Walk The Dead

So I took a break from Diablo 3 and Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (the two games that I've been consistently playing as of late) to finally sit down and play Telltale's The Walking Dead. A friend let me borrow his copy of all five episodes on disc for the Xbox. I played the first episode from beginning to end when I should've been watching the newest episode of The Walking Dead on AMC.

The game has received pretty positive reviews, and after playing the first episode, I understand why. But I still didn't really like the first episode of this game series. The story-telling was good, but I didn't like that it relied on "celebrities" from the comic. When I ended up on Hershel's farm in the very beginning, I was confused. It didn't look anything like it did in the comics or on the TV show. As soon as I realized where I was, I wanted to leave and meet new characters in this world.

Luckily, my wish was granted with Kenny and his family. I have a clear allegiance to Kenny and keeping that allegiance will guide most of my decisions throughout the game. I'm going to skip around here, to keep from spoiling the game.

Once I was inside the pharmacy, my problems with the game reared their ugly heads. I was charged with breaking into the pharmacy to get pills for heart-attack Dad and that became my ultimate goal. Frustration set in as the keys were nowhere to be found in the office. What I did find was a family picture of Lee with his parents and brother. He immediately ripped himself out of the photo and stashed it in the edge-of-the-screen inventory. For me, that was a very meaningful moment in how I understood Lee's story.

It was a weird thing to do, rip oneself out of a family photo but still keep the family photo. I was perplexed, in awe, and hooked. I left the office and the little girl's radio went off with Glenn, who went to fetch gasoline, calling for help. I brought the gun-girl with me to save Glenn and we saved his Korean ass. Upon returning with my axe, I tried to chop my way into the pharmacy and Lee, in so many words, basically said, "No dip-shit, you need the key."

So I was back where I left off and I talked to everyone again. Last being Doug, the guy guarding the door to the outside. And that's when I noticed the trapped zombie. The action button instructed me to show Doug my family photo, which convinced him that the trapped zombie had the pharmacy key. What just happened? Then it clicked: I had done things out of order. When I first talked to door-guard Doug, I was to see the trapped zombie (which I didn't) and try to convince Doug that the zombie worked at the pharmacy. He would have said something like, no it's too risky, I need proof. Then I would have gone back to the pharmacy office, picked up the photo, ripped myself out to hide my identity, and then showed the photo to Doug.

The moment I had with Lee, removing himself from the family photo, was ripped away. I had done things out of order. And from that moment on, I was pissed. So pissed, that I let Doug die in one of my decision button-time events.

As a general rule, I hate button-time events. They suck. I hated them in Resident Evil 4, especially after that knife fight, and I've hated them ever since.

The Walking Dead can basically be construed as an awesome story with a long string of button-time events. Awesome story-telling = good. Long string of button-time events = bad.

The episode ended with heart-attack Dad telling me to stay away from his daughter. My only thoughts were: I must have missed something because I think you're an asshole and I think your daughter is a bitch. As soon as I get the chance to let either or both of you die, I will do just that.

In some ways, I guess the first episode of The Walking Dead game succeeded because I am invested in these characters, whether its helping keep them safe, or having a hand in their gruesome deaths, I am invested.

As the episode ended, I was satisfied to see Glenn off in his pizza-delivery car. Get outta here kid; get yourself to the Georgia big time and be awesome (yeah, I like Glenn).

Colonial Marines: It's An Aliens Thing

To my surprise, Amazon delivered my copy of the Aliens: Colonial Marines on Saturday. Only four days behind the February 12th release. The collector's edition looked good. Damn good. The game? Well, that's another story.

After playing the game for just one hour, I had seen and killed more xenomorphs than were featured in the entire Aliens movie. That's a lot of dead aliens in just one hour. Too many, in my opinion. Then I had to start killing Weyland-Yutani goons and that just pissed me off. I really don't like the FPS that features completely incompetent human enemies and allies. To just shine the spotlight on my first two computer-controlled squad members: Shaquille O'Neal and Bella were idiotic, invincible, and made of ammunition. At first I thought it was funny to watch them shoot the walls and boxes that enemy soldiers were using as cover. It was hilarious, and then it just became sad. They were just tracking enemies and firing blindly (and they hardly ever killed anything).

I just want to put Shaq and Bella in an empty hallway with two enemy goons, weld the doors shut at both ends of the hallway, and watch all four of them pretend to be stormtroopers. Again, at first it would be hilarious, and then it would be embarrassing. But the really sad part would unfold when I dropped two aliens in the hallway from ceiling vents. Deadly xenomorphs my ass. There were points when Shaq, Bella, and I were waiting behind a closed door listening to the mad-scientist mercenaries fighting with the aliens. And I was thinking: alright, we'll just let them duke it out and we'll clean up whatever's left. That's a terrible strategy because apparently computer-controlled mercenaries and computer-controlled aliens just play patty-cake with claws and bullets.

Just kill them all yourself. It's the only way to be sure.

A couple things did impress me. I was worried when I used all of my pulse rifle's secondary fire grenades. A sliver of survival-horror right there. I did find Hudson's chestbuster-ruined body and his special pulse rifle; however, the legendary weapon did not make my character scream obscenities whenever he fired at aliens (I was mildly disappointed).

The best part was being chased by a larger alien (one that I believe birthed from Hudson) that the Internet is calling the Raven. Maybe there's a connection between the loud-mouthed bird from Edgar Allen Poe's famous poem and Hudson being the voice of ominous despair. I like it, let’s go with that.

Hudson's raven xenomorph chased me into my absolute favorite part of the game: the sewers aka home of the boiler aliens. The sewer was creepy by itself; to add to the tension, I was completely unarmed. Up to my knees in sewage, I found myself surrounded by alien carcasses. The character calls them husks; but they reminded me of the white, dying E.T. White and crusty as a sign of decay works. It was unnerving to see the first supposedly-dead alien body get up and walk around. Over the radio, Shaq tells me their "vision is based on movement" and that I have to stand still for them to leave me alone. Thanks Alan Grant, I haven't heard that one before.

Further through the level, I had to activate little machines that the boilers would sprint to and immediately explode all over. I was kinda disappointed by the whole kamikaze act. The boiler creepiness dropped severely after I realized they were so easy to trick.

I haven't gotten much further in the game; that's about three hours of gameplay (and I'm going slow).

My last little bone to pick: alien acid blood doesn't work at all like it should. I thought, as soon as I encountered my first alien, that I should keep the critters at a distance and avoid the bodies at all costs. Now, obviously, the game can't render every single dead alien melting through the floor where they die. But the wrong way to go is to give me a melee attack that stuns the alien so I can blow them apart while they stand there surprised, shocked, or frustrated from getting bonked on the head.

At least have the alien body do damage to the player who walks right over it. I don't want to see a space marine tea-bagging a dead xenomorph body in multiplayer. That's just wrong.

It's melt-your-dick-off wrong.

Cartridges: Our Link to the Past

While currently trying to ignore whatever pops up about Aliens: Colonial Marines, I need something to write about. Luckily, something interesting happened this week that hasn't happened for a long time: a friend and I swapped game cartridges.

Yeah, like totally old-school. I brought my copy of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for the the GBA to the office and he brought his copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the GBA (the one with the Four Swords multiplayer thing). We traded, identified save files that we didn't want overwritten, and agreed to return them as soon as we had finished. School yard ethics dictate that I name my save file PENIS or something, but still, how long has it been that you and a friend exchanged games? And cartridge games at that?

This single act has made me look over my collection of emulators and roms and think: "Wow. This is the future."

I remember when that cartridge was a key, unlocking a little portable world. I used to guard them with my life, especially if it was a borrowed cartridge, because that meant it was a game that my parents didn't want me to play. I had Tetris and a chess game for the Game Boy (not high on the school yard trade list), so I relied on the good graces of my elementary classmates to take one of my crappy games hostage so I could play their infinitely better TMNT or Mario game.

Now, these games are just zip files on my hard drive. Games that I would have begged to borrow are purely dismissal. I'm having fun playing A Link to the Past on my GameCube GBA player, but I've had that rom on my computer for years, and I've never touched it.

I guess that's the magic of cartridges and nostalgia. Back then, the first thing I did when I borrowed a game was pop it into the old Game Boy and give it a spin.

Blogging: How To Proceed

There's plenty of new shit to do now that 2013 is here and kicking. The first on my list is evaluating Google and its blogger service. I'm going to do some experiments here and the first has to do with images.

It seems that the images in each of my posts are actually getting hits and not the post itself. For a while, I was perfectly fine with this: the images get uploaded to a Picasa web folder and linked in the blog. This maintains the image name and that's what gets the hit in Google's image search. Crazy pictures seem like a cool way to attract readers to my blog.

But.

I don't think anything is actually getting read. So I'm uploading images to my imgur (account, gallery, thing) and linking to them in each blog post. This way, the images themselves will not pull hits to the blog; the images will pull hits to imgur. This will show if I'm getting hits based only on the post content and keywords or labels.

The Google AdSense service has denied my request for an account twice now. A sneaking suspicion tells me that I did something wrong when I tried to create my account. It's Google numbers all over again. Another likely explanation is that most of the images that I've used (up to this point) have been blatant copy-right violations. I own very few of the images found in my blog.

My crazy chronicle seems like the perfect spot to place some gaming-related ads. Maybe I'm just wrong about that.

October, November, and December of 2012 and January of 2013 have all drawn over 150 hits per month. By Internet standards, that's not that good. But by my standards, it'll do just fine. I'm curious to see how the hits dip.

Xeno-swag: Anticipating Aliens

Certain franchises just stick with me. Perhaps the one that I chatter on about the most is Resident Evil. The RE universe has stuck with me because it used to frighten me; the games don't do that anymore, but I still play. Before Resident Evil came along, Aliens satisfied that fun and frightful itch. Yes, I was way too young to be watching rated-R movies, but I did anyway. And man, I loved the Alien franchise back then.

Actually, I still love the Alien universe. Whether it's Ridley Scott's Alien or Joss Whedon's Alien: Resurrection (he wrote the screenplay) or the retarded little brothers Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, I have thoroughly enjoyed all the films. I can't say that I've spent too much time with the games: I completely missed out on the early Nintendo and Sega cartridge games and the AVP PC games were quick romps (if that) because I wasn't interested in their stories.

February marks the return to the Alien universe with Aliens: Colonial Marines, a first-person-shooter and spiritual sequel to James Cameron's Aliens; it's the one of the few video games without all the muddled predator pollution. I am one to ignore the FPS genre, but I will make an exception for Aliens: Colonial Marines because I really want to know what happened after the terraforming reactor and colony on LV-426 were supposedly destroyed.

Picking between the Xbox and the PS3 will be a tough choice, but the pre-order deals look pretty amazing. I'm a total sucker for gamer swag (especially games/franchises that I love) and ACM has a $99.99 treasure trove. The Aliens: Colonial Marines Collector's Edition comes with a statue of a power-loader fending off an alien. Patches and in-game items and characters, including Sgt. Apone and Pvt. Hudson. Man, I hope that includes their voices.

After hunting around online, I had to go with Amazon's pre-order because both Best Buy and Gamestop's pre-order allocations were all used up. Dry. This might be the hardest collector's edition to get your hands on right now. Here's to hoping that the aliens thrill and terrify just as they did when I first saw Alien.

For once, I am looking forward to February.

Enough of This Craziness

Last year's new year post went up on the fifth of January. The fifth. Can you believe that? That's crazy. Well, I'm here to tell you that craziness like that will not be tolerated on the DoNothingMan's blog.

There were 41 posts in the year 2012; that's almost three-and-a-half posts per month. Also a little bit on the crazy side. Let's pull those reins back just a tad and not get ahead of ourselves. On the bright side, I haven't changed my NASA wall calendar. It's still open to December 2012 with a picture from the Hubble telescope and a blurb about dark matter.

So what is on the horizon for the year 2013, the luckiest year of them all? I don't know. Grand Theft Auto 5 is set to come out this spring. Aliens: Colonial Marines has me really excited, but I'll probably be disappointed. There's another Iron Man movie in the works. Three. I'm successfully hacking PSP handhelds now. Fried chicken beam attack.

Yep, this is going to be a good year.

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