Like VS Good

There is a pretty massive problem that runs through the general human community. It’s always been there, and I’m pretty sure that it always will be. But that doesn’t mean that something can’t be said about it. Considering that I’ve been stewing about this particular issue for a few weeks now, and it just keeps whirling faster and faster in my mind, I feel like that time is now.

Everybody who is alive has an opinion. Which is fine. You’re allowed to like what you like and hate what you hate. There’s really nothing concrete that can be used to forecast what a person will be drawn to or steer away from. No complex algorithm can predict 100% of the time which direction a person is going to veer. Just because you’re attracted to one thing does not mean that all things similar are going to be to your liking.

There are people who think that Joss Whedon is God and can do no wrong. There are just as many people who enjoy a few of the things that he’s done but by no means do they like all of them. Fans of Firefly do not automatically have to be fans of Dollhouse. I know somebody who likes none of the movies Guy Ritchie has done except for Sherlock Holmes.

And you know what? It’s okay to not like things.

This is a concept that is hard to grasp for some. I don’t know why.

Like does not always equal good and dislike does not always equal bad. It’s a personal opinion. What you enjoy and what you do not. There’s this stance that a lot of people take that if you don’t like what they like, then you’re going to burn in eternal hellfire.

I get a very strong reaction from about 99.9% of people who find out that I don’t like Doctor Who or Torchwood. I understand that this is a very popular thing right now. I can accept that I travel in circles of people who have very similar tastes and that nearly all of them are Whovians. What I cannot abide and do not like is that very few of those people have said to me “that’s okay, it’s not for everybody” once I utter the most forbidden of phrases “Not really a Who fan, sorry”. There’s no reason for hostility. I’m not saying that Doctor Who is a bad show. I’m saying that there’s not anything in Doctor Who that has grasped my attention to the point that I had to continue watching. I’m not personally insulting your mother, or any other member of your family, and I’m not saying that you’re any less of a person because it’s something that you enjoy.

On the other side of the coin is the problem of things that people dislike. I am very careful to say things like I didn’t like it, I couldn’t get into it, or it wasn’t to my tastes for most things. Because that’s the truth of the matter. These things are more than likely not actually bad, I just didn’t connect with them. Most, however, do not take the time to consider that point of view. Most are more than willing to state “Ugh, that was SO BAD” or “What an awful ___” even going so far as “I can’t believe you like that, it’s so bad”.

Now, see, that is personal, and it is insulting.

I don’t think that everybody needs to have the same opinions on things. That would make the world a really boring place. I do think that people need to learn to respect the opinions of others, and not jump down the throats of those that might disagree. Or insult those things that people around them like. You don’t like Star Wars? That’s fine. I like Star Wars. I like Star Wars so much that I have Star Wars tattoos. It’s pretty funny to watch people frantically backpedal when they attempt to talk shit about Star Wars to or around me and then realize who they’re talking to. Now, I don’t care if you don’t like Star Wars. I’m not going to get mad at you for that. Your opinion is not going to change mine. I am quite open to debates about it, I can tell you my side of things and you can tell me yours. You might even discover that I agree with you on some points, and you might be interested to learn that I like Star Wars despite certain things. But don’t insult me.

There are very few things in the world that line up with the I don’t like it/it’s actually really bad combination. Off the top of my head I can think of just a couple examples. The Watchmen: The End Is Nigh video game is one. There are very few games which I won’t play to the end. Curiosity has me wanting to know how the story unfolds, what the end is. Barring that? Determination sets in and I will power through it. This game though, this game had nothing going for it. And you know what? Every single person I have talked to feels the same way about it. A lot of people that I know didn’t even play it long enough to get the first achievement. The funny thing is that going through various rating sites, I’ve seen that there are reviews with high numbers scores that just talk about how repetitive and boring the game is. Proving, I guess, that sometimes people will overlook a lot of problems in the face of a sprinkling of good. Another example would be The Manitou. A movie so bad, it can’t even be made fun of. I recently watched this in a theater filled with people who had been riffing on movies all night long. When it got to this one, about the only thing that could constantly be heard was the call for the credits to roll.

These are two things that I would gladly say “That was a giant stinking ball of shit” and not feel the least bit bad about it.

There have been some things that I have stated on this vehicle for geekery of mine are bad. The Cowbows & Aliens graphic novel, for one. But I can admit that I went into that the opposite way that most did. I saw the movie first. I liked the movie a lot. When I read the graphic novel, it did not hold up for me. Conversely, many people who read it first did not like the movie. Which is something that I can understand. So while I detested the graphic novel and wrote a whole diatribe here on how bad it was, it’s a matter of opinion and not fact. I know this. And I don’t unleash the same volcano of negative words on a day to day basis when confronted by people who liked it. I revert to the simple and un-insulting “I didn’t particularly enjoy it”.

This is not passiveness, by the way. Refraining from being a dickbag is not the same as rolling over and letting people walk all over you. It’s allowing for the fact that not everybody has the same brain. It’s accepting that if everything was uniform and all people had the same tastes that life would be a monumentally dreary trudge. You don’t have to agree with everyone on everything. You don’t even have to agree with your friends on everything. In fact, you can be friends with people that have mostly differing opinions than yours. It works. That’s how you learn new things. That’s how you expand your horizons and become a more complex and interesting person.

It takes more character to disagree with those around you than it does to surround yourself with minds that share every opinion you have. And it shows true intelligence to understand that not everybody has to think the way you do.

Why I Don’t Work In The Game Industry

You might have been reading this little loveletter to all things nerdy for some time, and seen all my posts about games. Maybe you follow me on twitter and notice the raptr updates about what I’m doing. Maybe you know me in person and know how much I love video games. Or maybe you’ve just stumbled upon any one of these things and find yourself immersed in my inane babbling.

In any one of these scenarios, you might think: Hey, you love games so much, go work for some gaming company. And maybe, just maybe, you’d have a point.

But let me tell you, my dearest friends/readers/strangers/whatever. I have. I did game testing for a while, and I agree, it’s interesting. It did have me doing something that I loved all day and get paid for it. It should have been the ultimate setup for somebody like me.

I tested big titles, and I tested things that have never seen the light of day. I got introduced to games that I fell in love with, and ones that still provoke an almost instantaneous rant from me. I also tested a racing game that was entirely in Japanese so I have no idea what the name of it even was, or what I was doing, but somehow I managed to get pretty far.

The problem was not that I spent my working hours on games, and thus went home not wanting to play them. It didn’t diminish the love or desire for me at all. I know this can happen for a lot of people in other ways. People who work all day on computers often don’t want to even check their email once they’re home. People who clean for a living might live in pig styes because of the horrors they’ve seen during the daylight hours.

My issue was that I was getting spoilers for games I was interested in, and then would not be so hyped up to play them when they finally came out. Even if I just ended up with a little tidbit, I would be anticipating it until I saw it in the game.

This began to lessen my excitement for the games that were coming out. I didn’t like that one bit. It would have been alright if I’d just been playing games I would NEVER have looked at in the real world. Such as the Barbie Magical Horse Riding whatever it was. But I wasn’t.

Eventually it brought me to the decision that the gaming industry isn’t for me. At least not in the creation part. I do love writing, I love creating new worlds and characters. But that’s not what video games are about for me. They do have those elements, yes. And I use those elements to escape from reality for a few hours. To take me to a place I can never go, see things that I will never see, and be able to do things that are not even possible in the world as we know it currently.

Escape is ruined when you know the mechanics of something. Freedom is lost when you’ve already seen the end of the plot. Fantasy is crushed once you’ve been forced to note bugs and try to recreate them.

Never again.

It feels like forever since I’ve sat down to write anything about games. Which, honestly, it has been. I am, admittedly, addicted to my Xbox. I have named her, I speak to her, I long for her when we’re parted. So to be away from her for this long has been a terrific ordeal.

Yes, overly dramatic, yes, they’re only games, she’s only a gaming system. Whatever.

By the time I got my living room set up, my television plugged in, my machines hooked up to it, it had been 68 days since I had played anything, or even seen my 360 in any manner than tucked away securely in a box awaiting my attention.

68 days.

I can honestly say that I have not gone that long without using my Xbox since I got it. Probably since I got my original Xbox, actually. Which I still have, by the way. And I do still love him, too.

It might have been one thing if my hiatus was voluntary, but it was not. It was forced. The sheer mess of things, the current status of certain rooms being that of a storage unit with no end in sight, my absurd notion of working from the back of the house forward (don’t know, don’t ask, can’t tell you) all impeded my … well, my whole life, to tell the honest truth. My gaming systems were not the only things tampered with. My ability to spend any significant time online, my books, my writing materials, all hidden under piles of other shit, thus making my life one of the circles of Dante’s Hell, I’m not sure which. All of them, maybe, at various stages. Yes, I know I’m using that entirely wrong, the example, but as stated above – overly dramatic.

About the only entertainment I have experienced that is of my norm is my movie watching. I have seen a good fair number of those. Not all of which I have written about, but could soon be on the way.

Anyway. All of this was just to say that everything is back to how it should be.

Sigh

Two games are out right now that everyone is talking about, and I want them both more than I can even say.

Arkham City and Skyrim.

I’m so fucking jealous of everybody playing either one. I stopped talking to a couple of friends for a night because they wouldn’t stop going on about Arkham City. That’s how jealous I am.

Upcoming Posts Post

This is just the keyword list that I wrote down to remind me what I need to write about.

Beautiful Katamari
Dante’s Inferno
Good VS Evil
Knight and Day
Kameo
Force Unleashed II
Rango
GI Joe
Prince of Persia
All the games I have left to play
Silent Hill: Homecoming
the physics of explosions in movies
all the guy ritchie
Goth (movie)
Achievements for playing online.
Jes Gistang
All things Vader

They probably won’t appear in this exact order.

Moved

I’ve moved from blogspot (same blog name, different blog channel) because… well. Because. This seems to get more traffic, and less spam. Plus there’s a way to filter spam comments, so I don’t even have to deal with them being on my posts at all.

Which is nice.

All of the posts from blogspot were transferred over, with the comments in tact. I think this is pretty amazing. I had the help of a wonderful person named Sheri, who went above and beyond to make sure all my content was moved, and done correctly. I really can’t thank her enough for everything that she did to assist.

I have not yet decided if I will find a way to crosspost to the old blog, or just keep it all here. Opinions on the matter are more than welcome. The layout is fairly the same in appearance here, as I was pretty pleased with what I came up with. It might be more streamlined and fancier, but it’s basically the same idea.

I will still take requests, I will – actually. Nothing else is changing.

Losing A Limb In The Star Wars Universe

Anakin Skywalker loses his hand. Luke Skywalker loses his hand. Tomcat loses his hand.

I’ve just finished Darth Bane: Rule Of Two, and it occurred to me that if you’re living in the Star Wars Universe, it doesn’t entirely matter what happens to you, as long as you’ve got a brain to hook up, they can make you a full new body. They practically do for Vader.

Kind of makes you wonder why they’re not a little more lackluster in their fighting. I mean, I get it, having your hand cut off has to hurt like a bitch, but it’s not like you’ve totally lost all use of it, is it? They’ll just take you to a Bacta tank, heal you up, and slap you with a new one. And the new one will be better. I bet you could fix up a new hand with all kinds of cool shit.

There’s a point where Luke uses his new hand to short out some wiring. I think his new hand might also have the ability to tap into networks. Possibly do stunts on show ponies.

What I’m trying to get at here is that while you might get freaked out every once in a while when you wake up and there’s this big metal THING hanging off your arm, eventually you’re going to get used to it. You could even have different attachments, ala Captain Hook.

Going down to the root of things, what is it with George Lucas and the missing hand? Is there something behind it that he’s not telling us? Is it his worst fear? Is it a secret kink? Or am I looking too deep and he just does it because robot hands are really fucking cool?

I know there’s a Vader-themed issue of … Rolling Stone… I think it is… out there somewhere. I wonder if that talks about the hands. Don’t ask me why I don’t already have it. I couldn’t tell you.

Upcoming Reviews

I have a backlog of reviews to do, and if I follow my current habit, one of the backlog will get typed up and then I’ll watch three new movies.

So here’s what you have to look forward to:

The Hebrew Hammer
Deadgirl
Fido
Sick
The Forbidden Kingdom
The Goods

Other movies I’ve watched that could get reviews possibly (encouragement may ensure writing):

The Princess Diaries
Sex and Death 101
Shrooms
It’s A Boy Girl Thing
Good Dick
House (Not the television show. NOT THE TELEVISION SHOW)
The Specials

Backwards Compatibility.

Due to certain circumstances, I find that my GameCube is leaving my possession. I was really saddened by this, because I enjoy the games that I have, and I didn’t really want to give it up.

But I was informed that I can, in fact, play those games on my Wii. So I’m guessing I’m getting the better of the deal. But at first I was curious as to how the Wii managed the GameCube games without consuming them and losing them within it’s core.

It’s still a mystery to me – much like how IMAX defeats the rules of physics and plays the film that rolls through it instead of eating it up and pooping it out in a tangled and melted heap – but all the internet searching I’ve done has promised me that nothing bad will happen to my games.

I do, however, have to get a new memory card so I can swap over my saved games before the box leaves me forever.

I just have to say that I really like this backwards compatibility thing that Nintendo has going on. Much better than what Sony could have ever dreamed of (Don’t get on me, I love Sony, I’m on a Vaio right now, they just suck in that way), and even Xbox/Microsoft has a bit of issue with it. I’ve been able to play a few of my old games on my 360, but I don’t know how much of that is because I have an Elite, and how much of it is pure luck.

So while the Wii might have an immature processor, it certainly does excel in other ways. Plus, it’s the only game system that has the ability to convince me that I should get off my ass and work out.

Eternal Darkness fourth time around, here I come!

Game Overload!

I’ve been playing Arkham Asylum since I got it about a week ago, before that I was trying to work my way through Silent Hill: Homecoming, and before that I was working on Saints Row 2.

None of these have been finished.

I may be close to the end of Arkham Asylum, I keep forgetting to check my progress. But I’m stuck on Homecoming because I’m fighting the giant demon doll girl thing, and I don’t have a lot of health left. And I’m about halfway through Saints Row.

Despite this, I just bought two new video games. Godfather 2 and Overlord 2. Mostly because I had a lot of BestBuy reward zone coupons and I ended up getting both games for under 40 dollars. I couldn’t really pass that up.

Of course, they’re gonna be sitting there until I finish Batman. Then I’ll have to decide if I want to push the others further down the queue or let the two new ones sit on my coffee table until the others are done.

Now that I think about it, there are other games languishing on my shelf that got set aside for other things. Horrible.

Obviously I have to do nothing but play video games for the next month so I can finish all of this.

Nostalgia

It’s Nostalgia Central here at Nerdmobile. Recently, I discovered a sale at Amazon for all those really old movies that I watched when I was a kid. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a sale so much as it was just the fact that they’re really old movies and a lot of people who use the internet have no idea that they even exist.

Anyway, I ended up getting *Batteries Not Included, Invaders From Mars (remake), The Thing, Innerspace, and Big Top PeeWee. Added to PeeWee’s Big Adventure, Short Circuit, and Flight Of The Navigator, you’ve got a collection of movies that I used to watch almost constantly.

They bring up memories of summer days, my mom playing water volleyball with the adults outside at her best friend Judy’s house. While I waited for my chance to swim, I was left to my own devices with Matt and Dillon, Judy’s sons. It’s through them that I saw most of these movies. And aside from The Thing and Invaders From Mars, these movies were a staple of our summer activities. I can’t even tell you now how often we watched them, and there’s absolutely no guessing at the amount of times I’ve seen each one.

Their house used to have this really excellent ice maker. It wasn’t a part of the fridge at all, it sat on it’s own. It had square ice. I used to just fill my cup with ice and sit and chew on it all day.

These movies hold really good memories for me, and though it’s been over 20 years since I last saw some of them, there are scenes that stuck in my memory and I couldn’t get rid of. It took me a while to associate those scenes with the movies they belong to, such as the dog becoming a hideous monster, or the teacher getting a needle in the back of her neck, but I eventually managed, and it brought me back to these movies, and of course I had to buy them.

I remember the first time I saw Innerspace, Matt told me that the opening was a cinematic shot of one of my favorite things (okay, we were like … 8. He didn’t put it quite that eloquently), and it took me forever to figure out what he meant by that.

And the first time I saw PeeWee’s Big Adventure, all of us kids had to close our eyes during the Large Marge part so that the parents could see if it was something that we could handle. Due to a previous scare with Roger Rabbit and the part where the guy gets steamrolled (it wasn’t that that scared me, it was when he blew himself back up), I don’t think I was allowed to watch the Large Marge part until I was 9.

When I was younger, I had a crush on the kid from Flight Of The Navigator. Incidentally, he looked and dressed much like my friend Matt, who I was watching the movie with. I’m sure the conclusion can be drawn there without my help. We used to talk about the silver Frisbee in the beginning a lot. Also the little tiny alien that he takes home with him at the end.

Man, I can almost smell the chlorine.

Seeing these movies again has made me really really glad that I bought them. They make me feel really at ease. Of course, they also make me want my own stand alone ice maker, too.

Fads

There are fads in everything. From clothing to diets. Some of them we look back on and wonder how we ever thought that was cool, some of them we look back on and wonder how many people it ended up killing.

The newest fad is these little NetBooks that phone companies are giving out. I personally don’t quite get it. It’s a little tiny laptop that connects to the internet. That’s all it does, from what I gather. You can’t play games on it, you can’t load software onto it. Does it even have a disk drive?

I can see, maybe, it having some novelty. Briefly. It might be a fun little toy to play around with for the first couple of days. But would I spent anywhere near 200 dollars on it? No. Maybe if somebody handed one over to me for free, I might shove it in my bag and carry it around. Connecting to the internet willy nilly wherever I go. But I’m not going to spend money of any substantial on something that looks like a laptop but does nothing but the internets.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. NETbook. NET. That’s what it’s made for. I just think it’s another way to part the sucker from his money.

How many people are going to end up carrying both their fancy NetBooks AND their laptops? That’s what I’m really wondering. How many people are going to not even think about it and carry their NetBook for a while, giddy over it’s compact size and it’s clever little built in connection capabilities, and then start taking their laptop too, because that NetBook doesn’t do everything they need it to do?

Maybe I’m cynical. Okay, I know I am. But I also think I’m seeing past the thin veil of awesome on this particular fad. It’s just a way to get people to use their service and “get” a NetBook with it. For “cheaper”.

EDIT: Dongle.

The Nerdmobile Keys To Movie Going

There are a few things that I’ve determined over the years are very important when it comes to movie watching, and more so for movie enjoying. A lot of the time I’ll hear people complaining about the types of movies that are coming out, or the actors who are playing in them. They’ll complain that something wasn’t CG-ed perfectly, or some mistake was made with a tie being undone, then done, then undone.

As somebody who has been in front of the camera, and gotten to see a lot of what goes on behind it, all I have to say to you people is give it a rest. Seriously. You think that you can make everything perfect, then go ahead and try. I will guarantee you that there will be some small fuckup somewhere.

Anyway.

The things that I’ve made into my movie-going habits.

1. Reviews. Ignore them. Read them if you want. Laugh at what the reviewer says. But if you intend to go see the movie, you have to have the ability to forget every word of the reviews. Because they’re unimportant. Oh yeah, some lucky fuck gets paid good money to sit through movies and rip them to shreds, but how often are they there to enjoy the movie? Do constant good reviews get you more readers? No. People love snark. They love to see other people hate things. So maybe sometimes even if a reviewer liked something, it’s not going to match with the popular opinion, so the reviewer writes what he thinks people want to hear. This is bullshit.

I really think reviewers need to watch movies for what they are, not compare them to anything else that already exists, and tell what their opinions of the movies are. Who cares if the movie was listed as being 82 minutes long and it turned out to be 83? (okay, so maybe nobody actually writes about that, but you get my point)

2. Actors. Alright. There are actors that we all don’t like. But you never know when they’re going to turn around and surprise the fuck out of you. So you’ve got to give them a chance in every new thing that they do. I mean, what if you decided because you don’t like Wanda Sykes in New Adventures of Old Christine so you’re not going to pick up that copy of Pootie Tang that popped up randomly for sale in Best Buy? You’d be missing out on one hell of a movie just because you don’t like the character that she plays in a tv sitcom.

I know, I know. I constantly complain about Anna Paquin. I do hate her. I hate her a lot. But I still watch True Blood, don’t I? I watch it all the goddamned time, and I adore it. This is what I’m saying, folks. I watch a show I love despite an actor I hate. I can get around my loathing of her so that I can watch Lafayette and Sam. And Eric. And Pam. There needs to be more Pam.

3. Friends, family, peers. Don’t bow to the peer pressure of what your friends are doing. You have your own brain. See what you want to see because you want to see it. Don’t be talked into seeing something that you don’t have any interest in. I can promise you that if you let yourself be dragged into a movie that holds nothing for you because your friends think it’s going to be awesome, you’re going to have a miserable time. And if you DON’T go to something because your friends keep saying that it’s stupid, you’ll never know what you might miss out on. Life is much too short to play those kinds of games. Also, don’t say something is cool just because the people you hang around with say that. If god meant for everybody to agree on everything, we’d all be clones.

4. Expectation. You can expect that a movie like Pineapple Express is going to have pot in it. There are going to be pot jokes. But don’t go into it thinking that it’s going to be another Harold And Kumar. Or Half Baked. This idea that we have about lumping movies together is really irritating. You can go into a theater with the knowledge you’ve gained from reading ads or watching trailers, but don’t think it makes you an expert on the movie. Even if it’s a story you know. Even if you lived and breathed Hellboy for years, you can’t know what the movie is going to turn out like. I’m not saying you should drop all your expectations on everything. Just don’t be so headstrong about things that you ruin the experience for yourself.

5. Directors. This is the same thing as I said above about actors. Sometimes directors consistently make good movies. Sometimes they generally make good movies, and then they marry somebody and all the movies they make while they’re with that person are crap, and then they get divorced and their movies are great again. Or maybe they were just having a bad day. Or maybe they thought the idea was much better on paper, but they just couldn’t get it to come across right on screen.

The only exception to this rule is Uwe Boll. His movies all suck and he’s a giant prick.

*
What it comes down to is: You need to make up your own mind about things. You have a brain, fucking use it. Don’t let people talk down to you because you like/don’t like something. You don’t have to be a sheep in life. Walk boldly, my friends. Learn to like things for what they are, or if it’s really really bad, learn to laugh at it and get your money’s worth.

The Geek’s Life – Sans TV

I have been without TV since April 5th. Three and a half weeks. 24 days.

This has left me without my Wii. Without my 360. Without original Xbox. Without Playstation 2. No movies while I’m upstairs, no television shows while I’m doing other things.

It has left me without a real sense of time. I used to have a pretty good schedule of what was going on in my life because I’d learned to tell time via shows. Now I think it’s late afternoon, only to look down and see it’s actually nearing 9pm.

This lack has left me with only a few things with which to occupy my time, which means that they’re getting redundant. The internet. Online RP. Computer games, of which I have two I enjoy at the moment. And Reading.

The last hasn’t really been hit hard by the loss of the television, because books change constantly, and I can change books whenever I want.

But the rest? Slowly and surely I find myself only doing a few things during the day. I’ve neglected Facebook so badly that if it were alive in any way, it might think I have another site just like it that I’ve been paying attention to. I’ve never liked MySpace, so the fact that I haven’t logged into that account since… I have no idea when, doesn’t really matter.

But other places I visit? Boards, webcomics, they’re all falling to the wayside. It’s not as much fun to be involved in things like that when you don’t really have a choice. If it’s the last refuge of your mind.

I like options. I don’t really always feel like playing Spore. Sometimes I want to play Viva Pinata. Or maybe I’d like to just sit on my couch and watch Wall-E. Or maybe, just sit on my couch and veg out to regular television. For godsake, I find myself actually missing commercials!

How many times in the past weeks have I thought to myself “I’m just gonna plop down here and pop in Silent Hill: Homecoming, and see if I can’t get through this spot… oh shit. No TV.” ?

Lots.

I feel less creative when cornered. When I have to write something, or my brain is going to fizzle away from boredom. When I have to work on my online class, or I’m going to go mad from the quiet in the house. Music has no appeal when it’s the only thing you’ve got for background noise. Television shows aren’t as fun to watch when you have to wait a day for them and everybody else gets to explode with Squee before you do.

I don’t want to watch movies on my laptop unless I’m traveling, or feel like curling up in my desk chair and watching one while I still talk to people.

Yes, I know it’s not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. It’s just a television. I do not need a television. I do not need my geeky stuff. But I like them.

I want them back.

MMORPGs AKA Mamorpagahs – The World of Kung-Fu

I spent some time today playing a MMORPG. This is not generally something I do, because I do not play well with others. I also have very little to extremely invisible interest in playing a game where you run around killing things and that’s about it. Also not very fond of FPS (first person shooters), for much the same reason.

The one I played today was called Kung-Fu? The World of Kung-Fu? I really don’t honestly have any idea. I think it’s still in Beta, too. Not that it really matters in the long run.

The point is, I played it. It’s pretty to look at, I was bored. I’m dying for video games because my television is STILL broken, and I may be going insane. Insanity would be a good fallguy for the reasoning behind playing this game.

The game itself isn’t too bad. It didn’t make me do anything. I mean, I could wander around and do random shit before doing any quests. Which is what I did. Because I didn’t know there were quests to be had, and only found out cause I accidentally hit the “Q” button on the keyboard.

That’s another thing. All this keyboard whatnot. I’m not a fan. I can do it. But eh. I like games where if I don’t want to use the keyboard, I don’t have to. In Spore, for example, most of what I do is done with my mouse. Same thing with Black and White. There are minimal things that require the use of the keyboard. Not so much in this Kung-Fu whatnot.

Anyway. Back to the point. The game. It was very pretty. Wandering around kind of fun… oh, there we are, yes. Killed things. Got stuff. Sold stuff. Couldn’t quite figure out what to do with the guy that can help you make your weapons or make them better, I probably don’t care in the long run, anyway, cause I doubt I’ll play this again.

Character creation was extremely basic. Also, I think I might have been the only actual girl on my entire server. Not that I didn’t see girl characters running around, but considering they were all hitting on me, I find myself hard pressed to believe that there were many real life girls sitting on the other side of the internet.

Now we really get into the realm of things that stack up and cause me to not want to have anything to do with games that let other people play with you when you’re playing them. Let’s ignore the big glaring fact that I really don’t like other people at all, shall we? Let’s pretend that I do well with random people interfering with my wandering about, picking up loot and cutting down trees for stuff. If that’s all they were doing, it wouldn’t be quite so bad. But that isn’t all they do, is it?

No. They want to talk to you. They want you to tell them where you live. What your real gender is, and how old you are. They ask you if you want to chat in private, or cyber. They yell at you for being near them when you didn’t know that the spot they were standing belonged just to them (since, you know, you can stand there too and everything). Occasionally, they even randomly attack you. For no good reason. It’s not nice. No, I don’t want send you a photo. No, I really don’t want to see one of you (especially considering I’m fairly sure it’s going to be of your penis).

I don’t like that you can’t turn the chat function off completely. I don’t want random people telling me to “Shout” for them, when I don’t even know what the hell that means. I don’t want private messages from people telling me that they’ll sell me something for some price when I don’t know what it is so I can’t know that price is even good. I don’t want to go on random gold-finding quests for you, either. I’m doing my own thing here, and I’m gonna keep that gold. Yes I am.

I think if I could play this game all by my lonesome, I would do so occasionally. Also, if the help section of this game were at all in any way actually helpful, I might give this game a second chance based on how pretty it is alone. But it isn’t helpful, so it gets no second chances.

I’m sure that if you actually know what you’re doing in this sort of game, this might be a fun one to try. Cause that would mean that you wouldn’t need the help section. Because you know the keys. You know what does what. You know that running into the big guy means you’re going to get killed (I figured that out pretty quick on my own, but didn’t help that what I needed was on the other side of him).

One last thing, Dearest Game, when I log out, please don’t tell me I have ____ amount of points so I can go ____, and I have ____ number of minutes so I can go spend number of minutes in _____ Temple, am I sure I want to log out? Because I DON’T HAVE ANY IDEA HOW TO ACCESS WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, AND YOUR HELP DOESN’T TELL ME, so yes, I DO want to log out, thanks.

This isn’t very reviewy at all, is it. This is more just ranty.

Spore – brief…. very

Spore has eaten my brain.

I have played a total of three times. Those three times equal together 19 hours. I shit you not. I just played for effing nine hours without getting up.

Yeah. So.

That can’t be right.

11…12… Nope. That’s right. Actually, it might be more like 10. Shoosh. I don’t want to hear it.

Technology

I love technology. I do. Very much. I love little gadgets, I love the way that over the past couple years we’ve gotten new things in leaps and bounds. I love learning about everything, figuring out how it works.

You could say that I’m pretty technologically inclined. Very often I can figure out how things work without having to look at manuals. This isn’t a hard-headedness on my part. Thinking I know everything and then getting confused or lost. I’m just in tune with certain things. I will look at a manual if I need to, I’m not opposed to it.

BUT.

And you knew it was coming, didn’t you.

I like my technology separate. I don’t want my phone to play music, go on the internet and take video.

I like my internet on my computer, which is a laptop that sits on my desk. I like my camera in a different hand from my phone. I like my video games to be on a computer or on my consoles. And I’d like my music nicely tucked away on my Zune in my pocket or bag.

All these little devices that merge everything into one thing really bother me. Not only because of the idea that if one thing breaks on it, you lose it all. But also because, why? What’s the point? What does it really matter? Why have all of these things in one place? Because it’s easier to carry? It’s not really all that hard to carry what I carry. Plus, I can keep listening to music if a friend wants to take a few photos. Or I can keep taking pictures and listening to music if said friend wants to listen to a song or borrow my phone for a call. Fancy that.

I feel like it’s really limiting. How many pictures can you take and store on a camera phone? Not many. And they aren’t very good quality. But, I fancy myself a photographer, even if I am just an amature. All the pictures I take are taken for a reason, so I don’t want the quality to be that poor.

And if I’m going to tote around music, I want to tote around a lot of music. A phone with music capabilities will never hold the amount of music that satisfies me. I suppose you could go through the process of changing out your music every single day to hope that you will pick the right thing. But personally, I never know if I’m going to be in the mood for that particular sound later in the day. So guess what? I have an MP3 player that can hold a hell of a lot and I don’t have to choose.

Yeah, I know my Zune holds other things along side it’s music. And I do use those features, carrying with me photos that I like and videos for long trips, but I sure can hold a lot more of that than a phone can, can’t I?

I know my point of view on this isn’t a popular one at all. People like their fancy phones that hold a lot of things and do a lot of shit.

But I don’t. I want my phone to be a phone. I don’t even particularly like texting. I really think that if you want to talk to somebody on the phone, you should call them. Texting to me is good for sending short, and I do mean short, notes. Not for whole conversations. It’s too impersonal. It’s also spawned a whole breed of idiotic spelling.

Wow. This turned a little ranty, didn’t it? Certainly not what I had intended when I started. Oh well.

Purposes and ideas

Now that there are a few more people actively looking at this thing, I thought that I might clarify a couple of things.

First, as I’ve said before, this entire blog has a focus on the geekier things of life, but within that, it has no particular focus. I like a large number of things, and feel the need for an outlet for all of them. There are handy tags, however, so that you can see opinions on video games, or movies, or television, or books, or really random shit that comes to mind.

Second, I might have a large focus on something for a long time and abruptly shift to something else. Like Star Wars. It seems as if the bulk of the posts for a long time were Star Wars, and that was because a lot of the things I was involved with at that time had to do with it. I had a very large series of books to read, I had a video game to play. Of course, I also have Star Wars in my every day life. But now suddenly, the focus seems to be vampires. Why? Because now there are a lot of vampire books being read. It doesn’t happen on purpose, I promise.

Third, I don’t truly review things. I give my opinion on them. I do my best to not reveal spoilers, or anything within what I’m writing about that I think people should discover on their own. I’m not going to give a large synopsis of what I’m writing about, because you can look that up elsewhere, and I really find that boring. The point of the reason I’m writing is because I find I want to talk about these things and either nobody around me has had experience with them, or cares. So my reviews aren’t really reviews at all. Just how I feel about it with a possible urging to others to pick it up or leave it the hell alone. This also means that I have no rating system. I’m not going to give something stars. Or anything else like that. My opinion is not going to be anybody else’s. I might think something is a lot better or a lot worse than somebody else. All you can do is read what I thought and go by that.

Fourth, I don’t really care what anybody else thinks. I mean I do, in such that I will pick something up if it’s recommended by somebody, but that’s about the extent of it. I’m not going to completely avoid something if I’m told that somebody doesn’t like it. I’m also not going to judge things based on what friends think. I don’t care if my friends don’t like something, I won’t hide the fact that I do, if I do. I will let them know that I did, in fact, enjoy it, and move on. I don’t expect people to like things because I do, either. Honest opinions are welcome. If you disagree with something I’ve said, then feel free to mention it. I don’t mind. But don’t get angry with me because I like something you don’t, or don’t like something you do. Don’t argue your points, don’t call me stupid. You can tell me WHY you didn’t or did, and we can have a rational discussion on it, but in this space opinions are respected. I like what I like, you like what you like. I also don’t really listen to reviewers. I’ve found too often that I don’t agree with them, so it’s best for me to just find out for myself.

So, there. I think that’s about it. I guess I can answer any other questions that there might be, but I can’t think of what they would consist of.

Yuuzhan Vong

Oh hell yes.

OH HELL YES.

Vector Prime didn’t get a whole lot into the actual Yuuzhan Vong or their society, but the little bitty taste that I’ve gotten has definitely whet my appetite for more. I need more! They’re so fucking badass that it hurts. It hurts so very good.

I think I’d like to see something, some sort of time-jumping AU where the Yuuzhan Vong meet Darth Vader. And then together, they take over the universe and make bitches of the Jedi.

They could make Vader some really cool sentient bio-mechanical armor to replace his normal stuff and then he’d be all neat.

This is very haphazard. I’m sorry. I’m just so excited about the Yuuzhan Vong. I’d been told that I would love them to bits, and it’s true. But it’s more than that. I more than love them. I extra love them.

Xbox 360 and A Kingdom For Keflings

So when Xbox decided that they needed to fancy up their shit and add in this little dealy where you make your own avatar, I wasn’t entirely impressed. I’m not a big fan of change. I like things to stay they way they are most of the time. There are occasions where I can see the better side, and I’ll reluctantly go with it, eventually grow into it, whatever. But there are things that I will look at even years after the change and say “It was better before”.

I’m sort of that way with this Xbox update. I certainly don’t see why it was necessary. And I think that everything was a lot easier the way they had it before. Things were simpler to find, etc.

Unfortunately, I’ve had a pretty good time making my avatar. Also seeing those of my friends. Seeing how they see themselves, or if they just make something really random. It’s been really entertaining. So while I might have liked the ease and simplicity of how my dashboard looked before, I’m reluctantly accepting this new way.

Which leads into the game A Kingdom For Keflings. At first, I thought it was just going to be some gimmick so that they could say “Here, you can use your avatar for more than just standing there”. And that would be it. I didn’t expect it to be very good at all. The general idea of it was pretty worn out, and I wasn’t sure what they could do to make it worth my time.

Another reluctantly, I bought it. Because I had some extra points and I managed to get the games I wanted and still have some left over. I figured that it would either be mildly amusing, or I would forever curse it’s existence.

And guess what. I like it. It’s rather like Black and White mixed with Sim City. You remember Sim City. I know you do. When you built up your town and then invited Godzilla in to have a little bit of fun. I don’t think I’ll get to have Godzilla in this game, but you get my meaning. It’s definitely as addictive as Viva Pinata is. My first time playing I sat for several hours without realizing it.

The one thing I strongly dislike at this point is the music. It’s horrible. Irritating. It’s like it takes your nerves, bundles them up into a ball, and steps on them. Then sets them on fire.