In game related news I made a video series that ran through last December. You can check it out on my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Tenfey

League of Legends is a game with a lot of potential.  I play it off and on now and again.  I can usually only endure it for so long before I just have to stop playing it for a few months.

There are so many things I like about the game, like the unique character designs and references.  The only problem is there are just way too many characters.  Riot adds a new one every 2 weeks, and it just becomes a bloated mess.  There is no way to balance this many characters.  The other problem is that the game cannot be played alone.  If you want to play the main game mode, you have to be with 4 other friends that you can talk to over Vent or Skype.  Otherwise you will get  auto assigned the biggest assholes the internet has ever bred.  Since this game is free to play, that means ever internet tough guy 13-year-old out there can just log on and grind to max level.  They will not listen to anything you have to say, and you will be called offensive terms you never thought possible.

So in conclusion, if you have never played League of Legends, don’t bother.  It really is just a garbled together mess, that I’m sure makes its creators a lot of money.

When I was a young and sprightly lad, I often found myself enjoying programs that were broadcast and received via my television.  One such “block” of programing was known as the Disney Afternoon.  It contained several shows I fancied, one of which starred a familiar pair of chipmunks in a very unfamiliar setting.  It seems that somehow Chip and his cohort Dale managed to take their lifestyle of tormenting (the usually deserving) Donald Duck and focus that energy into community service.  They did this by forming their own vigilante crime-solving organization known as the Rescue Rangers.  Even though they were quite small in comparison to human civilization, this did not deter them from their lofty goal.  I found their devil-may-care attitude and re-purposing of household items to be very inspirational.  Also the theme song was amazing.

Oh and also there was an NES game based on the show.  I played it.

See this picture right here ^^?  It is from the instruction manual from The Legend of Zelda:  A Link to the Past.  And let me tell ya, that was probably the best instruction manual ever crafted by a human.  This is back from a time period when instruction manuals had some class.  Nowadays all you get is a diagram of an XBOX controller and what all the fucking buttons do.  Basically I am like an 80 year old man talking about the time before the war, because I miss that shit.

So here is a trailer for Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.  It is a 4 player co-op team based shooter in which you either play Umbrella agents (a la HUNK) attempting to cover Umbrella’s involvement in the Raccoon City outbreak, or a team of US Government SPEC OPS sent in to collect evidence and bio-weapon data.  It is also considered non-cannon, with one major example of this being the fact that you can kill Leon S. Kennedy on his fateful first day as an officer.

I’ve been a fan of the Resident Evil franchise ever since playing RE 2 back in 1998.  The series has evolved over the years, with the most drastic change being the leap from survival horror to action in Resident Evil 4.  I don’t have a problem with this.  It has evolved beyond the limitations placed on it in the early days, and is also following the current direction of gaming.

From the reactions I’ve seen to this trailer however, you’d think the game was called “Resident Evil: Your Mothers a Whore.”  People are getting internet-level upset about this.  I don’t see the point of this reaction though.  It may not be my long wanted RE 2 remake or Outbreak File 3, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a good game in its own right.  As long as it has the settings and characters I like, the format of the game itself should be fine, as long as it’s fun to play.

Don’t tell the internet though.

Water is a necessity of life.  It is very abundant in the world we live in.  But when applied to video games, water takes on some completely different meanings.

The first instance I can recall of water appearing in a video game is Pitfall on the Atari 2600.  Despite the fact that even if you were to avoid the gators contained within, falling into the water itself is a death trap.  I guess Pitfall Harry didn’t bother learning to swim before braving a jungle for phat loots.

Next would be Super Mario Brothers, which contains two levels fully devoted to the briny deep, as well as a couple of underwater segments in a couple of stages (including the final castle).   This water proves to be fully navigate-able, and only a hazard if you do not posses fire power (in which case you are well and truly fucked.)

This is odd, because I distinctly remember there being a pit in level 3-1 containing water that you cross on a bridge.  If you happen to fall into this pit, however, Mario sinks like a rock.  Maybe the water is boiling?  Such a strange conundrum.

Another NES franchise in which a dip into water is suicide is Castlevania.  Our boy Simon Belmont (also Trevor) can fight undead hordes and demons from Hell, but if they so much as step foot into waist deep water it’s game over.

This is ironic given that water (of the Holy variety) is one of their most powerful weapons.  It’s basically the same thing as you carrying a jar of lava or hydrochloric acid around and throwing it at shit.

At least Mario, when allowed to swim in water, has unlimited oxygen.  Sonic the Hedgehog has to constantly find giant bubbles of air to breath in, the poor bastard.  Also, I’m not sure that physics would allow you to inhale an air bubble under water.  We need to get Mythbusters on this shit.

Also the “You bout to DROWN!” music that plays is pretty intense.

Even when the water itself isn’t a hazard, it can inspire pain and suffering.  Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple has left many a man a broken shell of his former self.  Having to raise and lower the water levels is a tremendous pain in the ass.  I spent a damn week on this temple back when I was a stupid fucking kid, just because I didn’t see that a block floated up and unveiled a secret tunnel underneath.  It also contains a crazy fish woman that wants to rape you.

To hell with this place.

Final Fantasy is another series in which water usually serves as a barrier.  At the same time however, if can be utilized in battle as a powerful weapon.   The ultimate culmination of this is the summon Leviathan.  You basically call upon a biblical manifestation of the ocean’s might to beat the shit out of whatever you’re fighting.

This brings me to my last point in this stupid blog post: Grand Theft Auto.  In GTA 3 and Vice City, entering the water in any vehicle other than a boat will result in an unescapable death (until you immediately are revived at a hospital that is).  However, if the GTA series has taught me one thing, it’s this:  only black people can swim.  Just look at the statistics:

Nico doesn’t count, because he ruins the joke that I stole.

This post was inspired by James Johnson.  So blame him.  I know I do.

Back in my high school days, Diablo 2 was a phenomenon.  Me and my friends would stand around in the morning waiting for the first bell, and discuss all of the epic loots we had come across the previous night.  I remember first learning of the expansion, with its tales of new classes and double stash size.  Of course, I never got a character past level 50, but that’s just because I was too stupid to spec into the right skills.  Back in those days, putting a point into a skill was signing a life long contract.

Anyways, the Paladin was the first class I tried, but it would be the agile Assassin that won my heart.  Maybe I’ll make a video about her someday . . .

PROTIP:  HIT RATING MY GOD GET MORE HIT RATING!  I CAN”T FUCKING HIT SHIT GODDAMN!

So at first I wasn’t going to make a post about this, because it applies only to me, but then I remembered that everything I post here applies only to me.  So after following an online tutorial, I finally managed to make my original “fat” PlayStation 2 start reading discs again.  Even though I have a fully backwards compatible PS3, this was still necessary for one reason: Resident Evil Outbreak (files 1 and 2).

Outbreak was easily my most played games on the PS2, but they had one major flaw:  horrendous load times in between rooms.  Playing this game on a non Hard Drive enhanced PS2 would literally leave you waiting between 10 – 15 seconds every time you walked into a new room.  Needless to say, this get’s pretty unbearable.  Luckily, if you were an idiot like me and shelled out 100 bucks for a relatively tiny HDD for the sytsem, you can reduce these loads to between 2 and 4 seconds.  This is why it is so significant that I have regained access to my original PS2.  For some reason, the hard drive inside the PS3 cannot be made compatible with Outbreak, and thus playing the game on that system is out of the question.  I’ll have to use what time me and my old PS2 have been given back together wisely, and hopefully make some delightful Outbreak videos.

Now if only there were a way to access the long dead multiplayer . . .

A’ight, so I have been resurrected from the living death that is complete and total laziness.  From this point forward I promise to at least attempt to deliberate on putting forth the minimum amount of effort needed to update this site on a somewhat (tri-monthly) basis.  It’s all I can promise.  Also I ain’t rescuing that guy’s daughter.  He can take care of that his own damn self.

SPOILERS: This game is not very good.