Heyo. In lieu of a regular post, tonight I'm going to share with y'all something special. See, I was speaking with one of my journalism professors, and expressed my interest in getting into video gaming journalism. He suggested that the Gainesville Sun has a writer who does a weekly column on games, and that maybe I should write the editor with a sample piece and see what he thinks. He added that I could add his personal recommendation, and that this meant a lot because he and the aforesaid editor were friends.
So I did a story based on my wait in line for Halo 3 and emailed it to him. It's too long for a traditional column, but it's only meant to be an example. I'm posting it here. Tell me what you think.
And by that I mean comment, darn it. I can't be having with 1 or 2 measly comments per post. I live and breathe from those. They're...they're feedback. They're all I have. They're the only assurances that anyone at all is reading this malarkey.
Anyway. Story time.
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My girlfriend and I pulled into the food court parking lot around 8:30 or so. She was driving. I had no car, and while a bus would have taken me there, no bus would have operated late enough to take me back. Getting there early was crucial. Though the game could only be sold starting at midnight, a good spot in line would be essential. She wouldn’t normally have come, not being a big gamer herself, but I had asked and she had agreed.
As we approached the GameStop, there was not yet any evidence that tonight was going to be the release of one of the most highly anticipated games in a decade. We stopped inside briefly. My girlfriend flipped idly through a World of WarCraft strategy guide and looked with some interest at the PlayStation 3 demo unit. I spoke to the manager, asking him if my employee discount would still apply to the purchase of the game tonight. He seemed too busy to look into it immediately; I did not blame him. This would be a busy night for him. I wrote down the phone number of the GameStop where I had worked over the summer, thanked him, and the two of us departed.
Around 8:50, a minor crowd had built up outside the doors to the mall. It had been decreed, an employee had told me, that we could not wait inside the mall proper until 10:00. There was much discontent as to this ruling, and grumbling about foolish mall policies. Later, we found out the reason. The security personnel had to create a barrier, making sure we stayed in an orderly line inside the mall, not straying into the rest of the building.
By 9:30, there were two lines in place. There were two game stores in the mall, each of which had accepted many pre-orders for the game. There were taunts floating back and forth across the evening air about the merits of one line versus the other. Two people in particular, one from each line, repeatedly called out to each other, each attempting to anger the other enough to make him come over, thus losing his place in line. It never happened. Insults held no power to people dedicated enough to stand in line for three hours on a Monday night for a video game.
I had found some friends. Two stood out in particular, a solidly built fellow student, who I’ll call “Ivan,” and a younger boy, only 15 years old, who I’ll call “Steve.” Steve in particular was in anguish about his evening. He was not old enough to buy the game on his own, as GameStop will not sell M-rated games to people under 17. Calling his father to come buy it with him was proving fruitless. We assured him that something would turn up to allow him to take home his game.
The store, or perhaps the mall, had thoughtfully provided ice chests full of cans of Mountain Dew for the line-goers. A good thing, too, as by this time, the number of people in line surely counted in the hundreds. A fire truck pulled up, to general interest and whispered rumors that a fire in the back rooms had burned up all the copies of the game. To our amusement, two firemen came out and joined the line. The joke went around that they had left a message at the firehouse, asking politely that the citizens of Gainesville not set fire to anything while they were gone.
Ivan showed me his iPhone, the new and ridiculously expensive gadget from Apple. We were all much impressed, and I in particular spent several minutes gleefully manipulating the touch-screen. I tend to be enraptured by high-tech devices such as those. During all this, my girlfriend was sitting on a nearby bench, on her laptop. She was writing an essay for her Introduction to Buddhism class. This kept her occupied until her laptop battery ran out.
10:00 rolled around, and those of us fortunate to be at the head of the line (myself among them) fairly skittered about in our anticipation. A friendly security officer, to whom we had spoken earlier, informed the crowd that we were not to disturb the barriers he had erected. He had spent a long time setting them up, he said, and assured us in no uncertain terms that he would come down like a ton of bricks on the first person to disrespect their presence. We agreed quickly, anxious to get inside. As I passed the barriers, I noted that they were, in fact, just yellow caution tape strung between poles and chairs. They were mainly symbolic in any case.
As it happened, there were to be two lines for each store. The first line’s purpose was to verify the fact that we had pre-orders, and to pay off any remaining balance left owed. The second line was for people who had already paid, to wait in order for their games to be handed out. Upon my inquiry, the harried-looking manager recalled our earlier conversation. No, he said, I could not use my discount. It had been more than six weeks since I worked at a GameStop; I had been removed from the system. Chagrined, I paid the remaining balance and resettled in the second line.
Ivan and Steve joined me shortly after. Steve was jubilant; he had found a way to trick the system. Ivan had affirmed that he was Steve’s step-brother, and thus an over-17 parent or guardian had been confirmed. We sat down on the edge of the store. I was fifth in line to receive my copy of the game; Ivan and Steve, due to some confusion on our parts, slightly ahead of me.
Ivan produced a pack of cards, and we played a few games of Egyptian poker, which I still believe he made up on the spot. Cards soon lost their appeal, and we began an animated conversation. As it happened, Ivan was a fan of a popular trading card game, Magic: the Gathering ™, which I have followed zealously for a long time. He had not played in years, and urged me to acquaint him with the cards that had been printed in his absence from the game. A breathless account on my part revealed to him many of the more recent cards, and he affirmed that he wished to get back into the game.
My girlfriend had found an empty outlet in the wall of the store. A quick plea to the manager had won her the right to use it to power her laptop. Even more interestingly, she found a wireless network in the store, which she speedily connected to. She then started up World of WarCraft, to the astonishment of all around, and the envy of several. Thus engaged, she began speaking with the people behind us in line, who expressed an interest in the game.
Time passed, as it does. The hour of midnight grew near. Anticipation increased among the people in both lines. I ventured out of the store to observe the scene behind us. The line to pay, the first line, was still out the door, while the line of those that had already paid stretched out of my line of sight, behind a wall. I congratulated myself quietly on having had the foresight to come early. It would surely save me time later. Ivan and Steve were growing restless, as was I. A few sentences of desultory conversation trailed off; none of our minds were on anything but the game we were about to receive. My girlfriend ended her session of World of WarCraft and put her laptop away. The hour, as they say, was nigh.
Finally, with a cheer from the denizens of the line, it had begun. Midnight had officially occurred. The first few copies of the game were handed out. Ivan assured me that we would meet online. Earlier, he had taken care to write down all of our “gamertags”, the online names we used to identify ourselves in the game. He promised to email me a copy of the list from his iPhone. He received his copy of the game, and smiling broadly, strode away.
Steve was next. He had paid the premium and received the “Legendary” edition of the game, so named for the hardest difficulty setting on which it could be played. This edition contained not only the game, but several special-edition DVDs containing extra material, and a replica of the helmet of the Master Chief, the hero of the game. He took the large black box, and walking outside, held it high for all to see. He had the first Legendary copy. A roar arose from the lines, and Steve jubilantly walked out.
The moment of truth. The clerk behind the wall of boxes studied my receipt and my photo ID. A match was assured. He asked what copy I had bought. I replied that I had purchased only the ordinary copy. A game box was plucked from a nearby crate and bagged. As I took the bag, I felt tremendously elated, as one might who has just completed some onerous task. My girlfriend asked to hold the game. I allowed her to do so, gently reminding her not to open it. That was to be my privilege.
We walked out, past both lines. As we exited the mall, we noted that the line to purchase stretched out the door and down the sidewalk quite a ways. I felt a twinge of sympathy for those who had arrived perhaps twenty minutes later than I, and now had to wait an hour or more extra. But there was no room in my heart for sympathy. I had the game. I climbed into my girlfriend’s car, closed the door, and buckled my seatbelt.
Halo 3. The end of a mighty trilogy of games. Would it live up to the hype? Given the astronomical levels of hype and supposition, almost certainly not. But, I thought as my girlfriend pulled out of the parking lot, it didn’t have to be the ultimate experience of my life. It was, after all, only a game.
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And this I sent to a professional newspaper editor. How foolish am I? I don't know, do I? Nobody seems to want to give me their opinions.
Oh, yeah, one last thing. The physics test was this morning. It was about as hard as I thought it would be, and I'm fairly confident I did well.
Until next time.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Wednesday Night is Game Night
Game Night! That glorious night of fun and people who might, incredibly, be slightly nerdier than I am!! The smell in the air tells me that the night has finally arrived. No, wait...the smell in the air tells me that I just walked past a skunk that's been dead and decaying since the Truman adminitration. But I can feel it. And it's great.
My test went fine on Monday, which I neglected to mention. It was real easy, considering I had studied heavily the morning of it. Also considering that the professor told us exactly what to study for. It was a bunch of questions based off of the heavily detailed notes he had us take, and five questions off All the President's Men, the book Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward wrote about the Watergate story. You know. The one that unseated President Nixon and forever changed the shape of journalism.
...Please tell me that those last two sentences were unnecessary. Please. I'll lose all faith in humanity if people don't know what the friggin' Watergate story was. I mean, they made jokes about it in Futurama, that alone should qualify its knowledge in even the basest of our youth.
Oh well. I suppose I'll find out later. Right now I'm waiting on people to arrive for my weekly game club. Even though people are invariably late, I still wait for them to be punctual. This suggests that perhaps I have the IQ of a Ritz cracker. I say it's my optimism at work, but you can only stretch that excuse so far. Unfettered optimism closely resembles delusions and madness, I've found. Still, it's always worked for me, and the giant pink iguanas ballet-dancing around me agree.
So what else happened...I gave a speech today in speech class. It was about the history of Nintendo. Piece of piss - I banged it out in two hours before class started. I wanted to make a speech about something I already knew, and something I was actually interested in speaking about, so that seemed to fit the bill. I went two minutes over time, but I didn't manage to make myself look like a total idiot. It's safe to say that I maintained my image as a partial idiot, like I always do.
The new Magic: the Gathering set, Lorwyn, looks completely and utterly ridiculous. Broken beyond belief, overpowered to a degree we haven't seen since the bemoaned Urza's sets long years ago. Sounds like a blast, I can't wait. It'll fundamentally change the shape of the game, I know it will. If the 5/5 first strike vigilant creatures that can block any number of creatures and that cost 3W don't, the planeswalker cards that can deal damage, untap lands, create creatures, and in extreme circumstances animate all creature cards in all graveyards without spending a mote of mana will. That sentence was a bit runon. I don't care.
A note I've wondered for a while: Someone named 'Steve' is posting in my comments section. (Speaking of which, post comments, people. I live and die by feedback to my work.) I know no less than three Steves. Which one are you? I just can't wait to find out.
It occurs to me that I was setting the bar a bit high with my initial blog posts. You can't expect every single one to be that long. I do have SOME limits on my time, after all. I have a test to study for on Friday, and I really should get around to buying the textbook for that class. One of these days. You know how it is, a person just doesn't have all the time in the world. My character in WoW won't get himself to 70, that much is certain.
I'm still debating on what costume I will wear when I go to Megacon (a great big anime/sci-fi/gaming/comic book/other convention) in February. I had originally planned to go as Bobobo, the titular character from the anime Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, but the fact that everyone else in the world seems to hate that show but me drove me off. Now I want to go as Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist, but there are a certain few problems with that as well. I'll have to paint my entire body to match his dark skin tone, I'll have to somehow acquire short white hair, I'll have to draw the complex tattoo he has on his right arm...and let's not forget that in the 50-odd anime episodes and 70+ manga chapters existing of FMA, he has never once smiled. He seems to have a permanent glare. I tried that, and after ten minutes it felt like my eyebrows were going to burst into flames.
I originally ended it here, with a simple "That's about it", but bugger that for a lark. I may be making shorter posts, but I can take a little extra effort and tack on a few paragraphs. Even if they're about nothing in particular, I can do it. It's an insult to my skill (or lack thereof) as a writer to write such a pitifully truncated post.
My current thought is about my future career. I do want to work for a video game magazine, like Game Informer or Electronic Gaming Monthly (or any one of the dozen or so others I know about, honestly, magazine fields are extremely highly specialized these days). But it would also be interesting to take a page from my girlfriend's book and spend a stint as a foreign correspondent. I read some of P.J. O'Rourke's books on the subject, and he MAKES it sound like a rollicking good time, but I know he's lying. He really doesn't sugarcoat what he goes through, he just somehow manages to convey the impression that while being pepper-gassed in Korea and shot at in Beirut, he was enjoying himself. I believe this firmly falls under the category of "I went through hell to bring you this amusing anecdote, so gosh darn it, enjoy it or else." I really have no illusions, but it does make for an interesting expense report when all is said and done ("Did he really claim $5,621 for 'fermented socially-lubricating interview-inducers'?") and it sounds like a hoot. Plus, if I get arrested (which I probably will, for one reason or another), I'll be able to run a front-page story in the New York Times on how horrible I've been treated. So it's win-win.
Game Night was an absolute blast. We played "Token Effort", a game that I suspect the guy who told it to us made up on the spot, which is really too complicated to explain but caused the sentence "You didn't spend enough tokens. Now you all have a sex change," to be spoken. Anything that begets that, while all the participants are sober, certainly merits some thought. Even if that thought is "If I ever see anyone doing this, I'll shoot them right then out of sheer mercy." In between games of that, we played Pirate's Cove, which is an entertaining pirate simulator. The most interesting part of that was when one of the players attempted to take on the Flying Dutchman by himself. The resulting slaughter caused much merriment in all but him.
A high point of the evening was when we all gathered around to watch videos of a certain Super Mario World hack, in which all the levels were changed to be fiendishly difficult. I might even say some of them were archdemonically difficult. For example, a given task would be to jump from platform to platform as they fell from the sky, with no real ground to support oneself and the margin of error being a tenth of a second, at best. This sort of task would then be repeated approximately forty to sixty times in a given level. Not all at once, mind, but enough to cause the most ardent gamer to hurl his controller away like it was personally responsible and stomp off, cursing the names of all who invented such tripe. It gave the player unlimited lives, and just as well. Dying upwards of 100 times to complete a level, even for the extremely skilled person playing in the videos, was not uncommon. The name of the hack is a bit crude to mention here, to an open audience, and even a line of asterisks would allow the inquisitive to guess. So let's call it "Crude-nickname-for-an-annoying-and-disreputable-person Mario". That should be vague enough for the parents of impressionable children.
THAT'S about it.
My test went fine on Monday, which I neglected to mention. It was real easy, considering I had studied heavily the morning of it. Also considering that the professor told us exactly what to study for. It was a bunch of questions based off of the heavily detailed notes he had us take, and five questions off All the President's Men, the book Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward wrote about the Watergate story. You know. The one that unseated President Nixon and forever changed the shape of journalism.
...Please tell me that those last two sentences were unnecessary. Please. I'll lose all faith in humanity if people don't know what the friggin' Watergate story was. I mean, they made jokes about it in Futurama, that alone should qualify its knowledge in even the basest of our youth.
Oh well. I suppose I'll find out later. Right now I'm waiting on people to arrive for my weekly game club. Even though people are invariably late, I still wait for them to be punctual. This suggests that perhaps I have the IQ of a Ritz cracker. I say it's my optimism at work, but you can only stretch that excuse so far. Unfettered optimism closely resembles delusions and madness, I've found. Still, it's always worked for me, and the giant pink iguanas ballet-dancing around me agree.
So what else happened...I gave a speech today in speech class. It was about the history of Nintendo. Piece of piss - I banged it out in two hours before class started. I wanted to make a speech about something I already knew, and something I was actually interested in speaking about, so that seemed to fit the bill. I went two minutes over time, but I didn't manage to make myself look like a total idiot. It's safe to say that I maintained my image as a partial idiot, like I always do.
The new Magic: the Gathering set, Lorwyn, looks completely and utterly ridiculous. Broken beyond belief, overpowered to a degree we haven't seen since the bemoaned Urza's sets long years ago. Sounds like a blast, I can't wait. It'll fundamentally change the shape of the game, I know it will. If the 5/5 first strike vigilant creatures that can block any number of creatures and that cost 3W don't, the planeswalker cards that can deal damage, untap lands, create creatures, and in extreme circumstances animate all creature cards in all graveyards without spending a mote of mana will. That sentence was a bit runon. I don't care.
A note I've wondered for a while: Someone named 'Steve' is posting in my comments section. (Speaking of which, post comments, people. I live and die by feedback to my work.) I know no less than three Steves. Which one are you? I just can't wait to find out.
It occurs to me that I was setting the bar a bit high with my initial blog posts. You can't expect every single one to be that long. I do have SOME limits on my time, after all. I have a test to study for on Friday, and I really should get around to buying the textbook for that class. One of these days. You know how it is, a person just doesn't have all the time in the world. My character in WoW won't get himself to 70, that much is certain.
I'm still debating on what costume I will wear when I go to Megacon (a great big anime/sci-fi/gaming/comic book/other convention) in February. I had originally planned to go as Bobobo, the titular character from the anime Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, but the fact that everyone else in the world seems to hate that show but me drove me off. Now I want to go as Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist, but there are a certain few problems with that as well. I'll have to paint my entire body to match his dark skin tone, I'll have to somehow acquire short white hair, I'll have to draw the complex tattoo he has on his right arm...and let's not forget that in the 50-odd anime episodes and 70+ manga chapters existing of FMA, he has never once smiled. He seems to have a permanent glare. I tried that, and after ten minutes it felt like my eyebrows were going to burst into flames.
I originally ended it here, with a simple "That's about it", but bugger that for a lark. I may be making shorter posts, but I can take a little extra effort and tack on a few paragraphs. Even if they're about nothing in particular, I can do it. It's an insult to my skill (or lack thereof) as a writer to write such a pitifully truncated post.
My current thought is about my future career. I do want to work for a video game magazine, like Game Informer or Electronic Gaming Monthly (or any one of the dozen or so others I know about, honestly, magazine fields are extremely highly specialized these days). But it would also be interesting to take a page from my girlfriend's book and spend a stint as a foreign correspondent. I read some of P.J. O'Rourke's books on the subject, and he MAKES it sound like a rollicking good time, but I know he's lying. He really doesn't sugarcoat what he goes through, he just somehow manages to convey the impression that while being pepper-gassed in Korea and shot at in Beirut, he was enjoying himself. I believe this firmly falls under the category of "I went through hell to bring you this amusing anecdote, so gosh darn it, enjoy it or else." I really have no illusions, but it does make for an interesting expense report when all is said and done ("Did he really claim $5,621 for 'fermented socially-lubricating interview-inducers'?") and it sounds like a hoot. Plus, if I get arrested (which I probably will, for one reason or another), I'll be able to run a front-page story in the New York Times on how horrible I've been treated. So it's win-win.
Game Night was an absolute blast. We played "Token Effort", a game that I suspect the guy who told it to us made up on the spot, which is really too complicated to explain but caused the sentence "You didn't spend enough tokens. Now you all have a sex change," to be spoken. Anything that begets that, while all the participants are sober, certainly merits some thought. Even if that thought is "If I ever see anyone doing this, I'll shoot them right then out of sheer mercy." In between games of that, we played Pirate's Cove, which is an entertaining pirate simulator. The most interesting part of that was when one of the players attempted to take on the Flying Dutchman by himself. The resulting slaughter caused much merriment in all but him.
A high point of the evening was when we all gathered around to watch videos of a certain Super Mario World hack, in which all the levels were changed to be fiendishly difficult. I might even say some of them were archdemonically difficult. For example, a given task would be to jump from platform to platform as they fell from the sky, with no real ground to support oneself and the margin of error being a tenth of a second, at best. This sort of task would then be repeated approximately forty to sixty times in a given level. Not all at once, mind, but enough to cause the most ardent gamer to hurl his controller away like it was personally responsible and stomp off, cursing the names of all who invented such tripe. It gave the player unlimited lives, and just as well. Dying upwards of 100 times to complete a level, even for the extremely skilled person playing in the videos, was not uncommon. The name of the hack is a bit crude to mention here, to an open audience, and even a line of asterisks would allow the inquisitive to guess. So let's call it "Crude-nickname-for-an-annoying-and-disreputable-person Mario". That should be vague enough for the parents of impressionable children.
THAT'S about it.
Monday, September 24, 2007
A Productive Time All Around
Well, this weekend was a pile of fun. Let me tell you what. I went home to be with my family and friends, as you already know if you have read the previous entry, and I got all sorts of things done. None of them were in any way productive, but they got done regardless.
The first thing was a Magic draft tournament. To those who are unfamiliar with the rules of such a tournament, we each had three 15-card packs of Magic cards which we had not opened previously. We would each open a pack, take a card, pass the rest, take another, pass the rest, etc. The second and third packs would be opened in sequence, and the process repeated. The 45 cards we ended up with at the end, we had to build a working deck out of. Well, a deck, anyway. The deck I built didn't end up working at all. It was easily the worst out of anyone's there. I didn't win a single game. I suspect that if I had started to win one, against all odds, the deck would have burst into flames or imploded into a black hole. This is unusual for me. I generally know how to do these things quite well. It was probably because I was unfamiliar with the block (group of cards) we had drafted in. Oh well.
Leaving aside the indignity of my defeat, I had a marvelous time. Lots of Super Smash Bros. Melee was played, World of WarCraft accomplishments were touted, large dinners were eaten in the presence of many. Dinnertime with five or six of my friends as well as my parents is always an entertaining experience, simply because of the sheer random nature of what we generally end up discussing. I don't remember all the details, but I know the Evil Overlord Rules (Google it if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's worth it) were the subjects of much debate. And laughter. Because if at any time, an evil overlord actually obeyed these rules, surely all hope for goodness and prosperity in the world would vanish forever.
Tonight is Halo 3 night. It doesn't get released, strictly speaking, until tomorrow; but starting at nine o'clock, the store is opening its doors to any who reserved the game, as I did. So I anticipate hours of fun. My girlfriend is coming along, but only because it provides a more quiet and relaxed atmosphere than her house so that she can study (which probably speaks volumes about the atmosphere of her house. Living with sixteen other girls would take its toll of sanity on anyone), as I doubt highly that she is at all interested in the game.
Speaking of the game, hoo nelly. It promises to be absolutely ridiculous, in all aspects. I'd love to go on and on about it, but such things will probably have to wait until Monday. With a test today, a speech due on Wednesday, and a test in Meteorology on Friday, I may have to do something I have been loath to consider previously...something I had avoided so far this year and hoped to avoid still further. I may have to actually do some work.
Yes, yes, I know, a horrifying concept. I can hear your gasps of panic and incredulosity from here, I assure you. Even though, now that I think about it, you aren't actually reading this right now this second, as I'm writing it previous to posting it. Unless you were to look over my shoulder. Which nobody is. Regardless, I firmly believe that my entire potential audience has had a precognitive flash of the last sentence of the last paragraph at the exact instant I wrote it, and I had a similar flash of being able to hear your reactions. Or maybe that's just a random hallucination. Lord knows my sanity is not as great as it should be, after a weekend with my friends. Spending extended amounts of time in their presence taxes the brain.
My girlfriend is actually in the room right now, talking on her cell phone and subtly trying to indicate - without being so gross as to actually say or do anything - that she wants me to stop writing and go with her to dinner. But this journal waits for no man, or woman. I was struck with the creative inspiration, and I could not resist. Any writer can tell you when something like that happens. Nevertheless, she will wait, for it will only be a few minutes more. When the inspirations strike, I type like lightning.
But the point of the first point I made was that she was talking on her cellular phone. She recently acquired a new phone, a hands-free that has just a small dealie that attaches to her ear which she can speak into and hear from. The quality of her voice is somewhat questionable, that far from the mouthpiece, but I cannot say as to whether the reason I can barely understand her on my phone is that she is mumbling, the mouthpiece is misplaced, or her other phone is lacking in clarity. I say "her other phone", because as soon as I got on the bus to head to college, I realized I had left my cell phone back at my house. So she has lent me her old phone in the interim, while I wait for my phone to arrive here (my parents were kind enough to overnight-mail it to me).
Not having my cell phone gives me cause to realize how truly dependent on it I am. Without it, I cannot communicate effectively with the outside world. I cannot call up my friends to inquire "what is up", speak with my girlfriend about when to meet her at night, talk to my parents and beg them for money...I don't even know what time it is. If she hadn't lent me her phone, I'd be lost.
Another thought occurs to me. My girlfriend's hands-free headpiece makes it impossible to tell if she is having a conversation on her phone or merely talking animatedly into the air. This is a more common trend than one might think, for hands-free headsets are dominating the business world. It makes the most rational of businessmen look like gibbering lunatics, blithering into the empty air, having an animated conversation with another party who is not, technically, present. The time I was in a public restroom, and one of these men walked in and went to the urinal next to mine...already a sign of trouble, every other urinal was empty. That's just creepy. As he began his ablutions, he was having a loud conversation that seemed to consist of "What??...No! Tell him...He said that? Tell him that...What?? He said that??...Tell him..." Again and again and again. I could not decide whether he was a high-powered executive skillfully negotiating company politics, or an insane hobo debating the fictional spirits surrounding him. It really could have gone either way.
That's just about it. Reports on what I've seen from the game next time...and what I got from my pack of Magic cards that I'm going to buy myself for completing a week.
The first thing was a Magic draft tournament. To those who are unfamiliar with the rules of such a tournament, we each had three 15-card packs of Magic cards which we had not opened previously. We would each open a pack, take a card, pass the rest, take another, pass the rest, etc. The second and third packs would be opened in sequence, and the process repeated. The 45 cards we ended up with at the end, we had to build a working deck out of. Well, a deck, anyway. The deck I built didn't end up working at all. It was easily the worst out of anyone's there. I didn't win a single game. I suspect that if I had started to win one, against all odds, the deck would have burst into flames or imploded into a black hole. This is unusual for me. I generally know how to do these things quite well. It was probably because I was unfamiliar with the block (group of cards) we had drafted in. Oh well.
Leaving aside the indignity of my defeat, I had a marvelous time. Lots of Super Smash Bros. Melee was played, World of WarCraft accomplishments were touted, large dinners were eaten in the presence of many. Dinnertime with five or six of my friends as well as my parents is always an entertaining experience, simply because of the sheer random nature of what we generally end up discussing. I don't remember all the details, but I know the Evil Overlord Rules (Google it if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's worth it) were the subjects of much debate. And laughter. Because if at any time, an evil overlord actually obeyed these rules, surely all hope for goodness and prosperity in the world would vanish forever.
Tonight is Halo 3 night. It doesn't get released, strictly speaking, until tomorrow; but starting at nine o'clock, the store is opening its doors to any who reserved the game, as I did. So I anticipate hours of fun. My girlfriend is coming along, but only because it provides a more quiet and relaxed atmosphere than her house so that she can study (which probably speaks volumes about the atmosphere of her house. Living with sixteen other girls would take its toll of sanity on anyone), as I doubt highly that she is at all interested in the game.
Speaking of the game, hoo nelly. It promises to be absolutely ridiculous, in all aspects. I'd love to go on and on about it, but such things will probably have to wait until Monday. With a test today, a speech due on Wednesday, and a test in Meteorology on Friday, I may have to do something I have been loath to consider previously...something I had avoided so far this year and hoped to avoid still further. I may have to actually do some work.
Yes, yes, I know, a horrifying concept. I can hear your gasps of panic and incredulosity from here, I assure you. Even though, now that I think about it, you aren't actually reading this right now this second, as I'm writing it previous to posting it. Unless you were to look over my shoulder. Which nobody is. Regardless, I firmly believe that my entire potential audience has had a precognitive flash of the last sentence of the last paragraph at the exact instant I wrote it, and I had a similar flash of being able to hear your reactions. Or maybe that's just a random hallucination. Lord knows my sanity is not as great as it should be, after a weekend with my friends. Spending extended amounts of time in their presence taxes the brain.
My girlfriend is actually in the room right now, talking on her cell phone and subtly trying to indicate - without being so gross as to actually say or do anything - that she wants me to stop writing and go with her to dinner. But this journal waits for no man, or woman. I was struck with the creative inspiration, and I could not resist. Any writer can tell you when something like that happens. Nevertheless, she will wait, for it will only be a few minutes more. When the inspirations strike, I type like lightning.
But the point of the first point I made was that she was talking on her cellular phone. She recently acquired a new phone, a hands-free that has just a small dealie that attaches to her ear which she can speak into and hear from. The quality of her voice is somewhat questionable, that far from the mouthpiece, but I cannot say as to whether the reason I can barely understand her on my phone is that she is mumbling, the mouthpiece is misplaced, or her other phone is lacking in clarity. I say "her other phone", because as soon as I got on the bus to head to college, I realized I had left my cell phone back at my house. So she has lent me her old phone in the interim, while I wait for my phone to arrive here (my parents were kind enough to overnight-mail it to me).
Not having my cell phone gives me cause to realize how truly dependent on it I am. Without it, I cannot communicate effectively with the outside world. I cannot call up my friends to inquire "what is up", speak with my girlfriend about when to meet her at night, talk to my parents and beg them for money...I don't even know what time it is. If she hadn't lent me her phone, I'd be lost.
Another thought occurs to me. My girlfriend's hands-free headpiece makes it impossible to tell if she is having a conversation on her phone or merely talking animatedly into the air. This is a more common trend than one might think, for hands-free headsets are dominating the business world. It makes the most rational of businessmen look like gibbering lunatics, blithering into the empty air, having an animated conversation with another party who is not, technically, present. The time I was in a public restroom, and one of these men walked in and went to the urinal next to mine...already a sign of trouble, every other urinal was empty. That's just creepy. As he began his ablutions, he was having a loud conversation that seemed to consist of "What??...No! Tell him...He said that? Tell him that...What?? He said that??...Tell him..." Again and again and again. I could not decide whether he was a high-powered executive skillfully negotiating company politics, or an insane hobo debating the fictional spirits surrounding him. It really could have gone either way.
That's just about it. Reports on what I've seen from the game next time...and what I got from my pack of Magic cards that I'm going to buy myself for completing a week.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig
This one won't be long. My friends are waiting on me and, frankly, I don't have the inspirations I did last time. This particular post takes place from the comfort of my own home. Not the "home" I traditionally refer to, my dorm room, but my actual house wherein I grew into the fine, upstanding person I am now.
...What? I am a fine, upstanding...er...the thing about that is...
Dramatic license. Push off.
Anyway, I just arrived after a long and boring bus ride that was made much more pleasant by the fact that my girlfriend was riding with me. Even with her company, five hours is five hours, and the climate control on the bus seemed to fluctuate between Cryogenic Freezing Chamber and Surface of the Sun. So it was not without relief that I exited the vehicle and began the traditional "hobble because you've been sitting in an uncomfortable bus seat for hours" limp. And now I'm here. But I haven't done anything that interesting since I got here, so let's have a recap.
I run a gaming club at the university once a week, and our most recent meeting was piles of fun. I started by playing an obscure variation of Magic: the Gathering known as "Chaos Magic", invented by one of the guys who were there. It involves, at the beginning of each turn, rolling a 20-sided die and having the effect for the given number occur. It makes for crazy random games, it does. Nothing like trying to play a traditional game of Magic and having to randomly discard your hand, destroy all your creatures, deal out damage, and steal life from the other players on a freewheeling basis.
Then we went on and played crazy obscure games like Munchkin, Chrononauts, and Illuminati (all copyright their respective owners, it would be an honor to be sued but please don't.) Lots of fun all around, especially when you consider that we changed history to make it so Hitler was assassinated, there was a second Civil War in 1898, and John Lennon not only survived his shooting, but became a US Senator. And that was just the one game. Later, the Bavarian Illuminati (the ones you traditionally see, with the pyramid and a floating eye on top) lost hardcore to the Sons of Cthulhu, but they were ultimately unseated by the Discordian Society and the Gnomes of Zurich. Or something. I wasn't really paying attention, since I was too busy mourning my many, many losses.
I slept through my first-hour class this morning. All the notes are online and the book provides pretty much all the instruction I need. The professor teaches straight from the notes, and the grading scale is so weird that an 80 is an A. A 65 is a B. And so on. And the only grades are from tests, so no pop quizzes to ruin my day. Whether this represents that the class is going to be extremely easy to get an A in, or the professor realizes his class is so difficult that an 80 is just about the highest one could hope to achieve, I don't know. I'm hopin' for the first.
Several of the stories which vie for attention in my head have been flitting about as of late. The details are sketchy, but they range between...Well, here's one. A girl who is the ambassador from Earth to a galactic federation of planets is captured by an evil despot in the federation, who is actually controlling the rest of the planets with puppet leaders...but she is saved by her boyfriend, who happens to have fantastic super-strength and marvelous powers. A variety of space and ground battles ensue as the couple evade the attentions of the mad king and his super-powered bodyguard, stronger than the hero, but who actually cares about doing the right thing, enough to occasionally allow the two to escape from his liege's diabolical clutches.
...See, this is why I don't usually write these things down. Just looking at it, I can see why it won't ever make a good written story. Possibly an action movie or something, but I don't have the technical skill to pull such a thing off. Sigh. I suppose that a childhood of watching superhero cartoons and reading comic books is to blame for such oddities of my imagination. If you're not convinced, read my previous post to see my obsession with such subjects.
It's just as well. When I first heard the Black Sabbath song "Iron Man", I immediately devised in my head how exactly such a thing could be turned into a story. In my mind, a massive, space-based magnetic field threatened to tear the Earth apart, so one man went up in a space station to try and counteract it. He ended up dispersing the field, but the backlash turned him into a man made of living steel, using intense magnetic pressure to be able to move his iron body. He then, obviously, went to fight crime, as would any man who suddenly discovered he weighed sixteen tons and could throw a car to the moon. It's just common sense.
See? There I go again. More rambling. But then, that's the name of this online journal, isn't it? You knew what you were in for when you started reading. And most of what I think about is more of the same, so I generally don't dignify them by writing them out. They remain in my head, occasionally banging off the sides of my skull, bobbing up at the most inconvenient times ("Luke...I think I love you." "Aw, I...hmm, maybe the bodyguard actually has a heart of gold!") You can see how this might be disruptive to my day-to-day schedule. Maybe I should go ahead and write them down, just to get them out of my head. Even if I burn the paper they're on afterwards, it'll probably be good to give them release.
That's about all I got. As I said, this one would be somewhat shorter. So...great. Bye.
...What? I am a fine, upstanding...er...the thing about that is...
Dramatic license. Push off.
Anyway, I just arrived after a long and boring bus ride that was made much more pleasant by the fact that my girlfriend was riding with me. Even with her company, five hours is five hours, and the climate control on the bus seemed to fluctuate between Cryogenic Freezing Chamber and Surface of the Sun. So it was not without relief that I exited the vehicle and began the traditional "hobble because you've been sitting in an uncomfortable bus seat for hours" limp. And now I'm here. But I haven't done anything that interesting since I got here, so let's have a recap.
I run a gaming club at the university once a week, and our most recent meeting was piles of fun. I started by playing an obscure variation of Magic: the Gathering known as "Chaos Magic", invented by one of the guys who were there. It involves, at the beginning of each turn, rolling a 20-sided die and having the effect for the given number occur. It makes for crazy random games, it does. Nothing like trying to play a traditional game of Magic and having to randomly discard your hand, destroy all your creatures, deal out damage, and steal life from the other players on a freewheeling basis.
Then we went on and played crazy obscure games like Munchkin, Chrononauts, and Illuminati (all copyright their respective owners, it would be an honor to be sued but please don't.) Lots of fun all around, especially when you consider that we changed history to make it so Hitler was assassinated, there was a second Civil War in 1898, and John Lennon not only survived his shooting, but became a US Senator. And that was just the one game. Later, the Bavarian Illuminati (the ones you traditionally see, with the pyramid and a floating eye on top) lost hardcore to the Sons of Cthulhu, but they were ultimately unseated by the Discordian Society and the Gnomes of Zurich. Or something. I wasn't really paying attention, since I was too busy mourning my many, many losses.
I slept through my first-hour class this morning. All the notes are online and the book provides pretty much all the instruction I need. The professor teaches straight from the notes, and the grading scale is so weird that an 80 is an A. A 65 is a B. And so on. And the only grades are from tests, so no pop quizzes to ruin my day. Whether this represents that the class is going to be extremely easy to get an A in, or the professor realizes his class is so difficult that an 80 is just about the highest one could hope to achieve, I don't know. I'm hopin' for the first.
Several of the stories which vie for attention in my head have been flitting about as of late. The details are sketchy, but they range between...Well, here's one. A girl who is the ambassador from Earth to a galactic federation of planets is captured by an evil despot in the federation, who is actually controlling the rest of the planets with puppet leaders...but she is saved by her boyfriend, who happens to have fantastic super-strength and marvelous powers. A variety of space and ground battles ensue as the couple evade the attentions of the mad king and his super-powered bodyguard, stronger than the hero, but who actually cares about doing the right thing, enough to occasionally allow the two to escape from his liege's diabolical clutches.
...See, this is why I don't usually write these things down. Just looking at it, I can see why it won't ever make a good written story. Possibly an action movie or something, but I don't have the technical skill to pull such a thing off. Sigh. I suppose that a childhood of watching superhero cartoons and reading comic books is to blame for such oddities of my imagination. If you're not convinced, read my previous post to see my obsession with such subjects.
It's just as well. When I first heard the Black Sabbath song "Iron Man", I immediately devised in my head how exactly such a thing could be turned into a story. In my mind, a massive, space-based magnetic field threatened to tear the Earth apart, so one man went up in a space station to try and counteract it. He ended up dispersing the field, but the backlash turned him into a man made of living steel, using intense magnetic pressure to be able to move his iron body. He then, obviously, went to fight crime, as would any man who suddenly discovered he weighed sixteen tons and could throw a car to the moon. It's just common sense.
See? There I go again. More rambling. But then, that's the name of this online journal, isn't it? You knew what you were in for when you started reading. And most of what I think about is more of the same, so I generally don't dignify them by writing them out. They remain in my head, occasionally banging off the sides of my skull, bobbing up at the most inconvenient times ("Luke...I think I love you." "Aw, I...hmm, maybe the bodyguard actually has a heart of gold!") You can see how this might be disruptive to my day-to-day schedule. Maybe I should go ahead and write them down, just to get them out of my head. Even if I burn the paper they're on afterwards, it'll probably be good to give them release.
That's about all I got. As I said, this one would be somewhat shorter. So...great. Bye.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Of Coffee Shops and Superheroes
So here I am. Wednesday’s update, as promised. It is, as of when I begin to write this, 1:47 PM, and I’m in the food court of the Reitz Union. Normally I prefer to write at home, but it’s raining (drizzling, but still), and past experience has taught me that lugging a computer home in the rain is a bad sort of idea. I sure wish the wireless network would work around here. It’s probably this bloody computer. Says I’m connected in one breath and says I’m not in the next. I’ll have someone take a look at it.
Monday’s update was not what might be called my best work, vaguely interesting, or even a coherent piece of writing. I called it a game review, in my naiveté, but the comments of others gave me cause to give it a once-over, and now I am ashamed to admit that it is nothing of the sort. It’s too long, for one thing, and it’s less a review than a gushing description of all of the game’s mechanics. Any decent gaming magazine, should I present them with that, would laugh until their spittle had drenched my shirt, whereupon I would be booted from the premises for so completely failing. I didn’t even give it a numerical score out of five or ten. I am disappointed in myself.
Well, that’s what this journal is for, isn’t it? It’s as much a practice of my writing skills as it is an archive of my thoughts. I won’t take it down or even edit it: I want it to stand for all time as sort of a testament to my unpolished technique, an example of what not to do, the very thing to glance over whenever I feel that my writing is too amazing to be believed. Roald Dahl, an accomplished children’s book writer (he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among others), gave this advice: “Maintain a degree of humility. The author who believes his work is marvelous is headed for trouble.” This will do that very thing. Sorry for subjecting you to all that, though.
What happened in the last two days that’s worth writing about? Well...I had a quiz in Public Speaking. It was fairly easy to ace, which I did, seeing as the teacher was kind enough to give us all five questions the class before. Maybe he believes that we could profit more by studying exactly what we need to study. Maybe he believes that actual speeches are more important towards our grades than simple written quizzes. Maybe he’s just sick of grading papers and wants things to be easier on himself, for a change. Maybe he was bribed by one of the students; I’ll never know. We WERE supposed to hand in an assignment today, but he made no mention of it the whole class period, and nobody made a move to turn it in. It is just as well, for I had forgotten to do it.
As I sit here in the crowded food court, I wonder many things. Thoughts cross my mind at lightning speed. One notable example is why there is a Starbucks under construction on the other side of the room. I would not normally question this, for the frequency of Starbucks...Starbuckses...Starbucksi? The frequency of the coffee shops in question is not anything new or puzzling. What baffles me is that across the way from the future Starbucks is another coffee shop, Java City. And I mean, right across. I could walk between the two in five seconds. Two Starbucks kiosks in the same building would raise an eyebrow, but in the same room, a stone’s throw from each other? Even if that stone were thrown by a really weak guy?
The comedian Lewis Black commented that seeing two Starbucks shops across the street from each other caused him to realize that this was the end of the universe. I’m not sure how this applies to competing joints, but surely it must presage something of some cosmic importance.
Speaking of cosmic, I’m reading too many comic books lately. Enough so that I actually start to get into the stories and get personally interested in the characters. But I am saved from total immersion by the persistent belief by comic book writers that if logic and reason, nay, the very laws of the universe must be twisted and bent beyond recognizability to maintain their hackneyed stories, then so be it. That is to say, the laws of the universe that are not already bent to allow for people who can fly, lift cars, use heat vision, etc.
Heat vision...now wouldn’t that be an awesome superpower? The ability to cook your food by staring at it. Or to surreptitiously set fires from meters and meters away. And...er...well, there aren’t that many uses for it, now that I think about it. I’ve just always had a strange fascination with it, for whatever reason. I can’t see the practical application of burning things from a distance, anyway, barring a few unusual circumstances (“What? The research paper was due today? Do I have it with me, you ask? Er...look over there!” *FWOOSH*)
But I digress. The characters in comic books will strain credibility to the breaking point to avoid obvious solutions to their problems. Every comic-book universe contains a few heroes who are so far beyond every other hero in terms of power that the presence of the rest seems unnecessary. Why have Batman when...well, scratch that, Batman is cool. Why have Aquaman when Superman is around? Why have Aquaman at all? Has his ability to talk to fish ever mattered? Aquaman is the Ringo Starr of the Justice League: he has talent, yes, but the others mostly keep him around because he would complain if they left him at home.
Which is why I like the Sentry. Even people who don't read comic books can appreciate this. Surely you, the reader, has seen a movie, or read a book, or something similar, wherein one of the characters does something so completely stupid and against all elementary logic that you want to reach into the page (or screen) and beat them senseless for being such an idiot. An unarmed girl in a horror movie walking into an obviously haunted house, for instance. It makes you want to scream "DO THIS, YOU MORON!" Or is that just me? (Please tell me it isn't.)
The Sentry is extraordinarily powerful. He commands the power of a million exploding suns (which a few minutes on wikipedia and a calculator tells me is 1.217x10^35 megawatts per second, a great big number if I've ever seen one), but that isn't why I like him. It's his obvious determination to actually do all the things he should be doing, logically. At one point, his greatest foe, the Void, taunts him for his weakness and mockingly states "You'll never be rid of me." A normal comic-book character would, at this point, bury his face in his hands and weep in despair. The Sentry, however, disagrees, grabs the Void, flies him into space, and hurls him into the sun. I was so shocked that he actually did the thing that made sense that I immediately sought out other books that featured him.
But enough about comic books. What else happened? Well...I rejoined the online community of World of WarCraft, to the somewhat tepid response of my friends. I get to level 65, and all I get is a mild remonstrance from Travis for leveling faster than he? Come on, you clowns, the school year can't be that difficult. Nevertheless, I foresee a lot of time wasted on WoW in the coming weeks...though not so much time as to lower my grades. I do have an image (and several scholarships) to maintain, after all. I think a future potential employer would be more impressed with a degree than he would with a level 70 Warrior in full Karazhan epics.
To my surprise, I apparently look good in hats. I was initially skeptical when my girlfriend showed me the hat she bought me, but as near as I can figure out, anything which shields the general public from my hair (which is legendarily untidy) is a boon. So I may buy some more in the near future. Although a paper bag would be cheaper, and do just as well; perhaps even better, for it would spare people having to look at my face.
So that's about all I got. Bye.
(Things to do for next time: Figure out how to write an actual game review. Find more comic books with the Sentry in them. Learn the plural of Starbucks.)
Monday’s update was not what might be called my best work, vaguely interesting, or even a coherent piece of writing. I called it a game review, in my naiveté, but the comments of others gave me cause to give it a once-over, and now I am ashamed to admit that it is nothing of the sort. It’s too long, for one thing, and it’s less a review than a gushing description of all of the game’s mechanics. Any decent gaming magazine, should I present them with that, would laugh until their spittle had drenched my shirt, whereupon I would be booted from the premises for so completely failing. I didn’t even give it a numerical score out of five or ten. I am disappointed in myself.
Well, that’s what this journal is for, isn’t it? It’s as much a practice of my writing skills as it is an archive of my thoughts. I won’t take it down or even edit it: I want it to stand for all time as sort of a testament to my unpolished technique, an example of what not to do, the very thing to glance over whenever I feel that my writing is too amazing to be believed. Roald Dahl, an accomplished children’s book writer (he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among others), gave this advice: “Maintain a degree of humility. The author who believes his work is marvelous is headed for trouble.” This will do that very thing. Sorry for subjecting you to all that, though.
What happened in the last two days that’s worth writing about? Well...I had a quiz in Public Speaking. It was fairly easy to ace, which I did, seeing as the teacher was kind enough to give us all five questions the class before. Maybe he believes that we could profit more by studying exactly what we need to study. Maybe he believes that actual speeches are more important towards our grades than simple written quizzes. Maybe he’s just sick of grading papers and wants things to be easier on himself, for a change. Maybe he was bribed by one of the students; I’ll never know. We WERE supposed to hand in an assignment today, but he made no mention of it the whole class period, and nobody made a move to turn it in. It is just as well, for I had forgotten to do it.
As I sit here in the crowded food court, I wonder many things. Thoughts cross my mind at lightning speed. One notable example is why there is a Starbucks under construction on the other side of the room. I would not normally question this, for the frequency of Starbucks...Starbuckses...Starbucksi? The frequency of the coffee shops in question is not anything new or puzzling. What baffles me is that across the way from the future Starbucks is another coffee shop, Java City. And I mean, right across. I could walk between the two in five seconds. Two Starbucks kiosks in the same building would raise an eyebrow, but in the same room, a stone’s throw from each other? Even if that stone were thrown by a really weak guy?
The comedian Lewis Black commented that seeing two Starbucks shops across the street from each other caused him to realize that this was the end of the universe. I’m not sure how this applies to competing joints, but surely it must presage something of some cosmic importance.
Speaking of cosmic, I’m reading too many comic books lately. Enough so that I actually start to get into the stories and get personally interested in the characters. But I am saved from total immersion by the persistent belief by comic book writers that if logic and reason, nay, the very laws of the universe must be twisted and bent beyond recognizability to maintain their hackneyed stories, then so be it. That is to say, the laws of the universe that are not already bent to allow for people who can fly, lift cars, use heat vision, etc.
Heat vision...now wouldn’t that be an awesome superpower? The ability to cook your food by staring at it. Or to surreptitiously set fires from meters and meters away. And...er...well, there aren’t that many uses for it, now that I think about it. I’ve just always had a strange fascination with it, for whatever reason. I can’t see the practical application of burning things from a distance, anyway, barring a few unusual circumstances (“What? The research paper was due today? Do I have it with me, you ask? Er...look over there!” *FWOOSH*)
But I digress. The characters in comic books will strain credibility to the breaking point to avoid obvious solutions to their problems. Every comic-book universe contains a few heroes who are so far beyond every other hero in terms of power that the presence of the rest seems unnecessary. Why have Batman when...well, scratch that, Batman is cool. Why have Aquaman when Superman is around? Why have Aquaman at all? Has his ability to talk to fish ever mattered? Aquaman is the Ringo Starr of the Justice League: he has talent, yes, but the others mostly keep him around because he would complain if they left him at home.
Which is why I like the Sentry. Even people who don't read comic books can appreciate this. Surely you, the reader, has seen a movie, or read a book, or something similar, wherein one of the characters does something so completely stupid and against all elementary logic that you want to reach into the page (or screen) and beat them senseless for being such an idiot. An unarmed girl in a horror movie walking into an obviously haunted house, for instance. It makes you want to scream "DO THIS, YOU MORON!" Or is that just me? (Please tell me it isn't.)
The Sentry is extraordinarily powerful. He commands the power of a million exploding suns (which a few minutes on wikipedia and a calculator tells me is 1.217x10^35 megawatts per second, a great big number if I've ever seen one), but that isn't why I like him. It's his obvious determination to actually do all the things he should be doing, logically. At one point, his greatest foe, the Void, taunts him for his weakness and mockingly states "You'll never be rid of me." A normal comic-book character would, at this point, bury his face in his hands and weep in despair. The Sentry, however, disagrees, grabs the Void, flies him into space, and hurls him into the sun. I was so shocked that he actually did the thing that made sense that I immediately sought out other books that featured him.
But enough about comic books. What else happened? Well...I rejoined the online community of World of WarCraft, to the somewhat tepid response of my friends. I get to level 65, and all I get is a mild remonstrance from Travis for leveling faster than he? Come on, you clowns, the school year can't be that difficult. Nevertheless, I foresee a lot of time wasted on WoW in the coming weeks...though not so much time as to lower my grades. I do have an image (and several scholarships) to maintain, after all. I think a future potential employer would be more impressed with a degree than he would with a level 70 Warrior in full Karazhan epics.
To my surprise, I apparently look good in hats. I was initially skeptical when my girlfriend showed me the hat she bought me, but as near as I can figure out, anything which shields the general public from my hair (which is legendarily untidy) is a boon. So I may buy some more in the near future. Although a paper bag would be cheaper, and do just as well; perhaps even better, for it would spare people having to look at my face.
So that's about all I got. Bye.
(Things to do for next time: Figure out how to write an actual game review. Find more comic books with the Sentry in them. Learn the plural of Starbucks.)
Monday, September 17, 2007
Game Review: God Hand, for PS2
Nothing interesting enough has taken place in the 24 hours between the last post and this one to make note of here. So instead I'll go with the first game review, and that game is God Hand, for the Sony PlayStation 2.
God Hand is a traditional brawler, in the manner of Double Dragon or Final Fight or even the lamented Bad Dudes before it. ("The President has been captured by ninjas! Are you a bad enough dude to save him?" - Verbatim quote from the game's intro.) You go from level to level, from area to area, find hordes of violent goons, and beat the tar out of them in the finest tradition of killing everything that looks at you funny that seems to prevail in most video games. There are bosses, and minibosses, but mostly the game is just a long string of beating people up in an amusing fashion.
So what distinguishes God Hand from the hundreds of other beat-em-ups before and after it? I think the best answer would be "style", although another answer could be "humor" or even "poisonous chihuahuas." God Hand does not take itself seriously in the slightest. It knows that it is perpetrating the stilted gameplay of a hackneyed genre, and uses that base to build a surprisingly solid game.
For one thing, it's very difficult. This is not in and of itself something that improves the quality of the game, but it keeps you on edge. During the earlier levels, you can afford to make a few mishaps, because it at least starts at a mildly forgiving tone. In the later areas, though, any one or two enemies is quite capable of knocking you from a full health bar to down on your ass in a matter of seconds. You must use all your considerable skills to fight, in some cases, as many as five or six of these foes at once. Oh, and you don't have a block button, so if they swing at you, you'd best hope your dodge doesn't take you into the threatened zone of another thug.
So how is a character supposed to survive in this hostile environment? Impressive martial arts skills, for one thing; your character (a sarcastic ruffian with a heart of gold named Gene) seems a master of every discipline from jeet kune do to drunken boxing. The fully customizable control system allows you to set the over 110 moves available to you to any button or button combination you feel comfortable with, giving the game a great level of depth and sidestepping the "Press B to kick" trope that makes all the rest of these games all seem the same. Want to play Gene as a quick-punching specialist that dances around and tags his opponents with rabbit punches? You can. Want to play him as a heavyweight who barely moves while he slugs his foes with powerful, but slow, attacks? Again, you can. Want to play him as an uncoordinated lout who uses seemingly random attacks and appears to win by sheer luck? You can, but this is an inadvisable strategy for later in the game, where the enemies will not even pause to laugh uproariously at your bumbling before beating the snot out of you.
An intriguing and well-executed feature of the game is the addition of situational special attacks, that is to say, attacks that become available after certain conditions are met. Hit an enemy enough times in a row and he will become staggered, temporarily dazed and unable to defend himself. Then, the option appears on the screen to press the O button to unleash one of several special attacks. These include Suplex, where Gene grabs the foe and, bending over backwards, smashes his head into the ground; Pummel, where pressing the O button rapidly results in Gene unleashing a torrent of rapid punches or kicks on the enemy, capping it off with a single, powerful strike that launches the enemy away; and Stinger, reserved for larger enemies, where Gene repeatedly smashes the enemy's face into his knee (again triggered by quick button presses) prior to crushing him into the ground. These are only a few; more are available and found by exploring the game and fighting different foes.
But simply punches and kicks wouldn't be enough to save Gene from the terrors that await him. As the story explains, demons are making their move now to seize control of the Earth (although their methods seem questionable and, indeed, outright laughable), and Gene must defeat their leaders to quell the uprising. Fortunately, he is not unaided in this endeavor. He has a magical right arm, the titular God Hand, that gives him a variety of interesting powers.
For starters, Gene has many special attacks known as God Reels or Roulettes (named for their selection process: when you wish to use one, you hit the button, and time slows down while you pick your choice from a spinning wheel of options). These range from the Divine Smash, a powerful punch that will break through any guard and deal heavy damage to one or two foes; to Kung Fu Samba, a combination of powerful (and stylish!) strikes to cripple a single enemy; to Home Run God, wherein Gene conjures a bat of shining divine energy to strike an enemy with such force that he flies far away into the air and disappears with a twinkle. My personal favorite, however, is the Ball Buster...Gene moves towards his opponent as if readying for a mighty strike, then simply wheels and kicks him in the...er, vitals...to the accompaniment of a humorous *ding!* and a smattering of laughter from the unseen audience. These attacks can be used only sparingly, as they consume "orbs" of power that you must scavenge from fallen foes, and it can be a long time between finding these orbs. Still, they are both amusing and powerful, and excellent ways to fight bosses or superlatively tough enemies.
But even these powers pale in comparison to the might that is revealed when Gene unleashes the true power of his God Hand. As you deal and receive damage in combat, a small meter below your health called the "Tension Gauge" slowly fills up. When it is full, Gene may activate the hidden potential of the God Hand. The brace around his arm restraining the God Hand shatters, and Gene becomes invulnerable, as well as moving faster and dealing greatly increased damage, for as long as the meter lasts. This is not permanent, or even particularly long-lasting, but it can be enough to deal with a group of particularly stubborn foes or take the edge off a boss fight. It is often thought of as a "panic button", for dealing with situations that are too much for even Gene's normal level of skill or to extricate oneself from a bad spot.
The difficulty, as has been remarked upon previously, is intense - punishing the casual player by soundly thrashing him before he can even reach the second stage. But it is not entirely unmerciful. Beginning the game, a player may choose between Easy - still tough by most standards, but certainly doable - and Normal - advanced difficulty, only for those who consider themselves skilled in the genre - but the final difficulty, Hard, is not for the faint of heart or the slow of button-pressing. Hard cannot be selected until the game has been beaten once already, and it provides a tremendous challenge to even the most seasoned veterans of these games. In the old style of games like Contra and Ninja Gaiden and similar, the game is entirely bent on destroying you and your fragile self-confidence (at least, in terms of game-playing) and is quite accomplished at fulfilling this goal.
But even more remarkable than the adjustable difficulty (admittedly, there is nothing truly remarkable about it, it seems a fairly standard feature in games today) is the dynamic difficulty that adjusts itself on the fly. This establishes itself in levels of challenge, of which there are four: Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and the intimidating Level Die, which is represented by a flaming skull. As you successfully defeat enemies and avoid taking damage, the level increases...and when your level goes up, you do not increase in power, as is expected, but your enemies become stronger and faster accordingly. If you take damage and fail to beat up your opponents, your level decreases until you can resume the smackdown. So the game constantly keeps the experience at a level that will neither bore you through easiness or crush you through hardness. It is a well-implemented feature that should be seen in more games.
A review of God Hand cannot be complete without mentioning the humor permeating the game. The outright silliness of your enemies (Clowns? A wrestling ape? An enchantress who turns you into a puppy?) combines with the amusing story (the interactions between Gene and Olivia, the girl that follows him around, simply have to be seen to be appreciated) to provide an experience that will have you chuckling as often as pummeling. The experience of facing on a fearsome demon, adorned with spikes and wreathed in purple hellfires, and kicking it in the groin to watch it stagger about in pain, is one that typifies the sense of humor that suffuses God Hand. Oh, yes, one more thing: There really are poisonous chihuahuas in the game. You can see them race and bet on them to win money. You might think that this is a joke on my part; well, let me tell you, I'm not nearly that creative.
All in all, God Hand is a well-designed and extremely entertaining game. Some claim it is repetitive and boring, that the game never truly changes, that it does not provide an in-depth experience. To those people I say "Did you perhaps read the back of the box before you bought it?" It is not intended to be a deep and enriching experience, but a fun and mindless beat-em-up done in the old style that is so rarely seen these days. I bought it twice (I have a bad habit of losing game disks), but just once should be enough for anyone not so careless as me. It won't be regretted.
God Hand is a traditional brawler, in the manner of Double Dragon or Final Fight or even the lamented Bad Dudes before it. ("The President has been captured by ninjas! Are you a bad enough dude to save him?" - Verbatim quote from the game's intro.) You go from level to level, from area to area, find hordes of violent goons, and beat the tar out of them in the finest tradition of killing everything that looks at you funny that seems to prevail in most video games. There are bosses, and minibosses, but mostly the game is just a long string of beating people up in an amusing fashion.
So what distinguishes God Hand from the hundreds of other beat-em-ups before and after it? I think the best answer would be "style", although another answer could be "humor" or even "poisonous chihuahuas." God Hand does not take itself seriously in the slightest. It knows that it is perpetrating the stilted gameplay of a hackneyed genre, and uses that base to build a surprisingly solid game.
For one thing, it's very difficult. This is not in and of itself something that improves the quality of the game, but it keeps you on edge. During the earlier levels, you can afford to make a few mishaps, because it at least starts at a mildly forgiving tone. In the later areas, though, any one or two enemies is quite capable of knocking you from a full health bar to down on your ass in a matter of seconds. You must use all your considerable skills to fight, in some cases, as many as five or six of these foes at once. Oh, and you don't have a block button, so if they swing at you, you'd best hope your dodge doesn't take you into the threatened zone of another thug.
So how is a character supposed to survive in this hostile environment? Impressive martial arts skills, for one thing; your character (a sarcastic ruffian with a heart of gold named Gene) seems a master of every discipline from jeet kune do to drunken boxing. The fully customizable control system allows you to set the over 110 moves available to you to any button or button combination you feel comfortable with, giving the game a great level of depth and sidestepping the "Press B to kick" trope that makes all the rest of these games all seem the same. Want to play Gene as a quick-punching specialist that dances around and tags his opponents with rabbit punches? You can. Want to play him as a heavyweight who barely moves while he slugs his foes with powerful, but slow, attacks? Again, you can. Want to play him as an uncoordinated lout who uses seemingly random attacks and appears to win by sheer luck? You can, but this is an inadvisable strategy for later in the game, where the enemies will not even pause to laugh uproariously at your bumbling before beating the snot out of you.
An intriguing and well-executed feature of the game is the addition of situational special attacks, that is to say, attacks that become available after certain conditions are met. Hit an enemy enough times in a row and he will become staggered, temporarily dazed and unable to defend himself. Then, the option appears on the screen to press the O button to unleash one of several special attacks. These include Suplex, where Gene grabs the foe and, bending over backwards, smashes his head into the ground; Pummel, where pressing the O button rapidly results in Gene unleashing a torrent of rapid punches or kicks on the enemy, capping it off with a single, powerful strike that launches the enemy away; and Stinger, reserved for larger enemies, where Gene repeatedly smashes the enemy's face into his knee (again triggered by quick button presses) prior to crushing him into the ground. These are only a few; more are available and found by exploring the game and fighting different foes.
But simply punches and kicks wouldn't be enough to save Gene from the terrors that await him. As the story explains, demons are making their move now to seize control of the Earth (although their methods seem questionable and, indeed, outright laughable), and Gene must defeat their leaders to quell the uprising. Fortunately, he is not unaided in this endeavor. He has a magical right arm, the titular God Hand, that gives him a variety of interesting powers.
For starters, Gene has many special attacks known as God Reels or Roulettes (named for their selection process: when you wish to use one, you hit the button, and time slows down while you pick your choice from a spinning wheel of options). These range from the Divine Smash, a powerful punch that will break through any guard and deal heavy damage to one or two foes; to Kung Fu Samba, a combination of powerful (and stylish!) strikes to cripple a single enemy; to Home Run God, wherein Gene conjures a bat of shining divine energy to strike an enemy with such force that he flies far away into the air and disappears with a twinkle. My personal favorite, however, is the Ball Buster...Gene moves towards his opponent as if readying for a mighty strike, then simply wheels and kicks him in the...er, vitals...to the accompaniment of a humorous *ding!* and a smattering of laughter from the unseen audience. These attacks can be used only sparingly, as they consume "orbs" of power that you must scavenge from fallen foes, and it can be a long time between finding these orbs. Still, they are both amusing and powerful, and excellent ways to fight bosses or superlatively tough enemies.
But even these powers pale in comparison to the might that is revealed when Gene unleashes the true power of his God Hand. As you deal and receive damage in combat, a small meter below your health called the "Tension Gauge" slowly fills up. When it is full, Gene may activate the hidden potential of the God Hand. The brace around his arm restraining the God Hand shatters, and Gene becomes invulnerable, as well as moving faster and dealing greatly increased damage, for as long as the meter lasts. This is not permanent, or even particularly long-lasting, but it can be enough to deal with a group of particularly stubborn foes or take the edge off a boss fight. It is often thought of as a "panic button", for dealing with situations that are too much for even Gene's normal level of skill or to extricate oneself from a bad spot.
The difficulty, as has been remarked upon previously, is intense - punishing the casual player by soundly thrashing him before he can even reach the second stage. But it is not entirely unmerciful. Beginning the game, a player may choose between Easy - still tough by most standards, but certainly doable - and Normal - advanced difficulty, only for those who consider themselves skilled in the genre - but the final difficulty, Hard, is not for the faint of heart or the slow of button-pressing. Hard cannot be selected until the game has been beaten once already, and it provides a tremendous challenge to even the most seasoned veterans of these games. In the old style of games like Contra and Ninja Gaiden and similar, the game is entirely bent on destroying you and your fragile self-confidence (at least, in terms of game-playing) and is quite accomplished at fulfilling this goal.
But even more remarkable than the adjustable difficulty (admittedly, there is nothing truly remarkable about it, it seems a fairly standard feature in games today) is the dynamic difficulty that adjusts itself on the fly. This establishes itself in levels of challenge, of which there are four: Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and the intimidating Level Die, which is represented by a flaming skull. As you successfully defeat enemies and avoid taking damage, the level increases...and when your level goes up, you do not increase in power, as is expected, but your enemies become stronger and faster accordingly. If you take damage and fail to beat up your opponents, your level decreases until you can resume the smackdown. So the game constantly keeps the experience at a level that will neither bore you through easiness or crush you through hardness. It is a well-implemented feature that should be seen in more games.
A review of God Hand cannot be complete without mentioning the humor permeating the game. The outright silliness of your enemies (Clowns? A wrestling ape? An enchantress who turns you into a puppy?) combines with the amusing story (the interactions between Gene and Olivia, the girl that follows him around, simply have to be seen to be appreciated) to provide an experience that will have you chuckling as often as pummeling. The experience of facing on a fearsome demon, adorned with spikes and wreathed in purple hellfires, and kicking it in the groin to watch it stagger about in pain, is one that typifies the sense of humor that suffuses God Hand. Oh, yes, one more thing: There really are poisonous chihuahuas in the game. You can see them race and bet on them to win money. You might think that this is a joke on my part; well, let me tell you, I'm not nearly that creative.
All in all, God Hand is a well-designed and extremely entertaining game. Some claim it is repetitive and boring, that the game never truly changes, that it does not provide an in-depth experience. To those people I say "Did you perhaps read the back of the box before you bought it?" It is not intended to be a deep and enriching experience, but a fun and mindless beat-em-up done in the old style that is so rarely seen these days. I bought it twice (I have a bad habit of losing game disks), but just once should be enough for anyone not so careless as me. It won't be regretted.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The Intro, Or, Why This Will Probably Fail
...So. Due to popular demand on the part of friends and family, I have started this here blog. I'd like to begin by saying that I really hate the word "blog"...I mean...blog. It sounds like a kind of marsh that as soon as you set foot into it, you hear a sucking noise, kind of like if someone tried to inhale a slug through a drinking straw, and your boot that you were assured by an overzealous shoe salesman would "stand up to any climate" disappears into the sludge, as if it had been stolen by the Swamp Thing, and you just can't face the thought of going in after it, so you leave, cursing softly under your breath, and for the rest of your vacation you're wearing one boot, one sandal, since you only brought those with you, figuring that sneakers wouldn't be suitable for "roughing it", and eventually...
Er. But I digress. So I say now that I will refrain from any further uses of that dreaded word. Instead, I will refer to this as my "online journal". It's more unwieldy to say and write, but it doesn't sound like something that gets stuck to the bottom of my shoe and I can't scrape off even with a stick, so I figure the pros outweigh the cons.
I plan to update this...online journal...three times a week. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. I have enough spare time to bang out a twenty-minute chunk of prose nearly any day of the week, so I figure I'd keep it to an even schedule. Updates outside of the block may be made if something particularly newsworthy or interesting occurs in my life, and I just can't wait to tell people about it. Not extremely likely, though. And I picked this background because I read somewhere that light text on a dark background is easier on the eyes than the other way around, which makes sense.
In addition to the stuff that happens in my world, I'll also post other things that I find interesting. Reviews of video games, perhaps. Thoughts on random subjects. I'm essentially thinking about five or six separate things at any given time, and my mind feels like I'm constantly clicking "Random Article" in wikipedia, so don't expect any kind of order or clarity in my musings. It's a fool's errand.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I have kind of a self-discipline problem, hence, the title of this...website. (Near miss, there.) So I have decided to embark on an enticement program, to keep me operating and writing. Every week that I complete all the posts I said I would (Mon, Wed, Fri), I'll buy myself a pack of Magic cards. Laugh all you like, but I have a strong feeling it will work. At $4 a pack, it's not going to break my bank anytime soon, and it'll likely succeed in its goal of keeping me updating. So on Mondays, the first part of my post will probably be describing what cards I got from Friday's pack.
To anyone who doesn't know me, you might be wondering what distinguishes this blo...damn! This "online journal" from any of the millions of others out there. The answer? Not much. But my spelling and grammar are correct. That alone puts me in the top 10%, from what I see. And I'm just vain enough to think that my writing style is a cut above most, so if you find yourself agreeing, come and check this place out.
So that's all for now. The next update will come tomorrow, as promised, this one being by way of an introduction. And by the way, in case the name of the page hadn't clued you in, I'm Luke. I go to the University of Florida. And that's just about all I'm comfortable with sharing with the entire Internet, screaming mass of hooligans that it is, but I can't imagine people demanding to know more about my personal life. That's the path to madness, folks.
I'll end with an amusing exchange that took place at yesterday's football game (UF vs. Tennessee, 59-20. We crushed faces all game long, it was beautiful.)
Me: "We're up by over five touchdowns. This is madness."
My friend: "Madness? THIS...IS...FLORIDA!!"
The best part being, I didn't even see the joke coming until he finished it. It's just one of those things that works out, y'know?
Peace.
Er. But I digress. So I say now that I will refrain from any further uses of that dreaded word. Instead, I will refer to this as my "online journal". It's more unwieldy to say and write, but it doesn't sound like something that gets stuck to the bottom of my shoe and I can't scrape off even with a stick, so I figure the pros outweigh the cons.
I plan to update this...online journal...three times a week. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. I have enough spare time to bang out a twenty-minute chunk of prose nearly any day of the week, so I figure I'd keep it to an even schedule. Updates outside of the block may be made if something particularly newsworthy or interesting occurs in my life, and I just can't wait to tell people about it. Not extremely likely, though. And I picked this background because I read somewhere that light text on a dark background is easier on the eyes than the other way around, which makes sense.
In addition to the stuff that happens in my world, I'll also post other things that I find interesting. Reviews of video games, perhaps. Thoughts on random subjects. I'm essentially thinking about five or six separate things at any given time, and my mind feels like I'm constantly clicking "Random Article" in wikipedia, so don't expect any kind of order or clarity in my musings. It's a fool's errand.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I have kind of a self-discipline problem, hence, the title of this...website. (Near miss, there.) So I have decided to embark on an enticement program, to keep me operating and writing. Every week that I complete all the posts I said I would (Mon, Wed, Fri), I'll buy myself a pack of Magic cards. Laugh all you like, but I have a strong feeling it will work. At $4 a pack, it's not going to break my bank anytime soon, and it'll likely succeed in its goal of keeping me updating. So on Mondays, the first part of my post will probably be describing what cards I got from Friday's pack.
To anyone who doesn't know me, you might be wondering what distinguishes this blo...damn! This "online journal" from any of the millions of others out there. The answer? Not much. But my spelling and grammar are correct. That alone puts me in the top 10%, from what I see. And I'm just vain enough to think that my writing style is a cut above most, so if you find yourself agreeing, come and check this place out.
So that's all for now. The next update will come tomorrow, as promised, this one being by way of an introduction. And by the way, in case the name of the page hadn't clued you in, I'm Luke. I go to the University of Florida. And that's just about all I'm comfortable with sharing with the entire Internet, screaming mass of hooligans that it is, but I can't imagine people demanding to know more about my personal life. That's the path to madness, folks.
I'll end with an amusing exchange that took place at yesterday's football game (UF vs. Tennessee, 59-20. We crushed faces all game long, it was beautiful.)
Me: "We're up by over five touchdowns. This is madness."
My friend: "Madness? THIS...IS...FLORIDA!!"
The best part being, I didn't even see the joke coming until he finished it. It's just one of those things that works out, y'know?
Peace.
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