Knight's Reviews

Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act

2012-01-18T07:33:00.009-05:00

Today, January 18th, is the official day for the Internet Blackout in protest of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and its retarded nephew the Protect IP Act or PIPA.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot a blogger like me can do to show my solidarity with the people who are taking part in the protest. I can't take down my blog, and I already update infrequently enough for "not updating this week" to mean nothing. There is one thing I can do though, and it's what I do best: rant.

For those of you not in the know SOPA and PIPA are two bills currently before the United States Congress that claim to want to stop the piracy of video games, movies, television, and so forth. I know I'm opening myself up for a lot of hatred by saying this, but I do have to admit one thing: while dangerous, stupid, and doomed to failure, these bills are -in theory and from a certain point of view- not abjectly terrible ideas.

There's a lot of misinformation out there about just what SOPA and PIPA are. First off, this is an issue of piracy, not freedom of speech. There is no desire to censor the internet, there is no plot to shut down Wikipedia and Google, and it is not part of a government conspiracy to destroy your fanfiction. The purpose of the bill is to block access to sites that exist primarily to provide copyrighted material for free.

Imagine this from the point of view of a director. You've just poured hundreds of millions of dollars and years of hard work into creating a movie you can be proud to put your name on. Finally the movie is released and you wait for the public to see what you've made and love you for it. Instead you discover your movie is the number one bootleg download on LetMeWatchThis, and you'll never have anything to show for your hard work and creativity but rants about your evil capitalistic ways.

That is the stated purpose of this bill: to protect the creator from thieves. Piracy is not an issue of free speech. You do not have the right to steal, no matter how much you may wish you did. Here's where we run into trouble: that purpose is stupid. This may shock you to hear, but there are two big problems with it.

1) Most of these websites are made by people from another country, usually China. Believe it or not, American courts do not have the legal right to tell Chinese companies what to do. Of course there's always the option of force, but somehow I don't see America going to war with China over a bootleg copy of The Dark Knight.

2) There already exists legislation to allow the government to shut down websites (or if that's not possible, to block search engine access to them) for copyright reasons. That's why PirateCity.org now belongs to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It's safe to say that when you wake up to find your website now looks like this it's going to be a very bad day.

What makes SOPA different from existing legislation is the same thing that makes it dangerous: it hopes to streamline the process by removing the need for injunctions, court hearings, lawyers, and a definition of what "existing primarily to provide copyrighted material for free" even means. If you're having trouble understanding the full implications of that, just imagine an internet where one report equals one shut down website with no chance for the site's owner to defend him or herself. Basically like if the entire internet was Youtube.

All of a sudden, any website that has ever hosted or linked to any copyrighted material is in danger of looking like that image one paragraph up. This holds serious ramifications for the entire internet. It's taking out the handrails to make it easier for people to get shoved off the stairs. Sure, the government and corporations say they won't abuse the near-absolute power this would give them, but can we trust them? SHOULD we trust them?

Fortunately, as I said, the bill is doomed to failure. The White House has already come out as being adamantly against it. Obama himself said that if passed he would veto the bill. He has said -and I agree- that content companies like the MPAA and RIAA and internet companies like Google should get together and come up with a better solution that is less destructive, dangerous, and illegal.

So rejoice: it turns out some people really aren't completely stupid. I know, I was shocked too.

Video Review: Wendy's Grill Skill

2011-11-30T22:19:00.007-05:00

Recently -by which I mean at least 3 years ago- someone leaked a Wendy's training video called Grill Skill to the internet. I worked at Wendy's myself several years ago and I don't remember watching this training video, but then again it was a long time ago. One way or another, I just couldn't let it go without getting made fun of.

Warning: This is going to be long.

Video Links: Part 1 and Part 2.

The video starts with Wendy's founder Dave Thomas standing in a freezer. If all you know about Dave comes from 90's era Wendy's commercials then brace yourself. Because even though this was filmed 13 years before he died they still managed to film it entirely with his reanimated corpse. He seems to be somewhere between bored as hell and suicidal for the entire video.

"Maybe if I stay in this freezer long enough I'll catch pneumonia. Then I won't have to do this stupid video anymore."

It's not polite to mock the dead so I won't go too much into his speech impediment here. Suffice to say that after two minutes of telling us how he has the fray-shest burgers in the bid-ness, he leaves us alone so he can have an old fay-shioned hamburger with mustard, pickle and onions.

We cut to a static shot of a keyhole accompanied by random bird sounds. This scene drags out almost long enough to make you reach for a razor before we finally meet employee Bill. Bill is an idiot.

Anyway, Bill is told to go speak to the manager, Mary, who wants him to learn how to work the grill. Before sitting him down with a training video (yes, the character watches a training video in this training video) she takes the time to remind him that Wendy's only uses 100% pure ground beef, because apparently no one ever explained to the actress that this was a training video and not a commercial.

Anyway, Bill puts the video into the television and this is where everything goes to Hell. The television promptly explodes in a cloud of smoke, which forms into a disembodied spectral head. Because we've already established that Wendy's training videos are made by necromancers this surprises nobody but Bill, not that you'd know he was surprised from the actor's performance. The head introduces itself as the Duke of the Grill (vassal of the Burger King, I'm sure) and drags Bill into the TV and no, I am not making any of this up. It really happens.

"I'm here for your soul. If you're working in food service you won't need it."

Bill finds himself in the home dimension of the Duke of the Grill, who happens to be a dorky black guy in gold-rimmed sunglasses. Sadly for the Duke, his world is nothing but a tiny cage floating in a black void filled with laser lights, his only furniture a single Wendy's grill, and his only food an endless supply of cheese, buns, and talking meat patties.

Maybe if you had some real furniture you wouldn't need to make your meat look pretty, Duke.

What happens next is one of the most painful moments ever recorded to video: a two minute rap about hamburgers. To be fair, the Duke isn't the worst rapper I've ever heard, though that's mostly because Bill tries to rap too. To be unfair, it doesn't matter how good he is, because either way he's still rapping about Wendy's hamburger patties. Snoop Dogg may have been able to name himself after a cartoon character without losing street cred, but even he would look like a jackass doing this rap.

Over the course of the longest two minutes of your life, the Duke explains the proper way to cook a Wendy's burger. The first thing you may notice is he's not wearing any sort of gloves. This is not a mistake. The grill worker doesn't wear gloves for safety reasons. If you accidentally touch the grill or get a grease splatter on your hands then latex gloves will melt and stick to you, turning what would be a mild first-degree burn into a hospital stay. As for cleanliness, well, they're supposed to wash their hands. Personally I always washed my hands before work, but to be totally honest I think I was the only one.

Anyway, on to the actual preparation First you lay it on the grill with the help of an arrow on a piece of paper, because meat has grain (just like wood) and if you lay it down improperly it will turn into deadly poison and murder your dog while it sleeps. Anyway, he then explains about the four corner press. This is where you crush the meat into the grill to spread it out and make it cook faster. As the name implies, you press the meat four times, and you do this twice for a grand total of eight smashes. Usually pressing meat out on a grill like that dries it out, but Wendy's burgers have so much fat in them that even after being smashed out eight times you still have to drain it off, as shown.

Finally the Duke finishes up his rap. Unfortunately, Bill then does the exact same rap again, only with infinity times less enthusiasm. After a gloriously failed attempt at a fist bump, the Duke goes into *shudder* a second verse, this time about how to add cheese to a burger. Defying all logic, this process somehow manages to be longer than one step.

He also mentions that you must never serve burnt, dry, broken, or incomplete patties because "quality is our recipe." But because they use a different recipe for chili, they are allowed to put the burnt, crappy meat into that. That may not sound very appetizing, but to be fair they do shove said meat into a drawer over the grill for several hours before someone finally comes to get it and stick it in the chili pot. Eat up, chili fans!

Finally we cut back to the real world, where Mary snaps Bill out of his smoke-inhalation-induced hallucination by screaming in his ear. As they leave, the camera hangs on the TV way too long in a segment that makes me think the thing is about to transform and eat everyone. Sadly, it doesn't.

Instead we get a montage of Mary teaching Bill the same thing he just learned on the video, then spending the rest of the day watching over his shoulder like a crazy person while taking notes. Clearly after watching the kid stare slack-jawed at a malfunctioning TV for what must have been hours she realized he couldn't be trusted to operate a spatula without close supervision.

Finally, we're back to Dave, who has just received his old fay-shioned hamburger from a girl wearing gigantic nerd glasses. Dave almost bites into his skimpy little burger before realizing what an awful idea that is and putting the horrible greaseball down. He then rephrases the opening speech, this time making sure to assure us that cooking a burger is a very difficult and extraordinary talent that takes lots of practice. You keep telling yourself that, Dave.

"You have to eat it, Dave. The cameras are on you. No, you can't go hang out in the freezer again instead."

We end on a two-minute music video for an awful song called Grill Skill, over which we see clips of hideous people cooking hideous burgers while simultaneously flexing their scrawny muscles, lip synching badly, and playing air guitar with their spatulas.

I actually feel a little bad about making fun of this video, because it's obvious that some poor, misguided person really tried his best on it. That person was the geek who played the Duke of the Grill. As for the other "actors," Bill and Mary's performances are almost good enough to be called phoned in, but the real shining star of half-assedness is Dave Thomas himself whose performance is somewhere between "smoke-signaled" and "100-character tweet without bothering to capitalize the 'I's."

As for the special effects editor (and never before or since has the word "special" been more appropriate), he seems to have tried his best given that a head of cabbage has more brain matter in it than his head.

That's really all there is to say about this video, but there is one last thing I want to leave you with...always remember: Wendy's 100% real ground beef is pattied into squares so the meat hangs off the edge of the bun.

Video Game Review: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

2011-11-26T22:37:00.002-05:00

Hey boys and girls, have you ever played a truly great game? I mean the kind of game that you could actually say, in perfect honesty, is one of the best games of all time? I have. It had an excellent story, a fun and functional combat system, and a fully open and immersive world that made me feel as if I was really a part of it.

I can still remember the first day I played it. I spent that entire day almost in a daze, completely captivated by the scope of the game. I can still recall the moment I realized that I didn't have to do some special quest or defeat an evil wizard before I could leave the first town. I could just go whenever I felt like it. I had total freedom, for the first time in any game I'd ever played. If there was a plate sitting on a table I could take it. If there was a man on a street corner, I could kill him. If there was a book on a shelf I could read it, and not just a one-sentence excerpt either but the entire thing. The game I'm referring to is, of course, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Sadly, I can't quite say the same thing about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Allow me to explain why not. By this point you might have heard of a little controversy surrounding the children of Skyrim, or more specifically the fact that they can't be killed or even damaged in any way. Granted "I want to kill kids!" is a weak argument to make against the game, as Bethesda Softworks has so condescendingly pointed out time and again, but the thing is it's just the tip of the iceberg. A sizable percentage of NPCs in Skyrim are considered "essential" to the story and therefore invincible. Unlike Oblivion -the fourth game in the series for those who've been under a rock- this extends beyond just main quest NPCs, to basically every NPC who is involved in any quest at all, no matter how minor. It gets to the point that evil characters will find themselves having to save the game before attacking any NPC because of the relatively high chance that the NPC (or another nearby NPC) will be unkillable.

And that's pretty much The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in a nutshell. Skyrim is beautiful, expertly written and designed, and set in an interesting world with a rich history and culture. Every dungeon has been handcrafted, often with its own hook, story, and special reward. I could praise the game until I'm blue in the face, because it's easily one of the best games I've played in years.

But that's just the thing: that word, "game." Like most video games, it keeps reminding you that you're only playing a game. Every time you try to murder an annoying NPC only to have them jump back up from 0 HP and call the guards on you, every time you want to pick up an item off a table only to discover you can't because it's only decorative; every time, it just serves to remind you again that you're only playing a video game.

KR Rating: [4] GOOD

This was actually a fairly hard rating to give. Yes, the various questlines are much shorter in Skyrim then they were in the older games, but that seems like a hollow argument when you can beat Morrowind in less than 15 minutes without cheating. Also, yes, this game has more bugs in it than an anthill, but at worst that just puts it on par with basically every other game to come out in the last few years, and at least in Skyrim's case it can be justified thanks to the game's massive scale.

Judged all on its own, Skyrim deserves a rating of 5, but I just can't in good conscience give it one when I know that it could be so much better. Not every game has to measure up to the bar set by Morrowind. I wouldn't hold, say, Final Fantasy up to that standard, for example. The difference is that in this case the company that made the game is the same company that set that standard in the first place. We know what they can do. Yet, rather than expand, they choose instead to make each new game smaller and more limited than the last, with less content and less customization, and instead more arbitrary restrictions and more invisible walls.

And that's the story of how the best game of 2011 only earned a 4 out of 5.

Holy Crap, Where Was I?!

2011-11-09T22:57:00.002-05:00

For those of you who've been wondering where the Heck I've been for basically all of October and the first half of November, the simple answer is I've been trying to fix up the blog and make it nice. I've been working on new graphics, including a title picture and new rating images, with more in the works.

I've also gone back and added annotations to some of my older blog posts, so feel free to go back and read them again. I've added especially lengthy annotations to my reviews of Final Fantasy X-2 and Sonic Gems Collection.

I intend to restart the regular reviews ASAP, most likely tomorrow. In other news, I currently have Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on pre-order and intend to have a review up for that shortly after getting my hands on it.

It's Not Okay...But It Does Get Better

2011-10-20T09:39:00.001-04:00

Those of you who follow my blog may know I have a rule about keeping the blog non-political. You also know that rule gets broken more often than a humerus bone in a Seagal movie. At this point it's not so much a rule as it is...well, a lie. Well, I'm breaking it again.

There's yet another story in the news about a teenage suicide, and I want to put a stop to it. I know I'm not exactly a powerhouse celebrity whose words can reach the millions, but I'm going to post this here in the hopes that someone, somewhere, who needs to hear this message will see it. If you are being bullied and considering suicide, please listen to this. If you're not then feel free to ignore this post and come back next week for more philosophical rants thinly disguised as movie and video game reviews.

I want to tell you something real, kids, not what most adults will tell you. Most adults will tell you that everything's okay, that you just think you're in a bad spot. They're wrong. See, they haven't gone through it. Most people haven't and they never will. They don't know how bad it can be.

I do, because I've lived it too. I was bullied in high school by people who would punch and kick me in the head right in front of teachers who would watch it happen and say nothing. When I got home I had to look forward to three more hours of running for my life from my brother who would beat me up for -depending on his mood that day- not standing up for myself at school, not playing video games with him when he demanded it, or sometimes just because he was bored.

I can remember nights when I would stay awake until 4 o'clock in the morning, just sitting in bed doing nothing, just to have a few more hours of not getting the shit kicked out of me. The punchline of it all was that every god damn adult I talked to accused me of lying to get attention. They all told me it was all okay. It wasn't okay. It wasn't even remotely okay.

So no, I'm not going to tell you that it's okay. What I am going to tell you, and please believe me when I say this, is it does get better. It really, really does. Now that I'm an adult, I'm finally the master of my own life; I can do what I want to do and it's great. My brother and I are actually friends now. I love my life. I've learned to live without fear, and to stand up for myself when I'm attacked instead of blaming myself like I used to.

I feel a lot of things when I look back on those times. I feel anger, sadness, shame, but mostly joy. Yes, joy, because I know I'll never have to endure that kind of torment again. When I think that I could have ended my life then, having known only misery and despair, and I think about the happiness I gained by sticking it out...it's unimaginable to me that I ever could have even considered something like suicide.

If you're being bullied or you're in any other sort of rough situation and you're considering suicide, just remember, it may not be okay but it really does get better. I swear to you, before every power in the universe, that is the truth.

Video Game Review: Creeper World

2011-09-25T19:51:00.000-04:00

Every real time strategy fan is familiar with the dream of an RTS game where you can "just build," either because they share the dream themselves or because they know someone who does. It's the player who builds turrets and power plants instead of infantry and tanks, the player who believes if you win a battle before you reach the highest tech tier available then you've failed. They're called turtles, and their goal in an RTS is not to defeat the enemy, but to create the perfect, self-sufficient base.

Sadly, there's not a lot of games available for turtles. Strategy games like Command & Conquer usually include base-busting superweapons that make turtling impractical, and tower defense games ramp up the difficulty so fast that before long even the most perfect base won't be able to hold off the enemy anymore.

Creeper World, which you can get for 10 dollars from indie developers KnuckleCracker, claims to finally give the turtles what they want: a strategy game where it's just you and your base against the creeper, a literal flood of destructive evil that can only be, at best, held at bay.

Does it live up to the claims? Not really. The creeper stops feeling like a threat after about the second level when you realize you can completely lock it down forever by putting a single blaster next to the spawn point. As for base building, the network system usually ends up creating a clunky mess, and the fact that there are only about 9 types of structures you can build ever means you won't have a lot to play around with.

Aside from the developers' obnoxious non-stop boasting (For example, the developers' real answer to the question, "What is Creeper World?" : "You ever play a game and then years later you talk about that game and how cool it was? [...] Well that's Creeper World.") there's nothing particularly wrong with this game, it's more that there's not anything particularly amazing about it either. I wouldn't spend 10 dollars on it myself, but I guess I can see how someone else might.

KR Rating: GOOD

No, what I really have a problem with is....the fans...

The fans rave about Creeper World!
The following are real comments posted about the level pack Creeper World: User Space.

william1647:
Best game ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Psilo707:
Best game I've ever played. Ever. 5/5

relaxrelax:
I bought starcraft because of the creep description, it was supposed to... well do what the creep does in THIS game! Slowly take over everything!!

Seeing comments like these is like hearing someone say that american is the best kind of cheese, or that they decided to try filet mignon because they heard it was similar to low grade hamburger meat soaked in ammonia. I'm not sure whether to call them stupid or just feel bad for them. Their taste in games is so primitive and backwards it still thinks the wheel is a fad.

Particleman:
That'ssss a very nice civilization you have there. It would be a ssshame if something happened to it.

Now that a lot of people have played Minecraft it's hard to hear the name "Creeper World" and not think of the green suicide bombers from MC. Apparently if your brain is made of cheddar it's equally hard not to bring up that coincidence in the comments. You literally can't go for more than 10 comments without someone bringing up Minecraft. This comment wins for mentioning the similarity in the most obtuse and roundabout way possible.

GoeyJoe:
This is the BENCHMARK for a perfect strategy game. No planes, knights, killers etc. Everyone just needs to quickly and effectively to reach our goal. The upgrades are a great idea. Units, menu bar, the informations are extremely well thought out. !!! A STROKE OF GENIUS !!!

This guy almost started to make a legitimate point about simplicity and purity of strategy (or something) but quickly got distracted by his own stupidity. I'm not even sure what he's trying to get at here. How is a strategy game with knights worse than a strategy game with, say, marines? What the hell does he mean by "killers?" Did he forget that this game does actually have planes (well, aerial drones), or that upgrades have been a regular feature in RTS games for years? What does everyone need to quickly and effectively do? Move? Shoot? Molest a goat? What?

The comment has no answers for you. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, marinated with the unknown, baked in a puzzle for an hour at 450°, and then garnished with a conundrum.

Near the end you can see where the commenter's brain exploded and the shards of shrapnel from his skull managed to type out the rest of his post. Sadly, most of the pieces seem to have hit the exclamation key.

CERN to World: "We Broke Physics. Our Bad."

2011-09-23T02:50:00.004-04:00

According to researchers at the CERN Institute in Geneva, the neutrino particle could be capable of moving faster than the speed of light, something that until now was widely considered impossible. How could this be? Let's start by examining the theory of relativity itself, shall we?

The theory starts out with something that's more or less inarguable: as you move faster, everything around you appears to move slower. If you're driving down the road and you pass someone walking on the sidewalk they appear to be standing still because their speed, relative to you, is so much slower.

Einstein, took this a step further. He decided that everything didn't simply look like it was moving slower, but that it actually was moving slower. That is to say, that as you move faster time slows down. He went on to theorize that you could place yourself into a sort of suspended animation by moving very fast, that if you were to travel near the speed of light years would pass for everyone else in what would be -to you- a matter of mere seconds. Furthermore, he declared that the speed of light was the ultimate limit, that at that speed time would stop completely. Therefore, he concluded, moving at or beyond the speed of light was physically impossible.

The problem with this theory, if you haven't figured it out yet, is that it's based entirely on ignorant conjecture. It follows a three-step process of idiocy to create something that's more akin to superstition than science.

1. Take a subjective observation. (We've never seen anything move faster than light.)
2. Declare that subjective observation to be an objective fact. (We've never seen anything move faster than light because nothing can move faster than light.)
3. Assign arbitrary magical properties to explain your new "fact." (Speed somehow controls time, and the speed of light is where time breaks, therefore nothing can move faster than light.)

And if we really want to be nitpicky...

4. Defend your "fact" by calling it "common knowledge" and accusing anyone who questions it of being stupid and arrogant. (Einstein said it was true and he's smarter than you, therefore it's true. Or are you claiming you're smarter than the greatest scientist who ever lived?)

Honestly, the only reason anyone took the theory of relativity seriously at all is because Einstein was the one who put it forth. If literally anyone else had suggested the theory of relativity it would've been laughed at, but Einstein gave us E=MC2 and so therefore -in the minds of the scientific community- nothing he said could ever be wrong.

Every genius is allowed at least one stupid idea, aren't they? Well, relativity is Einstein's one stupid idea. Personally I've been waiting for someone to disprove this ludicrous theory for years.

Movie Review: Dungeons and Dragons

2011-09-10T07:14:00.001-04:00

This week's review is for 2000's Dungeons & Dragons, the labor of love of a then...well, really still pretty much unknown Courtney Solomon, driven only by his desire to make a movie about the famous role-playing game. Though a critical and financial failure (according to IMDb the movie lost 1.2 million dollars worldwide) I must admit that I actually enjoyed this movie, which is exactly why I decided to write this review slamming it.

Don't worry, it'll all make sense by the end.

Let's start with the actors. Even if you're capable of looking at Justin Whalin and not seeing Jimmy Olsen, who he played on the TV show Lois & Clark, he's still just a bit too irritating and childish to be heroic. Zoe McLellan creates a female lead so wooden they could have subbed her out for a cardboard cutout and no one would notice. The most enjoyable performance in the movie is Jeremy Irons as the villain, as he enacts his evil plot to chew up all scenery everywhere, which is sad because Jeremy Irons hated this movie and intentionally overacted as revenge against the director. To put it simply, when Marlon Wayans gives one of the best performances in your movie (and your movie isn't Requiem for a Dream) you have a problem.

Even worse than the acting, however, is the plot. This is due mostly to the deleted scenes, many of which are actually kind of important to the story and without them the already grandiose plot just becomes incomprehensible and ridiculous. Without them we don't know why the hero hates his dad, why he wants to find the magical McGuffin despite repeatedly stating he doesn't care, why it's so important that the villain be defeated, or any number of other important things. The editing is so bad that we don't even find out the name of one of the main characters (Elwood the dwarf) until we see it in the credits, because the scene where he introduces himself got cut.

As much as I did enjoy watching this movie, there is only one rating I can logically give it.

KR Rating: BAD

The reason I decided to do this review is to prove a point. That being, that how good a movie is and how much you like that movie are entirely seperate concerns. The fact that you like a movie does not automatically make it good. Case in point: I like this movie, but it is, objectively, bad.

At the same time, liking a movie that is bad does not make you stupid, or show that you have poor taste. There's definitely something to enjoy here, as long as you're willing to put up with the movie's flaws. The movie had ambition, ambition that was mostly squandered granted, but ambition nonetheless.

Dungeons and Dragons set out to be great and ended up bad, but the fact that they tried gave the movie individuality and heart. Comparatively, the sequel, 2005's Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God set out to be "okay" and succeeded. The movie is objectively better as a movie, the plot makes more sense, the acting is better, but the movie has no soul. There's absolutely nothing differentiating it from any of the hundreds of other generic fantasy movies out there.

Television Review: Star Trek Enterprise

2011-09-01T01:15:00.000-04:00

For those who've been living under a rock for the last ten years and don't know what Enterprise is, it might help if I start a few years before the show came out. In 1999, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace hit the big screen to more or less mixed reviews. Despite complaints, the movie was a massive financial success, earning nearly a billion dollars worldwide. Prequels became the next big thing. By the time the craze finally ended it gave us a large number of -mostly awful- prequels, including the 2001 show Enterprise. Set a century before the events of the original series, Enterprise claims to tell the story of Captain John Archer, captain of the USS Enterprise NX-01, in the early years of space exploration.

Other reviewers have already said a lot about the lack of character development, or the way the show blatantly rips off stories and scenes from previous Trek series, or the silly and sometimes cartoonish plot points. Those are all valid criticisms, but personally I'm not going to be talking about them. I'm going to talk about something else, both for the sake of providing some actual fresh insight, and also because as bad as those things are I don't believe they're even cose to the worst aspects of this show.

No, the most irritating thing about the show in my opinion, and the reason I feel it would have been awful even if it was well written, is the extreme political bias. Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing necessarily wrong with being either liberal or conservative as long as you don't drift into fanaticism. Unfortunately, the writers for Enterprise seem to have left "fanatic" in the dust a long time ago as they sprinted straight for "retarded" at top speed.

Nowhere does this show more than in their portrayal of the military, specifically Starfleet. Yes, Enterprise is a military vessel, however peaceful their mission may be, yet the show's portrayal of military personnel is about as accurate as the average Appalachian redneck's idea of an african american.

This is a problem that could be easily remedied with research. Stargate SG-1 is a great example of TV getting the military right. Sure, it wasn't always perfectly accurate but they did a pretty good job specifically because they did research. Enterprise could have done the same, but that might have required talking to actual military personnel, and as near as I can tell from watching this show, the writers' idea of military personnel is a grunting neanderthal trying to think up excuses to kill brown people.

Faced with the problem of trying to make the target of their hatred the protagonists, they set out to design a "better," "smarter," and "more moral" version of the military for their show. What they ended up with was a league of incompetent poofs who ignore procedure, make stupid decisions that get innocents killed, and try to solve every problem with slapstick and passive-aggressive posturing.

KR Rating: HORRIBLE

As much as I try to keep the blog non-political, in this case it can't be helped. Despite what many internet denizens believe, ignorance is not the sole province of conservatives. The writers of Enterprise are about as ignorant as they come, and the show suffers a lot because of it. Their misguided attempt at writing a "better" military obliterated any shred of believability in the plot or likability in the characters. Yes, the show got better as it went, but it didn't matter. Even if the show had been well written from the beginning, the writers' political stupidity would have killed it anyway.

At multiple points while watching the show I tried to figure out how other Trek captains would have handled the situations Archer finds himself in, yet every time I tried I realized that no other Trek captain would have been in those situations to begin with. Picard would never have sent his crew to an uncharted planet without even so much as running a single scan to find out if it was safe. Archer did exactly that in season 1 episode 3: A Strange New World. Kirk would never have brought his pet to an alien planet knowing it would almost certainly offend the locals. Archer did that in season 2 episode 5: A Night In Sickbay.

In the real world the military would never take orders from a foreign power the way Starfleet kowtows to the Vulcans, they are not in the habit of sending either personnel or vehicles into combat zones unarmed, and believe it or not the military's policy toward stupid captains who get their subordinates killed is not "forgive and forget." Any captain like John Archer would be court-martialled less than a month into his command. It's as simple as that.

Movie Review: Wild Wild West

2011-08-26T03:20:00.001-04:00

In 1965 Robert Conrad and Ross Martin co-starred in a TV show called Wild Wild West. The show chronicled the adventures of James West and Artemus Gordon, two members of the secret service taking on villains in the old west using West's gunslinging and Gordon's steampunk-lite inventions. The major draw of the show was the incredible chemistry between the two stars, who created a screen partnership to rival Kirk and Spock, Luke and Bo Duke, or...um...Bert and Ernie.

In 1999, Barry Sonnenfeld directed a film called Wild Wild West, a 170 million dollar action comedy about an Army Captain and a US Marshall who join forces to stop an evil genius who plans to conquer the United States with a giant mechanical spider. Though financially a success (the film earned back over 222 million dollars worldwide) the movie was considered to be a critical failure and has since become one of the most universally hated movies on the internet, wih 4.4 stars on IMDb and 21% on Rotten Tomatoes.

At the risk of having my internet writer license revoked I have to admit that I never really understood why this movie was so hated. Most of the hate seems nitpicky to me, as if the critics are desperate to agree with the hive mind, but can't actually come up with a justification for doing so, so they just bring up whatever bad things they can think of, no matter how minor.

The one real, major problem I can find with the movie is the two leads, Jim West and Artemus Gordon, as played by Will Smith and Kevin Kline. Don't get me wrong, the movie doesn't need to put the same emphasis on their relationship as the show did, nor would I expect it to. Smith and Kline don't have anywhere near the chemistry of Conrad and Martin. That's kind of the problem, though. Smith and Kline are like oil and water. These two would be unappealing in any movie. Watching them try to emulate one of the greatest relationships in television history is just painful.

To be fair to them, part of this is the fault of the script. The movie -perhaps unwisely- tries to evoke the old buddy cop trope of the two lawmen who start out as enemies before coming to respect one another. Sadly, it never quite seems to get around to the respecting each other part, settling instead on going from hatred to just not caring. It doesn't help that when they finally do get to their big bonding scene it's played entirely for laughs, and punctuated by the two of them being chased through a cornfield by flying saw blades.

KR Rating: GOOD

So is the movie really as bad as everyone says? Not even close. Is it as good as the TV show? No, but to be fair it was never going to be. Haters are quick to say that you have to judge it in context, and they're right. In the context of a big budget action movie -which is what it is- it's actually pretty good. It was never intended to compete with the series, or to be high art. It succeeded at what it wanted to do and it brought something new to the genre, which is more than can be said for most other action comedies, including those that rated higher than it did. The only real problem with the movie is the utter lack of chemistry between the two leads.

If you haven't seen this movie then I suggest you check it out, even if just so you can judge it for yourself. True, fans of the series and those looking for high art won't find a lot to be interested in here, but if you're a fan of action comedies, a fan of steampunk, or better yet a fan of both then I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by Wild Wild West.

Confession: I kind of can't stand DC Comics Confessions

2011-08-19T09:11:00.003-04:00

Before I get into talking about this week's subject, I'd like to talk about a phenomenon I like to call the I Like Cheese Effect. I'm not talking about the fact that I like cheese, even though I do. No, I'm talking about the people who feel the need to post on Twitter, on a blog, on Facebook, or somewhere else, but they don't really have anything to say, so they just end up posting something like "I like cheese."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say you should never have an opinion, or that you should never post it for people you don't know to look at it. If I believed that I wouldn't have this blog. The thing is, there's a difference between making a point, telling a story, or offering insight, as opposed to just saying "I like cheese." If you want to tell me about the specific kinds of cheese you like, I'm all ears*. If you want to tell me a story about how you had some really good cheese when you were vacationing in Europe, go right ahead*. If you want to write me a 5 point thesis on why cheese is the best food ever, feel free*. But if all you have to say is "I like cheese," please kill yourself.

* Note: my interest in these topics will, of course, depend entirely on whether or not I know who you are. Do not send me e-mails talking about cheese if I don't know you or I will lay every curse I can on your hard drive.

DC Comics Confessions is basically an entire website of cheese-liking. Yes, true, there are a few actual points being made. Unfortunately, 99% of it is just page after page after page of meaningless statements like "I can't stand [Starfire]" and "I hate Nightwing's mullet." They're a bit like bumper stickers in a way. People who already agree with you will get a brief "somebody else feels how I feel" high, but aside from that there is no purpose or meaning to what you're saying. Even as conversation starters they fail, since all confessions are completely anonymous.

Of course, I'm sure someone could mention here that that's the entire point. It's not about making an argument, or starting a conversation, it's about confessions. That goes back to what I was saying to begin with, though: It's one thing to believe that, say, "the Superbuddies are the most awesome superhero team," and it's perfectly fine to want to tell people you believe that. But if you feel so strongly about it that people must know, yet so oppressed that you believe the only way to get your opinion heard is by anonymous confession, you really need to go outside.

OWGH: Timesplitters Future Perfect

2011-08-09T02:11:00.004-04:00

As my way of apologizing for missing or stretching my last several weekly updates, the three people who read this blog get an extra post this week. Because I'm lazy, though, it's another edition of the old website's greatest hits.

Originally, I was going to repost my first review ever, for Icewind Dale 2, but I unfortunately hit a snag when I realized that review sucked. Instead, you get a repost of my review for Timesplitters: Future Perfect.

Enjoy!

Obviously there is something desperately wrong with me. I know this because I actually went out and bought this game, even after the maddening horror that was Timesplitters 2. I'm obviously either a masochist, dangerously stupid, or more likely both.

Or maybe I'm just morbidly curious. Who knows?

Fortunately, my fears were alleviated almost immediately. Future Perfect is an awesome game and definitely much better than its awful predecessor. How did this happen? Mostly, there's a new developer: EA Games. In fact, I have totally unreliable testimony from a halfwit who claims with no proof that he worked for TS2 developer Eidos saying that the reason Timesplitters 2 sucked so hard was because frankly Eidos just didn't give a damn about the franchise so didn't put any effort into it. It would certainly explain a lot, but then again I got that information from a GameFAQs user. To protect his identity, I have code-named him "Curve Ball."

Anyway, back to this particular game. EA Games decided to actually explain the plot for us, as well as, thankfully, letting us know just what the Hell was going on in the last game. In a change from TS2 you actually control Cortez through this game, rather than jumping into other people. This, of course, means we actually get to have cut scenes and interaction between characters. You even get to hang out with your future self on occasion. Don't worry, it'll all make sense when you play the game.

All things considered, my only real complaint is that they took out the Wild West and Cyber Punk eras from TS2.

Presentation: 5/5
The presentation is perfect. Graphics are great, sound is great. No real complaints here.

Gameplay: 4/5
The gameplay is also great. The game is a load of fun, with many unique and interesting weapons, challenging enemies, and decent A.I. Unfortunately, the gameplay only gets a four because Cortez still hasn't learned how to jump.

Multiplayer: 5/5
Honestly, the only way the multiplayer could get any better is if you could design your own maps and scenarios to play in using some kind of map editor. Oh wait, you can do that! Sweet!

KR Rating (from the FUTURE): GREAT

Sadly, this was also to be the last Timesplitters game, one final hurrah to end the series. I guess it's just as well. Not every game needs to be a series. Future Perfect is, well, perfect all on its own. One could argue it doesn't even strictly need the first two games either. Really, it's not that I'd like to see another Timesplitters. I think this game wrapped up the story very nicely.

Rather, I'd like to see more games like Future Perfect. You know, a game with more than two hours of content, a game that has a serious story yet doesn't take itself too seriously, and where "weapon variety" doesn't mean "fifty assault rifles, six pistols, three shotguns, and a token rocket launcher just to shut you up."

If you're one of the many people who still have a Playstation 2 (or if you're one of the PS3 owners lucky enough to have a backward compatible system) Future Perfect is a must-have. It's a solid game and personally I believe it still stands up even when compared to modern shooters.

A Real Storyboard for Mystery Science Theater 3000 (From Another Universe)

2011-08-02T01:49:00.005-04:00

I, like a lot of people, love Mystery Science Theater 3000. I was 15 when it was cancelled in 1999, and while I didn't exactly cry, I was sad to see it go. At the same time, let's be fair. It's not like no one saw it coming. It's a show of 2 hour long episodes, each of which required long and expensive copyright negotiations just to be filmed. The fact that it lasted for 11 whole years is amazing in and of itself.

At the same time, I feel like the show is a product of its time. It was first created in 1988, but ran until 1999, so I feel it's really a product of the 90s. That's part of why I love it, I loved the 90s, but at the same time I recognize that society has changed a lot since then. Somewhere in the 2000s we dragged subtlety into the street and executed it, gangland style, while it begged for us to please, please don't do this, please I have kids!

The point is, whether you think we've lowered the bar, dumbed everything down, or just plain screwed everything right the Hell up, we can all agree that what we expect from our entertainment has definitely changed a lot since the 90s.

So, what would MST3K look like if it was made today, by the average television writer of today? You may remember some time ago, I was able to use an screaming rip in space and time to bring you a letter to Cave Story designer Daisuke Amaya from another universe. Well, that rift has since collapsed into a black hole that has swallowed most of Arkansas, but it also allowed me to find another artifact from the same universe. As near as I can tell, this is part of a storyboard for that universe's version of Mystery Science Theater 3000, created in the year 2011. Enjoy!

Top 5 List: 5 Awful Banner Ads

2011-07-23T16:23:00.010-04:00

Here's an experiment you can try at home. Don't watch any TV for a year. You can watch shows online if you'd like, but don't watch on the television itself. At the end of the year go back and turn on your TV, then wait for the first commercial break. Count the number of seconds it takes before you want to punch someone.

Most commercials are so awful I'm honestly convinced it might all be a massive inside joke or experiment. It's like the somewhat well-known story of Motley Crue members Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx, who had a bet to see who could go the longest without showering and still sleep with groupies, except in this case advertisers are trying to see how terrible they can make their ads and still get corporations to pay for them. Even good products are getting terrible ads, as I've mentioned before.

As my way of launching my newest post tag I decided to sit down and find five truly abominable ads. Originally I was going to discuss television commercials here too, but I'm afraid I'm not ready for that kind of crazy yet, and this is coming from a person who read Time Cube from beginning to end and journaled my descent into the rabbit hole on this very blog. Besides, at this point banner ads are sort of my thing.

That said, here are five ads that force me to ask: "How in the Hell are you selling your product?"

5. NewsMax.com: 4 More Years?

This is a great example of what I was talking about. This ad for NewsMax.com -a real news site with real journalists and real stories and everything- shows off all the wit and subtlety of a Mack truck combined with an absolute minimum of effort and a crop job that looks like it was done in 5 seconds on MS Paint. For Christ's sake, the name of the site they're advertising doesn't even appear on the damn ad!

Just to prove my point about how not hard this is, I decided to make my own ad for the same site making the same point as theirs, only in a more effective way. The following ad only took me seven minutes to make, and I'm not even a professional advertiser.

If I was a professional advertiser you can bet your ass this thing would be flashing like I had a blood vendetta against epileptics.

4. Milanoo Final Fantasy Cosplay Stuff

Here's a secret the ad agencies don't want you to know: advertising is actually really simple. Just show your product looking awesome, delicious, or convenient, then tell people how to get that awesome, delicious, convenient thing. If your product can't be made to look awesome, delicious, or convenient, then you lie.

Clearly, the advertisers for Milanoo were well aware of this simple idea. Who needs to lie when you're selling cosplay materials and outfits so amazing they will magically transform you into a CGI character cropped out of the game and crudely photoshopped onto a picture of a couch?

3. Alli Labs: Look 10 Years Younger in 10 Minutes

Before we begin, it's important that you understand, I did not alter this ad in any way. I didn't crop out some crucial text that explains what's going on. This isn't the first frame of an animated ad. This is all there is to this ad. The only other context available is mouseover text which I've included here.

First of all, when trying to sell a rejuvenating lotion (I assume) it's important that you show a picture of someone attractive, someone your viewer would presumably want to look like. This woman looks so old I'm convinced the only thing your lotion would do is take her from "fossil" to "mummy." Combine that with a slogan that sounds like something you'd see in the subject line of a spam e-mail, and you have two great reasons not to click this ad.

Just for argument's sake, here's a more effective ad (not made by me) for a similar product, in this case apparently a magical spell that will turn you into a life-sucking demon.

Admittedly, she's pretty hot for being probably a witch.

2. Free Electronic Cigarette

For those not in the know, electronic cigarettes are battery powered smoke machines lauded for managing the Herculean task of being better for you than a tube full of tar-soaked carcinogens, a claim almost as obvious as it is completely untrue. But it takes more than bad spelling and a stupid product for an ad to be truly awful. Fortunately (ha) this ad quickly goes full retard.

It just raises so many questions. Why is the word "now" in quotes? Are they being sarcastic? Why are they talking about quitting smoking in the middle of a cigarette ad? Why did they include the year at the end of the ad? Are they expecting me to see this and say "okay, you say I can quit smoking with your e-cigarette, but what year, huh? Oh, I see! Sold!"

A trip to their website doesn't answer any of these questions. It does, however, assure me that Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, and Paris Hilton all use e-cigarettes. Quite the argument there. How could I possibly disagree with the product choices of out-of-touch, eccentric douchebags?

1. Knight Productions...what even is this crap?

This is just bad. I mean, first of all, what is this even advertising? Some stupid angelfire site no one's ever heard of? And that artwork, what is that, a cave drawing by a blind weeaboo neanderthal who died of terminal lameness halfway through? The slogan is even worse. "Shameless self-promotion" stopped being a funny line in, oh wait, it was never funny.

I like the font, though. It looks like if SyFy stopped trying.

Apparently the moron who made this stupid crap eight years ago has some sort of blog now. Let's check that garbage out. ...oh.

Movie Review: Stan Helsing (Movie)

2011-07-09T17:31:00.003-04:00

Chances are most people reading this have heard of writing/directing duo Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, commonly referred to as Seltzerberg. They're infamous for writing and directing lazy, low-budget, raunchy spoof films, usually named some variation of "___ Movie." Examples include Epic Movie, Scary Movie, and Disaster Movie.

I should mention, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer were not involved in the production of this movie at any point. Why do I bring them up then? Because I'm almost certain their work was used as a template for this movie. This movie falls victim to all of the same problems that plague Seltzerbergs' worst films. It's so bad that I actually had to go back and check to make sure the title wasn't "Helsing Movie." That's right, this movie is a low-budget ripoff of a Seltzerberg picture. Think about that for a while.

So who did make this movie? It would spoil the surprise if I told you now, so instead I'm going to make you wait until the end. No skipping ahead!

But first, because lists are easy and because I suck at segues, here are the top reasons Stan Helsing sucks.

4. Fweddy.
No, I didn't spell that wrong. Fweddy is what this movie calls their "parody" of A Nightmare on Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger. The reason I use the sarcastic quotes is because, honestly, I'm not convinced this qualifies as a parody at all.

Freddy Krueger is possibly one of the most unique slasher movie villains out there but -with the exception of the evil doll Chucky from Child's Play- is also quite possibly the easiest slasher movie villain to make fun of. The guy once killed a kid by trapping him in a video game. In A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge he ties up a naked gym coach and smacks him on the butt with a towel until he dies. For God's sake, Freddy Krueger is a pedophile with a face that looks like melted cheese. How much easier of a target for ridicule could you find?

So how do they parody him? By having him wear a clock necklace like Flava Flav. But wait, that's not all! He also does the famous Krueger pose, smirking with his bladed glove in front of his face, except wait! The thumb's "blade" is actually a toothbrush, and he brushes his teeth with it.

So yeah. That's your big Elm Street parody? Freddy Krueger brushing his teeth? That's almost as bad as Seltzerberg "parodying" Little Miss Sunshine by having one of the characters die while wearing a shirt bearing the movie's title.

3. Leslie Nielsen as Kay.
Leslie Nielsen hasn't been in anything good since the 90's, so it may come as a surprise to my younger readers when I say this: Leslie Nielsen is quite possibly the funniest actor in the history of comedy.

Nielsen has the ability to deliver ridiculously nonsensical dialog and subpar jokes with a completely straight face that makes them drop dead hilarious. The man might just be a real life alchemist; he takes awful puns that should go over like a lead balloon, and transmutes them into 24 karat comedy gold. Don't take my word for it, though: even Roger Ebert once referred to Nielsen as "the Lawrence Olivier of spoof movies."

With that in mind, what sort of madman casts Leslie Nielsen in his movie, then gives him absolutely nothing funny to say or do? Nielsen doesn't get any jokes in this movie, not even bad jokes. The closest he gets to doing anything funny is that his character is a woman. No, seriously, that's it. He has fake tits and a bad wig, and he calls the main characters "freaks." That's all he does.

This is the equivalent of drafting NFL all-star Peyton Manning for your football team, then making him the water boy.

2. The setup.
Up until now we've just looked at specific examples, but really the entire thing is just bad in general.

The title character and star of the movie is Stan Helsing, a weed-smoking slacker whose motto in life is "don't get involved." His plans to attend an awesome Halloween party with his friends are put on hold when he's ordered to make a delivery to his boss's mother's house. Unfortunately, the mother lives in Stormy Night Estates, a small town/gated community (the movie doesn't seem to be sure which) that's said to be haunted.

The first half of the movie follows Stan and his friends on their way to the gated community/town, as they are subjected to one horrifying incident after another, including a hitchhiker who turns out to be a psychotic serial killer, and a dog they run over whose vengeful owner brings him back as a vicious zombie.

To be honest, it's actually fairly effective. It's scary, and so over the top horrible as to be fairly funny too. The problem is that none of this setup pays off, ever. Once they arrive at Stormy Night Estates, all of the enemies they picked up on their way are anticlimactically dropped and replaced by lazy parodies of famous slasher film villains, thereby rendering everything we just watched completely pointless.

1. The payoff.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for an awful movie. I shouldn't need to give you this warning, as you could probably see all of these "plot twists" coming even if you never watched the movie.

As it turns out, Stan Helsing's real name is Stanley van Helsing, he's the descendant of famed monster hunter Abraham van Helsing, and at this point absolutely no one cares. Faced with his past he instantaneously discards the philosophy of non-involvement he's held for his entire life, in order to save a gated communitown full of people he has no reason to care about, from a group of parodies/ripoffs that don't even seem to be that much of a threat.

But first, we're treated to an awful karaoke scene where the monsters fail to parody The Village People. Incidentally, how do you fail to parody The Village People? Anyway, after this scene accomplishes nothing but padding the movie's runtime Stan is forced to fight the villains for real. He remembers he has a scroll telling him how to win, but all the scroll says is "the monsters have weaknesses."

Somehow, this cryptic nonsense works and Stan magically guesses all of the monsters weaknesses on the first try. Freddy is dispatched when Stan removes his famous razor glove, revealing his hand sparkles like Edward Cullen in daylight. Pinhead is then destroyed by Stan pushing the pins on his head...into his head. That retardation out of the way, the writer apparently gives up on thinking up weaknesses and Stan takes out Jason and Michael Myer by...honestly, I'm not even sure. He just sort of fondles their masks for a second then pushes them both out the door.

Really, I can't even think up any jokes for this, that's how awful it is.

KR Rating: SHOVEL
Stan Helsing is more than just bad, it's aggressively bad. The movie seems to delight in teasing you with actually decent jokes and scares, only to instantly squash them in the laziest way possible. This goes beyond simply not caring. I can't say I know what the director had in mind, so, I don't know for a fact that any of this was intentional. That said, if I can be real here for a second? If the writer/director is NOT a supervillain who plans to take revenge on the world by subjecting it to terrible movies, then he has a lot of explaining to do.

Back at the beginning I promised I'd tell you who made this movie once I got to the end of my review, so here it is. You ready?

Stan Helsing was written and directed by Bo Zenga, who also wrote and directed Soul Plane, a lazy, racist (to both whites and blacks), low-budget raunchfest, the plot of which can be basically summed up as "wacky black people are on a plane, the end."

All of a sudden, everything makes sense.

Video Game Review: Pokémon Black/White Version

2011-07-02T05:24:00.003-04:00

The Pokémon franchise has gotten a bit of a bad reputation for its lack of innovation. I'd explain why, but if you're reading this you probably already know why, and besides this VGCats guest strip makes the point much better than I ever could.

Clearly, Nintendo and GameFreak heard all the complaints, which is why when they were working on Pokémon Black/White they made a point of letting everyone know that this game was finally going to give us that "something new" everyone had been asking for.

So, did they succeed? By way of answering that, allow me to present to you the top 3 problems with Pokémon Black/White version:

3. The new pokémon.
One of the big hype points for Black/White was that it would have all new pokémon. That is to say, the old pokémon will have to either be transferred over from old versions or caught in specific special areas. No more caverns full of zubats, no more caterpies hiding in every patch of grass. Unfortunately, Nintendo and GameFreak handily showed us that they were not capable of coming up with 150 more pokémon.

You can go through the list and point out where most of the new 'mons are obviously just old ones with new designs. Pidove is the same as Pidgey, Timburr and its evolutions are the same as Machop and its evolutions, and while it's true that we no longer have the caves full of Zubats and Geodudes all the other games had, that's only because they're now full of Woobats and Roggenrolas.

Speaking of, Roggenrola actually shows a fair amount of potential for uniqueness. It could be a rock type with a propensity for sound-based moves like the newly introduced Echoed Voice. Maybe its evolution could be called Roggstar. That'd be cool. Instead, they abandon the rock-and-roll pun after its first evolution when it becomes Boldore and proceeds to completely rip off the Geodude line. In fact, the only thing really differentiating the Roggenrola line from the Geodude line (aside from its appearance) is that Geodude has a larger move list. The two lines even evolve the same way. (Once at level 25, again when traded.)

The Roggenrola line doesn't even seem to know what it wants to be itself. Gigalith's (the final form) pokédex entry makes a big deal out of how it absorbs sunlight to fire powerful energy beams. That makes it sound like the pokémon's signature attack would be Solar Beam (which is a grass type move anyway, so why?) which is weird because Gigalith does not learn Solar Beam. It can learn it as a TM, sure, but so can almost every grass, fire, bug, and normal type in the series. They had here not one but two different possibilities to make this pokémon unique and they squandered both of them.

2. The philosophy.
When he was reviewing the movie I Am Sam, Roger Ebert said, "you can't have heroes and villains when the wrong side is making the best sense." That line sums up this game's big philosophical debate pretty handily.

The main villains of this game are Team Plasma, a group who believes that kidnapping sentient creatures, locking them in tiny balls, and only letting them out so they can participate in glorified cockfights might not be very nice. I know, shocking, right? Their point is obvious and hard to argue against, so naturally they never seem to be capable of making it in any real way. When asked to defend themselves, rather than point out the obvious, they usually change the subject and talk about their evil plans instead.

To be fair to Plasma, no one seems to be able to mount a decent argument in either direction. When asked to defend their own worldviews, the trainers' main argument is to whine "but we like training pokémon," in much the same way that a 19th century plantation owner might have said "but I like owning slaves." It's not only ludicrous but starts to get sad toward the end when you realize it's not the NPCs saying it but Nintendo and GameFreak desperately trying (and failing) to convince us that pokémon training isn't completely cruel

Here's the thing, though. These questions aren't that important. When I played HeartGold I understood the moral implications, but they never hindered my ability to enjoy the game. The difference here is that they brought it up. I can only assume they quickly realized they didn't have an answer to the argument, so they tried to avoid it. That begs the question, though, if you couldn't argue against it, then why bring it up?

1. Just, generally, everything.
I really hate to say this game is bad because it's obvious that they did try to give us some actual innovation in this game. Unfortunately, most of it's wasted on superficial things like camera angles and sprites that wiggle around in battle.

As for the new pokémon we were promised, let me go on record as saying that a few of them really are cool, like Pawniard, Hydreigon, and the water type starter. Sadly, most of them are either lame rehashings of older 'mons, or else just totally uninspired.

So as much as it pains me to give this game this rating, I'm afraid it's the only one I can honestly give.

KR Rating: BAD
If you want to play a Pokémon game, play HeartGold/SoulSilver instead. It's easily the best game in the franchise. As for Black/White, there's no reason to even bother.

Video Game Review: Monster Tale

2011-06-23T04:11:00.002-04:00

Monster Tale is a new DS game released in March of this year. Created by new developers DreamRift and published by Majesco, Monster Tale is a game in two parts. The top screen of the DS is home to a Metroidvania-style platform adventure following Ellie, a young girl imbued with a magical armband and trapped in an alternate universe she's trying to find her way home from. The bottom screen is a pet-raising sim where Ellie's monster companion, Chomp, can use items to grow and evolve into new forms.

Monster Tale got fairly high ratings from most review sites, and it's not difficult to see why. It's a good game that works fairly well and shows some promise. If this is the sort of thing DreamRift delivers on their debut game, then I look forward to seeing what they can produce in the future. But does this game hold up on its own merits? Sadly, not entirely.

The adventure side of the game is short and aside from a few frustrating parts is never really a challenge. None of the abilities Ellie will recieve are very imaginative, every one of them (aside from the roll) is only a new type of armband shot or a new melee attack. The story shows the potential for being interesting but is desperately in need of a few more rewrites, and the characters are bland and one-dimensional.

The monster-raising sim on the bottom screen is remarkably shallow considering the amount of thought that seems to have been put into it. Items will drop from enemies and can be picked up and sent to the bottom screen. Your monster can use these items to gain experience and stats, and to evolve into new forms. If you give your monster items it likes it'll evolve faster, but that's about the extent of that.

None of the forms have a particularly interesting appearance either. Really, they're all just slight variations on the base form, adding claws, horns, wings, scales, etc. Each form has one usable power and one trait which, once mastered, can be used on other forms. None of the abilities or traits are particularly interesting either. As for your monster himself, he's slow to attack and never deals much damage. You'll probably use him for healing if you use him at all, but given how easy the game is don't expect to need health often.

KR Rating: GOOD
Overall, Monster Tale is a decent game that shows the potential for a great game. I'll certainly be watching DreamRift in the future, but sadly Monster Tale is not the contender I was promised. It's too short and too shallow. It borrows too heavily from games like Metroid and Castlevania, while not being much better.

If you want to play an imaginative platform adventure with interesting abilities, pick up Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for the DS, Drill Dozer for the GBA, or Shaman King: Master of Spirits for the GBA. If you want a game that successfully combines pet-raising with action and adventure try the PS2's Castlevania: Harmony of Darkness, or better yet just play one of the Pokemon or Shin Megami Tensei games. As for Monster Tale? It's definitely worth a try, but don't expect anything ground-breaking.

Television Review: Deadliest Warrior

2011-06-17T16:32:00.005-04:00

For the uninitiated, Spike TV's Deadliest Warrior is a series created by Max Geiger, based around a computer program by Slitherine Strategies. This program is capable of taking complex data and running a realistic battle simulation with it, which they then do 1,000 times. In theory this allows them to enter data about historical warriors and finally settle the age old question of who would win in a fight.

The competition angle is definitely not the show's strongest suit, but what is awesome about the show are the weapons and armor demonstrations. If the entire show was just them looking at history's greatest warriors and examining the tools of their trade in gory detail it would be completely awesome. Unfortunately, as mentioned, the show falls apart when it gets into the competition aspect. Here are the top 3 reasons I will probably not be tuning in when the show returns on July 20th of this year.

3. Why are vikings fighting samurai?
I'll go ahead and say it: the fact that they didn't put ninjas against pirates should be a crime. They made a show about which ancient warriors would win in battle, and didn't do the single most hotly debated matchup of all time? That's like doing a series about famous wars of the 20th century and skipping World War 2.

Now that that's out of the way, I still have to wonder about some of their picks. Knight vs. pirate? Maori warrior vs. Shaolin monk? I get that the idea was to be outlandish so as to take full advantage of the anachronism stew they created, but the result is ridiculously unbalanced. You can usually name the winner of these early episodes from the beginning, or at least the halfway mark, once you realize that no amount of steel armor can stop a cannon, or that the ninja has like two weapons with killing potential while the spartan is so heavily armed even his shield can kill you in one hit.

As mentioned, though, these are early episodes. The reason this is only number 3 is because this is really only a problem in the first season. There seems to have been an early desire to do "strength vs. speed" and "skill vs. ferocity" fights. By season 2 they started sticking to closer matchups. This kind of goes back to a bigger problem, though.

2. It's not a realistic battle simulation.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that the computer program they use is anything less than amazing. It's deep and capable of taking so many factors into account. The problem isn't with the program, it's with the entire concept. The program can only simulate the physical attributes of the fighters: strength, speed, size, weapons, and armor, and that's really all you can expect it to do.

Thing is, there are so many more important factors to a battle than that. There's also skill, training, determination, and most important of all strategy. Yes, they run these simulations 1,000 times but it doesn't matter. It wouldn't matter if they ran them a billion times, they still can't factor in strategy. If you don't get why that's a problem, remember that in a purely physical matchup England would have demolished the Continental Army in the American Revolution, the Nazis would have crushed the French Resistance in a day, and the people of Afghanistan would have been easily conquered by the Soviet Union.

Not only would I say that strategy is the most important part of battle, I might even go so far as to say that proper strategy, along with the skill and determination to carry it out, is the only truly important part of battle. But hey, that can be forgiven. If DW's magic program could simulate strategy the ninjas would've just poisoned the Spartans in their sleep 1,000 times over, making for the most boring episode ever. The real issue is...

1. You're not a Spartan, okay?
Here's where the show gets stupid: the trash talking between the weapons experts they bring on the show. It's one thing when it's something like the Green Beret vs. Spetsnaz episode, where the weapons experts for each side are actualy former Green Beret and Spetsnaz commandoes, but then we get episodes like Apache vs. gladiator. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but they did not resurrect either an Apache warrior or a gladiator for this episode. The weapons experts have no stake in this fight and no reason to dislike each other, yet they're bordering on death threats.

I'm sure this was the idea of the producers. Experts who have appeared on the show have also implied that the producers pressured them to show off weapons that were cool as opposed to weapons that would have actually been used. (Case in point: the hookswords in the Shaolin monk episode which, while undeniably badass, are debatably not even actual ancient weapons and even if they were they were certainly not the mainstay weapon that episode implied.)

This is easily the biggest problem with the show: all the things they added in purely to boost the "cool" factor. I suppose it's to be expected, this is a Spike TV production after all, but it is really irritating to the point of being honestly painful to watch and it ruins the fun of watching the weapons demonstrations.

KR Rating: MEDIOCRE

A Toast To The Old Cowboys of the Net

2011-06-14T20:03:00.003-04:00

In the 90's we had a second wild west: the internet. The internet was the new frontier. The trail had been blazed by the pioneers of the 80's, paving the way for an internet that was still wild and untamed yet worked well enough to be accessible. We flocked to this new wild west, some of us seeking a new start amidst the anonymity of the net, some seeking to have fun in a world of freedom.

That's the operative word for that time: freedom. Mainstream society was mostly ignoring the internet, so there wasn't any real strict system of governance in place, yet at the same time it wasn't total anarchy; you found out what was accepted by your community and you worked with it. There was a casual atmosphere, a lot of individuality, and a sense that people gave a shit.

Even our outcasts had a certain amount of charm to them. One of the outcasts we had back in my own old haunt was a guy named Dan Moore. Dan suffered from severe autism, so severe in fact it bordered on schizophrenia. He had no ability to differentiate fantasy from reality. All of his problems eventually lead to what almost become a civil war on the message board when he acted on one of his role-playing conflicts out of character and no one realized it wasn't real until it was too late.

While it doesn't feel right to call a genuinely mentally ill person an insulting term like "annoying" he was, at the least, very frustrating to deal with. And yet, I'd rather spend every day with him then the average denizen of TVTropes, 4Chan, Youtube, or really any place on the internet today.

Much like the old west, however, soon everyone started moving in. The common users just wanted to be a part of the "big new thing." Then there was the government, terrified by some of the bad things that happened on the net and determined to bring order to what they saw as a lawless land filled with bandits and psychopaths. Of course, there were also the corporations, determined to squeeze some money out of the internet. The small communities are now almost all gone, replaced by mega-sites and social networks like Youtube and Facebook. The individuality and casual atmosphere are both gone too, replaced by the drumbeat mantra of pseudo-civilized society: "Fit in. Follow. FIT IN."

Half of the internet became all Serious Business, strict rules, and prim and proper social conduct, walking the wire knowing one slip will have you ostracized as a "troll." The other half, either due to a misguided sense of "returning things to the way they were" or maybe just a good old fashioned lack of ethics, became the highwaymen of our new west, falling into memes and sadism.

Then there's the old cowboys of the net, like myself, who suddenly find there's no place for us anymore. Freedom, true freedom is a terrible, beautiful thing. It's a gift from God Himself, abjectly horrifying to those who've never known it, but to those of us who have seen it nothing else can ever hope to compare.

Television Review: Loonatics Unleashed

2011-06-10T04:54:00.007-04:00

Chances are you've heard of Loonatics before, though that's probably thanks to the many caustic reviews and parody videos. The show was being mocked before it even came out, thanks to the early designs for the new characters. I wish I could say it didn't deserve it but, well, it did.

This episode brought to you by the letters L, S, and D!

The designs were mocked relentlessly, culminating in an internet petition demanding the designs either be changed or the show be cancelled. Proving once and for all that internet petitions do actually work but only in the most half-ass way possible, the designs were changed. Buzz Bunny became Ace Bunny, Loonatics became Loonatics Unleashed, and Roadrunner and Coyote's relationship became more homoerotic than a million Kirk/Spock slashfics put together.

Sorry, you'll have to look up those Roadrunner/Coyote pics on your own time.

You've probably heard of the concept of "AU" or alternate universe material. Basically the idea is that you take existing character or plot concepts and re-imagine them in a new genre or setting. Loonatics Unleashed isn't exactly an alternate universe, these characters are meant to be the far future descendants of the originals, but it's the same basic concept. Some people consider AU material to be source-destroying sacrilege, but not me. Maybe it's because I'm more of a creative person myself, but I always enjoyed exploring new concepts based on the same characters. So on paper this is exactly the kind of show I would like.

The problem is that even judged on its own merits, this show is objectively terrible. The characters are shallow and one-dimensional. The plot is boring with twists most people could see coming a mile away. The writing is genuinely awful and smacks of having been made up as they went along. The best example of this would be how the intro sequence calls the planet the Loonatics live on Acmetropolis, yet all of the characters refer to it as Earth for most of season 1.

Even worse than the writing, however, are the original characters. There's nothing wrong with AU material adding an original character or two to spice things up or fill a niche no source-character can fill. The problem is with the exception of the Loonatics themselves every character in the first season is an original creation. There's no far future Marvin the Martian, or high tech bounty hunter Elmer Fudd, at least not until season 2.

So let's talk about season 2, then! The show does get much, much better in the second season. That's when they added in re-imagined versions of the other Looney Tunes characters. They also seemed to spend more time on writing, actually adding some dimension to the characters. A few of the season 2 episodes could even be called good, including It Came From Outer Space, starring a revised Marvin the Martian, and Family Business, which finally gives Rev Runner and Tech E. Coyote personalities. The show is definitely at its best during episodes like this.

Unfortunately, there's just not enough of them. Most of the episodes still revolve around original characters, often even going so far as to make the revised characters play lackey to the newly created villains! To make things worse, while the writing does get better in season 2 it's still not what you would call good. There are gaping plot holes all through the thing, and nonsensical lines that were clearly put in just to lead into puns that are never funny enough to justify it.

In the end, though, the biggest problem Loonatics has is that combining superhero fight sequences and Looney Tunes sight gags creates a disconnect that makes it impossible to know when you're supposed to be taking things seriously. One episode repeatedly has two of the characters get crushed under falling rocks as a cheap sight gag, then halfway through it traps the same characters in an unstable cavern and suddenly expects us to consider falling rocks to be a legitimate threat. No. It doesn't work that way. If the writers had actually tried they could probably have found a way to reconcile these two conflicting styles, but they didn't. They just let it go and hoped we wouldn't notice.

KR Rating: BAD

Is Loonatics as bad as you heard? Yes. Hell yes. Indisputably, yes, it is every bit as bad as you heard. To be fair, the second season is a vast improvement over the unmitigated train wreck that was the first season, and even occasionally borders on good. But there's still just way too much lazy writing. Like most bad cartoons, Loonatics seems to operate on the assumption that kids are stupid so it doesn't matter if the show makes sense.

At the same time, there are worse cartoons out there, and worse Looney Tunes spinoffs at that. The only reason this show is still so reviled is because of those caustic reviews and parody videos I mentioned before. Loonatics Unleashed wasn't just a high profile failure, it was a high profile failure on the internet, which -if Lolcats and Struttin' Leo are any indication- never lets anything go ever.

The Best 8 Indie Games Ever Made Anciliary: A Dwarf Fortress Review

2011-06-02T00:35:00.003-04:00

Back near the beginning of 2010 I wrote a post for this blog about the 8 best indie games ever made. Aside from being my most popular post with a total of 1,974 page views as of this writing, it also got a number of comments demanding to know why Dwarf Fortress was not on the list and I had to admit that I hadn't played it.

It's not that I hadn't heard of Dwarf Fortress, I had. Rather, I was intentionally avoiding the game. All of the things I read about it made it sound like a complicated mess that was basically unplayable unless you were a Stephen Hawking level genius. Sort of like SimCity 3, which was so strict that if you built a fire station before your town was "ready" for it you would go bankrupt almost instantly. But I digress.

Eventually I did get around to downloading and playing Dwarf Fortress. After all the glowing reviews I was certain that once I was done I'd be able to sit down and write a new post singing the game's praises and lamenting that I'd not played it before.

Sadly, I just can't do that. It's not that the game is bad, and I am happy to say that my preconceptions were dead wrong, it's just...well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

For anyone who might be reading this who doesn't know what Dwarf Fortress is, a good way to describe it is this: Dwarf Fortress is basically like Minecraft for people who think Minecraft is too shallow and limited. Dwarf Fortress is complicated in a good way. You'll probably need a guide to get started (Here ya go!) but once you get into it the game is intuitive, deep, and best of all works. (Seriously, fuck you, SimCity 3.)

The only real fault with the game itself is that it's in the "losing is fun" genre of games. As fans of the game will be happy to tell you, you'll never know what fun really is until you conquer the beasts of Hell itself and wrest it from their vile claws. (Granted, even if that's true it's still not losing that's fun, so much as winning over seemingly insurmountable odds.) The problem is, unlike with other LIF games like Spelunky, you're not just losing a few minutes but potentially days, weeks, or months of your life every time you lose.

As with Dungeon Crawl, however, I'm willing to give this one a pass on the grounds that you can always just back up your saves if you don't want to lose everything.

No, the reason I can't make that worshipful post is simply that this isn't the universally awesome ultimate game I was promised. Dwarf Fortress is just not for a lot of people and sadly I'm one of them. Those who follow my blog are well aware that I'm not a graphics whore, but even so ASCII graphics just never did it for me. (Though I will say this game makes possibly the best use of them that I've ever seen.) I've also never been a huge fan of simulation games. Mostly, though, I just don't have time for a game like this right now. Those of you who know me probably know why and those who don't know me have no reason to care, so I won't burden you with the details. Maybe in the future when my life is working properly I'll come back to this game, but not now.

KR Rating: GREAT

So, if I were to rewrite the Top 8 Indie Games today, would I include Dwarf Fortress? No contest, I absolutely would*. Hell, it might even take the number 1 spot! It's objectively good and easily the deepest game I've ever played. The only real problem is, despite the adulation of its fans, it's simply not universally enjoyable. Dwarf Fortress is the textbook definition of a niche game. If you're not into sim games, don't like ASCII graphics, or simply don't have time for a game that will devour hours and even weeks of your life with the very real risk of losing it all to one unlucky incident, then this game has nothing for you.

If you, are okay with those things or even suspect you might be okay with them, then I strongly recommend giving this game a shot. Go ahead and get it here.

*I would also include Tastes Like Spelunky (sorry, vanilla Spelunky) and Minecraft.

Not a Video Game Review: I Review a Review of Terraria

2011-05-23T21:47:00.007-04:00

For those of you who don't know yet, a 2D Minecraft-style game called Terraria was released last Wednesday. If you're into that go get it, it's only 10 bucks. If you're not into that then go play Brink or something. Oh wait, that doesn't exist. Sorry.

Anyway, shortly after the game's release a group called The Best Gamers posted a video review of the first five minutes of the game. The makers of Terraria saw it and had Youtube take it down under the pretense of "copyright infringement." (Reviewing a video game is not copyright infringement, Youtube are just pussies.)

Before you ask, yes, the review is bullshit. There are more enemies in the game then slimes, the worlds are randomly generated so level design is not even a thing, and shut the Hell up already. But it doesn't even matter. All of that is something ten seconds of light googling would disprove. Don't try it, though. I'm pretty sure if you type "is there more than one enemy in Terraria?" into Google it calls you a dumbass and formats your hard drive. Google's a dick.

The question that crossed my mind is, are these people stupid and missing the point of the game, or are they trying to be ironic?

One of the things they bring up a lot in the review is level design. for those who haven't played Terraria, the second thing the game asks you to do after making your character is to make a world to explore. It then randomly generates a world, while telling you that it's randomly generating a world. There are no levels in Terraria. Honestly, the reviewer has to know this. Hell, he reviewed Minecraft and started out this review by saying Terraria is basically the same as Minecraft. He must be aware that sandbox games exist, yet he keeps bringing up level design, apparently under the pretense that Terraria is a 2D platformer and all 2D platformers have levels just like Mario.

He then forgets what NPCs are and rants about how an "enemy" (pretty clearly an NPC) is bugged and can't be hurt by his weapon. ...how many video games have these people reviewed again?

So yeah, no one can be that stupid.

But there's more to it than that. The fact that they used editing software to dub in retarded sound effects purely to make the game look bad (Including the screamer moment at 5:20 in that video, which is not even remotely in the game. Probably should've warned you about that screamer earlier, by the way, but I'm an asshole.) tells me they knew exactly what they were doing. The constant, douchechill-inspiring repetition of "scrub" and "nerd," the fact that one of their biggest issues with the game is that it's in 2D, and the fact that they seem to review mostly indie games for the sole purpose of talking about how much they hate indie games, all tells me that they probably don't know what irony is and would call you a fag for thinking they did.

Surprisingly, the verdict isn't that they're just douchebags. The verdict is I don't care. A closer look at their site, including their forums and the people there, implies that they might be joking, but if they are then Jesus fucking Christ they suck at joking. On the other hand if they're trying to be serious then they suck at that too.

I love Stephen Colbert and his work, but god damn it all if he didn't open the floodgates for every moron who thinks he's funnier than he is to try and be an ironic character just like him. At least Colbert had the sense to parody a group that actually exists. Who are The Best Gamers parodying, if they are a parody? No one. The only people who act like that are fat slobs mic-spamming on XBox Live. They don't do anything, they don't matter, and spending time and money on making parodies of them has about as much point as spending money to produce parodies of your alcoholic neighbor Bob.

I think the worst thing about this review though isn't even the review itself, it's the response it got when it was taken off Youtube. Immediately legions of retards who'd never even heard of Terraria or The Best Gamers before flocked to the cause, posting 1-star reviews of Terraria all over the internet that just repeat the same points made in the video, thinking they were fighting for free speech.

Listen, guys. You're not championing the cause of a brave gamer who dared to call a shitty game shitty and was punished for it. You're championing the cause of a malicious douchebag who tried and failed to be ironic and got his review taken down because it was slander. So yeah, congrats on that. How does it feel to be a drain on society?

Video Game Review: Brink Doesn't Suck, There Is No Brink

2011-05-18T10:43:00.006-04:00

As of right now Brink has a 6.0 on Gamespot, a 6 on IGN, and 2 out of 5 stars on GiantBomb. Personally, I think even that is too much. Not because I think it deserves a lower score, no. See, I don't believe it exists. I'm aware there is something out there that people are calling Brink, but as near as I can tell there isn't a single original concept in the damn thing. Here, let me show you.

Presentation: A Less Stylized Borderlands
Be honest. Raise your hands if, upon seeing the box art for Brink you didn't immediately think of Borderlands? Raise your other hand if you looked at the little icon they made for it and didn't think of this.

Now slap yourself in the face with any hands you may have up.

Just...look at a screenshot.

Gameplay: Team Fortress 2, Mostly
Oh hey, look! Brink has multiple classes each with their own unique abilities. Classes have actually been in quite a few first person shooters, but it's not entirely played out. There's plenty of room to get creative. Let's see what they have here. There's the Medic, who revives fallen comrades. There's the Operative who disguises himself as enemies and hacks computers. There's the Engineer who fixes stuff and places sentry turrets. Lastly, there's the Soldier who wears body armor and specializes in heavy weapons.

So yeah. To be fair, they don't steal everything from Team Fortress 2. They also seem to have taken their AI from Daikatana.

Story: Every Dystopian Future Story Ever
So there was a bad thing that happened and all the people moved to a self-sustaining "safe" city to survive. Said city quickly became an overpopulated, fascist nightmare. There is now a rebel movement that wants to overthrow the city's leaders or at the very least find somewhere else to live.

No, no, I'm not talking about Aeon Flux. Nor am I talking about Praetoria City from the new City of Heroes expansion. I mean, at least those two added awesomely implausible technology and superheroes, respectively.

Honestly, I can't even complain. I mean, if they stole everything else about their game, why would the story be even remotely original?

KR Rating: NON-EXISTANT
Screw the people who made this. It's official. There is no such game as Brink. Sure there's a box with a disc in it with a game on it, but said "game" doesn't have a single original concept anywhere in it, and honestly it's not even like they were trying. Therefore, I'm officially saying there is no game called Brink, only a poorly half-assed mashing together of other peoples' ideas.

You know, critics have sort of a code that they're supposed to follow, where no matter what you say about the product you have to be nice to the people who made it, but in this case I'm saying fuck that. I want the world to know that these assholes are completely creatively bankrupt. I want the entire world to stay away from...wait. Bethesda? And also Splash Damage? What the Hell happened, you guys?!

Banner Ad Review: This is Where Chris Hansen Starts Watching my Blog

2011-05-02T00:14:00.004-04:00

Are you a raging pedophile, and also you want to be able to draw in a way that looks suspiciously like a photo run through Photoshop's greyscale filter? Now you can!

Banner Ad Review: Shmuck Bait

2011-05-01T22:37:00.006-04:00

You know, banner ads are the kind of thing that -in theory- wouldn't be so bad if done properly. After all, ads are a major source of revenue for TV shows and websites, so maybe putting up with a little irritation in the name of supporting your favorite site wouldn't be so bad.

That's probably what the makers of this ad had in mind.

So yeah, it's pretty obvious, but just how bad is it? Let's look at just how much is stupid about this.

1. The amazingly subtle and understated use of an ass to represent absolutely everyone who uses AdBlock. As any political cartoonist will tell you, nothing converts people to your way of thinking quite like openly insulting them.

2. But wait, blocking ads is an inherently evil act that makes you a jackass and will provoke small animals into attacking you...and yet they only want you to disable your adblocker for specific websites? That's like saying "Murdering Jews makes Santa cry...unless you're Japanese. Click here to find out how you can become Japanese."

3. The cats. Of COURSE there are cats. "Cats are one of those 'mee-mee' things internet types are all into, right? Yeah, let's throw some of those in there. That's sure to get the little buttsuckers' attention."

4. Supporting a website I enjoy by putting up with ads WOULD be worthwhile if it weren't for the fact that roughly 100% of all banner ads are either trojan horse viruses, attempts at phishing credit card information, or useless knockoff bullshit that looks like someone spent more time on the ads than they did on the product.

5. This isn't even really a product. Everyone already knows how to disable AdBlock for certain websites. If they don't, well then they can find out in five seconds.

Video Game Compare Review: Tactics Ogre vs. Final Fantasy Tactics

2011-03-22T04:33:00.003-04:00

So the remake of Tactics Ogre is out now, and I highly suggest everyone play it at least once. But the question is, which is better? Tactics Ogre, or Final Fantasy Tactics? To make all things fair I'll be comparing the two PSP remakes.

WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Gameplay:
This one is more fair then you might at first think. The original Tactics Ogre came out two years before Final Fantasy Tactics and it showed, but since they've both been remade they're on a much more even keel. The main issue at hand in the remakes is lag: FFT is full of it. The PSP remake of Final Fantasy Tactics struggles especially hard to render magic effects and lags a lot.

We've moved past this, right? This isn't a PC game where every system is different. Excepting firmware updates all PSPs run basically the same. You know what the system is capable of, WORK WITH IT. There's no excuse for lag in a non-PC game, sorry.

WINNER: TACTICS OGRE

Story:
It's very important there be no misunderstanding here. Tactics Ogre's story is dark, and so is Final Fantasy Tactics' story. But there's a difference. In TO, the island of Valeria starts out crapsack. Racism and greed rule the country, your own people are beaten and broken and being herded onto reservations and as the game proceeds a lot of good people die who shouldn't have had to, but in the end things are better. You unite the country, and not by wiping out the other races but by overcoming racism, unifying against a common foe. Instead of being Galgastani or Walister or Bakram you become simply Valerians. You forge true peace.

On the other hand, we have Ivalice. Ivalice starts out crapsack, being ruled by the fascist elite who treat everyone else as little more than slaves. After literally every remotely good person dies the elitist aristocracy wins, erases your name and deeds from history, and continues their stranglehold for the next few thousand years...but hey, at least the world wasn't destroyed. That's not the bad ending, either. That's the ONLY ending.

To put it simply, there's a difference between dark and gritty, and just pointless. FFT is pointless.

That said, Delita owns your ass.

WINNER: TACTICS OGRE (even despite Delita)

Customization:
If there's one place Final Fantasy Tactics wins it's here. The customization is pretty much the one saving grace of FFT. It's why people can beat the game, scream bullshit on the ending, then keep playing anyway.

Tactics Ogre's remake added a skills system that gave the previously dull classes their own unique flavor and life. Unlike Final Fantasy, however, Tactics Ogre's fun skills are almost all class-exclusive. Got dreams of an Angel Knight that uses fire magic and two-handed swords? Well TOO BAD because both of those skills are exclusive to other classes! The few hybrid classes there are tend to just suck.

There is a little bit of customization in Tactics Ogre, but it's way too restrictive...oddly enough, the original was much less restrictive, even if only because the classes were so poorly defined.

WINNER: FINAL FANTASY TACTICS

Content:
Tactics Ogre is a MUCH bigger game, for the most part. There are more side-areas and way more to do. Compare the big side-dungeon from both games. Tactic's Ogre's Palace of the Dead is 115 floors, compared to FFT's big dungeon's 50 floors. There's more game, more classes. Non-human races also don't entirely suck in Tactics Ogre, mostly due to being able to (as of the remake) use more than one class. So that's another dimension of gameplay added right there.

On the other hand, equipment options are extremely limited in the remake. In FFT and the original TO, you had tons of different weapons, some of which had element as their only real difference, so you could mix and match to fit what you needed. In the remake there's very sparse options and pretty much everything is organized by tiers, worst equipment to best.

Equipment options are further limited by class, either outright (ie. rune fencers can't use axes) or by making anything else pointless (ie. two-handed swords are the only weapons with worthwhile abilities for a terror knight).

If we were talking about the original then Final Fantasy wouldn't stand a chance, but the remake severely reduced the content. The addition of worthwhile non-human units is a plus, but is outweighed by the fact that the equipment options are so anemic. As for the 115 floor Palace of the Dead...most of the floors are basically the same only re-arranged a little, flipped around, or starting you in a different spot.

WINNER: FINAL FANTASY TACTICS (barely)

OVERALL WINNER: DEPENDS

Honestly, from an objective point of view, both games are very good but shine in different ways. Final Fantasy Tactics has an utterly terrible story, but much deeper character customization. Tactics Ogre has an extremely restrictive class system but a much better story. Saying which one is better doesn't really work because they're good for different reasons.

That said, the original Tactics Ogre beats the pants off both of them. I'd suggest trying to find it if I believed that was even remotely possible.

Tactics Ogre And An Epiphany

2011-03-04T04:57:00.003-05:00

Those of you who know me know that my biggest axe to grind with Square-Enix has always been Tactics Ogre. Tactics Ogre was one of the best RPGs ever made, even compared to modern fare, a deep and amazing franchise that was deliberately killed off by both halves of Square-Enix, even before they merged. Well, with the recent remake of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together for the PSP, I suppose I have to finally let this grudge go. But that's not what this post is about.

No, this post is about an epiphany I had while playing the new Tactics. Ready? Here it is.

Square-Enix half-asses everything, except when making remakes.

That's not an underhanded jab about how their old games are better than their newer ones either, that's an honest statement. The new Tactics Ogre isn't just a re-release, even though that would've been fine. It's gotten a complete loving makeover. Graphics, dialogue, even the combat and levelling systems have been overhauled, all in the name of making it better.

Tactics Ogre isn't alone. When Square-Enix decided to finally port Final Fantasy 3 to the United States, they could've done the same thing they did for the original Final Fantasy, and ported it mostly as-is with some graphical updates; and you know what? People probably would've been happy with that. But they didn't. They completely overhauled the game, changing the graphics to 3-D, adding new gameplay, classes, and even creating entirely new main characters. They put forth a lot of effort.

The remakes prove that as much as we all hate Square-Enix they really can still make good games, which is why it's so infuriating that (with a few exceptions) they just don't bother with their new games. I've already talked about the half-assed job they did on Dissidia as well as Magical Yuri Dress-Up Fantasy. I haven't reviewed Final Fantasy 13 because honestly I just can't be bothered to care about it, but it definitely qualifies too. When it comes to making new games Square-Enix doesn't care at all.

I can't say why it's this way. The most likely answer is that the teams that do the remakes and the teams that make new games are different crews. (The Tactics Ogre remake, for example, was made by the same people who made the original, who are now called the Ivalice Alliance and actually do tend to do reasonably good work.) Whatever the case, Square-Enix, this isn't how you run a franchise. I love that you're putting thought and effort into your remakes, and yes I love the old games too, but there's only so many times I can replay them.

If you were to make a new game, putting in the same amount of thought and effort that you put into the remakes...well, I'm not going to say it will shut up all the raving fanboys. Most of them are hard-headed idiots who will never be satisfied by anything. But Hell, at the very least it might save you from eventual obscurity.

So how about it, guys? You gave us Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy 6, and Final Fantasy 7. You can do good work. I know you can do it again, at least once. What do you say?

You Decide! Which YouTube Idiot Is Stupider?

2011-03-02T18:33:00.007-05:00

YouTube and idiocy are pretty much synonymous with each other. Still, there are some that stand out above the rest like finding a diamond in a mountain of solid gold, or a rat trap cleverly hidden in a pile of dog shit.

What we have here is the double rainbow of shit: two comments of such superfluous badness that even one could fuel a month of blog posts. But which is worse? It's hard to decide, which is why I'm going to force you to do it for me.

So, which of these two comments is more stupid, fear-mongering, and ignorant? Is it this stunning critique of Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish?

"Wow. I don't have a lot to say about this. Excuse me but nothing but satanic crap. I found my youngest daughter listening to this band, and now that I've looked even deeper into them, I know that this is nothing a pop goth band crying for attention that should keep their mouth off the word of god, and my 15 year old daughter!"
-Annhend16

Because a song lamenting the evil in the world is totally comparable to Gorgoroth.

Or is it this response to the above comment? (Forgiving the bad grammar, because I don't think english is her first language.)

"omg! You're could get in really serious trouble posing as 43 woman,U Saying you're have daughter, that's really mess up! That's not really your pic, I'm going to report you'd to FBI. It's People like you're that play Sick games. Like the Death Megan Meier because of that woman was posing like boy made her commit suicide. I take this very serious! it's trolls like you'd should all belong in jail, grow up assholes, I'm not going report. if you lose the act."
-Laurenthebloodyvampy

Because being 43 on the internet is a felony, apparently.

Post your answers in the comments, or just e-mail them to IDon't@Really.Care.

The Video Game Maker's Exam

2011-02-27T00:05:00.002-05:00

Over my time writing for this blog you could say I've become something of a shitty video game connoisseur. You could say that, but you'd be wrong. The truth is I'm just bored. Also I made a deal with the devil where every day I fail to play at least one terrible, soul-sucking video game, he murders a puppy.

The point is, after playing these things for so long, and then reading the Fantasy Novelist's Exam and its retarded brother the Filmmaker's Exam I realized I could totally shamelessly rip them off by making my own Video Game Maker's Exam. Just like with the Rinkworks exams, if you're making or planning to make your own game and you answer yes to any one of these questions, then you should probably consider starting over.

Or you could jump into a wheat thresher. Seriously, you won't be missed.

1. Do you think shotguns are close range weapons?

2. Do you think swords are throwing weapons?

3. Do you think machine guns are fully automatic?

4. Do you think piano wire can cut someone in half simply by being swung at them?

5. Is any character in your game best described as "a brave and powerful warrior who refuses to aid the characters until they best him/her in combat?"

6. Is any character in your game best described as "a sarcastic evil artificial intelligence" and also your game is NOT Portal or System Shock?

7. Is any character in your game best described as "a space marine" and also your game is NOT Starcraft or Warhammer 40K?

8. Is the main character in your game best described as "whiny and self-absorbed?"

9. Is any character in your game best described as "like myself only better in pretty much every way?"

10. Did you lie on either of the last two questions?

11. Could your game be described as "basically just like ___, only not as good?"

12. Would you describe your game as "basically just like ___, only better?"

13. Do multiple characters in your game consistently break the fourth wall by referring to such out-of-character concepts as "experience levels" or "hit points," even outside of the tutorial?

14. Do you think proper game balance means that every strength needs a weakness to cancel it out?

15. Do you think a main character dying is all it takes to make a story poignant and meaningful?

16. Do you introduce a significant plot point or character motivation only to completely forget about it 5 minutes later?

17. If your game has multiple playable characters, did you make one or more of them noticeably better than the others in an attempt to boost their popularity?

18. Does your game contain a character who is noticeably worse than the other characters, but the player is forced to use them anyway?

19. Does your game include a morality/alignment system that doesn't actually affect the story in any way?

20. Is the main evil force of your game called by any variation of the phrase "forces of evil," including "army of darkness," "shadow king's minions," and "creatures of the night?"

21. Wheat thresher time: did you actually call them simply "the bad guys?"

22. Are you making a reboot or sequel to a massively popular game without realizing what made the original popular?

23. Is your game a remake of a console game that you're redesigning to be played on a handheld system?

24. Does your game's success hinge on its association with a major motion picture license?

25. Do you work for Zynga? (Oh, who am I kidding? They don't design their own games.)

26. Is a significant portion of your game comprised of references to other games?

27. Does your game's tutorial take more than 30 seconds, despite the fact that the gameplay is essentially the same as every other game in its genre?

28. Do you believe that a specific art style (pixel graphics, high-definition, polygon, etc) makes a game inherently better or worse, regardless of the quality of the game itself?

29. Are multiple non-combat segments of your core gameplay controlled by random number generators, even though that makes no sense? (Character attributes, levelling up, how much healing inns give you, etc?)

30. At any point is the player required to win a game of chance or luck in order to advance the story?

31. At any point in your game is the player forced to run directly toward the camera?

32. At any point in your game is the player forced to escort a helpless and easily killed character through danger?

33. Are the characters in your game ever stopped by some arbitrary obstacle such as a rickety wooden door, despite having power that can obliterate mountains, just because the plot demands it?

34. Does your game require the player to wander through wilderness or caves for hours just to get to the next town/dungeon/story segment?

35. Does your game's AI commonly cause enemies to get stuck behind boxes, stand motionless while being shot, shoot at other enemies, or any other ridiculous thing?

36. Do you believe that the right theme or "attitude" in a game can be a suitable substitute for story and/or gameplay?

37. Do you believe that marketing a game to females is as easy as adding some romance and a dress-up mode?

38. Do you believe that marketing a game to females means you need to drastically reduce the difficulty?

39. Do the female characters in your game regularly wear outfits that show cleavage, sideboob, midriff, or butt, even in combat?

40. Does a female villain change sides solely due to having a crush on a main character?

41. Bonus question sponsored by Wheat Threshers 'R' Us: does every female villain do the above?

42. Hell, does a male villain ever do it?

43. Do you think women are basically like men only not as smart or strong?

44. Did you include a lesbian couple among the playable characters purely for fanservice value?

45. Did you include a male-on-male couple among the playable characters purely to be edgy?

46. Are your cutscenes unskippable, even if the player has seen them once before?"

47. Does any cutscene (aside from the ending) in your game last longer than 5 minutes, not counting pauses for player input such as pressing a button to advance dialogue?

48. Is your game's ending shorter than 30 seconds?

49. Is more than 50% of your game comprised of non-interactive cutscenes?

50. Are you designing a game for an english-speaking audience, have access to english-speaking voice actors, and yet you still can't be bothered to include english dialogue?

51. If your game has online multiplayer and downloadable content that costs money, do the downloads make the player far superior to all other players?

52. Alternately, do the downloads do basically nothing at all yet still cost money?

53. Do you not know what the point of playtesting is?

54. Did you lie on any of the previous questions to get this far?

Top 5 List: 5 More Web Game Concepts That Need To Die

2011-01-15T21:32:00.013-05:00

We've talked before about the shitty nature of web flash games with the Top 5 Indie Game Concepts That Need to Die. They're not all bad, but for every Epic Battle Fantasy 3, there's The Day, War on Paper, Kids vs. Ice Cream, and I'm just going to randomly stop there.

The thing is, when it comes to web flash games the bar is set extremely low. Unlike a normal game all it takes for a web game to go down as not just good but one of the best ever is to basically work and have maybe one neat gimmick. So hey, what do you think most web games are gonna focus on? If you said "gimmicks" you get one point. Here are the top 5 that need to just go the Hell away.

5. "RPGs Sure Do Suck."
This one was going to be parody games, except that somewhere around 100% of these are targeted specifically at RPGs of some kind, whether it's JRPGs (Turn Based Battle, The Idle RPG) or MMORPGs (GrindQuest, HackerStory). The problem here isn't the idea itself, it's the execution. I get that they're intentionally bad to poke fun at the genre, but an ironically bad game is still a bad game. Didn't Airplane! already prove that parodies don't have to suck to be effective?

Pictured: The Idle RPG. Not pictured: a game.

4. Energy Games
For those not in the know, "energy game" is a slang term for "cheap money-making trick."

Want to keep playing? Break out the credit card.

Basically, you have a set amount of energy, which decreases whenever you do anything in the game. If your energy runs out you can't play anymore. Energy usually recharges, though depending on the game it can take anywhere between a few minutes and a day. The one common element between these games is that you can always recharge your energy in exchange for real world money.

Naturally, Zynga are huge fans of energy games. Honestly though, I could've made this entire list only things they've done and only scratched the surface. This is a company that, by the founder's own admission, operates more like a Colombian drug cartel than a team of web game designers. Besides, plagiarism isn't really a gimmick.

3. Pixel Games
Ever since sometime around Cave Story web game designers came to the conclusion that pixel games are awesome and unique while simultaneously forgetting that something can't be uniquely awesome if everyone's doing it. But again, it's not the idea that's bad. Hell, most of my 8 best Indie games had pixellated graphics. The problem is people who make these kind of games tend not to put much into, you know, the actual game.

This game is like 15 minutes long.

But so what if Vox Populi Vox Dei: A Werewolf Thriller has a title that's longer than the actual game. The bigger problem is that this often overlaps with...

2. Games That Want To Be Portal Part II: 200% More Emo
Puzzle/platformers have started to go away somewhat, but they're holding onto the basic story concept (seemingly normal game with dark undertones) for dear life. Sometimes it's done pretty well (The Infinite Ocean) and other times you get The Day.

A lot of these are pixel games as well and, as I mentioned in that entry, the main problem is that when so many new games are "pixel graphics, some emo-style pseudo-philosophizing, sinister undertones and a plot twist at the end" it's not really edgy and unique, it's just the same old shit. When even Achievement Unlocked 2 is doing it you know it's old hat.

But hey, at least they don't usually go so far as to actually literally include GladOS (or at least an expy) as a character. Only K.O.L.M. has done that recently. Well, that and I Am An Insane Rogue AI, but I don't think that one counts.

1. Unintuitive Random Guessing Is Technically A Puzzle, Right?
I really have nothing to say about this except fuck you, Doodle God and fuck you too, Doodle Devil.

More Greatest Hits: Final Fantasy X-2

2011-01-11T16:45:00.006-05:00

Final Fantasy X-2 takes place after the end of FFX. Sin is defeated, the Aeons are gone, and Tidus has mysteriously vanished. Eventually Yuna comes across a sphere with a video in it that makes it seem as if Tidus might just be alive. Blah blah, yadda yadda. The law of diminishing returns strikes again with Final Fantasy X-2, and considering Final Fantasy X was already not that great, that means we're really in for a treat here.

True story: my brother was obsessed with FFX. He still talks about it as if it was one of the greatest games of all time. When he found out I'd bought this game he couldn't wait to play it to find out what happened to the characters after the first game. Even with all that love for FFX he still gave up before the first chapter was over. That's how bad this game sucks. Also, Square, if you're listening thanks for betraying your stupid fans' loyalty you sick bastards.

(On a related note, it'd be nice if I could spin this into a story about how Square-Enix ruined some child's Christmas but the truth is my brother is older than I am and is kind of a dick. If anything I thank Square for getting back at him for all the times he beat me up as a kid.)

I, on the other hand, actually played this game quite extensively and am quite qualified when I say it sucks ass. Final Fantasy X-2 takes a break from typical JRPGs in many ways. For one, X-2 has ignored the general consensus among many JRPGs that having more characters is better. While other games have 5-10 playable characters, with some even hitting over 50, Final Fantasy X-2 has three playable characters: Yuna, Rikku, and Paine. Of course, the presence of a Final Fantasy Tactics-esque job system means it's like having dozens of characters, but only if you're remarkably stupid.

Unfortunately, being unique is not always a good thing, as our Unlimited SaGa review established and this game proves. Final Fantasy X-2 might have really had something with the inclusion of the job class system which elevated Final Fantasy Tactics to best seller status despite not being all that great. But what Square doesn't seem to have realized that what made the job class system so popular was its ability to customize: to make each character uniquely yours. In Tactics you could have, for example, a Black Mage with Fighter techniques and Dragoon style high jumps. In Final Fantasy X-2 there is no customization. Every Black Mage is the same as every other Black Mage, every Fighter is the same as every other Fighter.

But it's not just the job class system (or dress spheres, as they're called). The entire gameplay for this game has been dumbed down. You no longer have to worry about equipping weapons or armor, just accessories. Levelling up is all automatic, and your abilities and stats change whenever you change jobs so there's not even any strategy to levelling with the right classes.

With its generally non-existent story consisting almost entirely of "hey, remember that part in FFX?" type events, overabundance of strong and independent (yet still remarkably ditzy) female characters, conspicuous lack of puzzles, and gameplay dumbed down to the point of monotony, Final Fantasy X-2 is clearly a game intended primarily to appeal to girls who don't like video games. What the designers didn't realize is that girls who don't like video games still don't like video games and are not a viable target audience. The kinds of girls who are a good target are gamers and just like any male gamer they don't like having their intelligence insulted. Maybe if Square had put as much effort into making this game good as they did into making it palletable to a demographic that won't play it anyway it might have been halfway decent.

Story: 2/5
Since most JRPGs lack riveting gameplay they instead put most of the focus on storyline and presentation. Which is why X-2's crappy story and character elements dealt the hardest blow to the game.

In case you're hoping to see the same characters from Final Fantasy X, don't. Even characters who appeared in X are vastly changed. It almost feels as if someone went through the characters, cherry-picking personality traits he liked and dropping the rest. The result is that Final Fantasy X-2 feels more like a crappy fanfic than an actual sequel.

Presentation: 3/5
As far as presentation is concerned, Final Fantasy X-2 isn't that bad. Obviously the graphics designers didn't slack on X-2...except in the battle system.

In most recent RPGs attacks, especially magical or super-powerful ones, are an event. Gameplay stops and we get to see total devastation happen. In X-2 special attacks are simplified to a few differently colored pixels around what is otherwise the character's normal attack animation, which is just as well since the ATB Gauge keeps moving so you won't have time to look at pretty attacks anyway.

What is made into an event is the in-battle changing of dress-spheres. But believe me when I say the dress changes will get old after the third or fourth time.

Gameplay: 2/5
While JRPGs are already not exactly known for riveting gameplay, and the Active Time Battle system remains without a doubt one of the worst ideas in the history of video games, Final Fantasy X-2 STILL managed to take gameplay to a remarkably lower level. At this point, we're not even scraping the bottom of the barrel anymore. No, we've punched through the bottom and started digging through dirt.

Minigame Idiocy: Over 9,000/5
Retarded minigames have been a trademark of the Final Fantasy franchise for every game after 7. X-2 has a grand total of three different minigames, presumably because Square realized that by the time chapter 3 rolls around players will be wanting to play something, anything other than this game. And oh yes, as you would expect, all three minigames are shoddily done mistakes requiring no skill or strategy that you get to play through once and never again.

KR Rating: BAD

Annotation from The Future:

Oh poor, deluded past me. I can see you now, reviewing this game and truly believing that was the worst it could get. At the time of this writing there is serious talk among gamers that Final Fantasy 14 has literally killed the Final Fantasy series. I'm not sure if I believe this myself, but I don't suppose it's entirely out of the question. Still, I think the hate is misplaced. Final Fantasy is not a great game series ruined by one bad MMORPG. It's sucked for a while and if you didn't know that, smack yourself in the face. To prove my point, I want to mention another awful Final Fantasy game: Final Fantasy XIII.

In this review (X-2) I mentioned how the game seemed stripped out and dumbed down. Looking at it now not only will I still say that's totally accurate, but I believe it can also be seen as the prototype for Final Fantasy 13. Thirteen is a game in only the loosest sense of the term. It's barely even interactive. The game handles combat mostly on its own, at no point do you really need to even so much as push a button to win. The entire game world is mostly a straight line from one cutscene to another, broken up only by a recycled story and uninspired boss battles. Even the upgrade system, while on paper an interesting take on the old class and level system, is here entirely superfluous. There's no real strategy to wisely choosing which upgrades to take as you'll end up with all of them in the end anyway.

But God damn it. Sure it's on rails, but a game can be on rails and still be fun. Final Fantasy 7 was technically on rails - the story did not deviate in any way, no matter what you did or in what order you did it, but it was still great. Think of it like a roller coaster. The car is going to the same place no matter what, you know it's not going to go anywhere else, but there's enough twists, turns, and drops that it doesn't matter.

Final Fantasy XIII is not a roller coaster. It's a subway car full of smelly homeless people, taking you somewhere you don't even want to go. You don't want to be here but you feel like you have to because the conductor used to be a really awesome guy and you feel like you owe him. Speaking of the conductor, the entire time you're here he keeps coming on the loudspeaker to tell you about the hot lesbian couple a few seats down from you, in a "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" kind of way.

That is Final Fantasy XIII, distilled down to it's primal essence. It is a subway ride with homeless lesbians.

Movie Review: Intoxicate my Equines

2010-08-01T17:27:00.006-04:00

I'd heard conflicting stories about Toby Keith's movie, Beer For My Horses. I first heard that he was making the movie years ago, then I heard he'd dropped the project in favor of a romantic comedy, then I recently saw the movie on Netflix and decided I didn't hate myself enough, so I went ahead and watched it. The best way I can describe the movie is this: imagine if, when you were ten years old, a Hollywood producer approached you and asked you to write the script for a badass action movie. Chances are you'd give them Beer for My Horses.

Toby Keith is Sheriff's Deputy Rack and yes, you read that right. He's a no nonsense type and a natural leader, otherwise known as clichéd action hero characterization number 2. (Number 1 is grizzled ex-Marine.) He's accompanied on his journey to rescue his kidnapped sweetheart by the bumbling comic relief Deputy Lonnie (played by Rodney Carrington) and Skunk, a silent but hard-as-nails deputy who carries two uzis instead of a service revolver and uses a bow because he was raised by Native Americans (played by Ted Nugent...the character I mean, not the Native Americans). There are a few characters in this movie not played by Toby Keith's musician friends, but there are none that aren't total clichés.

As for the humor in the movie -and there's a lot of pathetic attempts at it- there are some chuckle-worthy bits that could've been genuinely funny with just a few more rewrites, like Toby's reaction upon hearing his friend's giant pickup truck took 75 dollars to fill up with gas or the running gag about his lawnmower in the beginning of the movie (long and not that interesting story). Then there's bits that could have been at least passable had they not been handled so ineptly, like the awkwardly forced exposition about Skunk's Native American upbringing. (Honestly, any of the bits involving Skunk could qualify here.) Unfortunately, most of the "humor" results in downright cringe-inducing scenes that should have been cut completely, such as Lonnie singing with a bunch of thugs in a rest stop bathroom in a scene that goes on way too long.

To his credit, Toby Keith's politics take a backseat to the movie. To his shame, being a platform for Toby's jingoistic rhetoric would have at least justified the movie's existence slightly. As it is, Beer For My Horses is nothing more than a shallow, formulaic film that spends too much time wallowing in clichés and amateurish attempts at badass to bring anything worthwhile to the table, new or otherwise.

Unfortunately, I can't give this movie a rating as I'm not sure it qualifies as a movie so much as video-taped evidence that country music stars can't act. Fortunately, my imaginary friend was on hand to remind me that this movie is a derivative pile that would need about three more rewrites just to qualify as mediocre.

KR Rating: BAD

DEALBREAKER: You've Contributed to Dealbreaker

2010-04-27T14:22:00.005-04:00

Hey, babe. Sit down, I think we should talk. What's that? Yes, actually, I did check out that website you e-mailed me a link to. Yeah, the one you said you totally loved and...well, that's kind of what I want to talk about.

I really tried to give it a chance, you know? I really thought some of them were damn funny too, like the one about the heterosexual lesbian or the tuxedo t-shirt. Oh, and the one about the 7-11 guy and at the end it switches and becomes a deal maker; that was really clever. Then I kept reading and I realized that about 90% of these things are written by picky assholes who think sex is the only aspect of a relationship and anyone they disagree with is the Anti-Christ.

I'm not sure where I realized it. Maybe it was the one about how the woman hates DJs and then proceeds to make it clear she doesn't actually know what a DJ does and thinks they just play records all day as opposed to mixing which is actually not that easy. I'm thinking, though, that it was the one where the woman says the deal is broken because her guy used to have dreadlocks and even though he now thinks it was stupid she can't see herself with anyone who ever made a decision she dislikes.

You say you loved those? Yeah, I thought so. See, that's what I wanted to talk about. Do you know why I've never introduced you to any of my friends? How about the reason I've never taken you to my house, or why I refuse to listen to my CDs when you're in the car? You're a diva. No one and no thing is ever good enough for you.

Everyone makes mistakes. Your mistake was thinking you're better than everyone else when you're really kind of an ignorant jackass. My mistake was thinking this could ever work out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go find someone who's slightly less of a cunt.

Word Verification For Commenting Now Active

2010-04-24T09:58:00.003-04:00

Up until now I've tried to avoid using what I see as a very annoying part of the internet. Unfortunately, the blog has recently seen an infestation of spam bots including a whopping TWENTY SEVEN (!!) spam posts under the article about Video Game Murders. That's more than the comments on every other article combined.

(And oh, yeah, bots? Posting your spam in Japanese won't trick me. I have IM Translator bookmarked, ya bitches. Incidentally, I'm still unsure if the gibberish it spit back at me is the result of Translation Train Wreck, or because even in the magical future world of Japan bots still can't fucking talk right.)

I'm still in the process of deleting the spam, but to prevent future bot infestation I have turned on word image verification for all comment posting. I have also begun sending robot assassins in the guise of muscular Austrians back in time to kill Alan Ralsky, but until one of them succeeds the word verification will have to remain active.

I apologize for the inconvenience this will cause the two people who occasionally post comments on my blog.

Jack Chick Out Of Context

2010-04-21T05:01:00.008-04:00

While those of you who have 90% of your brain intact doubtlessly know who Jack Chick is, for the rest he is a famous "evangelical" "Christian" "artist" who may or may not all be an elaborate joke. He's famous for hating everyone and everything and for taking Bible quotes ridiculously out of context to prove his point. Well, two can play at that game. If Jack can take lines from the Bible out of context to prove that God hates people who help their fellow man then I can take his work out of context to prove...not much of anything really. But it might be funny.

Let's go!

Shortly afterward, Michael was banned from his Dungeons and Dragons game for abusing a large Hide skill modifier to the silliest extreme possible.

The true reason Lucifer became evil, as written in a newly discovered piece of the apocrypha: his roommate insults him and throws him out, and on his birthday too!

"Grandma! But...but you're dead!"

"No, child. That's just what I wanted you to think, and now that you've fallen for my ploy it is you who shall die!"

"It is with great pleasure I introduce a famous new age healer: Smugs McConehead!"

"Thank you, ma'am, but I prefer to be called The Healer Formerly Known As No-Necked Hideous Facial Scar. Now, which of you kids wants to get molested?"

*every hand goes up*

It doesn't matter how much you like to watch them, Tommy. Let little Susie and Buffy out of the basement before I tell your parents!

O SNAP.

The 8 Best Indie Games Ever Made

2010-02-15T13:25:00.015-05:00

Everyone loves a good indie game. They're free, they're sometimes fun, and they give you something to do. But there are some times when independant games just cross the line. Then there's indie games like the eight below. Games that can give professional games a run for their money and best of all are all 100% free.

8. Eversion
At first glance Eversion appears to be a cheerful Mario Bros-esque platformer with upbeat music, bright colors, and a cute flower creature as the protagonist. This is until you start eversing, moving between the layers of the world. Each eversion takes you deeper into horror but you'll need to go all the way in order to win.

Horror and pollution are interchangable.

Eversion is a great game with solid and challenging platform action and the eversing system is interesting and well implemented. Eversion's only hindrance is that it is extremely short. There's eight levels here including the bonus level. That said, it's eight levels of pure awesome.

Everse now.

7. Dracula's Shadow
A remake/homage to Castlavania 2: Simon's Quest. Graphics are more or less unchanged from the original, but the music has been remixed, the levels have been redesigned and new characters and items have been added.

There's no way around mentioning this so let's just get it out of the way now. This game is UGLY. This really goes with the "unretouched graphics" thing I mentioned above. Castlevania 2's graphics were hideous even for the time, and they have not aged well. That being said, the graphics do not in any way detract from the gameplay.

Actually, this isn't really an enemy in the game. This is just what happens to your eyes after playing this game for too long.

Dracula's Shadow is a long and exciting game and it has clearly been designed with playability in mind.. Enemies in outlevelled areas will stop giving experience, which discourages grinding and makes the game more fun. Your weapons deal set damage that is in proper proportion to how much damage the enemy can take, making combat much simpler than your average modern platform RPG hybrid.

The real downside to this game is that it's just a tad too easy. The bosses are pushovers, even for an NES homage, and the game itself is none too difficult either. Of particular strangeness is that the placement and programming of enemies always makes the game more difficult when travelling left to right, even in areas where you have no reason to do so. This is puzzling and just a bit sloppy.

Overall, a very fun game that is easy to get into and enjoy, but hindered by a number of vexing problems.

Get it here.

6. An Untitled Story
An Untitled Story is a non-linear platform game (ie. Metroid) involving birds, fireballs, and blowing shit up. In the developer's words, "you begin as an egg in your nest, and the rest is up to you to figure out." The game takes this simple premise and follows it to an utterly illogical and completely badass conclusion.

This egg kicks more ass then you ever will.

Alright, admittedly it is just a cuter version of a 2D Metroid with more exciting bosses and better platforming action. On the other hand, it's a cuter version of a 2D Metroid with more exciting bosses and better platforming action. Why the Hell are you not playing it already?

Find it and other less untitled games here.

5. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
The ultimate roguelike, Linley's Dungeon Crawl was first created by Australian programmer Linley Henzell in 1997. After Linley fell off the edge of the Earth in 1999 it was picked up by the current team at sourceforge.net and became Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Stone Soup is quite possibly the biggest game on this list. Looking at the races screen shown above you may imagine this to just be a lot of fluff with no substance. This is not so. Each of the races has its own unique play style. Ghouls, for example, are deadly unarmed fighters that need to eat constantly to avoid dying, as opposed to mummies who need no food at all but heal very slowly and can't use potions. Even the different breeds of elf have noticable differences.

A single session of Dungeon Crawl may last anywhere from several hours to several minutes, but don't think you've seen everything the game has to offer just because you beat it once. Gameplay changes drastically based on your character's race and choice of god, and random levels and artifacts ensure you never play the same game twice. For those who don't like the ascii-based nature of roguelikes Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup also has a beautiful tiles version.

Beauty and giant cockroaches are interchangable.
Dungeon Crawl's one shortcoming would be its totally unforgiving nature. It is very easy to die through absolutely no fault of your own, at which point your character is deleted. This can not be turned off and the developers have been very vocal in their refusal to change this, saying that doing so "would violate [their] definition of fun." Fortunately, this is very easy to get around if you feel so inclined. (Just back up your saves.)

Bring your +5 Plate Mail of Elitist-Linux-User-Dodging and go here to get it.

4. Knytt Stories
Knytt Stories isn't truely a series in the way most people think of a series. That is, there are no sequels and they're not all made by the same person. Rather, Knytt Stories refers to all games created using Nifflas' Knytt platformer engine. Specifically, this entry in the list refers to The Machine, Within A Deep Forest, and, of course, Knytt.

Knytt Stories is platforming in its purest state. There's no boss battles, no levelling up, just solid platform adventure in a beautiful and detailed world. This may be a turnoff to those expecting a lot of action, but for those who want epic platform adventure without a lot of hassle you need look no further.

You need the blue key to click this link.

3. Five Days a Stranger
A game by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Five Days follows Trilby, a cat burglar who breaks into an apparently abandoned mansion only to find he isn't alone, but is trapped with four other strangers. Over the course of the next five days a horror mystery unfolds that would make M. Night Shyamalan jealous.

The M. Night that made Sixth Sense, I mean. Not the egomaniacal hack that's currently wearing his flesh.

Five Days a Stranger has the best story of any game on this list, which should really be expected from an interactive fiction. In a way 5 Days is just that, an interactive horror/mystery movie. Unfortunately, like any mystery movie it doesn't really matter how good it is, once you've seen it once you don't have a lot of reason to see it again. Even more unfortunately, like any good horror movie it was immediately followed by a string of sequels that will make you want to throttle Yahtzee like Jason on a sexually promiscuous camp counselor. Do yourself a favor and ignore the rest of the quadrilogy.

You can find the game here. Machete not included.

2. Iji
A science fiction platformer that asks, "what if one day, out of nowhere, aliens attacked and destroyed all life on Earth? Also, what if the last human survivor got upgraded with nanorobotics that allowed her to kick through walls and use any weapon, even ones that don't exist?" The answer is just as awesome as you'd expect.

Awesome is interchangable only with more awesome.

If Stone Soup was the biggest game on this list Iji is definitely the most unique, if only for including a morality/pacifism system that actually works. It's actually possible to beat the entire game without killing a single living thing. (Which, ironically, earns you the most destructive weapon in the game.)

But even if you don't care about that (and if you do, why are you playing a game about killing aliens with giant guns?) Iji's awesome gameplay and numerous secrets and unlockables will keep you playing for quite a while.

There's a weapon that kills everything on screen and it's not even the strongest weapon in the game. Find out what is here.

1. Cave Story
You know what Cave Story is. Don't play that game.

Daisuke Amaya's Cave Story is not only the best indie game it's one of the best games in general. It's also similar to our number two game Iji in that, taken together, they prove that graphics aren't that important after all by trouncing even current gen professional games using nothing more than epic story, solid gameplay, and an array of weapons that would make Charlton Heston piss his pants.

This pistol can make an elephant EXPLODE.

While Cave Story's gameplay will appeal most to fans of the 2D Megaman and Metroid games it is accessable and enjoyable for pretty much anyone. You know, unless you have some sort of religious code that forbids you from playing the greatest game ever made.

If you need a link to this game there's something wrong with you.

Edit from The Future:

I must admit I hadn't played Dwarf Fortress at the time I wrote this. I have since played it and wrote a review which you can find here. Enjoy.

Exclusive! A Letter to Cave Story Designer Daisuke Amaya (From Another Universe)

2009-10-14T05:23:00.004-04:00

By now chances are you've heard of the freeware indie game Cave Story. If you haven't you're a terrible person. Go to your kitchen, get a knife, and slit your wrists. As for the rest of you, you've doubtless heard the story. Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya created an awesome game called Cave Story. It became a hit and an updated version is scheduled to be released with Nintendo's WiiWare this year. This was a small-time programmer who made this game, released it as a free download, it became a hit, and it's now being adapted for the Nintendo. For an indie game designer that's like winning the lottery three times in a row and then an error in the lottery office's computer network causes you to accidentally be awarded double prize money which will be taken directly from the bank account of everyone who ever picked on you in high school.

And if it turned out that awesome as a project basically built completely by one guy, could you imagine how it would have come out if it had an entire studio behind it? Well now you don't have to! Using the exciting power of high technology, ancient magic, and staying in our house while it was being fumigated we managed to find an alternate dimension where Cave Story was, in fact, created by a major studio! What follows is the studio's response to the original proposal of the game, as picked up by our scouting kleptoprobes.

Daisuke,

First off, we're really liking what you sent us. I've shown it to everyone in marketing and they think that with some work we can totally come up with something worth making from this. There are a few kinks to work out but, hey, you know how these things work. I'd like to just run some stuff by you, throw around some new ideas, point out a few errors you made.

First, characters. I love the main character, she's great, but it seems that in your writeup you've accidentally switched the description of the sexy female main character Quote (needs a name change, how do you feel about Rena Gunstar?) with the description of her sidekick Curly Brace. No big deal, just get it fixed. Once we've changed that we can work on changing her outfit to something more presentable, making her pants tighter (and leather) pulling up the straps on her thong, that sort of thing. Also, let's get her a katana in addition to the guns.

Let's see here. Oh, I love Balrog, the giant killer robot. Bill thinks, and I agree, that if you took away his flight power and instead gave him a sports car transformation (flying sports car?) in addition to his normal giant robot form he'd be much more marketable. Ted suggested having Balrog kill Quote's (Rena Gunstar's) family near the beginning of the game. It would help explain her quest for revenge and help to show that Balrog is, indeed, a killer robot. (Incidentally, why did you doodle a picture of a lunchbox with eyes next to his description?)

Also, fix The Doctor's hat. It looks like a cyclops microwave is eating his brain. Seriously, Daisuke.

Now, on to the story. I'm sorry but you really kind of dropped the ball here. I notice that you've done little to explain why Quote (Rena Gunstar) is on her bloody quest for revenge. Think about my suggestion above for this. The way you have it Quote (Rena Gunstar) just sort of wakes up and stumbles upon all this stuff accidentally while trying to escape the cave. Okay, look. Escaping is for pansies, and Quote (Rena Gunstar) is no pansy. The only time trying to escape is okay is in a horror story, but this is an action story.

The thing with the red flowers was just confusing. Flowers aren't scary. Make it a virus instead. In fact, you could easily work the red flower virus side-arc into the main story and turn this into a decent action-horror game. Oh, I'm getting an inspiration here. Have Curly Brace catch the red flower virus at the beginning of the game causing him to become the giant killer robot Balrog, then have him kill Quote's (Rena Gunstar's) family while under the effect of the virus. This explains why she's on her quest for revenge and why she would come to the cave despite all the red flower virus zombies. It's the only way to stop/save her beloved boyfriend Curly Brace.

Lastly, about the mimigas. These are obviously the mascot race, like pikachus or moogles. But it seems like you've tried to do some strange thing where you make the useless but adorable mascot race basically like people. I'm not sure why. We all like the idea of this society of intelligent cats, but you just made it weird. I know you get off on that sort of thing in China or wherever you're from, but we're not trying to market our game to furries here.

Think about it and get back to me. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of our improvements and remember, we're hoping for release within two months.

With respect,
Pixel Entertainment of America Inc

Broken Destiny And An Epiphany: Why Soul Calibur Sucks (And Always Has)

2009-09-11T06:49:00.005-04:00

You may recall yesterday I wrote a review of Final Fantasy Dissidia, the game that shits all over the once good Final Fantasy series (even more than all the other recent Final Fantasy games shit on the series, I mean). That got me to wondering what other great series have been shat on by their developers, which led me to the PSP's Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, the newest installment in the series. While planning a review of Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny I suddenly had an epiphany. I was mad at Dissidia because I had hoped it could get me interested in the Final Fantasy series again. I wanted to get Dissidia. I didn't really want to get Broken Destiny, I just did. The fact is...

Soul Calibur is not a great video game series and it never has been.

No, really. Let's be totally honest here, the Soul series trudged in obscurity for six years from the time Soul Blade was released in 1996 to the time Soul Calibur 2 was released in 2002. Sure there were people who knew about it, but it wasn't until SC2 that the series really gained any fame and even then it was only thanks to a gimmick: the inclusion of guest fighters Link, Heihachi Mishima, and Spawn.

But the game that really put Soul on the map was Soul Calibur 3 and this was almost entirely because of one thing: character creation. Up to this point the video game industry as a whole had never really taken the concept of character creation seriously. It was there, sure. Sometimes it took the form of Final Fantasy's system of picking from pre-made characters and giving them names. Sometimes it was more like Dynasty Warrior's system of creating a character by combining a weapon and a character model with about 5 different options in each. More often it was along the lines of Champions of Norrath where you pick a class and a hair color. The only video games that really took character creation seriously were wrestling games. Here, for the first time, was a game that people would actually care about, that wasn't just a wrestling game, that had a character creation system that actually worked and wasn't just a shitty afterthought.

It's easy to say that Soul Calibur 4 and Broken Destiny squelched the good will that Soul Calibur 2 and 3 brought but the truth of the matter is those games should never have garnered that much fame to begin with. The series got attention thanks to gimmicks, there was never a decent game to go along with them. Don't get me wrong, I do like the storyline, but the Soul Calibur games lack gripping gameplay. I loved Soul Calibur 3 for the character creation and the story, but I never really enjoyed playing it. I didn't like the game, I just tolerated it because I liked the character creation system.

I'm sorry, Namco Bandai, it looks like the honeymoon is over. You really had something with the character creation system and the guest characters. It's too bad you only used them as a pathetic attempt to vitalize a shitty series instead of pairing them up with gameplay that was as innovative and fun as they were. I'm well aware that this isn't the end for you. You'll keep on making Soul Calibur games, just like Square keeps on making Final Fantasy games and just like Square you'll probably be successful, but your popularity will only go downhill from here. As for me, I think I'm going to jump ship now and say adieu, just as I did to Final Fantasy.

KR Rating: HORRIBLE

Dissidia

2009-09-10T05:25:00.005-04:00

It's time for another review and this time it's for the PSP fighting game Dissida: Final Fantasy. First off, let me just say what I liked about the game. The graphics are good, and I found the bravery system interesting. That's about it.

"But wait," you scream, your monocle and top hat sent flying dramatically from your head. "Are you saying you didn't like Dissidia?!"

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Allow me to explain by way of example. When Final Fantasy 3 was first released for the NES the main character was the Onion Knight, who happens to look like this. When they re-released the game recently for the Nintendo DS they gave the main character a name and a new look and made him Luneth. So when they made Dissidia they had Onion Knight represent Final Fantasy 3, and made the alternate costume...Luneth?

He has the hair, yeah, but why stop there, Square-Enix? Luneth has an established look, Square and you know what it is so why not use it? (Answer: Because Luneth is the gayest boy ever.) And it's not like you can't make a new character model for a character's alternate costume. Cloud, Squall, and Sephiroth have new character models.

But this is just symptomatic of the larger problem that Dissidia has. When I said Cloud, Squall, and Sephiroth have new models for their alternate looks I meant that Cloud, Squall, and Sephiroth are the only ones. Warrior of Light's alternate costume is colored red instead of blue. Cecil's alternate costume has red trim. Exdeath's alternate costume has the bright blue color on his armor set two points lighter. There are even rumors that they colored Jecht's skirt red in his alternate costume (as opposed to orange) because that was their way of adding Auron to the game. If that's not the saddest damn thing you've heard all day then thank you for reading this review, citizen of Ethiopia.

Look, I'm not so naive that I don't get how it works, okay? I understand Final Fantasy 7 is the money maker. People bought this game for Cloud and Sephiroth, not for anyone else, so it's natural that Square would spend more time on them. But that only works when they actually spend...well, any time on the rest of the game. If the game itelf was good but the FF7 part was better I could forgive that, but that's not what happened. The Final Fantasy 7 parts of the game are passable and the rest is practically non-existant.

Aside from the afore-mentioned bravery system which I won't go into detail on here there's very little to enjoy about this game. There's no real AI in the game, it's a Soul Calibur system where it auto-blocks and you only win because it occasionally decides not to. The fighting style is cool in concept but horrendously executed, mostly because of the poor AI. The storyline (singular because every character's story is the same) was clearly written by a bored stoner. I've already gone over the lack of effort put into character designs.

I guess what I'm saying is fuck you, Square-Enix and while I'm at it fuck you too, Sony. Yeah, this piece of shit game was definitely worth making a commemorative PSP.

Bing vs. Google, The Showdown

2009-06-13T11:55:00.008-04:00

So I've been seeing these ads lately for Bing.com. If you haven't seen these ads they're about how search overload -getting tons of search results that are only peripherally related to your search- is ruining us and this new Bing, the decision engine is here to save us. As you may expect, they are every bit as relatable as a punch in the face.

So it's easy to dismiss Bing. I'll admit I don't have high hopes for this thing, but I can't stop at that. If I stopped here I'd be just like every other lame opinion blog delivering half the story. No, that's not what this blog is about. This blog is about video games, Vladimir Putin shirtless, and large black men screaming obscenities at children. So I made up my mind to test out Bing and more importantly, I would make a side-by-side comparison with Google. Here goes.

Getting Started
I may have slept through most of seventh grade science, but I stayed awake just long enough to know you're supposed to begin any experiment by stating your expectations going in. So let me start by saying I've never had much trouble with Google, and I don't think a lot of other people have either. Yes any search will likely net you 200,000 irrelevant matches, but the top ten, twenty, or even five hundred are usually worthwhile.

Honestly, I expect Bing to be nothing new. The idea is to stop irrelevant search results, so it's probably going to be exactly like Google, only cutting off about 90% of the results. Let's find out.

Test 1
In the commercial the first victim of search overload is a young woman who tells her friend she needs a new place to eat breakfast, only to have her friend shoot back "The Breakfast Club!" So that seems as good a place to start as any. I went to both Google and Bing and typed in "where can I find a good place to eat breakfast?"

Google
Results: 33,200,000
Google's number one result was "Yahoo! Answers - Where's a good place to eat breakfast?" This is a question and answer page where a man from San Jose, California asks where to go instead of Denny's or IHOP and is given a list of pancake restaurants in San Jose. Okay, not so useful if you're not from San Jose. Second was a best place to eat breakfast top ten list, then the next few were the best places to eat breakfast in Bristol, Johnston City, New Orleans, and a town in Oregon called Eugene. I decided to see how long it took me to find "The Breakfast Club" but gave up on page 11. I did, however, pass by "Help - 1 Year Old Won't Eat Breakfast or Lunch!?" and "Eat a good breakfast to start a good day - Science Update." So there's some irrelevant results.

Bing
Results: 12,500,000
Okay, the list of results definitely got slimmed down, by 20,700,000 to be exact. Let's see if that left us with more relevant information. The number one result is "Hong Kong - Where to Eat?" followed by a list of restaurants in various cities, just like the Google results. I did get an irrelevant entry - "Tips on Eating a Quick and Healthy Lunch" - on page one. Page three has "5 Ways to Easily Improve Your Breakfast."

Test 2
I don't believe I can really call this one for either side. I put in a lot of words that could have easily been picked out and given me irrelevant nonsense. The fact that I got mostly breakfast restaurants says a lot for our search engine technology, even if it was all useless to me since none of it was in my town. Still, this was my fault. I was too vague. Let's go simple. I decided to type in "dinosaurs." We'll pretend it's for a project or something.

Google
Results: 16,300,000
After a handful of awesome pictures of dinosaurs roaring I got the Wikipedia page on Dinosaurs as my first result, followed by "Zoom Dinosaurs" at a website called "Enchanted Learning." It gave me a bunch more pages on dinosaurs, some videos, and a list of related search topics. I got my first irrelevant result -qwantz.com's Dinosaur Comics (irrelevant, but awesome, by the way)- on page two.

Bing
Results: 8,850,000
Believe it or not the first two results were exactly the same on Bing. From there it was mostly the same results, but in a different order. It also gave me an irrelevant result on page one: the Wikipedia page on the Dinosaurs TV show. I got my second irrelevant result on page 5, but to be fair that's only because I consider anything from Conservapedia to be irrelevant.

Test 3
It looks like Google won that round, waiting until page two to go irrelevant. Also, that list of related search suggestions -which I found only on Google, not Bing- could possibly be a real help to my imaginary science fair project. I don't want to make this too long, so let's end on something pretty much everyone is going to search for. My search entry into Google and Bing: "hot asian lesbians."

Google
Results: 2,720,000
I got porn right off the start and right on Google with two thumbnail pictures of cute asian girls kissing, actually still shots from a clip on Video Google. This is followed by a website called YouPorn, which I am going to go ahead and assume is the porno version of YouTube. (Fun related fact: Firefox's spell check does apparently not recognize YouTube as a word. Suck it, YouTube!) This is followed immediately by porn on Youtube. Seriously, YouPorn, you made a version of YouTube that has porn? Hey, maybe next you can make your own version of the XBox 360, only have it play video games!

Bing
Results: 203,000,000
Bing gave me pretty much the same results as Google, only without pushing Video Google on me first. It started me off with YouPorn, then gave me YouTube a few entries down. Pretty much standard. Oddly enough, even though I got way less results on Bing then I got on Google for every other search, I actually ended up getting way, way, WAY more results from Bing on this search. Given that I made sure to turn off Google's SafeSearch feature prior to making this search, I can not explain these results and am forced to assume that Bing simply digs asians.

Conclusion
Bing is a search engine. No, really, it is. It's not really any better or worse than Google, though it does lack a few features that Google has. As for being a "decision engine" that will help to defeat "search overload," I came across a fairly equal amount of irrelevant results on both engines so yeah, that's BS. Furthermore, does it even matter? Even if you suffer from crippling ADD I still sincerely doubt the few irrelevant results I got would be anything more than...no, they wouldn't even be a minor inconvenience. They're pure, undiluted, meaningless.

Still, I know there are people out there who are going to like Bing simply because it's not Google. Google started out awesome, it was simply the best search engine, but now it's gotten bloated, full of itself. It's time to take on the man! Time to switch to--oh, wait. Bing is owned and operated by Microsoft. Nevermind. The revolution is off.

1 Reason Guilty Gear Overture Blew (and 2 Reasons It Rocked)

2009-05-10T00:51:00.006-04:00

1 Reason Guilty Gear Overture Blew

1. Sega
Sega proved once and for all that Square is not the only cannibal game corporation out there when they merged with Sammy and decided killing Guilty Gear would be a fun way to celebrate. Don't get me wrong, Guilty Gear Overture wasn't a bad game, but it also wasn't a good game. It was mediocre and most of all it was just disappointing, in much the same way every Sonic game post-Genesis was disappointing.

Guilty Gear Overture was Sega's way of telling fans that the series under their control would have nothing to do with the X series that people loved or the characters we'd grown so attached to. Arc System Works, the group that created Guilty Gear, was just as pissed as the rest of us, which leads us to...

2 Reasons Guilty Gear Overture Rocked

2. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus
On the other hand, maybe it's for the best. Guilty Gear's creators have been stuck in a bit of a loop lately, with pretty much every new edition of the game being little more than a revised version of Guilty Gear XX: The Midnight Carnival. Even Guilty Gear Isuka, the game that was supposed to change Guilty Gear forever, was pretty much the same thing. Sega may have stolen a beloved franchise, but at least we're moving on.

Accent Core Plus is a bittersweet game. It's bitter because it marks the end of Guilty Gear and, yes, it's also just a revised Guilty Gear XX. On the other hand, it's sweet because it ends the series on a high note by not only making what's likely the best of the Guilty Gear saga but also by finally wrapping up the storylines we've all been so involved with. Eddie, Robo-Ky...we finally get to see how these stories end. Just like Square and Capcom, the creators of Guilty Gear are more than capable of making a good game when they choose to (ie. Guilty Gear Judgment), and Accent Core Plus proves it.

1. BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
Overture is also not the end of Arc System Works. When Sega refused to return Guilty Gear to its owners Arc System Works and Aksys Games left to create a new fighting game series. From the looks of it BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger takes everything that was sweet about Guilty Gear, concentrates it into its purest form, and injects it into a shiny new body. Oh hell, just see for yourself.

Yes, Overture marks the end of something great, but it also marks the beginning of something even better. Just like how a forest fire kills off the stagnant and dying in order to make room for new growth, so too has Sega's shameless self-service made way for the new hotness that is BlazBlue.

That said, fuck Sega.

Yotsuba Out of Context : Part 2 : The Sequel : Reloaded

2009-04-24T07:54:00.007-04:00

"Remember, Yotsuba! Once Asagi becomes a vampire and tries to summon Satan the only way to defeat her will be with a headbutt!"

"In all my years as a crime scene investigator I've never seen anything quite like this. Somehow, the body has fallen several feet away from the blood spatter."

On her first day working for Halliburton, Yotsuba discovers the Iraqi oil fields are less productive than first thought...and have been taking marketing advice from Chinese milk producers.

Included solely because holy shit did Yanda just name drop the Yotsubato hentai doujinshi?

Top 5 Indie Game Concepts That Need To Die

2009-04-16T02:35:00.019-04:00

Everyone loves a good indie game. They're free, they're sometimes fun, and they give you something to do in the massive amounts of free time provided by your lackadaisical schedule of not having a job or a girlfriend. But there are some times when independent games just cross the line. These are the top 5 indie game concepts that need to god damn die.

5. Blood-Soaked Point And Click Adventures
People like point and click adventure games like Myst, right? And people like blood and gore, right? So clearly, people would absolutely love a bloody PnC adventure where the entire point is to kill random people and animals in the most disgusting way possible. Right? Right?

So as to not offend the kiddies I've chosen a non-gory picture. It's a celebration!

It's like an interactive horror movie where you play as the villain, meaning there's no suspense. So basically, it's like any other point and click adventure game, but without a reason to play it. If you desperately need blood and guts there's better places to find that too. Like, you know, a real game.

4. Ragdoll Games
Do you know what's more fun than putting together Flash objects so they look kind of like a disgustingly limp person with no bones, then throwing that person around? As it turns out, a video game.

Look, ragdoll physics are cool when they're used in an actual game. Who doesn't like blasting an enemy and watching his body flip through the air and land in an undignified position? Then we stand over their faces and squat repeatedly and good times are had by all. But when you take the ragdoll out of the game I think all you're really left with is horror

What the hell am I playing and why do I feel the urge to add myself to the sex offender registry for playing it?

Leave the ragdolls where they belong: in underprivileged little girls' toy boxes and between our legs in a Halo deathmatch.

3. Physics Puzzles
In short, a physics game is a game where stuff falls in a realistic fashion, IE precarious structures will topple over rather than just moving downward until they hit something.

Like Sudoku, which offers simplistic puzzles but makes you feel like a genius for completing them by including numbers, physics puzzles make you feel like a genius just by including the word "physics" in the title. Let's face it, isn't wanting to feel smart the entire reason we play puzzle games?

Physics and ancient history? Nobel Prize, please!

So what's the problem? As it turns out physics is unpredictable and difficult to control, even for a scientist. Play a physics puzzle and even if you get everything right you can still fail if your timing is off by one millionth of a second or even for no discernible reason at all. The result is a puzzle that relies just as much on luck as it does on skill and intellect which, if you think about it, isn't really a puzzle at all.

2. Games That Want To Be Portal
This was going to be popular mainstream games in Flash version but as it turns out no one ever makes Quake or Bioshock in Flash. No, it's pretty much just Portal or puzzle/platformers that desperately wish they were Portal.

Not Portal.

The problem here is that they're all missing the point. Yes, I agree that Portal was awesome. Do you know why Portal was awesome? Because it was made by people with vision. The makers of Portal set out from the beginning with the intention of doing something that had never been done before. Then, they succeeded.

Also not Portal.

You took an idea you saw work for somebody else and did the same thing, only not as well. That doesn't make you great, that makes you a copycat. No one likes a copycat. I'm not saying the idea can't work again and I'm certainly not going to say that only Valve has the right to make a Portal-esque game. What I'm saying is, as with Monty Python, these are masters of the surreal and the unique. Their strength is in their individuality. Do you really think the best way to show your admiration for them is by mimicking their every move like a damn trained monkey?

1. AdventureQuest, MechQuest, AdventureQuest Worlds, Dragonfable, ArchKnight, et cetera
No, really. Please, Artix Entertainment, for the love of all that is holy, STOP. Stop remaking AdventureQuest ad infinitum, stop flooding every damn page you can find with spam about your stupid game like it was a penis enlargement pill, and for all our sake stop pretending a silly game that's a fun time waster at best rocks our socks off.

Banner Ad Review: I Think I'm Done Here

2008-12-27T10:17:00.006-05:00

As you may know, I have sort of a thing for making fun of banner ads, and for pointing out stupidity. Don't get me wrong, now. A lot of my friends are Christian, and most of them are good people, but let's face it: there's not a lot of demographics dumber than the true fundamentalists, and as you'll soon see, there's not a lot of demographics that make dumber banner ads either.

What's with the broken infinity symbol? Why did they use the image of White Jesus twice, and cut the second one off halfway? Why did they replace the "o" in network with a cross, instead of the actually vaguely cross-shaped "t"? How do you think God feels about you using the image of the device used to torture and kill thousands of people including His son as the symbol of your religion? Why did this banner ad appear on the message board for my DnD group?

But of course, I couldn't stop with mocking the ad, mostly since I just used up all my material in that last paragraph. I had to check this "christian NETWORK" out for myself. In addition to such thrilling topics of conversation as "Canada," "Christian tattoos," and "team jesus in me" there's a noted denial of proven facts, such as the December 25th date being borrowed from pagans. Ah, hell, just look at it yourself.

Of course, that just led me to the best part, and the point of this post: The Fundamental Top 500, a (very real) web ring for fundamentalist Christian sites that...well, that seems to use as its logo none other than the image of an angry man halfway through delivering a vicious beating, probably of an atheist or homosexual.

Agnostics, atheists, secularists, we're now officially done. There's no way we can top that.

Today's Challenge: This Banner Ad

2008-08-22T03:54:00.004-04:00

So I saw this ad. My first though was "oh, it's another free MMORPG advertised with anime characters that aren't in the game." My second thought was "wait...GOLF?"

No, I don't know why they're advertising an online golf game using anime characters, much less what would seem to be a nubian and a teenage Oliver Twist. (Two demographics I've always associated with golf are the africans and 1830's street urchins, but to be fair, I'm schizophrenic.) I don't even know why they're advertising an online golf game at all. Honestly, I don't even know why they made an online golf game.

But that's not what's important right now. What's important is it's bullshit. While the game itself is free, you have to buy "campuscash," the online money of GamesCampus, the site that hosts the game, to do anything with it. Also, by all accounts (looking at all handful of screenshots) the game sucks.

What's also important is this particular blurb.

Just like we all wish cigarettes were...

An InCONvenient...ly Lazy Pun

2008-08-17T18:19:00.005-04:00

I wold like to pose a question to the webmaster of an InCONvenient Guilt Trip. How much money did the republicans pay you, and why was it not enough to hire someone who understood grammar and logic? What, was Nick Naylor busy?

I'm not going to bother going over every little thing on this site. I could point out fifty things wrong with it, just on the front page and all off the top of my head, but that wouldn't be fun for either of us. Which is why they made it easy on us and made the more asinine comments bolded for easy access. Like this one.

"IF WE DON'T SAY NO TO THE GLOBAL WARMING CRUSADERS IT IS THE SAME THING AS SAYING YES!"

Brilliant deduction, Mr. Hawking. Wait, I'm getting a news flash! Apparently, if we don't eat cheetos it is the same thing as not eating cheetos. And in a related story, if we're not intelligent it is the same thing as being you!

Another thing I just have to mention...

"To think that we caused [global warming[, or can significantly change it, is the same as saying the world is flat. Queen Isabella and her contemporaries did not have enough information and lived in constant fear of the assumed and unknown."

I know, right? Don't you just hate people like that, who believe in crazy things without thinking about them? Like that the universe was created in seven days and fossils are an elaborate hoax cooked up to trick people into thinking it's older, all for no reason. Or people who believe that the Earth is going to be destroyed by a mythological horned monster that the book they believe in doesn't even mention, and that an old man in the clouds is then going to horrifically torture 99% of humanity for all eternity, because he loves us. People who believe that are so stupid! A person like that could never get elected in this day and age. Oh, wait...

Also, Queen Isabella, the one who financed Columbus's expedition, did NOT believe the Earth was flat. The reason she was unsure about financing Columbus is because he was an imbecile who thought he could sail halfway around the world in just under a week.

Look, it is a proven fact that the climate changes, I'll grant you that. After all, 65 million years ago, the Earth was covered in tropical rainforests and ruled by giant monsters, and today the Earth is colder. (Though still ruled by giant monsters.) That much is true. But don't try to tell us that we can pump gallons upon gallons of toxins, catalysts, and CO2 into the air and nothing will happen.

The problem is the amount that the climate is changing is tiny. Contrary to what some people would have you believe, it will not become a problem in our lifetimes. Global warming is not going to bring about a Day After Tomorrow climate change and destroy the Earth. It's just not. It is, however, going to make our planet unlivable within the next few hundred years, so in essence our children or possibly our grandchildren have no futures. Of course, you might say that by that time, they'll be able to just leave the planet anyway, presumably in spaceships powered by the pipe dreams of selfish Americans, since most people still refuse to accept alternative fuel research.* Except dreams probably qualify as an alternative fuel, so scratch that.

Come on, people. I know it's "gay" to want to help the environment and your fellow man. I know it's "nerdy" to think about the long-term, and try to come up with real solutions. That is why I'm issuing this challenge: to all nerdy homosexuals, it's up to you to save the planet! Let's get together and think up a way to do it. Alternately, let's build spaceships and go to Tau Ceti 5, and leave the "real Americans" on the Earth to die.

*I found the perfect article to link to to illustrate this point. Unfortunately, Rush Limbaugh's site demanded a password from me, presumably because he realizes how much of a jackass he is and doesn't want anyone else to see.

Yotsuba Out of Context

2008-07-06T16:14:00.008-04:00

Steve immediately knew where to build the new plant. With this information he'd finally be Vice President of Nike corporation.

Yotsuba discovers the "Pretty Neighbor" doujinshi.

Out of context, yes, but this is nonetheless pretty much exactly what it looks like.

"The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth."

-Revelation 9:1-3

Koiwai-san was going to shoot up his workplace, but then he remembered he worked from home.

Ena never got over losing her friend, Yotsuba.

*scream*

The New Guilty Gear is Coming

2008-06-10T09:54:00.008-04:00

Two Reasons the New Guilty Gear Overture is Going to Rock

2. It's in 3-D.
Don't get me wrong, I do like old school gameplay and graphics never bothered me that much. I still play the Playstation game SaGa Frontier often and love the shit out of it, and I still like the SNES game Super Mario World. But ever since Super Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time there's a part of me that secretly hopes all my favorite 2-D classics will get the 3-D upgrade, and I love it when they do: Castlevania, Metroid, Megaman Legends. I'm probably the only guy on Earth who loves Megaman X7 non-ironically, even despite its many glaring flaws.

1. It's about Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske.
For those of you not up on your Guilty Gear history, Sol Badguy was a member of the Order (read: Paladins) back during the days of the Holy War against the gears and is actually a prototype gear (a human infused with magic, made for fighting). He's also one of the most badass characters in the series. He's friendly enemies with a pretty blonde guy named Ky Kiske, an order member whose most notable characteristics are having a special attack named after a Metallica song, having a green-faced robotic clone of himself, and as of this game being the king of his own country for some reason. Together they gave us some of the most memorable battles in the series and now they've got their own game.

Three Reasons the New Guilty Gear Overture is Going to Blow

3. It's in 3-D.
Guilty Gear is a 2-D game. Guilty Gear has always been a 2-D game. Guilty Gear is made of two basic building blocks: the first is rock and roll/heavy metal references and the second is awesome weird, and believe it or not the unique sprites are a part of that weird. Granted, there's more to it than that.

2. It's about Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske.
Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske are two of the most badass characters in the series. They're also two of the most bland. Sol Badguy is pretty cool, and his gear abilities (which supposedly this game will finally show us the true extent of) are awesome, but at the end of the day he's just a guy with a sword that shoots fire. Ky Kiske is so blah that his own robotic clone is almost infinitely more awesome than he is, but to be fair Robo-Ky is more awesome than all of the characters. Point is, there's more exciting characters, and characters with storylines I'd love to see finally get extended. But as of current information, none of the other existing Guilty Gear characters will even be getting so much as a cameo in this game.

1. Guilty Gear Isuka
The previous two points are reason for pause, but not necesarilly deal-breakers. I could overlook them if not for this game: Isuka. This was Aksys' attempt at taking the series in a new direction. Unfortunately, that apparently meant stripping out the story and the Instant Kill powers that made the game unique and tossing in a bunch of nonsense gimmicks that ended up being more annoying than interesting or cool; by the end of it all, Isuka generally ended up as the worst mockery of a once great series this side of Mortal Kombat Armageddon. We got a few cool things out of Isuka, yes: Robo-Ky and A.B.A. for instance, but overall Isuka serves as a warning of why Aksys should not deviate from the formula. Guilty Gear Overture would be a radical change from the norm of Guilty Gear games and could work. Unfortunately, Isuka already taught us that Aksys can not do change from the norm.

No Title This Time

2008-03-29T03:26:00.005-04:00

I'm too angry to come up with a witty title this time. Why? Because apparently in this country, at this time brutally murdering children is considered controversial.

For those too lazy to read the story, there was a 15 year old middle school student who was gay and liked to go to school in makeup and jewelry. Whenever bullies teased him he'd tease back by hitting on them. Well, one day one of the hate-filled little bastards got tired of the fact that his punching bag wasn't feeling enough self-loathing AND SHOT HIM TWICE IN THE HEAD.

AND THIS IS CONTROVERSIAL.

To anyone who may not know what to think about this, here's what you think: Children murdering other children is wrong. I really don't think I'm breaking any new ground here. Is it really that radical and unfounded to say that?

The controversy here is over wether or not it was a hate crime. In other words, the question is "Did this kid kill his classmate because the other kid was gay or because he just thought it would be fun?" Here's a better question: Does the previous question have any right answer? Is there any answer you could possibly give to that question that would make it okay for a 14 year old to shoot a 15 year old to death? The answer to that question is no.

For that matter, and I never thought I'd say this, what happened to the days when if you wanted to hurt someone in school you'd just punch them? I had a kid who always used to hit on me too. I told him to stop several times and he never would. So I hit him in the stomach. You know what? He stopped after that. It wasn't that long ago all you needed to be a man was your own two fists. Now we have middle schoolers shooting each other and the worst part is that it's so bad now that people find that NORMAL.

It's things like this that make me embarassed to call myself an American. It is a very sad day when a child murders another child and it becomes a political issue.

You know why? Because this kid was strong. Look, I don't care how you feel about transvestitism, you have to agree this kid had a strong will. He knew who he was and he was going to be the person he believed he was, and he didn't let anyone tell him he shouldn't. That is how he should be remembered. He should NOT be remembered as a martyr for the political agenda of some douchebag who never even knew him.

Television Review: The Most Awesome PSA Ever

2008-03-26T19:05:00.008-04:00

Watch it. The whole thing. I'll wait. Seen it? Now weren't the 50's great?

The message of this video is so laughable that you'd probably never imagine this PSA was made if you hadn't seen it. Hell, the damn thing starts off by saying that hitchhiking is awesome. It's a "good way to get from one place to another." Of course, we know today that hitchhiking is in fact the most dangerous method of transportation, second only to riding inside the mouth of a great white shark that has had Hitler's brain transplanted into it.

But to be fair, this was made in the 50's, back before video games and rap music introduced the world to violence and invented crime. Back when this was made hitchhiking was safe, right? It turns out no. You see, there is a secret evil lurking amongst this otherwise perfect transport system.

THE HOMOSEXUAL.

That's right. The Homosexual. Just like sith, there are only ever two gays in existance: The Homosexual and The Bicurious. Previous The Homosexuals have included Elton John, Ru Paul, and Richard Simmons. The current The Homosexual? Who knows? It could be anyone! Even....YOU?

It is the hidden nature of The Homosexual that lends added terror to this beast. How do you know when the person you're talking to may be The Homosexual? Well, according to the PSA you can tell because The Homosexual is friendly, just like our good gay friend Ralph from this video.

Okay, so we've identified our The Homosexual, now what will he do to us? In the video we see Ralph pick up a young man named Jimmy, they become friends, they go to Ralph's house, and then Ralph drives away...ALONE.

Wait, what? What did he do to the kid? We're never told*, so I guess they're leaving it up to us to imagine a horrible fate for poor young Jimmy. Maybe Ralph raped him and left him naked in the woods to die from exposure. Maybe he killed him and skinned him to make a suit. Or, even more terrifying, maybe he gave him a ride and dropped him off at his house and nothing weird happened at all, except that now Jimmy has been infected and will become...The Homosexual! (Yes, gays are a lot like vampires too.)

Bonus Points: The fact that the worst thing they can say about gays is that they're nicer than straight people is pretty funny, but they get bonus points mostly for the Boys Beware sign at the beginning of the PSA. Because everyone knows The Homosexual can never be female.

Annotation from The Future:

I eventually discovered the missing last half of the PSA and what happens to Jimmy is both lamer and more hilariously psychotic than anything I could have guessed. As it turns out, Ralph molested Jimmy. That's not the hilarious part. No, the psycho part is after that happens, then the police proceed to arrest Jimmy...for being molested. They eventually drop the charges (which were what, exactly, officers?) and release him into his parents' custody where he is presumably beaten to death for getting too close to...The Homosexual.

Top 5 List: Top 5 Worst Video Game Cities To Live In

2008-03-22T06:51:00.003-04:00

Cities in video games are already typically terrible places to live, and for obvious reasons. If they weren't full of enemies to fight, then the game wouldn't be very fun, would it? But some are even worse than others and since making lists is easier than writing real reviews, here's another Top 5.

5. San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto
Yes, it's the gritty city from GTA. I think this one's fairly self-explanatory; San Andreas gets on the list not just because of the fact that your main character is a criminal, or there's rampant gang wars, but because most eveyr game will eventually end up with the player saying screw it and just deciding to see how much shit he can blow up before the police take him out. But San Andreas only gets number 5, because the police will eventually take your ass out, so there's still some semblance of law and order. That's more than you can say for some of our others.

4. Post-Apocalyptic London, Hellgate: London
Hellgate: London is a Diablo remake/homage set in near-future London after a demonic invasion has reduced most of the city to ruins. Humanity hides out in subway stations and other subterranean areas and fights against the demons.

I'll admit it. If it weren't for the constant threat of death, lack of resources and luxury, and maddening horror around you, I'd almost be willing to live there. It would be a little fun almost, with everyone left living together in relatively small places underground, not able to venture out it would likely foster a closeness and a real sense of community. Like a sleepover that never ends. Either that or it would drive everyone completely, criminally mad. Unfortunately, it's the latter. Almost 90% of the people you'll meet are certifiably insane and the other 10% are certifiable douchebags.

Also there's that constant threat of death, lack of resources and luxury, and maddening horror all around you thing I mentioned earlier.

3. Anywhere, Ratchet & Clank series
Between RnC's slapstick humor, intrigue, and explosions it's easy to miss the subtle Orwellian horror behind it all. No matter what planet you go to it's all just as bad. The galaxies on display are horrible places ruled by massive corporations where deadly monsters roam wild in the streets, highly deadly weapons of mass destruction are for sale to anyone who wants them, and villains murder and destroy at random.

Your hero is no better. In the first game your mission to find Captain Quark takes you to a planet overrun by slime monsters where the police are desperately trying to save the city, and to progress you must destroy both sides. In the second game Angela causes a store to be overrun with monsters, resulting in at least one death but once you discover she's a chick all is forgiven. Even when the plot isn't making you be evil there's still the robotic citizenry of these planets scattered around, who the game never penalizes (and in fact often rewards) you for killing.

2. Paragon City, City of Heroes
From the superhero MMORPG City of Heroes, Paragon City is an advanced city home to hundreds of superheroes, be they NPCs or player created. Supergroups abound and dozens of heroes patrol the streets at all times. So you'd think Paragon City would be mostly free of crime, right? Well, you'd be wrong.

A simple walk around the block will lead you past three purse snatchings, five muggings, two drug deals, a few crazy cultists murdering people, and maybe a few random ambushes, all in broad daylight and right out there on the street corner. Oh sure, there's a police department, but the cops, even on the rare occasion they decide to go out on patrol, have been known to walk right past crimes taking place. There's also Longbow, a corporate militia comprised of humans and low-ranking heroes whose job is to police the city, but they're also total mercenaries and are even less effective than the police.

But why Paragon City and not the City of Villains equivalent, the Rogue Isles? Simply put, because the Rogue Isles are a third world shithole populated exclusively by outcasts and prison escapees that even Paragon City didn't want, and is harrassed constantly by the hundreds of supervillains that call it home. That doesn't make the Rogue Isles BETTER, but it does make the fact that they're a terrible place to live a lot more expected. Paragon City is a first world highly advanced culture with the best policing you can find (the cops and Longbow suck, but it's still a city of heroes) and yet has a crime right bad enough to make Washington DC look like a glittering utopia. No, screw that. Paragon City's crime rate is higher than Washington DC, Detroit, and New York City if they were somehow mashed together into one and then shipped to the Sudan.

1. Your City, SimCity series
The SimCity series of games allows you to take the role of mayor, city planner, supreme leader, and god of your own society, ruling over it completely as you strive to build the ultimate utopia. At least if you're a liar. We all know why we play SimCity, and it's not for the joy of dealing with their effed up super-strict rules that will likely drive you bankrupt before your population even hits 500.

More realistically, SimCity lets you act out your destructive impulses as you rain down disasters on your fair city. Or, even more realistically, SimCity is the ultimate horrifying spectacle of human evil as every game quickly degenerates into random bulldozing because even the disasters just aren't devestating enough for you. The temptation to wreak havoc makes SimCity a lot like Grand Theft Auto with one major difference. After you bulldoze the orphanage, call down space aliens on the hospital, and take control of an army tank to blow up a residential district when you finally get down destroying you're still the unchallenged supreme leader of your city. You are above the law, and not just in the celebrity sense of you can get drunk and hit someone and get off scott free with just an apology, you're above the law in the sense that you can carry out an extended genocide against your own people and when you're done you're not only still in power but they love the shit out of you.

To all the people who downloaded maps off the internet just so they could ravage them with disasters, to all the people who played the disaster scenarios in the original over and over and quit every time once the fires went out, and to everyone who placed military base zones in SimCity 4 right from the start just because they wanted to drive the tank and blow up their city with it, I say this: thank you for making Your City the most terrible place to live in any video game ever.

Dissecting the Hays Code

2008-03-11T04:32:00.007-04:00

Not sure how many people know about this. Most people probably know bits of it, like the fact that there was a rule that forbid them from showing Jeannie's belly button on I Dream of Jeannie, but once upon a time there was a code governing all films and television that would be made.

Is it any wonder the majority of movies back then sucked? A few mentions...

To paraphrase, evil must be wrong, good must be right.
As they explain in their reasonings, later, this rule does not mean that the bad guy can't be a sympathetic character, just that the thing they're doing has to be shown as bad and destructive. In other words, if a character in your movie rips off his friend and makes millions of dollars, even if he later gets arrested and thrown in prison forever, that will not be allowed to appear in the movie. That's simply unrealistic.

As they go on to say later, there are some sins which are obviously bad and repel people such as murder and rape, but there are others that can be attractive such as "daring theft," "sex sins," etc. Is it wrong to say things as they are? I say it is not.

"Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation."
Later on they explain that no movie can ever suggest that a criminal or rebel is right in challenging the state, nor to suggest that the system as a whole is corrupt. You heard it here first folks: Imperial England and Nazi Germany should have won, according to the people who wrote the Hays Code!

Look, I get what you're saying, people who wrote this. That people should be patriotic, and a movie that forces them to think of their nation as bad is hurting their patriotism. But sometimes a country IS bad and people need to think for themselves and figure it out. America was not founded by people who believed questioning their place in society was a sin. It was founded by people who realized corruption when they saw it and did something about it. Think about this, too: how would the second world war have panned out if Albert Einstein, rather than fleeing to the United States, had instead remained in Germany and blindly allowed Hitler to do as he pleased with him?

Note: I'm going to mention the nazis a lot. At least wait until the end before you call Godwin on me.

"Hence the important objective must be to avoid the hardening of the audience, especially of those who are young and impressionable, to the thought and fact of crime. People can become accustomed even to murder, cruelty, brutality, and repellent crimes, if these are too frequently repeated."
Now you know where Thompson got it.

"Revenge in modern times shall not be justified. In lands and ages of less developed civilization and moral principles, revenge may sometimes be presented. This would be the case especially in places where no law exists to cover the crime because of which revenge is committed."
Goodbye, Batman! Goodbye, Hamlet! Goodbye, Poe!

"The treatment should not throw sympathy against marriage as an institution."
Again, imagine all the timelass dramas and romances that would have never happened if people actually followed a rule like this.

They go on later to talk about impure love. Actually, they're not talking about homosexuality here (remember, this is before people acknowledged its existence) but rather rape and seduction. These things must never be presented comically nor sympathetically. Okay, yeah, no rape. But seduction? Goodbye....90% of films and television shows presented after the 50s.

"The effect of nudity or semi-nudity upon the normal man or woman, and much more upon the young and upon immature persons, has been honestly recognized by all lawmakers and moralists. Hence the fact that the nude or semi-nude body may be beautiful does not make its use in the films moral. For, in addition to its beauty, the effect of the nude or semi-nude body on the normal individual must be taken into consideration."
Nonsense. Patent ludicrosity. How can the expression of beauty be immoral? Is a rose immoral? Is a sunset immoral? No. So how is the human body's presentation immoral?

I can see where's they're going when they talk about improper use, such as putting nudity in just to give your movie a little "kick." But to suggest that nudity and semi-nudity can never be used for plot and can never be shown?

"The reason why ministers of religion may not be comic characters or villains is simply because the attitude taken toward them may easily become the attitude taken toward religion in general. Religion is lowered in the minds of the audience because of the lowering of the audience's respect for a minister."
This I can't make fun of. This one was just plain prophetic. Seriously, who do YOU blame for the wave of religious cynicism in America today? It's not the Priest touching the boys that's the problem, it's the liberal media telling you that the Priest touched boys. ...I think?

To its credit, they don't just say Christians here. They extend this to all faiths, so according to the Hays Code it is equally wrong wether you slander a Catholic Priest, a Jewish Rabbi, or...whatever you call a muslim holy man. Stupid maybe, but discriminatory the Hays Code is not. (Except later when they talk about White Slavery being wrong to show, but say nothing about blacks.)

"The just rights, history, and feelings of any nation are entitled to most careful consideration and respectful treatment."
Yes and no. For example, what about a World War II movie where the nazis are involved. Is it right to say in that movie that all Germans are evil because of a few bad apples at the top, or that German heritage is something to be ashamed of? No, that is wrong. But is it right to insist that the nazis themselves were bad? Most definitely yes.

***

Is it any wonder the majority of old movies were lame and stilted, dancing around real issues to present mindless pseudo-entertainment? But for that matter, is it not the fault of this code that the modern media loves so much to defy these rules for no other peurpose than to defy them, so much like a kid so long denied a candy that when he finally gains access to it he gorges himself?

Look, I'm not going to say there's not a lot of bad messages out there or that a person like Jack Thompson doesn't ALMOST have a point. As the people who wrote the Hays Code says, this media reaches a lot of people and is accessible and understandable by all, so if you're a parent or guardian to a youngster it is important you monitor what your children watch so that you can protect them.

But the next time you start to think that a person like Thompson is right and we need a code in place, think about this: if these codes were in place throughout history, the entirety of Shakespeare and Poe would have been banned. Elvis? The Beatles? Never would have happened. We live now in a world of highs and lows. Yes, there's bad movies both morally and artistically, but there are also movies that are bad morally and good artistically as well as ones that are good morally and bad artistically, but I've never seen a movie that was good both morally and artistically. Wether it's Christian video games, old cartoons that are usually only enjoyable ironically (or at best are good in spite of the good morals, not because of them), it's just impossible. Stories are about conflict, which you can't have when everyone is moral and lovey dovey. I'm not saying you have to go to the extremes like Itchy and Scratchy (another example of bad morally and bad artistically, but that was the point so it's okay) but if these people had their way we'd live in a world full of mediocre shlock, providing mindless entertainment that would soothe your spirit but would never stimulate your mind, and no one would like that. Freedom of expression, all expression, is necesarry for art. As has been said: either everything is okay to write about or nothing is.

Remember, also: Nazi Germany enforced a similar code. They banned all music except German folk songs, they banned the Bible and many other works of literature and film. Now's where you call it, Godwin fans.

Special Review: MSN's Wedding Advice Sucks

2008-03-08T04:25:00.005-05:00

Ever since MSN became my homepage (I think it happened when I installed a toolbar or something and I don't care enough to change it.) I've enjoyed reading their columnist Miles Stiverson's occasional wedding advice columns. It's not because I intend to get married. I have no interesting in ever dating, much less marrying a woman. It's more because I enjoy the insane Bridezilla ravings that are attached to them. It seems for every good piece of advice (like their advice in Worst Wedding Advice Ever where they suggest that it's horribly offensive to tell a bride-to-be to save her money and buy a house because she'll just get divorced anyway) there's two more suggestions that suck. Here's some highlights.

How dare you ask me about transportation and lodging after I invite you to my wedding?!
From the 10 Biggest Mistakes Wedding Guests make, Miles rants about the audacity of those who dare to ask how exactly you intend to get them acoss country for your big event, going so far as to say they're "treating you like their personal concierge." Sure, he does go on to say the best way to deal with it is to just give them the damned information, but asking someone to do something for you then calling them out when they requests details as to how they can do what you want kind of makes you a dick.

I demand free stuff! NOW!!!
It's in a lot of them, but most notably Couples Speak Out: Worst Wedding Gifts Ever. Some of their examples are awesomely bad: an empty gift card, a regifted tray with the original card still included, a framed invitation to the gifter's wedding which had occured several months prior, and a book entitled "Why Men Love Bitches" for instance. But when you're bitching because someone gave you a George Foreman grill or a ceramic statue maybe it's time to stop being such a cunt. Some of us aren't Mr. Moneybags and maybe you should just be happy you're getting anything at all.

The first thing you should do is cut guests!
Are you kidding me? Come on, people. This is quite possibly the worst advice EVER. But it's not just Stiverson, or even just MSN. I've heard this advice in lots of places as a wonderful way to cut costs and generally fix anything that could ever be wrong. In the real world this destroys friendships, costs people jobs, and breaks up marriages before they even begin. I hate to sound like the very people I'm mocking, but you have to realize that when you say "Sorry, we're uninviting you because we don't have room at the reception" what they hear is "and we decided that having you there was less important than having Aunt Tina, Aunt Tina's Drunken Boyfriend number 3, and her five screaming bastard younguns, none of whom we've spoken to in three years for good reason." There's no way to uninvite a wedding guest that WON'T just translate to "I hate you and everything you stand for" in their mind, so don't do it. If you don't have the foresight to only invite who you need I guess you'll just have to swallow your medicine with a grain of salt. Either that or accept the fact that you are an unforgivable douche who is going to die alone and will totally deserve it.

Runners Up
Hating on wedding guests who request you make arrangements for food that will suit their diet.

"Adult-only" weddings, and venomous bile spewed at those who dare to commit that unspeakable atrocity known as "having children and not wanting to leave them with a babysitter for a week."

From Wedding Guests: Guests Behaving Badly: "We placed wedding cameras on every table. After we got back from the honeymoon we were looking through the pictures when we came across one of our male guests exposing himself. We were so mortified!" If there is any divine justice this mortification would have been accompanied by the fine lady fainting. Her husband would have lost his tophat and monocle as he exclaimed "My word!" I also sincerely hope the man who took the picture wrote on the back "This is what you're missing."

Spite at an aunt who got the bride's 14 year old brother shitfaced and he, among other things, told all his family members how he really felt about them. If anything this aunt deserves a medal for creating the most awesome wedding story ever.

Video Game Review: A Few Mini-Reviews for the PSP

2008-03-07T04:15:00.004-05:00

Warriors of the Lost Kingdom
A mediocre dungeon crawler for the PSP. It doesn't really bring anything new to the table and has limited classes. An interesting change is you don't use money in the game. The shop operates by a trade system - in order to buy certain items you have to trade other items. While interesting on paper this provides an extraordinary amount of annoyance as you'll have to go through complciated trade chains to get what you really want rather than just being able to fork over cash. Also worth noting is that the female Dark Seeker character's default armor is actually called bondage gear in the game. And you thought Bloodrayne was bad...but at least WLK admits they're pervs.

KR Rating from The Future: [2] BAD

Star Wars Battlefront 2: Renegade Squadron
You undoubtedly remember this game. Pretty much every TV channel played commercials for it twice in every commercial break, signs were plastered around every electronics store, they even released a special white Vader PSP to commemmorate its release. When it was finally released it cost half again the usual price of a console game, much less a PSP game. It also managed to be a profound disappointment on every level. Don't get me wrong, I could never fault a game for not living up to the hype, but this isn't even as good as a regular game. If you've played the other Star wars Battlefront games before you'll find nothing new here, and if you're anything like me you'll get so good at this game as to totally trounce it within the first hour or so, and I'm not even usually that good at video games. Of course, there's the character customization angle, which was the main selling point of the ad campaign (customize your units, better your squad), but honestly they didn't even fucking try. The extent of customization is exactly nine options for each faction and the extent of the "bettering your squad" is that there is no bettering. You have all of the weapons accesible from the start and have 100 "points" to spend on equipping them, and this number will never change. There's no room to grow, no unlockables, nothing at all to keep the novelty of this game from wearing off within the first few hours.

KR Rating from The Future: [1] HORRIBLE

Rogue Galaxy
Rogue Galaxy is a game that, I can't believe I'm actually saying this, got horribly ripping off everything around it right. You play as a blonde, handsome young man who was raised by someone other than his parents on a desert planet* before his home is attacked by enemies and he escapes the clutches of a tyrannical galaxy-spanning empire to go on an adventure with a crew of spacemen and discover his hidden destiny. If that sounds familiar to you it's because I just finished talking about a video game based on the movie it's stolen from. (You even get a robot that talks just like C3P0.)

But it can't be all that bad can it? Oh, you naïve fool. Gameplay is not slightly but EXACTLY like Final Fantasy 12 (which is forgivable because Final Fantasy 12 is just Chrono Trigger in 3D anyway and has no right to call out anyone else for being uncreative) and I'm fairly certain at least one of the PCs is Yuna.

But none of that changes the fact that Rogue galaxy is a fun and lovable game and is definitely worth a look. Just don't expect anything ground-breaking.

*For that matter, video game designers, Hollywood, and everyone else: Earth can not be the only planet in the universe with varying ecosystems. The idea of a "jungle planet," "desert planet," et cetera is not only highly unrealistic but also stupid and lazy.

KR Rating from The Future: [4] GOOD

PS. If your first reaction to the last review was "But Rogue Galaxy isn't for PSP"...good for you.

Video Game Review: Hey, It's More Greatest Hits!

2008-02-18T05:03:00.002-05:00

This time it's a repost of the Guilty Gear Isuka review from the old website. Enjoy!

Yes, it's another Guilty Gear game, the sequel to Guilty Gear XX, in fact. To those who were participating in the argument over wether it'd be called Guilty Gear XXX or Guilty Gear #Reload Slash, you're all wrong. No, the newest GG game's useless tag is Isuka, a japanese bird which Sammy says represents their taking the series into a whole new direction. By which they mean, "all new ways to say 'f**k you, American.'"

What the Hell happened, Sammy? Guilty Gear X2 was so good and this game is...so...so...BAD. I mean, don't get me wrong. I like the new characters, and I really like how Robo-Ky isn't just Ky with a green face anymore. But that's about where the good parts end.

The most obvious change? The new GG Boost mode. This is a side-scrolling Final Fight style beat em up pitting you against hordes of junk. Seriously, the fighters you face here are called junk (well, at least when you translate it to english, which Sammy didn't bother to do...AGAIN), which I have to admit is almost clever. Of course, all this really means is all new ways for the AI to be completely cheap, like moving a half a step up to dodge all your attacks, standing over traps where you can't reach them, or just running away from you until the timer reaches zero. Oh, and continues? Yeah right.

The next difference is in Arcade mode. Whereas in X2, you moved through a series of fights until you finally won in here you can't really win the fights. Instead, you simply go until your "survival level" goes up a certain number, then the game yells out "Here comes daredevil!" and you go into another fight. (I think they wanted to make the whole game feel as much like a peyote dream as possible. Mission accomplished.) At the end of it all you fight Leopaldon, a giant yeti thing that pretty much kills you instantly and can only be hurt by aerial attacks. Yeah. F**k you too, Sammy.

Guilty Gear Isuka is a combination of nonsensical and lame single player modes, uber-cheap AI, and god-moded bosses all coming together to mock a series that I once saw as the greatest fighting game series right after Mortal Kombat...and possibly Soul Calibur. Anyway, the question is, what more could you want? A story mode? Keep dreaming, bitch.

Presentation: 4/5
The anime style sprites are really nice and provide a unique style that compliments the uniqueness of the story and characters nicely. Backgrounds are also top notch and the music and sound effects are decent.

Gameplay: 3/5
Making a pale imitation of a once great game is a trespass that I can almost forgive. But taking out Instant Kill? I'll see you in Hell, Sammy.

Multiplayer: 5/5
Guilty Gear Isuka allows for up to four people to play simultaneously, but only if you own a multitap. Still, this is good, since the uber-cheapness of the AI and lameness of the single player modes means playing against your friends in multiplayer is the best part of this game. Fortunately, it is not only the best part but it's also totally awesome and is the one saving grace that makes this game worth buying. Unless you're like me and all your friends think this game is stupid and nerdy. Sigh...

KR Rating from The Future: [3] MEDIOCRE

Top 5 List: The Top 5 Superpowers, and Why They'd Suck to Have

2008-02-08T00:38:00.000-05:00

So who out there wants to be a superhero? If you said yes you're either a little boy or a creepy old man. In either case I will accept further inquiries in the form of naked photos.

As I wait for my inbox to fill up I thought I'd pass the time by shitting all over your hopes. Here's the five best superpowers you can hope for and why they would actually suck.

5. Super Strength
Now who hasn't wanted to have super strength? Wether you're a little kid getting shoved off the swingset by a bully or a grown man and some beefcake muscle man is walking off with your lady, your plight is the same: you lose because they're stronger than you. Wouldn't it be nice to walk up to them, say a catchy one-liner, and knock them through a wall?

Turns out, no, it wouldn't. Have you ever noticed how super strength is the go to power for superheroes? They all have it, even Aquaman is stronger than a body builder. There's a reason for that. It turns out the normal human's body is incredibly frail. A strong enough punch in the right place from even a normal human can rupture internal organs, break bones, and generally leave you fucked up or dead. No one's going to cheer when that amazing story of schoolyard justice ends with an eight year old's internal organs sprayed across the sandbox.

Just to drive the point home, have you ever held a fabergé egg, or something else tiny and incredibly fragile? You know how you have to be super careful all the time not to break it and you end up just giving it back because the pressure is too much? Well, now that you're super strong every single thing in the world is like that. Your friends, your car, your thousand dollar computer. You will never be able to have anything nice ever again. Why do you think the Hulk was so pissed all the time?

4. Super Speed
Never enough hours in the day? Do you have only five minutes to drive all the thirty miles to work and if you're late you WILL be fired? Fear no more! Just run there with your super speed! Get authentic italian pasta from an authentic italian restaurant in authentic Italy and still get back home to the States to sleep in your own comfy bed.

Yeah, except you couldn't actually, you know, DO any of that stuff. Have you ever opened the window on the highway at 70 miles per hour? Did the wind sting your eyes? Imagine now that you're going twice that. Ouch. To get the 30 miles to the office in five minutes you'd have to be going at least 360 miles per hour. That's half the speed of sound. The wind friction alone would rip the skin off your body.

Okay, but that's assuming normal human physiology, right? If you have super speed maybe you also evolved super wind resistance ignoring. Let's talk about collisions then. You bump your head at average walking speed of about six miles per hour and it hurts like Hell. At even 30 miles per hour that once gentle bump takes off the top half of your skull and most of your brain too. At super speed every object around you becomes deadly and if you couldn't see that open cabinet door coming at you at a snail's pace, how are you going to see it coming at the speed of a bullet?

3. Flight
Who hasn't been stuck in a crowd or in traffic and wished they could just take off and soar over everyone else? Who hasn't longed for the freedom of zipping through the sky like a bird? Flight is a dream of many.

It would also be highly limited. You'd have to stick close to the ground for one thing, or the changes in air pressure would likely kill you. Assuming a flight speed equal to your land speed, it also wouldn't be terribly liberating either. And if you have flight and super speed you face the same dilemmas as super speed, namely collisions and wind resistance. Starting to not look so amazing, isn't it?

2. Invisibility
Everyone wants invisibility. You could turn invisible and watch chicks undress or, less creepily, you could help your buddy cheat at card games. You could sneak into bank vaults, shoplift without fear of retribution, or you could be more altruistic and sneak up on criminals and dispatch them without them knowing about it. Invisibility is powerful.

It's also not very useful. As movies like Hollow Man and Predator 2 pointed out, there are many ways around invisibility. There's still non-visible spectrums like ultra-violet and methods such as infrared (body heat) and sonar. Or, if you don't have that technology handy, you can go low tech and just dump a bucket of paint on the guy. Once you start your crime spree it won't take long for the police to find a way of seeing you and take you down.

But what about stopping criminals? What if there was a hostage situation and you could sneak in and knock the baddies out while they couldn't see you? Sounds good until you realize that hostage-taking criminals are likely already on edge and will not hesitate to start shooting at every sound -or worse, at hostages- when something they can't see starts knocking them in the head.

1. Stopping Time
Oh my God. This is the ultimate super power. Stopping time. It trumps every other power. You're super strong? So what. I can stop time and cut your head off. You're super fast and can run from New York to Boston in a minute? I can stop time, walk liesurely to Boston, and then start time back and it hasn't even been a heartbeat. You can turn invisible and go inside a hot chick's shower? I can stop time, strip her nude, fuck her, put her clothes back on, and start time back and the only thing to tell her anything even happened is a sudden feeling of being incredibly unclean. It even serves every day uses: get an extra hour of sleep, play vide games without having to worry about your parents stopping you to make you do chores. When you can stop time YOU WIN.

Stopping time is also the worst possible ability to have, because of all the horrible science problems it brings up. For example: what effect would this have on temperature? For those that flunked chemistry, temperature is caused by the movement of molecules against one another. When time stops movement stops, and the universe freezes. You stop time and suddenly you and everyone else dies as temperatures plunge to absolute zero. Conversely, what if you don't stop time, you just make yourself infinitely fast? Well, much like lowering the motion of things around you would freeze them, raising your own speed would cause you to burn hotter than a neutron star and vaporize, likely taking the rest of the planet with you when your mini-supernova ignites the atmosphere.

Temperature issues aside, what about the other problems infinite velocity causes? If you thought super speed caused problems with collisions, imagine how further compounded they are when you're moving faster than the speed of light. If you take a step your leg hits the ground at infinity miles per hour and explodes. You try to open a door and you destroy half your house and yourself with it. Simply moving your arm slowly would cause so much wind resistance it would tear the flesh from your bones. You'd have to remain perfectly motionless or die a gruesome death.

Even if your could somehow get past those problems, what about aging? You would age normally while time was frozen, but the rest of the world would stand still. Even if we assume a very limited usage of your powers of only one hour per day you'll still end up aging an extra 15 days for every eyar that passes normally. A more realistic yet still limited schedule of, say, six horus per day will add one day of aging for every four that pass normally. Assuming your powers appeared at age 15 and you kept up that schedule for the rest of your life you'd reach 72 (the average male lifespan in the United States) after about 49 years, cutting your lifespan by 8 whole years. And that's assuming you limit your use of your powers. With unlimited freedom and no objective way to even tell how long you've been using your powers, how long would you use them? Twelve hours a day? More? Would you use them days at a time? Months? Years? Sure, it would seem to you that you've led a full life, when you die from old age after only 15 years have passed, but think of everything you'll miss out on when you're gone. Stopping time has stopped looking so good, hasn't it?

Review Site Review: Gamespot

2008-01-21T02:51:00.002-05:00

Gamespot are sellouts.

Sorry, but it's true.

How do I know this? Alien Syndrome. Alien Syndrome creators Sega sponsored Gamespot for a while. Ads for it were everywhere. The website even used an Alien Syndrome background theme for like a month. And then it came out and it was shitty. Even Gamespot admitted this by giving it a 5.0. But it's all for show.

Let's be real here. Most of their reviews are written like they intentionally found the one member of their staff least likely to enjoy the game and ordered him to review it. But not Alien Syndrome's.

There was another game that got a 5.0 called Warriors Orochi. Gamespot's reviewer spends the first few sentences of their WO review saying that anyone who likes the game's creators, Koei, is an apologist idiot who's deluding themselves and doesn't know what a good game is. They then spend the rest of the review trying to describe the game's good features in a patronizing way and harping on the few bad features over and over.

The Alien Syndrome reviewer spends most of his time dancing around the game's bad points and talking about how it could have been better. The worst thing he actually says is that some of the aliens look similar to other aliens.

You want a comparison? Warriors Orochi has 77 characters with distinct personalities and stories. Alien Syndrome has a chick who the developers desperately want you to think is like Samus Aran. Orochi Warriors has you fight hordes of enemies with admittedly poor AI using combo attacks that are unique for every character, despite there being SEVENTY SEVEN of them. Alien Syndrome has five or six of the exact same alien slowly slug towards you which you then shoot for over five minutes before they die and then they respawn about ten or twelve times. This happens in every one of the thousands of rooms in the game and you have to kill them all or you will be lacking experience for the boss fights.

Look. I know Warriors Orochi is a mediocre game at best. But Warriors Orochi has interesting characters and is easy to get into and can provide mindless fun. Alien Syndrome is so mind-numbingly tedious I took it back to the store and asked for my money back after the first level. That's how bad it was.

Look at Gamespot's Top 10 games on the front page. All of them are from within the last year. Really? You really think only recent games deserve to be in the top 10? Half of them AREN'T EVEN OUT YET. How is that possible, Gamespot? How can you say a game is one of the top 10 best ever when you haven't played it and moreover CAN'T play it because it ISN'T EVEN OUT?

Look, Gamespot reviewers. I know companies pay your company to give their games good reviews. I know you have to be nice to those companies' games or you'll lose you're job. But you know what? YOU'RE STILL SELLOUTS.

Annotation from The Future:

One of the things you might not know about me from reading this blog is that I'm actually not a bitter person. I don't hate the world and I don't think all people are stupid. Really, that's why places like Gamespot irritate me so much: because most people are not actually that stupid, but the media, the government, and the corporations all think we're as dumb as bricks.

That said, as I mentioned in the annotation of my review for Unlimited SaGa I love that I can totally rail on something in a blind fury, and then I almost always end up completely vindicated. In this case, it was when Gamespot fired one of their employees, ostensibly for giving Kane And Lynch a bad review. (Happy ending: that reviewer and some of his friends went on to found Giant Bomb.)

Or to put it another way: before I edited this review for content, pretty much every other word was an F-bomb. And you know what? Gamespot deserves every fucking one of them.

Top 5 List: The Top 5 Lamest Game Heroes

2008-01-20T05:09:00.000-05:00

So we've taken our look at the top 5 most badass, but who's at the bottom of the barrel, you ask? Let's find out! Sedalb, if you're out there, I'm only dropping your name just because I so desperately want you to find this blog and read what I said about you so you'll give me more precious gems of your unmatchable inanity.

Here we go!

5. Boogerman, Boogerman
Earthworm Jim and Boogerman are pretty much equal as being heroes that are hilarious if you're a preteen boy who would like shit jokes if you weren't too young to know what shit is. So snot is inserted in the place of shit and you make an entire game based on bad puns and excessive amounts of slimy green stuff. In a way, he's the last generation's Conker. You know, back when you didn't need to secretly insert images of anal sex into your games to be edgy. (Boogerman gets the spot instead of EWJ, because Earthworm Jim was actually funny.)

4. Lloyd, Tales of Symphonia
In the words of agony booth forumgoer Campion, "whiny, abrasive, self-righteous, and stupid." Unlike the rest of the cast, all of whom gain likability when they get ported to the PSP's Tales of the World Radiant Mythologies, Lloyd is STILL FUCKING ANNOYING. But at least you don't have to talk to his stupid ass as much. And you get to beat the crap out of him. While we're here, though, I'd like to mention Genis Sage as a runner up, just because his name would seem to be a combination of "genius" and...well, I think you can see where I'm going with this. Namco, he'll get his share of yaoi appearances. You don't need to drop hints.

3. Geo Stelar, Mega Man Starforce
I can forgive that he's a third rate Lan Hikari (who, by the way, is awesome). Which is why the creators of the game had to go the extra mile. Geo Stelar's character seems to argue with itself over wether he's just annoying or cliche. He's an angst-filled totally-not-a-teen, lazy ass bastard who's home schooled in about the same way Eric Cartman was home schooled in the spelling bee episode, only with a much less cool phonics monkey. I want to punch his pre-teen face.

2. Nowe, Drakengard 2
He's a boy raised by a dragon who tries to evoke an X-Men hated by the people he helps vibe, but he's really just a whiny little bitch. The first time he rides the dragon he invokes the spirit of that other annoying bastard from the Never-Ending Story when he shouts "YEAAAH!" for no reason. I'm surprised the big lizard didn't do a barrel roll and dump him right there. Worth noting, for the second half of the game he wears a shield over his butt, presumably to protect himself from jumping humpers. In terms of sheer Mary Sue he manages to score 5 Outrageous Okonas out of 5.

1. Player Character Avatar, Monster Hunter Series
I DESPISE the player character in Monster Hunter, which is weird since it's one of those games where you make your own character. But really, Monster Hunter is one of the most ANNOYING games of all time, thanks in large part to the main character.

Most of the animations make me want to cringe. Whenever you select the character to continue the game he does a stupid little animation that's supposed to be badass but just comes off as stupid and corny. The "gangsta" animation where he takes a step back and assumes a "cool tough guy" pose is especially cringe-worthy. The "banging a fork and knife on the table like a 1960s cartoon character" animation when you order food in the Felyne Kitchen in the sequel is nearly as bad.

Most annoying though are the needless time-waster animations out in the field. Why does my guy need to flex his muscles for five seconds every time he drinks a potion? Why does he have to flash his sword around for three seconds after using a whetstone to sharpen it? All this does is waste valuable time in the missions, which are always timed, not to mention hold you up in a fight where mere seconds can and often do mean the difference between life and death.

Then there's...the run. Normally your run animation is a perfectly normal slightly faster walk that consumes stamina at a slow rate. However, for God knows what reason when there's a large enemy on the screen your run changes to...well, I'm afraid I can't come up with something to call it without swearing profusely so I'll just explain it. Basically, it's exactly the same as your normal run except it looks twenty times stupider, is actually SLOWER, and drains stamina at quadruple the normal rate.

Lord knows I wouldn't mock homosexuals, but when you take time out of fighting a giant monster to make stupid poses like this...well, I think that makes you kind of a faggot.

Top 10 Baby Names

2007-12-29T00:38:00.000-05:00

So the results are in and some baby website has released its lists of the top 10 baby names for boys and girls. And here they are from 1 to 10, reproduced without permission and frankly, to the BabyCenter, if you care? Fuck you.

Top 10 Girl Names
1. Sophia
2. Isabella
3. Emma
4. Madison
5. Ava
6. Addison
7. Hailey
8. Emily
9. Kaitlyn
10. Olivia

Top 10 Boy Names
1. Aiden
2. Ethan
3. Jacob
4. Jayden
5. Caleb
6. Noah
7. Jackson
8. Jack
9. Logan
10. Matthew

I'm not surprised at some of them. 10 and 9 are Matthew and Logan, which is the first two names of my nephew. I know someone who has a Jayden...I think. Jacob's a popular name.

I'm mostly concerned about the girls' names. Olivia? Sophia? I have NEVER met a Sophia. They don't even have Elisabeth?

Noah is number 6 for boys. I was friends with a Noah in high school. One day before school started I ran into a guy who looked like him and after trying to talk to him found out that it was someone else. It was weird because this guy looked EXACTLY like him except more punkish. It was like being friends with someone and then meeting his evil twin. Like a soap opera, except he wasn't carrying my baby. I REALLY need to get out of my head.

Anyway, I have also never, EVER met an Aiden. I'm pretty sure I haven't because I'm certain I'd remember some crazy shit like that. And I'm to believe that Aiden has been the number 1 baby name for 3 years? I call bullshit.

Top 5 List: The Most Badass Video Game Characters

2007-12-24T11:26:00.001-05:00

Okay, Sedalb, listen up. It's time for school to start. Here are the top 5 most badass video game characters.

5. Kratos; God of War Series
Kratos is one bad mamma jamma. But, like Devil May Cry's Dante, the game's designers simply try too hard. Don't get me wrong, I think he's awesome. He would've scored number one if it weren't so damn difficult to take him seriously. Besides, fanboys, at least he made the list. There's got to be thousands of video game characters out there; to make the top 5 is still a huge honor.

4. Caim; Drakengard Series
"Furiae! Oh, Furiae!" Going mute was the best thing that could happen to this guy. But once he does he becomes awesome. At the very least he manages not to wet himself as the universe quite literally falls apart around him. Between giant severed heads raining from the sky, little girls that speak in baritone, and horrors too terrible to describe, he keeps his stoic calm. The only thing stopping him from getting higher on the list is the memories of his whiny ass crying out for his girlfriend in the first level.

3. Maria Renard; Castlevania Series
Maria Renard is the cutest little summoner you ever will see, wether she's tossing kittens at the enemy or hiding under a giant turtle shell. But then she burns off 50 hearts to summon a screen-wiping dragon god that kills even bosses nearly instantly. She makes the list mostly for being tougher than Richter Belmont despite being half his age. She keeps her cute charm after growing up in Symphony of the Night and adds some sex appeal to the mix.

2. Slayer; Guilty Gear Series
This one's for all those people who liked vampires before they heard of Anne Rice. Slayer is proof that vampires don't have to be brooding emo kids. They can also be super badass. Slayer is suave and laid back, but brutal in combat, just the way a vampire should be. Wether winning or losing he manages to still look cool and for that he gets a spot in the Top 5 Most Badass.

1. Iron Ox/Honda Tadakatsu; Devil Kings Series
Known as one of the most fearsome warriors in feudal Japan, Honda Tadakatsu was a loyal servant of the otherwise unlikable Tokugawa Ieyasu. In video game land, he's been a tough-as-nails boss and kicked Lu Bu's ass (several times!) in Orochi Warriors. But the incarnation that earns him Most Badass is that in Devil Kings/Sengoku Basara. Iron Ox laughs at Hard Mode; he takes next to no damage from enemies, kills even bosses in no time, and has a special attack that has to be seen to be believed. He's so badass even getting ordered around by a midget can't harsh his cool. That's why he's number 1.

Video Game Compare Review: Shining Force Neo vs. Exa

2007-12-22T08:53:00.002-05:00

So there's two Shining Force games for the PS2, you say? Which is better, you ask? What's that? You didn't say or ask either of those? You don't care? Well that's too bad, because here's another strap-you-to-your-chair-and-pry-your-eyelids-open video game review!

Shining Force Neo
Released in 2005, Shining Force Neo is the first of the Shining Force games on the PS2 and departs from the tactical RPG style typical of Shining Force to deliver a Diablo-style adventure game. Enemies are monsters which spawn from "monster generators". You must destroy a certain number of monsters or the generators will instantly regenerate.

Gameplay: 2/5
Shining Force Neo is a game that is nice to reviewers like me. A lot of 2 and 3 games get the rating because they're decidedly average and are therefore hard to describe. Shining Force Neo gets a 2 on gameplay because it both sucks and is good at the same time. Gameplay is interesting and combat is responsive and fun. On the other hand, monster generators are EVERYWHERE, take forever to destroy, and usually must be destroyed to continue. This gets tiresome fast.

Story: 5/5
Shining Force Neo takes place a couple decades after a war between light and darkness. As usual, the darkness was sealed away but not destroyed and now the darkness is reawakening again. A cliche premise, but well executed with interesting twists and developments. Characters are interesting, if typically anime-ish. I actually felt bad when Max's dad died near the beginning. It's not a Hemmingway novel, but it's as good as you can expect from a video game. My only real complaint is the gameplay will frustrate you so much and the story won't keep you involved enough to keep playing.

Base: 4/5
The "team base" has been in all the Shining Force games and Neo's is particularly good. You can warp back at any time. Although there's very little in base the town attached to it has everything you need, from the "Force Art" engraver (along with levelling up this is how you increase your abilities) to the shop. Nice enough.

Main Character: 4/5
While the story-related aspects of Max are okay (he's the typical average hero) his gameplay-related aspects are also decidedly average. He can equip and use any weapon, cast any spell his weapon has, and equip any armor. It's a tad unrealistic but allows for a great deal of customization.

Total: 15/20

Shining Force Exa
Released in early 2007, Exa is Neo's successor. Unlike Neo, which got a T for Teen, Shining Force Exa is rated E for Everyone. Maybe it's because Toma's dad doesn't die. But I'd like to think the werewolf in bondage would be worth a few points. It doesn't help that the coloration of his facial fur kinda looks like he's wearing a muzzle. But if Xemnas can get past the censors I guess Duga can too.

Gameplay: 4/5
Gameplay is vastly improved over Shining Force Neo. You'll find the same hack-n-slash combat on display here. While monster generators are still in use and prevalent there's nowhere near the numbers there were in Neo and they don't take as long to destroy. Unfortunately, there's your base. It's awesome, but it can be attacked. And it will be. A lot. And you have to switch to your second player to defend it. Sometimes this will even happen when you're in the middle of a boss fight. This gets very annoying.

Story: 3/5
It's possible the story is lighter here because people complained. Like how Aeris's death in Final Fantasy 7 caused Square to turn Final Fantasy 8 into a soap opera. Or how the unrelenting parade of tragedy and maddening despair that was Final Fantasy Tactics caused Square to release what was basically a childrens' book with swords. I don't know. But whatever the case, Exa is a lot lighter. Almost kiddy. Characters are a lot more cliche. Just...meh.

Base: 5/5
Your base is awesome. Everything you need is in the main room so there's no running around town. Better, your base is upgradeable, has a built-in special attack, and a built-in random dungeon generator for when you've played through the game already. Very nice.

Main Characters: 4/5
Your characters are not nearly as customizable as Max was. The boy, Toma, equips swords and the girl, Cyrille, equips crossbows and books and casts magic. On the plus side, you have armor that actually changes your appearance. It did in Neo too, but the change in appearance in Neo was like the change in appearance in Diablo. Barely noticable. It's a lot more noticable here.

Total: 16/20

Verdict: Shining Force Exa Wins!

It was close and in the end Exa was only one point ahead, but in the end Exa wins sheerly for having less monster generators, less annoying five-million-levels-ahead-of-you side areas, and generally just better gameplay. I'd recommend playing Neo for the story, but if you want a game to just play go for Exa.

Youtube Idiot Review: Sedalb

2007-12-19T17:05:00.000-05:00

We all know there's idiots on YouTube. Today I'd like to take the time to pay special honor to a special person in what will possibly become a regular feature here.

Let it be known that I do not mine for idiots, but when I come across them I've got to say something. So here is today's idiot!

Comment on the official teaser for Duke Nukem Forever:

Sedalb

Fuck yea!!!

The Duke never disappoints, the most badass VG character is back. That's right, more badass then Kratos, Cloud, and Master chief put together!

While this one post could likely give me an entire month of updates (especially given how often I update) I'll try to hold back.

Sedalb. The Duke disappointed us for TEN YEARS. Or did you forget that? And most badass? Please. I mean, maybe among your examples.

Kratos? Kratos is a badass. That's why I'm going to assume he doesn't mean the God of War version and is instead referring to Kratos Aurion from Tales of Symphonia. Sure that takes us in the wrong direction but it's funnier.

Cloud is the biggest bitchboy ever put in a video game. Do I even need to explain why? At least he didn't say Vincent. Not that Vincent's not a badass, but we want to avoid cliches.

And Master Chief. Again, not that MC isn't a badass but that's your third example? If you're trying to name hardcore video game heroes you suck AND fail. Kratos I could see. Cloud not at all. But by the time you say Master Chief then you're just blatantly dropping names at random.

Let it be recorded for posterity. The main character from Doom RIPS AND TEARS Duke Nukem a new one based solely on the Doom comic. And Sedalb is STILL A MORON.

Manga Review: Not a Review of Yuu Yuu Hakusho

2007-12-10T17:46:00.001-05:00

HIEI ANNOYS THE CRAP OUT OF ME.

We get it, Hiei. You're the most powerful character in YuYu Hakusho. Ever. Godmoder.

You know, it's okay when he's doing crazy NPC stuff, like when the villain expects to win by numbers and he shows up like "oh, were those your guys I just beat up?" See, then, it's okay because he's just making the fight fair to the heroes.

He annoys me when he tries to be a hero and fight the villains, because that's when he does stupid shit like "oh, by the way I just cut your arm off and you didn't even realize it because I'm that fast."

Kurama's a godmoder too but at least he gets HURT sometimes. I don't think I've ever seen Hiei actually get hurt by an enemy. The only times he's ever been hurt was actually his own stupid fault for trying to be flashier than necesarry. Sometimes I think of stories as RPG games. And Hiei reminds me of that one character in every game that's played by the powergamer who figured out how to kill everything in one hit while still technically being at the same level as everyone else. When he gets hurt, this is the GM trying desperately to find a way to not let him kill the game. "Dude, GM, he just fried a FIRE ELEMENTAL with a giant dragon made of fire." "Oh...shit...um...spot ruling! Your arm is broken!"

Possibly the worst part is no explanation is given for this power. Okay, Kurama's an ancient fox demon and that's why he's powerful. Genkai's an old woman who's mastered martial arts over her life time and has a tremendous understanding of ki. Yusuke is Genkai's disciple. We get that. But Hiei has been stated multiple times to be nothing special. His evil eye is something he acquired, not developed, and his most powerful move isn't even really his own power. As far as we know he's just some punk demon who woke up one day, decided "I'm gonna go beat people up today," then instantly became infinitely more powerful than any demon, human, or god ever.

And that is why I hate Hiei's character.

On an unrelated note, this review marks the first ever book/magazine review on this blog. And that is why I posted to tell you I hate Hiei's character.

EDIT: Also, as my friend pointed out, Hiei is also a cheap Vegeta knockoff. Good God, they even have the same hair. Just to be fair I also have to mention, Hiei vs. Seiryu is the only way it could've happened. They're both instant-death-or-nothing characters. Had anyone else fought Seiryu, Seiryu would have won. It had to be Hiei and it had to be immediate. That said, that does not lessen my annoyance at that gyp of a boss fight. To put it simply, I hate Hiei for the same reason I hate mindflayers in DnD. He has no other settings besides "God" and "Off."

Video Game Review: Jewel Summoner

2007-12-07T14:35:00.001-05:00

Today's game is Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner, an RPG where you capture and control monsters, similar to Pokemon. Unlike Pokemon, Jewel Summoner really sucks.

The story is rather decent if not cliched. I'd like the angst to be turned down, of course. "Tch" is not a sentence. It's not even a thought. Gameplay and presentation is where they lose all the marbles, though.

The art is rather good, admittedly, but all of your attacks look the same. How many times do I need to look at the same burst of fire/water/ice/whatever? Sound and music are okay. At least 75% of the game is voice acted, save for interactions with random townsfolk which are text. Problem? They fall short on the voice acting a LOT. It's passable at best and terrible at worst. Video game makers, listen to me. The Zelda games have never used voice acting and they're still good. Voice acting is good, but not a neccesity. If you can't do it right then just don't bother.

The monsters on display here are uninspired and rather lame. There's not a hint of the variety seen in Pokemon or even Dragon Warrior Monsters. We've got several varieties of kirin, a few dragons, some wolves... a caterpillar... turtles... come on. Even Dragon Warrior Monsters does better than that.

On the topic of gameplay, what's up with the lag? Making a crappy game is one thing, but seriously what's the deal? Video game lag is forgivable sometimes; a high-end game ported to a handheld is one thing, as is a computer game where the specs for every system are different so programmers have no choice but to guess at what sort of resources they'll be dealing with. But this is a PSP only game. The programmers KNEW what the capabilities of the system they'd be dealing with were and purposefully designed a game that the system couldn't handle.

KR Rating from The Future: [2] BAD

Documentary Review: Okay, We Get It.

2007-12-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

You don't like video games.

Look, folks. I have nothing to say about this honestly. I've said it all before and let's face it, none of these people are going to read what I'm writing. But I promised my friend I'd do it so here we go.

Ahem...

SHUT UP. YOU'RE WRONG AND NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY ANYWAY.

"Violence has always been with us, but we've recognized it as a vice, not a virtue."

Oh? Were we recognizing violence as a vice back in Ancient Rome where they forced slaves to brutally dismember and kill each other for the peoples' amusement? Were we recognizing violence as a vice in Sengoku era Japan when it was considered preferable to disembowel yourself rather than accept defeat to a worthy adversary? What about when we stone a woman in Afghanistan because one inch of her wrist was showing for all of one second? How about the sacking of Carthage when they sprinkled the earth with salt to make sure the land itself would die? Several crusades where men butchered women and children in the name of God all over some grudge between two kings?

"We don't want to regulate games or force you to use a ratings system."

And yet you instituted a system where a team of people who would never even play games on their own because they hate them are allowed to have unchecked and unlimited censor control over this art form. A system where a game can be rated based on illegal modifications other people have made, and where a single man can defy the Constitution of the United States by banning free expression. An AO rating means a game can not be sold in stores, which is an instant death sentence for any game, and the Game Nazis at ESRB can hand out this rating at will.

"If men could sit in front of a flight simulator and learn enough about flying planes to fly them into the world trade center then what do you think will happen when a 9 year old sits in front of a first person shooter that rewards him for killing cops?"

Ah yes, Random Cop Killer 64. A rare game, mostly because it doesn't exist. People like this have these crazy ideas of what games are that are totally incorrect. It's like when I was a kid and my dad tried to tell me all rap music was about men smoking weed with their mothers.

What they also forget is that video games didn't make 9/11 happen. The hijackers may have learned to fly planes from playing flight simulator games, I don't know. But they didn't get the idea from the game. They had the idea, the game gave them the knowhow to execute it. Knowhow they also could have gotten from any book or instructor. And Hell, I'll be totally honest with you here: if you're planning on crashing it anyway I can't imagine flying a plane would be all that difficult. You could probably just wing it, considering the only really hard stuff is the takeoffs and landings, neither of which they had to do.

"There's going to be a Columbine-like event, maybe to the factor of ten. Then there's going to be a human cry within the Halls of Congress to ban these games altogether."

And then beautiful unicorns will dance through the meadows and it will rain sugarplums and pixie sticks! Oh, and while we're in Fantasyland, let's have Jennifer Lopez suck my dick and give me fifty million dollars.

By the way, if this is the kind of stuff you fantasize about, you need some rehab, dude.

Top 5 List: Top 5 Ways to Survive a Fiction Story

2007-12-01T02:18:00.000-05:00

So you're a fictional character who's finally gotten a story of your own. Great! But studies have shown that many fictional characters who appear in stories end up dieing. But now you don't have to! Just follow this simple advice.

5. Don't be sweet, cute, or funny.
The best way to make the audience hate the villain is to have the villain murder the sweet, innocent cutie. Meanwhile, the jerk everyone hates lives forever. Don't be likable or you will die tragically.

4. Don't burn bridges with the hero.
If you absolutely positively HAVE to betray the hero, don't be a douche. If the phrase "I always hated you" even comes into your brain you'd might as well save us all time and just kill yourself.

3. Don't set up a situation where your death would be ironic.
There was some really crappy movie which name I can't be bothered to remember where one of the characters once said "don't say you'll be right back or you won't." Or something along those lines. Point is, if you ever set up a situation where your death would be an ironic coincidence you will die.

2. Don't be expendable or important.
Above all else, make certain that the enemy knows you're important. If you seem like a random mook you will be killed and no one will care. Just the same, make sure the enemy knows you're expendable. If they think you're important they'll kill you. It's a little arbitrary and totally impossible but there you go.

1. Sleep with the writer.
No fatties.

Video Game Review: Ghost of a Good Premise

2007-11-25T19:01:00.001-05:00

Today's game review is of the Playstation 2 title Phantom Brave. Released nearly four years ago (let it never be said I'm not on the cutting edge of the hottest new games) Phantom Brave is one of those games that's a little hard to parse.

In Phantom Brave you play a chroma, a person with ties to the spirit world who uses them to fight. But your chroma isn't like the others who use their spirit energy to blow crap up and do cool stuff. Your girl's power is to summon the spirits of the dead to fight for her.

On paper, this is a good game. The spirits you summon can be merged with other spirits (typically you would merge items onto characters to give the characters new attacks) and upgraded, allowing a good deal of customization.

Phantoms, once created, are summoned into battle by confining them to pieces of the environment, which will alter their stats based on what you confine them to. For example, summoning onto a rock will give the character increased HP and attack, but decreased speed, wheras a flower might give increased speed and intelligence, but decreased attack. This, along with a limited summon time for all troops, means you'll end up needing to use a lot of strategy.

Better, a random dungeon feature allows for extended gameplay beyond the end of the game.

Unfortunately, without spending dozens of weeks building your party you will find most fights completely impossible. Phantoms, dungeons, and equipment are all created randomly, so you'll have to go in and out of the menu option dozens upon dozens of times to get a good one. And oh yeah, customization takes a LONG TIME. Even the simplest of customizations will cost hundreds of mana and bordreax (the game's currency) and, oh yes, you won't GET mana much faster than maybe 20 or 30 a battle and after healing you'll likely end up with no money left. So unless you have the willpower to keep playing this game for years and years you'll pretty much be stuck with a lame party for the game.

The random dungeon feature, while described as "the best way to get money and mana" actually COSTS more money than it earns, since you'll have to pay thousands upon thousands of bordreax JUST TO LEAVE WHEN YOU'RE DONE.

The storyline, of course, WILL piss you off. Your main character catches more crap than a port-a-potty from every single other character and the game through no fault of her own and JUST SITS THERE AND TAKES IT. And even when you finally get to beat up the people who hurt you, they just sort of ignore you and walk away. This is just because the game is apparently not allowed to let you feel any satisfaction with the story at all.

This game has a good premise and can be a good game, but when every single element of the game seems purposely designed to piss you the fuck off it's really hard to care.

KR Rating from The Future: [4] GOOD

Again, I gave the game crap, but when I look back now I think a lot of it might just be the fact that I didn't understand the system. As I said, it is a really cool idea and the spirit merging system provides an amazing amount of customization. For example, you could merge the spirit of a fire-elemental sword onto a character spirit in order to give him increased strength and fire-based attacks. You could even go so far as to merge a potted plant onto a character to give him plant-element moves.

Really, though, the storyline is extremely frustrating nonetheless, and is the one reason this game just can't receive a 5 no matter what.

Website Review: Better than a Dictionary

2007-11-23T11:14:00.000-05:00

The words of the day are Free Rice dot com.

FreeRice.com is a website where you try to match vocabulary words to their synonyms. As you play, vocabulary words get harder and harder. The game itself is rather simplistic and sometimes their synonyms are incorrect. But that's not really the point of the website.

What is the point? Unless you checked out the link you're probably wondering why a vocabulary game is called Free Rice. Well, the reason is because for every word you match correctly the site will donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations, to be sent to third world countries. And before you ask, a quick check on Snopes would seem to show they are indeed legitimate.

Now, normally I'm against these sorts of sites. They encourage complacency. Why donate real money, food, or time when you can just play word games for a minute and get the same cozy feeling, after all? But when it is this easy it's hard not to jump at the chance to play for a few hundred grains of rice. Just remember that even if they're real, they're not a substitute for actual aid. I'll never tell anyone to give until it hurts, but give what you can.

Video Game Review: Dracula X Chronicles

2007-11-21T18:47:00.001-05:00

One of the things I like about Castlevania is the multitude of enemies with interesting attacks and tactics. In level 3 you'll find the Armor Knight, an enemy in armor that weilds a spear. In a normal game, a spear-weilding enemy would walk around and damage you if you touch it. In a good game, he might jab a little. In Dracula X Chronicles he will stab in four directions, slice for extra reach, and block your attacks. And that's a random mook.

Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP has a simple enough premise. It's a 2.5d remake of the previously Japan-only Castlevania game Chi no Rondo, or Rondo of Blood.

The good is obvious. Enemy AI is good. Presentation is beautiful. All the visuals have been rerendered and voices rerecorded.

The bad news is noticable only after you play a little while. While the presentation has gotten a revamp gameplay really hasn't. And that's not entirely a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Castleroid-maniac or anything. But what the old school fanboys sometimes fail to realize is that old games were not hard because of smart enemies or anything. They were hard because they were poorly programmed with near-impossible jumps en masse, tiny hitboxes on attacks, and often players would die simply by random happenstance such as an enemy that just happens to turn right before you jump or an enemy respawning right where you're standing. Dracula X Chronicles doesn't really change that. Controls are VERY unforgiving and this game will require lots of luck and lots of tries to beat, assuming you can stand the annoying game over screen which, oh yeah, forces you to look at it for a good minute or two.

There's three unlockable games included as well: the original unaltered Rondo of Blood, Symphony of the Night (the first Castleroid and still widely regarded as the best game of the franchise), and a game called Peke that was originally an add-on for Chi no Rondo.

My advice: unlock Symphony of the Night as early as possible and play the shit out of it. You'll enjoy it a lot more than the game they wanted you to play. Hell, if any Castlevania game SHOULD have gotten this 2.5 update it's Symphony of the Night.

KR Rating from The Future: [4] GOOD

Television Review: Cops Gone Wild

2007-11-05T17:57:00.000-05:00

You know, I've seen some fucked up shit on Cops before, but at least it's usually from the perps.

I don't think I've ever seen anything more fucked up then the time they tried to arrest a woman simply for...well, basically for not wanting to die. The police went to a grocery store parking lot and held a fake drug deal and when a random bystander didn't immediately jump in and try to stop it they jumped her and told her they were going to impound her car. When she told them she needed the car to take her kids to and from school they threatened to take her kids away and told her she was lucky she wasn't being arrested. For what? Being intelligent enough to know that an unarmed 30-year-old woman isn't a match for 4 heavily armed drug dealers?

Of course, I've lived in the United States long enough to know a good portion of our laws are only meant to keep people from having fun, so it's not that surprising to see the cops do stupid shit when pot or hookers are involved. Shit like pulling over a man and arresting him simply for being in a part of town known for hookers and drug deals. I'm not saying he wasn't after a prostitute, but when you haven't seen the guy do anything you can't arrest him for what he might do. You're not Dick Tracy. It doesn't work for you.

Of course police are also not paramedics so watching them stand around and question a guy who's just been shot in the back four times isn't that surprising, given the ambulance wasn't there yet.

It's all kind of expected. We know the police fuck up sometimes. But guys, when you show ALL THREE of these in one episode, it's going to take a lot more than saving a family of cute* racoons stuck in someone's chimney to save your reputation.

*Also, guys? Racoons are not cute. They're filthy vermin. They are highly aggressive and will attack people and pets, often spreading deadly diseases such as rabies. They break into homes and businesses, causing property damage in their search for food. In the end, you just released a bunch of horrible little monsters back into the world to cause further pain. Way to go.

Video Game Review: Monster Hunter Freedom 2

2007-10-01T22:15:00.001-04:00

Yeah, I figured it's time I actually do a real review for a change. And this time it's about Monster Hunter Freedom 2 for the PSP. Monster Hunter Freedom 2 is an odd game to parse. There are few games as beautifully presented as Monster Hunter Freedom 2. There are few games as fun, deep, and rewarding as Monster Hunter 2. There are few games as brain-crunchingly annoying that will keep you screaming at the top of your lungs for the creators of the game to die and burn in Hell as Monster Hunter 2.

Don't get me wrong. As I stated, Monster Hunter Freedom 2 is a very beautifully presented game, with truely breath-taking environments, realistic looking monsters, and a very good audio track that adds to the gameplay without distracting from it. The game itself is also truely massive and reqarding with over 250 missions, 70 monsters, 700 weapons, and 1400 pieces of armor. This can in fact be a very fun game.

On the downside the game itself presents very little new if you've already played Monster Hunter or Monster Hunter Freedom. In all honesty Monster Hunter Freedom 2 plays more like an expansion than a new game. Not that that makes it bad in any way and in fact I would encourage fans of Monster Hunter to buy this.

That said, Monster Hunter -the entire series- is also one of the most mind-numbingly frustrating games ever. Until you have good equipment you will find every boss monster to be so vastly overpowered as to be almost unbeatable. And don't think items will help. (Why must I pose for five seconds every time I drink a health potion, Capcom?) I can not stress the following enough: if you are the kind of person who has a tendency to throw the controller while playing a game DO NOT BUY, RENT, OR PLAY MONSTER HUNTER. You will end up with a broken PSP and an aneurysm.

KR Rating from The Future: [4] GOOD

Six years later, and they won't shutup.

2007-09-17T09:35:00.000-04:00

I was hoping I could ignore September 11th this year, but it's now September 17th and people are still talking to me about so I guess I'll take this time to finally say how I feel.

September 11th was a bad thing. Obviously. It's always bad when people die, especially in large numbers. But I can not stand the reactions to it, be it the smug superiority or the hushed reverence. Let's take some time to debunk some of the more common bullshit.

We never saw it coming!
In 1992 Osama bin Laden bombed a hotel in Yemen in an attempt to kill American troops, but only succeeding in killing an Austrian guest at the hotel and a muslim employee. In response he issued a fatwa, stating that anyone near his enemy becomes his enemy.

In 1998, he and Al-Zwahiri co-signed a fatwa stating it was the sworn duty of all muslims to kill all Americans and anyone near Americans.

In 1993 the World Trade Center was hit by a car bomb in its basement, planted by muslim extremists. Osama bin Laden is reported as announcing afterwards that he would attack the towers himself and when he did they would fall.

Prior to September 11th, muslim hatred of the United States grew more and more. Jihadist leaders, including Osama bin Laden, issued repeated threats and demands which were all ignored, leading to escalated threats and demands.

So when you say we never saw this coming, I'm forced to ask...did you think he was joking?

This was the greatest tragedy in world/American history!
If only Osama bin Laden would do it 100 more times then the number of deaths would be ALMOST equal to those from the Rwanda massacre. You know, that thing you never heard about?

To put it even more into perspective, we'd need ten 9/11 type events in one year just to equal the number of people who die every year from drunk driving accidents.

The 9/11 attacks were a drop in the pond. They were the worldwide equivalent of getting a bruise on the playground. And yet six years later you're still moping about September 11th like it was the single greatest horror in world history.

If you want to know just exactly how small it was, take a look at wikipedia's list of wars and disasters by death toll and remember this: September 11th only killed 2,752 people.

Bill Clinton never did anything to catch Osama bin Laden.
Untrue. Bill Clinton did a LOT to catch Osama bin Laden, he just didn't base his entire presidency on it like George Bush has. Osama was indicted by grand jury twice in 1998 following his fatwa and first few successful attacks on Americans and in 1999 was added to the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives list.

In 1998 President Clinton ordered a freeze on all assets possibly linked to bin Laden and signed an executive order for his assassination, almost starting an international incident when a cruise missile attack failed to kill bin Laden but succeeded in killing 19 civilians. After multiple attempts at assassination and extradition failed, Clinton convinced the UN to impose economic sanctions against Afghanistan in 1999 until they released bin Laden to US custody.

Muslims hate America because they're evil/jealous/whatever other nonsense.
Nonsense. Muslims hate America for a good reason. Following World War II the western world became obsessed with boundaries and stability in countries. We went to the middle east and set up national boundaries, forcing rival factions who had previously kept to themselves to share countries, thus causing unrest. We overthrew their kings, threw out their entire way of life, and installed brutal, tyrannical puppet dictators loyal to us and armed them with weapons of mass destruction to use against their own people. To enforce the new boundaries we desecrated muslim holy ground by building military bases on holy sites. Finally, we gave their land and their holy city to a group of people who they have hated for thousands of years.

As if that's not enough, America is simply full of itself. There is a willfull ignorance of everything around us and yet a determination to change it anyway. Furthermore, America thinks it can police the world even though its morality and spirituality are in the gutter. And THAT is why a third of the world absolutely despises us.

Video Game Review: More greatest hits: Maverick Hunter X.

2007-09-12T10:08:00.001-04:00

It's Mega Man X! The first one! Again! Yes, Capcom has gone back to its roots. Anyone who says "No, they did that in Powered Up." is going to make me really angry and I'll whine and cry and storm away and you'll be left going "What! What did I say!"

The entire game has been redone, although levels and enemies are mostly the same, all the sprites have been made into 3D models, and the backgrounds, while still flat, are now beautifully rendered. The game has also had lots of plot added, with cutscenes and boss speeches. And because I know it'll make the old fans like me happy, I'd like to report that gameplay has been left the same. And once you beat the game you unlock a short, 20 minute anime movie about X's days as a Maverick Hunter and Sigma's descent into maverickdom.

Also, Chill Penguin apparently has the voice box of Gilbert Gottfried. First Iago and now Chill Penguin. I'm beginning to suspect something.

If there's a con to this game it's that it's very short and the fact that it's easier than the original means that you'll likely beat it quickly, especially if you played the original as much as I did. To remedy this, Capcom took a page from HAL's book on extending playability by adding Vile mode, a mode where you play as Megaman's Boba Fett-lookalike enemy, Vile. Unlike Meta Knightmare, however, Vile mode has new cutscenes, redisgned levels, and a vastly different gameplay style which will make Vile mode actually worth playing through to the end.

Speaking of Vile mode, anyone who still doubts the sexual orientation of...well, pretty much anyone involved with the X franchise ever and thinks one or two of them might be straight, will be shut up right quick when they get a look at the...loving detail put into Vile's ass. And since Vile's stand animation has his back to you when facing right (opposed to X who turns his back on you when facing left, which you rarely do) you'll be seeing an awful lot of Vile's ass. Don't think I'm happy about that.

All in all, Capcom actually did a VERY good job. Hey, say what you will about Capcom. Lord knows I have. But I've always said that they are NOT incapable of producing quality work, they just rarely choose to do it. They tend to lose sight of their goals and let their games slip into stagnation quite often (ie. look at the huge gap in quality between MMX4 and MMX6), and their worst games have been truely horrible. But there's two sides to every coin and their good games can in fact be counted among the greatest games of all time.

It's just too bad most of their effort went into VILE'S ASS.

KR Rating from The Future: [5] GREAT

What pole?

2007-09-04T07:27:00.001-04:00

The second most hilarious thing about this picture is that the name of the boat is the Temporary Insanity.

The first most hilarious thing about this picture is that the name of the boat is the Temporary Insanity II. Did you wrap the first one around a pole too, jackass?

I know, I know, there's the obvious question: are jackhammers worse than the cigarette she's puffing on. The saddest thing about this picture, though, is that this was taken just a few blocks from my house.

Top 5 List: What I've Learned That the Villains Haven't.

2007-09-02T02:32:00.000-04:00

5. The arms race will never work in your advantage.
As soon as you come up with a weapon that the heroes can not stand up to their tech team will come up with something even better that you can't stand up to. The trick is, don't go bigger, go different. Awesome is hereby defined as someone who leads the heroes through a vast dungeon filled with fire and lava, then after they've got enough energy resistance to make themselves practically immune to fire, hits them with LIGHTNING for instant death.

4. The size of the force against you is inversely proportionate to how scared you should be.
If Saddam Hussein could fuck with the UN for years there's no reason to call a red alert when they come after you. Movies and real life have taught us that the heriarchy of effectiveness goes from Masked Vigilante to Secret Agent to Navy Seal to Suspended Officer to Detroit PD to LAPD to FBI. By the time you've got the UN or Interpol involved an old woman in a wheelchair with a cap gun is a more formidable opponent. The true threat to you is not the army, but a small force infiltrating your compound and killing you in your sleep.

With that in mind, let's work on your security. Ventilation systems should be too small for a human to fit through. The door should not be guarded by idiots who let in anyone wearing the right uniform, but a DNA scanner which can determine 100% who is and isn't one of your guys. Finally, security cameras should be everywhere in your compound. They should face the correct way at all times and should be shielded against electromagnetism and whatever other clever devices the enemy has.

3. You're better off as a human.
Be it Voltron, Power Rangers, or any other show where humanoid villains assume giant monster forms, it's always the same. They're almost always winning when they decide to take giant monster form. At that point the fight usually lasts about 30 more seconds before the villain's horrifyingly brutal death.

Here's another thought. When Voltron Force assembles, or the Power Rangers form the Megazord, that's when you get OUT of giant form and then fly your tiny ass over there, get inside, and blow them up with a nuclear bomb or something. Those giant robots are packed with weapons that can kill giant enemies, but nothing against tiny ones. Seriously, haven't you seen Star Wars? Also, they probably won't even look for tiny you. They'll be looking around saying "Stay tight, gang. He must've turned invisible. He's right nearby, I can smell it! Hey, what's this? He's on the Megazo--" BANG!

My realizing this does, however, make me exactly as smart as the Green Ranger. One of the few good villains out there.

2. Your underlings are not mooks.
I know it might not be evil enough, but your underlings would be more loyal if you didn't view them as expendable. Also, it would be cheaper and more effective to keep one group of hirelings kept up, healthy, well-equipped, and well-trained, rather than just hiring on meat puppets by the truckload. Replacing your workforce with robots or zombies may solve the first problem (loyalty), but it exacerbates the second. Zombies are known to be weak and easily burned. Also, they stink and tend to rot and fall apart. Well preserved, a zombie might last you a month. And robots? The construction of one robot alone is the same as a year's upkeep for 100 humans. And that's not even counting the upkeep for said robot which is even more than a person would cost.

Also, on the topic of Star Wars...how are all the Storm Troopers terrible shots? Really, how? THEY'RE CLONES. They're genetically engineered in a lab. You can give them ANY TRAITS YOU WANT and you chose to make them completely skilless with the only weapon you give them? That's RETARDED. (Also, aren't they cloned from the best shot in the entire galaxy?)

1. When your enemy has racked up a monstrous body count before you, a non-violent resolution is usually in order.
Maybe Superman and Batman have codes against killing, but when you're going up against a foe who has a history of all his villains dying in humiliating and ironic ways, you don't want to invoke the fight-to-the-finish unless...well, never. You WILL DIE. If you're nice enough not to actively seek the hero's death he might return the favor. I'd mention something about movie action heroes like Rambo or Steven Seagal (I use the actor's name because I can't think of any of his characters' names and let's face it, they're all the same anyway) but they'll probably kill you anyway.

I'd actually like to see a plotline in a strip like Dick Tracy or Phantom where the villain, rather than fighting to the death, just suddenly dropped his gun and surrendered, just so I could watch the hero stare dumbfounded. The bad guy could probably just escape right there as the hero tried desperately to figure out what to do in this situation.

WooTBASH: Week 4

2007-08-18T00:44:00.000-04:00

It's been one season and four more weeks and it still amazes me how a bunch of real people who we're watching live somehow manage to react to the animations and greenscreen effects.

The most notable part of this episode, of course, is that Stan Lee is an amazing sellout. This episode revolved almost entirely around tracking down a villain who stole an Esurance check. They were even "aided" on the mission by short animated scenes from their mascot, Erin Esurance. Tune in next week when the Geico cavemen attempt to kill Snuggle Bear. Can our heroes stop them in time to have hamburgers with Ronald McDonald? Spoiler alert: the Hamburglar may have already stolen the burgers.

Of course, Basura went home because she ignored a woman who lost her kid. Stan, get a clue. Hiding a person who has lost a child in the crowd of people to test the heroes' heroism only works when you haven't already done in five thousand times before. Yet somehow Basura still failed. It's unfortunate, but won't get in the way of Stan Lee's master plan to create the perfect superhero by frankensteining together Basura's chest, Parthenon's ass, the Defuser's biceps, and Hyper-Strike's hair. I'm not sure where the head, torso, forearms, or legs will come from. But to complete the analogy he'll need the brain of the stupidest contestant: Ms. Limelight.

I actually find the ending teaser kind of interesting: Dr. Dark has acquired Stan Lee's DNA from his pencil, presumably so he can create Anti-Stan Lee (Eel Nats?) who will draw supervillain comics. Perhaps this will fuel the spinoff series, Who Wants to be a SuperVillain. Is it just me or would that be a way more badass show?

Video Game Review: Suckitude reaches level 10.

2007-08-16T23:10:00.002-04:00

And after I heard so much good about you too, Dungeons and Dragons Tactics. You disappoint me. Where to even start?

Character models are ugly. I mean really ugly. I mean giant bloated head ugly. Literally.

The storyline is lame and since cutscenes are non-alignment specific don't be surprised when your chaotic evil sorceror talks like an honorable knight of virtue and justice at all times.

I'd rather not talk about gameplay but I suppose I have to. DnD fans might like this game, which stays true to DnD rules. Unfortunately, it allows no multiclassing or prestige classes, the two additions to normal DnD which allow the most amount of character customizing. Wizards and psions are not allowed to be specialists in this game either. This is okay for wizards, but it renders the psion UNPLAYABLE, since all of the good psionic powers belong to specialists only.

Then there's the inability to sue potions on your team mates, or anyone besides yourself, most likely a sad excuse for forcing you to use clerics. I actually looked in the book because I was certain there was no way they could be stupid enough to make you unable to heal your own teammates. I turned to a section marked "Restoring Hit Points" and found that it consisted almost entirely of the following quote.

Hit points decrease due to attacks and increase due to healing.

Thanks, asshole.

Annotation from The Future:

Those of you who aren't into pen-and-paper gaming might not know this, so let me let you in on a secret. There's a common prejudice among tabletop gamers that computer RPGs such as Final Fantasy and Baldur's Gate all suck. Basically, the belief is that they're all just shallow and pathetic attempts at recreating tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons in a simpler form that's easier for stupid people to use and enjoy. This prejudice is so widespread it's even reflected in the pronunciation of the acronym CRPG as "crappage."

While I don't share that prejudice myself, as near as I can tell the makers of D&D Tactics were trying their hardest to prove it correct.

KR Rating: [1] HORRIBLE

Television Review: How to get more sucking up in your roast.

2007-08-16T02:17:00.002-04:00

Ever since Comedy Central took over the roasts from the Friar's Club they've gone steadily downhill. Does anyone else remember back when they were roasting people like Hugh Hefner and Chevy Chase? Back then the roasts were funny, and more than that they actually felt like an honor.

The first roast Comedy Central did, Dennis Leary, was still almost watchable. But even then, it was obvious that it had immediately degenerated into toilet humor and corporate nepotism, with every single roaster being somehow involved with Comedy Central programming. I watched the roasts of Jeff Foxworthy and Pamela Anderson mostly out of curiosity. My curiosity almost got me to watch the Roast of Flavor Flav too, until about three minutes in when he descended to the stage on wires and lead the audience in chanting his name. I was then able to thank Comedy Central's shameless ass-kissing for reminding me why I hate the roasts and turn it off.

I spent the time I would have wasted watching this dreg by debating with myself what kind of celebrity Flavor is. It was a tossup between D-List for "Does anyone know who the hell this guy is?" and W-List for "Why should I care?" but in the end I think I made the right decision when I went with F-List for "Fuck this crackaddict waterhead up the ass with his own viking helmet."

I really liked the commercials too. Have you seen the spelling bee commercial, where Flavor "humorously" misspells boy as "BOOOYYYEEEE!" and it's declared correct? Here's some more spelling humor: Flavor Flav is actually spelled F-U-C-K-I-N-G L-O-S-E-R.

And that's how you do a roast, you pansy ass punkbitches.

Annotation From the Future:

Actually, it's even worse if you know who Flavor Flav is. Seriously, how does a person conjure an entire career out of being the annoying guy who screeches in the background of Public Enemy songs? From what I can tell, he must appeal to the public desire to be stupid and annoying without any consequences, because the idea that people actually think he's cool is too sad for words.

Television Review: WooTBASH.

2007-08-10T03:38:00.000-04:00

As you assuredly know, back in July I made a post mocking the contestants on this season of Who Wants to Be A Superhero, hereafter known as Wootbash or "that superhero show". Well, the show's gone through three episodes now and I have to admit that I wasn't really that surprised to find that this year's contestants weren't as lame as I thought they'd be. That said, there's some things I like and dislike about this season.

I like that the show seems to be running longer. What I mean by that is, in the first season they ran two eliminations an episode and the show went for six episodes. (Presumably because they wanted to do an entire season and weren't sure anyone would watch.) The result was most of the airtime was spent on challenges and we never got to really know any of the contestants. This year with the exception of the third episode there's been one elimination an ep, thus stretching it out and giving us more time to get to know the people.

The bad news is that the challenges seem to be edited more erratically. In the first season every contestant was shown one by one and so we got to really see who was doing well in what way. In this season it flashes back and forth between each contestant and it can be hard to really get a grasp on what's going on or how each person is doing.

With all that said, here's my current take on each of the cast.

The Defuser
I kinda like him, kinda don't. As a police detective (both the character and the real guy) he has a real take charge personality which I must admit I find appealing. Unfortunately, when he goes into "cop mode" he has a tendency to miss important details and he sometimes forgets that he's talking to real people. He has a tendency to treat everyone like a suspect and as a result he comes off as kind of an ass.

Ms. Limelight
I'm not sure if it was the inordinate amount of tanning or the peroxide in her hair but something fried her brain. The woman is a ditz. When Stan Lee asked about her character to get direction in designing her new costume she couldn't even name a single one of her superpowers. She was eliminated this episode for being generally cowardly and cracking under pressure like a lightbulb in a vice grip. How the hell did she even get on the show?

Hyper-Strike
Hyper-Strike is the kind of guy who you're almost certain you'll hate until you actually get to know him. He's actually a pretty cool dude, even if he is as my friend says, a "yuppie ninja." Stan Lee was kind of a prick when Hyper-Strike said he didn't like his costume, which is very confusing given how upset he was at Ty'Veculus last year for lying about not liking the costume. You just can't win with Mr. Lee, can you?

Whip-Snap
I don't know much about her still. But that's because she never really does anything. Sidekick material at best.

Mindset
He was eliminated because he chose to have his entire team be attacked by bees rather than intentionally misspell a word. It's kind of cool that he was willing to face his fears and stand up for truth. But still, what a dick.

Basura
I actually do really like her basic concept. Most superheroes are super wealthy and have tons of stuff, but she lives in a dumpster and has to make everything herself. Nonetheless, much like Whip-Snap she never really seems to DO anything.

Mr. Mitzvah
Kind of an interesting backstory here. Mr. Mitzvah's creater, Ivan Wilzig, is actually super-rich in real life and is semi-famous for his charity, the Peaceman Foundation. Apparently something of an eccentric, he has taken to dressing up in a cape and calling himself Peaceman. He got on the show as Peaceman but due to conflict of interests (he didn't want to give up the copyrights to Peaceman) he changed the character to Mr. Mitzvah. Surprisingly, given he's a famous charity worker, he is a humongous douchebag and was eliminated for general dickishness.

Braid
Eliminated because in a challenge to get information from a break-in victim she turned retarded and spent the entire time talking about her powers instead of, you know, HELPING. Aside from that, she was mostly just there and had no real character traits at all, much like the other ladies.

Parthenon
Hold on, my gaydar just exploded. We need you to turn it down a few clicks, Parthenon. We need you at a 10, right now you're at about five trillion.

Hygena
I said she was this season's Fat Momma but she's not anywhere near as likable or even as interesting as Fat Momma.

That's actually another major problem this time around. I mean, what's with these people? Last time they had real character. Whatever you say or however you feel about Fat Momma you have to admit that she had a very distinct personality. The final three: Feedback, Major Victory, and Fat Momma all had very distinct personalities and very good motivations and I think most people can say they really liked them. With a few exceptions, this year all the girls are totally bland and all the guys are dicks. HOPEFULLY we'll see more character as the show progresses but as of now I can't say I really care for any of these people.

Video Game Review: Irrationality to follow.

2007-08-09T00:19:00.000-04:00

I'm back with a semi-review, and for once I have nothing mean to say. Rather, I wanted to talk for a moment about a particular aspect of many games: the irrationally unlocked secret. As far as I can tell the first example of this was a rumored secret in Final Fantasy where if you clicked on flower pots it would unlock a powerful weapon in a hidden dungeon. It wasn't true, of course, but it started a trend.

So many games had insane secrets like this. In the NES days a lot of games had hidden areas that you could only enter by walking into random walls and which contained hidden messages from the game's designers. (Fun Fact: This trend started because back in the early NES days video games were still thought of as pointless time-wasters and so it was considered in bad taste for programmers to put any sort of credit on their work. Editors would often even go so far as to remove credit sequences from games. That practice changed, obviously, and many games just used it to provide fun and unique messages or as a throwback to that time.)

The Guardian Legend took the idiotic secret to a whole new level by programming their game so that at one point you can only proceed with the game by mindlessly walking into and out of an unnamed room something like 20 times.

Even today games like Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin contain insane secrets. In PoR, the secret is that if you kill 1,000 of the Old Axe Armor enemies you unlock a special mode where you can play as one. I actually kind of wonder how people found out about this, given the Old Axe Armor is a rare enemy. Most likely Konami released the information themselves, but I like to think it was just some bored kid who decided to kill 1,000 of every enemy just to see what would happen.

I actually kind of like these secrets because they force you, even if just for a little bit, to be retarded and do things no sane person should do in exchange for prizes. It's kind of like being on your very own mini reality show, only with crappier prizes. I would say with less human interaction but no one willing to humiliate themselves on national TV like that still deserves to be called human.

Hmm. So much for not saying anything mean.

Baby Review: My new nephew.

2007-08-08T05:33:00.001-04:00

In case you're wondering, the reason I haven't posted lately is because I have a brand new baby nephew. His name is Matthew Logan, he weighs eight pounds and one ounce, and he was born on August 6th. He sleeps a lot and scrunches up his face sometimes. I give him a 4 out of 5.

Annotation from The Future:
My (now ex-)sister-in-law was a bitch. That's all I have to say about that.

Top 5 List: Top 5 Catchphrases That Need To Die.

2007-07-28T01:24:00.000-04:00

5. "The problems of the future, today!"
I have to state the obvious, of course, that the phrase this comes from, "the innovations of the future, today" is nonsense. If it's here today then it's the innovation of today. That just makes this phrase worse. I'll admit that the first time I heard this I thought it was kinda clever. The problem? According to Google, so did 15,800 other people. It's not funny anymore, guys. You killed it. To death.

4. "It's over NINE THOUSAAAAND!"
Yes, I think Dragonball is retarded too. No, that doesn't make it awesome. This was funny to make fun of for a while. But then those bastards that I call "people" came along. First there were the 500 different cuts on YouTube. Then there were the music videos. Then the montages. Then the parodies. Then the parodies of the parodies. Then the parodies of the parodies of the parodies. File this one with "All Your Base" and anything ever said in a Monty Python movie ever. They'll all be Exhibit A in the Case of Hell Really is Other People.

3. "SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE!"
File this one with "Aeris dies," because it goes for that phrase too and all phrases like it. It started out as a spoiler shouted out to piss off hardcore fans, long after the point when hardcore fans could concievably not know about it. Then people started using it as a catchphrase. Why? God only knows. Or the devil, since he's most likely the one behind it. I don't think anyone ever thought it was really cool or funny or even that irritating, honestly. It's just kinda dumb.

2. "Worst. _____. EVER!"
We get it! You watch the Simpsons and you think something sucks! SHUTUP!

1. "You know what happens to a ___ that gets hit by ___? Same as everything else!"
The first time I heard this was in the X-Men movie and I had to think about it for about five minutes before I got what they were trying to say. That's how lame this phrase is. It's so lame, it made me feel like I did something wrong. After I figured it out I spent the next five minutes trying to figure out what imbecile thought this phrase was awesome. It was bad enough when it was just one line in a stupid movie. But then I saw it in Bob and George. And then I saw it in an RPG. And then I saw one of my "friends" quoting it out of context. And that's when I killed him, your honor.

On a side note, in the movie Storm says this when she blows up the Toad with a lightning bolt. But don't the X-Men have a code against killing? I'm pretty sure they do. And I'm pretty sure blasting someone with lightning and blowing them off the top of a skyscraper-sized statue is lethal, frog powers or no.

Television Review: Who Wants to Humilate Themselves on National TV?

2007-07-21T22:14:00.000-04:00

It's just a week or so from the beginning of the second season of Who Wants To Be A Superhero, so I thought I'd give my thoughts on this year's picks.

The Defuser
He has darkvision 60' and light blindness. He's an albino drow. Read that bit about how he loves non-lethal weaponry and refuses to use firearms. Clearly he took Stan Lee's denouncement of Iron Enforcer a little too seriously.

Ms. Limelight
The bastard daughter of Cell Phone Girl and Feedback. She has all of the best abilities of all of Hollywood's action stars, which basically means she can do anything as long as it's A. required by the plot and B. badass and preferably followed by a snappy one-liner. Her weakness is that she has weak legs. As the show's website says "If someone tells her to "break a leg," it really breaks!" So in other words, she's exactly as powerful as any normal movie star but with a horribly debilitating, easily discovered weakness? Lame.

Hyper-Strike
Dear Hyper-Strike: you're auditioning for Stan Lee, not Akira Toriyama. Cut down on the anime stuff. Not that I don't like anime, but there's a time and a place for everything. Including cannibalism.

His weakness is that he needs nine hours of sleep every night, which is one hour more than what normal people need. That's barely an annoyance.

Whip-Snap
Her weakness is that she loses all her powers if the temperature goes below 65 degrees. Maybe no one ever told her this, but the average temperature in about eighty percent of the planet is at or below 65 degrees. Unless she fights crime exclusively in Death Valley she's pretty much fucked.

Mindset
He's a hero from the future who is impervious to modern weapons and has telekinesis, but his body is weak, fat, and susceptible to disease. I kinda like this, because it's actually probably fairly close to what humans will be like thousands of years from now: mentally evolved but weak and fat from never doing anything for ourselves and just using our mind powers to get ourselves cheeseburgers. Does that mean he'd make a good superhero? No. Superheroes aren't supposed to be realistic. That's why they're super.

Basura

God, if you exist, let me get through this without busting a vein. She's aided by and can communicate with bugs and her special power is...turning trash into treasure. So basically her power is that she's homeless. Also, she's hindered by the fact that she loses things and her bugs like to fuck. And her palms sweat. First Hyper-Strike and now Basura? Jesus, people.

Mr. Mitzvah
God, if you exist, why do you let people mock you so? This guy's similar to the gay guy from last year, except he's jewish. The major difference is he's "because" instead of "and." Let me explain. See, the gay guy was a superhero AND he was gay, thus providing a positive model to show gays can be cool. This guy is a superhero BECAUSE he's jewish. Being jewish is his only character trait, thus making him exactly like all the other annoying jewish stereotypes in movies you've come to hate over the years.

Braid
Her hair does stuff and if it gets cut off she loses her powers. But Millia Rage is cooler and Samson had better super powers. That's two heroes who already have this gimmick and did it way better and I could probably come up with more. The fact that her nemesis comes from a galaxy called "Damn Nation" is slightly funny though, and is just punny enough to be really comic-book-ish, though it's not PG enough.

Parthenon
He's like...a guy...who has an Atlantean armband...that uses magical rocks to give him powers. This is really painful folks. Is it just me or do all of this year's picks seem way dumber than last year? Also, doesn't Wonder Woman already have a similar superpower and do it way better?

Hygena
She's this season's Fat Momma, I think. She cleans stuff. And she has a magical pearl necklace...and her clean bombs knock people out...and.... AUGkj;jllllllllllllllllllll

Soap Review: Soap, the newest cult phenom. I wish I was joking.

2007-07-16T14:33:00.000-04:00

I've been visiting with my mom and her new husband and I went down to take a shower. I decided to take a look for the first time at the bottle of shower gel they have in there and low and behold I found the latest cult sensation, and I don't mean cult as in pop culture.

That's right, folks, I'm here to tell you about the new, the improved, the amazing, non-animal-tested, Oregon Tilth certified organic*, 18-in-1 Hemp PEPPERMINT PURE-CASTILE SOAP from Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. Also, the number 1 ingredient is listed as water so so much for purity, jackasses.

*Fun fact. The FDA has never released an official classification for organic or natural products, so this means about as much as if they'd said "Wom-bom-booie space god love you long time!"

But wait, there's more! The entire bottle is covered with inspirational/creepy (select one) quotes from...someone unattributed. Here's an example from the usage instructions.

"Enjoy only 2 cosmetics, enough sleep & Dr. Bronner's 'Magic Soap' to clean body-mind-soul-spirit instantly uniting One! All-One! Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! For facial packs, scalp & soothing body rub, add dash on bath towel in sink of hot water. Wring out. Lay over face and scalp. Massage with fingertips. Repeat 3 or 4 times 'til arms, legs & all are rubbed, always towards the heart. Rinse towel in plain hot water and massage again. Breathe deeply! Health is Wealth. Within 9 minutes you feel fresh and clean, saving 90% of your hot water & soap, ready to help teach the whole Human race the Moral ABC of All-One-God-Faith! For we're ALL-ONE! ALL-ONE OR NONE! ALL-ONE! ALL-ONE! ALL-ONE!

It's clearly written by people who don't speak english, but more importantly it's clearly written by lunatics. Here's another quote.

Einstein, 1939, after Nazis & Commies united, proposed spacebombs that destroy all, unless we finally teach the Moral ABC's the real Rabbi Hillel taught Jesus to unite all in All-One-God-Faith. As teachastronomers Abraham-Israel-Moses-Buddha-Hillel-Jesus-Spinoza-Paine-Sagan & Mohammed, inspired every 75 years 6000 years by the Messenger of God's Law, Halley's Comet: "WE ARE ALL ONE OR NONE!" "THERE IS NO GOD BUT GOD!" "TEACH LOVE THY ENEMY!" "LISTEN CHILDREN ETERNAL FATHER ETERNALLY ONE!" Israel-Moses-Buddha-Jesus-Mohammed: ONE! ALL-ONE!

Now, I'm too lazy to check if their thing about Einstein is factually accurate. What concerns me more is the fact that all nutcases are apparently legally obligated to speak only in bad refrigerator poetry. It must be the fault of the One World Earpiece Control Frankenstein Communist Computer God.

Lateron we come across a sticker that promises "FOR ALL MAJOR INGREDIENTS WE ARE GOING FAIR TRADE". It might sound oddly noble of what is apparently the last survivor of Heaven's Gate to have "95+% of Our Agricultural Volume Benefiting Farming Families and Communities in the Developing World" until you remember that what this actually means is "we're outsourcing your jobs to ten year olds in Indonesia who we chain to a bench for twelve hours a day where they can choke on the toxic fumes of our soaps, and if they survive we give them a quarter.

Fortunately none of it matters. As we all know, Dr. Bronner will be banished from Heaven for using magic in his Magic Soaps, to stand outside the gates with the dogs and sorcerors. It's all in Revelation, look it up some time.

Also, despite its magical properties and creepy cult message, Dr. Bronner's soap is still to be kept out of eyes, and if the cap becomes clogged you should poke it clear only and not squeeze. If you manage to get the miracle of All-One-God-Faith in your eyes, you should flush them well with water for fifteen minutes and and consult a physician if irritation persists.

All in good fun, Doctor. I'd like to just end this still mean, but I can't, and not just out of a respect for the dead and a fear of being sued by his family and/or melted by their creepy cult magic. But also because, while he (or whoever wrote this bottle) is clearly insane I do agree with the basic message that we as a race need to stop fighting each other and unify. That said, could someone tell me what a teachastronomer is?

Video Game Review: Sinners welcome. Does that include bad game designers?

2007-07-11T17:46:00.001-04:00

Saint's Row. I know it looks like just another Grand Theft Auto ripoff, but you should never judge a book by its cover. It is in fact a Grand Theft Auto ripoff after recieving a concentrated dose of white. Not that I don't find it amusing to hit a thugged out rival gangster's car and hear him whine nasally "Oh man, my mommy's gonna kill me!" I just kind of doubt the street cred of a gang that chooses an especially girlish shade of purple as their color.

The entire message of the game is anti-gangstah. Your gang, the Saints, are out to bring peace to the city streets by blowing shit up with rocket launchers and machine guns. Also, by pimpin' out hos. It's all a very complex plan, you see. As you ride on whiny white kids and hos tell you about the importance of staying in school you'll meet such hardcore characters as the gang leader who doesn't like killing and the hardened street bitch who instantly backs down when accused of being a ho.

That said, Saint's Row is almost worth checking out for the fact that it's just one of those games that is so stupid it goes all the way around the bend and becomes fucking awesome. The characters are nutjobs, of course, but the best part is that everyone in this city is apparently insane, possessed of no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, or more likely both. As pedestrians hurl themselves in front of your car the other drivers will suddenly start swerving for no reason and taking out lamp posts. Then a cop drives his squad car into some random woman and jumps out and starts beating her to death with his baton. And then rival gang members show up and shoot everyone. You'll be laughing your ass off even as your car blows up and sends you to a fiery grave.

So maybe the characters and plot are stupid, and maybe the programming is so bad that 15 car pile-ups happen every five seconds. But if it wasn't that way, this would be just another boring clone. So is it really that bad? I mean, the answer is obviously yes, but still I have to ask, is it? ...yes.

KR Rating (From the Future): [2] BAD

The first Saint's Row was what you might call "so bad it's good." Yes, it was stupid, but it was that stupidity that was what we all loved about it, yes even myself. The second game decided to capitalize on this, turning everything up to 11, with minigames where you spray sewage onto your enemies' houses, throw yourself in front of cars, and generally act like a hellion. The result was a game world that made Grand Theft Auto look subtle by comparison. Four years later and here I am, actually looking forward to Saint's Row: The Third, the sequel to a game I once panned.

That said, make no mistake: Saint's Row was a bad, bad game.

Commercial Review: Truth Found

2007-07-07T20:51:00.001-04:00

This just in! According to a recently discovered memo from a big tobacco company, tobacco companies chose to uphold their legal obligation to stockholders to keep profits up by not itnentionally sabotaging themselves. Now can anyone tell us why this commercial isn't stupid?

In other news, if you don't drive a Scion, you are a boring sheep person. If you do drive a Scion you are a hideous demon-spawned murderous abomination unto the eyes of the lord. I think the new "Little Deviants" commercials are supposed to be a wacky and humorous jest at how they're shaking up the auto industry. Sorry, guys, but you went a little too far into creepy and lost your message.

Holiday Review: George Washington would shove an M80 up your ass for freedom, bitch.

2007-07-04T13:58:00.001-04:00

It's the fourth of July! That wonderful day when we prove once again that America does not deserve to be free from Britain. Come on, people. How pussy of a country are we when we celebrate our nation's independance with a tiny black rock that when you light it it grows a little bit? And don't try to tell me it's symbolic. It's still lame. And oh, sure, there's the big, city-sponsored fireworks. Fireworks which are launched in a cordoned off area 500 yards from anything and chaperoned by a dozen trucks worth of firemen and if the tiniest cinder lands within 50 feet of a human being they close down the whole show and treat the person for severe psychological trauma.

What happened? When I was a kid I remember launching off bottle rockets every night for a week when July came around. One time me and my brother lit an M80 and stuck it in a hole we thought was our street's gas line. Because we were perfectly willing to annihilate our entire city in the name of democracy. Nowadays only shitty spark fountains are legal in my state. And they've added insult to injury by inventing something called the "Rocket Fountain." It looks like a bottle rocket and even says "Rocket" right on the side but it turns out it's just a fountain on a stick. Only a few states still allow good fireworks and those are trying harder and harder to pass laws banning them.

I call for a nationwide boycott of the Fourth of July. Employers, don't give your employees the day off anymore. Everyone, don't buy fireworks. Don't watch fireworks. Take what you have of this day after getting off work to write your congressman and tell him how much his pussy laws suck. Everyone in America should boycott this pussy ass holiday until it starts being badass again.

Annotation from The Future:

Whenever I start to think that this world can't possibly disappoint me any more than it already does, someone comes along and lowers the bar. Just like critics of American Idol never foresaw Jersey Shore or The Hills, so too did I never foresee some of the terrible "fireworks" they've got now.

Allow me to introduce you all to...the California Candle! Just as the Rocket Fountain dashed all of our hopes and dreams by making what looked like a kickass bottle rocket into a pathetic fountain, so too does the California Candle get our hopes up with what looks like a Roman Candle, but is actually a glorified sparkler.

As for the name, I sincerely hope that the satirical implications were intentional, because it's funny as Hell.