Various Nerdy Rants

[sudsyrants]

In a Life Far, Far Away

The Chronicles of Jedi Academy: Part IV

It’s been what, ten months since I announced a written piece on Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy? What the fuck has been keeping me from writing? Well, nothing. I’m just terribly lazy. However, I’ve now mustered the energy to get rid of the calories needed for writing another article. I have to admit it’s one clusterfuck of a challenge to write about a game i’ve spent thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of hours on (I’m not good at math). Where do I begin? How do I treat the reader? Do I assume you’re into this game or do I assume you don’t even know the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars? Let’s not go so far though. I won’t spend space on any lore or anything that’d require you to know much more about Star Wars than laser swords and space helmets. So let’s get started with the first part of this… Trilogy? We’ll see.

I figure a good place to start would be the gameplay, so let’s go over the story first, and yeah, spoiler warning. You’re playing a dude called Jaden and you’re becoming a jedi or something and your master is Luke Skywalker or Kyle Katarn and there’s this annoying tard called Rosh Penin who is your best friend and you choose whether you wanna be a sith or jedi kinda like an RPG but then Tavion shows up and wants to kill jedi so you kill her, i guess. To be honest, I haven’t played the single player mode much but I guess that’s as good a summary as any. I don’t give a shit though, because the reason anyone would play this game is because of the Multiplayer.

When I teased about writing this shit, I mentioned the amazing saberplay and how it was crude. Let me clarify this: you’re pretty much in complete control of your swings. Wanna do a horizontal swing? Press left mouse button while pressing D or A. Wanna do a diagonal swing? Then there are 4 possible combinations, left/right uppercut using LMB+S+D/A, left/right down-swing using LMB+W+D/A, or just regular down-swing with LMB+W.  This differs from many other Star Wars games where you press a button to do a set combination, or swing in a set way. In Jedi Academy however, you can jump, crouch and move in any direction while swinging in pretty much any which way you can. You can delay hits, you can poke, wiggle (more on this later) and for those of you who enjoy set animations of swings you can do those too, but they suck.

You can choose between single saber, dual sabers and staff saber. While dual users and staffers are able to use speed and blockbreaking gay ass motherfucking glitches which makes the game unplayable for us real noble knights using single saber. Of course single saber users have some nasty tricks up their sleeves too: wiggle, or poke. While using red stance with single saber you can either wiggle the mouse slightly in and out of your foes hitbox to maximize the damage. Of course you can do this trick with staff, duals and with yellow and blue stance too, but that requires more precise epileptic movement. If you’re really cool, you can go melee. Just run into a ferocious free for all and just fucking wail on those bastards. You’ll die, but you’ll die in a blaze of humiliating glory.

The choice of nobles

And then there’s these people...

So, you’ve got sabers and melee, what else? Weapons and force powers. Most servers only permit sabeers and melee, but sometimes admins will grant you the boon of either force powers (empower/emp) or weapons (mercenary/merc) and all hell breaks loose. The chaos that ensues is unheard of in modern games with online capabilities I know of. Sure, GTA Online probably gets chaotic, but there are still rules, somewhat… In JKA, there are no rules. Just throw mines all over the fucking place and wait for people to walk into them and die like an unsuspecting kid walking into a field of death.

The typical death area in Jedi Academy

Rules though… I’ll end with this paragraph on, ugh… rules… So, while JKA has no official moderation or anything, there are rules which are enforced in various degrees on different servers. Of course you can’t harass people, except sometimes you can and sometimes the admins will join in the harassment. You can’t be a general asshole or a troll or spam the chat, unless you’re one of the alright troll spammers. The one rule that IS enforced, kinda, is the dreaded “no laming rule”. “What’s laming”, you ask. Laming is when you attack a player with their saber down and/or chat bubble up. Even though the most commonly played format is Free For All and the objective is to kill every single little piece of shit that comes across you; unarmed people are protected, despite the fact that they can pull their saber up and defend themselves like actual fucking human beings. Some retards will run away instead of retaliating and cry to the admins. Real men/women will take the challenge and valiantly fight you. The laming rule is what confuses many new players, and many new players quickly become the most vehement defenders of this bullshit rule. For some reason killing people in an online game is tantamount to actually beating them to death in real life. Seriously, grow some balls, clits or whatever ye got twixt yer legs.

Some people get creative with their names

And with this, I end this first segment of The Jedi Academy Chronicles. I figure you have some loose idea about what the game is about now and you’ll be ready for some more meaty material of what actually goes on in the game, and my life within it. Take it easy, shitkickers.

[sudsyrants]

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology

No continent is safe from the plague of remakes, remasters, reboots, reanimators and so on. With the coming of the Nintendo Switch this problem has made us all very well aware of some sort of hostility toward making new games, and instead remaking every fucking Wii U game except the ones that actually matters, like the two Zelda remasters. Yeah, you heard that, I want a remaster of a remaster. Atlus has followed suite, and Atlus has some good ol gems which often are forgotten by the tides of time, and this one coming from the oft forgotten lines of awesome RPGs on the Nintendo DS- to the 3DS! Enough poetry, let’s talk about this awesome little JRPG, since JRPGs seem to be a running thing around here.

You take control of Stocke, an SI operative (SI stands for Special Intelligence or something). Stocke has a canny fucking need for doing things right all the time, and when his allies die in battle he is saved by some child-like twins. This is because he was given the White Chronicle prior to going out on his mission. This book gives Stocke access to history, or rather shortcuts to important events in his recent life. This means he’s able to go back in time and save his comrades, and he does it over and over again. That’s pretty much the plot of the game. Of course there are cool things in the story, but I found myself just not giving a shit. Something cool is how you’re given options every now and then, and depending on your decision the world might end. Like how when you tell a scientist how to grow coconuts and it turns out his coconuts were used as a weapon by the Alistelian forces to pretty much eradicate the entire continent.

Underneath all this timetravel bullshit is a pretty straightforward JRPG. Battles are turnbased... With a twist! Because there’s always a fucking twist. You can see in what order actions will happen, but by switching the order of your actions you can string together some epic combos. There’s also the possibility to simply erase your enemies’ turns by using some sort of burst thing, which whenever filled up allows either a powerful attack, heal or simply erasing a turn. The game also uses grids in battle, so you can push enemies left, right, back and pull them toward you, allowing you to line them up with your combos or simply just bag em together and beat the shit out of all of them at the same time.

You also get to choose from different characters, most with their own unique abilities and styles. My favorite team consisted of Stocke (you have to use him) as a melee puncher, Raynie to dish out elemental damage with freaking brutal magic spells and Aht, some sort of satyr girl who can put out traps for the enemies to get pushed into for some massive damage and delightful poison effects. Even though the graphics look dated it works just fine. It does feel a bit awkward having voice actors for 2D sprites but who am I to judge, I eat my melon frozen.

Overall the gameplay is relatively fast paced with very few sections that actually bog the whole experience down. The story gets a bit too intense at times, with long fucking cutscenes with little substance. The timetravel thing can get confusing, since you’re playing through two timelines it can be a hassle keeping track of when certain plot points in timeline A makes you access a new plot in timeline B. That’s why we have online walkthroughs though, and I made the mistake of putting the game off for a month and coming back confused as fuck.

The game comes from Atlus, so of course it’s fucking quality. We’re talking about the people who’ve brought us Shin Megami Tensei, Persona and Etrian Odyssey, of course it’s aight! And as is expected with JRPGs, it even has some fanservice. Enjoy.

[sudsyrants]

Some games that deserves more praise and attention of 2017

So I know, it’s a bit late for a list of cool games from 2017, but here we fucking go.

1. Hollow Knight

What’s your shitty excuse not to play this game? You get to play as a heroic beetle, running around cutting other bugs in twain. You get to meet hot bug chicks, get denied and go loose upon the bug hive of Hallownest. Also, it’s fucking gorgeous. The story is told in the manner of a souls game, but with bugs! #bugsdoneright It’s got real charming characters, like the mighty knight Zote who talks a vig game, but if you follow his quest-line you’ll find out he’s some sort of Don Quixote type dude. He’s got a quest but he seems to forget the purpose of. It’s also got like 80 hours of play if you’re a completionist.

2. Sundered

Yeah, it’s another metroidvania, but it’s less souls-like. This is the kinda game that’ll fuck you til you’re forced to love it. You’ve got no choice. Enemies are everywhere and they’ll often gang up on you, go berserk and rip your anus apart. Despite causing PTSD, it’s real fucking enjoyable. You’ve got about 10-15 hours of gameplay in this Lovecraftian, dark ass world where occultism and science clashed.

3. Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Academy

Despite all the great games of 2017 (Breath of the wild, Persona 5 and shit), some games keep you playing for years, and JK3/JKA is one of them. This game had amazing saberplay and although it’s crude, it laid the foundation for something to never be developed into pure perfection.Instead ucasarts would fuck up, EA would fuck up, and Disney would ignore it. It sports one of the most... Interesting online communities: yes, it’s still played. If you’d spend 13 years in this game, you’d understand the levels of heroism and shit deeds done in that tiny, loyal little neck of the woods. In fact, I wrote this post and camouflaged it as a GOTY 2017. Yes, thats right my dear shit kickers, I’m going to research Jedi Academy and write a big ass fucking post about it and get you to join my crew of terrorists.

PS: Ever Oasis was really fucking cool too, even though it didn’t let me live out my dictatorial fantasies.

[sudsyrants]

Persona 5- or how I learned to love high school

Aight, I’m back buttfuckers, long time no see. 2017 has been one hell of a year for me gaming wise, and that’s one of the reasons I haven’t written shit in like six months. I bet my massive amount of readers have missed me, and the bots of Tumblr even more so. The reason I’m making a post after all this time is not only because I’m procrastrinating, but aso because I wanna highlight one of the many games I’ve had a fucking crush on this year, and that game is Persona 5.

Let’s start by ranting about how much high school sucks. You got so  little freedom, studying sucks ass, girls are ignoring you and your throbbing, rejected dick and don’t even get me started on parents, those bastards always making sure you’re alive, keeping you fed and putting up with a miserable piece of shit like yourself. On the surface that sounds like a recipe for middle age suicide, but deep within that shit lies the Metaverse: the world fo the collective subconsciousness. And it’s here where I’ll start talking about the game itself.

Persona 5 takes place on the streets of Tokyo, behind a school bench and in the collective subconsciousness Carl Jung rambled about. You take the role as a teenager on parole for a crime he didn’t commit. You live above a café. You’ve got a bed, some junk and a cellphone with a strange app on it, called the Metanav. Despite numerous attempts on deleting the malware, you give up and get to know another teen, join up with him, a talking cat and a hot fucking gal to make a P.E. teacher confess to his crimes. How though? Well, simple: You break into his mind palace and crush his spirit, or “take his heart”, as the game puts it. The taking of hearts is done through typical JRPG turn-based combat. Did I say typical? Fuck that! Check below to see the amazing fucking battle screen.

You see? Now compare that to a Final Fantasy game of your choice and try to tell me that FF is worth two shits, I dare you.

And the cascade of pure awesomeness doesn’t stop there! Because school is actually fun! You get to date girls, seduce them, show off your knowledge and try to get into the teachers’ panties. That’s what kept me going through this game. I wanted to score with the teacher, and when I “failed”... I realized that I fucking loved this game. The battles, the characters, the dialogue, the voice acting (even though I played through the second half of the game with japanese voices, the english voice acting is pure quality if you ask me)... The aesthetics of the game is like Quentin Tarantino went... I dont know, gothic? The cell in which you fuse personas (see next paragraph) is dark and brutal, and when you fuse personas you literally fucking execute them with a guillotine, chainsaws and electric chairs. And then you go back to the real world and visit a maid café to increase your charm and kindness (improving your social stats is a huge part of the game, and not just in order to get laid).

About the namesake: Personas are “demons” you can recruit throughout the game to aid you in battle. You equip different personas to use different elemental attacks, give you resistances and stuff. It’s a bit like Pokémon, if Pokémon had the ability to tell you to fuck off instead of just running away like a faggot. The personas are based on folklore, mythology and religion. You can equip everything from Satan, christian archangels, hindu deities, samurai to fucking Thor. When you’ve recruited different personas, you can fuse them and get a new, sometimes more powerful persona. This is one of the most addictive features of the game since the personas can inherit skills, resistances and what not you’ll be fusing the shit out of personas to create the ultimate motherfucker.

So, I’m aware this was a weirdy structured text... But fuck you. I love this game and the only thing that sucks about it is mementos and Yusuke. I’ll be posting more shit, hopefully posts with better structure than this one, about games I’ve fucking loved this year (like Sundered, Steamworld dig 2 etc.,) and games I’ve fucking hated (Bravely Default...). Meanwhile, glad to be back and all that. Sorry for the lack of structure and the long departure.

[sudsyrants]

Ever Oasis

Just when you thought that the 3DS was about to die a slow death, Grezzo comes out with this excellent piece of a time waster masquerading as a RPG. It’s more or less a cross between Animal Crossing, Kingdom Hearts and Zelda. It’s got management of your oasis, side-quests, dungeons, puzzles, party battles. There’s also some pseudo-FPS moments in there. What doesn’t this game have? Well, it doesn’t really have characters you give a shit about whether or not they die in a fire.

The basic gist of the game is this: The rest of the world looks like fucking Africa (the shitty parts) while you live in the Garden of Eden, keeping the evil forces of Chaos out of your oasis. You grow up in an oasis with your bro, but that doesn’t last too long and Chaos envelops his oasis and you get the fuck out of there. The water spirit Esna starts flirting you up to create another oasis, since you’re the child of some fucking tree. Once you’re done with that you start thinking “hey, should we like.... do something about Chaos?”, nobody seems to have thought of that for like... since ever. So you go out and gather residents you have to run errands for, despite the fact that you’re the chief of the tribe.

Let’s get this over with. The graphics are really great for the 3DS. Now that graphics are dealt with, let’s get down to the gameplay. It plays out as an action RPG, in the style of Kingdom Hearts. The battles are in real time, you can switch between party members and while you’d think there’d be some strategy required... Nah, it’s a button masher. But it’s a fun button masher. You get to do combos, cast spells (kinda) and there are a few different varieties of weapons to use. But it does lack depth, we can’t ignore that.

The Animal Crossing elements of the game are basically you being able to build Bloom Booths (market stalls) to sell different shit, including drugs. There’s this one sidequest you get where you’re supposed to find a mushroom which makes you laugh. Come on Nintendo, we all love shrooms but let’s not get 7-year olds into it. Let’s wait til they’re 9 at least. When you get farther into the game you get to send expeditions to gather materials for your booths, and you upgrade your garden to grow all kinds of grub. However, it gets a bit tedious after a while. You’re being forced by your citizens to go out and risk your life and find a fucking strawberry. I’m not kidding when I say that out of the 30 hours I spent with this game... 20 were probably spent just running around gathering materials. I had fun, but jesus christ, when you look back at it, it was a waste of time. I guess it’s the gaming equivalent of spending two years studying gender studies.

The above mentioned elements does take away a bit of the enjoyment from the puzzles and dungeons. I was surprised by the amount of explorable land in this game. It doesn’t rival Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption or whatever, but for a 3DS game there’s a lot of space to explore. The overworld does feel a bit empty at times, but once you descend into a black hole there’s a lot of shit to do. Even though the puzzles are of a hilarious simplicity at times, there are occassions where you have to stop and think about what to do. One sucky thing about this though is that every resident have skills, so for some puzzles you’ll have to teleport back to the oasis to switch out party members just because there’s a hole in the ground which requires a specific skill to go through. This happens A LOT, and it’s never made clear why the fuck I can’t be taught to turn myself into a ball, dig with a SHOVEL or hack stones with a pickaxe. It’s not fucking rocket science.

I’m getting all riled up here, but it is a great game, and probably one of the top 3 games I’ve played on the 3DS. It’s got something for most gamers, and if you’re not into the whole micromanagement thing, then you can probably just hack n slash your way through the game without caring much about those elements.

[sudsyrants]

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Okay, this is it. 100 hours later I finally did it. I beat the crap out of Ganon and saved the fucking day. I finished what might be the best Zelda I’ve played so far, and ironically the least Zelda Zelda. It’s not a perfect game though, and I’ll get into the nasty parts later on. But first, let’s praise this motherfucker, and expect a few hyperboles and superlatives! It’s gonna be a fat one, so strap your belts on.

This is a pretty ass fucking game. I’m gonna come right out and say that I’ve never had such a fucking delight just looking at stuff in a game as I’ve had in this game. Every area is filled with so much detail and I often found myself climbing to the top of mountain or a hill, pulling out my Switch, sorry... Sheikah Slate to spot a new location with an interesting look to it. The colors are vibrant and the grass... The fucking grass man, it swoops and sweeps in the wind and bends over like a person begging for a pecker in pooper when you walk over it. I bet if you could smoke it, you’d be high as a kite.

Which brings me to my next point of awesomeness: The paraglider. This fucking thing should be a new standard for open world games. You’ll have to do without it for the first tiny part of the game, with Old Man taunting you with it. The moment you see it, you think to yourself: “Man that’s a sweet ride, I could bang some prostitutes in that thing.” In fact, you’re given the dialogue option of “Hand it over!” when Old Man asks if you dig his ride. Of course we dig his ride. While beating the first four shrines is a blast and all, getting the paraglider... It’s the equivalent of finishing a delicious, juicy burger with an assload of cheese, bacon and other heart attack-inducing, cholesterol filled shit and having a nice dude coming up to you saying there’s another one of even better quality, and it’s yours. For free! Almost.

The moment you get the paraglider the game world is yours to fucking pillage. The game prompts you to go to Kakariko Village, Zelda staple. But fuck that, Impa can wait, because YOU have some unfinished business with every innocent critter in Hyrule. Squirrels, horses, deer, goats and bokoblins (while not entirely innocent, you don’t have to go all Lancelot on their asses). Everything will feel your wrath. Including grass. As mentioned above, the world is packed to the brim with details and stuff you can do. I spent the first 10-20 hours of the game just lollygagging around the countryside of Hyrule: From the jungles of Faron to the fields of Hyrule Field (duh), cutting down every inch until I finally encountered a Guardian and got raped.

This brings me to two points: The difficulty and the weapon durablitiy system. Now, I’ve heard people claim that Breath of the Wild is a difficult game. What the fuck is wrong with people? It’s not hard, it’s... fair. Have people even fucking played Zelda 2? Hell, even Ducktales: Remastered is harder (that too is a cool game). One thing that increases the difficulty slightly at times though, is the fact that weapons break. And it’s not like in other games with a durability system, like Dark Souls. In fact, let’s start off with the Dark Souls-comparisons here, because I’ll be delving further into this later on. Weapons can break in Dark Souls too, but it rarely happens between checkpoints (bonfires), and in the third installment weapons repair at bonfires. Some weapons break easier than others, and for those you have Repair Powder, which you use and BAM, repaired. Breath of the Wild has none of this. If a weapon breaks, it explodes like everything else in Zelda. You can’t get it back, and it happens FAST. For a few, large encounters I probably smacked my way through 4-5 weapons. While this does force the player to think in different ways, such as using the environment, it doesn’t work as smooth as the developers might have hoped. Often when I tried unorthodox ways of killing enemies I found myself swarmed and left with no other choice than to run like a pussy. There goes the hero of Hyrule, bravely fleeing. This depletes your stamina meter, and Link really needs to get his cardio going. Even I can sprint farther than that little runt.

The combat is reminiscent of Dark Souls in that you’ll often have to time attacks, dodges and parries (fucking parries man!). Depending on how precise your dodging is, time will slow down and allow you to slash away at the enemy. So does parrying, which is even harder to master. The combat is not as smooth as the one in Dark Souls though. While enemies in Dark Souls often react to the way you behave (well, sometimes), enemies in Breath of the Wild seem to follow random patterns (not randomized on the level of Orphan of Kos from Bloodborne though, jesus christ...). This would usually make it harder, but nah... For some reason most of the battles can be won through good ol’ hack n slash. There are a few enemies who has some quirks to them, like the stal-enemies, where you have to kill their heads after you’ve killed their bodies. Otherwise they’ll just reassemble themselves and try to kick your ass.

Another problematic part is how the story is handled. Once again, paralells can be drawn to the Soulsborne series in how minimalistic and... I dont know, meta it is. The story is rarely told in a straight-forward way, but rather the issue is talked around, and while this works great for Soulsborne, it’s not as thrilling in a Zelda game. I want the epic lore, I want someone telling me. I don’t want clues about what the fuck is going on, just tell me the problem and I’ll solve it. If evil ever shows its face in Hyrule, I will fuck it up, take it down, and wipe it out! While the objective is made clear from the start: Ganon is being a dick again and you have to stop him, I’m unclear about the actual evil going on. It feels a bit like the writers wanted to step away a bit from the clear contrasts of good and evil and just be like “hey, this guy’s an asshole, kick his butt”. And I can respect that, but man, this is Hyrule, give me a villain and not a dark purple-ish flying thingie.

I do like how they’ve thrown out a few Zelda conventions. The large temples are now replaced by: 4 Divine Beasts, which are kinda like the good ol’ temples, but they lack that distinct character most temples had. 120 shrines, which are basically just tiny temples which might take you 10 minutes to solve or it’s just a miniboss. There’s even a shrine on an island with the trial being pure survival: you’re stripped off all your gear and inventory and you’ll have to survive using the means the island provides. It’s a great way to make the player explore the possibilities of the game. And last, but not least: 900 Korok seeds! Yes, lift a rock and a small Korok might pop up and give you seed which you can use to expand your inventory. If something looks weird, there’s probably a Korok around. While I do miss the distinct temples, I feel that the replacement with smaller shrines and overall the world being packed with so many mysteries makes the world itself a bit of a huge temple without the cutoff. It’s a hit of fresh air for a series that has gone on for over 30 years.

Now, don’t be too discouraged. There are classic Zelda elements. There are puzzles and there are chests to open. There are rupees and there are bombs. Though, bombs might be the only classic utility item, if you don’t count Cryosis, which is like an ice rod. You’ve even got your classic races like Rito, Zoras, Gorons, Gerudo, Koroks and Hylians. The Master Sword, Hylian Shield and the good ol’ green tunic is available, but you’ll have to do your job to get them. No rolling though, and yeah, that pisses me off a bit. There are a few tunes which brings back some nostalgia. Like the Rito village tune being a chilled rendition of the Dragon’s Roost Island theme from Wind Waker.

Oh, before going on to the last paragraph, two more things! Rain is fucking bullshit. It makes climbing impossible, and it rains a lot. It pisses me off even more than the lack of rolling. Oh, and also: cooking is addictive as fuck. You gather a bunch of ingredients around the world, like bananas (which increase your attack power) and like... acorns and meat and shit. You throw it in a bubbling cauldron and BAM, you’ve got a meal. Unless you’re a fucking retard at cooking. Protip: Don’t mix bugs with meat and fruits and vegetables. Instead, mix them with moblin testicles and you’ve got a great elixir. Food and potions restores health, stamina, gives you boosts to attack, defense, stealth and what-not. It’s a great pass time.

That said, this game is awesome and I had a hard time to actually dig up the negative points, because the game is just... epic. Every inch you walk is a true adventure. I had that feeling from when I was a child and messing around in the garden. Every bush, tree, rock and patch of grass was five thousand times larger than it actually was. There were mountains to climb, monsters to kill (ants and isopods), mysteries to solve and a wilderness to tame. I don’t remember the last time a game made me feel this alive. While Skyrim was great and all, it was still, you know... It had a lot of dull parts. I’d rank Breath of the Wild as my favorite Zelda game, and probably one of my top 5 games I’ve ever played. I think the last time I felt like this, like I was exploring something new with endless possibilites was the time I bought Demon’s Souls and got ready for my ass to bedelivered a constant beating for years to come. You’d really be missing out if you never played Breath of the Wild. I don’t really wanna end this rant about this awesome game, but I’ll have to stop here.

I leave you with a picture of waifu Link.

[sudsyrants]

A Switch in action

It’s been two weeks of owning a Nintendo Switch: perhaps the most hyped console since the Dreamcast. I’m saying that because from my perspective, the hype has been fucking unreal. While the past iterations of Playstation and Xbox consoles have been hyped, they’ve still been pretty ordinary consoles. You put them by the TV, plug em in and off you go surfing for porn. Heck, even the PSP was decent for spanking your monkey in lack of a better browser. The Nintendo Switch is a bit different though, and it offers users the choice between playing on the TV or taking the little shit with you. Below are some random thoughts from a sleep deprived dude in his 20s. Above is my shit shrine to the Switch.

Here are some areas where Nintendo dun goof’d so far: No Virtual Console, no Youtube app, no exciting games except Breath of the Wild (which is fucking amazing by the way), nothing to do except playing Zelda, 1-2 Switch should’ve been a bundled game, the dock feels very Poundland-ish and some users have had their Switch screens scratched by it. Overall the launch era of the Switch has been rather disappointing. We haven’t seen much of what it’s capable of yet, and it’s a console that has a great potential to become so much more. Why isn’t Nintendo flexing this cool piece of tech? The E-shop is fucking garbage so far, with only a few mildly interesting titles like Blaster Master and Snipperclips.

That said, let’s go over to some cool points. The Joycons are pretty cool and despite my fat, fleshy hands, I think they are rather comfortable without using the Grip... Joygrip? I don’t know. The Joycons are real easy to slide on and off the screen, and it feels so fucking satisfying hearing that click. It feels like you’ve achieved something, even though you’re a year behind on rent. I haven’t slid on those side thingies yet though, and I don’t intend to because they appear shit and breaky. The Joycons being tiny, the Switch itself, and the dock is also tiny, even in comparison with the Gamecube.

In its portable mode, it’s comfortable to hold, even when lying in bed. Not even my PSP or 3DS can compete with that. The battery is low though, with Zelda maxing out at maybe 3 hours if you’re lucky. I can understand the battery being shit though, since the screen is amazing, in my opinion. I’ve heard people complaining about the screen resolution only being 720p, and maybe that’s shit, i don’t know. Keep in mind that this is coming from a guy who grew up with a NES and a Game Boy Color, so my standards aren’t exactly high.

I don’t even know what more to write about this console. While the console itself is impressive, smooth and comfy, it is plagued by a shitty launch with not much to do. Was Youtube on launch really too much to ask for? Considering my PS4 takes a minute from booting up to launching Youtube, I was hoping that I’d be relieved of this pain with the Switch, because that motherfucker is faster than a whale in japanese territory. All in all, I am more happy than sad about the Switch, and I have great faith of whats in store for it.

PS. I’m currently fleshing my way through Breath of the Wild. I’ll hopefully compose a long-ass text about it soon enough.

[ohlookalovelylobster]

Swim narwhals swim!

[sudsyrants]

Incest, Piety and Nailing kids shut inside a shed

The VVitch (2015)

Alright, I gotta come clean here: I don’t write about movies. I’m terrible at the terminology and I honestly don’t think my sort of quick rant style suits when I describe them. But Goddamn, this film is just too fuckin’ legit to skip.

So, it’s about this family who wanders off into the woods in New England during the colonial era. Due to the father being a heretic, the villagers hate his family’s arse. The family starts a new life in a shitty hut being passed as a house by 17th century standards. The infant of 5 siblings (back when you didn’t skip the condoms for increased pleasure) vanishes and the cracks in the family soon become apparent. Long story short: Pure fucking evil. I’m not gonna spoil it more than that.

Interesting shit about this movie is that it ain’t your typical horror movie with gore and stuff. The power of creep in this one lies within its symbolism. The family are strict pietists facing an entity drenched in sin, they are slowly driven into the deceptive embrace of Satan. They turn on one another gradually throughout the whole movie while thumping the Bible, constantly trying to make sense of their situation through the eyes of Christianity.

What makes this film more interesting is the claim that it’s based on historical accounts, folktales, diaries and journals from that era. The dialogue is amazing, it feels like you’re in that era with lines like: “Get away from her, Caleb! She will witch thee!” It’s an interesting piece about the conflict between devotion and the lust of man. Seriously, check it out.

[acosmicgiraffe]

Heights! chapter 2 is now finished and uploaded.

Direct link: acosmicgiraffe.com/heights/

[sudsyrants]

Fire Emblem Fates: How to leave a gamer with questions

Aight, I just finished this fucking game, and let me say: It rocks. Not as much as Awakening, but the core gameplay is still there. One of the improvements is how you have your own castle which you can defend from invaders and buy shit in, which in turn makes travelling unnecessary and thus is removed from the game.

However, let me get into the gritty parts. The story of this game is fucking bullshit. Let me go summarize is and get to the pissy part(s).

*ALL SPOILERS BELOW*

 You play as Corrin, a kid who is locked into a castle tower and apparently never questions why you, as the child of a royalty of the kingdom of Nohr (typical medieval european setting) must spend your life locked up. Your siblings and retarded typical butlers come to visit you and play around with you and everything’s happy and dandy. Suddenly your daddy, king Garon tells you to tell some defenseless captives from Hoshido (Japan-esque kingdom). Being a human rights advocate you tell him that’s bullshit and let them go, and Garon’s pissed off, gives you a mission to redeem yourself and you’re betrayed. Some Hoshidans find you and bring you back to Hoshido. Turns out the reason you’ve been living in a fucking tower is because you’re actually the daughter of the Hoshidan royal family. wow. They take you in and treat you with respect, the exception being this little pissant, Takumi.

Shit happens, betrayals happen, ninjas die and some blue bitch sings a song a bunch of times. As you fight for former siblings they all agree that “man Garon’s weird as fuck” which leaves you the mission of killing the old fart. Which you fucking do. BUT WHY?! The fucker turns into a bitchin’ dragon and you kill him in two nutpunches, and says something like “well, life sucks” and fades away (seriously). The team of Hoshidans give some brilliant insight into the matter: “maybe he always wanted to die, huh? Anyway, let’s drink sake and produce illegitimate heirs.” HOW IS THAT RESOLVING A FUCKING PLOT?! You’ll never know what the fucking old dude’s motives were! WHY did he turn into a dragon? WHY was he waging a war against kotakus?! They never answer this fundafuckingmental question. Keep in mind that I finished this game ten minutes ago, so my anger has not yet been appeased.

Now, let me try to create a fucking motive for Garon. Maybe it’s an attempt of the developers to simply not give the antagonist a clear motive? Maybe he’s simply pure evil, which means he doesn’t need a motive to kill innocent people, nor his children. Perhaps he’s the very example of evil we all actually doubt exist? Hitler had a motive, even fucking Ed Gein had a motive: He needed some new lampshades. Maybe Garon was trying to get back at the world for the death of his wife? Maybe his penis was diminishingly tiny? We will never know. “Maybe he always wanted to die, huh?” Maybe Nintendo explains this in one of the other Fates game, but I don’t care. I paid full price for it, I deserve a fucking explanation.

That said, fuck the story all the way up the prostate. The game is still good. It’s harder to grind, which does force you to make more tactical decisions. I thought they’d make up for this by making it more interesting to equip your character, but nah. Some character can only achieve A-rank in a weapon class, which leaves those S-weapons glaring at you in the inventory. Yeah, rant over. Seriously

[sudsyrants]

Brave Slaughter of a Deer

I bought Pillars of Eternity yesterday. And man is it awesome. It’s exactly like the RPGs I grew up with like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. Something I dig about the game is that it features sequences where the previous, calm melodic music will suddenly change into the batlle music:

It doesn’t matter what you’re fighting. No matter if you’re instigating a brawl with a helpless deer or defending yourself against 20 attacking, angry goblins, this will kick in. What makes it even better is that no matter your victim, the fighter will always grunt loudly in enthusiasm of getting to kill something. It’s a blast attacking aforementioned deer and hear the epic, critical music kick in while you’re hammering the poor deer. Here’s my party proudly reflecting on the epic struggle between good and neutral.

[sudsyrants]

Fire Emblem: Awakening

 Dating Simulator: The Tactics

For the last three weeks, I’ve been putting almost 100 hours into this game. A 3DS game, really? Yeah, really. Writing this made me realize how much I’ve fucking wasted my life these past few weeks, even though it’s been worth it. My schedule for the holidays have been pretty much this: Go to mandatory family event and look up cool shit on Fire Emblem while hanging out with family, get back home and pretend you’re engaging in X holiday when you’re really grinding the shit out of Fire Emblem. I could’ve gotten married, I could’ve become an alcoholic and I could’ve done something productive with actual results (ranting about it on Tumblr doesn’t count), instead I killed evil dastards and breeded ultimate children. So, let’s get started.

The story is as follows: Chrom, the god of Conan the Barbarian, finds the main character lying in a field with amnesia. Having no idea who this person is, Chrom puts Robin (which we will use as the main character’s name henceforth) in charge of all strategic decisions. Frederick, one of Chroms adoring fans, is skeptical, but Chrom says he should be less skeptical. Can’t wait for Chrom to get children and tell them to be less skeptical about strangers offering candy. It turns out the asshole Plegians are sending out ruffians to destabilize the Ylissean infrastructure and Ylisse beats their ass in response, but at the price of losing its leader. With asshole Plegians out of the way, the cocksucking Valmese decides to invade and Ylisse beats their ass by taking help from the asshole Plegians. Then some evil plot twists and shit happens and time travel. Because, you know... Gotta fill the plot not only with amnesiacs, but TIME TRAVEL too!

While the plot is your typical brainfart to fill up hours of fun, the gameplay is fucking amazing. It’s like any other tactical RPG; you order a dude to go to a square and kill another dude, repeat. However, you can pair up units thus adding a bit of strength to another unit. If you have an archer, you probably don’t want the guy roaming the streets by himself, but instead want him behind a fat knight who does the asskicking. The downside of this is that the main unit grabs that sweet XP while the assistant gets very little. You could just have them standing next to each other too, but that leaves a unit vulnerable. And enemies aren’t shy about raping your weakest unit.

I do feel that the game lacks depth at some points, especially when it comes to combat. I’ll do a brief comparison to another tactical RPG I wasted a whole semester on: Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together. In Ogre, you’d position your units favorably, such as on a hill or a rooftop, where they could easily shoot down an enemy but the enemy would have trouble getting up there. In Awakening, it’s all flat space. Now, there are places only flying units can go, such as the thin air (duh) and on mountains, but no place really offer any advantage as you have to be X spaces close to an enemy to initiate an attack. There’s also certain areas such as stairs and columns which will fortify and possibly heal a unit if you place it there, but I found these places rather insignificant as Awakening more or less encourages you to be the aggressor. There is some tactical depth when you consider what enemies to attack with what unit, like attacking an armored knight with a mage since magic negates the armor. There’s also the movement perspective, where you might use a unit to spearhead an assault, cutting through enemy lines That’s not saying the combat isn’t fun, because it is. You even get animated sequences, which you can thankfully turn off and just watch sprites bumping into each other.

The aspect of Awakening which really gets to me is the potential to grind the fuck out of it. Robin can reclass into almost anything (except gender specific classes), which has led me to have her acquire every possible over powered skill. Having a character being able to one-shot enemies, then taking another turn and one-shotting another dude is just amazing. The grinding aspect comes to a climax when you realize your characters can marry and have children! This dating simulator aspect of the game is the primary reason I’ve spent around 100 hours on it. You grind two characters to max stats, give them beneficial skills and their kid will inherit high stats and two skills of your choice. This has led me acquiring a ridiculously overpowered character who can take on an entire army by himself, literally.

The game has spotpass features which gives you access to potential party members, equipment and a delve into the past history of Fire Emblem. There’s also tons of DLC which are quite cheap, but that sum does add up when you consider how addictive the game is. The Future Past DLC is the most relevant story-wise, Lost Bloodlines 2 gives you access to the godly Dread Fighter class, EXPonential Growth and Golden Gaffe lets you grind for both XP and gold, so those last two are pretty useful. The option to engage in some battles from the past of Fire Emblem makes me quite sad that a lot of those games never were released in the west, because we westerners were looked upon as stoopid. Please Nintendo, release official translations and I’ll let you have my left testicle.

I also have to give credit to the animated CGI sequences. A friend and I were discussing how shitty the new Berserk anime looks, so I showed him the animated sequences in Awakening and he was awed by the impressive awesomeness that a little 3DS could pull off while the animators of Berserk just made pure shit. Just look at this laggy gif, for gods sake.

In conclusion, Fire Emblem Awakening is probably the best game I’ve played on the 3DS. What it lacks in tactical depth, it gives back in epicity (that’s now a a word) and pure grinding. I haven’t mentioned the music because it’s quite forgettable. The japanese voice acting is pretty fucking top notch, the combat is amazing and man, it’s just an awesome game. It’s a shame the older games weren’t translated officially, since Awakening does such a great job of luring a new audience with this release. Seriously, all the negatives I’ve pointed out in this review were things I really had to scratch out of my anus to feel even a little butthurt about.

I leave you with a photo of my waifu, Cynthia.

[sudsyrants]

The pen is mightier than the sword

But in Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, the pen kinda IS the sword! Tap shit and Link will make it die. Sadly this does not work in real life situations such as tapping calories, math problems or whatever the fuck you’ve got a problem with since it’s a video game you sad piece of horseshit.

With that aggression out of the way, let’s get started on Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS. Link and his fuck buddy Tetra are hanging out at seas when a ghost ship shows up. Tetra, being adventurous and lacking all sorts of common sense enters the ship, shit happens and Link gets washed up on an island, awoken by a fairy. Link realizes he and Tetra are pretty much the only midgets in the world, so he needs to go save her or lose his fuck buddy and teams up with the anatomically fucked up crack addict Linebeck (see the picture below to see what I mean), because he has a boat. And then they start sailing the four oceans.

Now, in any 2D/top down Zelda game you instinctively turn to the D-pad to move Link around. But no! You run around by putting the stylus on the touch screen on the DS; you attack by either tapping or making swiping motions (for a circular attack you just “draw” circles on the screen). When you’re first given these controls you probably hate them and start claiming muh d-pad, but it actually works really smooth in MOST situations. The badminton parts sucks, since it’s hard to time your swing on the ball of incinerating fire. You can roll by “making small circles on the edge of the screen”. In reality you don’t make small circles, you just rub the shit out of that touch screen and hope for the best.

Like Wind Waker, this game has sailing, and it’s kinda fun. You draw a path on the touch screen map and the ship goes that way. You tap enemies as they appear, or jump over obstacles. You can find treasure by lowering your crane into the ocean depths, you can fish and you can go in endless circles. For long travels it gets a bit dull, and since you control the camera by sliding the stylus across the touch screen, it can get rather complex at times. 

The graphics are also pretty fookin’ noice, especially when considering it’s a Nintendo DS gam, and Linebeck’s a pretty cool dude. And then there’s this bloke:

This guy fucking nailed it. Instead of participating in the endless hamster wheel that is society where your only value is the work force you present, he said “fuck it”, stayed home and ate cheese. Kudos man. Fuck this depressing farthole called society and enjoy your unemployment benefits.

For all it’s awesomeness this cute little game has some shitsides. Let’s start with the namesake, the phantom hourglass. What is it? It’s an hourglass that lets you spend a certain amount of time in a dungeon called the Temple of the Ocean King. You can fill it with more sand, of which some are given to you in the main quest and others can be found through the crane, if you’re lucky. Why would you increase the amount of time spent there, don’t you only go there once, like pretty much any other Zelda dungeon? Haha, no. You go there after pretty much every major dungeon, and guess what? It’s stealth based! If the time runs out, you die! And you don’t teleport to where you quit last time, you have to go through the whole thing each time! :D Well, in the middle section there’s a teleport, but if you used up 18 minutes getting there, you will teleport back there having spent 18 minutes. So if you have 20 minutes in your hourglass, you only have 2 minutes left before you die. Oh the joy.

There isn’t much of a sense of an antagonist either. Of course there’s the last boss, but that’s all you see of him. In Ocarina of Time you might be going “fuck Ganon, I’m gonna gut that turdburglar”, while in Phantom Hourglass you’ll go “who am I fighting again?”. There isn’t any sort of feeling of impending doom, you just coze around (to coze: having a cozy time).

The bossfights are cool. One is invisible, so the top screen is seen through the view of the boss while the lower screen is the normal top view, so you have to aim in the direction of the boss (duh) and on the top screen you can see Link aiming his bow right in your face fucker. It’s like watching a blonde little whimpy Eastwood with his .44 Magnum. But, the dungeons are not memorable. I cannot recall a single thing except for the buttpain of Temple of the Ocean King.

In conclusion, it’s a cozy game. Really fucking cozy. Imagine the feeling of snuggling down under some blankets or whatever, some chill ass music on and just close your eyes. That’s the game. Oh yeah, you shout at things too. And you get to build your boat, like Mulle Meck.

[sudsyrants]

Exiled in the town of King Charles

So baby, let’s get the boomstick loaded and doggies rollin’, cuz I’m back. Pretty much like Napoleon Bonaparte after his grand defeat(s), I have been living in exile: without access to internet. It sucks man. 

However, being away from the internet gave me an opportunity to play through some games I would never have thought of playing otherwise such as Shadow of the Colossus and finally completing the last stage of Limbo. Being BACK on the internet has given me the opportunity to rewatch all the porn I’ve missed and of course, write nonsense about video games. My first mission is to write a piece about this pretty fucking cool game called Phantom Hourglass. Enjoy it later.

[sudsyrants]

Divine intervention

Preacher is my favorite comic, and I know there are a lot of people who will agree with me. I’ve been looking forward to a TV adaptation ever since I read it, and it’s sad that there’s many who have tried, but they didn’t last and they died as they tried. Okay, they didn’t die, I just wanted to make a Judas Priest reference. They have failed though. Yesterday, the actual premiere for Seth Rogen (I can’t spell his name without feeling the need to puke) and Evan Goldbergs TV adaptation happened. It actually happened! But was it worth it? Let’s go over a few points I felt were worthy to discuss. Also, I wanna warn for spoilers, both for the comic and the TV series.

SPOILERS

It starts off with a cosmic view with planets and shit, until it’s suddenly broken off by a screaming ball whistling through the universe, crashing into an african priest. The priest survives and proclaims he’s the prophet, and then explodes. This is something I’d imagine happening in Preacher, since it’s random, bizarre and fills a lot of the gory elements. Someone who haven’t read the comics is obviously confused about the whole thing, but people like myself know what that ball is: Genesis, a divine entity created by an angel and a demon fucking their brains out.

We then turn to Texas and get to know Jesse Custer, the noble christian protagonist. He’s in the process of holding a sermon while children are playing on their iPads, adults making gestures about taking a smoke after the shitty sermon is over with. This scene is hilarious. Custer stumbles through the sermon, not actually knowing what he’s saying or what the message he wants to get across is. He’s broken off by sudden organs playing, either the lady playing the organ was too bored to listen to the sermon and figured it was about time to play the organs, or she thought it’d save Custer from further embarassment.

We then get to know Custers dark side when a kid asks the preacher to hurt his daddy. And this is where one of the bigger disappointments come: This scene is supposed to make us fear Custer, through dialogue and moody music. If you ask me, it fails. What he says is pretty much just blathering, like a failed improv. The music doesnt add anything really, it’s clichéd.

Thankfully, this scene is short and we get on over to introducing the next protagonist: Cassidy, an irish vampire. Rogen/Goldberg thankfully got their obsession with weed out of the way pretty fast by simply showing some people on a plane using a bong. We then get to one of the greatest fighting scenes I’ve seen in a long time. Cassidy fights off (read: slaughters in self defense) the vampire hunters by using a wide array of weapons: cutlasses, knives, a bong, an axe, a golf club, a spear and ends it off by throwing a broken wine bottle at one of them. He uses this broken wine bottle as a tap to pour himself some blood in his flask. I love fight scenes like this, I love seeing fighters using their surroundings to come out on top. Good job Rogen/Goldberg.

Tulip gets introduced in a more violent way. We turn to Kansas, focusing on a car driving down the highway. A passenger is shot and the driver, a woman, gets strangled by the passenger in the backseat. She drives into a corn field and beats the living shit out the attacker, ends up at a house with two kids greeting her, obviously admiring her from the start. She and the kids build a bazooka, she shoots down a helicopter and yeah, leaves them. We don’t know what’s going on here, and it’s never explained in the episode. Tulip is obviously a cool chick, but she’s also the biggest departure of the main cast from the original. Tulip in the comic book is never shown to possess such prowess, nor does she know how to build a bazooka from what I recall. She’s also blonde and white in the comics. It seems odd that, so far, the trio is pretty much what they were in the comics, with Tulip being the exception, and I’m not entirely sure why. Ruth Negga does a great job though, and she’s one of those actresses who has a unique look about her, instantly recognizable. How often do you hear about an irish-ethiopian actress anyway? Good job Negga.

Overall, Rogen/Goldberg surpassed my expectations. I was expecting a compromised shitfest with no thought behind anything, just Rogens stoned laugh for 40 minutes, and no connection to the comic beside the name. It’s actually a great show, but I fear it might be a bit much for someone who is not familiar with the comic. I’ll admit to being biased, but here are a few worries I have.

Will the show adhere to a politically correct agenda? This is my main worry. Preacher came out in the 90s and flailed its arms at everything and everyone, nothing was sacred. It was the very pinnacle of secularization and postmodernism, a work in which holy relics were smashed asunder, truths were twisted and most people were fucking assholes or just weird individuals. The first episode was centered in Texas, and thus, a lot of redneck jokes were made, which is natural and all. However, my fear is that the series won’t wreak havoc upon absolutely EVERYTHING. There’s a scene in the comic where Jesse is driving down the road with his radio on. There’s a conservative and a feminist debating. He steps out of his car, gets into a phone booth, calls the radio station and commands the debaters to tell people what they really want. Both the feminist and the conservative goes frantic about their need for cock. Will Rogen and Goldberg have the balls to do something like that?

I’m not very happy with the setting either. It’s set in modern day USA, and I feel like some of the feelings are lost. Arseface, a character whose face looks like an arse, was a grunge fan in the comic, and now he’s listening to hip hop, come on dude. Arseface could’ve been executed better too, it sounds like the actor is muffled by a towel instead of making an effort to actually sound like… Arseface. I think the show would’ve benefitted from actually setting it in the 90s, and using that period in a clever way to satirize the modern world. Also, the soundtrack is hardly impressing so far. And, I doubt Jesse will worship John Wayne in the series, since there have been zero indication towards it. It would be awesome to see Bruce Campbell do John Wayne though.

It’d be too much of an asshole move to judge the entire show from this one episode, but some things could’ve been executed better. If you’re not familiar with Preacher, do yourself a favor and read the comic, or follow the series. As stated above, it exceeded my expectations, but they were already pretty low. It’s a decent show so far, and I hope Rogen/Goldberg don’t fuck this up. Best wishes.

[sudsyrants]

A misty rant

Don’t ask me about the title, I just like the word “misty”.

Misty reminds me of Pokemon, the second gym leader and Ash’s fuckbuddy was Misty. I never liked her, maybe I’m sexist, I dont know.

Speaking of sexist, how about those new Ghostbusters trailers? The first trailer was pretty fucking horrible, while the second was... decent, more decent than the first one. They get so many things wrong though. I’ve never liked Melissa McCarthy.

Didn’t she do that ultra-shitty movie Tammy by the way? Jason Bateman in that film? I’ve been meaning to watch Arrested Development again. That show is fucking gold.