orcein

Things to know when playing FF3:

---edit-----
2006-12-30: Organized into sections, added power-play tips

Overall Rating: 8.9 / 10
( In-Depth Review )

Overall: I like Gears of War. It's a great game! Despite some quirks, which you don't really notice, it's a helluva lot of fun to play solo OR co-op! Mostly, it just feels a little rushed, and I think that it was. The Wii was coming out and the PS3, and Microsoft needed a killer game to drive XBox sales, and I think GoW suffered for that. I wish they'd had another 3 months to polish the campaign gameplay and revisit some of the bosses and AI/pathfinding. These flaws, however, are nothing we haven't seen before in countless other games. It just makes me sad that with all this great gameplay and graphics and texturing and level design, they stuck with poor pathfinding algorithms and stupid AI. It really stands out. With the unpolished feel of so many smaller areas, I cannot give this game the full 9+ points it would deserve. Still, it's a wonderful game, and you should DEFINITELY find the time to sit down and play it... Just maybe at a friend's house with a large TV. ~_^

--------edit---
2006-12-23: Formatting, editing, tags, and slight content addition

Biohazard on the Wii

Thank you.

Must go see the new Pirates movie. I saw it last night. (Friday.) You must all go see it, or ph43r teh loser for taking you over!

Also, I've started playing Resident Evil 4... O.O Yesh. I am about a subchapter into the castle area, for anyone who's played at least that far, and there's been at least a few times I almost crapped my pants... Like... fighting El Giganto... and crazy-in-the-head chainsaw bitches! O,O

--Ben

This is so right... From a certain point of view.

I'll just say it and leave you wondering (if you don't read computer news articles, that is. If you do, then you probly won't wonder too much... ^_^). I just got done playing Oblivion (for the night) on my Intel-based iMac. Just purchased it a month or two ago. And I played Oblivion on it just now. Yup. Sure did.

*in shock*

Hrm... Yeah. I'll probably go to sleep, and wake up and this will all have been a dream. That's what'll happen. I'm sure of it. (Kind of.)

--Ben

Ladies and gentlemen:

Alternate Reality Gaming

Yes. Quite AWESOME! But then, I'm a whore for anything that makes my brain squish from the inside out.

Currently, I'm trying to help locate a lost British lady. Some of you may be interested (given time and/or the willingness to give up a bunch of it) in joining the effort, as I know many of the people who watch me tend to be rather cerebral.

Kind of like gaming with conspiracy theory thrown in... [eg]

--Ben

Hm... I'm gonna get to go to Nebraska tomorrow! It's work related. (Database consulting with my brother.) But it's cool, 'cause they're gonna pay for us to stay at a Holiday Inn Express (which is gonna -- fingers crossed -- make me smarter), and then I'll get about $50 an hour, 'cause being a consultant freaking rocks for hourly rate... I'll probably be back in town around Thursday evening. Maybe even early enough to see a movie with someone! ^_^

Also, playing World of Warcraft lately. It's fun. I'm a horde member on um... one of their servers. They freakin' got 5 MILLION players! FIVE MILLION!!!! Damn! That's:
$15 * 5,000,000 each month! Gues what? That's = $75,000,000 EACH MONTH!!! Guess what else? For a whole YEAR? That's $900,000,000!!! In case you can't count right, it's read "NINE-HUNDRED-MILLION DOLLARS" every year! O_O SHIT! Blizzard Entertainment could buy EVERYTHING in about another year and a half. Yeah. They can totally afford to take their merry freaking time to develop any game they want. That's cool.

Well, I'm off to do, um... stuff.

--Ben

Hmm... the title is misleading. Anyway...

Jack Thompson's "Modest Proposal" is certianly not modest, and I think we can all agree that he is basing his writings off the idea of one Jonathan Swift's piece on eating babies. However, I think there's a key point that Mr. Thompson missed and taht is this: I Swift's piece, he makes HIS point by arguing the OPPOSITE side's case. The EXTREME opposite side's case. In Mr. Thompson's case, he's just telling the story of a VERY sick, twisted man who snaps, and violent video games just HAPPEN to be involved.

Naturally, someone as daft as Mr. Thompson WOULD think that his idea is brilliantly satiristic, because he probably has no idea the reasoning behind Swift's piece.

You see, people at the time of Swift's writing were arguing that poor people kept having children, and those children ALSO grew up to be poor, and it was draining society's resources, because these children of the poor never grew up to help BUILD society; and they wanted to find a good solution, and a few ides had probably been thrown around, so Swift, being sick of this bullshit, wrote his piece, elaborating the COMPLETE, far-end argument of how to make these poor-people's-children useful. It's a horrific idea, and I highly recommend that everyone who hasn't yet should read it.

Thompson's proposal, however, does not fit the spiritual idea of the original proposal even remotely. Thompson's porposal does NOT argue the side opposite of his. If I have understood correctly, Thompson's goal is to stop the production of violent video games, because they make people do violent things, right? So, to argue the complete opposite side, you would have to assume that we've solved the problem in some OPPOSITE way, because as with Swift's piece, the piece was about how to SOLVE the problem. I find it difficult to put my finger on what a good representation for Thompson would be, if only because he is not it the proper position to be MAKING and "Modest Proposals" about anything. HE is the one who sees this huge, growing problem, and is looking for the solution. To me, it seems that the proper thing would be for someone who thinks Thompson is stupid to make a "Proposal" of their own about a possible solution along the lines of Mr. Thompson and his goals.

See, Mr. Thompson, you have to actualyl UNDERSTAND what you read in school, not just register that this "Modest Proposal" was a satire, and that by writing some very horrific things, you can get people to go your way. That's not it at all.

I think Mr. Thompson has seriously missed the boat on this idea... At least, though, people have made good of all this, thanks to Penny-Arcade. And by the way, were I CEO of a major game corporation, and there were a "proposal" made against me like that, to which a $10,000 offer were made to a charitable organisation, I would halt all current game production JUST to make that game and call him out on it. I would advertise it, and I would design it exactly to his specifications, and I would publish it, because you know what? People would BUY and PLAY it! ESPECIALLY, were it to be a big media deal. MAKE Mr. Thompson stand good to his offer. I'm sorry, if he won't play by the rules HE set forth, then he doesn't deserve to be listened to.

Ahh, I haven't had a good rant in a while. 'Feels good.

--Ben

Ah. Yeah. Just read it.

http://www.discordguild.org/

...Just read it.

--Ben

*sigh* Bored... almost tired... 4:30 AM. >.<

Oh, hey, so I sent this email to Jack Thompson (y'know, Wacko-Jacko? The guy suing Rosckstar and everyone he can involved with video games for being, I dunno, violent, mature, graphic, and overall just plain cool...?). It was a few days ago, after reading the more recent events from VGCats.com and such... Here's the email:
( Email to Jacko... )
So there you have it. My wacko-email. Hrm. Nothing much to write about. Jeff an' Tisa are moving back closer to me, which is cool. And I should probly apply over at Microcenter, where my brother works now, 'cause they pay pretty well and can support part-time employees... Hm... Also, I get to be the choir director at my church! Don't you just LOVE getting to do things you've NEVER done before, and have neither learned how to do before? I have some ideas about how a choir should be run, but overall I'm kind of going to fly this one blind...

...like playing DDR when the arrows just SHOW UP a half-screen before you have to press them... That's CRAZY! But I'm not TOO bad at it, I s'pose.

Anyway, I'm gonna shower and try to sleep...

See you, space cowboy...
--Ben

PS: Hey, Jaff an' Tisa! You should look into taking Ballroom Dance with me at Metro this semestre! It's late in the evenings on Monday and Tuesday! It'd be cool!

I would just like to say ew.

I'm sorry, some of these women just look... gross. Not to mention the fact that the charater they're trying to LOOK like isn't that all REALISTICALLY PROPORTIONED, nor is she, um, I dunno, ACTUALLY attractive! Let's get real people -- this character, Antonia Bayle, was created by a bunch of nerds (not just geeks, but actual NERDS) in a computer room somewhere! Have you ever PLAYED EverQuest? Look at the female characters. Or hell, even the male ones. NOTHING looks right. Breast proportions are ALL out of whack, body posture is screwed up, the animations look like they were hand-done by a two-year-old... I mean, freaking NOTHING in this game looks like it was done by a company which makes (assuming at LEAST $15 a month per player, and then factor in the 350,000 players they're claiming, so $15 * 350,000 = ) around $5,250,000 EACH MONTH, and so can probably afford, um, TALENTED artists and designers, and fucking VAs who can do a REALISTIC british accent, or FUCK it all, even just a CONSISTENT accent would've been okay! They could afford MOTION CAPTURE! Does it look like they did any? HELL NO!

So, I'm sorry if I sound a little, um, bitter... I just can't believe these guys are getting away with this! How LAME are their gamers?!? There's ONE reason I play (when I have a regular job and money isn't WUITE so rare for me), and that's because I know a whole FAMILY of friends of mine who play wuite often, and then only because they played the original, when graphics were EXPECTED to suck, and VAs were nonexistent, and when EQ was the ONLY thing out there. Now we have Final Fantasy, which has BRILLIANT story and directing if you can stand the grind. And we've got World of Warcraft, which has GORGEOUS graphics (unlike EQ2, which just has an impressive rendering feature set) and interesting/fun gameplay and is approachable even by those who've never played an MMORPG. My MOM could play WoW!!! Plus there's City of Heroes, if you like that sort of thing, and aren't into crafting items, and just wanna kick some ass. And wait, there's GUILD WARS now, which is fucking FREE after you purchase it, and it's EVERY bit as fun for me to play as Diable was, except the story is a tad longer, and more involved, and it's got an amazing PvP set built in that I've not even TOUCHED hardly yet.

Anyhow, I just can't believe that they're doing this UBER SHALLOW model search thingy, and if you look at the numbers, nobody even really thinks any of these girls LOOK like the character. The one who looks the MOST like her is just plain UGLY! I would NEVER date a girl who looked like Antonia Bayle! Eww! What makes these nerd FREAKS at SOE think I'd ever want to see a REAL-LIFE version?!? I hope they pick one of the two who actually look NORMAL, even though they don't look too much like the character. *shudder*

Disturbing.

In game, I just chalk her bad looks up to bad modeling. In real life, I can't blame a horny artist for how unattractive a woman looks. I can't believe I even LOOKED at those pictures. I think I'm going to hell more for that than for the time I made fun of the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial!

--Ben

---edit---
PS: FIVE AND A QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS!!! Each month!!!! That's enough that, if all you're doing is saving it, you could pay for a triple-A game's development in a month or two! Holy shit! Okay, so you have server charges and developers you gotta pay, so maybe four, or five months... But still, that's FAR longer than it'd take ANYONE to develop another triple-a game title!I mean, COME ON people! Is it too much to make INTERESTING animations? I want my guy, when he's running, to look like he's fucking GOING somewhere, damnit! Gah! FIVE and a quarter MILLION! That's more money than I'll probably EVER see in my lifetime, and they're getting it EACH MONTH! Fuckin' WASTE of MONEY, if they get that much from their users and can't even pay their texture artists enough to make something that doesn't repeat so bad it gives you a migraine! Or their modelers to=, I dunno, make a wall that's more interesting than a fucking QUARTER MILE of the SAME DAMNED TEXTURE repeated ad nausium (see previous sentence for how BAD that texture may or may not be)... Damn!

Hehe... I think I'm have officially graduated to HEAVY difficulty on DDR. I mean, there are still ones I do on STANDARD mode, 'cause heavy is just, well, insane sometimes. But I'll do MOST of them on HEAVY and not fail all the time... And the only ones I can't do on Standard are the INSANE red ones just about "RANDOM"in the list... Oy. >.<

Also, since we have a house (that we get to move into around the 18th and thereafter) I'm envisioning a late-July, early-August house warming party hosted by my whole family, possibly doubling as a nursing school graduation party for my mom, and everyone I know who I'm still on good terms with will be more than welcome to show up! More details will follow, of course. But I just wanted to give a heads-up. ^_^

--Ben

I've considered writing a paper on this topic, but never got around to it. Here is an article one guy wrote on the subject which is a nice, newer look at the whole thing. I posted a comment (#78) -- a long comment -- echoing my thoughts on top of his, and rebutting one or two other comments saying that while his point had merit, there wer other sides to the argument he hadn't considered.

http://d-fens.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=5179966&publicUserId=5629740

Have fun, and feel free to open debate here on my journal as well. ^_^

I'm always open for a good, clean discussion.

--Ben

I played DDR for two hours today...

When I close my eyes, I see arrows. Many many arrows. More arrows than thre are directions (I think there are duplicates)...

So many arros. I think they are trying to eat me.

--Ben

Heh. Mine is a sad, pathetic existence. I'm playing Guild Wars, recruiting for my guild, the Drakken Guard using THIS line:

RECRUITING: Guild Drakken Guard! All who fight for right, and defend the weak are welcome! Send whisper!

So some kid laughs at that, and I ask if he has a problem with it. He says it's stupid, I say okay, whatever. THEN... He says I must be a 40 year old living in my mother's basement. Naturally, I must correct him, so I tell him I'm 21 and doing very well, thanks.

Then he states that I should be out drinking and partying instead of playing this game. Blah blah blah, andI'm dissing this momma's boy 14-year-old. Mine is a sad, pathetic existence. -.-;; Altough I must admit that Lording it over loser kids is somewhat satisfying. And he DID deserve it. Last commen he made? "do you even have a job?". My response? "Yeah, babysitting momma's boys like you." ^_^

Kids like that make me a sad panda. But at least I have the clear advantage over jerkwads like him: I'm intelligent.

--Ben

...Sir Auron will be featured in Kingdom Hearts 2...

!

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/rpg/kingdomhearts2/screens.html?page=88

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

15% Yankee

10% Dixie

5% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

Isn't that just NIFTY?!? Wahoo! Even though I think their grading this based on not nearly enough evidence of word choice. I think they should probably double or triple the number of criteria they have for each thing, and then maybe they'll be able to deliver NOT the same resulst for Bev and myself... ^_^ 'Cause I'm pretty sure we don't talk EXACTLY the same way... <.<

BTW, I met Rayne's mom at school today and we talked for a few minutes. Small world!

BT(other)W, my new E Nomine CD came -- the one with Mitternacht on it! *droolz* Apparently the AMV done to it is a favorite of the guys who run the Denver NanDesuKan, one of which is also a teacher at my brother's school. I've kicked his ass at UT2003! ^_^ *feelz zpecial for knowing people of import*

--Ben

Wheeeheehee!!! I just beat Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle using ScummVM!!! It's so cool, you can go bakc and play ALL of the old LucasArts adventure games! They SO rawk! I would go so far as to call them t3h b0mb!

Anyway, it's REALLY sweet, and they even have TWO free adventure games by other companies there! It's AWESOME! Adventure games are definitely underappreciated by modern game developers. I mean, Sam & Max 2 got canned, as did Full Throttle 2... T_T Maybe it's for the best, though, since the main guy behind ALL of LucasArts's great adventures left them some time ago, I believe. So sad.

Were things REALLY that much better when we were little, or is it just our own nostalgia making all the old stuff SEEM cooler than it really was?

Meh.

--Ben