Catharsis

Video

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 16:05:56 -0400

"All the elements in your body were forged many many millions of years ago in the heart of a far away..."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:31:56 -0400

“All the elements in your body were forged many many millions of years ago in the heart of a far away star that exploded and died. That explosion scattered those elements across the desolations of deep space after so, so many millions of years, these elements came together to form new stars and new planets, and on and on it went. The elements came together, and burst apart, forming shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, and cabbages, and kings, until, eventually, they came together to make you. You are unique in the universe.”

- The Doctor

Doctor Who “The Rings of Akhaten”
(via ritchandspace)

"To see anyone defending EA and Maxis for the state of SimCity, even were it in perfect working order..."

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 06:10:28 -0400

“

To see anyone defending EA and Maxis for the state of SimCity, even were it in perfect working order on launch, depresses me to my core. This self-flagellation-as-skincare notion, where gamers loudly and proudly defend the destruction of their own rights as consumers, is an Orwellian perversity. That it might be considered in any way controversial to call them out on their crap, to point out that no, always-on DRM is not an advantage to anyone, is bewildering. It’s a sign of just how far the gaming world has fallen into the rabbit hole of the publisher’s burrowing.

Years back we would get up in arms about entering codes to launch single-player games. Now it’s as natural a part of the installation process as choosing the install directory. Damn it, it was only the last two years where we stood up and shouted down Ubisoft for their ghastly, cruel and completely useless always-on DRM, and they wisely capitulated and removed it. They must be staring in confusion and horror as people excuse EA for SimCity, and Activision for Diablo III. Tolerating this idiocy is how it will become the norm.

”

- http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/11/simcity-is-inherently-broken-lets-not-let-this-go/

CISPA

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:30:00 -0500

Much like the year before, I’ll leave links on the subject.

Do what you can. Make people aware.

Thanks

http://youtu.be/TxJAQjKXdak

http://cispaisback.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQjdO_CFxNk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLVXUBEMD9w

zaranyzerak: crimsonooze: bakedblondebuns: juliefarkas: butif...

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 09:14:41 -0500

zaranyzerak:

crimsonooze:

bakedblondebuns:

juliefarkas:

butiflewtoohigh:

itsgoodtoseayou:

snowchip:

THIS IS NOT A DRILL I REPEAT THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

STEVEN MOFFAT HAS CONFIRMED THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY EPISODE WILL CONTAIN ALL 11 DOCTORS.

READ HERE

WHAT WHAT WHAT

I DONT EVEN WATCH DOCTOR WHO AND IM FREAKING OUT.

NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE.

WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

Get the fuck out. O_O

WHAAAAT! YYYYYEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!

Photo

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 19:32:23 -0500

Photo

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 19:06:14 -0500

"Every inconvenience is a challenge, and games are made of challenges. This means that every..."

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 11:35:54 -0500

““Every inconvenience is a challenge, and games are made of challenges. This means that every inconvenience in your design is potentially someone’s game””

- Raph Koster

Finding good music randomly is sometimes the best and sometimes...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 08:36:00 -0500

Finding good music randomly is sometimes the best

and sometimes the worst.

Either gets us through the dance of today.

So hear me cheer “Life is great”

leivos: by Joseph Sanabria

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 19:42:49 -0500

leivos:

by Joseph Sanabria

Loved Art Attack as a kid. Small update to my Blizzard...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 06:27:35 -0400

Loved Art Attack as a kid.

Small update to my Blizzard ramblings, played the first two days of MoP, haven’t logged back in since. Sub is cancelled.

Not that the games modern day problems could ever be explained in a single quote, but nonetheless, heres a couple I agree with from the GreedyGoblin blog:

…”But the constant news stream don’t even let me forget the big picture: I optimize for nothing. The optimal way of getting higher ilvl gear is simply logging out for a month. When you log back, you get it for free. Everything that I could earn now will be baseline stuff in the next patch and even until then there will be hotfixes to make it trivially easy to get.”

“In EVE everything I get is mine until I lose it by being bad in the game. My Orca will be just as useful a year from now as it is now, the only way to lose it is to fly it to Rancer or something. Caldari Navy standings won’t get obsolete like Baradin Wardens. But in WoW the general rule is that everyone must get everything. The raid content I want to see and farm gear for will be completed by literally AFK people in a few weeks when players run out of votekick charges.”

Fucking Cancer

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 22:50:40 -0400

I have a quite a few aunts on my mothers side. To date, I’ve known two of which that has or had cancer, one of which died several years ago now.

Today, another of my aunts (making it three) went through operation to remove one of her kidneys, due to, you’ve guessed it, that word. The doctor has apparently given her 5 years to live.

I can’t help worrying of course that, due to a great number, that it be God forbid genetic, and thus might affect my mother one day. No one on my Dad’s side as far as I’m aware has died from it, and of course it makes me worry about myself, too.

It gets a bit worse emotionally as once I confronted the issue, I learned that a further two aunts had been treated for it when I was younger. These two aunts are still alive and kicking however, so it kind of eases one half of my brain whilst worrying the other half further.

I can’t do anything about it, of course I know that. No matter what the fucking fuck we die from, part of life. And I don’t need to be told to appreciate every day that I can with loved ones and to live my own without focusing too much on how much life can suck or the anxieties of tomorrow. I’ve known that for a few years now all too well.

That simply doesn’t stop me fearing losing loved ones. Because it breaks me every time. And the parents are one of the (if not most) closest things I have.

On a personal level, it also bemuses me to think sometimes about whom would actually be beside me at the hospital bed, if I ever were to be in hospital myself for one reason or another.

Mum reassures me. Said to me, upon discussing this stuff with her that ‘Hey, you know by now that I don’t stem from the same roots as those others. Don’t worry.’

Where would I be without you saying such things, mum?

Photo

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 09:00:49 -0400

Photo

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 08:56:54 -0400

"If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets."

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 07:31:03 -0400

“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”

- Haruki Murakami

Loyalty (and videogames)

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 07:09:55 -0400

Loyalty comes in many forms, can be good and bad depending on the situation, but perhaps the stupidest form of it is loyalty to a game developer.

Whilst I’ll always be a Sega fan for example and have an interest in what they’re doing, my loyalty with them ended in 2006 with the release of Sonic The Hedgehog 06. Imagining kids play such rubbish was the biggest eye opener at the time, tarnishing what came before and new generations left at odds as to what’s supposed to be good about the character.

Not to say I’ve avoided Sega, I just take the reviews far more seriously since then, rather then buying them mindlessly for having a blue hedgehog on the cover. It’s stopped me getting 3-5 titles, including this years Sonic 4:Episode 2.

I should add perhaps, that Sonic Generations was the best Sonic game in years, and that was released 2011.

Then theres Blizzard.

I’ve been a World of Warcraft player on and off since 2007’s TBC release (with a little bit of play before that too - AQ patch). To say the game is not what it once was is an understatement, at least the things about it that originally appealed to me as a gamer.

The tone of the game for me started changing drastically mid-Ulduar, in 2009. So-called fixing of quality of life issues started becoming more about making things more readily available to those that choose not to participate in end game content. More about making the initial levelling journey less of a game. More about removing effort and reward for investing time into such a (at the time) brilliant title. More about destroying any sense of server community by willingly allowing the game become single player.

Rather then advancing the game further.

My good times and ‘fun’ kept me a loyal player and believer that the people working over there are not stupid, that they’d realise the mistakes they make. Granted they are a business, but I’ve always been a believer of true game developers making games they themselves want to play. How can they get a sense of satisfaction and ‘fun’ from playing the current game compared to yesteryear truly baffles me sometimes.

Cataclysm (the 2010 expansion) proved they were not backing down on their changes and going further with them. To add insult to injury, it showed for the first time how prune to critic they are by the average player base, and swiftly removed the added challenge they tried to put back into the game. Along with the raids all being a bit blah except for the tier it started with. Firelands you steamrolled through with just Ragnaros being the brick wall. Dragon Soul, thanks to looking for Raid, the motivation to ‘see’ content (which in my eyes, was a major factor of raiding in the first place) burned out many, including myself, too quickly. Because we all saw everything the moment it was released.

It is my least played expansion, not logging on for weeks if not months at a time. They even tricked me with the Annual Pass, a year-long subscription from 2011-2012 which, if you did, you got Diablo III for free. I figured there would be no way they’d not release content at all from that period, because they saw how a year-long Icecrown Citadel patch was. But no, as of typing, Dragon Soul has had to last 10 months. With no content since.

Fool me once, but fool me twice?

I realised that I have too much loyalty towards them(and some other things in general), Diablo III proved things further. Unstable at launch, non-exciting loot to say the least, and a difficulty curve for a loot grind game that just…baffled. I was never a Diablo II player, but i played Torchlight for hundreds of hours. Hacking away at stuff has its own fun in this genre, I hesitate to call it braindead activity but for me at least, that’s what I found fun about TL. Being able to grind a little bit, leave it, and be able to continue looking for loot later.

Not die every 10 seconds.

I wasn’t told to go through the game twice just to experience something mildly challenging, either. That is something that they really need to learn. Difficulty settings are not additional content. You have 1 piece of content, the player should be able to choose how they want to enjoy it from the off. (and funnily enough, TL2 got a lot of things right in that regard, I’ve chosen the hardest difficulty, and its both challenging and brand spanking new fresh, I haven’t seen it all yet. Doesn’t take a genius, eh?)

And now, the u-turn. Or comments from the part of me still loyal.

Despite their mistakes, Diablo III is shaping up to be a much better game, only months from it’s release. Does it excuse them from releasing the way it did? No. But it shows they notice what’s wrong with it. It has a amazing grind (another thing sorely missing from WoW these days) for those that love progressing to things slowly rather then being given it the moment you step out the door. It has content incoming ‘for’ those grinders, and a far more adjustable difficulty slider slapped onto every difficulty (so that even Normal is a decent challenge). And I don’t even particularly care about the PvP patch but that’s coming too.

If that isn’t an amazing turn around I don’t know what is. But nonetheless, the initial people it alienated and those that probably won’t try it again, I don’t blame them. It’s worth noting that unlike WoW, this is NOT a subscription based game, which is another thing in its favor.

Meanwhile in WoW, Mists of Pandaria (the 2012 expansion) comes out tomorrow. My subscription, luckily enough for them and the annual pass, runs out in November. I would have possibly cancelled a hundred times over by now otherwise. My lack of interest is in the high 90’s.

It’ll add two things that are of interest to me personally. Pokemon, and challenge modes. Their version of Pokemon, assuming they’ve done it right, could genuinely be the start of a sub-community focused just on that one thing. Likewise, with Challenge Modes, if they extend it to raiding in the future, could restore the balance of those of us feeling the game has no ‘game’ and sense of accomplishment anymore. It is kind of sad when you think about it, that it has to have 4-5 different versions of the same thing to appeal to everyone. When for the first many years, everyone entered the same raid. One difficulty. You can either do it or you can’t. Go.

They’ve never failed on the levelling experience of a new expansion, so no doubt that, and the music, will always be pretty great. The way I sometimes see it is some parts of the blizzard department are at odds with others, which is why the game is still super in smaller respects and terrible in others (aka, the gameplay prospective).

At the same time, if I wanted to play Pokemon, I’d just play Pokemon. Black & White 2 comes out Oct 12th. No doubt thats better. If I wanted a proper investment MMO, I’d bother learning to play EVE better. An MMO where time investment is very literal in what you get in return, even when logged off.

I made up my mind a couple of weeks ago, though I kept going back and forth as to bother with it at all or not at this point.

Seeing as my sub ends in November, a month and a half is more then enough time for Blizzard to prove me the game is going in a better direction again. The 35 bucks they get will be last they get from me otherwise. I have many other game experiences I could get into, and other stuff in life in general, to waste my money and time hoping it returns to what it once was purely for the sake of having invested a literal year in /played time on this game, purely, I guess you could say, out of love and loyalty for the last couple of years.

There is of course, also the literal thinking behind this and not just emotional. If its fun, it’ll be fun, like any other 35buck game. If it’s not, you put it down, like any other 35buck game, after playing it initially.

Having not logged in for months properly as is, I imagine currently that I’ll have fun for the first week, possibly two, before knowing the game is no longer for me but a different kind of gamer. And it’s nothing but minor feelings hurt at this point for the long term in the future, but I’m fine with that. I’ll live with it.

But I’m all for good surprises. because that’s part of the joy of life.

And Sonic Generations is living proof.

Loyalty. For loved ones. Friends. Innovators. Businesses and corporations. It all has a plus and minus for being so.

Photo

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 19:18:10 -0400

Despite my personal thoughts on the many faults this game had...

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 21:49:33 -0400

Despite my personal thoughts on the many faults this game had (the main one being linearity). Regardless.. This is the scene to play The Legend of Zelda:Skyward Sword for.

Not only for being so sentimental that the lullaby is in there after the game being devoid of traditional themes up to that point.

Not only for the sword bit, or the fact the games plot was actually pretty great/what any long-time Zelda fan would have sold their kidneys to know about for all this time: a true origin story.

But for the writing.

Eat Well. Avoid Microwaves. Reward in Moderation.

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:19:46 -0400

So we had a microwave for about a year or two, with the disapproval of my mother usually, as the device is still claimed to be a harm for this or that reason.

I’d heard this too of course, but never bothered searching it up, as the only times I used the thing was when I’m alone at home, as I’m a bad cook. (By that I mean, I can just about manage eggs and all little else.) We’re a home cook family 99% of the time otherwise.

This will need to change asap to be 100%.

The microwave broke down last winter, I felt bad throwing it out, especially as how useful this magical retangular box was at cooking stuff like burgers and fish within minutes. That’s magic shit, yo. (speak for when you don’t want to understand the scientific side of it, wink.)

I asked Dan on his opinion on the matter, I was provided with a couple of links. One on microwaves, and one on food in general. They are as follows, and I fully recommend reading and watching them all:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-dangerous-truth-behind-microwaves.html

http://www.infowars.com/food-the-ultimate-secret-exposed/

Talk about losing my appetite for just about anything. About the most amusing/scary is the mutant salmon.

It’s not like I didn’t know fizzy shit is bad, mind you. I need to take control of that in other ways, as stuff like fizzy pop or rubbish fast food has, over the years, become ‘reward’ food for times I feel I should reward myself. Be it for work, a rough day, or something to celebrate. Probably because, outside of the fake good taste, that its cheap shit.

I’ll need to think of a better reward system. Perhaps outside of food completely, finding a happy place in other ways. This tended to be gaming at one point, but if anything the recent steam sales past and present prove, I tend to feel two things, at least currently. One is not feeling I have the time to get into whatever it is despite wanting to. The other is really wanting to get into select titles more, but not being able to. It could entirely be a ‘right now’ thing, though.

Thing is, I do still game. New and old, select categories. I suppose one way I could look at it is that I’m actually far more picky about my time spent, and certain games appealing more so then others for that given time. As long as I’m having fun with games I do get to spend time on, who gives a shit, right? (well, my wallet does, when that game never gets played I suppose)

But that’s a whole different discussion regardless. Point is, it’s not a good reward system.

Movies/Books/Comics/Cinema/Music could be. Movies can seriously waste your time if they’re not any good, nonetheless theres a lot of cult classics I’ve yet to see. (Alien, Blade Runner, original series of Star Trek) Same with books. Cinema is only good if theres actually something I’m looking forward to, to see. (2012 is a particularly good year, in that regard) I’ve had years where theres only one or two I’m interested in throughout a year.

If only I could make a walk in the park feel gratifying. At times it is.

Music is the biggest reward. There is always something new. There is always some catchy beat (if the lyrics are crap), there usually is soul, and you can always throw a song to your own understanding that makes total sense for you and your own world.

Rest, and sleep has its own satisfaction at times. It is after all, the aftermath of a long day. Attempted self-reward or otherwise. That dream could be the best thing that wakes you up to an amazingly good and rested mood.

Insert obligatory ‘Life is it’s own reward’ quote here.

I’m done mumbling to myself for one night.

Anyone know how to make sprouts taste like Dr Pepper and Big Macs?

Please, eat well.

Photo

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:58:18 -0400