Achievements and Lawn Gnomes.

So i've been playing Half-Life 2, Orange box..

Now keep in mind its been like, 6 years since I was hardcore into FPS's, so I consider myself out of practice, rusty if you will.

as such I decided to play Half-life 2 and Episode's 1-2 through single player

HL2, ok, Ep1: short but ok, Ep2: Holy shit, Episode 2 (as well as Portal and TF2) has Achievements! like xbox360 achievements but for the pc, and they reflect on your steam gamerscore, Fantastic.

So I made the mistake of reading the achievement list before I played through ep2 and its all standard shit, some things you get just playing the game, some things you have to try a little to get, some things are harder to get.

Then I saw one that made me laugh.

"Launch a Lawn Gnome into Space"

and I didnt think anything of it, not knowing what I had just gotten myself into.

So like a half hour into the game im in this little shack thing, and im deucing around breaking shit with the gravity gun, and i go to grab something from under a shelf or someshit..

Lawn Gnome flies up into my face.

and im like.. oh, ill just hang onto this gnome, i donno if i'll get the chance to get another one later, maybe thats why its an achievement, plus how far away can it be to launch the thing.

And now im like 6 hours into Ep2, and the entire fucking time, ive had to tote around this lawn gnome, or find ways to bypass obstacles with it and keep it with me throughout the entire fucking game. This gnome has become the bane of my existance, i hate it so much, but i want the achievement so bad and ive come too far now to just lose the goddamn thing.

Get in a huge firefight, grenades and shit exploding all over the place, having to sort through the rubble to find my gnome. Get the car? have to find a way to jam the thing between the seats and pray it doesnt fall out during a turn, and it it does, go back and get it. Make sure i have the gnome with me for any events that cut me off from backtracking.

oh and the gnome isnt heavy enough to use as a weapon with the gravity gun.

You cannot run while holding an object with either your hands or the gravity gun.

It runs into objects and sometimes falls out of your grip.

its light, and has a tendancy to fall over and/or roll off say, elevators and lifts

also the thing has somehow magical properties that if you walk into it wrong, it knocks you back like a npc does, you go FLYING, this has caused more than a few instances of me falling into a pit or otherwise instant death.

I have had to load the game after a long fight probably two dozen times now because at some point during the fight my gnome gets launched by a grenade or rolls into a pit or an otherwise inaccessible spot.

And this was the intention of the Achievement, there is only 1 lawn gnome in episode 2, the intent is to hold onto it for the entire game. I recommend doing it on a 2nd playthrough, not the first.

Although, it does add another element of immersion to not only fear dying with Gordon, but also trying to protect your gnome.

I hate Lawn Gnomes.
-Rei

GADD

Awhile back I coined another Term

Game Attention Deficit Disorder
1.) Being Unable to completely finish any games, ever. 2.) A Person who gets excited about and buys new games, just to play them for a few hours and shelf them forever, and never goes back to finish them.

I know several people who have GADD, but the one that comes to mind as a perfect example is someone I have known since Elementary School, whom I will refer to as SR, granted I haven't spoken to him in like 3 years now.

SR Thinks himself hardcore.

He gets excited about upcoming games, he pre-reserves upcoming games, he buys pretty much every good game that comes out.

Remember Steel Commander for the Xbox? Mech game that came with a like 200 button controller that cost $200? and like 1 out of 5000 xbox owners bought it?

yea, its collecting dust in his closet.

Warcraft 3, Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Dozens upon Dozens of console games, Max Payne 1 + 2, Morrowind.. the list can go on forever, seriously.

This kid has more games than he knows what to do with, but he hasnt spent more than like 10 hours on ANY of them.

Now, the kid isnt very good at games, he just isnt, hardcore is in the blood and it isn't in his - but that doesn't explain his GADD. He claims he doesn't have the time to play them.. but i've seen him load up a newly purchased game, install it, patch it, play it for an hour and then go dick around on AIM for 2 hours and then go watch a DVD hes watched 5000 times before.

Oh and this kid is why there is cheat codes, he wont play through a game once without cheating first, he opens that door as soon as he gets mildly inconvenienced by things like.. having to try.


-Rei
I'll make another post later today, this one is rather short.

Gaming Illiteracy

Today I decided to coin a phrase:

Illiterate Gamer.
To be Illiterate at Gaming, ie: Non-gamers who write game reviews. Aka: Being an Outspoken Noob. Someone who tries to tell others about a game or other popular work, and does not have a common knowledgebase to reference in explaining things, or does not know what to look at when reviewing a game.

People who do not play games should not write reviews about games.

If I were to go out and buy a new game that comes out, and I go to write my review of said game, I am going to look for things that I would want to be in the game, or implementations of ingenuity that would make the game overall better. I'm going to look at what is good, what is bad, what is just unbalanced, and what was stolen from other games.

A Non gamer is more than likely going to get stuck on graphics for the most of their review, talk about which parts 'totally kick ass' without an in depth explanation as to why. They like to get stuck on trivial things that have been done before and better in other games, they also don't have the experience to reference other games for explanations, and they dont have the previous game experience (with good games, mind you) to know a good game. If I have to read another goddamn review that claims halo is the greatest fps ever made I will more than likely stab someone. Or how bout the classic "The game looks so good, it looks real" yea no shit, welcome to Next-gen systems, games look real, infact ive come to expect it, if it DOESNT look real I would dock points for shitty graphics. In this day and age a still from a game should look like either a picture, a cartoon, or a work of art. Nothing should look grainy or badly rendered, at all.

Crysis is the top game coming out as far as Graphics, and In my opinion it is not because of the fact that the whole environment looks real, "look" is one thing, "interact" is another. All the underbrush moves as you move it out of the way, bullets rip apart trees, dirt kicks up, water splashes and looks real, and im pretty sure anything you come across is destroyable in one way or another and if you screenshot it at any point during the process, it looks like a photo (You cant see polys, shapes make sense, things move realistically in response to your actions.)

Furthermore I should never get the impression from the Reviewer that they suck at games, I dont care if you played Halo3 and wrote a review on it, i dont respect you because you had to play it on Easy, this means you suck at games and your opinion doesn't matter. But I would read and respect a review written by the biggest retard on the planet if said Retard played it through on legendary.

And Finally, Do not hold a bias, do not sell out. If a game sucks, and everybody who plays it knows that the game sucks, say so - Don't try to appease gamemakers by kissing ass about how much you loved to play Barbie Horse Princess Adventures, Don't give it a High Score because they give you a high amount of advertising, and Don't be nice just so you dont hurt someones feelings.

l2review

-Rei

Make a Fucking Sequel Already.

First there was Final Fantasy VII, and everybody loved it. Deep Story involving a main Character whom was a wackjob and confused about who he was, A Totally Feminine Antagonist whom set the standard for badass evil guys for games to come, and a totally solid magic/growth system. Who could ask for more in 1996? In my lifetime ive 99:99'd FF7 probably 5 times, its so good i just keep going back and playing it again.

Then comes FFVII: Advent Children, which was pretty much just a way for them to make more money off the same characters, and they could show off how good they are at CGI, awesome movie, alot of badass fight sequences, good shit.

Then theres FFVII: Dirge of Cerebrus, which was a pretty awful game in all regards, but the Movies were badass as always, the story made sense, and you got to play as one of the more-badass chars in ff7; Vincent Valentine. Aside from the bad game mechanics and shitty controls, this might have been a good game.

Now theres FFVII: Crisis Core, where you play as Zack, and its essentially a prequel. The drawback here is that for some retarded fucking reason, they decided to put it on the PSP. The PSP being the biggest failure of a handheld since the NeoGeo Pocket. So instead of putting it on the System that one out of like 5 homes in america has; The Aging PS2, they put it on this piece of shit glorified mp3 player. Good goin.

In addition to the shitty cellphone game im not mentioning that i think also came out in japan, and a bunch of other shit like manga and i think there was an Anime, they keep squeezing blood out of this decade old IP hoping to get more cash from characters people already love.

I mean sure, they made FF8-10:2 and 12 (FFXI doesnt count) and for the most part they were good, exception being the debacle that was FF10:2, but hell, the people know what the people want, and they have been asking for a FF7 remake for YEARS. Why dont they just fucking DO IT already, they made that Technical Trailer for the PS3 that had the intro to FF7 using the models from Advent Children, why not just make the fucking remake, sell into Multi-platinum status, buy an island in the south pacific and name it Square-Enixia, and make BANK.

or.. You could make a fucking Sequel, continue the story, make another game, find some bullshit way to bring back Sephiroth a 289th time and make a 60 hour RPG out of it keeping the orignal materia system, id buy that shit, id even buy a ps3 to play that shit.

hell, if you made a FF7 Remake AND a FF7:2 for the ps3, id go buy a ps3 right the fuck now.

God.

-Rei

TES: Oblivion

So I recently decided to spend the time to play Oblivion, partually due to not being Hyjal keyed yet, and having a shitload of Free time while waiting for them to do Tempest Keep so I can get Kael's Vial.

So I install oblivion, start the game, crank all the settings to max on my rig, and spend seriously like a fucking hour trying to make a char that doesnt look like he has down syndrom or is a monkey. Finally find something I think is decent, and start playing an Epic Adventure to battle the forces of Oblivion.

And about 2 hours later I Contracted Vampirism in my random wonderings, but it doesnt kick in for like a game week or someshit, and i didnt notice the "You have Contracted Porphyric Hemophilia" message, and i didnt look in my buffs and see this little hidden "You just fucked up your game" buff.

So for the next like fucking 10 hours of game time im running around like an idiot trying to find the cure, which I couldnt even do, because i had JUST STARTED THE FUCKING GAME AND YOU HAVE TO KILL SOME BADASS VAMPIRE OR SOMESHIT AS PART OF THE QUEST.

Couldnt go outside without Melting, Couldnt talk to everybody because every person i talked to was like, 'zomg dood, ur vamp1r3 olol", Couldnt complete quests because, guess what, 90% of the quest people are ONLY AWAKE DURING THE DAY (Imagine that). Fun shit right there.

So i find the bitch that eventually will cure your Vampirism, but she wants a whole bunch of shit that theres no way for me to get. and id been actually doing storyline shit in my dumbass vampire cure searching, so here i am like 15 hours into the game, stuck as a vampire, and having a bitch of a time with it.

So i cheat, player.additem cure for fucking vampirism, np.

I wont even comment about how fucking idiotic it is to make it so you can contract an uncurable game altering illness 2 hours into the fucking game, or to make the cure completely retarded to get at an early step, or the kicker - once you cure it, you cant go back to being a vampire ever, thats cute too.

So im doucheing around in my travels, randomly completing steps blahblahblah, and i get to a place where i had two quests that involve me dealing with the same red-headed cunt whom cant seem to follow her programming. I had to sneak into her room when shes asleep and steal a ring she only takes off at night, and i had to hit her with a like, take all your clothes off and dance naked spell (during her dinner party).

So here i am, at this dinner party, waiting for her guests, and i nail her with the spell, party gets naked, i get thrown in prison, fantastic im done.

go back to the same said bitch and wait for her to get up and goto bed, her husband says her parties are at 8 pm, and she goes to bed at 11 pm, ok sure.

So i wait.

and wait.

shes the only one sitting at this table, and its like 4 am.

so i wait till 10:50 pm the next day, party ends, guests go home, she doesnt goto bed.

...great, so the bitch is bugged, fantastic.

So i have to cheat again to get her to stick to her programming, so i force her to goto bed by forcing her back onto her pathing.

and i follow her to her room, and sneak in, pop the jewelry box

No fucking ring.

Check wiki's and shit, its supposed to be there.. wtf?

So i have to cheat AGAIN and give myself this ring, granted i wasted like 2 hours dicking around with this bitch before i said fuckit and just console'd the ring into my inventory.

and this is how my experience with oblivion is, every day a new bug fucks me up, and its getting really fucking old.

Ill bitch more later, or go back to playing wow, probably the later.

-Rei

(New) servers, and why they suck.

Twice now I have quit wow and came back, making a Character on a (New) Server

Once in 2006 and Once right after TBC came out.

Both times I Ended up Transfering my toon to an Old Server.

New Servers are populated by people either trying to make a name for themselves by xfer'ing off their old servers, where they were Relative nobodies (Read: Tokee of Underbog) or Genuine noobs starting off their WoW Careers in a place Recommended by the Game for New People.

So you get these new servers full of noobs and douches, yet still underpopulated by the games standards.

I will list underbog as an Example, since its the most recent server I moved from, my issues are still fresh in my mind.

1.) Low Population, there was Maybe 800 people whom were 70 and raiding, 400 of which were Decently geared enough to do at least Karazhan, and maybe 250 of those werent retards, say 100 werent in a place where they could raid due to time constraints or RL issues, leaving seriously 150 good people on the entire horde side that were decent and raided. Take your 150 Semi-retards and consider that they were all distributed across seriously like 14 guilds, with full-retards filling in the blanks, the More uber of the guilds having 15-20 MAYBE non-retards, but not all of them played at the same time. So you have this core of like 10 people who dont suck, and you are trying to recruit from the benches at the special olypmics to fill out your roster.

2.) Retards, The problem with using 4th String Special Olympians was that they were infact totally retarded, and this would hold your guild back, no matter how hard you tried, no matter how good your core was, you were constantly recruiting to try to find quality players. And guess what, those Quality individuals you want? they have been on an old server since 2004, and they are established, and they arent coming to the ass-backwater underbog to try to start over. QQ

3.) Shrinking Playerbase Daily, If you look at the Underbog forums, on the first page theres usually 3-5 posts from players xfer'ing off, Your pool of quality is shrinking at an amazing rate, and you are replacing them with total retards, Casuals, or noobs.

4.) Lack of Progression due to aforementioned reasons causing a lack of pull of people to your backwater shithole resulting in a downward spiral of filth and stagnation that will only end in server merges in a desperate attempt to fix the situation. At the time of this writing the Underbog has not killed Vashj or Kael, where almost every other server has at least one guild with Illidan on Farm.

In Short, if you are on a Underprogressed TBC (New) Server, you should get out now and avoid the impending flood of refugees looking for a new place to go, get your apps in to good guilds now, xfer it up asap. Theres alot of the game you are missing, and you wont see it on your shithole - especially with Sunwell Plateau coming. If you want to see content before WotLK, xfer.

-Rei

The Death of Azeroth

I liked warcraft 3, and warcraft 1 and 2 before that. I liked what they did, I liked where the story was when Frozen Throne ended, I liked where it was going.

They announced WoW, and I was under the impression that it was going to be very similar to SWG in the fact that the player really could not effect anything Canon. You cant go kill Darth Vader and save Palpatine from Dying on the 2nd Death Star, because the movies were LAW and you were some insignificant shit running around in their Fictional universe - but they had Set storyline in stone that a player could not effect.

You should be able to go From Warcraft 3 to Warcraft 4, without missing anything. No major characters should have randomly just up and died, no major wars, etc.

So WoW Comes out, and its cool, we're insignificant little shits running around doing trivial quests to help completely new and unheard of characters do assinine things in places we'd heard about in previous warcraft games! Awesome!

Beta starts coming to a close, they add Onyxia and MC, the first raid places, with bosses nobody had ever heard of in any lore, and it didnt matter how much we killed them because they werent major in the grand scheme of Azeroth. - And yes, you can go in and kill the major storyline guys in the various cities, but there is no Quest or Event directly telling you to go kill Thrall or Tyrande, so as far as my assumption, you arent -really- supposed to, and its nice that you can, if you get bored.

So this scheme of things continues, BWL and ZG gets added and you are still killing people nobody ever gave a shit about (Deathwing people would care about, Ony and Nef - no).

Then came the turning point in my respect for the game - Naxxramas

They make Kel'thuzad and Sapphiron killable - these are actual figures from the Lore.. and theres a Quest from Kel'thuzad that basically says, yea i killed him, wtfpwn. So now its in the Lore that Kelthuzad gets to die to a random group of idiots who managed to work together.

Sapphiron sure, whatever, he wasnt huge in the storyline anyway. but Kel'thuzad? Come the fuck on.

So this bugged me a good amount, then they announce burning crusade, and you get to go to outland, no big woop right? but then i remembered that book in Stratholme that said Illidan and his minions fled back to outland.

now.. Killing illidan doesnt really effect anything, since as far as Warcraft Canon is concerned, he got his ass cleaved in two on Icecrown Glacier. So if they want to add him as a killable boss, it doesnt effect anything. Kael'thas doesnt die (You Monkies Failed shout after you turn in the quest item), and Vashj was gay anyway. So the expansion really didnt add anything that would F up story anyway.

Except the raised the Level Cap.

This implies that Kel'thuzad is significantly weaker than Lady Vashj.

Now, when i was playing Wc3, kel'thuzad and arthas were basically equal pre-arthas putting on the crown, and Arthas was equally matched vs Illidan, so this means that somehow Lady Vashj > Illidan AMIRITE, ok

Now they are talking about raising the level cap again, and making the Continent that the Icecrown Glacier is on.. which in my head means they will more than likely fuck up and make Arthas killable, which means they cant make a Warcraft 4. Which means the series ends with WoW. WoW is aging now, coming up on its 3rd year, EQ only lasted for like 4 years before the exodus began, how much more life do they think they can get from the game? maybe another 3 years, but why burn your bridges and kill one of the best series' in RTS history for some more cash now, christ, are you people retarded? Continue the storyline, preserve some game history, make Wacraft4 and maybe a WoW2, shit. its so Simple.

Make some encounters like Majordomo, except have heroes flee at the end, or something similar, you dont have to kill Historic Characters to make the game better. You dont have to fuck up the history you wrote in the games to make your mmo sell more copies.

Please dont ruin Wacraft Lore
-Rei