After seeing the town of Goodsprings safely into the hands of the Powder Gangers, I started on down the highway towards my would-be killers. My first stop was the New California Republic Correctional Facility. I heard on the radio from Mr. New Vegas that the Powder Gangers had recently taken it for themselves, and I wanted to get some caps from my good deeds that were done in their name. The leader of the gang gave me a few jobs to do and offered to give me free explosives! Of course I was going to do whatever they needed so I could get some more dynamite to blow shit up with. After killing a few deserters and defending the facility from and NCR Army attack, I was given all the dynamite I wanted and a free pass back into the prison. While I was there I took some time to sneak around and pickpocket a few sleeping convicts for some extra boom-boom.
My second stop of the day was Nipton a small town where I was hoping to gather some information and grab a few boxes of ammo. The entrance to the town was quiet and strewn with blood. I spied a single man in Powder Ganger garb who was running around screaming something about winning the lottery, I wasn't quite sure what lottery he won, or what he actually won, so I avoided him, just like all of the other crazies. The general store was in complete disarray and the owner seemed to be dead asleep on a chair. I noticed that he had a lottery ticket on him as well. As he was sleeping I decided to help myself to whatever was left in the shop. The rest of the town was spattered with blood and I noticed that the town hall road was lined with wooden crosses. Each cross had a man or woman nailed to it. As I walked by I realized with horror that the people were still alive. The end of the street was blocked by a squad of strangely dressed men that called themselves Caeser's Legion. They let me walk on by as long as I spread the word of their deeds. I highly value my life, especially after being killed once before so I agreed wholeheartedly and started my way towards the NCR's Mojave Outpost.
As a gamer, I often wonder what it is we love about frustration. Some of the games that I play most regularly, Halo: Reach being a good example, frustrate me the most yet I continue to play them time after time. I get to the point of swearing at every single kill and death, even if I'm winning the game. I'm fairly certain that my most used phrase during any game is, "How the fuck?" Even though the freaking game takes place mostly in a science fiction world, I still expect it to have some kind of "normal" physics. That's the single most frustrating fact of any game that I play. How in the hell do I get shot around corners? It happens all the fucking time too! Wanted didn't make any sense and made me my brain try to eat it's way out of my head, so when I see the same type of shit in a video game when it shouldn't be there I go into a blind rage. And then I just start to lose more and more, it's really a terrible mechanism. The bottom line is that I still play the game even if I don't like the way that the bullets travel or that the lag is handled, whichever of those items is the culprit. In fact, I think I'm fueled by my frustration. It's a piece of gaming that has been alive since the beginning. Who didn't get frustrated on those levels of Super Mario Brothers that just seemed impossible? Even so, we all continued to try and try again. We even tend to look for games with levels of difficulty that frustrate us, take a look at Ninja Gaiden back in the day and for a current reference there's Legendary difficulty on the Halo franchise. Why do we love frustration?
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Day Five: The Beginning
I was surprisingly limber and fit after having my body dug out of a shallow grave and the bullet removed from my brain. It was lucky that they didn't shoot me anywhere else. Doc Mitchell seems like a nice enough man, I mean, he did stitch me up and all, but I'm still wary of his motives. He leads me around to some antiquated strength testing machine, which I clumsily grip. The test proved that I'm apparently made of solid stuff. Afterwards, the Doc took me over to his couch and told me to sit down. At this point I'd ruled out that the guy was a necrophiliac, but I still wasn't quite sure that he wasn't going to just rape me. The questions didn't help clear him of being a crazed killer/rapist either. He asked me a bunch of ridiculous word-association questions that I basically just rigged to make it sound like I was going to blow the shit out of him if he tried to attack me. Well, the questions finally stopped and I was able to freely leave the house, but I watched my back around the old man even after the fact. That was before I killed him, of course.
After relearning how to walk around and shoot shit up with Sunny Smiles, the local law enforcement, I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. I attempted to gather some information about my shooter and the town that I found myself in, Goodsprings. Ringo, some trader that took refuge in the local gas station ruins, was being hunted by the Powder Gangers, named for the gunpowder in their explosives, and that was the big news in town. I took it upon myself to go up and see the guy; figured he might know something about the man who shot me. Of course he drew a gun on me as soon as he heard my footsteps outside the door. He told me some story about being chased by the Powder Gangers because he was some with some caravan. It was really hard to keep interest after I killed him and took everything he owned. Afterwards I met up with the Powder Gangers that were going to kill Ringo and told them I already did the deed. What happened next was mostly a blur. I helped the Gangers take over the town, killed Doc Mitchell so I'd never have to worry about my rear end again. My next destination would have to be Primm, following the men who shot me. I would get revenge, one way or another.
After relearning how to walk around and shoot shit up with Sunny Smiles, the local law enforcement, I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. I attempted to gather some information about my shooter and the town that I found myself in, Goodsprings. Ringo, some trader that took refuge in the local gas station ruins, was being hunted by the Powder Gangers, named for the gunpowder in their explosives, and that was the big news in town. I took it upon myself to go up and see the guy; figured he might know something about the man who shot me. Of course he drew a gun on me as soon as he heard my footsteps outside the door. He told me some story about being chased by the Powder Gangers because he was some with some caravan. It was really hard to keep interest after I killed him and took everything he owned. Afterwards I met up with the Powder Gangers that were going to kill Ringo and told them I already did the deed. What happened next was mostly a blur. I helped the Gangers take over the town, killed Doc Mitchell so I'd never have to worry about my rear end again. My next destination would have to be Primm, following the men who shot me. I would get revenge, one way or another.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Day Four: MMORPG
It's come to my attention that World of Warcraft is now free to play. I was surfing around on the internet, looking at a wiki for some Fallout information, when 47 different ads instantly assaulted my browser and I, claiming "NOW FREE TO PLAY!" Of course there's a catch, the game is now free to play, but only to level 20. When I played the game, the first 20 levels were always somewhat exciting to be sure, but how is that going to give players an idea of what to expect when they finally ascend to the endgame? Blizzard is giving a free taste of, in my opinion, the best part of the game but they're not quite giving the whole picture. In my time, at level 60, I was raiding all of the damn time and I was bored as hell after the first two or three times I ran through each of the raid areas. Unless you're a hardcore MMORPG gamer, I would stay away from WoW even if they are promoting a free 20 levels of fun. All you'll get in the end is a waste of 20 bucks a month and a huge pain in your ass.
That all said, my dislike of MMORPGs stems from a long line of them that I used to play. Here's a quick rundown of each and every one that I had a chance to play:
The first online game that I played was Final Fantasy 11, and I played it for a good year or two. The game itself was able to feed my love of RPGs as well as my love of the Final Fantasy world. Tucked neatly within the horrible, horrible level grinding were useless quests that gave little to no reward, and thus no reason to complete them. After coming to the conclusion that continuing to play FFXI was just a huge drain on my bank account and a worthless endeavor, because no one in that game besides White Mages was actually able to find a party, I looked to another MMO for a reprieve. WoW satisfied me for another year or two, but the fun of the game quickly fizzled out after my Shaman was nerfed time and time again. When I went from being a decent damage dealer and jack of all trades to merely a pathetic healer for my raid groups, I lost all of my want to play. I quickly moved on to find that City of Heroes could only hold my interest as long as I could continue to create new heroes. The bland combat and repetitive buildings only fueled my frustration. I believe that City of Heroes lasted me maybe a month or two. The same issue came about with Lord of the Rings Online. Though I love the LOTRO world and the very idea of playing inside of Tolkien's rich, expansive world, the game itself fell short of the novel's delivery of the experience. The last MMO that I attempted to play was Dungeons and Dragons Online. Here I experienced a great deal of soloing as a Paladin, but once I moved to another class, I was unable to do anything by myself. DDO ultimately suffered from the same problems as WoW.
My issues with each and every one of the above games came right down to playability. I can play Dragon Age over and over and I don't need to wait for five other nerds to log on to do anything fun. Once I reach the end of the game, my experience has been fulfilled and the end of the story ensues. Normal games reward a player for reaching the end by completing the story or allowing the player to see the aftermath of their choices. MMOs steal that experience away. The story is unfortunately never complete and the fulfillment never comes. So each player continues to shell out month after month, attempting to collect all of those armor pieces and that last special pet so that his character can look like Santa and ride a Reindeer during Christmas. But who wouldn't want to do that for 20 dollars a month?
That all said, my dislike of MMORPGs stems from a long line of them that I used to play. Here's a quick rundown of each and every one that I had a chance to play:
The first online game that I played was Final Fantasy 11, and I played it for a good year or two. The game itself was able to feed my love of RPGs as well as my love of the Final Fantasy world. Tucked neatly within the horrible, horrible level grinding were useless quests that gave little to no reward, and thus no reason to complete them. After coming to the conclusion that continuing to play FFXI was just a huge drain on my bank account and a worthless endeavor, because no one in that game besides White Mages was actually able to find a party, I looked to another MMO for a reprieve. WoW satisfied me for another year or two, but the fun of the game quickly fizzled out after my Shaman was nerfed time and time again. When I went from being a decent damage dealer and jack of all trades to merely a pathetic healer for my raid groups, I lost all of my want to play. I quickly moved on to find that City of Heroes could only hold my interest as long as I could continue to create new heroes. The bland combat and repetitive buildings only fueled my frustration. I believe that City of Heroes lasted me maybe a month or two. The same issue came about with Lord of the Rings Online. Though I love the LOTRO world and the very idea of playing inside of Tolkien's rich, expansive world, the game itself fell short of the novel's delivery of the experience. The last MMO that I attempted to play was Dungeons and Dragons Online. Here I experienced a great deal of soloing as a Paladin, but once I moved to another class, I was unable to do anything by myself. DDO ultimately suffered from the same problems as WoW.
My issues with each and every one of the above games came right down to playability. I can play Dragon Age over and over and I don't need to wait for five other nerds to log on to do anything fun. Once I reach the end of the game, my experience has been fulfilled and the end of the story ensues. Normal games reward a player for reaching the end by completing the story or allowing the player to see the aftermath of their choices. MMOs steal that experience away. The story is unfortunately never complete and the fulfillment never comes. So each player continues to shell out month after month, attempting to collect all of those armor pieces and that last special pet so that his character can look like Santa and ride a Reindeer during Christmas. But who wouldn't want to do that for 20 dollars a month?
Friday, August 12, 2011
Day Three: Lego Everything
Browsing Barnes and Noble is rather dangerous. Not only can one get lost for hours on end, but you also run into such items as Lego Harry Potter books, or Lego Star Wars books, or Lego Pirates of the Caribbean books, or even Lego Batman books. It's like a trip to the past when Legos were the most awesome and creative thing a kid could own. Epic battles and nations could be created on a massive scale using little yellow people with peg heads and clamp-like hands. I used to love building expansive castles and imagining a siege complete with engines of war and soldiers of fortune. But today there are so many damn Lego adaptations that it'll make your head spin. Of course this phenomenon isn't confined only to the physical blocks, but also expands to the digital world. If we have Legos to play and build with in real life, why do we need them also in video game form?
I enjoyed Lego Star Wars, in fact I liked running around as R2D2 and building useful objects out of bricks, but little did I know that it was just the beginning. Next we saw Lego Batman, a decent game in its own right, but it's the same damn thing. That's the problem with these games, there's no fucking difference between one or the other. Whether you're Batman, Luke Skywalker, or Indiana Jones you're building the same useless crap in the same environments with the same controls. I could see creating a sequel to a successful game franchise, but why did it need to escalate to the monstrosity it is today? It's like you have a decent cheeseburger with all of the fixings: ketchup, mustard, lettuce, and all the other junk, so you decide to make it again. Only the next time you make it, it turns out a little less tasty and you change the combination of the toppings. If this happens time and time again you'll eventually reach the outcome that your burger is essentially a piece of shitty beef that you've eaten too many times only with the toppings being swapped. That's what our Legos have been reduced to. The only logical limit is a shitheap, or in this case, Lego Universe.
I enjoyed Lego Star Wars, in fact I liked running around as R2D2 and building useful objects out of bricks, but little did I know that it was just the beginning. Next we saw Lego Batman, a decent game in its own right, but it's the same damn thing. That's the problem with these games, there's no fucking difference between one or the other. Whether you're Batman, Luke Skywalker, or Indiana Jones you're building the same useless crap in the same environments with the same controls. I could see creating a sequel to a successful game franchise, but why did it need to escalate to the monstrosity it is today? It's like you have a decent cheeseburger with all of the fixings: ketchup, mustard, lettuce, and all the other junk, so you decide to make it again. Only the next time you make it, it turns out a little less tasty and you change the combination of the toppings. If this happens time and time again you'll eventually reach the outcome that your burger is essentially a piece of shitty beef that you've eaten too many times only with the toppings being swapped. That's what our Legos have been reduced to. The only logical limit is a shitheap, or in this case, Lego Universe.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Day Two: Downloadable Content and Magic Sword
Downloadable Content, or DLC for short, has to be one of the most insidious items ever created for human entertainment. Take, for instance, a game like Fallout 3. If you aren't satisfied with the 20+ hours of game time already built in, why not spend $10 on DLC that will extend the game's life to 25? It'll add a bunch of new weapons, armor, and perks! Yeehaw!
Those of you who've purchased DLC know the deadly truth, though, that the first purchase is only a gateway. Once you've gotten those few extra perks and quests, you just can't live without getting every single DLC pack that exists. I'd make some vague reference to Pokemon, about having to catch 'em all, but I'm just not in the mood. We all try to rationalize this with vague excuses like, "You can't have all of these new weapons without new quests to try them on! And with all of these new quests, I'm going to need this other pack so that I can make my own ammo!" Pretty soon you're looking at credit card debt of $3000 and a potentially serious psychological disorder. As far as I'm aware, there's no cure.
My trek through the wasteland has been delayed until next week, so expect some more random gaming thoughts until then. I have to compile more data before I have anything to say that anyone will actually give two shits about.
The other thing on my mind today is Magic Sword. From what I can tell, the game is an arcade port to the SNES. I've been playing it a bit on my phone and though the controls are lacking, which isn't the fault of the game, I'm happy to say that it's a good waste of my time when it's needed. It kind of reminds me of a horrible, nightmarish cross between Golden Axe and Zelda 2. You climb a tower as some kind of Fabio reject and fight enemies, gather items, and defeat bosses to earn points. Along the way you gather approximately a million keys to open random doors. Seriously, every fucking enemy seems to have a key... which makes total sense to me. What skeleton or minotaur doesn't want their own room with a lock? Anyway, so the points you earn really don't do diddly squat. I think that you're able to get some extra lives, but really it's just the old arcade gimmick: Earn more points then your friends and show off your nerdy power. Of course today these scores mean absolutely nothing. Back then they meant very little as well. Who in their right mind bought a game for the Super Nintendo whose main goal was to earn points? After Atari, gamers were looking for an experience where you could conquer your enemies and overcome obstacles. A scoring system just no longer works like it used to, besides, what kind of sense does that make in real life? If we were all scored on a system like Magic Sword, I guarantee we wouldn't have any extra lives.
Those of you who've purchased DLC know the deadly truth, though, that the first purchase is only a gateway. Once you've gotten those few extra perks and quests, you just can't live without getting every single DLC pack that exists. I'd make some vague reference to Pokemon, about having to catch 'em all, but I'm just not in the mood. We all try to rationalize this with vague excuses like, "You can't have all of these new weapons without new quests to try them on! And with all of these new quests, I'm going to need this other pack so that I can make my own ammo!" Pretty soon you're looking at credit card debt of $3000 and a potentially serious psychological disorder. As far as I'm aware, there's no cure.
My trek through the wasteland has been delayed until next week, so expect some more random gaming thoughts until then. I have to compile more data before I have anything to say that anyone will actually give two shits about.
The other thing on my mind today is Magic Sword. From what I can tell, the game is an arcade port to the SNES. I've been playing it a bit on my phone and though the controls are lacking, which isn't the fault of the game, I'm happy to say that it's a good waste of my time when it's needed. It kind of reminds me of a horrible, nightmarish cross between Golden Axe and Zelda 2. You climb a tower as some kind of Fabio reject and fight enemies, gather items, and defeat bosses to earn points. Along the way you gather approximately a million keys to open random doors. Seriously, every fucking enemy seems to have a key... which makes total sense to me. What skeleton or minotaur doesn't want their own room with a lock? Anyway, so the points you earn really don't do diddly squat. I think that you're able to get some extra lives, but really it's just the old arcade gimmick: Earn more points then your friends and show off your nerdy power. Of course today these scores mean absolutely nothing. Back then they meant very little as well. Who in their right mind bought a game for the Super Nintendo whose main goal was to earn points? After Atari, gamers were looking for an experience where you could conquer your enemies and overcome obstacles. A scoring system just no longer works like it used to, besides, what kind of sense does that make in real life? If we were all scored on a system like Magic Sword, I guarantee we wouldn't have any extra lives.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)