Well it’s pretty much T-Minus 3-Hours, 30-Minutes before I leave Fundee for the Summer, so I thought I’d pop on and make a ‘final’ post before I go. This is history right fucking here. I’ve been up all night listening to Raidchan and packing up all my shit. Surprise, I haven’t slept, though I did get a nice 20 hour stretch yesterday, which was the best sleep I’ve had in weeks.
I’m not even back yet and I’ve already pissed off my mother… because I didn’t call… yesterday. Even after I texted her saying I was going to turn off my phone to get some frakking sleep… I dunno. Some might call that an OVERREACTION, and I might be one of them. Whatever, I’m always the Villain when it comes to family shit like this, and I guess I’m still getting used to it.
But hopefully, If my faults as a son haven’t rocked the roost too much, the ‘rents should be out of town for the weekend, leaving me with a house and several magic decks to myself. So that’s what I’m looking forward too. And sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.
Two things that have been popping up lately I’d like to set in stone. The first being where I get my TV from via the internet. Simply it’s HERE. Long version, EZTV is the best torrent site I’ve seen to keep up with your weekly shows since it shows exactly what was on yesterday, and what will air today and has a huge fucking list of past shows with user ratings and a MASSIVER LIST OF SHOWS AND HOW MANY DAYS IT IS UNTIL EACH SHOW RETURNS AND OH MY GOD CANDY FOR BREAKFAST!
The second is a peice of advice. There’s a couple of people I’ve met who haven’t secured jobs for the summer months, to them I say, If you’ve got the chance to have a summer of fun, not to be tied down by a job, then FUCKING TAKE IT. Take it because you’ll maybe never have the chance to have a summer like that ever again! I’m fucking positive that I would take it, because I haven’t had a fun summer in YEARS. I think the time was like 4 years ago, me and Drizau up til 4am each night Pwning ass in CS:S, that I believe was also the summer I discovered Warcraft and Pure Pwnage. Ah, those were the years.
Here’s a vid, I don’t know where it’s from, but the song just popped right into my head the other day, so why the fuck not?
And to close, no matter what, I’ll be back to dundee after the summer.
Before I cut open my chest and start bearing my emo emo emo soul for all to see, some impressions of the new Indiana Jones film. I’m sure if you care enought to hear me talk about it, you care enough to actually go and see it. It does go places that the previous films did not, and I think it worked extremely well. It’s absolutely not the rumored ‘will it blend’d version of all the previous films. There is like a single moment of that, you know, an unnecesary reference. It’s as bad as George breaking through the movie screen with an axe shouting “YOU SEE THAT YOU FUCKING DICKS! YOU SEE THAT RAIDER’S REFERENCE RIGHT THERE!” Besides that, it’s really good. A note for the next one, if Harrison hasn’t died by then, how about some Cthulu? Get some Lovecraft shit in there. Might be spectaculawesome.
Now, This isn’t the post I promised, the one cursing several game developers for their thunder stealing, rythematic, chinese plastic. Due to some new info, my original perspective is now slightly skewed. No, this is the annual “bitch about life” post that is… well… Annual.
I suggest you begin by watching this episode of Metalokalypse, since I feel that it would be helpful and marginally humorous to reference it throughout the rest of the post.
Brutal… So I was having a somewhat perfect day. I woke up at 4…ish. Did a quick skim of the internet. Noticed that Indi was finally out, went to cinema, etc, etc, got some delicious shish from Corfu, watched the first 15 minutes of the latest boston legal, played the PA game trial on XBL and the DBZ Burst Limit Demo. Then, I hear the sound of children screaming - As though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing appeared above my phone and from it emerged a thousand starving crows, the phone began to ring, and so, fearful, I reach to answer it. I catch a glimpse of the caller ID, but it’s too late, I’ve answered. “Is it ok to talk now? Or shall I call back?”. “It’s fine”, I reply. The ‘rents have called.
I use the Metalocalypse episode as a point of reference because, whenever my family appears, in whatever ghoulish manner, I feel the way that Pickles does. This is not a celebration, this is a moment of fear, of pain manifested in some psychic familial form. These beings have some godly right to judge me, and forcibly mold me into something I’m not, and worse of all, magnify my failures and spread them about. Everything is, after all, my fault.
I’m really in a state of shock right now, It’s hard to type this, my hands are shaking. Hopefully the hard metal I’m pumping into my ears should calm my blood pressure, long enough for me to finish this post, so I can get round to a sleepless night of mental anguish. Lets just say that my 5th floor window is looking mighty appealing right now, even if all I do is fuck up and break my legs.
Let’s dig a bit deeper here: In life, I fear three things. Not the little things like primal fears (fear of wasps for example), I’m talking the big daddies here. #1 is simple, to Die alone. Though honestly, I’ve come to except that is a distinct possibility these days. #2 Is fear of dissapointing my family. #3 is the fear of dying in my home town.
#2 is something that really should be a fear that should be overcome. It’s stupid that I turn into a different person whenever they phone, perpetually covering my ass in the duration. Having them treat me like a 10-year-old and take it.
#3 is something that came up in a conversation I had on MSN, I said that next year, at the end of the summer, no matter what, I will come back to Dundee. I’m very commited to that. Not much to say on the matter, other than I will fight for my right to not die in Fraserburgh. I know that sounds very damning of the town, but it’s really the whole package that makes me want to run away. There are good things, I have some friends there, some non-judgemental family members, a very awesome shop that sells all manners of CCG’s and TCG’s. But it’s the bad things that make me want to leave. The fact that I can step out the front door of my parent’s house and see the Academy, the one that took six years of my childhood and made them the worst imaginable. The weather, that is dynamic as it is equally hellish. And going back to Fear #2, judgemental family members footsteps away.
My fear is slowly quelling, the heroic melodies of Dragonforce seem to be a rather healthy remedy. I’m reminded that I’ve been an idiot all these years. Go ahead, drop me an email at themissingnin@hotmail.com and tell me so. It’s about time that I start to stand up to my parents, no matter the costs. Nothing drastic mind you, I’m not going to torch a building or challenge people to mortal kombat. It’s about time I start being the Teenager I’ve repressed all these years.
Two things I should explain. Some mysteries I’ve kept about my character. My internet moniker, TheMissingNin, is taken from Naruto. It is what shinobi call another shinobi who betrayed their village, ran away and did some bad stuff in some dramatic manner. Itachi, being my favourite example. He killed his entire clan, to get some ancient ninja magics, with the exception of his brother, who he told “live to hate me, and only then will you get your revenge”. Something like that. I figured that I would betray someone at some point, in some major way, or lots of little betrayals, so why not? and TheMissingNin was born. I guess I’m just waiting for the fight that I can turn round and say to my near-defeated adversary: “live to hate me, and only then will you get your revenge”.
Second mystery - You may have noticed, but I tend to pimp out PurePwnage whenever a new episode rolls out, but I never really explain why I like it. My Parents (yeah, I’m going back to that) have never understood gaming. Never respected it. It’s always been the arguement that they’ve always won, that somehow it’s something bad. “why game when you could be sweeping the patio?” You see where I’m coming from? Then PurePwnage comes along and tells me that it’s ok to be a gamer. HOLY SHIT. Can you imagine how I felt? Fucking relieved I tell you! A revelation of personally epic proportions.
I bring this up now because the battlefield is about to present itself. One thing I took away from that debilitating phone call, besides me doing it all wrong. It finally hut me that my time at uni, for the year, is almost over, I’ve only got about a fortnight left, at most. I think it’s finally dawned on me that I really am going to be stuck in EPIC PHAILSERBORING for three months, where I’m going to have to work 8-til-5, and have to live with the ‘rents.
Imagine a warrior standing atop a mountain, fueled by rage, hatred and betrayal. And infront of him, a tidal wave of pure earth core lava, tall enough to cover the mountain three fold. Within the lava comes galloping the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and behind them the hollow souls of every hell-sent being. The warrior looks behind him, to see the beings of the world flee, and is presented with a choice - run with the rest and hope not to get caught up in the wave, or stay and fight near-impossible odds. Victory would mean a life of his own, and isn’t that worth any cost?
I hope you enjoyed this dive into the depths of my cold black emo heart. Or you now feel some sort mortal fear, I’m hopeful of that too. Next post, I’d imagine will be after the National Qualifier this weekend, till then, as I used to say, keep it 1337.
My living situation is rather odd, as people I’ve actually told about it will probably agree. My flatmates, who I haven’t seen since about christmas, are a bunch of messy fucks, especially in the kitchen. And since I really don’t want to clean up their shite, and I don’t want them to think that I should be, I simply rarely use the kitchen. This is a bit of a pain, sure I still use the microwave and the oven, for about 15 minutes every couple of days, but I never engage in any actual cooking. So I leave the real food for the takeaways and the fast food. And I find it satisfying that someone else cooked my food, hence removing me from the blame game should something go wrong. The problem comes when I run out of cash, as it did this week with my payments for GTA4 and the aforementioned cards from america. I was living off the 3-for-2 on all ready meals thing from tesco all freaking week, and I craved real food, something handmade. And then I remembered my mother mentioning to me several years ago about cooking bacon in the Microwave, and the look of horror on her face when she realised I actually didn’t know you could do that, like she just opened pandora’s box. Out of… Well… fear I suppose, all those years I never took the chance I had to experiment in the kitchen back at the failserboring homestead. Now was my chance, and it was delicious. 16 rashers cooked in under 15 minutes. Eaten in under 3.
I woke up Friday morning determined to get myself set up for the Metal Gear Online Beta. I went through the motions of signing up for one of those stupid Konami ID things (you know, a third party solution to something that the 1st party already took care of) and all that. But I can’t actually find the fucking client. I’ve looked, several times, for hours on end trying to find the damn thing in every nook and crannie within the “new and improved” playstation store. I emailed konami about it, and they haven’t gotten back to me. I guess it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s hard to tell if the servers are up or down, and communication between the devs and the testers has been extremely limited. So I guess I’ve missed my window entirely. Nevermind, it’s out in about a month anyway.
I dinged 500 Tournament Points yesterday in Yugioh Online. For the uninitiated, allow me to explain. Winning any weekend event in the game gives you Tournament Points, and if you accumulate over 500 points by the end of every season, you get a card of your choice from the entire catalogue, and a special looking Duel Disk avatar part as a sort of trophy. I dinged in a rather epic way aswel - getting a 8 win streak in Gunslinger with my Six Samurai deck. Though to be honest, most of my focus, especially late at night for some odd reason, has been focused towards Trading. I initially thought it to be a bit of a grind, but I find it rather exhilirating.
I managed upon some amazing trades in my ventures, namely an Exodia Set and a playset of Cyber Dragons, and the very last cards I needed to make my Six Samurai deck ultimately complete - a Shogun Shien and a Grandmaster. Though I did trade ‘golddust’ level cards for most of them, essentially all the cards I won from all the Weekend Events I’ve played in so far. I think my trade partners were a little off put by me offering them, and I didn’t understand why it is they wanted them, they’re not particularily great cards. It’s lead me to the belief that there’s a trading subculture in the game that people partake in when they’ve run out of Duelpass Points, and that it’s become a little detatched from the main game, valueing rarity over useability. Now doesn’t that seem a little exploitable .
Hanging out online with, and pwning the asses of, Yugioh fanboys, it’s hard not to notice all the talk about the new anime, Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s. I must admit, I’ve watched it, infact I’ll embedd the pilot below. It’s rather… well…. good I suppose. Sure it’s a little retarded, you can figure that out within the first five minutes. SUDDENLY MOTORBIKES THOUSANDS OF THEM! but when you look at Yugioh in general it makes a bit more sence, or atleast it does until the inevitable introduction of ancient egyptian prophecys and the fate of the world hanging on the outcome of a children’s card game. Besides, I find that it’s put together rather well, and I don’t think they’ve broken the rules of the card game yet, which the older shows were notorious for, but I jsut can’t wait until next weeks episode. Check it out below.
I’ve been checking out some other animes aswel, besides the usual BleachRuto combo. Blastreiter had a usual anime preface, something about demons and robots and saving the world, but I’ve heard praise about it so I’ve got it, I just have’nt watched it yet. The other show, which I have watched, and loved, is Soul Eater. It’s like a mish mash of Shaman King and Death Note in a weird-assed Tim Burtononic world, and it seems to work rather well. I think the best thing about watching these new animes is that they are beautifully animated, especially compared to some of the classic stuff that everyone takes as the standard for anime. I’d better stop before I start singing praises for Fansubbing and BitTorrent, I could go on all day.
I’m going to leave you with some music today aswel, a little bit of chillout from the Animatrix soundtrack that clawed it’s way into the back of my mind. Enjoy.
And now a look at the week ahead, only one thing is really standing out as the pinnacle of the week. GTA4. Need I say more. There’s also Iron Man I suppose, as a little treat for the weekend. And there’s the extention to my ever-increasing overdraft that should come in and allow me the delicasy of non-microwaved food. Speaking of, I think I’ve got sausages and mash for tonight.
So Edge did it wrong, totally. Let’s start off with mistake numer one, listing the GOTY on the first fucking page. You bum-love the thing so much, give it a damn drum roll first, dudes, srsly. So here’s how it’s going to go: I’m doing the 2007 Edge awards (from issue 184), except I’m putting the right choises in, right as in my choices, and adding in some minor stabs at Edge as we go along. First thing I did when I got home with the mag was to go through it with a permanant marker and added my own little comments. And we begin with the Alternative Awards, games that missed the gold, silver, or bronzes of the real awards but still deserve a mention, like the stupid awards in your high-school year book like who had the best hair or who was most likely to become a porn director. I should say right now there’s only one Wii game that got an award, and it’s only for it’s box art. I’m not a reviewing press person so I don’t get hardware and games mailed to me by people who want their praise from me, so I didn’t want to have a £200 peice of kit sitting there doing nothing for the next billion years, hence no Wii, hence no Wii games played, hence no awards. These are my awards after all, they don’t come with a golden statue or additional press controversy or pissing off fanboys at a national level. They are about as useful as a list on someone’s retarded bebo page. These are all my opinions based on what I’ve played and observed over the past year. Granted, I’ll forget something. Also, because it is the new year already (so this is a little bit late) I’m going to forego the annoying texty bits and leave you with the pure and simple lists, and an invitation, one that allows you to challenge my decisions, so I can respond and tell you I’m right.
The Alternative Awards
Best Use Of A Beta - Crackdown (360)
Best Use of Annoying Leper/Poor People - Assasin’s Creed (360, PS3)
Most Dissapointing Game - Hellgate London (PC)
Best Use Of Subliminal Messaging in Box art - Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Best Movie based on Game Franchise - Hitman The Movie
Easiest 1000 Gamerscore - Avatar The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth (360)
Best Game that the Yanks Got But We Haven’t Yet For Some Fucked Up Reason - Rock Band (360, PS3)
Best Use of an Importer - Pokemon Diamond & Pearl (NDS)
Best MMO Patch Of The Year - EVE Trinity (PC)
Most Use Of Man-Hours - World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade(PC)
Best XBLA or PSN Game - Settlers Of Catan (XBLA)
Most Secretive Game - Alan Wake (360, PC)
Game That Should’ve Had More Development Time - Mass Effect (360)
Game I Should’ve Played More - Company of Heroes (PC)
And once again, I’m here. Mask of false persona and fake happiness GO!
So my mother hijacked my flat yesterday night, leaving me once again trying to sleep on the floor. She’s like an attention seeking child in that, I leave her for 5 minutes to go take a piss and I come back and either my shit’s all rearranged or she’s snooping about the place looking for excuses to castrate me. The 2.5 hour ride back tonight was equally worse, where she complains about my bank balance and how it’s somehow her problem, what I’m being drafted into doing when I’m here, how I’ve not done something I needed/should’ve done, why haven’t I got a job and that I need a hair cut. Then I lie a little, die a little, and cry a little. Then I come here to post about it.
I expect that since I have only the NinTop and my PSP with me, to entertain me for two weeks, and having my laptop at the moment only being EVE capable, I’m going to get really bored, really fast. So expect near-daily blog updates. Christmas is after all, a holiday I do enjoy bitching about. Enjoy in the same way that middle-eastern terrorists enjoy bitching about the west. Or Christians about the Jews. Or the Japanese about the Gaijins. I’ve also got my little Games of the Year awards to think about, though I’m pretty sure I know what my GOTY actually is already.
And now, a random technical question. Does anyone out there know how to make a laptop with vista installed on it to not go into standby mode when the cover is closed? This would be helpful for personal reasons, and if you can help, please leave a comment.
The only bit of recent gaming news I wish to touch on is the whole Miyamoto Ratchet and Clank thing. HERE lies the Kotaku post that sums up the whole thing. Go read it then come back, I’ll wait…. Now in my opinion this happened for two reasons. #1, because Nintendo has Miyamoto chained up in a basement most of the time and isn’t allowed to touch anything that doesn’t have either a touch screen or waggle-wands and is only allowed out to play when the press come knocking. Or #2, Because he’s so stuck up nintendo’s ass that he’s being a giant douche and is not aknowleging the existance of his competitor’s games. Either way Ninty and/or Moto’s looking like the bad guy, so I’m quite happy about that. Come on it’s fucking Ratchet and Clank, best sellers on the console that beat your ass to a pulp last gen, how could you not have heard of them?
But yet, I look at my 500k download rate and I smile a little. There are benefits to being here, in the centre of all things unholy, my awesome internet connection and having satan on speed dial for a game of magic to name a few. And Satan, despite being, well… Satan, plays very good magic. Very good magic indeed.
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May 30th, 2008 by /images/author.gif)
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