The hallucinations just keep coming! I thought I just saw, what’s his name, sounds like a danish chopped sausage.

That’s close enough to the original quote.

No, it’s not hallucinations I’m referring to, but rather..idiots.

DISCLAIMER: IF YOU’RE A DOUCHE, THIS MAY OFFEND YOU.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/34236012#34236012

Now naturally it’s not very nice to tease and bully others, and I do feel a little sorry for the parents, but the blame in this situation lies solely on the girl, and partly her parents too. If you’re going to send naked pictures of yourself to other people, you shouldn’t really be surprised when other people call you a slut.

I’m not really sure what the point of that article was, as with most American news stories, it was vague. I’m not sure if they were trying to blame the other kids into pushing her to suicide or what. Regardless the blame lies solely on the girl and not to speak ill of the dead or anything – she was an idiot to send those pictures out, that in itself is pretty much child porn and as far as I know, would’ve gotten herself and whoever she sent it to into trouble with the law, what with being ILLEGAL AND ALL. In the end she took the cowards way out, you only get one chance at life and she even said herself “she didn’t want to let them get to her” or whatever, well she sure failed that. She will be remembered as some idiot who killed herself after making a mistake. Oh Lant, who are you to speak? You’re not in her situation! No, you’re right, I’m not in the habit of sending naked pictures of myself around to people. You know what though? I got bullied in school and you know how I dealt with it? I ignored it because I wasn’t pathetic enough to let what imbeciles said get to me. No, instead I in turn felt pity for the people who would bully me, pity that their feeble minds must have found it entertaining. In the end they are just words that you think you hear people say. Words are a triviality, they mean nothing. Killing yourself over them means even less.

As I said though, there’s also some blame to put on the parents, they shouldn’t have raised their kid to be a whore, oh I’m sure they probably thought they were doing a good job and I’m sure teenagers are SAWWW hard to deal with, but it’s the role of a parent to know these things, it’s your role to look after your offspring, not the school or anyone else. To take care of them until they are capable of doing so themselves is YOUR role. If you aren’t prepared to do that properly, if you aren’t prepared for the role of being a parent, don’t have kids in the first place. Simple.

Honestly, they should just neuter these morons, it could be the one way to save the human race.

Now, back to the music.

No

Ah, I have been shown a source of near infinite rage that will keep me green and growing for a long, long time.

http://www.amazon.com/Gamer-Girl-Mari-Mancusi/dp/0525479953

As one chap put it: “It’s as if the author studied /a/ & /v/ intensly for a few years, then wrote down all that made us rage, then wrote a book just to troll us. I swear to God it seems that way.”

It’s a good thing I’ve only been up 20 minutes and am still a bit drowsy, otherwise I would no doubt be having a fit of rage. That’s the purpose of this post, you see? If I ever need to heat up the ol’ rage furnace I can just look at this.

How is this even a book.

Demonic Archives

ARCHIVES HAVE COME BACK FOR MORE!

This time it’s MSN archives, so brace yourself, behold the beauty and marvels of..the secret crypt. Just for the record, even though I’m the one saying a lot of these things, I literally have no recollection of doign so, as I’ve explained before, in 2004 I was a different being, current Lant (myself) was born sometime in 2005.

13/11/03  19:31:41  Lant ->  Thorsion  Mrs Durgarenage
13/11/03  19:28:17  Lant -> Thorsion  *transforms into mrs garvey*
13/11/03  19:29:17  Lant -> Thorsion  *turns into a giraffe as well*
13/11/03  19:31:02  Lant -> Thorsion  Miss Garvey the elephant hotdog with a giraffe’s neck fuses with Mrs Duvenage and Mrs Durey

2 years Later..the early signs of the RAGE that now fuels my life.

17/01/2005  20:11:53  Fei Xu (Me) ->  Mike  BATTLE COMMENCE!

17/01/2005  20:12:32  Fei Xu ->  Mike  !)” “£( $”( )”"”"::)”)”):”)”:”):C O “$) )$”$:P”$@”$O?O@RE ::”ERL:L :”£PRO: “RL:L”:R”:ROORORFrsdswe;;e;rter;r;tw34;5;34;47;67;90;09;0-;;=0-;0;00;0;9;;9;9;9;9;98;9;;;9:%%TR%:^ :^:%::D%:%C:%V:C:%:(%V:(V:V::%V:VB:B::B^:B^:^::^B::^NB: $V(: $:($:V(:V:; ; ;; ;y; drt; rt;ytr;yert;y ;4w356 ;4;7 wsdfis ihzsi

17/01/2005  20:07:22  Fei Xu  Mike  I CANT FIND A GOOD ANGER SITE
17/01/2005  20:07:30  Fei Xu  Mike  WWW.IAMANGRY.COM
17/01/2005  20:02:08  Fei Xu  Mike  must take out frutsation on a crustacean

Foreshadowing of what was to come..the greatest tag team, EVER WITNESSED.

[21:11] <+Lant> cool new char
[21:11] <+Lant> with sword
[21:11] <+Lant> Kasumi getting owned
[21:12] <+Lant> they were like
[21:12] <+Lant> aw crap my head
[21:12] <+Lant> and jan lee is all like
[21:12] <+Lant> hutwah
[21:13] <+Lant> new wrestlers!
[21:13] <+Lant> BEWm
[21:13] <+Lant> GO NINA
[21:18] <+Lant> we can team up as hayate n hayabusa
[21:18] <+Lant> n own all

The Nintendo Wii.

[15:41] <@Adam-X> LMFAO @ THAT CONTROLLER
[15:41] <@Adam-X> WHAT THE FUCK
[15:42] <+Lant> NINTENDO YOU FOOLS
[15:42] <+Lant> HOW THE FUCK CAN I OWN ON SMASH BROS WITH THAT!?!

This was a very common sight.

[16:22] <+Lant> mainly .. i am restarting Finis Impiri
[16:22] <+Lant> i am uber unhappy with the one i made before

He is here.

[16:40] <12@Thorsion> FOUND MY DYING SPOT
[16:52] <12@Thorsion> Yoraeis REBORN
[16:52] <12@Thorsion> with new hair style.
[16:54] <12@Thorsion> and a WEIRD BEARD THING

WoW has arrived. Italics are from right now with BIG MIKE commenting.

[22:25] <@Adam-X> lol, imagine a non WoW player trying to understand those two lnies
[12:56] <Thorsion> no, not those two lines, everything
[22:34] <@Adam-X> fucking fuck of a fucking fucking fucker
[12:56] <Thorsion> see
[12:56] <Thorsion> the tone of this log changes considerably
[12:56] <Thorsion> when wow is involved

On a side note, until more proof is or isn’t found, the official birthday of Lant + FI (not me, I mean the character Lant) will be August 5th, 2002. Which makes him 7 years old. That’s also one day after my birthday. So yeah I’ll admit I mostly chose it for the sake of simplicity. Also, that’s Ayane’s date of birth from DOA, fitting as that’s the character I main.



You’ll LIKE being a Plant

..I DO.

It’s 5:30am and I’m waiting for my 360 controller to charge, thus it’s time to babble. About what? On a subject I have touched on many times before, but I’m going to expand it even further, yes, it’s FFID.

To be precise, I’ll expand upon what role each character plays, looking upon it in a DND/generic fantasy fashion. Of course I’ve never actually played DND nor have I read that much of it, so I’m just going to use it as a comparison.

I’ll start with Erthus, as he is perhaps the most simple to explain. Erthus is a DPS warrior, a fighter, whatever. Trained to use almost every form of weapon, but much like Montolio, he prefers to use a two-handed axe or sword, it is a sign of how they grew up mostly. Whilst realistically a sword and shield would be superior, it just wasn’t..cool enough for them. Besides, the axe especially serves other purposes. Generally however, Erthus would go into battle with a two-handed weapon, a smaller sidearm and an array of knives. Whilst he’s trained with bows and crossbows and the like, Erthus prefers the throwing knife, finding it far more versatile. He is not however a tank, whilst he wears heavy armour, it is usually to protect from spells more than blades. He is not the type of warrior to just trade blow for blow, rather he relies more on riposte and counters, ensuring that he spends minimal energy to make up for the fact that swinging large weapons and wearing heavy attire may tire him out. This being said, Erthus enjoys battle and will rarely aim to kill from the outset, he won’t go all out you could say. Perhaps it’s a superiority complex, but like Lant, Erthus usually plays on the defensive, he waits for his opponent to attack so he can show them how futile their actions are, not to mention to confirm that he is indeed superior to them. Having trained in several combat styles, Erthus is well matched and experienced in one to one duels, yet also fares well against several opponents at once, he can adapt to almost any melee situation. However he lacks any ability to manipulate magic whatsoever, save for that one certain technique. Outside of combat his abilities are similarly somewhat lacking, he is skilled in basic first aid yet no medic and has knowledge of gnomish engineering, yet he has little wit or patience for conversation. If the fastest way to fix a problem is to smash it with a sword, Erthus will pick that. As for his war mount, Erthus makes use of an armoured steed, one that can bear his considerable bulk. If you had to classify him as a class, Erthus is a pure up fighter, a warrior, a blademaster, not so much a berserker yet he does tend to get..angry. He has not sworn any oaths, yet he is loyal to friends and nation..even if he does not always see fit to follow their laws. It would be simplest to define him as a fighter, but that is deceptively simple, it is dangerous to underestimate him on those grounds, as he has taken it to the highest pinnacle. Erthus wields the two-handed blade Hautecler (Halt Cleh Ray) and a two-handed axe constructed from Arcanite he named “The Bone-Reaver.” He is also the third wielder of San Desica.

As for Montolio, he is somewhat harder to define. I usually split him into two distinct roles, there’s Paladin Montolio and “Ranger” Montolio. I think we all know how the Paladin works. Mont’s a retribution Paladin, path of the blade, whatever, his experience was in offense and support on the frontlines. As for the later part, it is extremely hard to define. I use the term Ranger, but it is not entirely accurate. Like Erthus, Montolio is trained with most weapons, yet prefers the longsword or two-handed sword. He is also a keen archer, despite the loss of one eye, decades of eventual practice and necessity have kept his aim true. Whilst Erthus can fight no matter the number of his enemies, Montolio is only adept at fighting one on one, if he is forced to fight several opponents, he uses the enviroment to make it so that they can only come at him in single file. Whilst not as skilled as Erthus and lacking the immense physical strength of his brother, Montolio is a quick learner and quick thinker, able to supplement his weaknesses. His role in the party is relatively straightforward, as a Paladin he would be on the frontline, supporting the party and damaging the enemy, as a Ranger he can fight from afar or up close, he’s a jack of “most” trades you could say. Erthus uses throwing knives, Mont uses a shortbow, however he does have the fabled “Montbow” if the situation requires it. If Erthus was eventually a blademaster, capable of creating form and technique, Montolio would be a copycat apprentice, he does not create his own form or technique, but rather imitates the style of others, perhaps improving it as he may. As for HOW he fights specifically, it is the opposite of Erthus, whilst Erthus fights “slowly” and remains on the defensive mostly, Montolio seeks to end the battle as fast as possible, he will go all out from the start, he’ll use any advantage as soon as possible in an attempt to overwhelm his opponent. Outside of battle, he would rather use his gentle humour and wit to avoid a confrontation, but if there is a battle to be fought, few can match him. Decades of living in the world and years of torture have made Montolio incredibly endurable, he’s not a Druid, not in touch with nature, but he knows enough to read signs as they come, naturally this combined with his knowledge of first aid makes him slightly more adept at healing than Erthus, but still not someone you should consider a doctor. You could describe him as a Ranger, a Bard, a Duelist, a Hunter, a Swordsman, it’s nigh impossible to get the right term, I myself use Ranger in the Lord of the Rings sense as I find it most fitting. I think you can find that Erthus and Montolio have many characters you could compare them to, perhaps the most suitable would be Boromir and Faramir. More obvious in terms of the story however might be Anakin and Obi Wan, albeit with some role reversal at times. Finally if you’re wandering what Montolio’s mount is, in the early part of the story he has none save the human steeds of Elwynn, later (part 3) he wrangles a particularly savage and powerful variation of tall strider he encountered in the northern barrens, to his wife’s chagrin he named the beast “Montstrider” but after many an argument he relented and named the beast Frahlo. Frahlo is a fierce fighter in his own right, and for some unexplained reason has survived alongside Montolio for over a hundred years. Montolio wields the longsword Vapor, the “Montbow” (an extremely oversized longbow) the two-handed axe, “Grand-Mont’s Sunderer” as well as an un-named shortbow and is the fifth wielder of San Desica. After his self-exile, he is often accompanied by an owl he names “Ian the first hooting tooting baron of Azshara” or “Hoota” for short which assists his aim with a bow on account of his worsened eyesight by hooting by his targets.

Finally we move onto Frahlo, the last member of the party. It might seem odd that it’s only a three person party, but hey that’s how they role. Frahlo’s a mage as I’m sure you are aware. Whilst initially he is an elementalist with little reknown, as the story progresses, so to does Frahlo’s understanding of magic. Remarkably fast some say, un-naturally so. This of course would be thanks to Mirasmiel. To touch upon his non magical abilities first, Frahlo is relatively skilled with a blade, much to Montolio’s dismay he often wields an ungainly two handed sword upon his back. Never the less, Frahlo has enough skill with a blade to serve in a dire situation, in a way it suits him. Frahlo usually refers to himself as a combat mage, his magic is dedicated for battle mostly. He also tends to betray the usual mage mantra of standing far away and pelting his foes with energy, instead Frahlo often finds himself in the thick of things, using unconvential means of what he calls “CQM”, close quarters magic whilst questioning the parentage of his enemies (a trait picked up from Mirasmiel, perhaps) Whilst one might think it foolish for a mage to engage in close quarters melee, Frahlo’s (and Mirasmiel’s) knowledge of shielding and portal based magic proves to be formidable indeed. Frahlo is skilled in almost all schools of magic, whilst his personal preference is fire and ice, he is extremely proficient in utilising spells in ways others would not think of. If pressed greatly, Frahlo can use the magics of Mirasmiel, for whilst it should be impossible to use the mana of another world, Mirasmiel’s vessel itself is pure mana. That is to say, Mirasmiel himself is akin to an immense mana battery from his own world, allowing Frahlo to use exotic magics never seen on Azeroth before..to varying degrees of success. Frahlo’s main strength lied in fighting non magic using enemies, of any number, as such he was less effective when dueling a single magic using foe. However, over the course of the story he steadily improves until he is what many consider a perfect mage. Erthus is the perfect fighter, Frahlo the perfect mage, and Montolio is a bit of a mix, he does not truly exceed at any factor, but is more than adequate at each of them (bar spell casting of course, when he stops being a Paladin, magic is more or less closed to him) Frahlo’s first mount was a horse, yet sadly it perished saving its master in circumstances that will become clear. Following this, Montolio gives him a Dun Morogh ram, once a gift to the Ranger from Kurineor. Frahlo wields several magical blades of his own creation along with the final creation of Rollard Runecraft – Vajra, the fire enhancing staff of great magical power that Rollard once left to Lant. Montolio gifted this to Frahlo as well, deeming Lant unworthy (not to mention Lant had no interest in such a thing.)

[HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.. AHOY]

It begs the question, who would win if they fought? It’s a tough question, you have to consider so many things, where they are fighting, why they are fighting and so forth. Perhaps for Erthus and Frahlo the answers would be more simple, yet for Montolio, WHY becomes a large issue. For Montolio’s “strength” per se scales depending on who his foe is, it fluctuates and is not exactly stable, indeed, another trait of Montolio I mentioned before was his copycat tendencies. He can change himself in battle, self suggestion one might say, he changes who he is by drawing a blade. As such even if Montolio defeated Uska when Uska defeated Erthus, that does not mean Montolio could beat Erthus, does that make sense? Well regardless, Erthus is certainly the best fighter, he would probably beat Montolio in a straight up fight (this is Ranger Mont in all these examples) but against Frahlo it’s possible Erthus would lose. It’s hard to think because the outcome of most fights depends on the story but if I had to write a fight randomly without any regard to the outcome, Erthus would beat Montolio, Frahlo would beat Erthus, and Montolio would beat Frahlo. I’ll briefly touch on Lant and Yorae too whilst I’m on the matter.

Lant..is impossible to describe. I have him listed as a Conjurer, but that’s not strictly true. Lant is like a combination of Montolio and Erthus. He can do a bit of everything like Montolio can, yet whilst Mont is more melee oriented, Lant is more magic. However he is more like Erthus in how he fights, he mostly sits on the defensive and counters more than outright attacks. Unless angered of course. In a strictly melee battle with no magic involved whatsoever, Erthus would be superior to Lant, yet taking magic into account, Lant could defeat Montolio with ease in a melee battle, even Erthus would lose against him. Whilst Lant is about as skilled as Frahlo with a blade, he is an extremely effective hand to hand fighter and often strengthens this aspect of his character even more with magic. Against Frahlo, Lant is the superior caster, there are few mages on Azeroth with the wit and knowledge to defeat Lant in a battle of magic. Of course, Mirasmiel is not of Azeroth. Even taking conventional magic out of the equation, Lant has three trump cards he will use if need be. First there’s Aughtfire, the spell that ignores time and as such cannot be defended against. Second there is San Desica, a blade which links all dimensions, and as such, also cannot be defended against. Finally there’s Lant’s link to Tri, the mysterious demon realm. I won’t go into great detail as I don’t want to spoil EVERYTHING but it is this that makes Lant so formidable, and perhaps, unbeatable. Outside of godly beings, there is little that poses a threat to Lant, that by itself might mean that he could be considered a god by some. So what will happen when the “god” with unlimited magic fights Mirasmiel, the one who claims himself a god, a god who is in possession of every spell ever created. Finally, Lant has no need for a mount, as for weapons, he may summon an unlimited amount of any weapon he wishes, yet mostly he prefers his own fists or fire. He is the second wielder of San Desica.

Yorae’s nice and simple to explain after all these huge barons. Simply put, Yorae’s a shadowknight. He fights using darkness, he travels via darkness, he can manipulate it and so forth. He rarely fights, yet when he does it is extremely brutal and rarely do his foes remain recognisable after he is finished. Perhaps it is due to his nature of being nigh immortal, but he likes to make sure whoever it is he is fighting, isn’t going to be getting back up. Yorae also rarely bothers using a mount and as for his weapon, he (near)exclusively wields Zomorrodnegar, however he is also the fourth wielder of San Desica.

I guess I more or less covered everything important there, here’s a quick rundown:

Erthus

• +Master level melee fighter
• +Well protected from magic
• +Powerful technique and style
• -Has problems with on the fly adaptation
• -A tad cocky at times
• -No skill with magic whatsoever

Montolio

• +Adapts quickly
• +Strong ability to imitate
• +General all-round fighter (melee/ranged) Jack of all trades..
• -..Master of none
• -Very limited skill with magic
• -No techniques of his own

Frahlo

• +Very strong magic user
• +Able to fight close or long range
• +Mirasmiel hax
• -(Comparatively) weak melee fighter
• -Inexperienced mage duelist
• -Deepsea dive hat

No need to mention Lant and Yorae considering Lant’s basically flawless and Yorae can only even be killed by something that completely negates magic..or just nicks his sword.

I on the other hand, have no weaknesses.

Other than “dying” and not getting a proper end even when Mullin did, that is?

Now it’s 8:00am, man I’m probably the best person in the world at distracting myself like this! Uuh now my controller has more than adequately charged, but I find myself longing for breakfast.

Oh before I go, I’ll quickly list everything that shows up in the 2 year bonus thing. I suppose I’ll say what it IS, too. To summarise, it’s a compilation of random stuff that may or may not have happened from 2007 to 2009. Of course, some of the things on there are far older. Namely, the two pals in the bottom left who must be almost 10 years old by now.

(Starting from bottom left)

• “Best Jiang Liang” courtesy of BIG MIKE.
• “Zhou Wuuu” courtesy of BIG MIKE.
• Lant (from SS, don’t get him mixed up with FFID Lant) he’s not to be mistaken for a lantern.
• Lant (from FI1) It’s a slight paradox to have him sitting ontop of himself from the future but ok.
• Screenshot of the first time I got banned from the WoW forums. Funny to me as I trolled people 24/7 and in the end got banned for just merely correcting somebody!
• Montolio_reacts_staring_at_Sayoko.jpg etc
• Frahlo insists that he is HATING. MANGEY. CUMMING. ALL ON YOU.
• GET SOME.
• Dio.
• Beitetsu’s Bloggy Woggy (that lasted very long.)
• Bork.
• Captain Falcon (duh? He was with me from the start on this epic ballad of rage.)
• Apachai + Mao. Partners in..awesome?
• OL CAPPIN FLAPJACKA M8SLAPPA THE 18TH – THE CAPTAIN
  ADMIRAL FAGLO SWIFTPOOPA THE 94TH – THE ADMIRIAL OF THE M8-FLEET??? (Frahlo parrot)

I drew most of them myself with as I’m sure you can see, limited effort. I put a little bit extra into the ol’ Captain (..Falcon) as he was in my first banner.

If you want to be correct though, this was my first banner.

There’s a reason I didn’t use that.

I can’t find the others I thought I had, I seem to have deleted them.

Que after more searching I’ve found what appears to be a photograph of my head, taken from above. Why? Also why is my hair so much darker than now. Well I can’t find what I was looking for so settle for this:

I was hoping for something from 2007, but mid 2008 works.

Oh, what IS that you ask?

I uh..think it was my design for some sort of military grade ant-eater that would assist me in my problem with insects, that is, I hate insects of all kind.

Yes, this post is 3000 words long. I win.

Stage 2 Now I remember! I am Lant the amazing, shinobi of RAGE!

I would like to say that it has a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for me to write this blog, but I can’t because my lying stems are all out of commission.

I hate and despise you all.

 

Indeed, it’s a day early, but I’m not sure whether I’ll be here or not tomorow and/or in a mood to do anything other than die, so it comes one day early. Big whoop wanna fight about it? I’ll get you.

Thank you for reading – yes, I am still number 1.

Relics of Gaming

To celebrate the (near)eve of the blog’s 2 year anniversary, what could be better than a classic rant?

The target of my ire this time happens to be “old school” gamers, specifically, this IGN article. I read through it and found myself shaking my head, shouldn’t professional writers be unbiased? That article certainly isn’t. I have found recently that “old school” gamers love to argue, yet their arguments are ineluctably flawed. For starters, these are some of the major points they bring up:

• Games are too easy nowadays.
• Games lack imagination nowadays.
• Console games suck compared to PC games.

You understand that I summarised that, but you get the idea. At least, you’re getting something. I can point out two classic signs of an “old school” gamer, or to be less polite, a moron. First off, they incessantly complain about modern games lacking, oh, be it colourful graphics, good gameplay, a challenge, or whatever the hell else. Second, they almost always raise Street Fighter 2 as a “good” old game.

I may be going off on a tangent, but allow me to explain something about fighting games. Simply put – 3D fighting games are superior to 2D fighting games. However, most of the gaming generation has been raised playing Street Fighter. There’s a good chance you are shaking your head and disagreeing with me as you read this, but I’m afraid to say you are wrong. 3D fighting games are superior in every single way. Just because you were raised playing Street Fighter does not make it better, just because SF is played at EVO does not make it better. Popular =/= better. If you were going to raise that argument, you would be saying that Twilight is the best novel to come out in the past decade.

Oh I’ve tried of course, I’ve tried to convince people, but do they listen? Nope. It is practically impossible and unheard of to convince a moron otherwise, they stubbornly refute your points whilst failing to uphold their end of the argument. Indeed I’ve yet to hear a single good reason why people think Street Fighter is a good fighting game. I’ll tell you what a good fighting game is, Dead or Alive and Virtua Fighter. These are the pinnacle of fighting games. I’m stating that as fact. Oh Lant you’re no pro, you’ve never won a tournament how do you think you know more than [some pointless gaming celebrity] Silly question, does a football manager need to be better than his team to understand a strategy? My favourite fighting game is Smash Bros, but I can understand how VF and DOA are superior. Oh – but Smash Bros is still superior to Street Fighter.

Why are these games better? Simple.

Let’s compare Street Fighter IV with DOA4. In both cases we will assume that I am facing somebody of equal skill, however in DOA4 I am using a bottom tier character, Hitomi, versus a top tier character, Ryu. In SFIV (I’m going solely by what I can find on google for tier lists here) I’ll be Vega and my opponent Sagat. In SFIV it is highly predictable that I will lose the majority of the matches, whereas in DOA4 my chances are much higher. Why? DOA4’s mechanics are far superior. Now, let’s change it around a bit, same characters, but I’ll be playing against somebody who is inferior to me in terms of skill. In DOA4 I will win every match, in SFIV I cannot say, there is still a chance I will lose. DOA4’s counter mechanics balance the game near perfectly, there are no retarded supers that somebody can get lucky and land on you. Oh, but there is no luck in a fighting game, if you get hit by a super that’s your fault. Not so, luck is a factor, the more random elements in a game, the less fair and balanced it is. DOA4 and VF, and to an extent, Smash Bros have virtually no random elements (under the right circumstances, aka no items/crazy stages). Aside from that there’s the issue of the enviroment, having 3D environments naturally opens a whole new field of depth that adds to the experience.

None of this matters though, does it? Decent games like DOA and VF will never be at your big PRO game events because you’re all to intent on hurling laser balls out your dicks at each other.

Finally, still on this matter, I am going to touch on the matter of “fair play.” There is perhaps a rather infamous article on the internet written by some peon or other (sirgroin perhaps?) that touches on the matter of “cheap”ness in fighting games. It doesn’t matter, as long as you win, that’s it. They state that this is merely an excuse that losers use. I beg to differ, “it doesn’t matter how you win as long as you win” is the sort of argument used by those who care solely about winning and not the game or sport itself. Just because there are cheap things you can abuse to win, it doesn’t mean you should use them, this is yet another reason DOA4 is superior. You want to play Ryu and spam ninpo or headrockets? Be my guest, you might beat me once, you might even beat me twice, but by the third time I will counter your attacks methodically and without fail, can I say the same for SFIV? Nope. “Cheapness” is not merely an excuse by losers, it is a valid complaint. There is such a thing as sportsmanship, if I were to challenge you to a sword fight and then shot you with a gun, by your logic that would be fine, yes? I won, it doesn’t matter if I used an underhanded method. That’s the flaw of this argument, it robs your victory of any meaning if you do not achieve it properly. Call me old-fashioned, but when I win, I want it to be clear that I was the superior one, let there be no doubt or excuses you can use, which is exactly why I won’t resort to spamming or being a moron.

Anyway, back to my original topic, “old school” gamers and PC gamers usually tend to be one and the same. I’ll say it now, I find them to be the most insufferable of all gamers. I recall some time ago, there was an internet radio show I used to listen to, during which they (near exclusive WoW players) were complaining about console games, this was..oh, perhaps late 2008? Anyway, I sent in the following e-mail.

Isn’t it a tad hypocritical to claim that 360 gamers aren’t “gamers” just because they exclusively play 360?

Now I’m no expert on your personal lives obviously but I get the impression you only play PC games, the most inferior gaming system currently. So how is it different from playing 360s exclusively?

Of course, it depends on how you judge a gaming system, but in my eyes, a gaming system is only as good as the games that’re on it. Can you name 5 good exclusive PC games coming out this year or next? Heck, I only use my PC for playing Team Fortress 2 or pre-05 games. Devs just don’t bring anything worthwhile out nowadays that justifies me spending £500 every few years to upgrade my PC.

I apologise if this came across a bit rude but it seemed amazingly arrogant the way you seem to look down on console gamers.

Oh, and FPS games are fine on the 360. It’s 2D fighting games that suck on the 360 pad.

Their response? Laughter and insults. They misconstrued my words and instead of countering with an argument, they merely insulted me, yes indeed that is most mature and proves my point of how sad PC gamers tend to be. Quite.

For starters, is there anything wrong in that e-mail? Did I lie? No, I used facts and all my claims were stated truths:

PC being inferior gaming platform: Correct. Look at release dates, the number of exclusives, the hardware faults, the porting issues, and the utter butchery that is MW2. Also of note is that I said CURRENTLY. Until perhaps 2005, PC was a superior platform, it had the internet, it had MMOs, it had the graphics, it had the mods, it had the level of customization that people wanted. Nowadays? You can huff and puff about how great Crysis looks, but you know what? I’m fine with PS3 and 360 graphics, if you’re honestly using that as a reason nowadays, you’re grasping for straws. PS3 and 360 games now almost always have online support, consoles themselves are rapidly catching up to the PC in online gaming, the only thing that has kept them behind is by and large the community. MMOs? Consoles get those now. Mods? Some console games can be modded, but mods have never really bothered me that much, I can live without them, they rarely have been needed for me to enjoy a game (never, in fact) What advantages do you have then? Slightly better graphics? Mouse control?

FPS games being fine on consoles. They are. Did I say they are SUPERIOR on consoles? No, I said they are fine, they are fine. FPS games are perfectly playable on a console. So you have mouse control which is better for FPS and RTS. Keyboards are arguably better for MMOs. That’s great, but consoles are still superior for almost every other type of game.

Exclusives. Could they name exclusives? Could they name one? I’ll tell you what they named, Diablo III and Starcraft II. Oh my. It’s almost 2010 and there’s no sign of either game. I’ll let alone the fact that I asked for GOOD games, and not Blizzard-shit. So no, they couldn’t name a single good PC exclusive game that came out in 2008 or 2009. I am sure they could have at least found a couple, if they had the wit to back up their claims.

Here’s a tip, do not bandy words with the mouth of Plant if you lack the mental fortitude to even at least keep from foaming and frothing at my claims.

Finally, it amused me how this article utilises yet another of the classic moves. Take a game commonly regarded as hard, and say it isn’t, just to try and sound impressive. In this case, Ninja Gaiden. Well I have news for you buddy mcbroski. I’ve played Ninja Gaiden Black, II and the original NES NG (and yes, completed on PotMN.) You know which version is harder? The new ones. There is a difference between hard games and stupid games. Do you understand the concept behind creating a game in the 80s and early 90s? Most games were arcade games. You know when you go to the fair or theme park and try your hand at those games, but they seem impossible? It’s the same concept. They are designed to be extremely irritating and tricky, to keep you from advancing. It’s more a test of your wallet than your skill.

Don’t take my word for it, I don’t exactly care if you think you’re right. Have fun crying about how games suck and how ____ is cheap in Street Fighter. I’ll be over there playing Crackdown.

Final point? Seriously. Difficulty makes a game. No, IGN, interaction and the ability to have fun is what makes a game. People do not play something with the intent of pissing themselves off, they play it because they wish to interact and enjoy themselves, difficulty is merely an extension of this.

They’d rather sit there whining about consoles when they could just buy a game and have fun? ..Okay.

I shall return, not unlooked for, on the 27th.

Yet keep an eye out for me anyway, especially at unexpected times.

Lant’s List of Lovely..L-Games.

I’m just making a list so I can stare at it and nod to myself.

Anyway, these’re the games I will be planning to buy in early 2010 along with their release dates. (Things with an * are potentials that I’m not sure about as I’m indecisive!)

Mass Effect 2 – 29/01/2010

Splinter Cell Conviction* – 26/02/2010

Bayonetta – 08/01/2010

Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce  – 19/02/2010

Blazblue Calamity Trigger* – 26/02/2010

Dante’s Inferno* – 12/02/2010

I’m also planning to get Dragon Age too, so I expect after I do I’ll just be ranting about Morrigan forever until I find out a way to fire her out of a cannon into a brick wall and then use her remains as jam and feed it to the war dog, which I will call Apachai.

There are no other games.

No other games.

 

 

What with one thing and another, my best option seemed to be jumping out of a window again

*wink*

See, I care about my readers, I like to know you’re all healthy and spry as young lambs, gallivanting here and nuntooting there. As for me? I’mmmm alright if you happen to like that sort of thing which personally I don’t. (Marvin reference #1)

I’ll be honest, its 10am and my hands are literally about to fall off due to how cold it is, so I thought to myself, how can I make my hands warm? Opti0n 1 seemed to be playing a game, Option 2 was sitting on them, and Option 3 was ratta tat tat away on the keyboard, so I figured I’d do something constructive (laugh) like a blog post.

As it happens, I do have something to talk about, as I finished Ergo Proxy yesterday I may as well spam images from that and talk a bit about it. Same rules as usual, there will be spoilers (although I try to keep them to a minimum, don’t blame me if you read this) for the general story of Ergo Proxy as well as I can understand it. So don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m also typing this with gloves on, which is interesting.

Anyway (I use that word to start paragraphs way too often) I had known of Ergo Proxy for some time mostly due to the stupid title. That’s all I knew about it though, oh, and that the main character had blue mascara..stuff. It was never high on my list of stuff to watch, and I’ll be frank the only reason I really picked it up was due to Dai Sato being the writer. (Lead writer on Eureka Seven, he also worked on Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell) the premise of Ergo Proxy isn’t anything that far out there, in essence, humans are living in a large domed city, big brother society, world outside is FUKO’d, the usual. I’ll skimp on the details for the most part and just say what I thought about the show, A.P.A style.

Ergo Proxy started off pretty damn fast paced, the first 9 episodes or so introduced a ton of characters, many of which died out within 1-2 episodes, it didn’t really give much indication as to where the series was headed, but eventually, much like E7, LE and to a lesser extent Cowboy and Champloo, the story takes place on a ship and its crew, going on a journey. Never the less, where E7 and LE have large crews and what not, Ergo Proxy’s crew consists of 4 maximum members: Vincent Law, Re-L Mayer, Pino and Iggy. Vincent and Re-L are “humans”, Pino and Iggy are Autoreiv Entourages (basically robots or androids) so after episode 9, the pacing slows down and it becomes more episodic in nature till about the 19 mark or so. In a way it contrasts with Last Exile, whereas Last Exile starts off very slow and then becomes fast paced near the end, Ergo starts fast, then goes slow.

As for the characters themselves, there wasn’t really anything new here. Vincent Law is an amnesic (Japan LOVES amnesiacs more than Batos loves rating) Re-L is your typical rebel girl with a gun, to be honest I didn’t much like either of these characters, and I basically paid very little attention for the first few episodes. Pino and Iggy were far more interesting to me, ironic considering they are/were robots. If you hadn’t realised by now from my banners and spamming of Dio pictures, I like, 90% of the time, the “happy-go-lucky” or careless characters most of the time. Apachai, Dio, Pino and so on. (Mao doesn’t really count, but he’s a cat.) I’m not really sure why I enjoy these characters more, but oh well. There’s also a moderate supporting cast. Chief amongst these are Chief (…) Raul and Daedalus the “I’m actually a man despite my female voice actor” and if that didn’t tip you off, I was listening to the japanese dub. I tried out the english dub as it was dual audio but..for the most part, the voices weren’t bad at all, but I found Vincent and Pino to be superior in the japanese versions (also the english dub removes Pino’s nickname for Re-L, what’s up with that?)

From here on there be spoilers, just so you know.

So eventually (well, like at episode 9) it is revealed that Vincent isn’t human at all, but is in fact a Proxy. To quote him, “I am Ergo Proxy. Agent of Death.” and that’s when the storyline kicks in more. From what I understand, Proxies are basically god like beings with ebony skin who are more or less immortal. Re-L (her name is basically pronounced Real) discovers that her entourage, Iggy, has been infected by a virus known as Cogito, which gives these robots a soul. Pino has been infected for basically the whole time, so when Iggy gets infected he goes mental and it eventually ends up with him dying. His death scene was rather amusing as he kept swapping back and forth between his two differing personalities you could say. Lots of characters die in Ergo Proxy. In what seems typical of shows Dai Sato works on, there is no clear-cut villain. Heck, even more so in this case, Cowboy has Vicious you can say is the bad guy, Eureka has Dewey, but there arent’ really any real villains in Ergo, not in the traditional sense, you could say Raul is I suppose, that’s probably the closest you’re gonna get.

Again, like Cowboy, Ergo has a rather vague ending, I will literally show you the exact ending:

“I am Ergo Proxy”

“Agent of Death”

Make of that what you will, that’s the main character, and main characters aren’t meant to give sinister smiles like that. Even so, it wasn’t a bad end per se, it didn’t feel as rushed as LE’s end, and whilst it could have answered more questions, I was satisfied with it I guess.

I do feel that Ergo Proxy would feel a great movie if somebody were to adapt it. Whilst E7 fails as a movie because the major strong point of E7 is that it spends half the series establishing the characters and giving them development, the actual plot isn’t amazing, so when you just pull that out (albeit in a changed form) and cram it into a movie, the end result isn’t that amazing. I feel Ergo Proxy however, would work well as a movie, it has some cinematic moments. Speaking of cinematic moments, Last Exile would make a great movie. Perhaps even live action. I still really hope the fact that people are taking down the concept art means it is in production.

Lastly before I spam some images from the last episode, I’ll touch on everything else: Voice acting was average to good, it varied. Animation likewise varied, but for the most part it was above average, with several episodes (namely the first and last) having very pleasing animation. However there were no moments that stood out as a “wow” moment. This is from the same studio that did Samurai Champloo, but they’ve not done much else, to give you an idea of what to expect. As for audio, for the most part the music was, much like the animation and voice acting, average to good but nothing noteworthy that stood out. That is of course, with the exception of the OP and ED. Both of which were decent, the ED was Paranoid Android by Radiohead. (Marvin reference #2) I think that honestly sums up the series well “Average to good but nothing noteworthy”, nothing that will make it go down in my memory as awesome.

Now I shall proceed to spam some images before going to find cake. I hate winter, I have like 0 body fat to keep me warm..so I..eat cheesecake. Lant logic for you ladies and gentlemen. (Excuse the aspect ratio, for some reason MPC decided to be an asshole and fuck it up when I took screenshots and I honestly can’t remember how to fix it and I’m too lazy to re-take them)

Problem, Proxy?

EUREKAAAAA-UHH..RE-L RE-L.

Pino loves her portable piano thing, the name of which escapes me.

Pino’s making a classic I DUNNO LOL expression whilst Re-L is unamused as ever.

I still wonder what Pino’s suit is meant to be, a dog? rabbit? cat? fox? Who can say!

As for the score, I gave Ergo Proxy a 7/10.

Now I’ll go on a brief tangent regarding my scores:

• 10 – Perfect
• 9 – Masterpiece
• 8 – Very Good
• 7 – Good
• 6 – Above Average
• 5 – Average
• 4 – Below Average
• 3 – Bad
• 2 – Very Bad
• 1 – Terrible
• 0 – Unwatchable

Let me now elaborate upon this using examples. (Bear in mind, (or is that bare? I can never remember) that these are strictly my own opinion, and whilst I might think show A is perfect, it doesn’t mean I expect everyone else to agree with me)

10 – Perfect. I’ve given this to two series so far (I’m leaving things that aren’t anime out of this as it gets more complicated with movies and even more so with games or music or anything like that) Gintama and Eureka Seven. Why is this? Rewatchability is a big thing for me, and so far I’ve never grown tired of a single episode of Gintama or E7, this is impressive considering the former is currently almost at 200 episodes, and the LATTER is a 50 episode series (HAPPY NOW MIKE?). Perfect is an absolute, this means that in my eyes there’s nothing that can be improved, or if there is, it’s literally the smallest of nitpicks such as, for example, E7 isn’t widescreen, neither is Gintama.

9 – “Almost Perfect”, fuck off WordPress, I know you’re not meant to use an absolute for comparison but I’m going to do it anyway, don’t you know the phrase almost perfect? My god just GET OFF MY BACK JUST FUCK OFF WOULD YOU PAL BUDDY BRO. Anyway, these are shows that I really really liked, but they just didn’t have “that” which makes it a perfect score. Things that scored 9 include; Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Planetes, Guardian of the Sacred Spirit and 2nd, 4th, and 5th Kara no Kyoukai movies. These are like, the elite, the most awesome of awesome.

8 – Very Good. I don’t care what some morons might think, for me, 8/10 is an amazing score. Examples of 8’s include Denno Coil, Great Teacher Onizuka, Baccano, FLCL and indeed, Last Exile. These are shows that whilst I really enjoyed, they did have flaws that kept them from being a 9. Take Last Exile for example, this is perhaps my favourite show behind E7, yet I’m not blind to the fact that it has pacing issues, script issues and further problems that stem from these. 8 is still a very good score though, anything that scores 8 or above is something I highly recommend watching.

7 – Good. Now, in most game reviews for example, if you see something score 7/70% you think oh man that’s sucky sucky. Not so for my scores, 7’s still good. Ergo Proxy scored 7 alongside RahXephon, Death Note (the ova), Code Geass R1 and Darker than Black. These are all enjoyable shows, but nothing makes them stand out for the most part. Don’t think that 7 is bad, not at all, we’ll get to bad later so hold your horses, 7 is still good, it’s just at this point where the flaws become larger and more obvious.

6 – Above Average. Now, 4/5/6 are all regarded as average to me, it’s just tiers of average. Some examples of 6 are; Xam’D, Soul Eater, Cromartie High School, Scrapped Princess and all seasons of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. These aren’t bad series, no, on the contrary, they are still enjoyable, but that doesn’t stop them from being average. Sometimes it’s one huge flaw that can knock their score down, but most of the time it’s just mediocrity. Soul Eater is a good example of what would’ve been a 7 or potentially an 8, yet the horrible ending took a lot of the enjoyment out of the show and made much of the message seem pointless.

5 – Average. This is where the “true” average shows are, neither good nor bad, but more often, they share elements that are both good and bad. Examples; Canaan, MariaHolic, Kenichi, Sengoku Basara and the first TTGL movie. Canaan is probably the perfect example of a 5. It’s an enjoyable show certainly, but there’s so many stupid moments that make you go “what” and plot holes and just..well, nothing that makes it go higher. Kenichi and Basara too, both were enjoyably and silly shows, Basara was nothing but silliness, Kenichi took the typical shounen route and attempted to include the entire spectrum of emotions, to limited success, it should’ve stuck as a purely comedic show, Gintama’s one of the few shounens that can do comedy and serious parts equally good.

4 – Below Average. Right, now we’re starting to get to the meh shows. Full Metal Panic, both seasons of Druaga, Samurai Champloo and Death Note (the series) these are things that could have potentially been decent, but were marred by certain things which crippled my enjoyment of the series on a whole. Example? Druaga season 2 starts off promising, but quickly descends into nonstop QUALITY moments, clichéd plot twists and general crappyness. Death Note starts off good but after L dies the series goes downhill pronto quick and all the charm goes out of it. As for Champloo, I just..the rap really annoyed me and stopped me from enjoying the show, the OP literally hurt my eyes and brain. Perhaps a petty reason, but even without it Champloo would be a 6 tops.

3 – Bad. Finally, we get to shows that I actually consider bad. However! Just because something is BAD doesn’t meant it can’t also be enjoyable. Some things are entertaining, whether it’s because they are so laughably bad or whatever, it’s not like you should always pass them up. Examples; Naruto, Devil may Cry and Afro Samurai. Let’s take Naruto, that series starts off promising but quickly becomes..just..my god. I don’t even need to explain, do I? Devil May Cry on the other hand is just so uninspired and pointless that it makes you wonder why they bothered to make it. Dante seems nothing like Dante other than the fact he’s unkillable and just waltzes around blowing everything up which makes you wonder what the point is as there’s nothing that can possibly pose a threat to him. Afro Samurai uuughhh..that gets 3 points solely because of the niceish animation.

2 – Very Bad. I’ll be frank, I’ve only ever rated 3 things Very Bad. Code Geass R2, Tales of the Abyss and Advent Children. I think it might be more suitable to call this point “So bad it’s laughable” Geass R2 was certainly so amazingly horrible that I found myself entertained more and more with each passing episode, wondering how they would top that absurdity, and certainly, they did. Tales of the Abyss was amazingly horrible and facepalm worthy throughout more or less every episode, the animation was a joke, the voice actors sounded bored most of the time and the story was perhaps the most generic and clichéd JRPG story I’ve ever seen. Advent Children was just full of fuck.

1 + 0 I don’t actually have anything rated 1 or 0 apart from Naruto Shippuden, which I’m hesitant about to be honest. See, with Shippuden, I’ve watched episodes 1-20 and then like 6 more episodes which were the Shikamaru vs Hidan episodes and the Jiraiya vs Pain episodes. Now, these episodes were impressive and I enjoyed them, HOWEVER, if you take them out, Shippuden is horrible horrible horrible horrible. Not even so bad it’s good, just BAD. The plot is a joke at this point and revolves around nothing more than HERP WHERE’S SASUKE I WANT HIS DICK IN MY ASS DATTEBAYO. I hate shows where the main characters have useless goals. Yeah though, there’s nothing that’s been properly rated 1 or 0 so I can’t really talk about it. Yet I can give you some examples of shows that I would rate 0, I don’t even need to watch them to know. Lucky Star, Toradora, and Haruhi. These are all shows that I don’t even need to watch to know how terrible they are. Much like I don’t need to watch Transformers: Revenge of my ass to know that is shit.

I hope that potentially cleared up any confusion regarding “Y IS SHOW X ONLY 7 OMG” ‘cos..I’m not a fanboy who just insta-rates shows 10 because I liked them, even if I do rate mostly on opinion, I’m not THAT biased.

Goodbye.

Oh right, next up on my list of stuff to watch? Serial Experiments Lain. I think I should really actually watch it considering I’ve already been ripping it off for 4 years woops.

OH right #2. No, Ergo Proxy does have a stupid title and they never explain it. THEREFORE, SUBSTITUTE. It’s just the name of that character.

Hold the phones! Does perfection have another name?

Kaonazhie.

Kao..Kao..KAZOOIE. KID IF I FOLLOWED YOU HOME WOULD YOU KEEP ME?

If you honestly thought I’d ever begin making relevant titles then I’m afraid you will be sorely mistaken, because this post is going to be mostly about MW2, ergo far from perfection. Annoyingly, I’ll never be able to use that word without thinking of Ergo Proxy. That’s annoying.

You know MW2 is out now obviously, and it’s not really about the game that I’m going to complain about, it’s more all the news surrounding it. If you’re in any way related to gamer “culture” I’m sure you’ve seen MW2 articles everywhere. I would like to say “I don’t understand, why does every single site randomly spam about it”, but I do understand, or rather, I know, I don’t have to understand, knowing is enough. So COD4 was popular, so logically if MW2’s going to be popular you want to cover it because you get hits LOL HITS HOW ABOUT I HIT YOUR DICK WITH A SHOVEL. Ironically I suppose it’s not that different because I’m doing it as well, but unlike most sites I’m not doing it to garner traffic, if I was, I would have had the title of this post as something MW2 related, which it isn‘t.

Got it?..Anyway. This is worse than GTAIV. If you cast your minds back to GTAIV’s release people were verbally and mentally ejaculating nonstop over that game, sure, GTAIV was a fun game. Best game this generation, or indeed of ALL TIME as some people seem to be implying? Hardly. GTAIV is just SA with improved tech and inferior gameplay. No, alright, I can partly understand GTAIV, it’s the next gen GTA, cool, cool. MW2 though? Seriously? It’s just COD4 with a new campaign. I’m not saying it’s a shit game, the single player looks enjoyable, the multiplayer..hahahahahahahahaha. Okay yeah, MW2 is a shit game. LANT YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED IT YOU CUNTSTAIN YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO CALL IT SHIT ((((((((((( Hold your horses you silly shit, I don’t need to play MW2, I’ve already played COD4. That entitles me to judge MW2 considering MW2 is just COD4’s MP but shit’er.

This is, by it’s very nature, COD’s multiplayer is broken nowadays. How is it fair to reward the winning team by giving them further advantages? Let’s say there’s a football (soccer to certain morons) a match, okay? Team A is winning, the score is 6-nill. Oh, Team A is doing good, let’s reward them with a GOAL-STREAK by breaking all the knees of the opposing team, that is fair! Not to mention the kill streaks are retarded in MW2, they haven’t even attempted to balance them clearly, they just went for what would be cool with the kids. What’s cool with kids? Big explosions, so now you can randomly nuke them.

Secret “unlockables” like this are terrible, and ruin the game. I digress, this post isn’t meant to be about how MW2’s multiplayer is shit. It’s meant to be about the blatant fanboyism surrounding MW2 is pissing me off. I checked out GT’s review earlier, 9.5 they gave it. 9.5 They gave it a 12 minute review and didn’t even MENTION the features it has removed from COD4. Dedicated Servers? No leaning? No mods? No maps? 100ms being considered good for an online FPS? Nope. They didn’t touch on any of these issues, they just fanboyed over the game. My gosh, can you even TRY and PRETEND to have the illusion of being professionals? No? It’s laughably pathetic, I won’t be surprised if MW2 wins GOTY. I wonder if there was ever a time when games and movies had to be genuinely good to be highly lauded? Even fucking Final Fantasy 7 deserved a high score more than these, because whilst it might’ve had a shit story and terrible writing and so on, at the time, it was exciting to have a “deep” RPG in a “fully” 3D world.

Then take Zelda. Ocarina of Time is one of the highest rated games ever, and for good reason! Same with Mario 64, these games were almost perfect, despite being the first 3D games of their respective series. Majora’s Mask  basically improved upon everything OOT founded, yet at the time, people understood that yes, for the most part, it was just a “rehashed” version of OOT (and you must understand, when I say rehashed, I mean it had similar gameplay and graphics, not being 90% identical like MW2-

You know as much as I do that reviewers do not even attempt to uphold their integrity though.

Must not make much difference though, fanboys are blind. Literally. It doesn’t matter what you say to them, they aren’t going to change their mind, they are stubbornly dogmatic and..wrong. Why are they wrong? Simple, if you disagree with me, you are wrong. My views and opinions are fact and perfect. If I say something is bad, it is bad. Naturally, I’m not saying you should parrot my views as your own, you should form your own fucking opinion and not just like MW2 because it’s MW2. Then again most of the target audience of MW2 are amazingly simple-minded morons who are easily entertained tools who don’t even give a shit if they have to donate $10 more to jew kotick so he can buy 50 more houses as he slowly kills the game industry. Just look at the sorts of people who buy MW2.

Be it idiots like this guy right here or any other generic gangster idol retard, they are part of the problem; some rapper who I had to look up on wikipedia to find out who he is. He might be a nice guy, but he doesn’t seem to understand (or maybe he does?) that he is a role model for the youth of today. A fucking role model. What do these rappers endorse? Killing fools and pimping bitches in the ghetto because they had such TUFF LIVES and think that entitles them to whine about it for a career where they drunkenly slur into a microphone whilst terrible music plays? Rap culture disgusts me so much, but what disgusts me the most about it is the fact that they inspire youths to be like they are. Oh sure, maybe they say HURR DURR THE KIDS ARE BIDS AND SHOULDN’T DO WHAT I DID I KILLED BITCHES DON’T KILL BITCHES DURR BURR I LIVE IN A WURR. You think they give a shit? For every rapper saying stuff like that there’s 50 rapping about how many fools they have shot and how many times they themselves have been shot.

Awesome tip: if you’ve been shot enough that you can still move, it was clearly one time too few.

I dread to think where we are going to be, as a species, in say..50 years time. What is going to happen? Has it always been this way? Have 99% of our people always been idiots and the other 1% are the ones who lead? I don’t know. I can’t know, nobody can. All we can do is wait and see, but can you imagine a world run by people with such small and closed minds?

Like, for the sake of looking at both sides of the argument and stuff, I do know it’s not just rappers that inspire people to act like they do, there’s “emo” bands and heavy metal bands who do so as well, but I’ll be honest, I couldn’t care less if people cut themselves or grow their hair long and play guitars. Certainly, if it’s a choice of hanging out with people who cut themselves, or people who cut OTHER people, I’m pretty sure it’s a safe bet to hang with the former. It is a slight problem though I will admit, does the problem lie at the source, with the people rapping and singing? Or does it lie with the sheep who copy them? I mean, I’m an extremely impressionable person, or so I thought, but compared to the majority..just..wow.

Apachai knows what the world would be like if everyone had the wits to form their own opinion..

Finally, you might get the impression from reading this that I’m a very elitist, narcissistic individual. You might be right for thinking so, I honestly do think..well, know that I’m superior to most people. I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with that, it’s much the same as looking at a worm in the garden, you don’t think it’s odd that you find yourself superior to it, do you? You just are. This is more or less the same. I don’t think I’m the “best”, by any means, but in my views there are three kinds of people. People who are below me, people who are on the same level as me, and people who are above me. It’s just life that the majority of people are below me, it’s not something I’m proud of, I don’t exactly enjoy being born better than other people. I’d rather prefer be a mindless sheep who can follow the system so to speak, but sadly I’m not and can’t, I have to complain about it.

It’s people who are better than me that say “all men are born equal.” They understand that in order to satisfy the masses, they have to appease and comfort them, not unlike a child. That is the main reason they are better than me, they know how to deal with people like this, I don’t. If it were up to me, I would either kill or export 90% of the population of earth to the moon or something. I’d handpick people who are good enough to stay. Ideally, I would create my own civilisation, one where people enjoy what they want to enjoy, not what companies want them to enjoy. Realistically? Never going to happen, even if it was a perfect society, eventually it would deteriorate, as honestly, there’s no way to utterly destroy stupidity, and in the end idiots would pop up.

So no, it’s not that I try to act elitist, I just can’t help it. I can’t help the fact that you are stupid and I am not. Oh I try of course, I try to educate other people, but they find this offensive, of all things. So I give up. How can you deal with somebody who is unwilling to accept that they are wrong and unwilling to learn. Whilst I am certainly the former, that’s because I only formulate an opinion based on fact, I know I’m right before I say I’m right. As for the latter, I’m certainly willingly to learn, if somebody is smarter than me, I’ll listen to their words, it’s just that I rarely if ever find somebody like that. So in the end all I can do is wait.

For the record, I’m not the sort of person who is like FUK THE SYSTEM BE DIFFERENT HUMANS ARE SHIT FUCK HUMANS. I’m just aware of the “system” and dislike it whilst recognising that it’s pretty much the only viable option without resorting to genocide. As for humans, I’m of the opinion that we’re awesome, it’s just a shame that there’s lots of shit covering the rare gems. Finally as for being different, I don’t try to be different or want to be different per se, it’s just that the majority disagrees with me (and is thus wrong) but yeah it’s not like I strive to be different, in public I’d appear the same as everyone else. I wonder how many other people are like that.

That feels pretty good, I’ve not had a turbo supremo rant for quite a while now, so it feels good to get that off my chest so to speak. In other news, chapter 14’s out. I’ve almost finished Ergo Proxy now and the work on my house (hopefully) draws near the end, assuming there’s no sudden issues that arise. Once this is complete, I can get a giga-cat.

2010 is soon and who knows what it’ll bring.

It’ll bring more anger and more joy.

Business as usual, then.

The plants of intelligence

It’s potentially a bad sign that I’ve now just resorted to using whatever happens to be playing in foobar as a post title.

It’s been what I will laughingly refer to as a long time since my last post update, and as usual, I feel some obligation that I must update constantly. Perhaps I have to make up for the fact that my friends BIG MIKE and Adam never update theirs.

As usual, I’ve not really been up to much, nothing interesting has happened, I’ve simply been playing Borderlands a lot. I’ve now got a level 50 Roland, a level 18 Brick, and a level 6 Lilith/Mordecai. From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t like one character entirely more than the others. It’s sort of tough to explain, but in many games I find that there’s one character who often caters to everything I look for in a character. In Borderlands for example, in terms of aesthetics, I think Roland looks like the best character, he also suits my playstyle (I like to play support characters) and I usually have a preference for ARs and shotguns. Thing is, occasionally I really like revolvers, and Borderlands happens to have a wide selection of awesome ones. Anyway I digress, that’s all good, but Brick is the best character personality wise, followed by Mordecai and Roland. You might think it odd, but to me, a character’s personality is oddly important. By that I mean, mostly, what they scream.

By my logic, if you’re going to be playing as a character for an extended period of time, you want them to be roaring out something cool, yes? That’s the reason I play as Hoffman in Gears too. Also compare Ryu in NG2, where I’ve previously mentioned how the japanese dub sounds like 1000x better in combat, whereas the english dub guy sounds like he’s trying to blast out the biggest turd ever. Brick has cool “taunts” and so on, Mordecai has a hilarious death cry. Roland’s aren’t bad exactly, he’s just..stereotypically black. It’s sort of bizarre, when you look at Roland’s character, he’s an “ex Crimson Lance” hardened merc type, in the intro movie he’s like get that camera out of my face fool, but then when you start playing he’s all DAYUUUM BIOOOTCH. I like Brick more, he’s got great callouts, not to mention awesome “I’M GETTING IN A CAR” noises. Oh right, you can’t forget his Berserker noises which are fucking hilarious.

As good as Borderlands is, it’s not as good as I was expecting. It seems somewhat different to the 2007 version, here’s a list of things that were either implied to be in the game, or outright stated as being in the game that, to my knowledge, are not:

• Randomly generated dungeons/instances/doglegs
• Character enhancements (aka buying upgrades for your character to increase reload speed and so on, this seems to have been worked into the game with weapon profiec)
• Character unique missions (Roland looking for the brigadier, Lilith for the other Siren etc)

At least that’s all I can remember, I would’ve honestly liked if the characters were a little more balanced and well, unique. Lilith for example is broken in terms of PvP, she has a daze effect that basically equals auto-win. Not to mention phasewalk which makes her invisible. Roland’s turret is useless as it only fires in an arc in front of it, you can just stand behind it and completely negate the point of it. I was sort of hoping that the characters would have 3-5 skills they could use, but in-fact they only have one skill each. I think the talent trees could use a bit of re-working as well, Roland has a lot of relatively pointless talents, everyone does.

You know what else I would like? Something concrete to work for. Right now I’m basically just teleporting from zone to zone, killing everything and looking through the shops and chests to find some good stuff. Specifically, I’m looking for a revolver, a bloody unforgiven legendary (I think that’s the one) with 900 damage, crit damage bonus and high accuracy, preferably with the model that looks like the dirty harry gun. It’s sort of hard trying to find something that specific when there’s so many guns. I’m not really sure what, but it would be neat if they added in “something” for me to work for over a long period of time other than increasing my weapon levels to 50. Heck I dunno, maybe add in DLC missions where you can build a gun you want over a very long quest-line? Nothing too precise of course, just like selecting what the different characteristics would be etc, I for example, like to stray away from elemental weapons, I’m not really sure why, but I prefer to use normal weapons, however I do have a corrosive atlas revolver which I employ against Crimson Lance (and it looks comical how fast it shoots thanks to my character’s buffed fire rate) as it stands, my Roland’s build and gear loadout are as follows:

(I think aid station might be a tad pointless, and I honestly swap those 5 points about constantly, but for arguments sake, I’ll put them in aid station)

• Hyperion Crimson Cobra Combat Rifle
  
• 271 damage.
• 97 Accuracy
• 15 Rate of Fire.
• 52~ bullets to a clip/magazine/whatever (around that, I’m not sure how many it has by default)

• Jakobs Fearsome(?) Thunder Sniper Rifle
  
• 960 damage
• 96 Accuracy
• 0.4 Rate of Fire
• 17 shots

• Dahl(?) Terrible Matador Shotgun
• 170×12 damage
• 35 Accuracy
• 1.2 Rate of Fire
• 36~ shots

• Tediore Bloody Equaliser Revolver
• 760 damage
• 86 Accuracy
• 1 Rate of Fire
• 5 shots (default 2)

I also occasionly use (against Crimson Lance and Eridian)

• Atlas Vitriloic Revolver
• 400 damage [x3 Corrosive]
  
• 90~ Accuracy
• 1.6 Rate of Fire
• 8 shots

• Maliwan Scoped Destructor
  
• 1700 damage [x4 Shock]

I do have an amazing Hellfire SMG as well, but fuck SMGs and fuck Hellfire and fuck using the “best” weapon in the game, it looks dumb too.

Of course, I’m going by memory for these stats, those are rough estimates. As for other gear, I’m using a level 6 corrosive artifact on the turret, from what I’ve seen from testing, that’s by far the most useful one. Corrosive in general seems to be the superior elemental damage. Melts armour, melts flesh, melts faces, spreads to others, increases the damage you do to them, has no drawback from what I’ve seen. As for shields, I’m using one with 1620~ ish capacity and no bonus effects, just a “very high capacity” one, previously throughout the game I used health regen ones, but now that I have stat and aid station, it’s pretty much obsolete and I just go for the shield with the most capacity, I’ve also been looking for a 60% health shield, but no luck as of yet. Grenades likewise, I used transfusion for most of the game before swapping to corrosive bouncing betties, which I enjoy throwing into the air like fireworks. As for class mod, I’m using something like this

• 650 Heavy Gunner Mod
• +75% Weapon magazine size
• +3 impact
• +4 metal storm
• +3 overload
• +50% Weapon fire rate

I don’t actually know what the rate of fire increase is to be honest, as I can’t see it. I just know that it certainly does increase fire rate. Supposedly they are patching it so weapons can display more than 4 lines of text, that will be really helpful, I must say. From what I’ve experimented around with, that is by far the best mod. I do keep a +20 ammo regen mod in my backpack too, but frankly I never need to use it unless I’m running around and have “low” ammo and want to recharge whilst I’m out of combat or something. Shocktrooper seems pointless, Commando also seems pointless, Rifleman seems pointless and Tactician seems like it “could” be useful. Frankly, increasing weapon magazine size and rate of fire > increasing the other stuff. I think people tend to underestimate how useful magazine size and rate of fire is.

As for weapons, I usually look for two things, raw power and high accuracy. I tend to like Hyperion weapons a lot, but as for which weapons I’ve used the most, well, I dunno, I think there’s a way to check on an xbox profile thing, but I dunno. I would guess Tediore, as I’ve found several great Tediore legendary weapons that have lasted me a very long time. I don’t really like weapons that fire more than one bullet at once. I did use a Skullmasher for a very long time, but I find that Skullmashers and Mashers tend to be pretty sucky, maybe just for Roland, maybe they rock for Mordecai. I only use shotguns for multi-projectile weapons. Speaking of which I have had shotguns far more powerful than the one I’m currently using and listed above, but they had too small a magazine size. In comparison, once I get metal storm going, my current shotgun is ridiculous, I got ambushed by 2 badass fire skags, 1 corrosive and 1 normal badass alpha skag all at the same time (not badass, but I forget what the level 51 versions are called) and well, let’s just say that my shotgun destroyed all of them. That’s my go to weapon, if something is pissing me off, I swap to the ol’ faithful and just run up to them and unload 34578 bullets into their face for maximum damage.

Overall, I really want to like Borderlands, I DO really like it, I just really hope they support it heavily with DLC. I want to see new areas, more storyline, character specific missions, more ways to make the characters unique, possibly even a new character. I know there’s the zombie DLC coming soon, however details are scarce, all we know are that there are at least 3 achievements/missions:

“House of the Ned”/”Braaaaaaains”/”Jakob’s Fodder”

I think they could increase the level cap and add a 5th tier set of talents, or just add an extra one onto the 4th tier. I’ll be frank, the guided missile and supply packs are useless. Increasing the level cap to 55 or 60 would yield some benefits methinks, it would let people stretch out a bit more, show some more diversity in builds and what not.

I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what there is planned. What with that and Dragon Age, Bayonetta and Mass Effect 2 all coming out in several months, I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied.

What’s that? No Modern Warfare 2? Shit, son, I don’t know what to think about MW2. On the one hand I want to play the single player (multiplayer doesn’t really interest me THAT much, I would not play it religiously like most MLG prozzzzzzzz) as I really enjoyed the single player in COD4, right? Sure the story telling isn’t exactly great, but I found it immersive and just, well, fun. It’s the same reason I enjoyed COD1 so much way back in the day. I never really played COD2 or COD3 however..mostly as they came out in the deadzone era of when I played no games other than WoW. (like, 2005-2006) I really don’t want to support Activision, I don’t want to give them my money. It’s a dilemma and it pisses me off, Infinity Ward are being huge dicks and whilst no, it doesn’t affect me really, I’m not playing it on PC, I’m not playing MP, only really the SP. I still don’t want to give ‘em my money. I’m contemplating renting it, but special forces looks like it could be really fun..uh, why Activision? Why you gotta be cunts? Do you enjoy angering me? Do you want me to come and strangle you?

Before I finish, I’ll quickly touch on two things. First, 9 episodes into Ergo Proxy and I’m still confused as to what the fuck is going on. Pino however, is awesome. Second, this FAGS thing with IW/MW2/Adam Sessler and so on? Laughable. IW made an un-funny joke and Sessler has a fit about it, both parties in this case are like bickering three year olds, it’s just a word, and in-case you want to bring up “hurr u woldnt like it if i called u ____”. No, I wouldn’t like it. I wouldn’t dislike it either. I would have no opinion on the matter as I wouldn’t give a flying hootananny, neither should you. Honestly it’s sad that I, of all people, am berating others for being stupid and angry.

Much like 90% of the things I can talk about on this blog, it can be summarised as such:

It pisses me off.

I’M MAD.