[insert witty title here]

Yeah, this pretty much sums it up. Deadliest Warrior is one of the most entertaining documentaries I’ve had the pleasure of watching. Add a healthy mix of blood to things, watch them use weapons in various ways, learn about the histories of each, their fighting styles, more, and this is all before a wonderful fight sequence that could trump anything I’ve ever seen in Soul Calibur.

One big question I have, though, is “Why is everyone such a friggin’ jerk?”.

The representatives of each Warrior are jerks. They sling schoolyard insults around and act like this is a war of life or death, when it’s just a silly “what if” decided by some numbers.
The fans who argue against the results are jerks. They hamper on how weapons aren’t accurate, the results aren’t accurate, how the experts aren’t experts, how it’s all stupid and flawed and needs redone.

C’mon, guys. This is just for fun. It’s entertainment. The probability of these fights occuring are impossible, and even then the nature of combat relies on so much more than just weapons, so nobody will ever really know what will happen if an Apache fought a Gladiator.
I thought the Gladiator would win. Does the fact that Deadliest Warrior reported differently say otherwise?
No, not really.
They’re not the end-all-be-all source of fact, nor do they ever claim to be.

All documentaries have flaws. This is just one of them. Does it change the results? Quite a bit.
But does it change the fact that we get to see THE MAFIA TAKE ON THE FRIGGIN’ YAKUZA?! No.

It’s just entertainment TV.

Super Mario Galaxy and No More Heroes sit mostly untouched on my Wii.
I never did get past Devil Hunter difficulty in Devil May Cry 4 for my 360, nor do I really care to. My created wrestlers in Smackdown VS Raw 2009 lay still at skill level 37.
I’ve logged on City of Heroes about a whole three times the last month. Hellgate: London I never went online with, nor apparently will I ever be able to again. Phantasy Star Universe has never been reopened ever since I lost my save data. Unreal Tournament 3 was never played after the second day I had it, once I beat the campaign.

For the past couple week, I have been playing older and more obscure games religiously.
Guwange is exquisite, despite being so simple.
Alien Soldier is climax after climax, without ever growing old.
Splatterhouse 3 is a gruesome, if not unique, take on the beat-’em-up formula, and manages to attain horror without sacrificing action, or sacrificing action for horror.
World Heroes is a very underappreciated fighter series that had several very interesting ideas.

I’m not exactly what one would call a “retro gamer”, but I can’t deny the wonder that several ooooold games had, compared to much newer games. A lot of games now fall in the category of same old–look at shooters as of late, for example, which mostly have been an obscene sea of dull grey-brown space marine. Earlier shooters could have you as a rampaging oni that could shoot arrows for some undeveloped reason, or flinging strips of paper, or a wild west cowboy cow, or an extremely potent psychic shooting only mind bullets, or a half-naked ninja chick.
Man.
I’d kill to have shooter protagonists nowadays be even not human.

Modern-day games are certainly more technically proficient, more capable of doin’ stuffs, and can realize imaginations like nothing else. But…I dunno…just feels like they’ve lost their soul. All the simple, fun, shooty-uppy stuff has been sacrificed for warehouses in space against nazis, while escorting a yappy guy who calls in your ear as support and finding keys.
I mean, seriously. Some of the top sells in the shooter genre lately? Halo 3, Dead Space, Killzone 2? You couldn’t find a more bland and uninspired bunch if you tried, but I guess these guys do something right. Even though  it’s all THE FUTUREEEE with a faceless guy shooting up endless swarms of evil aliens and good god I could go on and on and on.

The past had a lot of imagination, that modern-day technology could really amplify.

To say that I’m a bit of a DnD novice is akin to saying that the sun is moderately warm.
There’s no tabletop gaming centers around here, none of my bookstores sell any of the books, few people around where I live are interested in gaming (much less tabletop gaming), I have no money to buy the fancy figurines and other strange stuff, and I go through Neverwinter Nights by picking Fighter/Barbarian and invoking deathening upon innocent kobolds just trying to get a meal for their starving wives and children.
The only experience I’ve had with DnD is the butt of so many jokes, the motivational posters talking about fat nerds staying up at 4 AM and desperately trying to score with that imaginary chick with his Charisma-specced Paladin while mapping out statistic after statistic to overcome Cthulhu. And let’s not even get into LARPing.

It seems a little anticlimatic that this would just burst in a simple conversation:
Friend: Hey, I found a strange RPG system. Wanna try it out with me?
Me: Sure.
And with that, it ended.

I’d like to say that “though the conversation ended, something else grand began” and talk about treks into “a whole new world”, but to make this out to be anything more than it is would be pretty pointless. It’s just tabletop gaming. Not even tabletop gaming on an actual table, but on the internet. On MSN Messenger. And the RPG system we’re using has us as generic anime maids.
Let me just reiterate that.
We’re bastardizing a pasttime constantly made fun of, not doing it on an actual table but rather on a clunky IM client with a word limit and giganterous names with fancy formatting that take up more space than half the posts, and we’re all grown men playing as Japanese cartoon maids stumbling around in comically over-the-top scenarios while going “ia, dame, yamete!” and “aishiteruuu desu ne~~” while serving a nonexistant master, who commands our every whim, and all of the scenarios are taken straight out of a page from a dime-store glorious nippon mahngah shop where the Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z cosplayers frequent.
Oh, and did I mention that your characters traits are randomly generated by dice rolls, and that you have as much of a chance of being a hermaphrodite princess of the Yakuza entering maid service to be a bride as you do of being a pro-wrestling mummy who watches over an army of demonic soldiers due to being the long-lost sister of the master who’s also in love with him?

And yet, I stayed up until 4:30 AM last night playing my pretend giggly maid with other grown men, in a practice we will do regularly from here on out, no doubt resulting in an inevitable avalanche of estrogen castrating our virtual dongs.
The thing is, all of us know this. The phrase “dumb, stupid fun” exists for a reason, and none of us are taking this seriously. Just the act of rolling up a character took two hours and had us in stitches, trying to find ways to logically and coherently piece it all together–as if logic and coherency had a place in Nipponland in the first place. I didn’t at all in any semblence know any of the people other than my friend, but I was swapping jokes and one-liners about the situations with them in absolutely no time. The GM threw the possibility of a dragon at us. One gamemate accidentally had an entire horde of goblins stripping in front of us.
And what did we do? We rolled the dice, played out the results, and stayed up way damn late awaiting with baited breath as to how each others’ fictional giggly maid would respond to a hot-blooded cooking duel.

We weren’t interested in the story. We weren’t interested in the overarching consequences of this. We just wanted to have dumb, stupid fun.
But I think what really brought it to life was the community. It was just three/four of us, sure, but it was still more than one person. Each sharing ideas and jokes and acting as a foil to another’s dramatic advances.

At the very least, I’ll need to study this more. There’s a goldmine of psychological study that can be done here, even if the dissection of story structure and how it pieces together from madlib basis may be a futile attempt that ends in madness.
Regardless, I’ll end this with a quote describing an asset of another person’s character:

“Her worst enemy is the hair on her own head, which may or may not be as intelligent as her, but is certainly far more malevolent. “

It seems whenever I’m not posting my flimsy writing on this here blog, I’m talking about video games in some form or another.
And now I’m going to ramble about probably the most discussed subject in the history of America, one that many others have discussed before me and far more eloquently. Me talking about this subject is like going to be tossing a straw in a haystack while desperately hoping others consider it a needle to dig through and find.
But, what the hell. Let’s get into it.

Are games an art form? Read the rest of this entry »

Writing is a strange craft. In some ways, it can be the most expressive. Very little can match an in-depth description of psychology, a detailed breakdown of the thought process and emotions felt from start to finish. On the other hand, it’s also limited. Describe too much and you lose your reader. Use big and fancy words at your risk, possibly alienating people without as copious a lexicon your brobdingnagian intellect accomodates. You’ll never be able to completely and accurately describe your vision, unless you have considerable skill.

Writing, however, is similar to art in how you can easily spot the most glaring mistakes. Paint someone’s leg on backwards? Whoops. Completely forget all form of sentence structure? Whoops. Put someone’s nose where their eye should be? Whoops. Throw down a gigantic infodump without pacing? Whoops. As you get more and more skilled, however, it’s somewhat difficult to improve unless you develop. Great artists can see a little tiny smudge that ruins the flow, how an area is too layered, how a color fades out when it should get stronger. Great writers can see an awkward word of choice, a pace that jumps back and forth, forced character development. The steps from becoming a good writer to an excellent writer are incredibly difficult to see, though the results of each step are obvious.

That’s why I made this blog. Is this some sort of advertisment, declaring my “skillz” and showing off how awesome I am? Not in the least.
I’m not a good writer. I’m a decent writer, but I can hardly compare with the greats. What this blog is, is practice. Just like an artist scribbles for the fun of it, I jot down any world in my mind. Commentary on modern events aren’t rare, but I’m not aiming for those. What I’m aiming for is WRITING. Fantasy, sci-fi, fiction, non-fiction, surreal, allegorical, alternative, journalism, poems, descriptions, biographies, alternate history, anything. I’ve no doubt that what I put on here is shit. In fact, I expect it. I’ll look back several years after this, glance at this blog, shake my head and wonder “Wow, how could I have even considered that good enough to put on the internet?”.
This is simply practice. I’m hoping for an update once a week. Not all of the works I’ve written will be post up here, but it’s posting nonetheless. Will I get any fans? I highly doubt it. Most of the people probably reading this will likely just be friends and family and friends of family. Will I get people pointing and crying about how awful this is? I wouldn’t be surprised.

But, regardless, this is a place for me to sit down, practice, and publish my practice. I’ve noticed that there’s a gigantic difference in emotion between works that just sit on the harddrive and works actually displayed for all to see. With the latter I feel I’ve accomplished something, even if it’s simply what not to do, and I feel driven to my next project. The former, I feel nothing.
And nothing is worse than nothing itself.

It feels odd to me that I’d be lifting up my walking stick and whining and complaining about how gaming was in the older days when, being barely out of my teen years, I never was really a part of the older days. I never really touched an Atari, and my main console of choice when I was a wee lad was a Super Nintendo. Back during a time where piracy was something only heard about in history books, and torrents were stuff in sea waters. Back during an era where the only game reviews able to be found were in magazines, and thus were definitive law. Where you could ask your friend about that cool game for the SNES or Playstation, and didn’t have to prowl through reviews and message boards online.
I can’t help but marvel at how things have changed since then. I’m not going to say things were better back then, because they weren’t. And I’m not going to say things are better now, because they sure as hell aren’t, either. But I will say that, as of late, people are more eager to swing around the “Best game ever” title, while few of these “greatest adventures yet” actually last beyond a few months.

I know I’m not the only person who plays the original Doom campaigns, and not just out of nostalgia. Not that I have much nostalgia for it in the first place, I only was introduced to Doom when I was, what, 15? My first “serious” FPS series was Unreal.
Along the same lines, Mario Sunshine and Mario Galaxy have tried to make lightning strike twice in order to bring the Super Mario 64 formula back to life again, but have cut little, basic things that made the legendary N64 epic so charming, so fleshed-out and in-depth. Every Zelda iteration past the legendary Ocarina of Time has never really captured the magic since. Crysis, which was dubbed “best FPS ever” numerous times, is really little more than a memory and “Oh, THAT game!” to people right about now. Unreal Tournament 3 is technically amazing, and was dubbed “best multiplayer FPS ever”, despite the fact that it sacrifices so much in order to achieve this technical amazement. Smash Bros. Brawl is frequently heralded as the “best fighter ever”, and has already had several clones, and yet in the same breath you could easily lambast Brawl for its many shortcomings.
Soon, Soul Calibur 4 will be coming out, and I’ve little doubt that it’ll be given numerous awards as “best game ever”. It’ll likely be a great game, too. So many positives. And yet, it’ll also have numerous flaws, and I highly doubt people will be continuing to play it numerous months after the initial release.

What’s the reason for this? Is it because we’re so drenched in seas of vomit that the game industries constantly regurgitate, that any single piece of quality is treasured like bars of gold?
I’m not sure, really.
Compare this with other games. Say, Gotcha Force, Rez, Killer7. Absolutely amazing games, and yet given barely any formal recognition at all–if you talk to a person who plays it, though, they’ll happily admit it’s not only one of the best games for that system, but they still fire it up regularly. Games that don’t even have a chance of being “best game ever”, and largely suffered horrible reviews from professionals. Cult followings, pretty much no chance for a sequel.

While you’re comparing that, also compare this to many games from the SNES and NES era. Even the licensed games were quite good back then–Duck Tales, Kamen Rider, Michael Jordan’s Chaos in the Windy City, and Power Rangers Tournament Fighters. Not to mention the glorious masterpieces that many claim have never been truly recreated since–Kirby Superstar, Super Mario World, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, and some even claim Link to the Past though I thought Ocarina of Time did a fine job with that. The good games were truly good games, and the crappy ones were shoved in a rut. Good games got the exposure wanted and needed, and especially nowadays with emulation and downloadable WiiWare/XBox Arcade games, they’re getting a continuing hurrah. Games that truly have stood the test of time, continue to be played, and still provide enjoyment and love.
Are those liable to be counted as the best games ever? Quite likely. They’ve withstood the test of time.

Maybe it’s viewer bias. Maybe some people desperately want to pick nits with these best games, and downplay the quality. Maybe these same people then present the best parts of the underrated games while dismissing their own flaws.
Maybe it came with the development of the internet. A much wider pool of people to meet, a mass number of voices are going to drown out small, tiny voices. We also got introduced to a larger number of jackasses infiltrating daily life. Compare this with just groups of friends back in youth, where you could suggest a game to a friend, let him play it, and he’d be a fan too.
Maybe it’s game developers trying to broaden their appeal to other people, trying to please everyone and just giving a mediocre experience all around.

Games, gaming media, and how we view things have most definitely changed. “Best game ever” is a title just slapped around willy-nilly now, and very rarely carries any weight to it. The golden crown gets handed around left and right.

Halo and Smash Bros., in their original incarnations, got mediocre reviews. People played these games, loved ‘em. They grew famous. Other people tried to imitate them. The sequels got amazing reviews that bragged about “continuing the greatness of the previous title”. Both of those games did things differently, and several people didn’t like them for it. But once they were established and here to stay, said people started changing their tune.
Maybe “best game ever” is just how popular something is, regardless of the quality.

(Halo didn’t do much different, but it did do some things differently, it still sucks, shut up)

GameTrailers has given Metal Gear Solid 4 a score of 9.3.

This is a good score. In fact, it’s a very great score.

“If your going to say IGN gave the first perfect score to MGS4 then you are wrong because it’s not even the 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th or even 10th perfect score given. So dont say its IGN’s first perfect score game because those bragging rights belong to Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. And if you mean it for yourself then its a little tough not to call you a fanboy. So many great games have gone by and the first one you think is perfect is on the PS3. i have seen many perfect games on many systems outside of one companies brand. I love this game wish I had a PS3 right now, but I (in my opinion, if you dont like it ignore it) think its not perfect, no current gen game game can match todays standards to the entire extent and surpass all of our expectation and imaginations. It’s to hard and should just except the fact that a freakin’ 9.3 is great score”
- Quoted from an incredibly reasonable and intelligent person.

“Shut The Fuck Up Gaybox 360 Fan. This Is A Fuckin WAR And You Just Simply Cant Face Reality That Were Winning Because You Go Bumb Your Xbox 360 Until You Get The Shitty Red Ring Or Summit
MGS 4 IS OURS FOR PS3 !!!
WE WON – YOU LOSE MUTHER FUCKER”
- Response from, uh, I guess he can classify as a human being.

This has happened with Metroid Prime 3, when GameSpot made the “unforgiveable sin” of rating it 8.5. And just like Twilight Princess, which was rated 8.8. And IGN rated Smash Bros. Brawl 9.5. People went INSANE at this!

These are GOOD RATINGS, PEOPLE. They are ABOVE 7, and MUCH above 5, and nowhere NEAR 1.

What the HELL is wrong with you all?

“The meaning of life is to attain the highest plateau of knowledge.” – Plato

“The meaning of life is to achieve the state of being completely virtuous and happy.” – Aristotle

“The meaning of life is to be at one with nature.” – Hellenic Cynics

“The meaning of life is just to feel as good as possible.” – Cyrenaic

“The meaning of life is to break from fear and reach a state of perfect tranquility.” – Epicurus

“The meaning of life is to not be concerned with the divine order of the universe, take everything with a clear mind, and be hampered down by nothing.” – Stoicism

“There is no meaning of life–reject all ideals and morals, as they only hold a false hold on society to power those higher.” – Nihilism

“The meaning of life is not philosophical, but rather utilitarian. The question is not ‘why was I given life?’, but ‘what can I do to understand life?’.” – Pragmatism

“The meaning of life is whatever you make it to be. It sways and changes for each person, and only you can define it for yourself. No one else.” – Existentialism

“The meaning of life is to develop and fulfill, become a better race than what we already are.” – Humanism

“The meaning of life is a nonsensical question. It’s recursive, as the ‘meaning of x’ IN life is for regarding the consequences and notes of x in a person’s life. A person’s life can have meaning and importance, but to apply to life in and of itself is a misuse of language.” – Logical Positivism

“The meaning of life is to prepare for the world to come, Olam Haba.” – Judaism

“The meaning of life is to have a unifying relationship with the one, loving God.” – Christianity

“The meaning of life is to glorify and worship Allah, and seek for his approval by living within the Divine Guidelines.” – Islam

“The meaning of life is to bring together all of humankind in a spiritual unity.” – Baha’i

“The meaning of life is to cease of all suffering and to achieve Nirvana.” – Buddhism

“The meaning of life is for all sentient beings to walk the path of self-correction and self-realization, for opposites to mingle so the universe can be achieve Oneness.” – Taoism

“The meaning of life is to live as long as possible and to avoid death.” – Shinto

“The meaning of life is to replicate, reproduce, and to evolve all of humanity along with you.” – Science

“The meaning of life is nil. Life sucks and then you die.” – Unfunny darkity-dark teenagers

“Life has no meaning, but as humans we try to associate a meaning or purpose so we can justify our existence. You will never truly live if you are looking for the meaning of life. The meaning of life is to forget about the search for the meaning of life.” – David Seaman

“The meaning of life is to wake up and hope that tomorrow will be a better day.” – Charlie Brown