Mister Splunk

I HAVE A TURKEY IN THE OVEN

2012-01-08T09:41:00.006-05:00

SO HERE'S SOME QUICK THOUGHTS

Catherine... isn't that good. I admire what they're trying to do, but they tried really hard to make the game "different" and forgot to make it "good". I'm not terribly far in it (I think around the fifth or sixth night), but I'm finding it harder and harder to play the game. The gameplay is pretty terrible, but I could forgive it if the story was relatively better. So far, it's not. There are no characters here, the closest you get is Vincent (the protagonist), and really all he does is stammer and sweat while hardly reacting to being told he has a child. The two Catherines are caricatures and nothing more. Maybe that was the point and it's strictly meant to be a surreal affair (pun not intended, but hilarious none-the-less), but to go from Persona 4 to this seems like a giant step backward.
Sonic Generations is fun... but not incredible. I guess that's all you can really expect. I find myself really wishing they re-did more than ONE stage from each game, since nostalgia is the major - MAJOR - draw here.
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is not really worth talking about.
Batman: Arkham City was good... but I already got the latest Assassin's Creed game. I didn't really need Batman thrown into it.
Speaking of Revelations, so far it seems exactly like Brotherhood. The only differences I can find is that Ezio has a fuller beard, and there's no "The Truth" puzzles hidden around, which is something I really liked in previous games. I still have fun running around the city and assing people, but it has about as much innovation and quality that you'd expect an annual game series to have.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is good, and that surprised the ever loving shit out of me. The combat is WoW, the classes are WoW, and the graphics and animation are honestly pretty bad, but the presentation makes up for a lot of its problems. Just the simple fact that it's all voice acted is enough to get me to play it. It's still very much an MMO, and aside from instances (flashpoints and they're called here) and your class quest the dialogue is little more than someone reading quests text to you. It's still something different than any other MMO has done, however, and for that I applaud it.
I have had Skyward Sword for two weeks now and I have yet to play it because of "doing other shit". I must remedy this. However, I just remembered you need a Wii Motion Plus two days ago, which I must now wait for to be delivered. I must also find my Wii and kill whatever creatures have infested it.
I will write up something about my DnD campaign soon, it's just we haven't had a lot of time to play what with the holidays and work and sheet.

Quick Updates and Preview of Actual Shit

2011-12-02T10:46:00.005-05:00

Skyrim is good, but not great. Played it for three days straight and haven't really touched it since. Overall it's better than Oblivion, but they took out a lot of things from Oblivion that could have been reinvented instead of removed.
Saint's Row The Third is the best of the series in terms of gameplay (it is actually a functioning piece of software on a PC), but it may be the worst in terms of story. And the first Saint's Row was awful, so The Third is pretty disappointing. It's not a bad game by any means, but it seems to have lost a lot of the heart of the second game. Either that or it seems like they either ran out of time, money, or sense. Fun game, but very disjointed and disappointing story.
Modern Warefare 3 and Battlefield 3 are both awful. This is a war one cannot win.
STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN A DOTA 2 INVITE DESPITE SIGNING UP AS SOON AS SIGNING UP WAS AN OPTION. WHY DOES VALVE HATE ME!? DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG!? I DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN THIS LEAGUE OF LEGENDS WORLD ANYMOOOOOOOOOORE!
King of Fighters XIII is a really great fighting game, but it's another game that should have been at a lower price point. Mortal Kombat is really the only fighting game I can recommend to people who aren't hardcore fighting game players, and it has nothing to do with the actual fighting. Played one game online with a full connection and haven't touched online play since. Someday this curse will be broken.
Started watching Breaking Bad on Netflix. I wonder when Lois is going to catch Hal doing these terrible things.
Tucker ate my Carnifex. He's a Space Marine player.

Okay, and now for the actual shit. Recently I've been preparing to DM a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, so I thought I might as well chronicle the thing here. I'm playing with a fairly colorful group who are all pretty much brand new to the game and roleplaying in general, so it should be interesting. There may be a lot of character deaths. I am not your granny's dungeon master.

WERT I BEEN DURIN' INSTID A' TALKERN TA YOU

2011-10-27T04:44:00.003-04:00

His name's Tucker, he's a boxer/lab mutt, he's eight months old, and he never fucking stops. This photo was taken hastily in the few precious minutes he is not trying to steal shoes and take them to what I can only assume is some kind of shoe sanctuary. He thinks himself a hero, liberating the Shoeish people from our oppressive regime of feet. He's a lovable guy though, even if he still plays like a little puppy despite not being little in any sense of the word.

Anyway, there's plenty out there to bitch about. I saw a commercial for Final Fantasy XIII-2, and I was filled with plenty of pre-bitching rage. Tucker there, however, was only ever kennel trained by his previous owners, so there's... a lot of work to do during my free time. I'm just making this to say I'm still here, in case anyone wanted to have sex with me.

It is October 13th

2011-10-13T11:25:00.002-04:00

How about that?

My Dick Hurts - September 17th, 2011

2011-09-16T10:22:00.006-04:00

Street Fighter X Tekken, Skull Girls, King of Fighters XIII, Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Persona Arena, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Dead Or Alive 5, and Soul Calibur 5. Do you think there are enough fighting games coming out from now to 2012? In most other genres, this wouldn't be a big deal. But for people like me whose consumer judgment is completely butt-fucked at the notion of learning a new fighting game, the new deluge of fighting games comes at a price, and not just out of our wallets. Sure, back in the day there would be a new version of a fighting game every week (a trend Capcom seems to want to continue), but those were largely the same systems and characters receiving an update. Also, I was a dumb kid back then who thought the dragon punch was a mystical random boon from the gaming gods bestowed upon you for doing enough fireballs. Now I can spend hours just exploring characters and combos in a training mode, and I can't do that for this many fuckin' games in additon to keeping up with those I already play.

Originally, I couldn't care less about Street Fighter X Tekken ("X" is apparently pronounced "cross" in Capcom Land), because my faith in the Street Fighter franchise was shaken by 4, and I don't give a shit about Tekken. OH, how I do not give a shit about Tekken. After more videos and information has popped up, however, I've become intrigued. It looks like a more advanced Street Fighter 4, and if there's one thing SF4 needed, it was progression. The recent announcement of the "pandora" mechanic scared me a little, but hasn't proven itself to me to be another X-factor just yet. SFxT is a tag game, and when one of your characters is at low health, you can sacrifice them to power up your other character. Just looking at that makes it look like another terrible come-back mechanic that has infested this latest generation of fighting games. However, when you factor in that if you don't win the round in, like, eight seconds (that's what it looked like to me anyway) you instantly lose the round. While that does potentially allow for bullshit come-backs, the huge risk you take (and the fact that your opponent obviously has access to this, and theirs is going to last longer than yours at this point) makes it far more interesting.

I said before if there was an update to MvC3 I wasn't going to buy it, and despite Ghost Rider being in it I'm still in the mindset of sticking to that. I was tempted though, because I mean come on, Ghost Rider. I always say you vote with your wallet, and I don't want any kind of game to be treated like this. It shouldn't be okay for developers to release an incomplete product and release an "update" in such a short time.

Skull Girls is looking very interesting, since it's a game made by fighting game fans FOR fighting game fans. Persona Arena doesn't seem all that engaging as a fighting system, but the art and promise of a continuation of Persona 4 is enough to draw me in. King of Fighters XIII seems to be what King of Fighters XII SHOULD have been, which is also very interesting. I don't give a shit about the rest, primarily because they're 3D fighters and I have... issues with that genre. I can usually have fun with Soul Calibur, though.

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League of Legends has this problem that supersedes any gameplay imbalance or bug: it wasn't supposed to be this popular. That's what it seems like to me anyway. Riot's big thing they've got coming up is Dominion, a capture-and-hold type gameplay mode that is apparently going to change the world. Before that it was spectator/replay features, and before that it was a new DOTA-style map called Magma Chamber. None of these have been released. Dominion has far more marketing behind it than anything else they've said they're working on, and was said to be released "shortly after PAX". What we've gotten is an announcement that limited beta testing would be starting for Dominion at some time in the future. Eh.

The MOBA genre is going to be the new shit, if it's not already. Every other game in the genre has had features LoL has talked about for a year but never delivered on release. It's a fun game, don't get me wrong, but I'm very skeptical that is deserves to be the most popular and profitable on the market. And honestly, I really don't think Riot can compete with Valve once DOTA 2 comes out. I like your game, but you've got to get something out there.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a great game, ignoring the boss battles. However, something I didn't mention in my original post about it was the shooting mechanics. This is mostly because I didn't really use guns in my first playthrough, but when I did use them they felt very "console-fied". By this I mean they were clunky and had too much mouse smoothing (note: any amount of mouse smoothing is too much). You might get used to it if you use it enough, but it still doesn't feel good.

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Finally, Danzig.

My Dick Hurts - August 28, 2011

2011-08-27T19:14:00.008-04:00

So I "beat" Final Fantasy XIII... I think. I don't know if I missed some side-quests (I did a few of the hunts, but then realized that I have a goddamn brain and decided to not continue), but this ending comes in the middle of the game. I appreciate the developers ending it quickly - very thoughtful - but... gah! The WORST part of this ending was that it was actually kind of awesome. I have NO fucking clue what happened, but the final cutscenes are great to look at, and are actually kind of tense despite the "not having a fucking clue what happened".

I'd relate what occurs and what I think about it, but I don't think that's possible. The protagonists fight Orphan despite the fact they just spent the last ten hours talking about how they weren't going to do that. Turns out Orphan is a... mixture of Seymour and some other random character whose name I forgot. There's a lot of random characters whose names I've forgotten that are just dropped and served no purpose what-so-ever. Anyway, you beat him, but the characters don't know what to do. It's KIND OF too late to be formulating a plan here, but whatever. Orphan starts torturing Retarded Australian Girl in order to get her to kill him, but Hot Australian Chick ain't havin' none of that. So she threatens to smack Retarded Australian Girl in the head with her stick, and everyone else turns into Cieth. I don't know why. They dogpile on Hot Australian Chick, who turns into a fiery cat demon for some reason, jumps at orphan... and then gets off and turns back. I don't know why. Everyone else turns back into humans, I don't know why, and then we fight the REAL Orphan who's a baby head, I don't know why, which is an insultingly easy boss fight. You beat Orphan and then Hot Australian Chick and Retarded Australian Girl fuse together and turn into a thousand-armed demon and jump into the center of the world, using lava that turns into crystal to connect Pulse and Cocoon. Um... I don't know why? I laughed my ass off during the whole thing, but it was cool to look at.

Then it ends with a shitty song and pretends like something profound happened. There's no closure because it failed so hard at explaining the conflict. Next.

I already made a post about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but I'll go into more detail. This game turned out a lot better than I expected. The graphics and animation are pretty dated, but the gameplay and level design are what matters and that's what they focused on. I'm playing through it as a stealthy-hacker, and for the most part I'm given fun and useful things to do. Until I get to the castle and have to fight Bowser and save the fucking princess. There are boss battles, and they do not belong. I assume if you focused on combat and played the game as a more traditional shooter, these would be fine. If you play Deus Ex like goddamn Deus Ex, however, you've got a problem. These segments have really tainted my view of an overall excellent game. Not only do they remove the element of choice, they are also just bad boss battles. Not welcome in the slightest.

I got used to playing as Neo a little faster than I thought, though. So there's that.

I don't have much to say about Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition, because I haven't gotten the chance to play it much. Street Fighter III has always been the fighting game that I could really "get into", but till now it's been hard because no one fuckin' plays it. I've only really fiddled around with it so far (haven't even touched the online mode), but the immediate thing I noticed is I can't do inputs. Like, I play Makoto and can't get her throw out when I really need it. At first I thought Street Fighter 4 just ruined me, but then I remembered the last time I played this game was on an emulator with a goddamn Xbox 360 controller and my execution was fine. Haven't really played enough to blame the game, but it just feels like something funny is going on.

Finally, I'm thinking of maybe doing something at the end of each of these, since they're basically all I do now. So for now, I'm going to be posting whichever song I've been listening to the most since the last post, provided there's a YouTube link to it. Why? Because I dunno. Here.

ATTENTION DEVELOPERS OF DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION

2011-08-25T19:40:00.003-04:00

You did a good job. One question though.

Why the fuck are there boss battles?

ATTENTION MARKETING TEAM BEHIND THE NEW "THE THING" MOVIE

2011-08-21T15:35:00.003-04:00

Please make it absolutely clear in your trailer that it is a prequel. That way, someone's movie going experience isn't ruined because the only thing they can think about is how you made MacReady a girl.

My Dick Hurts - August 15, 2011

2011-08-13T05:25:00.005-04:00

Final Fantasy XIII is boring and I haven't played it much because it is boring, and it is boring because it is boring. That is all.

Apparently there's such a thing as a "Christian Police Association", and they are calling for a ban on The Darkness 2 in multiple countries. I don't know anything about this organization, so I'm not going to assume anything. My guess is, however, that they're reacting mainly to the original game, wherein a large part was dedicated to evading or thwarting corrupt cops. And since it's a game, you shot a lot of these police officers and, okay, MAYBE ate a heart or two. Even though these cops were expressly made out to be "dirty", I can see how a police officer wouldn't like to see police officers shot at. Some of them do get shot at, and they don't want to be reminded what could very well happen to them. Of course, calling for a ban on the game in question is absurd for all the same reasons you've probably heard a thousand times over. And also there's no evidence that the police are an adversary in the sequel, unless police happen to be hellish shadowy demon-spawn.

It's likely the "Christian" label has something to do with it as well, which I really don't understand. In the original game, Jackie has to commit suicide on holy ground in order to attempt to destroy the Darkness. Now the "suicide" part isn't very Christian, but Jackie does it in a Christian church, and it works. So according to The Darkness, a church is hallowed ground and is used to combat a force of evil whose domain is referred to as "Hell", which sound's like something Christian's are a proponent of. The thing I'm getting at here is The Darkness 2 is coming out and I want it.

I've pre-ordered Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and my thoughts on it are you better not fuck up. I don't really watch trailers, because they tend to color my reaction to a game before I even play it. In Human Revolution's case, some of the shit they're showing looks balls awesome, and some the shit they're showing looks like shit, and by shit I mean Invisible War and Final Fantasy. The original Deus Ex isn't known for its awesome androids-shooting-shit fight scenes and brooding anti-hero protagonist. I'm not saying the game will be bad, but I am saying I'm afraid it's not going to be Deus Ex. We'll see on the 23rd... which is also when Street Fighter Third Strike: Online Edition comes out. So I'll have fun trying to decide which one to play that day.

Counterstrike: Global Operations (a title made purely for the acronym) was announced, and it's another title I'm really excited about but extremely wary of. Let's get one thing straight - Counterstrike and its iterations are the modern military online shooter, in that it's clearly the best and most competitive. However, the modern military online shooter in terms of popularity is of course Modern Warfare, and Modern Warfare needs to stay far the fuck away from my CS. The fact that its heading to consoles is reason enough for me to fret - I'm not sure if a truly skill-based shooter can survive on consoles, especially in this Modern Warfare era. And I think Valve knows that. I'm really hoping they'll take a gamble.

These gummy-star-burst-thing commercials piss me off. None of these things are contradictions, they're just... things that are unexpected.

My Dick Hurts - July 30th, 2011

2011-07-30T07:05:00.004-04:00

Not much to report on in Final Fantasy XIII. I've simply had better games to play, and that is a long goddamn list. I don't even know what the twenty hour introduction was for. It's like half of the design team wanted to make a shitty movie and the other a shitty game, but the publisher thought that was too much shit to be in one place. So they just let each design half the game. There's very little story for the fifteen or so hours I've played past the introduction, barely any of it makes any sense, and none of it is interesting. Final Fantasy XII felt like an MMO because it had a similar philosophy to this one, but instead of change that philosophy because of fan backlash they just removed what made that philosophy work. I'm now free to "wander" the "world" and do "side-quests", which I tried to do. I really did, but the fact is the gameplay is pointless. Leveling up characters just makes it go by faster and lets your characters get past the next boss fight. Notice how I said "characters", as you have no real say in it.

There's something called the "Calvary". That's... that's it, it's just something. I have nothing else to go on, the only impact this... thing has had is make people say its name ominously. I'm sure if I looked in the datalog I'd find out what it is, but I simply don't care enough to press the X button. The main characters have simply stopped interacting aside from the occasional unbearably awkward "flirt" scenes between Retarded Australian Girl and Boner. Hero Guy has gotten hurt a couple more times, so at least that's been good. Aside from Sazh and Hot Australian Chick every character is an annoying fuck-pot just aching to regurgitate the next emotional revelation that is impossible to give a crap about.

Caught the top 32 Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition matches at EVO last night. Despite the game's obvious balance issues and honestly being boring to watch, there were some very hype matches. We won't be seeing a rematch of Daigo and Justin Wong this year, as Wong is obviously fatigued with the game and was knocked out fairly early (for him). Seeing only two Yuns (that we know about) in the top 8 is nice, and getting to see a Poongko/Daigo match will be a treat. I'm personally pulling for Wolfkrone to take it, though he's got an uphill battle. I'll eventually watch VoDs of the Mortal Kombat matches, but it's hard for me to enjoy watching that game. I know far less about it since the online is dreadful and there's not an inkling of a scene in my area.

I finally got Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines to work on a modern computer, and this game feels new every time. This is seriously like my eighth playthrough and I didn't get bored once. I believe it's currently on sale on Steam, and if the unofficial patches work with it I highly recommend getting it if you haven't already. If you (for some strange, sexy reason) want the perfect example of a game that I love, check it out.

Saw the last Harry Potter movie, and it was good. This series, like the books, really grew with its audience. The first two movies were really just kids movies, nothing special and not what I'd call "good". Then there's the middle/highschool cliched bullshit that ruins everything set in a school. But here there's blood, brutal murders just barely concealed, death, sexin', and all kinds of things that warrant the PG-13 rating. I stopped reading the books after the fifth one, but I'm thinking about going back to them. They aren't the best things ever written, but hey, it wasn't a bad movie.

Kinda've a short post, I know, but the only other things on my mind are tragedies that I'd rather not post about since they're all tragic and what not. It's not really my thing to talk about world news, but I'll just say the horrible events in Norway are important and should be analyzed by everyone.

My Dick Hurts - July 13, 2011

2011-07-13T00:01:00.007-04:00

Last week I said you should buy Frozen Synapse, and I may have called all four of you assholes. What you have to understand is that I MEANT to say that you should buy Frozen Synapse, asshole. It is a fuckin' good game, and for gloriously simple reasons. If you're not aware, it's a turn-based strategy game, where you and your opponent (be it AI or Other Dude) get a handful of glowing dudes with guns that you direct in an attempt to try and kill everyone who's not your color. The main deal here is that you can plan out your moves in advance, even going so far as to move your opponent's units. This essentially removes any semblance of luck from the game. If your guys get dead, it's because you didn't test all the possibilities. If you win, it's because you ARE A GOD AMONG MEN AND YOUR VAST INTELLECT SHALL BRING ALL OF THEIR WOMENFOLK TO THEIR KNEES... uh. Yeah, it's really satisfying when you win.

I'm no good at good game talk. Look this game up, I highly recommend it.

That brings me to Final Fantasy XIII, which I have a lot more to say about. I've barely played it this past week, because I've gotten to the point where there's a lot of combat, and I cannot remember a game that felt more like a waste of time. This combat is... it's just pointless. That is the best adjective to describe it. I am not being tested on anything here. If I fail on a fight it's because I'm either meant to avoid the encounter, my characters took too long to switch to a healing paradigm, or I fell asleep. Leveling up characters is tedious and is devoid of any choice. Yeah, I can make any character level up in any class I want, but why? You just made me play twenty hours when I only had a choice of three per character. I've already invested in what you wanted me to invest in. So unless I'm meant to grind (and fuck that, you fuck that right now, I'm not kidding just fuck that), I'm playing the game the way you want me to.

And when are these goddamn characters going to actually do something rather than complain and emote to each other? I'm probably going to get into spoilers, but the game's old so fuck it. Boner (that's his new name) is so fucking annoying. I just... my God. He's angsty, his mom's dead, he ejaculates at the mere sight of a woman, and he has daddy issues. He has such a terrible, understanding and loving father who's willing to throw away his life and beliefs to help his son. Poor thing. He was just about to straight up murder a motherfucker and now he's going on about the power of friendship and choice and he pulls a boomerang out of his ass and his hair is stupid and fuuuuuuuuuuuuck hiiiimmmm.

I have no idea why Cloud is the main character. None of these characters really do anything, so I guess she's the main protagonist because she has a sword? Guess it makes sense. "Lighting" is not actually her real name (it's revealed to be "Claire", but I think they just misspelled "Cloud"), she just insists everyone call her that. She's at least twenty-one. It's like if I still told people I was a "ninja wizard", which I totally am but keep it to yourself, bitch.

I have no goddamn idea what's going on. There are two worlds, yeah? Coccoon and Pulse. At least I think they're separate worlds. You can apparently fly a ship to get from one to the other so I don't know. There are also these things called fal'cie, which I think created humans? There's like one line of dialogue that says they created humans, but that isn't brought up anywhere else. Anyway, fal'cie turn humans into l'cie, which are essentially mages. The fal'cie give l'cie a focus, which is a task they must carry out or become cieth, which are essentially abominations from Dragon Age. If they do carry out their focus, they're turned into a crystal and apparently cry Cerulean City gym badges. The fal'cie don't tell the l'cie what their focus is, which is a really stupid thing to do when you want something done. At first it made sense that l'cie only get a glimpse at what their focus was, since every fal'cie you came in contact with was just a big discombobulated mess of mechanical nothing-stuff that never spoke. But now I've fought what is basically this game's Seymour twice, and he's a fal'cie that can change his form into whatever the fuck he feels like, including a human being who can speak perfectly. My brain, it hurts.

Anyway, the gang decided to take out the Sanctum, which rules Cocoon because why the fuck not. In Cocoon, fal'cie apparently provide necessities for humans, like food and light. Our little band of misfits comes upon the realization that this is a terrible thing and these things should be killed because of it. Stuff happens, and Seymour sends us to Pulse. Or Gran Pulse, I don't know. There are fal'cie on Pulse as well, only they're just basically animals that apparently let people ride inside of them. I'm not kidding, the characters find a giant mecha-armadillo and their first instinct is to hitch a ride on it. We do... something in Pulse, fight Seymour again, who gives us a ship to go back to Cocoon. We then start slaughtering people on an active hover-cycle raceway.

I think the basic plot goes like this - one of the main characters is supposed to become Ragnarok, which does what you'd think something called "Ragnarok" would do. They become this by killing someone called Orphan, who is... uh. Uh... anyway, Hot Australian Chick apparently became Ragnarok hundreds of years ago and wrecked Pulse, so I think everyone else assumes their focus is to destroy Cocoon in the same way. And I think Seymour wants them to do it, despite trying to kill them twice and being the ruler of Cocoon with, literally, all the power in the world to destroy it himself. So at the point in the game I'm at now, Cloud and her group of revolutionaries are going to attempt to destroy the things that keep Cocoon alive so they... can save... Cocoon, okay this shit is stupid.

Oh, and everyone got their own transformer while all of... this is happening. Now, I am not a terribly smart man. There are some stories that have plot elements that go over my head. This game, however, has a less coherent plot than Eraserhead. It's even lazily written, with characters spouting out their motivations and emotions at the drop of a goddamn hat, and I'm still not entirely sure why they are doing what they are doing. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware the game is leading up to some "amazing" twist where I end up fighting God with the power of love and friendship or some shit. They always do. But keeping the audience in the dark for thirty fucking hours is not going to keep them interested, especially when you don't give them gameplay that's the least bit entertaining.

But I'm going to get through it, because fuck you game. Stay tuned.

Frozen Synapse

2011-07-06T10:26:00.003-04:00

Buy it.

My Dick Hurts - July 4th, 2011

2011-07-04T08:02:00.007-04:00

Started playing Quake Live and am really wondering what took me so long. It just feels so refreshing to play a skill-based shooter again. I'm a lot more Counterstrike at heart than Quake/Unreal Tournament, but getting that sweet rail gun shot off a jumping opponent on the other end of the map feels so much better than sitting in a corner with a FAMAS hoping someone doesn't spawn behind you or poops a grenade when you kill them. I'll be the first to admit I'm not great at Quake, but that's why I'm liking Live so much. I can suck at it, and that's not something you see too often in modern online shooters.

So I finally got to the point in Final Fantasy XIII where it actually starts (I estimate my play time at "way too many" hours in)... and haven't played it in three days. Linearity in video games is a trendy topic right now, but it's one I really stay out of because I play different games for different reasons. Some games are meant to be linear and some aren't. I was perfectly fine with essentially playing a movie (regardless of how bad a movie it was), but asking me to grind my way up using pointless combat twenty hours into the movie is an unwelcome gear shift. I care about exactly one character in this game (two if you count Hot Australian Chick, but I don't), and he's a supporting character who's not likely to get much in the way of screen time. No, we are much more interested in telling the story of Cloud and her pet Tidus. Forgive me if I'd rather play Portal 2.

I must reiterate again, however, that this is a pretty game. "Beautiful" is not something my testicles like to hear me say, but running through large plains and avoiding enormous mammoth-like creatures is a genuinely evocotive experience. I just wish they could build a good game or story around these visuals.

There's an "anti-streaming" bill that's going to congress, and it's filled with a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo that prevents me from knowing exactly what it says. But people smarter than me say it could potentially give jail time for streaming or posting videos of video games. The bill is mainly aimed at movies and TV shows, but simply uses the blanket term "copyrighted electronic media", which obviously includes video game. Odds are either the bill won't get passed in its current state, or it will but it won't really matter beyond a few instances where offenders would get punished anyway. For instance, I don't see any developer of a competitive game pressing any charges on streamers. Those streams and VODs are a good thing for everyone involved, from players to publishers. However, "Let's Plays" and streams of single-player experiences could certainly be at risk. Rockstar, for example, is already very aggressive in shutting down anyone showing off their games without their permission, and I'm... actually kinda okay with that.

If a game developer doesn't want their primarily story-based game to be easily viewable in its entirety on the Internet, I see no problems. Gameplay is another matter, but streaming say L.A. Noir is exactly like streaming a movie. You could make the argument that commentary makes the video more of an original work, but that doesn't work for films either. Simply streaming gameplay, however, should be protected and actually encouraged. It draws attention to your game and can keep it alive for much longer than it would be otherwise. "Let's Plays" should also have some form of protection, but if a developer or publisher doesn't want someone else to make a profit off their game that isn't reviewing it... well, that's copyright laws.

Finally, I'm playing Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. It's fun.

My Dick Hurts - June 27th, 2011

2011-06-27T15:57:00.004-04:00

My 21st birthday was on the 22nd, and apparently that means I have to drink something alcoholic. I was forced into drinking a "buttery nipple", which is some kind of shot that supposedly tastes like butterscotch with a terrible name. I didn't recall butterscotch smelling like gasoline, so I adamantly refused. It didn't help that "just hold your nose" and "you have to drink it really quick" were the arguments towards consuming this nipple. It felt like when I was a little kid and my parents kept trying to get me to take some foul tasting medicine, and it ended with similar results. After twenty minutes of arguing I put the most ass tasting liquid I've ever tasted in my mouth and subsequently into the sink.

I do not wish to drink anymore nipples.

I just now started playing Final Fantasy XIII... which I'm aware I'm kind of late on. Despite posting my conflict with this game a long time ago, my better judgment won and I did not purchase the game. But I saw it for twenty bucks and decided to just fucking give in already. I've played it for quite a while now, at least fifteen hours, and am starting to wonder when this game will actually start. I've met all the player characters now, and they consist of Cloud, Emo Who Gets Cripplingly Hard Boners, Retarded Australian Girl, Hot Australian Girl, Mr. Punchy, and Sazh. I call Sazh Sazh because he is an honest-to-Tiamat likable character and I am trying my hardest to hold onto him for as long as I can. They put a black man in a J-RPG who is not a horrible parody, AND he has amazing hair. He has problems just like every other character, but they are ACTUAL problems and he reacts to them like an actual person.

Cloud wasn't so bad until she spent so much time with Boner Boy. Remember how they ruined Final Fantasy XII with Vaan? Yeah, they did that exact thing again only now he's a major focal point of the game so far. He spends the vast majority of his screen time on the ground, which I assume is the game's way of showing me he is weak but it was really unnecessary for it to do that. So I just think he's popping boners at everything that excites him and move on. Retarded Australian Girl has spent most of her time with Sazh, and I believe she has been significantly less annoying than she could have been directly because of that. Hot Australian Girl hasn't done much, but she's hot so it's cool. Mr. Punchy also hasn't done much but punch things and get punched (which is much better) and ride a motorcycle made of two interlocking ice-women. I think he's the traditional hero of this story, and I think that because every line of dialogue from him has reassured me of that fact.

This game is not written correctly. Dialogue is rather mediocre, but just in terms of explaining to the audience what the fuck is going on this script is a colossus of confusion. There are so many terms just thrown about that aren't explained till about ten hours in, and none of them are capitalized correctly for no goddamn reason and it pisses me off. There's a "data log" that kind of explains everything, but there's a lot in it... and forgive me if I don't feel like committing all that much to a Final Fantasy game. I found out, in fact, that a lot of this shit is explained in summaries that pop up when you load a game. So yeah, just reload your game every twenty minutes and you'll understand everything PERFECTLY! Don't know why everyone's so upset about this game.

Honestly the story's a bit better than I expected, but I really, really did not expect much. I have Sazh and his beautiful hair so I haven't given up yet. The combat, however, is absolutely dead. There's nothing really here so far. You have an "auto-battle" option during combat, which automatically selects the most effective skills for whatever situation you're facing. It's as if they realized they haven't really made any innovative encounters for years, and just decided they'd do it for us. I don't really mind games that don't actually let you play out the combat - hell, the Ogre Battle games are some of my favorites and you couldn't really do a damn thing in combat. If you're going to go that route however, you have to give the player sufficient variables and tactics they can plan out before combat. This game has not yet given me anything substantial whatsoever that I can so much as tweak to give my characters an edge in battle. Some of these fights can take, like, five minutes and it's just pressing the "auto-battle" command and occasianly changing a character's class mid-battle. I don't get any choices when leveling up characters, there's only two stats for me to modify, and I have no control over my party beyond the leader (which is essentially controlled by the auto-battle command). I actually enjoyed the Gambit system in Final Fantasy XII because I had to set that shit up. Here I'm not sure why I'm even needed.

It's a very pretty game though. Music is terrible, but it's purty.

Dreamhack came and went, and League of Legends got up to 200,000 viewers at one time. Granted the game's stream was promoted a lot more than any other game's, but it's a little sad the game got far more views than other games that were being played. I've already pointed out that LoL is a very fun game, but its skill ceiling is simply too low for it to be a major e-sport. Hopefully all those viewers start looking beyond LoL and support e-sports further, if only because I find LoL boring as shit to watch.

ONCE AGAIN I RISE TO FEAST UPON THE BLACKNESS IN THIS WORLD

2011-06-22T09:42:00.005-04:00

It was on this day that I first rose to power, and it is on this day on this annal that I rise again. Give unto me your second born and atop their labored hands shall I build a terrible monument to that which is me. If ever there were a soul among you that had doubt of my eminence you shall be brought to the precipice of this obsidian throne and impaled upon your own weakness. Forever shall this world shrink in fear of the visage that is my palace, and forever shall the cries of its people ring its bells and soar above its towers unheeded and unheard.

No girls allowed.

Poem - Better

2011-06-21T09:36:00.006-04:00

A while ago my genitals took a vacation and I don't really remember what happened but I found this poem so I thought I'd share because I don't feel like writing a blog post today go Redskins.

Better

All those people are crazy
They simply can't do right
Can't use their sense of sight
All those people are lazy.

All those people are making
A big altar of fun
Hid away from the sun
All those people are thinking,

Just wonder
How it could be better
Just ponder
How it can be better.

I wonder
If it wasn't better
I ponder
Find that we are better.

My Dick Hurts - June 16th, 2011

2011-06-16T06:46:00.004-04:00

I only play Valkyria Chronicles 2 when I take a shit and I don't feel like reading a book, which is partly why I haven't beaten it yet despite the months I've had it. It's also partly because I wish horrible, deadly anguish on every fucking character in this stupid fucking story and their stupid fucking faces with their stupid fucking voices that are stupid fucking stupid. I'm hinting at the fact that I dislike the direction they took the story in this sequel. As I said in an earlier post, the original Valkyria Chronicles didn't have an amazing story, but I'll take mediocre over annoying and stupid fucking stupid any day. I may get into spoilers, but I don't care and neither should you.

I've detailed what I think of the main character already. What you may not know, however, is that nearly every goddamn character has absolutely no business being anywhere near a military institution. Mister Annoying Fuck Protagonist's main squeeze is a field medic. She is also deathly afraid of blood. Perhaps this is not the profession for you, young lady. Oh, and she's also completely color blind, which is not only a detriment to her success in the field, but also renders her phobia of blood completely fucking retarded. She's is not afraid of blood, she is afraid of liquid. It's good that I only play this game in small increments, because there's a lot of gameplay here and it gets pretty redundant. However, even here in this blessed sanctuary of mediocrity the stupid fucking stupid story creeps in. One character is an artist and also a bitch. Randomly, she will refuse to take orders. She gets "moody", and thinks that this is an excuse to stop being in a war. No, bitchy artist. If you wanted to be a bitchy artist, be a bitchy artist. The fuck are you doing going to war?

I'm at the point where there's a bunch of man-made super-saiyans running around in the rebel army, which you'd think would have come up at some point in the first game but whatever. They apparently took over in a ten second cutscene, which was a little sudden for a group of people who get their asses kicked by a bunch of incompetent children led by a severely autistic boy with an eating disorder on a daily basis. The sexy doctor lady who I still hated but is a sexy doctor lady so it's okay left and Big Tits (I actually can not remember her name) died, so there's really nothing left for me here.

Mortal Kombat got a big patch, and the few games I played online were ACTUALLY playable. The problem now, however, is it takes an average five minutes to find a match. I got up to ten minutes once, and that's just when I gave up looking. I realize fighting games require more precision, but a proper online experience is really keeping the genre down compared to other competitive genres. RTS games, particularly Starcraft and LoL/HoN, are ridiculously more popular than even Street Fighter as e-sports, and a big part of that is the fighting genre's seeming inability to evolve past the arcades. The community is certainly doing their best to get the games out there (even if the vast majority is focused on Capcom), so I think it's really up to the developers to push the genre forward. Mortal Kombat, with its gradual balancing patches, seems to be at the forefront in this, but still. Ten minutes.

I realized today that I have never actually beaten either Dragon Age game. I've gotten the the very end on both, but I long lost interest by that point and never go all the way. Hopefully the less-than-positive reactions to Dragon Age II starts showing more people that there are other western RPG developers than Bioware. Don't get me wrong, Bioware as a mainstream developer is a golden corn nugget in a sea of brown shit, but to me they've never even come close to succeeding Baldur's Gate 2, despite (or perhaps because of) their tendency to just copy characters or plot elements wholesale from it. But competition is good, and I think competition will bring the great back out of Bioware.

Why Does No One Like it When I Stick My Finger in Their Ear?

2011-06-15T10:53:00.002-04:00

I just do it because I like you.

My Dick Hurts - June 8th, 2011

2011-06-08T11:32:00.007-04:00

I MAY (may meaning "for the trillienth time I will say I 'may' do this but actually won't do anything of the sort" here) make a return to making YouTube videos in the coming months... but with a different direction. The "plan" is to keep "rants" here, and use YouTube as a "fuckin' around" venue of expression. I might do LP's, I might do Vlogs (though, uh, my pretty face is just too pretty for vlogs... yeah), or I might just review pornography (you'd watch it), I don't know. As I said before, I don't really do... this, what with talking to the internet, for the attention. If I did I'd consider everything a massive failure. I do it because it's fun, and I had fun fuckin' around on YouTube. So I might go back to that. Besides, vidoes of me just fuckin' around got upwards of 20,000 views, whilst those I actually put effort in were lucky to get 500. So it seems even other people like fuckin' around more.

L.A. Noir was, like every Rockstar game since GTA IV, a mixed bag of great writing, awful narrative structure, great characters that are never given the time they need, and terrible gameplay. The game looks better than trailers and commercials made it; textures aren't great but serviceable, and the faces aren't nearly as out of place as I thought they'd be. Every so often you'll catch a face going into an "idle" state after some kind of expression and it's... disarming, to say the least, but other than that it really is a progression towards photo-realism in gaming. Whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you.

To my knowledge you can skip pretty much every driving/shooting/action sequence in that game, and the reason behind this is because it's all terrible. Your on screen character controls even clunkier in this game than Red Dead or GTA, and cars are... well, it is the '40s. The meat of the game is in the investigating and questioning sequences, which play out as an Ace Attorney game. Just... yeah, this game is basically Phoenix Wright if Phoenix Wright was a lot easier and a lot less dumb (snap). The game holds your hand through-out almost everything, even when it doesn't seem like it. It's hard to explain while avoiding spoilers, but let's just say even when you have to make a choice it doesn't really matter. The game ends up the same way regardless of your input.

When questioning a witness or suspect, you're given three choices: you can assume they're telling the truth, doubt that they're telling the truth, or call them out on a lie if you have proof that they are lying. The problem is that Cole Phelps (who you play through-out most of the game) has a loose interpretation of what those three things are. The "doubt' option is more of a "be a dick" option, and calling someone out on a lie can completely change what you thought the conversation was about. In fact, after I figured out what it was doing, I'd call EVERYONE out on a lie to find out just what the game thought I thought this person was lying about. You can just back out of a "lie call" anyway, so even the "difficult" calls are made easy. Until I got to that point though, the game was very meta. I never really thought "is this guy lying to me about being at the DixGarage last night with Fernando Poohola?", but rather "what does the game want?". It breaks the immersion the face technology and setting establish and could have been handled much better.

I can't say I didn't find any enjoyment from the game, though. For the majority of the game the plot is interesting and kept me playing. It did that Rockstar thing, however, where characters seem interesting but are never really given the development or even backstory that they seem to deserve. Cole Phelps seems like a genuinely flawed yet likable character, but the last three or four mission aren't even played as him. Instead you get this fella who you knew about, but only showed up in a few flashbacks and just takes over the story like he knows a 'ting or two. There seems to be an interesting story to tell here, but the writers were too afraid to tell it. It's also hardly "noir". The closest it gets is in the beginning, where some guy you meet near the end of the game narrates before a few cases, but that quickly goes away. It's more of "GTA IV in the 40's" than a noir crime drama.

My foray into Heroes of Newerth has been... mixed. On one hand, it's still very much like this. Do not heed the disclaimer in the beginning of the video. That is how one first experiences HoN. The game itself, however, is actually quite fun. Comparing it to League of Legends, there is a much higher skill ceiling and that skill comes into play almost immediately. If I do well in HoN I feel like I contribute much, much more than if I do well in LoL.

Someone let me borrow Crysis 2 on the PS3 and it looks like shit. I've seen it played on the PC and it looks fine, but the "best looking game on consoles" tagline on the cover is a goddamn lie of Satan's balls. Normally I wouldn't really care if a game had sub-par graphics, but here they actually get in the way of the game. Texture work and image fidelity is so low I can barely make out the enemies from the backgrounds (and this is on a 50' HD TV through an HDMI Cable), even the big fucking alien dudes who run all over the place. Normally I wouldn't comment, but it's just so weird to see the fabled Crysis name on something that looks so awful.

And finally, E3 came and I gave nary a fuck. That is all.

My Dick Hurts - June 1st, 2011

2011-06-01T04:02:00.005-04:00

I found one. My blue-faced-purple-dicked God I found one. I had a match in Mortal Kombat that was playable. Vanilla Street Fighter 4 playable (which is actually not all that playable), but playable none-the-less. It was against a Scorpion in a player match... naturally being a Scorpion in a player match he didn't know what the block button was for but still! He disconnected as it was obvious I was going to get a double flawless on him. The ONE match where I could do basic shit, and he disconnects. Also, to anyone who's picked up Mortal Kombat and is not sure what to do, random jump kicks and low jabs/toe kicks aren't the most effective maneuvers.

Played Heroes of Newerth again, and while the community of the game is still really holding it back, they've incorporated a few features that other games looking to emulate DOTA should take a look at. Firstly, there's a shop. Normally this would be a "fuck no" situation, but it's basically League of Legends where the skins are purchasable with the fake money you earn in game. A lot of people want everything from a game (especially a multiplayer game) from the get-go, and while I can certainly understand that, I still like the unlocks. It keeps me playing, and even if its in a superficial way that's what I want my games to do. The new "casual" mode... is basically League of Legends with denying. I like it, and I don't like that I like it. It's like playing "easy", I just feel emasculated. But even if I don't like it, my lady parts like the more forgiving nature of the mode. Finally, they've added in game "guides", much like you'd find here for LoL, but totally supported in-game. They'll even auto-choose your skills as you level up if you want. They've fixed the problem "recommended" items have in games like this where the community simply finds a better way to play a character than the developers, and it really helps new players. Now, if only people would let me play it.

The Witcher 2 is in the bag and was AWESOME but also ended somewhat disappointingly most likely because of how AWESOME it was. Note that this rating of "AWESOME" is coming from someone who found the original Witcher also AWESOME, but this game itched that RPG scratch that many developers have just been scratching AROUND. You know, like one of those itches you get that you're not quite sure where you need to scratch, but YOU KNOW something on you somewhere is itchy, and you wonder if it's on the inside of your skin or on, like, a deeper layer of your skin and you're like does that even work like that, it probably doesn't because you read somewhere that itches don't really have much to do with skin at all and is more of a spinal cord thing and thinking about itches so much just makes you realize how itchy you are? The Witcher 2 itched that. A few gripes, though.

Firstly, I realize they're planning ahead for the console port this time around since their last one failed, but this game is really too close to a console game than a sequel to The Witcher should be. The save system is obviously designed for a profile system... but without a profile system. There's no way to choose WHERE you save, meaning you just have an ass-ton of save files and no way to start a new game without potentially overwriting everything from your old one. Also, the difficulty curve is FUCKED. The first real fight in the game took me at least fifteen tries, and the first major boss fight seems absolutely impossible until you figure out exactly what the developers want you to do. After you learn of the beauty that is the Quen sign, and Ard's ability to completely lock down an opponent in an one on one fight however, the game is pretty effortlessly easy bar a few fights. This is going off normal mode, so it might be better tuned for hard.

No one seems to be able to end games anymore. Granted, The Witcher 2's isn't a bad ending, it's similar to the first's in that it ends a story while subsequently starting a new one. The problem with this one is that the final chapter (which is the third, by the way) and the epilogue last no more than two or three hours in this thirty hour game. Side characters and plot points are just kinda dropped, which is a shame because there are really no uninteresting elements in this game's story that I can think of. Voice acting is kind of inconsistent, but the majority of it is serviceable. Geralt sounds much better, and his character becomes much more likable because of it. In the first one he was kind of a dork a lot of the time, but here you believe this dude could really get all this pussy. And, well... let's just say they tried to show as much as they could without getting an AO rating. Red Dead Redemption's "LOOK AT THIS HUMPING" scene has got nothing on this game. Whether that's a pro or a con I'll leave up to you, but I will say the... frivolousness of pretty much every female character can bring them down. You know, as characters.

Review - Dragon Age II

2011-05-21T01:45:00.002-04:00

Don't you judge me.

First Impressions - Mortal Kombat (Part 1.5)

2011-05-17T00:23:00.007-04:00

Online play is pointless. I sincerely hope the "technical difficulties" NRS is reporting (and certainly the promised fix for them) are existent, because to think a company would knowingly release such an atrociously unplayable online experience is absurd. King of the Hill mode, the most interesting mode there is, seems to consistently have a five second input delay attached to it. It can take longer to find a match than the match to conclude. Despite the lag, it's obvious everyone who plays is awful. Picking a character like Noob Saibot, who as far as I know is fairly counter-able offline, with spammable zoning projectiles will make you god tier against any character without a teleport. You simply cannot react to anything.

It seems to be a great competitive game, and the single player content is strong (or downright incredible as fighters go), but unless this fabled fix is released I'd look for some friends to play with offline before purchasing.

My Dick Hurts - May 11th, 2011

2011-05-11T10:01:00.004-04:00

Obsidian Entertainment's problem is that they try to make better games than they are expected to. And the fact that that is a problem, and the fact they are constantly bashed by console-centric gamers for this problem, is sad and indicative of one of my main problems with the modern game industry. Being an independent studio, publishers pay them to make games meant to make a quick buck. For instance, KOTOR 2 was an unfinished game, but anyone with half a brain can tell the developers and writers of the game didn't intend for it to be so. Publishers wanted a quick cash-in on the KOTOR name, and Obsidian started to make a game that was flat out better than Bioware's effort in nearly every aspect. They did this with less funding and a smaller team than Bioware, and were only given a year to do it.

They are known around the web primarily because of the bugs in their games, and while any developer should certainly be scrutinized for bugs, singling out Obsidian and saying "YOU ARE THE BUGGY COMPANY" is absurd. Obsidian makes RPGs, and there is not a single western RPG out there that is not a buggy mess of a game in comparison to games with less scope. That is simply the genre. Planescape: Torment is buggy as hell, Baldur's Gate is buggy as hell, Mass Effect is buggy as hell, every Fallout game is buggy as hell, and The Elder Scrolls is certainly buggy as hell. RPGs are not only longer than other games, they have far more variables.

Do you think Obsidian was contracted by Square Enix to continue the epic franchise that is Dungeon Siege because of their prowess in writing? While I'm not going to pretend to know for sure, my guess is probably ass-fucking no. I know I come off as a fanboy here, and honestly I probably am but not without reason. Obsidian and its employees from other defunct companies have given me the games I want to play. Games where writing, characters, and original depth in plot and mechanics are put above spectacle and mainstream appeal. They've already been hit with layoffs - if Obsidian goes so too does many of my hopes for the future of gaming.

On that sad note, The Witcher 2 is coming, from one of the very few other developers I actually care about. Not only that, it's coming for forty-five dollars DRM free, with a ton of goodies including another free game. Oh, and the original Witcher is only five bucks. CD Projekt RED/Good Old Games are part of the "good guys", and the fact there is a "good guys" to be part of is a great thing. I spend most of my gaming time on games like The Witcher now-a-days - European RPGs with less production values and a few translation errors but with more heart than anyone else can seem to muster.

The PSN debacle is getting worse and worse. Most hints point towards Anonymous as being responsible, and I wouldn't be surprised. If ever there were an organization (and they ARE an organization) that could fail harder at making a point it's them. Yes, Sony is in trouble here, but so is every other company that stands to make money off of PSN. If you're trying to tell a company they should let you do something to their product, bringing down their entire network and costing them and their partners billions of dollars using the thing you want is not going to get you dick. The PS3 and every gaming console going forward will be even more restricted in features now, and these hackers have no one but themselves to blame.

My Dick Hurts - May 4th, 2011

2011-05-03T04:01:00.008-04:00

This PSN outage normally wouldn't have affected me much. I don't play very many console games online, and the ones I do are fighting games and... well, taking a break from Capcom rage probably does me some good. HOWEVER, I was mulling over some purchases in the PSN store, and I made the decision to act on those purchases the night the damn thing went down. And also Mortal Kombat, though that could also be a boon (I am so very clever and charming). I haven't been able to play the game very competitively, and I tend to ruin games for myself when I start to think about them competitively. If you have not yet noticed.

Some... "interesting" discussion surrounds the outage, and by that I mean a bunch of PR and mind-numbing stupidity. I don't know what's worse, fanboys who are on Sony's side or fanboys against Sony. Certainly Sony deserves heavy criticism, but I tend to put more blame on the actual perpetrators. Now, I don't care about Sony and Sony does not care about me. Corporations are not human beings despite what the government says; they do not feel. They do not love. They fuck as hard as they can for as long as they can and prefer not to stick around for breakfast. That said a corporation does not want to publicly leak the personal information and credit cards of seventy-five million people. That is something I'm sure they took steps to avoid. Whether they put enough effort into that security is certainly up for debate, but I'd urge taking a look at the situation that led up to this.

Got into a discussion on whether or not girls "like douches" or not, and it's a topic I've found to be fairly trivial to discuss. Basically, males are of the mindset that women only like assholes, and women are of the mindset that women like confidence and humor and muscles and flowers and me and money and cars and clothes and make up and... dolls or something. Hey, I wouldn't be here if I knew what women really liked. Anyway, of course a lot of women like assholes. Women are people. Many people are assholes. Thus many women are assholes, and are therefore attracted to the many assholes that are men.

Sorta-kinda started a DnD game recently, and it's been interesting. Pretty much everyone in the game has never played a pen-and-paper roleplaying game, where you have to ACTUALLY role play, so it's been... awkward at points. Combat's actually pretty fun though, at least for me. In one encounter I 'sploded five dudes to death with a single ability, and then transformed myself into their leader, eventually getting them to attack said leader on the basis that HE was the impostor. I thought it was clever.

Started another playthrough of Planescape: Torment, and it really just makes me sad. Why can't they make games like this anymore? I don't mean that developers don't have the ability to craft such a story-driven, immersing experience, I mean they CAN'T. They aren't allowed anymore. The novel adaptation of Torment had to cut shit out of the game so it'd fit, and I don't mean pointless side-quests, I'm talking entire major characters not even mentioned. It really is sad that the uninspired military shooter some big publisher made a studio fart out costs the same to the consumer as some magnificent opus of storytelling and game design that took far more effort and funds to create. The average gamer simply doesn't buy stories or interesting ideas anymore - they buy the same multiplayer and graphics over and over again. I'd look to indie developers, but they seem more preoccupied with fucking zombies or vague philosophy than anything else.

However, I did play an indie game recently that felt pretty good. The final part of Decay came out, and the entire series has got me looking at Shining Gate Software. There's a room in this final episode that I can't find any use for other than to creep me the fuck out. There's just this blue-faced eyeless dude knocking on a door and starting at you through a hole. I'm not sure why, and this doesn't happen often with this kind of "BOO, ghosts!" horror, but I was genuinely goddamn disturbed. I did not want to go in that room. Though honestly I would have actually liked a few more cheap scares in this part, especially since it has a new first person perspective where you have to physically turn the camera around to look at the demon ghost thing that is so totally behind you but maybe not AHHH. The endings I got (and there are quite a few, though I only got three of em') were kind of rubbish however. They were basically the same and didn't really make any sense.

Oh, and Osama Bin Laden died as I'm sure you just found out here. Obviously I'm glad he is no longer alive - if I had the opportunity I can't say for certain I would not have killed him myself. That said, it's a very odd feeling seeing so much celebration because we killed someone. Looks awfully similar to anti-American rallies following 9-11 and other terrorist attacks. I'm not condemning those celebrating, it's just... kind of messed up. As if we're trying to say "YOU MESS WITH US, WE'LL KILL YOUR ASS ten years after the fact letting you live in expensive suburbs with your many wives." Just... an odd feeling.

AND FINALLY, someone typed in "big fat wrinkly asses" in Google and came to my blog. I'm not fucking kidding.

First Impressions - Mortal Kombat (Part 1)

2011-04-21T06:00:00.009-04:00

In general, this game is good. This GAME is good. This is a game. You are given things to play. This is also a good fighting game, though exactly how deep and competitive it is is still to be seen.
I spent a lot of time with the demo, and though the fighting engine has certainly been tweaked it's still similar. But going from my experience in the demo, at first this game will feel fairly stiff and shallow. Spend some more time with it, however, and it really opens itself up. Suddenly what seems like a game slower than Street Fighter 4 feels faster than Capcom vs SNK 2.
Story mode was great. I beat it in one day, but I also played it for the vast majority of that one day. There are some... significant changes to the series' mythology that I don't wholly agree with, but Mortal Kombat has never shied away from completely messing with its characters. Voice Acting and writing still isn't great, but compared to previous entries it's goddamn magnificent. As an big fan of the Mortal Kombat story line, I was giddy through-out the whole thing.
Bosses are push-overs. At first they seem overwhelming, what with their multitude of throws, unblock-able attacks, and super armor on EVERY MOVE, but one simple trick beats them. Simply find a good, damaging combo that ends in a knock down and hit them with it. Jump over them as they wake up, and more often than not they'll try some attack that'll wiff that you can punish. Rinse and repeat.
Challenge Tower really evolves the "challenge" gimmick most fighting games have these days. While I would have liked the more traditional "do this combo" challenges thrown in somewhere, I vastly prefer the enormous amount of varied matches and mini-games they put into this thing.
They got... creative with the Krypt this time around. About seventy of the unlockables are found in the distended stomachs of corpses floating in a marsh of blood. And also there's a demon that randomly pops up and screams, scaring the shit out of you if you've been playing the game for eight hours and it's three in the morning. Most of the items are just concept art and sound-tracks though. Understandable, but still a little disappointing.
Arcade endings are some of the best in a fighting game yet. They're still almost all non-cannon, but they're done in a great motion-comic style narration following a quick animation of your character beating up Shao Khan in their own unique way.
I haven't spent much time online... because the time I spent there was absolutely terrible. The lag was so atrocious I had to just start laughing and quit out immediately. It took me ten minutes to find a match, and in the worst match I had there had to at least be a five second delay. Now the next time I tried to connect to PSN it was down (and still is down), and most games are laggy for the first week or so of release, so I'm still hopeful the lag will be fixed. But it wasn't a good first impression.
Practice mode doesn't save your settings, and there's no way I've found to record and play-back moves for the practice dummy to do. Annoying.
Haven't put much time in Tag Play, but it looks pretty well implemented. Very interesting.
Character models are... still Mortal Kombat. Generally, if a character is pretty much all costume with very little skin to show they look great. Not so much for more human characters. Faces, particularly on female characters, are well animated but oddly proportioned. Same with bodies.
X-Ray attacks look cool the first time you do them, but after that they just slow down a match. I like the mechanics of the super bar in general, but X-rays could definitely use some tweaking.
The block button scared me at first, and while I still feel myself trying to cross people up, I don't think it really detracts from the game's depth. The obvious reason for this is the way Super meter builds, but a lot of characters have various moves that can mix a blocking opponent up.
So far character's normals seem sufficiently varied, which is a new one for Mortal Kombat. There are still some re-used animations/hitboxes, but I haven't noticed too many.
So far I've spent the most time with Sub Zero, Baraka, Kano, and Sektor. Sub Zero has always been my main character for Mortal Kombat games, and he seems fairly strong here. He seems faster than his demo incarnation, but the game in general feels faster so it's probably just a side-effect of that. His Ice Clone has even more limitations, which is probably a good thing. His main hassle, I feel, is dealing with teleports. His moves have more recovery than others and can almost always be punished with a quick teleport.
Baraka seems pretty terrible to be honest. I haven't been able to find a combo that does more than 25 percent damage, which I was able to do for most characters in ten minutes. His normals have a lot of range (and also look and sound awesome), so it's possible he's not meant to do a lot of damage at once. His special moves are good for keeping someone out, but they don't do terrific damage and none of them can be combo'd off of. His X-ray is pretty good though, which is a good thing because his EX moves don't seem all that great either.
Kano fairs pretty well. His ball specials are incredibly fast, and if used with his great projectile he can really turtle well. He's no slouch up close either, with some pretty powerful combos and an absolutely wicked X-ray. It's one of the most damage in the game... it's also a really long range throw with armor.
Sektor is also looking pretty strong. He has great keep away against rush down characters with his rockets, but against characters with faster keep away tactics like Noob they can be hard to use. However, he also has his teleport, which is great for punishes and combos alike, and his goddamn flamethrower. This thing stops absolutely everything, even priority monsters like Raiden.
Smoke looks to be one of, if not the best, characters in the game. His smoke bombs are fast and nearly mindless in their execution. They track everywhere on the screen and can lead into at least a 30 percent combo. Add that to his great rush-down and defensive capabilities and it's starting too look a lot of UMK3 in here.
Ermac looks good, both competitively and just aesthetically.
Reptile seems fucking annoying, with great keep away and amazingly fast slide specials.
Kung Lao seems to have also kept his high position on the tier list from UMK3. He is very versatile, has great damaging combos that are really easy to pull off, has an X-ray that'll stop you from doing anything while he has it, and his teleport gives him great mix-up.
Raiden is a fucking god, and not just literally. His superman attack beats out just about anything, and basically means you can't jump against him. His EX lighting bolt works against everyone, he's almost never at frame disadvantage on his block strings, and his teleport will shut down any attempt to zone him out.
In my next post I'll talk more about the depth or lack thereof of the fighting behind the game (as I haven't really gotten to play it in a competitive environment yet), but for now know that I am satisfied, and hope if nothing else this game will make other fighting game developers stand up and pay attention.