From my brain to you

Hello everybody, whilst writing today's edition of random gibberish also known as the 30 day video game challenge, it suddenly dawned on me that it may look like I am plucking these questions out of thin air, making them up on the spot with my sheer genius. Well this may be true for the answers, but the questions have been taken from here. So if you are finding the questions rather random or lacking in substance then blame someone who isn't me. Also, I have changed around questions 7 and 11 for the reason that I want the "Favorite videogame couple" post to coincide with Valentines day. I am thematic like that, and can say with a fair level of certainty that I will not be doing anything exciting on the day in question. Cry me a river.

My second realization of today (yes, its been a busy day for my brain) is that as of yet I have not fulfilled the claim that this blog shall be multimedia related, so far the focus has been purely gaming. Well have no fear, I am planning to review some films, TV shows, or perhaps even albums in the near future. Your faith and patience shall be rewarded, so sit on those hands. Of course if your thirst for film digestion must be quenched, go here you greedy thing, and drink deep from the blog of another. This link will take you to my brother's blog which is more film focused, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I am aware I am heavily plugging the family Rossi but I have no shame so don't bother pointing it out. As always, thanks for reading and stay tuned for more daily insanity from your minister of ranting,
        El DeadTom

30 day video game challenge day 7

   I am going to keep this one short but sweet as it is both a tedious and often controversial subject that nearly always results in a pissing contest between fan-boys. Yep, you guessed it, day 7 asks for my Gaming system of choice. For me, it has to be the Xbox 360, quite simply because I have owned it the longest out of all of the current gen consoles. Yes that's right, the meaningless gamerscore I have accumulated over the years of owning a 360 is the sole thing keeping me from giving my Playstation 3 full attention, or indeed from buying a Wii. Well, that and I don't want to get RSI from a Wiimote and smash my TV screen as the damn thing ejects form my wrist after vigorous flailing. Hell, I don't even want to use a Wiimote. It just sounds embarrassing.

   In all honesty, the PS3 is a decent machine- I can admire it for its technical superiority over the competition. Also, the free online gaming is not to be sniffed at. And as far as Nintendo is concerned, I cant say a bad word towards them as their previous consoles have been my personal favorites of their respective generations, in addition they have produced some of my best loved and most overplayed games. However the real reason I keep with Microsoft's expensive time bomb, and this time I am being honest, is simply because I have made some good friends via Xbox live and feel it would be a big middle finger towards them if I ditched everyone for a technically superior console. And yes, I lied to you before about the gamerscore thing. Sue me. So after all the millions invested in one-uping each other, my loyalty has been secured by a completely unrelated and unforseen aspect. Somebody at Sony is going to be pissed. And if you are pissed for having your expectations of hard drive, blu ray and motion capture comparisons dashed by soppy human social requirements, then you are probably a biased little fan-boy and I am glad I have offended you. Get off my property.
      Damn, after writing this I am paranoid I may be going all soft in the head. Time to go commit virtual genocide on Xbox live like a real man. Best of all, I can do it with friends! Ahem, bad-ass friends of course. Thanks for reading, and if you are actually looking to buy a console, I recommend the PS3. But shh.

30 day video game challenge day 6

    Today I will be taking about the most annoying character in gaming. Well, I will attempt to. There are plenty of contenders, and its hard to pick just one. Annoying characters can come in many forms and there seems to be no boundary between good and evil when it comes to being a massive pain in the arse. Take Waluigi and Luigi for example, Waluigi has somehow achieved the impressive feat of being more annoying than his karmically balanced counterpart. I didn't even believe this was possible being that Luigi is just a lankier, whinier version of Mario- I was under the impression the Italian people could not be degraded further by the Mario clan. Alas, I was wrong. Waluigi is basically Berlusconi in videogame form, lets just leave it at that.

    Do not be fooled, however. Waluigi may contain the essence of all annoying game characters, but he shall not receive the golden merit of grand douchebaggery. That title, my friends, is reserved for another. You see first you must understand how I arrived at the conclusion- for many games are plagued by annoying characters. Be it the rambling mentors that will talk you to death during the tutorial stages of an RPG and force you to rage-quit the game before you have slain your first foe, the clingy emotional car-crash of a love interest who questions your every action as you attempt  to save the freaking world, or simply a baddie that is so incredibly frustrating to fight that it tempts you to track down and wail on the responsible developers with a bag of doorknobs as a simpler alternative. However to achieve true greatness as an annoying bastard, they need to be memorable. Plenty of characters fill the above criteria but are not significant enough to commit to my ever dwindling  memory banks. Just play any Final Fantasy game and I am sure you will run into if not one then all three of the above character types. If this character is not haunting your dreams and forcing you to wake up with a mouthful of pillow, then they just aren't doing it properly.


   And here is that very character. Tingle the fairy. Or as he is sometimes called, Tingle the middle-aged drifter who dresses up in spandex and watches children from a hot air balloon. I know, that one is a bit wordy but lets not dress it up here. Yes, Tingle the fairy from the fantastical Legend of Zelda series has managed to score leagues ahead of the pack in the annoying character pool. Its hard to say which he is more- annoying or creepy- but I can tell you for a fact he is a fucking sack load of both. I should probably steer clear from any sack analogies when describing Tingle, he is just that depraved. To any of you whose childhood innocence was not robbed by this suggested sex offender, I shall provide a brief description, although the picture really says more than words ever could. Tingle is a fully grown man who dresses like a fairy because he believes he is a fairy. Of course. In Zelda: Majora's Mask, Link must burst his sack (oh damn, it happened didn't it?) in order to take Tingle out of the air and purchase his crudely sketched maps. Talking to Tingle was like inserting starved leeches into your ears, when he wasn't spouting infuriating nonsense about his disturbing personal life, he was making inane noises or convincing Link to befriend him for reasons I do not want to think about. This is all of course my interpretation of the scenario, none of this was ever covered in the Zelda games, but it sure was implied. Loosely. Who knows, maybe I am the sicko here. Either way, if you want your kids to grow up fast, show them Tingle and see what happens. You have been warned...

30 day video game challenge day 5

Day 5 fields a difficult question; Which character do you feel you are most like?
Inevitably, the answer is going to be either massively self loathing or disturbingly delusional, but reaching said answer will be the tricky part. I think this is more likely a case of finding out which characters I am most unlike, and then filtering out the remainder. First off the bat you can eliminate the obvious groups, like the hard-assed bastard war veterans. Marcus Fenix, Soap Mctavish, Master Chief- if I told you I was seven foot tall, could bench press main battle tanks and ate alien skulls like cereal then its a safe bet I am lying to impress you. If anyone finds themselves relating to these characters, they should probably seek psychiatric help. I'm looking at you Stephen Segal. Even Mass Effects Commander Shepherd is hard to relate to. I mean I know he/ she is essentially an extension of you, but I cant help feel that Shepherd is more of an ass. On occasion I have been known to say the wrong thing and rub someone up the wrong way, but its like Shepherd  identifies the right thing to say, and then deliberately says the opposite. Even the compliments have all the backhand power of a tennis pro.

Speaking of Shepherd, this brings me to the creatable characters. Many modern games, usually RPGs, give you the option to create a character from scratch. And this is always going to end one of two ways for me. Either I take the path of vanity and attempt to construct myself in virtual form (with added generosity in certain areas), or more commonly if the character engine is poor, I make someone who will likely fit in with the aesthetics of the given game. I feel I would be cheating you if I said the character I feel I am most like is myself, plus its not exactly easy to relate to a floating head and a dialogue wheel. Shame, that was a good answer.

Many of vdieogamings great characters have been, for whatever reason, entirely mute. Or at least unnaturally quiet. As spaced out and dazed as I can sometimes be, I am not sure I can relate to someone like Gordon Freeman- a man who refuses to utter a word even when crab-like alien creatures are attempting to mate relentlessly with his face.  I guess such traumatic experiences could explain the large number of voiceless gaming characters, Link has to contend with randy zombies and genocidal lunar cycles on a daily basis and he is just a child. I cant compete with that, and I am not sure I want to. So that rules out our silent protagonists. 

I believe this leaves us with the characters that aren't even human, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Sonic and all the other cuddly hyperactive critters. I am going to go ahead and draw a line right through this group, I mean I may aswel be picking characters out by random at this point; Bomberman, because I am a pyromaniac! Kratos, because I have a god complex! Hellghast soldier #375 because I'm a... peon? Conclusively its incredibly difficult to pick a character that is most like me simply because videogame characters by nature are very unrealistic. Videogames are more often than not a form of escapist expression and if designers were to fill them with realistic characters they would have to populate 90% of their titles with assholes and ignoramuses.
But I suppose if you have read this far and still have no answer I have to give you something, dear reader, so I shall not disappoint. If I had to pick anyone I would say it would be the one character that shares 3 of my most charming characteristics; Jun, from Halo Reach. Sarcastic, arrogant and prefers to take down his enemies through the safety of a sniper scope like a real man. Who said there were no more heroes?

30 day video game challenge day 4

After a summer of work, an autumn of big releases, and a winter of pure concentrated procrastination, I have returned to finish what was started. Prepare for Blog attempt 2: the unoriginal title. In cinemas 2012

Day 4 asks which game do you consider a guilty pleasure? For me, it can only be the Ninja Gaiden titles; Team Ninjas hack and slash arcade em up, and as far as I can tell an answer to both Devil May Cry and Metal Gear. Now just because it is a guilty pleasure of mine, do not take that as a reflection of the NG titles. They are not bad games, not by any account. They do however posses all the characteristics of your average over the top Japanese anime- cheesy dialogue, unrealistically proportioned women, and heavy doses of gratuitous violence. In other words if you are looking for substance, you have picked up the wrong game... Unless that substance is intestines. 

Ninja Gaiden does at least make up for its lack of depth and engaging narrative by being difficult- very difficult. I'm talking rage induced coma difficult. Even the lower difficulty settings can be like fighting off a pack of tigers armed only with a ragged oven mit. The final stages of Ninja Gaiden 2, for example, consist of fighting seemingly steroid enhanced versions of the games previous bosses in one condensed area, and often whilst fending off hordes of slightly less murderous enemies. Or fighting two bosses at once. Whilst on fire. Or upsidedown. Ok that may have been a mild exaggeration, but the end result is much the same- your thumbs will resemble shark attack victims. At least when I am wading through entrails up to my neck in claret from the hewn limbs of my fallen foes and shielding my ears from the cringe-worthy comments of scantly clad femmininjas- I can persuade myself I am just in it for the challenge.

30 day video game challenge day 3

To make up for missing a day of this challenge, which I instead spent in a work induced coma, I shall be posting 2 questions.

Day 3 of the 30 day video game challenge brings us to a game that is underrated.
 For me, Grand Theft Auto 4 was highly underrated. And that's not to say that it slipped under the radar, or indeed scored badly on most sites or magazines. However when talking to other gamers GTA4 is one title that seems to receive a heavy slating- the shared opinion being that it has taken a different direction, that it lacks the humor of previous GTA titles, and that the gameplay is less entertaining. Now when you look at it from this direction, maybe all these factors ring true. On the other hand, everything seems better when hiding behind the teary veil of nostalgia. There comes a time when such games should enter the classic box, and should be dug out and played for nostalgia rather than applying their qualities to new titles.

I think Rockstar took a bold step in making GTA4 more mature, more real- a necessary step. With games like Saints Row and Just Cause offering a very similar experience to GTA Vice City, San Andreas etc Grand Theft Auto needed a revamping to stay ahead of the game. And thats exactly what GTA4 did. The realistic visuals and slightly less over-the-top action & gameplay did not dull down the experience for me at all. Rather than feeling like Point Break,  it was more akin to Heat- Keanu Reeves had packed up his hair gel and let the twin guns of Pacino and De Niro add some class to the scene. It was grittier. Darker.

Going postal and shooting up the neighborhood probably felt less satisfying as the experience was more lifelike. Interactions with other characters became realistic, and inevitably the guilt of sending a schools worth of AI children to the NPC orphanage took it's toll. On top of this, Niko Bellic was less bulletproof than past protagonists- throw this together with Swat teams that actively flank, snipe from helicopters & aim for your squishy head and crime sprees became short lived. Maybe Rockstar was trying to send a message here, to fight off the controversy that surrounds every release, they cried; "Hey kids, crime doesn't pay. And you shouldn't be playing this anyway, it says 18 on the case!" Or maybe they were just encouraging gamers to play the game differently. To think about each shootout as it happened. I for one thoroughly enjoyed all of these changes- they made the game a more challenging and believable experience. Some of the achievements required some real effort on the players behalf, such as evading the police from a 4 star rating. If the purists had their way, we would instead be left with the "kill 10 people with a dildo" achievement.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe the old fans were driven off by Roman's unquenchable thirst for bowling, but the less said about that the better.

30 day video game challenge day 2

Day 2 raises the question of favorite character, and after much musing I have decided I am going to keep the Zelda theme going by choosing Link. Now you are probably thinking a largely mute character is an unlikely choice, but that would be very discriminatory of you and you should be ashamed. But seriously, Link's lack of vocal input is part of what makes him so great. He can remain silent and stoical even in the face of tremendous peril. And it's not just peril Link has to put up with, when confronted with some of the unforgiving puzzles and repetitive sidekicks Link has experienced over the years, you would excuse him for letting slip a string of profanities crude enough to rupture the eardrums of every pensioner across the land, but he doesn't. Link just gets on with it.

I also can't help but adore the iconic attire of green tunic, pointy hat and tights. Now normally anyone prancing around in this get up would likely be sectioned, or at least sent back to the north pole to their rightful place of toil amongst the rest of the elves. But somehow, against all odds and the advice of fashionistas world wide, Link can pull it off. In fact, it only furthers the aura of cool he oozes from every pore. Despite Link's many transformations, both in format and artistic style, the image is still as powerful now as when you were squinting at a collection of pixels on the SNES.

Must be the missing link...

But who knows. Maybe I only relate to Link because we have similar difficulties in social scenarios and my hairstyle has mirrored his since the age of 11. Maybe I should get myself a green tunic after all...