There is a problem with Dead Space

Now, I'm currently trying to finish Dead Space... on the uh, very last leg of it. Chapter 9 I believe. Just uh... been caught up in other games and well, Dead Space is a very scary game. Kinda hard on my nerves. Not a big survival horror guy, cause I'm a scaredy cat. But Dead Space is obviously a great game, and I can admire the craftsmanship of the dev team even if the actual game is really making me piss my pants. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, after all I did manage to get through the first 9 chapters. So it's pretty scary, but tolerable. And uh, finally decided to try and finish it. Having a good time. Could've used a quicksave system, would've been a lot better, but I guess that would've made it a bit less scary. I can see why they wouldn't want that in there. I would like that in there, that's just me, personal preference. Hey, it's alright, it's not you it's me, whatever.

But uh, there's an issue with Dead Space. One that's kinda bothersome, and I really really do hope they uh... manage to correct it for Dead Space 2. Which you know they're gonna do, they must. EA would be retarded not to make a sequel to one of the best games of 2008. Completely warranted to call them retarded if they didn't. Dunno about the ending, but most game endings these days pave the way for a sequel, right? It makes sense, just like a lot of films. Sequels deliver more of what you loved about the first game, while hopefully improving on the deficiencies. Well, Dead Space has a deficiency, and that's the damn loot system. Unlike a lot of other games, the loot, or ammo drops and health drops, is uh, not hand placed. There wasn't some tired game engineer painstakingly placing down each and every item. It's actually spawned by a somewhat dynamic system which takes into account what your current weapons are. So you'll generally get ammo that corresponds to the ammo you're actually using on the monsters that drop the ammo. It's a great cycle.

Except it's not working that well. It seems to be much too nonchalant about the types of ammo that're getting used. The game sees that I have four weapons in my inventory, and then just seems to place ammo for each in nice 25% ratios. Or something like that. Which is completely too unrealistic to what a player actually does. Or maybe I'm just different from an average player, because I certainly don't use ammo from each weapon in the same proportions. The plasma cutter is my fucking go-to gun. I need way WAY more plasma ammo then the other guns. Yet I keep getting drops for my contact beam and line gun when they don't need more ammo. I don't fucking use the contact beam unless I'm confronted by one of those huge Brute thingies. Who the hell uses the contact beam for regular enemies? It's like the rocket launcher in Doom, you don't just waste it on the normal shmucks. Same with the line gun, I'll generally pop it out for big battles when I need to cut down a lot of folks in a hurry. The rest of the time, it doesn't get used. The fourth gun I have is the Force Gun, which is the other gun I'll actually use somewhat frequently, because really, it's like an uber shotgun of sorts. The range sucks, but since most of the enemies are melee ambush types, the ease of use with the wide spread just makes a lot of sense. So in tight cramped spaces, pulling out the force gun can be rather more reassuring then the long ranged plasma cutter.

So yea... plasma cutter and force gun get used a lot, contact beam and line gun not so much. This heavy use of two guns at the expense of two other guns really shows the flaw in the loot system, because it's just too dumb to recognize this. So I keep running out of ammo for the plasma cutter and force gun while picking up obscene amounts of contact energy and line racks. Oh, and a random drop of pulse rounds here and there. Like, WTF? Sure, I can sell the contact energy and line racks and buy more plasma ammo, but that's only whenever there's a handy terminal nearby. Seriously, it's not a bad system... but it needs to be refined. Don't give out equal portions of ammo for every weapon, have the AI take note of how much ammo for a particular weapon is getting expended.

Is "Indian Giver" racist?

I've got something on my mind.

Well, I was watching Curb your Enthusiasm yesterday. It's a show with Larry David. The uh, guy behind Seinfeld. Tall bald guy with glasses. Jewish. Not sure if you've seen it. But uh, it's pretty funny. And well, there was this one scene where his manager Jeff Greene said something about an "Indian giver", and how that was a terrible racist term. And that really confused me, since I'd never thought of it as a racist term before. Because if you think about it, "Indian giver" is really just describing the terrible actions of whites who gave the Indians some land and then took it away later. Right? Isn't that what the "Indian giver" refers to?

So I'm not sure how that's actually racist. It's not really reflecting poorly on the Indians. It seems much more logical that it would be a white person, rather then an Indian, who would be offended by that. Because it's not like it's the Indians who gave land to the whites and then took it away. Maybe it's actually referring to the settlers who gave malaria blankets to the Indians? So an "Indian giver" was someone who gave blankets?

Or actually, I believe it was smallpox. They were smallpox blankets. That's pretty nasty. The uh, pus getting stained on the blankets, dripping yellow and smelling... ugh, it's not a pretty image. Or is pus clear? Does smallpox make the pus yellowish instead of a clear liquid? Has anyone had smallpox recently? I dunno, I'd imagine not. I know they cured polio back in the day. Cause of FDR. Though he still died at the end of WW2. So that didn't help. But they did cure polio. And smallpox is similar to polio in that pox and polio both start with "po". So that's somethng. Yea, you're right, they probably did cure smallpox.

Clean blankets at Indian casinos these days.

What's a pedometer?

This. This is a pedometer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedometer

I have to say, I totally did not expect that to be what a pedometer was. I was thinking... ya know what, this pedometer must be some sort of meter to determine how much of a pedophile you are, right? That's what it's gotta be, so you can find some kind of metric to grade yourself by as a budding pedo. It probably starts with some little stuff, like whether you find a 16 year old Emma Watson attractive, and goes all the way down to how you feel about Dakota Fanning back at the beginning of her film career... that's uh, that's probably what it does. It just goes down in steps like that.

Boy, I was pretty glad it wasn't that. Cause I've actually seen some funny images on the net for those kinds of pedo meters. But uh, apparently that's not what an actual pedometer is.

MechWarrior 5 Announced!

http://pc.ign.com/articles/100/1002164p1.html

DO WANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At first I thought it was just a CGI video, but it seems to be real in-game footage. And that's awesome.

Just kinda wondering why that Atlas doesn't have his big ol' mitts anymore. Maybe 3015 was just a bad year for hand actuator manufacturers?

No physical attacks, I'd imagine, so why have fists?

I'll tell you why, because it's right and proper and looks good. Just because there aren't any physical attacks doesn't mean you take away one of the most defining characteristics of an Atlas. That's just ghastly. It's like... taking away the shuttlebay from a model of the Enterprise just because there might not be any shuttle combat in a Star Trek game. It's horrible.

None of the other MW games had physical combat, but that doesn't mean it should still be some towering obstacle. We have the technology, we have the know-how. We can make it better.

Though since this is being made for both the PC and 360, I can see them having trouble finding enough buttons to fit a punch and kick ability to. Which is why it's always a bad thing when a game gets made for both the PC and consoles.

But yea, that video was... amazingly beautiful. Cockpit might've been the best part, it's miles beyond the one in MW3. And the MW4 cockpits were horrendous.

Did you notice the PPCs seemed to miss a few times at close range? Pretty nice touch. The art direction seems to be spot on, as well. You know, I really hated the lackluster effort in MW4, but this video looks like they're going back to the MW3 look. Mostly faithful to the structure and texture looks of the TRO designs. Well, except for the hand actuators.

The machine guns splattering against the thick armor of the Atlas seemed like a wink and a nod to the MW2 intro video.

That video was so mindblowing, I'm still not even all that upset that it's gonna set in 3015 IS instead of 3050s Clan. Probably have to wait till MW6 for that. Sure, they could throw in some Clan Mechs in a DLC... but uh, I wouldn't want that. If they're gonna introduce the Clans, it should be in a big bad way, with their own campaign, or at least a major part in an IS campaign. Just throwing some Omnis in for multiplayer... that's not doing em justice.

It's alright, from the looks of this video, the game's probably gonna sell gangbusters. I can wait a while until the sequel comes out and revel in the Clan glory. Ya know... we've been through MW2: Mercs, MC1, MC2, MW3, MW4: Mercs... I can tolerate yet another MW game with c-bills accounts and purchasing pilots and salvaging weapons and all that nonsense. I'd just like something new. A return to the Clan side and maybe an innovative new bidding system... it could be just as enjoyable as running a mercenary outfit, IMO.

Know what I was just thinking? Perhaps the success of this new MW game will compell other companies to do something with their old PC IPs. Perhaps even one about Freeing in Space? Think about it... Fallout 3... AvP 3... now MW5. All the stars are aligning in a celestial ballet.

This news makes me so so happy. It's like a new lease on life. The air smells fresher, food tastes better. There are probably little kids playing around with big beautiful butterflies outside my bedroom window.

Clothing and Dressing Rooms: The Unanswered Question

Have you ever worked in uh, a clothing store? A place where they sell clothing? Like shirts and socks and pants, the whole kit and kaboodle?

I dunno what kit and kaboodle really means, I just don't, it's just something I picked up somewhere... literary device, sounds catchy...

No? Oh, good. That's good, cause I was just wondering about the uh, the laundry policy for that kinda business. Specifically, the dressing rooms. Now, they let you try on clothes before you buy em. But... and this is the important part... how often do they actually take those clothes to the laundry when someone tries out the clothing but then ends up not buying em? You've got these unknown strangers, with god-knows what sorta personal hygiene, trying out the wares you're trying to sell. And do they just put those clothes back on the rack afterwards? Do they immediately put em into a hamper? How big would their backroom have to be to do that? Cause I imagine a lot of people try on all sorts of clothing but then find that they don't like it. So all that's gotta get cleaned, right? Imagine some big heavyset guy who's just ran a marathon comes in and tries out clothing? It's gonna be all sweaty and maybe greasy too... that's not good. That's not something you can just put right back onto some shelves.

Do you think they go to the laundrymat every day? Maybe every three days? It's gotta be a pretty fast turnaround time, right?

"Transformers Revenge of the Fallen was great, all those critics are wrong!"

WTF are you people smoking? This movie was goddamn horrible SHIT. And I thought the first one was okay. Passable. The Rock is Michael Bay's best work, and then Transformers and The Island were sorta alright. But this... this is ridiculously wretched.

It's just bizarre that his second flick is one of the greatest action films ever and over ten years later he comes out with this sort of colossal trainwreck. I dunno, it's like he was playing it straight back then and since then, he's just been indulging in his worst instincts and Transformers 2 is the most excessive display of that.

There are actually a pair of twin robots that speak in ebonics, call the humans "pussies", and one has a gold tooth for some reason. It's like two Jar Jar Binks at once. And yes, they are racially offensive, it wasn't funny at all. Cringe inducing. Ya know what, I didn't even find Jar Jar Binks offensive in a racial manner, just retarded, because I've never actually met anyone who spoke like Jar Jar. "Meesa people gonna die?" Yea, never heard of that from any ethnicity in real life. But the twin robots... yea, I've heard that sorta thing. It's amazing that Michael Bay thought this was alright. Sure, Jazz from the cartoon had a distinctly black voice, but it wasn't hitting you over the head with it. Jazz never called anyone a pussy or talked about how he never was much for book reading.

And Devastator was completely wasted. Here's this gigantic robot made up out of five constructicons, and... he doesn't really accomplish anything of note. At first he sucks up one of the GhettoBots, which made me really happy... and a few seconds later we see him leap out of Devastator's mouth and start shooting it in the face. And it's supposed to be this moment of victory for the good guys, but... I just got pissed that the horrible Jar Jar bot didn't get eaten and killed. That would've been so fucking great.

Devastator then just gets blown apart by one shot from a railgun mounted on a Navy destroyer. WTF? All that buildup just to see him clumsily trying to scale a pyramid and get BOOM HEADSHOT from some made-up CGI railgun? Fucking lame. Of course, the design itself was awful, it looked nothing like the Devastator I remember from G1. But that goes without saying, none of the designs look good.

You know what was amazing though? Michael Bay actually attempted to put some sort of message or moral into the plot. See, in the beginning... the main character's going off to college and he has to deal with his parents letting him go. So later, in the final battle sequence, he gets reunited with them and he tells them to go to safety and they refuse to go without him. And he says something like "Dad, no. You have to let go of me. You have to let go." And that's when it hit me... Michael Bay was actually trying to tell a story about a boy's parents learning to let go of their son so he can leave and become a man on his own. But of course, it's stuck in a film that just showed two hours of giant robots fighting each other, so... that message is kinda ridiculous. It was really funny how clumsy and awkward it was delivered.

So yea... the film's not good. CGI's great of course, there's this nice setpiece in the middle where Optimus Prime fights two or three Decepticons in this forest. And the blending of the CGI robots with this really natural setting was super impressive. Props to ILM. But the story and characters and editing and everything else is terrible.

Plus, I was sitting next to a douchebag who suddenly started texting on his fucking cell phone halfway through. I mean, yea sure... it's a long film, two and a half hours long... but that's no excuse for disrupting the theater experience like that. I was so irritated that I leaned over, nudged him in the shoulder and said "Your phone." And this guy turns to me like he's shocked that he's sitting next to actual human beings and asks "What?" Like he has absolutely no idea that he was doing anything wrong. So I say "It's distracting." Dude goes back to texting like I'm some jerk who likes being a jerk.

It's a terrible world we live in. And now that I think about it... I saw him texting and playing around with his cell before the film started too. Of course, I just naturally assumed he wouldn't actually text during the film. Faith and goodwill toward man, I guess.

And no, this movie is not true to the cartoon at all. The cartoon did not have childish humor like this. Point me to the G1 episode where a little Joe Pesci robot voiced by Steve Buscemi gets caught in a fucking mousetrap and whispers "You hot but you not so smart." And later humps a human's leg. WTF? Or an old bot farting out a parachute. Or someone stripping down to their fucking jock strap, exposing their asscheeks. WTF was that? Why do I want to see John Turturro's asscheeks? Someone stab my eyes out. Of course, we get the nonsense at the beginning where all the household appliances turn into murderous transformers and Shia's dodging gunfire from his fucking vacuum cleaner and microwave... just really lame bullshit. Oh, and the guardpost they run across in the desert? Just happens to have a little midget. It's soooo fucking hilarious isn't it? Midgets... they're small... hahaha. Fuck you Michael Bay. The man seems to have lost his goddamn mind on this film.

So yea, the cartoon was, strangely enough, much more mature then this film. Made entirely for people who grew up with the original cartoon series and are now adults? Hell no, I grew up with the original cartoon and this is an abomination. Why the hell is Bumblebee still fucking mute? I don't remember that from the cartoon. He gained the ability to speak at the end of the first film, for crying out loud. And a robot that's razor thin and formed out of the shells of a thousand ball bearings? Cool special effect, but I sure don't remember it from the cartoon. When Ravage gets torn apart by Bumblebee at the end of the film, his spine has some green liquid mess around him... huh? What was that about? Last time I checked, Transformers were all machine, no bio parts. Of course, that's overshadowed by the fact that the Decepticons can actually make Transformer-Humans now. With really long tongues and a great libido. Just amazing... it's like Michael Bay was trying to rip off every sci-fi property from the last 20 years. So in that scene he was ripping off Species and Terminator. Then, in another scene, Optimus Prime fires a bullet in slow motion at Megatron. Obviously a Matrix reference. Of course, you've got the obligatory military porn scenes that he's been doing for his entire career and which we all kinda tolerated in the first film. Now there's even more of em, in case you didn't get enough! And the standard 360 spin around characters. There was actually a scene composed of nothing but those spins. Remember when Shia and Megan Fox are first talking about saying "I love you" first? Didn't you notice that it's just the camera whipping around them, then whipping around them, then whipping around them, etc? I started turning my head from side to side to follow the camera, it was that annoying.

Also, did anyone else wonder WTF the point of the insect decepticon was? Here's this tiny little decepticon that looks like a fly. Shia picks it up and uh, tears it in half. Just like a real fly. Well... but this is a Transformer, made out of advanced alien technology. Why the hell would it be as easy to rip apart as a normal biological fly? It just shows that Michael Bay actually doesn't give a damn about Transformers. Like the first scene... Optimus Prime falls out of plane and deploys three giant parachutes. Why oh why would the Autobots reply on human-made parachutes? Wouldn't they have jetpacks or flying technology of their own? You'll remember that in the first few episodes of G1, the Autobots could fly. Not to mention that parachutes would probably have to be absurdly huge to provide enough lift for a giant robot made out of heavy metal.

Of course, Arcee gets no character at all, it's just three pink cycles that show up for the first half of the film. Ironhide has a strange British accent, which really distracted me whenever he spoke. Cause in the cartoon, Ironhide always had this sort of gruff Southern accent of sorts. To now sound British... it made him quite a bit more dainty.

And let's talk about the Fallen, the very very pivotal character who's in the fucking subtitles, for God's sake. Subtitles are pretty important. Star Trek II has the subtitle "The Wrath of Khan." Khan is a very important person in that film. Now, in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the Fallen is... huh? Wha? Nowhere to be seen? Yea, apparently. He showed up three times, first in that awful opening scene where he crushes a bunch of silly cavemen who look somehow worse then in 10,000 B.C. Which is surprising, because 10,000 B.C. was a Roland Emmerich piece of shit. Then in the middle of the film, when Megatron goes and decides to fly off to some moon of Jupiter. There's the Fallen, sitting in some mechanical chair and spouting awfully cliched villain dialogue. But hey, they must be just building up to something spectacular, right? Well... no, not at all actually. It's the end of the film, they've just revived Optimus and Devastator's been railgun'd, and all of a sudden, the Fallen teleports out of fucking nowhere, I guess maybe all the way from that moon, and climbs to the pyramid. And once again, Bay seems to have watched and liked the X-Men films, since he has the Fallen pull a complete Magneto with the tanks and rubble. Optimus somehow gains the ability to wear other Transformers as a skin, kind of a creepy idea, and then... proceeds to absolutely rape the Fallen in about a 50 second fight scene. Wha, huh? All that just to have the subtitled character go down faster then Paris Hilton? Maybe ILM spent so much time working on the forest scene that they didn't have enough time to make a longer fight scene at the end? Who knows.

If you thought this was some great cinematic experience, go kill yourself now.

What's the deal with that island?

Have you ever wondered what the difference between England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom was? I have. It's always been kinda the same thing to me. There's this big island in Europe and it looks kinda like a dog. That dog-shaped island's the UK/Great Britain/England. And it's supposed to have Scotland somewhere too. Just found out from Wikipedia today that the landmass of Scotland is actually just the upper portion of England. That's kinda confusing. At least Ireland has its own island to differentiate itself.

Just started wondering about it cause people said Andy Murray was Scottish, not British. I dunno. He might be both, right? Could he even be English? Didn't the Scottish fight the English in Braveheart? Okay, maybe he can't be English. But he could be British and a UKer.