Update!

So some people have been asking why my posting can be so erratic, and maybe I do owe a bit of an explanation. Part of everything stems from work, which has been especially stressful recently, and tends to come and go with the turn over in our clients (it would take too long to explain what I do, just understand I do extremely difficult work). Along with this, I struggle with motivation to do things. Third, there are not a whole ton of readers here, so I don't feel overly responsible to amuse you. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy expressing my (endless) opinions, but expressing them to nobody isn't very useful. Finally, I've been going through a rough spot in life where I need to somehow make a decision about what I want to do with life, and either go back to school or get a more acceptable long term career. The difficult decisions of this magnitude have occupied much of my thought, making blogging sort of a back burner leisure activity. So, if you want more posts, try to advertise my blog a little. I know this is suppose to be my job, but I only know so many people that want to hear what I have to say. Get me more readers, and I will feel a much stronger commitment to provide more regular postings. Really, tell 5 friends to tell 5 friends blah blah....

All things said and done, I have no idea where my life is going. Ideally, I could monetize this blog, and possibly branch out into a video format such as The Spoony Experiment, Lord Kat, Angry Joe, or the Angry Video Game Nerd, but less angry, if this somehow becomes popular enough. This would be a dream world, but hey dreamers give this world a soul. Realistically, I will try to do better getting more consistent content for you, once a week is reasonable. Believe me that I have a million things to say, its just a matter of putting thought into word. I have a couple more Gaming Triumphs and Failures planned, too many Why People Suck, and I will probably be branching out into more game reviews, as well as revisiting some older games. I want to talk about the anime Claymore that I finished recently, as well as Valkyria Chronicles for PS3. I'm in the middle of Darksiders for PS3 as well. I am potentially buying Left 4 Dead 2 if I can snag a few people to play with me. I have also debated doing a running series revisiting all the old Final Fantasy games, playing through them all again sounds like fun (I'm playing 6 right now). Movies may also make their way onto this list some day, but for now I have enough with games, anime, and people sucking. Expect any and all of these to show up at some point. I am aware that some of my reviews will be older, like Valkyria Chronicles and (maybe) Left 4 Dead 2. I can only review things as I play/watch them, and I have enough backlogged games to play that I'm just not going to be cutting edge at this point. But really, many old games deserve a second play through, and my opinion is typically quite different than others. Again, if this is popularized enough and becomes something I can invest a significant chuck of time to, I could do a better job keeping up with more recent games.

The Death of the RPG

I grew up in the glory days of the JRPG.  I remember sinking endless amounts of time into Final Fantasy 3/6, several playthroughs of Final Fantasy 7, and the pure awesomeness of Star Ocean Till the End of Time and Valkyrie Profile.  There were more JRPG's than I could have possibly played, and it took me years to catch up on all of the great games out there.  I generally prefer the JRPG style to the American RPG like Fallout and Oblivion, but I do like some ARPG's.  Recently, however, I have found it nearly impossible to find a JRPG that is actually PLAYABLE.  And most American style RPG's are overrated!  What the hell happened?  I'm here to tell you.

Final Fantasy 13 is only the finishing touch on the JRPG genre.  Let's examine how horribly it failed.  I have played nearly every Final Fantasy on a non-portable console, so this drilling is even coming from a fanboy, I'm sure others hate it even more.  Now, this is the first Final Fantasy game that I started and never finished, and have no desire to finish.  First of all, you don't explore.  At all.  When I read all the reviews that said that the entire game is like running down a hallway, I thought it had to be an exaggeration.  A lot of people complained that Final Fantasy 10's areas were too linear, I thought it would be similar.  FF10's were rather linear, but not awful.  FF13 is a hallway, nearly literally.  The only time a path EVER branches is to go to a treasure chest.  You have map that shows you which branch is the treasure containing dead end.  There is no exploration at all, it is totally linear in every way.  The characters are bland, some are annoying.  I didn't mind them quite as much as other people seem to, but really I can't say I really cared for any of them very much.  They only character kind of liked was Lightning.  They are just run of the mill, no badassery (outside of Lighting).  The characters that some games could make acceptable in some facet just fall flat in every area in FF13, they just have no redeemable features.  On top of this, the combat is AWFUL.  I will give Square props for trying to innovate, something most new games lack completely.  But I have a VERY hard time believing anyone play tested this game.  The combat essentially auto-pilots itself.  Each character has 3 class/job types they can switch to at any time in the battle: healing, support, blackmagic, physical attacker, tank, nothing too special.  You have a standard fare ATB bar, and actions take a certain chuck of it, allowing you to chain moves together.  Basically, you need to manage when people need to change class/jobs.  Then auto battle until a switch is needed again.  The computer will pick optimal attacks if you have scanned the enemy, and inputs commands at least slightly faster than a human navigating the menu can.  So you scan an enemy type once, and then hit auto every turn of battle you fight him for the rest of the game.  The only micro I had to do in combat is scanning, and sometimes doing AOE when I think I should but the auto battle isn't doing it.  So 95%-ish of battles I just hit auto.   SO. BORING.  Even if you choose to manual input, its nothing special.  It just isn't exciting at all.  Attack all out on one enemy till he breaks for extra damage, burn him down fast, do it on the next enemy.  The Esper summoning is a gimmick that is ok but not enough to carry a horrible system like this.  FF3/6's system was better.  Read that again, an SNES game has a far FAR superior battle system, story, and characters, to a current generation RPG.  Every character had a special ability that kept your battles fun and involved.  The only truly redeeming feature of FF13 is the graphics are nice.

Moving on, here is a quick rundown of some RPG's I've played over the last few years.  This is generally mid-late PS2 era onward.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope: PS3 JRPG, ok overall, very fun combat.  Mediocre story, but there were a couple of characters that seemed to be designed deliberately to annoy and be stupid (similar to my comments about immature stupid stuff in otherwise good anime).  Even the VOICES on these characters HAD to be done with intention to annoy.  If these characters were overhauled this game would be good.  But I did have fun overall, people with less tolerance will not be able to play this game. I can't stress enough how bad a couple of the characters are though.

Oblivion:  Leveling system was so tedious I could not play this game.  If you don't care about maxing stats with any efficiency or getting the most out of level ups, you can manage.  But really if you care at all about achieving good stats this system is so tedious you SERIOUSLY should watch paint dry, it is less of a waste of time than this.  I've thought about trying it again to see if I'm being too harsh, but I dropped this game very quickly the first time around because of the leveling alone.

Fallout 3:  This was decent overall, I didn't quite finish it but completed a vast majority of the side quests and the main story.  I just wasn't really hooked in it and had other games I wanted to get started.  The action in the game is crap.  Firing outside of VATS is dumb, just hit VATS and it pauses, click AIM FOR HEAD, then BOOM HEADSHOT, next please.  This game is basically all about adventuring through an interesting environment.

Valkyria Chronicles:   A PS3 Strategy RPG, I'm in the middle of this currently.  It is pretty good overall.  I don't like their choice of trying to make the story scenes play out like they are in a book (they have a book-like boarder in story scenes, and they story plays out with just pictures of the talking character's face, rather than see full live action moving scenes and stuff).  The battles are pretty good, but I would have liked to see a wider range of enemy types.  Also, I wish you had a better battle planning phase, the tactical map doesn't give you a great overview of the land, making planning your strategy impossible without actually playing some of the map and reloading from the start.  It also sucks that the XP and money gain from missions is based ONLY on how fast you beat it, meaning good strategies often equal poor XP, while running around like a mad man is rewarded.  I really like how entire classes level up together, avoiding the plague most strategy RPG's have of a couple of characters getting WAY overpowered, and everyone else lagging way behind and being worthless.  Seems like a lot of nagging, but really I've had a positive experience overall.

Mass Effect 1&2:  Shooter RPG's.  Decent action, pretty engaging story.  Both games have some big flaws (massive amounts of worthless areas in ME1, mineral finding in ME2) but overall I definitely enjoyed these games. 

Dragon Age:  One of my favorite American style RPG's.  I liked the story, and I really enjoyed the characters, moreso than most RPG's.  The combat was fun, even though mages are extremely overpowered.  The game is pretty open ended as far as order of events, but you will wind up in the same place.  You do get some fairly important choices to make, nothing Earth shattering but you can kill or recruit a certain (douche bag evil) person at one point, pick sides in an old feud, and you get to pick from a few different ways to deal with a special circumstance at the end of the game among a few other things.  The areas aren't as open as Fallout 3 of Oblivion, you don't explore the wilderness, you only travel directly to towns and dungeons similar to Baldur's Gate 2.  Some of the dungeons just get too long for my tastes, and I feel it could have been a little longer, but probably just because I was having fun.  I would have liked some more optional dungeons and stuff.  Combat I feel could have been smoothed out a bit, and while the orders you can give the AI are helpful, I still found myself needing to micro everything which means I had to pause a lot.  Pretty good play overall.

Final Fantasy 12:  PS2 game so it is a bit older, a lot of people hated this game.  I didn't mind it so much.  The combat was alright for me, this is an example of innovation that actually worked, unlike FF13.  The story wasn't as good as I expect from a FF game, and the characters were merely ok.  My big complaint is that if you do all the side quests and kill the extra bosses (called marks I think?  It has been a couple years since I played this) right when they become available, your party gets way ahead in levels and rolls through the regular story content.  I enjoyed it overall, but not my favorite FF.

Demon Souls:  PS3 action RPG, this game has a strong following largely due to its high difficulty.  This game has almost no story or character development, so I was hesitant to place it hear but most people these days are calling this an RPG, even though its more action/adventure with character stats.  The difficulty is high and unforgiving even of small mistakes.  Beating a level really feels like an accomplishment.  The combat is ok, not too great.  I found the main appeal to be the sense of achievement you get simply from beating a stage without using a guide, as it is truly a challenge.  Don't play this if you don't like putting some real effort into a game.  I thought it was decent overall, but highly overrated by the community which is adamant it is the best thing that has happened to gaming in the past decade.

Final Fantasy 10:  PS2 JRPG, and I loved it.  Liked the story (even though the "twist" is easy to see a mile out) and the characters were great.  People hate on Tidus, and he is annoying at times, but he seemed more real to me than many other protagonists of the time.  Auron is a badass, one of my favorite RPG characters ever.  The combat was GREAT.  Overall, one of my top FF games behind 3/6.

Star Ocean Till the End of Time:  PS2 JRPG, wonderful game.  Great combat, good characters (Cliff was awesome, again one of my favorite RPG characters), story was ok but took a lot of hate from people for having a rather cliche twist (it is cliche, I didn't mind it as much as some people).  This is worth playing just because the combat was awesome.

Xenosaga Series:  PS2 JRPG, almost plays like a movie.  I like it, but will admit it had several flaws.  Dungeons got long an tedious for example.  I liked the story, and while the cutscenes did get really long, I liked the story and characters a lot so I didn't mind the TV episode length story scenes.  If you are looking for something more action based, look away, but if you don't mind VERY LONG blocks of story, this is a good game. 

(Note: I haven't played the Tales series)

I'll stop here, but I could keep going (especially if you let me keep going back in time!).  Notice a trend?  First, there aren't many new RPG's, especially for JRPG's.  Everyone just makes shooters and Grand Theft Auto clones.  The RPG genre has been trending away from story as a whole, and mixing in more action elements such as the Mass Effect games.  Most praised modern RPG's are American style, and they are grossly overrated.  I would love to see Final Fantasy go back to its roots, and for Star Ocean to cut the intentionally shitty characters out of their games.  There really just aren't many story driven RPG's anymore.  I love videogames as a story telling medium (blog for another day) so I long for the return of the JRPG.  Stop buying Call of Duty # 9023: Please-Don't-Notice-That-This-Is-The-Same-Game-It-Was-Five-Years-Ago and maybe developers will go back to making good games.  Sadly, people have no taste, so that won't happen, but maybe someday people will start writing a good story and designing an engaging character again.

I will try to post more, I have lots of things to say but work and such has kept me a busy man.

Edit:  I've hit some weird formatting issue when I copy and paste this from my word processor, cutting some sentences in weird spots.  Leave a comment if you see one, I fix them when I see them.  I'm not really sure what the deal is.

People Suck, Part 2

Now that I've been thrust into the so called "real world," being about a year and a half out of college, I've begun to see people in a more and more negative light.  Therefore, I think reasons most people suck needs to become a recurring post theme.  So, I'm a lonely bastard.  I like to cuddle, and have had a noted lack of a nice woman to snuggle recently.  A couple friends eventually convinced me to try out match.com to find someone.  The experience there has brought to light more reasons people suck!  Please note that this is not a bash on match.com at all.  In fact, I'm as of yet to complete my profile to get matched with people (that self describing paragraph is just too difficult!) so I can't review the service at all.  I can't get matched, but I can search for people with certain traits (looks, hobbies, etc).  No anger is aimed at match.com, I've heard its a great service, the rage is aimed at people, because they suck.

People lie.  A lot.  In fact, I know a few people that probably lie more than they tell the truth.  Without so much as emailing anyone on match.com, I have identified dozens of liars.  For example, Match asks for your basic body size, average, thin, athletic, a few extra pounds, big and beautiful, blah blah.  An alarming amount of people lie about this, even though THEIR PICTURE IS IN THEIR PROFILE.  I don't want to sound like a typical male jackass, but I've seen at least a dozen women that are clearly 70+ pounds over a healthy body weight listing themselves as "average."  I know you are all screaming that this is a subjective matter, so let me clarify.  I'm not a guy that wants to count the ribs on my girlfriend.  I am talking what would medically be defined as a healthy weight.  Some of these women are not just overweight, they are morbidly obese.  I'm talking people that are under six feet tall and weigh over 300lbs.  These people are overweight by just about any measure, and they are trying to play themselves off as "average" or "a few extra pounds" and their picture betrays this statement to the point of sheer comedy.  I'm not trying to insult overweight people (I'm about 20lbs heavier than I should be in all honesty), I'm just using this as an example of how horribly people lie.  I'm sure there are plenty of men that do this as well, I'm just speaking from personal experience.

Lying goes far beyond trying to portray yourself favorably to get a date.  Trying to find people to cover shifts at work, or reasons people call in sick, are more examples of how comically bad people are at lying.  The reasons I've heard for people that don't want to work a shift have been nothing short of hilarious.  If you have a job where you have to get shifts covered when you want days off, or answered the phone when someone was faking sick to get off work, you KNOW what I am talking about.  You get people with the most bogus reasons why.  I'm not going to list specific instances of obvious lies, because I don't want to incriminate anyone.  However, if you are one of the people who has done this, please inform me why you think a totally transparent lie is better than just simple honesty.   If you don't want to cover a shift for someone, why not simply be honest and say you are burned out and need your day off or have plans for a party, rather than telling some totally bogus story that just makes you look like a fool.

Do people think they are better at lying than they really are?  Do they believe their own outrageous truth bending?  Is admitting the truth so difficult that you would rather look like a mischievous bastard than admit a simple fact?  It makes me sick how honesty has fallen out of favor in place of half truths and outright lies.  I don't understand how these people aren't completely consumed by their guilt.  I'm not perfect, I'm not 100% truthful in every situation, I'm not going to pretend to be.  However, the truth is far easier than manufacturing a lie, and I've found that being truthful is rarely a burden.  Sticking to the truth keeps everything so much more simple, which is why I go with honesty in almost every situation.  Why lie?  It just complicates life even further, and life doesn't need any help being too complicated.

StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty

So I've been torn about what to say about this game for some time, and I've delayed this post for a week and a half thinking of what I should say.  At first, I was very reluctant to buy SC2, thinking it was just a slightly tweaked SC1.  I was pissed that Blizzard is releasing the campaign as 3 separate games, a total money grabbing move.  I've spent a decent amount of time with it now, and I've finally started to make up my mind.

SC2 is a solid game.  Unlike my initial opinion, enough has changed from SC1 to justify picking this up.  Several units have been removed and added, including units that are staples to all races. The core gameplay, flow, and many iconic units (siege tanks!) still exist as they were, so fans of the original need not fear.  The gameplay as a whole is really solid.  There are counters to just about everything, and counters to those counters, however micro and macro management remain important enough that it is not simply a game of rock paper scissors.  Far from it, SC2 is massively skill based, and it is quite easy to spot the better player.  The races all have a unique flavor, and play VERY differently.  Finding the race that fits you will be essential to multiplayer success.

The campaign in SC2 is fairly well executed, but not particularly impressive.  The length is nothing to get excited about.  The cinematics and between mission banter do add some depth if you enjoy the StarCraft story.  While the missions aren't really BAD in anyway, I just felt it was unremarkable.  There was nothing that stood out about the campaign that made it particularly enjoyable.  It was just pretty bland.  There are plenty of achievements to pick up, many requiring play on high difficulties, so if you do enjoy beating on RTS AI there is some replayability here.  If you aren't interested in SC2's multiplayer, don't bother picking up SC2 just for the campaign, it just isn't worth it.

Multiplayer is the heart and soul of SC2, and it delivers.  The matches are intense, and quick enough that you can squeeze one in during half time of the Viking beating Dallas (woot!).  As I said, these are VERY skill based, with little luck involved.  The maps are diverse, and there are teamplay and solo matchmaking queues.  Matchmaking, however, is what really pisses me off in this game.  SC2 has you play a few placement matches to figure out which of the divisions of skill to place you in (copper silver gold platinum and diamond in order of least to best).   I was placed in Silver division after doing my placement matches, and proceeded to play vs platinum, which is TWO divisions high than me, for the next several games.  After a few matches against equally skill opponents, again I landed vs platinum.  I'm not stomping in silver, in fact my current record is something like 9-12 (I suck at RTS games, and have never played vs real people before, so shutup).  Overall, I've probably hit platinum around 25-30% of my games, with another 20% vs gold (one division above).  Gold is forgivable, but platinum is just a stomp and it is stupid.  I would understand if I was winning a lot and the match making wanted to see if I should move up, but this simply isn't the case, not even close.  This makes no sense, as I was queuing at regular gaming hours, and there are a TON of SC2 players that it could match me with that would be a far more fair fight.  The matches I play vs opponents of close to equal skill are INCREDIBLY fun.  However, after I have 1 or 2 good matches, it throws a platinum in and I get stomped so hard I want to quit SC2 forever.  To sum it up, if you are an above average RTS player, you will have great time playing SC2 online.  However, if you are average like me, or below average like the poor copper players, match making hates you, and you will get put in matches you don't stand a chance in fairly frequently. I don't understand why SC2 has such crappy match making.  If all my games were vs silver, the DIVISION IT SAYS I SHOULD PLAY IN, I would have a blast, as they are mostly around my skill level.  Alas, Blizzard finds it necessary to put me vs far superior foes, TWO DIVISIONS above me, so often that I just don't play much SC2 online anymore.

My experience with SC2 is quite mixed.  While I enjoy the game, the match making frequently makes me forgo playing SC2 for something that isn't such a crapshoot.  If you don't mind losing, or are a skilled RTS player, you will love SC2.  If you aren't very good, or are just average like myself, and you don't like losing, avoid SC2.  Poor match making will make you rage, a LOT.  Also, don't even think about picking up SC2 for the single player.  The campaign is acceptable, but definitely not worth the price for the full game.  If all 3 campaigns were included, it might be a different story, but with only 1/3 included (the Terran story) I can't recommend SC2 for its singleplayer.

Edit:  I forgot to mention, SC2 multiplayer is so fun that the current tournament games are being broadcast.  They have actual commentators, and the game is so popular that the prize payout in the 1st major tournament was roughly $86,000.00 to first place.  Watching these games is actually quite enjoyable.

Edit 2: I should note that I have been playing vs platinum players less frequently as I've logged more games, however my statement about match making still rings rather true.  Many of the matches I play are annoyingly lopsided one way or the other.  If Blizzard worked on the matchmaking a bit this could be a really great experience. 

Recharging Shields and Health

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, because it really kills a lot of modern shooters for me.  Halo and Call of Duty started a trend that is just destroying modern shooters, recharging shields and health.  Many people praised this concept as it was brought into popularity, and it is now seen in almost every shooter.  Mass Effect, Halo, Call of Duty, Killzone 2, Gears of War, and Bad Company are only a few games that are guilty of this sin. 

Why is this such a bad thing?  How can so many games with such high praise from reviewers all have it wrong?  Many people claim that recharging means the game is faster paced and more intense, however I can't disagree more.  Recharging health and shields removes almost ALL of the difficulty from a single player perspective.  You are not punished for any of your mistakes.  Poke your head out of cover at a bad time and take a few shots?  No problem, hide for 10 seconds and you are 100% fine again.  Back in the good old days of Quake and Doom, you needed to find first aid kits and such to get you health back after such a mistake.  Make too many mistakes and you will run out of health pickups for the level, and you will die.  There is no such management of health in new shooters.  Just duck down for a few seconds and you are fine.  Not punishing mistakes removes almost ALL of the intensity from shooters.  I've just started playing Killzone 2 on my PS3 and seeing it frequently mentioned as one of the better shooters on the console.  It just doesn't get me going like older shooters did.  Taking a few hits means nothing at all, if you aren't gunned down full to dead, you can recover with no consequence. There are no tense moments where you need to enter combat at 50% health because there are no first aid kits nearby. 

Now you are probably raging at me for focusing on single player, because nobody but me cares about single player games anymore.  Well it sucks for multiplayer too.  Recall that a few posts ago I talked about camping in shooters.  Recharging shields and health means campers can take a few hits and not need to move around to find health and armor to replenish themselves.  Taking a hit or two doesn't phase a camper, because they will simply recharge.  A few hits here and there would kill a camper if he didn't recharge between every person that gets a shot in on him.  Recharging also means that damage put on any player in general doesn't stick, so there is no difference between a near-kill or getting completely wtf-pwnt by someone.  Without recharging, if you almost killed them they need to resupply or you will beat him easily when you find him again.

I don't want people to get me wrong, I have enjoyed some new shooters, I'm not somebody that only likes classic games.  But  I feel that nearly every shooter would be better off if they went back to an old school static health system, instead of the recharging crap that almost all new shooters are using.

Hellsing

More anime!  So I just recently finished watching a short running anime called Hellsing.  This show is another rare anime that doesn't fall into the childish humor and meaningless filler crap, +1 awesomeness!  The art work does a great job adding to the atmosphere.  The show follows the efforts of the Hellsing organization, led by Sir Integra Hellsing, to purge the world of undead, namely vampires.  However, the Hellsing organization's secret weapon is an uber powerful vampire named Alucard.  The reason Alucard works for Hellsing is not clear.  Alucard is a fun character.  Basically, he is a total badass.  There is also a new vampire that joined Hellsing, however her story doesn't get filled in as much as I would like because you follow their vampire hunt for 13 episodes.....

Yeah, 13 episodes.  This is a problem.  Where I praised Gun Sword for having a story to tell, telling it, and being done, Hellsing is simply not long enough.  I don't know if the show was cancelled (would have a hard time believing it) or if it was planned to be so short, but the story doesn't get filled in enough.  Yes, the story arc is completed at the end, but you don't get to see nearly as much about the characters as I would like.  It sucks that we don't really get to learn a whole lot about Seras Victoria, the newly turned vampire in Hellsing.  You never learn exactly why Alucard works willingly for humans.  There is a TON more story that was asking to be told, but is never seen.

Hellsing was was a fun, quick watch.  However, I was sorely disappointed by the total lack of episode count.  This should have been a two or three season show, not half.  Regardless, overall I did enjoy watching it.

Note: This applies to just the series Hellsing.  They have started making a set of OVA's called Hellsing Ultimate that I have not seen.

Gun Sword

Long time no blog!  I will try to do a better job keeping this up to date, I've just been busy with other things.  Today I want to talk about anime.  Anime frequently start running filler episodes, and/or have episodes filled completely with humor that has a target audience age of around 10-12 years old.  This sucks.  A lot.   It turns a genre of shows that I really like into childish crap.  Many shows hit this snag and they turn into kids' shows rather than great adult television.  Gun Sword doesn't go there, and therefore I love it.

Gun Sword has a story to tell, and it tells it.  The show only has about 26 episodes.  It completes the story and its over.  It doesn't have a load of filler crap, or episodes dedicated to fart jokes and fluffy clouds for 10 year olds.  I watched the entire show in 3 days, and I was sad that such an epic story was so short, a blessing and a curse.  The world Gun Sword establishes is amazing.  It has a lot of attitude, and the mechs are awesome.  The characters are believable.  Van isn't just some happy hero going out to do a great deed for the glory of justice.  Van has a score to settle, revenge against the Clawed Man, and he is going to MESS HIM UP.  Van can be related to, he is flawed and makes mistakes.  The fight scenes in this show are great (its mostly mecha battles). 

The story of Gun Sword focuses on a man named Van, who we learn possesses a powerful mecha.  He starts off as a rather mysterious character, and all we know to start with is that he is out for revenge against the Clawed Man.  Van saves a town early in his travels, and a girl there accompanies him to search for his brother.  I thought this young girl would be the bane of my existence with this show, as they frequently become the center of the childish elements that ruin so many anime shows.  I'm not going to claim there is never a childish moment, but Gun Sword stays away from this MUCH better than most animes I've seen. 

Gun Sword is a great ride, and it was streamable on Netflix when I watched it a few months ago.  If you enjoy anime and get the chance to watch Gun Sword, give it a try, I promise you won't regret it.

How to: Fix Modern Shooters

I'm not the kind of person who will pose problems without providing an answer.  As noted in my previous post, modern shooters are suffering from a major deficit in gameplay, mainly due to campers in multiplayer modes.  Shooters used to be my favorite genre, but with the ever growing camper problem, it simply wasn't fun anymore.  This is the simple in concept but somewhat difficult to execute solution to the problem.

The arcade shooters of old, most notably Quake, really didn't have issues with campers.  This is for two reasons.  First of all, you spawned with very little in terms of equipment, while the map was littered with gear.  This forced players to move about the map to pick up essentials like armor, ammo, health, and weapons, not to mention things like quad-damage super powerups.  Modern shooters frequently spawn players with all of their gear for a chosen role (snipers with rifles, heavy assaults with machineguns, etc.) meaning from the second you drop in the level you are capable of gunning down foes.  This means that you can pick a dark corner, hide, and crush people that stray into your crosshairs.  This wouldn't work in Quake.  Your starting weapons aren't sufficient.  Even when you picked up decent firepower, if you hide in a room without going out to get armor and other gear, your shots will fail to one-hit kill (if you had armor and full health in the Quake series, you wouldn't get gibbed unless an enemy had a temporary quad-damage powerup).  This will allow your opponent with superior armor and weapons to turn around and melt your face. 

This brought on the important concept of controlling the map.  Having several important pieces of equipment on the map made players want to control areas, and try to deny other people items by keeping track of respawn timers and recollecting the item again right once it spawns.  This means players need to move to try to prevent other players from obtaining powerful weapons, and making sure they are able to get sufficient gear to battle their enemies.  If you camped, you would be surrendering too many resources to the enemy, and you would die an awful death when the player you let gear out to the max finds your dark corner.  This concept of controlling spawn points of powerful weapons is completely absent in many modern shooters simply because they drop you in the map completely ready to go, with only a few (if any) smaller powerups on the map.

The second way to build a camper-resistant shooter is simply the quality of level design.  Map designers need to be more and more aware of the current trends in shooters, and build their levels around preventing these cheap tactics.  They need to be aware of sniper locations, blind corners, and rooms with only one entrance.  I'm not saying these elements can't be present in a level, but if you throw too much of this in one package (or just one incredibly good sniper spot) it becomes a camper's game.  Levels need multiple paths to the same location, and while cover is necessary in shooters there can't be so much that any idiot with a shotgun can camp a well traveled corner and pick up cheap frags.  Halo is a prime example of a game with lackluster map design.  Halo has weapons (not really health and armor like Quake) and vehicles to get by moving about the map, but many of the levels I played on had wicked spots for snipers and blind corner shotgun campers. 

Promoting movement through essential equipment pickups and ensuring maps don't have too many (or too good) camper spots would increase the entertainment value of shooters by a massive margin.  We can hope someone (I'm looking at you Id Software, super awesome multiplayer Quake 5 next please!) will release a shooter to teach this younger generation of gamers what a real shooter experience should feel like.  Movement, map control. Lets put those 1-hit kills and sniper nests aside people, and pick up our nailguns, rocket launchers, and plasma rifles.

Gaming Triumphs and Failures, Part 2

How about we tackle the iconic genre most people think of when they hear about videogames, first person shooters. I've played countless FPS games, from Wolfenstein 3D, Quake 1 through 3, Doom 1 through 3, Battlefield 1942, Halo, etc. I can truly tell you, FPS games are going downhill. They aren't changing at all. First off, WHY ARE THEY ALL EITHER WW2 OR MODERN ERA? The Call of Duty series pisses me off. Do something original. Not every shooter needs to be placed in modern day situations. Not every shooter needs to be a world war shooter. Where did the aliens go? The fantasy creatures? The alternate worlds? Those are reserved for survival horror and RPGs I guess. After I played Battlefield 1942 everything just started to look the same.


Halo was fun when I played inhouse matches with a group of friends. Halo at least innovated a little bit with regenerating shields to keep the action going instead of finding health kits to restore an HP number (my thoughts on regenerating health in FPS games will be explored in a future post). Halo grew old sort of quickly, and became a camper's game...like almost every FPS on the planet. Games like Doom and Quake were fast paced, and didn't do headshot one hit kills like modern games. You just didn't get gibbed very often like in modern shooters. In newer shooters, you can just camp in a corner and pick people off before they can figure out what happened. I know, Quake had some camping, and I know you can counter campers. Before I hear the cries of “OMFG UR NOOB LOLZ” I'm not bad at new shooters. I'm not great, but I do know ways to counter snipers and campers, I just think it makes for a very lame style of play. I understand realistic shooters have their place, but I long for the more arcade style of Quake and Doom where you can take a rocket and live to fight back and lob your own hardware at your foe. Long intense fire fights were normal, with people jumping over missiles and dodging behind pillars while shotguns reloaded. Now its frequently about jumping people or landing a sniper shot, with intense longer firefights being rare occasions. Some would argue its just a different style of play, which is true, and I just like the old better. That doesn't take away that new FPS games just are NOT innovating ANYTHING, they are just reskinning and adding some new features that have little impact to whats going on. An untrained eye could hardly tell the difference between Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare 2, and Bad Company 2. I don't like it, I know I will get flamed for it. But I believe the FPS genre is dying due to complete lack of innovation.

A noted few have pushed the enveloped. I enjoyed Gears of War, which added a rather nice cover mechanic for stop and pop shooting. Mass Effect 1 and 2 were rather good, while both having flaws (too much pointless space to explore in ME1, with generic sidequests, ME2 had the horrid mineral searching) by pushing in RPG elements with a good story while maintaining fun shooter action.
I'm not trying to say any individual Call of Duty game, or other recent shooters, is bad. I haven't played them enough to make that judgment. It just annoys me to no end how everyone thinks each one of them is a miraculous work, when in fact they seem more like expansions most of the time. No other genre has been so stale for so long, while still being so highly praised. It also doesn't help that the Call of Duty community is just as bad as any others that I have mentioned :)

Triumphs: Arcade style FPS games, daring to innovate in a proven genre, Doom and Quake multiplayer

Failures: Rereleasing the same game 10 times with new graphics and two new features and calling it a sequel, Campers, Mass Effect's empty space and Mass Effect 2's mineral searching

Simple Solution to Gaming Communities

Nothing too substantial today, just an outlet for me to rage a little.  Previously I talked about how terrible many gaming communities are, and how this truly makes me wonder about the true nature of people.  Recall I mentioned a couple posts ago that one of the top League of Legends player's account was hacked, and another top player (and rival) played a match with the hacker on this account knowing that it was hacked.  I won't go into more detail, however the consequence for this person that played with the hacker turned out to be....a ONE WEEK ban.  Seriously.  Read that again.   One week.  Instead of cursing and raging for the next couple paragraphs, I will offer an ultra-simple solution to all of these terrible gaming communities!  Grow a pair and lay down some law.  Actually CARE about your online community!  This person should have been completely and permanently banned.  This person has been in trouble for his actions in the past.  He is very well known for his pisspoor attitude and tendency to rage, along with some questionable morals.  Who cares that he is a top tier player?  Ban him.  Permanently.  I have lost a good deal of faith in the developers of League of Legends due to them passing up this chance to make a critical statement.  Namely, they could have thrown the gauntlet at people like this, saying "we don't care who you are, if you are wrecking the community you are DONE."

Think of the possibilities.  Game developers are completely able to ban people from their games.  They have the technology and the lawful right.  I know that this can be hard to monitor, and could open an ugly can of worms.  Everyone gets mad and frustrated at some point.  This is understandable.  There is a difference between a few cuss words, and calling people the N-word and calling anyone that moves "gay" in nearly every match you play.  Seriously.  League of Legends has a quick and easy to use report-a-player function to inform Riot Games when players are using such racial language, or otherwise griefing other players.  The problem is, the consequences are so minimal.  There are too many people like this to report as well.  The idea is great, but the implementation doesn't work.  When they receive frequent (and proven) reports of these behaviors, these people should simply be banned permanently.  I realize they hate to do this simply for the money they would lose, however the number of players these types of people drive away from the community is countless.  I refuse to play unless I have a group of friends online, because without them I am almost guaranteed to end up on a team with at least one player out to ruin everybody else's game. 

Blizzard Entertainment, creators of World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, tried to step up to the plate.  They were going to implement a system that would require a user to post on their forums with their REAL NAME.  This idea was met with extreme backlash on many fronts, and I believe they have delayed, modified, or scrapped this plan.  I honestly haven't checked what ended up happening, however if you Google it I'm sure you will be met by a storm of articles.  This idea can open up a world of pain, not the least of which could be some privacy concerns.  However, at least Blizzard is showing that they are trying to push something forward to help the ailing gaming communities.  I am actually sort of a fan of the idea, but I acknowledge that it really isn't at all practical.  I applaud their effort at least.

If developers actually cared about their communities, they would be trying desperately to do something, anything, to fix the terrible state of online gaming.  Sadly, the only real threat you hear is getting banned, which doesn't happen because it means they have one less player continuing to buy content for their game.  I dream of a world where someone is willing to stand up and be willing to take a hit to their wallet in order to get something done right, and maintain the best product possible.  Riot Games had a golden opportunity to show players that they care about the people that play their game.  They could have made a statement that childish, disruptive, vile, and horrid people would not be welcome to play, paying or not, so that decent people could have a good game wouldn't need to deal with their total nonsense.

I for one, am not holding my breath.  I'm just vastly disappointed that a company that has produced a game I play and enjoy very much passed up an obvious chance to make a change.  I don't want to sound too down on Riot Games or League of Legends.  The game is great, provided that you have 4 other people you know to play with to avoid the terrible teammates.  Anyway, I'm done with this rant.  More Gaming Triumphs and Failures coming in a day or two.

Gaming Triumphs and Failures, Part 1

Something a little more light-hearted today, I thought I would look at some of the aspects that make a great game, and why some popular games fail completely but are still somehow hailed as great games. As I stated in my previous entry, I have been playing videogames most of my life. I had an NES and a PC at home from as young as I can remember. I'm 23 now, and I'm still up to date with the most recent gaming hardware with a gaming quality laptop and a Playstation 3. I've played, loved, and hated games from just about every genre. What I'm trying to say is, I've been there, done that, seen it, and I know a few things about games. Despite what companies try to push on people these days, HD graphics, surround sound, pricey DLC that should come free in patches, and an ever decreasing difficulty are not what make great games. Looking back through the years, Master of Magic, a strategy game from 1995, is probably my favorite game of all time. This game had everything. The soundtrack was beautiful for its day, and the graphics weren't bad either. This game had exciting strategic combat that actually required thoughtful execution. Master of Magic has literally infinite replay value. The map is randomly generated, 5 difficulties (the computer cheats so much on the highest difficulty it can challenge seasoned veterans of the game), with insane customization options for your wizard. You get 11 “picks” to customize your wizard's abilities and magics. There are 5 magic types, and you can take up to 11 picks in one type, with more picks meaning more and stronger spells in that type, with 18 of special abilities and 14 different species your starting city can be. Each color brings a unique array of spells, and each race plays quite differently. Without going into more detail, you get the point. The AI isn't great, but gets enough cheats and bonuses that it will keep you on your toes. Good combat, fun spells, wide variety of races, exploration, loot, heroes to develop with items and levels, this game is a complete package.

Games like Civilization and Alpha Centauri and even games that try to clone Master of Magic like Age of Wonders Shadow Magic fall flat for numerous reasons. You can pick your nation in Civ, which grants a few small bonuses and a unique unit or two. Master of Magic's racial differences are HUGE. Civ and Alpha Centauri's combat comes down to a simple random number generator dice roll, which isn't exactly involved or exciting. Master of Magic's combat does have some RNG involved, however the way you move your units, cast your spells, and putting yourself in a position to strike first GREATLY influence the way a combat will play out. Civ having no player input into combat is lame, and I never got into the Civ series for this reason. These games claiming to be strategy when combat takes no player input, being decided by an RNG, is an atrocity.

Age of Wonders Shadow Magic has MANY of the same traits as Master of Magic, and is an obvious clone attempt (deemed a spiritual sequel). This game failed pretty badly in my book, while many critics claim it pulled off its mission with flying colors. The races all feel the same. They have unique units, but they are mostly the same as other races' with different graphics and slightly different stats. Master of Magic's units have massive differences in capabilities and special abilities. AoW: SM has the varying magic colors, but all the magics feel mostly the same. Many of the same spell effects show up in multiple colors with simple graphical and name changes, while having only minor number tweaks. AoW: SM tried to balance the game by making everything almost equal, which was horrible. Balance is good, but making everything the same is the wrong, and completely boring, way to do it. Master of Magic is by no means a balanced game, but it made it work to a degree. The AI cheats, and being a 15 year old game multiplayer didn't exist, so the comparison on balance isn't completely fair. The magic colors were all strong in their own way, I have my favorites but you can beat the highest difficulty level with any of the magic colors. Some of the special abilities suck, and I do feel some of the races are underpowered. There are plenty of races, special abilities, and magic colors that are top tier combinations. Obviously I haven't tried everything (possibilities noted above) but if you plan your magic/race/abilities/strategy well, you can win. Many races have overpowered units, and the magics all have overpowered spells, enough so that everything is overpowered so it sort of balances out to a degree (by no means completely). Heroes built properly, however, are totally overpowered (Warrax and Mortu especially). If this was multiplayer, it would need massive balancing changes. But I would argue this could be done without taking away the variability. A few changes to a few spells, units, and abilities, with a massive change to how heroes/items scale, and this would work on a multiplayer level. AoW: SM just feels like watered down Master of Magic. It gets difficult to explore this idea completely without diving into more details about Master of Magic than most of you probably care to read. This game is totally worth picking up today, even at full price.

I know this post probably reads a bit scattered. What I'm trying to get at here, is many newer games try to sell replayability through reskinning or adding small new features. Looking at a game like Master of Magic, you can see real variety in gaming. Without spreading itself too thin, it has offered me over a decade of gaming. Too many games these days give me the feeling of doing the same thing over and over (ever try leveling in World of Warcraft, or bought generic survival zombie shooter number 2948?). Games also try to balance themselves by making things rather unremarkable. Games frequently offer a wide array of abilities, weapons, or guns that are almost the same with different graphics and slightly different stats, simply out of fear that the game developers will be unable to balance everything if there are large differences in functionality.

But, I feel I'm ranting here.... Don't get me wrong, I have played plenty of modern games that I enjoy, I just feel that gamers are overwhelmed with mediocrity at every turn these days, and a truly good game is becoming more and more rare as time goes on. I have endless opinions on games, both old and new, so it is a safe bet that this will be a continuing series on this blog.

Triumphs: Master of Magic, replayability by giving the player limitless possibilities to customize their powers which all feel and play very different, making the player feel powerful while still providing a challenge

Failures: RNG only combat in strategy games, lazy game balancing, no worthy Master of Magic sequel has been made

People Suck

I would like to address something that is perhaps a strange way to start this off. In what will probably be the most profound post in this blog, I would like express concern for the current state of people in general. Most people will try to play themselves off as at least neutral toward others, if not at least slightly respectful. However, if you strip away all forms of accountability for their actions, people change. How many of you would steal a million dollars from a massive corporation like Microsoft, if you knew with 100% certainty that you would never be caught or suffer any negative consequences in any way? My guess is, most people would, or at least be strongly tempted to do so. I come face to face with this type of behavior quite frequently while playing videogames on the internet. For those of you who are unfamiliar with how online gaming works, you create an account, typically tied to your email address which only the game developers know. While playing with other people, they see whatever player name you choose, and they cannot see your email, your real name, where you live, nothing. You are essentially nothing but some imaginary name. Of course, you are able to talk with other players in the game through various means. The people in these games, to be blunt, are almost exclusively terrible human beings. I have been playing online games since I was a teenager, and have experienced several online communities including World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Quake 2 and Quake 3, Diablo 1 and 2, among others. In all of them, the same flaws have persisted through a decade of my experiences, and in all honesty it scares me sometimes. People will verbally attack others without provocation for no reason other than to attempt to psychologically wound another human being. People will play the game in a way to intentionally disrupt others' gameplay for the sole reason of causing trouble for other people (I'm talking about when the game is not meant to be played this way, and you receive no reward whatsoever for doing so). Players will show no forgiveness for other people's mistakes, even in noncompetitive games, and will take absolutely no responsibility for their own.




For example, one of the best League of Legends player's recently had some of his personal information stolen, and his account to the game was hacked. This hacker logged into the game with this account and played a match. Four other people, some with a high respected standing in the online community, joined the game with this hacker and played a full match. They KNEW that this account was being played by a hacker (they admitted this) and played with this hacker anyway. Their excuses varied, from being a rival to this top player who was hacked, being fun to play with a hacker on a pro player's account, and the player deserving to be hacked because his information was easy to get to. As another example, in World of Warcraft, high level players frequently go into low level areas just to kill new players that stand no chance to fight off the high level character. The high level player gains absolutely no reward for this. No gold, no experience points, they don't level up or gain a badge of honor. They just go to annoy and disrupt other people for their twisted form of enjoyment. These behaviors are so common players have coined several terms for people doing this, typically calling them “griefers.” When given free reign with no tie to their real identity, a disturbingly vast majority of people tend to take actions to cause others harm in some way. Going to most internet forum websites will yield this result as well, where people like this are called “trolls.”



At this point many of you are probably thinking that I'm leaving out all the positive experiences I've had, and that I'm simply being selective. I have met some of my best friends through online gaming experiences. However, I can count the number of kind people I've met playing videogames online for about 10 years using only my fingers and toes. The number of trolls and griefers would number in the hundreds at least. Some people would argue that this is a very small selection of people, and to a degree they are correct. While World of Warcraft has advertised as having over six million players worldwide, they can hardly be considered a global meter for the human condition. However, gaming as a whole has been increasingly more popular, with game names like Halo and Call of Duty becoming recognizable by most teens and young adults. Is this horrible trend applicable only to the nerds and geeks of online gaming, or is it only seen in this population because it is a situation where any chance of suffering a real world consequence for their actions is removed? Nerds are even typically steroetyped as being the “niceguys” versus the more rude and condescending population of “jocks” and “preps.” While I won't go back into the high school clichés, I don't believe that computer gamers are someone more evil than your standared non-gamer young adult.



Others may argue that this entire situation is unrealistic, and that people should not be judged how they respond in a scenario where there is no responsibility tied to their actions. This argument is completely flawed. While this situation may be detached from reality, it shows a person's true colors because it leaves them with no reason not to do whatever they want. There are no inhibitions or outside influences to prevent them from doing exactly as they please. And a majority of people choose to rude, offensive, disrespectful, and cruel to other people. Online gaming communities as a whole have become so hostile that it is nearly impossible to try to play any team-oriented or cooperative game without filling your entire team with friends, because you won't want to deal with the awful personalities of 99.9999999% of the people you meet in the game online. Trying to find a team of random players online that you can get along with well enough to play the game becomes a test of your pain tolerance. I'm not trying to call out videogames in anyway whatsoever. I spend much of my free time gaming and have a wonderful time, provided I play either single player games or bring a team of friends online. Anyway, leave a comment if you agree or have a story to try to brighten this rather frightening trend. I'm going back to League of Legends hoping to have a match where someone doesn't question my sexuality or call out my Mother because my team of five friends (who are actually gamers that are decent human beings) managed to crush his team of assholes.

Wall of Text crits for 9000.

Hello World!

I've been meaning to start a blog for some time now, and I've just finally gotten around to it.  I don't have a particular reason in mind, other than I like to rant about things and I feel my opinions are usually important somehow.  Keeping in mind  how random I can be, I can't give much more detail than that.  I do have a few entries mostly written already, so check back regularly for updates!