IAM Blog Engine

Bam.  And Bam.

WARNING, this entry uses come colorful language, in reference to the game in question only.

So there’s this game called “Cunt,” where the objective is to pilot a disembodied member around the game space, shooting various bodily fluids at a horrific portrayal of female genetalia.  To put it simply.  I played it, I enjoyed it.  Here’s the meat:  The feminist articles that reported on the game had a few points, but at their weakest they digress into generalizations about an entire gender, and go so far as to imply hidden meaning where there, at the direct addmitance of the author, is none.  This, my friend, is ridiculous.

I looked at the game “Cunt” as objectively as I possibly could at first, then broke it down for myself.  The game has some crazy, nasty imagery that honestly made me giggle.  It was childish and simple.  A nasty looking vagina with several forms of VD, and eyes, sends out various disease/parasite related enemies to try and destroy a tenacious little fella.  I laughed, an honest chuckle at the game play.  I then looked at the subtext.  Male fighting female, destroying each other with disease and fluids.  It’s some really Freudian stuff.  I dove a little deeper and read the quote from the author who says he just thought genitals were funny, and wanted to create a game about that.  I took his word for it.  I want to make a game about killin’ ninjas, plain and simple.  Sometimes the motivations are nice and easy.  But not nice and easy enough for a type 2 feminist, it seems.

I was informed of the existance of Type 2 feminists by a feminist friend of mine.  They are the man-haters of the lot, apparently.  I’m a Type 1 masculinist most of the time, so I listened good to her description. The articles written…I have no real connection to the issues the authors are drawing from.  I read the articles but they began to dissolve into “But he didn’t REALLY mean that…he is REALLY a woman hating man,” and suddenly I was upset.  I felt as though any response to “Why this game?” would result in a psychological dissertation from the feminist movement.  Sometimes things are really just as simple as they seem.

I’m not sure where this is going really.  My bottom line is this:  Games with controversial/sexual/violent images CAN have subtext intended, but the world needs to prepare for the possibility of there NOT being a subtext as well.  And if interpreted, that subtext may or may not mean anything about the author of that game whatsoever.

There.

PS: Satire. (NSFW)

Soul Calibur 4 returns with some updated environments from previous installments, and well as some beautiful new arenas to engage in. Each environment has exquisite detail and has little things about them that you can use to your advantage in order to win your bout. One stage in particular involves you battling in this Medieval-looking temple with a line of guards that move forward about every 7 seconds or so both players aren’t finished battling within about 8 minutes(which is highly unlikely), then one the players, or both, might fall into a pit that is on the left side of the arena(facing horizontally). Besides this stage, almost every other stage involves incredibly easy “ring-outs,” ring outs are easier than ever now. Speaking of that, when you are facing Algol at his stage(a round portal platform), never let him get you close to the edge, because he is one opponent in particular that will take the easy way out to beat you, and don’t bother trying to do the same thing to him, because he had a speed dodge.

Haha, it appears I jump to a new game every time I blog but that’s how I am.

To side track a little bit and touch on my last journal, I talked about Warcraft 3 and how I play that a lot more. I just became re interested in tower defense (TD) games especially MAFA TD and Green Circle TD. I find myself playing this at least 2 – 3 hours a day><” But enough about that.

As I mentioned Persona 3 so many times before in my past journals, I have finally got around to progressing in the game. A little background on the game: you play a high school student who transfers to Gekkoukan High. He finds himself attacked by ’shawdows’ which results in his mysterious powers to become awaken. The power is known as a ‘Persona’ or a summon and to use this power you must shoot yourself with a gun-like object called an ‘Invoker’ (see below). When the clock strikes midnight, it becomes the ‘Dark Hour’ – an hour that exists between the current day and the next day. Shadows start to appear during this hour and attack people’s minds for no apparent reason which results in those people becoming brain dead or as they call ‘Apathy Syndrome.’ The main character joins other members (mostly high school students from his school) in a student organization called SEES (Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad). They group together to stop the shadows and find out where they came from.

The game play is really unique I thought. Certain aspects of the game reminded me of The Sims, but a little bit faster. You progress through calendar months; week by week and day by day. Each day is broken up into pretty much morning, afternoon, and evening. During school (Mon through Sat as in Japan) you go to school. Like in the Sims, you have stats that affect your social circle. You can work up the stats in various ways such as studying in the library for intelligence, going karaoke at night for courage, or drinking at a cafe for charm. The stats mostly affect the social networks and friends you can make (represented by a bar/level) which affect your personas. The stronger friendships you make (i.e. the more you hang out with them, the more you converse with them in a way that makes them happy), the stronger your personas can become.

After school you can spend your time with friends, go to various locations around town where you can purchase items,  and eventually go back to the dorm. Here is the interestin part, you can choose to visit ‘Tartarus’ which is an odd building that only appears during the Dark Hour, sleep, or study. At ‘Tartarus’ you fight shadows in a turn based fighting system (you only control your character, other members are AI) and explore the tower that seems never to end. The story progresses chronologically and with every full moon (which is indicated on the top right corner of the screen with the date in the story) there is a major event and boss fight. It goes through one calendar year meaning there are 12 main bosses.
Japanese Screen Shot Showing School and Calendar in Top Right Corner

Okay, well I think I explained the game fairly well for the most part. Just to touch on my progress, I’m at the end of August in the game w/ only 4 more months to go. In Tartarus, between each full moon, you can do side missions that gets you items and weapons. Also Tartarus is divided into floors and sections. I’m currently in the 3rd section trying to get to the 110th floor. The bosses at this point are ridiculously hard so I find myself dying a lot. So for the time being I’m just going to lower floors and leveling up. The cool thing about that is that the navigation system is like (if I remember correctly) Chrono Trigger on the SNES. Your party party follows you around(you can have up to 4 people in your party) and as a party, if you want to engage in a fight you attack the monster that’s represented on the map like Chrono Trigger (whether you hit them first, same time, or after the monster hits you determines what is pretty much a preemptive strike). You can also command your party to split up and either look for items and way points to the next floor/exit, or fight all the enemies on that floor. While separated, if you engage in the enemy you can call for back up where the rest of your party will join your current battle.

I’ll probably touch more on the game mechanics in another post but I’m just frustrated at this point because leveling up and fighting the bosses seem very redundant.  Also, my one friend (non-gamer) was watching me play this game and made a comment to me that made it seem that it was a chore. At that point it kinda was, I was just going through and automated sequence, sending my people off to find items, kill shit, and level up. I can’t wait until I get past this part and progress with the rest of the story.

So, I was hanging a couple of my friends, when they brought up a game called Final Fantasy XI. I played previous Final Fantasy games, and hearing this one was online. Bought the game and installed it on my computer which took about 10 hours from all the updates and installations, which was very annoying. Started the game by doing character creation, getting to choose from 5 different races. Elvaan, Mithra, Galka, Tarutaru, and Hume. I chose Hume, because that is basically the Human race in the game and I wanted to go for a race that closes resembles me. I then get to decide which starting nation I want to start in, I choose the elvaan city and then end up there. I end up going to the front of the city to meet my friends who also bought the game. We group up and go to level up our characters together. Even early in the game it seems vital for grouping up to get the most experience in the shortest amount of time. The game seems really kind of fast paced in the small low level areas, I haven’t seen any really high level characters just yet. I’m only made it to level 15 and I hear there are level 60+ characters. This game is kind of in medieval times, with dragons and stuff. Nothing like the Final Fantasy games I’m use to playing. A funny thing my friends pointed out, during the character creation there are no dark skin tones, or black characters to choose from at all. Not any race is there black characters. We were wondering if black people didn’t exist in Square Enix’s Fantasy.

You know those times when you’re collecting items and suddenly theres only one left but you can’t find it no matter how hard you look…yeah. granted, its probably not going to take me too long to find the last figment in the last level since the levels are not that big. but its still frustrating. Which makes me think of the article that talked about why we keep playing when the game is no longer fun. For me at least, I think its because I feel like I need to finish the game to be able to put it down and not play it again (or at least for a while.) But, to actually decide to finish the game completely, I have to like the game to want to spend all the extra hours running around in that reality. If its a bad game, then chances are good I won’t try and get 100% but if its a good game then I almost feel obligated and deturmined to see the game through to the very end, even if there is not a reward for doing it. With Psychonauts, I’m probably only compelled to finish every level just for the sake of these journal posts. Its not that I don’t like the game, its just that once you finish a level everything is pretty much cleared out and its just a matter of navigating your way to the end looking for things you forgot. No enemys, nothing new. But in games like Zelda:Windwaker and Twilight Princess, I spent way too many hours running around to all the islands or chasing after little glowing bugs just to finish both games completely. I can’t say it was all fun, but it managed to keep my interest and I actually had to pay attention to my surroundings so I wasn’t caught off guard by something. I think stubborn deturmination seems to be the major reason I finish games 100%.

I’m in a blogging mood.

This is my first post.

If this is out of line, I apologize.

——————————–

All right, let’s talk turkey.

Working on a game store means that I see alot of fandoms. I worked the Wii launch, I head stories of the WoW launch, we get customers coming through the door barking “Did anyone buy a Zune? Huh? Zune? Buy? Zune? Customer? Zune? Welcome to the Social?“, we get casual fans who come in and cooly slide at us “Oh they got a new King of Fighters? Badass…” But lemme relay one day that stands out in infamy.

My manager Mike is the baddest dude to ever save the president. Lemme start with that.

A customer walks into the store asking about the PS3, wondering prices, and differences between 20 and 60 gigs. Being cool headed, non-biased store clerks we (That’s myself, Lou and Mike) all sneer at the prospect of a PS3 being purchased. We explain the system, ask if he has an HD set up. He doesn’t. Ask if he’s got a sound solution. He doesn’t. Ask him, quite fairly, why he wants a PS3. He begins to list reasons. Here’s a snippet:

1) The Blu-ray player holds, like, 80 gigs of space. (This is not true. Single layer Blu-ray is 25 gigs, dual-layer 50)

2) They got hella good games. (This is sort of true. The game he was referring to was NBA Live ‘07)

3) It looks great. (This is for DAMN sure. The PS3 looks like a liquid dream, streaming from God’s own private lake)

4) The Xbox sucks. (We get this alot. A is good because B is bad, I’m going to come back to this later.)

5) It’s more expensive, making it better. (Caviar is expensive, but you know what’s better? Anything, it’s a subjective question. Myth Busted.)

6) The PS3 is backwards compatible, the 360 isn’t. At all. (Both systems are KINDA backwards compatible.)

Poor Manager Mike was talking in circles with this guy. Mike wasn’t out to destroy the PS3, just wanted the customer to be informed, and to clearly plan his purchase. The conversation ended when Mike walked away after hearing the customer say the Xbox wasn’t backwards compatible at ALL, and that it didn’t even play DVDs.
Now, the meat.:

Fandom is an almost blind adhearence to one item, one company, one man. I myself am a victim of rampant fandom. I feel that Hideo Kojima can do no wrong. In this, the 7th generation of home consoles, we see more rampant fandom than ever. People are blindly following the Xbox for no reason other than “Sony Suxxors!” PS2 owners are running out and getting PS3s because “The PS2 was really good.” Wii owners, well, Wii owners are an elite class these days. But still, the hardcore Nintendo fans have been hearalding the second coming for a while now, and now that they have it they’re going to rip into the other two next-gen runners for not being a Nintendo product.

This is the behavioral patterns that split gamers apart. A normally accepting society ripped at the edges. Refrence this comic from TWO THOUSAND AND ONE in which the scribes and sages of our era Gabe and Tycho raise a little thinly veiled commentary:

Gamers of the world, you need to know what you are buying. Read magazines, read specs. Try to stray away from console specific mags. No PSM, no XBM, no Wii Gazette…okay so there is no Wii Gazette but I bet you’d be reading it if there was. My point is you can make your world loads better if you know what to expect from a new system before walking into the store. Parents and children and gamers alike. An unfortunate side effect of not knowing, is the temptation to bandwagon.

A good and new friend of mine, John, said this to me:

“(John)sparkbolt: Sadly, i’m sure your cries for justice will fall on deaf ears…
sparkbolt: those who tend to be fanboys, tend not to listen to any logic. Hence, being a fanboy.
(Joe)Taiko Samurai: Most likely, since I can’t post it.
sparkbolt: hahah, that as well
Taiko Samurai: Can I add that to the article?
Taiko Samurai: Your quote?
sparkbolt: quote away, my good sir!
Taiko Samurai: I shall!
sparkbolt: verily!”

John used the word logic. The true fan defies logic. They rationalize, they justify and they equate. There is no arguing, no conversation past I’m right and you’re wrong. A friendly conversation turns sour fast when steadfast fans enter the scene. They’re abrasive at times, annoying at others, and rarely will a true fanboy speak from his mind. If he did, he’d not only see flaw, but may admit defeat, and thus, negate his “true fanhood.” As a result, N-Gage foreva, ride or die.
It has become trendy to hate the PS3. That’s not right. Hate should never be a trend, towards man, animal, rock and console. Trends in like/dislike mean that the person bashing is uninformed, and has not found a way of researching an unbiased source for their material. OR, they have not experienced first hand what it is their hating. I bashed all football games for years, and then I actually played NCAA ‘05. It’s still my favorite football game. If we don’t try to get our hands on something, look at it, test it, taste it and make love to it, then can we really make informed choices when we walk into a store and cough up $600+ for a console? No, we can’t.

My point is thusly: Gamers of the world, prove yourselves. I encourage and even beg you NOT to bash the PS3 until you’ve played one. Do not bash the Wii until you’ve played it. Don’t gloss over the 360 because it’s not “new.” Every system has an owner. Examine what you need, what it does, what it will do, and then make a choice. If you can do that, then “gamer” will take on new meaning. From “A person who plays games” to “an informed consumer-person that plays games.” And for it’s confusing and gramatically incorrect phrasing, I’d rather be known as informed.

So the next time you find yourself about to utter “SONY, AND THEREFORE, THE PS3 SUXXORS” consider the facts, play the system and then (Shameless plug for my own opinion) say it anyways. (End Shameless plug for my own opinion.)
A rude bag of chilies and pistols,

Joe

I find a good part of myself in this article. About being malcontented with reality and retreating into the MUD for sanity. I can see how that may be why I began playing MUDs 12 years ago. Finding that I am able to live out a life the way I wish it were possible for me to live out my own real one. I am quite shy in my own life around people I do not know, and shyer still when trying to talk to women (if I can do it at all,) when trying to talk to them about anything serious. I do ok when acting like a goof-ball though. However in my virtual skin I am much more assertive and feel that people take my advice and or opinions more seriously. Though that is more than likely due in part to the fact that I am one of the higher level characters in the game. However the only equivalent in my real life, outside of school, is if I were somebody’s boss. At any job I ever had (Except the one where I was one of the bosses) my input didn’t count for shit. They would pretend to listen but then not take my suggestion, or any part of it. My suggestions couldn’t have all been terrible ideas. But in my MUD if there is an invasion (assault on one of the towns/cities) and I suggest a tactic, people actually listen to me and it is considered. I seem to be able to get much more respect and consideration than I command in real life. I suppose one of the things I would like most is to feel like I count, there I do. Thanks to school it seems more and more that people value my thoughts and the like and it has become less of a crutch. I have played less and less over the past year and a half. But will it return once I am done with school if that loss of respect returns? I cannot say.

So. it appears that the folks at gay gamer are just as nerdy as I am when it comes to rocking a plastic guitar. They posted a link to the new tracklist and had a couple of comments about waiting for the Wii…
I don’t know if there’s a game that i’ve had more fun playing this year than Guitar Hero. Actually i know that’s a true statement, and i can prove it by this photo:

I’m going to go buy guitar hero 2 within the hour…

The blog also had a few other various posts today. nothing that really seemed too important. they also posted this video which i thought was pretty funny.

Level 23.

100 hours.
Thats right, I’ve spent 100 hours playing this game. It’s sobering to realize that. Frightening, even. And I have a long way to go still.

In the course of my becoming filthy stinking rich (more than 30,000 gold), I’ve noticed another arbitrary little limitation in the game world. At higher levels you routinely loot weapons and armor off your enemies that are worth up to 5,000 gold. But the most you can sell anything to any of the merchants in any of the cities is 1,800. Apparently if you’re a master of the “mercantile” skill, that number is raised by 500. Even with that, you have a grip of items in the game that you can never, ever sell for their full value. Its one of those little issues that breaks, if only for a moment, the suspension of disbelief. Too bad…

That, along with the fact that the entire world levels up with you as you become more powerful, adds to the feeling that you can never really get ahead. Perhaps this will keep the game interesting for longer, but at some point the goal oriented playing must break down when you find that your goal is unattainable.

Much has happened to my character in the world of ADOM. I once again lost track of time as I became immersed in the world of The Drakalor Chain.  I progressed quickly to level 12 after becoming greedy and trying to snag a few artifacts from a cave guarded by hundreds of fire-breathing (and, invaribly equipment-destroying) steel golems. My Blanket of Fire-Resistance (which protects inventory from fire, not worn items) took too much damage, leading to me losing my Necklace of Rapid Healing, (I found another for sale at an underground Dwarven village for only 1,206 GP, w00t!) my Gauntlets of Strength (+3), some unidentified scrolls + potions, and 3,648 of my then 16,347 GP. Fortunately, I managed to recover my most important of losses. 

I have not managed to be crowned by my diety yet after successfully coverting to Lawful.  There is some weird algorithm behind pre/post-crowning that I have not bothered to figure out.  Before I can proress in the game, I must find an Amulet of Life-Saving (ressurrects PC or NPC in given spot where they died once) to give to a dying Sage in the Caverns of Chaos.  I could opt not to save his life, but I would be missing out on valuable points toward my lawful alignment. 

I’ve become corrupted (probably because of those damned chaos rats!). The first sign up corruption is often harmless, but as they continue, they get progressively worse. I have grown 6 eyes and my perception score has increased by +6. Normally stat bonuses are a good thing, but now that I’m corrupted, it’s only a race against time before I turn into a writhing mass of primal chaos, and die.  I have to constantly worry about procuring Scrolls + Potions of Cure Corruption (and they aren’t very plentiful!) to keep myself human (troll).  If only I were more attuned with my diety…

I believe I’ll suffer from a temporary bout of depression if they character dies before I complete the game (no resuming, unelss you save scum [duplicate your character's save file elsewhere on your computer] (HIGHLY UNETHICAL amongst Rougelike RPG nerds :-p), and I’m much too classy for that.)   

Laugh all you want. I’m still more aesthetically pleasing than your average rougelike gamer. o–(^_^)–o

I’ve not yet amassed my identity to my Trollish barbarian, but I can’t help but feel like a proud pet-owner/surrogate father (it’s all the same, right?)