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So my Guild Wars character hit 6 years old tonight, or whenever, I haven’t logged in with any regularity for some time as I wait for the painfully awesome looking Guild Wars 2 to suck the teet of my free time like a hungry mutant baby with seven mouths, exactly seven. Every year they give us a miniature ‘pet’ on your character’s birthday. Which is kind of cool, I guess, it’s one of those useless aesthetic trinkets given out, mostly I think to appease the fanboys… and I fucking need them okay? I need the little bastards because they added this update that basically transfers items and titles to you in Guild Wars 2. You get ‘points’ from doing various things in the game, and over the course of six years, bear in mind this is not from six years of CONSECUTIVE play. I have taken a few rather long breaks. I’m at forty-six of fifty points. Fifty is the maximum. I don’t know if you can ‘beat’ a game like Guild Wars per say, just because you hit fifty points doesn’t mean you’re done playing.
For me it fucking does.
I have played this game to the point where it feels almost like a chore now. Maybe it’s my fault for being OCD about completing the titles. Maybe it’s my fault for being unable to live with a unfilled meter just begging to be maxed out, but you know what? I could have lived with it if my relentless title grinding could just end. I know, I know I don’t have to grind for titles. Okay? I know, but I’m sick. I’m compelled to finish after coming so far, and god help me I can’t seem to stop till I’m at fifty points. I need eight more mini pets, which means either playing the waiting game or simply buying them from players. This may seem like a simple task, but in game like Guild Wars with no market system in place, that means standing around in town listlessly staring at pink colored text, okay ‘salmon’ colored text, scroll by while you desperately wait for someone to pick you out of the textual clusterfuck and finally release you from the tedious hell that you are trapped in.
For the sixth year characters the wizards at Arena Net decided to give us not minis, but everlasting tonics that transform you (as many times as you want, oh boy!) into a random hero/npc from the game. Which is great because you can turn forever into a lame ass hero character instead of playing as your cool-looking stylized character. Why play as Serra Demer, slayer of everything in the game, literally, when I can play as a wacky hero sidekick like Acolyte Sosuke or, in my case, a bald man in a dress Kahmu? A useless ass dervish hero that honestly I could never imagine using in a party for any reason. Ever. Seriously, I play a game for six years, bust my ass for stupid titles and get rewarded with a tonic that turns me into a cross-dressing bald retard with all the personality of a block of balsa wood.
“Oh Boy! You can look like me whenever you want now! Happy Birthday motherfucker! Ahahaha”
I swear to whatever gods will listen, if I could I would get a bottle, slap a label on it that said ’6th Year Birthday Tonic’ and put a big fat turd in it then mail it to the Arena Net corporate offices to express my fanboy angst in it’s starkest terms.
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Apart from a few graphic novels and essentially noncanonical works of comic-related fiction (ie: films like the Dark Knight), it’s been nearly a decade and a half since I’ve bothered to invest much attention in the comic book world or its ridiculous, bloodthirsty fandom. Nevertheless, the inevitable references to established characters of the genre occasionally make their way into other hobbies of mine, and into Google query results even when I’m not looking for them. It’s precisely that concept that led me to write this article.
It’s not a big secret that I’m not so much a fan of comic books themselves as I am a keen observer of some of the interesting characters that have been introduced in their pages; with possible exception to books like The Tick, I find little value in just picking up a comic book to read if it’s part of a longer-running, convoluted storyline that I’m going to be neither interested in hunting down nor willing to part with the money for, to find out what happens next. Many of my favorite comic book moments as a kid were one shot issues with more edgy yet generally simple artwork without the superfluous inclusion of chains and shitty anatomy (hi Todd McFarlane!), because more often than not, these stories had more personality than the standard spandex wearing superzeroes could provide.
That’s why I found it both depressing and hilarious to note how the members of Comic Vine take a collective steaming wee wee on the entire roster of potentially awesome characters by reducing them to what they can do in a fight, because apparently that’s all comic book mainstays are suited for. It’s like arguing with my friends back in grade school about which video game system was better. Hence, comic book fans can be really fucking stupid. Just take a look at one of the main draws of Comic Vine – the ability to vote on randomly generated fights between superheroes, supervillains, Vegeta, and God. You know, I swear I’ve seen this before somewhere. Hmmm. Oh that’s right…
Kittenwar.com
Aw geez, I always feel bad voting on one kitty over another one, they’re all so snuggly wuggly! Comic book fans of today apparently feel the same confliction when they see Superman vs. pretty much anyone. And if you thought I was joking when I said Vegeta and God, just click the Powers link at the top of the page, and prepare for incoming douchebaggery of the highest order. According to this scientific device, the Lich King’s powers of necromancy are greater than those of Alice Cooper, but not enough to best Rob Zombie. Wow.
That’s not the best part though;
Click to continue reading “I heard it through the Comic Vine”
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A while back, Gamespot.com began a tier-based, vote-fueled, completely fraudulent and utterly retarded popularity contest called “All Time Greatest Game Villain” that would result in much whining and disappointment, this article included. However, as someone who grew up with nearly all of the characters involved, I feel it is a right and a duty of mine, in all the power my geeky childhood gives me to do so, to further mock what has already become a mini monument of fail. Let’s take a look at how the contest worked:
Obviously, every villain on the list appeared during week 1. The obvious losers were quickly shuffled off the stage, making way for more epic battles in week 2. Things were already looking bad, however, when threads began appearing on 4chan with suggestions on who to vote for/against, links provided. An event that, on sites like IGN for example, would have been a typical “List” that readers could either take or leave depending on whether they agreed with the handful of editors behind the project (GLaDOS was the #1 villain there, fyi), the Gamespot version was given the worst odds of a pleasant outcome by putting the voting power into the hands of members, lurkers, and trolls.
The main issue I had with the content was that it included several characters that, for all intents and purposes, earned their fame.. or infamy as the case may be, well outside of the video game industry. The Joker. Darth Vader. Even Dracula, though the latter starred in an original game series for over 20 years and not just the bi-products of major franchises wanking into a hat to keep interest in their characters alive.
This would not have been a problem, save for the fact that there are a lot of Darth Vader fanboys out there who for reasons of insanity or possible head trauma, refuse to believe that the Sith lord could be battered senseless by an enemy as simple as Ganondorf because hey, he’s in Star Wars and the bigger your death star, the more fanfictions you win by default. Any character that had the wherewithal to rip Vader’s clunky-ass suit from his charred old man body would sooner pity him than stomp on his face. I draw the line at the Pac Man ghosts though; persistent, yes, but overwhelming psychic power to rival the Force is not their strong suit.
Likewise with the Joker, even moreso in fact… I mean, just think about the Joker meeting the Lich King or Bowser in a dark alley. For all his craftiness against the coppers, the only reason he’s even alive is because Batman refuses to kill him. Bowser weighs about ten thousand pounds and breathes fire and oh yeah, he’s a fucking fire breathing monster. Did I mention that? Because he is. I’d like to see a witty quip get you out of the burn unit.
So as super duper cool as Vader and the Joker happen to be, they didn’t belong on the list, because obviously they would go on to dominate it unfairly, and are not game specific characters, despite the sum total of games they’ve actually been in. Anyone who disagrees is a fuckhead. Moving on…
Click to continue reading “Gamespot’s Greatest Game Villains and Other Stupid Popularity Contests.”
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You know, if someone had told me, long long ago, that there were quite so many shitty video games in the world, I might not have bothered collecitng them. Nonetheless, I still have a small hoard of 8 and 16 bit cartridges lying around from when I was younger, taking up space and, from a purely entertainment viewpoint, not aging all that well. Case in point, the fresher generation of angsty consumers has to wonder what the fuck we were thinking to spend money on garbage that can now be reproduced and improved upon by a teenager armed with a copy of Flash and a case of Red Bull and no life to speak of. As I play more NES roms, I realize how stupidly simple his task is. Most of these game developers had no clue how to create an enjoyable product. Oh, but you know the drill by this point. Now comes the part where I shed light on the evidence to support my previous claim. Yay! All aboard the 80′s Fail Train. Fasten your cartoon headgear.
(And Sir or madam, if you grew up with some of these games, I have little trouble believing that you now wear a crash helmet)
If any of you were into the anime craze of the late 80′s/early 90′s, you may have sought out some ‘classics’ of the genre, including some of the more “serious” films like Akira, Ninja Scroll and Fist of the North Star. Not to say that these films were intellectual fair or anything; people just swore a whole lot and half the cast or more ended up dying violently, and death is pretty serious, or so I’ve heard. Fist of the North Star, or FotNS, upped the ante by making the deaths ridiculously gory and sometimes just plain stupid. Ken Shiro, the protagonist, was a post-apocalyptic hybrid of Bruce Lee and Mad Max (no joke, that’s precisely what the original graphic novel creator was going for), who had somehow mastered a deadly form of martial art that caused the human body’s physiology to alter itself radically and well, long story short, his victims contorted, swelled, and exploded in torrents of blood and guts. Sometimes all he had to do was touch them just right to begin a typical sequence of nigh-comical hyper violence. Obviously, this was a good idea for a Nintendo game, because if we’ve been taught anything, it’s that 8 bit graphics realistically convey splatterhouse carnage and other organic special effects without looking like pixelated horse crap.
Oh wait.
Click to continue reading “Digital Nightmares Vol. 4″
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It would appear that as a result of NP’s frequently submitted video game-related articles, the site has drawn the attention of gamers around the world, to which we say “Big deal”, but even we were shocked recently to be contacted by a man decked out in stylish fashions who may or may not have claimed to work for NCSoft, makers of hugely successful games like Guild Wars, Lineage, and Aion. Seriously, I’m not making this up. To prove it, here’s an interview!
Warden Wells: Hi, and welcome to Nonpersons. So Mr. Repose tells me that you refuse to leave until you are satisfied that your message is appropriately conveyed to fans, claiming you may or may not work for NCSoft.
 Ayep. That’s right. I work for NCSoft, pubrisha of a-huge games you rikey pray. We all super cool.
WW: Okay. Well I have to admit, I always wondered if we could get a game developer on the site for a Q&A, but NCSoft? That’s pretty amazing. So I guess I better get with the Q.
Ayep. I didn’t come here for yo goddamn shit. You waste enough time and space making huge brack bar on my Asian face. Rookit all dat waste of brack. Pitiful.
WW: Sure. So what’s your favorite game?
Well, you probably not know about Koreans since you just dumb American retard pray Madden games all day, but we have game called Starcraft, very new wave. Hip unrike your shirt. Pray onrine all day, score super hot babies. Yeaaaah!
WW: I know about Starcraft. It’s outdated and not very fun if you ask me.
You could-a get seriourousry kirred in my country for talking so much nonsensy shit, Warden a-Whitewells. Starcraft best game ever. Kim Jong Il invent dat like toaster, internet porn, and chibi. Do not upset grorious reader!
WW: Let’s talk about NCSoft’s games, and the ideal of Korean game developers in general. What’s the difference between your games and those of Japan and the more western countries?
JAPAN?? Japan don’t know goddamn shit about games, too busy stuffing octopus in womb to pay special attention to most powerful game erement of rife.
WW: So what is the secret of Korean game development then? Note: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!
Click to continue reading “Grind Wars – Secrets of Korean Game Developers Revealed!”
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So if you’ve been on the internet for more than 60 minutes, you’ve already witnessed what are arguably the most hilariously exploitative, dishonest, and just plain bad “free online game” advertisements in history. IN HISTORY. I dare you to find something more pitiful and repugnant than the misleading boobs-a-poppin’ flash/banner ads for Evony, a game that’s making its money off of horny retards and fans of the Civilization games who may or may not know that they’re playing a clone of it……. and that, despite the promises of Evony’s snake oil peddling advert department, is completely lacking in anything racy or even slightly arousing, or even slightly original.
Like most people, I saw the ads and laughed them off in hopes they would go away, but at first glance it’s pretty difficult not to notice a chasm of massive, yawning cleavage threatening to claim your last iota of attention as you’re checking your email.
 Don't fall in. Don’t worry though, Evony’s degrading ad campaign wasn’t just the willy nilly scheming of a random mail room scamp, it took a lot of effort to photoshop girls from low budget pornos into these things. True story; at least one ad had images ripped directly from the cover of “Girls Playing with Girls 102″ (thanks to John Kershaw of Negative Gamer for this highly amusing and disgraceful information):
 
Great job, Evony. You have lured countless stupid people to a boring game by pandering to their most primal of desires. It’s not like no accomplished this lazy tactic with some success in the past, but a lot of that happened in the 90′s and the games were actually kind of fun. This game is a portal to your wallet guarded by a chick in her underwear.
That’s right, not only are there no hot bods in Evony (previously named Civony – the Civilization Ripoff), but they practically harass you into paying for in-game premiums and advantages over the other bored retards, using real cash. So I have to laugh at people who spend hundreds of dollars on something they didn’t even want to begin with, all because of their genitals and their inability to log off once they’ve gone through the arduous task of making a name and password for yet another site.
Congratulations, internet. You’ve outdone yourself.
- Wells
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Digital Nightmares is back with a special edition that our 5 readers will just go nuts over! Now while the ‘Nightmares’ in Digital Nightmares has, in the past, consistently stood for outrageous difficulty regardless of the quality of gameplay, Hack Edition widens the playing field; the following games are nightmares because of the near-sacrilege it was to have created them in the first place. They are hacks, the definition in this case being: ROMS that have been cosmetically altered to present different characters and/or themes than originally intended. With that out of the way, let’s dip into what I found.
Note: Some of the ROMS didn’t make the final cut because of taste issues, such as one disgrace in particular packed in the rar titled Dick Kids, which features a hack of the old NES game Mc Kids (a McDonald’s themed game), in which naked child-like pixel blobs run from woodchucks with boners into disturbingly phallic shaped houses. If that kind of thing is your cup of tea, you can go catch the northern end of a southbound train, you sick bastard.
Pussy City Pimps (River City Ransom hack)
River City Ransom is still one of my all time favorite pick up ‘n play games from the silver age of video games, so I naturally gravitated towards hacks of games I liked and am very familiar with. Let’s have a look at PCP. Essentially RCR with a perverted theme, PCP made me think it was designed by a lonely pothead whose sense of humor centers around the word ‘boobies’ and has yet to know the touch of a woman (ie: I’m not going to discriminate here, but there’s no way a chick created this mess).
In Pussy City Pimps, you fight gangs with names like the Premature Orgasms and the Limp Gays, every one of them sporting flaccid pixelated wangs from their jeans, the ladies going around with little to nothing at all. Why? Well have a look at the deep, award winning storyline to know the answer to that and other questions (like: can a monkey really code?):
That’s right, thePimps has taken my hoes. Wow. Someone must have brainstormed diligently with a whole fucking pool party’s worth of rocket scientists and movie giants to create such a compelling plot. I bet you anything that arrogant prick M. Night Shyamlan was there wearing a speedo and admiring himself in a pocket mirror, distractedly suggesting he play the main character who goes on to change the world forever. Seriously, Pussy City Pimps is almost as bad as Lady in the Water.
Click to continue reading “Digital Nightmares – HACK EDITION”
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Over the course of the past six months, I’ve had a lot of seat time with my favorite MMO – World of Warcraft, arguably one of the most addictive and well constructed PC games of its time, but not all of the experiences have been rosy. When I began playing WoW again after a year or so hiatus, I was initially thrilled to put on my winter wardrobe to battle the undead legions of the Lich King in the frozen wasteland of Northrend, but then I realized Blizzard made a critical expansion error.
Death Knights.
See, the balance of WoW has been kept in check by a variation of classes that are built from the ground up. Starting at level 1, a paladin player will, presumably, learn the ropes on his/her way to the current level cap (as of now, 80). This can be said for most classes, with the exception of Death Knights, who begin at level 55 and practically have everything handed to them, particularly the false ideal that they are good at everything because their starting armor is better than yours. This has led to a whole new generation of frustration.
The problem with Death Knights is not simply limited to the fact that your kid can roll one on your account as long as you’ve gotten at least one character to level 55, thereby bypassing any knowledge of how to actually play in a massively populated online game, no. In addition to that, DK’s are just not very balanced. They are OP (overpowered) in their starting levels, but have a limited choice of spells and skills, making them utterly boring to play as. A friend and I both made the decision within the past few days to delete our Death Knights because frankly, we agreed that they’re not very fun to play. So basically, a Death Knight is Blizzard’s way of saying thank you to their loyal players over the years by introducing a class that a retard can have grouping with you in the Dungeon Finder within a day and in their off-time enjoys slamming square pegs into circular shaped holes while grunting. Two of the most popular and well known DK’s on the server I play on are almost always in Trade chat, shooting the breeze, they’re that bored.
Pros of being a DK: Plate armor
Cons of being a DK: Everything else
Click to continue reading “Death Knights: Not to be taken seriously.”
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Hey, you know what Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show all have in common? Assuming you’ve even heard of the Cleveland Show by now and have also NOT committed suicide knowing it exists, I’ll tell you: all three are the projects of a guy named Seth MacFarlane. Seth, after an attempt in the 90′s to make children’s cartoons (and failing miserably), was eventually responsible for Family Guy, a mostly garbled animated sitcom with a lot of pointless pop culture references and segues that veer straight off a cliff into the unfunny unknown. The show’s low percentage of actual humor is countered by shock laughs, sex gags, and uncomfortable subjects that kids shouldn’t be watching, but probably are because hey, it’s a cartoon right? Cartoons can’t be bad.
Warning: Cartoons can be bad. Very bad.
See, the thing about MacFarlane’s humor is that it’s funny to him and was never very funny to anyone but him, until he convinced a lot of idiots that his formula was a display of utter brilliance and laughs, the same idiots that still watch the Simpsons hoping it will ever be as good as it once was, and even then it was overrated. The allure of making an animated sitcom is hey, you can make your characters do practically anything without worrying about budget or props, and thanks to MacFarlane, they can say anything they want too, much to the dismay of people who aren’t impressed by constant flashbacks, and those who don’t drag their knuckles when they walk. Can anyone count the number of times in one episode without losing track, just how many times Peter “remembers the time” he <did something zany> with <famous person>? If you said yes, there’s a good chance you’re a liar, seeing as sitting through an entire episode of that shit means you probably can’t count nearly that high.
The sad thing is, Family Guy is his best show. It gets the most attention from writers and advertisers and as much as I hate to admit this, has a broader base to build upon than something like American Dad or The Cleveland Show. (Trivia: The theme song originally contained a line referring to Cleveland’s “happy black-guy face,” but this was replaced with “happy mustached face” to make the song more racially sensitive.[8])
They actually changed the song to an animated Blaxploitation sitcom to be more “racially sensitive”. Amazing. Even if by some miracle this show does not get canceled, its fans can feel dead on the inside knowing that they kept a humorless husk plodding along.
Click to continue reading “Seth MacFarlane, you’re not funny. Give it up.”
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Conceptually creating a convincing villain is actually terribly difficult if you want to do it right. When you consider, foremost, coming up with a strong enough motive to possibly justify said villain’s behavior. Which, is not entirely the most difficult part of the process, but it’s close. The most popular justification is the ‘one bad day’ scenario. As is the case of many comic book heroes and villains, is that quite a few had one. One moment in their lives that was so awful and terrible it bent and twisted them, one way or the other, into acts of extreme depravity or heroism. Just a few examples. Spiderman decided to use his powers to be a hero for good when his Uncle is gunned down in the streets after he (Spiderman) had a fight with him. The Punisher is another great example. Retired delta force officer, takes his wife and kids for a stroll in the park, and they all get gunned down in front of him, caught in some mobster’s crossfire. Batman, for example, he too has one bad day, seeing his parents killed in front of him by a mugger. These moments fundamentally change their lives, sending them off to be heroes. The mentality being of course, that they cannot allow what happened to them to happen to anyone else. Though, I feel I must clarify that I don’t technically view the Punisher as a hero per say, he just kills criminals. I cannot really fault him for just killing them rather than simply capturing them and allowing them to get loose over and over again. Which, is a fault of the character of Batman, who only seems to contain the damage his villains cause rather than put an end to it for good. It’s arguable as to who’s methods are more effective, but not exactly the point of this entry.
The villains also have a similar origin pattern, often simply being a mirror version of their nemesis. In this way, it makes their reason for fighting each other almost a co-dependent relationship. The hero needs the villain to satisfy his urge to save the day and protect villain, and the villain needs the hero to give them something to fight against. A great example of this would be Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, which depicts the Joker’s origins as similar to Batman’s. One bad day is all it took, and his world was destroyed and he went insane, in a different way. Or as The Joker himself comments in the comic, “You had a bad day once, am I right?… Why else would you dress up like a flying rat?” In this intricate dynamic your villain and hero cannot really carry a story on their own and therefore the story becomes co-dependent on this element to always be present. The villain acting and the hero reacting.
But that’s just the comics, but do not mistake that sentiment for me being dismissive, as I still actively read graphic novels. Not so much the typical superhero fare anymore. The problem as I see it with the ‘one bad day’ scenario is that it’s too clean, too easy to justify or explain. It’s not realistic or, honestly, very believable. Villains are not just the result of one terrible tragic moment, some villains are born twisted. Some are slowly, and gradually, driven towards the inevitable event horizon of their own person mental apocalypses. Some just make a string of increasingly amoral decisions based on morality or greed or patriotism until they have become crooked on the inside. The real world equivalent of super villains, people like Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and (to a lesser extent maybe) Osama Bin Ladin. People like that aren’t just born from having their parents killed in front of them or their village tragically burnt to the ground. They are also proof of one statement that I have heard, but cannot remember the source exactly, so allow me to paraphrase: “No villain written could be as bad as history’s worst.” Which, I semi-agree with. Who could match orchestrating the deaths of millions of people to a comic villain pouring some fear inducing powder into a cities water supply? The problem I have always felt with villains I have seen in some stories is that they don’t feel realistic.
Click to continue reading “Creating Realistic Monsters”
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