08.29.06

It’s Oh So Quiet

Posted in Gaming, Rants, Writing at 10:53 pm

So, uh, yeah. Hi. Is this still on? Damn.

It’s odd. Ever since I lost my job I’ve been busier than ever. Haven’t had a single moment to think; always either working on other projects or trying to get a paying position lined up. Now, that said, a lot of those “other projects” have revolved quite heavily around video games, so it naturally follows that “working on them” means “playing them”. But, given everything I’ve said about WoW so far, can you really count my play time in Azeroth as “relaxation”? Didn’t think so.

Actually, if I could be permitted to offer a slight spoiler for The Unbelievers, I’m really sitting on the fence as to whether or not I want to continue with WoW. Three weeks ago my decision was a solid “no”. Prior to my PvP disaster this evening it was a quiet but firm “yes”. Now? 50-50 odds, baby. We’ll see next weekend. Yesterday was supposed to be the final day, but Labor Day sounds just about right to put the game to rest.

I’ve yet to do any writing for Inconsequential during this hiatus. It’s looking increasingly unlikely that I will, too; I imagine that things are going to wrap up in the job hunt very soon, possibly just around the time that the WoW project ends. With any luck I’ll be able to focus my after-work time on writing again, but things seem a little cramped already– I’ve got to do some more coding work for Netjak these next couple days (”With great power” and all that) and I also have a new review to write for them, Star Fox Command. After about an hour’s play, I can honestly say that the game’s a little disappointing. Kind of a cross between Wing Commander and Advance Wars, but without any of the bits which made each other so good. I will say this, though– the story is quite interesting, what little of it I’ve seen.

And back in Paragon City, Poppett continues to struggle to get through her lower-40s funk. I’m about halfway through to 44, and I really, really hope I can get to 50 before Issue 8 hits. Because once it does, my big idea for my Kheldian character goes right out the window as wings are introduced. Funny how that works out. Anyway, I have more options for getting through the doldrums– I can run Shadow Shard missions (which have a damn cool story running through them) or I can grind good old reliable Warburg. Once I hit 44, I can also take on the third Respec Trial for the proverbial Massive Damage to my XP Left total. So as soon as I get through these tough times, the end will come quickly.

I am very very glad that I bought my Mac mini when I did. See, the G4-based minis have a dedicated graphics card put in them, so they can do magic things that the Intel-based ones can’t. Like, say, output to a TV with a very cheap adapter that I picked up prior to being let go. Long story short, that plus a DVD-ROM full of SNES ROMs makes me a very happy fuzzy indeed. Oh yeah, and now I can watch literally any fansub on my TV, as opposed to before, where I could only play most of them on the MPEG4/DivX-enabled DVD player (the biggest exception being Tsubasa Chronicle; don’t know why that one wasn’t liked). Haruhi is love. Confusing love, but love.

I tire, and I have a surprise in the morning. So good night, folks. Hopefully it won’t be another week before I write here again.

08.18.06

Irritation Happens

Posted in Rants at 9:10 pm

During all of the times that I’ve been without a car, I’ve been quite attracted to the sleek German engineering of the Volkswagen in its many incarnations. I came extremely close to owning a VW at one point, as well, and perhaps if I had owned it, I would not have been in the public-transit-required situation that I have typically found myself in.

However, if the current “safe happens” commercials that have been running were being broadcast during the times I was searching for a car, I certainly would not have given VW a second thought. Because say what you will about having all the people safe and outside of the car at the end of the commercial, scaring the shit out of the viewer by putting them in the car while it’s crashing is NOT going to make people think highly of the car. The only association you’re likely to make is “Oh. Volkswagen. That’s the car with the commercials which make me wet my pants.”

08.17.06

In The Beginning

Posted in Rants at 11:20 am

…there was NCIS, and it was good.

Then, there was a new BT album announced. And it too was good.

Then, there was an Evanescence pre-order announced. And, as can probably be inferred by this incredibly stretched metaphor, it was good.

And then there was Babylon 5, and it was HOLY CRAP T3H PWNZ0RZ.

ahem I mean, and it was good.

There’s something to be said for drinking kool-aid.

08.14.06

And She Sings, Too

Posted in Anime, Gaming at 12:49 pm

So, Utada Hikaru is teh l33t at Tetris. Wow.

Some other odd things I noticed about her– she was born in the US (so I probably have her name backwards– meh, culture clash), wrote her first songs in English, and damn, “Kremlin Dusk” is a really good song (except for the ending– should have faded out).

Actually, the rest of that album (Exodus) is kinda meh, really. “Dusk” and “The Workout” are probably the two best tracks. I really wish her cover of “With Or Without You” had seen an official US release, and not just on the Japanese MTV Unplugged, but… yeah.

Aaaaanyway. Tonight I’ll be watching the last of Ah! My Goddess, finally. It seems like the series has been mocking me since Tekkoshocon; it’s been hard for me to find, and when I do find it I’m broke or between paychecks. Luckily I managed to grab the last volume on my way back from Pittsburgh, so there’s that.

About Pittsburgh, actually. I went down there to do three things, primarily: visit Pez, play obscure German board games, and get more than thirty seconds’ worth of experience with DDR SuperNOVA. Depending on how you view life, it’s possible that one of these is reprehensible but more than made up for by the other two– which one is up to you and varies from person to person, but I honestly don’t care which one since I don’t share that viewpoint. I can say with absolute certainty that all three missions were accomplished. The arrows were plentiful, the board games sufficient in their obscurity and Germanity, and the visiting full of quality.

A quick note about SuperNOVA: I have never been more humbled by a “new” DDR mix than I was yesterday; however I realize now that it’s mostly to do with some tweaks the game did to the step timing, in addition to a fair amount of exhaustion. So I’m sure we could have done all those really weird new songs I picked, under optimal circumstances, but the circumstances were not optimal.

I’m having a little trouble staying focused, here, folks, so I’m going to cut this short. Talk to you all later.

08.11.06

Well, DUH!

Posted in Rants, Writing at 6:42 am

Hey, just saw this report while checking my mail: Muppets go adult. The gist is that in Edinburgh this year the Muppet troupe is running two shows– first a more general all-ages show during the afternoons, and in the evenings an adult-oriented improv show. I think it’s brilliant, but this line disturbs me:

But would Brian’s father [Muppet creator Jim Henson] have approved?

HELL YEAH he would have! Sure, the Muppet movies may be family-oriented, and the vast majority of the Muppet ouvre is fairly innocuous. People forget that the opening shots, which launched the Muppets– their first TV special– was called “Sex and Violence”. Jim Henson was a true genius, if you ask me– he was able to be funny to both adults and children. If Brian Henson can do that without being crude, crass, and discharming (which I know isn’t a word), then all the best.

Anyway. I’m off to Pittsburgh for the weekend, so no updates to either here or my side of Unbelievers until Monday (I still have yet to post the results of the interrogation– they’re not pretty). Later, folks– when I return, I’ll also have some notes on DDR SuperNova.

08.10.06

Quiet Morning

Posted in Anime, Rants at 6:43 am

Hey, folks. I’ve been doing most of my day-to-day writing for Unbelievers, and I’ve got a piece to write later today for there, but I didn’t want to neglect the place where it all started.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much in the way of news right now. I’m heading down to Pittsburgh this weekend, and will likely not have much time for any gaming or anime ’till I get back (though my interest in the media has been rekindled by my watching of all my AMVs last Sunday afternoon, not to mention discovering a freakin’ treasure trove of anime at the Best Buy near work).

So, yeah. Quiet morning, quiet weekend. As with everything, we shall see.

08.02.06

I Predict A Riot

Posted in Rants, Site News at 10:25 pm

I’m quite nearly done with the primary Unbelievers site, so rather than work on a post for it just yet I’m going to hold off. Instead I bring you this drivel.

I made a little bit of a big deal over the changeover from Adelphia Cable to Time Warner. One of the things about it, though, that’s causing trouble is the fact that in both Cleveland and in Buffalo, the NFL Network was dropped from the channel lineup.

The NFL Network is gone. In Buffalo and Cleveland. Just about a month before the season starts.

That’s kinda like telling France and Italy they aren’t allowed to watch the World Cup, and springing it on them a week before the first matches.

08.01.06

For The First Time

Posted in Gaming, The Unbelievers, World of Warcraft at 7:14 pm

Session Time: 2h20m. Advanced Ceilai from 8 to 9; rest state started at four “bubbles” (roughly 20 minutes of gameplay before it was exhausted). Completed a quest in the Fel Rock area and made it halfway through a quest in the Banethil Barrow Den area.

So, I’m enjoying myself. Why??

Let me start over here for a moment. The gameplay is very much the same as it was over the last couple hours. Leave town, kill things, collect the resulting detritus, sell detritus for a paltry sum. Occasionally talk to an NPC to get XP, money, or shinier detritus. I’m not paying attention to the storyline any more than is required to actually complete a quest; that is, I read over the quest descriptions looking for key words such as “north”, “dungeon”, and “kill”. I really have no emotional attachment to or investment in the story surrounding Azeroth, and I don’t see that changing unless the game makes a bigger effort to engage me. Rob called the setting “unoriginal”, and while it’s hard to refute him, there are a few things which manage to impress me. When I find them more than once during gameplay, I’ll let you all know.

One thing I thought was quite interesting was a quest I literally stumbled upon by accident. I had been wandering through Darnassus and accidentally found myself teleported to a small fishing village on the south end of the island. I was, of course, grateful for the 70 XP I gained from “exploration”, but more interesting to me was the fact that I had found a teleporter. It was a glowing purple aura. Later int he evening, I came across a similar aura surrounding a particular tree in the hollow south of Darnassus. Naturally, I approached it, thinking, “great, where will this one take me? Nothing happened; well, no actual transit happened, anyway. The tree could be interacted with, actually, and it awarded me with a fruit that “would be of interest” to one of the previous quest NPCs I’d dealt with. It was a rare stroke of luck that I actually remembered who the quest was talking about, and a few minutes later I had completed the task. It was rewarding– not just in the large monetary gain afforded me upon turning in the fruit, but also because it involved no combat (until the fruit was planted and the quest already complete; the monsters spawned were pathetically easy, though, so it hardly counts) and wasn’t made blatantly obvious, either by the game’s “!” markers or by any other in-game indication. It’s an interesting mechanic and I am looking forward to seeing more of this type of quest in the future.

As said in the summary, I did wander into a couple of dungeon-like areas; actually caves, and not specifically “dungeons” (the term in WoW is reserved for the instanced missions, I believe). Fel Rock was actually an interesting place for a hunter to go, as demons spawned pretty regularly and were easy enough to handle solo. I may go back there just to take out some more demons, as they tend to drop the occasional handful of coins. The Barrow Den, however, was a different story. It’s loaded down with gnarlpine monsters, who are curiously not as affected by the hunter’s Nature-elemental based powers as, say, a demon. Moreover, there are way too many of them in the cave. Now, granted, this is mitigated quite a bit by the fact that there are usually many more adventurers entering the cave than there are monsters, but the quest I have involves collecting items from treasure chests scattered in the dungeon. Which means that unless your group is all on the same page, you’re likely to fall behind the meat-shields– er, excuse me, casters– who’re plowing their way through the depths. The mini-map is useless in the dungeons as it doesn’t account for height. Finally, and this is probably a shortcoming of the Hunter class, it’s too closed-in for ranged attackers; you can probably only get in about one or two shots before the monster closes to melee range. I suppose once I get a pet, I can have that hold the monster at a distance while I pick it off, but that’s a portion of a level away.

On a completely unrelated note, the quest in Fel Rock required me to decapitate a monster and bring the smaller portion of the corpse to the quest NPC. It is exactly the first time I’ve ever given head for XP. My slow descent into levelwhoring has begun!

The Good: Quests can be gained in unorthodox ways, and also solved in unorthodox ways. If you ask politely (read: not in global chat), people will generally point you in the right direction. I’m getting oddly familiar with the gameworld; as soon as I logged in, I answered a new player’s question. The map of the island is almost complete for me. Apparently there are many UI mods available; however, I’m refraining from using them so I review the game in its default state (otherwise, it would be fair game to bitch about GTA: San Andreas for having Hot Coffee); this is also why I’m only accepting limited help or information from external sources.
The Bad: If grouping is discouraged until Level 20, why are the low-level areas too full? Is there a way to turn off duel requests or otherwise indicate to people “No, I will not duel you, stop asking me”? The WoW forums are a dark and scary place, much like SomethingAwful but with less parental supervision. Moving windows in the UI should not require a mod. The minimap remains near-useless except in finding your corpse. Death penalties are not clearly defined in the manual or documentation.
Opinion Change? Improved somewhat. Quest diversity is good, but it’s still boiling down to “kill things”, “collect things”, or “deliver things”. I would love to see a quest revolve around a riddle that the player has to solve; bonus points if it requires knowledge of the gameworld that can be learned from within the game (no strategy-guide-only answers, please).