Okay so we all know the spirit of giving and good will towards men were killed in a shocking double-homicide in 1978; but that doesn't mean that we can't have fun trying to make Christmas special for the ones we love. I am not even close to an expert on anything but I will say that the only thing I've ever done in life that would earn me a 75% approval rate would be giving gifts. They say it's better to give than receive and I totally believe this; this is why I like to give gifts to those who are special in my life just to show them how much I care to have them in my life. Even with the economy being bad; and even to those who probably won't get you anything in return, I still think you will feel rewarded to give gifts this year. If you are like me, you might even enjoy it once you get into the Christmas spirit. In a way you can try to get into the heads of your friends and family and maybe even get to know them a little better. So without further ado here are some suggestion from me, it is my gift to my readers when I'm writing this and I could be playing Call of Duty: Black Ops instead.
It's not about what you want them to have, it's about what they want: Some of the worst gifts I've been given and the worst I've received have been from neglecting this rule. It seems like a no brainer but when you see a person you think of what you would want if you were them. A better way of thinking of simply this is what they would want. You kind of have to take yourself and your likes out of the equation. So if you want CU stuff and they are OU fans it's probably not going to impress them when you get them CU stuff. Likewise, if you don't like their taste in music you can't get them a CD of what you think they should be listening to. Think they need some sensitivity training books? Christmas isn't really the time or the place to drop this kind of bomb on them. There is a minor exception to the rule...
How about that movie/book/CD you think they'd like but they haven't tried yet: You can tell someone that they would probably like a movie or a book or a certain artist a million times and they will say, "I'll have to check that out." You know they never will; so why not just get it for them? This way it's at not cost to them; they may not always like it, but hey, it didn't cost them anything to try it. As I said you do have to observe the previous rule where you don't seem like you are imposing something on them, or even worse, saying more than you intended. Think more along the lines of "Hey you like Eastbound and Down? Well hey, that same guy is in this movie called The Foot Fist Way you might want to check it out."
Don't get things for a hobby or sport they know way more about: There is a little adage that if a person likes golfing don't get them golf clubs. This goes to say that if they are an adamant golfer they probably don't need golf clubs; likely they have ones that they are happy with and if you try to get them that, they will just gather cobwebs in their basement. Not only that, but it might reveal to them how much you paid for it, a golfer that is worth his salt knows about how much each brand costs or how little you know what you are doing. If you do know what kind of golf balls they use, by all means, not like you can have too many of those; or maybe something non-performance related like a club head cover or something like that.
If you do know a lot about a hobby they are getting into, go for it: Say you take your friend fishing and they have a great time. Why not get them a fishing pole that you like? This can add a bit of sentimentality to the gift, "Hey remember that time we had a blast fishing, well here is a new pole so you don't have to use mine." I remember when my dad wanted to get new golf clubs and he was thinking of springing for some new Nike clubs but since I worked at a golf store I knew that you can get a comparable set of irons for $500 less if you went for the Tommy Armour set.
Clothes? Only if you know them REAALLY well: Before you make this leap of faith think of all the times someone gave you clothes that you said to yourself, "I can't ever see wearing this." It's not a reflection on them; it's a reflection on yourself. You have your own personal style and quite honestly many people don't always like being analyzed based on the clothes they wear. I one time got a shirt that said, "I'm not trying to be difficult, it comes naturally" it is for sure in my normal rotation but I always ask myself when I see it, "Is this really the message I am giving off to people?" Certainly whoever bought it was thinking of me when they saw it; and I get a lot of, "That shirt is so you," so some other people must agree. I just am not sure if that was the best way to learn how difficult of a person I am.
Practical gifts for the man who has everything: I one time got in a name draw "the man who has everything" and insult to injury it was a $5 gift exchange. By the way, note to everyone that has a $5 limit on their white elephant/secret santa: NOTHING COSTS $5 ANYMORE! So you are stuck with a $5 gift certificate (also known as barely a coupon) or a sunglass clip. I opted for the sunglass clip; the guy I got it for took me aside and said, "damn, this is actually the only thing I got this Christmas that is practical enough for me to use." This surprised me, but the guy who has everything is too busy buying bigger, better, best of all the big things they likely neglect the small things that everyone else uses everyday.
Fun gifts for those who aren't so well off: This seems contrary to what most would think; you get the hefty gadgets they've never even heard of for the man who has everything, and you get something practical for those who live more humble lives. In my experience it's quite the opposite; the man who has everything has everything that piques his interest, the family that spends it's money on groceries and cookware probably don't need these things and if they do closer members of their family can probably zero in on what they need in that regard. Plus you might say more than you mean like, "Hey I don't think you can afford to get things for yourself so here is a crockpot," if they are in that kind of situation I am sure they don't need you to remind them. But when I say fun gifts, I don't mean gag gifts, that probably won't do them much good (but it depends on the person). I'm talking a board game or a movie or a gift basket as they may not get to enjoy these things as much as they like.
What's wrong with a Christmas card: You don't have to go Jay-Z on all your friends each year. Sometimes all people need is just a Christmas card. Basically, ever since the death of the Christmas spirit (overdose at a John Belushi coke party) nobody gives Christmas cards anymore. All the more special it will make it if you actually do send a Christmas card. You could literally get one for nearly everyone in your office for $30 bucks (but you might want to get the P.C. Happy Holidays/Seasons Greetings ones if you are worried about that). I think I've probably gotten more gratitude shown from giving people a Christmas card than I ever have from actually springing for a gift.
Making a gift isn't as scary as it sounds: Say you have little ones and you want them to get something for a God-Mother or something; well there are plenty of places that will allow them to make their own gifts like bracelets or even clay pots and figurines. This can also be a great activity to keep them preoccupied while one parent is getting the "Santa" gifts. But this isn't just for kids, why not make a scrapbook? Most people say, "I'm not creative enough to do that" that's what everyone says; but once you have the materials in front of them they just go to town. One warning about scrapbooking is that it is quite time consuming so make sure you have a lot of time (and glue as you never seem to have enough glue). As for if they will like it; they will LOVE it. There isn't a person on earth with a hard enough heart not to like a scrapbook.
Gift Cards only as a last resort: A gift card says I either don't know enough about you to buy you something or I didn't have enough time to put any thought into this; even if you intend it to mean that you want them to pick out something they would like. If you only see your niece or nephew once or twice a year who can blame you for not knowing what they want. But if it's someone closer, expect it to go over just a little bit better than giving cash. That's pretty much what it is, cash that you can only use one place; and if you pick a place they don't shop at you just gave that store money for nothing. If you do give gift cards I suggest get gift cards for something they like but you can't physically give them. For instance maybe a Starbucks gift card if they love coffee because you really can't wrap up a cup of coffee. Or online media gift cards like iTunes cards. You also definitely won't lose points for trying to dress it up a little either; gift basket?
These are just my recommendations so please don't take this as law or take offense to it. If I get enough readers I will also post some interesting gift ideas for those who are out of ideas.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Blizzard vs. Bungie: Battle for the Souls of Online Gamers
With the new title Halo: Reach Bungie is trying to recapture the audience it lost to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. I looked at all the hype surrounding Halo 3 and I can't help but sort of chuckle when I see how easy it is to get a copy of Halo: Reach now, and how little hype is going along with it. They just got lazy and complacent and it is a 100% their own fault. I think I know why they call it Halo: Reach; it's because it's kind of a reach to say that this can be packaged as a stand alone game, this is obviously just a Halo 3 expansion pack. And that being the case, it took you three fucking years to hit "copy/paste" to make a new Halo game? That kind of laziness makes me look like a John Henry-esque folk hero. You look at Bungie and then you look at a company like Blizzard who takes online gaming very seriously. Blizzard makes games like Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft and is probably most famous for World of Warcraft the MMORPG (Massive Muliplayer Online Role-Playing Game). I'm about 2 years clean from my WoW addiction so I haven't played in a while, but I can see why I got addicted to WoW. Okay so I'd first like to point out that Blizzard is in fact an intricate plot to harvest souls until they have enough to souls to awaken Ba'al Asmodius from his unholy slumber so he is finally able to take up his throne as the Dreadfather and ruler of earth-realm. It's in their mission statement and I think there is also something about it on their terms of service agreement; that is pretty much a fact at this point. But hey, they know how to treat their minions. This is why every Blizzard expansion is an unofficial holiday in South Korea (most companies close their business when a WoW expansion comes out because they know that they will have so many people missing work); and why internet console gaming can't compete on a global market.
Games:
The first thing to consider are the games that each of them make. As I said Bungie really likes to twist the knife when it comes to making and releasing games and even extra content. The map packs they released for Halo 3 took way too long and nearly everyone was sick of it by then; and then the wait between new games was a you-gotta-be-fucking-kidding-me 3 years. You know who likes sitting around waiting for things to come out? Gamers... oh wait, no they don't... they don't like that at all! Go into any videogame store and you will likely be asked if you want to "pre-order" a game; that's because they know that people will want it the day it's released and will be very upset if they can't get it the very second it's available. Look at that XBox 360 controller that leaked before the system came out; sold on eBay for thousands... and that is a CONTROLLER. Even South Park gets it; did you ever see the one where Eric Cartman freezes himself so that he doesn't have to wait for the Wii to come out? I've been there; I've considered freezing myself waiting for the PSP, and the Wii to come out. Basically Bungie would be like a crack dealer that says, "Well if we wait another week we should have some slightly better shit, plus it will make our clientele want it more." No, they are just going to go somewhere else for crack; that's why there is a new Call of Duty game every year. Are they pretty much all the same game? Oh yeah, but they have just enough to tide us over for another couple of months and we are just as psyched as ever when November rolls around and they have a new one.
Blizzard: What else is there to say; they focus on the World of Warcraft series but they are always updating their older titles. I know it's been way longer between releases of Diablo than any of the Halo titles; but they are always putting patches and new content in all of their games between releases. Not only that but they are spread pretty thin between all their titles.
Bungie: I don't know if there is anything else to Bungie besides the Halo franchise. According to Wikipedia there is Myth and Oni. I'm not very familiar with either of these but I did play a demo of Oni once. Needless to say they don't exactly have a lot of irons in the fire so there isn't really any excuse for not developing regular add-on content or releasing games annually or bi-annually. They have tried to break free of their FPS (first person shooter) game layout but each with very minimal success. They could be very good games; but I don't know if anyone would even know. People are simply getting sick of Halo; guys in green camo shooting bullets vs. guys in purple and pink shooting lasers. I was told Halo: Reach is a prequel because they've gotten to the end of the story line. I know it's been three years; but didn't Cortana get captured by the Flood and aren't there still a ton of those covenant elder guys left? Whatever the case, I believe the Halo series of games are based off of the Halo books so their lore is what the book's lore is. Blizzard's Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft each have completely different stories and folklore associated with them; and they have a ton of depth to each of them. Break free of the Halo series; I know it was badass but even things that kick ass get old after a while (see Grand Theft Auto).
Additional Content:
Blizzard: You buy an expansion every couple of years and that is worth the money; but then they start opening new instances (dungeons for multiple people to tackle together) all the time. There are even new areas that come around and I've actually been surprised and said, "I didn't even hear that they were making a new set of instances." There are always fun little extra challenges surrounding every major holiday. Anything from new monsters (there was a headless horseman guy on Halloween) to Christmas trees that give you little trinkets. They have little promotions going on all the time, like the Mohawk grenade, that give it a little extra spice and add to the enjoyment. Even stupid things like "non-combat pets" which just follow you around are kind of fun to collect. The one thing that Blizzard is one of the worst offenders, but really every MMORPG is sort of guilty of this, how stingy these people are with mounts (things you can ride to make you move faster). When I started WoW you needed to be a level 40 to be able to ride around on a little horse and save yourself some time. One of the main features of the next expansion, Cataclysm, is the ability to ride a flying mount in Azeroth. So basically you can ride a flying griffin wherever you want to in the game; even then though, getting the mount is only slightly easier than getting your own griffin in real life. I've actually heard of girls giving real-life sex for the money to buy the flying mounts. So what's the deal, why doesn't Bliz want you to have one? Well they claim they want you to experience all the game has to offer. Expansive games like Elder Scroll: Oblivion gives you a horse early in the game; Borderlands gives you a car to drive around early on too, but they don't think you are missing out on any content. I think it more has to do with the fact that you pay monthly for WoW and they want make you take your time getting around...
Bungie: Two words, Recon Armor. When Halo 3's map pack started to become stale there was another X-Factor being introduced into the game; and that was a handful of players in flaming armor. I don't know if there could ever be a cooler addition to the game than that. So after a while people started to write Bungie asking how or if they could have the armor; there response was literally, "No, you can't have it." Okay well is there something you can do to unlock it? "There is nothing you can do to unlock it." He even goes on to say that you shouldn't be jealous because it makes you an easier target. That's like the equivalent of saying, "Hey I'm going to eat this cake, you can't have any, but I can tell by how sweet it is that it would just make you fat anyway." Also, does he think people are going to feel sorry for him getting thousands of emails about people wanting FLAMING ARMOR? If it was me I'd just release it to everyone so I didn't have to hear about that shit all day. What kind of ship does Bungie run anyway? Every place I've ever worked you would get fired for addressing something like this so incredibly tactlessly. Furthermore, I am stunned that creating employee only content and flaunting it in front of the customers is even tolerated PERIOD. If you work in the mall, every year around Christmas time they force the employees to park in a designated further lot; is it because they are totally mean? Maybe, but the main reason is that the customers pay the bills and so you want to keep them happy and letting them have your parking spot makes them happy. All this just leaves me with one question, "How many times does a computer programmer's head need to get dunked in the toilet in high school before you decide to make a cool set of armor that is only for you and your friends?" just kind of curious... Bungie did eventually made it available when you preordered one of their other games but that is still prettttttyyy lame. So go into WoW and say, "I didn't even know they had a special Oktoberfest event!" But trust me you'll know when Bungie decides to throw some crumbs your way; they usually even have a countdown clock until they have new map packs. Here is a commercial for how cool it is that they will let you have this armor; looks the same as every other Spartan armor to me, but hey we should be lucky that customers even get to play it.
Gameplay:
Blizzard: Another good thing about WoW especially is that it has such varied gameplay. My first decision picking up the game is Horde or Alliance; the one I choose determines my race and basically the global team and pool of people I'll be able to play with. Suppose I choose Horde; well now I can choose Orc, Undead, Tauren, Blood Elf, or Troll each have their own strengths and weaknesses and even some abilities. Should I have chosen Alliance I would have just as many options about races; though they have completely different sets of races (Human, Dwarf, etc.). Then my customization goes to a class; depending on your race each character has a handful of classes which is the biggest part of determining your gaming experience and your class roles. So just for the sake of argument I chose "Paladin" I still even have further options to customize my character through a talent spec. I can choose "Retribution" and fill a DPS role (Damage Per Second) and help my team's damage, I can choose "Holy" and be a person to heal my party when it takes damage, or I can even be a "Protection" spec and focus on taking the damage from the enemy while they kill it. And for an amount of gold (in game currency) I can switch my spec at any time. So already I have hundreds of options for exactly how I want to play.
Bungie: The very first Halo revolutionized how we thought about in-game mechanics and collision detection; and vehicles in games today can barely even compare to the ones in the original Halo. Halo 2 came next and offered online play as opposed to only having the option of split-screen and LAN play. Since console games didn't have online play (for the most part) they really had a big expectations from people joining the Xbox Live network; and they didn't disappoint at all. Halo 3 came and offered high definition and a whole list of surreal additions. For instance if you killed the shit out of someone or had a 1 in a million kill somehow; you can record it and show it to your friends. But where do you go from there? There are 3 ways you can go from there. You can go the Modern Warfare II route and keep the gameplay mostly the same but inundate people with challenges and give people the rewards of nice, cheap little name tags and tiny icons to display next to their names. You can go the Boarderlands route and offer leveling, a talent spec, and a FPS tailored class system (sniper, heavy gunner, whatever). The final option is the Team Fortress Classic option where you have the ability to choose from specialists every time you spawn (a spy can change into a player from the other team, scouts run fast, engineers build turrets). All of these things add tons of depth to the FPS genre; so what did Reach do? They took a free-sample sized serving of the Modern Warfare II and Team Fortress Classic options. In Halo: Reach you can save up credits to unlock pieces of armor for your Spartan armor or effects for your player in general. The armor pieces are relatively inexpensive; however, it's kind of like when you go to the eye doctor and you do the "better or worse" when you look through that lens machine. To the eye doctor there is a big difference in your decisions, just as I'm sure whoever designed the armor pieces realize that each piece is very different from the others; to me there isn't enough difference to justify buying any of the pieces. In WoW at one time I had a set of armor that looked like molten rocks and flowing lava on my shoulders, anyone sees that and they are going to say, yeah that guy must have put in work for that. As for the effects you can unlock, they look cool but they take a shitload of credits to unlock; it's kind of like if you went to Dave and Busters and decided you wanted to save tickets up for a plasma screen TV you'd get sick of it and realize it's not worth it long before you actually got it. The reason why it works in Modern Warfare II is that you are getting these new nametags and achievements all the time; for instance you get one that says, "Not in the face!" for getting hit in the face with a grenade launcher. There are some that really are achievements you work to unlocking but it's nice to get some to tide you over for doing practically nothing. As for the Team Fortress Classic element; you can choose a "load-out" which is sadly only about 3-5 options per map and rage from being able to put the shield bubbles to being able to use active camo. In CoD:MWII you can choose your entire load-out from what primary and secondary weapons to even perks which give you a class boosting ability. In a way it is disappointing that you have to choose from the small amount of options they give you; but I guess it does level the playing field. In TFC you can pick a completely different character when you die; so let's say you need to guard something you can make an engineer and build/repair turrets. But the turrets kill the hell out of anyone on the other team; so they need to be a spy who can sneak past the turrets. It adds an extra dimension of strategy and teamwork to a very simple capture the flag scenario.
Customer Service:
Blizzard: There is an in-game chat you can have with admins and customer service if something happens and you need it. The wait times can be long when something is wrong globally but if you experienced a bug and didn't get the item you were supposed to for a quest you just tell them and they usually give it to you.
Bungie: You can see how they react when you show interest in their products; by the link above but what about day to day hum-drum game play? Well after nearly the dozenth time of being called a "n****r lover" by a child probably not more than 10 years old I decided to ask about maybe having separate gaming rooms for adults who want to play with other adults. Their response was, "Heh, well we can't discriminate against anyone on our game for any reason. Besides how can we even tell how old they are?" Cool it Che Guevara; far be it for me to question the inalienable rights of an elementary school aged child to scream hate-speech into my ears, but isn't there a way to make it so I get paired up with people that are just there to have a good time? As for how you do it, I don't know, it's not my job it's yours. This brings me to my next point...
The Banhammer:
For those of you who don't know what the banhammer is; it's the invisible hand of justice and order put in place by the admins that help casual gamers enjoy their gaming experience online. In a perfect server the banhammer puts the kibosh on hackers, harassers, and general dickweeds that are just there to crash the game.
Blizzard: I have no idea what if any part of this story is true; but one of my friends was on WoW and he set up a deal to buy an item from another player and got bamboozled lost all of his materials and money. According to the story the admins set up a similar buy from the same character and when they got ripped off as well they booted him off the realm (server). I'm sure how it really went down is that some admins scrolled through the log and found some jerk jacking people's money and booted him off the realm; but the idea of an in-game sting operation gives me a chuckle. But this is how it goes, if you play like a creep you lose your guy for an indefinite amount of time. They do have a very hard time tracking people doing legal operations with a cheater method; for instance in Diablo II they have PKers (Player Killers) that use hacked items to kill people's characters forever. And in WoW there was a trick where people would drop 1 piece of gold rapidly in order to crash the server. But keep in mind they are on PC's (as well as Macs) so doing counter hacking for an online game would be like being a hall monitor during a riot at San Quentin.
Bungie: It's pretty much the wild west on Bungie's servers; with each succession they are getting better at halting hacking; if you want to see what I'm talking about you can still go onto Halo 2 and within about 2 or 3 games you will see someone using a cheat that teleports them behind a player giving them an instant kill. But as far as stopping harassment by players... No attempts have ever been made to do it. In fact if you want to harass someone in Halo 3 you just click on their name and say "I like playing with this person" and you will get matched up with them more frequently. What caliber of people are on Halo? Well imagine you are in a movie theater that is packed to the brim and you give every single person a laser pointer, a cell phone that can't be silenced, unlimited beer, and a baseball bat. That would be a pretty tame Halo server.
Conclusion:
Blizzard games are something to be feared for their addictive nature; online console gaming, while popular in the US, is a long way from being able to compete on a global market. Even Sony who does actually compete on a global scale is even hurting to get a piece of the online gaming pie. Is online gaming a billion dollar industry? You bet your ass it is. Who is going to corner the market? Is it the company that gives it's player a new reason to turn their computer on and play every couple of months or the ones who are busy making wrestling belts for "best boss fight" at 1:20 (a serious wtf, since I can't remember a single boss fight in all 3 Halo games).
Games:
The first thing to consider are the games that each of them make. As I said Bungie really likes to twist the knife when it comes to making and releasing games and even extra content. The map packs they released for Halo 3 took way too long and nearly everyone was sick of it by then; and then the wait between new games was a you-gotta-be-fucking-kidding-me 3 years. You know who likes sitting around waiting for things to come out? Gamers... oh wait, no they don't... they don't like that at all! Go into any videogame store and you will likely be asked if you want to "pre-order" a game; that's because they know that people will want it the day it's released and will be very upset if they can't get it the very second it's available. Look at that XBox 360 controller that leaked before the system came out; sold on eBay for thousands... and that is a CONTROLLER. Even South Park gets it; did you ever see the one where Eric Cartman freezes himself so that he doesn't have to wait for the Wii to come out? I've been there; I've considered freezing myself waiting for the PSP, and the Wii to come out. Basically Bungie would be like a crack dealer that says, "Well if we wait another week we should have some slightly better shit, plus it will make our clientele want it more." No, they are just going to go somewhere else for crack; that's why there is a new Call of Duty game every year. Are they pretty much all the same game? Oh yeah, but they have just enough to tide us over for another couple of months and we are just as psyched as ever when November rolls around and they have a new one.
Blizzard: What else is there to say; they focus on the World of Warcraft series but they are always updating their older titles. I know it's been way longer between releases of Diablo than any of the Halo titles; but they are always putting patches and new content in all of their games between releases. Not only that but they are spread pretty thin between all their titles.
Bungie: I don't know if there is anything else to Bungie besides the Halo franchise. According to Wikipedia there is Myth and Oni. I'm not very familiar with either of these but I did play a demo of Oni once. Needless to say they don't exactly have a lot of irons in the fire so there isn't really any excuse for not developing regular add-on content or releasing games annually or bi-annually. They have tried to break free of their FPS (first person shooter) game layout but each with very minimal success. They could be very good games; but I don't know if anyone would even know. People are simply getting sick of Halo; guys in green camo shooting bullets vs. guys in purple and pink shooting lasers. I was told Halo: Reach is a prequel because they've gotten to the end of the story line. I know it's been three years; but didn't Cortana get captured by the Flood and aren't there still a ton of those covenant elder guys left? Whatever the case, I believe the Halo series of games are based off of the Halo books so their lore is what the book's lore is. Blizzard's Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft each have completely different stories and folklore associated with them; and they have a ton of depth to each of them. Break free of the Halo series; I know it was badass but even things that kick ass get old after a while (see Grand Theft Auto).
Additional Content:
Blizzard: You buy an expansion every couple of years and that is worth the money; but then they start opening new instances (dungeons for multiple people to tackle together) all the time. There are even new areas that come around and I've actually been surprised and said, "I didn't even hear that they were making a new set of instances." There are always fun little extra challenges surrounding every major holiday. Anything from new monsters (there was a headless horseman guy on Halloween) to Christmas trees that give you little trinkets. They have little promotions going on all the time, like the Mohawk grenade, that give it a little extra spice and add to the enjoyment. Even stupid things like "non-combat pets" which just follow you around are kind of fun to collect. The one thing that Blizzard is one of the worst offenders, but really every MMORPG is sort of guilty of this, how stingy these people are with mounts (things you can ride to make you move faster). When I started WoW you needed to be a level 40 to be able to ride around on a little horse and save yourself some time. One of the main features of the next expansion, Cataclysm, is the ability to ride a flying mount in Azeroth. So basically you can ride a flying griffin wherever you want to in the game; even then though, getting the mount is only slightly easier than getting your own griffin in real life. I've actually heard of girls giving real-life sex for the money to buy the flying mounts. So what's the deal, why doesn't Bliz want you to have one? Well they claim they want you to experience all the game has to offer. Expansive games like Elder Scroll: Oblivion gives you a horse early in the game; Borderlands gives you a car to drive around early on too, but they don't think you are missing out on any content. I think it more has to do with the fact that you pay monthly for WoW and they want make you take your time getting around...
Bungie: Two words, Recon Armor. When Halo 3's map pack started to become stale there was another X-Factor being introduced into the game; and that was a handful of players in flaming armor. I don't know if there could ever be a cooler addition to the game than that. So after a while people started to write Bungie asking how or if they could have the armor; there response was literally, "No, you can't have it." Okay well is there something you can do to unlock it? "There is nothing you can do to unlock it." He even goes on to say that you shouldn't be jealous because it makes you an easier target. That's like the equivalent of saying, "Hey I'm going to eat this cake, you can't have any, but I can tell by how sweet it is that it would just make you fat anyway." Also, does he think people are going to feel sorry for him getting thousands of emails about people wanting FLAMING ARMOR? If it was me I'd just release it to everyone so I didn't have to hear about that shit all day. What kind of ship does Bungie run anyway? Every place I've ever worked you would get fired for addressing something like this so incredibly tactlessly. Furthermore, I am stunned that creating employee only content and flaunting it in front of the customers is even tolerated PERIOD. If you work in the mall, every year around Christmas time they force the employees to park in a designated further lot; is it because they are totally mean? Maybe, but the main reason is that the customers pay the bills and so you want to keep them happy and letting them have your parking spot makes them happy. All this just leaves me with one question, "How many times does a computer programmer's head need to get dunked in the toilet in high school before you decide to make a cool set of armor that is only for you and your friends?" just kind of curious... Bungie did eventually made it available when you preordered one of their other games but that is still prettttttyyy lame. So go into WoW and say, "I didn't even know they had a special Oktoberfest event!" But trust me you'll know when Bungie decides to throw some crumbs your way; they usually even have a countdown clock until they have new map packs. Here is a commercial for how cool it is that they will let you have this armor; looks the same as every other Spartan armor to me, but hey we should be lucky that customers even get to play it.
Gameplay:
Blizzard: Another good thing about WoW especially is that it has such varied gameplay. My first decision picking up the game is Horde or Alliance; the one I choose determines my race and basically the global team and pool of people I'll be able to play with. Suppose I choose Horde; well now I can choose Orc, Undead, Tauren, Blood Elf, or Troll each have their own strengths and weaknesses and even some abilities. Should I have chosen Alliance I would have just as many options about races; though they have completely different sets of races (Human, Dwarf, etc.). Then my customization goes to a class; depending on your race each character has a handful of classes which is the biggest part of determining your gaming experience and your class roles. So just for the sake of argument I chose "Paladin" I still even have further options to customize my character through a talent spec. I can choose "Retribution" and fill a DPS role (Damage Per Second) and help my team's damage, I can choose "Holy" and be a person to heal my party when it takes damage, or I can even be a "Protection" spec and focus on taking the damage from the enemy while they kill it. And for an amount of gold (in game currency) I can switch my spec at any time. So already I have hundreds of options for exactly how I want to play.
Bungie: The very first Halo revolutionized how we thought about in-game mechanics and collision detection; and vehicles in games today can barely even compare to the ones in the original Halo. Halo 2 came next and offered online play as opposed to only having the option of split-screen and LAN play. Since console games didn't have online play (for the most part) they really had a big expectations from people joining the Xbox Live network; and they didn't disappoint at all. Halo 3 came and offered high definition and a whole list of surreal additions. For instance if you killed the shit out of someone or had a 1 in a million kill somehow; you can record it and show it to your friends. But where do you go from there? There are 3 ways you can go from there. You can go the Modern Warfare II route and keep the gameplay mostly the same but inundate people with challenges and give people the rewards of nice, cheap little name tags and tiny icons to display next to their names. You can go the Boarderlands route and offer leveling, a talent spec, and a FPS tailored class system (sniper, heavy gunner, whatever). The final option is the Team Fortress Classic option where you have the ability to choose from specialists every time you spawn (a spy can change into a player from the other team, scouts run fast, engineers build turrets). All of these things add tons of depth to the FPS genre; so what did Reach do? They took a free-sample sized serving of the Modern Warfare II and Team Fortress Classic options. In Halo: Reach you can save up credits to unlock pieces of armor for your Spartan armor or effects for your player in general. The armor pieces are relatively inexpensive; however, it's kind of like when you go to the eye doctor and you do the "better or worse" when you look through that lens machine. To the eye doctor there is a big difference in your decisions, just as I'm sure whoever designed the armor pieces realize that each piece is very different from the others; to me there isn't enough difference to justify buying any of the pieces. In WoW at one time I had a set of armor that looked like molten rocks and flowing lava on my shoulders, anyone sees that and they are going to say, yeah that guy must have put in work for that. As for the effects you can unlock, they look cool but they take a shitload of credits to unlock; it's kind of like if you went to Dave and Busters and decided you wanted to save tickets up for a plasma screen TV you'd get sick of it and realize it's not worth it long before you actually got it. The reason why it works in Modern Warfare II is that you are getting these new nametags and achievements all the time; for instance you get one that says, "Not in the face!" for getting hit in the face with a grenade launcher. There are some that really are achievements you work to unlocking but it's nice to get some to tide you over for doing practically nothing. As for the Team Fortress Classic element; you can choose a "load-out" which is sadly only about 3-5 options per map and rage from being able to put the shield bubbles to being able to use active camo. In CoD:MWII you can choose your entire load-out from what primary and secondary weapons to even perks which give you a class boosting ability. In a way it is disappointing that you have to choose from the small amount of options they give you; but I guess it does level the playing field. In TFC you can pick a completely different character when you die; so let's say you need to guard something you can make an engineer and build/repair turrets. But the turrets kill the hell out of anyone on the other team; so they need to be a spy who can sneak past the turrets. It adds an extra dimension of strategy and teamwork to a very simple capture the flag scenario.
Customer Service:
Blizzard: There is an in-game chat you can have with admins and customer service if something happens and you need it. The wait times can be long when something is wrong globally but if you experienced a bug and didn't get the item you were supposed to for a quest you just tell them and they usually give it to you.
Bungie: You can see how they react when you show interest in their products; by the link above but what about day to day hum-drum game play? Well after nearly the dozenth time of being called a "n****r lover" by a child probably not more than 10 years old I decided to ask about maybe having separate gaming rooms for adults who want to play with other adults. Their response was, "Heh, well we can't discriminate against anyone on our game for any reason. Besides how can we even tell how old they are?" Cool it Che Guevara; far be it for me to question the inalienable rights of an elementary school aged child to scream hate-speech into my ears, but isn't there a way to make it so I get paired up with people that are just there to have a good time? As for how you do it, I don't know, it's not my job it's yours. This brings me to my next point...
The Banhammer:
For those of you who don't know what the banhammer is; it's the invisible hand of justice and order put in place by the admins that help casual gamers enjoy their gaming experience online. In a perfect server the banhammer puts the kibosh on hackers, harassers, and general dickweeds that are just there to crash the game.
Blizzard: I have no idea what if any part of this story is true; but one of my friends was on WoW and he set up a deal to buy an item from another player and got bamboozled lost all of his materials and money. According to the story the admins set up a similar buy from the same character and when they got ripped off as well they booted him off the realm (server). I'm sure how it really went down is that some admins scrolled through the log and found some jerk jacking people's money and booted him off the realm; but the idea of an in-game sting operation gives me a chuckle. But this is how it goes, if you play like a creep you lose your guy for an indefinite amount of time. They do have a very hard time tracking people doing legal operations with a cheater method; for instance in Diablo II they have PKers (Player Killers) that use hacked items to kill people's characters forever. And in WoW there was a trick where people would drop 1 piece of gold rapidly in order to crash the server. But keep in mind they are on PC's (as well as Macs) so doing counter hacking for an online game would be like being a hall monitor during a riot at San Quentin.
Bungie: It's pretty much the wild west on Bungie's servers; with each succession they are getting better at halting hacking; if you want to see what I'm talking about you can still go onto Halo 2 and within about 2 or 3 games you will see someone using a cheat that teleports them behind a player giving them an instant kill. But as far as stopping harassment by players... No attempts have ever been made to do it. In fact if you want to harass someone in Halo 3 you just click on their name and say "I like playing with this person" and you will get matched up with them more frequently. What caliber of people are on Halo? Well imagine you are in a movie theater that is packed to the brim and you give every single person a laser pointer, a cell phone that can't be silenced, unlimited beer, and a baseball bat. That would be a pretty tame Halo server.
Conclusion:
Blizzard games are something to be feared for their addictive nature; online console gaming, while popular in the US, is a long way from being able to compete on a global market. Even Sony who does actually compete on a global scale is even hurting to get a piece of the online gaming pie. Is online gaming a billion dollar industry? You bet your ass it is. Who is going to corner the market? Is it the company that gives it's player a new reason to turn their computer on and play every couple of months or the ones who are busy making wrestling belts for "best boss fight" at 1:20 (a serious wtf, since I can't remember a single boss fight in all 3 Halo games).
Monday, August 30, 2010
Words are Worth Less and Almost Worthless
It's not an extremely commonly used phrase but sometimes when you throw out a big word people will call them "$5 words." I don't really know the origin of this phrase but, it kind of got the gears turning; what if words really did have a monetary value? Well it would be losing value exponentially. In the same way that light pollution blocks out the stars; word pollution lessens the impact of nearly everything we say or hear. Take for example a love letter; in the olden days that alone could win the heart of a prospective (literate) maiden. You ever try to write someone a love note these days? I've seen two people do it in my grown life and it didn't woo anyone; it was just openly mocked by the recipient and all of her friends on both occasions. Strange thing is we even have many more options available in the ways of getting a message of love to a potential mate: we have email, cell phones, land phones, post mail, MySpace, Facebook, Match.com, Zoosk, eHarmony. Honestly now text messaging your intentions will do you just as good as any of these other options. What the hell are you even going to say anyway? Anything that you think is coming from your heart probably was in some Kate Hudson/Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy already.
Point is that the English language is only so vast, and now more than ever, it is thinly spread across so many millions of things. Think of how many words you hear, read, and say every single day. If you're like most Americans you probably watch about two hours of TV a day, give or take, think of how many ideas are presented to you. For ten minutes you are watching Jesse Katsopolis try to impress his biker friends while Danny Tanner is trying to fight the feelings for the coworker that replaced his old co anchor who is on maternity leave pregnant with Jesse Katsopolis's child while D.J. Tanner is trying to fit in at school leaving Michelle Tanner to be neglected. Then we are interrupted by an ad showing gangster Boost Mobile is, then we are told how if we don't check our credit score we will end up working at a Red Lobster for the rest of our lives, and then we see an ad for killer super-evolved piranha, and then Flo from Progressive... So in roughly 10 minutes we have been bombarded with so many words, very socially complex scenarios, and emotions we were supposed to have associated with them. After three of these intervals then we completely shift gears when we see Dr. House treat a man for Anthrax only to realize he also has Flesh Eating Bacteria but he got Dysentery from the Anthrax treatment but the Dysentery treatment will make the Flesh Eating Bacteria grow faster... And this is our recreation; add in a highly stressful job with equally stressed out people and then come home to a family trying to cope with their own myriad of problems...
Eventually our eyes become so glazed-over and our mind becomes too overwhelmed that almost nothing can get through. The shame is the people that matter to us most are the ones we see after we are overloaded at the end of the day. But how did this happen? Look back at the turn of the century, before silent films you would only be able to see plays maybe go to a saloon and hear some music and maybe a new book comes your way every couple of months. But these are really the stimulus that even comes from somewhere besides your small social community and they would probably be pretty few and far between. Now-a-days we have movies; often we have a dozen to choose from, and even the least wordy movie probably has at least 100 pages of dialogue. In the past the music was limited to a few records or whatever music the musicians of the community knew; but now you almost don't even meet a person with an iTunes library of less than 1,000 songs. And as for books, there are so many we need a best seller list or an Oprah book club recommendation before we even decide they are worth our while to read. At my last job I remember coming off of a 1 day vacation to over three hundred new emails; and then I realized, in a normal day I look over 300 emails. Obviously, not all were for me specifically but I had to at least look over them. Unless you're really famous and get tons of fan mail, or you are Santa Claus, at what point in history would one person be receiving 300 pieces of mail a day? And advertisements... we are bombarded by them. I think the idea of subliminal advertising is almost absurd; think of how many LIMINAL advertisements we have to ignore on a given day. Even in the room you are sitting in right now turn your head 360 degrees and tell me you don't see at least one thing that is used for advertising, see just how far you have to turn before you see a corporate logo of some kind, if you want to melt your brain count how many words you see on the nearest object to you. I'm holding in my hand a 12 oz. bottle of water (very small bottle) there are 171 words on it and it contains water. I tried to count the words on a bag of Skittles but my head started hurting. And a Blockbuster receipt for two videos totalling $6.48 probably has more words than this entire article. It's word pollution...
Point is that the English language is only so vast, and now more than ever, it is thinly spread across so many millions of things. Think of how many words you hear, read, and say every single day. If you're like most Americans you probably watch about two hours of TV a day, give or take, think of how many ideas are presented to you. For ten minutes you are watching Jesse Katsopolis try to impress his biker friends while Danny Tanner is trying to fight the feelings for the coworker that replaced his old co anchor who is on maternity leave pregnant with Jesse Katsopolis's child while D.J. Tanner is trying to fit in at school leaving Michelle Tanner to be neglected. Then we are interrupted by an ad showing gangster Boost Mobile is, then we are told how if we don't check our credit score we will end up working at a Red Lobster for the rest of our lives, and then we see an ad for killer super-evolved piranha, and then Flo from Progressive... So in roughly 10 minutes we have been bombarded with so many words, very socially complex scenarios, and emotions we were supposed to have associated with them. After three of these intervals then we completely shift gears when we see Dr. House treat a man for Anthrax only to realize he also has Flesh Eating Bacteria but he got Dysentery from the Anthrax treatment but the Dysentery treatment will make the Flesh Eating Bacteria grow faster... And this is our recreation; add in a highly stressful job with equally stressed out people and then come home to a family trying to cope with their own myriad of problems...
Eventually our eyes become so glazed-over and our mind becomes too overwhelmed that almost nothing can get through. The shame is the people that matter to us most are the ones we see after we are overloaded at the end of the day. But how did this happen? Look back at the turn of the century, before silent films you would only be able to see plays maybe go to a saloon and hear some music and maybe a new book comes your way every couple of months. But these are really the stimulus that even comes from somewhere besides your small social community and they would probably be pretty few and far between. Now-a-days we have movies; often we have a dozen to choose from, and even the least wordy movie probably has at least 100 pages of dialogue. In the past the music was limited to a few records or whatever music the musicians of the community knew; but now you almost don't even meet a person with an iTunes library of less than 1,000 songs. And as for books, there are so many we need a best seller list or an Oprah book club recommendation before we even decide they are worth our while to read. At my last job I remember coming off of a 1 day vacation to over three hundred new emails; and then I realized, in a normal day I look over 300 emails. Obviously, not all were for me specifically but I had to at least look over them. Unless you're really famous and get tons of fan mail, or you are Santa Claus, at what point in history would one person be receiving 300 pieces of mail a day? And advertisements... we are bombarded by them. I think the idea of subliminal advertising is almost absurd; think of how many LIMINAL advertisements we have to ignore on a given day. Even in the room you are sitting in right now turn your head 360 degrees and tell me you don't see at least one thing that is used for advertising, see just how far you have to turn before you see a corporate logo of some kind, if you want to melt your brain count how many words you see on the nearest object to you. I'm holding in my hand a 12 oz. bottle of water (very small bottle) there are 171 words on it and it contains water. I tried to count the words on a bag of Skittles but my head started hurting. And a Blockbuster receipt for two videos totalling $6.48 probably has more words than this entire article. It's word pollution...
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Total Ad-ness: Insurance Commercials
There have been a lot of very strange messages that commercials have now. Some leave me saying, "what the fuck was that about?" while others I just have to wonder why any of these companies would want to give the impressions that they do. Take this first one for example:
Company: State Farm
Message: State Farm will give you stuff that isn't yours and help you abduct people.
The very first thing to notice is from 0:00-0:03; what are they talking about before they are interrupted by the baseball?
I've seen it like a dozen times and it sounds like they are saying, "Snatching stuff takes..." So those guys are sitting around talking about stealing things when 8oz. of karma comes smashing through their window? Thinking about that makes the whole rest of the commercial seem a little darker. So firstly a woman shows up in their house and they immediately force her to make them a sandwich, then they abduct some girl they've been stalking, and it all ends up with something that really blows my mind. They ask for a hot tub and get one; but this is an insurance company. So the reading-between-the-lines message is that, "Hey, so a baseball flew through your window; what is the fun in just getting your window fixed? Think big, tell your agent that you got your hot tub stolen... They're an insurance company, they screw people all the time, they can afford it... And you're the victim here; think of all that anguish you went through in the eighth of a second it took for your insurance agent to set things right... Oh yeah, and tell that bitch you need a sandwich!" So message received loud and clear: misogyny, kidnapping, and insurance fraud are met with beaming approval by your State Farm agent.
Company: State Farm
Message: Who fucking knows?
Here is the other State Farm commercials hosted by this guy... Without mentioning he looks like a creepy bus station drifter; see if you think there is anything strange about this commercial:
If you are wondering why the hell he said, "La Familia" when identifying State Farm customers then we are on the same page. None of the rest of the commercial is in Spanish and it's not like the commercial even panders to Spanish speaking people. And it isn't like 'la familia' is some phrase that you typically say in Spanish instead of English like "Mi casa es su casa." So why even do that, it doesn't make any sense. I'm not one of those people who get bent out of shape when I hear, "Para espanol marque dos" on the phone; but I know people who are. In fact I'd have to say it's more likely to have people not like it because of that; than it is to have people say, "Oh shit, he said 'la familia,' State Farm understands the plight of my people." And they also have tons of Spanish commercials as well so that seems to be a little overkill to put it in the English commercials as well. I'm thinking there is some ill-informed executive at State Farm that says, "Hey look at this huge untapped market of Spanish speaking Americans; hardly any of them have insurance."
Company: Esurance
Message: We will respond to serious inquiry with mockery and annoyance.
Okay so the last one, and this one cuts through me like glass... with rusted nails in it. I'll just warn you, that this is so incredibly unfunny and annoying that you might just want to skip to what I'm talking about:
How do you totally ruin a time-tested dance like the robot... Anyway, I don't understand why when she explains that they can contact the website 24/7 he yells, "ERROR!" Does that mean that the website doesn't do that, or that the website is prone to errors? Their new ad campaign seems to have an undertone of the people getting worked too hard that they become cynical; but is that what you want in an insurance company? That would be fun, you get in a car accident and you realize that luckily your family is okay but your family car is totalled, you've been through a lot and then you call the insurance company and some asshole starts yelling, "ERROR! Does not compute" at you. Insult to injury I think that the people who made this commercial actually thought this was in some way funny. They were probably like, "Dude we should totally say something funny, like they would say in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. How about, 'We aren't really robots','I thought we were.' It's funny because, like, how come he wouldn't know he's not a robot." Terrible...
Company: State Farm
Message: State Farm will give you stuff that isn't yours and help you abduct people.
The very first thing to notice is from 0:00-0:03; what are they talking about before they are interrupted by the baseball?
I've seen it like a dozen times and it sounds like they are saying, "Snatching stuff takes..." So those guys are sitting around talking about stealing things when 8oz. of karma comes smashing through their window? Thinking about that makes the whole rest of the commercial seem a little darker. So firstly a woman shows up in their house and they immediately force her to make them a sandwich, then they abduct some girl they've been stalking, and it all ends up with something that really blows my mind. They ask for a hot tub and get one; but this is an insurance company. So the reading-between-the-lines message is that, "Hey, so a baseball flew through your window; what is the fun in just getting your window fixed? Think big, tell your agent that you got your hot tub stolen... They're an insurance company, they screw people all the time, they can afford it... And you're the victim here; think of all that anguish you went through in the eighth of a second it took for your insurance agent to set things right... Oh yeah, and tell that bitch you need a sandwich!" So message received loud and clear: misogyny, kidnapping, and insurance fraud are met with beaming approval by your State Farm agent.
Company: State Farm
Message: Who fucking knows?
Here is the other State Farm commercials hosted by this guy... Without mentioning he looks like a creepy bus station drifter; see if you think there is anything strange about this commercial:
If you are wondering why the hell he said, "La Familia" when identifying State Farm customers then we are on the same page. None of the rest of the commercial is in Spanish and it's not like the commercial even panders to Spanish speaking people. And it isn't like 'la familia' is some phrase that you typically say in Spanish instead of English like "Mi casa es su casa." So why even do that, it doesn't make any sense. I'm not one of those people who get bent out of shape when I hear, "Para espanol marque dos" on the phone; but I know people who are. In fact I'd have to say it's more likely to have people not like it because of that; than it is to have people say, "Oh shit, he said 'la familia,' State Farm understands the plight of my people." And they also have tons of Spanish commercials as well so that seems to be a little overkill to put it in the English commercials as well. I'm thinking there is some ill-informed executive at State Farm that says, "Hey look at this huge untapped market of Spanish speaking Americans; hardly any of them have insurance."
Company: Esurance
Message: We will respond to serious inquiry with mockery and annoyance.
Okay so the last one, and this one cuts through me like glass... with rusted nails in it. I'll just warn you, that this is so incredibly unfunny and annoying that you might just want to skip to what I'm talking about:
How do you totally ruin a time-tested dance like the robot... Anyway, I don't understand why when she explains that they can contact the website 24/7 he yells, "ERROR!" Does that mean that the website doesn't do that, or that the website is prone to errors? Their new ad campaign seems to have an undertone of the people getting worked too hard that they become cynical; but is that what you want in an insurance company? That would be fun, you get in a car accident and you realize that luckily your family is okay but your family car is totalled, you've been through a lot and then you call the insurance company and some asshole starts yelling, "ERROR! Does not compute" at you. Insult to injury I think that the people who made this commercial actually thought this was in some way funny. They were probably like, "Dude we should totally say something funny, like they would say in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. How about, 'We aren't really robots','I thought we were.' It's funny because, like, how come he wouldn't know he's not a robot." Terrible...
Friday, August 6, 2010
Pearls on Swine
You know what really grinds my gears (ha, see I was an O.G. Family Guy fan); when people who are way fatter than I am, tell me that I need to lose weight. Like seriously, what the fuck? It's a slap in the face for actually liking people for who they are on the inside. Seriously, I've never even had the urge to tell someone they need to lose some weight. The only time I would consider it, is if they were normally smaller and they started gaining weight out of control. But as for me, I actually weigh a little less than I did last year, in fact as long as I can remember I was this size. I've tried walking 2 and 1/2 miles to work and also reducing my meal sizes to 5 meals the size of my fist like they say. After about 3 months I only had one person who didn't know I was doing that ever even remark about it. As for looking better to girls, didn't even help slightly, in fact being my normal size seems to work about the best; and my normal size is 220-230 range. My class reunion is at the end of the month, and for those of you who don't already know, I'm helping plan it. But honestly I could lose 30 pounds and it wouldn't mean a damn thing. I've already thought about it, you see here are my obvious character defects that will definitely come to light in the beginning stages of small talk: I started going bald at 25, I'm 5'7", I'm a borderline alcoholic, I have gout at 28, my normal weight is 230 lbs, I have been unable to find a job in over a year and half, I live with my parents, the sum of my total assets is in the $1,000 range, I've dismally failed at everything I've even tried in the past 5 years, I have a rotten personality, and I lack confidence. I can't even fix most of those bad ones; so plucking the weight problem out of there is like taking a shit on the floor and saying, "It will be okay as soon as I get the corn out of there." At this point I've given up on my love life and it's completely unsalvageable. So if I can't get any chicks; what the fuck is the point in worrying about it right now?
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Down on Williams Street
For those of you who don't know who Williams Street is; they are the main production company on the Adult Swim (late night on Cartoon Network) line-up. I mentioned before that I like watching it, especially when I'm doing my brutal accounting homework. In it's hay day Adult Swim was legendary; it was a whole night of very interesting shows. Anytime I was lucky enough to have the day off, I would celebrate by watching Adult Swim until my eyes literally couldn't stay open. But I went for a long time without watching TV and sort of lost track of the line-up. After reconnecting due to brain-searing amounts of late night homework; I realized that Williams Street is in sort of disrepair. It's kind of like that feeling you get when your best friend gets married and you are just kind of left in the dust. You can hang out with them but they are just not as cool and fun as they used to be. I want to say, "Hey Adult Swim, remember that time when you put that billboard of the Moonanite up in Boston and they thought it was a bomb and you got arrested... Good times, but seriously what the fuck happened to you, man?" I am barely even exaggerating, Williams Street made you feel like a friend; shit they even played little pranks on you. For instance on one of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVDs they have an option to "Play All" and then it plays every episode simultaneously on a grid. It leaves you saying, "You fuckers," but you know like you would to a friend.
But now they feel like they are growing up or something having a huge line-up of live action shows. The best one they have is Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! which is hit or miss, and I'd have to say more miss than hit. It's avant garde nonsequitur humor to a nauseating level. Seriously, I've gotten multiple headaches and had to lay down because of watching one of their shows for too long; which is strange because the episodes are only 15 minutes long. Then they have The Mighty Boosh which by saying it's not the worst thing on television would be extremely generous... like dedicating a building to someone because of a generous donation generous. I don't think Williams Street has anything to do with this one, I think it's some BBC show, but they sure as shit bought that show for reasons I'll never know. If you think Tim and Eric is hard to sit through, watching this would be an act of heroism. So after sharing half a good show between the two of them; it blows my mind that they think people would want more shows like this. Their newest show is called Childrens Hospital which seems to ooze bad taste to make a show about a children's hospital; but can you even say it's bad taste if there is almost no way you could think it's funny? I mean, I can't even tell if that's supposed to be the joke, like it's a joke about comedy shows that would be in such poor taste as to make fun of a children's hospital. I can't even tell, because it's not like the jokes just don't hit, and it's some problem with delivery and they can fix it by tweaking it a little; I don't even see where they were going, why anyone would ever think any of that was funny. Marking the recent success of Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell; every boom mic operator that worked on The Daily Show gets a blank check for whatever ill-advised show they want to make. This show stars Rob Corddry (I know he can be funny, I've seen a bunch of shorts that he made on the internet) but I can't tell if he was so excited to have his show that he tried too hard or if he went too far out on a limb and decided he'd get the show canceled so he could be free of a contract or something. I find it almost impossible to believe that he actually thinks this show is gold or has any sort of promise. I will say there are so many hospital shows it's about time they are parodied... or is it? They have made very good hospital dramadies like Scrubs that can be funny as well as letting you connect with the characters producing very emotional moments. Sad thing is, Scrubs is a million times better, and doesn't have nearly the star power this show has. Seriously it has Rob Corddry, Henry Winkler, Michael Cerra, and Ed Helms; I'd watch any show with them in it, except Childrens Hospital. The female cast is atrocious and they tend to get the most screen time, especially in the first season. Except maybe for Tina Fey, they are the most unattractive and unfunny women on any comedy show that I can think of. They seem like they don't even want to be there, with such an male dominated viewing audience, you'd think pretty much any semi-attractive semi-funny girl with as much face-time as they get would kill to be there. Just to make sure I've got all the current ones, I think I need to mention Delocated, far and away the worst show of all of them. The plot is about a guy in the witness relocation program pursued by a stand-up comic hitman... Did I piece that together from watching the show? God NO! You think I'm crazy, I got that from watching a trailer for it. Watching 5 minutes of that show will give you inoperable brain cancer. But if you think that a guy in a ski mask with one of those anonymity voice filters over his voice isn't a stale premise, you may like it... Ha, just kidding, nobody could ever think that show was entertaining.
But now they feel like they are growing up or something having a huge line-up of live action shows. The best one they have is Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! which is hit or miss, and I'd have to say more miss than hit. It's avant garde nonsequitur humor to a nauseating level. Seriously, I've gotten multiple headaches and had to lay down because of watching one of their shows for too long; which is strange because the episodes are only 15 minutes long. Then they have The Mighty Boosh which by saying it's not the worst thing on television would be extremely generous... like dedicating a building to someone because of a generous donation generous. I don't think Williams Street has anything to do with this one, I think it's some BBC show, but they sure as shit bought that show for reasons I'll never know. If you think Tim and Eric is hard to sit through, watching this would be an act of heroism. So after sharing half a good show between the two of them; it blows my mind that they think people would want more shows like this. Their newest show is called Childrens Hospital which seems to ooze bad taste to make a show about a children's hospital; but can you even say it's bad taste if there is almost no way you could think it's funny? I mean, I can't even tell if that's supposed to be the joke, like it's a joke about comedy shows that would be in such poor taste as to make fun of a children's hospital. I can't even tell, because it's not like the jokes just don't hit, and it's some problem with delivery and they can fix it by tweaking it a little; I don't even see where they were going, why anyone would ever think any of that was funny. Marking the recent success of Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell; every boom mic operator that worked on The Daily Show gets a blank check for whatever ill-advised show they want to make. This show stars Rob Corddry (I know he can be funny, I've seen a bunch of shorts that he made on the internet) but I can't tell if he was so excited to have his show that he tried too hard or if he went too far out on a limb and decided he'd get the show canceled so he could be free of a contract or something. I find it almost impossible to believe that he actually thinks this show is gold or has any sort of promise. I will say there are so many hospital shows it's about time they are parodied... or is it? They have made very good hospital dramadies like Scrubs that can be funny as well as letting you connect with the characters producing very emotional moments. Sad thing is, Scrubs is a million times better, and doesn't have nearly the star power this show has. Seriously it has Rob Corddry, Henry Winkler, Michael Cerra, and Ed Helms; I'd watch any show with them in it, except Childrens Hospital. The female cast is atrocious and they tend to get the most screen time, especially in the first season. Except maybe for Tina Fey, they are the most unattractive and unfunny women on any comedy show that I can think of. They seem like they don't even want to be there, with such an male dominated viewing audience, you'd think pretty much any semi-attractive semi-funny girl with as much face-time as they get would kill to be there. Just to make sure I've got all the current ones, I think I need to mention Delocated, far and away the worst show of all of them. The plot is about a guy in the witness relocation program pursued by a stand-up comic hitman... Did I piece that together from watching the show? God NO! You think I'm crazy, I got that from watching a trailer for it. Watching 5 minutes of that show will give you inoperable brain cancer. But if you think that a guy in a ski mask with one of those anonymity voice filters over his voice isn't a stale premise, you may like it... Ha, just kidding, nobody could ever think that show was entertaining.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
If Seth MacFarlane was an Ice Cream Cone Flavor He'd Be Pralines and Dick!
I was watching Adult Swim last night as I often do when I'm doing homework late at night and I watched a line-up that was made by a viewer and really enjoyed it. But then I saw a bumper they made that said something like, "Great first try, but ratings were a little low, next time try this," and then showed a line-up made entirely of Family Guy. Well even if Cartoon Network won't say it, I'm fucking proud that someone had the guts to not put Family Guy or American Dad on, if only for a night. I know how huge Family Guy's fan base is and I used to be among those ranks; I saw the pilot short on the What a Cartoon Show and I knew it was going to be a hit. Then 4 or 5 years later Family Guy went on the air, and I loved it. Fox later canceled it and then brought it back a few years later... It kind of reminds me of Full Metal Alchemist when they try to bring their mother back from the grave, but she's been dead way too long and so she's totally evil... The show was now solely about shock value, which wears kind of thin after a while. Even South Park realized that they need to have some substance in addition to shock value humor. But look at the score card, South Park went from shock value humor to thought provoking writing; Simpsons started out with great writing but have now sacrificed it for shock value and cheap laughs. South Park is still fresh (if they ever decide to make new episodes) and Simpsons are sort-of on their way out. I mean look at some classic Simpsons episodes like when Bart sells his soul; there is some genuine emotion there. But the last 5 or more seasons haven't produced anything like that. First couple seasons of Family Guy, same thing, they will never make another classic like Road to Rhode Island.
But even loyal fans who still love Seth MacFarlane need to realize the love isn't reciprocated; Seth MacFarlane hates you... Picture Seth MacFarlane in a giant Scrooge MacDuck money bin, swimming in money saying, "How stupid do I think American TV viewers are? I think I can sell them the same show 2... no 3 times and people would still watch it... Hell I'll even take the worst character from one show and make his own spin-off! Shit, I bet I could even have all three run in a prime-time slot on a huge network channel. And it will only make me RICHER!" College Humor nailed it with this video: Seth MacFarlane's Secret. I think even if MacFarlane saw that video he'd say, "That zutalor cat was amazing, call Fox and tell them daddy needs another time slot for his new show." And the whole generic family dynamic thing, that is totally ripped off of the Simpsons; I think they really had the perfect family dynamic going. If you want to have something about babies, you have Maggie; something about a mischievous boy you have Bart. And if you need an eccentric character for a joke that doesn't meet the specification of the principal cast, it's a cartoon, just make a new one. I think this is why no other sitcom had the versatility of The Simpsons. It's not like they didn't notice they got ripped off either, they even called them out a few times. But The Simpsons weren't the first and wouldn't be the last to call Family Guy out. The first to call them out was one of the people from Clerks: The Animated Series; but this is easily dismissed at just sour grapes, they turned down a very generous offer from UPN for a show on network TV that competed with the Simpsons/Family Guy, power hour. Well if they were on UPN they probably would be a little more lenient in what are acceptable ratings, so really it's their own fault; besides, it's hard to feel sorry for Kevin Smith, the only person I know with a greater contempt for the audience than MacFarlane. But then Trey Parker and Matt Stone (from South Park) finally called them out for their "cut-aways" where they just say, "This is like the time when..." and throw in some bit that they couldn't figure out how to work into the show. This is fine once in a while, but shit now it's like the whole show now. Instead of having some point to it, they now just use it to pad their incredibly thin main plot lines. Insult to injury, I can't remember a recent episode that didn't have "filler" (i.e. Peter falls down and holds his knee for like two minutes) very funny the first time I saw it, but they have one of these every episode now. Seriously, let me get this straight, you can't make 22 minutes of a story but you need 2 more shows?
But that still isn't enough, you made a DVD release called Cartoon Cavilcade of Comedy yeah I don't know if I spelled it right, and I don't care. I saw the previews for this show and I have one word... brilliant... That bit about the princess kissing the frog, and then he tells her it will only work if she kisses his dick, and then he says he's not a prince after she already kissed his dick... Give that man the Emmy, nay, give that man an Oscar! Seriously, where did you come up with that brilliant sketch? The only crime is I can't buy a million copies and watch it on a million TVs. And then he has this production he did called, Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein at Carnegie Hall. First question: How much fucking money do you need Mr. MacFarlane? Oh, it's for a good cause? The Writer's Guild? Wow, somehow that makes you seem like even more of a douche bag. But it's nice to see you appreciate how hard it must be to write your own stuff instead of taking your ideas from The Simpsons and Robot Chicken. Second question: you don't... like... masturbate to the sound of your own cartoon voices... right? I mean it seems kind of strange that you would even think that you are worthy of playing Carnegie Hall; that your voice is so golden that people would pay to see you do cartoon voices on a stage? I mean, I never saw it, but what the fuck else could it be? It's Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein, who has created such memorable characters as: Ms. Swan from MadTV, and Lois Griffin from Family Guy... and Ms. Swan from MadTV. Wait... what's that noise; I think it's everyone who practiced their entire lives for one chance to perform at Carnegie Hall but died before they realized that dream simultaneously rolled over in their graves. So in speaking of two unfortunate looking people with very limited imaginations sharing the stage; be sure to check out me and James Belushi when we play to a sold out Shea Stadium later this month.
Okay so I know I haven't been very nice, but Mr. MacFarlane, can you do me a huge favor and kill off Brian... soon. In the worst cartoon character hierarchy it goes Peggy Hill, Lisa Simpson, Brian Griffin, and then in a distant fourth Scrappy Doo. Favorite Family Guy moment of all time, when Stewie beats the fuck out of Brian for not paying his gambling debt... I could watch that over and over. The sad thing is that he's the only character you bother to develop. He's way too preachy; you're ultra-liberal, you smoke pot and you're an atheist, we get it. But guess what, it's a fucking cartoon dog, you can have a million episodes about those things (and believe me there is at least two episodes devoted solely to each) but you won't reach anyone. That's why people watch cartoons, because they aren't trying to cram some message down your throat. You watch cartoons when you are sick of the real world and just want to laugh about it. And seriously if there is one more episode about Brian professing his love to Lois; I will never watch the show again. And don't think I don't realize that Brian is supposed to be you, Seth MacFarlane, it's not like I don't see where that is coming from. You don't even change your voice when you play him, come on now. But now that you have literally sold out to every sort of medium out there; you really can't find a different way to express yourself than through a cartoon dog? Okay... I will settle for you killing of the baby on the Cleveland Show but it's going to have to be like the most violent death I've ever seen.
But even loyal fans who still love Seth MacFarlane need to realize the love isn't reciprocated; Seth MacFarlane hates you... Picture Seth MacFarlane in a giant Scrooge MacDuck money bin, swimming in money saying, "How stupid do I think American TV viewers are? I think I can sell them the same show 2... no 3 times and people would still watch it... Hell I'll even take the worst character from one show and make his own spin-off! Shit, I bet I could even have all three run in a prime-time slot on a huge network channel. And it will only make me RICHER!" College Humor nailed it with this video: Seth MacFarlane's Secret. I think even if MacFarlane saw that video he'd say, "That zutalor cat was amazing, call Fox and tell them daddy needs another time slot for his new show." And the whole generic family dynamic thing, that is totally ripped off of the Simpsons; I think they really had the perfect family dynamic going. If you want to have something about babies, you have Maggie; something about a mischievous boy you have Bart. And if you need an eccentric character for a joke that doesn't meet the specification of the principal cast, it's a cartoon, just make a new one. I think this is why no other sitcom had the versatility of The Simpsons. It's not like they didn't notice they got ripped off either, they even called them out a few times. But The Simpsons weren't the first and wouldn't be the last to call Family Guy out. The first to call them out was one of the people from Clerks: The Animated Series; but this is easily dismissed at just sour grapes, they turned down a very generous offer from UPN for a show on network TV that competed with the Simpsons/Family Guy, power hour. Well if they were on UPN they probably would be a little more lenient in what are acceptable ratings, so really it's their own fault; besides, it's hard to feel sorry for Kevin Smith, the only person I know with a greater contempt for the audience than MacFarlane. But then Trey Parker and Matt Stone (from South Park) finally called them out for their "cut-aways" where they just say, "This is like the time when..." and throw in some bit that they couldn't figure out how to work into the show. This is fine once in a while, but shit now it's like the whole show now. Instead of having some point to it, they now just use it to pad their incredibly thin main plot lines. Insult to injury, I can't remember a recent episode that didn't have "filler" (i.e. Peter falls down and holds his knee for like two minutes) very funny the first time I saw it, but they have one of these every episode now. Seriously, let me get this straight, you can't make 22 minutes of a story but you need 2 more shows?
But that still isn't enough, you made a DVD release called Cartoon Cavilcade of Comedy yeah I don't know if I spelled it right, and I don't care. I saw the previews for this show and I have one word... brilliant... That bit about the princess kissing the frog, and then he tells her it will only work if she kisses his dick, and then he says he's not a prince after she already kissed his dick... Give that man the Emmy, nay, give that man an Oscar! Seriously, where did you come up with that brilliant sketch? The only crime is I can't buy a million copies and watch it on a million TVs. And then he has this production he did called, Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein at Carnegie Hall. First question: How much fucking money do you need Mr. MacFarlane? Oh, it's for a good cause? The Writer's Guild? Wow, somehow that makes you seem like even more of a douche bag. But it's nice to see you appreciate how hard it must be to write your own stuff instead of taking your ideas from The Simpsons and Robot Chicken. Second question: you don't... like... masturbate to the sound of your own cartoon voices... right? I mean it seems kind of strange that you would even think that you are worthy of playing Carnegie Hall; that your voice is so golden that people would pay to see you do cartoon voices on a stage? I mean, I never saw it, but what the fuck else could it be? It's Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein, who has created such memorable characters as: Ms. Swan from MadTV, and Lois Griffin from Family Guy... and Ms. Swan from MadTV. Wait... what's that noise; I think it's everyone who practiced their entire lives for one chance to perform at Carnegie Hall but died before they realized that dream simultaneously rolled over in their graves. So in speaking of two unfortunate looking people with very limited imaginations sharing the stage; be sure to check out me and James Belushi when we play to a sold out Shea Stadium later this month.
Okay so I know I haven't been very nice, but Mr. MacFarlane, can you do me a huge favor and kill off Brian... soon. In the worst cartoon character hierarchy it goes Peggy Hill, Lisa Simpson, Brian Griffin, and then in a distant fourth Scrappy Doo. Favorite Family Guy moment of all time, when Stewie beats the fuck out of Brian for not paying his gambling debt... I could watch that over and over. The sad thing is that he's the only character you bother to develop. He's way too preachy; you're ultra-liberal, you smoke pot and you're an atheist, we get it. But guess what, it's a fucking cartoon dog, you can have a million episodes about those things (and believe me there is at least two episodes devoted solely to each) but you won't reach anyone. That's why people watch cartoons, because they aren't trying to cram some message down your throat. You watch cartoons when you are sick of the real world and just want to laugh about it. And seriously if there is one more episode about Brian professing his love to Lois; I will never watch the show again. And don't think I don't realize that Brian is supposed to be you, Seth MacFarlane, it's not like I don't see where that is coming from. You don't even change your voice when you play him, come on now. But now that you have literally sold out to every sort of medium out there; you really can't find a different way to express yourself than through a cartoon dog? Okay... I will settle for you killing of the baby on the Cleveland Show but it's going to have to be like the most violent death I've ever seen.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Top 10 Videogame Levels that Will Make You Throw Your Controller
Again let me reiterate that these ones about videogames probably aren't for everybody. I check the numbers and the readers for these ones are about half of what they are for the others. Honestly I really don't know who reads this; I know about 5 or 6 people who tell me they read them; but other than that I couldn't venture to guess. Also publishing them on the weekend sort of drops the numbers as well; so I guess no better time like the present to do this one. After all, I don't want to break my "write every day" mantra this early, so without further ado...
A couple of my favorite blogs are Cracked Magazine because of their awesome lists, and Angry Video Game Nerd because it's awesome to see someone get pissed off at videogames. So in an homage to those I am going to put together this blog. I have a feeling that there is a special place in hell for game developers who have a normal difficulty slope, then with no warning at all the crank the difficulty up to 11. In most of the cases below, you're just playing with a hard part here and a hard part there, then all of a sudden there is this part that makes you want to scream and throw the controller at the nearest expensive breakable object. Sad thing is that once you past most of these parts you realize the rest of the game is ridiculously easy.
#10 New Super Mario Bros.: World 3
Ice levels suck no matter which Nintendo game you are playing, that's one of the few things I'm glad died off with the regular NES. But then they came out with the Wii and put a whole world of stupid ice levels; which are the only things worse than underwater levels in the gaming hierarchy. Now I've watched most people play this level and I wondered why it was such a challenge; but it wasn't until I started watching their hands that I realized what actually makes these things challenging. Nearly everyone playing on an ice level jerks the controller when their character skids where they don't want them to go. This becomes an even bigger problem when you use a controller that responds to your movement. Nintendo did try to level the playing field with a "penguin suit" which is great if you can't wait the necessary 30 seconds it takes to die on these levels. I'm not sure what they were going for with it but the purpose it serves is to make you slide on your belly into the nearest pit completely effortlessly.
#9 Diablo II
: Duriel
Likely Diablo fans will disagree with me, but just think back to the very first time you played against this guy. He's got a million gagillion health, you can't leave, he hits like a truck, and on top of all this he damages your with freeze and slows your attacks down. If you use a melee weapon you get maybe 2 hits on him before you die; if you use a pet he's dead somehow before you even go into Duriel's room. He's the end boss of the second act, so if it's your first play-through you probably don't have anything amazing to take him down with. If you ask me, he's the hardest boss aside from Diablo, but he's the end boss so you kind of expect that.
#8 Marvel vs. Capcom: Onslaught
You're tired, you have fought your way through the masses of Marvel and Capcom characters. Finally took that cheap bitch War Machine down a peg. Now just have to beat Onslaught and then you can see the ending and go to bed. For those of you less nerdy than me, Onslaught is Magneto and Professor X from the X-Men combined (I forgot how it happened). His first form, really hard but sill in human form. In this picture you can see his second form; no that's not the background that's the guy you're fighting. His second form is not quite as hard really but whoever gets the last hit on this guy, is the one you get to see the ending for. So what if you want to see it with, let's say Venom, who doesn't have any great attacks that go to the very top corner of the screen. So you have to jump-punch, jump-punch, jump-punch until you finally kill him.
#7 Monster Hunter Freedom 2: Tigrex
I wrote a whole blog on this game earlier so of course I had to include him on this. The main problem with that game is that it's sofa king hard it's difficult to nail down a specific hard part. This guy was the biggest bottleneck in gameplay for me. As I estimated before, I'm thinking 60 hours just devoted to training to beat this monster. He isn't supposed to be the hardest, in fact he's just kind of the midway checkpoint guy. He is, however the "flagship monster" of the game so they want him to be tough but I think they went a tad overboard. See the "Hardest.Game.Ever" post for more details.
#6 Record of Lodoss War: Wagnard
You remember on the Dreamcast... What, you don't remember the Dreamcast? Okay well remember that show called Record of Lodoss War? Oh okay so you aren't as huge of a nerd as me. Well back in the olden days there wasn't a Lord of The Rings trilogy; if you wanted something that was basically the same and yet totally different you would watch Record of Lodoss War. Well there was even a game out for Dreamcast, but it was kind of strange. Basica
lly it was a rip-off of Diablo but as with RoLW and LotR there were almost more things different than things in common. You couldn't just play Diablo and then assume you knew how to play RoLW. There was this really strange armor system that made it so you melt down all equipment in the field for mythril to improve your early game equipment. It's one of the few RPG's where you get the lion's share of the equipment at the very beginning. So already strange you think the main character, Wart, would be giving you legit advice. But he says not to stray from the path, in the beginning you will see how bad you get owned wandering off it and just kind of assume you aren't supposed to do it. But if you don't venture off you won't be able to do any subquests and there are like 50 of them. The worst part is, you really don't need to do them up until the 2nd to the last boss of the the game. Even the room before this guy is easy and then BAM! you walk in the room, hear him say "Cardis" and you're dead. Then you realize you need to do 50 some-odd dungeons to get the equipment to kill him.
#5 Final Fantasy X: Dodge 200 Lightning Bolts
This is the first one that you technically don't have to ever do to progress to the end of the game. But since it's Final Fantasy you practically won't be satisfied to fight the end boss until you have all the best equipment and bend the end boss over like in Deliverance. So I consider this required... Anyway, in the FF universe there are so many bogus secrets that people make up (like the silver chocobo that sinks in the marsh in FFVII) I at first thought this was a joke. Dodge 200 lightning bolts... that come from the sky... that you don't know when they are going to happen... These lightning bolts come out on the Thunder Plains, you see a brief flash of light, and then you need to press a button to dodge them. You can't see anywhere how many you
have dodged, you just keep doing it until whatever happens (I don't know what happens honestly, my record is in the 6 range). They come down once every 3-7 seconds so it takes a long time as well. Seriously; do you even have the patience to count to 200? I don't, another thing is that your eyes almost start to bleed waiting for a flash every couple seconds... so the best internet advice is to just sit there like a tweaker with the lights off staring at the screen for 30 minutes. Also of course this is 200 in a row... so getting in the 180 range and slightly fucking up... I don't even want to think about it.
#4 Mega Man 9: Tornado Man
Wow, trying to find an image of Tornado Man's level is hard; but if I was trying to find a fan pic of Splash Woman giving Mega Man a BJ I would be able to make a whole gallery of them. Since I can't find a pic of the level you just have to take my word for it. You start off at this part where you have these little platforms that spin around while spinning you around at the same time; jump at the wrong time and you are jumping down at the pit. Well there are things like this scattered through the Mega Man (Rock Man in Japan) franchise. But this one goes on ridiculously long, so if you're like me you scrape by with maybe one life left if you even pass it. But the rest of the level is just as hard, there is some sweet fucking ice block parts, yeah you know like the sweet ones in the New Mario Bros... yeah they brought it back for this one, and then there is the one where the rain makes you jump too far and then the rain makes it so you can't jump far enough and then the fucking umbrellas come down slow as shit so you have to wait for them because you already died like 20 fucking times from thinking you can pass them just a little before but you jump so fucking high now that you run right into them, and then you're finally at Tornado Man with like two dots of health and so you throw the fucking kitchen sink at him because you're so stressed out and you don't want to have to go all the way back to the stupid platforms again... ARRRGGHHH! Then it's Hornet Man and he has a bullshit hard level too. Insult to injury; take a look at the achievements for this game. They are like, "Beat the game without dieing", "Beat all bosses with M Buster", "Beat a level without firing a single shot", "Beat the game in 5 minutes," "Beat the game while drawing pornographic pictures of Splash Woman"; who the fuck can beat this game with enough style and flair that they need these challenges. It took me weeks to beat Tornado Man...
#3 Final Fantasy XIII: Barthandelus
"Alright so I can finally pick my own team? After 60 hours or so into this, I finally get to do my own thing... that's awesome! And here is the first boss... Oh shit I died after duking it out with him for a half hour. Well at least now I know the strategy kill all the little faces and then fight the big one... Oh I made it 40 minutes before he killed me. The big face is really strong when I kill the little faces how about I leave one face up and hack away at the big face... well this is going to take 2 years this way. I think I'll play a little Bioshock now." This guy is a pain in the ass; he increases his power exponentially the longer you fight him. If you fight recklessly he has too much health and hits too hard to do a fight that way. If you fight cautiously he will just keep increasing his power and will flatten your tanks long before you kill him. I can see a 30 minute boss that you need to use strategy for; but no strategies work... and I mean not even close.
#2 Sega GT
This game was free with my XBox at the time I got it but it is the king of bad difficulty spikes. Either the license tests are too hard, or more likely, once you've passed the license test you have harder races but no easy races to try again ever... Unless you were the extremely savvy consumer you won't have the greatest cars ever but that's just tough shit, because if you don't, you'll never be able to get them. This could have all been fixed if you could just race lower ranked tracks but for less money. But if you're like me, you didn't know there is only one car that could ever win against the slightly higher ranked cars. Granted you can get money for losing races but that would be like saving for a Maserati with your paper route.
#1 Final Fantasy Tactics: Wiegraf and Velius/Belias
This has to be my favorite game of all time, Final Fantasy Tactics, it has gotten to the point that I literally have memorized the approximate odds of each attack connecting etc. And even knowing mathematically the odds for everything in this game, there is one challenge that every time I play it, I'm convinced, that victories are pure luck. There are hard levels in this for sure; Dorter Slums and Golerand Execution Site but these pale in comparison to the battle with Wiegraf at the middle of the game. Now typically in this game you have 5 characters to play with and maybe an extra "guest" (uncontrollable character). But for this level you have only the main character, Ramza, to control. Now I've tried this in nearly every combination of actually feasible characters and I'm rarely even able to beat him in this stage. Fact is, Wiegraf hits for about 112 and even more when he crits. Every possible combination of armor lends me in the high 200's at best. So if you are lucky you can survive 3 hits (as I said if he doesn't ever crit). You, on the other hand, hit for about 60-90 and he has in the low 300's of health and on top of that, he's a knight with a shield so 60-70% chance of hitting him is actually good... oh yeah and he can also "Counter" so hit or miss he gets a free chance to hit you again. So he has a 100% chance of killing you in 3 turns; while you have a 65% chance of killing him in 5 turns unless you somehow crit the fuck out of him... Did anyone even bother to run the numbers on that fight before they released it? So what is even worse is, you're stuck inside a castle and so you can't leave and level up to get a skill that might be helpful. You just have to make do or reset the whole damn game. There are really 2 or 3 strategies that work against him; both involve doing some borderline cheating moves like using "yell" (tailwind in the new version of the game for PSP). Then you beat him, big whoop... the next half of the fight is even harder. That's right, a mathematically impossible fight is still the easy part of this fight. Well once you get his health down low enough you can bring 4 of your friends. But then he gets to bring in 3 of his friends called "Archaic Demons" basically some of the baddest monster in the whole fucking game. All but 1 of the cheater strategies will have Ramza on the verge of death; but Wiegraf turns into Velius (Belias in the new version) and is cured fully and gets over 6x his normal health. And then let's look at his attacks, Clops (Cyclops) has massive range and will kill anyone who isn't wearing the best armor (Knights or Holy Knights) so basically heals and casters are dead first turn. Ramza is dead if there is a chill to the air. So you 9/10 times have one character (Agrias) in charge of doing 1600 damage... but she's going to die in the next turn because the Archaic Demons do "Dark Holy" which will kill most anyone especially if they just got hit by Clops. Top that off with Velius who can do 100% confuse (that character is out) and the Archaic Demons can also do "Giga Flare" and do 70 damage or so without charging which is a nice follow up to any of these other attacks that didn't quite kill you to begin with. But if you do end up beating him, you will cry tears of anger when you see how easy the rest of the game is.
A couple of my favorite blogs are Cracked Magazine because of their awesome lists, and Angry Video Game Nerd because it's awesome to see someone get pissed off at videogames. So in an homage to those I am going to put together this blog. I have a feeling that there is a special place in hell for game developers who have a normal difficulty slope, then with no warning at all the crank the difficulty up to 11. In most of the cases below, you're just playing with a hard part here and a hard part there, then all of a sudden there is this part that makes you want to scream and throw the controller at the nearest expensive breakable object. Sad thing is that once you past most of these parts you realize the rest of the game is ridiculously easy.
#10 New Super Mario Bros.: World 3
Ice levels suck no matter which Nintendo game you are playing, that's one of the few things I'm glad died off with the regular NES. But then they came out with the Wii and put a whole world of stupid ice levels; which are the only things worse than underwater levels in the gaming hierarchy. Now I've watched most people play this level and I wondered why it was such a challenge; but it wasn't until I started watching their hands that I realized what actually makes these things challenging. Nearly everyone playing on an ice level jerks the controller when their character skids where they don't want them to go. This becomes an even bigger problem when you use a controller that responds to your movement. Nintendo did try to level the playing field with a "penguin suit" which is great if you can't wait the necessary 30 seconds it takes to die on these levels. I'm not sure what they were going for with it but the purpose it serves is to make you slide on your belly into the nearest pit completely effortlessly.
#9 Diablo II
: DurielLikely Diablo fans will disagree with me, but just think back to the very first time you played against this guy. He's got a million gagillion health, you can't leave, he hits like a truck, and on top of all this he damages your with freeze and slows your attacks down. If you use a melee weapon you get maybe 2 hits on him before you die; if you use a pet he's dead somehow before you even go into Duriel's room. He's the end boss of the second act, so if it's your first play-through you probably don't have anything amazing to take him down with. If you ask me, he's the hardest boss aside from Diablo, but he's the end boss so you kind of expect that.
#8 Marvel vs. Capcom: Onslaught
You're tired, you have fought your way through the masses of Marvel and Capcom characters. Finally took that cheap bitch War Machine down a peg. Now just have to beat Onslaught and then you can see the ending and go to bed. For those of you less nerdy than me, Onslaught is Magneto and Professor X from the X-Men combined (I forgot how it happened). His first form, really hard but sill in human form. In this picture you can see his second form; no that's not the background that's the guy you're fighting. His second form is not quite as hard really but whoever gets the last hit on this guy, is the one you get to see the ending for. So what if you want to see it with, let's say Venom, who doesn't have any great attacks that go to the very top corner of the screen. So you have to jump-punch, jump-punch, jump-punch until you finally kill him.#7 Monster Hunter Freedom 2: Tigrex
I wrote a whole blog on this game earlier so of course I had to include him on this. The main problem with that game is that it's sofa king hard it's difficult to nail down a specific hard part. This guy was the biggest bottleneck in gameplay for me. As I estimated before, I'm thinking 60 hours just devoted to training to beat this monster. He isn't supposed to be the hardest, in fact he's just kind of the midway checkpoint guy. He is, however the "flagship monster" of the game so they want him to be tough but I think they went a tad overboard. See the "Hardest.Game.Ever" post for more details.
#6 Record of Lodoss War: WagnardYou remember on the Dreamcast... What, you don't remember the Dreamcast? Okay well remember that show called Record of Lodoss War? Oh okay so you aren't as huge of a nerd as me. Well back in the olden days there wasn't a Lord of The Rings trilogy; if you wanted something that was basically the same and yet totally different you would watch Record of Lodoss War. Well there was even a game out for Dreamcast, but it was kind of strange. Basica
lly it was a rip-off of Diablo but as with RoLW and LotR there were almost more things different than things in common. You couldn't just play Diablo and then assume you knew how to play RoLW. There was this really strange armor system that made it so you melt down all equipment in the field for mythril to improve your early game equipment. It's one of the few RPG's where you get the lion's share of the equipment at the very beginning. So already strange you think the main character, Wart, would be giving you legit advice. But he says not to stray from the path, in the beginning you will see how bad you get owned wandering off it and just kind of assume you aren't supposed to do it. But if you don't venture off you won't be able to do any subquests and there are like 50 of them. The worst part is, you really don't need to do them up until the 2nd to the last boss of the the game. Even the room before this guy is easy and then BAM! you walk in the room, hear him say "Cardis" and you're dead. Then you realize you need to do 50 some-odd dungeons to get the equipment to kill him.#5 Final Fantasy X: Dodge 200 Lightning Bolts
This is the first one that you technically don't have to ever do to progress to the end of the game. But since it's Final Fantasy you practically won't be satisfied to fight the end boss until you have all the best equipment and bend the end boss over like in Deliverance. So I consider this required... Anyway, in the FF universe there are so many bogus secrets that people make up (like the silver chocobo that sinks in the marsh in FFVII) I at first thought this was a joke. Dodge 200 lightning bolts... that come from the sky... that you don't know when they are going to happen... These lightning bolts come out on the Thunder Plains, you see a brief flash of light, and then you need to press a button to dodge them. You can't see anywhere how many you
have dodged, you just keep doing it until whatever happens (I don't know what happens honestly, my record is in the 6 range). They come down once every 3-7 seconds so it takes a long time as well. Seriously; do you even have the patience to count to 200? I don't, another thing is that your eyes almost start to bleed waiting for a flash every couple seconds... so the best internet advice is to just sit there like a tweaker with the lights off staring at the screen for 30 minutes. Also of course this is 200 in a row... so getting in the 180 range and slightly fucking up... I don't even want to think about it.#4 Mega Man 9: Tornado Man
Wow, trying to find an image of Tornado Man's level is hard; but if I was trying to find a fan pic of Splash Woman giving Mega Man a BJ I would be able to make a whole gallery of them. Since I can't find a pic of the level you just have to take my word for it. You start off at this part where you have these little platforms that spin around while spinning you around at the same time; jump at the wrong time and you are jumping down at the pit. Well there are things like this scattered through the Mega Man (Rock Man in Japan) franchise. But this one goes on ridiculously long, so if you're like me you scrape by with maybe one life left if you even pass it. But the rest of the level is just as hard, there is some sweet fucking ice block parts, yeah you know like the sweet ones in the New Mario Bros... yeah they brought it back for this one, and then there is the one where the rain makes you jump too far and then the rain makes it so you can't jump far enough and then the fucking umbrellas come down slow as shit so you have to wait for them because you already died like 20 fucking times from thinking you can pass them just a little before but you jump so fucking high now that you run right into them, and then you're finally at Tornado Man with like two dots of health and so you throw the fucking kitchen sink at him because you're so stressed out and you don't want to have to go all the way back to the stupid platforms again... ARRRGGHHH! Then it's Hornet Man and he has a bullshit hard level too. Insult to injury; take a look at the achievements for this game. They are like, "Beat the game without dieing", "Beat all bosses with M Buster", "Beat a level without firing a single shot", "Beat the game in 5 minutes," "Beat the game while drawing pornographic pictures of Splash Woman"; who the fuck can beat this game with enough style and flair that they need these challenges. It took me weeks to beat Tornado Man...
#3 Final Fantasy XIII: Barthandelus
"Alright so I can finally pick my own team? After 60 hours or so into this, I finally get to do my own thing... that's awesome! And here is the first boss... Oh shit I died after duking it out with him for a half hour. Well at least now I know the strategy kill all the little faces and then fight the big one... Oh I made it 40 minutes before he killed me. The big face is really strong when I kill the little faces how about I leave one face up and hack away at the big face... well this is going to take 2 years this way. I think I'll play a little Bioshock now." This guy is a pain in the ass; he increases his power exponentially the longer you fight him. If you fight recklessly he has too much health and hits too hard to do a fight that way. If you fight cautiously he will just keep increasing his power and will flatten your tanks long before you kill him. I can see a 30 minute boss that you need to use strategy for; but no strategies work... and I mean not even close.
#2 Sega GT
This game was free with my XBox at the time I got it but it is the king of bad difficulty spikes. Either the license tests are too hard, or more likely, once you've passed the license test you have harder races but no easy races to try again ever... Unless you were the extremely savvy consumer you won't have the greatest cars ever but that's just tough shit, because if you don't, you'll never be able to get them. This could have all been fixed if you could just race lower ranked tracks but for less money. But if you're like me, you didn't know there is only one car that could ever win against the slightly higher ranked cars. Granted you can get money for losing races but that would be like saving for a Maserati with your paper route.
#1 Final Fantasy Tactics: Wiegraf and Velius/Belias
This has to be my favorite game of all time, Final Fantasy Tactics, it has gotten to the point that I literally have memorized the approximate odds of each attack connecting etc. And even knowing mathematically the odds for everything in this game, there is one challenge that every time I play it, I'm convinced, that victories are pure luck. There are hard levels in this for sure; Dorter Slums and Golerand Execution Site but these pale in comparison to the battle with Wiegraf at the middle of the game. Now typically in this game you have 5 characters to play with and maybe an extra "guest" (uncontrollable character). But for this level you have only the main character, Ramza, to control. Now I've tried this in nearly every combination of actually feasible characters and I'm rarely even able to beat him in this stage. Fact is, Wiegraf hits for about 112 and even more when he crits. Every possible combination of armor lends me in the high 200's at best. So if you are lucky you can survive 3 hits (as I said if he doesn't ever crit). You, on the other hand, hit for about 60-90 and he has in the low 300's of health and on top of that, he's a knight with a shield so 60-70% chance of hitting him is actually good... oh yeah and he can also "Counter" so hit or miss he gets a free chance to hit you again. So he has a 100% chance of killing you in 3 turns; while you have a 65% chance of killing him in 5 turns unless you somehow crit the fuck out of him... Did anyone even bother to run the numbers on that fight before they released it? So what is even worse is, you're stuck inside a castle and so you can't leave and level up to get a skill that might be helpful. You just have to make do or reset the whole damn game. There are really 2 or 3 strategies that work against him; both involve doing some borderline cheating moves like using "yell" (tailwind in the new version of the game for PSP). Then you beat him, big whoop... the next half of the fight is even harder. That's right, a mathematically impossible fight is still the easy part of this fight. Well once you get his health down low enough you can bring 4 of your friends. But then he gets to bring in 3 of his friends called "Archaic Demons" basically some of the baddest monster in the whole fucking game. All but 1 of the cheater strategies will have Ramza on the verge of death; but Wiegraf turns into Velius (Belias in the new version) and is cured fully and gets over 6x his normal health. And then let's look at his attacks, Clops (Cyclops) has massive range and will kill anyone who isn't wearing the best armor (Knights or Holy Knights) so basically heals and casters are dead first turn. Ramza is dead if there is a chill to the air. So you 9/10 times have one character (Agrias) in charge of doing 1600 damage... but she's going to die in the next turn because the Archaic Demons do "Dark Holy" which will kill most anyone especially if they just got hit by Clops. Top that off with Velius who can do 100% confuse (that character is out) and the Archaic Demons can also do "Giga Flare" and do 70 damage or so without charging which is a nice follow up to any of these other attacks that didn't quite kill you to begin with. But if you do end up beating him, you will cry tears of anger when you see how easy the rest of the game is.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
An Undead Raccoon?
So there I was driving to KFC, that's one of my favorite places to eat when I'm house-sitting because there isn't one by where I live. Well I come to a car that was parked with it's lights on, it was dusk so you probably wouldn't have the lights on unless you were driving somewhere, because it wasn't quite dark enough that you would need it for any other reason. Well I see something in the road on my side of the road and I figured he stopped to let whatever animal it was cross. I saw what he was waiting for and I stopped too. It was a raccoon that was hunched over kind of like the way the Gollum was in Lord of the Rings. I flashed my lights hoping to startle it and have it run off. It didn't even budge, in fact I thought maybe it was dead or hurt so it couldn't move. But this wasn't the case as it would need every muscle in it's body to hunch itself over like that. The car on the other side of the street was flashing it's lights and started honking as well. He had a pretty clear shot to just drive off so I was kind of wondering why he wasn't doing anything. Well I got out of the car to shoo it away and the damn thing turns it's head very creepily. You know like real slow like monsters do in the movie. He then looks me square in the eyes with an evil stare and starts lurching toward me. It kind of looked like the way mountain lions lurch forward before they lunge after something. But this was a fucking raccoon so he must have some mountain lion sized nuts to try to attack me. Then in the back of my mind I remembered that there is some reason you don't want to get bit or scratched by a raccoon... What was it? Um... Oh yeah, because it could have rabies! Common symptoms of rabies, unusual behavior, hostile behavior, and agressive behavior... check, check, and check. And then I realized, he probably has rabies and he's totally going to attack me. OH SHIT! I rushed back in the car and the raccoon stops mid step and freezes. At first it looked like it was going to kill me but then it just froze like it totally forgot what it was doing. I then realized that the guy in the other car was warning me about a rabid raccoon. I talked with him and he was going to call animal control. Just to make sure nobody really freaks out, I found out later it was "distempered" (I honestly don't know if that means it's rabid or not; but that's what the animal control guy said). I just thought that was a creepy story worth sharing.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Saying Goodbye to Hollywood
Up until last night I was starting to wonder if Hollywood could still make a movie that I loved. Well they did and that movie was called Inception. I wasn't really surprised since people were coming up to me nearly every day, "You know what movie you'd like, Inception," and I would respond, "I don't know you but thanks for the tip." It wasn't just refreshingly friendly strangers; family, friends, and enemies all told me I'd like it. So, I'd just like to say if you did recommend it to me you were right on the money, and that movie was indeed right up my alley. And it's about time too; I was beginning to lose faith, Hollywood is so predictable and formulaic lately.
There are now only like 4 or 5 different sub-genres of movies. There is the paranormal horror movie; these almost always star Sarah Michelle Gellar or Jennifer Connelly and more than likely the stories came from Japanese movies. The plot goes like this, the main character is an emotionally complex wife or mother who needs to go live somewhere for some reason and there are paranormal things happening. They generally only have one friend to confide to who ends up thinking they are nuts and the movie boils to a crescendo when they realize that some kid died wherever they are living for whatever reason. Then there is the slasher movie which is 9 times out of 10 a "reboot" of a horror movie there already was. A reboot is when they change cast or directors for a movie series and start the series over from scratch because (among other reasons) the writers have literally written themselves into such a corner that they can't live up the the already low standards that a movie designed to help young teens get to second base. The Halloween series has already had 2 reboots, Halloween: H20, and Halloween the Rob Zombie version. After seeing Rob Zombie's Halloween II I think it's safe to say that Michael Myers is finally dead forever. Then you have the suspense thriller; these used to star Morgan Freeman ALWAYS, but now you can put Ashley Judd in place of or in addition to Morgan Freeman and it will still be released. Then there is the rehash of a 60's, 70's or 80's TV show or comic book; in the good old days they would only make movies about action comic books but now every syndicated comic strip is up for grabs... Seriously there is a movie about MARMADUKE... It blows my mind that at this time there is a person willing to pitch an idea for a feature length movie about the comic strip Marmaduke... And there is also board room of people that thought it was a good enough idea to ask people for money to finance this movie... And there are people willing to finance a movie about MARMADUKE... Because right now there people saying, "Jeeze I know movie tickets are $10 a piece, but I just have to see Marmaduke..."
Now Hollywood grinds out these things all year long and occasionally you get an Avatar and about twice a year the monster studios like Disney and Dreamworks make something you know will be good and sometimes a good independent or foreign film bubbles to the surface. But if it doesn't meet any of the above criteria... it's going to be a "twist" movie. A twist movie means they are going to throw a huge twist at the end. A lot of people blame M. Night Shyamalan for this becoming a Hollywood cliche but it takes two to tango. Honestly, Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were masterpieces; but his movies just get worse and worse every one he does. Why is this? Because a twist is only good if YOU DON'T SEE IT COMING! If you know that there is going to be a twist you just think, "What would be an ironic thing that could happen, and by ironic I don't mean the Webster's Dictionary definition of irony, more like the Alanis Morrisette definition of irony?" And then you have it... Oh he's going to kill himself and then the army will come by and kill all the bugs. It's the same reason that if you tell someone you are posing a trick question to them they usually can figure out the piece of the sentence that doesn't belong; but if you just pose it like you are asking them a serious question with a legitimate answer they are less likely to pick up on it. A lot of twist directors say they were inspired by Alfred Hitchcock but he didn't do the very last minute twist on any movie I can remember. His twists came when a well laid plan was messed up by a coincidence like in Dial M for Murder. Some Hollywood movies I would even say completely cheat the audience. The worst offender I can think of is Domino. You're sitting through over an hour of the movie and then 2/3rds of the way through it they say, "But that's not what happened at all." Why even show me something if that isn't what happened? That's like saying, "Dude I'm from Portland... psyche! I'm from Seattle." I wouldn't even consider that a lie, because that kind of implies that there was some element of tact involved, that's just telling me something that isn't true.
And finally you have the remake... There is one remake I want to PLEAD with Hollywood not to do, and that is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Now I just want to say for the record, I thought the movie was pretty good, not nearly the greatest foreign film I've ever seen. In fact I can think of a movie that really reminds me of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that came out in the seventies. Hollywood recently remade the movie and here is what they came up with:
That is the recent remake of The Wicker Man; the original 1973 version is great, but after seeing this video you probably won't take my word for it. Cracked magazine said it best, "We know that many of you have seen the above highlights, as they've been quite a sensation on YouTube. We also know that most of you haven't actually seen the rest of the film, judging by its box office. So here's a fun project for you: Sit down and try to write the rest of the movie so that those scenes make perfect sense in context" (the full article is here: 10 Scenes of Brutal Violence Guaranteed to Make You Laugh).
Now if nothing else, just don't make the movie because I have the feeling it's going to bomb and I don't know if I can afford more than $10 a ticket when you will inevitably massacre this movie. Firstly, the typical American movie goer is way way way more prudent than the average Scandinavian movie goer. I don't profess to be an expert on films from there, but I have definitely seen over a half dozen movies from there and they are much less sexually inhibited than movies you see in the United States. In fact I'd have to say we are far more prude than most European and Asian movie goers. This is the reason why classics like Ichi the Killer and Oldboy will never come to America; and why my roommates almost gouged their eyes out after watching 15 minutes of Thriller: A Cruel Picture (which is from Sweden I believe). Honestly I'm really surprised at how many women actually liked this movie and recommended it to me. It's very gritty and sexually graphic; I'm kind of thinking that anyone who is open-minded enough to see that for it's artistic merit has already seen it by now. Rape, domination, and masochism are pretty hardline themes throughout the movie; you NEVER see that (to the extent it is in this movie) in American movies. So if you censor it out or downplay it; that's 2/5ths of the movie gone AT LEAST. Then, of course, you can't have religious themes in there either so cut that out and you'll be left with something completely different. I have a feeling that the love affair with most people have with this movie is from the amazing performance by Noomi Rapace. The problem is, she doesn't speak English... not even to a Jackie Chan extent. So she can't be in it, I can't even picture an American actress that can play a don't-give-a-fuck devil-may-care attitude like her. And with a role like that, you can't fake it. I know there are many fans who loved that movie and it's for them I'm writing this; I don't want to see another Wicker Man scenario.
There are now only like 4 or 5 different sub-genres of movies. There is the paranormal horror movie; these almost always star Sarah Michelle Gellar or Jennifer Connelly and more than likely the stories came from Japanese movies. The plot goes like this, the main character is an emotionally complex wife or mother who needs to go live somewhere for some reason and there are paranormal things happening. They generally only have one friend to confide to who ends up thinking they are nuts and the movie boils to a crescendo when they realize that some kid died wherever they are living for whatever reason. Then there is the slasher movie which is 9 times out of 10 a "reboot" of a horror movie there already was. A reboot is when they change cast or directors for a movie series and start the series over from scratch because (among other reasons) the writers have literally written themselves into such a corner that they can't live up the the already low standards that a movie designed to help young teens get to second base. The Halloween series has already had 2 reboots, Halloween: H20, and Halloween the Rob Zombie version. After seeing Rob Zombie's Halloween II I think it's safe to say that Michael Myers is finally dead forever. Then you have the suspense thriller; these used to star Morgan Freeman ALWAYS, but now you can put Ashley Judd in place of or in addition to Morgan Freeman and it will still be released. Then there is the rehash of a 60's, 70's or 80's TV show or comic book; in the good old days they would only make movies about action comic books but now every syndicated comic strip is up for grabs... Seriously there is a movie about MARMADUKE... It blows my mind that at this time there is a person willing to pitch an idea for a feature length movie about the comic strip Marmaduke... And there is also board room of people that thought it was a good enough idea to ask people for money to finance this movie... And there are people willing to finance a movie about MARMADUKE... Because right now there people saying, "Jeeze I know movie tickets are $10 a piece, but I just have to see Marmaduke..."
Now Hollywood grinds out these things all year long and occasionally you get an Avatar and about twice a year the monster studios like Disney and Dreamworks make something you know will be good and sometimes a good independent or foreign film bubbles to the surface. But if it doesn't meet any of the above criteria... it's going to be a "twist" movie. A twist movie means they are going to throw a huge twist at the end. A lot of people blame M. Night Shyamalan for this becoming a Hollywood cliche but it takes two to tango. Honestly, Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were masterpieces; but his movies just get worse and worse every one he does. Why is this? Because a twist is only good if YOU DON'T SEE IT COMING! If you know that there is going to be a twist you just think, "What would be an ironic thing that could happen, and by ironic I don't mean the Webster's Dictionary definition of irony, more like the Alanis Morrisette definition of irony?" And then you have it... Oh he's going to kill himself and then the army will come by and kill all the bugs. It's the same reason that if you tell someone you are posing a trick question to them they usually can figure out the piece of the sentence that doesn't belong; but if you just pose it like you are asking them a serious question with a legitimate answer they are less likely to pick up on it. A lot of twist directors say they were inspired by Alfred Hitchcock but he didn't do the very last minute twist on any movie I can remember. His twists came when a well laid plan was messed up by a coincidence like in Dial M for Murder. Some Hollywood movies I would even say completely cheat the audience. The worst offender I can think of is Domino. You're sitting through over an hour of the movie and then 2/3rds of the way through it they say, "But that's not what happened at all." Why even show me something if that isn't what happened? That's like saying, "Dude I'm from Portland... psyche! I'm from Seattle." I wouldn't even consider that a lie, because that kind of implies that there was some element of tact involved, that's just telling me something that isn't true.
And finally you have the remake... There is one remake I want to PLEAD with Hollywood not to do, and that is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Now I just want to say for the record, I thought the movie was pretty good, not nearly the greatest foreign film I've ever seen. In fact I can think of a movie that really reminds me of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that came out in the seventies. Hollywood recently remade the movie and here is what they came up with:
That is the recent remake of The Wicker Man; the original 1973 version is great, but after seeing this video you probably won't take my word for it. Cracked magazine said it best, "We know that many of you have seen the above highlights, as they've been quite a sensation on YouTube. We also know that most of you haven't actually seen the rest of the film, judging by its box office. So here's a fun project for you: Sit down and try to write the rest of the movie so that those scenes make perfect sense in context" (the full article is here: 10 Scenes of Brutal Violence Guaranteed to Make You Laugh).
Now if nothing else, just don't make the movie because I have the feeling it's going to bomb and I don't know if I can afford more than $10 a ticket when you will inevitably massacre this movie. Firstly, the typical American movie goer is way way way more prudent than the average Scandinavian movie goer. I don't profess to be an expert on films from there, but I have definitely seen over a half dozen movies from there and they are much less sexually inhibited than movies you see in the United States. In fact I'd have to say we are far more prude than most European and Asian movie goers. This is the reason why classics like Ichi the Killer and Oldboy will never come to America; and why my roommates almost gouged their eyes out after watching 15 minutes of Thriller: A Cruel Picture (which is from Sweden I believe). Honestly I'm really surprised at how many women actually liked this movie and recommended it to me. It's very gritty and sexually graphic; I'm kind of thinking that anyone who is open-minded enough to see that for it's artistic merit has already seen it by now. Rape, domination, and masochism are pretty hardline themes throughout the movie; you NEVER see that (to the extent it is in this movie) in American movies. So if you censor it out or downplay it; that's 2/5ths of the movie gone AT LEAST. Then, of course, you can't have religious themes in there either so cut that out and you'll be left with something completely different. I have a feeling that the love affair with most people have with this movie is from the amazing performance by Noomi Rapace. The problem is, she doesn't speak English... not even to a Jackie Chan extent. So she can't be in it, I can't even picture an American actress that can play a don't-give-a-fuck devil-may-care attitude like her. And with a role like that, you can't fake it. I know there are many fans who loved that movie and it's for them I'm writing this; I don't want to see another Wicker Man scenario.
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