Everything in Moderation
What I’ve learned about going without Internet
Moving sucks, carrying large boxes, disassembling and re-assembling furniture, countless nights of fast food and most importantly no cable or Internet connection. When you plan to move you should always schedule your Internet connection to be moved well in advance, and I did... I timed it perfectly!! The second day in my new house the folks from TekSavvy would be around to install my wonderful outlet to the world. However, when that day came there was no door bell or friendly Teksavvy employee at my door. I called, waited in an extremely long hold line, and spoke with the representative. It turns out I got screwed, my order was “placed”, but soon thereafter cancelled and I was never told. Instead I had to wait an extra 7 more business days for them to come by to install the Internet in my new town-home.
So what have I learned living over two weeks without Internet?
I work, play and live on the Internet.
Primarily, I work from home... I VPN to my office to save myself the commute and the midnight drive. Having to go into work is a big negative, especially when commutes in Toronto are sometimes over 2 hours long!! Luckily my new home is closer to my workplace so it’s actually been really convenient. So overall, not having Internet for work hasn’t been that bad. It’s given me a chance to reconnect with some of my coworkers and mingle in a professional environment.
I thought I would miss my Steam connection, but to be honest I don’t. I’ve discovered some games that I have installed and can play in offline mode; such as Arma 2 and Fallout New Vegas. I’m sure if the new Deus Ex came out this week I would miss my Internet, only because it will be difficult to download it. I’m a singleplayer gamer; the only time I do play online is when I’m cooping with Nick or sharing a unique multiplayer experience, but to me multiplayer is gimmicky... that’s right I said it. I would be happy as a pig in shit if I just played singleplayer games for the rest of my life. I can still download singleplayer mods by tethering my phone or using some fools wifi connection in my neighbourhood that they failed to lock. I’ve been spending lots of time on my Playstation 3, watching movies and playing Super Nintendo. I’m an only child so being isolated from the mass gaming community does not phase me.
Living on the Internet is a different story... and to cope I have been tethering my Android phone to my netbook. It’s allowed me to check my email, communicate with the Podcast 17 crew, and do important things like online banking. Plus since I’m going into the office for work I can still spend a little time on my email and RSS during lunch and down time. I haven’t really noticed a difference in my productivity in regards to my Internet life.
So what have I learned? I can actually live without Internet for long durations. You might be saying to yourself that you could never do it or that it would be very difficult, but you might surprise yourself! I suggest that everyone tries it at least once... spend two weeks away -- don’t go on the Internet AT ALL... just the essentials, banking, email etc. I’ve found that I’ve been much more productive at home and social with Stephanie, getting lots of sleeping and just feeling great about life. I don’t get upset if I have to bring the car to the shop or pick up groceries because I’m not rushing home to refresh Reddit a million times.
So what have I learned? Everything in moderation and living without mass communication isn’t such a bad thing.
Maybe I’m just getting old.
Revenge of the Titans – Review
"Revenge" of the Titans is a name that suggested there was once a race of Titans and now, due to external circumstances, they seek revenge. Which suggests that there was an earlier game called "Titans", or... "Birth of the Titans"... or... Attack of the Titans. In fact, after further investigation I've found that Puppy Games actually created a game called Titan Attack which was sort of a space invaders clone. Whatever the case - Revenge of the Titans ROCKS!
If you ever looking to play a balanced mix of Real Time Strategy and Tower Defence then you've certainly found it. I picked Revenge of the Titans up when the Humble Indie Bundle Part 2 was out; I didn't pay too much attention to Revenge of the Titans at that time, but once it was released on Steam I was able to get it free of charge!! Unfortunately, the Humble Indie Bundle is no longer going on, but Revenge of the Titans is still well worth the price!
It has a very unique art style, sort of cell shading meets Tron meets; I dunno Saturday morning cartoon; I've never seen anything like it and it really functions well. The functionality of the game is also pretty unique, from what I can tell it auto generates levels based on how well you are doing, how much money you have, how much defences you have up. Which makes for an almost unique experience every time you play through the campaign. You can even "tone down" the level by selecting an easier one after death. This will generate a new level with easier mobs for you to fight against. As with most RTS's and Tower Defence games there are plently of upgrades to be had... and you certainly can't get them all in one play through. There are plenty of options at your finger tips and many ways to complete your objectives.
Revenge of the Titans is hard, you won't breeze through your first play through with ease. In fact many of my friends have restarted their first play through to choose different upgrades. The game allows you to back track through levels in case you want to make a different decision on which upgrade you have at your disposal. Personally, I got up to the Titan world before I had to... result to extreme measures - yea I cheated by editing the hex values in the process; but I still loved it! In fact this game is so adaptive, that it almost detected that I was cheating making the game EXTREMELY hard, bosses almost indestructible and things flying across the screen at lightning speed. Never have I seen a game be so adaptive.
There are other modes of the game too including Endless and survival game mode. Unfortunately, the only thing it is missing is a multiplayer mode or coop. Maybe in "Return of the Titans" or "Titans: The Tightening".
I fear there were some balance issues too that I recognized before I started cheating. At times I felt it quite difficult to actually win a level being very frustrated towards the end. It is my opinion that a game, even Super Meat Boy, should be completable in the first run. Maybe, now that I'm older I just suck at video games... can that happen? Does age truely bring about poor video game skills... boy I hope not. Back on topic though, Revenge of the Titans is certainly something that I hope to play on my off times. I'm glad Steam reminded me of it!! Thanks Puppy Games!
Dragon Age 2 – Review Stage 3 & 4
I'll try to keep this short as I've already talked in great lengths regarding Dragon Age 2. I've just finished Dragon Age 2 and in short I was very disappointed, but before I go into my conclusion let's talk a little about Stage 3. If you recall from my first Dragon Age 2 review I described Stage 3 as "The Breaking Point". This should be the point in the game that breaks up the game play, as by now it's usually very repetitive. In Dragon Age 2's case, I was very much looking forward to Stage 3 in hopes that it would finally break up the repetition of Kirkwall. For me Stage 3 begun during the Qunari revolution, but sadly, after the end of that Act, I was back in Kirkwall doing the same old shit in different piles.
The Act after the Qunari revolution was so short that I believe they could have filled in some new area, or areas to spice up the final moments of the game. Instead, by this point, I was so fed up with still being in Kirkwall I rushed through a lot of my quests. I completed Dragon Age 2 just over 40 hours, but if I spent more time in Act 3 I easily could have brought that closer to 50.
All my criticism aside, the conclusion of Dragon Age 2 -- Stage 4, was quite good. I enjoyed much of what Dragon Age 2 had to offer in the last hour when everything came together in the end. The thing I enjoyed the most was the much needed variety in enemies... finally we were able to see some new models and monsters in the flavour of sub-bosses. These created really interesting characters as the events I weaved unfolded before me.
It is apparent how much thought was put into the branching story arcs in this game. Almost every decision you make throughout your journey as "The Champion" affects the ending of Dragon Age 2; this should bring some comfort to die hard Bioware RPGers. For me, however, I can't see myself replaying Dragon Age 2 any time soon... unless of course I am bedridden or suffer from amnesia.
Sadly, I stick with my earlier score, a 3/10 -- but that's primarily because I made a promise to myself that if Kirkwall returned I would score it a 3/10. In all honesty, I should score it better than that because of the well structured ending. Dragon Age 2 is nothing like its original and has certainly left a bad flavour in my mouth. Furthermore, I have lost a little respect and trust for Bioware and, if possible, EA.
Dragon Age 2 – Review Stage 2
In Stage 1 of my Dragon Age 2 Review I was pretty hard on how story driven it was. I also left you with a question -- "Can a video game have too much story?". As I entered, what I believe to be, Stage 2 I had a little more hope.
After about the 8 hour mark things started to pick up a little bit. There was less boring running around Kirkwall and more action and gameplay. By this time I have established a pretty good relationship with all my characters and picked my primary party. I had a lot of fun completing the quests and running through the dungeons. The quests though, and the story, were still bland and pointless. There were plenty of times I would just drone out aimlessly clicking responses; some quests are great, but most are lacking a key point of interest to follow. The Qunari storyline, which reaches its apex at the end of Act 2, is particularly boring and bland. This still left me with the feeling of unimportance I felt after Stage 1 - What is my purpose? What am I trying to accomplish? Is there some sort of dilemma I am working out? Why the hell do I care about my in-game character?
Eventually you gain enough money to venture into the Deep Roads -- a planned expedition from the start of the game. This, I would say, is the most exciting part of Dragon Age 2 thus far. New areas, some new enemies and a simple quest structure. At the end I felt we were really reaching a main story plot, but to my disappointment it fizzled out like every other interesting part of this game.
There were some pretty strong rumours that EA was pushing Bioware to release Dragon Age 2 as quickly as possible -- to ride on the coat tails of Dragon Age 1. If these rumours are true I can really see the negative effect EA is having on Bioware. Dragon Age 2 is a "recycled game" and it is extremely apparent after returning from the Deep Roads. You're back in Kirkwall, picking up the same quests, raiding the same dungeons with no new content. I don't want to spoil it too much but unless you like watching reruns you probably won't enjoy Dragon Age 2 after hour 12-15.
My good friend mentioned that Dragon Age 2 "always has the same wallpaper". In other Bioware games you explored galaxies and entire planets!! I fear that this is the new trend in-game development, release a game with limited content the pump out as much DLC including "new areas" as possible. Bioware and EA are pretty big advocates for DLC -- so are other big development companies. After experiencing the "three years after Deep Roads" I vowed that if it ever happened again I would give Dragon Age 2 a 3/10. Guess what.... It happens again, not once but twice. So even before I get into Stage 3 and Stage 4 of this review I have already given Dragon Age 2 a 3/10. Personally, I don't know who to blame... Bioware for producing this shit or EA, allegedly, starting it. I'm really loosing my patience with this game - if it wasn't for this review I would have moved on to bigger and much better things. I think I'll take a break from Dragon Age 2 tonight; cool myself off.
Le’Garundu Expansion
I wanted to do something really special for the Le'Garundu expansion. I didn't want to just expand into a new area and have the same ol' stuff just in a different place. In my travels I came across the Biome Terrain Mod and I wanted to use it into the expansion. I knew it was going to be a lot of work, but I wanted to try it out anyway. I already had which seed I wanted to use in mind.
The first, and obvious, step was to lock the server, make a backup of the world and keep the server down for maintenance. This would ensure that no one adds anything while I edit the world. Multiplay.co.uk makes it really easy to make backups and download them locally to your computer as world files.
Once I had the world file the next step was the most tedious. I needed to load it up into McEdit and remove all the areas outside the boundary. Since people really enjoy breaking out of the cuboid areas this makes it very difficult as there is plenty of ground to delete. McEdit is a very powerful program, but takes a while to accomplish tasks, even on my fast computer. Often when deleting chunks of area I would get memory errors and have to start all over again. This was a very gruelling task. As you can see though, in these cartographer before and after renders I was finally able to accomplish the "pruning" task, but there was one small issue. Cartographer still thought there was land in the world where I deleted it. This worried me, I was concerned that no new land would generate over these deleted parts.
The uploading process to multiplay.co.uk is much longer than downloading. After about 30mins I was finally able to get the live server running with the pruned world. Why not just use a local server to see if it generates new land you ask? Well I wanted to be sure that everything was working on a production level with hMod just to be sure. As you can tell my fears were well placed. The land was gone, but not regenerating.
I reloaded the world in McEdit and found a different tool called the prune tool - stupid me. Instead of selectively choosing areas to delete, I could have just selected the area I wanted to keep and prune the rest. Once I did this I noticed the outlining areas were gone. Reloaded the world into multiplay.co.uk and viewed the result. The pruned world was 16.4MBs and the original was 44.8MBs. With a successful trial I was ready for phase two.
I deleted the recently uploaded world and installed Biome Terrain Mod to the server. I wasn't certain how well this would work, but I wanted to give it a go anyway - I had backups of all the worlds so it couldn't hurt. Installing any mod using multiplay.co.uk is easy - just select it and save. Once installed it will place a BiomeTerrainModSettings.ini file in your server directory. This ini file is way too long to post here, but it allows you to tweak the way new land is generated. You can create anything from sea lands, to air lands, to floating planets, to great sandy dunes... really anything if you can tweak the settings right. There is a wonderful forum post where various "designers" have posted their ini files with screen shots of the results. For the first expansion I wanted to do something truly unique, something that would make the players say "Wow, William really did so something different"... so I choose this seed. In later expansions the players will be able to vote on which seed they want.
I loaded the ini file, reuploaded the pruned world, restarted the server, and crossed my fingers. My hopes were that the new "generated areas" would adopt the biome terrain mod settings. There wasn't enough of a significant change in the new generated as I hoped, so I wanted a more extreme seed to test my idea. Clearly, by this point, I figured BiomeTerrainMod was not working with hmod so I went with plan B.
Plan B involved installing Biome Terrain mod on a local server and importing the map there. This meant I had a lot more control over BiomeTerrainMod and I could figure out why the terrains weren't being generated. Finally I was able to get the new world to work, but found that generating the new terrain up against the old region created steep cliffs on the boundary and that just looked ugly. I went with the other expansion option and decided to do a discontinuous expansion. Each discontinuous area would have its own theme; I.E. the Biome terrain generation it adopts. I separated the two boundary's with a mass amount of empty blocks (the new import is the blank shaded area north of the old region) and imported the Biome Generation from the local server. Uploaded the new world and began the long trek north towards the new area.
Finally the world was imported. The new region was very farther north than the old region and they were coexisting, but there was still much to be done. First step was to find a proper spot for the new region spawn (where I was going to place the stargate). I needed to find a place that shows off everything the new region has to offer as soon as you step out of the stargate, but yet the area had to be lit enough that you could see it. I think I found a pretty suitable place.
Next was to make the new four cuboid regions that would define the area to which I call Underhill. Once that was done everything was complete. Way more work than I was expecting!!
Dragon Age 2 – Review Stage 1
When reviewing an epic, and I use that term accurately, one needs to acquire a different reviewing method. If I wait until I finish Dragon Age 2 before I review it I will likely forget most of the game, crucial moments and points of interest. Ergo, I propose a new reviewing method - the incremental method. I hope to review Dragon Age 2, and other epics like it, in stages. In Stage 1 I will review the first 5-10% of the game... this is a very important stage because it captures the players interest. It doesn't matter if the consecutive Stages are phenomenal, without a high scoring Stage 1 the player is no longer engaged and interested. Stage 2 will cover the settling period, this is where the main content of the game starts to take form. In an epic, like Dragon Age 2, you can expect the rest of the game to feel like this stage. Stage 2 should include the most interactivity and elements of gameplay; no more introduction. Stage 3 is the breaking point. For me, every game has a breaking point - when Stage 2 starts to become stale and the developers need to rejuvenate the atmosphere. Without a well scoring breaking point you risk the player dropping out before Stage 4, the conclusion. The conclusion is what defines the game. Once the player has reached the conclusion very rarely do they stop playing. This is what the player will remember when explaining the game to another person.
So without further hesitation I give you Stage 1 of Dragon Age.
I couldn't find a concrete source stating how long the game is expected to play out, but one such article explained it being longer than Mass Effect, but shorter then Dragon Age: Origins. This puts the game somewhere between 40 and 90 hours (if you are a completionist) and that doesn't give me a lot to go by. I will assume that Dragon Age 2 is roughly 70 hours which puts my Stage 1 6 hour mark at 8% of completion.
As a reviewer I have to put away my dislikes of genre and "pretend" I really enjoy American RPGs. However, don't misunderstand, I really did enjoy Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, The Witcher, Fallout, and Oblivion. The issue lies with the fact that it's very easy for me to lose interest or drown in excess plot and lore. This brings up an interesting question - can there ever be too much story? On Podcast 17 I advocate for thick storyline and heavy concentration on planning player perception. The question applies to big companies and a company like BioWare whose roster includes Drew Karpyshyn - a man who truly understands a good story. In the first 6 hours of Dragon Age 2 I can probably count on my two hands the amount of battles I have been in. This is a great shame because the battle system in Dragon Age 2 is leaps and bounds beyond its predecessors. A problem I have adapted over many years of playing video games is that I look forward to the end. So much, in fact, that I often lose sight of the present. Furthermore, is interaction and gameplay the only thing that separates video games from your standard novel?
Dragon Age 2 follows the life of Garrick and... well his ordinary life. In short, Garrick and his family were forced to flee Lothering during the great blight in Dragon Age Origins. They eventually make their way to Kirkwall and live their life while the events of Dragon Age: Origins are sorted out. Unlike Dragon Age Origins there is no pressing point of conflict. The only conflict, if you can call it that, is the promised delivery of a package for some random Dragon Lady who saves you during the blight. Even this mission is not critical because the old bag seems to not even care that you waited a full year before even thinking of delivering the package. My point is this, why continue playing a game with no apparent direction and drive? Sure there is plenty of lore, cool history you can read and other people's affairs to get into, but after you strip all that out you are just an ordinary guy caught in the blight. And maybe this is the point... maybe Dragon Age 2 is about an ordinary guy - like you and me - and I'm totally missing the allure. After about 4 hours into the game I stopped reading all the lore and I probably won't continue because its overwhelming. I hate to say it, but I want to fight things... beat up bad guys... get sweet magical powers... not read about the history of Elves and slaves.
So far, Dragon Age 2 is for people who love story... love it so much that you are willing to really dive in. Willing to pull up a comfy chair, some snacks and get your reading glasses on. Granted, Dragon Age 2 has a lot of cut scenes full of really great voice acting, but don't expect to get down and dirty into the thick of it. I fear this will turn a lot of players away from Dragon Age 2. I will, slightly reluctantly, continue playing Dragon Age 2 and we will have to see what Stage 2 brings. I go back to my original question... Can there ever be too much story?
Dreamcast Collection – A Review
In my high-school days I did one of two things, sleep and play Dreamcast. So excuse me while I get really excited for a Dreamcast rebirth on PC... YIPPYYYY YAHOOO!!! OK, I'm done. Playing Dreamcast on PC is nothing new in fact emulation and "easy piracy" was one of the primary downfalls of the Dreamcast. With that said, one would wonder "what is so special about a Dreamcast Collection?" "Why shouldn't I just download the games and emulate them?". Well allow me to explain.
The Dreamcast collection comes bundled with four games, Space Channel Five Part 2, Crazy Taxi 1, Sonic Adventures DX, and Sega Bass Fishing. Surprisingly, out of the hundreds of Dreamcast games I've played Space Channel Five Part 2 and Sonic are not on that list. I have, however, played Space Channel Five Part 1 (which in my opinion is the better game). This review will be less about the games, which are pretty much one to one replicas of the original and more about the presentation of said games on the PC - which is what makes the Dreamcast Collection different from emulators.
Once you load the collection you are welcomed with a sort of portal where you can choose your game, customize your settings on a per game basis and read the games manual. This makes a nice transition from the Dreamcast to the PC in that you can view the control schemes before opening the game. You can even select your resolution, fullscreen options, language and more. The customization doesn't stop there however... once a game is loaded you are given brief tutorials on how to play that specific game using keyboard controls. This eliminates the clunky feeling of an emulator and makes the games feel like they were designed for PC. Check out the gallery for images on the configuration menus.
After all the configuration and customization is done you are free to enjoy your games as you remember them! Some game elements have changed however, for example, the sound-track in Crazy Taxi is no longer done by Bad Religion and the Offspring - which is a damn shame. Aside from these slight differences nothing much else has changed.
So what are you waiting for? Go catch some bass, fight space villains with your dance moves, pick up cab fare or simple dash around the beach in super speed. Alternatively, on steam, you can purchase the games separate and let me tell you... Space Channel Five Part 2 is well worth the 10 dollars!
Crysis 2 Demo – A Review
Crysis is known for pushing computers to their limits and with the advent of Crysis 2 I decided I would try out the demo before committing to purchasing the game. My initial worry was that Crysis 2 would run sub-par on my rig - oh how I was wrong. It seems they have highly optimized Crysis 2 - so much in fact that I can run "Hardcore" mode very smoothly on my PC. Granted my PC is pretty decent, AMD Phenom II X6 1090 with 4GBs of RAM and a 5770, but this didn't stop me from worrying. There is however the issue of graphics customization in-game or the lack there of. Players are greeted with 3 settings, Hardcore, Gamer and Advanced... nothing else - no advanced settings outside Full Screen toggle. I really hope the developers add something extra so we can tweak performance ourselves - I very much hope for a "no blur" option so I can actually take decent looking screen shots. Overall, I feel a lot of the "default out of the box settings" will quickly get on my nerves when playing single player.
The Demo is completely multi-player, it includes two maps and two game modes. One map sits atop various skyscrapers and the other takes place on a pier. Personally I like skyline the best, but pier has some great areas too. Both these maps are visually awesome and the crytek engine really adds to environment with it's advanced particle systems. The game modes are team vs. team death-match and a capture/defend the point.
I haven't had much time to unlock all the features, but from what I can tell it has an endless amount of unlocks which all seem very promising. The game play is pretty run of the mill and at par with other multi-player shooters such as Battlefield and Medal of Honour, which personally is not my cup of tea. The matchmaking system is highly reliant on Gamespy (which is as old as dirt), and is a little cumbersome to get used to. In fact I waited nearly 40mins to get a game together with the Podcast 17 group as the maps have a 6 player minimum.
Overall, Crysis 2 was pretty fun and I will certainly be revisiting it - I don't think the demo has convinced me to pre-purchase though. I might wait until it goes on sale as I am still a little skeptic on how I will enjoy single-player.
Bulletstorm – A Review
Two brothers in battle, working out their differences, seeking revenge against an unjust commander to make the past right again. That's the story of Bulletstorm and that's the only wholesome positive moral you will get out this game. The rest of the game is full of dick jokes, blood, gore, Hollywood cliches, and other... not niceness, but I'm not saying it's a bad game... this game is more or less mediocre.
When People can Fly and Epic group together we can expect another run and gun similar to Gears of Wars and that's pretty much what we get. Bulletstorm seems like a combination of Painkiller (due to it's varied enemy types and arena based environments), Serious Sam (same reason) and an on-rails shooter. The game is extremely linear allowing for not much player immersion or decision taking, but instead is action packed. The story doesn't go too deep so don't expect the next winner of any writing awards any time soon.
The games "key-selling point" is a system called skillshots... depending on how you "kill" your enemy you are awarded points which you can then spend on simple weapon upgrades and ammo. There are hundreds of "skillshots" ranging from kicking a dudes head off, shooting someone in the groin, pinning people to the floor, ceiling, sticking them on cacti and other brutality. Like with most games of this violent genre we must all take them with a grain of salt and not get too caught up in the violence. I didn't really follow the outburst certain media outlets had about the violence, nor do I care to or address it because the bottom line is... the overall game was enjoyable and not because it was overly violent.
I mentioned the linearity and I want to go into a little more detail, as I stated this game would feel the same if it was on rails - a lot of the time I found myself standing in one place, spinning around and performing skill shots on the enemies around me. Occasionally I would slide into cover to restore some of my health, but that's no different then letting go of the "pop out pedal" on games like Time Crisis. The difference between this game and, say a game like Half-Life, is that I am simply an observer. I am witnessing the story unfold in-front of me and not actively participating in it. The issue with games like this is that after a while they become boring - there is a reason movies are only 2 hours long because after a while you start to feel useless and bored. Bulletstorm clocked in at about 7 hours which was a little longer than I wanted it to be. I started to loose interest after the start of Act 6, luckly for me I decided to stick it out and found that there wasn't much left of the game. Any longer and I would feel even more disconnected from the game and possibly stop all together.
Towards the end of the game I really felt myself just rushing and over using the revolver charge. By this time the game was way too easy, I was completing "puzzles" quicker than I could even recognize what I was doing and sliding from point A to point B. By this time the dialogue became very dry, repetitive, and well... just down right annoying. The ending unfolded in an obvious manner and I was left with the confusion of whether that was intentional or not - either way it was negative.
Visually, the game is absolutely beautiful and that's it's strongest positive in my opinion. Animations are smooth, modelling is nice to look at and the environments are to die for. There are some great levels including escaping a rogue planet grinder, stunning vistas, a great "shadow of the colossus" type moment while you fight a giant mutated thingy-ma-bob and a ruined crash site (see the gallery for images).
Each enemy has a "different" way to defeat it so there is some strategy involved, but other than that the game isn't too difficult. The control system is very fluid which makes the game easier to deal with. Overall - gamers shouldn't have any issues with this game on Normal and should probably try their first play through on Hard.
I didn't try out the multiplayer, nor do I want to... If multiplayer is your thing feel free to check out one of the many other reviews out there on the internet.
Overall, Bulletstorm is an OK game, not great, but OK. I believe the developers could have taken an interesting concept (skillshots and stunning visuals) and extended it further using better story telling and a little immersion. Bulletstorm is certainly not worth the full retail price of 60$ so if you are thinking of picking this up, I would suggest either renting or waiting for it to go on sale.
Faeries Aire and the Death Waltz
My piano skills extend as far as playing the right hand of Fur Elise and playing The Office theme song I memorized off YouTube, but I know when I found a hard piece of sheet music... and let me tell you... Faeries Aire and the Death Waltz is the hardest piece of sheet music you will ever run into.
You shouldn't need to understand sheet music to understand that this "Waltz" is complete non-sense, but that doesn't stop people from trying to play it. Notice the part with the explosions? And the part with the penguins? And the explicit slippage on the violins?
The late John Arthur Stump is the composer of this piece of music and he is described as being famous throughout his family by his satirical parody's. John not only wrote this piece of music but also countless other parody's including String Quartet No. 556(b) for Strings In A Minor (Motoring Accident) and Prelude and the Last Hope in C and C# minor.
There is another "Death Waltz" that floats around YouTube, I have yet to confirm if it was actually written by John Arthur Stump, but it is an interesting piece that has also been attempted by countless musicians.