Cake-Pie

I can’t tell you how much I love Thanksgiving. It’s my very favorite holiday! Not because I’m a consumer whore who digs all the Black Friday sales, NAY! It’s the only holiday untainted by such! Even better: awesome food without the obligation to guess what other people want/need without going broke enough to re-gift. Nearly every other holiday requires some kind of gifting and boy does it suck to not be able to read minds. Next year, get me that for my Birthday. Mindreading!

I’ve found a couple of great things to be thankful for, and regardless of your personal spiritual/philosophical/apathetic views you can always appreciate some goodness!!

Zahada is an ongoing logic/reasoning/smartness game that will steal many hours of your life–for to have smart brains!–if you can figure out how to get started. It helps if you’re a nerd! I won’t give you any hints past that, but expect your head to a-splode with figuring. I landed myself in trouble around level 34, see if you can get there and find out what I mean! Please post no answers or spoilers in comments or I’ll burninate you. Or edit your post in an embarrassing  way. Don’t test me!

Faux Food –You probably think you know what this is, but let me tell you, punk, you should check this out anyway. I read this blog because I’m a girl and I love fashion so sue me, but look at this article!! Look at the om nom noms!! Thinking about a weird-ass Thanksgiving dinner? Here’s some inspiration. I especially love the Swedish fish sushi! I really want to try out the Jell-O Fruit!

Korean Dramas! Okay, so maybe you’ve never heard of these? But Korean dramas are leagues ahead of our own, mixing stories that will make you laugh, characters that will make you cry, and lots of hijinks and alcohol abuse. South Korean film-making is so good Kim Jong Il, in his infinite crazyness once kidnapped a film-maker and his wife, a former actress. Why? Because he wanted him to “Make good films”, which apparently iron-fisting and opium farming can’t provide on it’s own. Silly freedom and it’s good film-making!! At any rate, I’d recommend some, but my favorite (Exhibition of Fireworks) is not working right now. Just read the synopses for them and pick one. Give that at least two full episodes (they’re broken up due to size), you’ll be hooked.

If you get the ITIS this Thanksgiving now you have some clever sport to add to the holiday when you wake up. Try out my kind of fun!

Borderlands. Well, there are borders, and there’s A LOT of land, presenting itself as some sort of FPS with no dice rolls; AKA none of that Fallout crap where you get a head-shot and it says you miss. No, you get a head-shot, and it’s to the head.

The game takes no time to start you going. From the moment you hit the Enter Key your character selection is the only down time. After that, you’re thrown into a gunfight and the world is yours to loot, kill, loot, find better loot, quest, loot–did I mention loot?

Oh, and did I mention the 17 million guns or whatever Randy Pitchford said? Yeah, I’m positive that wasn’t a lie: I have all four characters leveling, and the only guns I’ve seen twice have been boss loot. There are a lot of effects your guns can have: you can have shotguns that can deal electric damage, machine guns that fire acid, not to mention rocket launchers!!! But the game’s main aspect is not just the ridiculous amount of guns. They’re just there to pad the way through this 30+ hour story.

Borderlands is structured in a somewhat linear way, yet it’s a huge world, with a lot of interesting characters and moments that will have you talking about them in one of those water cooler situations. Or in my case around a bottle of vodka on a Saturday night.

Now it’s rare for me to always want to play a game no matter what I’m doing, but I found myself at work, playing World of Warcraft, or watching a film and not even thinking about that stuff. All I had on my mind was Borderlands. The last game to do this was Age of Conan. Yeah, it’s been a while.

Sadly, there’s a sort of killer in the game: the story. It isn’t that the story isn’t good, it’s that it’s not amazing like every other aspect of the game. Everything else is so polished I guess something had to suffer. It’s a lot like playing an MMO. I’ll get a quest, I don’t read anything, I just go and do it, mostly because there’s a 99% chance it wants me to kill something and get loot. The main story is scattered around here and there, but you won’t really know it or care for it. You’re on Pandora, a planet at the edge of the galaxy, you’re looking for some Vault that has weapons and riches–or so they say–what’s in there? Play the game and figure it out… go! THAT’S IT! Yeah, not the best, but whatever.

The story won’t matter, and you wont even care because the best part of this game is co-op. We know all the rage these days is to be able to play with your friends, and this game has you covered! At any time you can invite friends into your game, and the AI and monsters scale to all of you so it does get harder, but you also get more XP, more things to kill, and better LOOT! You can do the whole game with three friends, but you all need to be around same level (or two levels up or down from one another) to maximize proficiency without the low-level player in your group getting stomped.

If you go in there and coordinate your attacks you’ll have a blast. If you aren’t lucky enough to have friends, you can still play single-player all the way through. And lets face it, you’re on PC so if you’re like me your only friends are WoW players who pretend to be chicks to get free items anyway (guilty!) .

The biggest gripe people seem to have is the graphics and visual presentation. Remembering back when this game was announced I had no interest in it. It looked like a Fallout 3 clone. Yeah I said it. And people, I’m telling you I love Fallout 3 but it’s not the Best Game Ever as some claim. Borderlands is presented in an almost cell-shaded look–I don’t know how to classify it but it’s damn sexy. The way the filtering and lighting works is awesome and it really brings the world to life. Even though most of the world is destroyed and full of junk it still looks good.

Borderlands really hit the spot I’ve been waiting for: a huge world, nice visuals, awesome co-op, easy to play, and FUN! That’s the core word, Borderlands is fun! You can die over ten times on the same thing and it’s still fun.

I could go into details on some of the boring inventory management because there really is a lot of loot to deal with, but that’s one very small gripe, and by the time you hit level 30 you’ll have plenty of space money and all the guns you prefer. Rating this game is hard. Not because I’m having trouble with giving it a amazing score, but because even a game like Metal Gear Solid 4 has gripes. This one has them too, but they’re minor.

So let me just cut to the score and give it 4.7/5 Pastries. Borderlands is a prime example of how to take a simple concept like shoot-kill-loot and make it amazing! If you get a chance to pick up this game now or when it’s cheaper do yourself a favor and do it: you won’t regret it. Gearbox has done an amazing job and deserves the money.

“We’re made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself” –Carl Sagan

This is an epic science cake right here. If you didn’t recognize these men, I’ll help: first you have Richard Feynman on BONGOS. Then Neil deGrasse Tyson AUTOTUNED. Next, Carl Sagan, and BILL NYE.

You might know that Richard Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project, how atomic! But chances are he was a super-famous physicist before your time. He did pioneer that nanotechnology thing, which is a far cry from bongos, and he won the Nobel Prize. In fact, even if you don’t know who he is, he’s probably the reason you know anything about quantum physics, as he spent a lot of his life showing how valuable it was, thus popularizing it.

The amusing thing about Neil deGrasse Tyson autotuned here–besides wanting to shake people in the streets? He did an entire segment on the subject of autotuning for NOVA Science Now, which is very informative. You’ll be an expert in it’s use after you watch him trying to sing.

Naturally, this isn’t the first time Bill Nye has appeared in a music video. Watchers of his show have cringed at the songs included in every episode of Bill Nye The Science Guy.

Carl Sagan is probably best known for his books, of which Contact was one. But did you know he was awesome? I certainly hope so, for the sake of sciencekind. Many of the shots in the video come from his Cosmos television series. Google him.

You may recognize the shot with the skin cells in the picnic guy’s hand from the Powers of 10 video. I watched this in science class a long-ass time ago.  It takes you to the smallest atomic stuff to the biggest cosmological stuff. It’s amazing! You can see it here.

“We have traveled this way before, and there is much to be learned.” –Carl Sagan

One of the coolest things about having your own blog is being able to say whatever you like. Apparently that’s the cool thing about being a “news journalist”.

The main concern here is not about saving the children, it’s not how VERY realistic a game is, it’s not the worry of  “assimilating killing people” (although that’s precious), the main concern here is that people with alternate reality syndrome  have been trying to kill just about everything awesome since always.

It’s a true fact that you could buy a mature-rated game as an adult consumer and place it in your family home. If you don’t lock up the controller batteries with your firearm ammunition, any child in your home could play it (unless you’re actually parenting). Assuming you aren’t, I don’t think Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is the biggest concern in regard to your child’s upbringing.

Furthermore, our culture loves to attract children away from the so-called wastefulness of videogaming and into the mind-expansion and education of learning by way of reading books. Five of the ten most controversial books on this list were taught as curriculum for my public high school education. I, and the rest of my classmates have been exposed to drug use, sex, suicide, anarchy, torture, rape, murder, terrorism, ridiculous amounts of profanity, not to mention over 200 uses of the word “nigger” in a single novel; all through the power of reading.

I’m not suggesting censorship. I really liked most of the five books, as their masterful storytelling impacts a mind within the safety of pages, rather than through the harsh reality of living these experiences. This is some quality literature! Any child can walk into any bookstore and purchase exposure worse than you’d find in videogames. Flashy pictures on the screen make it no more impactful.

We’re not getting rid of naughty books, we won’t hold back naughty comics, and we haven’t thrown away all our naughty television shows, music, and movies. Media bashing is nothing new: in 1805 Beethoven’s Fidelio was banned and censored. People will always try to blame stupid behavior on media influences.

The debate about realism is always stupid. Ten years ago there were games that are nothing but pixelated shit today that people at the time considered far too realistic to sell. See Mortal Kombat, Doom, and amusingly enough Death Race if you want to see what culture used to condemn as far too realistic.

Soon enough, the so-real graphics of today’s games will follow suit as technology improves, even so it will never be interesting enough to compare to the resolution and impact of real life (which we all know consists of rolling around a giant ball and collecting lots of random stuff, thanks to Katamari Damacy).

It’s also interesting that a game that focuses on making you the most laudable heroic American-type hero ever–notably something Fox News glorifies–is getting pissed on for a mission where you INFILTRATE terrorist cells. To destroy them. What, seriously? It’s one thing to gripe about killing hookers in the Grand Theft Auto series, you can actually do that, and there’s no two ways about it. You are killing hookers. But seriously? It’s some mad doublespeak to be able to twist a good soldier into a bent terrorist. For shit sake, you’re ordered not to fire until fired upon in one of the first levels in the game. Claiming that this game is just out to make killers is absurd to anyone who knows anything about the series.

After watching this clip it should be obvious what is the bigger threat to society.

What are your gamer numbers?

I was going to make a negative and/or sarcastic reply to Cake-Pie’s Post here, but a counter-article seems more constructive. Game companies shouldn’t waste time trying to cater to gamer types and just focus on making a good game instead. Like Cake-Pie said: “They own a lot of the same games the rest of us buy.” When a game is being made, you have three pint glasses: the first is for graphics, the second gameplay, and the third is depth. And game developers only use 22-30 ounces of beer to fill them up. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Moving on to the Bars of Destiny! To keep things simple let’s think of gamers as two slider bars, each with a scale from 1 to 10. To do this, we identify the two things that are most important to all gamers and games in general. If we do this right, we can use this scale to review games, as well as the people playing them. Ever wonder what kind of gamer those reviewers are before reading their review? It matters.

Let’s get down to business.

Slider 1: Personal immersion and investment level: This slider indicates how much of yourself you put into gaming. Are you playing the game, or is the game playing you? You’ll find things like controller throwing, swearing, adrenaline rushes, peerless concentration, and high blood pressure the higher you go in this scale.

People with Tens in this category will become the game. Quickly breaking the game down to what needs to be done, and then how best to do it. You will WANT to destroy anything in your way; and if you mess up, die, fall down that pit, or hit the wrong button, say goodbye to a tiny peace of your soul. You will have your own style to playing and assimilating with games, and your personality will be evident in your gameplay.

Games with no immersion qualities by virtue of design will only hold a Ten’s attention if there’s something to figure out or accomplish. Without that, the game must rely on difficulty to get you “immersed by retrying.” This forces you to figure out why the game is so hard, causing you to really focus on being–and beating the game–down to its coding if you have to, because you are determined to win. Ghosts and Goblins has no story keeping you going, just infinite lances and infinite continues. If you’ve played it, you understand the retry immersion from level 3.5. In order to see level 4, the game and your soul must be one, or you’ll just give up or get bored. This kind of investment means you spend lots of time really thinking about the game when you’re not playing it. Tearing your attention away from a game you’re attached to takes a lot of will. If you’re a Ten, you’re probably trying to figure something out in a game right now.

Now, let’s look at how Ones define this category. Games are flashy pictures on your TV. You can pick one up, enjoy it, and turn it off without a second thought. You might even enjoy the story more than someone who is a Ten. You’re watching the cut-scene for its cinematic value. Plus, it acts as a nice break from having to push buttons on the controller and move around in-game. Or it’s just a good time to put down the controller and pick up a beer.

Ones like a nice pace and difficulty curve that allows you to just pick up the game and play it. You’re turned off by games with somewhat complicated controls or reactionary moves that take memorizing. In your type of game, either you figure it out, or you can sit around and grind until it’s not so hard anymore. Because you’re playing the game to relax, it doesn’t bother you if you’re mindlessly killing the same monster for an hour. By the time you come back to the game, you can still have that hour’s fun again anyway. You aren’t going to be living and breathing the game, nor would you want to.

Reviewing:

If you wanted to use The Bars of Destiny as a reviewing scale, you just have to figure out how much the game can take hold of you. Does it suck you in, or does it just suck. Some characteristics to consider as you’re thinking of what’s important to this scale are:

• Sound Dynamics: Whether it’s sweet Mega Man-like techno music, or important positional audio like SOCOM, sound is a major key to immersion.

• Total Epicness: Do you like huge boss monsters, seemingly unstoppable forces, or throwing cars at things? Me too! There’s nothing like getting into a game because of its total epicness.

• Direct Involvement: Gold story, green story, who gives a shit? Is your character there just to complete the game, or do you want to use your character to complete the game? Think Devil May Cry 3 cut-scenes, nobody knows what the story is, but you just saw some dude throw a sword off a building then run down the side to catch up to it, meanwhile shooting a shit load of things, and that dude is YOU… sign me up!

Slider 2: Gaming depth, detail and demands: To be continued….

With the new season of Heroes interrupting my Mondays, my constant annoyance with shows like Fringe, and my happiness at the thought of new comic book films, I am always debating which awesome superpower I want.

It doesn’t help when I have dreams where I can fly, or throw shit really, really far. I wake up and want to play Crackdown again. Really badly.

Clearly there are some powers that are ahead of the pack.

• “All your mind are belong to me.” Did you see that film Push? Well I couldn’t resist an action movie with Dakota Fanning. In that film there are characters that can get into your head and basically replace your thoughts with their commands, or change your memories. They can even force you to shoot yourself in the head. It’s kind of like Matt Parkman’s ability in Heroes. If you get this ability good enough, you can make people do whatever you want. Personally, I’d get that asshole driving in the lane next to me to turn off his fucking cell phone. Just sayin’.

• “I am unable to be vinced.” This is my personal favorite, and were I given one power this would be it. Wolverine, Claire Bennet, Sexy Vampires, in one form or another these characters are nigh indestructible. They don’t age, they heal quickly, and overall this gives them the best superpower ever: the ability to be reckless as fuck. Benefits include: not worrying about those silly bullet wounds, the latest fashions never look weird on you, and no fear of the swine flu.

• “I am the master of space and time.” Link, Hiro Nakamura, and Sailor Pluto all have manifested this ability. Sure, it sounds all great. I know a lot of people who would love to go collect things from the past and bring them back–assuming our universe is actually linear–and then be rich, or otherwise awesome. But you don’t live forever. Boy would it ever suck to die by an accidental use of a suicide booth.

• “I can FLY!!” Everyone wants to fly. Notable fliers include Peter Pan, Captain Planet, and practically everyone in the Justice League. The upsides to flying are obvious: you can travel to sweet paradise locations around the world for free, you can escape trouble, you can impress the ladies! But have you thought for a moment about the downsides? You’ll have to keep your cell phone turned off because everyone is going to want a “quick lift to work” or some other such obnoxiousness. You will never have an excuse to be late to anything. Chances are good that you’ll swallow bugs. No, thanks.

• “When I hit things, they don’t get back up.” You lack imagination!! But I’ll humor you. You could like, punch people across the room, and you could redecorate said room about as easily. It’s because you’re so strong you don’t take shit from anyone. Problem is that now you’re the global threat equivalent of China. You’re the strongest, biggest, and most powerful person in your stamp collecting club. The other members are probably not going to want to talk to you much. Don’t think powerfulness automatically gets you the prestige and respect an effective punch in the face usually generates. In a fight, you’re going to be targeted first because you stand out. Plus, you don’t heal faster! Notables include Niki Sanders, Hulk, and Glorificus.

I’m sure there are more sucky abilities to ponder, but why bother? If you don’t want one of these you’re a moron. While you’re at it, why not add a couple of magical powers, you know, for style!