MOBA Nostalgia, Already?
•April 15, 2013 • Leave a CommentAgainst Origin-ality
•April 14, 2013 • Leave a CommentNote: This isn’t a post about EA’s Origin. I could probably write one eventually, though honestly EA’s handling that fine on its own.
I’m watching a lot of cartoons lately. I watch a fair quantity of cartoon in general–One Piece is always there to give me a new dose of pirate crazy, and I’ve got oodles of Narutos to slog through–but Netflix is really hitting things hard. I started watching The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes due to a mention in some list article that my Google-fu apparently cannot retrieve. The show’s dope, though canceled. People die in summary ways (which I feel is tremendously important for selling the severity of a supervillain), Ant Man has ants eat dudes, and they’re even tackling some surprisingly complicated storylines like a version of Secret Invasion that is set up at the tail end of the first season and then left fairly dormant for much of the second. Givenhowthey set things up, that’s pretty insane…if you were a kid who missed the key scene of setup, you’d have no ideawhy certain things were happening. In fact, you wouldn’t even knowin some episodes that things were awry at all.
‘Tis the Season
•October 28, 2012 • Leave a CommentLogged into GW2 after I was awakened from a nice slumber by an utterly horrifying dream wherein I had been sleeping in the same bed (but foot-to-head) with a possessed Linda Blair. We’d been playing footsie, and I was trying to exorcise her despite A) not being a Christian and B) knowing that the sheets on her side of the bed hadn’t been changed in weeks, which somehow meant they were extra eeevil.
Logged into GW2, where I was instantly approached by a frantic Pack Bull whose master had been eaten by a massive marsh drake. Rushed to the aid of the bull (I come from a rodeo family, this is a thing that must happen) and spent an exciting 10 minutes burning it down with two other folk. Did NOT manage to save digesting owner, so I’ll be redoing this event.
After I killed the drake (who had swallowed me with its dying breath, so I was screaming “Shoot heeeer! Shooot her!”) and admitting she was a “Clever Girl,” I saw a giant candy corn sticking up from the ground.
I harvested said candy corn, while speaking aloud the phrase “Sure, I’ll harvest some giant candy corn.”
That is all.
Memoriam
•October 21, 2012 • Leave a CommentThe Earth: Saved.
The fate of the brave XCOM soldier whose designation was “Whiskey,” a single mother of three children who had served with the taskforce for several months: Unknown.
What -is- known is that she sacrificed her livelihood, and possibly her life, to ensure a brighter future for her children, her family, and all the inhabitants of every nation on earth. When the sun rises tomorrow, it rises on an entire world which owes its existence to Whiskey and the work that she, her compatriots, and particularly her three fallen squadmates (Wardog, Athena, and Caper) committed aboard the massive alien cruiser previously seen to hover above the Pacific Ocean.
We salute you. Your children will grow as royalty and live as heroes. Every time mankind points its eyes to the sky, rifle in hand and finger on the red button, yours will be the name whispered as a silent prayer that tonight–of all nights–passes silently.
G3 v D3
•October 20, 2012 • Leave a CommentThe last week or so, I’ve been splitting my time between my usual work and convalescing from having four of my teeth cut out of my head. With, you know, knives and drills and such.
Seriously, it was some shit. I haven’t been put under for any sort of medical deal since I was 8, so it’s been two decades. In the intervening time the most medical action I’ve gotten was stitches, twice.
A combination of my groaning a lot about the holes in my head and my first ever experience with real painkillers has left me ample time to play video games. My innate hunger for variety combined with that to have me jumping into a number of games I haven’t touched in ages.
Including…Diablo 3. Continue reading ‘G3 v D3′
Time!
•September 21, 2012 • 1 CommentI’m going to start by sharing something that I’ve learned about myself in the last twelve months: constantly having new games to play drastically affects the time I devote to writing about them.
Who knew?
That sounds sarcastic but is actually pretty genuine, at least in the sense that I never knew. The family computer wheezed its way through a near-graphics-less game of RISK, back in the day. I squirreled away precious cash to a controlling share in the family SNES, only to have my game time limited because–you know–parents. Similarly, my pre-S NES days were perpetually stymied by the interaction between cartridge batteries, how rpgs used to save, and a brother who was six years younger than me and never punished my parents for erasing my save right when I got to the fucking Marsh Cave for the tenth fucking time! College allowed me to exist on OPP (Other People’s Playstation 2s), along with OPX and even OPC (I offered a freshman the choice between giving me his soul and keeping his desktop computer in my room for a semester; he was devout enough to part with the electronics. To be fair, it was keep the computer in my room or send it back home to his parents, since his actual roommate did not believe in computing).
But for most of my life I’ve been straight broke, and particularly of such limited means that buying a new upgrade of any sort was out of my reach entirely. I might rent a game here and there, or benefit from the largess of a friend or roommate, but I’ve had to devote a lot of time to scrabbling for any game I can get to work on whatever system I had at hand. EVE (my weary Macbook) stood by my side for many years–actually, she’s there right now–but beyond wheezing through Torchlight, NWN, and DDO her status as both a Mac and a laptop prevented us from keeping current.
Now I’m married. I have a wife; we share a home and bills. Suddenly, if Torchlight 2 puts itself up for pre-order, or the hype for Guild Wars 2 reaches an inescapable crescendo, or The Secret World says “Hey, kill Cthulhu,” or Grimlock smashes in a digital format, I can just peel of some cyber bills and have the thing on the other thing! Frankly, I’ve probably peeled a few too many bills off in this fashion, so I’m glad I’ve weathered the worst storms of the years (ominous forboding much?) and can quit buying games in order to play some. I not only haven’t beaten Skyrim yet, I haven’t actually joined either of the warring factions; that’s with something like 80 hours poured into a half-dozen characters in that game.
My “solo time” doesn’t even been to account for the many games my wife and I play together.
The point of this post was to stress that, despite my bowing platter of gamey delights, I’m rededicating myself to engaging in critical and creative discourse regarding this beloved hobby. I would have said that more elegantly, but I have to cut myself short now and get ready for tonight’s DnD session. Because that’s a thing I get to do too.
How’s your life?
My Brain Has Excellent Casting
•August 20, 2012 • Leave a CommentI just had a dream. This dream, which followed on the heels of a dream where Adam Sandler made a very tasteless joke about midgets ladling love-juice on the hair of sleeping female employees at a strip club (the dream included no actual stripping).
In the dream, Paul Blackthorne was playing Harry Dresden, which he did.
He was comforting a young woman, after he’d used his magical talents to solve the brutal murder of her family during a daring crime. The criminal was, of course, Michael Massee–or possibly Billy Drago. Dresden was explaining that since the character had previously been a diamond thief, he was well-suited to switching into safe-cracking. But, specifically, Dresden said “What the mind wills, the hand will do.”
In Latin.
A language I don’t speak.
Dresden said that while spinning a drill and, using a slight bit of prestidigitation, crafting a three-lobed amethyst crystal which he gave to the grieving girl in order to assuage her bad dreams.
My wife, on the other hand, had a dream where I cheated on her and some people wrecked our wedding, and now I’m home alone.
