Mr. Paisley

Fuck you Blogger, what are YOU playing?

2011-11-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

For fucking with my shit and not telling me. I figured the new format didn't ACTUALLY look like it took away any attempts at using the enter button to start a new paragraph hahahahah.... cause that would just be silly. But no, it fucked me. Decided to get rid of alllll of my formatting and make everything one big, jumbled mess *sigh*. Alas, they're fucked, and I refuse to go back to the "new and updated" version as I will likely be butt packed one more time.

What's everyone playing? I just beat Brotherhood not long ago, 100%'ing everything in between work. Game was fun. I'm playing lots of Skyrim, some Black Ops (fuck you MW3). You know, I really couldn't say if I was writing back when this was out, but I FEEL as though I touched on this earlier: Does it feel like Sledgehammer games designs games that they themselves (the hardest of the hardcore) have fun playing and strategizing with, but that the public in general just kind of, feel awkward about?

Steve Jobs was always very adamant about his plans and very intentional about his design. He knew that people didn't know what they'd want until he made it how he wanted to make it. He knew WHAT to make, but he knew no one would see it that way until he brought it to fruition.

But I don't think of Sledgehammer Infinity Ward Activision Blizzard utd. as some young, small, poor Steve Jobs visionary of the gaming industry. To me they seem like, Bill Gates? AFTER the success? I mean they control the two arguably biggest games for either the console, or the pc (CoD and WoW). And it's ironic because while WoW is actually catching flak for making the game easier and easier to get into (thus by watering down the game and making it both less interesting and far more boring to play), CoD gets flak for taking itself so fucking seriously.

"Art from adversity" is the phrase. No matter how we want to slice it (though their last game might've finally earned them legitimate credibility that is well-deserved), Treyarch hasn't always been the favorite. Treyarch always rode the coattails of the IW guys. Trey has always had something to prove. The question for gamers was basically "why play a shitty game by shit people if I could play a great game by great people, until the great guys put out something else?". Although WaW didn't EXACTLY do the trick for me, it DID take risks. It was the first game to involve new kill streaks, it used vehicles (albeit only one, but that is a step in the right direction for a cod game), and it used a new series of perks (though not all were very useful. "Sunglasses"? "Gasmask"? I still think those are the worst perks...)

There is no adversity for IW. Their launches are always buggy, they never beta test their shit, they always make a game them and their 20 some devs like to play with each other because they know EVERYTHING about the games. The Modern Warfare series' games are sooo complex and it simply becomes cluttered, noisy, confusing, and frustrating. Btwz, sniping is horribly broken in that game. I've had Hannibal Lecter killing sprees interpreted by some ass in a ghillie suit who need only fire a bullet in my direction while casually glancing and sipping on warm milk in his other hand, and it's an automatic lethal headshot to my brainholez. *sigh*

When I play Black Ops (mind you, I'm not the biggest shooter fan, especially when thinking of originality), Blops maps seems to play just a BIT slower, to be in the realm of "just right". I'm not being cluster fucked by the things on screen. Even the last killstreaks "dogs" and "...pilotable hellicopter", are worth getting, with out being so overbearing I'm dying upon spawn . . . a lot.

The all-too-frustrating Assassin Pro perk is far more annoying than Blops' "ghost" perk (that technically hides you from more), because the levels seem a bit more stretched out. Running into an assassin pro in some small ass corridor in some small ass level in some small ass game gets me killed 9 / 10 times. In blops the equivalent, ghost, is more useful as a utility for countering killstreaks, because they aren't seen by helicopters (eventually). It's simply less useful as a combat perk because you have fewer places to sneak attack someone with. The map design is hugely under-appreciated.

OH ALSO BLOPS HAD A COMPETENT THEATER MODE, THE FIRST OF IT'S FUCKING KIND IW! ALSO, THEY CREATED A WORTH "EMBLEM CREATION" TOOL. IT'S OKAY TO BORROW FROM THEM FOR ONCE, IT WON'T MAKE YOUR STUPID ASS STUDIO SEEM INCOMPETENT.

BUT ALAS. I'm done nerding out on CoDs. I just hate arrogant people, especially arrogant people with money and a plan.

My inevitable(ly long) MW3 post

2011-11-21T19:01:00.001-08:00

Not only did I go and buy MW3, but I bought MW3 AND I fucking did it at a midnight release at Best Buy. I love this game. I'm such a pro at it. It's excellent in every way.Well it was for a week. The excitement of playing a new CoD game was eventually overshadowed a bit (by a bit I mean massively so) by a game called Skyrim.... and then ironically the Hockey mode in Halo Reach also, seemed more interesting...I'll say this. I liked it more than MW2. After Treyarch and (what're they now? Sledgehammer?), them, have put out a few games I've realized something. Adolescent, prepubescent, nubile, young, vulnerable Mr. Paisley thought of Treyarch's games as copycats. Unoriginal, uninspired, bland, boring shooters. And while I still feel this general scent from the Modern Warfare franchise in general, it became particularly apparent with MW3.I enjoyed the game thoroughly for, as I said, about a week. Then the dazzle effect wore off. I was bored of what I was playing. It was no longer new and different. It literally baffles me, it shocks and appalls me that there are people in the world who have actually maxed out their level in that game. They've raised the level cap to 80 as well, so that's impressive... Skyrim (or GTA, or Just Cause 2...), have HUGE maps, as anyone who's played them can attest to. Now, baring that in mind, think of the real estate in the multiplayer content of the game. Does it even do justice, to the COCK loads of money that Activision Blizzard have at their disposal?The enjoyment level of the game is alright for me. I really feel like I'dve enjoyed the hell out of the game more, or at least for longer, if they actually had a GIANT playlist of maps. That they charge people 1/4 the price of the game for 5 new maps, is complete garbage. Then there's elite, where you basically get all the map packs for what, $60? Try not gouging me Activision, my wallet already hurts enough as is.I guess I found it harder to actually like playing the game after I got Skyrim. Not to say that (ironically...) Skyrim hasn't bored me at all, but when playing it you get the sense that so, much, work was put into the game. Every little detail was finaggled with and jostled. When I think about playing Skyrim, or playing MW3, it's just no comparison.Then I was trying to actually go places in Skyrim, and when I realized just how LONG it takes, and how BIG the world is. It, kinda made me upset that I was paying the same price for a game that took 1/6th the time to make and eventually costs more to get everything.I guess I can't bitch about these philosophicals for too long though. Blah blah the game is "engaging", in that it throws up small badges of excitement anytime you figure out how to aim down the sights properly. It's very set on making you feel like you're doing a good job. Which, is also actually another difference I've noticed between Treyarch and Infinity Ward (see wut i did thur?). When I play a Modern Warfare game (MW1 aside, honestly). I always feel as though there is so much happening on the screen. It's always so busy, there's always something trying to kill you (fuck assassin pro). My enjoyment levels of MW games always peak in the beginning. When everyone playing a particular game are new, I'm usually better. I find it easier to adapt to new games than compete with people who're pro. As the games grew on more and more I was finding myself curiously often matched up with members of a secret society of professional gamers who always knew wtf was going on. Does the Recon Drone really do a job of telling you what the hell it does or how to effectively use it? No. Should I (being the pro gamer that I am), use assault killstreaks? Hell no.And I could drone on for days about how I just generally, don't care for the game anymore, but when it boils down to it, I just find myself slightly cheated by the game. So little time is spent on a game so small in comparison to games that have fewer resources and still manage to do so much. It's easy(ier) to make a game satisfying by throwing badges and stickers about my face, but it's far more impressive to build entire worlds that are entirely explorable. If THAT'S possible I'd at least hope my $60+ would buy content that would equal or near such feats. But I guess that's what we get when we buy into seasonal games. Shooters are the iPod genre of gaming. To maximize your money you have to spend a specific amount of time to meet SOME kind of quality standards, with out fishing into your profit margins too hard. It doesn't help that every game reviewer that wants to be deemed "popular" can't give it less than stellar reviews. I never stop seeing reviews that rave about "generic brown/gray shooter 4". Is it wrong to question why is JUST like ? Not fixing what isn't broken is a good idea, but taking risks and having them blow up in your face (experimentation) is better, but only for the gaming industry I guess, not the wallets of business executives.

That one rim in the sky, Halo?

2011-11-18T03:08:00.001-08:00

Normally I don't want to write about a game until I've beaten it entirely. I mean, it's not fair to really, judge a book by it's cover. However, if Skyrim is a book then it's the Holy Bible and I've read Genesis and calling judgement upon it.I was one of few people that didn't "get into" Oblivion. I liked how I could roam around free to do as I please. Playing a sneaky character was fun and easy, and though I wanted to delve into a mage/magic/Harry Potter at some point, the complexity and difficulty in using magic swerved me enough the other way to stay away from magic aside from the occasional basic heal.I've even less experience with Morrowind so it's hardly worth bringing up. Though I WAS intrigued by it, my knowledge of that game doesn't extend much beyond watching it played briefly for an hour.Now, having given out allll my history with The Elder Scrolls, I can't stop playing Skyrim. It's really, really addicting. First, I felt like the world was small. The map offered a few landscapes surrounding your initial area, but it's much bigger. Cloud covers a majority of the map until you explore, and once you do, the enormity of the map is just overwhelming.In fact, overwhelming describes the game perfectly. Nearly any NPC that isn't a generic guard has something for you to do. Thus far it has avoided the dreaded "fetch quest" syndrome of feeling like a "kill this guy", "get this for me", routine of boredom. Likely because I'm often asked to go to a place I've never been before. This was a good way of getting my interest in both leveling, and the new areas around the world of Skyrim.I chose to play as a mean, lean, fighting with a shield-and-sword machine, because everyone and their mother is a "unique", mage (or a "unique", stealthy assassin with a bow and arrow). Choosing the high route, stealth'ing in full armor is something my warrior simply doesn't do well, and there are areas I've not been able to grasp fully.However the gem of the game for me WAS the leveling. You have an overall level, 1 - 10, 11 - 20, etc. And to level them, you must level your attributes. For instance, my warrior typically levels block, one handed weapons, and heavy armor, as I use these primarily. BUT, if I also use recovery magic on the side, this all goes towards my overall level. If I level up heavy armor to rating 4, a given xp amount goes towards my overall level.This was lots of fun for me, because further down, when you look AT your attributes, talents, etc, heavy armor will also have perks that you can unlock once that attribute hits a certain level. Blocking perks will make your shield bash deal five times as much damage.The idea is that you're going to level up no matter what kind of character you play (though it IS smarter to balance with a little MORE abilities than fewer. Only leveling up three attributes (block, heavy armor, one handed weapons), will eventually take longer as their levels increase, than doing that AND recovery magic and blacksmithing.The big idea of the game, is that dragons have returned. Previously thought extinct, their back, and ironically, you're the perfect man (or woman) for the job of hunting them down. Dragon fights are fun. Their encounters feel spaced enough to be exciting, and feel random. It can happen in a town, or out in the open, all alone. Although exciting, they MIGHT bore someone with a very small appetite for fun ;) The first few hours dragons (though challenging), won't do much more than fly around, burn, and swat at you.One complaint I might suffer the game for however is the "powers" menu. Basically one button will dash for you, the opposite, will use a dragon shout (nifty abilities learned throughout the game). You can't equip say, werewolf form, AND a dragon shout, because both use the same button, which to me seems silly.The only other fairly bothersome detail was actually something they minimized from Oblivion that I liked. This time around in Skyrim, I feel like the faction quests take significantly less time to complete. When I finished The Companions' quest line, I really did find myself wondering what the ACTUAL ending was. Only to find I'd already arrived at it, disappointingly. Still, the game is so damned big, that it's hard to get bored with it. Get it, pick it up, now, talk about it with your friends playing it too. . . or yer' mum.

So I JUST beat Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

2011-10-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

Except not. I beat it about two or three weeks ago. I DID immediately start writing a post after beating the game but it was all negative and pissy and I wanted to be fair to the game.LET THE NEGATIVITY AND PISSYNESS BEGIN!I'll say that I enjoyed the first hour of the game. First stepping into the world was fun and interesting, the levels look fresh and new for my eyeholes. Long gone are the grey, brown, have destroyed world of first person shooters or barren wastelands of freshly nuked soil. Instead freshly inked levels blossom. It's a beautiful game really.Then the rest of the game happened. It really wasn't a horrible experience, but I found I finished the game a lot faster than I normally do. Especially faster than I had wanted to. I played the game with a longing for it to be over already. Mah probz. The game draws a lot of parallels to the Metroid Prime series. Like Metroid, you explore one giant map, with certain areas only accesible once you've obtained whatever power necessary to destroy/remove/unlock whatever it is that's blocking the path onwards. Unlike Metroid however, the screen has zero dialogue. It operates in a series of pictures/silent movies. The GBA titles operated similar, in that they too didn't have voiced dialogue, BUT YOU STILL READ SOMETHING. Here, you instead have to interpret what a given obstacle is trying to tell you to.Example: There are a pile of rocks blocking the path, simple enough. You scan the rocks and a small picture pops out, displaying a claw grabbing the rock. Okay, you use your claw, you grab the rock. Fair. The PROBLEM comes in when you reach a mysterious object that you're unfamiliar with. It's presumably metal as it's resistant to your weapons. But it's clear it's a door or locking mechanism of SOME kind because of the contraption it sits in front of. Scanning it is made even more confusing because the picture the pops up shows a grid (?), of some kind, with an even, "griddier", grid above it? What the fuck does that mean game? Could you not simply say "you don't have this ability"? Cause that picture (even after obtaining the ability), makes no sense.The powerup in question by the way, is an emp of some kind. How it is at all represented in the picture is beyond me. A simple lightning bolt would've sufficed.Then the controls. Another difference between Metroid and ITSP. In Shadow Planet, you get about, nine abilities by the end of the game, you can bind four. In Metroid, you'll get maybe five or six, and all are comfortably usable. In SP, they're not. In SP, to use one, you must switch to it, and THEN use it. Alas: - Metroid - press b to fire rocket - Shadow Planet - press b to switch to rocket, then squeeze right trigger to fire itCUT THE DAMNED MIDDLE MAN. It's frustrating controls aren't immediately felt nor understood until you've sat back to think about why a given boss fight was frustrating. I remember have a very anger-inducing boss fight that SOMEHOW involved magnetism and lots of metal garbage floating about. HOW to fight him properly or HOW to use the magnet weapon isn't readily made information, available to the player because once again there's no fucking dialogue to aid you. Nothing induces seizures quite like trying to press a button during a boss fight, to switch to a weapon just to push another to actually use it. Especially when the boss in question needs to utilize about five or six abilities, and you can only actively have four bound.Overall the game started out fun for me but got worse as I was being forced to juggle more powers. Because nothing is ever spoken, or conveyed through text, and is certainly not adequately done via pictures, I'm left confused and annoyed that such was the case. I wanted a gorgeous, slightly dark, fun game and instead I was left trying to figure out more than just the puzzles of the level, but that of the game design as well.

I'm not a liar!

2011-10-02T00:12:00.000-07:00

I said earlier that I now have a new, shiny, well-paying job (well enough anyways, I'm still fiddling with tuna cans for dinner), and have thusly, recommitted to having no life, in a rather sour attempt to catch up on alllll that I've missed whilst I was the poor man's beggar.Having said that, I've literally JUST beaten Limbo (while also battling it out on Bastion, my newfound love for Halo Reach's Hockey mode (I'm an excellent goal scorer btw), Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, and Braid shortly (which I've beaten already, but have yet to net the points for doing so on my Xbox).LIMBO! Limbo played along my similar love for Shadow of the Colossus, in so few colors ;) You are alone. Isolated in an alien world where nothing is right and everything is your enemy. You are alone, and have absolutely no form of offensive weapon whatsoever. Fuck you Link. There is an obvious theme in the beginning, of rescuing the damsel in distress, but it takes a bit of a backseat to EVERYTHING ELSE. I don't think I minded it much because I found the entire atmosphere of the game to be a bit of a mind fuck. It's absolutely gorgeous in every way. Some shots were so pretty upon entry, I died on purpose just to watch it happen again. I needed to be able to screen cap my tv with better quality than a cellphone could because it just wouldn't do it justice. The sounds are so, familiar in a sense, yet different enough to be anonymous to your brainhole. You would only know, for example, that a given fluttering sound, would be from SOME kind of insect-like bug creature, because you're LOOKING at one. It SOUNDS familiar, but still, not.There is no dialogue. The characters and the game are completely silent and by all accounts you play a very boring character. The star of the game though, is not him. It's not even the girl. It is in fact a feat, that a game can provoke so much positivity from me, when it doesn't use color, nor dialogue, nor fighting, to interest me. And maybe that's what makes it shine.It really is a game that is worth it's weight in $10. Every detail about it is so expertly worked out and crafted. Nothing is ignored. I found the ending particularly beautiful. If you consider yourself a gamer who does more than shoot things, you need to get it. It's an excellent example of real art in videogames.

September at last

2011-09-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

I figure it's about time to do you all some justice, explain my lack of being here.Been a BIT late buuuut it's all good things, mostly. First, I've a new job. Second, I moved. Back to first, I now work packing and shipping engineering tools outside of the United States. About the same hours, more monies though. Speaking of more monies, because of my new job, I'm paid more, and because of moving out, I'm ironically paying less money for rent. All bills considered, after a month or so, I'll be making more than I was earlier.So! More gaming for me, and eventually, I'll be live streaming games. Highly intelligent discussions of a perverse nature while streaming will always be welcomed. My latest game played has been Dead Rising 2, lately. I ended up finding the game's lack of ability to save FOR me, quite annoying. I made my way from some annoying bitches in the distance wanting to be saved, to nearing a safe room, and they turned on me (dude, how am I NOT supposed to hit them when I'm trying to save them from zombies? what bull). After they turned on me (I actually GOT them to the save room, and it didn't count), I eventually gave up on trying to give a fuck for these dumbasses.Not to say I don't still want to play. I can very well resume playing here shortly, but I just need to really focus on work and get this job locked down. Once I do, I'll be paid even BETTER. ^_^

Quotes are important kiddos

2011-07-03T01:58:00.000-07:00

So, I'm going to take a step off of games in general, and hit another little important bit that's important to me. Facts.

Recently on Facebook, (I've a variety of friends), one of my more "redneck" (not conservative, he's a kid and, well as you'll see isn't exactly the sharpest redneck in his haystack), friends... ahem, one of my more "redneck" friends posted an article. Now, read the article, go on, it's short enough.

The conversation went as such on the right.

Now, as one would see, he DOES use the quote that Ms. Obama actually uses. "The withdrawal of troops from Iraq". This is less of a political piece, and more of an instructional piece.

First, never, EVER, take what somebody says, as truth. It HAS to be quoted (and even then, the quote must then be backed up and proven, either with a video or other multiple reliable articles). You can see here, that Matt was fooled into this idea that Ms. O thinks all troops are gone, after the writer simply, suggests that this is what she meant. The sentence "The withdrawal of troops from Iraq" could mean the entire troop count, but it could also mean the process, of removing troops over time, or, the troops that have been removed thus far.

Point is kiddos, do not get fooled into someone's suggestions. This is an easy trick that elementary writers use to gain support of their views. You must be only but so impartial and looking to interpret a quote as you want it to mean.

NOW GET OUT THERE AND BE MAD

Observations of a game-drunken sore loser.... lately

2011-06-09T01:02:00.000-07:00

The title is really irrelevant to the article that I'm writing. The only thing that I could think of that made me "sore" really would be the Seattle Sounders tying consistently (BUT WE'VE MORE INJURIES THAN CAPS LOCK SENTENCES ON ANY GIVEN PIECE OF WRITING I'VE EVER CREATED!). Anyways.i

It's been slow, I've played few games. Not really cause there's been a drought (though a drought, there has been), but games have changed for me. Actually, it'd be more appropriate to say, the way I play them has changed. In my younger days (I'm, not even 21 yet so I'm sure to age quite a bit more here soon.... hopefully), in my younger days my goal in a game was to beat it. Get to the end, and win, as fast as possible. I'm still pretty, "goal oriented" ask anyone that plays CoD with me (or doesn't anymore, due to my only skill in the game currently is consistently losing), I don't handle defeat well (Sounders).

Having said that, I realized, that I'm going to be the father, that gets their children into games, because games are his thing, his passion, his flair. Lord help you all if I could figure out how to make them (I've not the computer powerful enough to do such things nor the time, money, or resources). Since I can't, I resort to playing them and, on occasion, writing about them.

There was a trailer, for a little Assassin's Creed: Revelations, that has my boner raging like, I cared about Halo Reach. It was strange to me too, that I became so attracted to it. As far as the Assassin's Creed series is concerned, I appreciated it's differences. It was DRENCHED, in the life and lore of a would-be, fictional assassin's life and creed. The style and flourishes in it's combat. It made close combat (and assassination) preferable to ranged automatic weapon combat. It made timing important.

What I DIDN'T care for was the controls being, alright. I felt at times like I was being unfairly spotted (or obviously madly missed). There were a slim cast of characters I actually cared about (especially true in the first game). Having no one (main character aside) to CARE about, or fight for, really killed my desire to do more than play the game once.

BUT, now I've played Assassin's Creed's 1 through Brotherhood (nearing completion on Brotherhood, working on 100%). Although AC1 lacks in the personality or, depth, department, Ezio's story interests me. I've been with him, from his journey as a rico suave romeo for a juliet, to his lost love, his journey to being a master assassin. It's been two games, and will be three. Watching the trailer, I see him move like fluid. Ezio knows what he's doing now, with the third game. He's getting gray hairs, and his age has helped learn him that the world is far bigger than he. I actually care about this dude and his journey. It's been three games now, he's looking for answers, and so am I.

There is more though than just Ezio that deserves praise. Brotherhood, most notably, has been littered with clever artistic treasures for the watchful eye. First, the obvious. Eagles. They've always been close to the assassins. Both work very similarly. Searching, scanning, blending in, moving fast. In the game Eagles symbolized a tower that one would climb, and use, to open up the map in that area. In Brotherhood though, such a tower must be (in some cases) seized by Ezio. The towers would previously be in control of the Borgia, Ezio's enemy. The Borgian towers would be litered with crows (easier to hear than see really). Obvious symbolism is obvious.

In the trailer, where "leaps of faith" were previously an escape, they became the opposite for Ezio. He is walked out towards one (much like a pirate ship) by his captors (presumably Templars), and is expected to jump. As a fan, you wonder "?? . . . . but those always lead to his escape??". As his hood is lowered, and his face revealed, a noose is applied around his neck, and fastened. It becomes obvious that he is making a leap of faith that will result in death.

It's these artistic ideas and kinds of concepts that completely, forego any problems I have with the game. That Ubisoft can turn something that has for me, always been an escape, into a death sentence, is beautiful. I know Ubi is getting a lot of flack for releasing AC games so fast, but if they can stay this unique and, touching, in a way, they can put out double for all I care.

AND THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID

Computer gamers are bitchy

2011-05-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a while. There's not been a lot going on in my gaming life personally. I've been playing the new Black Ops maps again (it's the only way I'm good at the game again).

I DID HOWEVER, PLAY PORTAL 2, SOLO/CAMPAIGN AND BEAT BOTH.... a long time ago. Caps were necessary. I was reading that PC gamers were complaining that the PC port was "not a real PC port" for a number of reasons. One prominently stupid one stuck out: "There is a dialogue box warning players not to shut off their consoles while the game is saving". Hey dipshit, a computer can be called a "console" too. It wasn't saying "turn off your PS3/Xbox safely", it just means consoles in general. Other reasons basically boiled down to Valve streamlining the game to run for a wide range of systems, and not perfecting the computer version to take advantage of the PC gamer's expensive steroid machine.

Gamers this generation (especially goddamn PC gamers) are a picky, whiney, bitchy little bunch. Let's break down PC gaming.

- Expensive to maintain: In comparison to a console purchase (of a few hundred dollars), gaming computers are at least, at least $1,000, and that's being very conservative and hoping on a "half off/20%" off deal on your purchase. Add the cost of updating the computer proper.

- Maintaining the damn thing at all: Is a bitch. Updates for the computer, updates for the game, updates for the that runs the game (steam, the game's initial start-up item at all). Updating games on a console is as easy as . Fucking, a. Talk about the times that videocards aren't compatible with or when you need to replace a part of the computer at all anyways.... IT'S ALL A FUCKING PAIN.

Tip: Don't PC game. It might give you the bestest greatest graphics of any graphics of any graphic, at the bestest speeds, but it's not worth the price, and if you care that much about the graphics of your games, you obviously aren't looking hard enough at the actual GAME.

The changes I've seen in games

2011-04-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

I recently crossed into adulthood. Legitimate, pay-your-bills, set-yourself-up-for-life, dont-have-kids-cause-that's-a-bad-idea adulthood. I was in the generation JUST after the NES and right AT the SNES. I played a decent amount of popular SNES titles, but wasn't nearly old enough to be good at any of them. I remember Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Country (and vaguely 2 and 3). I never got into Ninja Turtles but enjoyed Power Rangers (that god awful show). I played Goldeneye, Spyro, Final Fantasy 8, and some Crash Bandicoot. Resident Evil's 1, 2, 3 (and survivor, lulz). I dabbled into hardcore Mario Kart'ing (always slaying any family stupid enough to challenge me).

I've personally seen these changes in games:

- Many, many games are now fully voiced. Because gamers are generally lazy (or just, humanity as a whole), we don't like working that brain muscle to spend time reading. It's much faster to have something spoken to us rather than read it. Having a voiced game can really lead to an experience that "immerses" you. Although it can also lead to some really, really awkward moments in voice acting history. Ala, nearly any Final Fantasy game. In fact, FF is a perfect example. See when text dominated the screen, you could put whatever voice you wanted to any text paragraph. Hoooowever, now they're always voiced by whiney bitch-asses who never pronounce things properly for us english folk and who can't go more than a paragraph without some utterance of fear, a whimper or gasping of some kind. A jawdrop, one might call it. I LITERALLY attribute a large part of my being "nearly educated" in the English language to my dedication to games as a kid. Large amount of time were spent reading. I read a LOOOOT in Final Fantasy 8 (the game was fucking 4 discs people). I know that if Square Enix remade that game too, they'd replace the voices in MY head too, which, rationalized a lot of awkward writing, with whiney, gasping-for-breath bitch-asses that are more "lost and confused" than the Twilight cast.

- BOOM BOOM EXPLOSIONS! BOOM RUN! GOGOGO BOOM! It was really during the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation that consoles had enough power to handle these situations that I call "When the game industry met Redbull". Because it was technically impossible for developers at the time to create so much fast-paced, adrenaline-rush, high-octane explosion-gasm moments in a single game, they had to bring (what would today be a) 10-level down to a 3 or 4-level. They physically couldn't create the moments we recognize today, in real time (meaning it's being done AS you're playing it. You're physically interacting with the moments happening around you and it's not being done in a movie where you've no control). Resident Evil used to be a very very easy-to-get straightforward plot. There are zombies, you are not one, do not become one, survive and seek rescue. Noooow this is different. Nooow they're, "sorta-zombie-things". There is, "some, kind of virus" that makes them run not walk. Throw the nearest fucking knife-axe-dagger at you, and grow beerguts big enough to carry/adequately wield a chaingun. Do not rationalize this. Do not fall into the guise of what I like to call "bullshit". All this is, is weakstorytelling, to sauce your face off enough that you're blinded by all of the fantastic, fanatical, crazy other "bullshit" on screen. It's not ALL bad. The games are, sort-of, fun. But they certainly aren't "survival horror" anymore. Once again, this series of games has met Redbull and instead of trying to scare me to death with creepiness, they want to bore me to death with obscene enemies all the more while growing more and more over-the-top.

- Everything is online, everything. Split-screen is real rare. Even in one household, most people would rather slit their wrists than split their 64 inch television in half (which, boggles the mind). The Xbox pioneered this idea a lot faster and better than anyone else. Although I was at the time opposed to the console in general (for being a fucking brick), it was actually technically superior. It had a hardrive, it was able to connect online. Boom boom, done and done. No more memory cards, no more 4-players per screen nor that awkward "oh crap we're actually playing in the same room" feeling. Now you can play (or ignore your friends asking to play) far more impersonally. I've actually been in places where they play separated by floors, and each player has their own television, all eternet'd into a router. It was at this point I might've actually decided against the Xbox because I feared borg-like assimilation. Even more modern was the availability of XBL and PSN (friendcode what now Nintendo?). It's alllll streamlined. It's another form of AIM or Twitter. You login to see who's online and if they want to be playing games with you. This, is actually, weird. I used to have to CALL, to see if they wanted to come over (and, go through that whole awkward "stay for dinner" thing, and play a game. It was a lot worse if there was a Halo PARTY going down. Things got real at that point. Lots of soda, lots of pizza . . . lots of lost hours of sleep.

- 3D and Motion Controls aren't making this list cause they don't dominate games as a whole. They're a slice of games but not a majority.

Honestly I actually feel like games now make us more anti-social, more screwed, and stupider, all at once. Because you don't read you don't work your brain. Because you play online you tend to be more of an ass (through anonymity) and less social with people you ACTUALLY know because you feel like it's nearly the same thing, but it isn't. And we're screwed with the stupid DLC system where MOST developers overcharge on the DLC they put out to make a profit. They may undersell their game (and risk being seen as "more expensive"), and plan to make up on lost profit through DLC. Developers, if you want me to like your DLC, make it expensive, and make it chunky. I'm not buying horse armor, I'm not buying costume changes, I'm not buying shit that is ALREADY on the disc, and paying to unlock it, and I'm not paying to Pre Order from somewhere, to get something everyone else will eventually get anyways.

Be smart guys. Respect the games that dare to be different. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood comes to mind because it's multiplayer is so, so much different on so many ways (albeit, unbalanced to a fucking testicle caught in the smallest hint of a smoke bomb). Team Ico also merits mention simply because they don't try to sell you on explosions, gunfire, and strangely Rambo-esq version of Chris Redfield, fighting OTHER Rambo-esq zombies. BUY GAMES THAT AREN'T FPS...ERS!

GTA, thoughts in a narrative sense, a higher nature, and lots and lots of f-bombs

2011-04-03T04:03:00.000-07:00

I've spent a decent amount of time working on GTA4. I've not yet beaten it, and as I speak, I've actually spent a lot less time with that, a lot more with Blue Dragon, and recently resumed playtime from my recently-break(ed) game Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

The shimi:

- I feel a softspot in my heart for Niko. Which is ironic cause he spends most of his time in GTA doing illegal things, and immoral things. I play the game and feel like every choice is a renegade option, with certain options being far more "evil" than usual. (One "good option" was to not kill a snitch, another one is to NOT kill a hooker whom I paid good money...). Somehow I still want Niko to succeed. I'm thinking back to all the stories I hear him talk of with regards to some "war" he spent time in. How awful Russian jails were. A lot of this is done in some, strange dark humor. Precisely because it's "dark", I actually end up feeling bad for the guy. It tries to joke about it but, I can't help but feel bad for him. He also never actually vocalizes hate towards people. He'll get angry and frustrated, or try to intimidate people through threats, but he doesn't seem to partake (thus far) in "Kill X amount of innocent people to complete the quest!". Just seems out of his style, which gives him some legitimate character layers for me to love up on.

- Technically the game can be bothersome. Some textures don't load properly, combat is either uber easy or unforgiving, due to the "automatic lockon and murder" function, that is either (easy) or (wtf?). Still, this game is old. REAL old. This was an EARLY 360 title, so I respect it's age. It pushed boundaries for it's time (though it DOES lead one to wonder how these weren't pushed, when similar genre games are running on the same platform).

- I like the game, though it still has issues that stop the game from blowing away my experience like a hooker... that's a blowjob joke I'm sure. I'm REAL sure... don't question that asshole. Anyways- wait no, ALWAYS question the asshole. I meant.

Fuck it. Bottom line is, I like Niko, and the other characters are just a little too thin and outlandish for me to connect with or understand. They always have some sort of theme "Oh! She's the crazy black lady. The cliche, outlandishly soulfood one. Oh HE'S the outlandishly boombox-totting photo-taking one. Oh he's a drug guy, all the time, every time. Great". These characters are boring and I don't care about them.

BUT PAISLEY! "Yes?" GTA is all about the murdering and slaughtering and stealing cars and having the time of your life! Fuck the story!
To this "it's not about the story" argument, in any game, I say this. "For me it is". Games with out strong stories just fail to compel me. Characters that aren't engaging and intriguing and relatable, or at least interesting, just zone me out of the best games. If I don't care about whether a character is there or not, little is at stake for me to lose in a game, and I simply don't care. This is true for any game's story as well. Fun beat-em-up, smash-em-up, kill-x-amount in x seconds, are only so fun for so long. This genre, style, thing, is called "mindless". Mindless fun, mindless shooting, mindless button mashing. For me, this only keeps my attention for so long, afterwards I need something more to satisfy my thirst in a game.

This is all personal preference of course. Makes neither me nor you right or wrong, but for me, any mindless game, better have more meat to it's bone(r) in the form of strong characters and story.

I will also finally reference that Shadow of the Colossus was NOT strong in it's story because it was so heavily written and spelled so much out for everyone, but it in fact let a LOT up for interpretation. A brilliant story doesn't need to be so heavily planned, prepped and produced, just well thought about.

HAPPY 64TH POST

2011-03-25T02:55:00.000-07:00

drunk

I let my little brother play GTA4

2011-03-24T05:03:00.001-07:00

Okay now admittedly, and I really, really don't censor, but admittedly, at first I told him no. I said to myself "wooow, the store's called "Jizzy Jims" and, there's all this spanking and, whipping and, it's just a bit much.", BUT, after telling him no he dropped me a "you know I've played this before right?". Okay well, no, I didn't know you'd played it before asshat...

It wasn't that he'd played it before that made me draw my guard down. He could've easily missed a lot of good, hidden bits in that game (and few games hide "good bits" as well as GTA4). What changed my mind was thinking back to being his age. I remember learning about how hot Natalie Portman was, and how Google Images was amazing. This wasn't something a game had to teach me (nor, at the time, could it). These were things I knew naturally.

Now, Fox News might want you to believe that the next thing this 10 year old's gonna do is, go jack someone out of their car, right before they down a 40 and have sex with a hooker, but I neither believe he will do that now, nor in 10 nor 20 years. If he does I'm certainly not blaming GTA4 on it.

But my reasoning goes even deeper. It's not JUST that he WON'T do these things, but personally, in America we're pretty censored about the whole "sex" thing. It's like everyone knows a secret, but you don't find out about it til' you look at porn... or talk to someone who did (LADIES!). See, Austin (as we'll refer to him), is GOING to learn about "fag", "asshat" (you're welcome Austin), "gaywad", "cumguzzler", and, whatever else words you wanna make by putting together two sex-related (in ANY way) words (no seriously... "asstongue"... you "dickvagina").

It doesn't matter how closeted I make that kid, if he goes to a public school, he'll find out about it. And lemme tell ya, being informed on the subject makes you a lot better off than not. I was pretty educated in most areas but during 5th grade I thought a "dildo" was a mexican food item (still kinda sounds like one). I just, don't see damaging content in GTA. Sure there is graphic content, there is sexuality, swearing, it's, adult. But it's also kind of arrogant to tie it's appropriation to age. Some kids are exposed to it daily, such as my brother. Some kids it's NOT appropriate for, but these kids are (generally) the closeted "this-isn't-fun-to-me" type. If you find the game fun, you find it fun, and you can handle what you're looking at.

At lemme just, CLEAR this up. For the people who say "what if they find it fun, AND can't handle it", to you I say "they exist, but it is not the game's fault. They shouldn't play it, and there are adult games out there that shouldn't be played by everyone, but my brother isn't one of em', and chances are your brother isn't one either. Kids might be immature with their words (nigger and faggot will be tossed around a lot), but it doesn't mean they don't understand and comprehend what they're playing, and can't see the difference between this virtual world, and reality."

Done

What's with all the fucking 2D sidescrolling platformers?

2011-03-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

How's that for a title? Pretty self explanatory that one is eh?

Braid, VVVVVV, Trine, Castle Crashers, the Misadventures of PB Winterbottom.

This is an especially strange time for me as a gamer. I'm supposed to enjoy these games, right? Don't get me wrong, I liked em' all, and for pretty different reasons for each, but I also feel like I'm kinda getting cheated. >_> Like, secretly, all games are moving towards this 2D sidescrolly world.

Obvious all games cannot, but more and more these games are making a lot of money, and bigger names are going all-in, high risk. My problem with this is that there is similarity between the stagnant genre of FPS games as there are with these fuggin' sidescrolling games. They almost always try to have some kind of deep plot-driven experience on the surface, but in the end your goal is just to get to the right side of the screen, you can only compel so much from me with this level of interaction (of which Braid probably reached my peak interest, that coy strumpet).

When developers look for funding, they have to sell an idea. And it's a LOT harder to create the demonstration with which to sell your image on a complex, 3 dimension (NOT 3D) game with sophistication than it is with on a simple 2D game (let alone, once you've sold them on the idea, to FOLLOW THROUGH and make it).

I remember games on the SNES, and I remember Mario, Donkey Kong, and Metroid. These games inspired us, and were the small roots of what the game industry is, and will be. But are we devolving back into such simple ideas? For every GOOD 2D sidescrolling platformer there are 30 games just like it hidden away in the "shit" section of the game market.

This still just links back to our jobs as gamers to support developers that make GOOD games, and take risks. Don't buy a bad game just because they tried hard, but don't buy the next biggest thing either, or you'll end up playing Castle Crasher Clones OR Call of Duty games for life. Be patient, read up on games, learn about them, and decide carefully.

As a sidenote: With the revival of Donkey Kong in his more traditional "go right go right", role, why does Nintendo see fit to make EVERY game bright and colorful? I kinda liked playing Donkey Kong because it was a completely different setting. The jungle was not bright and cute and wondrous like the Mushroom Kingdom. I already know that this is just up to one's preferences, and I'm not saying I'm right, that it should work like . But I was really excited to play a Nintendo game that wasn't nearly-fucking-cell-shaded. Then I did -_-

Hai world

2011-03-18T05:26:00.000-07:00

I'll spare you a horrid story (one I'm quite over with anyways), and just say that my early life as a kid was, interesting. In a nutshell, I did a lot of moving, and really liked videogames for two real reasons. First, it was constant and reliable. Honestly as a kid I consider myself pretty happy, as far as kids go. But with all of the moving, it was nice to go back to a world that was right where I left it previously. Second, it put me in the roles of someone else, typically a hero. I, liked being someone else. I though of myself as both scrawny and boring, two things that were simply, not exciting. People didn't want to be me, they wanted to be that heroic guy saving people and doing good things.

Today, being 20, and not 10, I game for similar reasons. I don't really give two shits about what I look like anymore, but I still love to put myself in the shoes of someone living another life. I'm at the point in my life where everyone that knows how life works has their shit straight and I don't. It's frustrating, scary, embarrassing, and a few thousand other things at once. I don't know what I'm supposed to do next month, next year, while Ezio has a plan for the next hour or four and more.

My life is consistently put into situations where people become close friends with me and then leave. I don't know if it's full disclosure and complete honesty that scares people, but I expect it, and I give it entirely. I've my vices, definitely. I can be needy and, clingy (and Lord knows I fucking hate clingy people too), sometimes I don't know when to shut up, but I also feel like I've never done anything to deserve less than 100% honesty and commitment from my friends. I try to never ever lie, and if I have, I will tell them about it. I want to be reliable and trustworthy, I want to be someone people go to because they admire me.

People are designed to need other people. Not everyone marries, or even dates, but human social interaction is simply built into us. Without it, we go crazy, we die early, get sick easier, become depressed faster. Think about it, argue all you want that you're fine without other people (I know there are people like you out there!) but daily, how often do you interact with people, and WANT to be talked to or with? How many times daily do we exchange text messages, emails, facebook shit, twitters, and whatever? Often, nearly hourly, maybe more for some people.

And I face a stage in my life where I feel unwanted by most of the folks around me, and, somehow someway, gaming helps me relieve that. I truly deeply love videogames. I love the creativity that people 1,000 miles away, evoke from me, and how I can actually care about digital characters that I play and the story I'm a part of. I'm particularly cut off from movies in this way because I know exactly how a movie will play out once I've seen it the first time. It will always, always be the same, nothing will surprise me, nothing will change. Games, give that opportunity.

Currently, I sit in mah room and, would like to have a car to drive somewhere, anywhere really. I don't, so, I want to get a lil' drunk, really. But I cannot. So instead, I want to sleep, but I know that will just bring me to tomorrow faster, where I will go right back into life just as fast. It's just depressing, and it weighs on me emotionally all the time.

I feel like a shitty vampire novel/movie/facebook fan page but I just want one thing from someone in the world that isn't family so as not to be biologically tied to me and therefore nearly-contractually obligated to me as well: I want to feel like someone in the world desires my company for more than what they need done at the time. I'm sick of helping people move stuff, clean stuff, get school stuff done, come into work. I want people to invite me out to places, ask me if I have time for something. I'd like to feel like a person and be desired sometime. I'd like late-night texts answered, I'd like phone calls returned, conversations finished, I'd like to be a remembered friend. Right now I'm not.

Thnx world okaybai.

Mr. Craig A Leg

2011-03-17T04:09:00.000-07:00

Some of you that quite inconsisently pop on over to this here blog know that, well, I know most of you through mutual fandom of G4. After being on a few (very small) bits and making a short appearance on the show to talk about World of Warcraft and how it's bored the life out of me, a very, very small little, life of people that "recognize me on the commercials" has erupted. Thus, if I plan on keeping my conscience clean and my life as a gamer well documented, I've committed to updating this blog here regularly (though not so much as to spam... on purpose that is.)

However, there is another wonderful gentleman, whom has appeared on AOTS in a much larger segment smelling much better and dressing twelve times as dashing, and that is sir Craigaleg. I tend to avoid linking to pretty much anything 1: to be consistent and 2: because well, I figure it'd be nice to just have a blog you can sit and read to get the idea with out being flashed pretty images and videos and navigating around the world before coming back to finish the article. Having said that, I hope this article makes up for it. Gotta make up for lost ground on that linking, thing.

Having said that, Craig, as we'll refer to him, actually keeps his blog updated. And, he looks much, much snazzier doing it than I. Give it a look over, check out a few games that peak your interest. Leave him some comments. Tell him to return my phonecalls, I don't care. I do try to keep up with likeminded people that have interesting thoughts and opinions on gaming subjects. While I don't really "review" games persay, if you're looking for just that, Craig is a wonderful read that will give boners to the men, and probably-maybe the women too.

But seriously call me Craig.

- <3 Paisley ...

My Personal "view" on "reviewing"

2011-03-14T23:06:00.000-07:00

I've been finding out more and more throughout my days that I'm unlike many people that also enjoy playing games. I realize I can be pretty cynical about any particular game. I highlight their faults with a very large very bright highlighter and continually find new ways to say "This game sucks because _____".

You see while I don't think that gaming will, "die out" (and anyone that uses that term to describe what game are or will be, is an idiot, do not listen to them, ever, at all...). Ahem, while I don't see games dying out, I guess I realize that my subconscious is meticulously forewarning me that games more and more appear to be pretty similar. Before the Xbox and PS2, games were pretty evenly spread. I blame this on fear really. Developers feared appearing too much like their competitors while today, they fear looking too fucking boring because their characters aren't toting around an automatic weapon of some kind with the latest in laser sightery and a grenade launcher for good measure.

Now, particularly when it comes to reviewing games I find myself analyzing all of the little things. All of the little details. Did the main character just try to murder someone? Could they have not murdered them had I not wanted them too? Why did they do it? Would I have? Are the other characters reacting to such an event? And it's juuust at about the point of "other characters" that games begin to degrade for me. Often I find other characters in a game to simply be character models with a pre-recorded line or two. Again, this is why I loved ME1 so damned much. I could figure out how characters related not just to me, but to others as well, by engaging them in conversation. ME was the first game I'd played where the characters were so thoroughly thought out that my brain gave up trying to dissect every line. At the end of the game I just wanted to stop Sovereign.

More importantly, I find that I deeply deeply fall madly in love with games that fight whatever gaming fad shows up. I'm really excited for Brink even though it IS just a shooter, but part of that stems from my love of the visuals in Mirror's Edge. Splash Damage (the fucker's responsible for Brink) actually HAVE a video up talking about the art design. The artist actually had to ARGUE to put the color in. Previously it'dve been another semi-colored, mostly-boring, all colors in the catalogue of browns and grays, shooter.

Point is, I found that I loved Shadow of the Colossus cause it was so fucking unique and different. And I find so few games that try something new. I get that ME didn't play like Halo or CoD, BUT THE WRITING IN EITHER GAME MAKES ME (Mass Effect) LOOK LIKE SHAKESPEAREAN WORK! Resident Evil decided to take one up the anal cavity for the team when "zombies" turned into "really fast alien things in Africa that wield gatling guns and electric tasers with alien in the mouth, things". The game was as fun as it sounded. See now I'd REALLY respect Capcom if they went the route of Alan Wake, where it wasn't PERFECT, but you could SEE the inspiration. The uses of black and shadow, fog and lighting (or lack thereof). Resident Evil just wants to "BOOM BOOM BOOM! ZOMBIES MAN! RUN GO GO GO! HURRY! SURIVE! THE HORROR! IT'S SERIOUS! GO GO GO!". Again, just as fun as it sounded.

Why though? WHYYYY AM I LIKE THIS? Well I don't know, nor do I care. I'm honestly just glad that I am. And, you should be more like me, but, with better comma usage. The reason being that when games that take a chance, aren't supported by sales, the people that fund these developers, won't. This is a problem. Unless you want to play Call of Duty Black Ops for the REST OF YOUR LIFE, turn off your computer, go down to your local Gamestore (not Gamestop), and buy Blue Dragon, as new as you can.

SotC and Ico PS3 HD release delayed

2011-03-08T17:52:00.000-08:00

Per G4's Leah Jackson, the SotC and Ico HD pack for PS3 has been delayed from late this year until early next year. The article goes on to argue about the lack of updates and information regarding their next game, The Last Guardian. I want as much as the next person to know everything about anything Team Ico. But the best part about Team Ico is that they've always risen above pressure.

People always reference Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as examples of games as art. Yet Fumita Ueda distinctly opposes this view, even at the frustration of many of his fans. But this is Team Ico's strength. Their integrity.

No matter how badly our mouths water for information on both The Last Guardian OR the SotC / Ico pack, d'you think they'll budge? Nope. They're known to defy traditional gameplay and using exciting, shooting, in-your-face shit that sells in a trailer. It makes them original, and one of my favorite developers today.

All of my games, where I am with them, what I do with them

2011-03-01T22:50:00.000-08:00

Alan Wake: Currently, bored, stuck at the stupid part where I rely on an AI to protect me (lol yeah that'll happen rite!?). Game is alright, not really scary but, atmospheric I guess. I mostly find myself trying to fight the scary black smoke effect by going AT it, and just finding the physical mountains that act as ACTUAL boundaries for the levels, rather than the black smokey effects.

Super Street Fighter 4: I suck at this game. That is all.

Mass Effect 2: Haven't played it since the last DLC came out. The DLC's been more fun than the game itself cause they've been meaty pieces of storyness that I've enjoyed experiencing. A strange counterpart to the sidequests in the main game itself which I found boring and uninspiring.

Borderlands: Again, haven't played it in a very long time. Though I actually enjoy this game. It has the WoW factor of gun stat leveling the and the DLCs have been pretty good really. The game has it's own tone and feel which is unique for a shooter today. It avoids hyper realism and instead grasps at a comic world of gross humor and indecency, two things I'm well known for.

Call of Duty Black Ops: Blops (as I've seen it named) has felt a lot more like an appropriate MW2. It's less up it's own ass and feels a BIT more simplistic, while still providing the depth that advanced players look for, especially in regards to customization of playercard and camos, gun sights, etc. I found it pretty straight forward and fun. Though lately, it's been pretty bland and more repetitive than a bitch in heat. How does that euphemism work? Dunno, fuck you.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: I played this in two parts. First I fell in love with the multiplayer, but then I fell in love with the story, so I usually end up in daily sprees of one or the other. The multiplayer was fun but a lot of things felt really cheap in the game. Smoke bombs are pretty guilty of being overly easy to use and hard to avoid. As well as nullify (or whatever the fuck it's called) that affects a ridiculously large portion of the players area deeming them entirely, useless. Seems a LITTLE overpowered. The story has been fun, though a few 100% parts are annoying. For instance, telling me to jump through hoops 1 - 10 with out messing up is pretty easy. But I start hoop 5 over (restart), eventually finish ALL hoops without issue, and then DON'T get my reward because at some point, I messed up, is a little cheap. Thus, taking a break.

Blue Dragon: A new purchase for me, I've literally barely scratched the surface, so I'll elaborate more later. Still I'm excited to play a legitimate JRPG that isn't so traditionally stuck in the clichés of creepy girly manwomen and women who always rely on some dude to make a woman of her.

EA and Activision: Can go fuck themselves, is the end of that summary.

Japanese Game Developers

2011-02-19T10:15:00.001-08:00

I'm pretty late in joining the bandwagon that says "Japanese game development is dead". Mostly because I've not played a whole hell of a lot of japanese developed games (cause I don't trust them fuckers, Square Enix is all but dead to me). But I also feel like people aren't entirely right (I respect Team Ico and Kojima).

A friend and I were chatting up about this one night at work (I was actually really spouting off at him after finding out he's played Final Fantasy 13 but NOT Shadow of the Colossus). I grew up on Japanese games, but very few. Nintendo was big, Square was big, Capcom was big. In fact I can't think of many American games I played. *shrug* I played Spyro. Anyhoo. I almost think of the changes that have taken place in these game series', are also nearly-literally taking place in the developer as well.

I see Square shift from having borderline-boring characters (early FF games were infinitely better but I can agree Quistis had the personality of a wall), to having overly-redundant, ridiculous, girlish man-children for their male lead roles. Female romantic roles are stereotypical small, meek, helpless girls (fuck you Snow and whatever that bitch was that was frozen in "Square Enix plot-tool mystery crystal"). I just attribute this to Square losing touch with it's fanbase and trying harder and harder to please the same crowd that likes the "style" of Kingdom Hearts. Which, by the way, is by no means a bad game, but I'd hardly call their characters "compelling".

One of my favorite games as a kid was Resident Evil 2. I loved spending SO much time in the Police Station and the game, continued, on! Today I'm sure I'd spend much less time in said station (I'm a far better gamer today), but still. The impact was felt and the time spent finding keys and solving puzzles, it was just so much fun. It felt slower, and much more like a survival horror game, then simply a survival adventure game (which are in fact two different things). I've said this before (perhaps only in person) but today's Resident Evils are of a new genre of scary. It's no longer a lingering, creepy feeling that there may be a spider above you that you cannot see (due to a static camera, for better or worse), but is instead now a "Run you're being chased! Hit the rights button combos to avoid dying in this movie!"- feeling. It's not, bad, but it's just not the same. They want to compete in the same high-octane fast paced world as CoD or other big names that will sell at LEAST x amount of dollars on their genre alone (shooters will inherently outsell music games, at least in my lifetime). Honestly in the studio, I feel as though the conversation went thusly: "Hey, RE has guns, but I wanna "reinvent" (i.e give me a big, fat middle finger) "I wanna "reinvent" the series. We're gonna make it faster, scarier, and better than ever!" And what Capcom fails to understand, is that while this worked in RE4, it was also at this time that RE stopped being horror, and was more, adventure, or excitement, or whatever you wanna call it. It worked in RE4 because this was the first time we got to actually look around and it helped us experience the world around us. BUT, it also turns out to be a shortly lived ride. While I enjoyed it at first, absurd characters like Capt. Crunch (short guy in a would-be pirate outfit), just got old. Then they take you through so many different landscapes and settings that it just begins to feel fake. I'm constantly reminded that I'm playing a game where the goal is to put me in as many different places as possible to make the game feel bigger. This is a problem in RE5 too. And this will probably continue to be a problem on the series.

Not all of Capcom is dead however (they're quite large). I've heard astounding reviews from Marvel vs Capcom 3 (although that's not saying much on a side scrolling fighting game that needs no story). I can't say much more because I'm terrible at fighting games like these, AND I've not played it, but I credit them for doing a simple idea and doing it differently (and well). It helped make me understand how fighting games like that could be different (I try to play SSF4 and fail).

Nintendo (probably the least dead of the three I'll write about), is still doing alright. I attribute this to the fact that Miyamoto is very involved in what Nintendo creates. I still "feel" his watchful eye in each Nintendo game that is released. Nintendo still puts out quality games, and they can probably be a lesson to other developers about how to age right. He (Miyamoto) has had to deal with the demands of consumers which can be summed up as "making more sophisticated games that don't feel dated". Mario was a pretty simple idea. Run to the right side of the screen until you hit the flagpole. To think that he'd still be putting out games (and selling them) with this same idea is impressive. And I think it's because Miyamoto sees what he'd want to play, what today's kids want to play, and knows how to put it into a videogame proper. I really hate the idea of swinging around a Wiimote anytime I want to slash something in Skyward Sword (Zelda), but seeing Shigeru play the game makes me feel like a kid again. He's so intimately involved with his games that his wife is probably a little jealous (I kid hard). In a world where developers are constantly pressured to evolve, change, make things bigger, and brighter, and more complex, and more betterer, and more bigger . . . he does it, just right. Not enough to alienate us (now) older folk. Yet just enough where I can see the changes made, and appreciate the work, even if I'm a little too old for Mario now.

How I fell in love with Team Ico

2011-02-15T01:31:00.000-08:00

Shadow of the Colossus. I found it in Costco for $20, randomly. I never heard of Team Ico, and what I knew of Ico, I didn't care for. I thought "hah, yeah, that looks pretty fucking boring". Dude, Shadow was SO good. Enemies are finally BIG, you are actually SMALL. You SCALE them and just MURDER them as best you can manage. You get flung off, thrown, tossed about. This felt SO real. This is something that I'd never experienced before. As fun as dodging Ganon is and shooting him with a light arrow, or shooting some random terrorist in slow motion is, it simply doesn't compare to scaling a giant for 5-10 minutes, to TRY and do something to hit, while trying to not get hurt.

I'm not about to review the game, but I want to stress how great Team Ico is. You'll never see them "scaling back the colossi to make it more accessible to a wider audience". Team Ico has an idea of what they want in their games, they've convictions, and they stick to them. This is what I need in games. As much as I love Bioware, given ME2, I see them following the same plan for ME3 simply cause EA thinks "It'll appeal to more people if it's easier to play".

Shadow had difficult moments as the game went on. This is called difficulty curve. ME1 had it too. As the game went on, you gained more abilities and faced bigger, tougher enemies, and had to know how to effectively use your character to survive. In ME2, the idea behind the difficulty curve was "make the game pretty linear, and make the player have to use more shots to finish an enemy, this is a difficulty curve".

I look at the trailer for "The Last Guardian" and I'm left unimpressed. BUT, I know what kind of quality to expect from Team Ico. Trying to lead some dumb princess out of a maze world (Ico) doesn't sound fun on paper, and shouldn't sell well, but that game spawned a huge fanbase. They're now known for quality. And THIS is why they're good. They don't rely on shooting, explosions, big vehicles, crazy actors. Team Ico uses creativity and unique ideas, and for this I salute them.

To Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox Live, and support staff of all kinds

2011-01-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

Alright, here is the pickle I'm in. I've been playing on the xbox for about 3-4 years now. I've had xbox live for about two of them. Now, while registering for said xboxlive profile, the emails I attempted to register with would not register as adult ages (how they know the ages of a gmail account is beyond me). This was not a problem, as I was crafty (sarcasm) and just MADE a new email to register my freshly new xbox live status with. After it registered as an adult, I was all set. Here was my problem. In short, I forgot the password to this email. I did actually NEED to login into it until I realized that you NEED to do this to erase credit cards from the console.

No seriously, I can actually login to that xbox right now, and purchase whatever I want from it, on any credit card that has been used on it, ever, with no password request or anything. If you have put a credit card on my xbox before (Rockband heavy), there is literally nothing I can do right now.

Now, I know this is the internet, but I promise (listen to my damn phone calls), I'm a swell guy. I'm not gonna start flaming, bashing, or attacking anyone, and I never have, but guys, I NEED to switch the email on my gamertag. I understand that this cannot simply be done without logging into the email that is in use right now, but I have gone through this process, over the years, three (now four) times now.

The latest time seemed the most promising. I got into a private-secret forum to post my problem, but I'm starting to hit snags. I can provide

- my social security to prove who I am
- the credit card number, and name, and address, of the account owner
- the addresses (or very, very damn close) or where I've lived previously
- addresses to places I've logged into before
- records of incidents that have happened on my xbox / to my account (RRoD's, gamertag changes).

Here's a few problems I had going through the normal process.
1: The answer to the security question will not go through, for the lovely lady helping me over the phone, nor for me. "Everett" OR "Everett, WA" could be the answer, but "Marysville, WA" could also work.
2: The team responsible for calling me the owner, or someone else, seems to determine that I'm not who I say I am. Guys, I have paid, for this service, consistently. I STILL have records of MY CREDITS CARD, on my XBOX... Normally these guys wouldn't be a problem, because I totally understand that security is a big deal, but I am providing some SERIOUS ID and now I'm starting to get the same copy/paste "I-didn't-actually-look-at-what-you-said-there" responses "At this time we were unable to" etc etc.
3: Speaking of, the ACTUAL info they want me to provide, does not, exist. They want emails I've written out before on the email, but it has NEVER, BEEN, USED. There are no subject lines to this email, there are no friends, there is not (spam aside) email in the inbox. It has never made an email out to anyone. There IS no personal info pertaining to the email address, to GIVE to anyone.

And it's at this point that I just feel I'm hitting a brick wall. The people over the phone (nice as they are) seem to be in MY boat as well. They just don't know WHAT to do, when THEIR systems are locking THEM out too. I KNOW, that at the end, there is a guy, responsible to "hit the button" to send out that password reset. I need him (or her) to do this. I don't know what else I can do to tell you who I am (I'm certainly not doing this publicly on my blog).

SQUARE ENIX HATES YOUR SOULZZZ

2011-01-27T04:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I tried to continue playing FF13, again. So far this has been my experience.

- There is a long corridor riddled with enemies
- Get through said corridor by whatever means
- Destroy boss
- SIT THROUGH AGONIZING CUTSCENE FILLED WITH DIALOGUE THAT IS HARDER TO LISTEN TO WITHOUT SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING SUICIDE THAN THE BOSS THE PRELUDED THIS SCENE.
- There is now another corridor, also riddled with enemies
- ...you get the picture

No seriously, I almost hate FF13. It's almost like the Star Wars prequels. I don't know why I'm playing it, I just, almost have to finish it all the way through to fully understand how bad it is.

My initial need to try playing more of it came in the form of excitement via a cutscene I saw on a website featuring most of the gfs fighting together in some sort of race (whatever, FF8 was my main game, so those huge goliath monsters they summon to fight with them, yeah I call em' gfs). Gorgeous movie-scenes seem to be Square's strength, but like the games they've made lately, strong dialogue or a story that is understandable seem to be lacking.

So, then I remembered where I'd left off. I previously spent time going through corridor after, fucking, corridor, killing foos, takin' names, the us (how do you spell "us" in "usual"? Yush?). I had put up with the absolutely horrendous script (there is actually a typo in the game, a legit, 100% "you-seriously-mispelled-that?" typo) until now, and done my best to find my iPod or a sharp object anytime characters started talking, but then they put me at a part where (literally) they tell me "now, these guys are far higher level than you, but they're slower too, so, try to avoid em?"

"Fuck that!" I said! I was determined to be better than anything in my way. Well, the first fucker downed me fast enough, and fed up I threw away the controller. Alas I was having better luck this time. I made my was through, avoiding the beasties this time. Then a cutscene

"Fuuuuuck that!" I said! I was determined to avoid this cutscene like a whore. Then the black guy starts talking about his son. "Oh" I thought, "this could be a big deal". I sit and listen intentionally. He goes on about how his son is either dead, or encased eternally in crystal. Shit just got real man. "It's quite a pickle heh" he says.

0_0 0_0 0_0 wut?

Was he talking about how sucky it was that he was stuck in the rain outside? Or was he, talking about his son? Cause, if I were talking about my son, who was either dead or eternally gone from me forever either way, I certainly wouldn't call it "quite a pickle". Especially if I don't yet know, whats happened to him.

I just don't get how these characters are so, fucking, stupid. FF13 should probably be rewarded for having the largest roster of characters I've ever hated in a single game. Hope is a whiney asshole, Lightning is a bitch, Snow is some 30-year old, in love with a 12 year old (and also never says anything that doesn't make me want to hurt the next living thing near me). That black haired bitch with the spear looks kinda cool though, I'm still hoping she doesn't turn out to be a cunt.

Anyways anyways. I was playing the game, when, things just overwhelm me. Somehow, the, pink haired, dumb bitch, (fuck it, Vanille) starts whining, and crying, because, she somehow, infected the black-guy's kid, to make him a luhsee (who the hell knows).

There were a few things that just, started, being asked in my own head
1: How did she do that?
2: Is this disease contagious?
3: Is it a disease?
4: What happens to people plagued by this disease?
5: How did she happen to be near his son? What lead to this happening?
6: What is a fallsee and a luhsee?
7: Which one is bad?
8: Why?
9: Which one is good?
10: Why?
11: Why do all of these characters seem more appropriately placed in a Soap Opera where everyone is somehow related than in a Final Fantasy game?

I JUST DON'T GET THIS GAAAAME!

12: Where are the towns?
13: Why can't I talk to people?
14: Why is it that when I walk down a sewer tunnel, there is no left-right direction and instead I'm stuck walking a very narrow up/down path?
15: Why does this game feel like it's holding my hand the whole time?
16: What is "shielding your team from enemy "ire"? Did you mean fire?
17: Why do characters in these games pronounce names horribly, horribly strange? Isn't Tidus pronounced "tye-diss" or "tye-duss"? How is "tea-diss" an accurate pronunciation?
18: Did you force the american actors to say these names like this?
19: Did they fight back or argue with you?
20: If not, were they just so incompetent and without such a backbone that they didn't care what they were saying as long as you paid them?

Square just feels like it's been giving me the middle finger, up my anal cavity, since this game came out. I feel like there's a clear correlation between their lack of connection to their audience (at least, in America), to their stubborn inability to work with their loyal, dedicated fanbase with their old (and far, far better) works (C&D orders at wonderfully exciting remakes of Chrono Trigger? Fuck you Square, fuck you).

Sup guys?

2011-01-19T23:09:00.000-08:00

To the like, 3 people (fuck that's generous) that have actually read my blog, "Heeeey sup? How you doin'?". I guess I just wanted to point out that (for stupid reasons) I had to read my first few blog posts, and I came across a sentence of mine that said "Please, G4, don't ask the demographic you go after to treat ladies like the music industry treats there."

LOL

Either I was mad, or I was illiterate, or both...

It gave me giggles, that was all!

Not bitching for once

2010-12-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

I realized once G4 awarded Mass Effect 2 their GOTY award (Game of the Year, for the not-game savvy), that a lot of what they said rung true for me in why I love the series (though I DID feel a lot of what they said applied more to ME1 than 2, namely regarding the story). So, for once, I'ma give Mass Effect the respect it deserves. No bitching.

1: The cast
The Mass Effect cast is excellent. I've cared for each and every character in that game, from the obscure, less known (sup Fist?), to the hugely popular (Ashley? Garrus? Wrex?). There were even characters I DIDN'T care about the first time (Legion), that after playing through twice (or three times) I realized, have depth to them I hadn't explored before because I simply wrote them off as boring blank faces.
Equally as important as the characters are the voices that speak for them. They're given life by the voice actors and they do an absolutely superb job. I didn't think someone like Seth Green would be a good choice for the game. How wrong I was. Joker is a beloved character in the series. His dry wit and fearless (albeit, lax) attitude in the face of death has always made him a ME badass.

2: The story
The story made a few good choices. It tells that we found technology once we got to Mars that helped evolve and shape our own technology ahead many many years. This did two things. First, it helped draw us into the world by taking Earth as it is now (today's times), and pushing us into the world there, in Mass Effect, by saying we found something on Mars. Second it made sense within the story, that Protheans would leave artifacts behind, that someone (of course, us) would eventually find it, and use it, to save us. This is just the lovechild of great writing.

3: The world
This is probably something understated often, but the actual world of Mass Effect is a vibrant, thoughtful, intelligent sliver of insight into the future. Alien life abounds. Some friendly, some, very unfriendly. All foreign. Laser panels, sliding doors, flying cars, forcefields, elevators (er, wait), scanners, laser guns, stealth systems, relays that give warp-like speeds. The world just, suffocates you with it's size and life. Nothing about the world DOESN'T look futuristic. Each race has a distinct style of speech and clothing design, while never looking much like a neighbor-race.

These are three main monuments that hold up the ME series against other games today. The cast, the story, and the world. Each is strong, in every game. And this is only a short summary of why the series is so fecking awesome.

Hindsight 20/20: Looking back at Kingdom Hearts

2010-11-28T14:55:00.000-08:00

Kingdom Hearts came onto the "scene" when I was like, 12 or something. I thought I was going to play a game for kids. It was a game that put Donald Duck, Mickey, and Goofy as main characters so, come on, everyone had to've been thinking the same thing right mate?

In a lot of ways it really is a kids game at heart. It plays on silly juvenile romantics about "rescuing the princess", "two people meant for each other since childhood", and awkward love triangles...
But surprisingly it also carried a weird, eerily dark undertone to it. This was usually due to "eery dark undertones" being the nature of the evil characters in the game (Malificent, Jafar, and Captain Hook come to my memory hole right now). It also brought back the inner kid in me. It was like PLAYING my old Disney movies I watched as a kid, but THIS time ALL the villains are working TOGETHER.

And, that kind of defined Kingdom Hearts. Creatively pulling from Disney's library and catalog of villains and heroes, while creating new, (while still fairly outlandish... Sora's shoes were bigger than his head) fresh characters to propel and carry the story that is set in a new world that is unfamiliar. It worked.

Buuuut Kingdom Hearts just feels different for me now. And I blame it all on Roxas. It was since him, that Kingdom Hearts has mistaken "creepy, dark and mysterious" for scenes of characters contemplating their existence. In Kingdom Hearts 1 things kinda made sense, at least in the overall scheme of things. What do I mean? Well it was pretty straightforward. Heartless are creatures that come after people who have hearts. Kill them, find the evil boss overlord hancho of that world, kill him, seal the "hole" (Keyhole), stop Heartless from entering. Do this enough times, they won't have an army to compete with you and you've ALSO saved worlds.

More or less, this is what the objective of Kingdom Hearts WAS. Although they did put this romance sideplot (lulz) but I honestly couldn't give a second fuck about Kairi (I really hate people pushing romance plots because "they love each other". They look fucking 12, they hardly have pubes). I think once Square saw that people really embraced the art and style (and god damn whiney attitudes) of Roxas, they EMBRACED it and frankly, made the game turn emo.

I'm used to Kingdom Hearts having intro segment-training-preemptive segments longer than the rest of the game it's prepping you for, but GAH Birth by Sleep is like reading the journal of a Twilight fan in a theater, or those youtube chicks. Happy-go-lucky Sora, the kid with an innocent heart and silly attitude has been replaced by Anakin Skywalker wannabe Roxas and it's fucking annoying.

Solution: Kill Roxas.

Now I'm gonna go cut myself and drink the pain away, peace.

Fallout New Vegas and all that other glitchy shit

2010-10-23T23:09:00.000-07:00

First of all, I did NOT realize it's been like, September 25th since I last put something down on internet paper. Let me excuse that by saying 1: so far this does not pay bills, Pizza Hut is, so, working at Pizza Hut > updating my lame-ass blog and 2: it's actually just been kinda boring in the gaming world. I'm not horribly interested in Dead Rising 2 (which is not to say I'm NOT interested in it (nor that I WON'T write about it), but the interest needed to make me spend $60 of my strapped-as-tis wallet, is simply not there.

SECOND (of all), wtf Fallout? BUT, moreover, wtf reviewers?

They complain and complain and complain that so much is left out of games and saved for DLC in a later release, they get all upset that games are not ready to go as-is out of the box, YET THEY RATE THESE GAMES EXTREMELY WELL FOR HOW GODDAMN BROKEN THEY ARE -_- I'm not one to use Metacritic to judge the quality of the game, but I will certainly use it to judge the quality of the reviews...
As of right now, the game has an average Metacritic rating of 84, it's in the green, the clear, the good-zone, the "buy-it" section. Why? Actually let me role-reverse here and ask "why not?"

"Because the game, when released, was so horribly fucking broken that it was as if they cut the budget down by removing everyone in the QA department and relocated them to SquareEnix's "moan" department."

Moreover, I know this might blow people's head wide open but not EVERYONE has the internet and not EVERYONE will be able to update this game. And even MOREOVER, a lot of these reviews are written with the idea that it is patchable, or it WILL get patched. Dudes, stop, excusing, laziness. It gets old, especially from the perspective of the people that READ your reviews, and don't have phat ca$h to spend on games. Calling a game "horribly, inexcusably" buggy", is not a segway to giving it a 4/5. What if the game isn't patched? What if (because of the nature of New Vegas vs Fallout 3), THIS game simply, can't be patched together to function properly? ORRR what if it DID go through the QA process, and this was THE best they could fix this mess?

These are all assumptions/ponderables and dreamclouds, but they're all very viable and really annoying to deal with. Simply, if this were NOT Fallout, if it were some strange, foreign-game in "unknown-world", it would've done worse. But because of the name, you excuse the problems, the glitches, the brokeness, and just assume "it'll get better, we'll let it slide, they'll do something about it".

Well stop, judge a game, as-is, upon release. If they patch it, they patch it. If they patch it, update your review, but for God's sake, stop assuming something is patchable, especially when it deals in a game that is as broken as Fallout New Vegas was.

(ps: still playing through it, and I swear, I'm not nearly as negative on the game as I appear to be at the damn glitches. There are actually many things I like about the game BETTER than Fallout 3. I'll write more about it once I've finished playing it :D til' then, buona notte!)

A bit about me

2010-09-15T02:06:00.000-07:00

I love space, and I love games. My passion for space came about, rather later in life. I've always loved games though. Often I've sat and wondered what the fuck it is that I want to do with them. I aspire to be able to do something I love and be paid for it. That leaves two options, space, and games. >_> Fuuuuuuck. Space, just screams at me as an impossibility. And I'm rather okay with that really. It's not the floating around earth I wanna do. It's the going to other fucking galaxies. Seeing other races, going to alien planets. I've seriously contemplated (and still am) freezing my body and waking up Keanu Reeves style, dazed and confused, and slightly angsty.

Videogames on the other hand, are just confusing. How does one "Get into videogames"? Do I just keep writing on this second-rate blog hoping to be picked up by someone who respects my crass language? Well, not really. I could probably drop a few (a lot) less f-bombs...
Still, I just find it hard to know what I want to do with them. I'm good but not good enough to be paid to play them professionally. I know what makes a game good or bad but, I hardly feel my writing is of the standard to have someone pay me to just, talk about it. And then I've always thought about making them. And this appeals to me a lot, for a few reasons.

First, games were always an escape growing up. No, my life was not horrible and bleak and, disastrous (though it was certainly difficult). But playing games, put me in the role of . I lived the life of someone who, did epic things. They were heroes, well respected and courageous. I guess the kid in me always aspired to be like the characters he played. I could never get into comics cause the pages were always static. I didn't get into movies the same way because the course of events was already pre-determined to happen a certain way, every time. Games were different. I chose when I was going to go to , how I'd get there, and how long I'd spend there.
Now, as I grow older, into adulthood, I realize, my love for living in new worlds and, portraying these people, is similarly tickled when I start thinking about my own unique adventures that no one else has played yet. The small daydreams I have about fictional characters no one has heard of, yet.

And in the real world these goals and aspirations have met a few roadblocks, that (if I'm serious), I must beat down like a hooker who has my money in GTA4. First, I need a good computer. Not just a good computer, but a steroid machine. I hadn't realized how much power is actually necessary to like, actually get work done in a timely manner when the work in question means rendering models and, animating things. I've started working with programs and software but my good Macbook is not the professional powerhouse I need. To get said powerhouse, you need money, you get money through work, and, I have work but I also have things like bills to pay.

Queue the epic tale of life. How do I get from making enough money to pay bills, to having knowledge and power enough, to make my own small little imaginings into something I can share with people...

*sigh, time to go deliver more pizzas. Oprah if you've read this, gimme a scholarship to some school where I'll have the time and availability to set my mind to something important to me. I promise I'll give back to people in a similar boat years later.*

Oh fuck it

2010-09-14T14:31:00.001-07:00

Letter to bitch in MSN video regarding Halo Reach:

"Hey, how are you bitch? Paycheck helping you sleep comfortably? Does that help make you comfortable when you disregard the feelings of an entire group of people who already likely face similar jest every day simply because they like, to play, videogames. By the way who are you wearing? Is that D&G OMG I LUUUUV Dulce don't you?! Anyways, fuck you, for just talking out of your ass without reeeeally thinking. I'm sure having Dan Ackerman there put you all at ease. Now you actually have someone there who knows what the fuck they're talking about (but omg don't his sideburns just luk silly hahaha rofl?). It's cool though, at least before we went off camera we DID manage to poke fun at him too. He DOES like videogames afterall L-O-L L7LOSER!"
- Once again, fuck you.
- Brandon

http://bit.ly/a6Y7RN

Lair of the Shadowawesome

2010-09-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

So I immediately jumped on purchasing Lair of the Shadowbroker. I've been open about my criticism of Mass Effect 2, (scroll down, like, anywhere), but if Bioware does one thing right, it's getting me excited for Mass Effect 2 content.

See LotSB (not, really going to keep doing that), does something different than, really any of Mass Effect 2. It deals with things relevant to Mass Effect 1, the good one. This one primarily deals with Liara. It's "supposed" to bridge the gap between ME1 and 2, buuut I played this DLC on a file that had beaten ME2 . . . so, I'm still not sure what is being bridged really... I also read the comic that LEAD to this DLC. Basically think of the storyline like this

- - -

So, really it's in the end of ME2 . . . idk. Point is, now Liara will do things. Instead of sit behind a desk while you try and save all life in everywhere from being dead... See, now that you have info about where the Shadowbroker is, she's all ready to go and help you... ugh, well good I'm glad she's motivated now.

So you'll set off to meet Liara. First, the bosses are pretty cool. I only played on Casual, so I can't imagine how hard the bosses are on Insane (but I'm working on that right now), but even on casual, they were a lot of fun. For the first time you go up against a Vanguard (the class I typically run with). It's fun charging after each other, running around like Biotic little hamsters at bullet speed. And she was rather challenging. I didn't die, but it just took a long time.
The final boss, while more straightforward, was still intriguing. He does literally tote around a large red laser-shield, Link-style. That, did kinda look funny. Nonetheless, it was a lot of fun.

Before the boss, you spend a lengthy-enough time just working your way along the outside of his base, looking for an entry. This was finished just as I was getting fed up with weaving between catwalks and rails and lightning rods. In the end, the backdrop is gorgeous, but a little too much time is spent on that damn outer hull. Nothing is done to break it up, it is literally just a long series of killing spawned enemies and continuing on. It gets old.

I think my favorite part of the DLC is at the end. After everything is said and done, a number of panels are made available to you for a variety of reasons. One lets you purchase (for lack of a better word) a machine that will periodically give you the various minerals you had to mine for previously. One of the more interesting panels (for me anyways, and I'm a lorewhore (Lowhore? Lwhore?) gives you the actual dossiers The Illusive Man gathered on your crew. You'll get some neat insights into the personal lives of the characters you work with. And this isn't limited to just party members. Captain (Chancellor) Anderson, Uldina, Captain Bailey, all have files as well. Some, rather large (Miranda's comes to mind as being a rather funny, lengthy one), others smaller and with less lore.

Because I should really just bring it up also, the car-chase scene, isn't all that exciting. It's basically a "fly left, fly right" game, because you can't go up or down, at all, at least when I was playing. Meh. I mean it's not BAD, it's just, not interesting. Hence why I didn't bring it up earlier.

And finally Liara, the main reason I wanted this DLC. See, in this DLC, she acts like I'dve expected her to act. Previously she would say things like "Sheppard I am busy doing and cannot travel with you." wtf? Now, she confronts you, on how time has passed. How she worked hard to find you. How you are both, very different, and how she has a lot going on. These are things that would've been nice to hear the first time. Before, there was no emotion, or inflection. Now, there is an actress playing a character with a conviction that was missing.

As for Liara herself, she's funny. See I didn't particularly care for her in ME1. She came off as a book-worm, puny, weak character I would never take into battle (or romance for that matter). Now, she is still a book-worm, dork, but with an attitude and an edge. "Oh, it would seem, looking down was a bad idea", was a rather random chat after a long series of fights, that really gave me a chuckle. It reminded me just of how much I missed my old team mates.

This is singlehandedly, the best DLC Bioware has released yet. I agree, that this DLC really would've served us better having been included in the actual game (seriously, get rid of Zaeed, nobody likes that hollow old-man-because-the-game-needs-one Mercenary-reject). But, if you don't see it in a ME2 copy soon, buy it.

BUT DON'T FUCKING BUY "WEAPONS PACK 1228-D" BECAUSE THEN THEY'LL KEEP PUTTING THAT SHIT OUT AND SO WILL ALLLLL THE OTHER GAME DEVELOPERS! IT'S NO BETTER THAN "HORSE ARMOR", AND THAT SHIT GOT LAUGHED AT. VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETS AND PAY FOR QUALITY.

More of what Mass Effect 2 is missing

2010-09-06T02:12:00.001-07:00

Never believe me if I say I'ma drop something. I continue to pop in Mass Effect 2 to try the DLC's Bioware's been putting out lately. Ironically, those've been some of the best stuff out of Mass Effect 2 at all.

Anyways anyways. DLC later, big, annoying, issue first. Mass Effect 2 horribly missed out on large thing. The villain. There was none. And don't try and make me believe that "the reapers" or "the collectors" are "the villain". I need one guy, with a Legion (teehee) of underlings doing their bidding. And no, that, unnamed Collector Leader who has like, 1 scene in the whole game, doesn't count.

Saren was excellent. You were soooo pissed at him cause he was eluding you throughout the whole game, and right at the end, boom, everything wasn't just as you thought. Gah. See I was thinking one night, while playing ME2 "Something more is just missing, I'm not like, roaring to go catch- oh, wait who's the villain in this one? oh...".

Did Star Wars ever lose Darth Vader? At all? Even the Emperor (the equivalent of that, stupid Collector Leader) played some kind of role throughout. Though his role was somewhat more grandiose, given that you've only kind-of barely seen/heard him up until the last movie where you finally SEE him. That's kind of a big deal. In ME2 you are introduced to the Collector leader AND kill him in the same sweep. I don't know. Cause, often in games you're introduced to a villain and kill said villain in one game but, it'd really be nice to develop a lasting hate relationship with some villain over a course longer than one game in a series.

Anyhoo, DLC's. Dude, the DLC's are pretty leet. I even enjoyed Kasumi's DLC. It offered bit of a change of pace and mission-type. Granted, it's not, uber exciting but I always loved Mass Effect for a different reason. The characters were always what mattered to me the most. Which is all the more reason that I go to Mass Effect 2. The characters are excellent. I like getting to know them. And Bioware continues to do this really well. I was never a fan of Liara from ME1, buuuut she seems to have evolved to a level now that she's developed a self-confidence enough to hold herself, without coming off as the, brutish Ashley/Wrex/Grunt pseudo-copy.

Anyhoo. I'm excited for Lair of the Shadowbroker (even though this kind of content really should've been in ME2 to begin with, thanks guys- oh wait, I gotta go change what color my armor is . . . right after I buy my space hamster -_-)

Characters

2010-09-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

I realized, like, 5 minutes ago. This might be the single most important factor in the quality of a game. Every good game, everyone of em' (bad game genres aside . . . *cough* sports *cough*). I know there's a lot of difference when it comes to people's preferences in their videogames, but at least for me, good characters make flawed game less, flawed >_>

This spans all games. From my best boner-game "Mass Effect", to my best boner-game of olde "Chrono Trigger" (fuck, that protagonist was silent too, AND he had more depth than any character from modern-day-RPG #1fo1a9 or "realistic first person shooter #421k").

I'ma get right into it.

Mass Effect: Despite some serious flaws in the game, the convincing realistic characters made that game. There were always similar games like Oblivion, where characters would just interrupt you because they needed you, but I was never quite as convinced with them as I was with Mass Effect's cast. I liked how people would shout for your attention from a distance when they spotted you, but not like, auto-initiate an entire conversation with you when you're just angrily hitting skip cause you KNOW you don't want to do this quest. Mass Effect also re-introduced (seriously game developers, get with it) character death. I'm not going to write entire pages about this but I mean it's, tense. Having to PICK someone to be dead, and never ever come back for any of the following games.
And Saren. Listen, developers. It takes one testicle to make me hate a villain. Dude wants world domination? I'll stop em'. Ass took my princess? I'ma curbsmash some Goomba face. BUT, BUT, it takes a whoooole cheek-full of testicle to make me hate a villain, and then care about them. Being able to make someone sympathize for the evil villain in a story is a trick pulled off only so elegantly and masterfully, as the best villain anyone has ever known in ever. Vader.
You hate the guy. He blows up planets, he's evil. He's ruthless in his hunt for Luke and, yet... he's also, he also kind of, has a heart, nearly? I mean, he is a REAL, PERSON. He isn't some, weird, unrelatable entity who just wants to take over the world and then, hang out. He, actually has a development curve. And this same treatment is given to Saren in Mass Effect.
I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who, like, haven't played it (I will kill any of you that I meet in real life). But just, be prepared for an excellent lesson in good villain-making.

Braid: I chose this simply because it was an abstract game, that also, ended up somehow making you bond with the characters, without all of that crazy drawn out story- okay, better phrased. It left a lot for interpretation, and didn't spell everything out for you. Usually, no one will agree on how things got where they were, but everyone reacts the same way towards Tom (assuming his, name, was Tom???)... oh and the woman. There is no dialogue (until the end, and even that was clever enough to not count), there is no CGI cutscenes to tell you what you need to know. You do everything from start to finish, your own. And you live the life and adventures of a relationship where something went wrong. This is all shown, without telling you anything, and it's beautiful.

Chrono Trigger: One of the things old(er) games did, that today's games fail at, is characters. See they didn't have the technology (or money, or support, or knowledge) to make all of these flashy set pieces and shit that people buy today. To sell their game, they needed you to like what you played. So gameplay was fun, and if you were an RPG, you made the player enjoy their characters. Once again trying to raise the bar, Chrono Trigger decided to say "fuck it" and make you actually CARE for the characters. One particularly sad scene (and there are many), involved one of Robo's sidequests (or, technically Lucca's but whatev). (While trying to remain spoiler free), he goes into the past, to play the role of a tractor, seeder, and (I kid you not), scarecrow. He does this for 400 years, as you just hit a few buttons, travel to the future, and pick him up many years later. Tired, rusty, and old, Robo's new forest he built is in full glory those 400 years later. In an SNES game, with 32bit graphics, Square created a kinship between you, a real person, and some, unreal, non-existent thing we call Robo :)

Few new purchases

2010-08-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

Now that I've a job, I've games. Woot! So, few new purchases with my fresh well-deserved paycheck(s).

First, Alan Wake. Second, Super Street Fighter 4. AW is, interesting. It really is like watching a movie at times. The dude practically narrates the whole thing. It reminded me of that joke (yeah joke, cause it'd be annoying otherwise) Family Guy did where Peter narrates his actions throughout the episode. It's funny cause no one would ever do that, eeeeexcept here in Alan Wake I guess. (I had to get over that fence, and down to the gas station to find a phone and call for help).
It is pretty cool though. Oh, and in another awkward bit. The voice actors are horribly synced to the characters. Just, don't look at their mouths when they talk (though now you will).
It has some legitimately scary parts. The games' use of darkness in scenes is rather noteworthy.
Instead of the usual cues that enemies are nearby (your dog growling, your character assuming a battle stance, a radio static going off), you're treated to subtle things that you must pay attention to. For instance, where you might normally walk down a shaded, spooky, dark forest, if that same shaded, spooky, dark forest is all of those things and foggy, (foggy like "black I'ma kill yo ass" foggy), you might want to turn around and make sure you aren't about to be ambushed by a bunch of black men. Not the skin tone you racist bastard, the weird foggy crap that protects most of the things you find in the game.
So, a lot of the game is cool, or at least able to be dealt with (voice acting quality comes to mind), but for, fucks, sake. I'm at a place right now where (long story short), I've no gun, I'm on a patio, and me and this AI are defending ourselves, he's the only one with the gun. I'm basically on light duty (flash some fools with light long enough to break the black fog, then he shoots em').

Okay, problem.
1: Why did I lose my gun? More importantly, why doesn't this hunter (he is a hunter) have more than one weapon? Even more so, why am I stuck with all flares, he with the only gun? Can't we split the flares and maybe, have two down at once or-
2: He is a horrible, horrible shot for a hunter. The asshole wastes ammo on everything except the guy attacking me.

And one more bit before I move on. Apparently being covered in the black shit gives you some heatseaking, anus-finding, twin-sided axe throwing capabilities cause I am oh-so-often hit from the FARTHEST distances from any number of the mobs who's instinct when I'm far away is to immediately throw their weapon, and shit another one from their ass (seriously, why do enemies seem to just do that in every game? Throw a weapon when you're far away and then poof another one right into existance...)

Then, Super Street Fighter 4. Now (and I promise folks this will be much shorter BUT), I'm by no means, "good" at these types of games. I'm horrible at series' of button combos that make some, random fucking special boner-inducing finishing move. In Mortal Kombat I never earned fatalities without using a gameshark first and I'm no better off in this game. I had to bring on a mate during my first night with it to properly explain how to do certain moves. And this is one rather annoying thing for a newb.

In training, there are a list of moves a character can perform. Said list also provides a button combo on how to perform such moves, and there is EVEEEEN a controller--->picture translation. So, if "Super Anal Fireball" is used by using "Punch" twice (punch is depicted by a plain white fist by the way), then you would hope that using punch twice would do that. No actually. To DO the moves listed, (again, all descriptions just use the pictures, with no color to the fist (or the leg signifying "kick"), you need to know ahead of time whether it's a "light, medium, or heavy" punch/kick. Does that make sense? So "Super Anal Fireball" MIGHT actually use "Heavy Punch" twice, but the move list that describes these moves, doesn't tell you that, only that it IS a punch... but what kind is beyond my knowledge, and I'm never told, I just have to guess... a lot.

BUT, the style they've put up for this game is a lot of fun. Everything looks fresh and vibrant, but not in an overly obnoxious fashion. Clean, everything looks clean. And normally this would bring the game down a bit (especially during, say a dark area or something), but for this game it works. Everything fits nicely.

The only serious thing that bugs me about the game (and this is really more with the genre, not the game itself), is how much I can really stand to play it. It's not like Soul Caliber in that there might be some story element or, RPG gear bit. It's straight up, left to right, fight. Even in story mode it really does just boil back down to "Go here, fight. Then go here, and fight." That whole formula gets a little old a little too fast for my $40.

Still, I just can't help but to like this game. It's got a charm to it. There is a character for every person out there (I'm a bit of a Dudley guy myself, I've a thing for men with mustaches and British accents).

Finally, I'm not going to do it in this post cause that would be OVERLY long, but I've purchased the latest two DLC's for Mass Effect 2 (Kasumi and the Overlord DLC). In a nutshell, I liked them both a lot and think it's money well spent, but they also kinda helped me come to a larger realization about why I was always uncomfortable with Mass Effect 2, or at least just one of the big things missing from it that I think really would've brought me on board. Hope everyone's had a great summer ;)

- Paisley

It's been a while, but I promise I'm not lazy

2010-08-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

I've basically been broke. For nearly forever >_> But now that I have a job at a foreign food restaurant, I've been able to afford some more games.

First thing I bought? My WoW subscription. Though this was a lot less about enjoying the game, and more about recanting olde times with olde WoW friends. It had literally been years since they last heard me. Long before I had pubic hair and gained a few octaves on my vocals. So, while the game is still the same mind-numbing grind, the folks are swell.

Now I'm not certain about what to buy next. I don't want to blow all of my money at once, in fact, I really can't anyways. But, I want to get "Alan Wake", "Final Fantasy" (ugh), "Monday Night Combat", annnnd "Heavy Rain". I actually have like, an ass and a half load of games to catch up on really. Anyways, I'dve been posting more, but uh, well, I've not had any games to play! Fuck!

Putting Mass Effect 2 to rest

2010-05-31T22:15:00.000-07:00

I'm not gonna lie. I'm a bit sad. *sigh* I had really really wanted to like Mass Effect 2. I loved (and absolutely still do) Mass Effect 1. And were Mass Effect 2, actually Mass Effect 1 (assuming the first never actually existed), I'dve loved it. Here's why.

Mass Effect 2 was a good game, but it wasn't a good sequel. I expected better writing from the game. Again, alone yes, the game's writing is excellent, but it's certainly not true sequel writing. It's as though Bioware thought we'd bitch about NOT having new characters in the sequel (which, might've been true really) and so they wrote out all of the cool ones from the first game. And I've made this point before, but I'll make it again.

The crew from the first game, doesn't join you in this game, because you are working with a "shady" group, to save the galaxy. They claim, idk, some bullshit about how they have standards. But mind you this is the same group that also BROKE THE LAW and joined you in fleeing from the Citadel. They seem like a group of people that are okay with an "ends justifying means" scenario. So all of the sudden, in the sequel, they've developed balls enough to NOT join you. All of the sudden NOW loyalties to duty and honor and shit are more important than the universe.
I also maintain that Wrex has the most legitimate reason for not joining Sheppard (and this is coming from a guy who wanted to have Wrex on his team more than anyone else). It's understandable that in a race as irrational or "for the people" as the Krogan, that Wrex would stay to help his people first, before possibly sacrificing himself for everyone else.

Anyways. These nearly-human connections you've built with these fictional people in this videogame, start to show their artificial roots with the second game. See when you start to feel like they're with you 'til the end (ala, Mass Effect 1), they now decide they aren't willing to do the SAME thing. I just can't shake the feeling that Bioware needed to introduce a new line of cast to get to know. But doing so while including the original cast as party members was likely technically impossible or very nearly so. Thus, the writers were hoping we'd just conveniently forget most of what we'd gone through with our team from the last game, or as least that we wouldn't mind if said team forgot what we'd gone through with THEM in the last game.

And that's what bugs me. A true sequel, sticks to it's guns. I'll bet it was certainly very near impossible to include the original cast AND new party members. But if that were the case then we should've had the option to do just that. It simply doesn't make sense that our previous team wouldn't join me at the drop of a hat this time, to do the same thing, for the same reason, a few years (two?) later. It may have very well been more boring to not bring in new characters, but it would've made bonds with these people far stronger. Did they think anyone REALLY didn't want to team up with Wrex and Ashley?

I neglected including people like Liara or Kaiden because they weren't necesarily well-liked. But I'd also argue that most Mass Effect players, while they likely used a very specific pair of people in a party, they also probably talked to all or most of the cast when not doing a mission. To get background on a character.
My point is that although we probably used specific people for combat, knowing these people were important to us. ESPECIALLY the people whom we often used in combat. It just, makes those goddamn relationships important.

And I'm all the more wary of bonding with characters of Mass Effect 2, cause I won't know if they'll just be written out of Mass Effect 3 like their ancestors were in Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 3, if it wants to be technically challenging and raise the bar, WHILE being true to it's fans, needs to include characters from both games. It's not the little nit-picks about Mass Effect 2 that are a big deal. It's this, elephant of an issue.

Any form of media, depends on some kind of connection. Movies, art, music, games, are all driven by purposeful connection. A bond or agreement in understanding. That's what made Mass Effect 1 such a powerful game, despite it's technical flaws. In a game that draws you into the relationships around you so well, the other issues seem to become far smaller. Mass Effect 2 skull fucked that, by making a functioning, technically marveling "game", that had few or little ties to the game that set it's own stage. The people that made the Mass Effect universe play such a minor role or come off as so insignificant it's strange.

So yes, in all technical aspects, it should be a great game, deserving of a 4/5. But artistically, as a sequel, I wouldn't call it such a thing. It is the definition of an unintentional spin off.

Why Heroes died

2010-05-19T13:20:00.001-07:00

Recently a friend of mine wrote an article about why Heroes was canceled. Yeah, I felt compelled to rage my, outrage, about Heroes. Cause, well I liked the show. And then kinda liked it, and, then, I was asking myself wtf I was watching...

Okay, here's what went wrong. First, no one ever dies. Every fucking time you think someone's gonna die, they don't. It gets old fast, and quickly took a lot of tension out of the show. I know someone's gonna gripe to me (or not, not really) that they could name like, 50 people that died in the show. Yeah, well, fuck off. That was the writers that died, of heart failure and lack of creativity or imagination.
See one big turn of events that slew everyone's then-boners, was the "death" of Claire's dad. There were paintings of his death. He was a loved character too. But all they FUCKING DID was give him BLOOD from Claire. WTF?! That's like, the most useful ability ever. To be immortal and then makes OTHERS alive again...

They essentially give us what we didn't want and took what we DID.
Ali Larter. I know a lot of people think she's like, MILFly hot, and she is. But, she was also completely horrible and unliked throughout the show. And while she did get, less-annoying near the end, she was also completely unlikable up until then. Oh and she died. Oh but wait no she didn't because apparently she can now turn into water upon death...WTF?!

Then Sylar, who was a bad guy, but then a good guy when he was around Kristen Bell, was actually a bad guy, who killed her, but kind of a good guy, cause of Peter, but not really, because he WASN'T actually his brother. WTF?! Bad guys, are BAD. For a REASON! They want to EAT, BRAINS! Not pussyfoot around a conversation, being all, polite and considerate and shit! Sylar, slices heads, and, takes powers.

Oh and Peter, goddamnit. See Peter too, was a loved character. He had depth. He had to deal with the idea that his ability (which at the time, would suck up the abilities of others within close proximity), would somehow turn into a giant catastrophe. This, was important. We cared for Peter. He was a nice guy, who was looking out for everyone. Authorities aren't gonna trust the word of a guy who says he can see the future, but we want him to succeed. Well, the GOOD idea was to totally remove all of that power, and let him just, pick and choose what he wants to take, but only let him have one power at a time. See that creates tension, and makes it a difficult choice for him... or not.

Then there's "the company". Claire's Faja looked cool, and acted cool, and sounded cool, and WAS cool, cause he worked for this "company" who would "bag and tag" special people, for an unknown purpose. They represented the fact, that people with powers weren't (usually) invulnerable, they could be stopped, and these people knew how. Well, the old writers at "smartville" decided to blow that idea up, literally.

Hey Heroes writers, please, go back to McDonalds and never, write, a thing, again. FUCK YOU.

Halo Reach Beta thoughts

2010-04-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

A fucking disclaimer: So, I'm going to rant like a WHORE, BUT, the point of the beta is to work out the kinks and the problems before the game is finalized and realized to the public, for $60. Having said that. The key that I snagged was for the "family and friends" release. This is before the ODST codes will open up beta-access to their owners. SO, I'm hoping some of what I say is changed/fixed/opened up once the ODST beta codes are opened up.

Alrighty guys. Here's what you'll find in your Halo Reach beta.

First, the control scheme is pretty dramatically changed. It's not the same as Battlefield, Call of Duty, or previous Halos. For example, melee has moved to the right bumper. Suit abilities are the left bumper (more on that later), and rotating through 'nades is moved to the b button. This scheme is actually pretty damn usable. I like it. And this is coming from a guy who thought (and still does) that Call of Duty had the best control scheme and wouldn't look back.

Next, you'll really only be playing two levels. This actually reinforces my idea that the beta is going to open up and expand once ODST beta codes are opened. I've looked into trailers and documentaries about the Reach beta and they clearly say there will be 4 levels. As of NOW though I've only been able to spend time on two levels. Neither are particularly fun really. One is a sloped hill with a circular coliseum-like structure being the main set-piece. It's just, small and, rather boring.
Now the NEXT level is truly frustrating. Picture two large walls opposing each other. Add bridges connecting these two walls at different levels and you get this level. The PROBLEM is that you often end up playing flag-capturing gametypes on this map. And to ascend to your bases you have to SLOWLY pace across these bridges. It's, fucking ANNOYING. Often you die, and no one then really WANTS to carry the flag. And THEN, you have those REALLY annoying fuckers that alternate x and right-trigger while walking. This makes them drop and pick up the flag repeatedly, and the announcer does not SHUT UP "flag dropped, flag stolen, flag dropped, flag stolen, flag dropped, flag stolen" over, and over, and over, and OVER. And it's not just to be annoying, it's just that you're SO, DAMN, SLOW when carrying a flag!

SUPER HUMAN STRENGTH!
This also brings me to another point. You aren't allowed to use your "abilities" when carrying a flag. Doing so will force the flag to the ground. So, abilities like "sprinting" (yes, it's an ability, not something granted to everyone), force the flag to the ground...
Doesn't that seem counter productive? It seems like a good offset between something like the jetpack and sprinting, would be that the sprinter can carry things while they run. I mean what's the point of SPRINTING through a number of obstacles when you can just jetpack straight there?
The other powers include armorlock. You punch the ground and become invulnerable, yeah. I mean it's really not, that great. You can't move, and often end up dead because someone just waits for you to get up just so they can assassinate your armorlocking ass.
Uh, fuck the name of this next one, you can basically turn invisible. This ability is well balanced. You can go invisible for a very long time, but you aren't ENTIRELY invisible. Anyone keeping a peep out for you will notice you. AND you give red decoy dots on the radar, alerting everyone in the area that SOMEONE is trying to run around invisible. It's a neat balance.
Jetpacks. Yeah, well this one serves a bit of a weird purpose. It really comes off as being for the lazy player. The guy that doesn't want to have to WALK around like, you know, walls. It also really doesn't let you get the jump on anyone. They'll look at the dot on their radar and if you aren't on the ground they look up into the air.

BOOM!
Nades. The fucking nades in this game are garbage. They're probably my least favorite thing in the game at this point. They make the game so unfun it made me go play Call of Duty again, after only an hour spent playing Reach. It's like the grenades in reach are packed with thousands of MW2 throwing knives. How incredibly fucking annoying.

VROOM!
There's a glaring, missing set of items in the beta. Vehicles. Strangely enough, they're missing. Again, I tend to think this is because the "friends and family" beta will be far more limited than the ODST beta will be, so I'm just baiting my time until this comes to pass.

W,T,F
So you'll quickly find this isn't like other Halos (and I warn you now this will be a long paragraph). Where you used to hold your trigger on someone's face and then melee them when in range, now closing in on your opponent is a bad idea. And seriously for the life of me I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I stare down a dude, I start shooting, I stay away from him, he closes in, melees, kills me. THEN, I stare down a dude, shoot, run up WHILE shooting, melee, and his melee kills ME.
This is truly astonishing and something I've still yet to figure out. My best advice for newbies would be to keep your distance from opponents and try to aim for the head while spraying lead. It seems there's bodily damage or, at least it's pretending there are.
I play more complex shooters because I prefer them, I don't like arcade shooters much. It just seems like any schmo without skill could end a good streak of mine when we're all the same characters essentially. But for the LIFE of me I can't headshot a fool NEARLY as much as I get headshot. I can't TELL you how many times I've been headshot. And it eats through shields and health, or so it feels that way. It's just really rather frustrating. I feel as though I have intentionally aimed at the heads of fools once I realized I was dying after being headshot all the damn time, but they've learned this art of the headshot FAR better and far faster than I...
My point is that it feels as though if I, a hard(er)core shooter fan, deal regularly with headshots and critical zones, I should be comfortable with this type of combat in Reach, but I'm not. I can't tell how effective melee REALLY is, grenades are RECOCKULOUSLY powerful, and my head is made of magnetic plates that attract the foulest of bullets.

A very sad lightsaber
Maybe it's Bungie's form of retaliation against George Lucas for having made prequels to Star Wars, but the energy sword now is just, well, shit. Typically a sword-guy will always be too far away from you to ever CHARGE you, but even in the events that they DO close in on you, guess what? Get this, GET THIS. You can melee, with your not-made-of-energy-weapon, and block an energy sword swing. No I'm not kidding. Like, it doesn't just slice right through you. You're actually able to deflect a laser-sword swing with your gun. Did you ever see a blaster deflect the blade of a lightsaber? No. Bungie, laser swords are meant to cut through FUCK-ALL when they can reach it. There's no point in making a MELEE weapon (which is ONLY useful in some sort when they're RIGHT AT YOUR TITS) so, ineffective.
On the polar opposite side, the hammer is now called the "fuck-it" and destroys anything, often too before it's even in range to typically do so. Even if your little reticule isn't red when aiming at a fool, you can often just kill them anyways. It's, a guilty pleasure to use.

Armory
So the armory is where you'll spend points you get after online matches, to upgrade different armor pieces to make yourself look unique. Now REALLY, there are four upgradable area. Two shoulders, a chest and a helmet. . . oookay. Two shoulders though? Like, why are they separated? If they were just paired, you'd really only have THREE upgradable zones. Each zone has a variety of items obtainable through purchases. Whether or not these affect your character beyond the cosmetic has yet to be seen. I COULD look it up, but I'd rather just emphasize just how much is left for the player to, figure out on their own (if possible). People shouldn't have to Google whether or not the armor does anything else beyond changing their na series, the sequel to a game doesn't quite explain a feature it uses, because it was popular in it's predecessor, and that's alright. But in Reach, nearly everything is foreign to any Halo player, so you've really gotta be careful abut explaining to them how everything functions.

Ahem, in conclusion
So far I've been on the fence about the game. I've been getting the vibe from them that Call of Duty scares them, and so they've been really trying to crack open some of that "realistic shooter" market" and, that's just not what Halo is for. Anytime you, mesh some of another game onto your own to try and imitate them, it's just, kind of ugly.
There's a lot of polishing needed. I really, REALLY need to get that flag carrying issue fixed. Either make the carrier faster or stop the announcers voice after too many drops/pickups in a given time. Nades need to be lightened down to make the game playable. It's really hard to critique the game beyond that as of now, as I've only seen a small slice of a very large and mysterious pie. I'll be sure to keep telling more of this, Halo Reach beta.

Horror games

2010-04-29T04:37:00.001-07:00

I realized after a few revisions of this post, horror games are pretty, bad today. I mean, not ALL of them (I still want to play Fatal Frame), but most of them. Especially the good horrors-daddies from back in the day.

Silent Hill is a good horror game. The big evil is some, illusive supernatural spirit force. Typically horror titles should stick to this way of trying to scare you. You can hardly scare someone as easily with an enemy they KNOW or expect, ala Resident Evil and it's zombie fetish. But SH's mysterious force has capabilities unknown to you. Are they going to come through a wall? A zombie doesn't go through walls. Are they going to possess one of your friends? Who knows, zombies don't possess people though.

And then Resident Evil started having this habit of turning you into some kind of James Bond zombie killer. You go from manipulating set pieces, storing herbs, and fending off the baddest of the zombies to kicking them in the face, kicking ladders in the face, and embarrassing Ashley (I like to pretend Sheva was never created) via awkward upskirt shots Capcom didn't care to mess with. See that's, just not scary. The occasional zombie that sneaks past me makes me jump, but that's just out of surprise, not really fear.

In Silent HILL though, when that fucking radio starting going static I shit bricks. Cause I don't know WHAT is coming at me, and from where, but that something is near. THAT is fear. It's all about, atmosphere. Creating a situation that you must experience to progress the game. An experience in which there are a number of unknowns, that will have consequence. Zombies are not unknown, zombies are pretty well-understood, especially in today's society.

Oh, OH! AND, what the FUCK Capcom, what the FUCK is with Wesker? He was a pretty rad villain in the first game, but now he can FUCKING TELEPORT?!?! A TELEPORTING GODDAMN ZOMBIE?!!?

*sigh*

What happened to the good ole days Resident Evil? Your games are so average it hurts to admit I like(d) you. Alright, enough bitching from me, I need time to sit and think to myself about what to bitch about next.

Why 3-D is good for games

2010-04-25T21:32:00.000-07:00

Ever watch Star Trek? You know that holodeck? The room that can be filled with (nearly) anything at the request of it's user. Did you ever stop and say "Wow that's just stupid."? Cause I didn't. I think the only demographic that felt that way towards a holodeck was the blind, though even the blind could call up an orchestra to play their favorite Chopin song before their ears . . . or just bring up Chopin himself...

It feels like people are complaining about 3D if only to hear themselves complain. The gaming industry has always been a case of trial and error. Some games are solid, or original, and sell well, others are generic, boring, or bad. Those games don't sell. So one could argue that the gaming industry itself is one big trial and error (though I'd rather stop there and NOT go into "Life as one big trial and error"). Before the term "videogame" was truly realized mainstream, do you think someone "back in the day" would have thought videogames were a "good idea"?

The industry is going to continue to a evolve. There may very well be an "ugly period" where 3D games are just, bad, the industry has shown it has the ability to learn from it's mistakes and improve upon them. Fuck just think back to before the N64 and Playstation. Remember those sidescrollers? Or the 16 - 32 bit RPGs? At some point we were able to bring Mario to the (imitated) third dimension, and it was awesome. So why in the world are people complaining that games should NOT try 3D?

Because they think that if we push more effort into the technology in game development, we'll lose a lot of those kind of important, subtle traits in every good videogame, like, the fucking script. And it's a damn good point! One of my favorite games, Chrono Trigger, had a silent protagonist. He literally said nothing, at all, ever. And today sees a lot more generic titles without real "soul", something that makes the game unique all it's own. BUT, we have to understand that this isn't JUST from advances in technology, but age. Anything that gets popular over time spawns replicas, failed attempts and generic copies. I'd also argue that this past decade in gaming has been the best yet for the industry. We've seen some of the most amazingly unique series' in the last 10 years, that really help put a fine line around what is a "videogame".

Just, don't fear new technologies. Don't go all, crazy on me. I can't be the only one pro-3D. Not for the sake of having used 3D just for the sake of trial and error, or that other e-word thing. Experimenting. It's healthy for games guys, just, try it out.

PS: Buy a 3DS
PPS: Okay I was kidding BUT it does look pretty sweet...but I'm sure there will be loads of games that are rubbish... still, I'm really surprised at how accurate it appears to be, around that not-at-all-perfectly-produced-for-the-3D-camera . . . scenario.

30th post wewt

2010-04-08T02:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've last posted anything >_> . . . . . . yeah. Anyways, Lord knows I refuse to just post shit for the hell of it (no really, I promise not ALL of this comes from my ass).

HOWEVER, hot off the trails of me shitting on Mass Effect 2 (ugh, I almost regret not liking that game, it's such a good series), I realized maybe I'll shit on Assassin's Creed 2 . . . too. Not for the hell of it (again, not from the ass), but because I legitimately have been frustrated by it. Unlike Mass Effect 2, who made such dramatic changes that I had a lot to shit on, AC2 really didn't change, and that's perplexing.

First, the most notably frustrating thing is the story. Simply put, I'm killing fuckers and I don't know why. I know there's a conspiracy, where my family died. I know it involved a number of people, I don't know how and (for now) I don't know why. I've killed at least 10 people so far (maybe a bit less), but I can't shake the feeling that AC2 story progression was heavily cut up mid-production. It's as though they CREATED a story, started working on it, and then took bits and pieces out because they needed to.

For example, I was going about my business (pre-assassin days), delivering letters and sleeping with the local whores, when out of nowhere, I found out two years had passed. What? When the fuck did two years just go by? The only reason I actually KNEW two years had passed was because it happened to have been spoken about in dialogue. "Two years hasn't changed you Ezio!" Ubisoft come on! What the fuck kind of character evolution is this? I've gone from being a fleet-footed thief-rascal so cute only a Twilight fan could love, to being a fucking assassin, murdering folk when I feel like it.

It just seems like Ezio's reasoning behind becoming an assassin is unjustified. Altair was born an assassin, Ezio was, blessed with assassin skills? Overnight? Er, over two mysterious years that aren't explained at all?

Second, the running method. Cities are gorgeous no doubt. They sprawl with methods of escape and there are always multiple entry points for infiltration. But with great, options, brings great frustration? Imagine you're balancing on a single beam staked into the ground. In front of you are three possible beams (or four, or five). Now in a chase you don't get to methodically fucking pick which pole you're going to jump onto are you? No, you're not. And the control scheme simply isn't sensitive enough to tell which fucking pole you want to jump onto. Often you're fall prey to missing a beam, partially finding a beam, or picking the wrong beam (or rail, roof, pole, ect).

This might seem like something quite trivial, but NOT addressing this issue would be like NOT addressing bad shooting mechanics of a FPS! Broken running mechanics break the game -_- They make completing quests, killing fools, evading fools, and progressing through the game all more difficult. A particular fat bitch are the time trial quests which have you running through a series of check points before a timer counts to zero. They were a lot of fun in AC1 but seem to have put on weight in AC2 (the fat bitch joke, yeah that was a long walk for that one).

Finally the only other issue I've encountered in the game is a general inconsistency in, things in general? I've been witnessing events at random that break the game. I see dude on rooftop I'ma gonna stab. I approach dude, he see's me, I step away and hide. THEN there's a boxed curtain between him and myself, but the game tells the enemy a.i's that this object is see through (which it clearly isn't), so even when BEHIND this object I'm spotted. HOWEVER, once I successfully get to the ledge of the rooftop he's hiding on, I can hang from the fence that he's walking near. A FENCE, and he doesn't spot me, he won't at all. And that's because the game says that THIS object, is solid and impossible to see through. -_- Oh! OH! And the guards?!?! They USED to get suspicious of you running, at all. But NOW they're not suspicious of you running, OR climbing of the side of a wall >_> But they ARE immediately angry once you get on the ROOF. . . So they DON'T mind me climbing along the wall, but they DO mind it once I've finally gotten to the roof . . .

And it's things like this that begin to break the experience for me. I'm witnessing strange, frustrating moments where it's hard to actually understand what I can or can't trust. Things like this should be far better refined, or you just leave your players (or just me) confused.

Now to be FAIR (and this is rare), the game doesn't fail like ME2 has. I've still consistently wanted to play through it, and I have been. But AC2 DOES get the award for having me turn it off simply because it had begun to be too frustrating. I beat MW2 on Veteran in one sitting without having to flip it off out of anger. It was difficult, but consistent. I knew what I could and couldn't hide behind. What is sufficient cover and what isn't. AC2 is fun, but it's just exposes Ubisoft's weakness in development, story telling. It's by far the games biggest flaw . . . Fuck, ugh, now I just want AC3, and I want it to be good . . . all, not-buggy and, good.

Mirror's Edge

2010-03-11T06:24:00.000-08:00

I was browsing through The Escapist Magazine website, and happened to stumble upon random Mirror's Edge articles. I miss the damn game, but moreover, I wish it was better.

When it was originally shown off everyone was excited at the idea of a first-person parkour game right? I mean who the fuck wouldn't? It's parkour, IN first person, a vag -er, badge the game wears proud.

In the end though the game suffers from "Wii syndrome". You get hyped by a product you think is going to do one thing, and it ends up not only NOT doing that, but also skull fucking your mum, and nobody likes that (except Curtis you fucking asshole).
Here's what happens. You = EXCITED for this parkour adventure! Then, you realize that getting from point a to point b only has one route -_- boring. You can't share any stories with your friends about things you've done in the game, awesome jumps/escapes/flights because it's the same thing EVERYONE is going to do.

Also, the city is largely ignored. It's large, sprawling with people walking around, and, entirely out of reach. You're always quite majestically placed on rooftops with no way down except gravity herself, and as "they" say, gravity is a bitch.

And then things just get sad. You can SEE the potential in the game, and you WANT to enjoy it, but you just can't. The biggest complaint I see from reviewers is the combat. Yeah it's not great, but complaining about combat in Mirror's Edge is like complaining about the character animations in Rockband or , who cares?

In the end, I'm really hoping that EA can have the integrity to IMPROVE it's game instead of writing it off entirely simply because it failed to pass the "generic-game-mechanics-test-of-average". Experiment, and IMPROVE! EA, don't let me down, you're affiliated with Bioware now. By association I might have sex with you.

Alice in Wonderland

2010-03-07T01:13:00.000-08:00

Like the title? Now THAT'S creativity right there.

I'm not going to review the damn thing. Take The Chronicles of Narnia, anally insert a large plastic tubing into it, and suck away anything good about it and you have Alice in Wonderland.

Okay actually THAT was harsh, so I'll point out the few good things real fast.
- Alice (whatever her name is)
- Helena Bonham Carter (The Red Queen)
- Johnny Depp (The Mad Hatter)

THOSE characters were at least good, not a lot to complain about. But the huge outstanding "wtf?!?!!?" belongs to Anne Hathaway. To be honest I never thought much of her as an actress really, but in Alice in Wonderland ugh, oh god please no. And that's all I'll say!

I was more interested in debating this stupid 3D shit. I saw someone post this comment to a review that was rather harsh to the film (which made me think they probably didn't thoroughly read the damn thing).
"Thanks for the review. I think many people have lost their imagination and no longer can enjoy the thrill of seeing a film such as this, even when presented in 3D." - idiot

No, no! Stop it! First, the 3D used in the film was simply, there. It was no more remarkable than the "blowy fan effects simulating wind!". If you're going to use 3D, all or nothing. Or as "they say", "Go James Cameron, or go home". It's just absurd, there are far too many badly-produced 3D movies coming out now thanks to good ole' Cameron -_-

And then it's awkward. You wanna see a movie, (Tron for example, looks fucking awesome). Now you have this strange situation you're in, you can either buy a 2D movie . . . er, well wait come on it's ONLY $3 more right? Yeah but it could be bad . . . Well I-mean-who-cares-right? Ugh but I could just SAVE the $3 dollars. Yeah but it's 3D! You know you're right! *purchases 3D movie ticket*

Thanks to fucking Avatar, now we're going to get spawns of average-at-best 3D movies that will be testing our ability to NOT purchase out of instinct. Save your money, go watch Hannah Montana in 2 dimensions. The third is just CG anyways, that bitch is too fucking hollow for a third dimension.

Anime, ani-meh

2010-03-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

I really hate giving any article a title. I feel as though too much of my cheekiness is going to be lost on you unless that title really delivers, and "ani-meh" is about as good as I'm going to get when talking anime (my mac is telling me that anime is a misspelled word, how silly).

Anyways, in my carousel of videos to watch before bedtime, I've stumbled on some anime. More than usual in the last few rounds, which has left me feeling a bit naked, which is saying something cause I generally am already quite naked. Except right now, right now I'm clothed I promise, don't think of me naked.

Coming from a dude who kinda prefers that things are a realistic representation, you'd like to think that I toss aside anime altogether but that's not entirely the case. I enjoy a good anime! Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop (if not two different apples from the same tree) were both a lot of fun to watch. I also have a lot of respect for anime that can make me uncomfortable by touching in that gray-area genre called "dark".

But "lately" that's not the case. "Lately" my bouts' of video-watching have been pelvically-thrusting all of the "other" animes at my gums. The ones where boys look like girls and girls have large, probing eyes, staring into my soul, making me shrink in fear -_-
I won't pretend to know as much about anime culture as I do about games. As far as I know, anime is very much a Japanese thing, and it kinda hit the emo-side of us American people, and businesses decided that America's a sad place and emo is kinda a cash cow (I'm talking to you, fuck-twats that pay to see Twilight and still manage to call it a movie, and THEN pay to see it's sequel, TWICE). Anime NOT being an American product (generally), and me BEING an American (generally), it makes it hard to complain, BUT having-said-that:

- Why do you all have to have eyes like that? Really, people DON'T look like that, living people at least.
- Why is there ALWAYS a dramatic stare-down, involving one or more people pointing a gun at someone else, who decides to just sit, and look at their shooter #cliche-tastic
- Boys are boys, not girls.
- Stop asking "who am I?" or "why am I here?" for fuck's sake, if YOU don't know I sure as hell don't. LITERALLY I watched an anime where the dude asks himself "Who am I?", and I just killed that internet page fast and moved on to something else.

The point is, I don't understand why any people who are good at a , conform to the popular cliches of their industry. I don't enjoy games that are just badly-made replicas of OTHER original and better-done games, and I sure as hell don't like watching "Bubbly eyed girl lost and alone anime #44" unless it's a porn.

Sometimes it's okay to reinvent a wheel.

2010-02-27T03:35:00.001-08:00

I recently read a review of Tim Burton's version of "Alice in Wonderland". The reviewer (and the people who read said review) criticized the movie for "re-telling a story but THIS time, with 3-D".

Guys, that's okay. Those classic tales we grew up with and the games we played while we were young, they were good for a reason. It is o-kay to remake something with modern technologies. I don't wanna start seeing 12 different Alice movies in the span of a few years, but come on guys!

The last real Alice in Wonderland property anyone really cared for, was the Disney version. This was out a loooong time ago. Like, VCR-ago :p Stop bitching for the sake of bitching. If the actors are bad, that's one thing. If you're only whining that "the story's been told before, and it's being redone with better graphics", then go burn your local library and then justify it . . . . . somehow . . . .

ass

Villains suck

2010-02-23T23:29:00.001-08:00

They're never done right anymore. What happened to the Darth Vaders? No one does shit, they're all talk, OR, they end up in some epic fight, in which they lose. . .

"Human Target's" latest villain recently got the brunt of my anger, which is usually my peen. Not my real penis God no. Only my peen . . . my internet penis. Anyways! Get this, you need to be afraid of this guy because (quite literally):

- He was "Chance" (the equivalent of James Bond) previous employer
- . . .
- He MIGHT be mean? I mean they don't really say . . . in fact they emphasize NOT talking about him in the slightest

Writers, STOP DOING THAT! Anytime "dark" precedes "past", the next words better be an explanation and a follow-through. I cannot STAND listening to characters who think they've gone through something so difficult it means they shouldn't explain themselves -_- You aren't fucking Darth Vader! Darth Vader blew up fucking PLANETS! (okay, okay it was Grand Moff Tarkin) He never bitches about "not talking about it" (and, actually ANAKIN bitches quite a lot, fucking pussy).

The point is, as THE, BAD, GUYS, you are EVIL! Killing is legit foo! I'm sick of seeing watered down nice-guy villains! You know who was a totally under-rated villain. The dude from Mission Impossible 3. He tricks the main character into thinking he's torturing his wife, while he can only sit and watch it happen. THAT'S fucked up. Granted, it was a trick, but it was damned convincing, and you can help but think "Man I'm glad he can't find her, cause he fucking would".

What makes a "dark" vidjagame?

2010-02-21T11:06:00.001-08:00

Ugh, writing is so frustrating!

Alright, I got a little face time with a game recently that came at me randomly. "The Misadventures of P.B Winterbloom". The idea behind the game is that the main character, P.B, he fucking loves pie. His love for pie is an unhealthy addiction. He'd basically chop his peen for slice of that delicious delectable.

Luckily you never have to commit to such an act (BUT YOU KNOW I WOULD). Generally the acts you ARE asked to commit to don't stray far from something you may have seen in Braid. Bend time to get from Point A to Point B, whilst trying to get some of that lovely boner-inducing pie.

Here's the thing though. I wasn't overly impressed with the gameplay, and that wasn't what really gave me the creeps. It's the fucking music, that shit, is JUST creepy enough, to really kinda freak you out. For example, Silent Hill being a scary game, you know you're going to shit your pants, but when a game (such as PB), comes out pants down, with it's creepy soundtrack gunning for your gums, it really is freaky.

So this got me thinking. The game isn't REALLY a "scary game", there are no huge monsters, no tense moments. PB, is a game that "we in the business" call dark. Which kinda surprised me. Up 'til now I thought dark games might be things like "Assassin's Creed" or "Grand Theft Auto". But those games are only mature games, with adult content. So what makes a game "dark"?

- Shadow of the Colossus. In SotC, you (and your dead girlfriend), are the only people you'll ever encounter throughout the world. There are no mini-enemies, no shop-keepers, no trainers. You are alone. It truly gives a sense of isolation, and can be pretty depressing. Fallout 3 would have a similar effect if it weren't constantly occupied by Raiders looking to use my skin as a coat -_-

- Ahem, I honestly had a list of games, but, well I've forgotten them all except SotC :D Gogo memory! (I'll add something here whence I've remembered where I put my memory)

The point is, there is a real difference between "scary", "mature", and "dark". Scary games will (who'da thought), scare you, "mature games" (Assassin's Creed) have mature content, but dark games speak personally to the nature of humanity. "How do you deal with being truly alone? Would you torture someone to save lives? Rape, murder, racism". They're all subjects that tend to make people uncomfortable, but they're very real and very alive today.

Tying this back to a fun, (yet dark) game, PB Winterbloom. I think it's safe to tie this game to the "dark" genre, simply because the music made me really uncomfortable (in a fun way). It didn't feel like he just had a love for pie, it felt like his love for pie was unnatural, and maybe, evil? It's very "Sweeney Todd". Artsy, creative, a bit light, but with a very creepy, subtle undertone.

Here's a bit to wet your pie-loving tongues with:

Hai ME2

2010-02-12T16:34:00.000-08:00

Hey, real quick-like: It's worth noting, in my last article I pretty much bitchslapped the game for really skull-fucking a lot of the relationships you built when playing the first game. I just wanted to add to that quickly and say that the coolest characters from ME2 are the ones you get to spend actual time with and talk to, meaning "Bioware, please, do NOT fuck with me in ME3 and tell me that all my friends from ME1 and 2 are going to just, not gonna wanna help me SAVE THE FUCKING GALAXY FROM TOTAL DESTRUCTION". I never understood that. It's not like I want to stop some dude from enslaving one small planet . . . I'm trying to SAVE the galaxy. AND, these people aren't random strangers, they helped me save the galaxy in the LAST game, but now they're like "Nah, busy, sorry, bai".

Examples of friends who don't give a fuck about you anymore . . . randomly:
- Captain Anderson: Conversations with him don't evolve beyond a regulatory hulloh, hai, busy
- Ashley: She fucking shows up completely randomly, says she's PISSED, and leaves. Fuck you Ashley.
- Wrex: I was kind of on the fence about this guy. I felt that of all the previous team-mate reuniting, his felt the least skull-fuckededly. He calls you out as a friend, defends your honor to other Krogan, and still acts like Wrex. His reason seems more justified than all the other people that turn you down. Still, as a fan-favorite, it was a strange choice for Bioware to leave him twisting in the wind of Krogan politics.

Anyways, I just started writing this with an approach that would hopefully point out the better side of the game. Then the leveling system just jumped in my head. *sighs in real life*

Okay, sure . . . this sentence will be common in future writings regarding ME2 but: "In ME1", Sheppard had about, 12 things to spend points in. In ME2 you start with 4 areas to allocate points, and (I believe) max out at 6 near the end of the game. And your party members never have more than 4 things to spend points in, ever. 4!

For fucks sake Bioware. I'm not heavily jumping on the "It's a shooter and not an RPG anymore" bandwagon. All they did was fix the shooting aspect of the game and all of the sudden thousands of fanbois leap into action defending the rights of RPGs world-wide. HOWEVER, they DID just dickslap a large portion of the leveling aspect of the game (yeah, jokes involving penis' and faces are hilarious). Leveling characters in ME1 was some of my favorite things about the game, but oh God . . . I can only level up four skills/abilities/powers, ever, at all, total . . .

It's like Bioware took the anally-polar-opposite approach to their feedback. Someone said "Yeah, the leveling might be easier if scaled back a bit" and Bioware was like "Fuck that, I'll make sure you only level something ever 10 levels".

Speaking of levels, it maxes at 30 . . . which is relatively low for an RPG, but to be fair to the game, remember Fallout 3's max level was 20 (30 after DLC), and it still took a fuck-age to get to 20. I found the LEVEL system to work quite well, while the level-ING system, needs work -_-

There is no comfortable way to end this hateful rant so, I'll have you know that Apple is gonna want me to pay $50+ dollars to get my laptop ready to plug into my HDTV? Fuck you Apple.

Just kidding I still love you, you over-pricing, sexy, bastards.

Alright Mass Effect 2

2010-02-11T08:02:00.000-08:00

I figure I'll review ME2 in segments, simply because it's too fucking hard to put these things into shorter, simpler pieces of reading.

My biggest problem: In ME1, there were characters that made a significant impact either on the story, or on your character (through Good or Evil points, defining what Good or Evil dialogue you have access to). Now in ME2, they play such an insignificant role! I played through twice, with two different save files. In one, I killed the Rachni Queen (the last surviving member of a once-feared alien race), in the other imported game-file, I let her live. To my surprise, at random, I met someone who was delivering a message from the Rachni Queen to me, thanking me for saving her . . . but that was all.

And it seems that many of these pivotal characters that you play the game with in ME1, are simply standing around waiting for you to show up so they can say "Hello! I'm still alive, yes I am!", and it's so anti-climactic and boring! You spend the entire play through of ME1 with a cast of characters, whom you become close friends with (and sometimes more), and even your FUCKING romance in the first game, is only around for a quick "Hello, now goodbye" (come on no one falls in love with Liara) and is never heard from again . . .

It just felt as though the game is missing so much from the first. For instance: normally you would think that someone who's life you spared (or saved), would have MUCH more to say to you than "Hi, I'm still here", but rarely do conversations with surviving characters become more than a mini-quest, and generally that never becomes more than a simple test of whether or not you've equated enough Good or Evil points, needed to respond with Good or Evil dialogue.

To fix this, ME3 NEEDS to allow me to actively seek out the services of characters whom I grew close with in ME1 AND ME2, and let me use them to help save the galaxy. Speaking of, a lot of the characters you DO meet, end up giving you a big cock-finger when you ask them to join you, because they're usually busy. "Busy?!" I think to myself. How BUSY can someone be, when you are SAVING-THE-FUCKING-GALAXY -_-

ME2 is NOT a bad game but I feel they've cursed themselves a double-edged sword, because in a game with such detailed characters and development OF those characters, you as the player expect such a flourished relationship with characters to carry on just as strong as the series to continues. It's more content that Bioware may not be able to stuff into the game for content purposes, but then again, that is also kinda their fault >_>

OMFG WATER??!

2009-12-20T08:27:00.000-08:00

On another planet, and NO, not "space-kinda-sorta-water", but real, actual, flowing, water. Yeah bitches.

I'll spare you from a rehash of the article and just link you the article HERE, I instead wanted to get your brain a-flowing with this.

Think of a few scenarios with me:

- We get to said planet in the future

- There is intelligent life

- Intelligent life asks us to go fuck ourselves and leave

- We leave

If all but the last step seemed plausible, you're onto something. You KNOW, that if we landed on an alien world, only to be given a large bird (finger folks, finger), we'd return with bigger guns only to take it by force.

I know we want to think positively, like we've grown and advanced past pointless death/war/killing, but re-imagine it this way with me.

- We get to said planet in the future

- There is intelligent life there

- They have lived there, but haven't become space-faring, and want us to leave

- We leave

Yeah, I won't need to point out which scenarios don't fit the realms of realism.

Or better yet:

- We can't get to planet

- Some human discovers a way to get there, and does so

- We (years later or days later) learn to replicate their technology and do the same

- Our own human-dude has created a government/law on the planet

- Our own human-dude is living alone, peacefully, easily

and then

- Our own dude has named the planet, and now wants us to leave

The fact is, no matter how you slice it, humans really are selfish at heart. We'll take what isn't given to us, case in point, the indians we killed to live where we do today. It's sad, but could become a new reality for our descendants many many years later.

The inevitable post about the VGA's

2009-12-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

So the VGA's happened...

- Jack Black can suck my ceck

- Yay Arkham Asylum!!

- Yay Flower!

- STEVIE FUCKING WONDER!

Jack:

The first award, "best male voice actor" went to Jack Black for his role in Brutal Legend. Now to be frank about Brutal Legend, it's like Mirror's Edge. It's just, not great. It's the creative title that you buy because you want to support creativity in the industry, not because it's a stellar game.

Now that THAT'S out of the way, Jack Black made a joke (which I assume was part of the routine and planned), that essentially discredited the other nominees and their games (among them, Nolan North). It didn't go well with the crowd, and it didn't sit well with me. Jack, for having such a mediocre title (that also won a total of, 0 awards), it doesn't seem as though you have any right to make such an ass of yourself. But hey, it's your ass, just don't hurt your back when you bend over and shove your head that far into it.

NEXT! Arkham Fucking Asylum! Oh! And Flower! Here's the thing, referring to the previous paragraph (about creative games and whatnot), it's SO encouraging to see game developers that REALLY put their heart and soul into their work, actually WIN against some big name developers. Aka, I hope you suck on a large piece of goal Square Enix. Let real, inspired and creative developers take over (you too Capcom, what the fuck was Resident Evil 5?). Arkham Asylum and Flower, are both tributes to what-can-be, when you put faith into titles that show promise. STOP buying into EVERY FUCKING HALO GAME, and look at the developers (like Rocksteady), that SIMPLY NEED MONEY! They have the skill, the time, they just don't have the funds!

I don't generally get moved to tears. But admittedly, there are two particular things that do the trick. Ladies, this is the way to my heart. Basically, genuine love for something, and genuine people being wronged. Now, Stevie Wonder appeared tonight at the VGA's. There's always something humbling about seeing someone who LIVES their life harder than you can imagine living yours. Anyways . . . he said something that just stopped me. "10% of the world suffers from disabilities like mine. 180 million people will be exposed to music games tonight. Being part of that 10%, I want to see the developers of these music games, making them accessible for people like me, so I can enjoy them too."

What a fucking genius. And how true is that? I take that shit to heart, I really do. I mean for God's sakes, MOTHERS PLAY FUCKING TETRIS AND PEGGLE! Can't we develop game for the people in the world who don't quite measure to our standards as, normal?

I have no flashy exit, peace suckas, I need sleep.

An example of why numerical scorings systems should fuck themselves

2009-12-07T13:30:00.000-08:00

I just got finished playing Mirror's Edge a second time. Now to get the issues out of the way, ahem.
- You must always get from Point A to Point B, and there is very little opportunity to explore the city. There are also very few ways to get to said destination. While a particular map/area may look huge, in reality, there was simply not enough time spent on making the game explorable for the player, and it starts to feel really linear.

- The story is bullshit. As one of my favorite game reviewers put it "The government is somehow evil, though the only thing you can accurately accuse them of is that they keep their city too clean (referencing the graphics that (while beautiful), are very VERY bright/white), yes they may run their janitorial crew hard, but you're the one evading the law delivering mysterious packages to unknown clients so..." and that's just plain true. You have no idea what you're delivering, just that you have to deliver it, you don't know WHY the government is bad, just that it is.

- The combat is just plain stupid. It's not BAD. It's just plain unenjoyable and boring. You end up doing the same moves over and over. Also, the police force for , suffers from a thick case of inbreeding or twins, as all officers you encounter look exactly alike.

Those are the big three, linear/narrow exploration, lame/unexplained story, andboring combat. Now that that's out of the way, ahem. The game is a classic case of "guess and check" aka, experimenting. And it's creative. Sure, it didn't quite turn out right, BUT THAT'S WHAT EXPERIMENTING IS ALL ABOUT (excuse the sex joke). If game developers refused to break out of the mold, the industry wouldn't be as successful as it is. It's because they take leaps of faith, that games continue to evolve.

The actual problem comes when we, the players, decide that because a game isn't a 5/5, 100%, A+ game, that we aren't going to buy it. Well fuckers, that's what makes game developers STOP breaking creative molds, and start conforming to whatever makes them the most money (ala, Halo/CoD anybody?). I'm not asking you to go and buy bad games, because doing that just causes developers to think they can shit on you for $60 (aka Halo/CoD anybody?).

Just, support the smaller, creative studios that haven't quite forgotten what awesomesauce originality, creativity, and experimentation bring to a game.

The Mass Effect

2009-11-30T13:32:00.001-08:00

It's no secret. If you follow me on Twitter, you know, I, love, Mass Effect. I'd just as soon get a gender transplant, to have the child of anyone at Bioware (Bioware, call me). I've been pondering what exactly to write here, and I think I've figured it out. Tweeps, friends, (family?), I need to share the love. I need to share the love because despite how popular Mass Effect is, I have relatively few people to nerd out about it with. So, hopefully I can persuade you to pick up the game, and finish it before January. What exactly is the Mass Effect, you ask? Well it's a term I just coined (unofficially) at the writing of this article. And really, it's, everything Bioware did right with their game.

The good
Achievement Unlocked: In Mass Effect, achievements actually do shit. They don't just give you a higher numerical value with which to feel good about yourself for. No, Mass Effect ascends that crock of shit and said "Hey, might as well do something while I'm here". For example, unlocking the "Krogan Ally" achievement causes all subsequent characters you create to have regenerating health. Unlocking the Pistol achievement (name escapes me), increases pistol damage for all characters created. This BRILLIANT idea needs to be adopted by more games. This actually makes achievements WORTH obtaining.

Variety is a good thing: The game is fucking abundant in all things life. There are just about every stereotypical alien race humans have thought of before, but the creative minds @Biofeed have created some truly unique alien races. The best part is, the lore is there for you, IF YOU WANT IT. If you WANT to learn how these races communicate and function, you can. For example, you'd never know that almost all aliens have a technology used to translate what everyone is saying into a language they can understand. Otherwise everything spoken sounds quite, English :D

The choice is YOURS!: And the fine folks at Bioware (and I mean FINE), know this. (Note: Skip to bottom if you don't want to read this lengthy piece of wordage). Repeatedly they'll put you in impossible situations, forcing you to make impossible decisions. Lemme pause real quick to press some knowledge unto you. Way back in Mass Effect land, there were aliens (Rachni) that were killing, the fuck, out of everything. So another alien race (Krogan) come in, and wipe them out. Then, they kinda started wiping everything else out too. Eventually they're stopped (via a virus that prevents them from giving birth to children). NOW, in the game you'rere *SPOILER*, asked to either "Set free" or "Kill" the last surviving Rachni Queen. To top it off, she's quite convincing that she isn't like her ascendants that were quite, murderous previously. The choice seems pretty easy, unless you have Wrex in your party, who's gonna feel quite sore about you releasing a queen to a race whom his people were neutered for helping stop.

(Skip to here): or to put it simply, choose between who you're gonna kill off. Your possible love interest? Or character you've been playing the entire game with up until now? There is no way out of it, one of them will die, and will not be in any sequels in the series... who dies? Choice in games isn't anything new, but what IS new, is that these choices will affect not just this game, but all sequels released in the future... Did you save or kill the Rachni Queen? Who died, Ashley or Kaiden? Game-changers, permanently.

Not too sure about this
(Not quite) combat ready: If you go into Mass Effect expecting a deep combat experience, you'll be sadly disappointed (which seems to be largely changed in Mass Effect 2). Combat in the game isn't bad, it's just not very deep. It's quite simple, take cover when under fire, make sure you shoot the bad guys, use powers when you have them (everyone knows Lift is overpowered).

An (not too) even playing field:
That's not to say it isn't difficult. There are still a number of times that I've died (it's particularly harder earlier in the game). While there are six total classes in Mass Effect, there are really three main classes (the other three being hybrids of the former). There are soldiers, who wear heavy armor and can use every weapon in the game. There's the biotics user (aka, mage). But then there's a third wheel, the tech-user. It was always rather confusing to me what point the tech user served in battle. They aren't quite a mage, but they aren't a specialist in armor or weapons either... They don't (notably) heal any better than the other classes either... they seem to be an awkward step child in the game, not quite fleshed out. I also haven't seen anything on tech classes for Mass Effect 2 to see how they've changed.

Sounds a'ight: Whatever, shut up, make a classier title, I'm not paid to sound good. Anyways. I realized the other day. I don't notice the sounds of Mass Effect. It's (again), not a bad thing, it's just not entirely good either. In games like Metal Gear Solid I can remember hearing subtle cues (rushing water, trees in the breeze (the breeze for that matter), animals chirping). In Mass Effect, when you're on a space station teaming with (previously mentioned) life, you'd expect to hear all sorts of murmors/indistinct conversations, but everyone's silent (aside from the random single conversation you might catch). I just want to play Mass Effect 2 and have a soundgasm when I hear the first ship in the game take flight.

The bad (or REALLY fucking annoying)
That did NOT just happen: Ironically, that title can be used for the next paragraph too >_> Basically, the game has a few bugs. I don't expect you to encounter them that often, but when you do, they-fuck-shit-up... Aka, you see a rock to mine, you mine the rock. The sign (that automatically appears next to mined rocks), somehow appears in your character. Now you're stuck... hi. Yeah it's fucking annoying, I've had it happen at least twice (though I've almost beaten the game 10 times).

THAT DIDN'T JUST HAPPEN: Easily, by far, the MOST annoying thing about the game is the lack of an autosave feature (READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE YOU FUCKING TELL ME IT HAS AN AUTOSAVE FEATURE).While the main quest-line DOES feature an autosave system, the sidequests lack said feature. The game doesn't do a good job rewarding you for sidequests as it is (xp/money doesn't cut it Bioware), and it doesn't help that EVERY sidequest has no autosave feature whatsoever. You'll decide "Hey, maybe I'll go here and do ." only to get oh-so-far into the quest to be slapped down like a silly-bitch, and when the game's reloaded, you find yourself back to where you first started upon landing on the planet. Yeah, THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN!

Lemme just emphasize: I think I'm better at passionately writing for things that make me mad. That having been said, the pros in the game, easily outweigh the cons. Mass Effect is so (lulz) effective at delivering such a satisfying experience, hence why I repeatedly play it. It really is like watching your favorite movie, starring you and a star-cast and you shape every experience.

PS: THE GAME IS FUCKING CHEAP AS SHIT NOW SO GO GET IT!

INFINITE AMOUNTS OF RAGE UNTO YOUR SOUL!

2009-11-23T06:19:00.000-08:00

Square Enix! As the brilliant @Johnandrewwalsh has said, YOU ARE HATED! Square, me and you *points to me and you* for a long time, have had a very mixed relationship. *sighs* First, I fell in love with you via a mutual friend, Final Fantasy 8. I still love them. They treat me right Square! They tell me a story I want to hear, they sing songs that fucking cause ear-gasms, and they're hot (actually, they're showing their age now...BUT AT LEAST THEY'RE RELIABLE!) But YOU! YOU Square, have become the two-timing cheating, unreliable, untrustworthy ho-face, in our relationship. Ever since you stopped going by Squaresoft, and became SquareEnix, I have yet to see you produce a game that merits more than a yawn from me.

What happened to the good ole' days Square (it's okay if I call you Square right?) Why isn't STORY important? Square, you LOOK, so good, and then you just utterly lose me with your lame excuses and lack of care towards a good story.

ADDITIONALLY! Remember that one kinda-popular game, FUCKING CHRONO TRIGGER! Well, they are my best friend, yet you two have some kind of history, and it's really affecting our friendship. See, Chrono Trigger really CARES about me. But you're the jealous type. AND! Anytime someone tries to help us out, coach us through our relationship, you just go all crazy on their jock! All of the attempted remakes/fan-games of Chrono Trigger, are immediately slapped down with a giant trout!

WTF Square?! Are you going to DO something useful with the game license? Or are you going to keep hurting me and my friends with your attitude and abuse?

I leave you all, with something epic (that was killed via stake to the heart by SquareEnix!)

Hi Square, YOU ARE HATED!!!!

Somewhere I rarely go, politics

2009-11-19T02:07:00.000-08:00

It took me a long time to turn some of the tangled and conjumbled thoughts that I've had lately, into something understandable. Now I have, and I get "it". You guys know that world called Hollywood? Where "celebrities" don't wear underwear and it's news. Why the hell do I want to know who isn't wearing underwear? Personally I don't, but it has always been the strange, wacky, crazy things that have made life interesting. And as the saying goes, information is a commodity. So, "WE" (viewers) end up trading "THEM" (Hollywoods) views/ratings (aka $$), for crazy/random information that satisfies our appetite for the abnormal and strange.

Which brings me to the stations we call news. Fox, CNN, NBC, etc etc are all guilty of this (some more than others). Their aim, their goal, is first and foremost to get ratings. No matter how far they have to stretch truth. This probably sounds one of two ways to you, obvious, or untrue. My thoughts on this go far deeper than "they want money so they do or show crazy stuff".

We often think of news and politics in our country as some kind of guerrilla war, and in a lot of ways they are. We align ourselves with one particular broadcast or personality, and that alliance is the only HONEST broadcast. Fox fans are CRAZY that Fox speaks nothing but truth. CNN and NBC people act the same way. These stations are working these ideals to their advantage. They found out that the controversial, the crazy, earns them more views, and more money than the easy to report, and often-boring, news. The difference between news stations and Hollywood though, is that "news" stations aren't simply showing the controversial to garner more ratings. They do that while masquerading as real, honest news. This ends up playing on this idea of our alliance being "The 1, true broadcast". It hurts us. Instead of uniting a country, news stations have been dividing it.

In the end, we end up clinging to our alliances. We'll swear that Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, CNN, Fox, NBC, Jon Stewart, are the only speakers of the truth, and that all of the other people are fascist/socialist/unpatriotic traitors. This has become a malignant cancer. A problem that threatens the peace and cooperation our forefathers aspired to, more than any attempt to expand medicare. We don't like to admit we were wrong, turn our backs, or walk away from someone talking down to us, it's human nature. Just like Hollywood, "News" stations will continue spiraling real news, into something controversial, while it gives them ratings.

This is dangerous and hurtful to our country simply because these people that are supposed to report factual information, choose to willingly mislead and misrepresent the truth. We're supposed to trust these people to be honest with us, so that we can vote in our country accordingly, to make changes for the better. When we're misled to believe what they want us to believe, we vote according to what they want, not what we want, and this country was never founded on one idea or belief, but was comprised of the thoughts and ideas of many collective people. The job of the news corporation is to spit out the news to us, as ugly, or as boring as it is, so that we the people may vote accordingly, and they have failed us.

My inevitable post, MW2 thoughts (multiplayer)

2009-11-18T02:47:00.001-08:00

Best game ever made.

Oh, details. Actually, no, it's not, by a long shot. See I consider myself a badass at the game. I mean, I've had ups and downs, but USUALLY, I easily rank in the top 2 (top 5 at most), at the end of a match.

Having said that, I was fucking surprised that I sucked ass at multiplayer. I realized a few subtle tweaks to the game. First, sensitivity (turn speed), has been dialed back a smidge. Instead of having a scale of 1-9 to set your sensitivity to, you only have low-medium-high to choose from. Even at high, I felt like I was sluggish, moving through some stiff water. At first this was incredibly frustrating, but what it allowed for, was far less gung-ho running, and forces more thoughtful decision making. Previously I felt confident in my ability to mow down 2-3 guys quickly. While that's still possible in the game, it's impossible to move with the reflexes of a Terminator. Why? Cause Terminators aren't real, and CoD is a realistic shooter.

Speaking of realism. Bullets hurt, a lot. In reality AND in MW2. If you happen to, come across a member of the other team during a multiplayer game, and they shoot at you, you'll likely die. Now, as annoying as this is, it does two things. As mentioned before, it ends up forcing you to think before you run around like an idiot. You really can't run/gun as much as you could previously. Also, it makes the often-used-previously perk "Stopping Power" (which increases bullet damage dealt), less useful. It's a perk available at the beginning of the game though, perhaps to give an edge to younger players who don't have an edge on the competition. In the end, they've turned a rather over-powered/abused perk, into a perk useful for players who don't have a lot of options, but still balances it once you level. You end up finding a perk like "Hardline" (which lowers the killstreak requirements by 1 kill), more useful. Two kills for a UAV? Badass.

I guess the bad news comes in here. You, customize, the fuck out of shit in multiplayer. It sounds kind of nice at first, but customizable killstreaks, perk leveling, weapon customization, title/icon. On paper it all sounds pretty neat and organized, but when you crack open MW2, it feels very crowded. I struggle trying to think about whether the menu is cluttered in reality, or if it just FEELS that way. In any case, it's a lot to take in.

Overall. MW2 is very much for the "professional/hardcore" gamer. I don't say that a lot, because I usually find "hardcore" games to be used as a joke. I can't actually think of a lot of actual hardcore games, but MW2 is the first game I can think of, that actually makes multiplayer, difficult. Halo a little hard? Grab a shotgun. I mean, every game has their power weapons (MW2 included), but everything felt, balanced. That was the most frustrating thing. It was hard to make excuses for why I died so often. Previously abused perks were removed/changed to be less useful. The only advantage they had on me, was that I didn't know the levels/weapons/perks/menus :D AFTERWARDS, with a few hours spent on the game, I did pretty well, but the learning curve isn't anything other than steep. Once you can grab the game by it's testies though, you'll find that IW put a LOT of time into the title. It's hard at first, but with patience and time, you'll find a thoroughly solid experience (and yes, she DID say that).

The perks of a perk system

2009-11-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

Mark me words mateys! Perks will start to become the new golden turd of videogames!

Ahem, more properly phrased, more and more games are going to commonly implement a perk system. I think two of the most recognizable perk systems, were those used in Fallout 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. While they're used differently, they allow for extremely customizable characters.

Now you guys are going to see this spread like a virus to other games, because it's a relatively simple way to give a player a sense of originality. Fo3's perk system basically gave (what would be a normal character), specific customizations/abilities that make them unique from the general wash-in of everybody else out there. CoD's perk system let players customize themselves to their play style. Players who would rather snipe, are granted perks that work with their preference of play.

I really want to see this move to a racing game. I don't actually like racing games, at all really. Having customizable perks (faster breaking, harder turning, faster acceleration on straightaways, faster acceleration after fully stopping, etc) make a somewhat bland game, diverse. A racing game would benefit heavily from an implemented perk system.

There are a number of types of games that would benefit from a perk system (sports included), EXCEPT maybe an RPG. Actually, one of the earliest perk systems I used was the "talent system" used in WoW. Like other perk systems, it helps diversify the play-styles of two otherwise similar characters. But otherwise a singleplayer RPG is already rather customizable (Final Fantasy Perk system? No thanks.)

Inspired by @NinjaPhysics for her wootzing of my blog, thanks Ninjaphysics!

Why Natal and ?mystery item? could be in trouble

2009-10-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

Obviously Nintendo's been wiping their asses with "the greens" whilst (As Shigeru Miyamoto puts it) "makin' it rain" for some time now. Their magic box aka Project Wii, was a big hit (though they recognize they're magic box is starting to lack the interest of some other boxes!). Not to be be outdone Microsoft announced Natal quite a ways into the 360's life cycle, to compete for the "handheld motion sensing" market (whatever demographic buys into that...). But Sony and Microsoft should take a good hard look at Nintendo if they are to avoid the same mistakes that Nintendo's been making.

Anyone who's bought a Wii (especially in the states), has likely not turned it on for some time now (one article I read stated they sold their Wii for a mini fridge :D). So where'd Nintendo go wrong? Why haven't people been playing these amazing wish-boxes? There are three large obstacles in Nintendo's way.

1: What exactly is "online play"?

Nintendo's friend code system can hardly be called "easy to use". A friend code is a tag assigned to your specific name on your Wii once you play online. It consists of a long series of letters and numbers, fun. Exchanging friend codes is neither easy, nor fun. Consider it this way. You're on a Dating Show. There are 3 mystery guests behind 3 different doors. You can SEE the person, but not the door. You KNOW who you want to choose, but you don't know what their "door number" (friend code) is. Thus, if you want to figure out your friend's friend code is, you have to ask them, which means THEY better know their own (again, it's a series of numbers/letters easily 15 chars long, you keep that jotted down somewhere). There is no "friends list", to keep in line who is and isn't on your "list". It essentially lacks any of the simplicity that is PSN or XBL, thus online play is "difficult" at best.

2: The Wii does not grant wishes

Sad but true, and let's face it. The Wii was pretty much marketed to better utilize the motion controls than it actually does in reality. Nintendo seems to be the only company that knows how to really utilize motion controls (and even they mess that one up on occasion). Another huge disappointment is that it seems as though every game on the Wii has to (in one way or another) use (or try to use) motion control. In the end, they often feel tacked on and half baked. Wii developers need to realize that just because motion control is available, it's not necessary.

PS: Nintendo, remember that one game you made (that kinda sold pretty well)? Super Smash Brothers? Yeah that game doesn't use motion controls . . .

3: Where do I plug in a yellow cord?

*grumble mumble* Yes it DOES still use standard RCA cables. Hold on while I get off to that one movie, "Uncharted 2". Okay, I'm spending very little time on this, but really Nintendo? If your console wasn't the first console on market, there is no excuse (and still little room to gripe if it were) for being behind the times. Games ARE after all supposed to be an extension of modern technology...

The only one that will actually apply to Microsoft and Sony is number two. The good news for both of them, is that they have already successfully handled issues 1 and 3. They're top of the line (graphically) and they both have relatively stable and robust online capabilities. They just need to make sure that developers either work hard to make motion control an option, available if I want it, but not a responsibility.

People that have impacted my life in gaming

2009-10-29T12:19:00.001-07:00

Nobuo Uematsu

You may not recognize the name at first (although Squaresoft alumni should immediately know the name). Uematsu was the mastermind behind the Final Fantasy 8 soundtrack (the first Fantasy game I'd ever played).

What put him on this list, was his understanding of mood. It sounds insignificant at first, but Nobuo understood what kind of music a particular scene required. Any game worth it's weight in cow testicles has a great sound track to back up every

hard hitting moment, and this man was the Einstein of videogame soundtracks.

Without further ado, one of my favorite songs of his:

2009-10-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

So we all know I love me some zombie ass whooping. Well @NikoleZ had the bright idea of tweeting: "This is the perfect song to kill zombies to. Someone should overlay it on the L4D2 trailer. Hawt, right? ♫ http://blip.fm/~fhgux"

Now, I present to you, said trailer. And NO, it's NOT just the same trailer with a background song, I (attempted to) do(did) a little editing. Either way, it took a bit of time and effort, so a modest amount of class would be appreciated :D otherwise enjoy folks!

PS: I know there are a few very small "nitches" here and there

- Namely that video quality changes due to content coming from all of the L4D2 trailer released thus far, there's only one part where it's particularly noticeable :)

Infinite amounts of furious rage upon thee!

2009-10-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

G4...stop, please. Please don't portray the gaming industry, the world of technology, or whatever demographic you're going after, to treat our ladies the same way the music industry treats there. I have long stated, "I get it". Bills must be paid, you must pay them, to pay them you need money, to get money I watch your television, I watch your television because you throw boobs in my face, got it. But, one question real quick, wtf is this?

"Near nudity highly encouraged"? *sigh* Things like this just piss me off. Remember when music was good? Remember those days? Oh hey, how does "good music" sound today? Kanye? T-Pain? Lady Gaga? Britney? Justin? Awesome musicians huh? No, they aren't. You know what most of em' have in common? The "ho's (hoes?)" they put in their videos. Why? Cause it earns them money. But guess what, it doesn't make the music sound any better. And thus the music industry universally suffers from a "lack of originality".

Why are you encouraging your viewers to get "nearly nude"? In fact, wtf is with this competition anyways? Women of the web? Again, "I get it", but why don't you change your fecking name to Spyke TV, or HB-oh? You are not being G4 anymore. Now, you are (to be frank) sellouts. I've been on the fence for a long time, but I feel as though by giving you money, watching your shows, I'm just kicking a dead horse that isn't going to be brought back in this lifetime.

By the way, you have some real fecking talent you could work with. All of your original hosts are damn good at what they do, and an absolute joy to watch. I just can't stand watching more "Wanna see the hawtest ladeeyzz, zomg?!?!?11?! Tune into "G4" this" etc etc. With AOTS and Xplay being hugely popular, (both being original content from G4 as well), is it really so risky to ask for something more than "COPS COPS COPS COPS CHEATERS CHEATERS XPLAY AOTS". It's not like AOTS and Xplay don't get ratings.

As a sidenote: I've been rather curious, who it is that spearheads these ideas? Do they REALLY think this is a good idea? I mean, it can't possibly just be Neal Tiles. One man can do many things, but this "shoving of breasts" in my face simply has to be the work of a great many people.

Whatever, fed up, done, time to go look for originality on the internet that doesn't substitute boobs for talent.

PS: Kudos to them though for the freerunning championship, I give credit where it's due. And Pereira, Butler, Munn, Haislip, Sessler, Webb, and Herter are all very, very good, and very fun to watch.

There are some things that make a total of zero sense

2009-10-15T04:19:00.000-07:00

I have long puzzled over the Republican party. I don't disagree with them entirely. But this is not a moral issue, not in the sense that you're probably thinking of. When I think politics I really, strongly avoid the checklist of "pro life / pro choice?" "yea / nay for the war?" "are you black or white?". I really hate these questions, and using them, to determine my political stance, is not just stupid, but dangerous.

This is where the real story comes in. Recently, Haliburton, a thriving oil business (in a sketchy "Gray Area" due to their relations with previous Vice President Dick Cheney), was recently put into a "grayer" area for a clause in their contract with employees that "prevented employees from suing, if they were raped by co-workers". No, I'm not kidding. This is not a Mr. Paisley funny joke, why not? Cause it's not fecking funny!

Of all people to look at this and actually do something about it, was Senator Al Franken. AL FECKING FRANKEN! (You may know him from SNL...) The bill was put through, and (ironically enough) it passed 68-30. Who would be the 30 fecking people that voted no to the "anti-suing-for-rape-clause"? Republicans, all 30 votes came from the Republican party . . . As Jon Stewart put it: "I understand we're a divided country. Some disagreements on healthcare... How is anyone against this?"

OH! And here's where the REAL gray area stuck. This all came to light, after a lady was gang raped by Haliburton/KBR employees, and locked in a crate after trying to tell law enforcement. After coming to America, she was told she wasn't allowed to sue the company, because of a clause in her contract . . .

And this is where I tie into my earliest statement. I'm not saying that by being a Republican you're an idiot. There are smart people in the world, smart republicans. Everyone has an opinion. There are actually people, that have opinions, about your opinion. Alas, I think there are 30 really stupid Republican senate members right now who need to rethink their job status. I'm uncertain about how we can, (what's the word?), justify rape of any kind? Apparently, these 30 people, are pro-choice of ANY kind, rape, abortion, murder? I wouldn't put it past em'.

For Yotobari and others who can't choose...without my expert guidance

2009-10-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Alright, let's get right into this. There are three consoles, you want one, but you don't know which one.

Wii: We've already clearly ruled out the Wii, but let's not forget to discuss it. Unlike Fox News, I try to be "Fair and Balanced." Here's the deal with the Wii. People think they grant wishes. I bought mine (while grinning like an idiot) and I haven't bought (or got excited about) a new game for a few months now. That's not to say there aren't a few quality titles. Almost anything Nintendo has put out has been a really good game. Alas, Nintendo as a game developer often doesn't stray from "the path". They develop a lot of platformers, and that's going to be a lot of what you choose between. "Zelda? Mario? Hmmm I can't decide!". I bought Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Brothers and there really are few other titles that have my attention. The other really crappy thing about the console (and this is rarely disputed), is that while online play is capable, it's hardly ever used because Nintendo still hasn't quite perfected the program. You don't create a name, you are assigned a number/letter combination (Evs395jsen) that you need to share with OTHER people, and add to your "friend-code list", hardly convenient.

Notable Wii games:

- Super Smash Brothers

- Super Mario Bros. series' (unreleased as of yet)

- The Conduit (average, at best, FPS)

- Madworld (Mature, kill-em-up title)

Playstation 3: Alrighty Yoto, PS3. This is (ironically) more of the "poor man's" console. It's not BAD by any means, it's just more affordable. The online play is free, it's (I believe) the same prices as any comparable 360, and it plays blue ray (which is pretty damn expensive on it's own!). The real problems with the PS3 lie in it's library of games. There are definitely some good ones, but it's definitely a smaller selection to choose from than that juggernaut-360. The other thing that's rather faulty is that if you're looking for a multiplayer experience (it IS free on the PS3), there are fewer quality multiplayer games. If you won't spend much time online, or playing with others (essentially you'd play offline single player experience), the PS3 might actually be a smart choice!

Notable PS3 games:

- Uncharted series

- Metal Gear, freaking, Solid, 4

- Little Big Planet

- God of War 3

Xbox 360: And now for my own choice of console, the 360. Note that my console is old, slow, RRoD' TWICE, and I still prefer it over others, (ps3 pulls a close 2nd). The biggest pull for the console, is that it's got a vastly larger library than the other two consoles, it also has a large variety of games. RPGs (while being rare right now, there IS Mass Effect (excellent game), and Final Fantasy just jumped on the 360), FPS', racing, etc etc. Now the online play isn't free, but you get much more than what you pay for. Buying 360 online membership opens you up to Facebook/Twitter on-console, Netflix and a robust (and I mean robust) online/party support. ADDITIONALLY, if you box DOES red-ring, they fix it, for free, AND comp you an additional month of xbox live...yeah, really. Does it take more convincing?

Notable Xbox games:

- Call of Duty series (top choice for FPS players)

- Mass Effect (for a story-driven player)

- Fallout 3

- Left 4 Dead (forcibly co-op multiplayer, or forcible death).

So there you go Yoto and others, I'd easily recommend a 360 over the others if you can afford the online play, but the PS3 is a solid choice if you can't afford to pay for online play, though it offers less variety and fewer games. What's a Wii?

My Letter to Neal Tiles

2009-09-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

To add a few things quickly (not included in the letter): I think Neal Tiles has G4's best interest in mind in all of his current decisions, this letter is only an extension of my current thoughts on the G4 programming and hopes for it's future.

Hey Neal, first off I want to warn you that this might become a bit lengthy, and secondly I wanted to thank you for (reading the entire letter, and) putting G4's "needs" ahead of the "wants" of the loud minority. Doing so takes "balls". Being a longtime G4 fan (going on the 6th year I believe?), I remember when a lot of G4's programming centered around games alone. Obviously this wasn't paying the bills and obviously you want what's best for the network (I'm sure you could have had an easier time with a different job).

That being said (bear in mind that this is with my most sincere and "non-douchious" thoughts). I find a lot of the latest original programming to frankly, just be insulting. I understand your position and because I respect both you and the network, I openly stand by your decisions (granted porn doesn't become part of the programming :p). My tv is often left on G4, but turned off if I don't care to watch what's on.

A lot of the shows themselves aren't what I take issue with, ironically it's usually the promos. I like poker, I used to watch televised tournaments/shows all the time. The promotions for these poker shows however, concerned the game of poker. Granted they might have some attractive ladies come out to serve players drinks sometimes, but they were hardly ever promoted to be the draw-in for consumers. Also, I keep seeing the staff (through Twitter or the main page) promote the ladies/women on 2m2mm, not the game or goal at hand, (Yeah! That was a stripper pole in that freeze frame!). Like any normal human male, I love boobs.

I don't watch G4 for boobs though, I watch G4 to stay connected to professional and very real world for which is so often stereotyped as "being for anti-social, basement monger, living-with-their-mother, pale, fat, skinny, nerds". Remember, I really do understand that as a business, you have to do what makes money. You aren't a magical cloud spewing geek news and content for me at my will. I know that G4 cannot just "stick it to the man", or "the man" will un-stick (or stealthily kill) G4.

I guess that I'm really hoping that G4 begins to snatch back the growing market for games/tech. Maybe TechTV acted too early trying to tap into this market. But now we're seeing ever-increasing interest in games/tech primarily through online content. It feels like G4 is ignoring this though and going after what's easy. "You are man, man like boobs, I give boobs, you give me ratings". I know that isn't how all of G4 feels, and I know you're keeping the monetary interests of G4 at the forefront, but I'm hoping that G4 gets back to what G4/TechTV was founded under (when it has the means to do so), and doesn't stay on the "what quickly makes/saves the most money" path.

My largest frustration is that G4 seems to have become one large stereotype for gamers, and not a proof of the growing industry it should focus on. Maybe inadvertantly it's become proof that a tech/game channel simply doesn't have enough interest to generate sales, and therefore there's a level of sex that has to be promoted to garner these sales. If that's true, it's sad. But maybe G4 should move to online content alone? There are many previously successful people doing this now (maybe that's a bad thing for you, maybe G4's missed the mark for that). Still, if G4 has to tank, I would've liked to know it did so without compromising it's beliefs and the beliefs of many gamers globally (note that I really hope G4 doesn't tank).

I love G4, I love what it stands for, and I love what (most of it) does. I completely believe that what you guys can do for the industry is not only necessary, but needed. You have large promotional powers and can reach far more people than a lot of other businesses. I guess this letter is for you (the man who can make things happen), from me (a fan), hoping that G4 won't forget what it stands for, and will eventually pursue more content oriented around the interests that it's name comes with, before someone else does.

- A fan,

Brandon Paisley

L4D2 Boycott Status

2009-09-15T23:16:00.000-07:00

Man do I love me some whiners. Every time I see one I inform them that the Earth was discovered to revolve around the sun, not them. And then I tell them they're a failure.

Speaking of failures! The L4D2 boycott which spawned a number of other boycotts (Shadow Complex and Modern Warfare 2 come to mind), likes to boast it's record number of legitimate members.

That's right guys, a record (we'll round up for argument's sake) 42k members! Now I know you might say "Hey! they only have (again, rounding WAY up for argument) 8k online! And even less actually PLAYING the game! There's only 4 people in their chat!"

And to you sir, I call you a terrorist with no heart.

Let's not look at numbers or statistics, I think the healthy comments the group receives shed enough light on the boycotts call to action.

I'd take the time to point out my favorites, but meh, that's more attention and time than they deserve. In other news, they finally pop up in my google search before typing "boycott" near the end.

Ironically, this happened AFTER news broke that founders of the boycott were offered a trip to Valve Studios up in WA (yeah, I live here, it's awesome).

Valve, I love you, I do. I know you love me, but do you know what you've done? Once gamers think that by complaining they'll end up in your studios within a few weeks, boycotts will be a dime a dozen! Anyways, here's my big "F__k you" to the boycott and, maybe just a quieter, less vulgar word towards Valve for indulging the gripers (not a plural of gripper you grammar whores).

PS: A good amount of the boycott members that actively visit the boycott group ended up flipping off the two founders that went to Valve because they had "Sold out". Yeah, you see what happens when you start a big fiasco? STFO and pull the sticks from your ass sirs.

The Future of the MMO

2009-09-06T02:01:00.000-07:00

I recently saw the latest trailer for "The Secret World". This was the first experience I had with the game, and from what I've heard from others, we shared the same first thoughts, "Wow a shooter MMO". Now after looking more into the media that is available, it's obvious that the game will use some form of magic, how detailed or how large a part magic will play, has yet to be revealed.

This got me thinking though. I really nerded out when I saw that trailer the first time. Many ideas came to mind. Most of which centered around the thought "Finally, someone made a realistic, story-driven RPG", that actually tries to stray from the pack of "hit the max level, join a group, do the last stuff until you get some absurd gear/equipment, and wait for our next expansion pack to do the same".

I'll say upfront that I'm a WoW player, and that I think it's a great game. But I'll also say that I feel the same pains many other WoW players feel, in the repetition of the game. Blizzard tries very hard to make new content for the game. TBC introduced every class to new abilities and created a new world. WotLK added a new world too, but introduced a new class, WHILE raising the level cap, to freshen up the classes. Cataclysm will work to renew the entire game, while reinventing the areas we all fell in love with at level 8. These are all genuine attempts to please their players, and it definitely shows, but the core of the game, is still repetition.

And so I jump back to my earlier interpretation of "The Secret World". Wouldn't this game (or any MMO) rock, if it got rid of the idea of leveling altogether? Hold your horses, the game isn't dead yet! It gets good I promise!

You see, this game would exchange the fantasy of "leveling up / magic" that is so attached to the MMO genre, with pure realism.Instead of leveling. You're actually working to obtain more "gear" (drugs, people (women, slaves, etc), or guns), anything that gives the player monetary power or influence, and helps them to survive in an "every man for themselves kind of world".

Combat would work like this: A pistol, could easily kill anybody in real life, it's a dangerous firearm. Still, even with a pistol, I'd never threaten a man with an Assault Rifle (you see where weapons/ammo/etc carry influence). In a world of "every man for themself", finding things that will help you survive, are key. Now you with your pistol are easily outgunned by the AR-man, but maybe your friend has a shotgun? The two of your are still obviously on the losing end in an outright fight, but the key would be distraction and surprise.

I hate turning articles into one huge "idea for an awesome game", but the MMO genre has a particular habit of falling into the category of MMO-RPG, and I'm really dying to see a game that brings a heavy and realistic story. I'm sick of living the "fantasy" in every MMO. I want to play an MMO that isn't so far from reality that it's (literally) unbelievable.

Thoughts?

2009-08-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

Most people have heard of the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott. It's old news by today's standards (news gets old pretty fast). But you were likely not aware that there is yet another boycott out there. Guess what game is facing the wrath of millions (okay fine thousands... okay hundreds tops) of nerds that are fed up with being jerked around! Modern Warfare 2.

No you heard me correctly. MW2 is in fact now the talk of many folks up in Britain, who are red in the face over the news that the game was going

to be £54.99! (That's about $90!)

Note: Before I get angry emails, no, the game is not $90 American dollars. It IS £55, but only $60 (standard edition anyways, last I checked) for us here in the states.

Allow me to break things down:

Is £55 too much? Yes.
Do the folks in Britain have a right to be mad? Definitely. That price is incredibly rediculous
Do I think it's worth boycotting over? No.
Do I think it will cause a price drop for the game? No

Speaking of price drops! All the boycotting in the world won't change a games price (well, that's not entirely true. A global boycott would likely drop prices like Norris drops men). In the end, developers aren't really looking at your whining, they're looking at their sales. If the sales suck, they'll likely lower their prices to meet our needs. If the sales are good, despite boycotts, they'll continue to do right by the people that buy their products.

Gamers have got this strange idea in their minds lately: "Hey! If I don't like something, I'll just bitch about it, get a group together of other people who complain just as much as me, and I'll get my way." Sad news, that's not how it works.

Just like parenting (though I have no experience on this matter!) when your k

id whines for the Popsicle, that last thing you do is give them their damn Popsicle.Now if your kid bought the Popsicle for $90, you explain to them "I know I'm being a douche by charging you that much, but it's legal, get over it."

Don't count on me buying from "the man" all the time though. I am still rather, hopeful that Activision will see little to no sales in Britain. Not because I don't want them to make money, but rather, I'm confused at their reasons for this price hike. Especially a change that is this big. I love Call of Duty, it's my game of choice, but I find it rather offensive to be honest. It's sad that Activision has to fall in the category of "Businesses that should be in the oil industry".
It sucks for anyone in Britain, and I totally understand the rage guys but really. Unless you are really going to boycott (not purchase from Activision ever)stop the boycotting, you make real gamers look bad.

-Class dismissed.