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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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Throughout my life, it had always been difficult for me to grasp what was so compelling about tabletop strategy and RPG games. I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around how fiddling with pencil and paper games and using your imagination would ever be preferable to an NES (or a NES, if you’re a retard and pronounce the console name “Ness”). And now that I’ve discovered Warhammer 40,000… well, I pretty much skipped all of it anyway, because the Dawn of War series is on the PC. Lulz.
Seriously, I never collected much of anything apart from Nintendo junk when I was under age 12, and from about 13 to 17, it was comic books. I never seemed to be able to geek out properly, not in the sense of enjoying something like tabletop games or D&D. I think the reason for that beyond their limitations in the area of graphics and sound, two big limitations when you’re a teenager, is that they were kind of boring.
That’s right, I said it. Dungeons and Dragons bored the hell out of me, as did every other copycat RPG where you rolled dice and talked a lot. No thanks, if I was going to be a loser, I was going to do it right and do it alone. It was in 2007, however, that I discovered that one of those copycats went on to become something amazing: Warhammer.
Click to continue reading “Dawn of War”
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Platitudes. Everyone speaks them, few understand how utterly obnoxious they can be. Rewind to a few months ago, I was on my ventrilo server (as in my, I own it) with my guild mates from Guild Wars. Allow me to sort of explain that, the Guild Wars thing I mean. You see, I purchased Guild Wars a long time ago, actually about four years ago when it first came out for the PC. I was looking for an RPG to play online with my friends that wasn’t an MMO. Since Guild Wars is a co-operative role playing game and not a persistent world MMO, I thought I would enjoy it. Little did I know the horrors that awaited me. Little did I know…
Let me plant a visual in your head to sort of describe the game play experience I’ve had while playing Guild Wars. You see, Guild Wars allows you to play solo, by bringing AI henchmen. You can’t solo a god damn thing unless you’re farming or vastly experienced, and the first expansion was so bug ridden you had to do some missions five times in a row in order to enchant each piece of your equipment, leading to annoyance and mostly rage. The first six months I sort of struggled through Guild Wars was kind of like fighting that crazy asshole Mike Tyson in an electrified cage when he’s got boxing gloves that are actually spiked gauntlets and I’m armed only with a really soft pillow and armor made out of novelty plastic ears. I chose a Warrior, because I always enjoy getting the Melee classes to do neat little tricks. I decided to make my secondary class Elementalist. So I’d be basically a Spellsword. If you’ve played guild wars you know where this is going, if you haven’t let me tell you something about that combination of classes… it only works in specialized circumstances, or when you know what the fuck you are doing. Thankfully, I didn’t. So I gleefully wandered around getting killed, the sheer variety of places I manged to get myself killed was really the only adventure I got to experience in my brave journey though Tyria. Dead in a marsh. Dead in a desert. Dead in a magical flying castle. Dead in a river. Dead on a mountain summit. Dead in river of molten lava, giving a dramatic thumbs up much like The Terminator. Dead in a pristine field surrounded by bunnies, piggies and magical rainbows that reflect the innocence of a child’s dream playfully in the sky. Dead along with my worthless, inept, AI controlled companions.
If you decide to go on a magical quest to save the world armed only with good intentions and a heart for adventure and these are the faces you see when you go to town to assemble a party, for your safety and sanity’s sake, just turn around and go home. Trust me.
Click to continue reading “Of Guild Wars, Platitudes, and the American Ninja”
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There has been some controversy about the newly released 4th title in the insanely popular, iconic Street Fighter video game series, all in regards to the final boss character. Named Seth, he’s bald, blue, has the ability to teleport, his stage is a high tech laboratory, and well.. he’s Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen.
That’s what it boils down to. Though this was being discussed as early as last year, the similarities are far too noticeable to be ignored by the majority, and all but the most desperate of Capcom fanboys* has to agree that this is highly suspect, and possibly even an attempt to cash in on the Watchmen film, being released today. In addition to the fact that it would have been painfully simple to strip a boss character of any extra detail, the timing is just too coincidental. I, personally, have always enjoyed Capcom’s games, but maybe they’re no longer content with ripping off of their own past material and slappnig new names on it (The Resident Evil series and Megaman 1 through holy shit, for example). They’re no strangers to just tossing out “new” editions like confetti.
Let’s list the incriminating evidence here.
Click to continue reading “Street Fighter IV – Starring: Dr. Manhattan?”
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“Fear is fascinating”
That was the official tagline for at least one title in the Clock Tower video game series that spanned at least 3 systems and is commonly regarded by fans of the survival horror genre as one of the building blocks of the craze that eventually spawned Resident Evil and Silent Hill, going as far back as the Super NES (SNES) days with Clock Tower: The First Fear. The intention of this review, however, is to focus on the Playstation version, called Clock Tower (Clock Tower 2 in its native Japan).
Unlike today’s most popular survival horror games, Clock Tower was point and click. You didn’t control the character’s body directly, but rather pointed them in the direction they needed to go in order to survive and discover items. This heightened the fear factor, as did playing as a set of characters that basically had no access to fancy weaponry. There are no flame throwers or shotguns in Clock Tower. You’re lucky if you are able to find mace or a good place to hide as the killer walks by.
Speaking of the killer, there are more than a few dangers in Clock Tower, but the real focus of the game is placed upon the infamous Norwegian child killer, Scissorman. A squat, limping psychopath whose choice of murder weapon is a giant pair of shears, Scissorman is never hesitant to use them to end your game, and main character Jennifer Simpson’s life. There are ways around meeting your doom at the hands of this prick though, including hiding in closets, under beds, and sometimes even taking the offensive and hitting him over the head with something. He never stays gone for long, but slowing him down will buy you the time you need to find important items needed to solve the final mystery.
When someone looks like this, they’re either dead or very uncomfortable.
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So I haven’t done one of these in a while, and I had a craving for old games about a week ago, so I tossed aside the newfangled for the dustfangled and prepared to swear a whole lot. I was not disappointed, but my neighbors might have been. In this volume, unlike the previous two, I’m going to focus on some nigh to completely impossible games that have little to no redeeming qualities. I mean, sure, Zelda II and Ninja Gaiden were frustrating, but they keep you coming back. This list consists of some pretty ugly, boring or just plain senseless creations of soulless monsters behind an 80’s game development kit, more commonly known as The Japanese.
Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones
Holy shit, this game is easily the hardest beat ‘em up in all history. Fuck Battletoads, the enemies in Double Dragon 3 would send them screaming back to the swamps that spawned them. In fact, if it weren’t for the cheat codes available, no one could ever beat this game, and even when you are completely invincible to all health loss, it’s still about as comfortable as watching a violent rape take place on an underage invalid (unless that sort of thing gets you in the pants, and then you’re welcome to my copy of this fucking bastard). Seriously, I can’t put this any other way but that, except possibly, you know those kung fu movies where the old man gets beat up in the beginning and left for dead, utterly incapable of defending himself against minute after grueling minute of punches, kicks, backflips, sideflips, weapons, and sadistic groin claws? Yeah, it’s pretty much like that playing this game. Sure, if you have the stomach to try and learn a pattern (hint: there’s only one pattern in this game and it’s DYING. A LOT.), maybe you can punch an enemy a few times with your ridiculously slow, fat jell-0 arms before he wakes up from his nap and continues beating you like a red-headed stepchild caught fucking the family cat.
Is it me or does Billy Lee really have to excuse himself here?
Click to continue reading “Digital Nightmares Vol. 3″
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There were enough games from the 80’s, early 90’s and even some following (mainly due to poor design/shitty camera angles) with the ability to drive a person half-insane (or in some cases, to the point of very real homicide) to choke a camel. Here are MOAR:
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Now don’t get me wrong about this or most of the other titles I cock back and lambaste for their murderous difficulty, I actually enjoy a lot of these games to this day, and with the lovely invention of the console emulator and advances in cheating, I enjoy them even more! On my unmistakably-named list “Holy shit – Games I remember beating when I was a kid but I don’t know how!”, Zelda 2 is at least in the top 5. I know that I didn’t do any major drugs when I was 10, so that couldn’t have been it. I suppose the random deity of your choice might have taken pity on me. Might have been alien intervention. Either way, Zelda 2 was the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. The first couple days of playing this game, you’ll think that you have the hang of the controls and that the AI is stupidly simple even for an 80’s video game. Just wait. Nintendo is just lulling you into a false sense of “I know what I’m doing” and will, mirthfully and with very little warning, drop a metric fuckton of 8-bit aggression on your fragile ego the moment you stumble into IronKnuckle and his tiny little sword of many deaths.
This one’s on a horse, Link! RUN!
The horrifying evolutionary next step up from Darknut from the original NES Legend of Zelda, IronKnuckle was abused as a concept character and is going to take it out on your unlubricated asshole. You’ll know you’ve met one when you DIE over and over again. To be fair, the early (orange-colored) versions of this megabitch are tame compared to the blue and red ones that follow. They will brutalize you in ways Freddy Krueger would consider overkill.
Click to continue reading “Digital Nightmares Vol. 2″
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So I wrote an article once for a friend’s website detailing the most horrifyingly impossible video games in creation (mostly consisting of those for the old NES system, and if you grew up in the 80s, DUH. You already knew that). As luck would have it, he changed the software for the main index, fully intending to re-add that piece and others at a later time. Then his computer shit the bed and he lost the database – hoo! Yeah, I know you’re reading this you fucking dickhead, I should have kept them out of your clumsy, knobby hands; it’s not bad enough that you tricked me into downloading bananaphone.mp3 at least 5 times by disguising it as other songs you said I might like, but then on top of it you had to just haul back and wipe your virtual Florida monkeybutt with my painstakingly crafted masterworks. ASSHOLE!
Regardless, I’ll just compose myself the best I can and offer up a new version of that article, since it’s impossible to forget the games that were in the original list. Oh fuck yes it is, believe me, I’ve tried. Some of them may be, even still, mocking me from their dusty places of rest under the bed back at the house where I grew up. For clarity, these are not listed in any particular order of annoyance, nor how cruel the Japanese game developers were feeling during the production of the title(s) in long overdue, sadistic response to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by turning American kids into irritable console zombies for 2 decades.
There’s a pretty good chance you’ve seen these screens…
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Ok, like the antagonist of the game in question, this one’s a no-brainer. If you played this game as a kid, you wanted to kill someone. If you didn’t want to kill someone, then I leave you to science because I have no fucking idea what’s wrong with you. Maybe your parents came home from work every day and beat the living shit out of you and you started to like it, and this went on for years – that’s how bad it would have been to have fully enjoyed this game, happily losing to Mike Tyson time and time again, if you even managed to make it to the champ at all. While Mike was busy training to pummel the 14 bazillionth Nintendo geek into pseudo-sentient tuna casserole, Nintendo would blissfully throw fighters like Mr. Sandman (who, for some odd reason, looked like a vampire when stunned) and Super Machoman in your face, and despite the fact that they would effortlessly play with Little Mac’s skull between their fists like two Chinese guys would play with a helpless little white ball in the Ping-Pong World Title match, they were still far easier to beat than “Iron Mike”.
Tyson’s NES arms were TNT-strapped jackhammers from Hell fueled by lightning that would obliterate anything they came across, including your youthful sanity. However, at least until the last fight, the game had a consistent learning curve: straight uphill. When you got to Tyson, the hill just fucking fell on you.
Click to continue reading “Digital Nightmares Vol. 1″
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