I got the inspiration for this article while playing Call of Duty: World at War earlier. This was on some multiplayer. I've always liked FPSes (contrary to my opinion that video games are too violent) and it's at least a fun way to overtake rivals and have a little fun. WARNING: This is a very long article. A lot of these stories were recounted from memory, but they are not embellished in any way. You just have to take my word for it.
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Well today, I'm playing CoD:WaW regular old Team Deathmatch and there's this group of five people who are apparently in the same party since they're always on the same team. One guy who sounds like a 300-lb redneck (well I am from the South) is talking trash. Okay fine, not like the first time I've heard this. But then he starts acting very unprofessional like "I nailed your mom," "you get it in the mouth every night," and "go jump off a bridge, Jeffrey Dahmer in the making," or some crap like that.
It's one thing to be cocky, but it's another to be a poor human being in general. I didn't have my mike on (even if I did have one, I wouldn't say anything, let them troll), but having a few noobs in the room add fuel to the fire doesn't help. If one's trying to gain the psychological edge by talking trash, then I guess that is "reasonable," but trust me. I wouldn't want to run my mouth and then proceed to lose horribly. Eating crow is about one of the worst things a human being can has to go through.
But it doesn't help that his team is playing good. Dogs up the ass cause you have these noobs who soft-serve the other team free killstreaks. It was the worst I've done in a long time with my .50 KDR. Before I realized that the Gewehr 43 ain't cutting it, so I bust out the FG42 (no I will not use the MP40, just don't really care). This is when things get better.
I hunt down this redneck guy and I swear, I'm doing everything I can to make this guy miserable. It seems when I'm not busy getting shot in the ass, if this guy pops up in front of me, he's going down. I have a few good games in terms of killing him (although my team lost every time) and then I bust out with this one game on Airfield and get a positive KDR by a large margin. Just a big STFU to him and he and his crew leaves. I mean, I don't claim to be "better," I just wanted to get a few potshots in, which I did.
Afterwards, I ended up getting thrown into this one game with five other people in a clan who were actually rather polite...see, it's nice to play with HAPPY people, isn't it?
This isn't the first time I had to deal with internet losers. If they're good, then justice is rarely served. It's like those baby turtles on the beach who are horribly maimed and killed by seagulls, crabs, and other evildoers before they reach the ocean. It's depressing to think about. Get off my games. Oh, and I hope that no one who plays Sega racers acts this way since hold ourselves to a HIGHER STANDARD.
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Of course, behavior doesn't change the fact that you have to go out and win. Yes, there's always that Sirlin site which I'm pretty sure competitive die-hards read like the Bible, but this is how I see it:
Ok, now that's "laughable" but do this. It doesn't matter if you're playing your best friends, some random 20-year-olds off the internet, a five-year-old down the street, or an MLG clan, you go out to win. Cause that's all you can do. And whether or the game is laggy, you're tired, you're upset, etc., you do what you can. And if you make mistakes, you better damn well learn from them and never make them again.
Of course, I wouldn't be playing games like Counter-Strike, Perfect Dark, or Call of Duty if it wasn't "fun." Sometimes I play to feel "good," but not to have "fun." It's really strange why people torture themselves like this. But yes, I do have fun playing these games, especially if you win since you put your "emotional chips" on the line and you get paid back in return.
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Anyway, let me talk about Counter-Strike 1.6. I don't give a damn if people say it's old or that no one plays it anymore. I love the game, although it's a very hard game to stomach. My "career" in CS didn't start out easy. It was back in the 9th-10th grade when I played some guys from school. Sadly, the other guys were Cal-M (which is like the top 1-2% of all CS players who play competitively) while I was just starting out. And it didn't help that we were on opposite teams.
I really didn't do good against these people at all and the pain was escalated even worse by the fact that when you die, you have to wait until the next round before you can try again. I did "stun" one of my friends since every time I ran into him, I dealt 90 damage to him while he did 100 (killing me) so at least I did something okay, but it's better to follow through. At least we were still good friends so no bad language was exchanged.
Later about two or three years ago, I would play with him in some cooperative scrimmages (5 vs 5) and I would do OK. He lost a bit of his luster from not playing so much so I guess we gained some mutual respect for each other. Plus I had fun so that's good!
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And then there's one more thing to talk about. And this is about pure Free-for-All Deathmatch. This is different from Counter-Strike. In CS, you spawn and the Terrorists have to plant and detonate the bomb; the CT's have to defuse it. It's more tactical in nature since if you die, you're out for the round. However, in FFA, you die, you respawn. Every time you kill someone, you get a point. Reach the point/time limit and achieve victory. Doesn't really get any more simpler than that
I used to play a Counter-Strike Deathmatch mod and you had at least six people running around a level, everyone blowing each other away. It was very frantic--just go for kills, hustle, use your instincts. Keep your back to the walls to prevent ambushes, always have cover, aim for the chest/head region. Practice, practice, practice.
And this is true and I swear, but when I play games like this, my mind would just phase out and I would go into "Matrix time." Like I would become a totally different person. I would stay fixated at that screen as stuff flies by me as I flick that damn cursor around and totally lose control of myself. At this point, I don't know if I was having fun or whatever, all I know was one thing--don't screw up and WIN THE GAME. I guess having the "out-of-body" experience meant that when the game was over and I returned to my normal self, I often exploded with emotions like a man free-falling into an ice-cold pool, only to become completely shocked with the result, whether good or bad.
I've had many close games where it was 50 kills to win and I won and someone else got 49. Like I would tell myself, "I've been in a situation like this before, I can stomach the pressure, I know I can do it." Barring anyone with supreme skills or a complete breakdown of emotions, I could at least do alright. Often, I question why I put myself through such emotions. I don't know, sometimes it just feels GOOD to win.
Another thing, I never once mentioned VIOLENCE in this whole article thus far...you see, I don't play game to spill the other guy's guts all over the floor. It's just a means to win, like getting the tennis ball past the guy or putting the basketball in the net.
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This article's so long I'm going to split it up. The next one deals with Perfect Dark for Xbox Live. Click here to read Part 2. You won't wanna miss it (assuming you've made it this far into the article).
Monday, November 8, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Funny Ass Kids On Xbox Live
I was playing some Nazi Zombies (on the PS3, sorry I lied), and I caught this kid singing. I don't know how funny it is, but yeah, sorry for the crappy video, but watch the entirety of it. EDIT: I think it's Justin Bieber - Baby. I didn't know at the time cause I don't listen to Justin Bieber, of course...
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Also, if anyone wants to play Call of Duty, we can use the [SEGA] clan tag. That would be boss, let me know if anyone is on-board with the idea. Otherwise, I'll stick with my old [DUDE] tag, lol.
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Also, if anyone wants to play Call of Duty, we can use the [SEGA] clan tag. That would be boss, let me know if anyone is on-board with the idea. Otherwise, I'll stick with my old [DUDE] tag, lol.
Furries Love Daytona USA 2 (Including Other Crazy Characters)
I had this in my back pocket for a while but I figure I might as well post it. I never expected this...
Doesn't really bother me, it's kind of cool. Actually, it looks like he's doing a good job. Oh, and let's not get into a furry rant--I mean, it's just a NORMAL FURSUITER playing an EXCELLENT GAME.
Ooh, look another picture, this one with Rush 2049, just to piss off the furry haters:
Link to the dude's account so it's not like I'm stealing anything
Speaking of which, I remember back at Chuck E. Cheese's a couple of years ago, I was playing San Francisco Rush and I was playing with this little black kid and we were making jokes and stuff. It was rather funny. Ok, what does that have to do with a fursuiter...well, crazy characters welcome, I guess (well as long as they're not murderers, rapists, and other contemptible fools who don't deserve the pleasure). Wouldn't it be bad to play Daytona USA with an old woman? That day reminded me of this:
I actually remember around 2003 I went to the arcade with my grandmother and she watched me beast it up on Daytona USA 2...she didn't play though. She did play Project Gotham Racing for the Xbox once though. She died two years later of cancer. Definitely a sad moment.
EDIT: Let's throw in some more fun pics, let's get 'em in here:
When it's time to party we will always party hard, party hard, party hard... (got pic from here)
BAHAHAHA, THIS IS GOLD. Businessman playing Fast and the Furious Bikes.Looking baffled with that blank stare, thinking "What the hell is this crap?" Now this is stranger than the furry pic IMO.(forgot where I found this pic) Now if you excuse me, I'm gonna go blow another $50 on Rock Band DLC. Oh darn, just realized I'm broke right now. HAHA
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Sonic "Low" Riders & Motion Controls
As you probably know, the Microsoft Kinect came out recently. And with that, the dashboard has changed. I don't know--the old one was starting to grow on me, but now, I just don't care anymore. Do whatever you want, Microsoft. It's your console, not mine.
And with the Kinect comes the new Sonic "Free" Riders game. Despite the fact that it's a "free" game, you still have to pay $50 for it on release. In theory, it is a "Sega racer," so we have to mention it. Well, to be quite honest, after looking at some preview videos a while back on Giant Bomb and whatnot, the game wasn't looking too good. And now that it's out, Kotaku just rips it.
Kotaku Sonic Free Riders Overview
And here's Jeff Gerstmann playing the game. You could see he was a bit narcissistic...come on, give it a break, it's a sad Sonic game. HERE WE GO! (Warning: Some Profanity):
The game itself doesn't look too bad graphically. As a matter of fact, the environments are damn nice. The gameplay, barring motion controls, is practically the same thing as in Sonic Riders 1 and 2. But the controls are so hard to calibrate they say, that they can't even get through the menu to play the game. Just great. Why is it that Sega had to use Sonic to test out the Kinect anyway? WHY SONIC??
I think this game will be compatible with the regular controller, but really, this game was BUILT around the premise of being a Kinect game. If it can't even get that part right, then that's one-half of the game in the toilet already. A waste of effort, perhaps? UPDATE: This game is not compatible with a standard controller so that sucks.
EDITEDITEDIT: Someone from Kotaku offers a counter-point to the previous review. The controls aren't so bad he says and he tells you something very important:
The tutorial never really spells out that you aren't supposed to crouch unless you're jumping or leaning forward to speed up, but once I figured that out, everything clicked. In the last race I played, I managed to execute a spin jump, dash, ring grab, and another jump before boosting over the finish line, all in rapid succession.
So that clears it up a little, but the game's still up in the air.
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I'm really not gonna lie here. Why is it that people are pushing motion controls past the Wii so hard these days? Look at the Sega CD. Ooh, you get to play the games on a CD. Well, it took the sacrificial lambs that were Sega CD, Phillips CD-i, Atari Jaguar and (to a certain extent) Sega Saturn until CD-based games came around in the form of the Sony Playstation. Like I mean, barring a few good Nintendo Wii titles, motion control is crap. It was crap back during the Power Glove, and only Nintendo has been able to save face in terms of this motion control travesty.
I'm gonna go ahead and say this. Making a game look better or use new technology is the last thing on my mind. I want DAMN GOOD GAMES first and foremost. Like people are more concerned with making their games look good than to make sure that they're actually, you know, FUN. Please, stop it, stop it, STTOOOPPPP IIITTTT!!!!!!!!!! Oh and before you say "Nintendo Wii," well their library's crap so don't bother.
EDITEDITEDIT: Oh yeah, and I was looking around on Giant Bomb some more and here's Jeff playing MotionSports, a horrendous abomination that further reinforces my belief that motion-control games suck.
WARNING: Even more profanity and and an obscene gesture. But it's hilarious, no doubt! "I want to marry this guy." "Rider, meet horse; horse, meet rider." "Smile for the camera! *weird face* "One of my favorite videos from these guys.
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Anyway, also worth mentioning is that Goldeneye Wii is finally out. It's a hit with reviewers, all in the 8.0+ range. Here's GameSpot's review. Anyway, I don't know what to say. These are the same reviewers that got thrills over Split/Second so who knows if the game's really worth it. At least it's something a little less mainstream for you people. I already talked a lot about this game already so it's not like I have anything new to say.
And with the Kinect comes the new Sonic "Free" Riders game. Despite the fact that it's a "free" game, you still have to pay $50 for it on release. In theory, it is a "Sega racer," so we have to mention it. Well, to be quite honest, after looking at some preview videos a while back on Giant Bomb and whatnot, the game wasn't looking too good. And now that it's out, Kotaku just rips it.
Kotaku Sonic Free Riders Overview
And here's Jeff Gerstmann playing the game. You could see he was a bit narcissistic...come on, give it a break, it's a sad Sonic game. HERE WE GO! (Warning: Some Profanity):
The game itself doesn't look too bad graphically. As a matter of fact, the environments are damn nice. The gameplay, barring motion controls, is practically the same thing as in Sonic Riders 1 and 2. But the controls are so hard to calibrate they say, that they can't even get through the menu to play the game. Just great. Why is it that Sega had to use Sonic to test out the Kinect anyway? WHY SONIC??
I think this game will be compatible with the regular controller, but really, this game was BUILT around the premise of being a Kinect game. If it can't even get that part right, then that's one-half of the game in the toilet already. A waste of effort, perhaps? UPDATE: This game is not compatible with a standard controller so that sucks.
EDITEDITEDIT: Someone from Kotaku offers a counter-point to the previous review. The controls aren't so bad he says and he tells you something very important:
The tutorial never really spells out that you aren't supposed to crouch unless you're jumping or leaning forward to speed up, but once I figured that out, everything clicked. In the last race I played, I managed to execute a spin jump, dash, ring grab, and another jump before boosting over the finish line, all in rapid succession.
So that clears it up a little, but the game's still up in the air.
------------
I'm really not gonna lie here. Why is it that people are pushing motion controls past the Wii so hard these days? Look at the Sega CD. Ooh, you get to play the games on a CD. Well, it took the sacrificial lambs that were Sega CD, Phillips CD-i, Atari Jaguar and (to a certain extent) Sega Saturn until CD-based games came around in the form of the Sony Playstation. Like I mean, barring a few good Nintendo Wii titles, motion control is crap. It was crap back during the Power Glove, and only Nintendo has been able to save face in terms of this motion control travesty.
I'm gonna go ahead and say this. Making a game look better or use new technology is the last thing on my mind. I want DAMN GOOD GAMES first and foremost. Like people are more concerned with making their games look good than to make sure that they're actually, you know, FUN. Please, stop it, stop it, STTOOOPPPP IIITTTT!!!!!!!!!! Oh and before you say "Nintendo Wii," well their library's crap so don't bother.
EDITEDITEDIT: Oh yeah, and I was looking around on Giant Bomb some more and here's Jeff playing MotionSports, a horrendous abomination that further reinforces my belief that motion-control games suck.
WARNING: Even more profanity and and an obscene gesture. But it's hilarious, no doubt! "I want to marry this guy." "Rider, meet horse; horse, meet rider." "Smile for the camera! *weird face* "One of my favorite videos from these guys.
------------
Anyway, also worth mentioning is that Goldeneye Wii is finally out. It's a hit with reviewers, all in the 8.0+ range. Here's GameSpot's review. Anyway, I don't know what to say. These are the same reviewers that got thrills over Split/Second so who knows if the game's really worth it. At least it's something a little less mainstream for you people. I already talked a lot about this game already so it's not like I have anything new to say.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Rock Band 3 Super Duper Exploit -- I'm The Magic Man But I Still Had To Work Hard
Note: Once again, I'm going to talk about Rock Band, so if you don't have any knowledge of it...well, I'm trying my best to explain here.
This happened all day yesterday (Sunday). Like I mentioned before in my preliminary RB3 analysis, some of the items you can give your characters are off-limits unless you complete these challenges, some requiring expensive peripherals like the keyboard or the pro guitar, some being EXTREMELY hard to get. So anyway, one thing that I wanted was the zebra mask. You may say, "Well, why do you want that?"--it's for some guy I'm trying to recreated from RB2. To get it, you have to get Double Awesome on all the vocal harmonies in the game.
Don't know what a harmony is? Basically, you have two or three mikes hooked up. You have to fill two or more bars in each phrase that has more than one vocal line to get the double harmony. Note that one mike/arrow can only pick up one line at a time so it takes everyone to work in unison. This basically requires more than one vocalist, something that I don't have. Look at this in RB: The Beatles (the word "Fab" replaces "Awesome"):
At first, my instinct was to give up, it can't be done even if I have the hardware to do it. I take my two RB2 mikes, hook them up, and start singing into them. This knocks out 8 of 64 songs and obviously, I have no shot if I keep doing this. I know that my family who has zero experience at RB wouldn't be able to help me even if they tried so I just about quit. My only other hope was that somehow Harmonix release a patch/DLC that unlocks all items, but I doubt that would happen.
Then I get the brilliant idea to use this software that I have called GoldWave to emit a sound into one of the mikes while I sing into the other. Goldwave is a damn fine program I might say--offers a comprehensive free trial, only costs $40, and I use it a heck of a lot. I create a smooth noise (censor bleep), put the microphone up to a headset hooked to the computer, then mess with the volume and pitch until the game picks up the mike. Obviously, I had to use headsets cause the noise would make me commit suicide. Okay, now we're rockin' and rollin'.
It's worth noting that vocals will jump octave so if I leave the mike in, say, the key of A, then it can play a high A, a low A, etc. If the pitch changes octave, then the arrow will automatically jump to that octave. Since this is on Easy difficulty, the game offers you much room for error when it comes to hitting the right pitch.
This lone, steady pitch can sweep up some of the notes, but it was then that I realized that you need to hit ALL of the harmonies in one run. I was under the impression before that you could hit some of the harmonies now and the rest later, but no, doesn't work that way. So I almost caved in again, yet I needed more firepower. Cue third mike! Thank GOD I own that, it's actually a GH:WT mike, but it's practically the same thing. I plug that bad boy into the third USB slot in the back (where the wireless internet goes) and now I have three mikes. I start up GoldWave in a second computer, start churning out another steady pitch (this one slightly lower than the last one), put the mike up to another headset and bam--two mikes going by computer and one by me. Lock and load.
You should also know that GoldWave allows you to change the pitch with the press of a button, so that's really handy if you want to nudge the arrow in a certain way to help clear a song.
I start completing some stuff like that Yoshimi song, The Look, Good Vibrations (yeah that's right), but then I stall at Bohemian Rhapsody. My arrow starts jumping around to the point where I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. So then I come up with yet another idea and that is hook the third mike up to the computer and let GoldWave do all the work. I only have two computers available, but I alter one of the wave files to play different pitches on the left and right sides. So adjust the microphone positioning and voila, three mikes on auto-play. I set the three arrows to equal distances apart to comb the entire octave to fill up as many notes as possible.
I decide to play the entire setlist while I go for a walk (watch the Saints game) and return every couple of minutes to cue the next song. Surprisingly, I knock out all but 15 songs this way. Songs that doubled up on the same pitch at different octaves (Heart of Glass, Du Hast), didn't work the first time but I passed them easily the next time. Auto-play took down Bohemian Rhapsody, Llama, and some other tough songs.
So then, it's time for me to play the role of surgeon with few songs to go. I leave two mikes on the computer while I take the other. I systematically pick off each song one by one. I don't recall all the "hard" ones, but Humanoid, Been Caught Stealing, One-Armed Scissor (because of the double-up end notes), Beast and the Harlot, whatever. So I finally knock out all the Harmonies in the game. Took me about ten hours, but I finally got that damn zebra mask.
Once RB gets their Game Link page up, I can show pictures of guys with horse/zebra masks. Until then, this is the only "proof" that I have:
This happened all day yesterday (Sunday). Like I mentioned before in my preliminary RB3 analysis, some of the items you can give your characters are off-limits unless you complete these challenges, some requiring expensive peripherals like the keyboard or the pro guitar, some being EXTREMELY hard to get. So anyway, one thing that I wanted was the zebra mask. You may say, "Well, why do you want that?"--it's for some guy I'm trying to recreated from RB2. To get it, you have to get Double Awesome on all the vocal harmonies in the game.
Don't know what a harmony is? Basically, you have two or three mikes hooked up. You have to fill two or more bars in each phrase that has more than one vocal line to get the double harmony. Note that one mike/arrow can only pick up one line at a time so it takes everyone to work in unison. This basically requires more than one vocalist, something that I don't have. Look at this in RB: The Beatles (the word "Fab" replaces "Awesome"):
At first, my instinct was to give up, it can't be done even if I have the hardware to do it. I take my two RB2 mikes, hook them up, and start singing into them. This knocks out 8 of 64 songs and obviously, I have no shot if I keep doing this. I know that my family who has zero experience at RB wouldn't be able to help me even if they tried so I just about quit. My only other hope was that somehow Harmonix release a patch/DLC that unlocks all items, but I doubt that would happen.
Then I get the brilliant idea to use this software that I have called GoldWave to emit a sound into one of the mikes while I sing into the other. Goldwave is a damn fine program I might say--offers a comprehensive free trial, only costs $40, and I use it a heck of a lot. I create a smooth noise (censor bleep), put the microphone up to a headset hooked to the computer, then mess with the volume and pitch until the game picks up the mike. Obviously, I had to use headsets cause the noise would make me commit suicide. Okay, now we're rockin' and rollin'.
It's worth noting that vocals will jump octave so if I leave the mike in, say, the key of A, then it can play a high A, a low A, etc. If the pitch changes octave, then the arrow will automatically jump to that octave. Since this is on Easy difficulty, the game offers you much room for error when it comes to hitting the right pitch.
This lone, steady pitch can sweep up some of the notes, but it was then that I realized that you need to hit ALL of the harmonies in one run. I was under the impression before that you could hit some of the harmonies now and the rest later, but no, doesn't work that way. So I almost caved in again, yet I needed more firepower. Cue third mike! Thank GOD I own that, it's actually a GH:WT mike, but it's practically the same thing. I plug that bad boy into the third USB slot in the back (where the wireless internet goes) and now I have three mikes. I start up GoldWave in a second computer, start churning out another steady pitch (this one slightly lower than the last one), put the mike up to another headset and bam--two mikes going by computer and one by me. Lock and load.
You should also know that GoldWave allows you to change the pitch with the press of a button, so that's really handy if you want to nudge the arrow in a certain way to help clear a song.
I start completing some stuff like that Yoshimi song, The Look, Good Vibrations (yeah that's right), but then I stall at Bohemian Rhapsody. My arrow starts jumping around to the point where I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. So then I come up with yet another idea and that is hook the third mike up to the computer and let GoldWave do all the work. I only have two computers available, but I alter one of the wave files to play different pitches on the left and right sides. So adjust the microphone positioning and voila, three mikes on auto-play. I set the three arrows to equal distances apart to comb the entire octave to fill up as many notes as possible.
GoldWave in action.
Computer and two mikes (ignore the cologne, lol).
Two mikes close-up.
The second computer, a laptop (the one I post these blog entries on!!).
Third mike hooked to the laptop.
I decide to play the entire setlist while I go for a walk (watch the Saints game) and return every couple of minutes to cue the next song. Surprisingly, I knock out all but 15 songs this way. Songs that doubled up on the same pitch at different octaves (Heart of Glass, Du Hast), didn't work the first time but I passed them easily the next time. Auto-play took down Bohemian Rhapsody, Llama, and some other tough songs.
So then, it's time for me to play the role of surgeon with few songs to go. I leave two mikes on the computer while I take the other. I systematically pick off each song one by one. I don't recall all the "hard" ones, but Humanoid, Been Caught Stealing, One-Armed Scissor (because of the double-up end notes), Beast and the Harlot, whatever. So I finally knock out all the Harmonies in the game. Took me about ten hours, but I finally got that damn zebra mask.
Once RB gets their Game Link page up, I can show pictures of guys with horse/zebra masks. Until then, this is the only "proof" that I have:
TLDR: In RB3, I needed three people to sing into the mikes to help beat a challenge. Instead, I used computer software to emit pitches into the microphones to provide me with ample backup. So thanks to my new-found technique, I played all day Sunday and finally completed what I thought was previously impossible. I'm very proud of myself.
Rock Band Forum Post Link !!!!!!
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