Top 10 Things I Learned at AwesomeCon DC

Hey folks. I'm back after a fun-filled weekend at AwesomeCon DC.  It was, well, awesome! And I'm not just saying that because our BioShock Infinite costumes scored us first place in the costume contest yesterday (YESSSS!!).  We had a great time and it was great to see fellow comic and gaming fans turn out en masse to represent DC. 

As I've mentioned, I work full-time and it turns out I  am running low on time for the blog tonight, but wanted to make sure I got down a couple afterthoughts on "BioShock on a Budget" and AwesomeCon.  To that end, I am going to wrap up with a top 10 list of things I learned at AwesomeCon DC.

10.  Homestuck.  I finally learned about this web comic and who the hell all these cosplay folks are with the bright orange horns.  Thanks to our fellow entrants in the costume contest for educating  me!  

Thankfully, no fire marshals in the room
for Super Art Fight....lots of
spectators!

9.  Hard-Core TableTop Gaming.  Admittedly, board games have never been a big part of my gaming experience--I'm more a console person--but AwesomeCon's "Mind of the Geek" game room showed me that tabletop gaming is alive and well.  Not only that, but people are really serious about this stuff---we saw the Warhammer table break out a tape measure to determine the outcome of one player's movements.  That was a new experience for me.  And hard core. 

8.  Super Art Fight is awesome and showed that it is possible to cover a large sheet of paper with comic characters disguised as Amish gangsters, seahorses, and baked goods.  Who knew there was a whole world of randomly-themed and timed competitive comic artistry out there?!

7.  Cosmetic contact lenses suck. I tried to stick it out all day Saturday with the blue contact lenses for my Elizabeth cosplay, but ended up wandering around with my finger stuck in my eyes half the time trying to readjust my contacts; the other half of the time I could barely see, and just walked uncomfortably around the vendor area. Perhaps a secondary lesson learned should be that spending $9.99 on a pair of blue contact lenses online is a bad idea.  That part of my BioShock on a Budget cosplay was an epic fail.

6.  Ernie Hudson is the same as ever.   It's like he's been preserved in a jar since Ghostbusters.  He looked the same this past weekend as he did when he played Winston.  So cool to see him there!

5.  Cosplaying is an event unto itself.   Since this was my first event truly cosplaying, I didn't realize until this past weekend how much time I would spend just walking around, getting photographed, taking photographs, and talking to other cosplayers...to the point that we missed several panels that we wanted to attend!  But it was great, and I would definitely cosplay again.

4.  Comic and gaming fans are just nice people! In a city like DC where people tend to be very stand-offish, it was refreshing to go to AwesomeCon and be able to strike up a conversation with just about anyone, of any age, any background, and not be judged or ignored.  We really enjoyed getting to meet all sorts of other gamers and learning a thing or two about comics and tabletop games as well!

3.  Comic people helping comic people.  We met volunteers from the Hero Initiative, an LA-based non-profit that raises funds to help comic veterans with financial aid, for anything from medical expenses to retirement to getting back in the industry.  It's a great cause.  You can help out too, via their website, www.heroinitiative.org.

2.  You CAN cosplay on a budget and, moreover, win a costume contest on a budget!! Jon and I were overwhelmed by the support and approval that we received from judges, fellow cosplayers, and the crowd at the group costume contest yesterday.  We're so happy that people enjoyed our version of Elizabeth and Booker from BioShock Infinite!

1.  DC Fandom.  There IS a large comic and gaming fan base here in DC, we CAN have our own convention, and AwesomeCon will be back and even bigger and better next year!

BioShock on a Budget: Cosplay for under $50

Just a few weeks ago, I decided to cosplay for AwesomeCon DC this coming weekend.  Now, I've been preparing my costumes for San Diego Comic Con for months, and one of the challenges I have frequently encountered is balancing cost, time, and attention to detail (the latter being extremely important to me).  But, I have found that being resourceful and creative can cut down on costs, and putting together a costume can still be managed as a side-project for someone working full time.  To prove that point, I decided to challenge myself to put together a convention-worthy cosplay for less than $50.

The Decision

Inspired by my recent playing of BioShock Inifinite, I settled on Elizabeth.  Before I definitively selected this character for cosplay, I considered several main factors which are relevant to any cosplay project (unless you're independently wealthy): 
1.  What skills do I have? 
I cannot sew, so I knew whatever I put together would be limited to stitch-free modifications and ideally a lot of pieces that could be found in my closet or at a thrift store. I do have some painting and artistic ability so I wanted to capitalize on that for some of the details.
2. How much time do I have? 
I work 10+ hours a day and do other stuff on the weekends, so assembly of my costume could not be a full-time commitment.  I was willing to set aside roughly 1-2 hours every couple days to work on different aspects of the costume.
3. How much can I spend on this?
I limited myself to $50 for this cosplay. Cost is something that I weigh carefully before embarking on any new costume projects.
4.  How accurate do I want/need this costume to be?
To me, costume accuracy to the original character is paramount; however, sometimes it is unrealistic to get every single detail correct, particularly when you consider my other three factors.  I had to ask myself which details of the costume am I willing to sacrifice on in light of the other constraints? I discovered that this answer changed as I began to search for key pieces of the costume.

The Hunt

Having assessed Elizabeth's costume while playing the game and looking at additional images online, I determined that many of her clothing pieces could be reasonably found at a thrift store, or at least something similar that would require embellishments or small alterations. So, I made my shopping list and headed out to my favorite thrift shops: Unique Thrift Store in Wheaton and the Georgia Ave Thrift Store in DC.  These places have a large inventory of clothing and are much more reasonable than the hipster consignment shops in U Street Corridor (but you know I Iove you guys).

My first visit to the thrift shops was largely a success! I found the pieces below which were more or less consistent with Elizabeth's main clothing pieces.  In total, these cost me  $11.89.

I knew it would be unrealistic for me to find a white blouse with blue-with-gold-trim collar, so I thought I could use a fitted blue collared shirt under a blouse, and paint on the gold trim, which is what I've done above.  Any gold acrylic paint will do, but in this case I used a gold fabric pen (about $2.99 at Michaels).  The skirt isn't exactly what I wanted--Elizabeth's skirt is a lighter shade of blue with dark trim on the bottom--but this is one of those times I had to ask myself, given time, money, and my skill limitations is it likely I will find a skirt that is a better fit for this cosplay in two weeks?  I decided that I wouldn't.

The other accessories that I wanted to ensure were part of my cosplay to really add that attention to detail (and utilize my art skills) were Elizabeth's brooch necklace, her blue hair ribbon, and the book that she was carrying with her when Booker first encounters her. I figured out from looking at a ton of online resources that the book is The Principlies of Quantum Mechanics by Rosalind Lutece, an NPC in the game.  At Michael's, I miraculously discovered that they sell small photo storage boxes that are designed to look like books.  I couldn't believe my luck!  It was $10, but splurged since it would save me some time (would only require minor modifications) and it would be dual use as purse-like storage for my cosplay during the convention.  Taking cues from BioShock photos online, I hand-painted a paper cover for the book and the binding to reflect the correct title and author.  I just taped it over the pre-printed design.  Here's how it came out.

The second accessory I crafted was Elizabeth's brooch.  In screenshots it appears to be a light blue lace necklace with either a birdcage or a bird design on the blue-colored brooch (depending on what Booker chooses for her in the game).  I found some inexpensive white lace ribbon at Michael's ($1.99) and a sheet of blue foam which I planned to use for the back of the brooch. I used blue acrylic paint to color the lace, and then I drew a bird like the one on her brooch and cut it out of a fairly thick piece of white cardboard.  I cut a circle out of the blue foam that would fit the bird cut-out, and painted the edges (again, just plain acrylic craft paint, $0.99) to match the design of Elizabeth's brooch, and glued it all together.  To make it a necklace, I used an elastic hair band piece that is usually sold in the jewelry section of the craft store--again, inexpensive, like $1.99.  Here's what it looked like before I linked all the lace pieces together.

The third accessory, her blue hair bow, was easy enough to find at the craft store; I intended to just buy some plain blue gift ribbon, but they actually had pre-made bows for the same price ($1.99), so I just bought that instead. I'll just tie it on to one of my hair elastics.  Done!


Lastly, I knew that I still wanted to modify the skirt that I bought so that it looked at least a bit more visually similar to Elizabeth's skirt, even if the coloration was off.  In the game, her skirt has four horizontal strips fastened by buttons at the top and bottom of the skirt.  I cut up some similar-colored blue fabric ($2.99 at the thrift store) to look like these strips and used fabric glue ($1.99 at craft store) to adhere them to the skirt.  I added some buttons to match the placement on Elizabeth's skirt.  I also used the fabric glue to shorten the skirt slightly since it was almost full-length when I bought it. Here's what it looks like now.

One thing that you have probably noticed I haven't touched on...and is a fairly important part of any ensemble for us ladies...is shoes.  Elizabeth is wearing steampunk-style, lace-up knee-high boots in the game.  I was concerned about this component of the costume because a not-so-great pair of boots can easily go for $30-40, and my timing is off to catch the clearance sales from winter.  While I did not own any such boots, I do have several plain brown and black knee-high boots that would suffice in the case that I would not want to spend the extra cash getting a pair of lace-up boots that I may or may not use again.  Now, don't judge me, but I opted to buy a pair of lace-up boots that I really liked, but they put me WAY OVER my $50 budget for this cosplay project.  I have decided to write off this part of the costume as an expense because 1. I did have another option in my closet that could have been used, and not exceeded my $50 budget, and 2. shoes have reuse value  for costumes and I could have conceivably already had a pair of boots like this.  Fair enough? Good!


The Verdict

So, tallying all my expenses above the total came to $33.83, not including shoes as I mentioned.  So it was absolutely realistic to stay under $50 for this cosplay! YOU CAN DO IT!  You may be wondering how much time I spent on this project, between the thrift store trips and putting everything together.  I would estimate about 12 hours, spread out over two weekends and 3-4 evenings during the week.  It was a bit of a time sink, but ultimately doable since I chose to make it a priority for AwesomeCon.  It did interfere with my ability to get on the PS3 for a couple days, but I thought this was a worthy excuse!

Check back next weekend for the big reveal of my BioShock cosplay (to include my husband's cosplay of Booker--a whole other project!) and photos from AwesomeCon DC!

 

Getting in Shape for Comic Con, Part 2

With our costume ideas finally starting to come together for cosplay for SDCC, I thought an update was in order.  In Part 1 of this series, I revealed that the first character I will be cosplaying is Mad Moxxi from Borderlands 2.  The main difference being that Moxxi in Borderlands 2 dons a purple-colored outfit as opposed to red, which was how it appeared in the first Borderlands game.  At this point, I have procured all the accessories, finished my Rubi gun (which was revealed in part 1), so just working on the jacket and hat...and SPATS! Who knew it would be so difficult to find a spats for ladies?  If anyone out there has any leads on such a thing, please send my way....

I think this interpretation of the Wolverines
by Paolo Rivera is particularly clever.

On other fronts, my other half has decided on his costumes for SDCC...the many faces of Wolverine.  Since he was terribly concerned about how long it might take him to grow the facial hair for this role, he stopped shaving about two weeks ago...yes, this is for an event in July.  For the purposes of this blog series, I thought it would be fun to do a time lapse of his facial hair. Well, here's a photo from day 1, paired with a photo from today.

Day 1

Two Weeks Later

 

 



Clearly, facial hair is not going to be a roadblock for him to do the Wolverine cosplay.  HOWEVER,  this blog is titled "Getting in Shape" for Comic Con, not growing facial hair for Comic Con, and both the husband and I have some work to do on getting fit for our respective cosplay roles.  To that end, we are adopting a couple new healthy habits that we hope will help us achieve our goals by July:

1.  Eating a clean diet five days a week.  Look, Hugh Jackman did it to get ready for his role in The Wolverine, so we can too....right..?

2.  Consistently working out--with the help of my pal Ndsettia at Vida Fitness in DC!

3.  Using the PS3 Move with my Just Dance 3 and 4 games a lot more often, and doing squats while we're playing non-Move games.

4.  In a few months, we'll be trying a 5-day juice cleanse through Khepra's Raw Food and Juice Bar ....yeah...stayed tuned for future posts on how that goes...

Lastly, I thought I should at least do a reveal of my next planned costume, which is mostly complete thanks to my gal Kim at CreationKO.  Here's a photo of her project in the works... #carolcorps!  Just got my blue fashion contact lenses in the mail today too, which should be interesting since I don't normally put anything in my eyes.

AND stay tuned soon for another facet of my foray into the world of cosplay, with a special feature on AwesomeCon DC....BioShock on a Budget!! My adventures in assembling a costume for BioShock Infinite for under $50.  Until next time!

Welcome to...The Cave!

After reading a ton of favorable reviews on Double Fine's The Cave, and seeing that it was developed by Ron Gilbert--the man behind many of my favorite old-school adventure games, like Monkey Island--I decided it was time for me to check it out.   And, it didn't hurt that it was a freebie for Playstation Plus members this past week, so what better time to take a trip into The Cave....

 

 

 

As described in the trailer, The Cave focuses on the stories of seven travelers, each seeking something different from the cave: the Knight, Adventurer, Scientist, Time Traveler, Monk, Twins, and Hillbilly.  The player must choose three of the seven characters to use in the adventure, each character having a unique skill which can be leveraged in various puzzles throughout the game.  The player leads their fearless three characters through a tour of The Cave to find that thing which they desire most, for which each character has a unique mission set or stage.  The game concludes once all three characters have completed their respective missions, so the game can be replayed with a new set of characters, revealing a whole new set of puzzles and areas within the cave.

 

I found The Cave to be a fun, challenging, and refreshing reprieve from the dominatingRPGs and FPSs on the market, which have monopolized my gaming shelf the last few years.  It combines puzzle-solving, teamwork, and a bit of platform elements with fun graphics, clever dialogue, and an entertaining narrator (the deep voice of "The Cave").  The puzzles are challenging but never to the point of complete frustration, and often require coordination of multiple character's actions to solve.  One play-through with three of the seven characters didn't take all that long, so the game makes a nice little interlude if you're looking for something different or a short break from RPGs and other games with extensive content requiring a longer commitment.

 

For my first play-through, I selected The Knight, The Adventurer, and The Time Traveler.  The gameplay is scrolling adventure style (i.e., no three-dimensional movement), and there's no conventional shooting or fighting (gasp!), so the controls are quite simple...easy enough to pick up and go without a control manual or in-game instruction.  I started with The Knight's mission, to reclaim the sword in the stone, which entails the completion of a number of smaller tasks.  Without spoiling anything, I'll just say,that there's a princess, a dragon, and some other medieval-type things involved...not all resulting in the fairy tale ending you'd expect!  The other characters' missions proceed in a similar fashion, but with differently themed cave areas to complement the puzzles and back-story of each character.

The game maintains a mysterious, foreshadowing tone thanks to the narrator, lurking soundtrack and the quirky but slightly dark quality of the graphics.  But not everything remains a mystery: the characters' back-stories are revealed as your adventure progresses, thanks to the discovery of "cave art" sites which unlock pieces of exclusive game art that collectively tell our characters' histories and mindset.  Without giving anything away, the revelation of these stories ties in nicely with the narration and overall mood of the game, and are indicative that the game developers frame the storyline as a cautionary tale about greed, desire, and the unforeseen consequences of the characters' actions in their quests to obtain that thing which they desire most.

The Hillbilly making his way through his
carnival-themed mission.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of The Cave are the wonderful throw-back references to adventure games from LucasArts days....careful placement of grog machines and useless cans of corn at several stages in The Cave brought a smile to my face and fond memories of the Monkey Island series.  Many components of the game, including the dark narration and the general illustration of the characters, bore the hallmarks of those early adventure games.  I thought it was a nice nod to some of the outstanding games that blazed the trail for the adventure gaming genre.

 

Overall, The Cave is a fun and memorable addition to adventure gaming and to Ron Gilbert's accomplishments, definitely worthy of a play-through or two.  I am now playing with The Monk, The Hillbilly, and The Twins and have not been disappointed--new content is plentiful and their stories are entertaining.  If I had to find something negative about the game, the only feature somewhat tedious was the time consuming ladder-climbling and pre-positioning of the three characters to solve various aspects of the puzzles throughout the game.  Some of the levels of the cave are fairly intricate and I felt that sometimes I spent way more time moving the characters around to the necessary rooms than I did actually solving the puzzles. However, I can understand how the seemingly extraneous movement would be unavoidable in many cases, and  it did not detract from my overall enjoyment of the game.  Playstation Plus freebie or not, The Cave is a great little adventure game that you should check out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Look: Defiance Beta 3 on PS3

Alright, folks.  I was super excited to get to participate in round 3 of the beta testing for Defiance.   The NDA was lifted today, allowing testers to share their thoughts online... and Trion did a live beta stream of the PC version earlier today.  As for the PS3 version, I'm feeling kind of meh about it, but still hopeful that things will improve with the release of the full game.  Read on for my first impressions.  If you need a run-down of what this game is all about, check out their website for a synopsis (the coinciding SyFy series premieres on April 15th).


So, the game introduction  and cut scenes were pretty good and included a decent tutorial as your character emerges from the wreckage of a shuttle crash.  The controls are standard fare for a shooter game, no surprises.  Graphics are decent (see screen shots below) but nothing to write home about.  Your character is fully customizable, i.e., if you want to spend hours getting your face shape and hair design just right, you can do that.  I think my gal's purple hair is quite appropriate for a post-alien invasion environment, don't you agree?







  Pretty sure that like five bad guys materialized
near that building a minute after this was taken.

Where the f$&# did all those bad guys come from?!  So one of my biggest issues with the gameplay so far has been the inconsistency of the reference map, which gives you a head's up when characters--good and bad--are nearby.  It also provides symbols for nearby mission objectives, challenges, etc.  But that functionality does not work all the time, especially when it comes to showing where your enemies are located!!  More often then not, there were no red blips on the head's up display when all of a sudden, a whole group of bad guys materialized in front of my character.  And THEN, if that wasn't bad enough, the bad guys are still not showing up on the map for several more minutes as I'm trying to fight my way out of a total mess!!  And THEN, there were even a couple times where the mutant mob completely disappeared as quickly as they materialized.  I am not sure if this is a network connectivity/congestion issue, but our connection is on par with the average gamer so I imagine many other players have experienced this.  Watching Trion's beta demo, I see that the PC version has the same problem with the head's up display (though they didn't mention it).  Extremely frustrating.

I beat a bunch of mutants, and all I got was this lousy scrip.  Not sure if this is a beta thing, but man....being a little cheap on the rewards for beating up all these mutants, aren't we?  In my opinion, beating some of these missions is hard as hell unless you're moving around with a group of other players--you can form "clans"--which can still be dicey getting through some of the later missions.  That's right--I am not afraid to admit that I have found this game hard!  When your character is stuck in a bad way and is about to die, the most common option is to "extract" (you can self-revive once, but after that you must withdraw from the mission if another player doesn't rescue you).  When you extract, you get charged a lot of scrip, aka, main currency utilized.  It is so difficult to get through some of these missions that I keep spending all my hard-earned scrip to extract from missions, and then I don't have hardly any currency left to buy upgrades or new gear.  I don't care too much since it's just a beta, and I imagine team development will ease the "extract" issues, but I hope that this stinginess with rewards doesn't continue in the full game.

 

Vroom Vroom. Crash.  One of resources your character can access at will is an all-terrain vehicle. Trion has been advertising that a special Dodge Challenger option provided with a pre-order of the game. I've tried using the vehicles a couple times in beta, but they've proven to be about as useful as a box of rocks.   The controls are not terribly intuitive and it's hard to navigate long distances with all the post-apocalyptic litter laying around.   Most players were using them to try to run each other over, but not for anything mission-oriented.  I'll walk, man. Of course, if I do that, I'll get ambushed by phantom-mutants not shown on my map, forcing me to "extract" and lose all my scrips. 

 

...and how is this all working with the TV series??  The big sell for Defiance was that it's the first video game to be fully integrated with a TV series.  I have been wondering how this will be implemented from a practical standpoint, and in today's Trion beta stream, lead actor Grant Bowler indicated that the whole first season of the show has been filmed.  Then how can the game possibly have any impact on the show until the second season?  I think the answer (which Mr. Bowler so cleverly side-stepped) is that it won't be impacted by the game...it sounds like the game will have injects based on what is happening in the TV series, but again, not sure how that's going to work or how much value-added it will have for the overall gameplay. 

 

Ok, I'll stop being a Debbie Downer.  It's not all bad!!  The times that I have interacted with other players in a team environment has been truly fun.  Also, the AI for the bad guys deserves a shout-out....I have not seen the mutants stuck in corners or standing idly by while my character beats on them.  The above-average intelligence of the enemy makes the game all the more challenging.  However, that added challenge, combined with the shortcomings I've mentioned, could potentially make long-term gameplay frustrating. 

 

Bottom line..a hopeful "meh. " It was really the TV series - game play interaction that made Defiance unique, but absent that, the beta has given me the impression that it is a fairly run-of-the-mill sci-fi shooter.  I am looking forward to getting the full game in hand and seeing the series.  I'm not giving up hope yet! But I certainly hope the show makes it to a second season to actually see through the game's potential influences on the story line.  Only time will tell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012 Games Revisited....Leprechaun Style, Part 2

Here's the sequel to yesterday's post, with two more limerick reviews of games from 2012.  Hope your recovery from St. Paddy's day is going well!

Borderlands 2

Claptrap and Vault Hunters back again,
With new friends like Maya and Axton.
The co-op mode is great!
Go on, don't hesitate,
Get online, kill some skags, do some lootin'.



Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect redefined RPGs
With decisions and cool NPCs
That should shape the outcome,
But the endings are dumb...
Threw my controller at the TV.

I just have to say, in all fairness, despite my negative limerick ending for ME3, I loved the series overall.  Oh, and I didn't actually throw my controller at the TV--destroying my screen would have (arguably) been more dumb than the endings to the game--but I definitely wanted to!  I still thoroughly enjoyed ME3, the characters and the concepts behind what BioWare attempted to do, even if I didn't really agree with the directions they took with the story in the end. 

2012 Games Revisited...Leprechaun Style

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

 

 

 

Inspired by a recent issue of Game Informer in which they discussed the top 50 games of 2012, I thought I would do a down-and-dirty rehash of my memorable games from this past year. 

I know I'm late to the blog-party reviewing these, so I figured that I would mix things up--and honor St. Patrick's Day--by doing the reviews in limerick format.  I'll be adding some over the next few days, so check back for new stuff. Erin Go Bragh!

 

Assassin's Creed III

 

AC3, showed U.S. history,
Plus great art and attacking from trees.
Hatham may lack honor,
But our hero Connor
Needs more of a personality.

 

Dishonored

Dishonored, a truly awesome game
Where you fight to uphold Corvo's name.
Sabotage, stealth or strike,
Choose the method you like...
It's your fault if the ending is lame!