So a few weeks ago I went to a friends wedding, got pretty drunk, then went out to a club afterwards with a few of the other wedding goers. Inside the club I spotted a bar maid who ticked a lot of my boxes, and this woke up my gaming senses enough for me to start acting up a bit. I grabbed the best man and opened a mixed 2 set by us by telling them he had just got married but his new wife had passed out at the hotel, then I ejected from set and left him to it. A little while later he comes up to me and tells me not to do that again because he was stuck with them for 10 minutes talking about his imaginary wedding and wife, with that I grabbed him and we walked around opening as many sets as I could find with the same thing and quickly ejecting, I could see he was enjoying it as much as I was and this started to really boost my state, and sober me up. While we were doing this another mixed 2 set walked past us and I got some solid eye contact from the girl. Later on me and the best man were sat on a sofa discussing game, he's one of my best mates and has been aware of my involvement in pick up from the beginning, but this was the first time he'd really seen me gaming since I had become competent at it. The mixed 2 set that I had the IOI from came and sat adjacent to us, but due to my alcohol intake I didn't recognise them, despite her giving more IOI's. My friend spotted the IOI's and assumed they were aimed at him, and as a result he asked for an opener, which I supplied, and went in to open the set. Within seconds the girl jumped across the room and parked herself next to me, leaving my mate and her friend chatting.
Now my state is pumping, I start stacking forward with my usual stuff, she's lapping all of it up, she's a cute little American girl who's just got into town that week, we're connecting, flirting, playing, and having an awesome time. I lead her round the place once, we get a drink, I run some sexual framing routines and it's all totally on the cards. We're about 20 mins down the line and it's looking like a done deal, which is when I get the impulse to bounce her to the dance floor, and for some reason, I questioned this instinct. This was when things started to go south, because I questioned my instinct, I then started trying to think about what I should do next, and nothing seemed to be good enough, so I figured I'd eject from set for a bit to give her time to miss me while I come up with a plan - mistake number two. I hit the dance floor for a bit with some of the other people from the wedding, we're actually in a student club and had somehow blagged our way in, so the fact they we are all suited and booted is generating a lot of attention, but I can see some of the dudes I know forming crystals around groups of girls. Deciding to show them up I start jumping into the centre of the groups and dancing around like I own the place, which again is building my state and social proof. this is when I spot the American girl again, she's with another of her guy friends (it turned out the set was a lot bigger than the 2 I originally thought it was) and looking over at me, but this place is so rammed I couldn't get over to her without making it look very clunky and/or needy, so I give it some time then go try to find her again. she's back at the seating area with her mates, so I sit down and start chatting to them, which is when she kicks out the words 'you're a really nice guy aren't you?'. Being drunk I totally miss-calibrated and assumed this was an IOD or a challenge, and as such assumed I'd botched the set, this was when things really fell apart... or at least, I THOUGHT it had fallen apart, and that's what is important here, I thought it. The fact of the matter is that in all likelihood it was an IOI, I had social proof to the max, was probably the highest value guy in the venue, we'd made a good connection and she's bought into all the frames I'd put forward, if anything, this was her trying to build rapport.
But like I say, I thought it had fallen apart, that was my reality at that moment in time, so I ejected and went back to the dance floor. I didn't have to wait too long to discover that my perception had been incorrect, because while I was back on the dance floor I caught the eye of another girl, a Welsh red head (I don't know what it is with me and red heads), I quickly escalated and got into heavy k-closing. About 10 mins down the line, while I'm against the wall with this new girl, I see the American girl in my peripheral vision about 2 feet away from me, with a look on her face of utter disappointment and anger. At that moment it all pretty much became clear to me, but thankfully I didn't react to it, I held the frame I was in and 10 minutes later left with the Welsh girl, so I can't really complain.
the lesson here is that you should follow your instincts, if you find yourself questioning them logically, ignore your logical mind unless it actually has a course of action for you to follow, but if it is just questioning your impulses you need to switch it off, or you'll just end up second guessing yourself. How does this look to a girl? It looks like you have lack of conviction in your actions, like you are sexually un-confident, and a whole load of other unattractive behavioural traits. If you want to do it, and no one is gonna get hurt because of it, then just fucking do it.
Also, drinking and game do not mix, trust me on this, it's a cocktail I have sampled many times lately and it always leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Quantum Leap
Ok, this is a totally abstract concept, and I know similar scenarios have been debated before, but this caught my imagination enough for me to post about it here. anyone who has seen Quantum Leap will be familiar with the idea of your consciousness time travelling and jumping into someone else's body, and I think there may have even been an episode of the show where something like this happened, but I want you to imagine what it would be like to quantum leap into yourself as a teenager. This is obviously way out there, but how do you think you would be able to cope with that, on the surface it sounds great, getting to live through it all again but with all the knowledge and skills you've developed since then, it sounds like a doddle, then again, maybe not.
In the years since you were a teenager you've grown up psychologically, and the events you experienced since then have formed your persona, what kind of impact would this have on your behaviour if one day you woke up to find yourself back as 15 year old again? What would be your initial impulses? What things would you want to go and do? What would be the first thing you try to change about your past? Would you even want to change anything about your past when you consider that the events that occurred are what have made you the person you are? If you felt the need to change events, would that mean that you are not happy with who you are or would there be other reasons for changing events?
I think some of the factors that I would find most difficult would be the way people would treat me, I was a very different person at that age, so to suddenly find myself back in that time, place and body but with the mind I have today, it would be one hell of a shock to the system. I also had a very different opinion of a lot of people back then to what I do now, as well as a very different attitude and outlook on the world, so as far as other people would be concerned, my behaviour would take a very sudden and dramatic turn, and I imagine that behaviour would not suit a 15 year old for the most part. Of course, it's also entirely possible that you would start to think and act like you did at that age the first time around, all the influences around you would be pushing you to adopt the thoughts and behaviour expected of you, and also there would be some many associations that might cause you to regress.
I'm not really getting at anything with this post, I just found it an interesting debate topic and I'd like to know what other people think would happen.
In the years since you were a teenager you've grown up psychologically, and the events you experienced since then have formed your persona, what kind of impact would this have on your behaviour if one day you woke up to find yourself back as 15 year old again? What would be your initial impulses? What things would you want to go and do? What would be the first thing you try to change about your past? Would you even want to change anything about your past when you consider that the events that occurred are what have made you the person you are? If you felt the need to change events, would that mean that you are not happy with who you are or would there be other reasons for changing events?
I think some of the factors that I would find most difficult would be the way people would treat me, I was a very different person at that age, so to suddenly find myself back in that time, place and body but with the mind I have today, it would be one hell of a shock to the system. I also had a very different opinion of a lot of people back then to what I do now, as well as a very different attitude and outlook on the world, so as far as other people would be concerned, my behaviour would take a very sudden and dramatic turn, and I imagine that behaviour would not suit a 15 year old for the most part. Of course, it's also entirely possible that you would start to think and act like you did at that age the first time around, all the influences around you would be pushing you to adopt the thoughts and behaviour expected of you, and also there would be some many associations that might cause you to regress.
I'm not really getting at anything with this post, I just found it an interesting debate topic and I'd like to know what other people think would happen.
Monday, 28 September 2009
How Long is Long Enough?
This is not a post about penis size, let's get that out the way now before all the comedians out there pipe up and get the two pence (cents) worth in.
I find myself getting frustrated with the length of video games, and it's a problem that has seemingly been present since I got my PS2 back in 2001, and has steadily become more of an issue since then. I don't know if it's just me that finds this, but most modern games have a very short length, which is something that I found to be an issue in both of my recent reviews for Wet and Halo 3: ODST. I find this to be an issue with a good 80% of the games I have played through in the last 7 or 8 years, even COD4 and Halo 3 were not as long as would have liked, it seems to be a common trend now that singleplayer campaigns average out at around 7 - 15 hours, which leads me to ask: is this long enough?
The games I played through prior to 2001 had much longer length, and while I wasn't anywhere near as involved in video games than as I am now, I played a variety of games across SNES, Megadrive (Genesis), Master System, PC, PlayStation and N64, all of which had some good sized games that kept you playing for hours upon hours. In my childhood, I spent hours on the SNES, playing games like Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda, and even games where saving wasn't common place, they were huge adventures that would absorb hours upon hours of button bashing, brightly coloured, imaginative mayhem. But then again, time is relative to the observer, and when you are a kid time seemed to move much slower, so is this all a figment of my imagination? I also have to appreciate that my gaming sessions had time limits placed on them by my parents to an extent, so probably only lasted 1 or 2 hours at a time as opposed to the 5 or even 10 hour sessions I sometimes clock in at on a lazy Sunday these days.
I think not, because even today there are a few games that just seem to last forever, and a stark contrast exists between these long epic adventures compared to the short chapter like games that account for most of what is out there. Final Fantasy games can easily suck up over 100 hours if you try to accomplish everything on offer, and a couple of these are so good that you want to play them through a second, or even third time. The gargantuan offerings from Bethesda that take the forms of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout 3 both have had me clocking in over 100 hours each, and with such gigantic single player adventures such as these I can't help but feel other game developers are simply lazy and looking to make a quick buck.
It's a difficult to take a side on this argument, because I am also aware that there are limitations on technology, story, and ideas, as well as limitations posed by the type of games. when a shorter game is released, is it because the developer has spent their time trying to make a more solid gaming experience, so that what is offered may not be very long, but is of extremely high quality? This is certainly the case some of the time, COD4 and Halo 3 being the two examples used above that would also fall into this category, but there are also some very low quality items produced that are also very short in length, but maybe due to their poor quality that is a blessing, I've had a run in with a couple of less than amazing games recently (reviews pending), and I find that I can't be bothered to finish these.
The other factor that changes the shape of the argument completely is the presence of multiplayer, I may hammer my way through most FPS' in 2 or 3 sittings, but if the multiplayer is good, there really is no limit to the amount of time you could spend interacting and shooting other human beings, and I'm sure the same is true for many other genres such as racing games. But should a game rely on multiplayer? For me, multiplayer is an afterthought when I consider buying a game, unless I know ahead of time it's something that me and my friends are all going to get heavily involved in.
I don't really have a conclusion or direction to take this debate to, but if anyone has any thoughts or opposing views I would love to hear them.
I find myself getting frustrated with the length of video games, and it's a problem that has seemingly been present since I got my PS2 back in 2001, and has steadily become more of an issue since then. I don't know if it's just me that finds this, but most modern games have a very short length, which is something that I found to be an issue in both of my recent reviews for Wet and Halo 3: ODST. I find this to be an issue with a good 80% of the games I have played through in the last 7 or 8 years, even COD4 and Halo 3 were not as long as would have liked, it seems to be a common trend now that singleplayer campaigns average out at around 7 - 15 hours, which leads me to ask: is this long enough?
The games I played through prior to 2001 had much longer length, and while I wasn't anywhere near as involved in video games than as I am now, I played a variety of games across SNES, Megadrive (Genesis), Master System, PC, PlayStation and N64, all of which had some good sized games that kept you playing for hours upon hours. In my childhood, I spent hours on the SNES, playing games like Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda, and even games where saving wasn't common place, they were huge adventures that would absorb hours upon hours of button bashing, brightly coloured, imaginative mayhem. But then again, time is relative to the observer, and when you are a kid time seemed to move much slower, so is this all a figment of my imagination? I also have to appreciate that my gaming sessions had time limits placed on them by my parents to an extent, so probably only lasted 1 or 2 hours at a time as opposed to the 5 or even 10 hour sessions I sometimes clock in at on a lazy Sunday these days.
I think not, because even today there are a few games that just seem to last forever, and a stark contrast exists between these long epic adventures compared to the short chapter like games that account for most of what is out there. Final Fantasy games can easily suck up over 100 hours if you try to accomplish everything on offer, and a couple of these are so good that you want to play them through a second, or even third time. The gargantuan offerings from Bethesda that take the forms of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout 3 both have had me clocking in over 100 hours each, and with such gigantic single player adventures such as these I can't help but feel other game developers are simply lazy and looking to make a quick buck.
It's a difficult to take a side on this argument, because I am also aware that there are limitations on technology, story, and ideas, as well as limitations posed by the type of games. when a shorter game is released, is it because the developer has spent their time trying to make a more solid gaming experience, so that what is offered may not be very long, but is of extremely high quality? This is certainly the case some of the time, COD4 and Halo 3 being the two examples used above that would also fall into this category, but there are also some very low quality items produced that are also very short in length, but maybe due to their poor quality that is a blessing, I've had a run in with a couple of less than amazing games recently (reviews pending), and I find that I can't be bothered to finish these.
The other factor that changes the shape of the argument completely is the presence of multiplayer, I may hammer my way through most FPS' in 2 or 3 sittings, but if the multiplayer is good, there really is no limit to the amount of time you could spend interacting and shooting other human beings, and I'm sure the same is true for many other genres such as racing games. But should a game rely on multiplayer? For me, multiplayer is an afterthought when I consider buying a game, unless I know ahead of time it's something that me and my friends are all going to get heavily involved in.
I don't really have a conclusion or direction to take this debate to, but if anyone has any thoughts or opposing views I would love to hear them.
Smashing Solo Game
Following on from my post recent post I had a serious brainwave about how to go about blasting through the sticking point of struggling to sarge solo. I want to share this with you, but in order to do so I will need to explain what 'Project Skywalker' is.
I've mentioned 'Project Skywalker' in a couple of other posts already, but I've not really explained what it is, until now. 'Project Skywalker' is the working title of a document I have been writing over the last couple of months, it started life as a written routine stack for my own reference so that I could ingrain it all into my head, it was what a lot of guys would call a cheat sheet, even though I had no intention of taking it out with me. What happened next was that a guy I know, from outside of the game and PUA community, showed some interest, so I decided to write some commentaries on my routine stack document that would explain each stage of the interaction and the purpose of each routine or technique. This is when it seemed to take on a life of it's own, once I started, I couldn't stop, I kept having more and more ideas that I had to get out of my head and into writing, until it started ti take the form of a full blown treatise on the system and style of game that I have been running and learning recently. I started structuring it all into a series of 20 lessons, each of which containing a theory, practical, and homework section designed for even the most inept guy to learn game. Now this isn't to say I had, or have, any intentions of marketing this out, in fact, it has been primarily for my own well being, and has already assisted me in a number of ways.
Primarily, it has allowed me to un-jumble much of the information I have taken in over the last 2 years, I've been throwing so much shit at the wall trying to get it to stick, that I didn't notice that so much had stuck to it that you couldn't tell it was a wall anymore, and all I was left with was a mound of shit. In a sense, writing Project Skywalker has allowed me to peel it all away and organise it into coherent piles of... shit... ok, bad analogy, but you get what I'm saying.
Secondly, the 'inept guy' I had in my mind when I was working out the lesson structure and content, was myself 2 years ago, I wanted to come up with a system that would have helped me learn and understand a swifter pace, should the opportunity ever arise that I could teach someone, I would already have the method laid out.
How is all this going to help me start gaming solo? Well, I realised that now that I've done all of this, I should work through everything within 'Project Skywalker' alone, there are a lot of exercises and missions I have placed within it that I haven't done myself, so it's only fair that I go out and do them, I can't expect someone else to do what I tell them if I am not prepared to do it myself or have not actually done it myself. In doing this I've given myself a reason to go out on my own and run game, essentially I've re-framed the entire scenario.
In a sense, I'm starting to feel like a mad scientist trying out a new formula on himself, will this be like Dr Jekyll & Mr Hide, or the more modern equivalent of Dr. Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk? Will I end up overshooting my goal and heading in a direction I hadn't intended? Quite possibly I think as through learning game I already seem to have done that in some ways, but none the less, that will be interesting in itself.
Having now had this idea, I find myself wondering if this is what many of the so called 'gurus' in the PUA community have done, do the experts all find a way to reinterpret everything they have learned into a form that they best understand, thus allowing them to reteach it to themselves and then upon succeeding, teach it to others? At this point I just want to reiterate that despite that last sentence, I have no interest or intention of teaching this to other people at present, I'm starting to feel as if the PUA scene is becoming very saturated with 'sure fire' new systems for learning game, and it's getting harder and harder to find genuinely new material, but as I also see a flip side to this debate, I'll leave it for another day (that isn't too far away by any means).
Going back to the topic at hand, is this what David DeAngelo means when he says 'become your own teacher', maybe I've drilled the concept down to too much of a fine detail, but do you think it would help you to work out how you would teach what you know, put it into a concise system for relaying and practicing the information and skills, then teach it to yourself?
I'm theorising that by doing this I will solidify own skills, test the system for any glitches that I might have missed, seeing as I didn't learn this system from scratch, it was something I transitioned into from a different system of game, and maybe by going through everything from scratch the system I am using will evolve further and become more effective along with my actual skills.
Obviously all of this will mean going back to basics, but that's not often a bad thing in any area of life, sometimes it's necessary to go back where you've come from in order to see things you missed the first time around, which is something often portrayed in detective stories, where the vital piece of information that ties all the clues together was the detail that was so obvious that it was overlooked. this isn't going to stop me going out at the weekend and gaming as I normally do with friends, but it will give me a focus for weekdays when I wouldn't normally sarge.
Another bonus of this is that it will give me a solid reason to post field reports, I'm not a huge fan of general field reports outside of my own hand written journal. I see a lot of them as being boastful and self indulgent, and only really useful if there was a revelation contained within that has a positive application for the future (I do actually have two such revelations and accompanying field reports which I will post in the near future). But again, this new active phase of 'Project Skywalker' has re-framed the idea of field reports for me, I will be able to analyse and feedback on the events of the lessons, specific to the subject matter of each lesson, almost like a hybrid of someone who is relatively experienced practicing from a newbie perspective, which will allow you guys to get more of a feel for what I am actually doing and how you can apply this to yourselves.
There are also two factors that will ensure I stick to doing this, firstly, posting it here, as I said in the previous post where I highlighted this sticking point, writing it for the whole world to see makes me accountable for carrying through with it. Secondly, the guy I go sarging with most, who also had an equal hand in forming our current system of game, has also expressed an interest in testing this out solo, and will keep me moving forward with it to compare notes.
Please feel free to leave any comments or ideas you have on this.
Update: 11th Oct 09
Psych from PUA Training has just put a post on their blog that presents a very similar idea to what I have presented above, I suggest checking it out for a comparison by clicking here
I've mentioned 'Project Skywalker' in a couple of other posts already, but I've not really explained what it is, until now. 'Project Skywalker' is the working title of a document I have been writing over the last couple of months, it started life as a written routine stack for my own reference so that I could ingrain it all into my head, it was what a lot of guys would call a cheat sheet, even though I had no intention of taking it out with me. What happened next was that a guy I know, from outside of the game and PUA community, showed some interest, so I decided to write some commentaries on my routine stack document that would explain each stage of the interaction and the purpose of each routine or technique. This is when it seemed to take on a life of it's own, once I started, I couldn't stop, I kept having more and more ideas that I had to get out of my head and into writing, until it started ti take the form of a full blown treatise on the system and style of game that I have been running and learning recently. I started structuring it all into a series of 20 lessons, each of which containing a theory, practical, and homework section designed for even the most inept guy to learn game. Now this isn't to say I had, or have, any intentions of marketing this out, in fact, it has been primarily for my own well being, and has already assisted me in a number of ways.
Primarily, it has allowed me to un-jumble much of the information I have taken in over the last 2 years, I've been throwing so much shit at the wall trying to get it to stick, that I didn't notice that so much had stuck to it that you couldn't tell it was a wall anymore, and all I was left with was a mound of shit. In a sense, writing Project Skywalker has allowed me to peel it all away and organise it into coherent piles of... shit... ok, bad analogy, but you get what I'm saying.
Secondly, the 'inept guy' I had in my mind when I was working out the lesson structure and content, was myself 2 years ago, I wanted to come up with a system that would have helped me learn and understand a swifter pace, should the opportunity ever arise that I could teach someone, I would already have the method laid out.
How is all this going to help me start gaming solo? Well, I realised that now that I've done all of this, I should work through everything within 'Project Skywalker' alone, there are a lot of exercises and missions I have placed within it that I haven't done myself, so it's only fair that I go out and do them, I can't expect someone else to do what I tell them if I am not prepared to do it myself or have not actually done it myself. In doing this I've given myself a reason to go out on my own and run game, essentially I've re-framed the entire scenario.
In a sense, I'm starting to feel like a mad scientist trying out a new formula on himself, will this be like Dr Jekyll & Mr Hide, or the more modern equivalent of Dr. Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk? Will I end up overshooting my goal and heading in a direction I hadn't intended? Quite possibly I think as through learning game I already seem to have done that in some ways, but none the less, that will be interesting in itself.
Having now had this idea, I find myself wondering if this is what many of the so called 'gurus' in the PUA community have done, do the experts all find a way to reinterpret everything they have learned into a form that they best understand, thus allowing them to reteach it to themselves and then upon succeeding, teach it to others? At this point I just want to reiterate that despite that last sentence, I have no interest or intention of teaching this to other people at present, I'm starting to feel as if the PUA scene is becoming very saturated with 'sure fire' new systems for learning game, and it's getting harder and harder to find genuinely new material, but as I also see a flip side to this debate, I'll leave it for another day (that isn't too far away by any means).
Going back to the topic at hand, is this what David DeAngelo means when he says 'become your own teacher', maybe I've drilled the concept down to too much of a fine detail, but do you think it would help you to work out how you would teach what you know, put it into a concise system for relaying and practicing the information and skills, then teach it to yourself?
I'm theorising that by doing this I will solidify own skills, test the system for any glitches that I might have missed, seeing as I didn't learn this system from scratch, it was something I transitioned into from a different system of game, and maybe by going through everything from scratch the system I am using will evolve further and become more effective along with my actual skills.
Obviously all of this will mean going back to basics, but that's not often a bad thing in any area of life, sometimes it's necessary to go back where you've come from in order to see things you missed the first time around, which is something often portrayed in detective stories, where the vital piece of information that ties all the clues together was the detail that was so obvious that it was overlooked. this isn't going to stop me going out at the weekend and gaming as I normally do with friends, but it will give me a focus for weekdays when I wouldn't normally sarge.
Another bonus of this is that it will give me a solid reason to post field reports, I'm not a huge fan of general field reports outside of my own hand written journal. I see a lot of them as being boastful and self indulgent, and only really useful if there was a revelation contained within that has a positive application for the future (I do actually have two such revelations and accompanying field reports which I will post in the near future). But again, this new active phase of 'Project Skywalker' has re-framed the idea of field reports for me, I will be able to analyse and feedback on the events of the lessons, specific to the subject matter of each lesson, almost like a hybrid of someone who is relatively experienced practicing from a newbie perspective, which will allow you guys to get more of a feel for what I am actually doing and how you can apply this to yourselves.
There are also two factors that will ensure I stick to doing this, firstly, posting it here, as I said in the previous post where I highlighted this sticking point, writing it for the whole world to see makes me accountable for carrying through with it. Secondly, the guy I go sarging with most, who also had an equal hand in forming our current system of game, has also expressed an interest in testing this out solo, and will keep me moving forward with it to compare notes.
Please feel free to leave any comments or ideas you have on this.
Update: 11th Oct 09
Psych from PUA Training has just put a post on their blog that presents a very similar idea to what I have presented above, I suggest checking it out for a comparison by clicking here
Emotional Investment of the Virtual
Having just seen the new, 7 minute, Japanese trailer for Final Fantasy XIII (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/tgs-09-final-fantasy/56840) I find myself wondering how important a story is to a video game. In this trailer alone I find myself sucked in by the drama of the events, the way the characters speak and interact with each other with complex body language and facial expressions. Various emotions are carried in their voices and it is all very clear that the world in which this takes place is breathtaking and awe inspiring place to be. Most of the trailer seems geared towards pulling someone into the story rather than the game play, but how important is a story to a video game?
Over the years, the Final Fantasy series has been a treasure trove of imaginative story lines, sub plots, archetypes, and characters that captivate the imagination. I first fell in love with the series, with Final Fantasy VII, and to this day I consider it to be one of the best video games I have ever played, if not 'the' best in fact. I didn't play it when it first came out, in fact I already owned an N64 when I finally got my hands on a PSone and a copy of the game, a good 3 years after it was released, so standards of video games had gone up. The character models were blocky, the animations had a low frame rate, most of the game took place in 2D pre-rendered backgrounds, some of game mechanics were fiddly, there was no voice acting, and some of the menus were confusing... but none of that mattered, simply because the game oozed character, imagination and charisma. The story was one of the most fantastic epic tales of good and evil (and the shades of grey in between) that I consider to be more imaginative and awe inspiring than anything modern cinema has thrown at us. The characters within the story were all so well written that even by reading their dialogue on screen you could almost hear their individual voices and personalities in your head, and you quickly grew to love all of them in their own way, causing explosive excitement whenever a piece of back story for any of them was revealed. As the story progressed and the lines of friendship, love, and heroism became blurred, you become so involved in the story and the fate of the characters, that anyone who claims not to have shed a silent tear for the pure and innocent Aries (Arith to Americans) when she met her untimely end, half way through the game at the hands of the game's misguided and disillusioned antagonist, can be nothing short of liar.
Obviously all final Fantasy games are story centric, which is no surprise as series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi is famous for saying "I don't have what it takes to make an action game. I think I'm better at telling a story" at the time of the first Final Fantasy game in 1987, however none of the others that I have played have ever been as engrossing as FFVII, despite most of them being technically more proficient. after VII I played VIII, which, despite two separate attempts, I never finished. this had nothing to do with difficulty, I just didn't care enough about the plot or the characters, not totally surprising for a follow up game to one of the most successful RPGs of all time, although there is debate among fans as many believe it to be superior to VII. Personally, I consider VIII to be more generic, less mature, and akin to a Hollywood plot. A better game that I played following VIII was IV, and despite going back to the 16 bit graphics of the SNES, this for me was a very good game, as complex, if not more so than VII, and I did see it through to the end despite a crippling level of difficulty, but ultimately I didn't care as much about the story or characters, the whole thing just seemed a little fragmented. XI is a game I finished, but again, didn't find it as engrossing and it almost seemed sparse in places. X was very different take on things and heralded the evolution to the next gen of consoles for the series, and while the characters felt more real and caused the player to become more emotionally involved in them and their relationships, the main story arch wasn't as dramatic as the almost opera like VII.
If we were to take a look another long running story driven franchise, you don't have to look very far to find the Metal Gear series. The metal gear games have always been based on stealth action in a world the resembles our own much more closely than the worlds presented in Final Fantasy. I came into this series at Metal Gear Solid, which was the third installment in the story, but that didn't leave me at a loss. The 4 'Metal Gear Solid' games happily stand on their own as a story and fill int he blanks for anyone that missed the earlier 'Metal Gear' games. the Metal Gear Solid games play much like an interactive action movie, and draw many elements from Hollywood action films. I only actually played Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, but the story line is so enthralling and exciting that I have watched the cut scenes of Metal Gear solid 3 and 4 without bothering to play the games! doing this was actually a pleasure, they are well constructed cinematic sequences and the voice acting is totally top notch. And while it is a shame that I missed some of the finer details that would have cropped up during actual play sequences, there was still enough rich story and action content in the cut scenes to keep me on the edge of my seat throughout... and that actually says a lot when you consider that there was over 5 hours of cut scenes in Metal Gear Solid 3, and 10 hours in Metal Gear Solid 4! (which to be honest is something I didn't know when I sat down to watch it one Sunday morning). for this series in particular, the story was actually more important to me than the game itself, but had it been presented in any format other than a game, I believe many elements would have been dropped to fit the medium, and as such it would have lost some of it's charm and suspense, and had these elements not have been dropped, the production costs would have been either too high or corners would have been cut, causing it lose it's edge.
It's fairly obvious from my review of the new Halo game that I am a fan of the series, and the story there of, but it isn't as necessary to the the game as Final Fantasy or Metal Gear, but it is a sci-fi epic in it's own right. What I find interesting about it is the different way in which the story is presented, in the Halo trilogy the player takes the role of the Master Chief from a first person view to run a bloody assault against an alien army (or two), and for the most part this is the perspective that you assimilate the story from as well. The Chief doesn't have a lot to say, so it is very easy for the player top layer the Chief with their own personality and play through your mission almost as yourself, or how you would be if you were an armoured and fearless cyborg tasked with saving humanity. where the emotion comes in is through the characters you meet and fight along side, how they all depend on you to save the world and the sacrifices they make in order to help you accomplish your mission. The other very clever element is the character of Cortana, a female computer AI who spends most of the series plugged into the chiefs computer components, meaning she almost lives inside you and talks directly into your head. But she is also written with a very human, caring personality, and while her main purpose is the survival of earth, you get the feeling that she actually cares about the various characters and their well being, including you, the Chief, which makes her presence sorely missed throughout most of Halo 3 while her whereabouts and and condition are unknown, a time during which the Chief displays his most determined and human side throughout the entire series. Without all of these components, Halo would really have been the stereotyped mindless and violent video game so many non-gamers seem unable to release their mental grasp on, albeit a very playable one.
Some games only really have a story out of necessity, or even in some cases, habit. the legend of Zelda series has been using almost the same formula for all of it's games, where by a Hero dressed in green (often called Link but this is left up to the player) has to set about saving the world of Hyrule (occasionally another place) by adventuring around the world and into various dungeons or temples to vanquish evil, find magical items and tools to help him proceed with his quest, and sometimes save a princess (almost always named Zelda). Most of the series seemingly is unconnected despite these similarities, and while the story has become more developed in later installments, it never really ventures too far from this formula. Because of a few small elements that do seem to connect the stories of the various games, there are a number of fan theories connecting them, which include ideas of alternate time lines, parallel universes, and reincarnation, which if nothing else goes to show how video games can actually encourage the imagination.
Similar to the Zelda series are the, one time rival, Mario series and the Sonic series. these were both simple platform games, but given basic story lines to give some small element of sense and purpose to the player, but over time with more installments and associated fiction, the story arches and lore evolved until both series' had their own rich worlds for players to become engrossed in, so much so that books, comics, and in Mario's case a poor Hollywood blockbuster, all spawned from them. Would either of these series's survived if the fantasy world in which these loveable little characters existed had not been solidified around them and left to be utterly unexplained?
Coming back to more modern times, one in-development game that has recently caught my attention is Heavy Rain, a game set in a real world setting with a gritty tale of murder and various other adult themes. From what I can tell, the story has been written for this game with the actual game play being more of an after thought, the catch is that depending on how the player influences events, the story will unfold very differently. the game appears to have many possible paths for the story to flow down, with each 'scene' having multiple ways of playing out, all of which will alter the events to follow.
what about games that do not have a story, well these days they usually only come in the form of sports simulations, even other types of simulators have a story that develops, but they just happen to be stories built by the player. The Sims series is a rather obvious example, where by the player is given a canvas world to fill with what they choose, then place in the characters of their choice, just to watch the story unfold in it's own way, which must be very much like the way soap opera writers imagine their worlds, and that comparison alone explains why so many girls enjoy the Sims series (risky comment!). going back to sports games, even these have an element of story in the modern world in the form of a career mode, where the player writes their own story from the stand point of an athlete, or even a team of athletes, and is a simple easy to identify with, story of challenge and glory.
Before I wrap up, I want to quickly suggest the notion that a bad story can ruin a game, the same way a bad story or poor acting can ruin a high budget Hollywood movie. If a game is perfect to play, in that it is utterly, sublimely enjoyable to perform what ever tasks or challenges have been set, but the story makes no sense, or the acting, certainly with today's increasing standards, was so bad that cerebrally I couldn't stand it, I would have no choice but to turn it off. The same however would also be true if the story was superb and well acted, but the game itself was diabolically crafted with bad controls, terrible visuals, and frustrating level design.
I believe that video games are like any work of fiction; books, films, cartoons, comics, etc, they are worlds and characters created in someone else's imagination and presented in a form that allows others to experience to a level that is not possible with other mediums. and this is why I love video games, because you actually get to enter and explore someone else's world, to live there for a short time, and the more fantastic the world and events, the more interesting and believable the characters that exist there, the richer the whole experience becomes.
Over the years, the Final Fantasy series has been a treasure trove of imaginative story lines, sub plots, archetypes, and characters that captivate the imagination. I first fell in love with the series, with Final Fantasy VII, and to this day I consider it to be one of the best video games I have ever played, if not 'the' best in fact. I didn't play it when it first came out, in fact I already owned an N64 when I finally got my hands on a PSone and a copy of the game, a good 3 years after it was released, so standards of video games had gone up. The character models were blocky, the animations had a low frame rate, most of the game took place in 2D pre-rendered backgrounds, some of game mechanics were fiddly, there was no voice acting, and some of the menus were confusing... but none of that mattered, simply because the game oozed character, imagination and charisma. The story was one of the most fantastic epic tales of good and evil (and the shades of grey in between) that I consider to be more imaginative and awe inspiring than anything modern cinema has thrown at us. The characters within the story were all so well written that even by reading their dialogue on screen you could almost hear their individual voices and personalities in your head, and you quickly grew to love all of them in their own way, causing explosive excitement whenever a piece of back story for any of them was revealed. As the story progressed and the lines of friendship, love, and heroism became blurred, you become so involved in the story and the fate of the characters, that anyone who claims not to have shed a silent tear for the pure and innocent Aries (Arith to Americans) when she met her untimely end, half way through the game at the hands of the game's misguided and disillusioned antagonist, can be nothing short of liar.
Obviously all final Fantasy games are story centric, which is no surprise as series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi is famous for saying "I don't have what it takes to make an action game. I think I'm better at telling a story" at the time of the first Final Fantasy game in 1987, however none of the others that I have played have ever been as engrossing as FFVII, despite most of them being technically more proficient. after VII I played VIII, which, despite two separate attempts, I never finished. this had nothing to do with difficulty, I just didn't care enough about the plot or the characters, not totally surprising for a follow up game to one of the most successful RPGs of all time, although there is debate among fans as many believe it to be superior to VII. Personally, I consider VIII to be more generic, less mature, and akin to a Hollywood plot. A better game that I played following VIII was IV, and despite going back to the 16 bit graphics of the SNES, this for me was a very good game, as complex, if not more so than VII, and I did see it through to the end despite a crippling level of difficulty, but ultimately I didn't care as much about the story or characters, the whole thing just seemed a little fragmented. XI is a game I finished, but again, didn't find it as engrossing and it almost seemed sparse in places. X was very different take on things and heralded the evolution to the next gen of consoles for the series, and while the characters felt more real and caused the player to become more emotionally involved in them and their relationships, the main story arch wasn't as dramatic as the almost opera like VII.
If we were to take a look another long running story driven franchise, you don't have to look very far to find the Metal Gear series. The metal gear games have always been based on stealth action in a world the resembles our own much more closely than the worlds presented in Final Fantasy. I came into this series at Metal Gear Solid, which was the third installment in the story, but that didn't leave me at a loss. The 4 'Metal Gear Solid' games happily stand on their own as a story and fill int he blanks for anyone that missed the earlier 'Metal Gear' games. the Metal Gear Solid games play much like an interactive action movie, and draw many elements from Hollywood action films. I only actually played Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, but the story line is so enthralling and exciting that I have watched the cut scenes of Metal Gear solid 3 and 4 without bothering to play the games! doing this was actually a pleasure, they are well constructed cinematic sequences and the voice acting is totally top notch. And while it is a shame that I missed some of the finer details that would have cropped up during actual play sequences, there was still enough rich story and action content in the cut scenes to keep me on the edge of my seat throughout... and that actually says a lot when you consider that there was over 5 hours of cut scenes in Metal Gear Solid 3, and 10 hours in Metal Gear Solid 4! (which to be honest is something I didn't know when I sat down to watch it one Sunday morning). for this series in particular, the story was actually more important to me than the game itself, but had it been presented in any format other than a game, I believe many elements would have been dropped to fit the medium, and as such it would have lost some of it's charm and suspense, and had these elements not have been dropped, the production costs would have been either too high or corners would have been cut, causing it lose it's edge.
It's fairly obvious from my review of the new Halo game that I am a fan of the series, and the story there of, but it isn't as necessary to the the game as Final Fantasy or Metal Gear, but it is a sci-fi epic in it's own right. What I find interesting about it is the different way in which the story is presented, in the Halo trilogy the player takes the role of the Master Chief from a first person view to run a bloody assault against an alien army (or two), and for the most part this is the perspective that you assimilate the story from as well. The Chief doesn't have a lot to say, so it is very easy for the player top layer the Chief with their own personality and play through your mission almost as yourself, or how you would be if you were an armoured and fearless cyborg tasked with saving humanity. where the emotion comes in is through the characters you meet and fight along side, how they all depend on you to save the world and the sacrifices they make in order to help you accomplish your mission. The other very clever element is the character of Cortana, a female computer AI who spends most of the series plugged into the chiefs computer components, meaning she almost lives inside you and talks directly into your head. But she is also written with a very human, caring personality, and while her main purpose is the survival of earth, you get the feeling that she actually cares about the various characters and their well being, including you, the Chief, which makes her presence sorely missed throughout most of Halo 3 while her whereabouts and and condition are unknown, a time during which the Chief displays his most determined and human side throughout the entire series. Without all of these components, Halo would really have been the stereotyped mindless and violent video game so many non-gamers seem unable to release their mental grasp on, albeit a very playable one.
Some games only really have a story out of necessity, or even in some cases, habit. the legend of Zelda series has been using almost the same formula for all of it's games, where by a Hero dressed in green (often called Link but this is left up to the player) has to set about saving the world of Hyrule (occasionally another place) by adventuring around the world and into various dungeons or temples to vanquish evil, find magical items and tools to help him proceed with his quest, and sometimes save a princess (almost always named Zelda). Most of the series seemingly is unconnected despite these similarities, and while the story has become more developed in later installments, it never really ventures too far from this formula. Because of a few small elements that do seem to connect the stories of the various games, there are a number of fan theories connecting them, which include ideas of alternate time lines, parallel universes, and reincarnation, which if nothing else goes to show how video games can actually encourage the imagination.
Similar to the Zelda series are the, one time rival, Mario series and the Sonic series. these were both simple platform games, but given basic story lines to give some small element of sense and purpose to the player, but over time with more installments and associated fiction, the story arches and lore evolved until both series' had their own rich worlds for players to become engrossed in, so much so that books, comics, and in Mario's case a poor Hollywood blockbuster, all spawned from them. Would either of these series's survived if the fantasy world in which these loveable little characters existed had not been solidified around them and left to be utterly unexplained?
Coming back to more modern times, one in-development game that has recently caught my attention is Heavy Rain, a game set in a real world setting with a gritty tale of murder and various other adult themes. From what I can tell, the story has been written for this game with the actual game play being more of an after thought, the catch is that depending on how the player influences events, the story will unfold very differently. the game appears to have many possible paths for the story to flow down, with each 'scene' having multiple ways of playing out, all of which will alter the events to follow.
what about games that do not have a story, well these days they usually only come in the form of sports simulations, even other types of simulators have a story that develops, but they just happen to be stories built by the player. The Sims series is a rather obvious example, where by the player is given a canvas world to fill with what they choose, then place in the characters of their choice, just to watch the story unfold in it's own way, which must be very much like the way soap opera writers imagine their worlds, and that comparison alone explains why so many girls enjoy the Sims series (risky comment!). going back to sports games, even these have an element of story in the modern world in the form of a career mode, where the player writes their own story from the stand point of an athlete, or even a team of athletes, and is a simple easy to identify with, story of challenge and glory.
Before I wrap up, I want to quickly suggest the notion that a bad story can ruin a game, the same way a bad story or poor acting can ruin a high budget Hollywood movie. If a game is perfect to play, in that it is utterly, sublimely enjoyable to perform what ever tasks or challenges have been set, but the story makes no sense, or the acting, certainly with today's increasing standards, was so bad that cerebrally I couldn't stand it, I would have no choice but to turn it off. The same however would also be true if the story was superb and well acted, but the game itself was diabolically crafted with bad controls, terrible visuals, and frustrating level design.
I believe that video games are like any work of fiction; books, films, cartoons, comics, etc, they are worlds and characters created in someone else's imagination and presented in a form that allows others to experience to a level that is not possible with other mediums. and this is why I love video games, because you actually get to enter and explore someone else's world, to live there for a short time, and the more fantastic the world and events, the more interesting and believable the characters that exist there, the richer the whole experience becomes.
Friday, 25 September 2009
Step 1: Collect Underpants, Step 2: ?, Step 3: Profit
I have just demonstrated to myself exactly how to NOT organise a week of sarging. Here is how it went down; I found out when freshers week was, I booked the time off work.... and that really is all I did. So it transpires that I should have firmed up some exact plans for what to do with this time and how exactly I was going to sarge some freshers. Just because you buy the land, it doesn't mean a house is going to magically build itself on it.
So, despite the epic failure that the week has been, I'm taking my own advice and finding something positive in it. to do that, I'm going to pick apart where I went wrong and what I should have done.
I relied on very few un-firm plans to transpire into the first field tests of Project Skywalker, I also had one very vague plan to hang with a girl I know one night, not one of these things had any one say 'yes we will do it at a specific time and place'. So the first thing I should have done was firm up everything with everyone, and at least some of it would have transpired, serious lesson to be learned there, and one that translates into actual sets that flake as well, must set up those solid day 2 time bridges people!
Secondly, when things started falling through, I just sat back and waited for something to happen... WTF! this is why I got into pick-up in the first place, I was sick of waiting for things to 'just happen'. Now I'm competent in social situations and understand the process of creating attraction with a woman, I should have translated the learning of finding ways to make stuff happen into other areas, especially in the arena of putting myself into situations where I can practice my social and seduction skills. Ultimately this comes down to one sticking point that's been nagging at me for a while now; solo game. Unless I feel I have a wing with me, I don't feel I want to go out and practice game, this is straight up wrong, and in fact, some of my greatest moments in pick up have been when I suddenly and spontaneously busted something out on my own. I need to start gaming solo as a matter of urgency really, if I had gone out to do this at any point this week it wouldn't have taken me very long at all to make some new friends to hang with. This is something that I feel so passionately about that I've built it into Project Skywalker, and as anyone who I've discussed Project Skywalker with knows, the lessons are as much for me as any student, and I'm committing to running through the practical exercises with every student, and all the homework exercises as long as they still apply to me (some are one time only exercises that do not take place in the field), but I'm now thinking that I can't wait around to find a student to go through all the lessons with up to that point just so I can start doing it. this is probably the biggest wall I've hit with game since I started doing it, and by the nature of the sticking point, there isn't anything anyone else can do to help me out, this one is all on me. But by writing it here for the whole world to see, I've now put myself in a situation where I have to do it.
What I'm really quite happy about with all of this is that I've hit a real dip in my progress, which believe it or not is good thing, as these are commonly followed by a massive peaks. I've observed this a number of times, and it seems universal to everyone and in all areas of life when you try to learn and improve at something, just when you start to get really frustrated, your ability seems to drop a bit, but then by sticking with it you suddenly end up better than you were before.
So, despite the epic failure that the week has been, I'm taking my own advice and finding something positive in it. to do that, I'm going to pick apart where I went wrong and what I should have done.
I relied on very few un-firm plans to transpire into the first field tests of Project Skywalker, I also had one very vague plan to hang with a girl I know one night, not one of these things had any one say 'yes we will do it at a specific time and place'. So the first thing I should have done was firm up everything with everyone, and at least some of it would have transpired, serious lesson to be learned there, and one that translates into actual sets that flake as well, must set up those solid day 2 time bridges people!
Secondly, when things started falling through, I just sat back and waited for something to happen... WTF! this is why I got into pick-up in the first place, I was sick of waiting for things to 'just happen'. Now I'm competent in social situations and understand the process of creating attraction with a woman, I should have translated the learning of finding ways to make stuff happen into other areas, especially in the arena of putting myself into situations where I can practice my social and seduction skills. Ultimately this comes down to one sticking point that's been nagging at me for a while now; solo game. Unless I feel I have a wing with me, I don't feel I want to go out and practice game, this is straight up wrong, and in fact, some of my greatest moments in pick up have been when I suddenly and spontaneously busted something out on my own. I need to start gaming solo as a matter of urgency really, if I had gone out to do this at any point this week it wouldn't have taken me very long at all to make some new friends to hang with. This is something that I feel so passionately about that I've built it into Project Skywalker, and as anyone who I've discussed Project Skywalker with knows, the lessons are as much for me as any student, and I'm committing to running through the practical exercises with every student, and all the homework exercises as long as they still apply to me (some are one time only exercises that do not take place in the field), but I'm now thinking that I can't wait around to find a student to go through all the lessons with up to that point just so I can start doing it. this is probably the biggest wall I've hit with game since I started doing it, and by the nature of the sticking point, there isn't anything anyone else can do to help me out, this one is all on me. But by writing it here for the whole world to see, I've now put myself in a situation where I have to do it.
What I'm really quite happy about with all of this is that I've hit a real dip in my progress, which believe it or not is good thing, as these are commonly followed by a massive peaks. I've observed this a number of times, and it seems universal to everyone and in all areas of life when you try to learn and improve at something, just when you start to get really frustrated, your ability seems to drop a bit, but then by sticking with it you suddenly end up better than you were before.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Day 2 Snap Decisions
It's no secret that I'm not much of a gamer (we're talking seduction/pick-up in this one btw) outside of the cold approach arena. I've focused most of my efforts learning pick-up in the last 18 months on the initial interaction; approaching, attracting, connecting, etc, but my follow up has been very thin on the ground. The reasons for this are numerous, firstly, I don't have very much interest in having an actual girlfriend, I used to believe I couldn't pull random girls, and now that I can it's all I've really wanted to do, I get a rush from it, a serious emotional kick. But at the same time I want to live that playboy lifestyle, and that can't be done if you are starting from scratch every time you go out, a true playboy has girls around him all the time, or at least they want to be around him all the time and are fighting for his attention. If I'm not following up and leaving them all by the whey side, I'm missing some serious tricks.
So what can be done to rectify this? Well, as it happens I have a few girls that I'm in contact with at the minute so am trying different things out, but unlike the cold approaching scenario, I don't have anywhere near the amount of information at my fingertips, nor much of a road map to follow. What I've found to be the best method so far is just to waffle in SMS text, private messages or chat with the intent of finding some way to slip in a day 2 suggestion, but this has it's share of problems too. It's very similar to the way I used to run my cold approach game before I had a structure to work with, it's reactive and relies on creativity in the moment and being thrown the bones to gnaw on. An example happened earlier today, I was chatting on facebook with this chick who has shown a crazy amount of interest, and I knew I was going to try to set up a day 2, but no blatantly good suggestions came out, and it resulted in the day 2 being 'go for a drink'. I hate 'go for a drink', might as well 'go to the movies' or 'have dinner with me', it's so boring and cliche. I like the idea of casually inviting girls along to something you are already doing, but at present my social life doesn't have many such events; I'm either out sarging, out with a set I have previously gamed and using them as pivots (or attempting to sarge one of them still, technically a Day 2 I suppose), or with people who I don't want to mix new (lady) friends with.
I think something I should probably do is take stock of the options available to me from now on, so at least I'm packing some ammo when I go into battle, rather than scavenging the battle field when I get there.
I'm guessing, like cold approaching, it's something that will become much clearer with time and work, but still, if anyone out there has some good pointers they would be more than welcome.
So what can be done to rectify this? Well, as it happens I have a few girls that I'm in contact with at the minute so am trying different things out, but unlike the cold approaching scenario, I don't have anywhere near the amount of information at my fingertips, nor much of a road map to follow. What I've found to be the best method so far is just to waffle in SMS text, private messages or chat with the intent of finding some way to slip in a day 2 suggestion, but this has it's share of problems too. It's very similar to the way I used to run my cold approach game before I had a structure to work with, it's reactive and relies on creativity in the moment and being thrown the bones to gnaw on. An example happened earlier today, I was chatting on facebook with this chick who has shown a crazy amount of interest, and I knew I was going to try to set up a day 2, but no blatantly good suggestions came out, and it resulted in the day 2 being 'go for a drink'. I hate 'go for a drink', might as well 'go to the movies' or 'have dinner with me', it's so boring and cliche. I like the idea of casually inviting girls along to something you are already doing, but at present my social life doesn't have many such events; I'm either out sarging, out with a set I have previously gamed and using them as pivots (or attempting to sarge one of them still, technically a Day 2 I suppose), or with people who I don't want to mix new (lady) friends with.
I think something I should probably do is take stock of the options available to me from now on, so at least I'm packing some ammo when I go into battle, rather than scavenging the battle field when I get there.
I'm guessing, like cold approaching, it's something that will become much clearer with time and work, but still, if anyone out there has some good pointers they would be more than welcome.
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Heroes: Time Travel for Idiots
Season 4 of Heroes, the X-Men for the 'I'm not a geek' geeks, has just started it's run in the US, and watching the first episode I once again find myself wondering 'why do I watch this tosh?'
The answer is simple really, I like action, especially when that action is centred around various superpowers that help me indulge in my fantasies of what I would do if I had some amazing super ability of my own, which is why I quite enjoyed the film 'Jumper'. Actually, there was one other thing about Jumper that I liked, and a similar attraction also exists in Heroes in the form of Claire, oh man, how I would like to wreck that chick...
But back to the topic at hand, we find ourselves with yet another set of plot inconsistencies, which it seems the writers of Heroes are now throwing in as a social experiment to see how long it takes before everyone has given up on watching the show bar the most gibbering of idiots... (yet I'm still going to carry on watching, less said about that the better). What really gets my goat is all the time travel plot lines, I have nothing against time travel as a plot device, as long as it's done right, but seemingly every time Hiro jumps into the past, something happens that clearly would have had a knock on effect that would have altered everything we have seen so far. This time around, Hiro verbally expresses this, only to have the writers go so far as to have another character tell him that it's OK to change 'just one thing' without altering all of the past... resulting in Hiro changing 'just one thing' that anyone who remembers the events of season 1 and has just a shred of intelligence would realise that it would have completely altered most of the events we have seen anyway (namely it would have meant Ando would never have sought out Nikki in Las Vegas, and the knock on effect from there). what the writers have tried to do is make this 'one thing' that Hiro changes different from what he originally intended to change, thus an attempt at misdirecting the audience was made, and it fell flat on it's face.... again.
Personally, I find this kind of thing insulting as a viewer, it's as if the production team don't believe their viewers have the intelligence to realise these things... either that or they don't have the intelligence to write a coherent story, but then who's more the fool; the fool or the fool who follows him?
... but it does have some entertaining (enough) action sequences, albeit brief as they are, and the corruptible looking Hayden Panettiere... so I guess I am committing another 23 hours of my life to this over the next 6 months
The answer is simple really, I like action, especially when that action is centred around various superpowers that help me indulge in my fantasies of what I would do if I had some amazing super ability of my own, which is why I quite enjoyed the film 'Jumper'. Actually, there was one other thing about Jumper that I liked, and a similar attraction also exists in Heroes in the form of Claire, oh man, how I would like to wreck that chick...
But back to the topic at hand, we find ourselves with yet another set of plot inconsistencies, which it seems the writers of Heroes are now throwing in as a social experiment to see how long it takes before everyone has given up on watching the show bar the most gibbering of idiots... (yet I'm still going to carry on watching, less said about that the better). What really gets my goat is all the time travel plot lines, I have nothing against time travel as a plot device, as long as it's done right, but seemingly every time Hiro jumps into the past, something happens that clearly would have had a knock on effect that would have altered everything we have seen so far. This time around, Hiro verbally expresses this, only to have the writers go so far as to have another character tell him that it's OK to change 'just one thing' without altering all of the past... resulting in Hiro changing 'just one thing' that anyone who remembers the events of season 1 and has just a shred of intelligence would realise that it would have completely altered most of the events we have seen anyway (namely it would have meant Ando would never have sought out Nikki in Las Vegas, and the knock on effect from there). what the writers have tried to do is make this 'one thing' that Hiro changes different from what he originally intended to change, thus an attempt at misdirecting the audience was made, and it fell flat on it's face.... again.
Personally, I find this kind of thing insulting as a viewer, it's as if the production team don't believe their viewers have the intelligence to realise these things... either that or they don't have the intelligence to write a coherent story, but then who's more the fool; the fool or the fool who follows him?
... but it does have some entertaining (enough) action sequences, albeit brief as they are, and the corruptible looking Hayden Panettiere... so I guess I am committing another 23 hours of my life to this over the next 6 months
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Review: Halo 3 ODST - Xbox 360 (Part 1)
This is not just a review of a game, it's a review of a story and a package as well, and it's likely that because of this review I will come off as being a Halo 'fan boy', which to be fair, I am. Why am I a Halo fan boy? Because I like to play things that I think I will enjoy, and even when I pick up a game I think I will enjoy, some still fail to hold my attention, most recently this was the case with prototype and bioshock, I played them for as long as I could but they failed to engage me, failed to fill me with excitement, failed to have give me consistent fun... I have never grown bored of playing Halo, from the moment I first picked up an Xbox controller at a friends house when we were drunk and asked with a love at first sight slur; 'what's this game?' I was in love with it. Even if I'm not in the mood to play, within a few minutes of blasting aliens or other people in multiplayer I can't put it down... or at least that has always been the case with the 'Halo trilogy'.
Earlier this year I downloaded and played the demo of 'Halo Wars', the first Halo spin off game, which failed to draw my attention, it was set in the Halo universe and was relevant to the events of the over arching story that I have grown to love, but the game itself failed to inspire me. So as ODST is the second spin off game, and while the first was not a product of Bungie studios as this and the Halo trilogy are, I approached it with a little more caution... This was unnecessary, I've had it for 11 hours and have been playing it for a good 9 and a half of those, only breaking for the toilet and a quick session at the gym. In fact as I write this, I have an empty feeling in my soul that I think will only be filled with more ODST action.... or a blow job... turning on my Xbox is the quick fix so we'll stick with that for tonight.
I'm going to assume that you know what ODST is, so I won't put you through the 'previously on Battlestar Galactica' style recap of the rest of the Halo franchise, instead lets get to what is awesome about it, and then I'll try to find some faults with it just to avoid being labelled a whore to Halo.
The Halo story line as a whole is epic, now spanning 5 games a graphic novel and a number of actual novels (I promise this isn't a recap, I'm going somewhere with this), the main story arc being that of the Halo Trilogy, and ODST does a very good job of fitting it's story into neatly into the existing events (it's set between Halo 2 and Halo 3) but for the most part avoids the main plot devices of the Halo trilogy other than the circumstances that were set up in Halo 2 that set the scene for this game. In fact, if you have never played a Halo game before, you wouldn't be totally lost coming into ODST, the year is 2552 and a coalition of alien races have successfully invaded earth and are now occupying an African city. You are an ODST (Orbital Shock Drop Trooper, basically the SAS of the Halo universe) and you are about to be sent into the hot zone with the rest of your squad on a classified mission, the details of which have not been disclosed to you. You and your team load up and get in your pods (you are in orbit and will drop down into the conflict in armoured capsules as the ODST name suggests, like modern day paratroopers but with a serious sci-fi twist), but the shit hits the fan immediately causing you to crash land and get knocked unconscious for 6 hours, when you wake you are stranded all alone at night in a city occupied by hostile forces. It's now your job to track down the rest of your team and make it out in one piece. To do this you will have to explore the (free roaming) city, finding items that will take you into various flash backs where you will find yourself playing as one of your squad mates at some point in the 6 hours you were unconscious. This is a very new and fresh way to play Halo, and also a very clever way to make the samey scenery of the city seem much more interesting, seeing as in previous Halo games you were put on a linear path through various locations such as space stations, ancient temples, swamps, desserts, icy mountains, etc. It's also nice to have a more compact story, you are not here to take on the entire invading army, you have a specific mission, you are not about to win back earth all on your own, as you probably guessed due to this being set between Halo 2 and 3 (and if you've played through 3 you know how the war ends anyway)
The characters in this game are much more fleshed out than those of previous Halo games, the ODST squad you find yourself part of are all quirky in their own way and they actually give a sense of friendship in the way they interact with each other and causes you to become emotionally invested in them much quicker than those of the Halo trilogy (after all, they had the luxury of 3 games to make you fall in love with them) , the only odd one out being you, the new member of the team, only referred to as 'The Rookie'. As 'The Rookie', you are a silent protagonist, almost an observer caught up in events, which makes you feel almost as if you are your own narrator within this story, especially due to the playable flash backs you experience. Much like the Master Chief of the Halo Trilogy, the face you have under your helmet is never revealed, the difference being that even the Chief had the odd line of dialogue here and there, giving him a strong silent type personality, The Rookie however is just silent, but that's not to say you are made to feel totally devoid of character. I believe that keeping The Rookie silent was a necessary step to avoid over shadowing the Master Chief, who has become one of the biggest gaming icons of all time, and as I already stated he had very little dialogue in his appearances, so to give the new protagonist more of a personality might have upset some of the fans. This is nicely offset within the game by it being mentioned and indicated by other characters a number of times throughout the game, that you, the Rookie, have seen combat before, but this is never detailed or expanded upon. I found this to be very clever, as it feels like the characters within the game are acknowledging and respecting The Rookie for getting into the ODST squad and for standing up and being a man in the face of danger. But this also me the sense that it's the game developers alluding the probability that the player has likely blasted his or her way through the Halo Trilogy, which is a curious paradox when you consider that the events of those games run parallel to the events of ODST and are carried out by a different character.
So how does it feel to play, firstly it is very evident that you are not the walking battle tank cyborg of previous Halo games that was the Master Chief (and by this point it's possibly starting to sound like I have the hots for him... I don't know, maybe I do). You are normal human being this time around, you can no longer jump from a rooftop into a crowd of enemy soldiers, blasting, punching and sticking grenades to them until you are the only one left standing, allowing you to walk away like John Wayne with a smug grin on your face as you shoot off a cliche one liner at your TV screen. In fact if you attempt this, the fall will likely kill you, and if it doesn't, the heavily armed party goers you just dropped in on (see what I did there?) will make swift work of you.
Because you are a normal man, the enemies you face will seem much more daunting than they did when you were the Chief, thankfully you have a few things working in your favour. Firstly, you are in the middle of an occupation, not a raging battle as used to be the norm, the fights you find yourself in are for the most part smaller scale affairs, and when the larger battles do occur in the game, they are set piece battles designed to look epic, so you are suitably armed with heavier weapons, equipment and reinforcements to deal with them. A lot of the game also takes place at night, and thanks to you being a normal sized human, as opposed to a 7 foot walking tank that can jump 15 feet in the air or take down a tank with it's fists, you are able to hide and sneak easier, allowing you to bypass enemies without alerting them or sneak up on them to get a tactical advantage, one which is helped by your stealthy load out of a sci-fi night vision/threat detecting visor and silenced weaponry. This gives the entire experience a much more desperate and tactical feel rather than the super-heroics of past installments, but still remains true to the feel of a Halo game.
One of the curious things I noticed was that due to the more subtle nature of the game and the isolated lonely atmosphere, there was a much mellower tone to the music used, which isn't something that I am used to in a Halo game, as previously it was always all out action, ever escalating to higher states of destruction, but this time around, you are made to feel lonely and find yourself wondering if you will be able to get down the next street unscathed, or be unlucky enough to run into an enemy patrol.
The voice acting is superb, easily the best in the Halo series thus far, Tricia Helfer fits her role well, as do the members of the ODST squad, but Nathan Fillion steals the show, accentuated by some genuinely funny lines of dialogue, particularly towards the end of the campaign.
This is only part one of my review, as I said at the beginning, I was reviewing more than just the game, but the story and package as well. Well, so far I've reviewed the story, and the game to the extent that I have played it, it took me the better part of the day but I ploughed through the solo campaign on normal difficulty, and had a riot all the way. I won't be able to finish this review until I have played through the harder settings, which is something I only do if I really enjoy a game (Halo and COD being the only games that have sucked me down that route in recent years), tried the new 'Firefight' mode, played through the campaign with a friend (or friends) in co-op, and done something else I'm almost dreading... the Halo 3 multiplayer suite that came as part of the package on a second disc, but I'll go into why I'm uneasy about that after I've done it.
To be continued... (next time on Battlestar Galactica...)
Earlier this year I downloaded and played the demo of 'Halo Wars', the first Halo spin off game, which failed to draw my attention, it was set in the Halo universe and was relevant to the events of the over arching story that I have grown to love, but the game itself failed to inspire me. So as ODST is the second spin off game, and while the first was not a product of Bungie studios as this and the Halo trilogy are, I approached it with a little more caution... This was unnecessary, I've had it for 11 hours and have been playing it for a good 9 and a half of those, only breaking for the toilet and a quick session at the gym. In fact as I write this, I have an empty feeling in my soul that I think will only be filled with more ODST action.... or a blow job... turning on my Xbox is the quick fix so we'll stick with that for tonight.
I'm going to assume that you know what ODST is, so I won't put you through the 'previously on Battlestar Galactica' style recap of the rest of the Halo franchise, instead lets get to what is awesome about it, and then I'll try to find some faults with it just to avoid being labelled a whore to Halo.
The Halo story line as a whole is epic, now spanning 5 games a graphic novel and a number of actual novels (I promise this isn't a recap, I'm going somewhere with this), the main story arc being that of the Halo Trilogy, and ODST does a very good job of fitting it's story into neatly into the existing events (it's set between Halo 2 and Halo 3) but for the most part avoids the main plot devices of the Halo trilogy other than the circumstances that were set up in Halo 2 that set the scene for this game. In fact, if you have never played a Halo game before, you wouldn't be totally lost coming into ODST, the year is 2552 and a coalition of alien races have successfully invaded earth and are now occupying an African city. You are an ODST (Orbital Shock Drop Trooper, basically the SAS of the Halo universe) and you are about to be sent into the hot zone with the rest of your squad on a classified mission, the details of which have not been disclosed to you. You and your team load up and get in your pods (you are in orbit and will drop down into the conflict in armoured capsules as the ODST name suggests, like modern day paratroopers but with a serious sci-fi twist), but the shit hits the fan immediately causing you to crash land and get knocked unconscious for 6 hours, when you wake you are stranded all alone at night in a city occupied by hostile forces. It's now your job to track down the rest of your team and make it out in one piece. To do this you will have to explore the (free roaming) city, finding items that will take you into various flash backs where you will find yourself playing as one of your squad mates at some point in the 6 hours you were unconscious. This is a very new and fresh way to play Halo, and also a very clever way to make the samey scenery of the city seem much more interesting, seeing as in previous Halo games you were put on a linear path through various locations such as space stations, ancient temples, swamps, desserts, icy mountains, etc. It's also nice to have a more compact story, you are not here to take on the entire invading army, you have a specific mission, you are not about to win back earth all on your own, as you probably guessed due to this being set between Halo 2 and 3 (and if you've played through 3 you know how the war ends anyway)
The characters in this game are much more fleshed out than those of previous Halo games, the ODST squad you find yourself part of are all quirky in their own way and they actually give a sense of friendship in the way they interact with each other and causes you to become emotionally invested in them much quicker than those of the Halo trilogy (after all, they had the luxury of 3 games to make you fall in love with them) , the only odd one out being you, the new member of the team, only referred to as 'The Rookie'. As 'The Rookie', you are a silent protagonist, almost an observer caught up in events, which makes you feel almost as if you are your own narrator within this story, especially due to the playable flash backs you experience. Much like the Master Chief of the Halo Trilogy, the face you have under your helmet is never revealed, the difference being that even the Chief had the odd line of dialogue here and there, giving him a strong silent type personality, The Rookie however is just silent, but that's not to say you are made to feel totally devoid of character. I believe that keeping The Rookie silent was a necessary step to avoid over shadowing the Master Chief, who has become one of the biggest gaming icons of all time, and as I already stated he had very little dialogue in his appearances, so to give the new protagonist more of a personality might have upset some of the fans. This is nicely offset within the game by it being mentioned and indicated by other characters a number of times throughout the game, that you, the Rookie, have seen combat before, but this is never detailed or expanded upon. I found this to be very clever, as it feels like the characters within the game are acknowledging and respecting The Rookie for getting into the ODST squad and for standing up and being a man in the face of danger. But this also me the sense that it's the game developers alluding the probability that the player has likely blasted his or her way through the Halo Trilogy, which is a curious paradox when you consider that the events of those games run parallel to the events of ODST and are carried out by a different character.
So how does it feel to play, firstly it is very evident that you are not the walking battle tank cyborg of previous Halo games that was the Master Chief (and by this point it's possibly starting to sound like I have the hots for him... I don't know, maybe I do). You are normal human being this time around, you can no longer jump from a rooftop into a crowd of enemy soldiers, blasting, punching and sticking grenades to them until you are the only one left standing, allowing you to walk away like John Wayne with a smug grin on your face as you shoot off a cliche one liner at your TV screen. In fact if you attempt this, the fall will likely kill you, and if it doesn't, the heavily armed party goers you just dropped in on (see what I did there?) will make swift work of you.
Because you are a normal man, the enemies you face will seem much more daunting than they did when you were the Chief, thankfully you have a few things working in your favour. Firstly, you are in the middle of an occupation, not a raging battle as used to be the norm, the fights you find yourself in are for the most part smaller scale affairs, and when the larger battles do occur in the game, they are set piece battles designed to look epic, so you are suitably armed with heavier weapons, equipment and reinforcements to deal with them. A lot of the game also takes place at night, and thanks to you being a normal sized human, as opposed to a 7 foot walking tank that can jump 15 feet in the air or take down a tank with it's fists, you are able to hide and sneak easier, allowing you to bypass enemies without alerting them or sneak up on them to get a tactical advantage, one which is helped by your stealthy load out of a sci-fi night vision/threat detecting visor and silenced weaponry. This gives the entire experience a much more desperate and tactical feel rather than the super-heroics of past installments, but still remains true to the feel of a Halo game.
One of the curious things I noticed was that due to the more subtle nature of the game and the isolated lonely atmosphere, there was a much mellower tone to the music used, which isn't something that I am used to in a Halo game, as previously it was always all out action, ever escalating to higher states of destruction, but this time around, you are made to feel lonely and find yourself wondering if you will be able to get down the next street unscathed, or be unlucky enough to run into an enemy patrol.
The voice acting is superb, easily the best in the Halo series thus far, Tricia Helfer fits her role well, as do the members of the ODST squad, but Nathan Fillion steals the show, accentuated by some genuinely funny lines of dialogue, particularly towards the end of the campaign.
This is only part one of my review, as I said at the beginning, I was reviewing more than just the game, but the story and package as well. Well, so far I've reviewed the story, and the game to the extent that I have played it, it took me the better part of the day but I ploughed through the solo campaign on normal difficulty, and had a riot all the way. I won't be able to finish this review until I have played through the harder settings, which is something I only do if I really enjoy a game (Halo and COD being the only games that have sucked me down that route in recent years), tried the new 'Firefight' mode, played through the campaign with a friend (or friends) in co-op, and done something else I'm almost dreading... the Halo 3 multiplayer suite that came as part of the package on a second disc, but I'll go into why I'm uneasy about that after I've done it.
To be continued... (next time on Battlestar Galactica...)
Review: Wet - Xbox 360
If Max Payne and Lara Croft had a drunk and steamy night together, then Rubi - Wet's anti hero protagonist - would have been their daughter... their rebellious, morally grey daughter. She dives, slides, flips, runs up and along walls, and swings around flag poles in slow motion while blasting dual weapons at relentless crowds of thugs, criminals and anyone else unfortunate enough to get in her way. She's crude, she's rude and if you tried to chat her up in a bar you'd probably end up locked in a cubicle in the gents sobbing into your lap. Controlling her is relatively easy and standard, left stick for movement, right stick for camera/aiming, right trigger to shoot. Other buttons are mapped as follows: A - Jump/Dive in slow motion, B - Slide along the floor in slow mo (which you can do on it's own or at the end of a dive), X - use your sword, Y - is your context sensitive action button, use zip lines, open doors, etc. Any time you do anything slightly acrobatic and pull the right trigger to fire your gun, the world slows down but you can still aim in real time, giving a very matrix effect to the whole affair. One very cool thing about this is that Rubi makes good use of dual wielding her guns, any time you are in acrobatic slow mo, she will auto aim one of her guns at an enemy who will be highlighted, allowing you to either target the same one or a totally different guy to make every bullet count, which provides some awesome cinematic moments as you slide on your knees into a room shooting two gangsters in the head at the same time.
The more stylish your moves the more points you rack up, and these are used in an upgrade shop to purchase new moves and upgrade your guns. And with that masterfully executed link, your guns come in 4 flavours, standard dual pistols which provide infinite ammo, dual shotguns for getting up close and personal, dual sub machine guns for spray and prey mayhem, and lastly dual cross bows that fire explosive bolts for when you absolutely, positively have to kill every mother f*cker in the room.
The levels themselves are all designed with plenty of scenery to dive behind, jump onto, grab hold of, and leap from to showcase Rubi's acrobatic prowess, and are all styled in the appropriate scenery as the story demands - US west coast freeway, hong kong opera house, london docks, and so forth. The story is presented in a Tarantino grindhouse style, larger than life characters that are treated as every day occurrences the world they exist in, the midget torture expert, the female, blind, albino, gothic body guard, the token British bad guy (4 of them in fact) and of course rubi herself closely resembles a more gothy version of the bride from Kill Bill.
A few set piece levels break up the action a bit; jumping from car to car on the freeway while having a shoot out with the mafia who are shooting at you from speeding cars, various sections of levels where Rubi gets blood in her eyes and literally sees red allowing you to go into a berserker mode painted in a noir pallet of reds, whites and blacks. There is even one level, caused by Rubi's less than stealthy infiltration of a carrier jet, that sees Rubi sky diving without a parachute amongst the wreckage of said jet, while shooting the other doomed occupants (who despite their predicament still seem to be hell bent on putting as many bullets your way as possible), avoiding the chunks of wreckage that are hurtling towards London's sky line with you, and trying to grab the only parachute in sight, which is bolted to the inside of a piece of the hull. This scene seems to have been completely lifted from the Clive Owen movie 'shoot 'em up', only Wet somehow manages to make it more believable!
The run time of 8 - 9 hours on normal difficulty seems to be pretty standard these days, I'd rather it was longer but as all other games of it's type seem to be about the same length, criticising it would be unfair. What really got my goat was the lack of New Game+ or being able to revisit the levels you have already done, once you reach the end of the game, that's it, you can either start over, from scratch without any of the skills you have unlocked, or just play through the final scene again, which wasn't much of a boss fight, but fitted well with the grindhouse setting. Not being able to go back and play the memorable moments again with your full arsenal feels, at best, like a huge oversight, and at worst, like a very cheap way of forcing you to replay the game.
Technically there are not many faults with the game, I didn't see many glitches, a couple of visual quips here and there, and while the graphics aren't ground breaking, they are tailored to the grindhouse theme, although I turned off the movie scratch/grain effect immediately to avoid feeling ill.
Scoring this game isn't all that easy, I had fun playing it and there were some truly breathtaking moments of over the top action and violence. It's faults are not really in what it has and does, but rather in what it lacks, there are key features that I feel should have been included, some as standard, and that's what really brings this game down for me, an anti climax to the fun.
6.5/10
The more stylish your moves the more points you rack up, and these are used in an upgrade shop to purchase new moves and upgrade your guns. And with that masterfully executed link, your guns come in 4 flavours, standard dual pistols which provide infinite ammo, dual shotguns for getting up close and personal, dual sub machine guns for spray and prey mayhem, and lastly dual cross bows that fire explosive bolts for when you absolutely, positively have to kill every mother f*cker in the room.
The levels themselves are all designed with plenty of scenery to dive behind, jump onto, grab hold of, and leap from to showcase Rubi's acrobatic prowess, and are all styled in the appropriate scenery as the story demands - US west coast freeway, hong kong opera house, london docks, and so forth. The story is presented in a Tarantino grindhouse style, larger than life characters that are treated as every day occurrences the world they exist in, the midget torture expert, the female, blind, albino, gothic body guard, the token British bad guy (4 of them in fact) and of course rubi herself closely resembles a more gothy version of the bride from Kill Bill.
A few set piece levels break up the action a bit; jumping from car to car on the freeway while having a shoot out with the mafia who are shooting at you from speeding cars, various sections of levels where Rubi gets blood in her eyes and literally sees red allowing you to go into a berserker mode painted in a noir pallet of reds, whites and blacks. There is even one level, caused by Rubi's less than stealthy infiltration of a carrier jet, that sees Rubi sky diving without a parachute amongst the wreckage of said jet, while shooting the other doomed occupants (who despite their predicament still seem to be hell bent on putting as many bullets your way as possible), avoiding the chunks of wreckage that are hurtling towards London's sky line with you, and trying to grab the only parachute in sight, which is bolted to the inside of a piece of the hull. This scene seems to have been completely lifted from the Clive Owen movie 'shoot 'em up', only Wet somehow manages to make it more believable!
The run time of 8 - 9 hours on normal difficulty seems to be pretty standard these days, I'd rather it was longer but as all other games of it's type seem to be about the same length, criticising it would be unfair. What really got my goat was the lack of New Game+ or being able to revisit the levels you have already done, once you reach the end of the game, that's it, you can either start over, from scratch without any of the skills you have unlocked, or just play through the final scene again, which wasn't much of a boss fight, but fitted well with the grindhouse setting. Not being able to go back and play the memorable moments again with your full arsenal feels, at best, like a huge oversight, and at worst, like a very cheap way of forcing you to replay the game.
Technically there are not many faults with the game, I didn't see many glitches, a couple of visual quips here and there, and while the graphics aren't ground breaking, they are tailored to the grindhouse theme, although I turned off the movie scratch/grain effect immediately to avoid feeling ill.
Scoring this game isn't all that easy, I had fun playing it and there were some truly breathtaking moments of over the top action and violence. It's faults are not really in what it has and does, but rather in what it lacks, there are key features that I feel should have been included, some as standard, and that's what really brings this game down for me, an anti climax to the fun.
6.5/10
Watch this space
Ok, lots happening people, lots and lots.
As it's the first post you have no idea what exactly 'lots and lots' entails, so here is a quick run down of what this is all about; I like gaming. to the masses this means playing video games, and that is correct, I love it, experiencing adventures and living stories I wouldn't otherwise experience, and of course blowing shit up. But, I also love gaming in the sense of pick-up, seduction, and 'The Game'.
So in regards to 'lots and lots', I've got plenty to post, I've written a review of 'Wet'; the bullet-time, grind house, slug fest starring Elisha Dushku; that I will be posting later on today or tomorrow. I also just got 'Halo 3: ODST' through the post, so will be posting my thoughts and opinions on this as I progress through the game. I'll probably be posting various musing generated by my enthusiasm for upcoming titles like Assassins Creed 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and of course Modern Warfare 2.
In regards to the other gaming, I'm currently in the process of putting together a lesson plan to teach the system I'm currently using, this is more for me than anyone else really, in doing this I have clarified and streamlined my own knowledge, and by teaching it I believe I will hone and develop my skills. That said, I do get a kick out of helping people out and it's serious fun as well, so right now I'm looking for local guinea pigs to trial this on, it's been code named 'Project Skywalker' (the inner geek seeping through the cracks there) until I find a more fitting title.
Specific areas of pick-up I'm aiming to discuss at the minute outside of Project Skywalker are dance floor game, text/phone/follow up game, day 2 game, and training and using wing girls.
So like I said, plenty is on it's way, watch this space...
As it's the first post you have no idea what exactly 'lots and lots' entails, so here is a quick run down of what this is all about; I like gaming. to the masses this means playing video games, and that is correct, I love it, experiencing adventures and living stories I wouldn't otherwise experience, and of course blowing shit up. But, I also love gaming in the sense of pick-up, seduction, and 'The Game'.
So in regards to 'lots and lots', I've got plenty to post, I've written a review of 'Wet'; the bullet-time, grind house, slug fest starring Elisha Dushku; that I will be posting later on today or tomorrow. I also just got 'Halo 3: ODST' through the post, so will be posting my thoughts and opinions on this as I progress through the game. I'll probably be posting various musing generated by my enthusiasm for upcoming titles like Assassins Creed 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and of course Modern Warfare 2.
In regards to the other gaming, I'm currently in the process of putting together a lesson plan to teach the system I'm currently using, this is more for me than anyone else really, in doing this I have clarified and streamlined my own knowledge, and by teaching it I believe I will hone and develop my skills. That said, I do get a kick out of helping people out and it's serious fun as well, so right now I'm looking for local guinea pigs to trial this on, it's been code named 'Project Skywalker' (the inner geek seeping through the cracks there) until I find a more fitting title.
Specific areas of pick-up I'm aiming to discuss at the minute outside of Project Skywalker are dance floor game, text/phone/follow up game, day 2 game, and training and using wing girls.
So like I said, plenty is on it's way, watch this space...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)