Seriously, Japan…

what. the. f*ck.

Honestly, I don’t know whether to weep or go buy a copy. It’s like Machine Girl all over again.

Nuclear Fire

A bunch of new gameplay videos for Fallout 3.

Well, that pretty much cinches it, I need to get a PS3 while I’m in Japan. I could maybe hold out on playing Metal Gear Solid 4 and Disgaea 3, and they haven’t announced a release date yet for God of War III, but those videos make it clear I need to play Fallout 3. It looks like they’ve combined the best aspects of Oblivion, which I never played but endured watching a friend play for almost 200 hours, and those of the original Fallout series, which has long been enshrined on my altar to the Gaming Gods. Also, as a man who once built a arm-mounted computer slash weapon gauntlet out of Construx to defend myself from nuclear mutants, my interest in the post-apocalyptic genre is somewhat vested.

From the sounds of it, they’ve kept the freedom of customization and action that meant multiple playthroughs of the game would always be interesting. In addition they’ve kept the graveyard humor and exteme violence that tickled the darker portions of my cerebrum when I was young, as well as the option between real time or turn-based combat. The incorporation of GTA-style radio stations, always available through your PIP-Boy, is a great touch as well, especially with the old-timey soundtrack. Hopefully they’ll have a decent selection of music, as well as a bit of talk radio.

Not quite the game, but still awesome.

The only thing I’ve seen no mention of is whether or not you can control multiple characters. The move to a first-person (or sometimes third-person over-the-shoulder) perspective would seem to indicate you can’t, but I think I can recall mention of multiple party members. If that’s true, I’m interested to see if they can come up with a decent interface. In previous games, your teammates were a liability as often as they were a benefit due to your inability to control them very well.

I wonder if the story will be like the old Fallout games and Oblivion; that is, there is a kind of central quest (in this case, the search for your character’s father), but you can really ignore it for the most part and just do whatever you want, whenever you want. I certainly hope so, because I can only handle so much random violence and grand larceny before I crave closure.

Random thought: somebody really needs to make a Fallout movie. Wait, on second thought, no. There has never been a good video game movie adaptation, and I don’t want to see Hollywood ruin another of my beloved series. Unless you give it to the people responsible for Dark Knight or Iron Man. They might be able to pull it off.

As a total aside, saw the latest episodes of Venture Brothers and Metalocalypse. I was starting to think both of these series were beginning to slowly spiral down into mediocrity, but things are looking up again. Shame it’s probably going to be another year until we get more VB.

Spoiler 1: #24, nooooo! Spoiler 2: I knew Toki would snap at some point, but damn. That was brutal.

Forever We Will Follow The Light
Although We’ll Burn in Nuclear Fire

 

Burrow Your Way To My Heart

Okay, I’m tired and and hung over from last night’s welcoming party, and I am in no way prepared to stumble across this at 8AM. On a good day, I would be fascinated by mind-controlling parasites. But with a roiling stomach the day after having consumed, by my estimate, the victuals of at least seven different animals, all I can think about is, “Oh God, what if I swallowed some Lovecraftian abomination, and it makes me blurt out inappropriate things at the exact wrong time?”

On second thought, I do that anyway. But now I have an excuse.

Anyway, it was great to be around some of the teachers outside of school, everything was a good deal less formal. Even if I still can’t understand most of what’s being said, it’s still fun, and the others were more than willing to try English and help me with my Japanese. I learned that horse meat tastes pretty damn good, and more importantly, squid (or ika if you will) isn’t half bad. Maybe they make it different over here or something, but the only time I had calamari in the US I was disgusted by it.

They also abide by my “everything tastes better when it’s on a stick” rule, with a good portion of the food arriving on skewers. I heartily endorse less chances to embarrass myself with chopsticks. And I was not misinformed when I was told the chuhai I had at the party in Himeji was, to be polite, inferior. The real stuff turned out to be far more delicious. And tasted dangerously like candy, making over-indulgence far too easy for me. I shall steel myself against it the next time to avoid collapsing on the floor, a drooling wreck of a man.

No pictures this time, only words. What would I have taken pictures of anyway? The fact I was smiling, a lot?

Eat me up with your love
Burrow your way to my heart

 

By the way…

…the name of that game is “Daruma-san ga koronda”. Yeah, I’m an idiot.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them WHAT to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

- Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.

540,000 Degrees Fahrenheit

I just heard about this.

Commence Primary Ignition!

Nerdgasm! I’ve found what I’ll be reading for the next few months. In between getting a 4th Edition game running around here, that is. My geekitude knows not the bounds of language or culture!

Not much happening on the Japan front, or maybe you could say a lot is happening. I think I’ve picked up more Japanese in the last month than I did in a full year or so of self-study. I’ve also got a sweet new Japanese cellphone with a GPS, web browser, built-in music store, TV ready, compass, 2 megapixel camera and a ton of little gadgets that will prove to be useful during my stay, for less than I paid for my crappy Razr back in the States. I say feh to you, America, you and your crappy phones.

I’ve started rearranging my new home as well. Now that I’ve got a paycheck under my belt I’m going to start picking up some furnishings so my apartment doesn’t have that “just got out of college” feel. I outgrew that phase far too long ago. Once I’ve done that I’ll snap some pictures of it so everyone can see how I live. Just as soon as I figure out how I pay my rent. Not much else going on, except occasionally prepping the kids for the Canada trip. I will say this; those kids have some sweet dance moves.

Finally, what’s up with Canada only bringing home three gold medals? Seriously, a country our size losing out to someplace like Belarus? That’s just embarrassing.

Every particle returns to its natural form
Ashes into ashes, blown away just like the dust

Dammit

I didn’t even last a month.

More pictures: The Festival, August 19th.

Here’s some photos I took during the festival in Shino (I think it’s called that) on August 19th. A lot of fun. The highlights: the fireworks went on for like two hours, everybody gawked at us gaijin, we practically ran like startled gazelles away from a group of pretty young women who said “Hello” to us, we remonstrated ourselves for the same, I discovered a new love in takoyaki (fried octopus dumplings), and finally one of the Andrew’s teachers invited us back to his home to help finish off all the sushi and liquor he had bought.

Festival, August 19th (Shino)

Also, I will share this. I bought some kind of robot mask during the festival because I thought it looked cool, and Lester managed to turn my shame into humour. It’s animated, so be sure to watch. Also, refrain from drinking Coke while watching. I speak from experience.

Uwaaaaah!!!

Brave New World

So, had my first solo class today. That was much sooner than expected.

First, I was worried. I thought it was only an hour, then I was told it was two hours, and all I could think was, “How am I supposed to teach kids English for 2 hours by myself?” It seemed an insurmountable obstacle.

Luckily, I was worried for no reason. My 15-minute lesson plan ended up taking almost an hour, and the kids really seemed to get into that. The language barrier was a problem sometimes, since I spoke no Japanese and they spoke little English, but we managed to work past it thanks to my English->Japanese dictionary and one of the students’ Japanese->English dictionary.

Once I’d spent the first hour giving them a crash course in Canada, (Beavers eat trees!), I helped them work on their introduction speeches for the Ottawa trip later this year. I was surprised at how well they were written; most of the mistakes were simple spelling errors. And one of the girls was busting out polysyllabic words, the meaning of which most English speakers probably don’t know. Very impressive.

Then, they made posters of some traditional Japanese games and activities so they can show the Ashbury kids how to play. The best was the one for “A Daruma doll falls”; I don’t remember the Japanese name. I know there’s an English version of it but I can’t recall the name either. The only thing that comes to mind is the game the kids are playing at the beginning of El Orfanto. Anyway, the point being the girl had forgotten the English translation of the rules, so they had to teach me how to play (in Japanese!), and then get me to write down the rules in English so they could make the sign. Loads of fun. Seriously.

And before I knew it, we’d spent not one or two, but three hours. So we ended there, after I nearly fell out the window trying to hang the curtain back up. Don’t ask.

Honestly, the idea of solo teaching terrified me before. Now? Not so much. Maybe I’m not as bad at this as I thought.

I have seen many things, in a lifetime alone
Mother, love is no more, bring this savage back home

 

Just to clarify…

If I seem to be ranting a lot this week, it’s because this is Obon week in Asago. It’s a yearly festival that everyone spends with their families. Unfortunately, most of the teachers at my school don’t live around here, and since it’s a holiday there’s no one at the school except me and the vice-principal. So, I have some free time on my hands, and as my friends know, when I get bored, I find things to get angry about.

Next week though should be more interesting. There is going to be an exchange trip to Ottawa in September, and the dozen or so students who are going will be coming in to practice their English. So I’ll have more to do and I’ll get to spend some time with the students. Perhaps I will try to convince them Canadians do indeed have bear cavalry. 

Also there’s a half-day seminar for ALT’s in Kobe next Wednesday. I’ll be able to explore the big city for a while and take some pictures. Will I accidentally wander into a “house of ill repute”, or end up losing my liver in a game of mahjongg to a hardened yakuza with a sword scar over his eye? Stay tuned!

Rage Against the Machine

Warglbl!

I hate World of Warcraft. There I said it.

Seriously Blizzard, you need to cut it out. There’s WoW itself, but then there’s also a card game, a pen-and-paper game, a board game and even now a miniatures game. There are novels, there are comics, and while I doubt that Make Love Not Warcraft counts as a TV show, a regular series can’t be far off. While it’s nice to see a Western geek-centric company take the same route many Japanese otaku-centric companies embrace with their ubiquitous branding, all you are doing is fueling my rage, Blizzard, because I hate your core experience.

Here is the reason for it: I play games with other people online for the opposite reason that I play games with other people in the meatspace. In the real world, with my friends, I like to play cooperative games, for example D&D. These are my friends, I want to have fun with them, not at their expense. (Yes, I know in D&D you ARE often having fun at your friend’s expense, but that’s more a function of the DM, the dice or poor decision-making abilities. Plus I don’t feel as bad when everyone else is laughing). I like Arkham Horror, I like X-Men Legends, I like to defeat systems with my associates in a collaborative setting because there’s nothing better than winning a game with your close friends. I imagine this is how people who play sports for fun think as well.

Online, however, is a different story. When you see me in an online game, typically a shooter or action game of some kind, I am not trying to be your pal. I am shooting you in the f*cking face because I AM BETTER THAN YOU. Yes, it’s primitive, animal-brain stuff. I am in a competition, testing myself in combat against the poor schmucks who have not yet learned to fear my name. The important thing here is that the kind of games I do this in, say the Battlefield series, is that each person’s avatar is the same. Skill is the deciding factor, not how much l33t l00t you’ve managed to skip work to camp. If I beat someone, or they beat me, it’s because of a valid difference in our abilities.

Contrast this to WoW. You spend a lot of time grinding on mobs with guildmates or random people to advance. Rarely do I manage to get enough of my friends online at the same time to make this feasible for me, and Random Internet People (R.I.P.) should in general die in a fire and end up like their acronym. This makes levelling up an ordeal of irritation and loneliness for me. The sheer amount of math that some people haul into this video game is stunning as well. If I want to play a game where I have to do actual calculations, I’ll just play D&D, thanks. At least when a party member gets me killed there, I can fling a D4 at him and put his eye out.

But what about the PVP you say? Yes, I do so enjoy being one-shotted by some internet addict with 20 levels on me, and equipment so rare you have a better chance of finding the Higgs boson, such that it is MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for me to even have a chance of winning. And the joy of doing the same thing to someone else is ameliorated by the fact it proves nothing except that person has more of a life than I do. This “Biggest Stick” game mechanic is not for people looking to have fun or blow off steam. It is a game mechanic for closet sociopaths with too much free time.

I want to like WoW. I really do. The setting of Warcraft seems like something I could get into, the artwork is fantastic, and I really respect Blizzard as a company. Maybe if I had a close group of friends who could all agree to play at the same, it could work for me. But right now, if WoW was a Transformer he would be named Frustrateron, and his only power would be to grab the anger center of my brain and set it ablaze.

On a bed of fire I’m choking on the smoke that fills my home