So the other day, I was watching the Joan Rivers roast on Comedy Central. So about half an hour in, two things are going through my mind: Is it weird that I think Joan Rivers is actually pretty hot? (the answer to which should be no), and Boy, Tom Arnold fucking sucks at telling jokes.
I'm serious. Muthafucka can't insult somebody to save his life. He slips on his pronunciation and then makes a big deal about it, requests retakes of horribly-failed attempted burns on Greg Giraldo, genuinely apologizes for potential hurt feelings on his least-offensive and least-funny jokes, and all-around does a terrific impression of a not-terribly-interesting trainwreck. Add that to the fact that every single joke told revolves around plastic surgery and calling people Jews, and you have...um, a pretty ordinary Comedy Central roast.
Now, my post was originally going to end there, but then I checked out xkcd and discovered that Randal Munroe has pretty much thrown in the towel and decided humor is just not his game. Good to see he's at least trying to give Xkcd Sucks some decent material to work with.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
It's Official...
...The people who run the games industry have no balls.
Six Days in Fallujah was a game that intrigued me from the getgo. Every time I read the previews section for a game magazine I have to avoid tripping over the eight or ten shooters that claim to be grim and gritty and hard-edged and depressing. So it was intensely refreshing in this games-industry equivalent of the comic book dark age of the 90s to see a game that seemed to actually be gritty and depressing (FYI, it was based on some military operation in Fallujah that went down the crapper when a bunch of meth-addled insurgents started crawling from the woodwork). It walked the walk, without the need to talk the talk.
Until Konami remembered that they're a bunch of spineless, dickless backs of crap who spend their spare time wallowing around in their own cowardice.
So I remained hopeful that maybe the developers would be able to find a different publisher willing to release something that didn't star a shaved-head space marine fighting bugpeople. And my optimism is rewarded, as always, by being informed by some gaming news site that, sorry Glorb, you'll have to go back to gunning down bugpeople as Flynn Taggart for the next while.
Look, video game people. It's obvious we're in the Dark Age of FPSes what with all the grim-n-gritty urban combat and the depressing endings and gravelly voiced dudes. So what's with the halfway copout? Start making games that are hard-hitting, that have a purpose behind the gore and guns.
Have us play, I don't know, an ordinary inner-city cop trying to clean up one drug-addled block. Make us an ordinary foot soldier in Iraq, with all the baggage that comes with it. Make us an ordinary single mom trying to eke by long enough to pay the rent on her apartment. Make us a hobo, a doctor, a garbage man, a tornado, a Rottweiler. Just have us play something besides some skinheaded bullet-timing gravelly-voiced supersoldier, please.
Six Days in Fallujah was a game that intrigued me from the getgo. Every time I read the previews section for a game magazine I have to avoid tripping over the eight or ten shooters that claim to be grim and gritty and hard-edged and depressing. So it was intensely refreshing in this games-industry equivalent of the comic book dark age of the 90s to see a game that seemed to actually be gritty and depressing (FYI, it was based on some military operation in Fallujah that went down the crapper when a bunch of meth-addled insurgents started crawling from the woodwork). It walked the walk, without the need to talk the talk.
Until Konami remembered that they're a bunch of spineless, dickless backs of crap who spend their spare time wallowing around in their own cowardice.
So I remained hopeful that maybe the developers would be able to find a different publisher willing to release something that didn't star a shaved-head space marine fighting bugpeople. And my optimism is rewarded, as always, by being informed by some gaming news site that, sorry Glorb, you'll have to go back to gunning down bugpeople as Flynn Taggart for the next while.
Look, video game people. It's obvious we're in the Dark Age of FPSes what with all the grim-n-gritty urban combat and the depressing endings and gravelly voiced dudes. So what's with the halfway copout? Start making games that are hard-hitting, that have a purpose behind the gore and guns.
Have us play, I don't know, an ordinary inner-city cop trying to clean up one drug-addled block. Make us an ordinary foot soldier in Iraq, with all the baggage that comes with it. Make us an ordinary single mom trying to eke by long enough to pay the rent on her apartment. Make us a hobo, a doctor, a garbage man, a tornado, a Rottweiler. Just have us play something besides some skinheaded bullet-timing gravelly-voiced supersoldier, please.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Proper BBH Protocol
Something disturbing has come to my attention. In recent years, there has been a great increase and subsequent abuse of the "Bros Before Ho's" rule, and it sickens me. This great American tradition has been turned into a mere excuse for cockblocking and other dickery. As such, I have taken it upon myself to lay down some general rules for proper deployment of the BBH rule.
"Bros Before Ho's" explcitly means that actions in the best interest of one or more Bros take precedent over those in the interest of one or more Ho's. It is not to be used as an excuse for behavior unbecoming of a Bro (such as stealing another Bro's Ho).
"Bros" refers to: Any male friend in good standing with another male, and, at a Bro's discretion, any female friends not romantically, familially, or sexually linked with a Bro.
"Bros" does not refer to: Any relatives of a Bro, male or female; acquaintances of a Bro, whether male or female; enemies of a Bro, whether male or female.
"Ho's" refers to: Any female whose attractiveness has the potential to cloud a Bro's judgement, up to and including any females romantically or sexually linked to a Bro, who are of age to be so.
"Ho's" does not refer to: Any female related to a Bro; any female friend not romantically or sexually linked with a Bro; any female not of sound age to be romantically or sexually linked with a Bro.
Scenarios where BBH applies (BBH-applicable scenarios): If a Bro wishes to cut off any activity between Bros to engage in any Ho-related activity, unless said Ho-related activity has been brought to the Bros' attention prior to the arrangement of the activity between the Bros; If a Bro wishes to leave the location of his fellow Bros for Ho-related purposes when the group is not currently engaged in a Ho-related activity, unless said Ho-related purposes do not detract from the other Bros' mood for a substantial amount of time; If a Bro feels that another Bro's involvement with a Ho will detract in any way from either Bro's mood; If a Bro has allowed or intends to allow a Ho to mess with another Bro's shit.
Scenarios where BBH does not apply (non-BBH-applicable scenarios): If a Bro wishes to prevent another Bro from involvement with a Ho merely for purposes relating to the first Bro (henceforth reffered to as "cock-blocking"); any normally BBH-applicable scenario where the female(s) in question do not meet the definition of a Ho, at the discretion of any Bros present.
Hopefully this post will clear up any confusion related to Bros Before Ho's.
"Bros Before Ho's" explcitly means that actions in the best interest of one or more Bros take precedent over those in the interest of one or more Ho's. It is not to be used as an excuse for behavior unbecoming of a Bro (such as stealing another Bro's Ho).
"Bros" refers to: Any male friend in good standing with another male, and, at a Bro's discretion, any female friends not romantically, familially, or sexually linked with a Bro.
"Bros" does not refer to: Any relatives of a Bro, male or female; acquaintances of a Bro, whether male or female; enemies of a Bro, whether male or female.
"Ho's" refers to: Any female whose attractiveness has the potential to cloud a Bro's judgement, up to and including any females romantically or sexually linked to a Bro, who are of age to be so.
"Ho's" does not refer to: Any female related to a Bro; any female friend not romantically or sexually linked with a Bro; any female not of sound age to be romantically or sexually linked with a Bro.
Scenarios where BBH applies (BBH-applicable scenarios): If a Bro wishes to cut off any activity between Bros to engage in any Ho-related activity, unless said Ho-related activity has been brought to the Bros' attention prior to the arrangement of the activity between the Bros; If a Bro wishes to leave the location of his fellow Bros for Ho-related purposes when the group is not currently engaged in a Ho-related activity, unless said Ho-related purposes do not detract from the other Bros' mood for a substantial amount of time; If a Bro feels that another Bro's involvement with a Ho will detract in any way from either Bro's mood; If a Bro has allowed or intends to allow a Ho to mess with another Bro's shit.
Scenarios where BBH does not apply (non-BBH-applicable scenarios): If a Bro wishes to prevent another Bro from involvement with a Ho merely for purposes relating to the first Bro (henceforth reffered to as "cock-blocking"); any normally BBH-applicable scenario where the female(s) in question do not meet the definition of a Ho, at the discretion of any Bros present.
Hopefully this post will clear up any confusion related to Bros Before Ho's.
Friday, July 31, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, July 27, 2009
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.
Update coming soon.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, July 20, 2009
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.
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.
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