Hal's log

Silver Lining

2012-01-19T12:22:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so Hunted: The demon's forge is not a very good game at all. The good news is that Duke Nukem forever is so skull fuckingly horrible that I can actual play Hunted and get some value out of it now.

Hunted is a dreary slog utterly devoid of charm and two of the worst, most hackneyed characters imaginable, but compared to the utter garbage that is Duke Nukem Forever, it's a godsend.

I still can't fathom how it came out THAT BAD. Sure I expected it to be garbage, but not as bad as it is. Between the tiny uninspired levels, the unbearable load times, the soul-less monotonous combat, dated last gen graphics, and dialogue that would've embarrassed me as an eight year old, I just couldn't bear to finish it, which says a lot because I finished Wall-E.

Hunted kind of reminds me of "Dark Sector", just not anywhere close to as fun with forced co-op jammed in, and godawful fantasy instead of generic sci fi.

Forced Co-op wasn't a good idea in resident evil 5 either....or army of two. Granted in that last one the ridiculous co-op was its only selling point.

A better question would be why I'm playing any of this shit when I have a stack of legitimately great games sitting on my desk waiting to be finished. Who fucking knows.

Also Dungeon Defenders is fucking rad.

Bastion

2011-12-25T04:03:00.001-05:00

Just making a quick post to say that Bastion was one of the most memorable, touching and unique game experiences I've had in such a long time. I feel truly blessed to have had a chance to play it and the soundtrack will probably haunt me for months.Such a simple game and yet so much more soul than anything that has come out recently.

2011-09-30T21:04:00.003-04:00

it's like the creepers know I nerfed their block damage on my server! I swear to god the little fuckers are waiting around every corner trying to kill me now in revenge.

Edit: Y'know, now that I've made them damage blocks again and started a new hard survival server they don't seem nearly as troublesome. Maybe it's just because I'm always on the lookout for them.

Fresh new heat pipes!

2011-01-28T01:43:00.004-05:00

Note to system builders: The thermaltake frio CPU cooler is a hellish monstrosity, but it does its job amazingly well. So much better than the stock cooler my CPU came with that it's almost as if I wasn't using anything before by comparison.

I've gone from 30 degrees C idling to anywhere from 50-60 at full load to 24 idling and 35 full load. Literally the best I could get was 24 in a room with windows open to the winter air, now it hovers at that while I type this in a pleasantly heated room.

I think I may have applied the thermal grease improperly however, as it was literally cemented to the CPU when I disassembled my system, scared the shit out of me when I pulled the heat sink up and the CPU came with it. I'm assuming my Arctic silver went bad, because a little google searching suggests that they have a shelf life of 18 months before it begins to settle, and mine was...shit...five or more years old? The thermaltake grease will do fine for now, not really concerned about that, just glad my new girl is up and running much cooler now.

That and the stock cooler was just...god awful. But they always are, they're meant to do just enough to get by under the best of conditions.

Oh, also, on full load it runs quieter than my case fans, which isn't saying much because those things are hellish monstrosities as well.

Seriously, measure your case before you buy this thing, it's literally the size of a chihuahua.

Hal

Fresh new pipes!

2010-12-09T18:44:00.004-05:00

My first post on a new internet connection. Well my first post in a long time. I've only had AT&T DSL running for a few hours now, but already I've noticed an amazing connection quality difference. Considering the bandwidth is technically much lower than my former Broadstripe connection I'm not even sure how that is possible. My only regret so far is not switching way back when Millenium first decided to change to Broadstripe and "upgrade" their systems. My connection has gotten worse and worse since that day. The icing on the cake is that by the time my promotional pricing is over, the savings over Broadstripe will pay for the modem cost a hundred times over. Well not really, but $65 with broadstripe versus $25 with AT&T is still $480 dollars in savings in that first promotional year, and then $240 every year after that when AT&T goes back up to the standard $45 for the elite dsl without phone service.

And despite what I've heard, the customer service is way better. Hell the fact that they didn't just drill a fucking hole into my wall to pipe in the cable line is a huge step in the right direction, but I had all my connection issues sorted out in 15 minutes over the phone, which is amazing. After dealing with Microsoft over the phone earlier in the year I expected the worst.

I say that the bandwidth is lower, but you can never really be sure with cable, I could range anywhere from 10-4 mb/s down 0.1-1 mb/s up over a day, with DSL it's a constant 5 down-0.7 up, and I sort of appreciate that.

But enough with the add campaign, I'm sorry about that. I'm just really happy to not only have an internet provider that doesn't blow chunks, but a cheaper provider to boot.

I'm trying to get myself back on track after some trying issues, will report more frequently in the future.

Hal

Windows performance index?

2010-10-13T19:39:00.004-04:00

See, this is why WPI is kind of silly. If my computer could score a 5.5 out of 7.9 with two gigs of first generation DDR, something must be seriously wrong with the grading scale. I mean honestly, what could be worse that could actually run windows 7?

I'm a little surprised that my processor scored the worst honestly. I expected my ancient tiny hard drives would be the deal breaker.

Windows 7 is both awesome and bittersweet, it's beautiful and all but it marks the retirement of good old AzureShadow. I'll post the new one when I get it put together, and y'know, think of a name for it. hahaha.

Edit: Not bad

pfft

2010-08-30T22:17:00.002-04:00

Price hike for xbox live? A service which literally does nothing that isn't available for free everywhere else? No thanks. I think I'll start putting my money back into my computer instead.

sigh..

2010-08-26T21:29:00.004-04:00

Gotta love wikis. Nothing like two paragraphs that fucking contradict each other right next to one another.

That's the problem with opinions, generally they're STUPID. It's amazing how long tribal wars has been running, how simple it is, how much time is devoted to it, and how much money it makes, along with HOW LITTLE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ABOUT IT.

For one, you should never ever ever have more offensive villages than defensive, but on the other hand, 3-1 is ridiculous overkill. 2-1 is fine.

Hal

Fuck consumers!

2010-08-25T17:25:00.004-04:00

So apparently I guess I'm a pirate now because I rent the vast majority of the games I play?

Rental is why I am a console gamer over a PC gamer for the most part. If rental wasn't an option I would most likely simply not be that much of a gamer. I can't drop $60 for a product I know literally nothing about.

What developers don't understand about the whole one use online code bullshit, is that buying a game used already comes with an implied penalty that is almost exactly the same. The longer a game ages, the fewer people continue to play it, with very few exceptions. A legitimately good game, like halo might have a claim to something like this, but that's where they take the smart route and sell map packs.

My mom used to say that you catch more flies with honey that with vinegar, and that's very true. Take something away from people, even something they don't really care about, and there's a huge backlash. Give people an incentive to buy new, and no one cares. Dragon age origins for instance, had a one use code with its new copies too, but for extra content, the first DLC as a matter of fact.

Isn't that WHY we pay money for xbox live anyways? To support multiplayer matchmaking? Actual gameplay is all hosted client side. I sure as hell don't pay $4 a month for goddamn major nelson.

Right now, it's just shitty sports games, no one REALLY cares that much, but it's a slippery slope. Digital distribution is an option on the PC because publishers already fucked over customers with DRM due to rampant piracy, and look where the gaming market on the PC has gone. It's basically dead now, most of the "games" that come out now are just tech demos for what the next generation of consoles will look like.

There's a reason the phantom was a joke, and when all the consoles become modified versions of it, I will go back to the super nintendo.

Hal

Poor little guy.

2010-06-25T18:37:00.001-04:00

Bye Scruffy. We'll Miss you. We're sorry we didn't make it in time this time.

Not like they need my money.

2010-05-28T17:31:00.006-04:00

So doom 2 comes out to xbox live recently, and I'm super stoked. I go to buy that shit the moment I find out, and since I've done this a thousand times before I figure it'll be super easy and I can get right to downloading right? WRONG.

THE CREDIT CARD YOU ARE TRYING TO USE COULD NOT BE AUTHORIZED, PLEASE TRY ANOTHER CARD.

Yes, the very same card that I have not only used multiple other places on the internet within the week, but across town within the day, Microsoft has some sort of problem taking. Never mind the fact that I've been a gold subscriber for over a year and purchased god knows how much shit from them.

So I call my bank, hoping they could sort it out, so I don't have to deal with Microsoft's worthless customer support, "Nope, problem is on their end, charges are coming through fine, they're just not coming through for any amount."

So I call the BARELY English speaking customer support and what answer do I get after a 20 minute run around and hold? USE ANOTHER CARD OR BUY A PREPAID POINTS CARD.

NO! FUCK YOU! IF I WANTED TO DO THAT SHIT I WOULD HAVE ALREADY GODDAMNIT.

I guess if you dipshits have some sort of problem taking my money I can just fucking give it to someone else!

Hal

2010-05-16T01:20:00.001-04:00

Got a starcraft 2 beta invite in the mail today.

Just thought I would share :)

So close to perfection....don't burn your wings on the sun.

2010-05-15T03:23:00.005-04:00

So I'm playing a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 named "Out of Hell." Fantastic free mod, absolutely brick shitting.

I'm positively blown away by how much detail can be stuffed into a six year old engine, of course running such loving detail in such a dated engine causes performance to suffer exponentially, but I thought it was a pretty good trade off for slightly slower framerate.

Keyword being thought.

I was thoroughly enjoying myself, scared out of my mind, reading up on some of the most fascinating zombie mythos I've ever read within anything, let alone a game, when I come to the end of the third level exit and BAM

GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT: CRASH TO DESKTOP

Normally I wouldn't have minded the jarring removal of my immersion, but when I loaded back up I found that the game hadn't saved prior to crash, as the author opted to remove mid level saves and checkpoints in favor of a between level save system.

Which while creating a much better atmosphere, if your game crashes between levels, that creates a pretty big fucking flaw.

I realize it was the work of just one guy, and amazingly well done at that, but that's still a pretty big fucking flaw. Sure these things take forever to make, but take a little longer and get it done right. If you're going to make an admittedly awesome atmosphere enhancing save restriction like this, it's best to have it save from within the game before any loading occurs, rather than in the middle of two states. Then just have the save file automatically skip to the next level when loading.

I loved what I played, but I wont be slogging through the 15 minute long level again anytime soon just to roll the dice and see whether the program will CTD instead of save. The CTD I can deal with, redoing the level from scratch? Not so much.

Hal

Edit: possibly a problem with multi-core support....did they have multicores in 2004? I doubt it....I'll try it out tomorrow night maybe.

When you make up almost 30% of character population, you're bound to attract idiots.

2010-04-16T13:42:00.004-04:00

So I'm running UK right? Retardedly easy right? Yeah if your dps isn't fucking retarded. For some reason I ended up with a boomkin that thought that an eclipse proc was a good reason to make an additional un-necessary pull.

We get to the point at the stairs where you can walk around a bunch of mobs if you're not a stupid ass, so what does he do? pull that set of mobs after I've already engaged the next. Ret pally dies, no big deal. We res him and go on and I emote:

"Benison has a bad feeling about GnarTokes"

To which he replies:

"You fucking suck."

To which I reply: "Have fun assholes." After I pull three or four groups and lead them back to gnartokes. Group wipes, except for me of course, I'm smart enough to bubble and /leave group.

I make a character on his realm and tell him the following: "Enjoy the repair bill stupid ass. Next time let the tank make the pulls and keep your worthless dps mouth shut."

Hal

Numbers aren't everything.

2010-04-04T23:35:00.006-04:00

So I'm out in zul'drak trying to inch out the last sliver of exp between my lock and level 79 just flying around, and this upstart lock starts dotting me up from a distance, so I /lol at him and fly off. A few minutes later him and his death knight friend jump me and start laying in to me.

So I'm thinking ugh...really? For a second I actually stop and try to bubble hearth, 'cuz of spending so long on my paladin. Then I decide fuck it, I can at least kill one of them before I drop.

Much to my surprise, I ended up killing them both fairly effortlessly. The lock and his death knight pet.

And the best part? With the faction restriction on pvp servers lifted, I can roll an alliance toon just to taunt them! Absolutley made my night.

Morale of the story? If you're new to the game, don't fuck with someone who has been around since the server was 2 weeks old, back in vanilla content, he's liable to ruin your shit.

I hope they feel the sting of shame for some time to come.

Hal

2010-03-21T04:28:00.001-04:00

RIP Mooville,VillaDeMoo and Mootopia on world 46.

:(

Does this sort of thing count as identity theft?

2010-01-21T23:22:00.003-05:00

So after getting an email telling me it'll take 8 days for Blizzard to decide if they want to reactivate my account I get an email asking me to fill out a customer satisfaction survey. My response is as follows:

"Overall I'm just kind of pissed that it took blizzard not even hours to permanently disable my account without so much as a glance at my account history, and it's projected to take them 8 days to figure out if they want to reactivate it? Is that really a good way to treat a customer that had your service taken from him via a malicious 3rd party? The item restoration notwithstanding, would it be that much to unban the person? Doesn't it strike anyone as funny that a customer that has played for three+ years off and on would suddenly change his password and sell everything he took god knows how long to earn and promote some random goldfarmer? Not to mention if he changes his password back and then writes a GM ticket about getting hacked? Why couldn't I have gotten banned while I was being robbed?

I know the in game economy is important, but I would think you would have at least some consideration for real world economy and value your paying customers.

Nothing against the service rep though, he was great."

Hal

Legendary Blizzard Customer support at work!

2010-01-17T13:35:00.004-05:00

I wake up this morning to find an email in my inbox telling me my battlenet password had been changed. So I'm thinking "Aw sheeit" as I go ahead and change it back and log in.

Basically all my characters are naked and their money is gone, but as some consolation it looks like I interrupted them halfway because a few of my bags and items are still there. Oddly enough my paladin was actually floating beneath the main landmass of Dragonblight. How he got down there I have no idea.

So I'm a little sad, but I figure blizzard might be able to fix it, so I open up a ticket, but then a couple minutes later I get disconnected from the server with a notice that my account had been closed, and I get an email in my inbox moments later.

"Reason for Closure: Terms of Use Violation -- Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy

This account was closed because one or more characters were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for "real-world" currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy."

Fucking wonderful. Not so much as a question, a look through my account history...nothing...just an immediate ban ON AN ACTIVE SUBSCRIPTION. I guess all the money and time I've given blizzard since warcraft 2 isn't enough for the goddamn benefit of the doubt.

Hal

Wolfen-Baww

2009-12-21T12:23:00.004-05:00

I have no idea how one of my favorite companies of all time started with a game like Wolfenstein 3D. I know they made commander keen beforehand, and earlier wolfen games, but this is where they really became recognized.

And for what? One of the most godawful games I can remember playing.

It's not that I am biased against it because it's so retro, I still play and enjoy DOOM and that game is over 16 years old. But wolfenstein is one of those painful middle children between the arcade genres and what we know today.

And you can tell that just by looking at the "points" and "lives" system. You run around killing nazis and collecting treasure to collect points, and every so many points you get an extra life and the all so precious high score, but what's the point? Even on the leaderboards that the xbox live arcade has now, there's only so high your score can go for each level, and what's the point of extra lives?

I could see if you started off where you died, like most arcade games with this sort of system, but no, you start at the beginning of the level, with all enemies respawned, no ammo, no weapons, and 1 less life!

Why the fuck would you want to do that? Especially when you could just, I dunno, fucking save the game?

Speaking of saving, you end up doing that a lot, because they like to hide bad guys behind corners, and just one slip up could have even the weakest enemy doing anywhere between 1 and 50 points of damage with a single shot, and when you only have 100 health, that's a pretty big deal.

Yeah I know, 1 and 50, really random isn't it? The same is true for enemies as well, it could take anywhere from one to five or six shots to kill any of the standard badguys, with no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever. Remember, this is back before you could aim for the head.

And when every badguy takes more hits to kill than you it can get really fucking frustrating and tedious really fucking fast.

You remember that old windows screensaver that made a random maze for the screen to navigate its way through? That's what this entire game is like, only chopped up every 10 minutes for a reload. All the floors and ceilings are one boring ass color, and the walls are just tiles repeated over and over. Add that in to the random maze design of some of the levels, and you can get wicked lost very easily, with the only thing to lead you being bodies from badguys.

And the moment you let your guard down you'll walk past a corner you thought you checked and "SHUTZSTAFFEL!" BRAKA BRAKA DEAD-RELOAD.

Seriously, maybe if this BJ BLAZKAWHATEVER was running around in combat armor instead of his...tattered prison pajamas, maybe the game would be more fun.

And you can tell the developers thought the blind corners thing was just awesome, because one of the last levels consists of nothing but. Moving up a few feet so you can kill the guy hidden in a little alcove, and then turn around and do the same to his buddy before he kills you, is not fun.

But then I can't help but wonder, when this game came out, did we even realize what WAS fun?

I started PC gaming with DOOM, so I may never know. DOOM is so vastly superior in every way maybe I'm just not capable of looking back at Wolfenstein 3D without bias.

Hal

Hmm

2009-09-05T19:36:00.002-04:00

So I was just kind of wondering....why do the Xbox 360, Wii, and just about every game system since the dawn of time come with games, and yet, the PS3 comes with a movie.

It's like the goddamn creators forgot it was a video game console!

Robot Zombies

2009-08-04T13:10:00.003-04:00

So maybe it's just because I've been unfortunate enough to work retail, but if there's anything more cathartic than plowing through hordes of zombies in a sports car that you just stole I haven't found it yet. Seriously. You have to kill fifty three thousand of the bastards to get the last in a chain of kill achievements, and I was entertained the entire way there. Of course it might have had to do with the fact that at any given moment my car could break down and I could end up in a poorly lit maintenance tunnel surrounded by the undead with only a baseball bat and my own two feet to get me to another parked car.

On an unrelated note: I've been playing a lot of kid friendly movie tie in games lately, partly because I'm a whore, and partly because I wanted something whimsical and entertaining that was as far away from mainstream gaming as possible. While I did find it with Kung Fu Panda, I very much did not with Wall-e, which is ironic because as movies go I very much found Wall-e to be vastly superior.

Wall-e fails as a game for one reason, its intended audience (kids) would never touch the game because it's so goddamn buggy and unlikeable that it actually makes you wonder what you could be better doing with your life until you shut the console off and wander outside.

My point can no better be summed up than level 7, "100% unsanitary," and while I heard on the internet that the last level would fill me with hair pulling frustration I found that untrue, and instead got bogged down on this one for the "finish it without dying" achievement.

The platforming isn't what's wrong with it, even though the control is terribly loose and slippery, it's that this level was designed by some sort of malicious prick that apparently hates children. It's based on the part of the movie where Wall-e ends up in the garbage dump of the axiom, and any strayance off of the narrow platforms results in instant death. The ground is slippery, Mo is beserk and shoving you around, there are rotating cannisters that you have to traverse with goddamn pinball bumpers in them that immediately catapult you into instant death soup, and then there's the assembly belt at the end of the level.

Earlier in the game you're told that red floors = instant death and purple floors = mild irritation, but here that goes out the fucking window. If you touch a purple floor even for a moment the game basically throws an unseen die to see if you're going to explode into a shower of kid friendly robot parts. That and if you so much as touch a wall or barrier it's game over instantly.

Why can't the buggy part be at the beginning? Why does it have to be at the very end of the level! I died so many goddamn times in this level I will have my route forever burned into my memory.

AND THEY MADE AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR NOT GETTING KILLED IN THE LEVEL.

It's a shame too, because free flying in the eve levels was actually somewhat unique and entertaining, but even they were long and tedious with glitchy instant deaths.

But in hindsight, it has made me look back more fondly on my time spent trying to beat call of duty 4 on veteran. In fact I may rent it again.

Hal

If all your game has going for it is your name on the cover, you should probably just pack it in.

2009-06-05T03:24:00.005-04:00

So, Jericho.

First off let me start out by saying I generally steer clear of games with the artist named stamped on it like, "American McGee's Alice," because that generally means some arrogant twat bossed around the people that actually made the game, which generally means the game is garbage (I'm looking at you Itagaki), but from what I heard the game was piss easy and not THAT bad, so I figured what the hell, easy achievements, it's not like I'm gonna buy the thing.

Is it THAT bad? I'm sorry to say, but yes, it really is.

First off, the writing is god awful. I'd blame Clive Barker and his blood 'n guts but no plot mentality but I'm not convinced he had anything to do with this mess of a plotline. The game literally plays out like a goth obsessed fan fiction writing highschooler's notebook full of a bunch of shit he thought was awesome. It's shallow, yet murky, contradictory and for lack of a better word, pants on head retarded. For what it's worth there's a lot of backstory about all the characters that you unlock via the achievements, but most of it is complete and utter tripe that just ends up making you hate the horribly unlikeable characters even more. Trust me, if you don't hate them in the beginning, by the time you hear them gurgle their completely out of place macho cornball one liners for the thousandth time, you damn well will.

The only saving grace of their horrible presence is that half of them get brutally murdered in the final few minutes, which is good, because the ending is just BAM, bad guy is dead here's a nice ocean scene. I mean it's a pretty nice water texture, but by no means is it any sort of CLOSURE or RESOLUTION. I kept waiting for something that would make the ending less rediculously bad, but it never came.

Combat is repetetive, piss easy and mundane. Switching between your squad mates via your own spectral presence is a neat mechanic and would lead to some interesting puzzle possibilities, if the game didn't hold your hand the entire way through like a toddler. Explain to me what the point of a puzzle even is if they walk you through it step by step as it is happening? I guess if you couldn't read it would be a challenge. To top it off aside from every now and then when you get seperated there is almost no reason to use anyone besides the squad mate with the rifle/grenade launcher.

The piss easy difficulty doesn't make the repetetive respawning enemies any more interesting either, which makes me boggle at the fact that cheat codes were a pre-order incentive. When a hundred or so enemies filter 1-3 at a time out of 1-3 holes in the ground and wait for you to clear a room before spawning more, that's not a challenge, that's a test of your endurance to bad gameplay design.

There's no health and no ammo really. I mean there is health, but it regenerates if you don't get hit and you get respanwed if you die, and there is ammo, but one of your squad buddies is constantly replenishing it, so it makes you wonder why they even bothered with either of the mechanics. Just give the player infinite ammo from the get go (with mags that need to be reloaded) spawn tons of enemies (all at once) and let him have at it with his 10 or so squad mates. NOW THAT IS A GAME.

Oh, the game is also short, but in this case that is almost a mercy. You can only walk through so many brown bloody cooridoors before they all start to blend together. Fighting the same four or five monster types ad nauseam from start to finish.

Oh did I mention the quicktime events? OHHH BOY, these fuckers are the icing on the shit sundae. Don't think God of War, think more along the lines of Dragon's Lair, that horrible quarter eating monstrosity of a game. Zero reaction time and out of nowhere when you least expect them. If they're going to be there, at least make them a stable part of gameplay, instead of just a dick move every now and then to kill you over and over until you get it right. If there was any flow or atmosphere to the game, crap like this would destroy it utterly.

Is it worth a rental despite the horrible game design? Maybe if you're an achievement whore or you love Clive Barker's narrative abortions. I'm the former if you hadn't guessed.

But I mean hell, Twighlight was crap and it still found a niche market, so someone out there will probably like this too.

Hal

Ginsu built to last.

2009-05-14T01:26:00.004-04:00

So...Before I get into anything else, Assassin's Creed, finished it recently. This game, all its other merits and drawbacks aside, is something like a metallica/tool song, or a gunslinger novel, or a lord of the rings movie. It takes an interesting idea or concept and reuses it over and over and fucking over again until it's no longer interesting or fun and then proceeds to beat the ever loving shit out of the mangled corpse of the original idea.

Long story short, Assassin's Creed is repetitive as fuck. Think: Math assignment repetitive and you wont even know the half of it.

The game is built on fun game play and interesting mechanics. The control is fluid for the most part, and assassinating people and fleeing from guards is genuinely tense and satisfying, it's all the other menial tasks you have to do to work up to the meat of the game play that is the problem.

Oh and don't even get me started on the flag collecting achievement. Seriously....100 hidden flags in each zone? COME THE FUCK ON GUYS. It's like the devil's version of Easter!

Genuine stealth+action game cliche tropes aside, how the hell can this man scale impossible heights and disable 12 armed guards in a single fight and yet he can't even swim? I realize he's wearing half a crusades era cutlery set in his gear, but if that's the issue how the hell is he able to stay concealed from the local guards?

After all the repetitive crap, the actual assassinations are such a small part of the game that they might as well have called it something else entirely.

Also the story is...questionable at best. You know something is going to be up when the game has a "made by a team of various religious backgrounds and beliefs" disclaimer before the title cinematic.

SPOILERS: You meet a lot of people of various religious backgrounds and beliefs, and then you stab them to death.

Hal

Sigh...

2009-03-04T14:13:00.001-05:00

[Edit] So Darius Twin basically has the most schizophrenic difficulty curve of any game I have ever played. I can literally make it from the first to last level without losing a single life and then at the last level it's like BAM: FISH EVERYWHERE. (It's a shoot-em-up where all the enemy ships are some form of sea life) Seriously, all the levels but the last are total snore fests and the last is insanely challenging. Or at least they seem like snore fests due to the ridiculously overpowered shield weapon that the last level will have absolutely no shit from.
[End Edit]

So I flipped through Sydlexia's "Top 100 SNES games" looking for something I might've missed that I should play, (flipping through taking about an hour) and it's pretty decent, aside from the fact that they make no mention of ROBOTREK. Which is arguably one of the best RPGs I played on the SNES, and that's saying a lot considering the SNES was pretty much the golden age for RPGs.

Then again only about twenty thousand people in North America even bought the game, and my mom was probably the only one of those in Michigan.

Hal

Taking a few steps back to better days.

2009-03-04T00:48:00.006-05:00

Every "next generation" console at my fingertips and what do I spend all day playing? A bunch of games from the mid nineties!

Yes, thanks to an odd stroke of luck, I currently have neither of my gamefly rentals with me any longer, and with 3-4 days before I receive a new rental I've been left at a loss as to where my gaming needs should be fulfilled.

Luckily, thanks to the power of the internet and current age technology, I can go back and play all the older games I own despite their respective systems being in relative disrepair. Just playing some of these games makes me want to buy some diet mountain dew and invite some friends over. Which brings a tear to my eye because most of my friends have "grown up." If you can call it that.

I wish I could find my old SNES carts too, I've seen some of them selling on ebay for 2-3 times what you'd spend for a brand new game! I've always had the understanding that some of them "loan vanished" (I'm looking at you secret of mana/chrono trigger, though I'm not going to name names.)(*cough*mariokart/pokemonpuzzle*cough*) but most of them have likely been packed away sadly into the collection of things I no longer mess around with because of broken and age-deathed technology.

One of these days someone is going to make something (and through a stroke of sheer genius do it legally) that can emulate every game system ever made so we can all go back and play all the good ones. Oh wait it's called a PC. My bad.

Anyways!

So I play through and beat the first 3 megaman games for the NES (megaman 3 is the best by the way) and I get to thinking, man I wonder if they have a genesis emulator? I missed out on a lot of those games when I was little, because we were mostly a Nintendo household (there's a reason sega lost the console wars), and genesis games were reserved for rentals.

So they do it turns out, and it's a really nice little program that even emulates the static snow screen when you don't have a "cart" loaded into the system.

So I get to playing Bio Hazard Battle, because of all the genesis games I remember, this is the first that comes to mind every time I think about the system. It's a pretty fantastic side scrolling SHMUP, and it manages to be both sublimely difficult (even on easy) and yet not retardedly unforgiving like R-Type (seriously, why even have lives if you start the whole level over every time you die? That's not another life, that's a continue.)

It's not without its flaws however. Your alt fire weapon thing spins wildly around your ship whenever you move, making all but the homing weapon nearly useless until you get extremely proficient, and it's a committer of the age old sin of replacing all your awesome collected weaponry with some random wimpy bubbles because you couldn't avoid picking up the wrong color orb.

But the music, the level/monster design, hell even the story, all of it is just amazing, which more than makes up for any minor quirks or bad design. Can't say that about too many games.

The whole organic ships/enemies and doom and gloom background music is just fantastic.

But even then...sometimes things are a bit off....take this for example:

Is it just me or does that enemy look like some guy's hairy ballsack?

Hal

Now I know how metal gear solid fans feel.

2009-02-28T00:38:00.004-05:00

Let's talk about shitty games for a moment.

So, I rented Condemned 2 because I enjoyed the story in the first. Now before I say anything else, when I first heard they added multiplayer to this game, my gut told me that they shit the game up big time, but I ignored my common sense (and indeed everyone else on the internet) and rented it anyways because I wanted to know what happened with the story.

And let me tell you, as a writer, and an avid reader, playing a horrible game for the sake of the story is like reading a book that upon completing a chapter, leaps from your hands and smashes you in the genitals. (see: title)

So in the first chapter I immediately know something is wrong. The x axis on the controller is smooth, but the y axis flows like Methuselah covered in tar, covered in shit. Since there's only one option to change the movement speed of all axis, you just have to live with it. Whatever, mild inconvenience.

Anyone who read my debrief on the first condemned knows that I'm not a huge fan of the major selling point, which is the horrible melee combat that the game emphasizes. Condemned 2 takes it a step further and adds combos and quick time events to the mix to further shit it up. There are literally ten or so attacks all bound in to three buttons, and God help you if you double tap attack in the frantic mess of things because it starts you into a quick time event maelstrom, which if you fail, opens you up to getting mauled by whatever you were fighting. It ends up feeling like they tried to stuff street fighter in on the same disc with FEAR.

Speaking of FEAR, just from looking at the game it's pretty obvious they built the game in the same engine, which also had melee combat which was shitty, but you didn't need to use it because THERE WERE GUNS. (fucking awesome gunplay I might add.)

Now towards the end of the game you start picking up a lot more guns, but that just takes it from horrible melee combat to horrible shooting game. Since you can only take 3-4 hits before keeling over dead, and most of your enemies have automatics, it actually makes the game LESS enjoyable.

I'm all for realism. My guy can only take a couple whacks from a baseball bat? Makes sense. My guy can only melee attack poorly? Fine, I grudgingly accept that he's not a fighting champ. My guy can't carry thousands of rounds? Makes sense. Darkening vision? Well I'm a hallucinating drunk, I guess that makes sense. Zergling type enemies that kill you in a few hits at melee range? Sure why not. All this shit at once? Fuck you! It's realistic but IT'S NOT GODDAMN FUN ANYMORE.

It ends up becoming sort of a trial and error game, which even a little kid can tell you, isn't fun. This isn't the arcade, I'm not putting quarters into my xbox. There's simply no way you're going to avoid getting mauled to death by a crackfiend in two seconds when he spawns behind you in the dark unless you've already done it! The first "run away or die" sequence is also lame and arcadeish feeling, instead of frigteningly tense and fun like it should've been.

IF YOU SPEND 90% OF THE GAME PISSED OFF YOU CAN'T GET INTO THE ATMOSPHERE OR BE SCARED.

According to the wikipedia article, SEGA only published this game, but I am convinced they had their filthy fucking hands in it. Monolith has made plenty of shitty games, but not like this. This has that arcade "hasn't progressed since 1985" feel to it that SEGA has always had.

SEGA thought that they could revitalize sonic the hedgehog by giving a hedgehog guns, so it only makes sense that someone in SEGA leaned over to a guy in monolith and said, "Hey more guns makes it better!" and they shit all over the atmosphere established in the first game. Only someone with absolutely no idea what made them popular in the first place would do what has been done to condemned 2.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the story isn't AS bad as yahtzee says it is, though it is by no means as good as the first, or even good on its own. There is no mention of mystical cults, and you don't "shout at the end boss until his head explodes." Though everything else he says is pretty much accurate.

In summation: No pacing + No plot + No balance = No fun.

Hal

Redux

2009-02-10T15:49:00.003-05:00

So...Interesting story. So I'm walking the dawgs down the old scout trails and I run into a nice fella walking a lab/golden retriever mix and as it turns out this guy actually had a run in with the same lady/bulldog that jumped me and widget last year. He says the dog pulled some of his dog's hair out even though it was wearing a muzzle.

Yikes.

So I come back home and I'm thinking, wow, if I hadn't had a run in with that lady maybe that dog wouldn't have been muzzled and that poor guy's dog would've been a goner.

Maybe everything does happen for a reason. Or maybe the sunshine after such a miserable winter is getting to me.

Hal

I'm going to restrain myself from making the obvious joke

2009-02-03T15:20:00.007-05:00

So I beat The Force Unleashed about a week back, and I had a pretty good time with it, I mean, there's something to be said about taking a storm trooper and flicking him with the force into a barrel of explosives, and then using his burning corpse to destroy a TIE fighter mid flight. Playing it on the hardest difficulty was quite a challenge, but like most beatemups on the highest difficulty it for some reason moves away from any degree of skill into finding your enemies' weakness move and exploiting it over and over, which just ends up feeling cheap. I mean running from bad guys because it's impossible to beat them in such high numbers? WEEEAAAAAK. God of war wasn't above spamming cheapshots, but at least you didn't have to run to save your ass through half the level.

Also, the achievements for using a certain move x number of times have got to fucking stop. I varied my force power usage through 2 playthroughs and barely got any of them!

Also the storm troopers make horrible sounds when you kill them. I actually started to feel really bad for them towards the end of the game. I mean they're all just clones right? They were bred for this crap and chipped up so they couldn't do anything about it. It's not their fault. It's a necessary evil that you have to kill them yeah, but it just feels bad that you kill them so casually and so easily.

Fuckin' Jedis. Self righteous pricks.

ANYWAYS: The game was fun, but it had a few bugs, and the control was awkward. The story was better in my opinion than episode 1, 2 and 3 put together, but that's not saying much.

Also, platforming in action games is one of the most awful things that we've had to put up with since Nintendo's early days. If I wanted to platform I would play mario for fuck's sake. Most action games don't have the controls for this crap, especially FPS games, but that's another rant entirely.

Hal

When he died at the end I was almost happy.

2009-01-31T21:55:00.005-05:00

So king kong, is without a doubt, the worst game I have played within the last 3-5 years. What bothers me about this though is how GOOD everyone claimed it was back when it was released around the launch of the 360.

I hate this game for making me realize that there are times when fighting T-rexes with a giant monkey isn't totally awesome.

To be fair, the king kong segments WOULD be awesome, if you didn't have to mash yourself into early onset arthritis on the b button just to fucking do anything. There's literally a segment where you fight three t-rexes at once, and every time they grab you, to survive you have to MASH THE B BUTTON, and to kill them you have to MASH THE B BUTTON, and when you're finally done and your thumb is throbbing you have to MASH THE B BUTTON to open a gate and leave! Then you have to do the same shit over again ten minutes later! I seriously thought only nintendo was fucking stupid enough to think mashing a single button as hard as you can qualified in any way as a game. I didn't rent mario party for God's sake.

The shooter segments are fucking horrible. They literally consist of: Find a stick to ram into a log to use as a lever, find a torch to burn some bushes, shoot some dinosaurs. They then take that formula and copy paste it for 20 fucking levels. Though to be fair a couple levels consist of a single action, like the one where you literally just jump off a bridge. But god damn, I though valve was bad with that see-saw puzzle they put in every half life episode. Running from dinosaurs with a limited supply of ammo should be awesome, but it's not. You HAVE to kill most of them, so it becomes an exercise in saving ammunition and throwing spears.

Also, while purely a cosmetical complaint, the character models are hilariously bad. They look like someone whipped them up in poser over their lunch break, and they move/talk like it too.

This kinda shit would've been embarrasing ten years ago. It would've been embarrassing compared to Daikatana! Why the fuck did everyone love it so much?

The main character is a writer that kills dinosaurs for fuck's sake. It should be awesome!

And yes, I did choke my way through the entire thing for the achievement points. I'm not proud.

Hal

OH SHI- GRENADA!

2009-01-08T19:58:00.006-05:00

Wow....so if you've ever wanted to do something mind destroyingly difficult....nay...NIGH IMPOSSIBLE, try playing call of duty 4 on veteran difficulty. This game is literally so hard on its highest difficulty that playing it makes me feel bad about myself. I literally hate myself for playing it so much that I want to give up on the achievements and just send it back, but not only that I want to give up on all the achievements and never play video games again. It's not even the good kind of hard, where one mistake costs you your life. It's the kind of hard that requires luck to see you through, and a momentary frown of the good luck fairy has a thousand bullets hit you square in the face.

Also the lack of checkpoints in between challenging segments makes me want to punch myself in the nuts every time I have to play over 5 minutes or so of gameplay.

I haven't broken a controller yet, but could swear it induced a beserker like fury in me the likes of which hasn't been seen since the norse gods were popular. I'm taking a break now lest the constant tachycardia and high blood pressure weaken my circulatory system too much.

Oh, you think I'm joking...but I'm not.

Of course....actually completing the segments and getting the achievement as proof is the sort of euphoric sensation that you seldom experience on a couch without titties being involved. This kinda shit is something I would have never done before achievements though, and I really have to wonder if those stupid gold stars are worth all this.

Hal

LOL@WOW

2008-12-24T14:19:00.006-05:00

Seriously though, they make like 165 million dollars a month off of WoW and the best they can do are in game cut scenes with their horrible character models/animation? I mean c'mon people, there's a reason machinima is really popular. Because anyone with a lot of spare time can do it basically for free. Is it wrong to expect more out of the biggest MMO developer in the world? This kinda crap is like turning in a book report without reading the book, everyone knows you really just don't give a damn anymore.

I don't want to sound like an ungrateful shithead but, is it bad to be kind of annoyed to recieve something for christmas that you specifically asked NOT to recieve? I mean I wasn't being cute, I really didn't want it, and what's worse is I can't even return it!

But that's another rant entirely

[EDIT]: So I received a lot of gift cards and unemployment for Christmas....sorta ironic.

Hal

Only the finest in virtual crazed hobo fighting

2008-12-16T23:23:00.004-05:00

So there's this game, called Condemned Criminal Origins, I just wrapped up the last achievement in it yesterday, that game is pretty good, but what I still don't understand, is why on Earth when the game came out, did every game critic in the universe wank himself raw over the combat system?

Sure it emphasizes melee combat, which is unusual for a shooter, sure it's more realistic than 99% of the shooter market, BUT that doesn't mean it's well implemented!

I played through the game twice, and I still didn't master the "block" system. You press block and your character brings his weapon up for a brief moment, and if you're lucky you block an incoming blow, but if you're unlucky you get the shit beaten out of you by violently crazed hobos! I found it far more effective to just sprint backwards, or fire my tazer, since the enemies have a wildly varied set of crazily effective attacks and you've just got the one blunt whack. There's literally no way to predict when the attack is actually coming, and if you're off by even a hair you take the hit full to the face. I don't get it, the enemies draw back if you block too long, so why can't you just hold the block button down? Is there anyone that can't maintain a defensive position after FBI training?

So basically if a "central" part of the combat system is broken, the whole fucking thing is pretty broken. That and the guy moves PISS slow for an FBI agent carrying almost no gear.

But those are my only two gripes, the story is interesting, the pacing is excellent, and some moments of the game made me nearly crap myself. It's a really good game, especially for ten bucks since it's old as dirt, but the combat system is not revolutionary in any stretch of the imagination. I mean this is SEGA and Monolith we're talking about.

Oh, it's short, and some of the achievements are piss awful fetch achievements, which considering you can't go back through areas of a level you've completed, are just tiresome, especially when the only guide available online isn't written in any goddamn order.

I really do wish more games would limit you to just the ammo you find in the gun and maybe a magazine or two that you can salvage from other guns of that type, it really makes you care about every shot. More FPS games should feature a "normal" guy as the protagonist, it makes things a lot more interesting in a sea of space marines in power armour that carry ten thousand rounds for 15 different kinds of weapons and run at 25 mph.

Definately a good way to spend a night or two, I don't regret renting it one bit.

Hal

Oblivion Lost

2008-11-20T04:05:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally finished the last quest in the thieves guild and picked up the last achievement for Oblivion, and I gotta say, I like the game, but I honestly don't ever want to play it again. Ever.

Honestly, after a year or so of playing games like WoW, (and I use the word game loosely) I'd almost forgotten what a real quest in an rpg was, one that didn't require you to just kill 25 bugbears or whatever nearby and kill the same monster a thousand times over to level.

That said, there are a great many things that mar Oblivion painfully and ultimately leave it vastly inferior to its predecessor Morrowind.

Level scaling has got to be the most terrible idea Belthesda has ever dreamed up and refused to let go of even though it's widely regarded as the worst aspect of their games. Rather than scaling your character to his environment by leveling him up through your actions, the game scales the environment to you as you level, the end result is that under ideal circumstances the game stays the same difficulty from start to finish.

But in reality, since you level by using your skills, you'll quickly find yourself vastly outclassed by your enemies, if your leveling skills are the abilities you use most frequently. Level scaling was in morrowind, but your stats rose a lot faster between levels, so it wasn't a burden if you played however you felt like.

The whole idea is fucking moot anyways, because it's one of the only games I know of that actually features a difficulty slider ranging between +100 (impossible) and -100 (piss easy).

The magic system is much less interesting and varied, as well as much more difficult to acess fully without gimping your character in all other regards.

The stealth system is horribly broken, as for instance, killing a person in a sealed room after stealthing up behind him, alerts the guards immediately if you fail to kill him/her in one hit.

The AI is horribly stupid. Granted the AI wasn't great in Morrowind either, but Morrowind didn't make a huge stink about how great the AI was. No AI that routinely runs between you and your target mid axe swing is great.

Also, the graphics, while fantastically bueatiful, are flavorless and bland, as well as incredibly laggy. I mean seriously, this brings me to an old gripe I've had for awhile now, what ever happened to the days where it mattered more that the game ran smoothly than it looked pretty? Comparing morrowind to oblivion is sort of like comparing world of warcraft to everquest, sure the graphics in wow are terrible, but they have character, and flavor, while the graphics in everquest are better, they look like they were drawn by some high school kid during lunch break, and are horribly unoptimized.

Take for instance fast travel, yeah I think being able to go anywhere you've been before is sweet, but I think they just threw it in because they couldn't think of anything as origional as the silt strider transport system from morrowind, or the mark and recall spells, now those were handy, I miss those.

The saving grace of the entire game was the shivering isles expansion, because it reminded me more of morrowind in art and style.

Also, the game fucking crashes occassionaly (constantly on the PC). On a console? Goddamn, I remember back in the day you'd get laughed into the fucking dark ages if you made a game for a console that crashed at all.

Bottomline? It's a good game, but Morrowind is still better. I knew this the moment I watched two guards spout the same conversation at eachother. "I'm looking for heronymous lex" they both say to eachother, and then turn to me and say "can you help me find heronymous lex?"

The story is pretty good though I must admit, if you can stick with it.

Also, Patrick Stewart dies like 15 minutes into the game.

Y'know how cell phones have all sorts of cameras and games and gps systems and internet browsers on them now but the actual phone part of them is somehow inferior to a phone that is just a phone? Yeah Oblivion is sorta like that. All this extra stuff is cool, but I think somewhere they forgot why the elder scrolls games were so good to begin with.

Hal