Quick & Painless Reviews: AVGN: The Movie

So it's been how long? Eight years...? Forever? But after what was starting to become Duke Nukem Forever levels of development, it has finally come out.

He's going to take you back to the past, though not necessarily to play shitty games that suck ass. What we get is a feature film which presents itself with a barrage of charming 80's b-flick cheese, and UHF style homages to popular films and games, plus more cameos than almost any one person can count in their first watch. Underneath it all we have a semi-serious political commentary about modern game marketing peddling shit, with an almost entire cast of super dynamic and forever memorable characters.

Strangely out of place is the second lead in the film, Jeremy Suarez, who is the only character who doesn't completely get the chance to 'fit' into the film's universe, almost as if his inclusion was an afterthought, or maybe written for another actor. Some of the passion behind the experience does also get lost as well after such a long, tiring wait, but I don't mean that in a way that belittles the immense amount of work that went into it while also producing dozens of episodes for various web series.

The big thing you're probably wondering is, "Does he finally do an actual review for ET in the movie?" The answer is yes, and the review is so surprising and unique from all of the others, that it's worth the wait of the film's production and duration to experience.

I'd give it more than 7 stages out of 10, but the stupid game won't let me go past that point.




FULL DISCLOSURE: I was, at one time, in a romantic relationship with James Rolfe, who is both the creator of the film and the lead actor, so my opinion on the movie might be biased.

Fucking Random Pubbers

The Sacrifice is a campaign that has the potential to really fuck you over if you get hit by a Tank and a Horde at the same time, and you have some random pubber whining for a first aid kit. I wish the sound on this recording worked so you could hear the delicious blow-by-blow.



At 0:23, I ask if everyone's ready. He says nothing.

At 0:46, you can see his speech icon as he starts asking for a heal AFTER the Tank and Horde have shown up.

At 1:07, despite my best discretion, I pull out my first aid kit in preparation to heal him. It's not possible, so I throw the bile jar in an attempt to distract the infected. It's still not working and the tank's on its way.

 At 1:12, "greedy teammates suck"

Who wants to support a filthy ragequitting casual anyway?

All in all, it's all IndridCold's fault, because I think he startled the crows.

Dark Carnival

Left 4 Dead 2 is a racist game where Turtle Rock Studios thought they'd make the game more "realistic" in the sequel by making the AI for the black characters extra stupid. Thankfully IndridCold and I manage without many problems.

Doom 3: Lost Mission Playthrough

I woke up in a very Doom-y mood this morning, so I decided to finally give the Lost Mission expansion a go.

Clearing

A made-for-television student film created in 2005, starring IndridCold as "Syd".




Video with audio commentary below.

H-Doom (techdemo5)

Someone had to make this mod someday. Just the first few levels since there isn't a lot to show right now.

Sorry for using Blogspot's quality-tastic video player, but it's not like I'm going to upload this to one of my real accounts.

Quick & Painless Reviews: Victory Buffet (Sarnia, Ontario)

From the ashes of Panda Gardens, and Oyami, rises Victory Buffet, which once again brings us a mix of Asian and American cuisine. IndridCold and I went in expecting another disappointing rehash of the last two restaurants, and that's not quite what we got. The menu is eerily similar to Oyami. Some of the dishes are almost identical, which implies that they rehired some of the former kitchen staff. However, the quality of the cooking has improved substantially.

My overall impression is satisfaction, but with a side of caution. I wasn't present for the opening of Oyami, but when Panda Gardens initially opened, they also brought in professional staff to prepare for them, only for them to drop their standards after a month. If a $22 dinner seems good to you, I'd suggest that you try them sooner than later, just in case, and I hope Victory Buffet my best wishes in maintaining good business, and good quality.

Hellsingish.

This is just a painting that, has been though many transformations to finally get to it's final stage. I was kind of indecisive of where I was going with this but, I like what I ended up with.

Review: Hidden Talents' Les Miserables

Recently I stumbled into an old friend from High School, on one of my drinking adventures. Long story short, he had came back to Sarnia from Toronto for personal reasons about a year ago. In the past month, he was in this musical production of Les Miserables. For the reason why this part has any reverences to my review: Eleven years ago I had seen almost the exact same play. Same director: Carrie Beauchamp, same theatre: Imperial Theatre, and almost the same cast. The stage setup, the props they used, the script, and songs were all the same. Even my friend, Adam, was also in it eleven years ago with his minor role. This time around he had the role of Marius. The true difference this time around is that, eleven years ago Hidden Talents' cast of Les Miserables were no older than 19! So, there I was finding all this out and, feeling obligated to go see this, because of the obvious reasons.

For some of you who don't know what Les Miserable is about: The story starts off with an ex-convict, Jean Valjean, who was imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. This takes place wayyy back in the days of the french revolution. Breaking his parole, Valjean escapes to start a new life. In his efforts of redemption, Valjean agrees to care for a young girl named, Cosette, for her late mother, Fantine. As Father and daughter, Valjean and Cosette live a quiet life together. Well, almost, Valjean is being ruthlessly tracked by Inspector Javert over the years since Valjean escapes his parole. And the rest is an epic story that unfolds.

(And yes, this is a novel by Victor Hugo, also a movie that was recently made in the passed year or two. Let alone a musical production from Broadway.)

The cast line up they had this time around was amazing in the musical and on the karaoke stage at my local bar of Lizards. I already knew that Adam could sing for, I have seen him in S.C.I.T.'s production of Little Shop of Horrors as the lead of Seymore. Let alone other school musicals and some songs he sang in the band called Canteen back in high school. The lead role of Les Miserables, Valjean, was portrayed by Andrew Colboure. I have no prior information on him but my goodness, the man can sing! For what I did read on Andrew, this is his dream role and also that, he is artistic director for Dance Academy. With all that being said, he is also directing the upcoming musical of Catch me, If You Can in the month of October this year. I am certainly going to go see that. Other amazing voices of Les Miserables are a music teacher, Jen Brown Nead (Fantine), Newly HS graduate, Garbrielle Drapeau (Eponine) and Jayime Cowen (Young Cosette) just to name a few of my favourites of this musical. Other people that I know in this musical are Joe Bainbridge, a fellow drama classmate of mine and Linda Morin, Ryan of the LBC's girlfriend. *It's a small world after all!*

The other amazing part of the musical was the orchestra playing all the music and, the crew who ran the sets, lights, props, and whatever else so smoothly. I don't know anyone personally or any works prior to Les Miserables but hopefully, they'll all get together for another musical, if not Les Miserables years down the road.

As the seats were filling up in the audience, I was lucky enough to have both seats beside me empty. Even though when I picked my seat, Row E 29, both seats beside were already booked, in reason why I went alone. However, I was content that the seats were empty anyways. The red curtains open... and the opening scene was prisoners in the aisles of the audience, pulling on a rope to a huge ship on stage, singing the prolonge of, "Look down, look down, don't look them in the eyes.." while getting whipped by the prison guards. I started getting goosebumps as I was having an odd feeling of DejaVu watching this. The opening scene is also where I discovered Joe Bainbridge was in this musical, as I'm thinking to myself, "Is that Joe? My goodness... it's Joe!" Essentially, I got goosebumps every time my favourites started singing like, Andrew, Adam, Garbrielle.. and the whole musical was certainly a case of DejaVu in a good way. I personally think that the whole thing was better than it was eleven years ago.

After the musical was done, a huge crowd and I were chatting and waiting in the lobby for the cast to slowly appear. Joe and I were talking at one point, catching up and all the jazz. Until Adam and I caught each others glances as we were looking over the shoulders of the people we were chatting with. When we finally made it to each other, we hugged, and chatted a bit on how the musical was amazing and then I got him to sign my ticket. On my way home, the only thing I could listen to from my MP3 player to match Les MIserables was Nightwish. Of course, Les Miserables had an orchestra and Nightwish is metal but both equally epic in regards of vocals. I was also thinking that going to see this was worth penny I spend on my ticket.

Poaching Bigfoot

A couple of years ago, IndridCold and I began the early stages for a full length documentary about Bigfoot. The twist is that our intention wasn't merely to capture poor footage of it, but to actually hunt it, kill it, partially devour it, and drag its carcass back as proof of its existence. It was one of a few "anti-documentaries" that we had in the works where we already knew in the beginning that we wouldn't find anything. Unfortunately, work and budget restraints got in the way and the project never really took off.

Over the course of this summer, we still have a few deep woods camping trips planned, and during our last outing, I just sort of threw together this footage as something of a pilot for an episodic series about finding Bigfoot throughout different parts of Canada.

Fist Of The Dead Star Playthrough

Dead Island is an underrated first-person horror survival game which becomes completely trivialized once one of the heroes channels the power of Kenshiro. This mod was blogged about everywhere when it first came out, but I haven't seen any full playthroughs using it. I'm not sure how entertaining it is to watch after a while, but playing it felt satisfying most of the way through. I would have liked to have had Japanese dubs to make it feel more authentic, but the best I had was Russian. I've managed to configure my OBS settings so that it captures the full image without there being boarders. Now I just need to adjust the bitrate or something to create a clearer image, though I'm going to miss being able to record four hour videos that are under 2GB.

Wolfenstein: The Hard Goodbye

Various screenshots of my playthrough of Woldenstein: The New Order, which if I were to give a quick & painless reveiw for, it'd simply be 'buy it!' Pretty sure this blog contains spoilers.

An early choice in the game that splits the timeline in two

grafix

Quake 3 Arena rocket launcher key chain

No Mercy

Left 4 Dead is a game where 50% of the things you shoot at are non-aggressive green flu victims, so it isn't very hard, even when IndridCold and I have a couple of chucklefucks dragging behind us.

Doom 3 BFG Edition Playthrough

I try to do something nice, and it turns out shitty. While trying to learn how to make OBS work perfectly, some of the video got cropped on some of the parts. Otherwise, here's a playlist of me slaying some demon ass.

Quick & Painless Reviews: Kenny vs. Spenny vs. Canada 2014

Pretty much the best part of the show

Venue: St. Clair College Capitol Theatre, Chatam, Ontario

$61.00 to see them on stage for eighty minutes if you don't include the intermission, half of which was them showing off bonus footage that's already available on the DVDs. Their banter was the usual rehashed schtick you'd experience in their various interviews and episode commentaries. Things were a little more interesting when there was crowd interaction with fan humiliations and heckling, but it was soon made clear that talking during their show was not allowed when people were threatened to be kicked out (not jokingly). I paid $20 for a pre-signed 8x10 because the venue didn't mention there were VIP passes that I had to buy to actually meet the duo, not that I'd expect it to be required. Penn & Teller stayed to take photos with everyone at Caesar's Windsor in 2012 (it was $50 for similar seats as well), that only being one example of many shows I've been to. At least I got to meet and talk with Bobby Patton while he was working at the merch booth before the show. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that I was literally jewed by a couple of Jews... I don't know. I don't want to write about it any more at this point; I'm a little crushed by the disappointment.

Never meet your heroes / 10

 Thanks Bobby

R U READY

Organic Organ.

Here I am, taking off the hiatus hat. It's been quite some time, I know. However here is one of my latest drawings. It was originally suppose to be an outline for a painting I was going to do but clearly that never happened. So, one night after coming home from the bar... I was feeling restless and started adding more details and shading it in. I'm not gonna lie, it's not my best and it could be a lot better but, it certainly something to look at.

Quick & Painless Reviews: Payday 2

STEAM FREE WEEKEND EDITION!

I heard this game was off to a rocky start upon release, and that the developers put it out unfinished, which turned me away from buying it despite loving the first game. Fortunately, I was able to try over the weekend for free. THANKS GABE.

 Uguu~~ I actually put on this mask as a subtle homage to The Birthday Massacre which no one noticed

 I imagine whatever was left out of the initial release was patched to hell and back, as it's now similar to how I remember the last game being. When you haven't played in like a year and a half like me, or not at all, it can be a bit of a confusing start. Some things aren't fully explained, even in the tutorial, leaving you to learn the hard way through trail-and-error alongside other Free Weekend shitters and angry tryhard veterans.

The music volume by default is cranked way too high, so even though the game tries to walk you through your missions, you'll probably not hear what you're suppose to do. Payday 2 seems to hate microphone users, as the max microphone volume is still way too low, so while you fumble around failing the heist, you won't be getting much audible feedback from your team apart than the fact that they sound like they're getting really pissed off.  It's just a good idea to turn your music and sfx volumes down to about half if you want to hear anyone, especially since the music isn't as good this time around anyway besides one track (I don't know what it's called).

How The Fuck Can I Be White? I Don't Even Exist!

So, for a while now there have been some theories that the Eminem we know today is actually a clone that has replaced the real Slim Shady. I have come to you today to confirm said theories. You see, years ago he was transported to the alien planet that the Z-Comics take place on to take part in a virtual reality simulation so that THE Z0NE could earn their Shooter Gym badges. The Hip-Hop Illuminati of course covered it up afterwards to prevent media uproar by creating a (apparently obvious) clone to replace him, and infusing his lyrics with cryptic messages revealing his true whereabouts. 

 

You can see it all happen in my Z-Comic #1 post. I promise Issue #2 will be up soon...?

Crossfire

There was a fun little game soldiers liked to play in Southeastern Europe during the 90's. On this night, the subjects would be five NATO captives and one from the KLA resistance. All six sat handcuffed across from each other in a circular dirt pit, perhaps about six feet deep, ten feet in diameter. Soon enough, one of the guards came down into the pit on a small step ladder. He began to draw a six-pointed star onto the ground with a can of spray paint, then he handed out six unloaded revolvers to each of the prisoners, then he climbed out of the pit and threw everyone a single bullet. As he did this, he explained the rules, "Gentlemen, the pit you are now sitting in is soon to become your grave." he opened with in the best amount of broken English he could muster, "Well, not for all you. If all goes to plan, there should be one of you left to deliver a message for us. The rules are very simple:

Quick & Painless Reviews: Ryse: Son of Rome

Six hours and ten minutes.

That is how long it took this game to install to a state where I was able to access the single player campaign. There is a point where one glaring problem negates the quality of the overall product. I don't care about the game's flashy visuals and repetitive combat anymore; the game is broken due to install time alone.

But who gets the shit review for it? The game itself, or the Xbox One? This seems to be an issue with most Xbox One games after all. However, I don't feel it's necessary to install 47GB of uncompressed data into your console's hard drive. I don't think console owners should need to clean up their hard drive after installing nine or ten games, then having to subject themselves to hours of installation again when they want to replay those games. The developer of these games shouldn't consider this okay, and so, even though the Xbox One is a garbage console in its current state, Ryse is still a broken game for playing along with it.

I know what some people are thinking: "It didn't take me that long." From the anecdotes I've seen on various message boards, the lowest install time for Ryse was 57 minutes. The highest I've seen someone give a number to was around nine hours.

9 hours isn't okay.
6 hours and 10 minutes isn't okay.
57 minutes still isn't okay.

1/10 isn't okay.





EDIT: 5 hours and 5 minutes to complete single player. 

Z-Comic #1: Nintendo, I Choose You!

Christian Weston Chandler has burnt down his house, hopefully destroying all of his original artwork, making today the perfect opportunity to share my own magnum opus with the world and trump his comparatively shitty comic. 

In mid-1999, a half decade before Sonichu, a twelve-year-old version of Yours Truly began his work on what is known as the Z-Comics. The plot centers around three friends who collectively refer to themselves as THE Z0NE, who all aspire to work in the video game industry, but must first earn eight video game gym badges à la Pokémon. This plot doesn't stick for very long in the series, and the story's focus constantly changes to whatever I thought would be cool during the drawing of that particular issue.

I always liked making comics growing up, having previously created a few based on Sonic The Hedgehog, Super Mario, and Secret of Mana. Inspiration for this series came from my friend Dustin, who created the main characters: Coopersville, Yarcofin, and Yodéréko (later revised to Yodariquo in later issues). Dustin himself had already made a couple of comic strips featuring THE Z0NE before this series was even a twinkle in my eye.

The first half of 1999 was kind of rough for me. North America's education system was riding the Columbine hype train, and quirky children like myself were now under suspicion of becoming the next school spree killers. My bitch seventh grade teacher, Ms. Jones, after humiliating me in front of the class, and threatening to call the cops on me on several occasions, had my ass thrown into counseling, which in my young mind made me think I was about one more step or two away from spending grade eight in a mental institution. In an attempt at damage control, I destroyed a lot of my art that could have been considered overly violent; I began spending most of my time locked in my room, and I made a habit of barely ever speaking to my family. This has probably made me look even crazier over the years, but I just wanted to fly under the radar.

By June 1999, I had to blow off some steam, so I got to work on an edgy comic that had cute characters that liked to swear and kill things. I kept the first two comics hidden under some old furniture in my basement so that my parents wouldn't likely find what I was drawing. It didn't take me more than one page to get tired of drawing Coopersville's complex initial design, and then I began adapting Dustin's characters to my comic instead. 

This comic didn't take me too long, maybe a month tops. The Z-Comics originally were definitely more about quantity over quality, as I finished the first two issues before August was over. Issues 3-9 progressively took more time and effort, needing between 6-10 months per comic usually. Issue #10 took something like three years to get done, then finally we have issue #11, which I have procrastinated through for like eight years now.

Anyway, I could write about this for hours, but I should save some of that for later issues. Behold the horror that is the early Z-Comics. I promise they get better later?

tumblr_my66xoEMOgrrrrrlllllol1_500

Red nose and all.

Painkiller: Hell and Damnation - Ascension Into Light

"Die!"

2pooky4me

Spec Ops: The Line - A Descent Into Darkness

Images of John Konrad appear before Walker several times in his journey

Quick & Painless Reviews: Rise Of The Triad (v 1.2.1)

This is pretty much as Q&P as these kinds of reviews get. If you liked Rise of the Triad: Dark War, or just that classic FPS feel in general, you're almost guaranteed to like the reboot. It's just that simple. The only thing that might be stopping you are the reports of poor game performance upon its release. That's fine, it held me back too. Well, as of the end of October, patch 1.2 was released along with the promise of less crashes and better framerates. The community seemed very pleased, so I couldn't hold back any longer. Though there's no question that this game is poorly optimized, the recent patch has made it manageable, and I personally am satisfied. While playing, I took a few screenshots that maybe could convince you further:

Drink Yag

Crybaby approves.

Drunk Santa And The Limo

A bit of an oldie, but a goodie. Happy holidays!

Crazy Miles

Quick & Painless Reviews: Call Of Duty: Ghosts

a.k.a. "I'd still rather play Black Ops"


5/10

Quick & Painless Reviews: Batman: Arkham Origins

Time to do another one of these charts.

Rat Wrestling

Yeah, I still have to scan the first comic. Here's something I filmed in the meantime.

Parking Lot

S.O.S.

It's Coming

People on DeviantArt have heard me talk about it for years, and I've even mentioned it on here a few times. The elusive Z-Comic series that I've worked on all of these years, but have posted barely any scans of. Well, I feel the time has almost come. Now that I own a scanner that can scan a 15-60 page comic within a reasonable time, I'll be able to show the world what I've been spending all my time drawing and not posting since the age of twelve.

I'm not going to get right on it tonight though. I have some work and such to take care of over the next couple of days, but expect to see the first issue up by about some point next week. In the mean time, a little something to set the bar for what you're basically in for:

Jessicka, The Emotional Individual

I want the tumblr audience.

Just an initial scan before I add some finishing touches and colour. Often times when I scan something, I get a clearer look at details I messed up or forgot.

A Skeptic's Local Dealings With The Paranormal

In 2010, I wrote a small essay regarding the reemergence of the parapsychology fad within the media, more so focusing  on its presence in my own town. It continues to be one of my favourite things that I've ever written, though I've been much too lazy to retype it since. The final edition is long lost, leaving only a print out of one of its previous drafts, so I apologize for the various errors and instances of ugly wordplay.

Greengob Noobfang

I've been meaning to keep this character hidden from Risexual, but whatever. I didn't colour in any sort of background, because why bother? I'll update it with one if I think of something that I feel fits.

P.I.T. Fan Art: Mike

So I bought a new scanner, and thus I can start posting new material again. Risexual is always trying to make me do drawings based on his ongoing PIT series, and after two years of requests I finally did something.

Karen's Response To Being Told "I Love You"

Pretty much my Z-Comic series in a nutshell. I'm sorry that I've never really scanned this masterpiece to share with all of you.

Danny At The Beach

Another panoramic attempt.

Quick & Painless Reviews: 2games1film

Remember when I said I wanted to focus less on reviews and get back to posting more art? LOL, I lied. Not that I haven't been drawing up new material, but back in December I bought a new gaming PC which doesn't have an input for my old ass scanner from 1999.

Remember Me

The year is 2084, and a century later Big Brother is back to claim mankind. He has created an implant called the Sensation Engine (Sensen) that allows for the digitization of memories. This has enabled humans to pick and choose what memories they keep and delete, or perhaps even create a completely fresh identity by downloading new artificial memories. Big Brother, for the most part, has built a monopoly on human thought. The player takes control of Nilin, a powerful, racially ambiguous woman who don't need no man, except for the one named Edge who guides her throughout most of the game.

Throughout Remember Me, you explore the futuristic city of Neo-Paris via automatic platforming where you are lead by the nose with a small orange arrow. Every ten jumps or so, you run into some retards, robots, or government baddies who want to kick your ass. Combat in this game is basically like that of Arkham Asylum... if it was dropped on its head. How enemies approach and attack is heavily RNG-based, so if the game rolled a 1 for you, you basically have already lost the fight unless you feel like evading attacks until the AI decides to chill out for three seconds. When you do find some time to fight back, you'll just be mashing the same few combos ad nauseum. You can input new moves into these combos, but they'll always be the same patterns of Squares and Triangles.

You'll be given the ability to "remix" the memories of other characters, something that was advertised quite heavily in previews leading up to the game's release, but this actually only happens a handful of times throughout the game and is a trial-and-error time filler at best.

Remember Me is a textbook example of a 5/10 game that barely scrapes together enough graphics, audio, story, and gameplay to call itself a game. 



The Last Of Us

So this game has received 10/10 reviews from just about every website and blog worth mentioning. Even fucking Eurogamer gave it a 10/10! If you're still unconvinced on whether you should go buy this game now, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of another lengthy review to try and tempt you further. Instead I'm going to rant about the haters for a little bit.

Can you believe there are people who hate this game? They seem to think that the "cinematic experience" is the cancer that's killing gaming. I'd like to know why they think it's suddenly The Last Of Us that's killing in industry, and not Half-Life 2, The Walking Dead, The Witcher 2,  Alice: Madness Returns, or the thousand weeabo JRPG's they love that favour story over gameplay. Don't get me wrong, gameplay is very important (and is constantly present in The Last of Us), but a well told story will see just about any game pass the test of time after its graphics have become dated and its gameplay has been copied a hundred more times.



World War Z

After a huge debacle of shame, and like two years of delays, the so-called film adaptation of Max Brooks' novel of the same name has finally come out. If you already know about the book, there are two reasons to go out to theatres and see this film. Either,

1. You want to pay to see how bad this movie can be, or

2. If you're like me, you can justify paying $7.99 as long as you are able to push the fact that this was once based on a book completely out of your mind for almost two hours.

If you can manage the latter, and pretend it's just "another fun zombie movie" like the rest of the general public thought, you'll at least be able to resist any urges to walk out before it's over. WWZ contains zombies that not only run, but also leap head-first at their victims, and can also scale two hundred foot walls in minutes. If that doesn't have you shaking your head, there is some seriously cringe-worthy dialogue and character logic sprinkled throughout the duration at the film that is almost physically painful (I WANT MY BLANKET!).

Everything was given a hardy amount of Disney Treatment, so in case you weren't able to find a babysitter for the night, you probably won't feel too bad bringing children as young as ten along with you. Despite being a film where zombies and survivors alike are constantly being mutated, the headshots and cannibalism are assumed, and little gore is present.

WWZ, however, does do a good job to occasionally remind you that this story is actually about a global war between the living and the undead. There are a few sets that genuinely look like they were taken out of Saving Private Ryan, or Black Hawk Down that inspire at least a slight amount of awe at the scale of destruction the zombie virus has brought upon modern civilization. I'd dare say it does this better than almost any other post-apocalyptic zombies movie, but it certainly doesn't redeem everything else that was done wrong.

I'd say after watching this motion picture, I wanted 4 blankets out of 10.

An Approaching Storm

My first attempt at a panoramic photo that turned out alright.

Quick & Painless Reviews: Dear Esther

2deep4me

I've heard mixed opinions about this game: That it's a deep and touching experience at best, and an arduous fifty minute walking simulator at worst. This game was on sale yesterday for $2.46, so I figured I didn't have much to lose if I at least took this game for face value and just appreciated seeing some pretty scenery here and there.

So it is true that this game is basically a walking simulator, but it is also true that it is very pretty at times. The landscape and soundtrack make for a very soothing experience, though not always so. If you're inquisitive enough, you'll be drawn into the odd abandoned house or small cave, which can be rather unsettling, especially when coming upon bloody surgical tools, and indiscernible markings on the walls. Some have gone so far as to label Dear Esther as a horror game, but that's a very big stretch-- these creepy settings make up maybe four minutes of this game's lifespan.

As you progress, a narrator laments over the history of the island you're on, its previous inhabitants, kidney stones, and the death of his wife. There's some 2deep4u metagaming stuff, like how the narrator, though voiced by the same person, represents the voice of several characters; what the markings in the sand and walls mean; and there are also tales of a dozen or so ghost sighting to those with a keen enough eye. I'm not going to pad this blog with all of that stuff, mostly because I don't care, but also because I don't want to spoil that aspect of the experience for you.

My only major gripe about this game are the cheap 2D sprites used on some of the plant textures. A lot of games use them, but when your game is all about the immersion, it's kind of distracting when it is obvious the plants are always "facing" me, especially so when I'm walking through waist-high long grass and weeds. Even the mushrooms in the caves are 2D sprites, which I felt was exceptionally lazy.

Anyway, for your enjoyment, I took several screenshots on my journey across the island. Something worth noting about the screenshots is that the image files are labelled with different names, which I suppose lends to the theory that the narrator is the voice of different characters. Alas, if you choose to play this game, here are some of the neat things you'll get to see:

PSN Hate Mail Round-Up

I don't want to toot my own horn too hard, but I'm a friggin' wicked Call of Duty: Black Ops player. The last time I did the math, I was in the top five percent of team deathmatch players globally. I think I started realizing this once I began receiving hate mail on a semi-regular basis. Most people call me out on being a camper, but I find that hard to swallow when my loadout is actually designed to run fast and cover as much ground as possible. Here's the messages I've saved so far over the last year or so:

You can't even kick players from a public lobby.

Anyway, the reason I "ran" was because he was the only player left in the pre-game lobby after everyone else ragequit.

French people are so rude. Also fuck this guy thinking he can look down at campers. Literally every single kill this player got on me in the two matches I played with him were with RPG's and newb tubes.

Obligatory "calling someone a faggot" message.

Okay, so this guy sent me this while playing on the map "Grid". I single-handedly destroyed his team so badly that everyone quit except him and one other player. With only a handful of players in the game, I stayed inside the South building since I could tell this guy had it out for me and I wanted him to know where he could find me. I more-or-less answered his question for him as he was sending this message, because when I received it, I was in the process of running outside and fragging him.

Deformed.

It's unfinished, but it's been a while since I posted anything for LBC. This particular image marks a 10 anniversary for me. So yeah, 10 years, and I'll only gotten better. I'm still learning though. 

I don't quite know which way to take it. It bothers me that there is so space to be filled. If this was 10 years, this page would have been filled already!

Quick & Painless Reviews: Dead Space 3

I was worried about the universal ammo, but it turned out to be a non-issue.
I was worried about fighting human enemies, but that turned out to be a non-issue.
I was a little worried about the recharging stasis, but it turned out to be a non-issue.

The one thing I thought wouldn't be a problem was the cash shop. It hasn't hurt my ability to play any other console game normally, so I didn't think it'd be a problem. Whoops. The default weapons take forever to fully craft and upgrade, and until they are, they're weak as shit. You now take on tons of enemies (so many that the corpses disappear before I can get items from them) in cramped environments, and on top of that, they're all faster than the advanced nercomorphs from the previous two games. This coupled with the bad level design usually results in "find the nearest corner and fire aimlessly into the dog pile of monsters raping my face until the dramatic music stops." The surgical gunplay from before has had to make way for generic corridor shootan that's even too fast and broken for KB/M.

If the game just slowed the fuck down a bit it could have been as good as the other two; it could have even kept all the enemies and it would have been fine, but it's easily the worst Dead Space by a long shot. I'm hoping the experience will feel more balanced with co-op on my second playthrough, and yes, it hurts that I have to say that about a Dead Space game.

UPDATE: Patch 1.2 seemed to change around weapon damage and/or enemy health. I don't know this for a fact, but I felt a distinct difference in gameplay after that patch was released. Fighting necromorphs feels more balanced now making the game more tolerable. I'd still say this is the weakest of all the Dead Space titles so far, but at least it's now fun.