Shade's Nexus

No I Won't See The End: STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl

2012-01-29T21:42:00.001-05:00

Shadow of Chernobyl is my second-favourite game. You might've been able to guess, from hints I've dropped in my previous writeups, but I might as well start by revealing all.

Surprisingly Terrifying Action... forget it. This is the only comment I will make about the punctuation. It's pointless, and silly.

I first played Shadow of Chernobyl about two years ago. Hearing that it was very glitchy, and the graphics were getting dated, I asked around about any sort of patches.

The recommendation I was given, was to install Complete 2009. It made the graphics brilliant and immersive. Even if not as realistic as newer games, the mood is set perfectly. There were some small gameplay changes, notably the inclusion of a sleeping bag, but I'm surprisingly not going to be talking much about specific gameplay.

After playing for about 12 hours, something happened. My hard disk crashed, and I lost my saved game.

It was a year until I came back to Chernobyl, having fond memories of it. I just hadn't wanted to start again from scratch, so soon after losing my last game. However, I did start again, and I found The Zone's call was just as strong as ever.

I guess, for those uninitiated, I should explain what sort of game STALKER is. It's... a survival tactical FPS with horror elements. I guess. What's hard to explain about STALKER is that it's not trying to craft a niche; it's trying to craft an experience.

This is ultimately what makes the game so good in my mind. STALKER is about being a lone soldier, in a hostile environment where even the air sometimes wants to kill you, and the people are less than friendly. It's not about emotion, or about drama, or about people. It's about the lack of humanity in a place like this.

That lack of humanity is further represented in the factions and mutants that exist in the game. Loners travel in small groups, just friends hanging out together and trying to scrounge up a meal. Sometimes you see them playing guitar together around a camp fire. Maybe they're sitting alone in the bar, drowning away their depression. Nobody is happy, everyone is just alive. They're the most human, but the loneliness of their humanity helps further emphasize the lack of humanity in the environment.

There are no recognizable songs; the guitars aren't there because the men are musicians; it's because they have no other way of expressing themselves in this land, and a guitar is the only thing that will hold their hand.

And the factions? They're crazy. Freedom wants the military to leave the Zone, the Military wants you to leave. The STALKERS are mercenaries and bounty hunters willing to kill anyone and anything, but the Mercs are mercenaries willing to eradicate even the most just of groups, just for a paycheck. Duty are militaristic and somewhat paranoid, and the Ecologists are... somewhere between bonkers and insane. They're interested in science. They want to take apart Snorks and figure out what makes them tick.

Which leads to the ultimate desolation of humanity: The mutants. Snorks crawl along the ground like some sort of wild cat, leaping at you and clawing. Invisible bloodsuckers run at you and tear you apart, drinking your blood after they've killed you. Shambling zombies aimlessly fire guns as they moan.

Not even your death is given any humanized glory. Upon your death, it simply says "Lost in the zone" and zooms out a bit, to show the world around your lifeless body. If a bloodsucker killed you, it will kneel down and start drinking the blood from your remains. A Snork? It begins to eat your corpse.

It doesn't even tell you to reload and try again. It just tells you to press space and go back to the menu. It's not mocking, it's just brutally honest. You can try again, or you can quit. The world doesn't care. Only you do.

Living is not easy, in this game. The enemies are brutal, and weaponry all has difficult balances. Powerful weaponry is more expensive, and aiming is very realistic; you will not be able to effectively hit someone more than 30 ft away with a pistol, likely. Weapons all use specific types of ammo, and all ammo and guns have weight. All types of armour have weight. All artifacts have weight. Medkits, bandages, food, alchohol, everything in the game has weight. And you can only carry so much. You can't take everything with you.

The game is a careful balancing act. I played on the hardest difficulty, and survival was dictated by walking the line between being overburdened and able to move. Upset the balance too much, and you'll have to save scum to get through your mission. You'll have to fairly often, even when playing utterly correctly.

Quick save and quick load make this easier, though the lengthily loading times will make you start to question if it's worth it. Still, after some time, you get used to the game, and stop needing to save scum. And as you start to get better, something happens; you start becoming a legend.

You start wondering if the whispered talks around the campfire are about you.

You start getting factions, people, and small groups who are friends. You piss off a faction or two. You start paying off the bounties on your own head, just to avoid being hassled. As you play the game, you start telling your friends about the crazy things that happened. How you fought off a pack of wild dogs with only a pistol and a grenade. How you totally took out three bloodsuckers without reloading your shotgun. (It held 8 shots, so hey, it worked!)

But still, nobody really cares about you. A friendly will aid you in battle, but they're far and few between. Mostly, people just want to stay on their own. Why travel with someone when they could stab you in the back?

The Zone itself isn't safe. I mentioned even the air wanting to kill you, and that's no lie. Pockets of radiation will slowly kill you, if you enter them. And even worse, strange anomalies exist throughout the Zone. Some will crush you, others erupt with fire or electricity... some pick you up in the air and tear you apart.

This all contributes to both a power fantasy, and a desolately lonely experience. When you triumph, it is the best feeling in the world. When you fail, it's dark and dreary. All you can do is keep trying, and eventually you succeed so much you feel great.

A pack of dogs is no match for me! I am a STALKER!

And this is where I got cocky.

The last mission of the game was the absolute hardest. I had been playing on the hardest difficulty, and just wanted to finish the game. I had played about 47 hours of this game. I knew what I was doing. I had sufficient ammo. I was a bit low on medpacks and the like, but it would be fine.

I followed the checkpoints. I ran to the next target. I assaulted the power plant. The ruined reactor. I got past swarms of armored enemies, past military copters firing rockets, and got inside the reactor before a blowout would've eradicated me where I stood.

And when I was inside, I heard the chanting. A deep voice, calling from far below. I crawled through the halls, my health halfway. Radiation levels slowly crept up, and my health slowly down.

I should've turned back then, but I pressed forward. "It will be fine" I said. "I'm good at this game."

I forgot everything the game had taught me. That it didn't care about me. I found an exoskeleton deep in a heavily radiated room. I got out just in time, with a few rations and anti-rads. I could've left, survived, restocked, and came back, probably.

I pressed on. Rounded a couple corners. I went through a hole in a wall. I went around another corner. I fought fifteen or so heavily armoured men. I nearly ran out of ammo. Just as I thought I couldn't kill them, I started getting ammo.

I should've listened to the tiny voice inside my head. The one that said "Go back!" I didn't. I made a quick save. The only quick save on that level, I overwrote each time I pressed that button.

I walked around a couple corners. The radiation was building up too much. I looked for something in my inventory to help. I had nothing. I checked again in disbelief. Looted corpses. Nothing. I walked a couple paces. A pair of soldiers saw me. I collapsed from radiation poisoning and died.

I loaded my game. Tried again. I died before I could leave the room. I loaded my game, tried again, died. I kept reloading, I even dropped my difficulty setting to the lowest, but it only gave me a couple more seconds. Not enough to even kill one of the soldiers and loot the corpse.

I died. There was no way out of that level without starting from the very beginning of it, walking all the way back through two deadly levels (which was very probably impossible). I'd probably have to save scum even farther back, to the point that two hours would have been for naught.

I was left with a quandary. What should I do?

I stopped playing. I closed the game, and announced to my friends that I couldn't beat the last mission. 50 hours into STALKER, at the end of the game, and radiation poisoning had killed me. The game didn't care if I won or lost. It gave me rules, it trained me to be careful, and I let my cockiness get ahead of me.

Could I take a weekend off and finish the game? Yes. But this ending was already stuck in my mind. The ending where a bold and powerful STALKER thought he could throw caution to the wind and charge through danger, but was met with swift death.

This feels right to me. This feels like the ending with the most meaning. I didn't care about wish granting or the zone. I had already experienced this place. This environment. I had met The Zone and been enraptured by it. I had no regrets having played that far, and the tale felt right, to end on such a bitter note. It made the tale bittersweet, and unique.

I will not see The End of STALKER. Not because I couldn't beat it. Not because I got bored or didn't like it; it is still one of my most favourite games. No, The End is elusive because I lost, in the most thorough sense. The Zone won.

Rating:

Lose yourself in The Zone

No I won't see The End: Dead Space (Review)

2012-01-26T01:48:00.001-05:00

My opinion on this game is conflicting. It doesn't do horror well at all. But it works. It's terrible at building atmosphere, and litters the game with jump scares. It still gets to me. This has the atmosphere of Left 4 Dead and the gore of Gears of War, and somehow manages to creep me out nearly as much as STALKER.

And I'm not comfortable with that.

If for some reason you went into this game not expecting the undead, you gotta learn more about how titles work.

This game doesn't really get anything /wrong/ gameplay wise. The combat is very visceral. It definitely feels like all the weapons have a real effect on the enemies, when used right. The game's dismemberment works really well, both visually and gameplay-wise.

I would definitely like to take a moment here and talk about this. Dead Space has a really interesting mechanic: Enemies don't die unless you dismember them properly. You may think it's something simple, like cutting off the head, but no, that actually makes them /worse/, as they'll go mad and flail wildly and be harder to hit.

Also these buggers look like this:

There's a stomach arm, and blade hands, and demon legs, and blood everywhere. This is gonna be a problem in this review. I'm kind of a dick sometimes, and I'll show blood and zombies and stuff sometimes, but this game is just gruesome. I'm not gonna show that on here.

You're given this gun which pretty much shoots cutting lasers. So you sever the limbs and hope that you've killed them sufficiently.

And man, can I see the possibilities. So many different weird creatures, which could all have different anatomies with different points you have to sever. You could have tentacles which need to severed, large arteries, all sorts of crazy, alien anatomy. Imagine fighting the aliens from, well, Alien, but having to cut them into pieces to kill them. Holy crap!

I would play this.

And you know, it works. I played 4 hours of the game, and came across 3 unique enemy types, and several variations of TummyArms up there. It was cool. And when you get new weapons, they change up how you can kill these creatures, often in necessary ways. There's a new cutting laser that shoots out this slow-moving beam, that pretty much cuts right through everything it hits. Massively effective against a single enemy, but hard to aim and slow to use.

It's all balanced properly. Don't assume my problem with Dead Space is I didn't enjoy playing it. Well, I didn't, but not because of the gameplay. For the gameplay, I'd actually say it's worth checking out.

What killed it for me was the atmosphere. Or rather the lack of it.

You play Science McFiction, a guy who wears an actually pretty iconic and unique space suit. Seriously, I was impressed. The art design in this game is actually pretty good, if it weren't for a problem I'll talk about in a minute.

I want to say it's ripping something off, but it isn't really. The closest it comes to is Joey from Friends in the Lost In Space movie when he donned the battle suit.

You play maybe five, ten minutes, then are attacked by a TummyArms.

The game honestly doesn't care at all about building suspense. That's a foreign concept to it. This game has the same subtlety as an Eli Roth film, and the same understanding of horror as Resident Evil: Afterlife

Which is why it bugs me so much that it actually works on me. This isn't a case where I'm running around stomping heads, laughing away at bad dialogue and being pleased by an attractive and badass woman as the protagonist. There is no Jovovich to save me this time.

I didn't even see this one; I only saw Afterlife. It doesn't matter though, I'm fairly confident she's just as awesome and the movie is just as hilaribad.

The game is built entirely upon jump scares. Go around a corner? JUMP SCARE. Enter an empty room? Just walk a few steps until JUMP SCARE. It's just JUMP JUMP JUMP COMBO BREAKER SCARE. And it really gets frustrating.

It would be pretty easy to solve, too. All they would have to do is take the time to build the tension, instead of immediately firing their gun. The game has a ton of scary concepts; the enemy designs are downright terrifying. There's a reason I'm not showing any of them. But the problem is that they throw them at you so constantly that they lose all effect.

Compare it to the beginning of BioShock, which starts with a plane crash. You're surrounded by burning wreckage, swimming in the middle of the ocean. You swim away, until all you see is a giant building, sticking out of the water. Odd. It's pretty creepy too. It's all you can go to, so you go in.

You aren't told the situation is going to be scary in advance, you just see bad stuff going down and follow course.

It helps that lighthouses are scary.

So you enter the building and [SPOILER] the door slams shut behind you, leaving you in pitch black.[/SPOILER]

The equivalent of this in Dead Space, is that you're exploring a little into the ship, and you go through a door. Suddenly it seals behind you, and the lights go out. Here's where the games differ.

BioShock then turns on the lights, wowing you with a hauntingly empty welcoming room, and a political speech given over a massive overlook of a breathtaking underwater city. It wows you, and then when you reach the end, when you've got all this emotional buildup, you're plunged into terror.

Dead Space throws a FlailyBladeArms at you immediately, and tells you to run for your life. Ahhhh, so scary, what do I do now?!

Run. The only "fear" here is from you suddenly not knowing what's happening. The second you figure it out, you aren't scared. Whereas in BioShock, you're so wowed and overwhelmed, that when the scares start hitting, you've already got emotional investment. That makes it all scarier, as you've already opened up your emotional side to the game.

Yet somehow, this game honestly scared me as much as BioShock, and possibly even as much as STALKER. And I don't think that's cause it was good horror. I think it's just that I scare easily.

What can I say? I crave this stuff, and it delivers. I can't exactly call it a bad game, but the horror is cheap. That's really what I can say. It's not fulfilling, the horror. The gameplay is good, I just can't bring myself to play it any more, as its effectively shattered any emotional involvement I had in it. I played it looking for a cheap scare, which I get, but afterwards I'm just left feeling empty.

Rating:

Empty like this long dead hallway.

No I won't see The End: F.E.A.R. (Review)

2011-07-11T14:25:00.005-04:00

America comes up too much in my reviews. I honestly don't have a major problem with the US of A or anything, it just seems like they make a lot of bad choices. F.E.A.R. is one of those, in terms of story. I can summarize it in a simple cliche: The army has military contracts that go sour. Big surprise, yeah? It's funny, you never see Canadian military contracts get screwed up badly in these games. It always seems to be the Americans who summon demon-spawn ghost children with their psychic generals.

Uhm... that's pretty much the plot of F.E.A.R. from what I played. A psychic general who controls a bunch of drone army clones somehow also summons a demon-spawn ghost child, and you have to go kill them all.

This is actually a surprisingly boring one.

At least the anagram stands for something this time.

This game is honestly unnecessary. I wish I could say anything explicitly bad about it, but I guess it certainly is solid. That's not a defense of it, though. That just means I'm more disappointed than raging.

As I said, this game is about ghosts or psychics or soldiers or something. I can't really remember. The plot is there but you honestly can forget about it so easily. I don't even remember if the psychic terrorist captain guy is the same as the ghost guy. I think they mentioned projections at one point but it doesn't even matter.

His name is Paxton, apparently. His crimes include murder, arson, desecration of corpses, and conspiracy to apocalypse. I assume.

And then there's some creepy ghost girl which seems completely unrelated, but at the same time totally related. How does that make sense? Well, so far, she just coincidentally is everywhere I'm going, as I chase after Ghost Lord Paxton here. And there's been some flashbacks to like, an incredibly messed up hospital type thing with bleeding ceilings and all that.

I really don't know what her connection is. So how do I know that it must be connected? I dunno, maybe because she's the biggest thing on the box cover.

Rated M for May Contain Freaky Ghost Children

So we've got a vacant story involving a ghost, the army, a freaky box art girl, and a psychic cannibal. At least the gameplay is good, yeah?

Well, I guess it's not bad. It suffers greatly from a school of design following a mantra of "make sure it doesn't get too boring". Which, I would like to remind you, is very different from "make it fun and interesting." It more exists in the vapid void between "not boring" and "fun" which I like to refer to as "solitaire card games".

I guess it's cheaper than a riding lawnmower, at least.

Everything is decently designed, I guess. All the weapons are satisfying to use. But they're all minor tweaks of eachother, it feels like. The pistol has maybe a third of the fire rate of the rifle. But then you can pick up two pistols and double the rate, so now you've got a more accurate weapon with 2/3 of the fire rate. Or you can get the rifle which seems to peg people to walls, but that has maybe 3/4 of the fire rate of the normal rifle, and twice the damage. Ammo is scarcer though. And then you could get the shotgun, but that's situational. It does a lot of damage but firing it effectively is so hard.

I mean, in one level, I finally found a usage for it. It's incredibly good at shooting Snorks, so I just use it for that. And I mean, if a Snork gets close to you, it'll just one-two kick-punch you and you're dead. So you really can't let them do that. I guess they're better than Bloodsuckers at least, since-

Wait now I'm talking about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

What are you doing out of your game? :o

Okay I swear, they look so similar. In fact they're basically the same enemy. Just less annoying because the totally overpowered kick attack can instantly take them out.

So anyways, after that level of curbstomping Grunts with my melee attack, I finally got a sniper rifle. It's too bad it's really only good on that one level and doesn't really come back afterwards (From what I played). But it is pretty satisfying taking out guys at range. Maybe it's used more later? I still don't get why we have the pistols, though. They're actually pretty useless, when there's an abundance of rifles left by enemies that are just generally better.

The most annoying enemy is probably the Hunter though, which-

No not again!

Okay, okay, wait, now I'm talking about Halo. How the hell do I of all people end up talking about Halo? I mean I get that there's big brutish armored soldiers which act basically identical to the ones in Halo but... no wait, that would be how I wound up there.

Alright let's try and move on. Other things I can say about this game... The graphics are decent, at least. The water effects are absolutely fantastic. I was actually pretty impressed by them, and the opening shots with all the water are really great.

And then when you finally get into Rapture the water still-

OH GOD DAMN IT.

No... no that's BioShock. Okay so the water isn't really a selling point either. What about the horror? A game called F.E.A.R. has gotta be scary. There's those moments when...

Yeah no look, this is one of the least scary games I've played in a while. I can't tell if it's trying too hard, or not trying enough. But it's pretty damn bad at it. It runs out of material really fast, to the point where it starts repeating its scares. There's one scare, where Ghost Girl appears at the top of a ladder, as you climb down it. Okay, not really scary, just a little jumpy. So you get to the bottom and turn, and BAM it's Ghost Dad, which isn't really that scary, as it's just Cosby, and-

...

I haven't even seen Ghost Dad. What the hell. The ghost doesn't even resemble Cosby. I'm really grasping at straws now.

Look to summarize, F.E.A.R. is pretty much a dull void. It's pretty lifeless, and just not fun in general. And pretty much every part of it is better in some other game. Actually it feels sort of like a watered-down mismash of all these different, better games. I can't really recommend it because, well, I played about five hours and am not satisfied.

If only I hadn't bought it in that pack on Steam with the expansions and sequel. Maybe they'll be better?

Please?

Guys?

Rating:

The slow motion is actually kind of good, I guess, sort of.

No I won't see The End: Assassin's Creed II (Review)

2011-06-19T12:35:00.003-04:00

So today I did something I've been meaning to do for a while. I got Steam working again. After a nasty bout of disagreement with my sound card, Steam decided to stop locking up my computer and let me play my games. I played Audiosurf for a while, then looked through my backlog to see what I should start next. I went to install F.E.A.R. and saw it was a large install, so I should free up some space. Clicking through my games, I decided what I wanted to keep installed cause I may play soon, and what I could do without.

And then, while F.E.A.R. began to download, I uninstalled Assassin's Creed II just for the hell of it.

Don't worry, I wasted less time with that story than this game would.

At least the title font is... readable.

The first game, I liked. Maybe it was because I was one of those people who waited till it became budget price and picked it up, or maybe it was because I still had far too much free time. (As opposed to just an annoying amount of free time.) And in terms of price point, for the ~20 dollars I paid for the Steam copy of ACII, I'm certainly not disappointed with what I got from it. I played about 15 hours and got through maybe a quarter of the storyline.

However I'm bored. Also the fanboys are annoying me. Let's deal with these one at a time.

First off, there's nothing objectively bad with ACII. The gameplay is very solid, making combat very smooth and somewhat exciting. The finishers are very slick, combining force and finesse quite well. The running is better than the first game, and you can actually jump more accurately between surfaces than in the first game. It's more like playing Prince of Persia than Prince of Persia.

Could I make this at all more clear?

And it's also nice that you can pick up enemy weapons and use them, now. It can be pretty badass to take a spear and impale a guy on it while you're fighting the four hundredth guard in the city.

I think that's one thing that sorta makes me wonder. I swear, 15 hours into this game and I think I've killed more people than in all of the Matrix movies combined. Well, minus that whole robot holocaust thing. So all the deaths onscreen. What's weird is that I can't really remember any of them being different. Or really what happened in any of them. I know what the finishers look like, but I can't really remember specific scenarios. Or those that I can, it's because I did the exact same thing over and over again.

Here's an example. There's guards in front of a bank housing a codex page. Three guards. I'm on a perch over top. I jump down, taking out two with the jump kill. As I get up, the third guy starts getting all worked up like I just did something unusual and alarming, and I promptly gut-stab him too. A job well done.

I think I did this on like ten seperate occasions. At some point you think the guards would put out a memo saying "Look UP occasionally." And it's not like I'm that fast either. I've stood over top groups of guards for several minutes and they never look up.

I dunno if I'm just weird, but I look up a fair amount in my daily life. And I spend most of that in front of a computer. I swear, I'm more aware of what exactly is above me than 95% of the mooks in video games. And it's not just cause I'm afraid of spiders.

I looked up "spider on ceiling" on Google Image and now regret it. Instead, have this picture of one of my coworkers.

Honestly the AI is a lot better than in the previous game, but it all still feels kinda hollow. There's so many guards and they never change their tactics. And they still have this sorta weird obsession of attacking one at a time.

Hollow is actually a good way to describe the whole thing. Like, ACII was worth 20 dollars, but... it's just not as good as a lot of fans say. Frankly nothing in the game is particularily memorable. Even the assassinations have little buildup (at least as early in the game as I was) and are over quickly. And it's still easier to run and tackle-kill the guy than sneak up.

It's sort of a problem of a current trend in game design. There's far too much emphasis in moment-to-moment entertainment. It's often a problem is large AAA games, where they developers put too much of an emphasis on providing a good product, as opposed to a good experience. Which would you rather have: Play through a game with high and low points, that climaxes at amazing plot twists and events but is not afraid to get mellow and almost boring; or play a game that is essentially the exact same slightly entertainment from moment to moment, ad nauseum for 40 hours? Apparently a lot of people choose the latter, but I'm a strong believer of the former.

The problem with designing games in this long way is that the games become easily replaceable. And much more easily fall out of the public mind. If you want to create a lasting experience, that actually-

Oh god damn it, America.

-okay so obviously nobody except me really cares about this whole "experience thing" and just wants some fun. Fine, you can have your fun, and it's certainly worth some brainless fun if that's what you wa-

Oh.

I guess this is the point where people say "but the story is so interesting, and so deep!" I'm pretty sure at this point you don't need me to facepalm in response because you probably already know I'm pretentious enough to find fault with AC's story.

Look, guys.... It's not that complex. It's incredibly obfuscated and hard to follow, but that's not because it's complex. Here, let me summarize the story from what I've played so far. I'd say "spoiler alert" but you really shouldn't care.

Altair's Story: Oh noes the Assassins turned out to be corrupt! I shall make a new order that isn't corrupt which will still be called the Assassins.

Ezio: The Assassins are good guys and oppose the templars. They are really old and my ancestor was involved! Path of lineage dictates I must stop a templar threat! Oh noes templars attacked and killed the men of my family! I must fight Templars!

Asshole in modern day/future (Desmond): Hurrdurr I never read even the slightest bit of genre fiction or watched indiana jones, so I don't know what templars or assassins are, and I'm utterly shocked that all this shit is going down but at the same time shall never move my face muscles more than a centimeter.

It's funny how Altair is all about making this honourable order after he discovers the corruption, then Ezio pretty much does whatever. Like, you can accept missions that pigeons will give you, to go beat up people who cheat on their wives or whatever. Okay, I'm sorry, but like, are pigeons just a commodity that only good people can use? Do they just sorta shrivel up and die when they smell evil, like the ones they used in mines?

Also come on, this is hardly an amazing plot. Ezio's story is really nothing more than a period soap opera, and about as convincing. It's really hard to feel for any of these characters when their facial animations are frankly just horrid.

Except for Ezio, who I will admit is definitely crush tier.

And most annoying is the fact that they keep treating old news like something revelatory. At the end of the first game it's revealed that the Pieces of Eden have god-given powers and that they're really old and have travelled between powerful hands throughout history, giving generals and leaders power.

In ACII, they pretty much tell us this over and over. Hey guys, oh my god, the Pieces of Eden are magic? What if... they're from god?! Oh wow, look, that saint had a PoE. Oh, so did that general. And that king, he had a PoE. And that emperor. And that captain. Everyone has PoE. And now I feel like I'm talking about Puzzle Pirates.

These are dubloons. I'll let you figure out the pun that involves the other form of currency.

And honestly, there's very little "conspiracy" going on. At least where I'm playing, it's very obvious who is a Templar and who is an Assassin. If they're an asshole, they're a Templar. If they're a playful scamp or honorable, they're an Assassin.

No, if you want to go play a game with a really good Templar vs Assassin story, that keeps you on your toes and actually has intrigue, go check out Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars. It recently got a great director's cut release on Wii and DS. Go get it. Now!

All in all, I just find ACII really lost it's flavour. It's just so boring now. It was fun for a while, but it doesn't leave any really strong memories. I've played 5-hour games that were more memorable. (Cough Portal cough.) And frankly, the series is just getting silly.

Look when I first started playing the series, they said trilogy. Okay. AC, ACII, ACIII, no problem. Now though, ACII is itself a trilogy? Why do we need this many games? I doubt the ending could truly surprise anyone. At this point it's painfully obvious that there's three possible culprits: 1) God did it. 2) Aliens did it. 3) Time travel.

And if it is time travel, I want there to be two more games, with even more weird titling than Brotherhood being a sequel to ACII. Let's call one of them Assassin's Space Creed, and then Assassin's Space Creed II. Why?

Because then any ASCII jokes in a review would seem a lot less forced.

Rating:

I HAVE A BROWN PONYTAIL AND AM EZIO'S BUILD, I REALLY WANTED TO COSPLAY HIM, AND AM BITTER ABOUT THAT, BECAUSE NOW IT'S TOO MAINSTREAM.

Hilariparenting #2: Programmer

2011-05-17T19:22:00.001-04:00

As a programmer, it makes sense to raise one's kids on Linux. Not cause Linux is superior or anything. But because it's incredibly easy to screw with while they're away.

So they break a vase? Well I guess this Xorg package isn't really necessary.
Broke a window? Write a script that inverts their mouse movements randomly.
Cursed? Write a proxy that redirects all links to http://www.hasbro.com/mylittlepony/en_CA/

Fun part: Refuse to fix the problem, they have to themselves.
Fun part: Claim it's karma. Deny all involvement.
Fun part: They become paranoid of the karma fairy.
Fun part: They start antagonizing all computers.

Down side: At age 10, realizes it really is you.
Down side: At age 17, they're hacking NORAD.

Hilariparenting #1: Daryl is a Dick

2011-05-10T23:06:00.001-04:00

Now I know you're thinking I'm a little harsh, but come on, Daryl really is an ass. Screw that guy.

Review: TRON Legacy

2011-01-23T03:02:00.000-05:00

First off, I'm not really one to hate movies. Even the fabled Star Wars prequels never really gets beyond distaste and disappointment. That's why I was a little vexed when I saw TRON Legacy and... hated it.

Sequel time.

First of all, I'm a huge fan of the first movie. TRON was a wonderful look into a theoretical concept of what would happen if a computer's internal complexity, when coupled with AI, gave birth to programs developing personalities. This was extended when Flynn, an ex-ENCOM programmer, is digitized by an experimental device and winds up inside a mainframe system. An adventure ensues, travelling across a digital landscape represented in forms reminiscent of video games. This all took place in the modern day of the movie's release, so the early 80s.

If there's one thing Legacy gets right, it parallels this. Legacy takes place in modern day, so around 2010. Technology has continued as normal, but instead of names like Microsoft and Apple being the leaders in tech, it is again the ENCOM corporation.

The depiction of an alternate modern day is interesting in one regard: Instead of the current operating systems we use, ENCOM OS is in use. It seem to basically combine the success of Windows, the bombastic marketing of MAC OS X, and the safety of UNIX into one fictional system.

I dunno if it's just the PC in me talking, or if this was intentional, but I absolutely hated the board of directors becuase they basically incorporated the worst parts of Microsoft and Apple's methodologies into one group. I hope it was intentional, as it was pretty much the only time I had empathy for our protagonist.

Before I go any further, I'm gonna say that if you haven't seen TheSpoonyOne's review of this movie, you should do so, as I agree with him about basically everything. Go and view it. Now. I'm going to refrain from complaining about a few things, mainly because he does a much better job.

Now, as for what I think is wrong with this movie, well...

Tron Legacy isn't exactly a bad movie. It's just not really good either. I'd say it's in the range of entertainment value of the recent Clash of the Titans movie. If you liked that, you may like this. Even the first TRON wasn't really that amazing. Despite some incredible ideas, it's very difficult to approach for some.

Plus it practically ate your eyes with contrast.

But speaking as a hardcore geek, and fan of the first, this is an absolutely awful movie.

There were some needless elements in here, for starters. They did the classic "Double The Guns" manoeuvre by giving Tron (unbeknownst as him to the viewers at this point) two discs. He jumps into the battlefield, crazy flips and all, and pulls out his disc. Then a second disc. This isn't actually that impressive, however, as the first movie had his disc twisting and turning midair, and here it has dropped to boring straight lines ala pong.

Ninjas. In. COMPUTERRRRSSSS!!!

Also later, some of the Red Team has lightsabers. Just... no point to it, really.

They also decided to change some of the game rules. Light-cycles has become casual. Where as in the first one, the creation of walls by the bikes made the game more and more difficult and complex as you played, in Legacy the trails fade over time. This was one of the most important part of light-cycles. Although there are still trails, they don't really have much of an effect aside from creating walls to kill opponents when jousting them with your disc isn't enough. I don't actually mind the 360 degrees, as it is more representative of current technology. But the loss of trails makes the game far less interesting.

And speaking of light cycles... Light planes? Really? Again, the point of the light trails on the cycles is that the arena would become increasingly complex, and difficulty would go up as you play, regardless of what you do, until eventual elimination due to basic game laws. But the scene where they are flying around is over open water. This scene is just ridiculous because there is no point. They could easily just take potshots at eachother and avoid having to collide trails at all. But instead they chase after this plane which makes a pair of trails, and destroy some of their men in the process.

PCHOOOOOOOO!!!!

The general appearance of trails here appears to be there more for visual effect than actual purpose. All of these scenes could be re-written with people discing eachother and it would make very little difference. Now i've got nothing against pretty lights but there was an actual design-related purpose to the original trails, and it just smells of cheap Hollywood simplification. And as someone heavily interested in game development, it's bloody obvious they didn't think to ask anyone about this.

By the way, I did like the inclusion of Bit as a sculpture in Flynn's digital home, but I would've liked to actually see him again, as he was one of my favourite characters from the first movie. No, he wasn't good, I just found him adorable.

yes

Now, let's briefly touch on the water. This is something that really pissed me off.

Why? Like... Why is there a bar? Why is there apparently an ocean? In the original Tron water was briefly mentioned as being a "fresh source" of power. Programs re-energized from it, as the cpu needs power to run and there is a metaphorical link between the program and the task. I'm still not entirely clear on what they meant by that, though, so I guess it's a little ambiguous.

But let's say they were saying it represents free ability to process a program. Such as free/idle CPU cycles. Programs would obviously like this, as the CPU would be granting them greater ability to function. Zeus' bar actually makes sense for this, as it would then make Zeus basically a Task Manager.

Two problems with this theory:

a) Why would Clu blow up the task manager?! That's a suicidal action and would only lead to further system imperfection.

b) I would think that Clu making an army wouldn't allow that many free cycles to be lying around.

The water, I guess, is really not that much of a problem, as again it was ambiguously explained at best.

Also I'm pretty sure David Bowie was intended to play Zeus. I mean, look at the guy. But I guess Daft Punk and David Bowie in the same scene would be way too surreal.

To wildly shift topics, I did like Tron's death over the ocean near the end. It was nice to see him turning blue as he fell into the water, finally dying as he was meant to live; fighting for the users and a free system.

Speaking of Tron, why did he basically have nothing to do with this movie? It's called TRON Legacy, and yet it's really more about Flynn and Clu. A more accurate title would be TRON 2: The Legacy of Flynn

On a side note, why was the gateway over all the water? I'd look into the metaphorical reason for this if I thought the producers actually could use metaphors. But metaphors probably aren't marketable.

Speaking of marketability, let's talk about aesthetics. In summary of the movie:

1. Not bright enough.

2. Should've aimed for surrealistic instead of realistic.

The original aesthetic was almost eye-searingly bright. It wouldn't make you blind from watching it, but if you're sensitive to light the contrast between the neon colours and the grey/black of everything else would sting. I can understand not enjoying the first because of this.

Bright Frisbees are bright

The aesthetic also made a lot more sense. It's a binary world; it doesn't need to look pretty. It's a utilitarian world driven by raw energy. And yet all over the place in this movie I'm seeing clouds, subtle contrast, gradient lighting, and just general ignorance of the point. Hence the surrealism. It's inside a computer. Arguably, the inside of the computer doesn't even look like what Flynn saw. Is it any coincidence that Clu looks like him, TRON looks like Alan, Sark looks like Dillinger, etc? And it really is convenient that the games Flynn plays are the ones he wrote. It's more of an amalgamation of computerized versions of what's on his mind.

This movie however ignores that, and focuses on more of an idea that this is really a future-world, hidden inside our computers, with skyscrapers, Daft Punk, and a few lights.

There's no reason Flynn would actually be inside the computer as his full self; whatever his mind computes would have to be represented in things he's already though of, hence usage of imagery that he understands.

In fact they could've made it really interesting. In the first TRON movie, Flynn was the only one in the computer. But now his son is there too. On one hand, the aesthetic does represent at times a warped midway between Flynn and junior. Flynn was absorbed in his games, and his son only knows a world of future-tech and big cities.

This all looks like some deep psychological games, except there's never any implication of change. It would've been interesting if at some point Flynn talked to his son and mentioned how the world changed immediately upon his entry. As if it was upset by two simultaneous users.

Multi-user-access, in my operating system?

However, this being a UNIX system, it can handle multiple users. So there should be no in-between representation. However, they could do some very interesting elements of Flynn and his son disagreeing on what they see when they are in the computer. The world would be represented very differently, and this could be a valid point of tension between the two as it would be harder to get what's going on. But of course, this would probably be hard to market.

And see that's the thing. Where the first TRON was a legitimate science fiction with some really interesting ideas and good use of metaphors, Legacy really is just a cash-in which tries to impress us with the type of razzle-dazzle seen in Transformers and the like, instead of through actual interesting plot.

In fact, the closest thing we get to a "theme" in this movie is almost a polar opposite to the first movie's. The first movie spoke of how technology was so deeply integrated into our lives, and how despite this we could still master it and work together for a constructive future. Legacy, however, tells how we must fight to stay dominant over technology, and how it will never be as good as reality.

Now it's not that this is an invalid argument. Regardless of my personal opinion, my problem here is that a sequel should further expand on the first movie, not turn around and talk down to it. But, it is an obvious element of the times, which i suppose is an interesting parallel.

While the first TRON was released at a time when computers were more along the lines of a new frontier, Legacy has been released in a time when technology is commonplace, and there is a classic love of the anti-technology "back to basics" theme. (See Avatar, etc.)

The final shot, of driving through the forest and seeing the magnificence of natural reality, is nice, but more of a giant flip-off to fans of the original. When the first ended with a pan of a city, growing darker until it resembled circuitry, this one shows the stark contrast of reality and the virtual world, and tell us that this is what we really deserve. And I wouldn't really care, if this wasn't a sequel. But as a sequel, it bothers me.

Perhaps what bothers me more is that they could've expanded on the original concept, as a reminder to people of the wonders computer technology can hold. Even an ending pan of trees isn't necessarily bad. Trees follow fractal growth patterns. Would it not have been interesting, to see trees, databases, fractals, and all sort of higher-intensity systems inside the computer, only for the final shot to mimic this in reality?

But that's too smart. This movie is a simplistic and ignorant mess. I can't recommend it. It's too disrespectful to the first movie. And on its own it was rather boring. A paper-thin plot and only adequate visuals that science fiction movies have been doing since the mid 00s.

Rating:

Daft Punk not being amused.

Science Fiction Implementation: Lightsabers

2010-10-08T14:10:00.001-04:00

First off, let's make one thing completely clear:

Star Wars if fantasy. It has nothing to do with science.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I was sitting around, thinking, when I started thinking about lightsabers. Obviously there are a lot of problems with them. They just can't work. However, I did think of a way to make something that looks almost identical, works the same, and actually has some science fiction BS behind it.

The saber itself has two main parts: The hilt, and the blade. The blade is a device which exudes gelatinous metal antimatter at a constant rate as long as it is turned on. The blade also contains a magnetic strip down the middle, which controls the density of the jelly. As we know, when matter and antimatter collide, it creates energy. This energy then gives off the light and buzzing sound that we know from the lightsabers.

On top of that, the creation of energy likely has an electric discharge. This would travel down the jelly and into the hilt, where it would be received and recycled.

The hilt itself would contain a tiny fusion reactor/battery, creating the necessary power to generate the antimatter. The antimatter would be generated by converting the waste from the fusion reaction as it is piped up to the blade. There would be a slot around the core, in which the blade can retract while not in use.

There are a few downsides to doing this, though:
1. The user would probably be exposed to radiation while using the saber.
2. There is still a power limit, as you would eventually have no more energy inside the fusion batteries.
3. The blade is not instantly drawable. There would be about 1 to 2 seconds of delay at least before the saber would be out and usable.
4. If the hilt were to be cut, there would be a loss of containment and likely an explosion.

And the last, biggest problem with all this is:

5. It's still not possible.

Teh Bias: Mystery and Adventure

2010-08-09T00:44:00.005-04:00

This article was originally printed on my community blog at Destructoid. I have reposted it here.

Shorah b'shem. If this month is about bias, I think it's my duty to speak up. I'm definitely biased about one thing, as anyone who's seen my game collection can tell you. If there's one thing that's clear, it's that I love Adventure games. And I don't mean The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, as Nintendo labels as games of the "adventure" genre. I refer to what would more suitably be called "Adventurelikes". Games similar in style to the classic 1976 game, Colossal Cave Adventure.

I'm talking about Zork, King's Quest, Monkey Island, Loom, Day of the Tentacle, Myst, Gabriel Knight, Broken Sword, Syberia, The John DeFoe Quadrology (aka Chzo Mythos), and countless others. I'm talking about one of the most niche and PC-centric genres in the industry.

Don't worry, the name-dropping stops here.

If there's one thing I'll defend more ferociously than anything else, it's Adventure games. And if there's one thing I'll attack more viciously than anything else, it's The Legend of Zelda. I don't even have to play the new Zelda game, I just know it's gonna be another of these samey, boring, action-adventure games.

Even though they aren't all the same. And they aren't all boring. I quite liked Wind Waker, actually.

I suppose you could say it's resentment. I practically grew up on two things: Adventure games, and shmups. Adventure games moreso. And of the two, the latter has definitely had a much higher impact on me. Nintendo is often seen as the "father" of gaming, it seems to me. That we have them to thank for the greatest in gaming. And don't get me wrong, they've done a huge deal. They saved the entire industry after The Crash. But that being said...

The Legend of Zelda is labelled as an "adventure game". Nintendo, and many gaming sites, label it as such. When I ask people what they think "adventure game" means, most people point to games from that series. Metroid is another series that often gets pointed to. But, let's look at a bit of history: The Legend of Zelda was released in 1986. Metroid was released in '86. Adventure was released in '76. Hardly seems fair for Nintendo to dictate the meaning of the genre when Will Crowther came around ten years early with his work of genius.

But this is all incredibly biased. When it comes down to it, Zelda just isn't my type of game; Adventure is. And more importantly, perhaps, is the fact that Nintendo is meaningless to me, from an emotional standpoint. I don't have any nostalgia for their games, cause it wasn't till the Gamecube that we had one of their consoles. No, my history lies squarely with the PC, and especially with its iterations of adventure games.

Let me take you back. (I should let you know, these are the events as I remember them. I may be a couple of years off in all dates. If there's one thing I'm bad at, it's my own chronology.)

One thing my father liked to do with my brother and I as we grew up was play computer games. When I was around three years old, he started showing us how to play a simple port of Pac-Man. He would also play through Doom in overhead mode (so we wouldn't get scared by the monsters).

From an early age my parents wanted me to read. A lot. When I was four, I started getting books. Simple books, and mostly pictures, but books none-the-less. But, from how easily we took to Pac-man, it was obvious my brother and I had an affinity to these bright, pixelated computer-game-things. My literary skills were developing pretty well (I could read the words "cow", "duck", and "squash"), and my dad decided he should let me try out some games of a more wordy variety.

In he popped the floppy, and he sent me off to play Adventure. When the words "interactive fiction" are mentioned, it's an eloquent way of saying "text adventure". And Adventure was the first of this type. Suffice to say, it was both one of his better and worse ideas. On one hand, it was a great introduction to the genre. On the other, navigating by the cardinal points isn't exactly easy when your understanding of directions is summed up by "never eat shredded wheat" (which is bullshit, I love that stuff). And don't even try explaining to a kid why you can't crawl into a foot-wide crevice of a creek.

But I still played it a lot. And I mean a lot. Despite my simple linguistic understanding, by my fifth year I could get past the locked grate in the forest clearing, find the serpent in the underground hall, get axed in the back by a dwarf, and fall into a crevice and die. A fine beginning to a life of adventure.

And speaking of my fifth year, my fifth birthday was coming up. I don't know what possessed my grandfather to do it, but he decided to buy me a game for my birthday. Both the first and the last time he did so, oddly enough. The game he bought me was Myst.

It worked a lot better than the typing. I could actually see what I was doing. That being said, I still didn't fully grasp navigation. So, the family decided to sit down and play it together; something we would do for the sequel, Riven, as well. My father didn't join us for Myst III: Exile, but my mother and brother played it with me, and it was immensely enjoyable. There's something about the series that drew me in. I was raised on narratives, and a game built entirely around discovering the narrative yourself seemed so perfect. Perhaps that's why I feel a synergy with the series.

I wish my grandfather had been as into it as we were. I never did get to play it with him. Nor did I get a chance to thank him for cementing my love of the genre. From Myst, I managed to reach into the rest of the genre. Soon I was playing Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Loom. King's Quest followed, and at some point I was introduced to the works of Benoît Sokal, most notably Amerzone and Syberia.

And it didn't stop there. I discovered the indie Adventure game scene, (AGS, Yahtzee's work, etc.) and at some point in my ventures into the internet, discovered that there were other people like me; others who enjoyed this niche genre so immensely. I stumbled across the site Adventure Gamers, and from there things became fantastic. I suddenly discovered tons of titles I had not even known of before, and gleefully purchased those that I could with whatever little savings I could scrounge together.

If you're curious, my library of PC games is probably around two or three hundred titles. 98 of them are Adventure games. And yes, I've counted and cataloged them.

It's not like I don't have any consoles, though. My two most recent (current-gen) consoles are a Wii and a DS. I know, odd isn't it. The consoles of my "worst enemy". Perhaps the biggest irony of all follows. My favorite game on the Wii? Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars - The Director's Cut. My favorite game on the DS? Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Perhaps it's fitting that two of my favorite Adventure games would be on the consoles of the company who "soiled" the term.

It's really a nostalgia thing for me. My entire childhood is basically Adventure games. I still remember the nights I spent, staying up late past my bedtime, hoping nobody would notice, playing The Secret of Monkey Island. Or my genuine shock and terror at the bathroom scene of 5 Days a Stranger. (Hey, I was like, 14.) Or how Saavedro's speeches in Myst III: Exile brought me to tears. (By the way: Fantastic performance by Myst fan and excellent actor, Brad Dourif.) I don't have any memories like that of Nintendo games; I can't. I was too old by the time I found them, and they weren't my style.

Feel free to enjoy them. That's your right. Oh, except one thing. They are not Adventure games. Zelda, and all those other games that Nintendo slaps the label on? No, they're action-adventure games. And if you disagree with me, I'll gladly engage in a shouting match about it. It's my childhood, after all.

Yeah, it's quite silly, isn't it? Almost as silly as a tentacle growing arms and taking over the world.

Why BioShock 2 has a terrible intro.

2010-07-10T03:40:00.000-04:00

Just... it's awful. Let me relate it to you in the form of a chat rant I had.

Shade: I was over at a friend's earlier today and played the first hour or so of BioShock 2.
Shade: Ugh, HORRIBLE intro.
Shade: Basically, it's a cutscene, entirely first-person, of your character doing average things which you could very easily control him to do.
Shade: It's like, 5 minutes!
Shade: A good 4 of that is just walking!
Shade: Hell, there's a part near the end where he jumps off a balcony and crushes a splicer with his foot (because he's a big daddy, after all) and then drills another one, and it was still completely feasable to let the player do that on their own!
Shade: And then like, there's a whole part where this evil woman comes up and mind-controls you into shooting yourself in the head.
Shade: But of course, the entire effect of control being taken away from you is lost because you don't even have control in the first place. *facepalm*
Shade: It's just BAD DESIGN.
Shade: And I'm thinking "hell, people were paid to think this up? This is horrible design! show me one player who would rather watch this stuff happen than do it." In half an hour you're doing it anyways, so it's just lazy, stupid design!

I wouldn't be surprised if they decided at the last second to add an intro section, and just hard-coded it because they didn't want to make an actual environment.

we're not doomed, guys

2010-03-28T21:28:00.001-04:00

Some people seem really feel pessimistic about stuff. Hell, so do I, often. But I think sometimes it's important to look a little beyond that.

Here's a conversation I had, which relates. Maybe it will make you think, I dunno.

Guy: I'm starting to think the only way we'll ever see a lasting change in the human race is if we manage to start changing how people fundamentally think.
Shade: Yes.
Shade: It has been happening, slowly, really.
Shade: Violent crime has gone down almost world-wide
Shade: Creativity flows like almost never before.
Shade: We just have some really bad apples.
Shade: But otherwise, it's a flourishing tree.
Shade: And it only grows bigger, and branches more, as it grows older.
Shade: That's the beauty of it.
Guy: I just fear that someone decides to cut the tree down and send us back to the dark ages.
Shade: You know, people can. If they had their mind set on destroying everything.
Shade: But those people are far and few between.
Shade: Look at mankind. We are not merely livers, we are survivors.
Shade: What compells people to go white-water rafting? Hiking over mountains? Flying for fun? Parachuting?
Shade: It's because it puts us back into our instincts. Our instincts on how to survive.
Shade: Humanity is comprised of opportunists. We survive by using an opportunity for good.
Shade: And nothing, aside from the sun itself demolishing this entire planet, shall be able to destroy humanity.
Shade: Oh, we may fall to the dark ages.
Shade: We may fall to the stone age.
Shade: Yet we will climb back. And we will learn of what happened. And we will be better, and go farther, and become stronger than ever before.
Shade: Nobody, except the gods and the heavens, can wipe out humanity.
Shade: And lucky for us, those seem pretty docile.

My Childhood is Dying

2010-03-22T18:06:00.001-04:00

I have found out some awful news today. I shall relay it in the form of another conversation log.

WARNING: This one has some very intense cursing in it, as well as just plain inappropriate sentences. I have edited it at some parts, but at others there's just no way to get around the graphic imagery. You have been warned.

Yarp: Huh. Apparently How to Train your Dragon is a good film. Mainly because, although it is simple, they say it still manages to be extremely entertaining.
Shade: I read the book. It was really good. I don't know how the movie would manage it, though.
Shade: The book was written as an autobiography/manual explaining how this viking guy learned to tame dragons, and how you could do the same.
Shade: I dunno, Seems like they're focussing on the story as opposed to the training part.
Shade: Might be good, but I thought the funny part of the book was how it was a manual.
Shade: Dunno. Either way I'm not too interested in seeing it. If the kids like it, good for them.
Shade: *shrug*
Yarp: Meh. At least it looks better than the movie adaption of Guardians of Gahool.
Shade: D:
Shade: They're doing/did that?
Yarp: YES.
Shade: Sorry, I think I'm hemoragging.
Shade: as is may hspelling
Yarp: I HAVE BEEN FOR MULTIPLE DAYS.
Shade: THAT WAS SUCH A GOOD SERIES
Shade: NO
Shade: DON'T RAPE IT HOLLYWOOD
Shade: DON'T DESTROY MY CHILDHOOD
Yarp: Oh, here's another thing that will make you feel even worse about it.
Shade: Oh god.
Shade: It's 3d, right?
Shade: They're doing 3d, aren't they.
Yarp: It was directed by the person who directed...
Yarp: Happy Feet.
Shade: F[RA]CK
Shade: F[RA]CK F[RA]CK F[RA]CK F[RA]CK F[RA]CK F[RA]CK F[RA]CK
Shade: F[RA]CKING C[OAL]SUCKING MUTHAF[RA]CKING [HORRIBLE]SONS
Yarp: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/dor/objects/14246936/10012238-legend_of_the_guardians/videos/lotg_trlr_030710.html
Shade: Okay, NO. That misses the point ENTIRELY.
Shade: Oh god. No.
Shade: No.
Shade: Oh god.
Shade: No, I am gonna- wait that actualy doesn't look too- F[RA]CK
Shade: NO
Shade: F[RA]CK
Shade: YOU SHOULD'VE STAYED WITH THE EPIC NARRATION
Shade: THAT WAS AWESOME
Shade: NOW YOU'VE JUST F[RA]CKED IT UP
Shade: YOUR DOING IT
Shade: your making it hapen IN THE COMPLETELY WRONG WAY
Shade: AND CUT THAT F[RA]CKING AWFUL POP MUSIC
Shade: THIS IS TERRIBLE
Shade: I THINK MY BALLS ARE TRYING TO CHOKE ME
Shade: THIS IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE
Yarp: Also. IT"S IN 3D
Shade: MY LUNGS ARE COUGHING UP VILE HATE AND HORRID MISFORTUNE
Shade: Okay, I'm gonna try something here.
Shade: I'm gonna mute the volume and play some epic music.
Shade: Cause you know what?
Shade: From what I'm seeing, it... COULD work. BUT IT WON'T.
Shade: Literally from the images I'm seeing it doesn't look too bad, BUT WHAT I HEAR AND THE COMPOSITION MAKES ME WISH TO COMMIT HOMICIDE
Shade: Okay.
Shade: Wow.
Shade: No, really, I don't even have the music well-synched, but a random epic music track makes it actually look decent.
Yarp: You know what? I think these next few years, Hollywood will rape all of our childhoods. Early nineties books and shows. Into awful movies.
Yarp: Like the way they raped children of the 70's and eighties with GI Joe and Transformers.
Shade: I want to cry but my body is using what would be tears to drown myself.
Yarp: Whoah, not raped children.
Shade: No, they did.
Shade: It should legally count as rape.
Yarp: Raped the children of the 70's and 80's childhood.
Shade: They retroactively raped them.
Shade: They literally got hollywood's giant cock rammed down their tender young throats.
Yarp: Now they are moving on to beloved childhood shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, and books that were popular when we were kids.
Shade: Oh f[ra]ck.
Shade: They're gonna do Redwall, aren't they? D:
Yarp: No, god no.
Yarp: Someone will hear you!
Yarp: Somewhere, they are talking this over.
Shade: BAAAAAAAAAAWWWWW
Shade: You know what, I am gonna buy this gahool movie, just so I can recut the entire thing as an actually good one.
Shade: And if what the trailer shows is how the movie is, it actually won't be hard.
Yarp: "Think about it guys! Bell falling on Cluny, but the 3D makes it look like it's falling AT YOU!" Everyone else: "It smells like money!"
Shade: D:
Shade: My eyes are trying to gouge themselves out.
Yarp: It's like I can read hollywood's mind.
Shade: IT'S LIKE ANYONE CAN.
Shade: JUST INSERT "STUPID MONEYMAKING S[TUFF]" INTO A SENTENCE AND YOU'VE GOT IT
Shade: F[ra]ck.
Yarp: Man, we're going to get CGI medieval mice shlong shoved down our throats, let's say, two years from now.
Shade: I'm almost crying but unfortunately I'm too much of a battle-hardened badass for that.
Yarp: Thankfully, deepthroating that will be easier after this catastrophic child-raping of a year for film.
Yarp: I have to set the table.
Shade: Kay.
Shade: Try not to stab yourself to death in the process.
Shade: I've got noodles tonight, and we're using spoons, BUT BELIEVE ME I WILL HAVE TO RESIST THE URGE

Review of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena

2010-03-20T01:47:00.001-04:00

Alright, time for another review. I have just finished The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, which as some of you might know also includes Escape from Butcher Bay. I am reviewing both of these games, since I had not played Butcher Bay before. So without further adieu, let's start.

Finally! I have finished a game with an awesome title!

First off, one thing: I dunno who this Riddick guy is, and I haven't seen the movies and stuff he's from. I certainly will be seeing them sometimes soon, though, for this was pretty awesome.

The story is rather simple, I'll admit. You're some psycho badass (the namesake of the games, Riddick) who loves the dark and says some really badass existential stuff. He is played (voiced and apparently motion-captured) by the awesome Vin Diesel. Riddick has been captured by some mercenary guy, and is sold to the high-security prison Butcher Bay. You must then play as Riddick and break out.

This is a dark game. I mean that both literally and figuratively. Riddick is an almost frightful character, a complete antihero has no reservations in killing people. Characters quite frequently curse (which can become comical at some parts), which makes sense in a prison setting yet can be more unpleasant in some situations. You of course kill a lot of people, quite violently in most cases, and there are a lot of unpleasant events that you can hear or are being talked about by the other inmates.

Trust me, screwdrivers are threatening.

Literally, the game uses shadows in an interesting way. It combines stealth tactics and shooter gameplay in an interesting way that forces you to use strategy, but also makes it very fast-paced. A fair number of lights in the game are shootable to make them go out, which then changes the lighting in areas, giving you more darkness. And after you get the shine-eyes ability, it becomes merely an advantage to you. Not only do you get to do a lot of shooting, but there are a variety of melee weapons in the game which work quite effectively and realistically do a lot of damage. Though just make sure you don't bring a knife to a gun fight - unless they don't notice you, of course. Silent take-downs are an integral part of the game, and succeeding them, followed by pulling the body into the shadows, is very satisfying.

Sneak up, snap neck, drag away. Quick and clean.

The gameplay in this game is mostly good, I would say. There are two major problems I noticed, though. One, that melee counters are very hard in the game. Unlike in, say, Assassin's Creed, where countering is very intuitive and almost always reacts as you want, there is no specific counter button in this game. You have to attack while your weapon shines or your hands are open, and then you'll counter. If you're off, you usually end up taking a signifgant beating. It is difficult to pull off in some of the more important fights, and makes them much harder than they feel they should be.

The other is that one of the frequent bigger enemies in the game, the riot guard, is too tough. To defeat him you have to shoot him with around twenty shotgun blasts in the back, two to three grenades, or about ten straight seconds with the minigun. On top of that, he has good eyesight, and will see you if you get too close, regardless of how dark it is.

When you finally get to play as one of these and kill the other ones it is so satisfying.

Riddick as a character is interesting because he gets very existential during conversation. It really adds to his character and makes him actually interesting, because it makes you wonder more about him. I have to say that the dialogue in this game is really good. In a lot of games I tend to read subtitles and skip dialogue, but it was good just to listen to it in this game. Vin Diesel does an excellent performance as Riddick, giving him that sexy-badass voice which seems to just fit perfectly. All the other actors (forgive my forgetfulness but I don't recall their names) bring about great performances as well. This is some of the best voice-acting and dialogue I've ever heard in a game, and it's one of the things that kept me going.

Because here's the major problem with Butcher Bay. It's too long. The payoff is great, and the first part is excellent, but it starts getting a little same-y and boring towards the end of the double-max section. (About 17 hours in when I was playing.) It's by all means great, but I think if it had been shorter it would've been sweeter and felt a little more tight.

I rank this game at:

Vin Diesel
(Badass and Awesome)

Now let's move on to the next game.

Is "chronicles" not one of the best words ever?

This game is a lot like the previous one. It feels like a good sequel, continuing with the same stuff we loved yet changing it up. Picking up where Butcher Bay left off, Riddick has escaped Butcher Bay (I won't ruin how) and is travelling through space. Did I mention these games are sci-fi? (These games are sci-fi.) Suddenly though, the ship is attacked by a mercenary ship called Dark Athena. Or maybe it was just Athena. Can't remember. Either way it sounds awesome.

So... yeah, basically the same gamplay, yet with some new additions. There are some new guns, some new mechs to pilot, some new types of enemies, some new environments, a continuation of the story... it's all great.

Riddick approves. It may not look it, but trust me, he does.

Its length is also better. I know some people really hated how short it was, and they probably had already played Butcher Bay and therefor ignored it in the package. But honestly, looking at them seperately, I think Assault on Dark Athena gets the pacing down better. There aren't any more of the annoying Riot Guards, and the replacement bigger bads are much more reasonable to deal with. The game just consistently flows, and although it is perhaps only four or five hours long, that's a good thing. The story feels a lot more condensed and tighter, with the same amount of stuff going on but it all happening with good beats.

I dunno, maybe the price was the issue to some people. But I thought Dark Athena was actually better than Butcher Bay. Hell, even the credits had better music. I'm not saying Butcher Bay was bad, but Dark Athena was a little bit better.

So, I am giving Dark Athena, as well as the combined package, a rank of:

Thumbs-Up Vin Diesel
(Badass and Really Awesome)

No I won't see The End: Far Cry 2 (Review)

2010-03-15T21:16:00.005-04:00

This is a game which gave me mixed feelings. What I think about the gameplay, the story, the atmosphere, the level design, and etc somewhat conflicting. All I can do is try to explain what happened when I played it, and how come I won't see The End.

Why do I seem to have problems finishing games with cool logos?

I suppose I'll start by saying the positive aspects. Far Cry 2 is a gorgeous game. There's no way to get around it. This game looks fantastic. In fact, one of the biggest driving forces for playing this game is just to see how great it looks. Trees, water, explosions, everything looks great.

Trees! Forests! Jungles! It's like being outdoors yet I don't actually have to get up and walk!

And besides looking good, it also plays pretty well. You get four weapons: one melee (Machete), one small (pistols, sawed-off shotgun, uzi, things like that), one medium (rifle, submachine, shotgun, etc.), and one large (rocket-launcher, grenade launcher, light machine gun, etc.). Switching between the weapons is simple enough, and you can also swap for the weapons your enemy drops.

While shooting, if you're holding a weapon an enemy dropped that is old and rusty, it might misfire or jam, which will have to be undone. It's a simple enough process, and forces you to think more about what you're doing.

Health system is decent, with a neat feature of having 5 health bars, the last of which decreases over time unless you stabilize yourself (removing a bullet, putting out fire, etc.), and you can use medkits to heal yourself. It doesn't get in the way and is simple enough to add strategy to the game.

No the game is technically fine. I haven't even mentioned vehicles yet, but let me say that they drive decently and the repair mechanic is a godsend.

No, the problem is that I won't finish the story.

The story has you as foreign assassin, sent to kill an arms dealer called The Jackal in a small African country in the midst of a civil war. This goes wrong when you catch malaria, and he saves you. Then you work for the opposing factions to try and catch up to him again so you can finish your job.

Which is decent enough, I suppose. You basically go around, sabotaging each side's stuff and do more morally-just mission from some of your buddies that you meet in your travels. But then something happens in act 2. As my character would write in his journal:

The APR sets me up, and begins a massive assault against resistors. They plan to stage two assaults, one against Mike's Bar, and one against the innocents in the church.

My companions had proven to be decent enough survivalists and fighters, so I left them. The church was basically defenseless, after all. I go in, I hide those inside, and the faction attacks. I'm clearly outnumbered, and slowly but surely I start running out of health and medkits. Eventually someone gets me with a shotgun and I go down.

But I'm still alive. They think I'm dead, and lose me amongst the bodies. I fall off the truck. The jackal once again rescues me. I wonder about my companions, and what happened to them. What happened to Michelle, or Bearclaw and Punk? Did they survive? Likely, no. I was outnumbered, they were outnumbered. Hell, even if I had gone to save them, we wouldn't have survived.

So I go back to the factions. It's The Jackal that caused all this. He gave them the guns, its his fault. I have to find him.

But they want me to do something that I can't do.

They want me to spread malaria among the enemy combatants.

It surprised me, at first. They wanted to make the enemy sick, give them a terrible disease. Then I was angry, and realized that there was nothing else they would ask me to do. Both sides wanted the other sick and weak.

I couldn't do it. I turned down both jobs. I went to a bar and sat down. Why was this a problem? I had already killed a huge number of people. The bodycount was somewhere in the seventies for sure. I had destroyed so much and yet couldn't do this.

The others were dead. They had died because I had let them fall into a trap. If I continued there would be new traps, and new companions would die. Regardless of what I did, The Jackal would always slip away.

I got up off the bar. I jumped on my ATV and drove off. What was I gonna do? I drive through the grass and the trees till I come to a cliffside. I stop, and look out over it. The sun's going down. The grass is painted gold and it looks beautiful. These sides are gonna kill eachother, and nobody is gonna win. My companions didn't win. I won't win. Only The Jackal will win. What can I hope to do?

What a view.

Maybe this is the end. Maybe it's not. I really don't know. I have to think. To think and decide. It's tough. It's not evil, and it's not good. What is good and evil anyways, in a world where everyone simply wants to kill? How can I, as an agent of death, stop the killing? I can't figure it out. I need to rest, for sure. Maybe I'll have an answer later. For now, I'll just watch the sunset.

Far Cry 2 is a game that I just don't know about. It plays well, though I warn that travelling takes a lot of time so you need a lot of patience. The story on its own is passable, but when you think about it and get involved it becomes really good. But I don't know if I'll be able to finish it. I just have a problem with doing this. It's too bad really.

Regardless of my inability (currently) to finish, I recommend this game. I rank this game at:

An Interesting and Fun Experience

No I won't see The End: The Witcher (Review)

2010-03-15T00:51:00.007-04:00

I really wanted to like this game.

Come on, that practically screams "awesome game"

Really. Western RPGs are my second-favorite game genre. I have some great memories of Neverwinter Nights. Even off the computer, I run two games of D&D and I'm playing a game of Shadowrun. It's not like I dislike the genre.

And yet this game has failed to make me interested in it. It's not a bad idea, I suppose. I even like some of the characters. No, the problem is the story.

You play the game as Geralt, a Witcher. He's a guy who runs around killing monsters for a living, and has been mutated to do so. He's basically what would happen if Clint Eastwood merged with Drizzt Do'Urden. He's a little cliche, one could say, being the total badass he is, but that doesn't mean it can't work. Oh yes, and he sleeps around a lot. But that's really not that important.

"The only way I could be more badass was if I was on fire."

So we've got Fantasy Eastwood here, and he's one of the last Witchers around. One of the neat things about the game is how alchemy and science are coexistant with magic, which gives it a neat feel. I guess it feels like 16th century sci-fi. Regardless, people don't like you because you're a mutant.

The game deals with a lot of racism and prejudice and themes like that. Elves, dwarves, and gnomes are basically second-class citizens to humans, which I have to say is an interesting twist. When humans take down a monster, the reward is greater than if a Witcher does. Dwarves are often lynched by humans, and there's a group of Elven terrorists fighting to be recognized as equals. The politcal situation of the game is one of the cool parts.

I can't even say that the gameplay is bad. The fighting system is fast-paced and energetic, feeling much more authentic than in games like Neverwinter Nights or Wizardry, with it being real-time. Although not really quick-time events, you have to time your attacks to chain them properly, and switch combat styles mid-fight.

And the graphics and music are good too. Both help draw out the atmosphere and immerse you, basically doing their job. The cutscenes are cool, and at times very cinematic.

So what went wrong? The set-up is good, our protagonist is usable, the gameplay is decent, and the graphics and music are fitting. Well, the story is the problem.

I really don't care.

And neither does this sheep apparently.

I don't think I've ever played an RPG where I cared less about what was going on. Nethack starts by telling you "Go retrieve this amulet" and I'm totally into it. But this game just doesn't draw me. Maybe I've seen the plot one too many times, maybe I'm just completely bored of fantasy RPGs.

The game begins with amnesia. Crap, that sounds familiar. Oh yeah, basically every single RPG with a pre-existant protagonist ever. So basically I'm an old badass which everyone knows, except me. You're in a Witcher academy, when BAM it gets attacked. Oh no! Not the few Witchers which I just met and don't feel any attachment to!

And then you come to a village that's under attack. Oh. I guess as the one Powerful Nice Guy around I will have to save the day. As everyone else goes about their business as if nothing is wrong. Why does my motivation drop even more.

And so I finally get into a city and now they play the political intrigue card. It starts getting interesting. Except, wait, they stop giving clues and we don't actually talk to any prominent figures. There's not much witty dialogue. Well damn, looks like once again I'm not interested.

And really, it's too bad. It has the potential for sure. We've got Drizzt Do'Eastwood killing monsters in a sorta noir-fantasy setting. We've got a story with a class system and racial factions which hate eachother. We've got an old order which is slowly dying due to prejudice. There's stuff to work with.

And sadly, they do so in the least interesting way possible. Honestly, I can't recommend this game. Although the character is a badass, he's not your badass, so don't expect to feel too much attachment. And there's barely any character development, so don't expect that to keep your interest.

It's weird. I'm a hardcore fan of story-based games, especially RPGs and Adventure Games. And yet I just can't say you should go ahead with this one. I know I haven't actually beaten it, and I likely never will. But that's just how I feel. Sorry guys.

I rank this game at:

Disappointedly Shaking One's Head

22 of my opinions (about games): #10-22

2010-03-14T00:49:00.004-05:00

Let's keep going!

10. I really prefer PC to consoles, but that's personal.

Yeah, the PC isn't objectively better than the other systems. I just prefer it for a multitude of reasons. Lack of vendor-lock-in, mostly.

11. I don't just need eyecandy.

I like stories, narrative, and atmosphere more than explosions.

12. I mean, I like explosions, but I don't like them as much.

It's not really a "they are bad" thing but an "I don't like them as much" thing. They tend to look better on the PC, though.

13. Sonic's 'friends' didn't really cause the death of the series.

Really, the death of the series was bad design. If the games were designed perfectly, nobody would care about friends. No really, you wouldn't. The games are marked by bad design, not by bad characters. Don't go hating on Big the Cat just because they decided to badly design a section of the game around him.

I mean come on he's a half-wit hermit fisherman with a pet frog who travels around looking and sounding adorable. It's not nice to make fun of something like that. That's like making fun of a puppy for living in an abusive household.

14. I suck at retro games.

Like really, I don't think I've beaten any game made before 92'.

15. Bowser... is kinda pathetic.

Like, he keeps getting taken down by a plumber. A PLUMBER. This is a guy who unplugs toilets and installs bathtubs for a living. Good in a zombie apocalypse? Probably, knows his way around a wrench. Good at battling a tyrant turtle? No. So that means that Bowser must just be really inept.

The only thing more pathetic than Bowser getting defeated repeatedly by an average Joe is that fact that he successfully kidnaps the princess. The Mushroom Kingdom is the most docile kingdom I've ever seen. I'm not sure if they even know what a guard is.

Oh well. It's just a silly game, after all.

16. The Wii has a lot more good third-party games than people give it credit for.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, Metroid Prime 3 (it was outsourced!), Broken Sword DX. There, that's three. Most people seem to joke that there isn't even one. So... yeah. There's three. Be careful about that. Choose a number like five or something. It's unlikely to ever hit that.

17. I don't like Smash Bros.

There's just not enough finesse, really. I like really stylistic fighters where you have to think and strategize and it's more like ballet than a brawl.

18. Samus is a person.

And the important part is how it doesn't matter that she's a woman. She's a strong female character on her own, she doesn't need any extra trimmings. I'd say she's a pretty good example of a good female character. Well, if she was actually character. Because really, at this point she's a suit of armor. (Or a snug jumpsuit but that's beside the point.)

19. Gears of War is a power fantasy, and kinda silly if you look at it out of context.

But really, so is Hellsing, so I'll shut up about that.

20. I don't care enough about The Legend of Zelda to care if they have voice acting.

Sorry but I'm just not really interested in the series.

21. Luigi is more interesting than Mario.

Mario is always the star, but Luigi has more characterization. We've seen that he's a relative coward, getting nervous easily. He's also taller and leaner, so not as good at fighting. That being said, he still helps out his brother when he can. Hell, his brother gets kidnapped by ghosts and what does he do? He enters a very creepy mansion all on his own, scared out of his wits, in search of his brother. Damn. That's heart. That's loving a brother. That's just a swell guy.

22. Bullet-time is still cool...

...under some circumstances. One: when used to show someone who is moving too fast to see. As in, everyone else slows down but they stay the same speed so you can see how much faster they're going. The One did this. It works well for popcorn-movies. Two: To show inconceivable details, like a bullet bending in Wanted. Three: It's an awesome ability in shmups.

22 of my opinions (about games): #2-9

2010-03-13T23:41:00.002-05:00

Now let's continue on with some more points:

#2 - The Legend of Zelda really needs to spice things up a bit.

Okay, they're really fine games. I can't find much of a problem with any of them (except Twilight Princess because something about the characters' weird voice noising grates my nerves), but they're pretty much all the same thing. I mean yeah, you're a wolf some of the time in one, you're on an island in another, you can change size in another... but it's still the same thing.

Imagine if instead of Portal, Valve instead made a Half-Life 2: Episode 3 in which Gordon got a Portal Gun and nothing else changed in the plot, except a little scenery. Would it be a good game? Probably. But nowhere near as good as Portal is.

What I'm trying to say is that The Next Legend of Zelda is a lot of work for what could be an even more awesome game. But it won't be because Nintendo won't let it. And that's fine, cause there's people who like retreading old ground for whatever reason, or maybe they just want a game to play and aren't look for a new experience, but it is still regardless a little stale.

Just jazz things up a little. Pull another Wind Waker and I'll be happy.

Oh, Wind Waker is the Zelda game I liked the most. Just my opinion.

#3 - Super Mario Sunshine controls better, looks better, has more consistent design, sounds better, and has a better story than Mario 64.

This is an odd one that I can't really put my finger on. People say that Mario 64 is far better than Sunshine. I don't even mean Nintendo Nostalgiacs, I mean people who play them each for the first time in close proximity. I dunno, I think it's pretty simple.

Super Mario Sunshine has more reactive controls and more angles of movement thanks to newer hardware. Therefor jumping is more fluent. Sunshine has better graphics cause it's on the Gamecube. Music is better too. Story is actually present; there are cutscenes (multiple!) as you go through it.

I guess the only difference is that the levels in Sunshine are very similar in style, instead of varying wildly. And I dunno, I like that better, but maybe that bugs some people. I thought it was neat to have an environment that actually felt all like one place, but maybe that's just me. Regardless, people are entitled to their opinion, just I'd like to hear some solid reasons for why Mario 64 is better aside from "because it was so much better, it was awesome."

#4 - I love PC Gaming

There's about a handful of exclusives for each console that I would make as my favourites, or at least as being excellent. Hotel Dusk on the DS, Broken Sword DX on the Wii, Mario Kart Wii, Tales of Symphonia, Final Fantasy X, etc etc. Consoles aren't bad, but I really love PC gaming. For every console game I love there's probably about 5 PC games.

And I love PC gaming mainly because it's often customizable. You can tweak the resolution and the screen size and the controls. Sometimes you can even mod the game (which was the saving grace of Fallout 3).

I know a lot of people say it's annoying that you have to update your computer every other year but... you don't. I've only updated my computer every 5 years or so and can still play most games. Hell, Far Cry 2 in DX9 mode runs everything on High with no problem, and the components in this baby are probably 3 years old at least.

#5 - One of the greatest games of all time was made in 1976

It was called Colossal Cave Adventure. It started a genre. It was fantastic. Probably none of you would like it, though.

#6 - Halo is a decent game, and the co-op is fun.

There's nothing technically wrong with Halo. It's just incredibly cliché and engaging in the loosest sense of the word. In singleplayer, at least. I wouldn't play online because I'm terrible at it.

#7 - Splitscreen multiplayer is fantastic.

No really, what's better than sitting on a couch with a bunch of buddies and playing through a game? I would submit that doing so with a girlfriend may be the only thing, but that's beside the point! Splitscreen is awesome!

Too bad it stopped being on PCs anymore. Come on guys, bring it back!

#8 - In fact why don't you have splitscreen when you have online?

If you can do it between two computers you can do it on one. We have dual cores and everything now!

#9 - Oh yeah, and do it on the PC.

Please.

22 of my opinions (about games): #1

2010-03-13T14:42:00.006-05:00

I'm weird. We've got that out of the way. To say that I'm the average gamer is just not true. I'm not very good at games at all. I really love games. But I have some weird opinions. The type of opinions that make most gamers fume and froth at the mouth.

Earlier I made a post [edit: Post has since been removed, hee - Future March] which was flame bait (some people fell for it), about some of my controversial opinions. I'd like to go over them again, in detail, and explain them. They're not as extreme as I earlier stated, but it was fun to watch a few people get frothy over something silly.

I'll be releasing responses in chunks so that posts aren't too long.

1. Nintendo's release model is similar to EA Sports' (Madden).

I called out The Game Overthinker for so violently bashing on Madden for being the same game over and over again, and rewarding Nintendo for doing something very similar. He said the difference was that Nintendo is doing it so people can have fun, and EA is doing it to make money. I think there's one major flaw in this viewpoint, though: It makes Nintendo look like a person. It isn't, it's a soulless corporation. Miyamoto has a soul, sure, but Nintendo doesn't care about you in the slightest. It's a corporation. All corporations are as animals; they simply want to eat, survive, and reproduce in the form of sub-companies and licensees. Claiming that Nintendo is somehow better than EA is a fallacy at its base, as it calls Nintendo a person. They are one and the same.

As for the release model, there are some similarities. Nintendo releases another entry in a series, usually one with very weak plot and little if no connection to the proceeding game. The gameplay follows the exact same formula for each installment, though there are variations in camera angles, level design, powers, and eyecandy. Yes, you could say that it's enough of a difference that they aren't just remaking the same games over and over again. That being said, it's also similar enough that calling them completely separate is rather silly.

Madden games are basically the same thing over and over again, near-identical gameplay with only changes in camera angles, eyecandy, management, and rosters. That being said, Madden 09 is different from Madden 08. It would be silly to call them the same game. Granted, a lot less silly than calling Twilight Princess the same as Ocarina of Time, but still silly.

That's not to say that either of the series are bad, mind you. The former gives nostalgiacs their buzz and allows them to play something familiar in a new way, feeling like once again they are worry-free children. The latter lets football fans feel like they are part of each year's best games. Both are sure to turn a profit, and that's all the corporations care about. Their similarity is in the fact that both are viable ways for a corporation to make money, and both cater to a specific portion of gamers.

Honestly it's kind of silly to fight about. They're not even similar to each other. I just wanted to bring this up because a lot of people seem to hate the opinion that Nintendo may not be a benevolent god-being. Maybe if I actually thoroughly enjoyed most of their games I would feel the same. Regardless, the only ones I did were Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Mario Kart (SNES, Double Dash, and Wii). Sorry, but Nintendo doesn't make my kind of games.You guys can have as much fun with them as you want, but please stop bashing football fans over what they enjoy. You can have your nostalgia and they can have their football. Me? I'll keep to my mysterious islands.

Good Horror Villain: Dracula

2010-03-10T01:20:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Dracula, the classic novel by Bram Stoker. It's the first novel I've finished for about 6 months, as I've been very busy. It was fantastic, though. Aside from being very well-written, the villain of the book (Count Dracula) is just downright creepy. He is, put plainly, a supernatural stalker.

And if it ended there, he's just be a slasher villain. But what puts Dracula up in the ranks of good horror villains is simple: You can't understand him. His motives are, at best, vague. We know his goals: He wants victory over London, and he wants specific women as his servants. But we don't know why. We even know what he's going to do next, almost night by night, often even where. We don't know how. He keeps getting stronger, he learns more of his powers, he adapts, he's smart. He has weaknesses and works against them. He always keeps a trump card up his sleeve, so he can escape with a power that the heroes don't know of yet.

And it's the fact that Dracula is so hard to get inside (the mind of) which makes him a creepy villain. You can't sympathize with him, you can't understand him, as he's just not human. There's nothing to understand. He preys, he's a hunter, he has some strange motivation which he never lets on, and is very specific about what he does next. You can learn of his strengths and powers, but only through experimentation and vague legends. You have to test your luck.

I think some people misunderstand what a scary villain is. It's not something that can screw you up majorly, it's not someone who has a lot of power. It's someone who is doing something bad and you can't learn why. He is indecipherable, almost mad. Yet madness alone isn't scary. Dracula's scariest trait is that he's sane. He's so sane and logical that it's scary that he acts like a madman. He does things all for a reason, and you'll never understand why.

It is, quite simply, fear of the unknown, fear of death, and fear of evil, all rolled into one suave package. It's downright creepy.

And that's fantastic. Anyone who wants to read some well-written, nay, amazing, horror should read this book. I give it a full recommendation, just for the villain.

UNNAMED RANDOM DEVLOG

2010-03-09T01:37:00.002-05:00

Tonight I finished the backbone of an IF I'm working on, called [CURRENTLY, NOTHING]. For those of you who don't know what an IF (Interactive Fiction) is, wikipedia has a good summary. You can go look it up.

Anyways the point of all this is that I thought I should make a small devlog of sorts, going over what I've developed so far and talking about how things work.

From the player perspective:

ATTRIBUTES
Unlike a normal adventure game which sets which objects that can be used together, this game runs by matching attributes instead. So instead of saying "if used item is object" you say "if used item posesses attributes of etc".

The entire point of this is to try and make a more natural and logical puzzle-solving process. If you've got a stick, a broom, a crowbar, whatever, as long as it has an attribute like "long", it can solve the puzzle. One might argue this makes things too easy. No, this makes things fair.

INTEGRITY
A lot of adventure games have a set "death point" of an object. After using a stick in the proper location, it "breaks". It's an excuse to declutter one's inventory. But in this game, an object breaks once its integrity hits or drops below zero. Actions all use a certain amount of integrity. For example, jimmying open a door may require an integrity of 20. A stick may have an integrity of 10. If you try to open the door, the stick will break, but the door will not open since the object didn't have enough integrity. Yet if you try something like a crowbar (integrity of 100s), the door will break open, and the crowbar will be only slightly damaged.

I won't list the chart here, as it makes things too easy. The game never gives exacts, just tells you how strong something feels. This makes things more challenging, as if you use the wrong item somewhere you may not be able to do something later.

From the developer's perspective:

EXIT DIRECTIONS
5 3 0
8
6   1
9
7 4 2

So each room has an array of chars. There are 9 spots in total, and each either has an x or an o. The numbers are weird and out of order because java uses columns then rows, instead of rows then columns.

NW N NE
   UP
W     E
   DN
SW S SE

x = No exit
o = Open exit

This can be expanded further when things such as doors become necessary. Then we can include locks with symbols like k.

MAP
The map class basically is what contains all the rooms. So you have rooms inside maps. I guess you could say that they're like a bigger room. So you would have a house map, and a street map, and a cave map, etc.

Map is arranged as follows:

0 - - -> 10
| + + +
| + + +
| + + +
v
10

Down, then right.

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
I'm writing everything in Java, and so far only have a console interface. So it will be fairly portable. Huzzah!

~~I'll post more updates as real progress is made. It will probably be rather slow, but I think this will turn out to be very interesting indeed.~~ [edit: There has been little progress, and do not expect any news to be coming. The project is temporarily abandoned. - Future Shade]

That's not how you advertise. ...again.

2010-03-06T00:42:00.003-05:00

No seriously, how do you screw that up.

EDIT: While watching the video for Bridge to Nowhere by Sam Roberts, it referred to it as a U2 song, and then later as a Lady Gaga song. Like... that is bad design. FACEPALM.

That's not how you advertise.

2010-02-22T16:06:00.001-05:00

I mean I like Jersey Boys as much as the next guy but I really was expecting something a bit different to pop up while I was watching helicopters explode.

Sometimes conversations just go like this

2010-02-15T00:58:00.003-05:00

Uh... Well, it's valentines day. I don't really have much to say on that, but I think this conversation I just had was interesting and relevant.

Note: I am not high, but I certainly do seem it. :P
Second note: This is long. By the way, it's been cut down.

Dude: your personal message
Dude: is very
Dude: ...
Dude: how do I say
Dude: un-informing
Dude: lol
Dude: hello
Shade: Hi.
Dude: what's up?
Dude: hows school going?
Shade: decent
Dude: sweet
Dude: it's killing me
Dude: schoo;
Dude: pour too much time into it
Dude: but, what else are you suppose to do, eh?
Shade: school
Dude: ture
Dude: I hate it though
Dude: it's like surviving
Dude: pushing to keep trying
Dude: I am so tired
Dude: recently
Dude: but time is short
Dude: with work on the weekends
Dude: I don't have much time to finsh work
Dude: what a perdicerment
Shade: look don't be going emo on me bro
Dude: I hope the wrist slitting doesn't happen
Dude: no worries g
Shade: craaaawwwwling iiinnnnn my skiii- no
Shade: Listen to Bobby
Shade: Don't Worry Be Happy
Shade: That's how you gotta do it
Shade: Let's rip open a can of this whip*ss on sadness. Time for some happy.
Shade: Put it in a pan, fry it, flapjacks with maple syrup.
Shade: Now we're talking
Shade: Eat that sh*t
Dude: ou saying drugs are the answer eh?
Shade: I don't know what I'm saying.
Dude: you have cahnged g-man
Shade: lol
Shade: Cause that's what it's about. Changing lols.
Shade: Gotta put that sh*t in the washer. Gets dirty over time.
Shade: Don't forget to dry. Nobody likes a soggy lol.
Shade: Soggy lols are the worst. Almost as bad as a soaking lol, but with less ol
Shade: More like a lo
Shade: But then it swings back round to a lol
Shade: It's like a sine wave, with the vertical being the shift from lo to ol and the horizontal being the dryness.
Shade: Wet is like an lo and then suddenly at dry it's like bam middle and you've got a lol.
Shade: just ignore that part about sine waves repeating
Shade: cause its not like that
Dude: just wiat
Shade: wiat
Shade: nice kid
Shade: shouldnt hav jumped the rope
Shade: i told him he was klutz, but he jumped
Shade: eggs
Shade: eggs is what happened
Dude: what
Shade: some lady drops her damn eggs
Shade: he trips
Shade: buhboom slam face down in eggs
Shade: look out for those goddamn eggs
Shade: you think concrete is bad but wiat learned
Shade: eggs
Shade: eggs will f*ck you over
Shade: theyll f*ck your sh*t up and then theyll take you to the cleaners
Shade: and this time it wont be a sine wive of lol
Shade: its exponential man
Shade: exponential pain
Shade: and it just keeps going
Shade: dont stop for nobody
Dude: you need to fihgt
Dude: fight against it
Dude: make displacement
Dude: what's the displacement of a cosince and sine
Dude: put together
Shade: its like a tan or some sh*t
Shade: except not a sunny tan
Shade: but like a number tan
Shade: red hot juicy .5
Shade: put it on a bun and eat it for lunch
Shade: seen a guy take eight of those in one day
Dude: I see your getting somewhere
Dude: need to figue out what I am supose to make out of eggs
Shade: eggs are bad news
Shade: theyre your fox to your cbc
Shade: theyll be all yo yo what conservative and be like
Shade: nyaaaaaa
Shade: distort truth
Shade: roll a 20
Shade: uh oh critical
Shade: what are you gonna do
Shade: what are you gonna do, they rolled a crit on yo
Shade: on you
Shade: f*ck
Shade: screwed that up
Shade: screwed that up like colbert
Shade: oh snap
Shade: hes in a cosine of cleaners
Shade: just round and round
Shade: oval office
Shade: cleaner office
Shade: sines
Shade: its all the same thing
Shade: all part of the bigger picture
Shade: you got it
Shade: the worlds a circle
Shade: aliens have flying saucers
Shade: sh*t
Shade: humans are from space
Shade: it all makes sense
Dude: string theory
Dude: sine
Dude: can represent that
Shade: its like a loap
Shade: a loop
Shade: a soapy loop
Shade: a loap
Shade: just going round and the suds get in your eyes
Shade: and they start popping and suddenly bam universe
Shade: you got a little universe above your eye right there
Shade: you dont see it
Shade: its there
Shade: but your ignorant
Shade: you dont know
Shade: but i'm telling you
Shade: and you'll make
Shade: you'll make that change
Shade: pop the bubble dude
Shade: make that universe
Dude: bam
Shade: look at that
Shade: thats fantastic
Shade: whoa
Shade: bro moment here man
Shade: fistbump
Shade: pow
Dude: are u high
Shade: im high on life man
Shade: just living
Shade: living this sh*t and its fantastic
Shade: its like reality is more real than reality and is reality
Shade: but it isnt
Shade: its real
Shade: real like a really real reality
Dude: that's a good felloing
Shade: i dunno i think its cause its valentines day
Shade: hey, so i aint got nobody to love
Shade: know what?
Shade: i'll just love the whole goddamn universe
Shade: that's my valentine
Shade: hey there little sun, you're mine. you'll be my valentine
Shade: and the whole wide world
Shade: all the people
Shade: look how fantastic we all are
Shade: what we've done
Shade: how far we've come
Shade: its aweosme
Dude: I know amazing
Dude: but you realize
Dude: that it was meant to be this way
Shade: i dont think so, and that's why its awesome
Shade: this couldnt be meant to happen
Shade: to difficult
Shade: why does nobody else do it
Shade: we create ecosystems
Shade: we create weather
Shade: we terraform
Shade: nothing else does that like us
Shade: its a big mistake
Shade: and damn
Shade: thats beautiful
Shade: its like were all lottery winners
Dude: absorb it all in
Dude: what makes you understand these concepts
Shade: i just know it
Shade: its like i just sit and think about it
Shade: and then i get it
Shade: i love that
Dude: see
Dude: there you go
Dude: that's what reality
Dude: is
Dude: but beter
Dude: than that
Dude: it's looking at reality
Dude: and instead of going
Dude: f*ck, hate this
Dude: going
Dude: wow
Dude: nothing
Dude: is so much worse
Dude: than this
Dude: there is so much
Shade: just live and love it
Dude: live to the maximum
Dude: expand your visons
Dude: dreams
Dude: expectations
Dude: that's what this is for
Dude: you got to live it
Dude: because life
Dude: is plain
Dude: awsome

The Marionette (Guest Review on TIGSource)

2010-01-23T17:58:00.002-05:00

My review of the The Marionette on TIGSource went up about 4 days ago. Read it here. Sorry I didn't mention that earlier, but I've been busy studying for exams.

Also, I've now got a copy of the soundtrack. It's really fantastic, and I'd put it up there with Silent Hill 2 and 3 as really good video game soundtracks. Good stuff.

how could I forget

2010-01-19T17:21:00.002-05:00

Yeah, Super Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart Wii are really good. I dunno why I forgot about them. My bad.

And you wanna know why?

MOTORCYCLES.

and this year's oscar should go to mspa

2010-01-14T18:12:00.001-05:00

Okay, this latest MSPA: Homestuck page is just way too awesome. There's just... oh hell, I'll show you the chat I had about it.

Inanimate: OH MY GOD
Inanimate: THAT WAS EPIC
Inanimate: MINDBLOWINGLY EPIC
Inanimate: I JUST... WOW
Shade: HOLY F[-]ING S[-]T
Inanimate: I KNOW
Shade: THAT WAS THE MOST FREAKING AWESOME THING I'VE EVER SEEN
Inanimate: YES
Inanimate: GAAAAH
Shade: Like, I thought it stopped... BUT THEN IT DIDN'T AND JUST KEPT GOING.
Inanimate: MSPA has ascended to godhood SO MANY TIMES NOW
Shade: I know!
Shade: It's like, how does he do it?
Inanimate: theres no words to describe the AWESOME of this
Shade: F[-]ing genius!
Inanimate: its humor, drama, action
Inanimate: EVERYTHING
Inanimate: and like
Inanimate: its just UNSPEAKABLE
Shade: This man deserves an oscar. Dead serious.
Inanimate: i know!
Inanimate: he fits everything together so amazingly well
Inanimate: most people are like
Inanimate: "humor action drama!"
Inanimate: and it doesnt make sense
Inanimate: but he does it ALL AT ONCE
Inanimate: and it is SHEER AWESOME
Shade: I KNOW. AHHHHH! SO GOOD.
Shade: AHHHHHHH. *fangirl squeel*
Shade: I CAN'T STAND THE AWESOMENESS.
Inanimate: this man is like, the GREATEST THING TO EVER HIT THE EARTYH
Shade: I'M GONNA WATCH IT AGAIN
Inanimate: IM LISTENING TO IT RIGHT NOW
Shade: OH WOW.
Shade: IT GETS BETTER SUBSEQUENT WATCHES
Inanimate: I KNOW
Inanimate: time travel now
Inanimate: SERIOUSLY
Inanimate: this one is doing it
Inanimate: AND everything else
Shade: And doing it all WELL.
Shade: Aw f[-]k I get freakin' chills watching this because it's soo good.
Shade: I'm really surprised by the dynamic angles he used here.
Shade: Some just really f[-]ing good art.

You can watch the latest page in all its animated glory here.

"Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays"?

2009-12-15T14:17:00.004-05:00

Christmas is an interesting time in Canadian society. Canada, like the United States, is officially a Christian country, and as such we get Christmas Day off. Yet it seems that the country is both simultaneously embracing and rejecting this, and it feels very awkward.

I have checked official sources, and the government refers to the upcoming holiday as “Christmas”. Indeed, even my school's calendar regards this time as “Christmas Holidays”. Yet, it seems that administration does not want teachers to use the word “Christmas” or the celebrate the holiday publicly. This is, to put it lightly, odd.

This trend is often said to be rooted in political-correctness. It can be easy to see why that may be. Canada relies largely on immigration, and has many large 'minority groups' which we cannot afford to alienate. When you've got a large percentage of the population that aren't white Christians, it's important to not make them feel unwanted.

Yet at the same time, this doesn't fully hold up. If that were true, the government themselves would change the holiday's name. The administration of the school board would assign a different name to the two weeks off we get. One could easily call it a plethora of other names: Xmas, Winter Holidays, End-Year Celebrations, Giftmas, Pagan Celebrations in the Guise of Christian Ones, Decemberdays...

It's probably important to note that a huge portion of the population celebrates the non-religious aspects of christmas; probably more than those who strictly celebrate the Christian aspects. When one looks at the advertised aspects of the year, symbols such as snow, presents for being good, Santa Clause, reindeer, pagan trees, friendship, and family, are much more common than baby Jesus or the virgin Mary.

Many stores already say “Happy Holidays!” instead of “Merry Christmas!”. The reasoning behind this may be that they don't want to get sued, but that's not entirely true. As the owner of a store, they have every right to say Merry Christmas, as it does not infringe upon any rights to say it. Saying that your local Walmart is not allowed to say Merry Christmas is like saying that the local Christian store isn't allowed to say “god bless you”.

No, the real reason they aren't doing it is to try to avoid alienation. When you've got a huge retail chain servicing millions every day, of multiple backgrounds and religions, you don't want to alienate people. At least if you want to keep profits high, you don't want to.

And that's what the whole “Christmas” issue is really about. Alienation. It's about doing what makes the most people feel okay. If it was about doing the morally right thing, you'd do the same thing, as conscious alienation of people is wrong. That said, the phrase “Merry Christmas” isn't intrinsically aggressive. It doesn't mean “If you are a White Christian have a good year and praise Jesus our saviour, but if you aren't then you deserve to burn in hell for eternity you devil-worshipping heaven”.

That said, it does have obvious Christian overtones. And it's obvious to see why this would bother some people. What “Merry Christmas” means is quite simple: Enjoy this time of year, where light and goodness can be seen in the world. It's about friendship, about family, and about how good can shine through no matter what the situation, if given the time to. It's about charity and wholeness of being, and about happiness and love. Yet it also has that obvious underlying message of “Jesus saved us, so honor him”.

But hey, we have another phrase that means pretty much the same: “Happy Holidays”. And guess what: it doesn't alienate anybody. It's about love and friendship, and the good in the world. And it doesn't have to mention Jesus to do so. It's accessible, and beautiful.

So enjoy these days, have fun, and most of all: Happy Holidays.

Quick Review: The Longest Journey

2009-09-30T20:41:00.002-04:00

Geeze, that took forever. That is one game that really lives up to its title. It feels like it too. Anyways, quick review of The Longest Journey.

As a matter of fact: yes.

Genre: 3rd Person Point and Click Adventure

Story: To be honest, I thought it was only okay. It's really grand and sweeping, but the characters seem somewhat inconsistant. The world and lore around it are really neat, and the attention to detail was great. Also, it has a really satisfying ending, though I was surprised that a few things weren't tied off. Not the best adventure game story, but it was decent.

Graphics: Background still look pretty nice, but low-res text and 3d models are annoyingly out of date. And the pre-rendered FMV sequences look really horrible. It's not too bad though, and it certainly isn't eye-straining. It just would be nice if it hadn't aged so badly.

Music: Nice and atmospheric.

Voice acting: It was generally pretty good, but it felt really scripted at times. Most characters were also boring to listen to. Except this talking bird named Crow. He stole the show. Actually, on that note, the ending has him in it as a major character, and I think that was the best choice in the game. When you first meet him he's an inventory object, but his progression is really great and you grow really attached to him. The ending was an excellent nod towards this progression of the character, and felt really great.

This guy right here. He's awesome.

Gameplay: *sigh* I really wanted to enjoy it, but this was honestly painful. This game pretty much represents every bad design decision that is a trope of Adventure Games. Ridiculously overcomplicated MacGyver puzzles? Check. Agonizing walking speed? Check. Fetch quests and running back and forth? Check. Tons of dialogue with a really boring and simple dialogue system? Check. Annoying timed part in which you wrestle with the controls? Check. Honestly, it's terrible. Unless you're a hardcore adventure gamer, you're gonna hate the gameplay.

Puzzles: See comment relating to MacGyver puzzles. Also, I really had to use hints for most of this game. There's no way any sane human could think up half the stuff you have to do.

Length: The first third of the game feels just right, the middle feels too long, yet the ending feels rushed. Overall though, it felt a little too long.

Overall: You know, I really wanted to like this game. I haven't played a good adventure game in a while, so I was hoping this would be one. But I don't think so. It has some good parts, but it has a lot of bad parts. Crow was an amazing character, though even he's not very memorable since he's in such a bland game. Ultimately, I'd say skip it. There's a lot better out there.

Review of Fallout 3 - Part Six: Modout 3

2009-09-07T16:20:00.002-04:00

Continuing on from my last post, these are my thoughts on Bethesda's action-rpg, Fallout 3. Er, sort of.

SHADE: Pffff.... god this is boring.
SHADE: ...there's gotta be some way to make this game more interesting.
SHADE: Hm? Mods?
SHADE: *clicks*
SHADE: O_O
SHADE: Shoot.
SHADE: *downloads*
SHADE: *plays*

-THREE WEEKS PASS-

SHADE: ...god this is boring.

To be honest the game kept me entertained
for about a month and introduced me to some neat ideas. (1960's robot designs were really cool.) It at least
deserves props for that. Plus, the modability on
the PC is really neat, and there is a ton of really creative and great
extra content out there. In the end, it doesn't save the game from eventually slipping from my mind, falling into the same stack of brilliant-yet-flawed-games-that-I've-beaten (and will probably not play again for many years), next to titles like Neverwinter Nights and Assassin's Creed. Was it worth 60 dollars? ...ffhhh... is any game? I dunno. If it weren't for the flaws, I'd say Fallout 3 comes damn close.

Just make sure that if you play it, you try out a ton of mods afterwards. That really does help save the game from doom.

In the end: It was fun. It was mindless... but fun. I reccomend that you try it on a console, and if you like it, buy it for PC. If your PC can handle it, that is. And if it can't, don't buy it at all.

And that's all I can say about the game.

-Review End-

- Shade Jackrabbit

Review of Fallout 3 - Part Five: The End?

2009-09-07T15:11:00.002-04:00

Continuing on from my last post, these are my thoughts on Bethesda's action-rpg, Fallout 3.

Of course, at the end of every journey, it must come to a close. Well, okay, it could decide not to come to a close and encourage open-world gameplay, but that only works if your world is interesting and there is some sort of appropriate award for doing so. (Learning more about the story, for example, is often a good reward for RPGs. Unfortunately the story in Fallout 3 is too weak for this, as I mentioned in Part Three of my review.) I don't really think Fallout 3 would benefit from an open-world ending, so the rather abrupt and decisive ending didn't really bother me. Still, if you want to be able to continue fighting "the good fight" after the ending, you may want to look into getting the some of the DLC (downloadable content) such as Broken Steel, which apparently lets you play after the ending.

Truly he was the master of the wasteland.

At this point though, I found myself a bit confused. I had finally gotten through the game. It had been a long and hard journey, and I had conquered all odds. But... something was missing.

Sometimes games have the problem that, after you beat them, you just want to keep playing. But at a certain point I found myself not even looking forward to playing Fallout 3. The world was too bland, my skills were too high, and I had to install a mod to allow me to keep levelling up, for I had hit the level barrier way too soon. There just wasn't a challenge. When I beat the game, I felt relief.

Except... I didn't.

I have to admit, shots like this are pretty awe-inspiring when rendered in full 3d.

There was something about the wasteland that called me back. Maybe it was the fact that half the map markers were left un-seen. Maybe it was that I had played the good guy yet in the end I died, leaving a hollow feeling like all my work was for naught. (Speaking of which, in the end you either live or die, and it's pretty much a yes/no choice.) Maybe it was even that I wanted to know more about what was going on.

But it wasn't any of those things. I'll tell you what it really was:

I was bored.

This guy may be having more fun than I was at that point.

When it comes down to it, I think Fallout 3 is quite honestly one thing: Unsatisfying. That's not to say it's bad, as it's quite a bit better than some RPGs (like Dungeon Lords, though that isn't hard), and the gameplay is pretty satisfying, but it's really not much better than playing solitaire for hours on end. There quite simply isn't much thought, and the world isn't very intriguing.

And I think what bugs me the most is that it could be so much better. There are some really bad mistakes that Bethesda made, that really hold the game back from the title of "masterpiece". I really wanted to like the game, and there were a few points (listening to my robot butler tell horrible yet brilliant science jokes, completing the Wasteland Survivor Guide for Moira Brown, taking out a base of raiders or slavers with a sniper-rifle) that were really fun and are even, dare I say, memorable. But most if it is just so bland.

It's too bad really, because I spent a long time on this game, and I'm not sure if it was worth it. On one hand, it pushed the bar and reminded me that "satisfactory", "safe" and "solid" games aren't good enough, and had some really nice moments. On the other, most of it was forgettable, and the ending gives no satisfaction.

I guess to summarize: Gameplay? Pretty good. Story and Dialogue: Passable. Graphics? Both impressive and lacking. Music? Great. Overall? ...er.

...I don't know. I've written five parts about this silly game. It's crazy. The game's not bad, like Dungeon Lords. The game isn't really good, like BioShock. The game's just... mediocre? No, even that isn't right. I don't know what to think, or what to say about the game. It's... solid. The game is very solid. My reccomendation? ...I have no damn clue. Borrow it from a friend? Try it? Hopefully all this helped, cause I still don't really know what to think.

Just... something doesn't feel right. Could this really be... the end?

Images used in this review do not belong to me, nor do their contents. I took none of them myself, but merely found them on Google. I assume no ownership and am using them for referential purposes. If you do not wish them to be used, simply send me an e-mail and I will replace them.

Review of Fallout 3 - Part Four: Graphics, Music, Sound

2009-09-02T14:53:00.004-04:00

Continuing on from my last post, these are my thoughts on Bethesda's action-rpg, Fallout 3.

So before I wrap up the review, I still need to talk about the polishings. You know, the eyecandy, the sounds, the music; the stuff that any game that wants to succeed as more than a niche title or wants to hide gameplay flaws must have.

And you know what? This is one of the areas that Fallout 3 really succeeds. ...and fails a tiny little bit. Let's look at the graphics first: They're really good, but when you look closely kinda bad. Let's look at some shots, shall we?

Yeah, this is why the bomb is bad.

The shot certainly looks really good. The sky is overcast and dark, and we can see the wreckage of what used to be a small town, including cars and a house that have been ruined. Off in the distance there's some of those power line things, and let me just tell you: that's not a flat image. Those are 3D objects, and it's pretty damn impressive. Now let's look at another shot.

I'm interested to know how a tire got buried that deep in the ground.

It may not be that seeable here. But look at that rock in the lower-left corner. Anyhthing seem odd about it? Okay, yeah, I shrunk down the image so it's blurred a little. Let me just crop it to show you.

Is this a rock or rubber?

Okay, not so good now, is it? Note that this is with the highest-resolution textures. It's rather disappointing, really. Considering the technical capabilities in this day and age, it would've been nice to have a "super-high" setting for textures, to get more realistic ones. It's not as apparent when wandering the wastelands, but when you get indoors it can be really blatant and a little annoying.

Now don't get me wrong, I think the graphics are pretty good. They looks dank and depressing, and really feel dead. Great for a game taking place in a post-apocalypse wasteland.

Now the music is an area where the game really shines. The game doesn't really have any music, except in certain places where it is added for atmosphere. But most of the time you have to listen to your radio, which is often playing songs from the 50's. Pretty cheery songs too.

Actually, it's an interesting clashing effect, the graphics and the music. You'll have a pretty happy song playing, and you'll be attacking supermutants with your shishkebab. And sometimes it seems to just fit perfectly too, in a twisted sort of way.

And the sound? Well, the sound works. Quite well. Great game to play with headphones.

So overall: Nice eyecandy and earcandy, though the former needs a tad bit more detail.

Oh! And I said at some point that I'd talk about the supermutants, didn't I? Okay, well... they're orcs. Seriously, they're just people that mutated into orcs. But they're pretty deadly.

...I really can't add more. They're just orcs.

Images used in this review do not belong to me, nor do their contents. I took none of them myself, but merely found them on Google. I assume no ownership and am using them for referential purposes. If you do not wish them to be used, simply send me an e-mail and I will replace them.

Review of Fallout 3 - Part Three: Story, Dialogue, and Atmosphere

2009-09-01T18:38:00.002-04:00

Continuing on from my last post, these are my thoughts on Bethesda's action-rpg, Fallout 3. Sorry about the lack of pictures in this one, but there's not much that can really be shown.

So what's a well-designed game without a good story to match it? ...well, Fallout 3, basically.

You see, there are a lot of problems that can cause a game's story to just not be good enough. Sometimes the story tries to much, sometimes it doesn't make you care enough, sometimes it gives you too much free reign, and sometimes it's completely seperate from the game.

Well... yeah, it's the last three. The main problem with Fallout 3's storyline is that it doesn't really matter what you do, aside from a few places that are part of the main plot. Okay, yes, the game cares about whether or not you blow up Megaton, but it certainly doesn't care if you retrieve Agatha's violin so she can run her radio station again.

That one in particular really got to me, because the whole time there's been only one other radio station that isn't broadcasting government propoganda. Yet when Agatha's station is renewed, nobody listens to it, and nobody seems to really care. Well, yes, it is very nice to have a new radio station playing classical violin music (a favorite of mine, which clashes nicely with blowing up zombies with grenades), it still isn't enough in terms of story. What would've been cool would be if you went back to Megaton, and someone's listening to it, and comments "Oh, hey there! Have you heard this Agatha lady's music? She just popped out of nowhere, apparently helped by a certain wasteland wanderer? *wink wink* Love the tunes she plays. So anyways, what did you want?"

Now, this isn't the only case of disconnect between actions and story, but I think it's a good example. We're talking about an entire new radio station, yet nobody seems to care.

And the story itself doesn't really hold up. Whenever you talk to people core to the storyline, they act as if time hasn't passed nearly as much as it may really have. For example, after moving into Megaton, people still will think you don't live there. And when you catch up to your dad, he acts like a lot less time has passed than it probably has. (For me, it was probably close to a year of in-game time, he acted like it was a few weeks.)

And the final nail in the coffin that makes me label this story as "poor" is that I don't care about any of the characters. Even dear old Dad doesn't feel as close to me as my shotgun, because he wasn't around for long enough. You're supposed to feel for him because he was there for 17 years of the character's life, yet he's only there for like 30 minutes of the player's life. This is pretty damn important. Characters like Moira Brown or the Sheriff from Megaton are more connected to me, because the latter is keeping an eye on the place I've spent days of the game in, and I've been trading with Moira as well as researching for her book. (It's one of the sidequests, and a pretty good one, if I may add.) But dear old dad? Bah. Hardly knew him. No character connections, no empathy, so I don't care.

And speaking of people, they really talk funny. I know I'm Canadian and may not know what most Americans from Washington D.C. sound like, but the dialogue in Fallout 3 is really... poorly acted. It's pretty wooden, although oddly enough it seems the male actors did a worse job than the female actors. I don't know why that is, but most of the men are really boring to listen to, and it's very hard to care about what any of them say.

That being said, a few performances stick out. The robots in particular are really well-acted, and some of the scientists have quirky and very mad voices. (The very stereotypical "scheming mad scientist" voice.) A few of the characters early in the game are done really well as well, such as the bully, Butch, who sounds like an authentic jerk.

A really impressive thing about the game is actually how many people are voice acted. Namely, all of them. It's not that impressive at first, but after playing for hours on end it really does help the feeling of immersion and is simply brilliant to see this sprawling wasteland where even the lone wanderers have their own lines. Not to say that those are original lines (they often duplicate across multiple people) but it's still quite an earfull. (What did bother me in particular though was the old man voice. He
seemed to play basically all the old men in the game, and it was really
obvious by the end.)

Now, this isn't to say that the place feels alive. This is the wasteland of a nuclear apocalypse. This place is dead, with what's left being either heartless monsters or small groups (or on occasion singular people) using all their effort to stay alive. And I really do have to say, the game pulls it off quite well. From the crushed houses to the collapsing metro and sewer stations, the game really feels like it takes place in the remnants of society. Order has given in to chaos, and there are only a few bastions of law and peace in the land. And those are constantly under threat.

Actually, one of the best atmosphere components is the raiders. Basically groups of sadistic wanderers, they hunt the wastelands and attack caravans; they mutilate, torture, murder, and downright destroy the people they find, and are really just plain sick. They're the crooks, the serial killers, the psychos: the people who can now run free thanks to the loss of order. I'd give you some pictures, but I really can't. There's a reason for that M rating. Still, they really add to the sense of hopelessness and despair that the dead wastelands have, and the game would certainly not be the same without them.

So to summarize: While the story itself is really poor, the amount of dialogue in the game and the fact that everyone talks is pretty amazing. The atmosphere is also really good, immersing the player into the world.

Review of Fallout 3 - Part Two: Interface, Health, and Items

2009-08-23T22:28:00.006-04:00

Continuing on from my last post, these are my thoughts on Bethesda's action-rpg, Fallout 3. Sorry that it's a bit late, but I got caught up in some other stuff.

Now, if this were simply a first-person shooter, talking about the core combat would've been the end of gameplay discussions. But, considering that there are a heavy amount of RPG elements at play, I'll have to offer my opinions on them as well.

First off, I thought the inventory system was simplistic, but pretty good. Things were pretty well organized, and it's neat to be able to bring up your inventory in-battle and use items. Sorta reminds me of the item-swapping done in The Legend of Zelda, actually. That being said, at times the inventory can get really cluttered, and it would've been nice to have some sort of filter to organize by weapon damage or armor defense, instead of just by name. Still, it works quite well.

Actually, that does bring up the matter of the Pip-Boy, which is your method of information storage and organization.

Oh no my head is crippled!

Sort of like a tri-corder from Star Trek, it scans health and allows VATS to operate. To be honest, I think the idea is pretty cool. It also collects notes and picks up radio stations, as well as create and log maps. It's nice because it keeps everything in one place, and you can easily swap between looking at your stats like health, checking your inventory, and looking at the information you've gathered. All while the game is conveniantly paused. Note that there is a brief period of inaction before and after the Pip-Boy is brought up, during which things still move and the enemy can damage you. This is a pretty fair element though, considering that you're allowed to basically stop time as you change armor.

And speaking of armor, the damage in the game is pretty interesting as well. The game has a concept of area-specific damage, such that if you get shot enough in the head (or you shoot the enemy enough in the head) their perception drops and it's easier to surprise them. There's also enemy weakpoints in the game, that if precisely hit and damaged can make enemies go crazy or slow them down, or do a lot more damage. Shooting an escaping target's legs can slow their speed and allow you to catch up. It's a nice feature that adds more depth to what would be otherwise bland battles.

Now if I just aim for the head I should be fine...

The variety of items in the game isn't huge, but it is quite decent. You have a lot of different weapons with different damage, spread, reload times, and such; armors with different bonuses such as damage reduction or stat bonuses (to charisma or the like); and edibles which act as your standard RPG potions.

The armor and weapons also have weapon degradation, which often has the problem of being annoying. I found though that this annoyance was offset by the fact that it both makes sense, and that enemies' weapons are often degraded as well. This means that if you take out a bunch of Talon Mercenaries, and you have a high enough repair skill, you can take all their armor and repair it together to create something you can wear that is stronger than any of the pieces seperately. It's a neat idea and adds another interesting dimension to the game.

Rocket Launcher + Rocket Launcher = Better Rocket Launcher

The game also allows you to build certain weapons from blueprints using items scattered about the wastelands, and it's really satisfying to scavenge together a flaming sword from a lawnmower and a motorcycle, then go kill Supermutants with it. Only downside is that you can't create blueprints yourself, and there's not that many of them.

Fwoosh.

Now one thing I haven't mentioned yet is radiation. Quite simply, the game takes place in a nuclear wasteland, so there's a lot of irradiated stuff. Simply eating food or drinking water is going to make you more irradiated, and this too adds another element to the game. Fortunately for your character, there are lots of RadAway packs lying around, and the radiation effects come slowly and aren't too dangerous. Unfortunately for the player, this means that you'll probably ignore the radiation effects most of the time, or at least won't find it much of a threat. Until you hit 600 rads at which point you give up and die.

So to summarize: Great inventory usage and item selection, although there aren't tons of different weapons. Weapon creation is satisfying, and degradation adds a fun element to the game. Area-specific-damage is a nice addition to the battles, giving them more flavour, but the effects of radiation are almost negligible.

Images used in this review do not belong to me, nor do their contents. I took none of them myself, but merely found them on Google. I assume no ownership and am using them for referential purposes. If you do not wish them to be used, simply send me an e-mail and I will replace them.

Review of Fallout 3 - Part One: Intro & Combat

2009-08-20T14:07:00.001-04:00

Well, I got around to "beating" the game (by which I mean: getting to the ending), and I think it's about time I offer my opinion on Bethesda's action-rpg, Fallout 3. Be prepared though, as this is a long one. This is strictly the introduction to the review, and the review of the combat portion of gameplay.

I love the little lightning-bolt in the logo.

To be honest, It's been a while since I've felt such a feeling of duality with a game that I've felt like quitting gaming (mainstream at least) altogether. I think the last time this happened was after playing Final Fantasy 7, and maybe for similar reasons. It's not really a bad game... but I can't honestly say that it's a great game either. There's a lot of reasoning behind both sides, so let's just dig right in.

See, I went into Fallout 3 knowing a few things and expecting a few issues. Yet I expected a decent RPG using a first-person-shooter as its core game mechanic. And in a way, it delivers. Sorta, kind of. In a twisted way.

See, my main problem with Fallout 3 is that there's some great ideas, and there's certainly lots of room for greatness. Yet it just feels like Bethesda "phoned it in" and forgot really crucial aspects. It's like they wanted to tack together an RPG's elements (like stats, leveling, vast world, sidequests, item systems, status effects, and turn-based combat) with a first-person-shooters elements (in this case, shooting people, free movement, and stealth). And for the most part it succeeds pretty well.

V.A.T.S. is where I really had a problem though. It's a nice idea; you can briefly stop time, select opponents body parts that you specifically want to hit while being given a warning of your chance to hit, and then shoot them up by using Action Points.

I'll talk about the super-mutants later. Needless to say, yikes.

But, there's a few flaws with this mode:

1. It breaks immersion. All control is suddenly wrenched from your hands, and while shooting you cannot bob and weave in the slightest. You just have to stand there and get shot while you shoot. Not to mention that after V.A.T.S. is used, there's a split second where you can't move cause you haven't gained back control.

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!

2. It limits the damage you take while just standing there. I mean, this was obviously created as a work-around for the fact that you can't bob-and-weave. And I'll admit, you probably take the same amount of damage in V.A.T.S. as you would if you were properly bobbing and weaving. Here's the issue though: V.A.T.S. stands for "Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System". It doesn't stand for "Vault-Tec Targets For You and Prevents Movement System While You're Near-Invincible" I mean, I know that VTFYPMWYNI wasn't as popular a name due to pronunciation issues, but it would've been more authentic.

Oh you know on second thought this doesn't hurt so much.

3. You cannot win a difficult encounter using V.A.T.S. alone, making V.A.T.S. practically pointless anyways. You're not going to win this game if you're bad at FPSs. Okay, that's an overstatement, but the game will be a whole lot harder. This makes V.A.T.S. in its current form practically pointless.

Actually, a better improvement to vats would be to not auto-fire at all, but auto-lock-on and engage bullet-time. What do I mean by that? Well, basically it would work like this:

1. Press V.A.T.S. button to bring up target selection.
2. Select a target based on hit chance and what you're aiming at.
3. Press the confirm button, and bullet-time gets activated.
4. The player returns to normal combat, having full control over moving and shooting, except their crosshair is locked onto the specific enemy area. AP drops constantly while in bullet-time.
5. Either the AP runs out, or the player presses the V.A.T.S. button again. If the former, bullet-time ends and the cross-hair unlocks. If the latter, you either start again at #1 or can disengage lock-on and bullet-time, returning to normal battle.

Personally I think this would work better, and would solve a lot of problems.

Now I would like to say that V.A.T.S. is indeed very satisfying in its current form. Especially when it changes camera angles to show off a good shot. Unfortunately these shots tend to come up even while not killing someone. Near the end of the game, I was finding them boring and repetitive. A better thing to do would've been to make them sparser, sorta like in Max Payne, by only doing the special-angle shots on kills and only rarely. (For those who don't know what I mean, if you snipe someone and kill them there's a chance that the camera will follow the bullet.)

So yeah, in summary: The combat is pretty good, but V.A.T.S. should've been handled differently.

Images used in this review do not belong to me, nor do their contents. I took none of them myself, but merely found them on Google. I assume no ownership and am using them for referential purposes. If you do not wish them to be used, simply send me an e-mail and I will replace them.

Keyboard Skin for Tachyon: The Fringe

2009-08-20T14:02:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure how many people have played it, but there's this cool little space-flight game sorta like Wing Commander, called Tachyon: The Fringe. Well, it had a lot of buttons. So many in fact, that I couldn't remember them all. I usually had the keyboard layout sitting in front of me as I played.

And then I got to thinking: "Well wait a minute, we've got a ton of old keyboards in the house. Maybe if I just cut+paste..." So about half a year ago I decided to actually go ahead and do this.

Voila. If I were to do it again for a different game, I'd probably try and laminate it somehow, because some of the often-used keys fell off or the glue melted under the heat.

Anyways, just a short little update from me. I'll have something big later, don't worry. Or maybe I won't. You'll never know! Muhahaha!

Pre-Mortem of Multiple Games

2009-05-28T00:32:00.011-04:00

Okay, so I've only completed one game before. I have a bunch though that failed, for a variety of different reasons, and thought I'd showcase stuff from a few of them to give a glimpse of some of the stuff that died long ago and may one day, like a phoenix, rise from the ashes. Don't hold up any hopes though.

(2007) Chris Herring - Private Investigator: Case 2

Oh damn, this was a good one. I was actually working on this for a long time until I ran into a problem with not being able to portray characters. It was actually the second game in a series, but I lost the first game (which had actually been completed, might redo that one some time). So this would've been his second case, and this one was about a serial killer who was pretending to be a ghost. Sorta like Scooby-Doo but more noir.

It was going to be a first-person adventure game, and I was using SketchUp to create all the locales. My issue though was that, at the time I didn't have any actors for doing FMVs, and my drawing skills were atrocious. (More so, at least.) I'd show some more pictures, but there's nothing really interesting.

(2008) Droid

Now, this one was pretty neat. This was a science-fiction third-person adventure game. The story was that humanity had expanded far into space, and that scientists had done this to escape persecution. You played the game from the perspective of Probe Delta-4, a probe in the first line of robots being programmed with AI, and very experimental emotions.

The game actually had an emotions system, where the game's world would "warp" somewhat with your emotions, since they overloaded you so much. Other robots had been experimented with as well, but got stuck in perpetual emotional stages. One robot was even suicidal. The entire ship was run by MOTHER, which stands for Multi-stringed Operating Terminal of Health, Engineering, and Research. I'll be damned if I know what a Multi-stringed Operating Terminal is.

I was working on it with a guy I knew from the AGS forums, but he randomly disappeared. He was doing all the coding, and I just haven't had the urge to pick it up again since.

(2005-2008) Leh Quest

This was another first-person adventure game I was working on. The premise is simple: A magical talking dog (talking dog, not anthropomorphic dog. See: The Chronicles of Narnia vs. The Wind in the Willows.) appears suddenly in your room, kidnapping you for you are apparently the saviour of another dimension, and you must go discover the secret of a magical substance called "Leh".

Yes, it's about as surreal as it sounds. I wish I had some pictures to show, but they're not on my computer. I'll see if I can find some, if you guys want.

It was actually an FMV game though, and my brother and I did a lot of video recordings done out in the nearby woods for when you entered this alternate dimension. There was also a mix of computer-rendered graphics, plus the somewhat odd use of stuffed animals for most characters.

I'd say the best description I could make of it would be a fairy tale for nerds. I would've loved to play something like that as a kid...

Our main development issues were my brother's college work not leaving much time open for working, and my personal disinterest after a while. That being said, we did some surprisingly high-quality work on parts of it, and I wouldn't mind doing something with this again, now that I know more people and could get some really good actors.

(2008) Darkstone Castle

This was going to be my entry for the Commonplace Book Competiton over on TIGSource. It was gonna be a platforming run and gun with a creepy storyline in Lovecraftian manner. What happened? I bit off WAY more than I could chew, and failed completely in finishing it. All I have is this screenshot of a hobo with a shotgun running at a gargoyle. I believe no further explanation is necessary.

(2007-2008) The Mars Initiative

This is what originally brought together me, my programmer in Droid, and my internet-pal Cinfa together. It was a sci-fi adventure game (seeing a pattern?) in which humanity as a last hope was trying to colonize Mars, and then intrigue happens. I would explain more, but recently Cinfa has been expressing passive interest in working on it again, and so I wouldn't want to spoil anything.

There are a bunch of others that I've worked on too, but I don't want to overload you guys all at once. Besides, I need posting material for this blog.

Stay fiesty guys.

Aliens in games are cool

2009-05-24T01:12:00.010-04:00

~~I don't really view myself as much of a gamer. I certainly wouldn't associate myself with the "culture" it has.~~ [edit: I am so totally a gamer. - Future March] But one thing I do notice in a lot of games I've been playing recently is that, well, aliens are really awesome.

It's not that aliens are fun to play as even. In fact most of the instances I've come across, they're enemies. But what neat and gorgeous enemies they make! For an example, here's one of the alien Akrid from Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions.

I hope 10 grenades is enough...

Yes that's right, it's a giant worm like the infamous one from Dune. Except it lives in the snow. And you can fight it. Can is the important word, as it's optional, but it's still pretty cool. Especially how one of its attacks is just to charge and eat you. Whole. Like bam, you're dead, a giant worm just ate you.

Speaking of worms, another game with worm aliens is Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The game has a unique alien lifeform called a mindworm. They basically drive people to insanity like some odd form of D&D's Frightful Presence. It's rather Lovecraftian in nature, and even look!

Tell Cthulhu he left his children over here.

Like whoa, that's intense. They're kind of a pest at first, sorta like the barbarian tribes in Sid Meier's Civilization, but you can eventually control them, and then they become a potent ally.

But some aliens you just can't control. No, they decide they have to attack earth for some obscure reason... probably something to do with expansion or whatever. But anyways, they come down in their UFOs, first sparsely but then in full force. Yes, it's a UFO Invasion, and only X-COM can stop them! For these are the terrible Greys! Okay, they're called "Sectoids" in the game, but they look like the Greys.

Yes, it is ironic that it was easier to find a decent resolution picture of an early 90's game than it was a mid 2000's game.

I'll be honest, I mainly pointed this one out because X-COM: UFO Defense is pretty much the best strategy/isometric-rpg/resource-management/military-simulation game ever made. Well, perhaps the sequels were better, I haven't played them.

But hey, at least the Greys don't use us as hosts! Not like the next guys, an alien from Half-Life. No, next we're dealing with those devilish monstrosities from the nearby dimension of Xen, Headcrabs.

They're not this cute and fluffy. Trust me.

But hey, there's not just one of these. No, there's two other, more powerful species. That's right. There's a bunch which are super-fast, and then others which inject you with a neuro-toxin and try to kill you with one scratch. That's intense. They also do some pretty crazy stuff, like coupling with your head to turn you into a zombie. I don't know what the transition is like, but considering the end result, really really painful.

Sorta like this, but more blood and screaming in pain.

To sum Headcrabs up, I'll quote myself from playing through a section of Half-Life 2.

AH ZOMBIES *sawblades* AH HALF-ZOMBIES'

Hey, it was damn scary at the time!

Now, I could go on and on about aliens in video games, and list a bunch more examples, but these were just some neat ones I thought I should mention. Read on for some related comments.

About the games referenced:
If you have a chance of playing Lost Planet some time, I'd reccomend you at least play the first half-hour or so. The game is really cinematic, and the Akrid are pretty neat monsters. The gameplay itself is... solid, passable, but not amazing. The graphics are pretty good though.

Alpha Centauri is pretty much Civilizations II except on Alpha Centauri. It basically picks up after the Space Race ending of Civ II anyways. It's a great game if you love sci-fi and the Civ games though, so if you do you should most certainly check it out.

X-COM: UFO Defense is a classic. The game is really complicated and fairly difficult, so be forewarned. Even so, it's very addicting, and the gameplay is really good and plays very well. It also manages to make relatively turn-based battles very tense and edgy. Definitely pick up a copy if you can.

And Half-Life? It's a classic in the FPS genre. The second game is a lot better, and Half-Life2 2 is basically what managed to get me to actually enjoy the genre. It's got a decent story (for a first-person shooter), but the presentation is really amazing. The characters all feel really realistic, which is great and helps make it feel more authentic. It's a good game and you can get it in The Orange Box with Portal, so go get it if you don't mind some pretty gory aliens! (Seriously, Headcrabs are gross!)

Last comments:
I'd also like to make a comment from a creative standpoint here. Aliens are a great way to make interesting and strange creatures without having to resort to magic. They can allow new ways of looking at thing like environments, animals, and races. You can use them to maintain reasonable plots, yet still explore strange new worlds and odd realities.

And they're just cool.

Credits go to the owners of the images contained in these posts, and the owners of the content in the images. I took none of them myself, but merely found them on Google. I assume no ownership and am using them for referential purposes. If you do not wish them to be used, simply send me an e-mail and I will replace them.

Battle TV - Episode 3

2009-03-16T15:48:00.004-04:00

Finally after a ridiculous length of time, the third episode of Battle TV is complete.

Enjoy. =D

Video Games Are For Everyone, And I DO Mean Everyone

2009-02-07T13:53:00.009-05:00

Well, in lieu of the fact that I'm supposed to do stuff relating to relationships involving geeks, I think it would be suitable to talk about gaming, a hobby that many geeks enjoy. As The Game Overthinker points out, there are two types of gamers and two categories of games: Hardcore games, and casual games. Since I'm assuming two hardcore or two casual gamers will not have much of a problem engaging in activities of mutual interest, I will move onto a more clashing problem. This problem that may come up is that you (or your date) may be a hardcore gamer, while the other isn't. They may enjoy playing halo while you might rather enjoy Wii Sports or Bejeweled. Well my friends, don't look so dreary, because I'd like to make a point here that was never really made in Game Overthinker:

It is impossible for someone to not like any type of games.

I'll let that sit in for a moment. Now, some of you probably are ready to jump back with "I never played a game I really liked" or something, but I'd like to expand a bit on what I mean. First off, games. Do you know how many types of games exist out there? Puzzle, action, arcade, rhythm, adventure, platformer, shooters, even board and card games... not to mention subcategories like "bullet hell" or FPS games, or mixed categories like action-adventure or survival horror. But the ultimate point in all this is that there is immense variety here.

Again referencing Game Overthinker, we can start at the beginning with casual versus hardcore games, right? Mmm... no. Because even this line is often blurred by certain games. Let me take the game Rock Band for example. Is playing a guitar like playing Rock Band's guitar? Not really. So certainly the harder difficulty is much more of a "hardcore" gaming experience than a casual one. But, what about the singing? That, on the other hand, I have found to be much more casual, and all it requires is a bit of ability to change one's voice pitch. The best part about Rock Band is that you can have a casual gamer choose singing, and put it on easy, and then you can have your hardcore gamer choose guitar, and put it on hard. Instantly, both players' needs are met, and they can cooperate on completing the song.

This is just a case example, based on my experience. I don't have a wide knowledge of what games are available, but Rock Band I always enjoyed because of this. (Although, yes, I have beaten Half-Life 2, I'm a much more casual gamer in a lot of respects.) But let's say that Rock Band is out of the question, so you and your date need to find something else to satisfy you.

Let's go with a different type of hardcore gamer, one that is much more a... niche: The adventure gamer. Okay, okay, you can stop throwing tomatoes. What I mean by this is that, honestly, adventure gamers like I put up with a ton of BS to solve these games, from ridiculous nonsensical puzzles to logic traps so grand you need sheets of paper to get through them. A lot of casual gamers might get frustrated and angrily give up, not having the hours to devote to clicking here and there.

One thing I know about adventure games though is that there is an odd setup to playing them, in that there are actually two types of people who can enjoy them: Those who enjoy controlling them, and those who like coming along for the ride. It's odd, I know, but I've noticed that when it comes to adventure games some people have to be in control, but others are actually more content to just sit back and watch the game unfold.

So imagine this... it's getting dark, the lights are dim, and you decide to pop Barrow Hill into your computer. (I'll assume you'd be the one playing, just so this story is less grammatically confusing.) So you're controlling the game, as the other leans against you to watch. You walk along the path in the dark woods as suddenly, the lights along the path begin to go out. All you see is the dark sky, and you comfortingly hold closer your date as the lights turn back on to reveal...!

Hey, I'm not spoiling the game.

But this is of course an option if the two of you have the patience to sit through such a game, and work through all the reading and the puzzle-solving and the note-taking. And hey, there are plenty of great adventure games of the freeware variety if you can't spend the money on a commercial game. For paranormal, how about the Ben Jordan series? And horror? The Chzo Mythos (or John DeFoe Quadrology) is a great (although very creepy) choice. Or maybe comedy is more your style, in which case there are some great offerings in even the short game category, like Murder in a Wheel. And fantasy/adventure? How about A Tale of Two Kingdoms?

But let's move on again, and now assume both Rock Band and adventure games are out of the question. What else can you engage in that is gaming? I know Super Smash Brothers has always been pretty playable as long as you go co-op against computer players (casual vs hardcore gamer though... not that fun). The thing to remember here is that the important part is that you enjoy yourselves, and that both of you enjoy playing the game. If nothing else is possible, you could always give in to one side, in which case I'd recommend casual games, seeing as how there's a higher possibility of both liking them. (I know a lot of guys who ace Halo 3 on Legendary yet also love Wii Sports.)

But the most important thing to do is to find the bridge. If you really enjoy gaming, then you can share it. It may take a while, but you will always be able to find a game two people can share and enjoy, regardless of their gaming category. And hey, if console games aren't working out, try checking out the Indie Gaming scene on the PC. Just remember: Perseverance. Games aren't some sort of weird hobby only enjoyed by a few people; they're a form of media, widely ranging in their scope, genre, style, and design. There's so many possibilities that, really, finding a person who cannot like games is impossible.

And hey, if all else fails, try some board games. They're like prehistoric video games.

BioShock (Quick Review)

2009-01-29T18:33:00.002-05:00

Well, I just finished playing BioShock. I have to say the ending was pretty good, and pretty reasonable for someone who chose to play the good path. But I bet a lot of you are wondering what I specifically thought of the game, so here's a quick review.

Graphics: Really Nice
The graphics really helped the atmosphere and fit really well into the setting.

Music: Pretty Good
Pretty good, and very well timed.

Voice Acting: Excellent
Okay, yeah, this is one spot the game shined. Really great voice-acting made it feel more believable.

Gameplay: Fairly Good.
Great combination of gameplay styles, and the gene tonics setup really allows great customization of play styles. Hacking minigame is fun, but got a bit repetetive by the end.

Storyline: Alright.
The storyline doesn't stack up against some adventure games, but that's somewhat expected from an FPS. For an FPS storyline though, it was pretty good, and pretty intriguing. Ending was also good, although I was sorta surprised when it didn't fade into credits and instead just cut back to the main menu. Oh well.

Time to Beat: About 25-35 hours I'd say. Not entirely sure, but I spent 3 or 4 long nights on this game.

Glitches: I encountered some graphical glitches in the game, but this may have been due to problems I've been having with my computer. I also encountered problems saving and loading the game while playing full-screen. This would usually cause the program to freeze. This may be due to using Vista though.

Reccomendation: Buy it. The game is the best when you play it at your own pace, and at 20 dollars it's very worth it.

Wizardry

2008-07-13T13:15:00.001-04:00

Well, yesterday I was getting bored with the games I've been playing, and so decided to hunt through my CDs to see what interesting games I had. I suddenly came across a little gem that I had almost forgotten about. It was of course, The Ultimate Wizardry Archives.

Now, those of you who think the only good games are the ones where you have to see blood flying and need to be pulling triggers in HD graphics on your 360, you can ignore this post as you'll just think I'm some sort of pansy most likely. Or at least, that's the response I'll normally get after talking about this kind of game.

Anyways, for those of you who don't know what Wizardry is, it's a series of games which has a rather odd past. It was originally developed in 1981 by Robert J. Woodhead and Sir-tech Software (or at least, that's what the copyright says). This means the graphics aren't that good. Which they honestly aren't.

Well, the graphics got better over time, and eventually moved to 16 colors in the 6th game, Bane of the Cosmic Forge.

See the improvement? Of course, that's because it was made in 1990. Now, this is the game I am currently playing, and I want to say this: It is awesome. The game has you enter some random castle called Bane of the Cosmic Forge and run around killing stuff and... well, I really don't know why. That's probably my only gripe with the game, but apparently it's supposed to be satirical so I guess that makes some sort of sense. Seeing as how some of the skills your rogue has are "skulldugary" or something silly like that.

Erhm, right. So back to what I was saying. So I found the disk and installed it. Then I started up DosBox. It is important to know that DosBox should run at the default 3000 cycles, as anything higher will cause the game to look like it's on speed. You should've seen it when I tried VDMSound. The mouse actually jumped because my computer was too fast.

One interesting thing about the series is that it is necessary to have the manual, and you should probably make a map as well, so you don't get lost. I of course, cannot find my manual, so I must simply guess at what different items do.

Anyway! It's fun. Now, after Wizardry 6, the next game is Wizardy 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant. I have played it before, though never beaten it, and I know it was hard. After that comes Wizardry 8. Yeah, no subtitle.

One thing I always liked about the series was that it reminded me of a cross between Dungeons and Dragons, The Elder Scrolls, Myst's node-style gameplay, and Zork. If you understand what that means, [lack of modesty]than you've got as awesome an imagination as me. [/lack of modesty] The last 3 games are actually direct sequels, which is interesting, because Wizardry 6 has no discernable plot in-game, and yet Wizardry 7 has tons. Of course, the Ultimate Wizardry Archives were released before Wizardry 8, so I haven't tried it yet. Oh well.

So I looked it up on wikipedia because I was wondering if there was going to be a ninth game, and I found out that the Japanese got ahold of the series and somehow really liked it. Apparently they thought it was serious because there was bad translation and they didn't get the satirical element. This is all Wikipedia's words, not mine. But they have like 30 games over there! As well as a movie and stuff. Why don't WE get that over here in North America!? Please excuse me as I mope for a bit while Charlie Brown music plays.

...

Okay I'm done.

Oh yeah! I forgot to post some screenshots from 7 and 8! Note that none of these shown so far are mine, I just got them through Google search.

So here's one from 7. Oh yeah, the ratkin bandits. I hated fighting those...

And here's one from 8, showing... holy shoot, that looks awesome. I need to go hunt some bargain bins or something. Like, NOW.

Anyways, yeah. You should go try it

Lichdom is this game I did.

2008-06-24T19:48:00.001-04:00

So my latest project is called Lichdom. As for a subtitle, I don't have one yet. But it's got a pretty simple plot. You can find it here:

Lichdom v1.0.0.5
Note: Game is in a .zip file, and the game itself is a .exe.
UPDATE Jun 24 10:23 PM: I fixed a few more bugs and stuff.