Heavily ARMA II'd

So I've been playing the ARMA II demo like I promised, and...well, I really don't know what to say (and that's not just because the Concerned dude beat me to it). It's realistic as hell, I guess, considering the keyboard mapping options menu lists "salute" and "surrender" as mappable actions. Wind affects bullets, bullets are deadly, individual damage modeling, all that jazz. The one thing that stuck with me the most, aside from the insane FPS I was getting (like twenty on the lowest settings; my computer is capable of running Crysis with pretty decent graphics), was the voice acting.

See, you seem to play as different dudes in different scenarios, and the one SP mission I played had you as Pvt. Kowolski (accepted into the squad, no doubt, because every military squad is required in the Geneva convention to have one dude with a last name ending in -ski), who fulfills the team's "annoying douchebag" role, at least in the opening cutscene for the mission. After that, though, the game begins to showcase its bizarro-world "voice acting".

See, instead of having guys read off stock lines like "Enemy ahead!", "Insurgents inbound!", "We're low on iced McCafe!", etc., they had what seems like two guys read individual words, which are then strung together on the fly to create something vaguely resembling a sentence:

2, 3, TAKE out that GRENADIER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ENEMY MAN to OUR left.

ENEMY MAN, to our far ahead, RIGHT.

THE POLITO FORM IS DEAD, INSECT. I AM KOWOLSKI.

And so on. Essentially, your squadmates sound like automated phone-robot-voices, and your dude's voice suddenly changes to resemble a cross between William Shatner and SHODAN. Anyways, I died after taking out a bunch of ENEMY MANs, I died, lacked the initiative to start again, and exited. If you have some kind of magical supercomputer and computer-calculated realism takes priority over believability or fun, then ARMA II is the game for you, I guess.

ARMA II'd and Dangerous

So I was dicking around on Steam and finally decided to check out ARMA II, the sequel to the super-famous and highly acclaimed ARMA. The trailer, contrary to my expectations, blew my ass away. I mean, your view actually rolls around when you roll! You can climb stuff one leg at a time! You get attacked by attack dogs! Recently I've been re-playing Far Cry on Realistic difficulty to simulate the real experience of being shot at by invincible dudes who can see you through walls and then dying and then reloading to a point four seconds before you get shot at by guys who can see you through walls, but this is not enough to quench my thirst for hardcore tactical getting-killed action. So I'm downloading the demo now to see if it's hardcore enough for me.

Update coming soon.

Minor Update Part One

1) A just listened to the new Podcast 17 podcast, with the Ross Scott interview. Very interesting and insightful and all that, but the dude sounds like he died of a Valium overdose about two hours before the interview. Regardless, he's a great guy and a great machinima creator and I love him.


2) I just played Left 4 Dead for the first time in about three months to check out the new campaign installation system. Far easier than I had expected (although double-clicking the .vpk files to install doesn't seem to work for me, simply dropping them in the addons folder does). My first new campasign that I've tried is Death Aboard. While the texture quality is a little bland at times and occasionally the number of divergent paths seems a little labrynthine (or however you spell it), all in all it's a massively awesome campaign, practically professional quality. Do yourself a favor and check it out (if you own L4D, that is).

3) I just went through my collection of crap earlier and realized just how lame my childhood was, toy-wise. I owned a total of three Transformers (all of them part of the various spinoff series, no G1s or anything), two legit G.I. Joe guys (Cobra Commander and, like, Snake Eyes, or whoever), and four G.I. Joe ripoffs (functionally identical in size and construction, but just not the same), along with a ton of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, mostly from Happy Meals. Video game-wise, I had a hand-me-down Genesis I enjoyed or about a year before it broke (mind you, all my friends had PlayStations and whatnot) as my first console, and about a year or so after that, a used Nintendo 64 (mind you, this is when all my friends has PS2s and Xboxes). This does not take into account all the mooching I did off my friends for their games and toys.

4) Damn, I make really good ramen.

An Immodest Proposal

If you know me, there's a whole metric buttload of stuff I don't like. Somewhere near the top is 4chan, for various reasons. I'm not entirely sure why I hate 4chan (and all of its various apendages, both Internet- and real life-based); maybe it's the seething masses of tentacle porn-loving basement dwellers, the anonimity that gives them the balls to act in horrible ways they never would in reality, the inane memes that spread whenever some schmo says or does something only mildly amusing, or the community's ability to organize entire mobs of people to do whatever they want, just because somebody got bored enough to organize such a mob.

So, one day, while I was out having real-life friends, earning an honest day's pay, and being non-ugly enough to attract members of the opposite sex, I came up with an ingenious idea: make a reality show where a bunch of nerds try and survive in the real world in various ways. And I'm not talking slightly geeky, TV-friendly lovable losers; I'm talking taking a bunch of harcore, pasty, fat, 4chan-frequenting, meme-spouting, expensive-coffee-delivered-from-their-mom-while-they-play-WoW-swilling, all-around depressing examples of humanity, and dropping them in the middle of various real-life, non-computer-related situations, left to fend for themselves.

Challenges would inlude things like:

Having to exercise

Having to navigate through the inner city without a GPS and with the knowledge that saying "nigger" in front of real-life black people will get your ass beat

Being tasked with hiking through the woods to get to some destination, with nothing but bottles of water and those really dry granola bars

Each guy will have to enter a bar and successfully get a date

Being given the task of starting and holding an intelligent conversation with a person face-to-face

Having some sort of privelege taken away whenever they make a reference to any internet meme

Having to go the entire length of the show without any computer or internet access

I'm reasonably certain this would be the first reality show to have an on-set suicide; after a long day of attempting to hail down cabs in the city while suffering crippling sunburn in front of sexy single ladies, some guy would probably realize a couple days in that all his buddies in Anonymous are probably making a humiliating meme or three out of his pathetic antics, and off himself. Failing that (most likely due to, y'know, ethics, and all), somebody would be reduced to a gibbering mess at least by the first episode.

So, Fox, or whoever, get on this. Like, now.

Breaking News: New id Game to Have Guns, Enemies

I just got my new Game Informer, right? Now, by and large, they're pretty much the only gaming print magazine still in existance that doesn't reek of pure suckage, something very admirable of them. One thing that tends to piss me off about them is that they almost always maintain a tone of over-the-top enthusiasm about the game they're previewing, no matter how boring, shitty, or hackneyed it looks (exception: all third-paty Wii games are preemptively declared boring, shitty, and hackneyed in their previews). This has never angered me to a significant degree or anything, but their new preview of id's upcoming Rage left me dumbfounded.

It's a free-roaming game about playing as a faceless dude waking up in a big Government-run underground facility in a post-apocalyptic future. And you fight bandits and mutants and whatnot with improvised weaponry. And you get a dune buggy.

THIS IS FALLOUT PLUS JAK & DAXTER.

I'm sorry, but just because you're a company known for doing nothing but dark-corridor shooters doesn't mean your new free-roaming post-apocalyptic world is any less than done to death. I can't accurately capture the particular in-house gourmet blend of id's total arrogance and Game Informer's obviously-payed-off wide-eyed enthusiasm, but id must have a set of big ol' brass balls thinking any of Rage's stylistic or gameplay elements are unique. Well, scratch that; id is known for having a set of big ol' brass balls, and I'd honestly be pretty miffed if they had appeared to turn soft. But it doesn't change the fact that they are passing off an intensely average game as the next messiah of FPSes. Even the big badass new FPS-redefining feature, vehicles, has been done, and very well, by a little game called Half-Life 2, for starters.

While I realize that refining tired concepts into spectacular FPSes is id's identity, but this is 2009 and that shit won't fly, at least not without a genuine attempt at something new.

Liberty Shitty

So I'm walking through my local Wal-Mart I am, when I sees this, this "Grand Auto Theft 4" all the kids is talkin' about, right? So I buys it, I pops it in my computer, and it never even occured to me I was about to waste two hours and thirty dollars!

It went down like this: Upon popping the disc in, I was prompted to install; this is a very common occurance, so I thought no more of it. As the installation went on, more and more obstacles presented themeselves. Not only was I expected to join both the Rockstar Games Social Club and Games For Windows Live at various surprise checkpoints during the installation (it's like driving down a road when suddenly the tree on your left becomes a guard booth and the bushes nearby turn into dudes with guns demanding you sign up for a free trial subscripton to Better Homes & Gardens), but also download the various updates and bugfixes for both. Oh well, I thought, what's twenty extra minutes out of my time compared to the hours of awesome violence I'll be experiencing once the install finishes?

After signing up using various bizarre aliases as per my usual signing-up procedure, I continued with the putting of the game files on my hard drive. Many uninteresting years later, the game was installed. After navigating through a swamp of product-verifying and copy protection bullshit, I was finally able to play me some Grand Theft Auto IV.

The first thing I noticed was that the mouse was comically slow, even with sensitivity cranked up to full. As in, I could fit in a full runthrough of Grand Theft Auto III during the time it takes the mouse to go from one end of the screen to another. After navigating my little cursor-boat through the lake of invisible tar to the "Start" option, I noticed the second thing: The whole game is slow as dogshit on a hot summer afternoon. I had to skip through the opening cutscene because every time Niko moved his jaw it caused the frame rate to plummet from ten FPS to around five. The game itself was not much better; to simulate crossing the street, take any ten GTA4 screenshots and shuffle them, producing a new one every two seconds. It's like that. You could be taking the first step off a curb at sunrise, and by the time the screen refreshes, you've accidentally jacked a police car and ran over a crowd of businessmen some time in the afternoon. Obviously the game was unplayable, so I decided to milk as much fun out of it as I could before attempting to return it (which I plan to do tomorrow maybe).

As my first act of fun (after the intro, obligatory drive-this-dude-here mission, and game-saving sequence), I ran down the street. This resulted in Niko getting his shoulder twisted sideways by a passing Taxi, though he somehow managed to hold his footing, something I commend him for. Moving more slowly now, I finished crossing the street, then resumed running. I tackled my way through a crowd of people on their way to work before running into an old guy so hard, he flipped over backwards and landed on his bald head and died. Apparently, Niko's idea of the American dream involves accidentally brutalizing innocent old men within five minutes of waking up.

I then walked over to a hot dog vendor, intending to steal his wares and take over his business as my own. No such luck; the game merely informs me that "Hot dog vendors do not serve unruly customers". Then he punched me in the mouth. Perhaps I should try and set up shop elsewhere?

As I leave the useless foodmonger behind, I noticed several of the people that I tackled have now begun to chase me. And let me tell you, pedetrians who chase you in GTA4, they fuckin' chase you, man. They can also fight pretty well compared to the citizens of San Andreas and Vice City. I ran a good fourteen blocks before an ambulance managed to run them over for me. Apparently, Niko's idea of the American dream involves running like a coward and getting social services to do his dirty work for him.

Thanking the ambulance driver for his help, I pull him out, attempting to give him a friendly combination handshake-hug. However, no such button exists, and I end up merely hopping in the ambulence and assuming command. Ah, well, this is New York, that's probably how they give handshake-hugs over there. I manage to rack up a pretty big kill count with my ambulance before the cops notice me. Wanting to go down in a blaze of glory, I exit my vehicle and decide to take them on, mano a mano. They respond by pointing their cowardly American guns at me and attempting to arrest me. The game politely informs me I can escape arrest by sprinting away, which I proceed to do. The cop proceeds to shoot me about five times in the spinal cord as I run away.

It's night time now, and I've been playing this seemingly unplayable game for quite a while now, something I had not anticipated. Out of boredom, I punch a nearby construction worker in the face, not realizing I'm low on health and this guy has the law on his side: as I swing at his snarling visage, a nearby policeman shoots me in the kidney, and I collapse into the construction worker's arms as the screen turns a grim monochrome. It remains a grim monochrome for a good five minutes before I realize the game has frozen. Apparently, Niko's idea of the American dream involves, um, dying. For good.

Upon restarting the computer, I promptly uninstall GTA4 and hope one day I will be rich enough to buy an Xbox. Apparently, Niko's idea of the American dream involves inspiring other people to become rich, not himself. I decide that Niko's exquisitely shaded, 8FPS death will not be in vain, that I shall pay it forward, as they say. That's why I'm giving Wal-Mart their game back tomorrow.

First Post Evar, and Reflections on Whiteness

Hey internet, sup.

So here I am, typing up the very first post on my blog. As of now, I honestly have no idea what the main subject matter of this blog is to be, if indeed it is to have one at all. I've wrestled with the idea of making a blog for myself over the last couple days, and, after not-so-grueling debates, both with myself and with my homies at The Fungi Forums, I decided, eh, what the hell.

I suppose my first subject should be the newest Harry Potter flick. I honestly couldn't care less about the franchise or any of its characters, settings, or events, and was forced to come along with one of my friends. A couple of cool special effects here and there, though the entire time I felt like some sort of outsider, the story incomprehensible through a thick goo of injokes and plot references. My main complaint, though, is that the movie is so damn white.

Like, you could drive through a blizzard to a polar bear convention in Wisconsin to do cocain with Wayne Brady, and run into less whiteness than you will with this movie. There are precisely two black dudse in the entire film; one is on the badguy team and never seen again after the opening train sequence. The other has no lines whatsoever, but to compensate, is in the forefront of every single crowd scene ever, meaning he's probably one of those loserly guys at almost every school who would always be the first to every fight and the most excited, in an overblown attempt to seem cool (to compensate, though, this guy does have a very cheery personality).

And the movie has Helena Bonham Carter in it, who manages to be intensely creepy and totally hawtt at the same time, something few actresses can pull off (aside from Helena Bonham Carter in Fight Club, Helena Bonham Carter in Terminator 4, Helena Bonham Carter in Sweeney Todd, and Helena Bonham Carter in Corpse Bride).

This concludes the Blorg's First Post.