Before heading to visit friends over the weekend, I opted to plan ahead and download a few choice albums. So I could set my phone to playing Google Play Music in downloaded only mode without worrying.

Seems like a lot of the music from my Hackmode 2017-01 playlist ended up there, as well as various cached music. I had created that playlist as I was going into crunch, that became a 15-day straight bombing run. Filled with music for the various emotions that go with working much overtime and the need for deep focusing.

Combined with the various files, Play Music opted to make a surprising mixture. On one hand, music like Alan Jackson and Ritchie Valens on one side, P!nk and Queen on the other, bracketing sound track made for The Hero of Fereldan descending into the hell to fight the Darkspawn and Faith doing the whole parkour across totalitarian future metropolis thing.

This kinda worked out better than expected, so I saved the queue as a Playlist: Roadtrip 2019-10.

In retrospect, I have to admit that the sound track from Dragon Age: Origins works for driving, as well as a fantasy RPG and focusing. Like, we don’t have John Williams and this isn’t Star Wars, but it better be damned awesome was probably their yard stick for composing the game’s score.

Hmmmm

About a year ago, I came across an interesting hybrid game called Omni Link; combining space combat, exploration, and far more importantly a good story. Much to my surprise it also had a couple of great songs to go with the journey across space.

My review on Steam was quite positive:

At first I thought, “Huh, this feels just like asteroids!” when I got to the helm. But it’s so much more than that.

Omni Link is more of an RPG / VN hybrid with action in a vein similar to Asteroids for the space combat. You can explore and travel the star systems, but interactions are mostly combative or story driven. It’s fun but the story is where it is really at.

I greatly enjoyed the story. Good times between Keb, Arcadia, and Dawn. Malthus livens things up quite a bit. Suzumi’s rescue was especially good for the soul. All in all, I probably enjoyed the story more than I would have going to see a movie for the same price tag.

Music is freaking great. Honestly my favourite part is the sound track–I wish there was an add-on with the vocal tracks and some concept art.

Art is very well done. I love the intermixing of comicbook/manga style panels here and there, and the CGs that are scattered across the game are wonderful. Some of the moments are especially great such as the hug and the cowlick scene.

Action as previously said reminds me of Asteroids. Augmenting that however is your fleet. As you pilot the main ship, Dawn takes care of your support ships and they are quite effective. Meanwhile you can morph into whichever one you like for direct control agains the enemy: allowing you to be the quick scout, the gunboat, etc and delegate the other roles to the A.I. backing you up.

Towards the more typical VN parts things are a bit more sparse. Saving only can happen outside of the VN portions. No gallary, screenshots don’t seem to work, etc. But it gets the job done. More focused on the space combat parts of the UI than providing an interface like renpy. No real complaints because the story is excellent.

/* Also Steam client needs to add a spell checker :'( */

I use vndb to track and remember the visual novels that I play, and there are not very many that I rate towards the top of the voting scaleOmni Link is one of the few I voted 9/10. Which pretty much means great victory on the story front.

One of the perks of using Steam is the ability to follow a game, and hope that someday a news post is made if updates or new projects occur. When I heard the developer was working on a new project called Crypterion: it didn’t take long to add it to my wishlist.

Later on, when the Kickstarter project was announced, I was very tempted. Never been a fan of backing crowd funded projects, but given how much I enjoyed Omni Link: the odds are in my favour that fun shall be had. Hearing that there were still some CDs in existence from Omni Link’s own crowdfunding, I rather went from “Remember to do that” to “Where’s the sign up button”, lol.

Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed the game’s main themes, particularly the song “Love is Pretend”. Pretty sure that a transcription of the lyrics is going to end up in one of my notebooks somewhere.

Today, happily this arrived in the post box:

This CD shall be going in a nice safe space :).

Actually, this kinda makes me glad that I still have plenty of hardware that can play CDs, and don’t have to power on an old PlayStation, lol.

Testing a pair of headphones, what is the first thing I fire off? P!nk’s Funhouse!

So far for a cheap pair of headphones the Mpow H7 Plus definitely exceed my ears requirements but I wouldn’t recommend it for anything base heavy. Sometimes headphones are more convenient than my antique 2.1 system, which usually means having to jack my Xbox headset into its AUX IN or Centauri’s motherboard.

Ordinarily, I think I’d just get a second pair of AF32s as I’ve been very happy with my pair from back in ’13. But the prices on the current gen are a bit too steep for my blood. Unlike the pair I use with my tablet there isn’t a 50% off deal.

But that’s where in lays the rub. When I want to use headphones it’s a bother to screw with things. When you’re turned into a dog chair sometimes having a wire between your desk and head isn’t convenient and neither is repairing devices often. Being cheap and lazy has its side effects.