Glorious Revival

This blog has been in dire need of revival for quite some time now. I’ve decided that instead of allowing my anxiety over what to write about prevent me from writing here, I should instead just write—and post whatever comes out of that. Here it goes…

I have been playing so much Dead Space 2 lately. I am currently about halfway through my second play through and I suspect I will be making several more—perhaps even in the range of half a dozen or more—because it is such a fun experience and I want to play it like a completionist. I am so far from being a  completionist with games. There are some that I’ll start to work on getting 100% completion on but it always gets to a point where it’s far more tedious and boring than it is fun and I end up stopping. I think God of War III is the only ps3 game I’ve gotten 100% completion on and it’s probably a lot of the same reasons I want to go platinum in Dead Space 2. They are both strictly linear in their narrative and level design but that’s part of what makes them so good; such strict linearity allows for a game to come as close to perfect as possible in creating an experience that feels whole and best represents the designer’s ideal vision.

Dead Space 2 is to me, all about atmosphere. There are parts where you get a jumpy scare or have a sudden hallucination where your environment suddenly changes into something far more disturbing but I felt the most fearful tension while slowly tiptoeing into a new area, cautiously sweeping each room with the flashlight conveniently attached to each gun completely unaware of what would come next but knowing I needed to be ready for it. It’s this tension where this game, and the last one as well, really grew on me. I am not by any means a fan of the horror genres in either games or movies. Yet something about Dead Space appealed to me and in playing the sequel over the past couple weeks I think I’ve broken down why I love it so much, despite not being a scare junkie at all: In any game, you always know that despite how scary or insanely difficult the challenges you’re faced with can be, they are always manageable. Games almost never put you up against enemies you can’t defeat, obstacles you can’t overcome; you’re always given the tools and skills to conquer each challenge you’re faced with and that’s how I looked at this game. Whenever I encountered a new enemy, part of me would freak out, get scared and instantly feel a sense of dread in facing more of them but another part of me would get excited at the prospects of exploring and experimenting with the weapons and tools I had been given to find the perfect strategy for each enemy—of which there are a few different ones based on your choice weapons and playing style.  The more comfortable I would get with each enemy the more playful I would get in my methods of dispatching them—shooting off an enemy’s claw, catching it mid-air with kinesis and shooting it back into it before it got to me first, is a great example.

I could rant about that game for a while, and most likely will but I want to try to save some of that juice for reviewing it, which I’m currently working on and should be posting soon.

There’s a bit of a dry spell for gaming at the moment, at least for me as I’m less than ecstatic for most upcoming releases, but L.A. Noire is the one game I am absolutely dying to play. Especially after seeing the walkthrough at PAX I am not only excited about the groundbreaking technology being used in it but also because I’ve now seen some concrete gameplay and it is definitely appealing. I remember playing a demo, sometime in the past year, for a CSI game that was just painfully bad. Although it was the clunky and the voice acting and character models were beyond atrocious, the point-and-click-ish crime scene investigation gameplay felt like a really fun idea—even if it was very poorly executed. From what I have seen of L.A. Noire thusfar it’s looking like they’ve done a great job providing a pretty realistic sense of that experience without making it as dull and tedious as I imagine the real thing is. Expect a lot of excited ranting about that game until it’s release (May 15th) where I will inevitably disappear from the world for a couple days while I envelop myself in that game for a while.

More to come. (I’m serious this time)

 

-Ben

A week of stuff, August 6th

This is a child of fine taste, and without adhering to his high-class specifications a trip to the zoo isn’t the same exciting venture it may be to those children with “less refined” taste.

 

I’ve been seeing some ridiculous innovations in the fields of women’s clothing and accessories recently (search above for wine rack) but this absolutely takes the cake? Any women have feedback on this? Is this enough of a problem for you that would buy this? Do any women actually read this blog?…oh, I should have known.

 

Raver Dog

Seriously, all he needs is some glow sticks. 

This is great: A group of gamers fight off two masked men during a robbery. It definitely would have been even cooler if one of them whipped out the blades of chaos or something but i guess that’s asking too much.

 

This is some of most poorly thought-out advertising ever.

 

Here’s a pie graph with some groundbreaking new research behind it.

Just when I thought I would never see a more ridiculous invention than the wine rack…enter: The Daddle

For all those times when a father spending some innocent, quality time pretending to be a horse with his child wants to make shit really awkward and weird.

 

Siiiick, I’ve always wanted to mess around on one of these but I don’t have one, a spot on a lake, or enough fat friends.

 

Epic reporter faaaaaaail

 

Most badass caterpillar ever.

 

 

That’s all for this week. My next post should be on the next game coming out that I am most looking forward to, Mafia II. There’s also a demo being released on it next week so I’ll be giving my thoughts on that as well by probably Thursday or so.

Inception

Here’s a couple Inception trailer mashups and some cool visuals that might clear a couple basic plot points up for anyone out there that’s confused.

 

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Inception

 

 

Toy Story 3/Inception

Now this is awesome

Apparently CollegeHumor.com absolutely refuses to allow me to embed this video so just click the link and be slightly inconvenienced by a new tab.  Inception Characters Don't Understand Inception

A week of stuff 7/29

First up some music:

I wasn’t crazy about this song at first but the video was immediately funny. After even just the second time though I’m really into this song now. These guys are just awesome. Sort of Tim and Eric and sort of

 

Dey Rapin E’erybody Out Here

Yeah, enough said.

 

Videos of people on drugs after getting their wisdom teeth out are always funny…

But this is easily the best I’ve ever seen. Did they purposefully overdose him?  Amazing. This is a few days old so I’m sorry if you’ve seen it already but if you haven’t you absolutely must.

I’m actually starting a new job today so I’ve been busy getting my shit together  and didn’t get to updating this until too late. So I’ll leave you with just geekiness at it’s cutest. I don’t think I’ve played a Pokemon game since I was in 4th grade and a girl bumped into me, knocking my pokemon yellow ( i think ) out of my gameboy and corrupting the save file. I decided it wasn’t worth redoing and sold my gameboy. Even with such a brief experience with that game i found this super fucking geeky and adorable.

That was a really brief entry but I’ve started watching Dr. Who and it’s taking over my free time. More on that later, and I’ll work on gathering more material for next Friday.

 

-Ben

Dare I say..consistency?

So I’m going to try something out here. I’m going to make Thursday my official update day…probably…for now at least. And on these weekly updates I’ll have either a game review, some type of ranty/rambly/thing or (what I’m planning on for tomorrow) a collage of funny/amusing/interesting items I’ve found amongst the filth in the internet world that week. Think of it as all of the funny videos you get forwarded to you or run into on stumble upon or however else but all in one place so you don’t have to sift through the crap. They will generally be the week of the previous Friday to the Thursday that they’re posted but tomorrow’s will mostly be just the past couple days since I just decided to do this a few minutes ago. Feedback is appreciated as always. Who knows, I may turn this into something totally readable and interesting someday…which reminds me; i really need a proper title. Suggestions for that are very welcome as well.

 

-Ben

Have you seen Missy?

Ok, let me just preface this by saying that I like animals in general and I absolutely adore cats. Not only that but the cat pictured in this item (link below) looks almost exactly like mine. I was really hesitant to laugh at this at first but you will see, as I did, that the elocution of sarcasm and wit shown here is far too good to not appreciate. I’m sure this woman is really emotionally distraught over her pet and I feel for her, I really do. Losing a pet you’re really attached  to can be pretty hard (and really hard for some people) so I get that.

With that said: If she had a single reasonable bone in her body she would not be blogging requests for fancy missing poster designs and just put a picture of her fucking cat on a piece of paper, write the word lost or missing and her phone number. Then photocopy it and hang them around town. Maybe even go outside and look for her fucking cat. But instead she is blogging about how much she misses her cat, the one she isn’t out there looking for. And someone saw the opportunity, grasped it, and hilarity followed.

I sincerely hope she finds her cat and that it’s safe and healthy; but if her cat dies out there because she was too busy whining on a blog to actually go find her cat then RIP Missy and I’m sorry your owner was such a dumb bitch.

Have you seen Missy?

I’m pretty happy about this