The Crusade that Burns.

It was pretty much inevitable. I had even bought the damn game, just hadn't installed it. But when Anton and Jon asked me why on Earth I'm not playing the Burning Crusade (the recently released expansion to World of Warcraft) I answered "Uh, I dunno."

Hell, I mean, it seems that everyone has played TBC for a while at one point or another. Even Ragnar Tornquist and Ron Gilbert are playing too, the latter even making his own Blood Elf guild! I'd so join that if I could play on his server. Oh, wells.

In all honesty, one of the reasons I started playing WoW again was because I wanted something to drive me away from Justice for All, which I had begun to rush through. And I really want to savor this game, enjoy every single bad pun, figure out every single reference etc. I dunno, it's kind of a weird feeling. From what I've been told, I'm not the only one who gets it with certain games, that feeling of sweet melancholy you get when you're nearing the end of a game you really liked. On one hand you're happy because you had a great time with it, and on the other one you're kind of sad because it's about to end. That's exactly what I got, and since it's gonna be a while before we get Ace Attorney 3, I'm in no rush to finish #2. Besides, playing Justice for all while in bed in the early hours of the night rocks.

So anyway, back to the Burning Crusade. I started playing with my level 60 Druid Erdalion, in my old server Argent Dawn, which is a roleplay server, in theory at least. Thing is, pretty much everybody rushed to level 70 (the new max in TBC) in the first few weeks, so leveling so far has been a pretty lonely experience. Sure I've teamed up with a few people here and there for dungeons or difficult quests, but it feels like most of the people I've met have characters level 70 already and just use the characters I meet them with as a past-time for when they're bored. So yeah, TBC is a Massively Singleplayer Online RPG for me so far in the Outlands. Still, I had a lot of fun with certain quests, and Blizzard's love for pop culture references made me laugh out loud a few times, a good example is the Tenacious Defender.

Unsurprisingly then, it wasn't long before the sameness of everything got to me. Quests so far don't really vary from the "Go there, kill X of this and get Y of that" variation. Sure, the new locations look pretty nice (except Nagrand and Hellfire Peninsula, fuck that place) but it gets boring after spending so many hours in the same place. I've been told that quests get better, and there are several dungeons to explore, which don't take that much time, but there are only so many times you can run those before it gets tedious. At this rate, I'll probably quit the game before I reach level 70 for the ranked Arena matches, but really, single-player grinding is not my favorite past-time, I rank it up there with shoving searing needles in my eyes.

And it doesn't help that the level of roleplay in my server is... Well, I'll let the following video describe it better, even if it's not made for my realm:


In all fairness, WoW isn't exactly tailor-made for RP, and I have found some occasions of excellent random RP. But generally, that's how it's been in the Outlands so far.

So what's a guy to do then? Why, roll a Blood Elf of course! I initially made a male hunter with the intend to level him because hunters are great fun, but I also made a female rogue because I had this storyline idea about such a character and thought I might as well give that a try. The result was, I got hooked on the rogue style of play. Stealthing everywhere is so much fun (even for a druid player, who's used to it) and the starting areas are so well-designed, Silvermoon City is one of the most beautiful cities I've seen in a game, and the quests are interesting and quite balanced. I decided to take this rogue business seriously, so at level 14 I swam all the way to Westfall (one of the starting areas for human characters) and got the Red Defias Mask, a rogue trademark, here's Gil at Undercity:


I'm up to level 21 currently, struggling a bit with the poisons quest, but leveling has been a blast so far. There are many people around leveling their Blood Elves as well, so it's really easy to find a good group, not to mention that most of them are really nice, which is quite surprising. Sure, there's the occasional jackass around, like one guy who expected me to run him through a series of high level quests so he'd get a certain item, when I wasn't really able of doing some of those quests on my own to begin with. And all that for just 5 gold! People these days. But hey, you can't avoid idiots in real life, so it's hardly surprising when you run into them in such an anonymous environment.

I have to say, on the roleplay side of things, I've been lucky enough to find a lot of it so far. Most people react in-character if you approach them that way, and I've had a few excellent RP sessions so far, more than I've had in a whole year almost. Only last night I run into an Orcish/Trollish celebration at Ratchet, apparently they had killed some boss and they were celebrating about it in excellent in-character fashion. They didn't seem to like Elves though, and my character isn't that fond of Orcs either, so this resulted in some hilarious misunderstandings, all in-character though. I hope I can run into more of these soon, here's a screenie of the aforementioned party:


Still, I agree with Ragnar Tornquist when he says that the first 20 levels are the best, after that it gets a bit boring for me. Initially, my goal was to get the Mask, the Cape seen in the screenshot above and a really nice dagger. Now that's over, I only feel like finishing the quest that gives me access to poisons, but after that is done... Chances are, I'll lose interest again, and with many games to play like the new Sam and Max episodes, WoW will be left behind, again. At this point, I doubt I'll ever get Gil the rogue to the Outland (the new area in TBC).

As it is now, I only have one goal in the game. I met this Tauren Shaman called Atlas, my mission is to make him shrug at some point and take a screenshot of that. 'Nuff said.

Spine tingling legal action!

Mind numbing legalese!
You will say "wow"!

Wait, I used that last line in my previous post. Oh, well. Since I can't sleep, here's another Phoenix Wright video, something of a recap from the first two games, with a few scenes from the (as of yet unreleased in the Western world) third game, so spoiler warnings apply to those sensitive to uh... spoilerage.



I think this is a really beautiful video. I have no flippin' clue of what they're talking about either, but I just like how they say it. From what I understand, they are reciting lines from the first two games, so that's definitely no bad thing.

It also got me thinking. A Phoenix Wright game with speech, if done wright, erm... right, would be like the best game ever. And given the care that goes to the script and dialogs, there's no reason to suspect Capcom wouldn't try their hardest to hire some really good actors for the job. Though given that they are Capcom, finding good actors may actually be impossible for them -Resident Evil series, anyone?

Still, such a thing could never be done on the DS anyway, and I think the system is perfect for the game, so it's just wishful thinking, really. Perhaps on the Wii, who knows. Plus, hey, if Resident Evil 2 was released on a Nintendo 64 cartridge, anything is possible.

Court is back in session!

In my second post ever in this blog I mentioned a DS game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I recently got the second game in the series, Justice for All, though now Capcom officially renamed the series Ace Attorney. I still consider Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney as the best game I've played in the last oh, several years. Bring me your Twilight Princesses and your Halos, your Half-Life 2's and your Oblivions, WoW's, anything. Nick Wright's misadventure of comedy and turnabouts is that much better. If you're interested, you can read my review in Adventure Lantern,

Here's a trailer from the second game:



I've been playing Justice for All a lot these days, I'm currently at the beginning of the third case, out of a total of four. Sadly there is no special fifth case with new gameplay elements this time around, so the game initially feels like a step backwards from the previous entry. That, combined with a few music tracks that are kinda "meh" and some mediocre writing in the first case, troubled me at first. But after one hour in the second case, when the game really starts rolling, oh my. As Maya Fey says, "You will say 'wow'!"

As I said in my first post all way back in September, Phoenix Wright has mastered one thing really rare among games; perfect balance between humor and drama. For every hilarious moment, there's a touching one, for every silly occurrence, there's a genuinely spine-chilling one. It's so well-written, it even puts several TV shows and movies to shame.

Which is why I personally like it so much. It has that elusive quality, a certain "je ne sais quoi" that ye old games of yore had, it's truly entertaining, but in a deep way, not a superficial one. It has characters and stories that will stay with you long after you've finished the games. Personally, after the seeing the quality of the second game, I now consider the Ace Attorney series one of my very favorite ones, up there with Castlevania, Street Fighter, Zelda etc.

Now some people, for example my good friend Tom, would say "But at the heart of it, it's just a traditional point & click adventure"

In response to those,



*slams both his hands on the desk and raises his left index finger towards the people in question*

Good games are more than just the sum of their parts. Sure, the core mechanics of PW's gameplay are based on a point and click system, but both games make significant advancements with regards to visual and audio presentation. Essentially, the trial parts of PW are a fighting game in adventure game format. Hell, Justice for All even has a health meter! And a person (Maggie/Maggy I think) calls for Phoenix to perform his "special move". Which is probably another reason why I like these games so much, given that since I were a teenager, my two favorite gaming genres were adventures and fighting games. So what better than a game that combines both of these genres?

Anyway, don't want to rant more than I have to (again). I have another video and a few more things to say, but I'll do that in a follow-up post.

Prepare for Glory!

Hyped yet?

Between Gates of Fire (which I recently finished reading -best book ever) and this, I'm in full-Spartan mode lately. When I'm not playing Phoenix Wright 2 anyway, but I'll talk about that in more detail in a future post.

I have to say, I find all the people drawing parallels between this movie and the current situation in Iran very funny, in a "come on!" way. Seriously, come the fuck on people, stop seeing propaganda and conspiracies all the time.

Sure, the Persians aren't shown in a very positive light neither in the graphic novel nor the movie, but have you seen how the Spartans are portrayed? Heroic, sure, but also militaristic, narrow-minded and undemocratic (is that a word?) as they were, in fact. Yet the whiners totally ignore this. And yes, in the end, despite all this the Spartans are the heroes, but y'know, that's kinda like the whole point of this story.

The only thing I'll give credit to the whiners for is that this movie has bad timing. Fairy nuff, that much is true. Anything beyond that is just stupid though; people just enjoy being paranoid I guess.

I won't even mention the Greeks whining about the fact that the movie won't be historically accurate, since talking to people who just won't get it it's simply a waste of time.

In case of emergency, please call...

112. This is the EU equivalent of 911, one emergency phone number to rule them all. It's a welcome change, since currently most countries in the EU have different phone numbers for different services, like the police or the fire department. Moreover, none of these numbers are shared throughout the countries of the EU, so you'd have to memorize each and every one, or at least, you know, store them in your cell. At any rate, with this new number the whole procedure becomes much more simplified, and much faster too, hopefully.

In theory, at least. I somehow doubt Greeks will adapt to this smoothly. It's already a pain to call any civil service here as it is, grouping them up together could prove to be a nightmare. Or it could force the local phone operators to grow the proverbial pair, and actually do their job for once. We'll see, I guess.

The following picture has nothing to do with 112, 911, or anything in this post at all, but I just felt like posting it.
I'm truly sorry.

O2 is alright

And so are The Gathering. Their concert in Athens last night was probably the finest of the last 30,000 years. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that they are one of the most important bands of the last decade.

Believe

Original image can be seen here and Neil Gaiman's site here.


Please let this movie be good. Pretty please. I should confess that I'm more hyped about this movie than I am for 300.

Just because

Since I earlier brought up Street Fighter, Street Fighter: The movie and um, stupid "things" I guess, there's a movie I need to share with you.

In fact, I'd go as far as saying that you have never been truly alive unless you've seen this. This is from a SF VR ride*. The ride of your life.

*You know, those stupid pseudo-3D things they used to have in fairs back in the 90's.

Of clouds and silver linings (cont.)

As I was saying, sometimes even the things that will seemingly destroy your soul may one day be the source of something really useful.

Case in point: remember that god-awful fighting game, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game (SFTMTG)? You know, that one, the black sheep of the SF family. The one with the Mortal Kombat-style digitized graphics? In all honesty I never really got the chance to play it, they never brought it at the arcades in my hometown, and the reviews I read all mentioned that it was horrible, so neither me nor my friends ever bought it. It is however commonly known as the worst Street Fighter game ever, and perhaps one of the worst fighting games ever as well, though that may be pushing it a bit. Still, the fact that it is based on Street Fighter: The Movie, a movie that succeeded in eroding the souls and minds of an entire generation of children, is bad enough to probably give it a place in that list.

At any rate, it's been more than a decade since both the movie and the game were released, so our memories of either started fading over the years, our wounds started healing. One question always puzzled me however; why did Capcom, a company I practically worshiped at the time, create such an awful game? Not that they had never created a mediocre title before, but the Street Fighter franchise has always been precious to them, especially back then in the mid-nineties, when fighting games still ruled the arcades. And hell, why did they even make a Street Fighter game that looked like Mortal Kombat, when most people acknowledged that Street Fighter was the superior franchise? Which it always has been, you MK fanbois reading this can go play Deadly Alliance if you disagree.

Over the years I would find out that Capcom had in fact outsourced the game to a little (and little-known) company called Incredible Technologies. That explained a lot, it wasn't created by the original team, such a change is usually a recipe for disaster. Still, it couldn't have been a crappy game from the beginning, otherwise it would have just been scrapped early on. So my questions still remained, how could the game end up like this, what went wrong?

So what do you know, about a week ago Alan Noon, a former Incredible Technologies employee and one of the main people responsible for the creation of SFTMTG decided to start sharing the story behind this game over at the ShoRyuKen forums. He's really going into a lot of detail, describing the whole procedure, from early designing to... actually I'm not sure since I'm still on page 6 of the thread, but I'm assuming he'll go as far as mentioning the feedback they received after it was released.

It's a really interesting read, and not just for people wondering how a game so bad could ever be released under the Street Fighter name. Noon's description of the whole game-designing procedure is really detailed, I think it's actually very inspirational for aspiring, well, game-designers. And yes, I fall under that category. Hell, even if you're not into that and just want to see what's going on behind the scenes of a game, it's still a good read. If nothing else, it shows that even though we now idolize the 90's as the "golden age" of gaming and a time when people cared more about the quality of a game than its potential sales, people still only cared about the money back then as well. I mean, do you actually remember the shit that Acclaim used to release in the SNES/Genesis~Mega Drive days?

Still, truth be told, back then there were less executives trying to boss around people like Warren Spector into making a mascot-based cart racer ("JC Denton's Ultimate Kooky Wheelz" for the win!) , but it was hardly the developer heaven that people claim it to be. Naw, that was old Infocom in the 80's. For more on that, you can read an interview of Brian Moriarty (Loom) over at Adventure Classic Gaming, another great read.