Pagoda of Gaming

So it seems that some things can stop the internet. I just picked up my copy 5 hours ago, so I haven’t gotten very far, I just thought I’d pop on and say that I’ve got it, I’m 4 hours in and…

So yeh, it’s fucking godlike. That’s all I’m going to say right now, I’m sure you’re all enjoying youself with it anyway. For people later to the party than me, I can advise on one thing, turn on the subtitles, because without it you miss alot of russian conversation and end up doing missions for a jamacan man you can’t fucking understand. I think it might have been a pre-order deal or something, but I got a free three month pass to XBL Gold with the special edition, and inside the game box, a coupon for another month, nice, thanks Zavvi! Remember and sign up to the Rockstar Social Club. I wonder how long it takes for the first person to enter the 100% club. You just know that there’s people skipping work/school to undertake that shit. I salute you sirs, for you are the hardcorest of them all, and don’t forget your poop-sock. I suggest you check out the Police Blotter too for some VERY interesting stats.

There’s also pretty much nothing else to talk about right now, this game really has made the gaming world stand still. It’s the only thing that’s being talked about on Kotaku, Joystiq, NeoGaf, EVERYWHERE! And I’m avoiding it all, because I know that there’s some mean spoilermongers out there. Though I did notice THIS. It made me think what a sweet turn of events would be if Jack actually played it, loved it, and left a life of lawyerising behind for a life of hot-pockets, internet bloggery, and modeling himself on Tommy Vercetti. He is afterall wearing quite a nice Hawiian shirt there.

The reason that I only got the game today (wednesday) is not because of Zavvi’s shipment process, though I did get a weird email from them yesterday at like 9am basically saying “erm, we’re not sure where your order is right now, we did send a bunch out last night, but we don’t know if yours was on it… woops”, no, the people deserving to be doused in hatredcopter fuel is Royal Mail, who don’t appear to like to ring doorbells in appartment complexes. I was all ready and sleep deprived waiting for the guy to come, it hits midday and I think they haven’t got it to me on time, so I go down to my mailbox in the lobby and lo and fucking behold there’s that annoying little red slip saying that I missed him by 15 minutes. Fucking Lier. The real kick in the teeth comes when I turn the little red slip over to discover that it takes them 21 hours to move a parcel from one of their tiny little trucks to the city centre depot. HOW THE FUCK DOES IT TAKE THAT LONG! IT MAKES NO SENSE!

Anyway, I’m going to go and sleep now, maybe watch some Veronica Mars. I’ll be hitting the digital streets tonight.

EDIT - seems that the first guy to complete the game 100% goes by the name of Only1Reality, and he did it in 18 hours and 3 minutes. I guess he get’s to go and actually play the game now, or like, sleep or something.

Oh no sir I must say you´re wrong

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.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

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.

But I believe there’s a ghost of a chance we can find someone to love

It feels really weird that GTA4’s hitting in less than a week. I’m actively avoiding several sites and forums simply so I can be dumped into the game as blind as possible. So don’t expect me to do a countdown or anything. I’m expecting that my precious little lockbox will be arriving late, I did order it over the internet ofcourse. So instead of drooling over screenshots and leaked video and posting about me drooling over screenshots and leaked video, I bring you a fully fueled Hatredcopter, all about Yugioh Online, and I guess TCG’s in general.

My largest complaint about Yugioh Online was that there was no place on the net to go for information. I guess I was wrong, or atleast google did not provide sufficiant aid. There’s actually quite alot of sites out there, though they’re hardly even mentioned in the chat channels. There’s 2 sites that have proven rather useful. DuelCity has probably the best database I’ve seen for the game, and the most useful. Basically it can tell you where to find a specific card, and what boosters you can get it in. This has proven rather invaluable, especially when trying to hunt down cards from earlier sets. News-wise, there’s DuelEvolution, that digs and gathers news on the game, usually from japanese sources.

My now-largest complaint about the game is the stupid fucking Metagame that’s going on. Essentially what I mean by this is the most popular decks, and they are popular because they are fucking BROKEN PEICES OF SHIT THAT TAKE THE FUN OUT OF THE GAME BECAUSE I’VE PLAYED AGAINST EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM A BILLION FUCKING TIMES ALREADY.

Back in Epic Failserboring, I’ve never really noticed a metagame to any degree. There’s so little people that it’s hard for a meta to develop in the first place, and honestly I like that. You can develop a deck of any kind and there’s little chance that there’ll be anything out there that’ll hose the thing into fucking oblivion. Not saying that the deck will win, it just won’t get heavily contested to a degree that makes your cards unplayable.

The remedy that Konami has been using so far, is rather… odd. Essentially they’ve been banning or limiting the deck usage of certain cards ever since the game began. Now I understand and agree with limiting or banning certain combo peices, because there are some RAPE-TACULAR combos out there, but when it comes to Pot of Greed, or Graceful Charity, I find it to be rather retarded. Card drawing is a problem in the game, it’s required to keep the game flowing at a decent pace, and to prevent neverending games of topdecking. But there are no cards that really help with it, unless there’s a major drawback. I guess that’s why I’ve been grinding like a motherfucker to get a playset of Reckless Greed (of which I’ve yet to pull a single one). I suppose that Pot of Avarice was supposed to be the answer to the afore mentioned ban, but in reality it needs a shitload of synergy for it to not be the deadest-draw of your game.

Maybe it’s actually a problem with the game in general, the thing is based on a TV show, and a rather popular one at that. Konami are now at a point that they are shipping cards to coinside with their appearance on the show. In the online game it’s clearly based on what’s popular. I saw THIS post on Duelist Academy that was pretty much an angry rant. It’s essentially the ‘Magic deck formula’ for winning weekend events. What’s a bitch is that atleast 70% of the decks I’ve played ARE near carbon copies of this deck. What’s more disturbing is that THIS post, describing the current online meta, made back in JANURY is still the fucking same as it is now.

I FUCKING HATE MONARCH DECKS, I FUCKING HATE DIRECT DAMAGE DECKS, I FUCKING HATE CYBER DRAGON AND I REALLY FUCKING HATE PEOPLE THAT USE THESE FUCKERS RIGHT HERE:

+

+

+ALL THE OTHER SHITTY SHIT THAT HELPS THESE CARD.

What really pisses me off about it is that it just hoses certain decks, like a few of mine into THE ELDER FUCKING SCROLLS FOUR OBLIVION. And they don’t even use it as a theme of the deck, just to be annoying cunts and summon the most stapleing obvious creatures. I’ve only seen the use of the first effect on Macro Cosmos happen ONCE, and that’s because the deck was themed around removing stuff from the game (it was a pretty enjoyable duel aktuly, even though I lost).

So how can this be beaten? I mean REALLY BEATEN. For one, most people are so fucking obsessed with their ranking or their K:DR that they never bother to properly test out and modify a deck idea. So I propose an area where people can duel one-another and not have their ranking etc effected at the end of a match, maybe lower the amount of prize cards or something as a penalty for using this. Secondly, make it easier to trade with people. Whenever I see people trading, they never use the Trade channel, they just spam the shit out of General Chat, and you ALWAYS see people trading for popular cards and it’s hard to get a shot in if all you want are a couple of commons so you don’t have to go gind your fucking ass off. Auto-Trading is a possibility, letting people put cards up for trade, and what it is they want for them, and then automatching and autotrading the selections. Especially useful if it could be active when your not online. Or even a visual trading room to keep all the spammers out of regular chat channels. The final Idea is for Konami to stop being a bunch of tight-assed cunts and to give us more than just 3 cards after every duel, that’s not even a booster’s worth in Japan. 5 cards for a best of 3, 3 cards for a single duel. It’ll stop the grinding, and open up more possibilities for everyone. COME ON!

Another thing that really grinds my fucking gears is why the hell is it that Duelpasses are released in phases, depending by region? That makes no fucking sence to me, I’ve been sitting on the latest pass for about 2 weeks now, and it’s been out in Japan for nearly a week now. IT’S A PEICE OF FUCKING PAPER WITH A 16 DIGIT CODE ON IT, HOW THE HELL CAN IT NOT RELEASED WORLDWIDE AND UNLOCKED ALL AT FUCKING ONCE?

Finally, can you people stop typing in txt-speak? It’s not cool, and I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to tell me half the fucking time. Infact, the stupid wordfilter is a hack job, and there’s no way I’ve seen to turn it off. Here’s a couple of examples: ” “T**ugh” and “Duelp***”. HO!?!?!? ASS?!?!?!?! It doesn’t even test for a space before and after the letter combinations! It’s FUCKING RETARDED. FIX IT NAO!

*sigh* So I guess that’s it, I’m outta fuel. I should mention before I go that I have some cards ordered from America, ones for the MTG Standard Qualifiers. £40 for playsets of Cryptic Command and Jace Beleren. I would’ve been £65-ish if I ordered from a UK store, srsly. I’m off to watch my new Lovefilm arrivals, Southland Tales and Goodfellas on Blu-Ray, and eat some cold-assed-Pizzaz. *smoke-bomb*

And it’s a shame to hear you’re happy

So I had a pretty fun weekend, the pre-release being the highlight. The low light being the ‘Oh Shi- GTGNINJAAWAY!’ I pulled at the end. So I have no idea how well I placed at the end, and I have no Idea what the hell I won. I’ll post my results when they get emailed to me. I suppose I could figure it out if I did the math.

My deck was surprisingly 2-coloured, technically. If you’ll look at the set, I’m sure you can figure out how I managed that. Not your avarage R/B affair, where my black was a little more blue if you catch my drift, and I have next to none removal, but I made up for it with a little mill. I would post the list, but I left it back in Failserboring, still sleeved up, in my cupboard. Though there’s one card I certainly remember, the superstar of the deck:

She was the only rare that I used in the deck, the rest was either Green shite who’s only place is in standard, or very overcosted. I really want to give here a real go in a faerie deck, just to see how awesome she really is.

First round I won 2-1, thanks to a constant flow of creatures from the deck, got Oona out in one of the games… who was quickly departed before she even lost her summoning sickness. Second game I lost 1-2 to a bunch of flying lifelinkey stuff. Third Game I lost 1-2 again. Fourth game was a fucking beauty, considering who I played, and that I bet him 2-1, and it was the only game that I dropped Oona and was able to use her - lucking into 7 faerie tokens in one turn. Last game was a 2-0 to me, under the same conditions as the first game, a constant stream of awesome. So atleast that puts me at 3 wins - 2 losses, which hits my usual pre-release target - more wins than losses. After that I Ninja’d away, before the results/prizegiving, otherwise I would’ve missed my ride back to Fundee, and we can’t have that can we?

I really like the set, for several reasons. First off, there’s alot of people complaing about the lack of ‘money rares’ in the set. I FUCKING LOVE THAT THERE ARE NONE! I hate spending £10 on a card, I really fucking do! Especially if it’s land. The art direction’s really fucking awesome, like a Tim Burton movie smushed together with LOTR with a bareable hint of Todd McFarlene. Mechanics are fresh and completely un-awkward. I LOVE IT. There should be more sets like this. I’m really stoked for the next set, whose name escapes me, that’s hitting mid-summer.

Now there’s the case of the Standard Legal National Qualifiers, happening on the 25th of next month, and I’m rather interested in going. The only problem is having about a week to get a deck together for it, or worse, having less than a weekend. I’ve really not thought about my timetable past ‘the end’ of Uni. I think I could manage to whip something together. I already took a look at the MTG boards, and I had one of those deckbuilding ephiphanies I love having oh so much. I’m not going to say much about what the deck is, other than that it recycles alot of the cards I already have, so I shouldn’t have to go out and ravenously trade for 2 days straight. Though there is the issue of acuireing several copies of a certain planeswalker.

Today’s video is the latest in the awesome set TF2 movies, straight from Valve, Meet The Scout

In other good news, I’ve managed to secure myself a summer job, back in the Failserboring, for nine weeks. The same one I had last year, which isn’t as soul destroying as other things I could be doing(things that make me not listen to certain albums for two years through fear of dredging up painful memories) Though I’ll obviously be back there for longer. Atleast my pay’s gone up… I think. So depending on how much I’m in the dog house, I may be able to afford Rock Band after all…….Hrmm. I also just got my OMHGTA4ISCOMINGHEREISYOURORDERSTATUSWENEEDTHEMONEYAWEEKEARLY email from Zavvi, and it just hut me that GTA’s only 8 days away. SHIT.

But her eyes saved his life

So I was going to write up a HUGE -ish post on Condemned 2, BUT, our good friend Yatzee bet me to the punch. Check out the fideo for his (mine) opinion on the game and get some lulz out of it. If you actually do want my opinion, I’d say that if you want some pure Condemned, go for the first one - availabe now in your local gamestation bargain bin, and also for about £5 on PC.

So onto topic #2, which is the reason why I’ve been neglecting certain things, like blog posts, real world contact etc. It’s actually quite funny… well, sort of. I’ve been playing THIS.

So… yeh. I can’t really remember how I came across it, It might have had something to do with me being stuck in fraserboring for a week and realising that the Nintop could process the damn thing. Certainly the 10 free duels helped, though I did start paying before those 10 duels were up.

Let me lay it down, because it get’s a bit more complicated here. You pay for the game by buying duelpasses, which cost just a little less than a regular booster pack. Each Duelpass comes with 10MP (mileage points, i think) that you can use to boost your collection via the in-game store, and a different structure deck, depending on what kind of duelpass you register, and 30 duels. There are new duelpasses released every couple of months, to keep it all fresh, and usually coinside with the virtual release of a set. Now your asking, “well, how long does 30 duels last you?” I guess that depends on how much you play the game. I’ve certainly been blazing a trail with the game the past two weeks, so I’ve gone through about £20 worth of Passes, but I can certainly see myself winding down in the future. And if you think that cost’s bad, you’ve obviously never played a TCG.

The game operates rather well, like your usual MMORPG. You start off by creating a character, who looks like he was just pulled off the screen from the anime. I have created GhostOfAChance, whose name may be familiar to you, I was rather surprised that it wasn’t already taken (though I did try LimeyMan first). And then you get into the game and you get to walk your character about a 2.5D environment and explore a pretty decent recreation of places from the anime. Then you duel. Win or lose, at the end of every game you get a card (or three, if you played a best of three) from a booster expansion of your choice.

In the future, when the new-car smell is gone, I can really see myself only playing during the weekends. Since they hold events every weekend. Borderline tournaments, to some degree. I won’t go through them, you can check out the DETAILS yourselves. There are also big tournaments, but I’ve yet to try them out, since I have yet to reach the pre-requisites.

I really like it. It brings me back, in a good way. That’s not to say it’s not without it’s own problems, every MMO has them. The matchmaking system is rather shitty, everyone of every nationality clamours into the English Lobbies, and you see the same staple cards over and over and over - that’s just to name a few. The only thing that really gets on my freaking nerves is that there’s hardly any online support for the game, any that I did get I had to pull from original card game sites, and that’s a slightly different game.

So what decks am I running I hear you not ask but I need a really bad segway. I’ve got about 4 functioning decks at the moment, though I don’t really consider any of them to be ‘complete’. I began working on a Six Samurai deck rather early; which is almost complete save for a couple of commons I never got. To get the cards for that deck I built up a simple Dark World deck, easily made considering the game gives you the base when you register your first duelpass, it works really well, but it still needs a couple of cards. And then I realised that I had quite a few Cloudian cards sitting in my collection, which I’ve put to good use as my third deck. Though, again, it’s really out of action at the moment since it’s missing some key cards on the monster support side. And there’s the deck that I built last night, based around the card Armed Samurai Ben Kai (affectionately known as “Ben-Gay” in the circle of people that don’t use him) which workes wonders in best of 1 games, and should work better when I get a much needed card drawing engine in there. And finally, the deck that everyone has - the Dick Deck, because the theme of it is to throw synergy out the window and shove every good card in your collection together because you want easy soulless wins, like the Dick that you are.

And onto the final question of the post - Why not MTGO? Quite simply, the answer is that it costs more, has less active players at any given time, and I’d rater play MTG sitting across from someone. And considering your avarage Yugioh player is a hyperactive 8 year old, I’d rather not sit across from that.

Considering that I haven’t posted in quite a while, I’m going to give you 2 videos today. First up we have the Premier episode of Yugioh Abridged, something that I’ve meant to post about a billion times before. It’s freaking awesome, and less than 5 minutes long! Check out more episodes HERE.

And next we have an updated teaser trailer for the upcoming Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, formally known as the Naruto 2008 Project… or something. It looks GORGEOUS! Day 1 for me!

Well, I’m off to prepare for tomorrow’s pre-release, which I’m not exactly head-over-heels excited for, I’d imagine it’s all the online dueling I’ve been doing. Impressions when I get back to Fundee, which should be about this time tomorrow.

Fantastic posing greed