www.joystiq.com/2008/08/28/capcom-resident-evil-2-wiimake-rumor-isn’t-worth-a-comment
Upon reading this story, I knew something was up, so I decided to contact Svensson, the VP of Strategic Whatever and Something at Capcom.
Big mistake.
“Fuck you.You are an asshole. I hate you so much. This is so stupid. How do you idiots get the idea that we’re making this game. You are so retarded. Why don’t you go mongle more cocks you fag-humping dick bishop. If I get one more call about this, so help me God, I’ll drive a wheelbarrow full of flaming dicks up your ass.”
Then he hung up on me.
I think we can file this rumor under “maybe”!
Final Fantasy XI’s New Boss: The Virginator
You know, I really don’t know why people keep making fun of MMO players. They’re always stereotyped as people with nothing better to do than sit and right click on stuff for hours at a time. It’s so unfair!
Oh wait.
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Final Fantasy XI has a boss that a raiding group played against for eighteen hours before giving up because everybody was throwing up and passing out. Granted, most MMO sessions end in me throwing up and passing out, but that’s just due to an unrelated drinking problem.
Keep in mind, this is at least 18 hours. This boss hasn’t been beaten yet. Presumably, you will receive some sort of reward for beating this boss. Obviously, since you’d likely have to be leveled pretty high to beat it, odds are the reward wouldn’t really be experience. Also, if I spent 18+ hours killing a monster in an MMO, and only received XP and gold, I’d spend the next 18+ years in jail, because everyone responsible for that lost time would pay it back in bloodshed and tears.
This is what I hate most about stereotyping: seeing the stereotyped people emphatically live up to, or even try to surpass the accusations levied against them. This absolutely bugs the hell out of me, especially with gamers. The few who shit in buckets so they can sit in front of an MMO 24/7 don’t just make me sick at how much of a worthless waste of life they are, they actively cause nongamers to have preconcieved notions about our hobby that simply aren’t true, and that causes problems for all of us individually. It’s kind of like gay stereotypes. Nearly every gay person I’ve known or been friends with have been completely normal people, they just happen to be attracted to a different gender, no different than how some guys like blondes and some like redheads. But the only type of gay guy you see on TV is the screeching snooty fashonista who hits on every guy he sees. And then we wonder why so many people hate gays? I would too if they all acted like the Queer Eye guys!
And it’s exactly the same with MMO players. Most of them are well-adjusted people who enjoy playing WoW or something in their free time, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But what do you see all over TV? People shitting in socks and living in squalid dumps so they can make pretend money all day long.
I can understand people getting really into a hobby. Hell, I run a fucking gaming blog, it’s not like this I’m a stranger to this concept. But you have to prioritize. I’m married, employed, I’ve got a nice apartment, nice car, and I’m getting ready to go to college for a journalism degree. Do I want to just sit and play Actraiser all day? Fuck yeah I do, sometimes. But I understand there are other things in life. I’m a musician, I write, I go on dates with my wife, I go bowling with my cousin Roman, I travel back in time to save my mom from being crippled by my father’s invention (the password is LARA) then Robo gives me an item that automatically brings me back to life once. I can separate my hobby from reality!
Seriously though, these wastes of life are a fucking blight on this Earth. If all you do is make everything worse for other people, then why do you even exist? That’s why Hitler ki- Hey, where’d my Google Adsense ads go? Hey… my… my host just dropped me. What the hell?
Sony Mailing LittleBigPlanet Postcards To… EVERYBODY
www.joystiq.com/2008/08/29/postcards-pitch-littlebigplanet-to-the-masses
Sony is so desperate for LittleBigPlanet to help Solid Snake carry the entire PS3 platform that they’re going to inform EVERYBODY about it. Seriously. They’re going to send out postcards to everybody in the hopes that the information about the game will be enough for people to buy a $400 game system to play it, Metal Gear Solid 4, a handful of bad exclusive games, and the shittiest version of every multiplatform game. Oh, and Blu-Ray discs. Let’s not forget those! Everybody would be happy to buy their entire movie library they just bought 5 years ago again to watch them in slightly higher fidelity.
I don’t mean to shit on LBP. It actually looks pretty awesome. I’m just frustrated by the PS3. I had a lot of respect for Sony until they lost their fucking minds immediately before the release of the PS3. All of a sudden, it seemed to be a game for the Playstation division executives to make the worst mistake they could possibly think of. It’s not just that they were cocky; I can understand that, the PS2 was a fucking force of nature. If you were born between 1990 and 1998, you were pretty much issued one at birth. No, the thing that really bothers me is that they believed they were completely infallable. Any mistake they made was automatically not a mistake, even if they have to lie about what happened. Sometimes they just make stuff up, like when Jack Tretton said it was impossible to find a PS3. They were there! He had to have known that! Or maybe he’s so out of touch with reality he just never leaves his office. Or, even better, maybe Sony set up a fake world inside the SCEA building so that he thinks he’s walking home and living a regular life, but in actuality paid actors are coming up to him pretending to love the PS3. The most likely answer, however, is just that’s he’s an arrogant asshole trying to make up fake information to appease stockholders who are seeing how miserably the PS3 is failing.
In reality, though, the thing I hate the most about the PS3 are the fans. Not the regular fans, or people who just bought it to complete this generation’s trifecta, the hardcore fans who try so hard to delude themselves and others into thinking everything’s ok. They’re like an abused spouse. “No, Sony didn’t MEAN to do that. It’s not their fault, we’re just not buying enough systems. They only act like this cause they love me. It’s gonna get better… everything’s gonna get better. Once they get their rumble feature back. They just got off to a rough start. They won’t do this again. I… I just wanted to play Bioshock… oh god, they’re releasing it! You have to leave, Xbox 360. They’ll kill me if they find you here!” How hard is it to just admit the damn thing’s a failure? I’ll just say this: my favorite game of all time is Earthbound. It was a colossal failure. It’s much more popular now than it was when it was released 14 years ago (goddammit I’m old). It doesn’t change anything I like about it to admit it failed! It did, and I acknowledged that and moved on. Have some fucking dignity, PS3 fans. Call it a “cult hit”. That’s what we Earthbound fans do. Quit embarrassing yourselves.
SHOCKING Xbox Live Poll Results!
www.joystiq.com/2008/08/29/gamerpicks-xbox-live-rock-the-vote-polled-obama-ahead
I’ve got some breaking news for you fuckers. MTV, bastion of vital political information, did a completely scientific poll (they counted gamertags with pictures of the candidate) to see who was leading in the hearts of gamers. Amazingly, Barack Obama, the 47 year old Democratic candidate whose revolutionary use of the internet and other technological means to gain the support of young people across the country is actually BEATING John McCain, a 72 year old Republican who doesn’t seem to know what the internet is!
To discover how this impossible scenario could ever happen, I decided to take it TO THE STREETS.
Unfortunetly, no one was willing to dignify me with a response, so I’ve got nothing.
Ahem.
Did you guys see the Olympics? They were pretty cool.
Brett Ratner is a Dead Man
www.kotaku.com/5043289/brett-ratners-guitar-hero-movie-idea-sounds-crappy
This can’t be allowed to happen. Someone must stand up for disaffected movie fans and gamers and for people who simply still have faith in mankind.
As an aside, has anyone noticed that, if you throw Fred Savage and a Power Glove in, this idea would pretty much just be the Wizard? Does he know about that movie? I actually hope he makes it and the owners of the copyright for the Wizard sue. What a surreal lawsuit that would be.
Actually it’d probably be very staid and boring. But in my mind, The Wizard would be owned by the most esteemed representatives of the 80s. Max Headroom, Hulk Hogan, Black Michael Jackson, Mario, and Optimus Prime would enter the courtroom dressed in business attire to defend their copyright against the forces of evil. I’m not sure what the final outcome of the case would be, but I’m pretty sure the Earth would be destroyed.
(Sorry about the short length of upcoming articles and any potential formatting problems. I have to do all this on my shitty Palm Treo until mein arbeitgeber decides to install my internet.)
An Uneventful Absence
I have recently moved. As a result, I am fresh out of internets. Because I work for my internet provider, it will take an unbelievably long time for me to actually have my service activated. As a result, posts will be infrequent at best.
Braid Came Out.
So, this game Braid came out. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s because nobody on Earth had heard of it until they announced it would be $15. At that point, people completely lost their shit over the price of something they had never heard of to begin with.
First off, let me say that my experience with the game is based solely on the demo, because I found nothing in the demo that personally warranted a purchase of the game (at any price, not just $15).
Braid is really confounding. It’s very difficult for me to form a real opinion on it. On one hand, nothing I’ve played really felt particularly innovative or unique, since most of the mechanics in play have already been seen in other games. The art style, while decently pretty, is nothing to reach sexual climax over, as many critics would have you believe. It just looks like a watercolor painting. It’s nice, but not amazing, and the idea of designing a game in the same style as a “real” visual art form has been around forever.
(As an aside, it’s really amazing that the game looks as good as it does, seeing as the visuals were designed by David Hellman, responsible for the MS-Paint-esque art from shitty webcomic/pretentious horseshit A Lesson is Learned But The Damage is Irreversable. I guess he does have talent, even if it doesn’t show up anywhere in his comic.)
Even though the game isn’t particularly innovative, it is pretty fun. It has some seriously awesome puzzles, especially the Donkey Kong themed level. Designer Jonathan Blow clearly has the spirit of a gamer. I think this is what really sets him apart from most “art game” designers: he actually gives a shit about games and, more importantly, has actually played some. The phenomenon of art games has been receiving more and more attention lately, but Braid is the first one I’ve played that is a game in any way, shape, or form. I personally don’t see the point in using a “unique” medium for any type of art unless it benefits the art. Most art games are really godawful, with nothing but a smugly pretensious message and an utter lack of gameplay value, only “games” in the sense that they receive tactile input and interpret it to do something else. In other words, they are as much games as driving a lawnmower is a game.
Braid manages to avoid this by giving us a reason to see the message the game has. That said, a lot of the first part of the game is just filler. I wouldn’t even consider it a game until the second world. It might as well say “This portion for critical and award consideration only. Please bear with us; your game will begin shortly.” at the bottom of the screen. This put a bad taste in my mouth, somewhat akin to licking a hippo’s asshole, until I reached the end, whereupon a totally fucking rad dinosaur came out and and said “I’m sorry, but your princess is in another castle”. This intrigued me just enough to keep playing, and I discovered a pretty damn fun puzzle platformer.
I’m not going to really go into too much detail about the game outside of this, because I don’t think that, having only played a demo, I have sufficient credentials to review it.
Well, actually, journalistic ethics have nothing to do with it. I just don’t want to incur Jonathan Blow’s wrath. Motherfucker can show up anywhere, at any time. I hear he’s the ghost of a pirate who died 500 years ago, and haunted around California until he decided it was time to do something with his life, went to college for a programming degree, and created a game, only to haunt blogs and forums about his game.
Things That Have Been Pissing Me Off Lately – Part 1
(Sorry about the long delay. Moving and organizing. Also, I’ve been conquering the moon.)
As I’m sure you’re aware, many things really piss me off. I have an opinion on just about everything, mostly completely uninformed and unjustified. Of course, I’m still right. So, in celebration of my extreme temper and severe mental imbalance, I present a new, completely original, never been done before series: Things That Piss Me Off.
First up: Brooding Anti-Heroes.
How many times is fucking Wolverine going to be made into a shitty game character? I love Wolverine. I do! But I’m so tired of playing as shitty ripoffs of him. The worst part is they can’t even usually get that right. For example, look at the restarted Prince of Persia series. After the first game, Ubisoft decided the game wasn’t fucking stupid enough, so they turned the game from a clever puzzle game into a shitty brawler, and turned the Prince into the 15-year-old assclown in a Disturbed t-shirt who fucks up your order 4 times in a row at Taco Bell.
I admit, playing as Ghandi wouldn’t be fun either. He doesn’t have to be a saint, but I don’t care as long as it’s not Kratos. I fucking goddammed hate Kratos. He’s the most generic, run of the mill video game character I can presently think of. Except, of course Marcus Fenix.
If there was a video game cliche book, Marcus Fenix would be on the goddammed cover. Shit, it’d probably be named after him. A buff (!), bulky (!!), brooding(!!!) space marine(ARGHHHHH) with a gritty voice and some serious attitude. Add a retarded weapon (a chainsaw rifle… Jesus.) and you’ve got the epitome of… the same goddamn character we’ve seen since 1993.
(So, hopefully everyone enjoyed this entry. I mean, of course you enjoyed it, because I’m awesome, but hopefully you weren’t bothered too much by the irony of me creating a generic complaint article to complain about generic characters. HAHA I MADE FUN OF MYSELF NOW YOU CAN’T)
Epic Games President Mike Capps stated in an interview at E3 that the reviews of the PC version of Gears of War are “bullshit”.
The game currently has an 87 on Metacritic.
…
What?
Mr. Capps, I think you should really just calm down and look at the situation. Any other developer of a generic, mediocre third person shooters would be proud of an 87! Why do you feel like your game deserves any different? Your shitty game made it really far. You made all kinds of money and garnered critical and popular acclaim. You didn’t innovate at all, you had the same goddammed fucking space marine story every fucking game has had since Doom came out. Basically, you didn’t accomplish shit, and you already got a tremendous reward for it. You have no room to complain, especially considering the only reason for the lower score was how buggy the PC version was when it was released.
I almost feel bad about this post. I love CliffyB, I just think this particular game was incredibly uninspired. I feel like a parent who’s fighting in front of a kid. It’s not his fault. CliffyB, if you’re reading (which you aren’t), I don’t blame you, and Epic and I still love you very much. You wanna go get some ice cream, champ?
www.nintendo.com/consumer/pinrecall.jsp
Nintendo is recalling a series of character lapel pins that are totally balls-to-the-wall awesome. Just look at them:
Lead or not, I’d still wear all of those fuckers at the same time, directly in my skin if necessary. If you went into a doctor’s office for lead poisoning after wearing these, he’d say “You’re a brave young man/woman. You’d think as a doctor I’d know which one you are. But I failed medical school. Anyway, for standing in the face of adversity by doing the right thing and wearing these pins despite the very real danger they posed to your health, I hereby declare you Chief Surgeon of this hospital!“
