A Bureaucracy of One

Of Birthdays and Destructive Idiocy on a Virtual Scale

Yesterday I talked a bit about how I want to play Team Fortress 2, yet lack the necessary hardware to do that. Well, today I shall talk about three games that I can play!

The first up is a game that's been on my radar since last year when it was released; and now, thanks to the wonders of birthday money, I can play it! Generally speaking, open world sandbox games are not my cuppa, but Just Cause 2 gets a pass. Why? Well, it isn't for it's trite and lame story. Or for its massive 400 sq. mile virtual island playing field. No, I want to play Just Cause 2 because the physics engine is wonky, and you have a grapple. Don't follow me? Then watch this:

 

That, my friends, looks like sweet, sweet fun!

The next game is also the second half of my birthday present to myself, Dungeon Siege III. Years ago I played a demo for the first Dungeon Siege on PC, and I always regretted not buying the full game. The third game in the series has been released, and it sees the long-awaited debut of Dungeon Siege on console platforms. 

 

Not ground-breaking by any means, but I enjoyed the demo, and dungeon crawlers have always been a favorite of mine. 

Finally, I come to game three and coincidentally (or is it?! (it totally is)) it is also the third game in its series - Saints Row the Third. The Saints Row games are open world sandboxes as well, but unlike the GTA franchise (which Saints Row aped poorly in the first game), the gameplay here is all about sticking to the rules, and playing as honest and fairly as possible.

Nah, just kidding. It's all about nut shots!

 
I had an absolute blast with Saints Row II, and it remains one of my favorite PS3 games of all time. So, you might be able to imagine my giddy glee when I saw the E3 trailer for the new game. 

  
I just really hope they include the Fart in a Jar. 

Valve Makes Everyone's* Day

*if you are a videogame geek

 

Videogame geek favorite Valve made two big announcements today; 1) was the release of the long awaited "Meet the Medic" video, and the other was that Team Fortress 2 is now Free to Play. Forever.

This would break my Awesometer (a delicate instrument that measures how Awesome a thing is) if it weren't for one teeny-tiny wee little bit of a problem...my computer chugs running Minecraft, nevermind something fast-paced and graphically intensive like TF2.  So, while I lust after the specs on a 15" Macbook Pro, enjoy this playlist of all the "Meet the..." skits Valve has released for the TF2 characters.

"Oh, they're gonna have tae glue you back together...IN HELL!"

 

 

Let's Play - For Geeks that Want to Know if The Princess Really is in Another Castle, but are Too Lazy to Play Themselves

Reading some of my older posts, and laughing at my wittiness...ah, good times! Speaking of wit, or lack there of, Nothingman posted a comment on yesterday's article:

You told me nothing in this post. Maybe you should stop relying on the Youtube and start posting from the heart, not from your "I think I'm witty" brain.

Yea and verily, he has a point. Of the eleven post I've made so far, I would say only two of them were actually interesting. However, I take exception to the idea that some of them were not from my heart - all my post are from the heart, though some (most...almost all?) do come from a rather shallow part of it.

Now, as some of you are no doubt aware, I enjoy playing the occasional video game. However, even with my copious free time uncluttered by such mundanities such are the lot of mere mortals, I find it difficult to squeeze in enough time to play the games I own, and thus so very many digital stories fall by the wayside.

That's where the Let's Play Archives come in. 

A sub-forum all their own on Something Awful, Let's Plays are threads wherein dedicated crazy people play games that the rest either can't, or do not want, to play. These LP's are presented either as screen shots with commentary, or videos with commentary, and are quite often funny, interesting, and very engaging.

For instance, as I mentioned the other day, I recently finished reading through the LP of Final Fantasy IX. I had played the game years ago when it was first released on the PSX, but I never finished it, and watching the ending on Youtube just isn't the same without context.

 

And reading The White Dragon's LP provides more than context! He also provides interesting insights to the development and translation of the game, along with showcasing the shear amount of detail that went into even the smallest sections of the game. Character animations that were only used once! Text written on items that were too small for the PSX to render properly! Legitimate cinematic techniques used in a pre-render cgi cut scene!

Then there is the social commentary about Hawaii that The White Dragon, as a native Hawaiian, provides. His insight into the gradual erosion of his linguistic heritage; how the native Hawaiian community views homosexuals; and what a pain in the ass tourists are, make the thread worth reading even if you don't give two figs about Final Fantasy IX.

1200 MB for That???

I am now about 21,000 words behind on my 2007 Nano effort, so this will be brief.  The biggest factor in my word deficit has to do with the shiny, new 60 GB PS3 that I got for myself a little over a week ago.  The allure of Ratchet & Clank's next-next gen (nexter gen?  nextest gen?) outing was too much, and so I spent many, many glorious hours blowing $#@* up!

That isn't what I was going to talk about, though.  What I wanted to talk about, albeit briefly, was that after discovering that my PS3 had wifi capability I downloaded the demo for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune from the Playstation Network.  It was 1200 GB, and took about four and a half hours to download.  All for about ten minutes of play.

Yeah.  1200 1.2 GB for ten minutes of play.

Sure, the demo looked all shiny and pretty (actually a little too shiny - most rocks that I see in the real word lack the sheen of those presented in the game), but at 1200 GB, I was expecting a bit more than running around, jumping on ruins, and shooting Hispanic (Hispanic, in the South Pacific?) pirate-types.

Oh, and a word on the intro FMV...wow.  That is some scary Uncanny Valley shite!  The eyes move.  The mouths move.  Nothing else in the face moves.  Very unnerving.

Wiener Biting

I'm not going to say that this is the best video ever, but it has Olivia Munn and a mustard-covered hot dog.  The sound you hear is millions of fanboys reaching for their Kleenex.

Baten Kaitos Quikie

I have not beaten Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (Gamecube), so this is not going to be a full review.  Rather, it is going to be a mini-rant triggered by this comic.  Legendary is a fun little comic by Robert Zakhiem that satirizes the more ridiculous points of CRPG's, and the particular comic that I linked deals with a particularly ridiculous battle system.  What does this have to do with BK:EWatLO?  Well, it is BK's combat system specifically that Robert is lampooning in that strip, and it really is that bad.

Seriously, it is ... how best to put this ... fucking annoying.

Which is a pity, because I love Baten Kaitos.  The narrative is strong, the characters are interesting (if not quite fully three dimensional - more like 2.5D), and the story is engaging.  It's just the damned battle system that sucks my balls in a really uncomfortable way - sort of like my second girlfriend. I mean, sure it was great to have a girl that was willing to try something new, but dammit, don't use teeth down there!
And as with that 2nd-rate oral satisfaction I received years ago, there are moments of glory (pulling off a 5 card combo -same suit, consecutive numbers- for mega damage), and moments of boner-breaking agony (getting nothing but defense and status cards during a crucial time in the middle of a boss battle).

I'd like to make one thing clear though, BK's combat system is not a deal breaker.  It is still fun enough, and flexible enough, that the game flows quickly and easily.  It is just that when you have something so beautiful, so fascinating, and so sexy as the statuesque red-head that is Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, you just wish she could give decent head, too.

New Toy

At the beginning of the season working on the mountain, I made myself a tip jar with intention of saving all the cash money I received and buying myself something nice at the end of the season.  What I really wanted was a Nontendo Wii, but since finding a Wii is only slightly easier than finding Diogenes' Honest Man, I have settled on the next best thing.

Alas, my local Gamestop did not have a copy of Super Princess Peach, and so I had to settle for the New Super Mario Bros. game.  Alas.

Machinima Meets Music: Music Videos That Don't Suck

I gave up on MTV years ago.  Not only were they starting to phase out music videos in favor of reruns of The Real World, but the music videos they did show invariably sucked.  I do not mean that the music sucked (though, there was that problem, too), rather that the videos themselves were starting to become drab, uninteresting affairs that did little to engage my attention and imagination.

Then, a couple years back I lucked into a show on either Fuse or MTV that showcased machinima music videos of popular songs and I was immediately entranced.  Here was a medium that combined music and video games, and I couldn't get enough.  However, as is common with us ADD types, I pretty much forgot about it by the next day.  And while those videos did pop back into mind every now and then, I never held out much hope for seeing them, or their like, ever again.  Then Youtube exploded onto the scene, and Google Video followed closely after. 

Honestly, I didn't "get" the whole Youtube phenomenon until just recently.  Head up my ass, or head in the clouds, but my few brushes with Youtube and Google Video had left me cold.  Fifteen second clips of grainy video and crappy sound of some guy getting it in the joyjumblies with a baseball bat?  I decided to take a pass.   What I didn't understand was the unique venue that Youtube and Google Video offered - a free and (more importantly) easy to use platform for amateur filmmakers to showcase their work.

I didn't appreciate that, until this.  While it is true that the Internet is for porn, it is now also for some truly creative and inventive artists to finally get notice.  Here, then, are a few of my favorite machinima music videos.

From the Sims 2 we get this tribute to Captain Picard.

Some enterprising individual took the cinematic cut scenes from FFX and put them to James Blunt's Beautiful.  It is, to use a little vulgarity, f***ing beautiful.

One of my favorite songs of the last couple years, Breaking Benjamin's So Cold is used for Still Seeing Breen, a video that uses the phenomenal Source engine from Half Life 2.  The lip-syncing of the G-Man was done using the Faceposer tool included with the Source Engine.

A really annoying song that has a really well done music video.  I'm Too Sexy as imagined by a World of Warcraft clan with way too much time on their hands.

Here's a unique one: it is an original song written specifically for a character class in World of Warcraft.  I give you...Big Blue Dress.  Funny and awesome.

And finally, we have a new twist on an Internet classic.