Shot Down In Flames

I am not surprised in the least.

Sony, you’ve been doing this long enough, you should know at this point how to market a platform. Or failing that, you should look at Nintendo, or Microsoft (the Xbox part, not the rest of it) and learn from them. Let’s take a look back at what you’ve done in your ill-conceived attempts to convince people your platform is the one they need:

• Dismissing the Wii as a “toy” and a “fad”. Yeah, them youngsters and their rock’n'roll music and their fancy computators, eh?
• Despite the fact your console is quantifiably in last place, claiming you are winning the console war. Cognitive dissonance much?
• Refusing to pay up to keep DLC from being platform exclusive. DLC is no longer considered a bonus, especially if you charge for it. It’s integral now. Swallow your pride and pony up.
• Yanking out the backwards compatibility, claiming it’s costing too much to produce. Can’t help but notice you haven’t announced a price cut yet. I know I love paying the same price for less features.
• Those creepy commercials. Seriously, who approved those? Is your advertising agency on LSD?
• A noticeably lacking library. Wasn’t so bad before you cut BC, since you could just play PS2 games. Now that you’ve moved to make the PS3 a separate platform, you need more titles. In other words, “LOL no gaemes on PS3!!1!”
• Making your console hard to develop for. This is so ridiculous I can’t even think of something funny to say.

I’m not saying you didn’t do some things right; the PS3 is, in terms of raw power, superior. The combination BluRay player and console is appealing to lots of folks. Games are not region locked. And you did finally break down and put together a decent online network.

Make it happen, Sony.

But right now, your console is in last place, behind the machine it was supposed to replace, and even Microsoft has more goodwill from gamers right now than you. Cut the price and soon, throw money at developers, have your PR drones focus on your verifiable good points rather than badmouthing your competitors and making things up. Things will turn around if you make an effort. Or you can be the next 3DO, it’s up to you.

Maybe there on the edge is your hope
But you don’t look down

Cthulhu Strikes Back!

So it sounds like Muramasa: The Demon Blade will be arriving in a few months. With the follow-up to Odin Sphere finally getting a release date, and the fact that MadWorld has done fairly well in both reviews and sales, it may finally be time for me to break down and get a Wii. Since the chronic shortage seems to have finally alleviated, it shouldn’t be difficult. Other than the fact I’m chronically short on another resource, spending money, nowadays. Perhaps I need to send some peasants out to find another gold mine.

Demon Octopus or Cthulhu? Is there a difference?

Well we almost all died, and Johnny’s out of his mind,
And though we never found Yig, we had a hell of a good time!

Fire Up The Blades

I have not yet picked up any of the splat books for 4th Edition, as I figured it was easier and smarter to do so on my infrequent visits to the English side of the world, rather than paying the book’s cost in shipping fees. So instead, I have been checking out information on the books, and found an interesting tidbit in a review of the Adventurer’s Vault:

One useful inclusion is a “move the magic” ritual, that allows you to move an enchantment from one weapon to another, so if that +2 Sunblade drops on a scimitar, but you want it on a khopesh, you’re good to go.

Well, finally. I’ve been frustrated with that sort of thing for years, and it’s nice they finally added a little something to take care of it. How many times have you heard something like this during a game?

“Awesome, a +5 Holy Avenger of Ultimate Destruction! Oh wait, it’s what kind of weapon? Damn, nobody’s proficient with that, put it on the sell for healing potions pile, then…”

That whole scenario has never been in keeping with the heroic conceit in D&D. It’s difficult to feel like an epic warrior when the Sword of Angel’s Tears that you risked your life to wrench from the Hellstone turns out to be a tulwar and no one can use it without slicing their own arm off. Accidental amputations are not the things sagas are made of.

Cut down by a Demon’s Blade
By strange forces it was made

Epic, in a sense

So, this is how my latest and greatest D&D character death went down:

“Fireball!”

“Damn, failed my Reflex save. But I’m okay, I’ve still got some hitpoints left!”

“Fireball!”

“Damn, failed my Reflex save again. I’m bleeding to death, but somebody can still save me!”

“Fireball!”

"..."

So, yeah. That’s one for the ages.

Also, looks like somebody at CCF maybe done f*cked up. Check the News for 11/5. Good show, random internet angry guys.

Brilliant!

From the comments here:

I would love World of Warcraft if it weren’t for all the other people.

Preach it brother. And the rest of you can take your Illidan Stormrage and shove him up your Murlock Breeches.

…And Then You’ll Beg

You may have already heard about this, but check out the 8.31.2008 post here for some righteous indignation. To quote:

The fine folks at GenCon raised over $17,000 for [the Christian Children's Fund] charity, which helps starving children in impoverished areas of the world–only to have that money actually turned down by the charity. The charity refused due to the fact that the money was raised partly by the sales of Dungeons and Dragons materials, which as we all know, puts an irrevocable taint of evil on the filthy lucre that us demon-worshiping gamers might want to use to, say, donate to starving children.

…

GRAAAAAHHH!!!

Yeah, you stay classy there, CCF. With all the strides gamers have made to show the world, hey, we’re NOT the insidious cult or violence-bent lunatics that the media and religious leaders paint us out to be, it’s nice to see that that you can still go ahead and make irrational decisions based on fear, hearsay and your own ignorance. Bravo!

The best part, of course, is that the only people who lose here are the kids. I’m sure they’ll feel much better knowing that the money that could have been used to provide them with food and clean water was turned down because it came from people who like to wear funny clothes and say “prithee” a lot.

Fuck you, CCF, fuck you. I’m too pissed right now to come up with a better way to express my anger, your stupidity has literally rendered me incoherent with rage. To make up for you being jerks, this year I’ll donate extra hard to Child’s Play. Maybe I’ll send them a few copies of the D&D Core Rulebook Gift Set just to spite you.

ossuary for the misinformed
you’d end up being amazed of what you’d see inside
the wisps of knowledge denied
and to think that someone’s implied it’s a better place to reside

Programmed to Consume

Still no mega-update yet, too busy. However, two things.

I bought a tie at work today. No, not on the Internet. There I was, sitting in the teacher’s office, minding my own business, when this older gentleman walks in with what looks like a large briefcase. Everybody smiles and nods at him, so I do as well. I figure he’s a member of the Board of Education, or a repairman, or something along those lines. Then he sets the case down and opens it.

It’s full of ties.

Some of the other male teachers come over to look, and nod appreciatively. He gestures me over and smiles, so I come over. He hands a few to me, so I examine them. They’re fairly nice ties, so I nod and smile back. He says something to me, and I make it clear that I have no idea what he’s saying. At this point I’m fairly bewildered; I have no idea what’s going on, and everyone else is busy and not paying attention to me and this nice tie-man. Then he says something I do understand: “Sen en”. One thousand yen. He punctuates it by holding aloft a finger, and then pointing at one of the ties.

He’s selling ties. Like, door-to-door.

What could I do? I found one that I liked and bought it. He smiled at me nicely, packed up his case and left, to a warm chorus of “sayonara”. The experience had a surreal quality, like a fever-induced dream, where even the most trivial act becomes suffused with meaning. But I’m holding the tie in my hand as we speak, and it’s pretty stylish, so it must have been real.

And to you, good tie-man, I say godspeed. May you always find welcome wherever men’s necks are undecorated.

The second thing is, today I bought this.

Damn you Sony! Damn you to hell!

I am a consumer whore.

Do we work for what we’ve created?
Just byproducts of man-made gods.

Still Alive

In my head I can hear “Ode to Joy” in the background as they fire it up.

There will be cake.

I’m making a note here, “Huge Success”

 

Homecoming

How could I have forgotten about you. Looks like the shift from Japanese developers to Stateside hasn’t had too much of an effect on the Silent Hill “feel”. I kind of wish they hadn’t incorporated that “peel back” effect from the Movie Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken, because anything that connects the superb games to the cinematic letdown is a poor choice.

I see him in my nightmares.

Wait, it drops on September 30th? Strange that they would move the ship date up from the original Halloween ‘08. Oh well, I don’t really mind having it available earlier than I thought, but this is the final nail in the coffin of my fiscal responsibility. I need a PS3, and I need it now. Maybe while I’m in Canada I can grab one, though I will probably be grossly overcharged for it…

Speaking of getting screwed, looks like they’re making a Silent Hill 2. Oh, ecstasy. I fully expect Hollywood to punch up the story like they did for the first one. There will be no surprise when I walk into the theatre on opening night only to find that James Sunderland is now an international superspy with a robotic arm and a talking monkey sidekick.

Now it’s too late, too late for me
This town will eventually take me
Too late, too late for me
This town will win

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