Gamerscore, or Someone Help Me

My name is Jonathan Singer and I have a problem.

I'm totally addicted to collecting Gamerscore. I know this is bad. Everything about it feels wrong. My recent readings on Buddhism have been telling me that collecting things is a bad thing, representing the attachment which leads inevitably to suffering. (More on Buddhism at some later time.) But it's a little sick, the time and effort I will put into eking out just a few more points in a game.

Case in point: Eternal Sonata.

I have had this game out from Gamefly since 2/21/08. I realize that it is a JRPG, and those tend to take a long-ass time to finish. But I should have long since sent this game back to the hell from whence it came, freeing up that spot on my Queue for other, better games (like the recently shipped Orange Box, though I question whether I will play any of Half-Life 2. I tend not to like getting involved in things part-way through, hence my not watching season 4 of BSG when it starts this Friday, because I'm still not done with Season 2, let alone started and finished Season 3). I mean, I already wrote about having finished Eternal Sonata and gotten the 300 and change achievement points that are possible on a first playthrough.

Of course, the game was made by a bunch of sick Japanese sadists, who require you to play through the Encore mode (basically New Game +, except you start back at level 1, with none of your equipment and the enemies all have twice the HP and 1.5 times the strength and defense) in order to get the other 600some points. This is awful. Who thought of this?

[Ed. note - At the same time, I have to grudgingly give the developers respect for making the second playthrough punishingly difficult. Once you got the timing of counterattacks and blocks down in the first playthrough, it was childishly easy. I could wipe out even the bosses that my walkthrough told me were really challenging. Really challenging for people who suck at video games, but not really challenging for me. I am a master. Well, this was before I played Encore and had Captain Dolce (oh the names are so awesome, so awesome. {cf. Polka}) sweep the floor with my bloomer-covered ass. I find myself again looking at how the course of the game has been changed forever, which is how I felt every time I got a new party level and found that the battle system was upgraded with some new quirk or other, that totally made things fresh and clean again. It's quite nice to find a game that I've spent so many damn hours on continue to surprise me, even if part of that surprise is discovering the inner depths of anger as I shout obscenities at the TV screen.]

Anyway, basically I've spent another 10 hours or so on this game, after having completed it once, just to get to the first of the second round of achievements, which was worth 79 points. So that's cool, but brings the time vs points ratio to like...7.9 points an hour. Hard math that. I actually busted out a calculator. No, really. I feel I can admit this to you, friendly reader types.

Now, the next few achievements will be easier to get, as I near the end of the game. And one of them is worth a cool 321 points, which is hott as Paris says, but really, it's a bit sick. I've pretty much lost enjoyment in the game and am now playing solely to get the achievements and send the bitch back to Gamefly, never to grace my sexy black Xbox ever agains! My replay(s) of Mass Effect will be far, far more enjoyable, because at least in that game, there are no children at all (yes!) and the adults are, on the whole (Preparation H feels good...), pretty sexalicious. And there is interactive sodomy, as they say.

Irregardless, I feel myself coming close to the end of Eternal Sonata and already, my spirit feels lighter and free. I don't even know what I'm going to do with myself when I don't have a bunch of Japanese schoolchildren babbling at me about Piu Grave and Shade Cometu. I'll miss you kids!

Mass Effect, Part 1

Howdy partners,

I figured I would just keep a lil' diary to bring everyone up to speed on my progress through Mass Effect and the elaborate universe within.

Just a few short days ago, I surpassed where I had been previously in the game--just about to finish up the Citadel section. This was good, as I had seen this first bit played as both a Paragon (goody-two-shoes) and Renegade (giant evil ho), so I wanted to see what happened next. New space dramz!

And boy, oh boy, did I get space dramz! After basically re-creating the woman I had made on Brennon's Xbox (only hotter, and with red lipstick...and evil), I toyed with the idea of pursuing hottie Kaidan, but then decided that obvs lesbian sex would be superior, especially if that Fox newscast was right and I could decide exactly what each person did to the other! Hot sexy minigame! So I nipped Kaidan in the bud and told him to keep his personal feelings to his damn self cause I was having NONE OF IT! None, you hear me? And since my character is a full biotic and Liara (the lesbian alien wench!) is a full biotic, I decided I needed some combat strength to fight the hordes of aliens and eeeevil machines I was sure to face on my galactic travels. Thus, I brought along a little woman named Ashley.

Ashley was totally miscast in the voice acting. She should have been voiced by Wanda Sykes. And I'll tell you why, reader-folk. Because Ashley has a (totally incredible) habit of proclaiming, "Daaaamn!" just the way Wanda Sykes does. It's amazing. Plz go buy this game right now if you don't own it, so that you too can be amused by shouting, "Daaaamn! Commanda' Shepahd! That alien's face is whack!" And in most instances, it's true. That alien's face probably is pretty darn whack. Also, Ashley is a total butch and loves to chime in while my evil ho is talking by pointing her gun at people and saying, "You want a bullet through the head? Back down!" You tell 'em, Soulja Boy Wanda!

In other Mass Effect news, my lesbian relationship with Liara is progressing nicely. I'm afraid to snub her by being my typical evil self, so I play it totally nice only with her, and then on the side, manipulate people into killing one another. It's actually quite fun when you get the hang of it, though I had reservations at first, cause my ho is REALLY mean. She constantly tells people to shut the hell up and give her money and has (once or twice) brutally murdered someone who dared oppose her.

Liara though, is a lovely woman who stands really close to me and says how much it means to her that I saved her sorry ass on that crumbling ruin. Plz. When does mama get some lovin'?

I'm almost done with my second main mission since leaving the Citadel and you know what that means! Well, maybe you don't. But it means that I get to have another conversation to bring me one step closer to finding the lesbian within, and that's never a bad thing. I want my character to be able to appreciate the wonders of the female anatomy, not run screaming from it.

Achievements so far: 75 pts. Pretty pathetic, to be sure, but it's a start. I haven't yet gotten to Two Worlds, which will no doubt be a frolic in the land of suck, but I'm seasoned at that game now. With luck, someone has found new ways to cheat and make it easier to get the achievements. I don't relish the idea of playing through it for another go, because the first go...pretty bad. Maybe they patched it and fixed the bugginess. Who knows!?

Stay tuned for part two, in which I save some more stupid aliens, kill some more stupid machines and come closer to unraveling a mystery that will change the course of the game...forever!

Mass Effect Retardation - UPDATE!

Hello, reader, and welcome to my corner of the intarwebs. As you may have noted yesterday, I got a little heated in my discussion of Fox News' treatment of the video game, Mass Effect. Seeing as I discovered the story via several gaming industry blogs, I was hardly the only one to flip out over the unfair treatment the game received on Fox. But today, I come bearing happy news. Not only has the gaming community pulled a stupendous prank on the Amazon page for Cooper Lawrence's new book, The Cult of Perfection, but EA (the company that owns Bioware) released a statement urging Fox to clean up its story and directly refutes the lies that were claimed about Mass Effect.

First, the prank. Seeing as Lawrence spent the Fox segment basically spouting total shit about a game she admitted to never having played, gamers have flooded the Amazon reviews section for her books with one-star reviews in which the comments are typically along the lines of, "There's full on sex that is inappropriate for the children this book targets. I've never read it, but I feel secure in making judgments about it." There have been over 500 of these reviews in the last few days. Now, obviously, there's a level of immaturity in doing something like this, but at the same time, it's nice to see some action taken against someone so dangerous to open discussion. Like I said yesterday, I'm happy to watch a group of people with valid, researched opinions on something, but if these negative reviews mean than 100 less people will pick up her crap and think it's valid, then I'm a happy camper.

Secondly, EA released a great statement in which they attack Fox News' assertion that the game has "full digital nudity" (which it doesn't), interactive sex (which it doesn't) and that it is marketed to kids (which it isn't). Even though it's a video game distributor that is doing the defending, it's always nice to see someone with visibility take a stand to defend the integrity of gaming. The guy from EA pointed out that the side-boob and profile shots of the 'sex' scene are no more risque than you see on primetime television, and certainly less than seen in Fox shows like The O.C. and Family Guy, which is a very good point. Also, he points out that the ratings system on video games is more effective than say, the ratings system on TVs. This is also a great point, seeing as network TV is free to watch for anyone with a television. A game like Mass Effect is hardly available to the vast majority of Americans, seeing as there are only around 17.7 million Xbox 360s sold worldwide as of a few weeks ago.

And that, as they say, is that (for now) on Mass Effect. I will be sure to update all of you on my final feelings about the game once I get an HDTV and an Xbox and can finally play through the whole thing. Until then, I'll have to find something else to write about on here.

Mass Effect Retardation

As usual, my punniness amuses me. Yesterday, I ran across this article in my daily web-browsings, and it (as most articles about video games in the mainstream news tend to) got my panties in a twist. Of course, it's probably too kind to call Fox "News," but they do have a lot of viewers who love to get spood-fed this crap about video games and it pisses me off.

Now, I haven't had the opportunity yet to play through the entirety of Mass Effect yet, though back in November I probably clocked a good 5-10 hours on it. I mean, first of all, this whole "sex scene" that has all these conservatives so flustered is tamer than 90% of PG-13 sex scenes I've ever seen. It features, as the video game guy in this feature says, "the side of an alien boob." It is hardly smut, and on the whole, looks to me to be done in the same cinematic style that the rest of the game is shot in. In short, if this scares them so much, no freaking wonder GTA makes them shit themselves.

But the thing that drives me the craziest is how everyone who offers an opinion on video games that is not actually IN the industry, has absolutely no clue what they are talking about. I'm totally fine with people feeling that a game with alien side-boob is not for them. It's not for everyone. But for God's sake, don't pretend like you know anything about the context of that scene when you're saying things like, "in some parts of this, you’ll see full digital nudity. Imagine! And the ability for the players to engage in graphic sex and the person who’s playing the game gets to decide exactly what’s going to happen between the two people, if you know what I mean…"

STFU, news lady from Fox. I've watched this scene, seeing as it's blasted all over the YouTubes. There is no image of alien or human vajayjay. There are no dangly bits. That alone makes it not "full digital nudity." Secondly, I (and a lot of other people) would no doubt love to see the game where you decide "exactly what's going to happen," because in that case, we'd be living in a world where pigs fly. And I'd like to see that game not get an Adults Only rating. The fact is, that Mass Effect, even from the first chapter that I have played through features so damn much talking, that I've never seen a talkier game. You have to plan out in advance how to even GET to this sex scene, and frankly, I doubt if even the horniest gamers out there are so desperate to see about 10 seconds of fake side-boob that they have to play through 30+ hours of talky-as-hell video game just to see it. I mean, in an age where porn is available for free whenever you want it on the interwebs, that's laughable. This is not a hundred years ago when petticoats got men aroused. It takes more than side-boob.

As an aside, when I was playing this game, I once went about 2-3 hours where I did not fight a single thing. Brennon, at the time, remarked that the game looked horrendously boring because all I was doing was reading shit. I mean, I can't even count the number of times I've read asinine stuff like "gamers don't read" or "gamers just like to shoot things." I think a game with a complex story and an AI capable of modeling a realistic relationship is--and I know this sounds crazy!--probably better for a person to experience than say...a marathon of Dancing with the Stars.

I also hate how all these people keep acting as though this game is designed to be in the hands of like, 12-year old children. It's rated M for a reason. Even this panel on Fox just sits there and says how it makes the job of parents harder to have to watch what their kids are doing. I mean, fracking imagine that. Actually taking a role in your child's development and helping to guide what they can and cannot play. One woman says that if an adult male has this game, his child will play it when he's not home. Well, either lock it up (gee, that was easy) or use the parental controls that are ON THE XBOX360. Freaking educate yourself and you won't have to worry about 11 year old Johnny somehow figuring out how to seduce a woman and sit through 30 hours of game with the possibility of not pissing her off so that she won't have sex with his character.

People's laziness just never ceases to astound me. Parents seem to think that before this age of technology, parenting was some sort of simple cakewalk where they were all perfect little angels.

And I know that Fox is of course going to blow this all out of proportion, but the fact is, stories about Mass Effect have been popping up all over the internet. This is bothersome to me, because as a gamer, these negative stereotypes are utterly ridiculous. The majority of gamers are not, in fact, 12-15. I mean, I will never understand why people insist on thinking that people who play videogames are inherently anti-social. It is no more anti-social than sitting around watching TV, movies, playing solitaire, reading.. All of these are activities typically done alone, or at the very least, don't promote conversation. So why is it that playing games, which is more interactive than any of these things, is seen as the root of all evil. I'm so tired of being seen as just another member of a group supposedly made up of pubescent boys and obese 30 year olds who live with their mothers and never see the light of day. And the fact is, that the media's portrayal of the gaming community in that way simply reinforces the stereotype for a bajillion other people--ones who actually KNOW people who play video games--who buy right into it.

In the end, I just wish people might for once a) look into what they offer an opinion on and b) realize that the gaming community is just that, a community, and not a collection of ultraviolent, emotionally-stunted "losers."

And frack you, Fox.

Return to Oz

Ah, my blog. Well, it's certainly been a while. I've been meaning to start writing in this again since I failed miserably at NaNoWriMo. This is now year 4 or so that I have failed, but I still don't want to give up. I mean I was REALLY close this time. There were extenuating circumstances...and those circumstances were not FFXII. My intention is to start writing more often, both in this blog about whatever comes to mind and in a more creative setting, to help myself write faster and thus be marginally more efficient during November. Of course, if I'm still in this job, which I intend to be, November will be a horrible month again...but life will always get in the way if I let it, so I won't. Bitch.

So, update on my life. Obviously, due to my extenuating circumstances, I am single once more. This is me waving my white flag and giving up for a while. I really want 2008 to be the year of me. I want to get re-acquainted with what I like about myself and whatever it is that other people like about me. Sometimes, it's difficult to see the good in myself. It's far easier to slip into a self-fulfilling prophecy about my being boring, but I know I used to think I was a fun, interesting guy. Sometime back in college probably, but I know I felt that way once. It would be a nice change to get back to feeling like that.

Hmm, what else... Been getting into watching politics even more than I used to, so yay for that. I <3 Hillary.

On an unrelated note, while it is obviously sad that Heath Ledger died, let's try to remember that celebrities are no more valuable human beings than anyone else who dies every day. Let this spur people to vote to get us out of Iraq or something.

Also, go see Persepolis, cause it's amazing. Um, pretty much out of stuff to say right now, but lovely to be back and I'll be sure to post something soon about Mass Effect or something. Digital orgy. Plz.