Long story short: I left a 4 page essay to the absolute last minute and stayed up until now, which is 6:40 AM writing it. I didn't even actually start writing it until 4 AM, spending the previous few hours mulling over 1 of the 4 articles I had to read before saying FUCK YOU AND YOUR PRETENTIOUS NONSENSICAL RAMBLING to the supposed author of whatever crap I was reading and skipping to the fourth one since it was the second shortest. Unfortunately it was also filled with a bunch of pretentious bullshit and convoluted sentences that I did not feel like reading so I skipped to #2. Thankfully this guy actually spoke in NORMAL ENGLISH but whatever the fuck he was talking about was relatively confusing and kind of fucked up and didn't make a whole lot of sense. Therefore I pretty much bullshitted my entire paper and am not really expecting that good of a grade. Regardless at least I got this fucker out of the way since it's worth 25% of my final mark and I'm fairly sure I probably bombed my mid-term which I did a few weeks ago. I actually have no idea what I got on the mid-term though because I haven't been to that class for a while.
Yeah i probably sound like a terrible student right about now but I've been completely fucking overwhelmed by all of his shit and have been managing my time pretty terribly to be honest. Ah well, it's a learning experience I guess. By the way, Gears of War 2 horde mode is pretty awesome, and Anthony Carmine has some pretty awesome 1-liners when he successfully active reloads including "SHIT YEAH!" and "I AM IN THE ZOOOOONE!"
I'm gonna go to bed now and pray I actually have the motivation to get up 3-4 hours from now to go to class and hand this fucker in. By the way if I sound kind of pissed off it's because I've been kind of sick and I've been living off really crap food for about a week because I have had absolutely no way to buy groceries which is something I don't feel like explaining because I live in the middle of fucking nowhere and transportation out here completely sucks ass and I have to walk 35 minutes to the bus stop, but it doesn't matter and I'm fucking tired so good night.
Pretty awesome band I came across recently. The ending of this song is pretty amazing but if you're not into rock music you may want to pass on this one.
eh chainsaws grubs and doesn't afraid of anything.
I finally had some free time this weekend to get some good ol' fashioned gaming done, and my game of choice was Gears of War. I originally played and completed the entire game sometime back around spring 2007 with my friend on co-op. This of course, was not on my Xbox 360, seeing as how I did not own one back then. Gears of War was pretty much the first "next-generation" game I played for more than a brief moment and it absolutely blew me away then, and it still blew me away now. Of course, it probably felt a little less significant this time around since I had already beaten the game before, but it was still an extremely epic and memorable experience the second time through, after having not played it for 2 years. I played it by myself this time, however, and this led me to discover a few annoyances about the game I was not previously aware of, and they were actually more prominent seeing as how I briefly tried out Gears of War 2 when I first got my 360.
I would probably say my biggest complaint with Gears of War is the fact that your allies do NOT revive one another, and this pissed me off to no end. There were times where one of my squadmates would go down on the complete other side of the area that I'm in, and despite the fact that one of my other squadmates is HIDING BEHIND THE SAME COVER as him, NOPE, he will not revive him and I have to travel across the entire level just to go get him. Epic did off-set this by making it so that if you clear an area of all the current enemies your downed allies will revive automatically, but it's still annoying because once they go down all the focus from enemy fire shifts towards you. This also leads me to another thing... the friendly AI in Gears of War is well... kind of dumb. I never really noticed it the first time I played because I was playing co-op with my friend. This time however, since I was playing by myself I noticed that often times your squadmates don't actually do a whole lot. That's not to say they are completely useless, since they do a pretty good job of distracting the enemy... but they aren't really so great at actually killing them. Sometimes I noticed my allies would just kind of stand around in really bad spots while getting shot and then just go down, and that was pretty annoying too. Generally these problems weren't really game breaking in any way whatsoever, they were just things that stood out to me as making the single player feel a little more frustrating than the co-op. Another thing that kind of bugged me a little bit, but is understandable is that when you get shot down you have to reload at a checkpoint. Naturally this makes sense, but in co-op you can be revived by a buddy, it just makes me think that if you allies are alive they should be given the chance to bring you back. The same applies in Gears of War 2 though, so I can't really complain. I kind of wish they made it so your allies could bring you back though because it's really annoying when you're at the VERY END of an area and some random enemy comes out of nowhere with a shotgun and is just like SUP BRO EAT SOME SHOTGUN SHELLS and you have to repeat the whole area from the beginning.
Another thing I noticed which may have just been to my own chainsaw incompetence, but sure as hell didn't feel that way, was that sometimes the chainsaw just felt really unresponsive. I know that when you get shot/hit/whatever while reving the chainsaw you have to rev it again... but there were numerous instances where I'd be right beside a guy and the chainsaw just REFUSED to work. I don't know if anyone else has ever experienced this with this game, but there were too many occasionas where I'd try to chainsaw a guy and I'd just wind up dying because the chainsaw decided it didn't want to do anything even though I was holding the button down, and even tried re-reving the chainsaw, but nope it just wouldn't work and I'd die and have to repeat the whole area all over again.
Anyway, don't take any of this as me bashing the game though, I'm merely just venting about a few frustrations I experienced throughout my absolutely spectacular playthrough of Gears of War.
In other news, I started playing Gears of War 2 not too long after I finished Gears 1, because after I finished Gears 1 I sat on my computer for about 30 minutes and then just got this feeling like I needed more Gears of War. Needless to say, I've played it pretty much all the way up until what I believe is probably the final area of Act II, and all I have to say is that Benjamin Carmine is awesome. Poor guy definitely got the short end of the stick though :/
Street Fighter and I go way back to the early 90s in the arcade when I was just a wee lad, and I think a lot of people can probably relate to this. Eventually this moved on to the Super Nintendo, and from there Street Fighter kind of just faded out for me. Even though it would be many years before I got back into fighting games in a big way, I always had a special place in my heart for Street Fighter II, and would never pass up a chance to play it. That being said, I had never actually owned any incarnation of Street Fighter II at any point in time, so my skills in that game were never at any supreme level with anyone outside of Ken, since he was the character I liked to use to the most.
So with the advent of Street Fighter IV it has taken me some time to get re-acquainted with the series, and I must ultimately admit that outside of Ken I didn't really know the special moves of any of the other characters or really how to use them effectively at all.
After playing a few matches in arcade, I hopped online and immediately started playing ranked matches to see how my skills were. Unsurprisingly I was met with repeated beatings until I discovered that player matches is where I should have been hanging out, although I did manage to score a few wins eventually, and even get the win 3 ranked matches in a row trophy. After I hopped over to player matches I started noticing that pretty much everyone was playing as either Ken or Ryu and I started to get a bit tired of it. So I decided to check out another character and I randomly picked Sagat. Fortunately for me Sagat was extremely easy to learn as most of his moves are performed in similar ways. After I practiced a bit with Sagat I hopped back online to player matches... and I noticed a significant improvement in my win/loss ratio. Now I found out afterwards that Sagat is apparently considered a "god tier" character, but I personally don't really believe in tier lists. Tier lists actually kind of piss me off, and whether or not they actually have any credibility doesn't really matter to me. I think if someone is skilled enough at the game they have as good of a chance of winning as anyone else, unless in the odd circumstance that a particular character really is just rubbish. But I think Street Fighter is well balanced enough that it doesn't really matter too much for regular play.
Anyway, I really enjoyed using Sagat a lot. He's probably my new favourite character as I have been playing with him the vast majority of the time and winning most of my battles now. Although I do come across the occasional player that wipes the floor with me, but not too often. We'll see how I far once I switch back over to play ranked matches.
Today I finally decided to actually start unlocking characters, since I spent my first 2 days with the game playing against other people online rather than the arcade mode. I haven't even touched the trials so I have nothing to say about those yet. I have unlocked Sakura, Dan, and Cammy so far, and I aim to get the rest of the characters throughout the remainder of the week when I have time.
I completed the arcade mode completely with Ryu first so I could unlock Sakura. I actually just went right ahead and played through arcade on medium difficulty and I didn't really have much trouble getting through it. I oddly had a bit of trouble dealing with E. Honda, but otherwise I got through every other character including Seth on my first try, save for Sagat who sent me back to the character select screen once.
I also tried out Crimson Viper and I really liked her playstyle a lot. I used her online and actually faired quite well against most people, although I did occasionally encounter the odd person who put me in my place, but that's where Sagat came in handy :)
Street Fighter IV is definitely a REALLY good game. I am extremely satisfied with my purchase, and am at this point probably hopelessly addicted to it, since it is pretty much all I have been doing and thinking about since I first turned it on. Street Fighter IV has definitely re-sparked my interest in fighting games which has waned slightly in recent times. I believe the last fighting game I purchased was Soulcalibur III back in the summer of 2007, well that is if you don't count Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3, which I actually never even completed... speaking of that game I should probably actually get around to finishing the story mode but eh, it'll have to wait until Street Fighter IV starts to wane on me and I can't really see that happening anytime soon.
About two weeks ago now I bought Hotel Dusk: Room 215 for the Nintendo DS. Today I finished this game, and I must say that I am incredibly unsatisfied with the game's conclusion. The basic plot-arc was resolved, but due to several choices I made, or lack thereof, I did not get two other scenes which give a much more satisfying conclusion to the game's ending. There's an alternate version of the main ending based on something you need to do nearing the end of the game which I did not think of. It involves a trick using the DS and this is not the first time this game totally screwed with my mind and its DS tricks. That's probably one of the things I liked the best about this game was the unique ways in which it makes you not only use the touch screen but the DS itself, which kind of boggles the mind. Needless to say I feel like an idiot for not realizing what I was supposed to do with the DS seeing as how the game actually FORCED me to do the same things earlier on in the game. In this situation there were two different things I could do and I was too stupid to realize the superior method even though the clues that were given to me were SO OBVIOUS once I realized what I was supposed to do. How that being said I did not know that this situation had an alternate method for completion, and I also did not know it completly changes the ending based on how you accomplish it. There is also another scene you are supposed to get after the credits if you complete the game without ever getting a game over. Seeing as how when you screw up you are given the option to return to the main title where you can reload your saved game, or "retry", well, if you "retry" then it counts as if you got a game over, whereas reloading your save continues as if you never got a game over. So a warning to anyone who is playing or planning on playing this game: 1. Don't get any game overs, and 2. When the time comes DO NOT TAP ON HER FACE.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is I basically got the worst ending possible. It wasn't "bad" per se, it was just unsatisfying as it left the main character's relationship with another character hanging without a resolution, and another plot arc unresolved. I did not go through +15 hours of a game to have the ending left hanging like this. The good thing is that I know how to do pretty much everything this time so it should go by much faster. That being said, I PUT ON MY TRENCHCOAT AND DETECTIVE HAT.
What the fuck kind of bullshit concept is this anyways? This is seriously like the dumbest fucking idea ever and everyone who supports this bullshit should be ashamed of themselves. What the fuck happened to the days when developer's gave us extra shit as thanks for buying their game in the first place? No, fuck that they say. Now it's all like HEY GUISE I HAVE A GUD IDEA LETS MAKE HALF OF THIS GAME AND CHARGE PEOPLE $60 FOR IT AND THEN RELEASE THE OTHER HALF OF THE GAME IN 3 SEPERATE BUNDLES FOR $10 EACH. FUCK YEAH MAN HIGH FIVE BRO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Short Single Player
Yeah online gaming is cool. But how the fuck did we let gaming devs get away with making like 5 hour single player campaigns and charging us full price for it? I don't know how this happened but it's pretty fucking lame. All that is happening now is everyone thinking they can get away with like 4-6 hours of single player and throwing in some online shit and it just over-saturates like fucking everything with the same fucking game over and over again with a shitty single player mode and usually a fucking derivative bullshit online component too that sucks fucking balls.
- PC getting the shaft
I've got to set one thing straight. I'm a pretty big PC gamer. I realize a shitload of people are not these days. Honestly I don't fucking understand why so many people are content on playing first person shooters with the worst control scheme imaginable (gamepads) but to each his own, if you want to spend 20 minutes lining up a headshot then be my guest. But that's the besides the point, I love how developers and publishers are treating PC gamers like second-class citizens with this anti-pirating bullshit. There is nothing you can fucking do to stop pirating so why even try? It's like Sony and homebrew with the PSP, Sony has spent so much time trying to kick homebrew to the curb and when it looked like they finally succeeded someone made some shit called a pandora battery and now homebrew and piracy on the PSP is even more rampant than it was when the goddamn thing first came out. It's like the more you try to stop something the more people are going to rebel.
ANyway, I'm going a bit off topic with the PSP thing but that pisses me off too. But it's like alright well some faggots are pirating PC games I guess we should implement some shitty anti-piracy measures that get cracked in 1 fucking day anyways and leaves everyone with a real copy of the game a fucking annoying anti-piracy system of installing/uninstalling their games and the pirates a nice ISO of that game without any fucking bullshit steps to install/uninstall their games. SecuROM - ditch that fucking shit.
And don't even try to defend it saying well it's not profitable to make PC games due to pirating. Yeah that might be true to an extent but it has nothing to do with the PC, has to do with the quality of the games. When people are making 5 hour games and charging $60 for them I don't really blame people for downloading them since it's a fucking rip-off in the first place.
- Assholes online
This is nothing new but what has happened to this generation of human beings? No matter where you go online in a game there's a bunch of people calling each other faggots, douche bags, n-words, jews, the list goes on and on, it's like whenever I play something online I'm playing with people exclusively from 4chan's /b/ and for the record I think that place is fucking retarded and if you inhabit that board you should probably re-evaluate your life because you're basically the scum of society. /moralfag
That's all I really have to say at this point in time.
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Been on a bit of a buying a frenzy this last week, so without further ado, here's all the games I've purchased.
Aquaria
I was browser the Steam store the other day and this game caught my eye. I then watched this trailer, and I pretty much decided to take a gamble with this game. Was kind of expensive at $20 for a downloadable 2D game, but I really liked the art and music, and the general concept of 2 guys making a game to prove that games can be art was pretty appealing to me. So far it's been a pretty fun game and the story seems interesting as well. Not to mention the music is fantastic. I'll have more to say about this game at a later date when I spend some more time with it.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Beta
I haven't actually purchased this game yet, but I am a huge fan of the original Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, as well as its expansions Winter Assault and Dark Crusade. What I have played is the free multiplayer beta currently running on Steam. So far I'm not entirely sure what to think but I was a little disappointed at first. First of all, the game looks absolutely fantastic; it makes the first game look like a PlayStation 1 game in comparison. That being said the gameplay has COMPLETELY changed. If you've played Company of Heroes then you'll kind of know what to expect from Dawn of War II. It's a bit weird because the base building aspect of the original game has been completely removed - all you have is a command center and units. The game's focus is basically on unit management and map control. It's an interesting aspect, but I'll delve into it more deeply in another blog post. Although I should say that I do like the new hero system, it is very similar to Warcraft III, but not a blatant copy either, and your hero also is not as overpowered as the heroes in Warcraft III are. Gonna give this game some more time to grow on me. Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
WHAT THE CRAP IS THIS? A DS GAME? Yes I bought my first DS game in nearly 3 years. The last DS game I purchased was when New Super Mario Bros. had just come out. I bought this game today on my way home from school. I had 20-30 minutes to kill waiting for the proper bus I had to take so I pretty much decided I'd go to EB Games and see if they had Dragon Quest IV, since my bus stop when I change buses it right beside a huge mall. I had been wanting to buy this game ever since it was originally announced, but it took a while to come out and kind of slipped off the radar for me. I strumbled across it again recently while browsing GameSpot and realized that it had actually come out already, and several months ago at that. I haven't actually played this yet, but I will be looking forward to doing so. I don't know when I will actually play it but I wanted to pick it up since it's been out for a few months already and Dragon Quest isn't exactly what you can call popular in North America, so I wanted to make sure I got a copy while I still could. I also slapped down $5 pre-order on Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride too. If you're wondering where all this random Dragon Quest love is coming from, well basically I've owned Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King for over 2 years now, and while I have not completed it and given it the attention it deserves, it is an absolutely beautiful game in every conceivable way and I actually really love it. Speaking of which, that's one of my near-future goals is to sit down and finish that game since it's the type of game that deserves your utmost attention, so I won't be doing that until I get all these other games I've started out of the way first. I should also note one of the main reasons I picked this up was because I've got a lot of down-time on my campus and walking to-and-from bus stops, and waiting around, and sitting on buses, ect, 5 days a week, and while music is generally enough to keep me entertained I do occasionally get slightly bored and wish I had a game to play, but I haven't purchased a handheld game since Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.
Left 4 Dead
Today I also purchased Left 4 Dead for myself, as well as my friend whom I have owed some money too for a while now. This was a return favour for him buying me a 2-month pre-paid game card for World of Warcraft all the way back at the very end of November 2007. Yeah, that was a LONG time ago. The reason why it took me so long to return the favour was because I 1. haven't really had much spending money between then and now, and 2. I finally have a method of buying things online. Anyway, played a bunch of this tonight and it was relatively amusing. I have some fun screenshots to share with all of you to commemorate the moment after we finished the first campaign.
See the dead guy in the white shirt at the top? Yeah that's me. The Tank zombie sent me flying over in that direction where I died upon impact with the concrete floor.
As unsportsmanlike as it may sound, I was a little relieved to see that my friend and the NPCs were not so fortunate themselves and also proceeded to get absolutely destroyed as I laughed my guts out on the microphone.
Unfortunately it would see that I would get what I deserved, as when we retried the final area of the first campaign as I made my way up to the helicopter on the helipad, I was actually blocked like 5 feet between me and the helicopter by the tank, who knocked me off to the side where I got mauled by a group fo zombies and died, and then watched as my friend and the 2 NPCs flew off to safety as the message "In Memory of Insanemarine" appeared on the screen.
...god damn it.
Mirror's Edge
I also purchased Mirror's Edge of Steam the other day as well. Mirror's Edge has been a game I've wanted to play ever since I first about it back when it came out in November. Despite the somewhat mixed reviews I pretty much knew this was a game I wanted to play once I saw the gameplay footage, this game just looked really awesome to me, and I really like innovative ideas too. I've never even really been one for much platforming either outside of 2D platforming, but this just really looked awesome to me. Right now I would say based on the 3 or so hours I spent playing it that this game kind of reminds me of the Matrix. Like you're running at super high speeds, doing leaps over ridiculously huge gaps between rooftops, then running from guys with machine guns, disarming them in slowmo then blasting them to oblivion with said weapons, and running again. Pretty awesome stuff, and I'm really liking this game so far. Definitely something I recommend people check out - although it probably isn't for everyone. My only complaint with the game so far is that the checkpoint system can be somewhat irritating in certain areas where you don't know how to get to where you're supposed to go but you're under a time crunch and you wind up getting killed several times over and having to repeat a section (albeit very small) it's just kind of annoying. And when I say repeat a small section, I mean like really small, like 20 seconds max. It's just annoying because I'm used to quicksave being a PC gamer so I guess I know what it's like for the console people to suffer through the checkpoint save systems. Will have more on this game later, but so far I really like it a lot and I as of now I don't really agree with some of the not-so-great reviews this game has been getting because for me it's been a total thrill so far. The rush of doing several things together in quick succession is amazing, and jumping onto these big crane things and going between two sky-rises is pretty freaking amazing, especially when you're doing like 30 foot drops between them.
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
And we finally come to Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. You may be a bit puzzled (LOL C WAT I DID THAR) as to why I bought this game (on Steam again btw), but allow me to explain. I had heard this game get some pretty high praise (and the Xbox 360 live arcade version got a 9.0 from GameSpot) but the general concept of a simply puzzle game like Bejewled mixed with an RPG seemed like my kinda puzzle game. I've never really been fond of casual games because they usually can't hold my interest, although there are a few exceptions ot this rule, with puzzle games like Tetris having me completely mezmerized for hours (yes for the uniniated I have in the past been a complete Tetris whore, however since I currently do not own any incarnation of that game I have been free from its evil clutches for several years). So yeah, when I first started playing this I played it for over an hour straight, and the only reason I stopped was because I had to go to bed, so I guess that goes to show what evil potential this game has on me already. It's kind of refreshing to get into a battle with a monster yet have to resort to destroying it via a puzzle game, and since I'm an RPG nut, this game is definitely suited towards people like me. I also like the fact that the developers took a very simple game and totally expanded on it by giving you a character that levels up and uses abilities, and you're actually fighting against an opponent while playing the puzzle game too. If you're into puzzle/strategy-type games at all but also like RPG stuff then you'll definitely want to check this game out, and it's out on pretty much every system that exists although from what I've heard the PC / XBLA version is the best. To top it all off it's only $10 on steam, not sure how much it is on XBLA, but it probably can't be too much more than that.
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So I started playing The Elders Scrolls III: Morrowind tonight out of sheer boredom and procrastination in going to bed even though I have a class and a lab tomorrow (technically today now) and I finally start to figure out what I'm doing in the game. So everything's going good and all, and I buy all this cool armour and stuff and I'm strolling along and I go into this cave. So I kill this dude and take his stuff and keep going and there's this guy standing there and he says "YOU'RE GROWING WEAK" and smacks me with this giant fucking war hammer out of nowhere. Then my guy falls down, and I'm like looking at it in third person view for some reason and then he smacks me again and I'm dead, in 2 hits. Then the game's like HEY GUESS WHAT YOUR MOST RECENT SAVE IS AUTO SAVE WANNA LOAD IT? So I'm like sure, oh wait what the fuck this is from like 40 minutes ago, THANKS AUTO SAVE.
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