The taste of her cherry chap stick
Yeah, Kate Perry is the big thing on the interweb, but I got better things to talk about. I got me a WotLK Beta Key!
Now, if you don’t have a clue what that means, you may just want to go somewhere else for a few months, as that is what I will be talking about here for a while. Maybe check out that video of a cow eating a baby chicken, or go find some tool chatting about the presidential race as if it really matters in this game of global hot-potato (really, who would want that job, they would have to be as retarded as… well, as the candidates raising their hands and saying they want the job).
I will be focusing on Death Knight mayhem, inscriptions, and general leveling and enjoying the new content. This will be a huge change for me, as I have been multi-boxing for the last month, so going back to playing one toon at a time may be a challenge, but who can resist and opportunity like this to play around with the big expansion to the biggest game EVER. Hopefully I can get the “enjoyment” out of the way so I can powerlevel my butt of when the retail release happens.
Bought this for the wife, but she is already claiming to be bored with it, so my fat butt is the one getting most of the use out of it, and LOVING it. In reality, I think she is just frustrated because she thinks she should do much better than me at things like the Yoga “games”, but I think it is her stupid dude trainer that is at fault, mainly because I hate to think that I am a natural at Yoga like the game suggests. It is also possible that I am overloading the poor little sensors, giving a false representation of my skills, but I don’t care, it is still a ton of fun, even if it moans when I climb on top of it.
Normally, if a game has awkward controls and a difficult to use interface, I give up on it pretty quick because there are plenty of good games out there. This one though is more a reflection of my slovenliness, not crappy coding, so my training persists. I particularly enjoy the insight into my craptastic posture and balance, which probably goes a long way to explain why my back hurts whenever I run a marathon or something.
If you have a Wii, get the Wii Fit. If you don’t have a Wii, this alone would be hard to justify as a reason to buy it, but it is still money better spent than all that other crap you buy, especially if it makes you healthier so you can attract better quality friends.
Age of Conan was fun. A nice little diversion. WoW killer? Nope, not for me at least.
Initially, I rolled a barbarian, because this was not Age of Emeril the Chef. After a few days of frustration, I decided to give a ranger a try, but that was even worse. For me at least, the game mechanics really did seem best suited for mele, even if it was a bit less than it could be. Yes, it is a rush to take down a crowd of 4 or 5 mobs with a dual wielding nutjob, but after a while it just gets boring. I guess I was hoping for something closer to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, with timing of attacks based on what you see happening on the screen (what a concept), hiding behind your shield to block an attack (with the shield blocking your view the way it should), and diving in at an exposed throat after something lunges at where you where half a second ago. Instead, in AoC, you react not to what you are seeing, but to some yellow brackets that for no reason shift around the mob, showing you where it is “shielding”. Now, it may not have a shield of any sort, and it may just be some dude in a dress standing there casting a spell, waving his hands back and forth over his head. Somehow me smacking him with a pair of swords in the head does almost no damage because his finger wiggling is stopping my blade.
Of course, when it is all working, it is good fun, especially when you get a fatality mid way through a big pull. A fatality is a nice little reward for killing something with a combo instead of a normal attack, but it only happens if you get a critical strike. The beauty of a fatality isn’t the massive stamina regeneration, but the splattering of blood on your screen followed by a sweet animation of you chopping their head off or plunging a sword in them before twisting it and putting your foot against their chest to pull it out.
Another bonus, in AoC, instead of a surly midget wanting you to go pick up the tools he dropped, it can be a smoking hot babe, sending you to find her sister…..
As you can see, the quality of the graphics are just stunning. Little touches like fish jumping in a waterfall or shadows on the ground from birds flying overhead really make it something worth checking out.
For me though, it wasn’t enough to keep me around. I will probably play a bit more before my subscription runs out to try out my new combo moves (I just hit 40, hence the big war mammoth), but I cancelled my auto-payment for now. Too many bugs. Too few quests. Too little to care about. I have yet to see any meaningful impact from new gear, and the end-game is pretty empty from what I have seen. That doesn’t mean I won’t ever come back, but right now, I have better things to do than beta test their game for them, especially because they don’t seem to care. Maybe I can chat with them about that when I go to Norway to see the old country?
Ok, maybe I should let the commercial speak for itself first
Yeah, it is like that. Rock stars with guns. Juvenile stupidity by testosterone fueled jackasses, but in a good way. The first original gameplay in a shooter in far too long. The whole concept at the top level is that as a team, you are more than the sum of your parts, a good lesson for everything in life. The straightforward stuff, like getting a boost up onto something too high to climb up yourself, or pulling down a door together are just nice touches. They don’t impact the game play, they just make it cooler, kinda like the sweet armor and customizable face masks.
The rest of the gear is also all customizable. Some things like your rifle you can upgrade with new stocks, barrels, bigger magazines, or even a grenade launcher. These customizations are paid for by the cash you get for completing mission objectives or finding extra hidden stuff, like some fool’s laptop or briefcase. Most of them make you more lethal, and when business is killing, that is good for business. Some, like gold plating and chrome cosmetic “upgrades” are meant to just be flashy and piss people off, as part of the “agro” system, the real heart of the dual character system.
For those who have played an MMO before, the concept of Agro is old hat, just not with a chain gun and flames painted on your armor. The goal is that when you are facing a large group of people not wanting you to continue living for whatever reason, one person finds a nice place to get their attention, by shooting at them of course, while the other person takes advantage of their attention being elsewhere to sneak through their lines, tearing them apart from the side or behind. If your buddy has enough agro (a meter at the top of the screen shows the ago balance) you become stealthed, turning invisible to the enemy until you get up close or start shooting. If the guy with agro stays at the extreme long enough he starts glowing red and a big skull shows up on the meter, and after a few seconds you can go into overdrive where the stealther moves at double speed and is totally invisible, while the guy with agro screams some crazy shit and now does double damage and pretty much tears everything up. Agro also impacts your mele attacks, which seriously kick ass in a ridiculous over the top way. You can have your buddy be the agro magnet, or you can do it and tell him to go forth and bust some heads. It is fun to watch as he glides through their ranks, sending them flying like rag dolls. Don’t worry, they are all bad people, so it is ok to giggle when they die… I think.
Yes, there are some game mechanics that could use some improvement, and I look forward to the next version where they will hopefully fix them. There probably could be more replay value by adding new weapons or missions or something, but in my opinion, the cool new stuff more than made up for the problems. I hear good things about the co-op play, but I am on a break from online video games, so I won’t know about that for a while (google the Internet Dickwad Theory for a simple explanation to my vacation from the internet). The biggest problem I found in this game though was that some reviewers, like Tycho at Penny Archade, are somehow trying to make it seem like a bad thing for me to enjoy playing with “belligerent, vile psychopaths”. There is a reason nobody makes freaking green-peace video games. If you are gonna kill stuff for money in a game, I don’t want it to be slowed down with some lame ethical discussions by killers with a conscience.
Back to some more cool stuff though, cuz I don’t want to end this review on the bad stuff…… You get hit, you go down, your buddy comes running to help, he grabs you by your collar like in the video, and just like in the video, you just keep shooting while he pulls you to safety and then patches you up. You like the sweet rifle he has, you tell him “you can’t handle that” and he swaps with you. You get surrounded, you go back to back and in slow motion you spin around while mowing down waves of fools that don’t seem to notice all their dead buddies. Shit gets thick and you need to rush some fools, just rip the door off a car and use it as a shield while your buddy snuggles up against you and shoots over the top. Ok, that is a little fruity, but it is no time to be homophobic, this is WAR. You feel the need to add to the stupidity (and I always do), you get close to your buddy and bump fists, play air guitar with your guns, or just smack them in the head (seriously, if you have never been in an environment where guys did that to each other as part of bonding, I feel sorry for you, you prancing little nancy-boy).
Your reward for reading through all that babbling, a little behind the scenes video of Mastodon.
Another belated PS3 game review. Why you may ask? Well, I just broke down to buy the platform, and I am the only person I know that has one, so in my book I am ahead of the pack, really a leader of men, possibly verging on superhero. Maybe I should go buy a cape.
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is probably the best looking game I have played on my new TV. In many areas, the scenery is truly stunning. Not photo-realistic, but getting close, at least in the sense that when you are playing you will think, WOW, that looks amazing. Having windows, outside of which I keep the real world, I am able to discern that the game actually is not a truly accurate representation of reality, but then again, this planet blows, thanks Al Gore. In reality I rarely get to explore ancient ruins, searching for treasure while shooting things with guns I find laying around, so all things considered I am fine with the compromise.
On the downside, the gameplay was a bit repetitive. You spend a considerable amount of time jumping around from ledge to ledge, and it rarely seems to be more than filler. The fights, the scenery, all seems like the same thing over and over. The very expressive character you play, Drake, even says as much, many times during the game. Early in the game, after climbing along the outside of a castle, you make it inside, and shortly you are jumping right back out a window to repeat the same boring crap. Drake pretty much sums up your feelings, saying something along the lines of “wasn’t I just out here climbing on the walls”. The limits on ammo and guns you can carry and the reuse of the same dozen or so models over and over for the bad guys didn’t help either, but those could have been overlooked if the rest of the gameplay had been a bit more fresh.To end on something good though, the story and character development was top notch. I actually gave a damn for a change. The protagonist, his sidekick, the woman (that of course he gets), and the antagonist all were fully developed and quite believable in a fictional story sort of way. If these guys had been in charge of Nathan Hale in RFoM, that game would have been much closer to the Halo it so wanted to be.
And that really is the point I guess. If you want to make a truly great game. You need a completely immersive environment, good gameplay and controls, AND well developed characters in a good story. Yeah, that is a long list, but if you are dropping millions developing a new game, every role is easy to hire someone for. The problem is, even if you are able to not only put a butt in each seat at the meeting room table but actually get someone with talent, you still need to be a pretty amazing project manager to make that all work together. This is why most games can only hope for a “next Halo” title during the preview phase, from the hacks and sellouts in the gaming industry who blissfully give out wonderful ratings to every turd of a game that advertises in their magazines and on their websites. That, and it is pretty clear that most game producers don’t have time to actually play games, and it shows.
or, Resistance: Fall of Man as old uncool people might refer to it was the “Halo” for the PS3 according to they guy that sold it to me. First off, if someone compares something to Halo, try hard to not let them see your eyes start to roll, it hurts their feelings, and odds are good that talking about video games is all they got going. It would be like someone trying to compare their web presence to say… this page. You know they are reaching for straws, so just let them dream.
Overall, it was fun. The beginning just kicked ass. You just jump right into it with an awesome rifle that at first glance looks like an M-14, then you see the side, and the stock looks like part tommy gun, and it shoots like an M-16, with a 40mm grenade launcher under the barrel. Just a pleasure to shoot. Even with a nice rifle though, I didn’t have problems putting the game down at any point. I never really cared about the over the top bland character I was playing (really, did he have to be the most boring character in the game). I was mildly interested in saving my fellow soldiers in the “hero moments” that they scatter through the game. Essentially, the bad guys will attack one of your allies, and you have a few seconds to save him. If you save him, he now fights along with you for a bit. If you lose all our allies, it doesn’t really matter, but it is more fun to have them there helping if for no other reason than the bad guys go down faster.
The disappointing part of the game though was that even when fighting inside a giant alien tower, it felt like every other level. Sure, they gave me a new gun… ok, they made one that shot red bullets shoot blue bullets, yipee, and I had to jump around a bit on some pipes for some reason, but it really didn’t draw me into the game in the least. With some of my favorite games, there are often levels or even just an individual skirmish that just made my jaw drop with their awesomeness, often leading to urgent phone calls to fellow gamers who put up with my spastic excitement. I end up replaying these epic battles over and over, never getting tired of the blissful ecstasy that they provide.An example from a classic WW2 shooter; I fight to clear a village of smelly germans, just as the last of them dies we dig in for a counter-attack and I get sent to the top of a grain silo where there just happens to be a sniper rifle that I now use along with my buddies who are calling out shots to destroy the enemy attackers. It doesn’t end there though, I am so drawn into this fight, so fully committed, that when we finally break their attack when reinforcements show up, I can’t help myself but to continue to pick them off as they are running in full retreat.
See, a good game fills you with anxiety about it ending, while a meh games makes you ambivalent that it is over. RFoM wasn’t terrible, but I won’t be replaying any parts of it. I didn’t hate playing it, but I also didn’t wish it would never end. If you haven’t played it and you like a good First Person Shooter as much as me, sure, grab a copy of it used and have some fun. Better yet, borrow it from someone. They won’t miss it while it gone, so no rush to finish it, and when you are done, you won’t forget to return it. My guess is that the sequel will rock, being from Insomniac games and all, so getting this one out of the way first is likely going to be a good thing in the long run.
Lets face it, nothing you do will stop spam from clogging your inbox. You can filter it, you can “train” your computer, but the evil bastards sending it seem smarter than the people writing the filters, so we are boned…. but there is hope. Ok, there is no hope or cake, but if you want to make something good of spam, use the new “Slostad technique” and I guarantee double your money in 6 months or send it back for a full refund.
All you have to do is use the crazy random names in the “from” column as inspiration to contact old friends, acquaintances, or arch-enemies that you may have been letting rest since your last battle. For example, today I got an advertisement for some wang pills or some such from someone named ”Stephan D. Nix” (may you rot in a special part of hell). I used this opportunity to contact 2 friends, one named Stephen, one named Stephanie. Ends up that Stephen had all sorts of wonderful news, and hopefully we will be getting together to visit in the next month or so.
Since I started doing this a few months ago, I have contacted two to three people a week, and though I still say terrible things about the spammers, I at least get something good out of their jackassery.
So, you want something that makes you smarter or better than the everyone else. Here is a great video that should help you learn sign language. Should you not have the patience to watch the whole thing, your loss, as the last 20% is where most of the smart people stuff is.
Yup, these guys are massive tools, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
The latest installment of mayhem from Ratchet & Clank is pretty much the same as all the others, making it just good mindless fun. The additions of things like the “SIXAXIS controller” to steer things is fun no doubt, and the graphics are amazing, but a direct HDMI connection to my 1080p 60″ TV left me pretty much expecting that. No sniper rifle sucks, but a remote control helicopter is a fair trade.
Sadly, now I stare at the selection of other games for the PS3 and wonder what next. Nice platform, but is it really that hard to make games that will play on it? Is the market for video games so decimated by World of Warcraft that developers can’t produce something, …. anything? Seriously, just take an old game, add some new maps or missions, up the polygon count, and throw some “new” titles on the shelves. Didn’t you know this platform was coming out? Do your project managers and team leads not have the necessary skills? What are you keeping them around for exactly?
Oh, well, maybe I just picked the wrong console? Nope, go check out the XBOX 360 rack, or maybe the MAC game rack. Sure, there is a metric buttload of PC games, and I gotta wonder what they are thinking, making soooooo many versions of the same dozen games. Don’t some of the developers think that market is a bit saturated, and maybe they could branch out a bit? Seriously, even crap ports of games would sell for the PS3 and XBOX 360.
