Updates soon. Maybe.

No new review, just a quick update. I don't like giving a review of a half played game and I'm in the middle of three right now: Metro 2033, Alan Wake and Singularity. I've played the most on Singularity and I have to say it's probably one of the most original FPS's that I've played since maybe Powerslave on the PSX. I may do a quick write up on that one if I can find my copy of it.

Anyway, I think I'm well over half way through Singularity so I may do a full blown write-up on it, if I'm not too busy with Alan Wake, which I'm also finding intriguing, mostly because I read a lot of Stephen King and it reminds me of his writings. On the second episode now and it's decent. Haven't played much on Metro 2033, but I have to say that the currency makes much more sense in it than Fallout. It's a post-apocalyptic game where survivors have taken refuge in the Metro tunnels; anyway, the currency is military-grade ammunition, which makes more sense than bottle-caps or pretty much anything else. Let's face it, ammo is pretty much the most valuable resource anyway, why not use it instead of money?

Well, that's about all I have to say right now. I'll get back to Singularity after work tomorrow and write up my thoughts on it. I'll also hunt down Powerslave and go through it again if I can. And I may finish Legend of Dragoon and do something with it.

What the hell happened to Vampires?

Ok, I'll be the first to admit that I may be the only heterosexual guy who read and pretty much enjoyed the piece of romantic fluff called The Twilight Saga. Had to turn off my brain to do it, but I didn’t really wanna think at the time that I read them. But honestly, does anyone remember Anne Rice? Seriously, was I the only one who enjoyed Lestat de Lioncourt's arrogance and self-centered attitude?

Honestly, I thought Louis was a whiny, pissy emo punk, at least in Interview with the Vampire, but I think that was kind of the point, but doesn't it seem that he's somehow, become shiny and changed his name to Edward Cullen? But whatever.

I remember, growing up, that it was cool to be a vampire slayer. Remember the Castlevania video games? Simon and Trevor Belmont made it cool to kill vampires. Hell, even in Dracula killing the undead demons was a desirable thing. I dunno, I probably wouldn’t wanna get romantically involved with someone that’s gonna want to drain every ounce of blood out of my body and leave me as a desiccated corpse. That’s not what I’m looking for in a woman. Biting is ok in my book, but dying is not high on my list of things to do, know what I mean?

Critics always call the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice “sexual” or “erotic” or “sensual”. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m a guy but I just don’t find anything at all erotic about it. They’re good stories, well told and Lestat is probably one of my favorite book characters, which happens to be a lengthy list including but not limited to: Roland Deschain from The Dark Tower, Durzo Blint and Kylar Stern from The Night Angel Trilogy and probably a dozen others. But I’m off topic here; I’m bitching about vampires becoming utter wussies. Vampires used to be men. Manly, visceral creatures, which broke into women’s bedchambers to suck the very life out of a woman and leave her drained, which is how most guys would like to leave a woman’s room, but few can actually do, so these ladies turn to the trashy romance novels with Fabio on the cover or vampire books.

But the beauty of the normal vampire novel (read: an Anne Rice vamp book) is that the vampires couldn’t care less about women. They come across as bisexual, and even that’s pushing it, because if I remember correctly, one of the books mentions that vampirism makes the sexual organs completely useless which made me utter an internal huzzah! because I really don’t wanna think about vampire sex.  Wait…how the hell did I get here…Must go back and collect my thoughts.

Oh yes. It used to be cool to want to be a vampire slayer; and it was mainly because of Simon Belmont and, in a way, Abraham Van Helsing (from Dracula, not that horrible Hugh Jackman movie). They even tried to get girls into blood-sucker killing by introducing Buffy, but judging by the success of Twilight and the like they weren’t successful in that attempt. It’s time to bring back our beloved vampire killers. KONAMI; NINTENDO! I’m begging you, please, let us dust off the Vampire Killer whip on a next-gen console with a Castlevania game that doesn’t suck balls! Please! I want either a new, decent 3-d Castlevania game, or a damned evil vampire movie. As it turns out, both of those wishes may come true soon. Lords of Shadow looks promising and I thought I saw an evil vampire movie preview the other day. Huzzah! I’m just tired of teenage girls and MY MOTHER swooning over brooding, emo pretty boy vampires like Edward Cullen. Am I asking too much?

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here

I won’t lie; I did just that when I picked up Dante’s Inferno. The reviews I’ve read were mixed on it; some people complained that it was a God of War clone, which it is, but that’s not a bad thing. I don’t think I’ve heard a single person complain about GoW. I never got to play it, so Dante is a good stand in. People who’ve read the book bitched because it altered the storyline, changing it into a “damsel in distress” kinda thing. Look, I’ve read the Divine Comedy; I enjoyed the hell out of it. In fact, before buying the game, I re-read the Inferno to see how much of the original poem is in the game.  And I’m pleased to say, there was a fair amount; mainly from Virgil, your guide through Hell, but there are a few snippets and lines from Dante and other characters.

The problem a lot of people had with the game was the nudity. Naked men and women abound throughout the game and yes, at times it is gratuitous, especially Beatrice. At first, I thought that she should have been clothed, but honestly, the more I think about it, this is the afterlife. Is there any real need for modesty in the afterlife, let alone in Hell? Anyway, that’s not the point. Most of the nudity is justified, as the majority of it is in the circle of Lust. Let’s face it: the naked human form is what drives lust, so this makes sense. Besides, why are you bitching about nudity and not the hours long, buckets of blood violence? I don’t get that. I was just as mystified when people complained about the Hot Coffee mod in GTA: San Andreas. Look, it’s an M rated game; your kids shouldn’t be in the room while it’s being played, let alone playing it. Quit blaming video games for poor parenting. M rated games require you to be 17 or older to purchase. If you don’t want you kids to play violent/sexual games, don’t buy them! How hard is that? Once again, I digress; I’m not here for ethical debate.

The environments were very well done, and each represented visually the sin that the Damned were being punished for. The only circle that I thought didn’t really exemplify its corresponding sin was Fraud, but how do you represent that visually? My biggest complaint about the game, other than the ending, which I’ll get to in a minute, was the lack of camera controls. They chose to use the right stick (I’m playing on the Xbox 360 by the way) as the dodge controls instead of camera controls. Personally, I’d rather mash a button and use the movement controls to dodge and have decent control over the camera and the ability to gawk at the damn environment that the developers worked so hard on. I dunno, maybe that’s just me.

Now on to my other major complaint: the end. It’s a really short game; I think I clocked in around 5 hours or so, but I wasn’t playing on hard, and I didn’t take the time to find everything; I go back and do that on my second or third playthrough. It ends pretty much the same way as the poem does: Dante ascends to Purgatory. And then the dreaded words that haunt my dreams: To Be Continued. Ok. Like I said earlier, I’ve read the Divine Comedy. To me, the Inferno didn’t scream video game; it’s a dude following a spirit through Hell. Not a lot of action there; thus they changed the storyline and added in hordes of dead enemies. Ok. Now, Purgatory is even less video game fodder, and I think the developers realize that. I did a little checking around the interwebz and found out that they have no intention of making Purgatory. I can understand that, and applaud their intelligence at realizing this. But I wish they had figured it out earlier instead of torturing me with those three cursed words.

All in all, I enjoyed Dante’s Inferno. I can deal with the changes to the great poem and I can deal with Dante being a weapons-grade douche instead of a great poet. I can even forgive the “to be continued” crap at the end. For a hack and slash game, which I don’t usually like, it was excellent. I won’t be trading this one in to GameStop anytime soon.

Bioshock

Just a quick update to this one; I say late last night/early this morning…don’t really remember when this was so I can’t update it. Just deal with it. :)

Just finished playing Bioshock 2 late last night/early this morning and I have to say: I liked it better than the first one. It’s rare I get to say that about a sequel; usually they’re much worse than the original (Like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within). I liked almost everything about this one better than the first. The ability to use plasmids and a gun at the same time, the power of the plasmids, the weapons, the Big Sisters, I just enjoyed it. The things that I disliked about the first one were mostly gone in this and I was happy about that. In the original Bioshock, I felt too much like I was being lead around by the short hairs, which I guess was kinda the point of the game; that was basically the plot of it. The second one, while still very linear, felt a little more open to me; I don’t know why, but I felt like I was able to wander around the areas more.

It also seemed to last a lot longer than the first one (to me at least). Plasmids were powerful, but not “I AM GOD, BOW BEFORE ME BITCHES” powerful. ADAM was more plentiful in this one, probably because there are 4 different sources for it: gathering with Little Sisters, saving/harvesting the LS, killing Big Sisters and ADAM slugs in the underwater segments. But to balance that out, there are a good deal of plasmids, each of which has 2 upgraded forms, and an enormous amount of gene tonics to add to your power. One especially lovely gene tonic was the “Drill Specialist”. It limits you weapon wise to just the drill, the research camera and the hacking gun but it makes the amount of EVE your plasmids use so miniscule that if you’re feeling froggy, you can go old school Big Daddy on the splicers of Rapture, which is decidedly awesome and gory as hell.

My only complaint was the “good” ending. It didn’t seem good to me; I went through the trouble of saving Every Single Little Sister in the game and it gave me a kinda lack luster good ending, but I guess that’s par for the course; the first game’s good ending was kinda crappy too. Anyway, I’m gonna say what every review I’ve read says: if you liked Bioshock, you’ll like 2. If you were sorta on the fence about the first one, like I was, you might like this one. If you hated it, don’t bother. Cheers.

Old LJ post #1: Regarding MMORPGs

I play MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games for those of you who don’t speak geek :-)). I even enjoy some of them. Now, having got that out of the way, prepare for the ranting!

World of Warcraft

This game is…Well, to be fair, it’s not awful…but it’s close. I’m serious. Look, like I said, I play MMOs, I’ve played the twisted abomination you people affectionately call WoW. I’ve played it for a good long while…Not long enough to max a “toon” out, but I don’t have that kind of patience or money.

Honestly people. I play games for plot. That’s what I’m in it for. That’s why I like Guild Wars: the plot may be weak and have more holes in it than Swiss cheese, but by the gods it’s there! There is absolutely no plot to WoW. I’ve played as almost every race; the intro “movie” to each does good at describing the race’s current plight, but you can do absolutely nothing to rectify that plight. It’s just a series of “go here, kill this, bring me proof” quests or "collect" quests which tend to also be “go here kill this” quests.  There’s no motivation behind these actions; the quest givers kind of sketch out a reason as to why they’re asking you to do this, but it seems like so much hollow prattling that it’s annoying.

Even the races that are “attuned to nature” like the Tauren or Night Elves have an endless amount of “go kill things kthxbai” quests that makes no sense; in the little bit of back story that I’ve managed to glean from the strategy guide says that the Night Elves revere nature and only kill beasts of necessity (which I take to mean for food and stuff like that, like American’s romanticized vision of the Native Americans before the arrival of the Europeans). Yet here I am as a fledgling level one Night Elf carving a path through the wilderness, marked only by the corpses of beast and bird. Seriously? They claim that it’s because of an “imbalance in nature” and seem to hint heavily that the Horde (read: bad guys) are to blame. So instead of laying waste to low level Horde to fix this “imbalance” I’m taking out the creatures that really aren’t to blame at all. That makes as much sense as America’s stand against drugs by putting the users in jail instead of busting the dealers and drug lords.

Oh lord, I’ve been ranting about this for almost a page and I’ve yet to touch on the most annoying and game killingly bad part about WoW: the endless, hour killing, drooling on my keyboard hoping it will short out and kill me level grinding. God even the name makes my stomach turn and my mouse hand ache. For anyone unfamiliar with the term (who am I kidding, nobody’s reading :D) this refers to basically camping out in an area, killing all the monsters in the area and waiting for them to re-spawn; lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat and lather, rinse, repeat…as needed. If this were required maybe for half a level every now and then, maybe it would be ok; I could get over it but no. It’s required for almost every damn level that you attain; and the level cap is what? 80? I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, and judging by the amount of people playing this cursed game it is.

Update:  Ok, I’ve played through yet another 10 day free trial of WoW and I may have found the only class that suits me: the rogue. Like I said, I was only playing for 10 days, but I think I managed to get almost to level 20. Now, you have to realize, I was doing other stuff for these 10 days, like working and sleeping and playing other games. If I hadn’t done any of those things, maybe I could’ve maxed out, or maybe I’d be a drooling idiot with sunken, hollow eyes from the radiation of the monitor and an endlessly twitching mouse finger, a corpse stuck in front of a computer, trying to grind out levels for all eternity. God how depressing an image is that. Not the point. Since finding my ideal class, I realize I may have been too harsh on WoW in my initial ranting. But I still stand by my ramblings. This game is not worth the price of admission; if it were FTP (free to play) I would keep it on my computer and play all the time.

Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar   

Ok. Done with that horrible game; let’s move on, shall we? Everybody bitches about LotR: O, saying that it’s a rip off of WoW and whatnot, but honestly, when everyone considers WoW to be the top echelon, it seems to be natural that they would want to take some things from WoW. But honestly, if we’re talking fantasy, isn’t every modern fantasy taking something or other from LotR? Why are we not paying proper homage to this lovely game? Alright, I admit it, I’m biased: I love The Lord of the Rings, the books, the movies (to a lesser extent) and basically all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings. So when I found out that LotR: O was coming out I wanted to try it out. I did and I fell in love. The amount of farming and pointless grinding present in WoW is there, but to a much lesser extent. There just seems to be a lot more love and time put into it than in WoW and I would expect no less; LotR has a fan base that spans generations and if they got it wrong there probably would have been fire-bombings by angry fan boys dressed like Frodo. But I digress. I can’t really say they stole the action bar and crafting panels from WoW; the action bar seems present in every MMO, and I would expect the crafting from LotR: O, since Tolkien was fond of including craftsmen among the tales of the great.  Like I said, I’m biased, but to me, it outstrips WoW in every aspect: game play, graphics, sound, storyline…Everything. It is what I want in a game, not just in MMOs, but in a game in general. On another note, this fall LotR: O is going free to play; kind of.

There are certain things you’ll have to pay for, although I haven’t read this in detail, as my current subscription comes down to $10 a month, and I’m ok with that.

Guild Wars

This was the first MMO I played. The fact that there’s no subscription fee is what mainly drew me, but it also has a plot. Like I said earlier, that’s what I play games for: story. It’s not a great story; typical xenophobic plot: vaguely humanoid furry creatures want to wipe out the humans, much devastation ensues. There are various other plot points involved, but I haven’t reached them, as I haven’t finished the Prophesies campaign. There are problems with the game, I won’t deny it. The lack of the ability to solo without henchmen (npc’s who you can recruit to help you die less), the necessity of choosing a second profession even if you won’t use it and probably some other gripes that I can’t think of right now because my brain is kind of fried.

Star Trek: Online

I can’t really comment too much on this one: I only played the open beta, but what I saw was decent enough. It was a mix of space combat and combat on foot, the graphics were decent enough and it had what passes for a plot in the Trek Universe so ok. Can’t say much more on this one, as I lack the funds to further go where every nerd has now gone before. Additional note after the fact: I don’t know if there are other races playable; like I said, I only played the open beta and that wasn’t for very long. As far as I know, you’re only the Federation. I’ll admit: I’m not a Trekkie by a long shot, I kinda watch the movies, and I may watch an episode of TNG if its on, but I won’t go out of my way to watch it. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the Federation is more about exploration and diplomacy, right? I know, the main enemy I was facing was the Borg and the general concensus of the Star Trek universe is that the Borg are EVILLLL, but seriously, I was blasting everything that twitched menacingly, which is normal for MMOs, but if you’re gonna do that, make Klingon the main race or place it during TOS when the Federation was at war with just about everybody. Dunno, makes sense to me.

Star Wars: Galaxies

Don’t really need to say much on this one: from what I’ve read, general consensus says it sucks, I played the 10 day trial and wasn’t impressed enough to disagree.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Honestly, I’m genuinely excited about this one. I played Knights of the Old Republic and I really enjoyed it. This one is from the same people (I think) and it shows a lot of promise. I saw some game play videos and it looks like it may be decent, but sadly, once again I shall lack funds to keep up a subscription even if it is worth it.

Final Thoughts

This started out as just a way to bitch and moan about the shortcomings (in my perspective) of everybody’s favorite MMO and it changed into a review of every MMO I’ve ever played or (in the case of TOR) anticipated…and that’s OK, because I know nobody reads this and so what? I vented my spleen on all this crap and I feel better.

Update

I think I'm going to start posting my older rants from my LJ on here. I've had them written down in a Word document on my computer, as it's easier to put down my thoughts there as I'm thinking them, that to constantly have this page open on my browser. So over the next couple of days I'm going to go through this 8 page document of bitching and moaning, update what needs to be updated and try to finish getting my thoughts down about the massive retcon that needs to happen to the Star Wars prequels and how we can make them better. Most of the document is game related, with a couple of deviations, complaining about people my age and the one that I've gotta finish about Star Wars. So with no more ado, I'll get right on that.

On a separate note, isn't it odd how I write like I'm talking to someone, when I know nobody reads this? Just kinda odd. :D

Games.

If my thoughts seem a little disjointed right now, please excuse me. I'm trying to sort through what I was thinking about at work several hours ago.

Not exactly a review tonight. I just got off work and I've been thinking all day about video games. Specifically, games that irritated me during my childhood and have haunted me to this day. I kind of got the idea from Spoony's Bayou Billy review; basically he says that the game haunted his childhood because it was so hard, yet he kept playing it. My entire NES experience, with the exception of a couple of games, was like that.

Back in the day before the internet, there weren't any faqs or reviews or anything. Especially kids like me, who didn't subscribe to Nintendo Power, we were fucked when it came to knowing if games were any good. The only thing you had to go on was the box art, the blurb on the back and maybe what your friends told you. Needless to say, everybody got their share of shitty games. I'll go in depth about two in particular that I never beat that still mock me even now, 20 years or so later.

First and foremost, I have to say, Back to the Future 2 & 3 was probably my favorite. It's an LJN game, which is enough to make most NES fans shudder in horror, but it's not that bad. If you're looking for it to follow the movies plot, then you're going to be disappointed. It kind of does, but not really. The gist of it is, you play as Marty, attempting to get the sports almanac from Biff, but in order to do that, you have to travel between 1955, 1985 and 2015 and attempt to find 30 items and return them not only to their correct time, but the correct location. If you don't map it out, you're screwed because there are something like 20 streets on each of the 3 times. Seriously, it sucks. I think the furthest I got was about 10 items found but not returned. My dad and I had all three years mapped out, but we still couldn't find where everything was, let alone where it went. After you get through 2, you get to play 3, which is about half as long and not really worth it. I loved this game as a kid, but it still haunts me that I was never able to complete it. As if the game wasn't already knock-you-down, steal-your-lunch-money hard, but they make it freaking long as hell and don't bother with a password system. Fuckers.

The second game was almost the same. Same company, a movie tie-in game, time travel, nut-bustingly hard...Why did I like these games back then? Bill and Ted's Excellent Video-Game Adventure. The name almost screams "I suck!" doesn't it? It's not nearly as bad as it sounds, really! The object of the game is to return certain historical figures back to their time and make it to the Wyld Stallyns concert. Obviously you play as Bill and Ted, but the duo is split up for this adventure. Bogus. You alternate between the two on each level and each one gets harder until you're pulling your hair out in frustration because you've spent half the level in jail and don't even have one piece of historical bait. Oh yeah, I didn't mention that, did I? The historical figures don't want to return to their own times and so you need to find bait to lure them into the booth. Some of the locals are hostile and will throw you into jail and you have several items that you can use to either calm them, kill them or distract them, and you will be using them all to get through. I think the farthest I ever got was the next to the last level. Once again, maps are your best friend in this game, so much so that the instruction manual has map pages instead of note pages. The reason maps are required in this game is that it is completely random. I mean, RANDOM!!! There are certain places where the historical bait always is but the bait is random, you will find bait for figures that you don't need...bah, it's just confusing.

I got my NES for, I think, Christmas when I was 5 and I still own it. Through out those 20 years of gaming, I have only completely beat two games on it: NARC and Wizards and Warriors 3: Kuros Visions of Power. That one was incredibly hard and it was a very satisfying win. But those two games, from a few of my favorite movies growing up, still mock me, even two decades later.