Toadie's Ranthole on the InterBlag

About the Duke.

2011-06-16T12:21:00.000+08:00

Okay so, Duke Nukem Forever has finally seen the light of day, and needless to say it's getting a post-launch lashing.

Some justified, some not. I've played it through, I've experienced it. I think that really the summation of the game could be put up as "1998 in 2011's clothing" and really is the victim of itself. There was absoultely no way in hell the game could be what we in 2011 were hoping or dreaming it could be.

In 1996-7 when the game was drafted, this game would have been fresh and innovative, even outstripping Half-Life 1 to interactivity and storytelling within games IF it had come out then. It didn't. So in 1998 when we saw it, it looked awesome, running on the then-shit hot Quake 2 engine. Then a few years went by of psuedo-silence before the 2001 E3 trailer literally blew everyones brains out. Even by today's standards, that was a HELL of a trailer. THAT game would have made game of the year. That didn't happen. By now, the official development time on DNF was 5 years, 3 of those with public interest. then nothing.

Literally NOTHING.

For 6 years.

The entire game industry went through SEVERAL full reiteration cycles in that time. Those who were around playing Duke 3D in thefirst place grew 10 years. If you were 12 when DN3D came out, you were 21 now, if you were 20 then you were 29. A fuckload of things happened.
Then we get a small 15 second teaser saying that Duke isn't dead. Then 3D Realms dries up, thne gets sued, then dries up more. Then in 2009 Gearbox picks up Duke's pieces.

So now we're lookign down the barrel a game that is so loaded on hope and hype that there is no chance that it could be good, lest of all if it stuck to the design docs from 1997. Which for the large part it did. Which is the problem.
not it's, yours.
Through all the development hell, the game didn't change. It's expectations didn't change over the years. Duke's humor didn't change, Duke's approach to the world didn't change. The developers despite fallout and reformation didn't change. You did. Your expectations of the game from 1998 to 2011 have changed so vastly that you're unwilling to even to enjoy this game for what it is-
A monument to the colossal fuck up that was it's development.

The game handles like a FPS from 1998, and if you're expecting anything more than that, your sights are FAR too high. The graphics are somewhat forward of that point, but only to the point where pixel shaders and polycounts are not 1998 level. AO helps the game in this respect, but don't expect Crysis.

While playing, at some point you'll probably ask yourself "Why did this game even get released?"
I have two answers, both likely worked in tandem:
1) 2K Games Recouping development costs for the project
2) Big names who worked on this game having far too much pride of craftmanship to let the game never see light.

Ignoring the lengthy time in the making, I actually didn't mind the game at all. The entire game felt like a game, which was refreshing after playing so many games trying to be movies, or reality, or comic books, or whatever. The game world worked like you would expect it to, with very few invisible wall moments. It made you constantly aware you were playing a game, which is the directly opposite of immersion. But you know what? That's fine. It's not a game to be immersed in character or story. It's game where you play a guy with a gun who's the center of his own world, and you've got shit to kill. End of story. It's actually refreshing to play a GAME game for once though, where the game knows it's a game, you know it's a game, and nobody's pretending to be otherwise. You can see it's working parts, understand how everything works by simply looking at it.

Really, if I had to pick out any bit that could be picked out for poor implementation, for certain, it would be a mid-section, romping through the desert on the monster truck. It felt stretched thin, and on average probably was the least aesthetically pleasing section of the game. If it were shorter, it'd probably have been less jarring. But no, it drags on, which is bad.

There's nothing I really can say about this game in deconstructing it that is either fair to expecations of gamers today OR the game itself without stepping on the toes of the other. The mechanics are telegraphed and overt (and apparently the console release is plagued with auto aim issues). The story is simple yet convoluted but is also played to irrelevance. The sound design is actually pretty nice, and is finished off with neat occlusion effects. The graphics are dated, but that's almost to be expected.

If I had to give an opinion on whether to buy or not, I'd say do it with three following caveats for that verdict-
1) You consider the purchase and play of this not as a purchase of a game to fill time, but as a testement to it's own nightmarish development.
2) You take no preconcieved notions about what the game could be like into it.(and play it on PC)
3) You have been waiting for this game for 12 years. You must buy it if only to say that you have it.

Me? I still love me some duke, and this game is the Duke-iest thing I've played in ages.
I'd give it a Duke/10.

OH MY JESUS

2011-03-14T17:55:00.000+08:00

Okay so I’m un the interlearns now… it’s a nasty sticky business, but overally I’ve gotta confess I am rather enjoying the experience… except for one unit.

I have to say, I really am not one to like book learning art. I have real issues with it, like diametrically polarized against it. I find that art in the book sense tends to be full of pretentious WANK. Two and a half pages of words to explain that could be easily done in two lines. Sociology fares about the same (which thanks to the nature of my course I must dabble in at least twice more over my 3 years). So you can imagine my chagrin with a unit that is about 50% art history reading, 30% sociology in relation to art, and the final 20% being labwork. It is mountains of unintelligible text, followed by mountains of unintelligble wank text, followed by “now lets use the crop tool”. So I spent today playing mass catch up with this unit, doing the rather large reading… WHAT IN THE LORD’S FUCK IS GOING ON HERE.

To quote my scribblings on the 10-pages

“Small summary of the Making friends with Jarvis Cocker text:

The Web. 2.0. Despite there being a perceived notion of the music industry decentralising, democratising (more power to the artists and listeners, less to record companies), this is not neccesarily the case. Let's use Jarvis Cocker as a case to sample against. Words. Words words words. Youtube. Wikipedia. More Words. Myspace. Quantifiable numbers validating that Cocker's Myspace is indeed seen. Youtube videos.Convergent Media. Thanks to WEB TWO POINT OH and SNS the artefacts of the pop idol and rockstar are being challenged, are being bridged, bringing people preceptively closer to their idols . All thanks to the web's society of archiving, we can map trends, we can correlate all kinds of social interactions, friends, top books ,etc etc.

The moral of the story- DICKS and FUCK YOU .“

Sorry, needed to vent. Having NO free time between work and being actually at Uni leaves very little time for study (mostly on weekend), even less for free time, so naturally I’m a little vent-needing.

Please excuse.

Why do I even bother? (A rant-view)

2010-12-14T14:49:00.000+08:00

You know, there are times when I don't know why I bother with these damn Chinese cartoons and mangoes. Sure, for every space epic, or well written drama, there's 3 HORRID, and I mean insultingly horrid, pieces of crap. Usually I'm game to weather their meagre offerings, hell, I got some perverse joy out of how BAD Kampfer was, but I have been almost bested this year.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's BAD ANIME time.

Asobi ni Iku Yo (lit:We came to play) is bad, no two ways you splice it. Naruto levels of bad. Do not come into this expecting something to enjoy, because it will rape your soul.

So the show starts off introducing the best friend of the Main Character, in profile,surrounded by techie nerd stuff, while the plot is whispered into her ears, which she thusly recites, along with some guff about the Browning High-Power pistol, because she will be revealed to us all as a huge kinder-/k/ wet dream whom at every chance drools over firearms all the while ignoring all gun safety and almost killing everyone. We then switch to a scene which is one NGE Asuka Langley introduction, part COD4 Crew Expendable, part MGS2. The main point of this scene is to reveal character TWO of the MC's harem- a flat chested quiet girl with a traditionally long black hair and glasses, who ACTUALLY works as some free agent spy in a stealth suit and can conjure guns and shit out of nothing.You can see where this is going.

So the show is set on Okinawa, the closest thing Japan has to an island escape within affordable travel distance. It also happens to be a major US military installation, and as you'll get thumb-screwed into you, the CIA and the international intelligence agencies are apparently running some sort of stupid not-so-secret mission hiring school kids to be double agents.... what a schoolkid could possibly know or get into that a well-trained agent can't is well beyond me, but hey, this doesn't stop the show.
And now 5 minutes in, we get our Main Character introduction, the stereotypical MC nerd, whose name is so irrelevant to the plot that I have actually completely forgotten it. He's that bland, so let's call him John McBland, or JM for short.

So JM is at a party on the beach with his bearded on-vacation CIA uncle or summat 'ike dat ('tis revealed later in the episode), who promptly offers some beer to McBland as he rounds on him for being the Main Character of a harem and not having any women despite being of the exact age that all MCs are that they begin their harem. CI-Uncle then points out the plot-girl in his harem, who has massive tits, huge curves, a skintight I-can't-Believe-it's-not-NGE jumpsuit and cat ears, who has mysteriously entered teh party.

Naturally she is not from this world, she is from a planet called....*long desparate groan*... Catia. They Went there. The planet of cats is CATIA. So John and Cat-bitch start talking and shit and they become Best friends forever n ever. Not really. He then realised that he's talking to a girl and promptly passes out, which is fine by me. Hope he stays that way. Scene change and he wakes up and "oh shit there's a girl in my bed scene happens" followed by "best friend walking in and getting all pissed off at MC" scene. She's also super uppity. No one actually likes her, so let's smile at her face and pretend she's got brain tumors preventing her being pleasant.
Oh and Did I mention that this show is HUGE on fan service and cheesecake. It's constant, never ending, and gets in the way of every single thing, obstructing any virtues the plot may have had.
Normally I'm willing to let it slide when a shows got reasonable amounts of the stuff, or is blatantly a show that is marketed as so, because usually there's some payoff or redemption in plot or art, look at Kampfer or Strike Witches, but oh my god, it's just ANNOYING in Asobi. It literally ruins every scene it's in ,and it's in EVERY scene.

Returning to the plot now, the show plows the plane into international spy conspiracies tower head on, as some agents try to get their hands on uppity Cat-girl's downed space ship, and get her to leave Earth. Furthermore, there is a bunch of insane sci-fi nerds who somehow have guns, even in the only country in the world where such things are completely outlawed, who are trying to get her to leave because she isn't the aliens they wanted (as in they wanted Close Encounters or Predators, or something less mundane)... which results in a full episode of WACKY AVOIDING BULLETS HIJINKS. Also John and Cat-bitch get hooked 'cause she's in heat... because, you know..CATS!

Lemme just round up the plot summary here by saying it does not get better ,and even when the ending gets here, which thankfully is only 12 episodes from the beginning and does attempt to redeem itself by not being completely retarded, does nothing to make the plot endear itself. You will want to stuff it in a box and throw it into a river.

The voice work is merely fine, not above standard, nor below. it is exactly average. The standout character voicing is John Bland, and that's only because his portrayal is the immaculate birth of mediocrity personified.

So why is this show worse than it's last-season counterpart- Kampfer?
It's really that more annoying. Where Kampfer was overcome with being jsut hilariously over the top, the tone of Asobi makes it more grating to take in. If Kampfer was a mix of laughing gas and mustard gas, Asobi ni Iku yo increased the mustard density about ten fold, leaving you gasping for air and covering with welts as you collapse in a pile of your own vomit and blood.

So why did I NOT stop watching? fading hope that it would improve. It didn't.

To weigh out the cons-
I did enjoy two characters - The Chief Maid of Antonia, and her underling, An ex-SAS chick with a penchant for cute things. They were very nice tongue in-cheek characters which raised a smile whenever they made an appearance. They were fun. Everyone else can go back to the swamp in which they dragged themselves out of.

Picture Related (Warning- Explicit Language)

Toadie out.

So THAT's where my hat was....

2010-11-17T15:45:00.000+08:00

Fuck bricks, you can say what you want about the Japanese, but they are nothing if not deviously clever with technology.

See this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXO7KGHtjI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmSoLpzhqUk

That is a live concert with No one actually performing the vocals. That's Vocaloid plus SOLID Holographic projection, with a guy on guitar and two guys on Synths/ drums.

How's that for mind blowing?
The sheer magnitude of the applications of this kind of technology are literally endless.Sure, we've all imagined those standard Star-Wars-esque telecommunication devices, but what about using the stuff to make an otherwise empty room appear to contain a small crowd? What about things like creating whole holographic diversions for a fraction of the price of actually doing the same of actual material? So, Japan, I tip
my hat at thy and raise my glass on high.

Speaking of Japan, let's have a look into non-synthetic music for a second.
I love music, music is awesome. Almost everything from classical to Urban (though with the latter, it's treated more case-by-case), it's all game. Everyone as a home genre, some sect of music that they inescapably latch to. For, me, as no surprise, it's Ska, and I am willing to share my passion with anyone who'll give me 5 minutes.
Now, I wasn't actually aware that Japan had a scene for this stuff, but after following a trail of breadcrumbs left through comments around the interhighways, I came to this exact realisation. What's more, it's a reasonably robust ska scene in Nipponland, which makes me just that much more curious to delve in and see what's on offer.

Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, The Sideburns, Blue Beat Players, it's all great stuff and a real embracing of all 3 eras of the music. However, I wanted to bring to the table one band to the table today - Ore Ska Band (Literally- We're a Ska Band). They're a real treat, playing some tapping tunes which draw mostly from that classic two-tone sound, with some nice brassy horn lines. This, combined with three part harmonies and that flat out over-syllabic tendancy of the language, create one of those things you have to hear to appreciate.

Do the lyrics match the music? I have no god damned clue, I don't speak the moonrunes. Although, this band has given me the one reason to bother learning. To hell with Anime, stuff for kicks or other pretentious cloaked intentions, I want to know what they're singing about, just to bring that level of understanding up a notch. That being said, not knowing does not by any means diminish the listening experience, it's music that just beckons to be danced to.

Another point to bring up, OSB are one of only a handful of bands that play the genre that I know of that have started well after the late 90's "Summer of Ska". Just saying.

That's it for me for the first time in several months. Expect the uptick to increase as we get closer to the D (tm)
Also, while we're here- Sergio Mendez & Brasil '66 - this is required listening.

So, Medal of Honor.

2010-07-21T21:51:00.000+08:00

So, apaprently I had access to the Medal of Honor beta. Given some playtime,I can safely say several things.

The first of these things is that the UI is FRIGGIN ATTROCIOUS. I know there is a orange/blue color thing that generally is one of those.. things, that has been shown to draw the human mind in like it a strobe light, but it's goddamn horribles. It's overstated tosay the least, eye raping to say the most. Worst of all it jsut doesn't work.

The menus need serious work, ranging from being vaguely non-functional through to just plain bizzarre.
Oh sure, I've seen WORSE designed interfaces, but this is probably up there as one of the less impressive out of a AAA title. It looks bad, it functions.. oddly, it's an allround dissappointment.

Gameplay has me confused though. It's clear that DICE was brought in on the project to make some sort of fusion BFBC slash COD game, and that's pretty much exactly where the game sits, from what you can play of it in the beta. Push mode from Bad Company, Closer combat from Modern Warfare. Here's my problem-
Why does this game exist? The Teamplay-ness is pretty alright, but it's detracted by that MW2-like fast pace, so it's nowhere near as coherent as BC2 for that aspect. Then there's the fast-pace shooter elements and levelling, which are very much like MW2 (all be it disfigured by ODD kit customising menus), but because of the teamplay elements , it's somewhat slower than it's inspiration, so it's not as coherent as MW2. You're left with a multiplayer game that tries to do two things, but pulls neither of them well enough to impress upon me.

I will say that the graphics, even on low are MUCH nicer than either of the other two games. So I guess that's a plus, even if at this point all the aniamtions are recycled from Bad company 2.

To be honest, I'm more interested in the Singleplayer. They've been saying a lot of big things about the SP in this game, and I REALLY hope they deliver on it... but the MP, as far as I care right now, give it a miss.

Can't sleep, housemates will eat me. (when it rains it pours)

2010-07-09T01:22:00.001+08:00

So here I am writing vertically in my room, completely bottomed out. REally, I haven't felt so low since high school, and believe me if you knew me through year 8,9,10 you should know that that was indeed a dark fucking hole in my life.
Yeah I'm back there, back in the hole.

It's the night I confirms my monthlong paranoid fear that my housemates were indeed out to get me because I am, in my own words, a high maintenance fuckup with nothing but trouble for them. The worst thing is, the monster of my mind that I thought I had tamed years ago, all the barbs,stings and verbal punches they haveused on me all point to that monster being at large.

For those who don't know, I'm a dyspraxic, I have both motor and Developmental Dyspraxia (which for a quick blurb, see US NINDS For a better description, see Wikipedia ). It permeates it's way through my life like some invisible python, striking when I've got my back turned. Think you've got fine motor skills down? OH NO! THERE GOES A PLATE WITH FOOD. Think you've remembered something, something that you only needed to remember maybe for half a day? OH NO, WHERE DID THAT MEMORY GO? OOPSIES. Irregular routines? YOU MISSED A STEP.Quick what did you have for breakfast? YOU CAN'T. Time management and logical processing? HA. Social Abilities? NOT TODAY SON. Sometimes it ain't a problem ,you know? You can get through a day, a week a month, fine, nothing goes wrong, then BAM. Right in the face, a week where everything that makes dyspraxia such a nightmare to live with comes haunting from high. You'll forget a bus, drop a plate, spill a cup, forget to lock a door, not manage a social interaction, find an exam you won't be able to write more than 5 minutes of without suffering debilitating hand pain, Trip and fuck up your nice smart business pants, misjudge someone's intentions and then to top it all off find out that all your friends now hate you because of it, and they want you out.

Like they say, when it rains, it pours. Goddamn is it pouring today. Could really do with an umbrella, or some understanding, Either or.

Review- WORKING!!

2010-07-04T00:46:00.000+08:00

Can I preface this by saying WHERE THE HELL IS THE GODDAMN MANGA OR THE VN?! I know Working is indeed an adaption of a combo manga VN series, however I can find neither hide nor hair of them on the internet, other than spurious claims that they exist. Goddamn I want MORE.

Now onto the review.

Slice of life, Comedy, Workplace (what's that? NOT A SCHOOL AND IT'S A SLICE OF LIFE?! SHAKU HORA)
Moe - 2.5/5 - Can get a bit moe, but not enough to make you hate yourself for liking it.
Violence - 3/5 Lots of animated punching, mainly one character. No gore, not intended to be srs violence... think slapstick on steroids.
Cheesecake - Nil
Pandering - Nil
Cheese - Some. It can get cheesy.

A Family restaurant in Hokkaido one day during the middle of winter finds itself short a service attendant. Send out Popura Taneshima to go find anyone interested. Souta Takanashi, after mistaking her for a someone much younger than he (as it turns out, she is his senior), he agrees to work at Wagnaria, restaurant full of lively characters. These range from the seemingly innocous Popura Taneshima who has a height complex (hey it least it isn't BREASTS again, also, see what they did there?), to the katana-weilding chief Yoshiyo Todoroki. 13 episodes of intrigue, character development and comedy ensues. I'd give away more, but I'm not too sure how much more can be given away without ruining it. Like a parfait.

As probably eluded to by peicing the puzzle so far, you may have already figured, this a character-driven show. There is no big dramatic moment that any one of the characters is driving towards from the beginning ( or at least not traditional storytelling sense of the word, there is a conflict resolution and such and I don't want to give too much more than that away). It is of itself simplistic, but for a Slice of Life series, simple is fine, especially when it's pulled off well.
Anybody who's worked in a restaurant or fast food joint should feel pangs of familiarity about the place watching this, regardless of how bad it was where you were. You were always surrounded by a cast of crazies, each with their own bunch of odd and interesting things about them. Working brings THAT feeling straight to animation, and brings it well. With a bunch of colourful characters, that bittersweet mix of work and happenstance ,and of course the relieved walk away at the end of the day, it knows it's strength lies in the workforce. Popura the midget, Souta the worshipper of all things cute, Mahiru the androphobe (yes it's real, and so is gynophobia), Jun the gossipmonger kitchenhand, Yachiyo the Chief, the list goes on, eachof them created specifically to be an ingredient for HYJINX. The characters all play off each other without becoming grating, and it all feels natural which is indeed a credit with a series with this many ODDITIES.

The show also manages to weave in a few undercurrent narratives into the overall structure. These range from ones that subtly make their way into the main happenings, like the unrequited love of Jun toward Yachiyo. Others are mostly implied, like Kyouko's previous life as what can be safely assumed as a gang thug. I can't say these aren't unwelcome, it certainly gives extra depth to what could be a very flat piece.

In short, story is well played out and written, characters feel natural yet odd and unique. For laughs, there's one "normal" character in the show and she loses it when she is observed to be quite un-normal by virtue of not being as quirky as the rest of the crew. It's quite bizarre.

To go with the crazy characters that Working has, Working brings some decently executed character designs. Most of the time, you see characters in work uniforms, which I suppose are somewhat less interesting school uniforms by needs of utility trumping individuality, but it's rarely an issue, Working gives each character it's own readily attributable uniform tweaks. On top of that, there seems to be none of that uniform character height issue in here (please tell me I'm not the only one who notices this when it's prevailent). All the characters are readily identifiable and have just the right balance of authenticism and creativity to not come off either as "too cartoony/stereotypical-anime-y" or as too bland ina real world sort of way.

Animation in Working isn't like Haruhi Suzumiya (where a large percentage of the animation team of the entire company were spent dedicating their time to animating everything that could possibly move in every frame ever), it falls very much into the traditional anime framework, which is in essence animation on a budget. Don't get me wrong, the animation that's there is really great quality stuff (despite a couple of rough hiccups during the second ep), but it's not as expansive for keyframes or percentages of screen real estate moving as the former. On the bright side it is a lot cleaner than K-on Season 1 was, and there's enough animation there to get the point across with just the right amount of conviction. A cautionary note for people who don't like chibification- there is some in this, you may rage. Don't worry, because it's for solidifying punchlines, not for it's own sake.

VA for Working is rather excellently cast and performed. From Kana Asumi as Poplar to Eri Kitmura as Yachiyo, every casting choice was well thought out here. Oh and Daisuke Ono. Yeah, each character was well cast here, expertly performed too. Never once did I actually suspect that Daisuke Ono was in fact Daisuke Ono.

Background art is well done, enoguh that it never really glaringly looked out of place or badly drawn. To it's credit then, I suppose.

I gotta say, I really do love the soundtrack to this thing. It's brilliant. For a change, all the catches, stringers, and background music, all done with live instruments, and it's an eclectic mix of mostly Light Music, Rockabilly, 4-bar rock and Third-wave Ska. Actually, the opening, Someone Else, is now on permenant loop in my head with it very notable Goldfinger-cross-RBF style to the Horns and 'tar . I really have to give Okabe Keiichi a mound of credit for beng elcectic in his music styles but staying right the hell away from the synthesiser.

(ed note:Except for two tracks. goddamn it, almost flawlesss victory)

Overall,

Working!!, a show about working, and everything that doesn't involve actually working. Well executed hilarity with JUST enough oddball for it to be endeering. Major props for clean music and non-school setting, can be a bit static, but easily overlooked most of the time. Summary- a great watch, isn't going to win awards (thoguh I suspect it wasn't intending to). Good for all company.

RATING-
3 Poprawrs out of 5.

A rating of 3 means that it's overally entetaining. It's bad points outweight it's good.

Billy Blag and his Blog of wonders

2010-06-13T01:52:00.000+08:00

Hey there generic, 5 person audience for my blog, sorry about not posting in here as much as I should, I've been looking after my other children ( Updated Tuesdays, For Hire and whatever mini project is the flavor of my month) amongst other things. I know usually I'm reputed for being lacksadaisical and apologistic towards repairing that trait, but sometimes I really do feel like looking after multiple side non-jobs gets towards the work effort of a real job, and likie a real job, you will forget things.

I guess the the Ranthole got the end of that stick this time. Anyhoo, when the UT website is finished and up (probably shortly after EXAMS) I'm gonna see what I can do to roll my Interblag the UT Interpipes blag. We'll see.

So I was having one of those existential moments, the ones I get every so often when I'm by myself (which is now frequent in my new home), I began thinking about WHY I even bother doing things like a webcomic or a Source Engine mod. I mean, it's not like webcomics nor cooperative games have never been done before. They have, alot, covering many aspect and angles. I know I'm probably not original for taking the routes, and it's debateable whether either of the two of my "kids" have anything that will add to the collective of either arena.
Still, "why?"

So after mulling this for a little I came to several realisations -
One - I don't really care if either Updated Tuesdays or For Hire "succeed": or "fail" in the end, I am right now quite enjoying working on them, and the end product is more or les jsut extra icing

Two- Even though the idea to start a webcomic wasn't origianlly my own, I'm really into it now. It's become it's own beast, which is great because if 12 months ago you said to me "You're going to make a webcomic that isn't failing", I'd have looked at you funny, especially if you told me it wasn't For Hire related. It's challenging me in a way that is different to the way For Hire challenges me too ,which is really handy, I suppose.

Three - They balance each other out in terms of my sanity karma. For Hire is balls to the wall accuracy of the realism variety, which is countered by my loose interpretation on reality in Updated Tuesdays. I guess one is like cerebral atonement for the other's.

Four- One thing's for certain - my art still sucks, either way. I am also fine with this.

Anyhoo, again, a post written post midnight that has a loose purchase on what could be considered conscious thought, I'd write these earlier, but to be honest, I'm not in a writey mood until like 11:50 pm..
So uh, yeah. This probably was a little too self0-indulgent of me, but I dunno, I just felt like writing it. I guess it had to be written or something...
Oh and check out http://updatetuesdays.blogspot.com and http://www.moddb.com/mods/for-hire at your own expense, and I'll try to keep you blaggers up to squick when I can.

Toadie Out.

Blog Flogging

2010-04-26T22:00:00.000+08:00

I know this is going to seem odd coming from someone who never once has owned a Sony console-

I really love the Metal Gear Series.

They are both well written, psuedo-realistic, and at the same time increibly camp and bizarre. It's this schizophrenic mix that isjsut like mad trail mix to me, and honestly I can't get enough of David Hayter doing VO work.

The reason I bring this up is because of the New Portable MGS game, Metal Gear Solid: PEace-Walker. I dunno how, but Kojima always manages to find that way to make whatever system he's making a game for POP. Peacewalker isn't just a solid shotoer game, it's friggin comprehensive Metal Gear Constructor set too, not to mention pseudo0business sim. The meta game of this thing is jsut immense, and when coupled with an already impressive sneak-and-shoot combat system, I'm really REALLY feeling something down there in my pats to go get this game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZXdCunDe_A&

I mean just look, aside from the retconing, how goddamn impressive is this. This is on a Fucking HANDHELD. It's unbelievable.

Can't Sleep Security'll eat me,

2010-03-28T04:27:00.000+08:00

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No really, this shit isn't funny anymore guys, not giving me the option of sleep makes lanning much less fun. Uni middle managment, get ytour shit together.

Episode 3 : Character, the one we one Emmies for.

2010-02-04T02:51:00.000+08:00

I don't know if it's just me, but has anyone begun to really hate, I mean REALLY hate, how simple and shallow game characters tend to be?

Okay I'll partially discount Roleplaying Games because by definition most of these are deep, though they fall into the trap excusing a whole tonne-of-brick typecasting characters, and generally only getting the term deep partially correct (where deep is word-replaced in their minds by "verbal diahorrea for dialog and backstory, and exemplify characteristics by DnD Stats, and a look defined by the BIG BOOK OF MYTHOLOGICAL SHIT"), but still , big budget game developers should be truly ashamed of what they excuse as characters in their games and game storylines.

By character, I'm speaking to every essence of what a well-rounded character personifies-
A percieved history, personal traits both good and bad , behaviour that backs up their traits and history, and appearance. At the moment, games as a general medium address merely two of these most of the time and the rest is usually Mary-Sue/Marty-Stu'd from wherever that shit comes from (probably Fanfic.net). The result is dull characters that one could not give a crap about.

Okay, take Marcus Fenix. Epic gave him a marty-stu armoured-hulk backstory, hulking armor and a voice from the same guy who does Bender from Futurama. He is, however, not well rounded. His actions, or more importantly, the actions the player had at his disposal didn't do any credit to his character's demeanor or backstory, it went tangentical to it in fact. He shows little remorse about his actions, doesn't lament for the dead, and as far as the game will let you go toward being a psychopathic senseless killer.
While that's all fine and great in the scope of the game, where you're stopping an enemy that threatens humanity in all existence, it's still inconsistent with Fenix's background as a decorated soldier who was imprisoned after abandoning his post to save his father. Rarely does this get reflected in the game. In Gears, all he does is tow party line, at the expense of comrades and friends, mercilessly slaughtering locusts for the good of the COG.
For all intents and purposes too, Marcus' background is locked back tight with only a few surface shreds to show for it's existence, and it is never delved into. For the intents of the game, he could just be a robot with a gun and the game would play more or less similarly.

A comparable character to Marcus is Duke Nukem. Yes, Duke Nukem. Unlike Marcus though, Duke Nukem is that way by legay and by design. He's shallow because he comes from an age predating Quicktime events and dead-serious drama in games. He's a cryogenically frozen and occasionally-thawed clone of 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger, without the bad accent, in a game. The difference between the two is not in the gameplay (because they both are action heroes with over the top bloody combat and crazy weapons and one-liners). The difference is that Duke is 10 years Marcus' senior, and overal game story deisng has moved on, but Marcus hasn't.

Then of course the question begins to be asked- " Would I want to find out about Marcus?"
Appallingly, the answer is no. Especially not in the midst of a psychotic chainsawgun-powered testosterone-injected superviolent action game. There is space for exposition, but it'd be a waste in Gears. I mean really, why even bother. Also while I'm at it, I'll thumb Halo for similar characterization.Though to it's credit, it does go out of it's way to break that where it can and has limited success, but fuck it anyway.

Of course someone will inevitably bring up one of several Bioware games, or Fallout (probably 3).Again, RPG games, and they are true exceptions to the rule, because they spend exorbitant amounts of effort doing it.. Except Fallout 3, 'cause fuck that. It shows, mind you, because Bioware games are AMAZING at that specific edge of storytelling. Especially Mass Effect 1 and 2 (and aside from Dragon Age) , do not fall back on DnD Cruxes and typecasting).

People go around and thumb their noses at Far Cry 2 for being quite "bland and boring", however there is a lot to be said for the writing and characters of that game. Like Anthony Burch, I find myself unequivocally attracted to the writing and storyline fuelling this game, as well as it's technical achievements. In particular the characterisation in the game is brilliant. Every characters is unique, with their own goals and ideals, and they back their traits with their actions. Even the Buddies, the interchangeable characters that the player can play as and have as help are all varied in their background, look and vocals. Then there's the Jackal, the elusive bad villain, who you pick up the tapes of in your quest to apprehend him as you venture through the very closest a video game has yet got to the genius introspective of Apocalypse Now, all be it as a subtext to the immediate plot.

Far Cry 2 is characterisation done right. Uncharted 2 is Characterisation done right. Gears is characterisation done wrong, Darksiders is characterisation done wrong.

Characters, at least in my book are not all generic Mary-sue. Everyone in the world has a certain amount of uniqueness to them, everyone has a story. Games with any shred of narrative structure should reflect this. It's almost Lit 101 grade basics here. Movies came to grasp with this, theatre REVOLVES around character, hell even anime/manga as a whole has a concept of how characterising works ( though typecasting is common, but it's still stronger writing than most games).

Characterising , in my books is the one area of game narrative that is being held back continually. It's probably the one thing stopping the progression of games as a progressive medium towards the realms of artistic recognition, and away from comic book territory. There is hope, as long as Bioware and Valve keep doing their thing, we may still cling to the hope the industry wakes up to realise that Rounded characters from design to execution are MUCH better for them than, say , Genenric overarmoured grunt, generic space marine, generic soldier (with insert twist), generic fantasy group, generic space travellers. Good design means you could Have ANY of those archetypes, but you can layer one detail of history, ideals , emotions, traits.

Guiltier than Gear and Halo though, are games featuring Modern day soldiers. Not joking, they are literally the shallowest of the charaxcter archetypes. Rarely do you get more than an "oh he's here, he's from X, he's here to Y".
Soldiers are people too, I should know, I know a few, and they all have personalities. When they get together, they have ways of speaking that aren't just text-book military lexicon. Especially in Military groups like Spec Ops or at the squad level, interactions between people is on a much more personable level than games lead you to believe. Game soldiers are, as a whole, cardboard thin cutouts of what soldiers embody. Granted, soldiering is their job, but like all jobs, that's not al lthat defines them, even "lifers".

I think, and I know I'm going to get rozzered for this, Rainbow Six, even Vegas are about the closest I've seen to characterisation in any Modern Day shooter. This maybe because Tom Clancy penned the original script to work off of, but there is enough character to even the NEW Rainbow Soldiers (Logan, Bishop, Kan, etc) to not worry about mary-sue syndrome. Every character has backstory, and even though the games aren't focused around character interaction much at all ,and game tech limited greatly how much visual characterization each had, every rainbow operative has backstory, a height ,weight, build, traits, things he/she excels at, things he/she fails at, and though All the games up to Lockdown couldn't visually or aurally express the difference, the AI for each handled differently, which in the game's scope was enough. Of course Lockdown and Vegas had proper characterising, complete with graphics and speech to boot, which was probably their only strengths, but my point remains the same. Rainbow Six - Best Character portrayals in modern shooters given it's scope.
Now imagine what you could do with a good script write, and today's game tech.

Lastly A brief look at another excellent characterisation game- Battlefield Bad Company. Every one of the main protagonists has a back-story (it's not deep, but it serves purpose), and coupled with creative writing and easily discernible looks for each, you have a recipe for great characters. Though the back-stories are shallow, they are deepened by the actions ingame, a shared experience between the player and the 3 other characters.
The player's character was introduced the right way, scripted in cutscenes the right way, each of the other characters was executed the right way that it seemed almost seamless the way the characters grow on you.
Bad Company sets to change the tone of things for the characters, which I'm personally apprehensive about, but providing they don't mess the characters built out of the first game, I'd still probably find it acceptable.

So yeah, game characters are on a whole, shallow twigs. They shouldn't be, but are. One day I shall fix this. Maybe today, maybe tommorrow.

Umm that's all I have to say for now, tune in next week where I chew something even more massive out maybe. If you have anything you wanna say, drop it in the comments below or reach me at the usual places.

my grenades are calling me.

2010-02-04T00:25:00.000+08:00

Before I Begin , I'd like to make an apology. I never intended to purchase or play this game. None. It was on my do not buy list. However, when gifted to you, where monetary value is nullified, I saw little reason not to take the oppertunity. Anybody upset by this turn of events, I apologise.

With that out of the way, I'd like to open up the can of worms I have fetched myself- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Also known as Call of Grenade: Oscar Mike 2.I'm going to try and keep my review as even handed, as there is a tendancy for Reviews of this game, particularly PC eviews, to be incredibly biased and bigoted. Not unjustly, mind, but bigotry none the less.
Where to begin?

Oh, and Spoilers. I don't care, but you might.

Singleplayer, May as well.

As the story goes, it's 5 years since the events of COD4 (and they even give an overly showy matrix green intro sequence with flashback for those not in the know.Basically, the Ultra-nationalists still somehow took over Russia, herald Zakhaev as a martyr.. and the US invaded Afghanistan. This Commander Shepherd is on the lookout for outstanding soldiers to promote into a Multinational Task-force he runs. First mission sees you as private Allen, a normal 75th Ranger Battalion foot mook with no discernible magic powers or powered armor, and you're in Afghanistan doing things that only Private Allen from the 75th Rangers can do. A convoy gets shot up, you go out on the counter offensive with a bridge-laying machine into a town that looks remarkably un-Afghanistani (More... Iraqi.. maybe? Definitely not A-stan though). Cue the Hans Zimmer music and the non-stop-sizzling action. From there you visit a Kazakhstani Airbase on top of a mountain (involving a left-click-right-click interactive quick time event and James Bond Snowmobile chase), An Airport in Russia, Rio Di Janiero, Virginia, USA and Oil Rig, A pre-soviet castle-turned-gulag, A Villa, and Afghanistan... Again. Sound pretty conclusive, but really, you're on a 6 hour roller-coaster that's tense enough that it's like someone's force feeding you adrenaline so you overdose on it. I think the plot does itself several disservices in the name of keeping succinct.

First of them is claiming Authenticity and realism then presenting what in some areas barely scrapes for Hollywood levels of realism. Now I know that some people are already about to jump to it's defense, claiming it still did somethings realistically. I will concede this, but for every single authentic ,believable thing it does, it does two things that if you've got a grasp of even basic military shit will twig with you as very wrong.
QED- in the First real level, in Afghanistan, a scramble of F16s topple a large building with Missiles, they observe a low, but believable flight vector across the place, peeling away well before the target, to confirm the shot.
Later in the game, during the Gulag mission, you'll see F16s again, but instead of flying at a low safe altitude, you see them , drop below the strike team of AH6 Littlebirds you are on, then decelerate to little-bird cruising speed (I think it's about 150 kph on he ground), fire off their missiles, then zoom through the debris. THE FUCK. Then mere minutes later, again, F16s do some stupid shit. That latter one,mind, was given a bit of credence and they do play that out properly, making the chopper shake and lose some altitude as the air's disturbed above and below it. But still. Only one small example out of several dozen I can think off of the top of my head.

"Wait, one MAJOR plot point is all fucked up though, how could i forget", he jests.
ACS, the Attack Charazcterisation System, the lynch-pin for hiding a soviet Force Projection Assault on Virginia. Now they say in the game, that the Russians managed to decrypt the ACS module off a downed satellite (which is why what you were retrieving in Kazakhstan), used it to create a phantom attack force over the West Coast, disguising a mass invasion force to the East(which is in itself a bit odd, but i'll slide that for the moment).Now, surely, a military and intelligence force as LARGE as America would have other , non-satellite imaging/radar-based ways of detecting and preparing for an invasion force. At the Very LEAST the CIA and NSA have field spooks, even in a hostile nation like an Ultranational Russia. There are about 4 or 5 different spectrum of dedicated radio frequency that can be used to transmit messages, without the use of a satellite relay. Several of these are even used under the bracket of ship-to-shore radio. SURELY somebody between Russia and Virginia SAW this force. SURELY. It's massive enough, hundreds of aircraft; migs, Heavy lift planes, Kamovs, Hinds and Hips. You'd have to be blind and deaf to not spot it before it hit you. And yet, somehow, that's exactly what happened.

Oh, then from there the story changes from a war shooter to a personal vendetta game, initially with Task Force 141 going after the Russians to find where Makarov is, then Captain Price and Soap after Colonel Shepherd after he for reasons not made clear at all stabs you in the back after getting the dirt on Makarov. It is indeed a bizarre tweest, and in opinion, probably the icy sta to the heart of the game. It was a cheap cut you never saw coming, and does nothing to explain itself. Then it sets itself quite cleanly to a sequel being pushed out.

Lastly on plot, I feel I have to address the Airport level in no short amount of words. It's uh... Very very out of place. That's the only way I can put it. It comes from nowhere, it goes nowhere in a game sense (though in theory it does actually forward the plot, it's very tenuous, ACS-level tenuous). Really, nothing it did couldn't have been done with a sightly longer level change video. This, coupled with the fact it's incredibly narrow-minded in design makes it more awkward than the disturbing shock to your sensibilities that it should be.

In Short, the storyline is tolerable with a forecast of horrible tomorrow. I want to take the writer out the back and scrub them down for being atrocious with their inconsistency. Military authenticity is hit and miss, and they scapegoat misses as hits, sometimes even contradicting their own fiction.

The Gameplay. How do I explain it? it's clean. If you've played a Call of Duty game, particularly COD4, it plays exactly as you expect. Except there is no leaning now, which is an odd removal,considering it's tactical implications...and it being a legacy feature of the series. A host of new guns, a host of little tweaks to the AI. should probably Break it all down.

The AI's been given a work-over. Notably, enemies are much less likely to be pants on head retarded. Probably a good thing considering that no longer does the game rely on indefinitely respawning enemies (though infinitely respawning friendlies is possible).What is a bit disappointing is that the game IS overall easier than the first Modern Warfare (bar two levels, which are hard no matter which way they're sliced.) quite a bit so, and this coupled with the shorter designed play time makes the game feel very short indeed by game standards. In fact, the length coupled with it's cinematic approach to design, and linear corridor execution makes the much closer by virtue to a movie than an actual game. I Beat the Easiest Difficulty without deaths or restarts in a smidgen over 5 hours. Veteran was tougher, and took about 8 just because of sheer numbers of deaths in two levels.

More bugbears I have with the gameplay - Enemy Weapon selection is very.. odd.. from a realism standpoint. Russians carrying American Anti-vehicle missiles, Israeli and Belgian ARs, South African Shotguns, and everything in between. Especially given the number of Russian weapon variants available in the world today, it is indeed a myth why Infinity ward didn't decide to put in AK74s, AN94s, even stuff like OC14 Grozas and VSS vintorezes, is beyond me. Oh, and the ACR is Bullshit.And changing the Default Keystrokes around from CoD4 was a dick move. Completely unnecessary.

Not to worry though, there's plenty of variety in the mission design, combining plenty of tried and true level design tropes,mixed with nearly every action movie ever. Sneak abord an Oilrig, boobie-trap bodies, be a gunner on a BlackHawk, a Hummvee, and several other vehicles, sneak through heavily patrolled areas. You know, the usual suspects. It's hardly innovative about itself most of the time.

Oh and there's Spec Ops, which is it's own up-to-Two player challenge mode. You're going to get more money out of Spec Ops than the campaign I reckon, 'cause Spec ops is gold. I haven't tried it with another player yet, but the single player was enough for me to be sufficiently pleased with the thing overall. Spec ops will take you a while to fully clock, I promise.

Onwards and upwards- Graphics.
Here is where I think Modern Warfare 2 really shines. The attention to atmospheric detail in the game is incredible, in every level. It is impossible to deny the beauty of this game. Not even joking, it's level of polish is incredible. Character animation is detailed and fluid, in that Infinity Ward twitchy kind of way, weapon models and animation are, compared to COd4, much improved. Character design is clever too, and I'll explain later on.the games visuals are overall nothing short of flawless, and it's clear that most of the money for the game went straight into sound and art.

Starting off, environments are richly detailed. Very few of them are brown messes, and particularly the levels set on US soils are full of minutia that while trivial, really make the scene. The Burger Town restaurant in "Wolverines!" looks scarify like a standard fast food restaurant that's taken a few hits, with cup stacks over the place, Broilers and Fry vats emptied, exterior with a few bullet holes.To ad to this, the amount of that minutia the responds when shot at is gleeful. Notably, Glass has been given a work through and now holds it's figure much more like real glass than sugar-glass. Most awe-inspiring visuals definitely go to the level "second Sun", without question though, especially combined with the silence and additional minor touches (like the EMP'd Optics gear), make it a stunning set.

Clearly, when Infinity Ward were taking input from COD4, they were listening when people complained about the models, and in particular how attachments were handled visually. The guns have been given a noticeable poly and texture boost, complete with excellent normals and proper specular mapping. This combined with well executed and fluid animations, you get probably some of the best visual representations of the weapons portrayed in games(except for for the enlarged rear apertures, and missing iron sights when scopes are attached). Additional points for managing to squeeze a Winchester 1887 in.
Now, character design I have to say is cleverly done. Main Piece characters like price and McTavish have been given full tailored designs dedicated to mostly only them (but still fitting whatever theme they're playing into), but piece characters, and enemies for that matter, follow a very clever modular design system. It allows for the artist just to make set number different pouches, helmets, faces, headgear, etc, and apply the variations in gear and camo ingame directly (saving hundreds of megs on texture and model data). Very Clever. Mostly it works, except for the Spetznaz/VDV in the US invasion levels, where it is right out of place (because it's all rigged up on mostly NATO gear).Camo was fine though.

Moving on Sound.
Sound, as usual, is fricking fantastic. IW once again one-upped themselves on sound design. Guns sound punchy and pingy, ambient sound has been ramped up again, and Foley. And everything. Is it realistic? Not painstakingly so. It's very hollywood sopund design, so take it as you will.

One pleasing little thing was the TMP and Mini-Uzi shooting. Now, if I had to onomatopaeia the sound for a Machine pistol, or a small sub-gun, it'd be BRAAAAP. Not a single game.. no wait, all games bar two so far... have managed to encapsulate that sound. Then we come to Modern Warfare 2, and suddenly, spraying a TMP and it just going BRAAAAP is the best experience I've ever got from sound in a game in ages.

So that's that then. Singleplayer is a very polished average shooter experience with the adrenaline valve jammed open and with a fun side coop thingy. I really with they'd made the game more like Spec Ops and less like the Campaign though, Ultimately that was too short, too over the top and just a little too.. convoluted.. all the time.It's fucked right up. Still a blast to play though and you should if you are planning on getting this game, just to say you've done it.

So that's it, get someone else to buy you MW2, because the two bits of game they give you aren't worth the retail + 10 they're charging...

..wait a sec...

Mul...ti...play...er? What's this?

OH fuck me with a brick I suppose I'd better talk about it, now I've sunk enough time into it (about 24 hours worth of game time in just under a month).
I really do think that this is a hard portion of the game to say whether I like personally or not, because I really don't know if I do or don't.

The first thing that strikes you about the multiplayer is is pretty much drops ALL pretense about realism. It's a pure multiplayer-driven game that is pat twitch shooter, part team-play. The visual and audio authtenticity is incredibly shallow, and for all intents and purposes doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of it. While it drops all pretense there, it makes up for it by being a VERY well designed experience, top to bottom. The Levelling system present in COD4 has been expanded and elaborated greatly.

Kills and points may be handed out a bit more liberally, but the level cap is proportionally much further away, and there are 5 levels of prestige. For those who haven't played the console version (like me) this was a change, PC players never received the Prestige system. But here it is now, which allows you to run the 1-70 leveling 5 times, each time resetting all your weapons and perks, but giving you some extra stuff unlocked initially (that were unavailable in the first run through). It's clever, and combined with call-signs and emblems , it makes the climb to the last prestige varied.

Oh there's callsigns and emblems. You unlock them through levelling, achievements, and just doing things the way you do them. You use them in a forum-like signature that people see when you kill them, or in lobbies. Just adds some personalizing, I do like that and it distinguishes it away from blandy-mcblands shooter number 5.

Let's see.. OH
Remember how Killstreaks used to be annoying? UAV was fine,but then Airstrikes were spammed, which led to Helo spam. Well, that's more or less irrelevant and/or a thing of a past. Modern Warfare 2 has customizable killstreak configuring, and it's effing brilliant. Not only does it give you that extra level of customization, you can ALMOST do away with airborne stuf if you want. Personally, I dig having supply drops and Sentry guns, so I usually rock them in my profile. That said, there's 15 killstreak unlocks, and even the ground-based ones (like the care package and sentry gun) get airdropped in. Don't worry though, there's a limit to 3 aircraft on the map at one time, and even stuff like Attack choppers can be countered, and very few of the killstreaks feel overpowered (except the AC130, and the nuke, one because it has cannons and the other because it makes for instant endgame where you win)

In fact, everything can be countered in MW2. That's probably the great thing. UAV can be countered by Counter-UAV and cold blooded, weapon perks balance, even the weapons do for the most part, and it all lets you tailor to your style of play, which is I must be honest, brilliant. The option to switch out your hand grenades for a Tactical Insertion flare is a godsend for team defensive modes like Domination, but the flares can still be shot or blown up to counter it.

Challenges return, and there are no shortage of them. Not kidding, there's hundreds. if you're a completionist, you'll be at them for a while.

Now, for the thing to take with a huge grain of salt.
IWnet. For those not in the know, IWnet was and is a huge source of contention with PC gamers, because of the lack of control over servers, matchmaking, especially regarding performance and bandwidth disparities. I am here to tell you that the fear of this IWnet is somewhat justified, at least Here in Australia.

The matchmaking is really odd I will admit. All the broadcasts for games are done via IWnet servers, which send back the list of games currently hosting, and your PC does a ping and filter through them until it hits one. Unfortunately, this leads to huge delays getting games up. and Unlike where in COD4 it was a 5 click job with minimal wait to get int oa game in your favourite server, now it's a 3 click process, with a potentially lengthy waiting period and a prayer. Lobbies seem to be quite volatile and players jump in an out sometimes by the second. It may work fine in the northern hemisphere where all the servers and players are within 100-200 ping of each other, but here where you've got to ping out to IWnet (which is a 400 ms round trip), then ping servers, it's somewhat nightmarish. Heck, Valve's matchmaking works better in L4D2 and L4D1. And host migration/Picking best host has a 50/50 chance of failing for whatever reason.
Once a game is Up though, generally it's fine, as long as the guy isn't an idiot running a torrent or something in the background chewing his bandwidth, or one of those exploiters doing that to farm levels (it's possible). So far, the game's been pretty clean of cheaters for me too, which surprised me considering all the oogie boogie people were screaming about.

Oh and there's no Offline LAN support. Forget it for LANs unless you've got an internet connection. IWnet, in short is the most disappointing thing about the multiplayer, and a huge frigging thorn in the side of the regrowth of PC gaming.

In short, the multiplayer is a blast, but the method of delivery is really letting the side down.

So, would I recommend you go out MW2?

NNNNNnnnnnnnnno.

Here's why - it's 10% more expensive than any other new release AAA PC game, and it's only about 80-90% worth the unmarked-up one, The SP is good but short if you put the blinkers on, and the MP is a blast, but is hampered by IWnet being a farce here in Australia. If someone gifts you it, by all means take it with both arms, or if it goes on sale, take it, but at $110 Australian, it's like Buying a Falcon for the price of a new Aston Martin-
Sure, they;re both decent cars, but the Aston is just that little bit more justifiable for it's price-tag, the Falcon jut isn't. MW2 just isn't. Almost, but not.

Here's a Bunch of pictars to go along with the review. Keep in mind, this is on a now-3rd-gen PC with shadows off (for whatever reason, my poor cassidy does not like to display the things AND keep a solid framerate)

http://tinypic.com/a/1jkuw/3

Cannular Infection

2009-11-16T23:18:00.000+08:00

Time to review the First season of Darker Than Black. Yes, there is a second going on right now, and I'll review that separately later

Darker than Black is an oddly titled little scifi show that delves into a very bizzarre world. A world where stuff has gone awry. Really, a good analog for how awry would be it's a Japanese take on Roadside Picnic/S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl, sorta. There's differences, but the mechanics of it all are similar enough . It's a bizzarre,depressing world where two giant anomalies appear in the world, one in South America(Heaven's Gate), one in Tokyo(Hell's Gate). When these anomalies appeared, much like in Roadside picnic, Odd things started to happen. The sky changed forever, a bizarre radiation emitted from the center of these anomalies, and seemingly at random, people were given supernatural powers at the cost of their conscience and their sense of emotion. These people, known as contractors are rapidly snapped up by governments all over the world and.. ah hell I'm not going to write down the entire bloody preface. You've got enough of the background story there, and it gets delved into during the show.
Anyway, the show's plot follows on particular power-owner (called contractors in the canon), Hei, also known as BK-301. Following him, and his exploits, you begin to uncover the bigger picture about what's really going on in the world, and more importantly, what's going on inside him.

I must admit this show isn't a very uplifting show. If you're wanting something light, this isn't it. You'll get a lighthearted joke now and then, but that's it. It's both deep and philosophical, and could easily give Shirow Masamune a run for his money. That being said, it's also very action oriented and in this regard, it delivers in spades. I'm rather amazed at the depth and diversity thats portrayed in just 26 episodes of 21 minutes each, and how very little the story grates when it switches between tracks. The shows canon just flows, and it's a great ride to be on.

The artwork, all done by Bones, is pretty delicious. The backgrounds and settings are mostly hand painted and full of detail. The character designs are well planned and executed, a real grounding in reality is felt about them, and it's not at all inconsistant across the entirety of the art.Short story, the art is great.

Sound in the show is excellent, showing excellent Foley mixing all over the joint. Voice acting is well cast, and all the voice actors seem into their roles enough that the tone is believable(NB, can't speak for the English dub, haven't heard it yet). The music, particularly the OP and ED tunes are all excellently chosen and mastered in. Particularly good choice getting Abingdon Boys School to throw a tune in, it really helps add to the show overall.

If I were forced at gunpoint to choose a negative point, I'd probably make a comment about point a gun at me being extreme, and then I'd say probably some of the humorous bits felt a bit forced and jarring, completely at odds with the rest of the show, but that's Japanese humor for you.

Overall though, Great watch. I'd reccommend this to anyon e with a.. I'd recommend this to anyone. It's that good.

Interesting point - I largely missed this show when it was actively airing due to the massive amounts of coverage Gurren Lagann and Spice and Wolf ( the shows that were airing directly opposite it in timeslots) were getting. DtB sort of faded into the background and relinquished itself to being a sleeper hit.
I though this review'd be longer, apparently it's not. Note to self- re-acquaint myself with the oxford dictionary.
Toadie, out.

Serious Gaming, and the Box art that inspired

2009-11-04T13:32:00.000+08:00

Gather round internetlings of the weird and wacky varieties, lemme tell you a story about how I became a hardcore Tactical Shooter fan.

It all began in the heady days of... the late 90s, back when DirectX versions could be counted on one hand, and I was a wee lad in the land of penniless dreams.

At one point in time there was a Computer store in my home suburb, a little place called Doors Multimedia (Did anyone see what they did there?) used to be THE place to hang out in my neighborhood or suburb, and were a nerd. Truly the dog's bollocks they were, at least for a few years (my formative computing years anyway). They stocked EVERYTHING, and they even had Playstation, N64 and Dreamcast demo booths. Keen-as. Amongst the stock though, was probably the most varied collection of PC games I've come across yet. They literally stocked everything. from stuff that ran on 486s to stuff that needed the then-top-of-the-line Pentium Processors and 3DFX technologies. All kinds of genres, all kinds of awesome.

I used to literally spend hours after school and late night shopping nights (the ones where we didn't go into Midland) hanging around that place, gawking and handling all the AWESOME boxes. Now there were some truly awesome looking boxes for PC games, I'm not kidding. Evocative, visceral, sometimes purely just shiny. It was like candy land for me, feasting my eyes over the fronts and backs over games I could never afford or play on my 286, but that was fine, because all I needed was the boxes to let me imagine the games when I left. Some of the most notable ones, the ones that I never forget, were the covers specifically of The Doom Collection (including Final Doom), The East-vs-West Pack (Duke3D and Shadow Warrior), The Duke Nukem Kill-a-ton collection (which was the AWESOME shiny bronze box that screamed BUY ME FOR LIFE AND PUT ME NEXT TO YOUR CRICKET TROPHY), And the Box for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.

Now the first 3 obviously I loved for they beautiful hand painted art, slick graphic design thrown in to boot, and iconic imagery. The last one baffled me for a long time though, I never understood at all why I liked it.

Linked Below is the box as I first saw it. Imagine it on a box of A4-ish size, a bit bigger.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six

Now though i understand it. It was Striking, and needed very very little trickery to achieve that. Just a photo, cropped and tinted, and BOLD text. It certainly didn't stop and take it's breath after that either, the entire box was pure thrilling class act. A fold out front, with similar styled designs on the inside,complete with the game's distinct (at the time) photo-realistic imagery, by cripes it's a gripping thing to behold. This WAS the Techno-thriller novel amongst the teen drama novellas, in almost every sense. Even making Flight Sims like Apache vs Havoc or Falcon 4.0 (which actually came with a 800 page Cut down Falcon Operations Manual) ook like weedy boxes.

I never did pick up the game, and year after year I skirted past boxes with Tom Clancy, and vivid Tacsim and Milsim boxes of one variety or another. Another set of boxes that never failed to draw my eyes were the Delta force games by Novalogic. Using similar aesthetics, again, simple design that just wanted me to buy and play them.

It wasn't until I was was well into my teens, and consequently, WITH money, that I did start purchasing these games (by first going back and getting the ones I missed). By now, my taste in games had matured significant, and I was beginning to savor for something more than just running around corridors blasting crap. This was a time when I started to get REALLY into deeper shooters, so games like Rainbow Six were fine now (and perpetuating my long-begrudging deep-held fascination with the 20th century, and now it's military aspects, to my own detraction at school).

So, after picking up the Main games in the series-es I loved ( Rainbow Six 1/2/Raven Shield, etc ) I was piqued to learn that another Rainbow Six game was in the works, and by all early reports was going to be an even more intense and deeper game. HOORAH, I thought. Then Lockdown came out, and between and my old chum Jim Lad, we were quite... disappointed. Even the Cover art (liked below) was a let down. I mean sure it was still striking, but nowhere to the extent the early boxes, or even the Raven Shield art. dismal Gameplay aside, the game's promotional material and box-art was a complete mess. Linking it below for you all to behold.

You can see that someone along the line here was slowly trying to change art style not only of the promo and box stuff, but the way the art ingame was done, moving away from the pure photorealism standpoint and towards a "styled" look. And from there, you can actually WATCH the art and tactical elements of the game fall off as the series continues forward.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas 2

As I said, styled look. I'm not saying it's bad, but it certainly isn't the clearcut striking images I idolized before I had money to do anything about it. I guess it's a bit disappointing that Rainbow Six will likely be forgotten to the gaming world in it's original form, and remembered as the glitzy modern-day-styled Gears of War that Vegas 1 and 2 are.

Not to me though, these boxes evoked me to be come a real tac shooter nut, and there are hundreds around the world that likely had similar experiences. Tactical shooter fans are small in numbers, but high in their passion for their particular game style.

I think thats what ultimately made me want to do For Hire. I wanted to do a tactical shooter because I think sadly that the Tactical Shooter is about to go way of the tradition adventure game, but I wanted to give it a proper roaring swansong. Something to really stick up there on the wall and knock Vegas 1 and 2 off everyone's recollections.

Anyway, Here's to the boxart that dragged me covertly into the shadows and scintillated my imagination. You will be remembered.

PS:If you are like me, and have a link to the tacshooter genre as much as I do, and feel you could contribute something, anything to the FH project, feel free to drop me a line, because I really will take nearly all the help I can get at the moment(toadie2k AT gmail DOT com).

AS AN ADDED BONUS, I put up a small album of the art, just so you can have a peruse and see the transitions it went through, and which exact point the Main developers switched from Red Storm to Ubisoft Montreal.

Gallery is here

Enjoy

Toadie, out.

PS: apologies for the loooong silence, been writing this on and off for like 3 months. Usual Rantnoise resuming ASAP.

Priorities - Addendum

2009-10-18T15:43:00.000+08:00

In the last few days Robert Bowling at last came out from underneath Europe, assumingly in some sort of underground Reichstag bunker that filters his ability to respond to queries for all sides regarding the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 to confirm on several fronts a shopping list of PC-related queries.
So, here's the shopping list for what is now being called by some "Black Sunday" -

Modern Warfare 2 will not be using a client-server relationship with a populated server list based off a master server for it's multiplayer handling. Instead, Infinity Ward has built a matchmaking system that shotguns on Steam, dubbed IWNet. So instead of your usual relationship between gamers and GSPs/ISPSs, you will now be running all multiplayer entirely through ad-hoc networks, mastered through IWnet.

There is no plans for dedicated servers. Period. You can already see where this is going.

IWNet will be using Steam for Anti-cheat protection (which is good, because punkbuster sucked), Matchmaking which will essentially lock you into games with similarly ranked players(presumably to prevent griefing).
Servers will be able to be privatised and password protected with some degree of customisation.

In a two-parts Modding for MW2 and custom content is out for the meanwhile, and so is competitive gaming.

Now, before I go on a tirade about why I won't be putting money down for this game EVEN more than I was before, I'd jsut like to also put on the balance that there are positives to matchmaking. For example, it's great for playing with a bunch of friends you already know without all that setting up business. What it's not great for is all the reasons this is making PC gamers worldwide angry (Amazon is reporting losing 2000 PC pre-orders in the 24 hours since this broke).
Let's start off with the bottom end first-
Competitive Gaming. yes, I hate the snot-nosed arse pounders, but whatever chance of competitive leagueshad of starting for this game has now essentially slimmed. Particularly without dedicated server support, setting up CG events will be somewhat stymied by forcing the hosters to have X amount of individual dedicated machines running the game WITH THE MACHINES ACTUALLY IN THE GAME will be troublesome. Yeah you can pretty much kissthat goodbye. Scrims and stuff probably will be less affected, but the real hardcore stff for MW2, probably gone. Enjoy that

Custom Content. Robert Bowling said that there's no information on a Mod dev kit as of yet, and was reluctant to confirm yes or no. However, the silence leaves two things up in the air - whether there will BE custom content support at all, and if nothing is said between now and immediate post launch the likelihood of it being so decreasing.

Onwards- Bandwidth.
Bandwidth is going to be a real deal-breaker for a system that ONLY supports ad-hoc matchmaking. Do I even need to say it? Home ISP connections are by and large quite small and will severly limit the performance of the game, as well as the largest reasonable server capacity. This is of course assuming that the pipe is completely open and not being shared with other suers (which it rarely is).

Latency.
I do not know of ONE ad-hoc system that has reliably correlated latency users. There is always an outliers. There's been no word from IW whether there will be localised or even continentalised IWnet servers, so I do not hold high hopes for the system, as the further you get from the central server, generally the less accurate latency matching you will get... and if the matchmaking has to come from the US... We're on the other side of the world here in Australia, it's going to be attrocious (it already is through Xbox Live according to some people).

Now, I'm a big fan of dedicated servers. They're there like public arenas. They don't move around, and generally are designed to cope with internet traffic. They're ideal in the PC world, because you can just open a game, go to your favourite server, and jump straight in.
I'm also not opposed to matchmaking, as I've mentioned briefly before. However, matchmaking is far from the ideal solution for PC gaming. In fact, relying on it solely is detrimental to the multiplayer experience. The above two key logistical issues are a start. No dedicated servers means that you may potentially be stuck in high latency games just because whoever started the game decided he'd open up a torrent in the background(or his housemate, whatever). Dedicated sservers give a baseline reliability and connectivity for a game, and without them, large-scale multiplayer games aren't possible.They ease the burden on machines with low specs or slow internet to keep the game running smooth, and as such make the game enjoyable for everyone.
Point is, yeah, have matchmaking, but keep Dedicated Support. It works great for Left4Dead, which in my books is doing matchmaking more or less ON the nail.

Further food for thought- This matchmaking system is cutting into the running of an actual 3rd tier business - Game Service Providers (people who run and rent servers as a means of profit). This will no doubt cause them some headaches. THE number one game of this year (so says the media), and THEY are going to have a hard time trying to be part of it. It's not like L4D or even Blizzard's battlenet, where they actually HOST games even though there is a matchmaking system, this is completely designed to run around them.

MY biggest concern is this is a continuation of a worrying trend that would circumvent PCs are a viable gaming platform (for major publishing companies outside Valve... Indy pubs and devs will ALWAYS run stronger on PC).. to what end?

So to summarise-

• IWnet servers will host multiplayer
• DLC will be a charged item for PC
• No dedicated servers
• Matchmaking system used to play with similarly ranked players
• VAC instead of PB
• Semi-capable password servers
• Semi-capable ad-hoc servers
• Competitive play is dead
• MW2 mods would not be possible
• Steam integration - (how far not mentioned)
• Potential bandwidth and latency nightmare
• The beginning of the end- HAS IW shot themselves in the foot?

Hold your receipts people.
Further Reading/listening-

http://bashandslash.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=746&Itemid=69

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/10/new-modern-warfare-matchmaking-service-will-definitely-reshape-pc-community/#more-362322

Priorities

2009-10-02T23:36:00.000+08:00

Okay so I'm going to do a hard sell here, and I'm going to ask you only one thing coming out of this - Do not under any circumstance purchase Modern Warfare 2.

Why, you may ask?

Allow me to elaborate in words of the queens english.

Argument the First- Bobby Kotick == prick.

I'm not sure how in the loop you are, but surely may have heard of this man who goes by the name of Bobby Kotick. He runs Activision these days, previously owning a boxing firm of some sort I believe. Anyhoo, past irregardless for the moment, he rose to power in Activision in a bloodless coup of stockholders sometime in the last 18 months.

In the last few months, he's been making a lot of negative noise. A WHOLE lot of it, in fact. Most of it is harmless stuff regarding his displeasure with the PS3 as a platform, bla bla bla too expensive, usual gripes. However, Early in September he make a pretty bizzare conference presentation to the Deutsche Bank Securities Group, which all in all has me incensed. To paraphrase and take all the good bits, addressing as I go.

"expect many of our products to be playable independent of a console,"
When asked about an untethered Guitar Hero. In principle, this isn't such a bad idea, however it's at best anther console which you'll have to fork out for, and at worst those stupid throw-away 8-in-1 LCD Gamin-and-watch-style deals ( You know, whole package games complete with hardware... except these'd have to be running stuff that can at least do pixel shaders, so they'd be expensive as shit, or using OnLive). Either way, it's trying to split your market away from everyone else's, which is probably not going to work in this case.

There was a section where he talked about how his friends in movies were quick to point out the bad mouth control and animation in COD:World at War (No shit, they syncing in that game was pretty bad).The executive said game makers just haven't reached a point yet where the mouth movement and facial animation of game characters is good enough to establish a compelling emotional attachment from the player. In many different ways this is untrue. There are plenty of games where emotional attachment to ingame characters or objects, and they didn't even need mouths to prompt it(Portal), and even when there are mouths involved, there are plenty of games out there that have excellent mouth animation and posing(Half-life2 for starters), just none of them I can think of were Activision games. OH, COD4 had some great mouth animation when they were scripted sequence closets.

".... And I think the goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks that we brought in to Activision 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

"I think we definitely have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."

"...You have studio heads who five years ago didn't know the difference between a balance sheet and a bed sheet who are now arguing allocations in our CFO's office pretty regularly,"

So essentially, he's sapping the fun out of making games, and turning it into the packaging industry. Great. As if we needed it. Admittedly, yes being fiscally responsible is pretty important, if you're ruling a bank, and I suppose you've still gotta worry bout th bottom line at Activision, but it shouldn't be DRIVING how you make your product. THAT, is bad game managment. If you're instilling pessimism and fear into your Developers, and making sure they're not enjoying themselves, you can bet your eggbasket that the games they make are noty going to be fun. It's really a symptomatic problem of some publishing deals (ie, game to movie tie-ins), but he's pretty plainly stated there he's got no intention of letting Developers enjoy making games, so don't expect me to buy anything from him. Seriously, I'm on Activision boycott now, and unlike my failed Vegas 2 one, I can actually achieve this quite successfully.

Argument the Second - Better games coming out if you're into semi-realistic FPSes, and don't care about the story.

You heard me correctly- there ARE better games out there coming out if you're not counting the Singleplayer experience. Say hello to Battlefield Bad Company 2 - a game that on many levels supercedes MW2.
For a start, let's have a look at the base multiplayer- It's Built off the Bad Company MP model, which in itself is built off Battlefield2, which is built of etc etc. The concept and the classes are all well defined and work. The gameplay modes work reasonably well, and the whole package just works. You'll find yourself a home in this game no matter what kind of player you are.
The Graphics- well, they're both pretty good, but the fact that BFBC2 scale to MUCH larger maps and gamplay, and I'm a personal fan of BC's animation style and effects over MW2's.As a package, they feel jsut that better composed and contiguous regardless of the situation (MW and MW2 have notable problems with player models and explosion effects). BC2 does actually kick MW2's arse for accurate models though. Sorry IW, not even complete remodels that you've done can save you from the blasphemous rear sights.

Sound Effects- No goddamn competion the BC2 has the better sound effects. Proper doppler, AWESOME sound Environmental feedback (reverb indoors, long fallof for outdoors sounds), none of this premix crap(1:1 what's on battlefield to what you're hearing), Best Explosion sounds in a game ever, and most realistic weapon sounds you'll ever hear too.

Gimmicks. Killstreaks? Deathstreaks? Fuck that. Destructible buildings. Fully destructible landscapes. How bout some of that? Fuck yeah. Why would you want anything more?
Seriously-
BFBC2-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQq6NQhXg1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRlBI6FgMOs

MW2-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4PMRFkx07g&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdPn_6PddLQ

Argument the third - Better games coming out if you're into unrealistic FPSes, and do care about the story.

Contrarywise to the above ,there are also better NON-realistic shooter coming out with more inventive stories than MW2.
Borderlands- it's really worthy of it's own blog spruik, but I'll summarise-
Millions of guns, procedurally generated
semi-procedurally created lifeforms.
Set in a futuristic wasteland on another planet
Interesting characters
Great art style
drop in/out coop
Actual character progression and growth as you play
Think Diablo on FPS steroid
Has a tank chracter that can slam cars
Has a robot in it, which is like Gir on cigarettes.
It's got it's own style,which is more than can be said of MW/Mw2's rip-off-every-movie-we-can-before-the-end-credits style.

Argument the fourth - Deagle Brand Deagles- NOW WITH DUAL WIELD.

I mean in theory I hate Dual Wield. In a game that tries for authenticism, it sticks out like a goddamn sore thumb. Deagles. I Hate deagles for the same reasons. Noone uses them for combat, except hollywood. They have no place in a theatre of war. Combining the Two? FUCK THAT SHIT, IW. FUCK IT WITH A BRICK. You know this is what ALL people who use akimbo are going ot use, and you know that the'll be gold ones, and it will be the epitomy of Fucked up.
You only need to see how much people can own with them in COD4 to see exactly how fucked up it will be with DOUBLE THE DEAGLE.

Argument the fifth - 12 year olds, spawn rape, all that shit
All that went on in COD4 probably returns in CODMW2. This, compounded with overcrowded servers are why you wanna stay the fuck away from CODMW2 until at least like this time next year. Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Argument the sixth - Fuck this shit.
Yeah, pretty much. You're spending AU$100 on a game, that's riddiculous. Remember when games were AU$49.95? considering the length of the game, the enjoyment rate for your dollar is pretty thin these days. Unless you buy like scribblenauts or LittleBigPlanet, or something with a ModKit, anything to give it legs, you are getting a very finite value outa the game. Choose very wisely. MW2's campaign is short, Spec ops mode is 2-player-only and finite to an extent, and the comptetitive MP is just plain spammy. Buy Borderlands instead, you'll get at least 4 times the amount of fun outa it, I promise.

So there we go, I hope this at least makes you think twice about buying IW's next game.
I'm Toadie, I say things so you don't have to.

Okay so here's the thing about Valve Software.

2009-09-11T01:29:00.000+08:00

I mean I don't hate them, nor do I spin madly in love with them, I just co-exist in the same world with them and sometimes we meet for coffee, if that analogy makes any sense.
I think that people both overstate and understate Valve, usually in the same breath.The overstatement is usually a sweeping positive or a sweeping negative, while the understatement is almost always just trying to ignore pitfalls.

Understatement
On one side, Valve are incredibly capable game devs. They've pulled off some of the best games I've played, possibly of all time (HL2: Ep2, Portal, HL1). They really know their shit and it shows in what I've seen from L4D2. They're really hands on with the community, and do support their product literally a decade after people would have bought it full price at a brick and mortar store. They hire high-class talent and produce high class work. However, they're not infallible.

People do treat them as if they are infallible. This is a problem, because they are not, nor are they delivering upon high mighty stone tablets. They are, at the end of the day, some guys in Bellvue Washington, who happen to make polished games and still support the PC platform with a reasonable amount of consistency.

They suffer from what I'd like to call "Game Science Syndrome". This more or less comes down to a game being designed from an initial point to reach a single hypothesis, which is then put to testers, who rigorously hammer, then it's passed back and forth until it's so tight that the hammering has turned the 50 cubic meter marshmallow is now a cube the size of a pinhead and full of glucose. Hence- Game Science. Have a theory, make a test batch, apply to mice, note reactions, modify and reiterate as necessary until it works with minimal flaws, push on public for fifty bucks. This approach is fine, and indeed should be part of all games, but relying on tester feedback and deliberately trying to smooth out the game leads to streamlining, and streamlining isn;t always necessarily GOOD. It has lead to some of my biggest beefs with Valve games cropping up (HL2's boring environments, TF2/TFC's useless class- the HWG, L4D's monotonous gameplay). I should address all these in proper reviews, but they're never going to get reviews, so I'll give a quick cover right now.

HL2's environments, immediately post acquiring the Gravity gun go from interesting adventurous places to be, to dull , gimmick-lined pains in the ass. Okay, let's assume that you're me, not a huge fan of using the gravity gun because of it's sheer gimmick factor. Yes, you'll use it when you HAVE to , but because you're not hunting for props and objects to throw at things constantly, the game goes from a tense run to downright boring. Props are all obviously there for you to punt. Hell, Ravenholm made sure you did by blocking your path with them time and again. It's a real problem especially around the sandtraps, where you must use your gravity gun (again, it's fine because that's the puzzle of that entire level) on everything. There is no other way to solve this level but to play shuffleboard with a door and a rotted boat (yes there are other props, no, get out of my head charles). THere is literally nothing more than this to the level if you don;t want antlions to rape you. You can of course try your best to cross withoutusing the gun, but you will find yourself physically alienated from the solution half way, because there is a gulf of sand wide enough that even if you could glitch it, you'd still probably miss. It's impossible. Then of course completeing this you get gimmick weapon two- the Antlion pheromone pod. Another story altogether. It's clear that Valve want you to play with the gravity gun, but I'm jsut not down with gimmicky tools in games. They're all like "Here, use this." and I'm like "No, I'll stick to trying my skill with the shotgun, thanks.". It reeks of the bad kind of game science, and it really irritates me.

Valve gripe number two - The Useless Class: the Heavy/Heavy Weapons Guy. Seriously, he's goddamn useless. Turns slower thank a tank, has the accuracy of a shower of rain. Sure, he's got 200 health, but he's so slow and his weapon is so useless that he jsut becomes a sponge for someone else to lob over the top of... and Trust me, being the sponge is not fun. Okay a bit ofa backstory. Before TFC, there was Quakeworld Team Fortress, made by a Queenslander in his bedroom. It was massive. Team based class gameplay, 9 classes, a bajillion maps. Yes, the Heavy was one of them, but he was a late addition. By the time he was added, Valve and said queenslander were already in talks for TFC in Half-life 1, so he was needles to say, a bit unbalanced. Minigun? unbalanced? never. TFC came out, and while some classes had become a bit softer, not got the nerf as hard as the poor HW guy.Admittedly, he wasn't as bad as he was in TF2, but he got a noticable step down in power from Quakeworld. TF2 made it worse, with the nerfing continuing, the removal of traps and grenades, and ultimately, becoming on it's own a different experinece altogether separate of it's roots. The HW guy went from being a good base of fire to being compltely and utterly useless. Sure, you could argue that some of the achievement unlocks for the heavy make him a bit more powerful ,but I'll be honest, putting 20 plus hours into a heavy, I've yet to see any of that shit, so fuck it. Again another iterative nerfing project that valve embarked upon.

And finally Left4Dead's boring gameplay. Mechanics directly from CS, step one for a resipe for disaster right there. Left 4 Dead, for me was this *hold down fire* *reload* *hold down fire and run* *wait for everyone * *fire some more**end level* *rinse repeat until last level* *receive rape*. That's it. there is literally nothing more to that game. What's more, the variety of weapons is shocking. Remember what I said about pruning and stuff? Heres where it was cut. Admittedly, any more guns might just be dupes, but they've no issue with it in two. What's more, the entire outside areas of Left4dead feel uninspired and boring for the most part. Especially the starting chapter. That set of levels was so very dull to be a part of. So dull it hurt my view of the rest of the game. L4D2 seems to cope with all this stuff and I'm much more inclined to get that over the wide berth I gave the first one.

So yes, people tend to understate or overlook minor or major downfalls to appease the actually-not-listening Gabe Newell head on their mantle, just because it's Valve.

Then again....
Overstatment

This happens a lot to Valve, because unfortunately, because they do seem to be such a community-focussed team, it makes them open to broad-siders about all sorts.
L4D2 Boycotts, the Anti-Steam movement, PS3 owners, L4D players, Portal addicts, TF2 addicts, CS junkies, CSS junkies. All of them overstate Valve's abilities or importance.. or totally go off the deepend regardless of the reality of the situation.

L4D2 Boycotters are nothing but a bunch of L4D gamers who immediately threw their hands in the air at the announcement of the sequal, not believing that valve could turn over a game in 12 months (thinking that this somehow invalidates their purchase or something), and in a leap of logic think Valve are jsut going to leave them in the lurch.

Anti-Steam people are just idiots. While there are a few bugs with Steam, it's a hell of a lot better than it was in 2004, and it most certainly easier to use and more convenient that maybe 70% of all competive game distribution platforms. Offline Mode may still be buggy to hell, but while I'm online, I've yet to see a problem with steam yet. Their leap of logic is thinking that Steam is somehow the worst concept in game distribution, because it's still better than discs. There, I said it.

PS3 owners who bought the Orange box are the only ones who should feel slighted by valve.. because the port (not actually done by valve) was crap. All other PS3 owners who are now whinging about Valve annoucement that they have no intentions for developing for the PS3. I'm not planning on making games for the PS3. What, you gonna cry 'bout that too?

L4D junkies TF2 addicts and Portal players all share one thing in common- their love for derivative material and memes. They think that no bad can be made of their game, and then have a hissy fit when someone does poke fun or point at a glaring fault. Get over it, they aren't perfect by long shots.

CS and CSS junkies (especially the Pro gamer type) just need to shut up. Valve don't specifically cater games to your tiny niche MLG market, they make games to be PLAYED by as many people as they can. Neither shields, FAMASes or Galils broke the game, AWP and Deagles were already ingame ,so the game was pre-broke.

Finally, I'd jsut like to reiterate, Valve software still support, and are one of the major pillars of, PC gaming. Despite all the back and forth, they're still worth putting money into, because at least they do this much for PC gamers like me. Few developers or publishers even recognise the platform at all these days it seems.

Streetlight Manifesto - FUCK YEAH

2009-08-06T20:49:00.001+08:00

I don't know what's gotten into me recently, must be all the coffee.

Recently, after watching the latest Hey Ash, I decided to see what it's writer/co-star has to say for himself, being all curious at the wrong time. Here's what I found - we're both very much on the same page about quite a lot of the big mechanical, social and cultural quandaries of gaming. Quad Erat Demonstratum : Games as Art. Say hello to Reverend Anthony Burch. His rants are insightful, and to be honest I can't disagree with him, even with my lack of philosophical sophistication, it still harmonised well with my sensibilities about both morality, and game design.

http://www.destructoid.com/rev-rant-fun-isn-t-enough-142052.phtml
There's a link, I recommend combing through previous rants as well, they're good for the grey matter.
My view on the whole thing is more on less what he says, but in my opinion what's needed is a transition period. I believe we're beginning to see that start to happen, but it's a massive ball to roll so it just needs more behind it. Also, I don't think art and fun have to be mutually exclusive. Especially transitioning, you have to put a mix down of the both, because swaying the masses aren't going to go intellectual overnight.

Now onto the meat and gravy- a Review.
Tonight, I Review my HEAHPONES.
TDK ST-PR400.
They're all wrong. aaaaall wrong. Okay not all wrong, but certainly not worth MONEY for any forseeable market. If you're thinking of buying these, take 70 bucks, and just set fire to it, because this is the effect that these headphones are worth. Still, I said I'd review them, not just give insult, I must follow through with a proper criticism of them. Where to start?

Cable/Jack- This I believe is one of the the few things they've done right. It's a proper thick cable, coated with proper rubber of some sort. Gold Tipped Jack, "oxygen-free" cord. And it's Coiled and springy, which is GREAT, they make them seem serious business. This is where the end of the purely fault free material ends.
Supports/Arch/Frame - Flimsy, Cheap feeling.
The actual muff supports swivel 90 degrees forward, supposedly because DJs like having an ear off or something. However, if you're a DJ, surely you like having a solid locking mechanism. The ones on these are Flimsy as all hell, they don't lock forward securely, nor do they lock to the normal position that easily.
The padding on top below the arch, where it rests on your head, usually there's some padding. On this , nothing. What,that little bump with the nylon mesh over the top? that's nothing,and it hurts my scalp if I slick my headphones in the normal way. The rest of the construction is molded plastic and pinning screws, which in my books, ALWAYS results in the headphones having a life of less than 12 months due to breakages, or stripping screws (this is what bad craftsmanship+my mediocre handling of headphones does.
On the plus side, it's clear that the designers actually allowed for boofs like me with BIG heads, because the arch is one of the widest spanning ones I've ever used.This is great for adding a little comfort to the packet.

The Cans themselves/Drivers- 50mm drivers(drivers being the speakers, not device drivers)) with an 20-20000hz response range. This isn't too bad, it actually is a slightly bigger response range than My old Sennheiser HD 202s, however, presentation of the range is at BEST sloppy. Now, these are marketed as "DJ Headphones", which is really odd. You'd expect DJ's would want some level of audio fidelity. Instead, you get nothing. Flat undersupported Bass, flat(seemingly clipped) treble, only the midrange seems to get any SOLID coverage. That isn't fidelity, it's sticking cheap portable radio speakers in headphone covers and calling it a day. It's unacceptably poor listening, particularly with these thing's tendency to ignore the Sound Pressure Level for the pain threshold (which it has NO objection going over if you want to hurt your ears and go deaf). I've heard better from noname brand earbuds, original generation iPod bugs, BUDGET sennheiser buds (coincidentally, they're less than HALF the price of these things).. Hell, even TDK's budget in-ear buds are better hear than these things(and those were cheaper than the sennheiser buds).
Further groans about the drivers, I have to really keep the volume down on these, because if I crank the volume up just a bit above what I've got them on, I get three major driver issues - Rattling, metallic ringing after peaks, and noise over the line. These could be a QC issue, but it could also be a fundamental design flaw (metal on metal bracing without insulation, washer-less fixture (or PLASTIC))
Drivers aside, nice padding, effing huge can widths. Great sound insulation on the padding. eliminates most of all audible noise from the headphones just with the two cans light pressed together.These headphones really are designed for big heads.

All in all,
Pros-
Great for big heads
Coiled cable with good insulation = win.
Plays the SHIT out of midrange and lower treble

Cons-
Unbalanced audio output.
Driver issues
Patchy supports
Feels flimsy
Overpriced
Does not like you

All in all,they're fucking terrible. I mean REALLY terrible. Still better than a set of Audiosonic or whatever EA sell at budget prices, but if you want to take the step up from them, I'd just advise to ignore the hell out of the impressive packaging these have, save the extra 30/50 bucks for Sennheiser or.. well any other brand. Sennheiser are just a good bet in that introductory Audiophile/Amateur Audio Scene price range. Point is, save the extra ducketts, get something better.

End of Financial year Anime runout review- Phantom

2009-06-30T13:40:00.000+08:00

With the rapid closure of the Financial Year today, I thought I'd close off on something tha'ts stil fresh on my mind and needs to be covered before you all get tootsie rolled by it, and that is Phantom- Requiem of a Phantom. You need to know several things before we get too deep into phantoms' coils :
1) it's penned by the guy who did Noir and Madlax
2) it's animated by the guys who animated Noir and Madlax
3) there are at LEAST two ALI Project in the soundtrack, one is the ending.If you can't stand ALI project, prepare to press the mute button a few times
with those three parental advisory alerts out of the way, let's delve into the cheesburger candy.

The plot premise is fairly straight forward- The main protoagonist wakes up with amnesia in a warehouse and finds himself in a locked room in a warehouse. The door is mysteriously unlocked, and he has to escape. Along the way he is dogged by a teenager in a detail-free white pantomime mask (who has guns and knives and apparently is trying to kill him) and he must survive the attacks and escape. Ultimately he finds a way to trap his attacker and pulls a knife on her, and slices the mask in half revealing.. a FACE! zomg. It turns out that this was all a test by a guy called Scythe Master to see if his survival skills were real ,and is now trained by his attacker (revealed to be someone called Ein) and purt through another warehouse cage fight, where he must learn to kill. After killing some mafia puke, the plot really begins.
It's revealed that Scythe Master works for a shadowy organisation called "Inferno" and Ein and the protagonist (now named Zwei, see what he did there) are now a two person literal vaguerie called "Phantom".
... maybe less straightforward, more intensely convoluted.
AS expected the show does all sorts of assassin things- taking out more mob guys, doing intel work, killing women and children with no mercy and Juno Reactor-ripoff music. This sounds all fine, but I'd just like to say this is wherre my real objections start coming into play. Coming from the guy who wrote Noir, you expect this this stuff, but where as Noir was well paced and took some nice cues of originality, Phantom does not. It lacks pacing and originality at the least. The background art is fine, the character design is passable enough, but there is so little character in the show it's 100% wasted effort.
QED, the cross-episode story of Inferno's toppling of Madison Square and the mafia roup running that place. It spanned two episodes, had dozens of characters both running and arc-centric. Only three characters out of that entire cast were identifiable (not relatable, nobody could relate to any of them,really) - Bitch number one, Bitch's body guard, and the Madison Square Mafia Boss.Every one else was just a John or Jane Doe, a dozen different faced John and Janes. Not even the main leads are fleshed out much at all (until epsode 8 where it's revealed whats really going on with that, so Phantom gets off the hook for them technically).
at 11 episodes long, you half expect them to keep a reasonable pace consitantly, but they don't. You have 1 epsiode of setting up the main leads, 1 of some more setting them up, 6 episodes of filler, and then the endgame begins. I mean whaaaaaaaaaat. They could have EASILY cut out half the filler and still made it watchable length.
Furthering my issues with this show, the bulllet removing scene... you'll know it when you see it.
Seriously, it was only a short mix and match editing witch choice film cuts away from being a hentai scene by suggestion alone. Sadly I can't find a youtube of someone who actually HAS done a mash up.... so I'll do one later. Anyway yeah, it's a real problem.
Also, there'as a subtly implied thread of pedophilia going on with Scythe Master.... I don't know if that was intended or not, but it was just wrong.

Finally the last episode was horribly paced and almost completely decontextualised. Thankyou very much for not making sense at a...

OH CRAP! Sorry guys, apparently I've only got half the series... I will see this through though, but consider this my initial impressions.

It's cardboard bland and badly paced. if this changes, I'll let you know in part 2 of the review.

EDIT - I just got two more episodes.. and found out that after those two, there's still another 15 coming...

here's my thoughts -

Adieu

A little something I'm working on (note - NOT FINAL)

2009-06-14T02:41:00.001+08:00

Original Video - More videos at TinyPic

More stuff coming just around the corner.

We Can't Be Cool

2009-04-22T00:02:00.000+08:00

It's kind of a reoccurring topic with regards to myself, but I can't stand Counter Strike, it's players and it's ability to somehow stay a solvent medium of competitive gaming@. I think the whole game is geared for twitchfuck gamers who obsessively chew through the game so heavily that to win against anyone you must know every small nuance of the game (otherwise you will be reamed in a fashion not unsimilar to having a Hydrochloric enema). Now, where to start ?

Oh yes, let's start with my smallest beefs. The level design is wholly impractical in a real world sense of the word. Even with CS Source's impressively redone maps, you're still stuck maps that are constructed around direct routes and bottlenecks. Now normally, having clearly defined routes is a good thing ,but in my books , having ONLY routes and bottlenecks (no lines for ambush or change of tactic) results in the maps being 100% predictable and linear. Painfully obvious about it as well. This is of course ignoring real-world impracticality, which CS maps all most certainly ARE. There is no sense of purpose to any of them. Thoroughfares that literally hair pain around a building, only to have the middle section drop below and under for NO reason other than for... well I don't know, it's goddamn ridiculous.I'll only concede one map is remotely real-world plausible, and that is CS_office. The rest are just theme mazes in my books (which detracts from the theme of the game)

Next biggest beef - Map scale. It's all wrong. Even with source (which is an improvement), the size of objects directly in relation to players is always off, varying from a bit to OH MY GOD BOXES THE SIZE OF SEATAINERS.

3rd biggest beef - Weapon Models- they're CRAP.No Seriously, not a single CS game has had decently looking or proportioned weapon models. Couple with the hurrrr lower right-corner weapon origins and animation makes every goddamn weapon feel ridiculous.

2nd biggest beef - Game mechanics and systems. They're outright bloody silly (which has lead to such heavy inbuilt and inbred imbalances... in). Starting with the almost arbitrary hit detection system and recoil system attached to weapons, and going through to the absolutely futile and broken weapons balance, it's all frigging wrong. As alluded to the hit detection is trash, it makes players who are occupying an entire crosshair on your screen less of a "you're in my crosshair now you will take some pain" and more of a 50/50 flip coin decision for whether that player is going down or not. usually erring on not (read: crosshairs mean SFA, Accuracy is almost arbitrary to the casual player). Again as inferred previously, recoil in the game is broken. If you can legitimately put a YouTube video video up that shows an exact recoil pattern that can be 100% replicated time and time again, you have officially broken it.

Moving onto the weapon balancing and it's broken ness. Once upon a time, every weapon in a game had a purpose at most of the time throughout all a game. This isn't the case in Counter Strike, because if you're not using the AWP, M4A1, AK47 and Desert Eagle in some sort of cycle, you aren't going to stand a chance against anyone at all. Sub Guns are a laudable effort, and outside of one round in the game ( "the SMG round", the second round in a game) you are not going to fucking touch them. Same goes across for the Shotguns, and the 1 machine gun "Has no use". If CS were thought out at all, there'd still be some use to these weapons in some sense ( personally, I would love to see some sort of purpose returned for CQB fans like me to continue using these weapons, unfortunately it doesn't happen because there is just no motive to get people out of their "favourite weapons"#. Then there's stuff like the AWP, which literally has no counter. THAT, in a multiplayer game is a fucking horrid design flaw. This combined with that whole "fire quickswitch" thing that "AWPers" do, it's intolerably unfair without contention. (and no one uses Auto Snipers for the stigmata they they'd receive from other players)

Now for my Biggest peeve about Counter Strike- the players.
If you're playing on a public server, you are guarantee to find the VERY worst of people's attitudes and egos on display. If you thought /b/ was bad, you ain't seen shit. Then there's incessant voice chat spam, the stoners sitting there with their voice key down while they toke or use their bong, prepubescent twerps and their ear bleeding voices, and all manner of other voicespams.
Then of course you have to deal with that fine level of elitist faggotry that some guys guys parade around with (usually ex-clan guys, or currently IN clan guys just wasting time until.... I dunno.... their order of shithot comes down from clanleader divine or something). These pricks are annoying on their own level because they play the ego card like a motherfucker and when they get pegged down one they scream bloody murder.
Then there are the Private scrimmers and clan guys.. .you know, the competitive guys.. These guys you see on the public open servers sometimes,and usually they pick a side and just REAM. These guys ARE egotistical pricks who not only mean srs fckn bsness ALL the time, but they make sure you know about it.however, unlike the ex-clan guy or the other egodouches, these guys are absolutely ruthless because they know the game better than Valve, Turtle Rock and Gooseman combined do, they know how exactly EVERYTHING goes and because of that, they end up just being serious mindfucks. The funny thing is, you'll pick them out a mile away IRL, because they're all the same. Watch out for these fuckers.

In short, CS is a brain-hemorrhaging experience, and why it's held up as a poster child for anything, is beyond me. There are dozens of games that did things better than it. Tactical Ops (and it's retail cousin in Tac Ops: Assault on Terror) was around at a similar time to CS, and without question it was the superior of the two in gameplay,design, art and function. For a more modern analogy, maybe see Call of Duty 4. Both of these games don't suffer the horrendous issues that Counter Strike suffers and (COD4's own independent success aside), neither replaced it on any level.

@ - I'm of course going to ignore that CS was touted as a tactical shooter. It clearly isn't, it's a twitch shooter of the ilk that quake3 is.
# - For the record, Valve have tried to rectify this once ,with CSS- the Market place. Unfortunately, habitual buying broke the marketplace in under month. last time I looked you would actually GET money money when you bought a TMP ,and the AWP was more expensive than the M249 was on static pricing

Addendum Rant -
I really don't get what every one's problem with COD4's Multiplayer is (by everyone, I of course mean "pro gamers", the same ilk that worship CS no less ) ... Here we have a versatile, robust multiplayer component that pretty much will let you play however you want, the maps are WELL designed and reasonable, and the balancing is fairly solid. Hit detection is MUCH more reliable than Counter Strike (for direct comparison because I just ranted about it), and it even allows for those idiot CS players to player their favourite mode - Bomb Defusal.
Furthermore, I reject the notion that COD4 isn't a fast deathmatch game. It is, and you need much faster reactions in COD4 than you would in a similar CS scenario. If you want a SLOW deathmatch, I challenge you to play Rainbow Six Raven Shield in adversarial mode, it's slow and what's more , all your CS-breed trickery will fucking fail in it. There is no jump, no quickswitching, and it has all sorta of believable cause-and effect systems in motion. Enjoy your slow deathmatch.

Phew, glad to chew that one out. I hate CS and I think COD4, by comparison, is THE shit. People make me angry :p

Don't go away folks because when I return I bring a TREBLE REVIEW. I review a slightly obscure FPS.. and a DRAMA.. AND MASS EFFECT
PS- I hate this keyboard.

So I drew THIS....

2009-04-09T22:56:00.000+08:00

... And then I died a little inside.

Pre-parade

2009-03-28T22:57:00.001+09:00

Much apologies for the month-plus without update... what can I say, I'm a bit of an ad-hoc slacker, sometimes I'm slack, sometimes I'm not.. Actually I spose the term is probably something like " multiple personalities disorder where both personalities are more or less the same, but one is me 10 years ago and lazy, and one is me now-busy"
Anyway, to recover from this staleness, I belatedly unveil -

The 2009 Toadie Singles Awareness Day/St Valentines Day Alternative Love Album.
This year's one is titled -
Not your Mother's Valentines Day Album
As a bonus this year, I include legal-length previews in a RAR file for those curious.

So , here comes the Track list-

1) Julianna - Love will light the way
To start the album I've gone with a track from the Haibane Ranmei OST.The track was chosen for not only it's lyrical value, but it's smooth jazz vibe. Ruffled hi-hats and beautiful bass and piano. It's a smooth and classy start to the album

2) Goldfinger - More Today Than Yesterday
A ska cover of a classic love song. It's a great way to ease not only the more senior of us out there into a field of music they'd otherwise shun for being too loud , but to ease the more junior of us into some music history. It's a great track to serenade to as well, so it hits points on all fields.

3) Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine - Are you Gonna be my girl?
Lounge music is so very untrendy and smooth that you can almost hear jet drowning in velour when you play this song... And who of the alternative of us wouldn't mind swooning with your object of affection around a dance hall to the death of Jet?

4) Bonnie Pink - Get in My Hair
Bonnie has this habit of writing, or at the very least performing, in a manner that seems to me to be very close and personal. Rather than singing to a stage or an audience, she feels to sing to herself or to someone right next to her. So really, I could put most any of her songs here and it'd probably feel appropriate.. so here's a good one.

5) Takanashi Yasuharu - (Track 9 from the Seto no Hanayome OST)
Sorry, I can't read moon runes, so that's the best I can give. You know, despite being quite BAD at conveying emotions, Seto no Hanayome (my wife is a Mermaid I think is the official name of the translated version coming to western shores) has some nice music. This particular track is a bit of a romantic interlude that will transition well into....

6) The Aquabats- Monster's Wedding
It's only appropriate that something as gimmicky as Valentines not be taken as fricking sombre important day, and this song is to remind you of this. It's a mix of really campy B-movie horror movie creatures, and love. Remember - this could happen to you .

7) Reel Big Fish - Alternative Baby
Now I know everyone I know doesn't like how much I try to get RBF songs into everything, but I really do think they have songs for every occasion, so I'm including some for Valentines. This song is a real plug of what inspired me to do these albums in the first place. It's a song about some guys at an alternative music concert of some sort, who've fixated their hearts on some girl there. Not wanting to use the cliches or to open themselves full scabbard at her, they're each trying to find a way to convey the point that they are interested in her.

8) Reel Big Fish - Skatanic
Okay okay, getting it out of the way. This song is about another really alternative kind of relationship ,and the confusion that is emotions. Really it is, it's totally not about Obsessive Stalking or anything....

9) Carly Simon - The Spy who loved me
Thank you Broccoli family for ensuring that double entendre was a key point of ALL James Bond flicks at all levels. Sweet Lyrics, and soft piano frame the verses, with some awfully powerful strings during the bridges and choruses, really hammer home a really traditional romantic feel, whilst not being lovey-dovey.

10) Louis Prima & Keely Smith - That Old Black Magic
Why not throw in a classic 50's swing lounge tune to your loved one? This song sorta reflects, in a roundabout way, reflect the way love can throw you off normality completely and absolutely. It's a gripping thing you see, and it'll eat your soul.

11) Wayne Netwon - Danke Schoen
Rather than singing about how love is a constant infinite venture towards some sort of... Mind soul and body singularity for two who are smitten by it's wicked curse, it sings about how sometimes it goes the opposite way, and that isn't necessarily a BAD thing.

12) Round Table featuring Nino - Let me Be with you.
This song is the exact opposite of Danke Schoen. I'd like to emphasise for the point of not wanting to be lynched for hypocrisy, that all loves do not work one single way. Best way to describe this is that it is such a well wrote love song slash into song that I couldn't NOT put it in, and for those couple who are serious Chobits nerds, play this and do that "Chiiiiiiiiiii" thing to one another. You'll either feel very silly, or you'll end up exploding like glass at resonance frequency.

13)UB40 and Chrissie Hyde - I've got you babe
Another cover, but it's got that reggae vibe, which really plays to the benefit of the lyrics. It's a song about how basic love is. Gawd I've gotta stop saying "love", I know... I'll set up a jar and put 50 cents in it every time I use the word. Starting as of top of the list. Crap.

14) The Tea Party - Emerald
Unlike some of the tracks above, The Tea Party really are an alternative band. Headed and Guitared by a man who could give Jim Morison a run for his money, this song is a bit of of a melancholy tale about .. crap *inserts 50c*... with passionate lyrics and performance, it really uses itself as an extra dimension to it's intent. It's like having a well written poem performed with intense passion and perfection.

15) The Darkness - I believe in a thing called love
As the name suggests , it's about a guy who's now lost his head over a girl. I'd try justifying this from some sort of artistic perspective, but the lyrics speak for themselves. Also, let's be honest, it's a great song regardless.

16)David Holmes - Tess
From the Ocean's 11. It wafts opulent admiration, but gives very little warmth. Let's face it, we all know someone who is like this, and know someone after this person. The unachievable dream. Sigh, one can at least pretend.

17 ) Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl
Ahh nostalgia. It makes everything in the past awesome. It also makes heartbreak harder. Poor Morrison lost a person very close to him, who had brown eyes. He reflects on what was once, and now no longer can be.

18) Dave Dobbyn & Herbs - Slice of Heaven
Dave from New Zealand here ,sings about not how this girl is pretty, or how she smiles or whatever small physical thing binds his heart to her, but how her mere presence and happiness makes him want to stick around her. If it sounds a bit wet, it is, but wet isn't always a bad thing. And Let's face it, this touches on the less physical aspects of .... oh cock *50 c*. If you found someone who everyday was exciting and interesting, wouldn't YOU do everything to keep him/her around? I swear, if I ever find someone who'd maybe one day consider not hating my failures as a human being long enough to sit around and just hold a conversation for a few days with me, I'd find a band, and I'd bloody sing a ska cover of THIS to her.

19) Imogen Heap - Closing In
Imogen sings about a great many things. her first album, i-megaphone, was a scary stare into the void without using the phrase "Death Metal". Speak for Yourself however, seems to be an album from the heart though, and this song in particular is about dissolving the gap between two people. Yesssss, made it without saying that word.

20) Oomph! - Answer Me
For a bit of a change of pace, here's some metal. It's a bit of a cautious stay-or-go tale, whether or not some woman has the nosh to say yes to someone as frighteningly intense as the lead singer from oomph!

21) Gene Pitney - Only love can break a heart
True story, nuff said. Laughter sure as hell doesn't do that much damage.. unless it's coupled with it.

22) Dr Hook - When you're in Love with a beautiful woman
Oh crap, I've added another mainstream oldies song. Rats.

23) The Delgados - Make Your Move
The Delgados is all about a the less optimistic form of romance. That is , the one that got half done and then abandoned. It's about trying to recoup the losses and get the whole thing back together. Then again, the song could be about anything, the delgados are great at being poetically ambiguous.

24) Basement Jaxx - Hot'n'Cold
Another song about mixed signals. I'll be honest, I see alot of THIS particular thing going on, which is a shame. You great pillocks out there sitting on the fence - dive in or get the fuck out.

25) The Delgados - The Weaker Argument Defeats the Stronger
This song is about the lazy heart - the heart the is self-concerned. As indeed the song says - What will our friends say?

26) Electric Light Orchestra - Strange Magic
ELO is always appropriate, no exceptions. Let's be honest, if ... shit *50c*... love was a magic, it sure has some ODD properties.

27) The Doors- Hello, I love You
Ah the doors, they're upfront and honest about their feelings,even if they don't know the target of their affection.

28) Toto - Africa
A song that's quite ambiguous on direct lyrics about.. that thing... but it's quite a good one to serenade to, and on the day of days, serenading is quite important to not letting that romance tank. It is a song about that strong emotion ,but it's quite coy about calling it directly.

29) BoA - Duvet
Duvet is about is a bit of a sad song about love gone unrewarded... cock that's another *50c*.... and how the fallout from the failed attempt at the relationship has left the singer drowning.

30) Imogen Heap - Sweet Religeon
So if religeon is belief and love in a deity, what does a lateral mortal love mean to it?

31) Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville - I Don't Know Much
Probably one of the most soppy love songs ever. Included for those of you who don't have a girl that could appreciate.. say.. Streetlight Manifesto

32) Tripod- Throw your arms around me
A Cover of a song about getting rid of all the baggage of life and enveloping each other in love, shit *50c*, sung by a bunch of clever idiots. Seems to get rid of that pretentiousness about the song, which is good ,because the song was horrid with it.

33) Reel Big Fish feat Rachel Minton (from Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer) - Ask
A cover of a song by The Smiths, it's a song about how the feeling is pretty much second only to friendship.

34) Smashing Pumpkins - Zero
This really is for the alternative heads out there, it's about how when you're in a relationship you yourself matter the least and the other person is EVERYTHING that you need to matter.

35) Streetlight Manifesto - Kristina she don't know I exist
This song's a bit of song about how not putting yourself out there can end up with you getting nothing and your affectioned getting something anyway.

26) The Aquabats - Hot Summer Nights (Won't last forever)
Unlike most of the other songs is about how affection can sometimes leave you blinded to the obvious fact she's not wanting you. fitting way to end a valentines album eh?

And now for a link to the preview file-

for-hire.half-lifecreations.com/Not your Mother's Valentines Day Album (Toadie's compilation 09).rar
Copy paste that into your address bar to recieve 30 megs of 30 sec clips.

Coming VERY soon, I return to review stuff, including something I've been holding for it to finish airing and now it's over.

They say it makes the world spin round

2009-02-03T00:07:00.000+09:00

Okay enough farcical delusions of grandeur. I'm about as close at I have ever been to to that razor edge between sanity and losing it. No one thing is particular is to blame for it, but the net result is that right now I'm sitting very tetchily this year, and any one small thing could tip me over the precipice. Consider this a warning, I may have less tolerance for shit this year, and patience overall will be probably less. No more passive aggressive tactics- you come at me, I'll come back at you and believe me, with my sheer determination as a glowing red fist you will go down for the count.

Whew, that felt good. Should vent that kind of stuff more often. Must be that preposterone everyone keeps saying all male bodies exert all the time.

Okay, now for another one of those pre-valentine things I do. Like last year I will be doing a recommendable playlist for love without using mainstream or classic or "oldies" to express it it. Think of it it as your Punk-Ska-Metal-AcidJazz Cupid.
On top this small gesture, I am going to offer something tangible to you, the avid, and maybe not so avid readers (who no doubt pick this up through my Facebook or something rather than the original source) .
Ladies and Gentlemen you probably know this already from my periodic bemoaning of the subject, but I'm a Single White Male, a nerdy one with odd tastes, but a single white male none the less. I have pretty much given up on the idea of ever running across what I'd currently consider my ideal match up.I've also given up on specialist dating sites (sites like anonidate have tendency to be FULL OF TRAPS). It really is quite depressing, particularly around this time of year (damn you you Hallmark season getting to me).
So this is why I have opened a challenge to you punters. Your mission consists of three objectives

Find someone who meets a below specified criteria
Contact me on a below specified burn email address with pertinent information
BONUS ROUND - if it gets around to FRIENDSHIP or dating, you get a bonus.

What are you competing for?
AU$100. Solid Cash. Unless you or the person you're presenting live outside Australia, in which case it'll be a purchase in Steam to that value. The bonus is an additional AU$50 of that same line of credit.

Now for rules-

All forwarded peeps must be at least aware are being entered into this.The is no way I am going force this stuff on anyone, so it's gotta be at least approved by them.
18+. Common sense there really. Nothing Paedobear may approve of because it is legally frowned upon and I do not want to be on the gigantic scroll of sex offenders.
All entries into the running must be entered before February 15, 5 AM to the following address - wejustcametopartydown AT gmail DOT com . Message must contain your name, the name of the person you're submitting, a viable contact method to get in touch with them (nothing stupid like AIM or YIM. Email, Skype, MSN, phone, something like), and a reply address if needed.
No Traps or Trolling. All trolling and fake entries will be ignored, as well as duplicate entries.

Those be the rules, now for my criteria on what I'm looking for

At least enjoys anime (taste in anime need not 100% align with mine)
Has a sense of humor
Can Caramelldansen
I was going to say "has broad taste in music", but what I really meant to say was "doesn't worship Rap or RnB."
has heard of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones or Reel Big Fish (and has no objections to it)
a bit nerdy. I like my women like I like my z-buffer algorithms - (overally complex with good results)
EDITED IN - can tolerate my OC-level dedication to game development, my modelling , sound editing, and the likes
ALSO EDITED IN - isn't neccesarily looking for a home run. Doesn't mind being pampered a little, within bounds.
eccentricity optional
physique - not particularly fussed, just not large. I don't want to sound cruel to you lot, but it's not really what I'm into. Glasses a plus, DFC - also plus.
optional bonus - is an fem/a/non (frequents /a/. Not /b/. They ARE different and no I won't go over it. )

There we go, your challenge is set, now GO PROVE ME WRONG INTERNOSES.

EDIT #3: oh and if said person you're interested in entering is curious about what I'm like, may I point to my Facebook profile - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=536634192

Toadie is in his couch, owning ur interwebs

2009 - Year of the Angry Oyster

2009-01-27T23:24:00.000+09:00

Unlike most people on the earth, I knew from the outset that 2008 was going t be a mediocre year... and I was not dissappointed. As a token gesture to the year that saw the release of more 3rd person shooters with cover than actual FPS es (further enforcing my hatred for Gears of War and all Space Marines ever), I'd like to hand out a few awards.

The Toadie Awards for Incredible Feats during the year -

The Koolaid Award - award for most over hyped thing of the year
OH YEAH. Inaugural award of mine goes to -
The Dark Knight.
Heath Ledger won Best Actor Posthumously? Fuck that. It was alright. Probably the best BATMAN movie, but it certainly wasn't groundbreaking cinematography or performing. And Fucking Batman needs a throat lozenge. It gave the franchise the venom and vodka induced reboot it needed, much in the same vein as Casino Royale in that respect.
Runners up - Treyarch for the Quantum of Solace Game. You couldn't have told the story of the movie worse if you were not briefed on either of the new Bond movies at all and instead were fed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Also, you guys need to finish the bloody game off.

The EA award - for keeping poor schleps paying for mediocre content year after year.
This year, not going to EA for once. Instead, it's going to THREE nominees -
Blizzard Activision and Treyarch - For Call of Duty World at War. You could have put out an Expansion Pack for the little amount of SP and MP innovation that World at War introduces. Flamethrowers and coop mode + WW2 do not a long lasted game make. At least roll the coop back to COD4 at some point please.

The ZugZug Award -for being 100% predictable in every respect.
Two winners for this award-
Firstly, Blizzard Activision for WoW:Wrath of the Lich King. Delivering EXACTLY what I predicted you would - More WoW, delayed Starcraft 2 ( Warcraft 1 in Space - 2)and more delayed Diablo 3(Diablo 1 Remastered).WoW 3 - Wrath of the Lich King. This time, throw more dots.
Secondly , the US money lenders, for trashing the US economy with sub-prime mortgages. HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE SEEN THAT THEY WERE NOT GOING TO PAY YOU BACK? SERVES YOU RIGHT, NOW YOU ARE BANKRUPT. HAR HAR HAR.

The Ubisoft Award - This award recognises services to the destruction of reliable brands, genres, or franchises.
This year's Winner once again is Ubisoft for making another contribution to the blamange swamp with YET another batch of atrocities to the Tom Clancy name. Good going guys. It was bad enough that you made ONE Vegas Game, you didn't need to make ANOTHER one, and you most certainly didn't need to recycle shit as much as you did. EndWar, despite being a decent strategy game, still makes me tick. You better not screw up HAWX.

The Left for Dead award- award for making something technologically mighty at the expense of everything else.
My last award goes to the outstanding money suckers at Valve for Left4Dead for designing a technically brilliant, and in theory good hooter, that in actuality I find quite boring and short on..stuff.. for the price it is going retail for. Genuinely pleased with the overcharging and hyping there. Way to shaft it.]

So , 2009 is now underway, and with it , comes a tonne of expectations for the year. I myself hold very few. Probably nickel and diming will go up on games, and the price of literally everything will rise again a few more times. Nothing Spectacular I can see on the horizon that tickles my fancy, so I shall see and when I see something I shall let you internoses know.
Because you smell and sniff data, you don't see or hear it. Not on the Internet.

OH, Before I forget and Sign out -
If you missed it in December -
www.svencoop.com - Sven Coop 4 beta is out. I did a tonne of stuff for it, so go check it out. Beware, there are bugs, check the forums for temp fixes.
and Coming soon - a short webcomic that I drew. and For Hire. I'll keep you guys posted.

Frank Bilders has come to fuck you up good like

2008-12-04T23:29:00.000+09:00

There are many, many MANY first person shooters out there these days. So much so that they almost transcend genres and create their own to get their point across. Ever since the high acclaim successes of Half-life and Deus Ex, however, there has been a lot of focus of throwing "fresh" into a first person shooters. The result - too much divergent thinking, there are a lot of shooters out there that try to innovate with the end result the core mechanics get neglected.

FarCry 2- THE REVIEW

Today, I would like to talk to you about my thoughts on Far Cry 2 and why you should put money on this and not.. say, Fallout 3. There may be comparisons on unfair standings, and this course could be considered biased.That being said, I still suggest you get FarCry 2 over Fallout 3.
Also, any references to Boiling Point: Road to hell that will be no doubt mailed with pictureised hate mail to me will be ignored, largely because it was an FPS RPG ( so any direct comparisons gameplay wise are nastily weighty), and honestly the game was quite TRASH - end of story.

Far Cry 2 is the sequal to the early 2000s WTF-thon shooter, Far Cry. Before anybody asks, no, it shares NOTHING in common with it. Not characters, not setting, not developers, nothing. Is this a bad thing? most certainly not. FarCry was only good for about 2 levels, before it became just ANOTHER corridor shooter, and really at BEST a mediocre shooter for the second half.

Really what they did for Far Cry 2 was go back to the drawing board with the game. They took what was GOOD from the first game (the initial wide open space gamelplay) and they expanded from there. The Result, one of the most positively awesome shooters on the market. Far Cry 2 really is ground-up a shooter, so any comparisons with S.T.A.L.K.E.R or Fallout 3 are largely unfair due to both of them trying to play the RPG elements card to the table in either a minor or major suite.Far Cry does not even bother with trying to sideline the player's trigger and brain connection like that.

The story goes in Far Cry 2 that you are sent into a war torn and scarred African country (that remains nameless for the sake of creativity) trying to get an arms dealer who goes by the alias "The Jackal". Not long after stepping off the plane however, nature gives you a kick in the nuts and you find yourself struck down with the malaria. After getting laid up in a Hotel to recoup, a strange twist of irony finds you face to face with your target. Too weak to even stand, he scares the shit out of you some and leaves.you then find Yourself right in the middle of a civil war between two massive factions full of Africans. Officially quite fucked, this is where the game actually begins.
The premise of the game's plot is quite intriguing, because it isn't pinning you to it. You can in fact ignore the main plot completely if you want, or you can cannonball the plot if you so choose. Both are polar opposites to each other, yet those two options exist, and every one in between. Essentially, I suppose a good comparison would be to look at the GTA series. yeah, the Delinearisation is probably a bit GTA-style, if a A LOT bigger game area and much more open.

With this amount of you'd expect something to be a miss, but there really isn't. The HUGE map, is well populated with detail, enemies and vehicles. The attention to detail in it is truly staggering. No really it is. a 1:1 day/night cycle, incredible procedural tree regrowth and grass propagation, it's a stunning world. This combined with SUPERB Atmospheric audio, the world literally crawls and sprawls with life. It's the closest thing I've ever experienced to a living world inside a game. In fact, the game is good enough is that respect that you can just stop what you're doing, find a nice little unpopulated area and just go exploring. In fact, no, that really is a good option sometimes.
And you know what? nothing stops you doing it. So Awesome.They've just given you 50-100 square kilometers of area and just gone "kill this dude, or don't- kgo". It's choose your own way FPSing.
Naturally, the tech behind this is really quite special, but the thing is it doesn't need a Black monolithic computer to run decently. In fact, a decent mid range rig could handle this game without too much of a hassle, and the visuals scale well, with a tonne of options to tweak the most frames out of your PC settings. Naturally, having a machine that could render the entire of the Death Star scene from Star Wars WOULD be a benefit, but it isn't the price of entry for the game, so all those mid rangers should rejoice.

A game of this category obviously must have some armaments behinds it, and boy does Far Cry 2 deliver in spades. Starting off , you are on a 4 slot system for inventory (your machete, a sidearm, a primary weapon and a special weapon). Each of these categories has between 9 and 12 weapons in it, and they range from standard Assault rifles , SMGs and pistols, to Grenade launchers (there are 2), rocket launchers, Flamethrowers, FLARE PISTOLS and a whole gamut of everything in between. Far cry 2 also has an interesting way of presenting you with weapons too. You can pick weapons off enemies, but you should be careful, because they ARE African and the weapons they carry are in a dilapidated state. In this state, they jam, and increasingly more so as they get worse, and eventually !KB on you (!KB = KABOOM!).However, getting yourself some of the local currency and visiting a weapons dealer, using his little 386 with Green-on-black CRT screen, you can purchase weapons to be permanently available in your storehouse.
Storehouses are adjacent to said weapon dealer's shop, and store all your weapon purchases. This is handy, because you then have clean, working weapons whenever you want them (read- clean guns that don't jam ALWAYS available for infinity). There are several places in the game world which are safe zones, generally, they are the three major towns (where cease-fires have been declared),bars (where you can pick up side missions from), and safehouses. Safehouses were designed as save points for the player, but thanks to quicksave, some of their usefulness is dulled off on the PC version. Still, safehouses are places where you are untouchable, can quickly change out dodgy weapons for new ones,AND as an added bonus, the only place you can sleep (so you can fast forward to a specific time of day to do a mission if you prefer working at certain times of day like I did).
I really would like to go into a whole lot more depth into all the awesome little things in the game mechanics that just make this a joy but I could be here all night. Just suffice in the knowledge they have NAILED FPS mechanics in the most visceral and gratifying way I've ever seen. OH and you have to actually take bullets out of you if you get shot up. Should mention that.

From an art and design point of view, the game has been gone over with a fine tooth comb, and everything has been given specific attention and care, from grass textures, to gun animations, to rock placement. it's all brilliant. As an additional Kudos, the sheer volume of quality audio is amazing, detail in the Audio.. I've never seen so much of it. Sure you could point at several games with plenty of sounds going on (any COD game really), but there isn't the detail to Audio that FarCry 2 has.
The weapon sounds are a livable mix of stuff they kept from when UBi bought RedStorm, and a whole cast of new sounds which are just MEATY. Machineguns have a satisfying thud to them, while assault rifles feel more dakka dakka, but it's all quality. Then there's the sheer volume of atmospheric sound (which I believe I mentioned earlier), the masses of non-important NPC and enemy conversations, and of course the literal truckload of character Dialog from all the characters. It's truly amazing, and Ubisoft Montreal really have to be given credit for it. The game is an aural masterpiece.

Lastly, I'd just like to give a message to Ubi Montreal- "YOU ARE A BUNCH OF CUNTS! LESS THAN 30 minutes before the end of the game! WHY?! D:" Allow me to qualify. Right, basically the way the story goes, I was getting rather attached to a particular character in the game, much more than I've ever felt an attachment to a game character before. Definition of sucking a player into the game world . I felt he could be a friend of mine in the real world, and he was just so damn cool. Anyway, 30minutes before the end of the game's main plot. oh I can't.. that would be spoiling. Trust me though, when you get there and observe what happens, you will understand my message. Yeah, Ubi, Fuck you. That was an uncalled for shot in the pills guys.

Now for the unavoidable comparing to Fallout 3. In my books really impossible to compare the two. They both are trying to accomplish different things. Far Cry 2 wants to be the best shooter, Fallout 3 wants to be better than Oblivion (not hard),STALKER wants to be Russian. However, gun to my head, I'm going to give it a shot.
I don't really like reliance on stats-based accuracy and damage (ie, roll a 3, do 2 damage, to his*roll again*... little finger) of Fallout 3, I don't think it's particularly good for FPSing with, and it results in absurd situations at times, VATS helps, but it's not really where the shootings at.Despite having an actual ballistics physics simulator built into the game, STALKER has about the least logical amounts feeling to all it's weapons. Starting weapons especially feel less like reall guns and more like spreadfire spud guns .Far Cry2's is much more about using your own wits and abilities to get the job done rather than relying on chance and die rolls, and does so with a nice amount of bravado and visceral emphasis.
Fallout 3's world is wide , open, but very much dead and dying. It feels dead, feels decayed, thus it fits with the premise of the game. Stalker's World is just haunting. It's real, but it's dead kinda of reality which makes you crap your pants around every corner in fear of danger. Far Cry 2 the world is about as living as breathing as game worlds get. Sure it may be a horrid place to live in real life, but my god it's just stunning, it's exactly like Africa.
In terms of art, Fallout 3 has that once again disturbing mix of Bethesda's well made characters and art, but with Bethesda's uncanny valley feel because they're too lazy to make people emote with anything more than vague gestures. STALKER read Roadside Picnic one time too many, played the original Fallout once or twice, then had a holiday in Pripyat to see what it was like. Came back, made the game, and the result is probably one of the best renditions of a wasteland. Far Cry2 relies not on heavy power to bring it's art to you, but it does it with enough conviction that by gosh if there was anything flawed, you could never see it.

If you have got to this end of the review, you should know just one thing if you haven;t already purchased FarCry 2 - do it now. You are missing out on potentially the best placement of money one a game this year (yeah, yes, Fallout 3, bla bla Bethesda, bla bla bla, don't care, too many laser rifles not enough satisfying mechanics).
This Game has officially surpassed Duke Nukem 3D as my most satisfying FPS ever. It has everything , looks, freedom, longevity, plenty of hidden stuff, lots of to do, and the most visceral feeling gun play I've ever experienced.
Get it, get it now.

If you're so smart , Explain this Clarissa .. POW!

2008-11-19T19:35:00.000+09:00

Speaking strictly off the cards, the world is pretty off center with its usual self lately. Okay okay, so there's a gigantic global financial brouhaha, the environment's going down the gurgler, all sorts of strife everywhere, and now everyone's worrying about SOMALIA... AGAIN. But, when I take a step back, I realise how good the smaller stuff ,all the stuff that is primary in contact to my life, doesn't seem to be going too bad.. so yeah, life is comparatively decent providing you aren't heavily commercializing your life or livelihood, and if you don't hold your breath for Humanity to reverse a literal civilisation or more's worth of ingrained tendencies.

I like to keep it positive, despite knowing well and truly that history repeats.
So what have I been up to?
In short- Kickin' it, keepin it real. Pretty crazy, fo sho etc.

Phew, glad I got THAT out, enough black people impersonating for me.

Nah, I be skankin with my fellow rude boys. Life's been pretty average for at least a a couple of months now, which is a great change from the insanity I was suffering end-of-July.With that kinda shit outta the way, I'm able to get back to focusing on the stuff I want to - my sketching, my 3d modelling, and improving my technique with both. I must say that thanks to incredibly long bus trips I am at least making some breakthrough with that. Unfortunately, creativity does have a tendency to dry up RIGHT as you need it, which is something I'm just going to have to prepare for.

Meat and Cookies over, let's have a look at shit that's happening this week.

First off , A lot of those games I mentioned a few weeks ago in here are almost ALL out, almost ALL of them seem to be of some description pretty decent (there are a few mixed bags coming up).
One game I don't think I mentioned at the time, which after release and launch seems to be a lot more promising than the small amount of information and media for it before release, is Tomb Raider Underworld. The game looks pretty gorgeous, they're really toned Lara Croft into a bloody well toned and much more pleasing main character. Same goes for pretty much ALL the visuals in that game, and if the soundtrack the ingame videos are anything to go by, it's going to be a BLOODY NICE game to just sit and play.

For all those recovering WoW-fags (I have NO apologies for calling ANYONE who plays that miserable excuse for a gaming experience) who managed to just wean yourself off your electronic heroin, I have some bad news- Blizzard just made CRACK AND REESE FOR BREAKFAST with the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King Expansion . The expansion isn't meant for everyone, it's a pack which at it's heart is designed for longtime Blizzard pushers who've got their level 70s and suddenly found out "shit, the game has an end. bugger." Not anymore, with a new continent, new classes, new mounts, new graphics, and most of all, another reason to re-open accounts with Blizzard after you quit 3 years ago after they nerfed the pallies or what the fuck ever. If you're on the WoW-steroids, by all means, go get your next fix. IF you're not, STAY THE FUCK OUT, I promise you I will start giving money to people if they swear on their life they will never play that game. Someday.

Oh, the new Need For Speed game. I feel I should mention it.. being a ..game... and all, and I know certain people do enjoy fast cars that handle pseudo-realistically. Need for Speed: Underground is looking, as all previous holders in the franchise have, shiny and awesome. There is an Aston Martin Vanquish in it, and that's enough of a draw card for me to at least look at the back of the box when it comes out in the next month.

Now, a bit more meat,I've managed to play myself a few dozen hours of the CODWAW Multiplayer Beta. I suppose what some of you want to know about the New call of Duty Game (World at War) - is it any good in multiplayer? As you've all no doubt guessed, the return to World War 2 means you'd be assuming that a lot of that modern-day cutting edge tech that you got to hoist around in COD4 is gone, right? Wrong, sorta.

The good -
The game's mechanics are much more inline with COD4's brilliantly slick setup (the XP system, attachments, unlocks, achievements, the whole lot). These mechanisms have been expanded on and tweaked to fit WW2. 65 Levels to gain, with 3 levels of Prestige mode ( a feature that was dumped from the PC version of COD4).
Some of the attachment unlocks are pretty clever. For example, Bayonets, Bipods, Sniper Scopes and Flash Hiders. For all of you Bolt-action fans, you'll be damn pleased that there are 6 of them, and by default come without scopes. Some of the new perks are pretty cool, and the replacements for UAV, Airstrikes and Helicopters are pretty clever. Dogs instead of Helo in my books is always a nice trade off. The game overall is quite balanced.And it sounds and looks nice.

The bad -
Aperture sights from a technical and historical perspective are a fucking joke. not a single army put those things into wide enough adoption that they even warrant a footnote on the battlefield. But no, they're in, instead of the red-dot sights ( because god forbid that modern technology have one up on WW2).
Of the 3 maps, I could really only claim 1 as decent for playing any sort of game in, and that's fort. The other two maps in the Beta were iffy. Makin has some serious performance issues on one end of it, and has really iffy amounts of cover over far too many routes between places. There are a few nice spots to camp and counter-camp, but it's just so damn indecisive. In short, the layout is CRAP. Roundhouse is worse. Its a sniper heaven, with cover only around the edges, and two spots in the middle. everything else is basically turned over to flat ground to allow the biggest wet blanket for deathmatch ever, the TANKS, to roll around.
Which brings me to tanks- They're really quite an odd inclusion in the multiplayer. They're bloody powerful , bloody slow, in the hands of an idiot they can roll a spawn point faster and more efficiently than just airstriking spawnpoints. On the counter, there are more then enough ways to take them out, and a couple of shots from a Bazooka or Sticky Nades should take one out more than happily.They make good mobile cover though, so they do have that for them. But I still don't see the point of them in the game. in the space needed to allow for them, they could have easily made more cover, and just solidified the damn infantry experience than bother with the damn laggy things.I suppose what I'm saying is that Treyarch's map designers are a bunch of crazy spazzers.

The Ugly- Nothing really. War itself is pretty ugly, and I think even in the MP beta, that comes across well. It's not as visceral in MP as,say, Far Cry 2 is, but hey, nothings perfect. If you yearn for your bolt action rifles again, World at war is your only friend from now until you unlock the Mosin Nagant.

The Verdict- it's good enough, I hope that most of the maps they put in the retail package are at least OF the standard of Fort (the one map I found adequate), and at the worst, being an improved Makin. Everything else is pretty good, some glaring history issues aside. Should be a good shoot.

Coming up next in my Bilbo Bloggins - I Review Far Cry 2 and kick some people in the nuts. Should be a good one, peace out.

Toadie reviews - Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion Season 1 (or How I learned about the Spaghetti people.. oh crap.)

2008-11-09T14:07:00.000+09:00

Sometimes there are shows or games that I really don't know what to make of. QED, the harrowing tale of Lelouch vi Brittania and his single-minded quest to overthrow the empire that bears his family name.

As the story goes, the Britannia empire, which is apparently full of power hungry crazies, decides they want to take over the world again (see Colonialism), and successfully does so, annexing the entire of Europe and continental Asia, as well as Japan(not without a fight, but the walking "knightmare frame" mechs they have do kinda of make it one sided). This is where the fun begins. The Area formerly known as Japan is known as Area 11, and all of Japan's former citizens are forced into slum-like housing and conditions, while the new overclass live it up with opulent style and safety (think Dickensian era class struggle difference between the two lots of people).

Lelouch lives an almost double life. Having had his mother killed by his father(at least that's who he suspects planned it), he removed himself from association with his family and all chances to take throne of Britannia as default heir, and escaped to Jap..sorry, Area 11 to plot his revenge. Years later, he and his mentally scarred-so-now-she-keeps-her-eyes-closed younger sister Nunally are living and being taught at the Ashton academy, being looked after by the Ashton family, under the assumed names of Lelouch and Nunally Lamperouge.

Turns out, Lelouch is somewhat of a master tactician. During his lunch breaks, he and his lap-dog best friend Rival escape on a sidecar to dual some of the best minds in the empire at Chess. On the return from one of these chess getaways, Lelouch gets caught up in a vehicle hijack by some Nippon liberation front type people (they get bumper shunted by a semi trailer that's been nicked from a Brittanian research facility), Lelouch gets all messed up in their escape, is accidentally targeted as being one of them. While on the lamb in this small crisis he discovers two things - firstly, his childhood friend Suzaku (who is the son of the former Prime Minister of Japan), and secondly, that what the terrorists stole, wasn't in fact the Poison Gas WMD they thought it was (or rather its hard to explain what it really IS). Instead, it's a Green-haired girl (later revealed to be named C.C (pronounced Shizu)) that has the power to give special almost magical powers (called Geass). Suzaku gets shot for disobeying an order to shoot Lelouch( he gets better), and Lelouch and CC escape, to find the true face of Britannia, mass-murdering shock troops willing to destroy entire cities to suppress an opposing view or to cover up things they don't want seen. He binds a contract with CC and she gives him a Geass power, the power to unwaveringly command people he makes eye contact with. From this point, Lelouch begins his anti-Britannia campaign, starting with the ordered suicide of the squad which caught him.

He takes on another alter-ego as Zero, leader of the Black Knights, a highly organised force of people who want the destruction of the Britannia empire. Of course, this is intermixed with his high school life and on more than one occasion through the season he has hi jinx which almost spell his true identity being revealed.

TL;DR - Lelouch becomes Osama bin Laden, only more successful.

The show is highly schizophrenic in it's direction. First it plays the high school card, then it plays the Byronic hero card, the LOYALTY card, the FAMILY Card, Jesus it plays almost a new card every episode, it's that mind-numbingly complex. The show has so many bloody characters too, 4 real primary ones, and about 20 secondary, and maybe another 30 supporting. The fact they try to give them all a fair dose of airtime doesn't help it. You know what? Thank bloody god the main story arc is rigid enough to keep it mostly in order, or this would be a real mess. To Sunrise's credit, largely they pull off most of the stuff they pull works enough to not be something to bitch about, if at times it really does seem quite off the wall.

The Characterising is a pretty large part of everything in CG, and for the most part the characters are all individual. Lelouch is a Byronic anti-hero with a heart of ice, who I found I really didn't like much. Suzaku is full of love, Gottwald is full of LOYALTY, and Euphemia is full of innocence. the characters get their motif across fairly transparently, and you don't need to wonder too hard about if they're hiding something.

Now to get into the technicals of the show.
The character art is HIGHLY stylised, with most character proportions easily defined as Noodle people. That isn't to say it's bad, but they are quite narrow and thin, with LONG arms. The animation is pretty good, with a fair few scenes with quite high frame counts (inversely, there are a few where they did just did a 2-frame talking heads thing).
Colour is vibrant, and I'm especially liking the royal purple color + crests and laurels they've given as the livery for the Britannia empire. It works, and isn't too far off the real world's British royal family livery.
Visuals overall are pretty good, but nothing that really breaks away from the norm.

To the audio side of things, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the effects are pretty nice and well mixed, but some of it (like some of the gunshots) seem really piss weak by comparison. The soundtrack's not bad though, and however the first intro ( Colors by Flow) was so out of context and catchy that it became one of 3 big memes that came out of the entire Code Geass. JIBUN WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The voice casting was somewhat more optimistically done, and by and large, it's all good with Jun Fukuyama as Lelouch, a few other names as other characters, and NORIO WAKAMOTO as the Emperor of Britannia.

If you are all about mechs, terrorism, Pizza Hut or deep,broad and complex stories, CG is for you. If you're not too keen on any of that, I recommend a return to normalcy and to pretty much go do something else.

Interblog update

2008-10-31T00:33:00.001+09:00

Current mood - WHaaaaaat ._______.
Currently activity - using all my strength to NOT play FarCry2.Must not play... too short on time right now....
Currently watching - Strike Witches. Why does not one female in this show wear PANTS?! I'm thoroughly bemused by it. Bemused, but not really complaining. Hey, I didn't write the show, I have no right to. Actually, if you pretend to ignore the blatent lolicon fanservicing, the show's quite an awesome twist on both history and ..witches...
Currently Playing - Far Cry 2 - the game is.. jsut wow. I don't think I've played a game this enticing since I picked up Duke Nukem 3D some 10 years ago. Not kidding, I love this game too much, it's a challenge to not play it round the clock.Needless to say, there will be a review of this shit once I finish off the main campaign at least ONCE.

Coming up next- I review Code Geass : Lelouch of the Rebellion without using the phrase "noodle people".

Peace out for a bit
Toadie

Kawaii kawaii desu hurk death

2008-10-17T23:22:00.001+08:00

It's official folks, there is now an International Saimoe League... and Voting opened today for it.
For those not in the know, Saimoe is THE competitive popularity contest. A competitition, oddly enough, for the most Moe character. If you're feeling guff enough for some hardcore radio button selection, head over to http://http://www.internationalsaimoe.com and put down some votes. Admittedly, the international flavour one has been streamlined down a shit tonne from all the varius regional and .jp ones, but it really keeps it sweet. Currently on round three is Konata Izumi vs Tomoyo Sakagami and C.C. and Kotomi Ichinose. I urge people to vote AWAY from the Clannad towards the others (they don't call it CLANNAIDS for a reason, though apparently After Story isn't 1/2 bad).

With that little poke over, let's get onto some real meat and cookies business. Yes, meat and cookies. Because I said so, no YOU SHUT UP.
October delivers quite a lot of things anually. For me, it's hayfever. For stores, Christmas season preparations. For game publishers, it's release fever. This year, it's at pitch with quite literally a few truckloads of titles rolling out the door in the next 6 weeks. Key ones I'm eagerly anticipating listed and categorised below -

Quantum of Solace (007) (actually released now) - it has been a long time since there has been a good bond game. Really, most of them since The World is not Enough for N64 have been really poor attempts to cash-into the franchise. This, combined with the reinvented Bond in with the face of Daniel Craig at the head and Treyarch developing the game itself on the COD4 engine, it really does seem to be quite promising. Oh and a Bond vs everyone else multiplayer mode, looks fun.
Video trailer link - http://www.gametrailers.com/player/41480.html

FarCry 2- NOT made by Crytek, DOESN'T involve islands or tunnel maze bases within, all sorts of Sandbox-y type stuff and AFRICA to enjoy... Built-in/ingame map maker/editor, propogated fire, actual damage and shit. What is NOT to like about this game? Nothing. It should be pretty fricking awesome. Enough to make me want to switch to modding the shit out of it? maybe, if there's an SDK after release.. I may consider it.
Video trailer link - http://www.gametrailers.com/player/41569.html

Halo Wars - Alright, I don't own a 360, but I love the world Bungie made for it's franchise, and this RTS looks to stick pretty happily to it. Looks like it plays like Age of Mythology on console with Halo stuff. MAC strikes and shit ftw.
Video trailer link - http://www.gametrailers.com/player/40830.html

COD World at War - Co-op, COD4-like stuff going on,Iwo Jima, NO Normandy crap, Treyarch's decent eye for detail and awesome shit.. and instead of Helicopters, you get ATTACK DOGS. ATTACK DOGS. Bayonets in the same way the COD4 had Grenade Launchers. Rifle Grenades. Gas and Gas Masks. This has got it GOING ON.
Video trailer link - http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36249.html

Mirrors Edge - Before they were even showing off the gameplay I was already loving this game. First thing I saw- they threw out alot of the First Person Shooter's archetyping in both art style, design and story. A clean and bright world with a sinister edge, a hero that's forced to live on the fringe, and more imprtantly ,a female lead who doesn't have a body that doesn't scream "I am a supermodel. OHOHOHOHO WHY NOT WHORE OURSELVES". It was almost felt eastern in intent and theme (avoiding using the phrase anime-like, because it's a bad descriptor and not strictly accurate.) Gameplay footage started coming out and it just kept going on that trend-bucking crap, and now it's loooking quite impressive from both an art and deisng angle, a conceptual angle and an overal game package. This should be a must get because it's pretty fresh and out there, enough so that it's really turning heads in a good way.
Video trailer link - http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36249.html

Tom Clancy's EndWar - Not a big fan of some of the newer Tom Clancy spinoff franchises ( Hawx and the later Splinter Cell games notably), However, despite the deavy stylising, End War looks pretty interesting. I'm always a bit tenuous about "red dawn" style RTSes (mainly because the CnC games pretty much shat on THAT), but it looks pretty nice, perhaps like Word in Conflict, without the 1980s.
Video trailer link - http://www.gametrailers.com/player/34525.html

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva - Had I a PSP to import games for onto... english breaking down... THis game would be on my import list? Why? 1)Hatsune Miku , 2) Rhythm games, great for handhelds (unlike FPSes) 3) excellent and FAAABULOUS graphics.
Video trailer link - http://www.gametrailers.com/player/41457.html

Oh and Left4Dead. I forgot about that. No trailers needed, it's zombie coop by Turtle Rock and Valve.

I predict that I'll probably only be geting maybe one or two of these games on release though, thankyou very much financial crisises killing the AUD's value again. The rest, well we'll see, probably trail purchases over the "holiday season".

Oh while I'm here soaboxing again, I feel it's time to announce to all those not in my "loop"

I will be moving to Montreal, Canada (pronounced Konata for some lollery) next year as part of a ... thing. I can't say much now, I'm pretty bound by the NDA that I verbally agreed to. What I can tell you though is it's full of win. I will be part of making WIN. and you will rejoice at said winning. So yeah, that shit is bananas.

On a side not, having flu-aids sucks, 'cause immediately after I got over last weekend's misery and depression, bam, straight into a nasty 3-phaser of a flu. Currently on the 3rd stage now. ON the plus side, all upper registers of my voice get shot everytime I get one of these bloody things, so I'm forced to speak in low, growly tones, and I usually throwin some accent for effect. Fun times, I can tune my voice a bit more.

.... dozo?

2008-10-12T22:02:00.000+08:00

I suppose I'm a bit spoiled for inspiration sometimes when it comes to anything, but there are days when my brain literally takes a vacation. Truth be told, it's more often than not lately. Partly I think it's a bit of trying too hard to try and come up with stuff (thus exhausting thus precious reserves of creativity faster), partly.. I dunno, I think I've hitting somewhat of a slump.

Today's pretty much the peak of it. It's frustrtating, because it leaks all over everything else going on today. I've had a pretty crapp day overall for no obvious reason other than I've hit a wall.

So to top off, here's my great list of things I've done in a lackluster mood -
1) washing, cleaning, the usual preparation for summer in the house (switching rooms around to get in some of the delicious afternoon sun)
2) started modelling ,realised it was crap, deleted it, started again, finshed, realised it was crap, got rid of it, closed 3ds max. Did not open again
3) had an attempt at lining and coloruing some art. Was craptastic, deleted the work

4)watched Season 4 of NCIS and Hayate Combat butler in a perfect one-then-the-other sequence.Then continued watching mroe Hayate.

5) went for two walks, one in the afternoon, to clear my head and other and 9pm because I enjoy the solitude of where I live well after everybody's home safe.. and to clear my head.

I mknow, fatastic day, right? Absoultely. I know I made myself somewhat of a promise nto to screw around and post "Dear Diary", but today's been so memorably flat, that it deserves the notariety.

This is the lonely, depressed and uninspired Toadie ,signing out.

Obl. Start of month post.

2008-10-07T23:26:00.001+08:00

Two words for the month - Norio Wakamoto.
THe man is a voice acting god. That is all.
Q.E.D.

Crysis Wakamoto Suit

Believe in the review that believes in you - Tenga Toppen Gurren Lagann

2008-09-16T00:30:00.001+08:00

Before I begin this shamozzle, I'd like to apologise beforehand that I didn't deliver on my word that I'd put out 5 pieces of content in a week. Turns out I'm a little less caring about my blog than I am most other things, and I thought I could keep the pace. For whatever reason I can't ,so it wasn't a week of delicious media. Instead, it'll be more like a 3 week-er. Not that anyone cares or listens. Anyway.

Today I'm going to talk about my thoughts on Gurren Lagann (Tenga Toppen Gurren Lagann, to use the full name of the series). To get it out of the way, GL is the current darling child of Gainax (known probably most popularly by their first series, Neon Genesis Evangelion), not to mention without doubt the biggest anime series of 2007, with the DVDs coming out as we speak for the English Dubbed world outside Japan. With such things being thrown around not only major anime news syndicates and forums, but /a/ also, I felt it was time to dig my feet into the murky waters of the genre of mecha shows. Going by my previous sentence, please understand that I do not traditionally enjoy Mecha shows and for 3 reasons -

1) they're horribly formulaic (yes this IS coming from someone who enjoys slice of life shows, but hey, I'm not claiming I'm not hypocritical)

2) There is a tendency for Mecha's to throw a badly veiled pretenses that is almost always some religious theme or Yu-gi-oh esque "you can change the world" crap that appeals to even the children

3) Two Words - Shinji Ikari. Shinji fucking Ikari.

Indeed my perceptions were to be blown away. Gurren Lagann is the story of Simon (pronounced she-mohn for integrity of Japanese phonetics) and his.. mecha. There's no way to avoid it, but like a gigantic elephant, it's a mecha show, and largely the mechas do take center stage when their time comes. Basically the story goes as this -
The world as we know it no longer exists. long ago, humanity forced underground to survive, the surface forgotten.Simon is a driller, drills holes to extend his village's size. His was a meager piece in life, until one day his best friend cum brother Kamina (who is, for the record, QUITE awesome and epic) hatches a crazy plot to head for the surface. The plot fails but then suddenly the roof opens up and a gigantic robotic head falls through. While this was happening, Simoun discovers a glowing head in one of his drillings. He, Kamina and the newly revealed hot gun babe Yoko go on a great adventure that sets it's sights on the impossible, and to kick reason to the kerb. On these notes, Gurren Lagann delivers.The overall story for the two released seasons so far can be broken into two arcs of story: Kamina and Nia. The Kamina arc is a display of Simon's progress from timid nobody to a super-power-toppling hero whom is modelled after the arc's namesake, Where the Nia arc is more of Simon understanding his own destiny beyond his own being (it's a bit more deeper than the first arc, so all you DEEP fans will just lap it up)... also BIG ROBOTS.

The show's progress is entirely linear. While some could perceive this as a bad thing and believe me there are detractors, I don't see it as so much. The show finds a pace, sticks to it and doesn't need that shitty filler that made Ergo Proxy go from quite majorly NEAT to filler 1/2.

Now onto the gears and bolts.
The Character portrayal in the show is excellent, from excellent designs and bold poses with a style to match, to excellent voice acting. It all comes together as a piece of excellent quality stuff. There are a couple of episodes I would like to add that did suffer from QUALITY (QUALITY being the actual absence of it), particularly I think it was ep 6 or 7, which looked very much like they very done by the replacement art department. Otherwise, Bold animation, bold colours, bolt art period. Kinda a reoccurring theme here. The show is bold.

Actually, you know what? That's what I like about it- it's bold, it holds no punches, makes all the right moves and doesn't like to settle with mild or deep. It is so successful at being itself, it's amazing. It is just awesome. Now for a bit of a outside view .
My former sidekick in crime, a Jim lad, when presented with the show gave some of the most interesting comments -
"No real plot"
"weak overall"
"not really that good"
After a long and lengthy conversation to try and convince him that he's not looking at a show that is Suzuka, where everything is pretentious and attempts to be realistic (where Gurren clearly isn't trying to be pretentious or realistic). Then I realised that he's part right.
The plot isn't something that is given to you as a bundle package at the start which only grows a little.. it's more simple than that. They give you a small plot that expands almost exponentially as the show continues. It's handy because the show isn't one that's targeted at literary geniuses, so getting all deep too early would have killed it. Anyway, who's he to talk about plot when he writes fantasy fiction about a guy with who's a part dragon,part vampire, part ranger mage who's got a serious amnesia plot device, and some sidekicks with names that do not consistently follow any one rule of pronunciation consistently. He got a whack over the head for pretending to be a lit fag, and I moved on to ignoring him, all is better. Moving on.

The show is a serious positive energy feed loop that doesn't step back from the plate at all. Holds no bars for plot and style, and let's face it, the end Battle is just too goddamn awesome. Using Galaxies as THROWING WEAPONS in a MECH THE SIZE OF A REALLY BIG GALAXY, POWERED BY HUMAN SPIRIT. How is that not awesome?

Overall, I loved the show, and I'm pretty happy to give this thing a definite recommendation. If I HAD to give it a score, it'd be like 9.5 (-0.5 for the crappy quality episode), however, I won't give it 9.5. Moot, in all his absolute corrupting wisdom, decided to stick up some Gurren Lagann in /b/ recently, which resulted in every OTHER board in 4chan flooded by shit-munchers, and thus entering /b/ and the internet's memeflow. So, I will give it MINUS 9.5 because moot took it and ruined it. What a dick.

Who am I? A review of Alone in the Dark

2008-09-03T22:09:00.000+08:00

Uusually I'm quite upfront if something doesn't erach a certain level of quality ,and I'm not afraid to bust chops if there is serious beefs to be had. However, with games like Alone in the Dark, I am somewhat miffed about what to say about it. On one hand they are really trying to innovate, but there are gaping issues to be had. Let's start at the beginning of this paradoxical game.

The game is somehwat of a bridge of old and new for Alone in the Dark. It starts with you,some yet to be identified amnesiac meatbag waking up about to be shot and tossed off a building. However, osme shit happens, something to do with walls and floors full of live cracks that suck people in and spit out monstrosities that want human blood... so a slight twist on that horror cliche.. oh and the building's on fire and collapsing. As you go along you learn that you are Edward Carnby of the original Alone in the Dark fame. How'd you get in to modern day New York, and why do you look so MANLY without your muttonchops? needless to say the story's decent enough in that exists, and to me was satisfying enough that I didn't do what I did when I played FEAR(which was round in full lols mode).there are a couple of plot-driven spots in the game which ARE tedious, but they're more mechanics than actual plot. Anyhoo, all you need to know is it's a solid plot, it'll get you from A-B.

The graphics are very nice, I will be the first to admit. heck, They were so nice they forced me down from maximum res and settings on my surday reliable PC Cassidy. What I do like is the stark world they've created around the location of Central Park. You've got this safe and familiar place, which at night becomes just that little bit creepier, then thrown all over place are these bits of evil sprouting it's ugly face. And then there's the creepy enemies you face, all tweaked on acid.

So the game's a visual smorgasbord, what could be wrong? It's certainly not the sounds or voiceovers. Plenty of Charisma in both, and especially in the soundtrack. The soundtrack is guaranteedly delicious, with an interesting twist on classical horror suite by throwing into the fray some delicous choral vocals. In short, sound isn't it.

And innovative gameplay isn't a problem.. an awesome fire propogation system and lights system that combined with a KKND-style mix'n'match inventory makes for a powerfully flexible system of delivering death.

I think where Alone in the Dark really takes a thrashing from everyone is the controls. Sadly, I'm inclined to agree. This game is so very fresh as an experience, but the controls are a complete mindfuck to understand sometimes. Getting onto a rope is fine.. and I can sort of understand their choice to have a Use and "un-use" kinda button, they make sense.... BUT WHY IN GOD'S NAME is there a Jump off rope button, and WHY is it on the other side of the keyboard from everything else?! That was a fucking stupid move there. furthermore, the movement is clumsy, and the free-position melee position, despite being really neat in concept, resulted in more agony that felt only a hijack shot of playing Touhou.Once you get your head around the bizzarre french controls though, the game makes a bit more sense. you just have to sort of play the game rather than let the game play you. But yes, big letdown in controls. They're crap and they should feel ashamed.

Overally, I don't think that just bad controls were enough to stop me enjoying an otherwise entertaining game, though they did really test me sometimes. For that, I can't say that I LOVE this game and to reccommend it for everyone because it's awesome.. I will reccommend for everyone to play it to see what they think. No doubt they'll come to a similar to the conclusion I'm about to make.

The Game has it's heart set in the right place, and everything works well enough most of the time, but there are serious control issies and implementation things that I just cannot ignore.

Internet and the technicolor dream hood

2008-08-26T20:57:00.000+08:00

I have a long history of experience with the internet, it's trolling and memeing, all sorts of nuances. Among the time I've spent on it in the last few years, I can, depending on whom I'm talking to, either contritely admit or proudly claim to have hung around 4chan alot. Before I hunker down to dodge the plentiful jeers I'm sure to recieve for that statement, allow me to qualify and quantify it.

I have for a long time been a being that has amalgamated internet community, mainly due to the diminished I feel from being part of it rather than a real life counterpart. 4chan was more than ready accept my niche attitude to everything, along with my nerdy fail at life attitude and ugly pumpkin head. Not only that, but the site was and still is, aside from images, relatively low bandwidth, which made trips through it fairly easy in the last few days of my dialup connection.
Originally I tended to stick to what was comfortable... which was mostly /b/ and /a/ at the time.Before I continue, I'd like you all to note I had and to some degree still have confidence issues,which stem from a few places (miserable school life being one of them), and my life seemed pretty dead-end at around the time I starting getting into 4chan (approx 4 years ago). Of course not long after this (approx early-mid 2005)I switched into the Hawk's Workshop.I'm sure most of you are PROBABLY aware of how much free time I had there, it was quite a bit.
Hence, my 4chan browsing increased dramatically. Like maybe 4 or 5 fold. This sorta stayed the norm for about 2 years until I left there. My 4chan addiction died off a little as of the start of this year (too busy with other stuff), so I really only stick around my core places.

Now as to the why I've hung around and it really isn't that complicated... You can glean some awesome comedy off the place when the iron is hot, the place is more accepting that just about EVERY other web forum out there. Except for blacks, 4chan haet black. Not only that, but under the almost paradoxical nature of the place sometimes, I can't help but feel there are some truely intelligent people on there. Sure, the real trick to 4chan is not to fall into the cesspit(s) that is /b/ or /r9k/ to avoid the real shit, but everywhere else, you'll probably find some intelligent life.
Which comes to my next point- newfags.
They really are the bane of my real world existance. Seriously, the number of dicks that I've met in the last 9 months who claim to be oldfags about 4chan. One especially bitches about overuse of epic and it's redundancy.. .which is a view I view I agree with, but to make it in the fashion he does, you know, excuding all his power levels to get his point across... it's excessively flamboyant and grinding on my core belief that the 4chan was something that you kept to your computer, or to yourself., not something you go flagging around. No, this wasn't all about power levels, this is about soiling a perception.
The same is true for just about every "4channer" I've met in the last 9 months- they soil the experience with their EFG masks, project Chanology(though a meritous projeect, I still hate that it is still linked closely to 4chan rather than branching off and growing). To add to addinjury to insult, thanks to the massive never-ending newfag summer of 2008, it's been grating more. So much so, that a few months ago, I gave it up entirely for a month and a half. I jsut got back into it in the last few weeks, and it seems that the summer is now starting to slow down, but alot of the big name tripcoders have vamoosed, which is a shame. *sigh*

So yes, I'm a *grits teeth* 4channer. I prefer the terms /a/non or /k/ommando to the former though, becuased they actually lug me in where I belong, rather than the generic umbrella. Don't mess with me 'cause I was there before they invented hacker-proof curtains.

Coming up next week - Tri.. I mean..Quadruple Review !

Alone in the Dark
Tenga Toppen Gurren Lagann
Seto no Hanayome
and the Wacom Bamboo.

Review Intersped with live commentary of current series[in brackets] - Paranoia Agent

2008-06-17T22:31:00.000+08:00

Before you all get your conspiracy hats on before we begin I'd like to give a parental advisory about this show- it will fuck with your children's minds. Also, never lie to your kids about things like them killing the pets by negligence- it can lead to some quite disturbing things in the future.

Okay with the RSAC done, let's get down to business. In the great Japanese tradition of making your mind turn to jelly comprehending exactly what is going on, Paranoia Agent takes a few pages from Serial Experiment:Lain then decides " ah screw it", and then just starts having warm,lustful lovemaking with it.. if that's given you a mental image that no amount of mind bleach can shift, then there is the true result of paranoia agent, and it has won.

Paranoia Agent starts off very much on the right foot for a mind fuck with an intro that seems innocent, but has such an unnerving and disturbing edge that I never really got over. It's set in a world that is heavily modelled off reality (and in fact may as well be, up until.. the end), and it starts off with an overworked young character designer getting whacked in a dark by the elusive Bat Boy. The series follow.. no not follows.. it goes around the people surrounding the case, and the serial of other cases following.

I won't beat around the bush, the show will probably lose you around one of it's MANY contextual and senory meanderings, that much is certain. The plot is almost liquid, it expands from the single case outward at an inpressive rate for a 13 episode show. Characters range from being fairly average, to fairly awesome, and there are a lot of messed people that you meet. It really was quite interesting the lady with bipolar and her two sides fought, the cop who stole to keep himself out of debt, and all sorts in between, they were well written animated and presented.

This leads me to the more technical aspects of the series. Character animation was superb and fluid, not to menation detailed, then there were times the polar opposite deliberately and those too were well executed. Backgrounds are the high standard you'd expect from Madhouse, and all other effects are polished to a sheen. Music and Sound is all great, and the voice actors were cast excelently.

In short, get it. If you like mindscrews, get it. If you on't like mindscrews, get it, and then learn to like mindscrews. If you enjoyed Lain, GET IT NOW. GET It, it 's worth it's weight in psychology books.

METAL GEAR?!

2008-06-09T23:20:00.000+08:00

Yes, I know, it's a horrible horrible cliche that just wants to make you gouge your eyes out, save someone doing it for you. I especially hate this particular cliche, because it's pretentious wankery of the highest degree that assume that all things can be given solid definitions., and that they will
be consistent from one case to the next. More on "Useless is..." later. Onto the news I give a crap about. Much like the news section of Top Gear, it's more of a brief and coloured version.

First off - The prologue to S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Skies, is looking to be a deliciously tasty treat if you can run it, or have been lavishly enjoying the first game like myself. No, I shit you not, it seems they've finally rounded off the X-Ray engine with some this generation tech (not 2003-4 era tech). Dynamic Soft Shadows, Rain shadow mapping, improved weather (or rather.. deteriorating weather), dynamic GOD RAYS, and a whole tonne of the deteriorated concrete mixed with wilderness that is the defining visual facett to the original game. It's not just the visuals being updated, with the vaunted ALife AI getting some improvement, and giving some sorely needed improvement to the weapon upgrade system and making cash WORTH something(probably one of the original's weak points), and more of that unique blend of linear progression and free-roaming world that makes STALKER the radioactive Animal Crossing it is. It's coming in August, so keep some dosh aside for that Vista DX10 powerbox and this to get some seriously pleasing SinglePlayer MMO action.

Duke Nukem Forever.. does anybody remember it? Remember Broussard making claims similar "the year you see Screenshots and Videos coming out for DNF is the year we're looking to release it" ? Of course you don't, you're probably not as bent as I was several years ago on being a 3DRealms Forum-ite. Anyway, he's gone on the record saying that. Last year november, we got some screenshots(three), and this year, we have a shakycam video slash interview. What does this mean? I FUCKING CALLED IT,thats what it means. Now, we've heard nothing official about a release date (much in the same way the first few videos of Half-life 2 were unconfirmed for a date), BUT, if we're to use my Broussardian rule of thumb, I call Christmas 08, or Easter 09. As of the video, there's not a whole lot you can make out about actual gameplay, but the HUD looks interesting(a little large, but that jsut may be my taste), and it appears a shrink ray is back in and on the cards. So far, NOT a failure.

Metal Gear Solid 4- I'm sure if you're not an AVID Metal Gear or Playstation fanatic, you've already missed the first 3 of the MGS games. Do not blame you for the blind eye that's being pulled there, but once you're into the series, it is a truly a hook. Hideo Kojima is a bit of a unusual designer in many senses, he developed in one fell swoop the Stealth Action genre way back in 1987 with Metal Gear 1, made a pioneeringly awesome Zone of Enders franchise, and has a kooky sense of humor which seeps through in most of his games. Starting with Metal Gear Solid he really did strike some serious gold reviving the Metal Gear franchise ( As Metal Gear Solid 1). Intense Stealth Action, DEEP Storyline with interweaving literary arcs that cross between Science Fiction, Mecha fanboy-ism and hardcore military authenticity, and more or less flawless artistic direction. To cut the long story short, MGS4 promises to be more of the same with a wh0le lot more bolted in for god measurement. Rumors are that there are a couple of 90 MINUTE custscenes in the game, along with a decently long game playtime makes this game... quite intensely filled. If you have a PS3, this game will be the one that defines WHY you chose a 1 grand black box for your next-gen console, so if you're NOT getting MGS4, I want to know WHY (Money gripes aside). I swear, if this game makes the jump to the PC, it'll be straight on here.

Moving on, erm... Let's talk music.Of recent, I've been looking for some more varied tastes in music, so with all things being circular in nature, I've been going through shoegazing electronica and other downeat and enjoyable musics from bother hemispheres of the world. On one side I've found myself some Imogen Heap (post Frou-Frou, keeps her melancholic voice though) and The Delgados (From Edinburgh, has some great Indie Rock from-the-north flavour), and on the other, I'm slowly piling up on Bonnie Pink and ORIGA (Most notably remembered in my books for her contributions to Ghost in the Shell 2, and both of the Stand Alone Complex Series ). As a direct result, I'm much more calm, and feeling much more artistic. Don't ask how it works, it just does, my mood is almost entirely swayed by what I'm listening to alone.

So, I thought I'd show off some of the freelance work I'm playing with at the moment. you should see.. some pictures.. around here.. somewhere...
Anyway, ignore the slightly manly, mostly unstarted head on the lady, that will be completed with time, and the Opel is going to be for HL2 Ep2(replacing the Muscle Car), os I've gotta finish it, shear off the doors and make with the awesome.

I'll Never Be...

2008-05-28T13:11:00.000+08:00

After accepting an insurmountable challenge to read through a 20 page "guys ask girls questions" thread on a not-to-be-named-forum, and only getting 14 pages into the infinite wall of text before reaching for the hammer to bash my head in (yes, ONLY 14), I have begun to ponder the great divide of the genders. Not only because I've been noticing the significant lack of pull I'm getting in creeps, but because the whole thing is just plain riddiculous enough to be "piffle"ed.

So, onto my view of this quandary. As a start, I think both sides have no idea what the other wants really at all, as proven entirely by about 5 or 6 pages of males and females arguing their all completely different angles. I mean, yes I would say that nearly 70% of all cross communication between the genres is entirely with the subconscious goal of putting your specific flavoured nectars into or onto a body of another equally specific nectars to result in one of the two parties involved pushing out a baby beemonster(I am of course referring to in a more social setting than any other goal-driven work setting), BUT there are people out there that are more interested in the path to the goal than goal itself... Which is really where more of the fun is to be had.

Second of all, I don't believe that the majority of the media promotes a healthy or positive mould for either gender to slip into. Let's use two generalised extremes to make this black and white, shall we? On one side we have supermodels, baleemic slash anorexic celebrities who go out and pollenate(in every sense of the word) and the sex-ifying of nearly everything (because as the addage "goes, sex sells", more than honesty and good prices ever have). On the opposing side we have both the Mysoginisticly MANLY man(a self image largely promoted by sports and masculine pursuits) and at the same time a polar opposite, the SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy... or sensitive guy), an image put forward mostly by a cartel of high power wealthy women to breed a generation of whipped guys to compliment their "liberation"(thanks in part or whole to the baby boomers "liberating" them). Neither side is very positivly reinforcing what should be the reality, and that is that both genders are probably a lot closer to each other than you'd think.

And genders are 100% guilty of supporting negative stereotypes also. Case in point - the whole "guys will only date bitches" and "girls only date bastards". Yes, there are cases of both, however it isn't as common as you'd wantto think. Probably. I dunno, it just doesn't seem logical to me that the number should be that high. And the reason both sides that DO go for the bastards or bitches generally tends to be as some "project" to turn them into something more in their mold, though if I've learned anything from my internet friends the result is the opposite and they break up anrgy and bitchy/bastardy. So no, people aren't crazy, they're just stupid. Plain vanilla stupid.

Now onto personalities - here's a shocker. Both coinsides like more or less the same thing as a baseline average. That is :
- Doesn't look like Igor
- Is interesting, or sounds like is interesting
- wants to protect/be protected (as a more complimentary thing, rather than a polar opposites)

As a more personal offisde to this, some of this I long suspected a while back. As such, for the past .. 7-8 months, I've being trying something I'd like to call... OPERATION IVY. My great plan - try to improve my (in my books) otherwise mediorce public image. Sure, interesting clothes I've been wearing was a nice start (wo DOESN'T Like patterned or hawaiian shirts?) but I felt I could do more. So, I've been on a nearly 100% pleasing bender, wringing out my social skills with all the aplomb of a 18 Wheeler hitting a brick wall. The result- I really need more caffeine and coffe to sustain me. Seriously, it almost seems far too much effort to be interesting alot of the time. The last fortnight ,thanks in part to being slightly broke while I'm on a gap between my last job and my new job, has been caffeine free, and I am not pleased to say, it's really SUCKED to get through. This, combined with some added pressure from inconsiderate group project members and a whole shitstorm of late niht typing. The result is that I have been quite exhausted for whole straight days, and all drive is gone. It really has felt sucky. Reading the thread mentioned at the start then drove me over the edge. "That's it - humanity sucks and I am the bone of my sword".

Then I get to the nails and mortar of the matter as to why it sucks, and it is the same reason at the start of year(or was it last year?), I'm a lonely gamer slash artist slash inept inturned mook. And unless I grow some serious cojones to do something as rash, as suggested in the thread, as going all out and just laying it on the table .. or playing a game of subtle grabass cat and mouse.
I'll never be the guy who has those kinda stones, so I guess I'll just have do what female anon does- shut up, browse /a/, and wait until god delivers another book of weird porn.

Chimps for Free

2008-05-17T14:53:00.000+08:00

So its seems that another gigantic brand playoff is coming this year - Blizzard's StarCraft franchise versus EA(formerly Westwood Studio)'s Command and Conquer Franchise. Honestly, I don't realyl give a crap though, aside from 3 early Blizzard titles, I really don't have much love for either. I'm also not keen on their legions of unwavering fans, with both camps sharing some bizzare polarisation against each other. Really, it just comes down to hairsplitting and petty inbickering over two very similar franchsies. No, I'm deadly serious. Starcraft is just a re-art of Warcraft(the new sequal looks like WC3 meets Dawn of War, so no change there har de har), and the CnC Red Alert.. 3... looks like every single last previous one with a new engine and some more hammers and sickles.

I must admit, I've never really seen what people SEE in either Blizzard or the developers formerly Known as Westwood. In the early 90s, they released some neat games, but come the late 90s they all of a sudden start becoming corporate douchbags, releasing primarily ONE franchise that is so blunt and uninteresting to me that they may as well be selling thumbtack simulators. And when it comes down to it, the gameplay of both is so close that you may as well ask whether you prefer Shadowrun or stock Dungeon and Dragons ( not that I've much experience with either, but from what I do know.. )

So yes, Blizzard, EA slash Westwood slash EAstwood - "meh"
Starcraft 2- Resounding meh
CnC RA 3 - Resounding nyet. Also, shorten that stupid ananananacronyn.

In other news, Just picked up some more RBF, so I'm rockin out in the livin' room on a laptop. So far, wins.

First Comment! review Tiem!

2008-05-08T08:50:00.000+08:00

Hoo-dawgie! First off I'd like to welcome new and old to my ranthole. What better way to start off than to get some of MY views on some sort of .. product... instead of the usual anime
TODAY

I present...

Soldier of Fortune:Payback (Australian Edition)

Now, SOFP is the apparent logical succesor to the original Soldier of Fortune series, under a new developer and different plotline. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why they dumped Mullins and his badassery (perhaps something to do with making the plot more PC and party-line than what was before), but it seemed pretty silly in my books. so, you play as this mercenary for a further diluted apparition of the "The Shop" from the original games, and you must save the world and make with some payback for being betrayed during the first mission (sorry, but if I didn't spoil that, this whole game review thing would be ignoring the white elephant in the room). Okay, it's not a brilliant plot by any stretch of imagination, but really, you don't expect all THAT much from a game into it's 3rd installment.
For all it's vapid vagueness in the storyline, the game is fairly straight to the point in directing you everywhere, so no complaints about being lost in the occaisionally maze-like levels. The gameplay behind Payback is fairly standard FPS fare, with your typical arsenal of doom. What is different, apart fro mthe sheer number of attachments for some weapons, is weapon stances. Take for Example pistols- by default, pistols are a one-hand held deal, but press the magic button (also is the Grenade launcher button), and it switches to the much more real-world-accurate two-hand hold. it gives more accuracy, drops recoil ,but you can't sprint. It's actually handy, because it means not having to resort to some downright shitty "ironsights".

Level Designs are 100% linear shoot-em-all arenas, almost all the way through the game. That, combined with waypoints, make the game play fairly fluidly. To the deveopler's credit, for hte most part, the levels look pretty nice. Sure there are some ugly spots, but there are a lot of nice spots. Props there. And a good look at some opium fields(in a country I can only assume is Afghansitan, for real-world-grit). Oh, and there are decidedly boss-like boss fights. You know the kind, the ones where you only can damage it at certain points where the game decides you can. That kind. Not necessarily bad, but it does take a few points of reasonability out of it.

Onto detail art (characters, guns, etc). For the most, all the art in is solid, and I'd have to say that animation and character lists must have been high in their list of priorities, because both are pretty nice. Effects are aright, but I must admit, they're nothing you haven't seen before these days. HDR standard, same with soft shadowing.
You've heard the good,noe here's the skinny on the shit.
Controls are stiff at best, unresposive half the time at worst. Damage for weaponry is way off proportion for most of the weapons in the game, same for accuracy. Stealth is impossible. I mean, they give us the option to knife fuckers in the back, and equip silencers. Neither are worth a diddly-fuck if the AI will see you through walls, see you even if you turn or blink. It's a paradox, I swear to god.
Shooting enemies in the game feels like shooting paper targets. I'm serious, Thanks to the removal of the gore system in the AU version of the game, there is so very little tactile feedback from shooting, you may as well be shooting walls.
The Menu Interface was designed by a bunch of guys who just found photoshop for the first time, too. It's horrid, especially compared to SOF2, which was brilliant.
Also, the MP is SHIT. Not that i could play mind, there are no servers online, and you can't jsut run around the levels. Oh no, needs at least 1 other player to play, but lets face it, WHO else bought this game, apart from me?

Now, if we also compare SOFP's feature list to SOF2', you'll notice a significant downgrade from it's predecessor too, notably losing the random mission generator, GHOUL2 technology, and a few extra things that SOF2 had as niceties.
It is a shame really the the RMG went, because that weas truly clever and handy to have something like that, it really made the game replayable.

To sum up, SOF payback, I think, was a game that wanted to be mainstream and big bidget, but had none of either to back it up. THe result, some good intentions that were ufotunately not enough to make the game anything more than mediocre.
I gave it a Waffle Hut waffle out of Kitten.