Pagoda of Gaming

So I just came back from my second Driving lesson. The car is certainly a strange vehicle. Taking the contraption and making it digital, via everyone’s favourite medium, illiminates the need for several of it’s features. Mainly the Gearbox, but also partially the handbrake. Your avarage game would have about 3 buttons; a Stick for steering, a button (or trigger if you’re playing true next-gen) for acceleration, and a braking button that would magically mediate between normal braking and a semi-handbrake. The gearbox adds complication to the mix, along with it’s cousin, the clutch. I have never seen a so called “Driving Sim” that accurately portrays this other than one button for gear up and one button for gear down. What I’ve experienced from a learners standpoint is that driving isn’t so much about getting from A to B, but it’s dealing with all the shit in the cockpit so you don’t fuck up real bad and mow people down, Vice City style. Though you’ll still get from A to somewhere, and that’s half the battle isn’t it?

I’m herading down to Dundee tomorrow to do all the Uni work that I need to do to stay on the course. As I’ve said several times already, I’ll comment on my entire Uni situation once the shit hit’s the fan. Though I can guarantee fan hitting to some degree, it’s the quality, or diaorreah-level of the actual shit that I’m worried about. As I’ve said, I’ll deal with comments later.

I’ll be staying with my good friend Lithgow whilst I’m down there. From what he’s told me, he’s pretty bored. Mincing about his new flat all day, yearning for the Internet then going to the University to get his fix. A cycle that’s almost perfect if he didn’t have to leave his flat. I should get him a house-warming present of such, I’ve pretty much told him that it’s going to be Final Fantasy 12, a gift that along with tonns of AVI’d TV should please both him and his gaming-inclined girlfriend. I do however find it a bit of a shame that I can’t really buy them a PS3 game due to several factors. I wouldn’t want to give a game of such low quality to the owner of such a new console, it would to some extend break his spirit. I’ll be leaving early tomorrow, I’m planning about 9, so that I miss the morning rush into aberdeen and hit the time that there’s no-one sharing my transportation method to the point that I’ll have two seats to myself. I’ve got it in the back of my mind to stay a couple of hours in Aberdeen, maybe to go see the new pirates movie whilst I have the chance, though it depends on whether or not Lithgow’s been to see it yet.

Whilst I’m on the subject of presents, I would like to bring somethign to light. For once, I am almost perfectly sure that I know what I could get my parents for christmas that would bring them happiness to some degree and bridge that giant gaping gap between our interests. I want to get them a DS. I was shocked to hear my mother about a week or two ago comment on a DS advert with “we should really get one of those”, with my father replying with some sort of grunt. Ofcourse the advert was for one of the several Brain Training games that are out there, the ones that I don’t really care about, but to not push them hard on the Gaming aspect of the system would be key to them liking it, though they have played Ouendan, with my supervision bridging the language gap, and I think that they could get into such a game that practices less of free form gaming and more of gimmickey controls and structured levels of play. And unless I win the lottery, they’re probably going to have to learn to share.

Death Note has somewhat consumed me, the story, the lore, the presentation all come together for me to add it to the list of anime that I couldn’t live without, High up there with Cowboy Bebop and the like. It’s come to the point that I’ve run out of episodes and I’ve been listening to the music of the anime. Not the background music at all, more along the lines of the opening and closing tracks of season 1 and 2, in somewhat of a continuous loop. I got the tracks off of THIS handy website, one that practices bad grammar and music from anime’s.

I think I might have to password-proof my computer before I leave, I can’t take the chance that my parents will go snooping around. I’m off to get something to eat and buy a present or two, catch you guys on Thursday.

‘Nin Out!

Even though I know that there’s shit all that appears on the internet on a sunday, I still like to check up on my usual sites. First off, here’s a video:

Joystiq ensures me that this professional Starcraft game is authentically professional, with one of the players earning $390,000. I also hear that many of the professional players (no matter how nerdy-aligned they are) have fangirls. Fangirls ffs. Hell, I’d settle for just enough $ to keep me going and maybe possibly atleast one fangirl. These guys have got it MADE.

I’d also like to point out that this was most likely broadcast on the good old Television, something that other countries have tried (I’m looking at you UK with your “Gamesville” shite) and failed to do. Proving that in most places, gaming is still looked down upon. I would like to add that Sky Sports aquired the rights a couple of weeks ago (or was it months?) to air professional counter-strike tournaments and the like on their various channels. A step in the right direction? Well it all depends on how the coverage it done.

Online shopping’s going to be the death of me. Or atleast the reason that I’ll one day be poor. The mouse that I currently use (The Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0) I’ve been using since I started playing CS:S about 3 years ago. Needless to say, the thing’s getting pretty manky. So I’ve been looking for a new mouse for a while, or something along the lines of a replacement. And I found that over at Steelgaming.com . Check it out HERE. Their prices (for atleast what I want) are reasonable. Not to mention that it’s in an attractive black, where mine is a dull grey.

Indeed that was very random… I’m off to watch some Deathnote…

‘Nin Out!

I just woke up about an hour ago, less even, and my dad walks in and asks: “So what are you going to do today?”. Now there’s a fine line these days between what I want to do and what I end up doing. Because I’m back in FRaserboring now, the time just gets sapped from me by things that my parents want me to do and the things that I have to do. Unless it involves food or a trip to the cinema, I’m not budging. Well, I’ll budge, just enough to keep everyone happy, my laptop comes in handy for this sort of stuff.

If it’s any surprise, I’m going to play WoW today. I’ve had a subscription payed for that I haven’t used in about 3 weeks and the only time I’ve had in the past week to log on is to do the Children’s Week stuff and put a couple of things on the AH. I think I’m going to start with my Priest Rin, then maybe log on with her tauren druid counterpart Nin. I’ll be on Sporregar if anyone wants me.

Before I go and the massive drought of gaming news sets in that is “The Weekend”, here’s the new trailer for the Penny-Arcade game:

I must say, it really looks like they’ve fixed up the game since the lsat trailer, mainly the character’s looks (which were abit “test footage” in the last trailer). I’m officially excited to play this as both a gamer and a penny-arcade fan. I also found this little bit of youtube footage, it’s a video of the wives of PA, basically talking at one of the PennyArcade Expo’s (PaX). It’s interesting to say the least.

So what are you guys playing this weekend?

‘Nin Out!

This week has seen the Finale of many shows for their current seasons, Lost, Veronica Mars and Heroes all ended this week, with Jericho afew weeks before, and Battlestar even weeks before that. So I thought I’d get it all out of the way so we could get down to talking about some freaking games for a change. I’m going to warn you, there’s going to be a megaton worth of spoilers here since I watch at the same pace as the americans, but first, here’s a really hot picture of Kristin Bell:

On Veronica Mars: This season’s been an interesting one with Veronica off at collage in usual teen-drama style. To be honest the season ended before the last episode, it really ended with the solving of the Dean’s murder (which was teh final episode before the fucking Hiatus). The final 5 or so episodes were full of minor mysteries, that were sortof interesting. Though the two-part finale was pretty awesome with the whole secret society + Jake Kain + Veronica Mars Sex tape. Sherrif Mars did obviously not stay Sherrif, that wouldn’t really leave for much plot development for the next season, if that is there is one. I’ve heard that the show’s been teetering on the edge for a while now, personally, I hope we see it to next season.

On Heroes: I was quite dissapointed with the season finale, not to say it wasn’t good though. I was really expecting an epic battle between Sylar and Peter, ala hiro’s time-travel episode or more specifically a battle involving flying characters, super-strength and power levels, if you catch my drift. It just seemed that it was all compacted into a single episode and left little in the way of epicness. Everything happened as it happened in Issac’s comic, with the exception of Ando being saved. Not to mention that no-body except Linderman died. It’s pretty obvious that peter’s not dead same goes with parkman. The rule is if you don’t see them bleed out and someone say that “he’s dead” on the screen, they are not. I’m a bit annoyed that Sylar got away, It leaves little room for another evil to move in. I pretty much called that Hiro would be going back in time to either become or meet Kensai. My predictions for next season are pretty slim, there wasn’t much to go by from the previous episode. I predict that Molly Walker will be living with D.L and Nikki since they’ll be “on da run yo!” possibly along with Noah (do you see what they did there?) Bennet and Claire. Hiro will train with Kensai in the past and Sylar, Peter and Nathan will return mid-way throught the season.

On Jericho: Awesome season finale here, I’ve talked about it before here on the PoG so all I’m going to say is that you’re missing something special by not watching it. It was left totally open so next season’s going to be more about how Jericho’s dealing with the Army being in town and searching for Hawkin’s. Hopefully they won’t pull off a “several weeks later”, so we get to see the army kicking New Burn’s ass.

On Lost: I loved the season finale for this the most, I just watched it last night and I’m still totally unsure how they are going to continue on from it. I don’t really know what to say, except that the flash-forward was simply GENIOUS! I’m going to have to watch that one again. The next season could carry on two ways in my opinion, the next three seasons are dealing with them getting off the island and dealing with the other people that Ben was talking about or it could lead on from the end of the episode and having Jack going back to the island with some other people, that would leave room for flashbacks to what happened after they all returned to civilisation.

On Battlestar: Equally as awesome as the ending of lost was the end of Season 3 of Battlestar. It’s been a while and I’m sure you all know what’s going on with it. The question you have to ask yourself, is why the hell aren’t you watching it if you haven’t already?

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s lunch time.

‘Nin Out!

It’s been a long while since I did an “On Mah Tits”, but stuff was really bugging the fuck outta me. One day, and that day might be pretty soon, I’m just going to pop and I’m going to be able to say all the things I’ve always wanted to say without the comforting anonimity of teh intarwebs.

So the parents are buggin me, what’s new. Though it seems that their new found points of critisism are coming in a constant stream spread out nice and evenly accross the entire day, instead of the usual “leave him for a week and then ruin his weekend”. And it’s over the littlest things aswel, not 20 minutes ago, my mother stormed out of the room beacuse I refused to style my hair saying that it would be too much trouble for me *, her storming was followed with a comment the kin of “Well looks like you have ALL the answers”. My father seems to be on the same trail as her, I need to basically go to bed at the same time as he to avoid any sort of comfrontation, and I’ve been waking up early in the morning to make sure I can actually do something of my own before I get drafted into doing god knows what. Something else, I cant quite put my finger on, is that I instinctively don’t want to do what he suggests me to do, as if he can never be wrong.

Something happened at supper today **, that weirds me right the fuck out. I took some ginger beer ***, filled my glass a little to take a drink of, leaving the bottle in a stable place in front of me, while I took a sip, set my glass down and closed my eyes to give them a good hard rub (’cause let’s face it, hay fever’s a bitch). All I hear after was the clink of the bottle against the table, I open my eyes to accusing faces and said bottle lying on it’s side, bleeding forthwith beer of the ginger variety. I swear on my life that the bottle was stable and that I never touched the thing, and yet there it was the cause of another accusation.

Maybe it’s the Death Note in me talking, but did they knock the bottle over just to fuck with me? If they did it means many things, they are smart enough to notice a bottle prime for knocking over on a potentially unstable surface within the 6-8 seconds it took to give my eyes a little rub. With smarts like that, they could’ve been doing it for years, and would account for my mother’s crazy ideas and points to “go off” on. Now substituting the crazy for the maniacle and evil. Just look at the situation that happened just minutes ago, could a person really gett annoyed at that? Even then would it be storm worthy? I’m going to keep an eye on them, the suspision is now out there for me to see. I’m going to keep a counter tomorrow of how many times they critisize me, I’ll report on how it all goes.

I could go on, there are many stories from today alone that could make a psychologist proud, but then there’s that other thing I have to talk about…

I’m not going to say much on the matter, but if Fraserburgh (a.k.a. Fraserboring) is anything to go by, then the world it totally and eternally screwed. I was in the town centre today with a friend up from Fundee for a couple of days, and all we could really notice was how much of a shit-hole this place is, and the way people are here are equally as shit. As soon as I get a job of any level of angst and misery, I’m fucking off to Azeroth. Fuck your needs to be social, fuck your needs to be friendly, you’re a dick and you live in a shit hole of a town. Screw you guys, I’m going to play WoW.

Because every gamer knows, there’s no place like Outland. I’m off to stay up as late as my laptop batteries allow it. I promise I’ll talk about the Halo 3 beta tomzorrow.

‘Nin Out!

*Though I didn’t make the point that it would make me look like an emo-faggot.
**Which of course was readied by me, because I certainly don’t have university work to do that could determine my future. /sarcasm.
***god knows why I was drinking the shit, I really don’t like it.