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Name: Canicus
State: Texas
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Interests: Religion, Ancient Texts, Computers, Video Games, Philosophy, Dead Languages, Comic Books
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11/23/2005
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|  I would like to note that today is the day we remember the real Santa Clause. Yes, there is a real man behind the legend. He was not a fat tub of lard. In fact, he was rather zealous for Christ. His real name was indeed Nicholas (hence the name Santa Clause is a slur from his real name "Saint Nicholas"). He left no writings, nothing but the records of his charity. He took care of his flock and gave to others without reserve. He especially loved children.
He lived in Myra. He is probably beloved, because while he was a firm defender of the Christian faith, he was not a mighty exegete like St. John Chrysostom, nor did he write bountiful volumes like St. Gregory Nazianzus. He did live around the same time, though. He attended Nicea, and my favorite story took place at that time: He became too zealous struck Arius at at the council. Consequently the Emperor threw him in prison for it, but the Theotokos intervened and sent a vision to several bishops and even Constantine. St. Nicholas was promptly released.
As a youth, he fled from the decadence and corruption around him. He retreated to Jerusalem to pray in the desert. After a while, he returned and came to Myra. He was subsequently elected bishop. He fed his flock, attended to their needs, and he practiced unbridled generosity. One seductive story is that he saw some girls who needed to marry, but their father was holding back. He couldn't give them a dowry. St. Nicholas would then sneak up at night and toss money into their stockings as they were hung out to dry. He did this nightly, and eventually the girls father managed to catch him. From this we developed our tradition of having children put out stockings at night (they have now become separated from their original form: socks). Eventually this practice, like so many practices surrounding the man were moved to Christmas. Still other stories accentuate how much he loved children. Children in my church actually receive gifts on this day to commemorate this (though this practice is not universal). Since he would sell episcopal goods to feed the poor, some places associate him with pawn shops.
There are many legends surrounding the man. I can guarantee they aren't all true; he left no written record and some have duplicate forms attributed to multiple persons. We cannot know which ones are historical and which are not. They can still serve a role in teaching, and they were associated with him early on account of his real holiness. His death is generally dated to 330 though I have seen other dates (this date, like many things, is uncertain). We do have most of his body intact, and his face has actually been reconstructed from his remains. He was short and had a peculiar nose.
People really want to put "Christ back into Christmas". I think this is the wrong approach. We have removed Christmas from Christ. We must put it back into Christ not the other way around. St. Nicholas is a way to do this outside of other things (such as restoring the Nativity Fast so that it's not months of unbridled celebration but one with preparation beforehand). Santa Clause is an enduring , and expanding, element of Christmas. What would happen if we replaced stories about "Saint Nick" with stories about the real "Saint Nicholas"? What would happen if we put a real person up for children to emulate? We do not need to jettison Santa Clause. We do not need to talk about him as satanic. We need to remove the godless corruptions that have caused us to forget his story. After all, it is a small variation to stop telling children about a fat cookie eating reindeer riding old man giving gifts to telling them they give gifts to remember the life in Christ of a man that fasted, saved children, and defended the faith. None of the practices need change, but they become far less commercialized. It is a testament to the man that he endures at all. Such a thing doesn't happen often and requires true greatness.
I'm 31. I still believe in Santa Clause ;).
Ἁγίε Νικόλαε προσεύχεσθε ἡμῶν. | | |
| I am obviously going to have to be careful in writing this. There are things in this that I shouldn't discuss to readily. Properly, it belongs to the inner life of the Church, not to its proclamation. The Discipline of the Secret in the Early Church severely curtailed discussion of the subject with those outside the Church, but things are different today. First, the cat is out of the bag. The Mystery and what it is are widely known (and, sadly, ridiculed). Second, it is the largest point of contention among the various sects and greatest hurdle for the Church. It really must be discussed in evangelism today, and that, to put it mildly, is a minefield lest I (or anyone else) overstep themselves.
I'm putting this up, because there have been a series of posts I've been reading on it, and I'll suggest this post to the site, hence an ulterior motive. Everything but my comments have been Protestant or Roman Catholic. There's only so much one can explain in a comment box. This will be long. The discussion, though, covers the periphery and doesn't cut to the heart of the issue. This question is a question about the nature of Christ, His mission, how He accomplishes it, and how it relates to us. It must be discussed in that context, not in the isolated manner it has been.
I'll start with Scripture, then move to the Fathers, likely in a later post (this will be quite long and still gloss over the subject).
No doctrine exists in isolation. Every dogma of Christianity (all dogmas, as an aside, are christological) relates to another dogma. This is no different in the Eucharist.
The root questions are "Who is Jesus?" "What did He come to do?" "How did it take place?". Those questions have to be answered first. Starting at the question of the Eucharist is a mistake. It can only be understood after the proclamation of the Gospel has been properly grasped. All things must be done in order just like a Church service must be done in good order.
The first, and most important, question is the perennial "Who do you say that I am?" to which St. Matthew's Gospel records Peter saying, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God" (Mt. 16.13ff.) to which Jesus blessed him. This confession tells us Who and What Jesus is.
He is the Christ, the ultimate and archetypal Anointed One of God. Every prophet, every king, everything that is good is a type of Christ. For what is good is anointed by God to do good work.
He is the "Son of the Living God". If you find the son of something, what is it? It is whatever its father was. The son of a sheep is a sheep. The son of a cat is a cat. Each organism gives birth to another after its own kind. He is the Son of God. He is the same thing as God (the whole point of John 1.1, and the absence of the article is very important, for He is not the Father; He is the same thing as the Father).
He is the "Son of the Living God" in particular. God is the God of the living, not of the dead, to paraphrase Mk. 12.27. There is an old hymn, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death". It is very important. Christ is alive, corruption and death have no power over Him. They never did. God is the Son of a woman, and thus human. When He died, His divinity could not perish and banished death. As a man, He was righteous, and God would not leave Him to die as a righteous man, thus death overstepped its bounds and forfeited its claims (the point of St. Peter's sermon in Acts 2, which has nothing to do with Jesus acting as a substitute for God's wrath).
This is the heart of the proclamation. The life Christ gives, though is, in Greek, zoe (I would type Greek characters, but in a post this long, I don't want to use the Xanga editor; I'll hit C-w and lose it. My gvim build on this box doesn't support unicode though; I need to compile my own binary and solve that problem). He is not granting simply bios. This life has a specific definition: that we may know the only true God and Jesus whom He sent (Jn. 17.3).
In the Synoptics, this takes the form of the "Kingdom of God" or the "Kingdom of Heaven". More tantalizingly, this life is granted to us in that we will be made "sons of God" (Mt. 5.9). Refer back to what it meant that Jesus is the "Son of God". He makes us by grace what He is by nature. He is the vine, we are the branches (Jn. 15). He intends for us to be one with each other and Him in the same manner He is one with God (Jn. 17.21). This means we become, by grace, "participants in the nature of God" (2 Pet. 1.4).
We, quite literally, become divine, little christs. This is the eternal life He offers. Salvation is not simply being "justified" before God. It is quite literally being made righteous. Both are legitimate translations of dikaioo. Translators often make the decision on a words meaning for us, but there are other ways to look at it. "Justify" is a hang-over from the Vulgate which translated it as iustificio, which is a legitimate translation covering both senses. Unfortunately the English does not and consequently alters how we think of salvation so that it is more legalistic than the authors intended.
The analogy for this used in the Church Fathers (especially later ones) is one of a sword. An iron sword, by itself, is dull, dark, and cold. Place it in the fire, and it becomes hot, and may even glow. If it is removed from the fire, it loses the fire's properties. So it is with us. We become like Christ if we remain in Him but lose it if we leave Him. He is what He is by nature. We can never be that by nature, but we can by grace.
It is here that we get to the Eucharist. The Holy Spirit descends down on the Bread and Wine and makes it the Body and Blood of Christ (not necessarily meaning that it ceases to be bread and wine). If the Spirit is not God, then He cannot do this. If grace is created (e.g. simply "unmerited favor"), it cannot do this. If the bread and wine do not become the Body and Blood, then it cannot do this. Only that which is divine can confer the divine. The corrupted elements of this world cannot do so until they are restored (incidentally this is one of the reasons apostolic succession is so important in the Early Church's beliefs).
Because of the nature of this theology, the Greek word for "sacrament" is mysterion. We get our word "mystery" from this, and it means this. It also denotes a ritual that confers an experience of the divine, sometimes divinity itself. This is why Greek "mystery religions" are so-called: they had a "mystery" at their center. In general, most such religions, including Christianity, considered it important and sacred and were reticent to talk about it. This is why some Latin authors, both Christian and pagan, would use the term secretum for it (from which we derive "secret") and shared a similar range of meaning, but with the added impact of "secret". It was not synonymous with the Greek word kryptos, "hidden" or "secret".
That is a lot of information on the meaning of words, but it is important. Our thinking is dominated by our vocabulary and its meanings. Some of our hyper-modern philosophers refer to this as the "tyranny of the word". We can only think about things the way our words construct them. It's very hard to break out of their classifications, and this can be deadly in theology. I could line up many examples, but I'll simply refer to St. Basil who insisted that sloppy use of words is one of the core causes of all heresies (On the Holy Spirit 1.1ff.). I had to talk about it. Since our language is so heavily influenced by Latin, I also had to discuss it.
With this in mind, consider the words of Jesus in a new light:
At the most obvious level, we have Christ's words: "This is my Body which is broken for you for the remission of sins" and "Take, eat. This is My Body" and "Drink it all of you, for this is My Blood of the New Covenant which is shed for many, for the remission of sins". This makes sense in light of the above. How, exactly, does His shedding of blood remit sins?
Starting in John 5, Jesus heals on the Sabbath by forgiving sins (incidentally the Greek word for "save" sometimes means "heal", such as Mark's account of the woman with an issue of blood, e pistis sou sesoken se, "Your faith has saved you" or "made you well"). Jesus moves into a discussion on His unity with the Father. Next we move to the feeding of five thousand (Jn. 6.1-15). Jesus multiplied and gave them loaves. The feeding of the five thousand is a type of the Eucharist, for few loaves feed so many just as one Man's flesh will feed many. The Eucharistic connection exists in all accounts of this feeding as well as the four thousand. It is most explicit in John ("let he who eyes to see see"). Still following John, we come to Jesus' claiming to be the bread from heaven that gives eternal life. The discussion escalates to the point where He declares "I am the Bread of Life! The one who comes to Me will not be hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty" (v. 35) and "Amen, amen, I tell you; unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in yourselves. The one who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day...The one who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood dwells in Me, and I in him. As the Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; whoever eats Me will also live because of Me." (vv. 53-56). Most people took Him literally and abandoned Him. He did not correct them.
St. Paul shares this view. He says "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a sharing in the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a sharing in the Body of Christ? Because there is one loaf of bread, we, who are many, are one body because we all partake of the one loaf of bread" (I Cor. 10.14-17). He goes on in following verses to speak about the fact that we shouldn't mix communion with Christ with the communion with demons. In 11.23-34, he reiterates the tradition and explains how unworthy communion has killed many ("fallen asleep"). This makes no sense if it were a symbol, but it makes perfect sense if the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ. Further, 10.14-17 blatantly state that the Church is one, because it takes part in one Bread. This Bread, Christ, is what actualizes the Church. Without the Eucharist, there is no Church. Conversely without the Church, there is no Eucharist. The word "Church", ecclesia in Greek, means simply "assembly" or "gathering". Specifically, it is an assembly around the Eucharist.
St. Paul speaks about it also as a mystery in I Tim. 3.16. "Great is the Mystery of godliness: God was revealed in the flesh, vindicated in spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed in the world, and received up in glory". This immediately follows his declaration that the Church is the "house of God", the "pillar and foundation of truth" (v. 15). It is this, because at its center it has this great Mystery. It is the Real Presence of Christ that will keep it this way in spite of men and schisms. Hades will never triumph (Mt. 16.18). This language of Paul's wouldn't make sense without the Real Presence.
Starting in 7 (well, really in 5) on into 9 and 10, the author of Hebrews goes on to say that Jesus is a high priest. He is superior to the priests of the Old Covenant, because He doesn't die. If He is a high priest, this implies that there are other priests, or else He could not be a high priest. ierevs, "priest", denotes someone who offers up a sacrifice, so if Jesus is a high priest and there must be priests, then the priests offer a sacrifice, the Eucharist. Jesus' office is superior to the Old Covenant's as well, because He doesn't die, where they have (He conquered death). Jesus' Body and Blood could confer and accomplish a remission of sins that the body and blood of goats could not. His mingling of our natures and sacrifice enables Him to stand in the breach, to mediate for us, where nobody else ever could. For this reason, there is one offering that is valid throughout all time, Christ, and no other offering can ever be made. This enables us to enter into the heavenly holy place with boldness, this heavenly place is none other than God Himself. Consequently, as St. Peter asserts, we are like Israel in that we are a holy priesthood, but our priesthood is superior, even as our sacrifice is superior (2 Pet. 2.5). Consequently our "priest" merely officiates in the common sacrifice inasmuch as those in the Old Covenant did. All Israelites were priests even as they had priests, after all. For this reason, St. Paul speaks about his offering a service up to God as a priest (Rom. 15.16, and it explicitly refers to one who offers a sacrifice, ierourgeo).
This is long enough. I need to discuss the Fathers at another time, and I am also quite tired. I need to get ready for the service this morning as well. I need to apologize. I dislike it, to put it mildly, when people use Greek as a magic wand (nine times out of ten, they only have Strong's Concordance and no adequate knowledge of the language). It is an abuse of the Scripture, an abuse of people, and a disrespect for the language and the Spirit. I used a lot of Greek and Latin here. It was necessary, but I know most people cannot verify what I'm saying, though if they try, I pray to God they go to a good lexicon and commentary and not to Strong's. This is something I try to stay away from unless necessary. It is necessary here, since so much of our "church language" on this subject must be deconstructed and looked at in light of the earliest language we have the Church's writings in. I hope I didn't seem to be using Greek as a magical wand (or to be using some inferior third-rate source). If I did, I have to apologize. Since I speak, and have often spoken, against this, it would be quite the sin for me. Of course, if I don't ever use my studies in Greek, Latin, and the Early Church, then it was a waste of time. It's a catch twenty-two in that sense :).
Having said that, the discussions of late around this subject start on the periphery. The RC doctrine of transubstantiation started with this doctrine and still includes most, if not all, of it. It simply added Aristotelian metaphysics (IMO a mistake). Protestant views of the Eucharist likewise stem from the answer to "Who do you say that I am?" and how this ties into what He does. Consequently all the discussions have skirted around the issue. The question isn't simply about some ritual, it cuts to the heart of who Christ is and what He did, the very heart of the Gospel itself. Unless those lines of revelation are connected, it is a disconnected doctrine at best, irrelevant at worst. Christians are to preach Christ and Christ crucified; if the Eucharist doesn't tie directly to that, what use is it?
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| I've completed my first playthrough Dragon Age: Origins. I did every sidequest I found (one exception: I couldn't find one of twelve letters). This is, of course, only for a human noble rogue. There are other origin stories and whatnot. It is also based on the PC version (the console versions are different, easier and more twitchy). I clocked in about 90 hours, which never includes reloads and whatnot. I now have enough time on the clock to review it :).
Let's go with the good:
The game has a great story. I liked the enemy. The darkspawn, instead of feeling like a traditional villain, felt more like a force of nature. I think that was intentional, and it added a good feel to the game. Traditional villainy came from other areas, and I won't mention who the main antagonist beside them, lest I give spoilers.
The controls were normally spot on. It's a refined version of the NWN and KOTOR controls. This means, of course, that the controls were good. I know that Bioware didn't do NWN2, but they and Obsidian share a lot, and DA doesn't have the same number of spotty bugs as NWN2. There were no game-breaking bugs at all (something that really dropped my opinion of NWN2).
The characters were enjoyable for the most part. Yes, they were stereo-typical, but most characters are, including the ones we really like. Shale, though, was the best. It was basically HK-47 with a new skin and new style. If you buy the game, download the Stone Prisoner. It really is that simple. Since Shale was basically HK-47 it was basically the best character since HK-47, though HK-47 is still better; he should get RPG character of the decade. If you like Star Wars and RPGs, you owe it to yourself to buy Knights of the Old Republic for either the PC or Xbox. You will not be disappointed.
The game also struck a balance between old-school difficulty and new-school ease. There are some fights that are infuriating. There is one fight you do against a certain Revanant that you must chase down that really seals the deal. It killed me many times (I will slaughter it the next time around since I know the engine and know what its weaknesses are). Some of the ambushes, at least early one, felt like, well, ambushes. Rather than being "back attacked", you found yourself at the center of a cross-roads with fireball hurling mages, ogres, and whatnot. They could be lethal, though a lot of pausing fixes the problem.
The graphics are upper-end for PC RPGs. Unlike the FF crowd, Bioware throws most of their effort into making an enjoyable and interactive world. FF focuses on graphics and cut scenes. Consequently, this doesn't have the shine (or the budget) of a FF. It has a better story, better dialogue, and more freedom in character development, though, as a trade-off.
This brings me to the charcter creation system. No, it's not as complex as DnD (and consequently games like NWN). It is, however, decently complex. You can still build a variety of builds. One aspect of the system I really like is that armor acts as DR, not a bonus making you harder to hit. That comes almost exclusively from DEX. The system is simple. It's a video game RPG that is now distantly related to its TT ancestors. It inevitably involves less rules, since the game only knows what it's been told can happen. It is simplified in a good way (e.g. thieve's tools were irrelevant in DnD games, since a good thief build never really needed them; I never touched them in NWN. They are gone in DA).
The dialogue tree works as it always has: lots of dialogues with branching options depending on what you select.
The morality system is a wonderful change. They don't have a paragon/renegade scale now. You don't see the consequences of your actions immediately. So, if you want to play a straight-up good guy the first time, it's a lot harder. You can't always just reload (unless you want to lose ten hours in some cases). I made some mistakes for a straight good guy, but that added to the charm for a first time play (they won't happen the second time through).
It also has a backstory that is very intriguing. Fereldon is based on the "Holy Roman Empire". Orlais is based on France. The Tevinter Imperium on Rome (and quite likely the existing Imperium will be modeled on the later Empire in the sequels). The game draws extensively on the Medieval Christianity (though certainly remodeled for fantasy), Islam (for the Qun), and paganism. I know enough history to know, "Hey, that's a backhanded reference to this event", and these little nuggets were thoroughly enjoyable. It also made a world rich in depth. It didn't have the rote sameness everywhere that most RPGs had. It felt like you were in a small portion of a big world. This is very good.
Weaknesses:
The party AI is terrible. It has a system to customize AI according to triggers...but it doesn't have enough triggers. I couldn't find "If target moves away, pursue, KILL", so if an enemy was knocked away or moved away, my melee guys would stand there and do nothing unless another trigger kicked in "If enemy is attacking mage: KILL". A few more switches would solve problems like this. It led to some interesting situations. Sometimes switches remained active even if I deleted them.
Another is that sometimes even if you tell your party member to do something or a swtich is active, they do nothing. For example, I told Shale to tank the archdemon. Shale stands there. I click on Shale, right click on the archdemon. Shale stands there. I finally move Shale next to the archdemon, and she responds. I then tell her to attack, she attacks. No trigger helped me there, and manually intervening did absolutely nothing.
Another problem is a mage-kill attitude in the NPCs. I like it to occasionally target my mages. I do not like it to be the norm. My tanks had as many "threaten"/"taunt" options as I could give and still couldn't draw enemies away. The game says that enemies target those with heaviest armor. I equipped Alistair with the juggernaught armor (the heaviest in the game). They still ignored him. It says that "enemies will target those who do the most damage to them", but they target my dedicated healer when I haven't used her to do any damage. Every once in a while, and especially boss fights, this can be interesting (it made my fights with the Revanants very interesting). Making my healer run from every common thug gets old. Fast. AOE spells from Morrigan only do so much without hurting you, and even if I wiped the floor with enemies using her, they still target the healer. I want a patch. That can ruin a night.
Another problem is drops. Early on, I had to go long periods without drops. Unless you build a mage yourself, this leaves you with a couple of potions and absolutely no healing. That can be a problem when fighting mobs. I had four potions, and no healer, when I went to Redcliffe (note to the reader: do not go to Redcliffe until you have a healer or enough potions). After I got my healer, ironically, it started dropping like it was Christmas o_o.
The last boss fight was horrid. It was easy as long as you micromanaged. If you didn't, then you lost characters fast to mobs. Long, drawn-out, tedious fights that with micromanagement are easy but without which kill your party are bad design. The fight with the archdemon is the low-point of the whole game. It's not just a let-down, it's probably the most aggrevating and least entertaining fight altogether, and it isn't so because of difficulty. I could respect that.
Summary:
I give this game an easy 9.5. It's worth it, aggrevations aside. The aggrevations are specific and apply to specific circumstances. The game's strengths far outshine its weaknesses. Its backstory even gives me lots of room to speculate about its fictional history and obsess over details. This caters to me a lot. It's also the first game in a planned trilogy. Alongside ME2, I'm going to have my plate full of RPGs in the future :).
Now I'm working on an Elven mage that I'll tweak into a spirit healer/arcane warrior and...cone of cold dangit. Next I'm going to draw up a Dwarven noble fighter built around a templar/reaver combo. I hope they don't get rid of the unlock bug I discovered in the future; it'll kill that option. After that, I'll know the system well enough to go on insane difficulty and brutalize the engine with a power-build :).
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| It's amazing what a little information can do. I still don't like Tekken 6's "scenario campaign" (but granting me a control type toggle instead of "press to free move" would change that substantially). However, I spent $10 for a noob's guide, and that's what I am, a noob, when it comes to this game.
I've spent a lot of time on fighting games, but they've almost always been 2D. I've spent only a superficial amount of time on 3D fighters, and the ones I have weren't like Tekken. Virtua Fighter, for instance, didn't punish my SF-type muscle memory, and it didn't seem to require too much in the way of novel ways to move the stick. Soul Calibur is a button masher, so I never bothered to learn much.
Tekken, however, has felt odd. Its system is completely foreign to me, and I never could figure out why. I couldn't manage to command move up and down. Some inputs came out one way one time and another way another time. It made no freaking sense. I knew I was correctly hitting db4 with Lili, for instance, and sometimes I got a low kick, sometimes a slo-mo kick. The input, to my hands, was exactly the same.
Then there's the boss. I usually figure out how to rape a boss in a fighting game pretty quickly. They all have gimicks that one can exploit. Some of them are harder, some are easier, but if you know the tricks and the engine, you can consistently beat them. They almost never have a tool that isn't available to anyone; it may be modded and suped up, but it's there for everyone. When I got to Tekken's boss, however, I was slaughtered with most characters. I simply couldn't figure out what to do. How was he blocking and striking? There were two ways to respond to this: A). Figure out how to beat him (cussing him is optional, and I usually fulfill that requirement) or B). Whining about how cheap he is and giving up (cussing usually goes with the territory here). In fact I did the former recently (while proclaiming my inevitable victory).
Well, the guide told me a few things. First, I know now why the controls made no freaking sense. The game considers neutral an input in some commands. To side step, I didn't need to hit u,u. I needed to hit u,ntrl,u. The game sees a difference in this. Other fighting games I've played don't really do so. No wonder I couldn't make any sense of it. Another thing is that a directional tap with a button and holding a direction with a button are considered different inputs. Yep, that explained why some moves came out one way and some another. Some moves have built in parry properties so that they bat away moves at a certain level. Yep, there's the blocking while attacking.
If I went into training mode for each ending I wanted to unlock (for 50+ characters), it would take a long time. The in-game command list doesn't tell me where something hits, or what bonus hit properties it has. This information is important in a game that largely revolves around juggling. The guide gives me this information.
With that knowledge, I was finally able to change my game. Naturally, I went to play that cheap boss again (obviously this requires I not play Dragon Age for a little bit, which is quite a feat right now) but this time with some inkling of what I'm doing (I still don't know most mechanics). First game: boss hands down (perfect on the second round). This repeats for about four matches, because I'm trying to do one of the combos listed in the book. I say, "Why am I doing it this way? I need to juggle his butt". *Looks up launchers* First launcher strat failed. Second had some success, so I retried it. The next time, I dominated the match with free-style combos. A little side-stepping, and placing the launcher as the second or third hit, and the boss goes down (he stops blocking, apparently after about three hits; that's something I couldn't have exploited prior to this information).
This game suddenly got a lot easier and a lot clearer. The guide is for noobs. It doesn't have important information like frame data, but I can't expect it to. All of this information is available online (and in a more accurate format). However, then I would either have to run between my comptur and 360 or print out tons of paper, which wouldn't be organized as well as the $10 strat guide. It doesn't need frame data in a basic introduction, though I wish it had it. I can't exploit that yet, and I'll need to settle on a character to do so. It's certianly helped my game out despite its weaknesses.
I've also noticed that what I thought was the in-game engine was just very poor animation, not the in-game engine. I noticed this when I beat it with Lili and Jack. Their animation was very, very good. So I went back and watched the first movies, and it's not machinima but pre-rendered CGI. The problem is that it wasn't done as well as the others or what I'd seen in the past, so I assumed it was the in-game engine; it was capable of doing the most obvious effects. Of course, this sort of thing is the pitfall of having so many characters. | | |
| Here's another fun series of vs. matches:
The Daleks (assume their most powerful versions, no PIS, no factional rivalry; the old unified non-individualized personalities) vs...
Three Daleks are dropped into the fringes of the Star Wars universe at the peak of the Sith power under Exar Kun. The Daleks have all they need to start manufacturing their kind again, but haven't built their time traveling tech at the beginning. Both Sith and Jedi have premonitions that they're coming and a vague idea of what they can do. This means they both go to kill the Daleks at all costs, and both factions can agree not to fight each other for a bit (the threat of extinction can be pretty persuasive). They do not know where they landed, though. Can they open up a can on the Daleks before the Daleks rebuild themselves?
The Dalek Empire vs. the Federation Time Corps.
The Dalek Empire vs. Species 8472
vs. the Tenchi-verse
vs. the doctor team: the Doctor, Dr. Doom, Dr. Richards, Dr. Banner (Yes, I know this is overkill; it's intentional). | | |
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