out the shop here! She specialises in fantasy and mythology if you’re into that sort of thing.

London Comic Con 2017!

Photo heavy post here guys! Comic Con was amazing, I had such a great time. I’m not quite sure where to begin. There were so many people, some that had come down from places like Scotland for it which is insane, that’s so far! I only went for the Saturday as I was working Friday and I wasn’t sure about going both days.

I suppose I’ll start by talking about the cosplays as, for me, they are the best things about it.

I love fancy dress and dressing up so being able to go to a huge convention where loads of people have put so much effort into their costumes is brilliant. I went as Link from Legend of Zelda, originally it was meant to be Link from Twilight Princess, it ended up more being inspired by that version though and after I had the main elements of it down I went for a more ‘weathered’ look. My dad made me an AWESOME scabbard for my sword which made me think about looking a bit more rough (if anyone likes the look and fancies their own leather armor goods then he would appreciate the business, get in touch!), I jazzed myself up with some hair beads (I was NOT wearing a wig after my previous Zelda wig mistake in 2015 – live and learn I suppose) and had some darker make up, still wouldn’t call it ‘rough’ but I think I looked pretty good. What do you think?

I’ll throw in an action shot too for fun!

There was even a Legend of Zelda meet up and we all had a photo shoot which was awesome but unfortunately I don’t have all the pictures from that yet.

As you can see from a couple of those pictures the weather was lovely and, for once unfortunately, very hot – it was about 28° (or if you’re American 82°ish) and for the UK that’s enough to convince us that the sun is falling. I was feeling rather toasty in my leggings and boots but nowhere near as hot as my boyfriend who went dressed as Deadpool, he was boiling.

That’s us done so here’s a little slideshow of some of the other great cosplays we saw:

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While there were a lot of games to try and big gaming industry names like Playstation, Nintendo and Rising Star games there were so many people and queues that we only got to try a few games out. I put a bottle of milk in a basket in Harvest Moon, then took it out again, then put it back in and clicked on some eggs. That was fun… No idea what I was supposed to be doing with that. In Cooking Mama I had to time my icing sugar sprinkling so that I didn’t sprinkle it while wind was blowing through my virtual kitchen window, there wasn’t an option to just shut the window. Then I absolutely whupped my boyfriend’s ass on the new Tekken game. Those are the only ones I got to play, I was fed up with queuing – I will explain why in a bit – so I was unprepared to queue to play Breath of the Wild or to have a go with the Playstation VR headset. Nevermind! You can tell I wasn’t too impressed by any of the games I mentioned above but on the other hand I didn’t know what I needed to do or how to do it so it’s not the game’s fault.

Finally, special guest time! The people I had been looking forward to seeing the most was Billie Piper and Catherine Tate, unfortunately Billie Piper cancelled but I still got to meet Catherine Tate and got her autograph on my newly purchased Tardis door front poster. My plan is to take that same poster with me when/if I meet other Doctor Who actors so it looks like they’ve all signed the front of the Tardis. I queued for about an hour and a half to meet her, it was horrible, I hate queuing but my commute into London had trained me for that moment. Normally you had to pay an extra £30 for a photo with her, a professional one, but she was letting everyone take a picture on their phones with her then and there which was absolutely lovely of her. I said something a bit awkwardly like “I really loved you as Donna, you were great”, obviously she’d heard that all before but what else do you say in such a short space of time? Then she asked me where I wanted her to sign my poster and I just said “the white bit” which in my head had sounded witty but when it came out just sounded a bit stupid and there was an awkward silence. Point is she was really nice and her Q&A was great too.

Kind of wish I wasn’t all dressed up for this part, she probably had no idea who I was meant to be

I was going to queue to meet Summer Glau too but the queue for her was actually longer than Catherine Tate’s and my feet were hurting, then I saw Sean Maher had a really short queue and I was going to buy a ticket to get his autograph but when I said ‘Simon’ instead of ‘Sean’ I realised it probably wasn’t meant to be (does that make me a bad Firefly fan? He does play my least favourite character to be honest).

In case you were wondering about art work and comic books I am afraid that, while I appreciate both of those things, I am not hugely fussed about them so I didn’t spend a significant amount of time looking at them. Below though are a couple of links to some websites with artwork that I really liked:

Dragonfly Heels (These are totally art, I didn’t buy any of these but I will one day, I just need a good excuse)

 

The Zero Room (where I got my Tardis poster, I also got a Firefly one)

Spineless classics (they have a whole book written out on one poster and I really wanted the one of The Hobbit but I had no idea where I was going to hang it as it was quite big

 

That just about wraps up my Comic Con post. I’ll probably have a few more coming up in the near future so stay tuned!

 

Preparing for London Comic Con 2017

Exciting event coming up soon… London MCM Comic Con 2017! I’m very excited, I’ve been once before (in 2015) and it was really fun. Last time I went I was dressed as Princess Zelda. I was very proud of my costume, it was all handmade, with me taking care of the fabric part and my friend – who was Hilda, the sort of anti-Zelda – making the golden armor. I would share a picture of me in it, but unfortunately I cringe so much when I look back at pictures because I think that I ruined it by wearing a really bad wig (I’m not blonde and my hair wasn’t long enough to go for a more natural look) so instead here’s a picture of the version of Zelda that I went as.

My overall verdict of the experience was that if I hadn’t been in costume, I wouldn’t have had such a good time. There wasn’t quite as much to do as I had hoped, there were a lot of stalls with overpriced geeky merchandise, and the special guests were not as impressive as other conventions (I hear the San Diego one has some amazing guests and that it’s huge – if I ever go to America I would love to make that a stop). I still had a great time though!

We had lots of people stopping us and asking for photos, despite my bad wig, which I was so pleased about, and we got to try out some games. Other people’s cosplays were amazing as well; I saw some incredible costumes. We also had a lot of creepy people taking pictures of us without asking permission though, which was super weird. I am in a costume, obviously I’m happy for you to take a picture of me, but when you pretend to be texting or casually walking past with your iPad camera aimed straight at me while I’m eating lunch, it’s super obvious and freaky, just ask!!!

Anyway, this year I am particularly excited because there are three special guests I want to get some autographs from: Billie Piper from Doctor Who (VERY excited about this, hoping they’ll announce David Tennant or Matt Smith at the last minute), and Summer Glau and Simon Maher from Firefly (if you haven’t seen Firefly please watch it, it’s such a good show!)

If I had known there was Doctor-Who-special-guest potential, I would have gone with a Doctor Who cosplay I’ve beenn planning. But the idea that I have for it would take a lot of work, and I’m too invested in (and excited about) my costume to change my mind now…

So with that let’s take a peek at my costume in the making…

Ok that one was a bit subtle… How about now?

Potentially still a bit tricky… Now?

It is of course Link from The Legend of Zelda! I had actually wanted to do this the first time I went in 2015, but then my friend wanted to be Hilda and I had another friend who wanted to be Link, so it made more sense for me to be Zelda. I really wanted to go all out with my costume this year, because while it’s technically a very simple costume (you just need the tunic, a belt and a hat and everyone would know who you are) there are lots of little details that can make the costume go from budget basics to super epic cosplay time. I often make my own clothes so I am confident in my sewing abilities for the costume. I was going to give craft foam a go but then my Dad, who has taken up leather work (everyone thinks that sounds a bit odd when I say that, I suppose it’s not a very common hobby), offered to make my bracer, gloves, belts and other little bits (the bracer and gloves in the pictures are his handiwork!) My family have become very crafty in recent years – my Mum makes quilts, crafty things, and clothes too (she has a blog about it if you like that sort of thing) so I am very fortunate to have that extra boost for my cosplay projects!

Right now it’s only two and a half weeks until Comic Con, so I need to knuckle down and get everything sorted! I will make a post about the event and show off my costume when it’s all finished. Hopefully it will look as epic as I’m hoping! Now I just need to figure out how I can take my Doctor Who poster with me for Billie Piper to sign without ruining the effect of my costume.

My wonderful UK readers – Are you going to London Comic Con this year? If so are you dressing up? Maybe I’ll see you there!

Equally-wonderful American readers – Have you ever been to San Diego Comic Con? What’s it like?

Rezzed 2017!

My usual Saturday consists of me playing video games or binge watching a TV show with my other half while we work our way through a pile of biscuits, crisps and pizza. What is better than doing that? Not much, except maybe going to play video games in a different location! We travelled mildly far across south London, defeated all obstacles that Transport for London threw at us (diverted trains, delayed trains, no trains, optional 3 hour bus journeys which we vehemently refused, and the tube which doesn’t need issues for me to find it an unpleasant experience), we attempted to journey on foot at one point, getting a bit lost and taking a 20 minute diversion but we saw some boats and a really nice pub I’ve mentally made a note of for future outings so it wasn’t all bad. Finally, we arrived at Tabacco Docks where Rezzed was being held.

We had tickets for the day and for the after party as well, and we got lost, so we had arrived pretty late in the day, we managed to see a lot though despite that. I got to try the Nintendo Switch for the first time which was really cool, I would love to get a Nintendo Switch (Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is calling to me…) but I need to save up for it first. At Rezzed we played Snipperclips with the Switch which is an absolutely adorable game, I loved it, it did take some getting used to though because the controls are super sensitive and you have to hold the tiny controller sideways, my big thumbs were being a bit clumsy.

My favourite game that I got to play though was The Room: Old Sins. This hooked me straight away, it’s a puzzle, mystery, and adventure game and I really want to play more of it to find out what was happening. Unfortunately this is a game we found at closing time and didn’t get to play the full demo of as they were closing up. When we first got on it though, embarrassingly my screen was the one being broadcast on and I am absolutely hopeless at puzzles, I enjoy them if there’s a good story to the game around it, as there was to this one, but I am useless at them and my gameplay was mostly me adjusting a chair over and over again trying to open a door (for more context there the chair was part of a switch for the door) until one of the guys on the stand took pity on me and helped me out. So that was a thrilling watch for bystanders. I will definitely be downloading this though.

I didn’t get to play everything I wanted to as we got lost on the way there and didn’t have as much time as we would have liked, and for every game I did play I played two that I was not keen on at all, this is mostly because a lot seemed to be a case of “this is a really cool concept… but what’s the actual game?”. I’m sure I must have missed a few things but here’s a small list of some of the games I really liked:

• Victor Vran Overkill (aka Motorhead the game). This is simply a very cool game, your guitar is a weapon and you can power slide through enemies to take them out. Enough said.
• Lost Words. I really like the idea of this game and I am very curious to see what the goals of the game are and where they will take it
• Muddle Dash. This was just super cute and super fun. A good multiplayer, chill out with your friends game.

Once we got kicked out of the main event we headed off to the after party where they had a bar, a DJ set and loads of retro games set up all over the room. You were supposed to tweet which game you wanted to play and they would come and change it over in the console but I didn’t see them change them that often, I had been hoping to play Kirby’s Dream Course but it was not to be. Instead I had to make do with my boyfriend telling me how amazingly good he was at Crash Team Racing and that he was going to annihilate me at it. Not to sound too much like I’m bragging (ok I am, but I like to indulge in the occasional one) but I managed to beat him both times we played and he accused me of ruining his childhood, it’s ok he’ll learn who the gaming boss in the relationship is eventually and succumb to my superiority. I will break him.

Overall, a good day out and I would definitely go again! Next year I’ll try to be on time!