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canicus
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Name: Canicus
State: Texas
Gender: Male
Interests: Religion, Ancient Texts, Computers, Video Games, Philosophy, Dead Languages, Comic Books
Occupation: Other
Industry: Other
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Member Since:
11/23/2005
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| It's too early for me to give a review, but Dragon Age Origins looks like it's going to live up to its hype. Setting aside Bioware's now nightmarish site layout for buying things (EA made them revise their rather sensible previous design evidently along EA's braindead standards), the game is great. One very, very heartening thing about the game is that it takes less juice than Neverwinter Nights 2. Why is this heartening? The game has been in development since at least 2003. Usually when that's the case, the engine keeps getting rewritten, and, well, the game doesn't really get 6+ years of work. Since we have an old engine, that means this game really does represent 6+ years of work. It shows in even the intro.
It also has a dog. If there were really mabari warhounds, Cody would give up on Mastiffs :). I like its description, it is "intelligent enough to speak but wise enough not to".
The game is also displaying Bioware's signature humor. At the first fight (this isn't a spoiler), you fight...rats. How many RPGs do you have to fight freaking rats? Well, right afterwards, an NPC makes the comment that this is like the start of one of his grandfather's bad adventure stories. It always starts with rats. How appropriate for a game aiming to be an old school RPG :D.
I also got my Pathfinder Bestiary in. I've been needing that. I found out what the new undead traits are and when sneak attack applies. The answer was surprising: it always applies. There is no SA immunity at all listed in the bestiary. I need to spend some time now getting to know my new monsters. | | |
| The year is, for all intents and purposes, over, at least for me. The releases of Tekken 6 and Dragon Age: Origins have finished the releases this year I care about. I don't really watch TV (don't own one). I don't go to the movies. My entertainment pretty much consists of books and video games. Naturally, I keep track of what I like.
Next year, however, I have some big games to look forward to.
At the top of the list is Super Street Fighter IV. I'm a Street Fighter nerd, I admit it. I'm looking forward to the buffs Ken is going to receive. He got nerfed rather badly in SFIV, and it looks like Capcom is going to correct that. Crazy kicks? With frame advantage on overheads, please? Faster shoryu and walkspeed? These would be nice.
Mass Effect 2 is coming out at the beginning of the year. This is number 2. Mass Effect is my favorite Bioware RPG. Bioware is my favorite RPG company. Mass Effect 2, by all accounts, seems to outdo the original in every category. There goes a few hundred hours.
King of Fighters XIII. Yeah XII sucked, but it's not so bad now that the patch is out. Further, I have always liked KOF (I'm going to get Mai back...yay). The gameplay in XII was solid, but it had no options to it. I suspect SNK screwed us over and released what was, in effect, a beta for XIII. I hope that this is the case, and I hope they realize they can't get away with it again. All I can say to SNK is "Come on, get serious!"; I'll still be there for now.
Diablo III. I don't know much about this one, and I can't even be certain it'll be out this year, but it's Diablo. It's going to rock.
BlazBlue Continuum Shift. It looks to be basically BB Champion Edition. BB was a really good fighter, and I hope that it turns out that CS keeps the same level of story and gameplay. Sure, it was lopsided, but it was fun. I hope Rachel isn't nerfed too much.
I am hoping for a sneaky Third Strike release on Xbox Live Arcade, but I won't hold my breath. Capcom could lose money on that.
If FFXIII corrects the series' mistakes after VII I might go for it, but we'll see.
Those games are the ones I am most excited about. There are others, of course, but that's enough entertainment for most of the year (the fighters really give a high replay value). I have to wonder what everyone else looks forward to (I have a pretty good idea with Chris :p). | | |
| I answered a poll on Facebook, and it got me into a little bit of a scuffle. The poll was whether the Bible is dangerous. I answered "Maybe". It certainly can be used, and has been used, to promote some very evil agendas, but it can also be used to oppose them.
Generally polls like that arise from our wonderful new atheists who want to prove how bad religion is. So, I put up a comment to the effect that "Yes, the Bible can be used for wicked ends, but it can be used to condemn them. Contrast that with contemporary secularism, which has no means to oppose these things other than 'I don't want to'". I figured I might as well comment on the opposing ideology as well.
Naturally, it invoked a firestorm. I'm now engaged in a debate with a fellow who seems to approach this from a fundamentalist mindset, and not a religious fundamentalist mindset. Part of this I can excuse. I wasn't the clearest in the world, and words like "secularism" have meanings that shift in the sand quite a bit. Semantics are important. He also doesn't know my own convictions on these things. There are few people who are more intrinsically opposed to religious intrusion into government than me, but I'm not absolute about it; I'm just a minimalist. So, no doubt, he has fashioned me as some sort of religious zealot. Of course, I feel the same way about his religious bents.
His argument has generally gone as follows: a). Religion causes harm more than good in government. b). Religion is the cause of most of the atrocities in history. c). Secularism is generally good. He later fleshes this point out so as to assert that secularism is simply the absence of religion from government and the non-interference of government in religion in response to my assertion that Cambodia and the USSR are good examples of bad secular governments (this I stand beside).
Of course, I call foul on all of these. Starting with the latter, he asserted that France and Sweden are prime examples. I still don't understand why it took me pressing it three times for him to register "Oh crap, there's that little Reign of Terror" and try to deal with it. I also cry foul, because they aren't wholly religiously neutral: there are laws on speech at the very minimum and France has laws on religious dress, and we have those a plenty in contemporary Europe. Secularism isn't as neat and tidy as he would assert, and it certainly doesn't justify disallowance of the Communist nations or the Reign of Terror.
I take issue with the first two on a principle everyone here knows very well about me: government is inherently violent. It is inherently so (In fact, I got into a debate about this not too long ago with a fellow on Dann's FB). This isn't some theory or metaphysical postulation of mine. It is a simple observation much like saying an orange is round. Most violence attributed to religion in history comes at the behest of government plain and simple. It really amazes me people almost systematically overlook government's violent nature and seem to see it as something angelic so that its abuses always come from somewhere else. The tendency is near-universal: Christian, pagan, Muslim, atheist, whatever. It truly is jaw-dropping how hard it is to get people to acknowledge this simple fact. Usually they run in circles, ever-retreating before the undeniable evidence, but never willing to speak badly of the institution.
This fact is also the single most damning piece of evidence regarding the modern secular nation. Modern secular theory has no source for ethics in itself. It appeals or seeks nothing transcendent. It is, in fact, based on a metaphysic of violence, despite its claims to have avoided metaphysical speculations. It's not so much that secularism must succumb to violence, but that it has no inherent reason to resist it. All its resistance is based on arbitrary, emotional reasons and is not rational. For instance, its current tendencies are rooted in horror at what occurred in WWII and the history that's been built up around it (whether it's all true or not). When that horror passes, and it is passing, it won't be the same Europe anymore, assuming Europe still exists.
It can also sustain its current status quo through apathy and hedonism. After all, Huxeley's Brave New World correctly predicted some of the totalitarian tendencies in our world today. We are given all sorts of pleasures and as long as we're superficially happy we are expected to tow the line in other areas. Increasingly we lose important freedoms in exchange for fulfilling hedonistic desires. This can help placate much of the modern secular states (not just European ones), but it can't last, and it, too, shall pass.
Of course, the Nazi card was played. He pointed out that Hitler used the Bible and asserted that Hitler couldn't have succeeded without it. This is a rank historical error. Hitler could easily have succeeded without it. He didn't arrive at his conclusions from the Bible. He did use it, but it was the desperation of the people that drove it more than anything, and that was really all that was needed. Everything else was a circumstantial tool. It also overlooks the actual history of European antisemitism, which actually predates Christianity. It was already firmly rooted in European thought before Christianity ever came along; the latter just proved congenial to continuing it.
It really does amaze me how much the modern secular paradigm is based on a) unsound logic, b) faulty history, c) binary thinking, and d) the vilification of its opposition (in this case usually Christianity). It is shallow and trite, but it's so easy to sell one's product on sound-bytes and thirty-second distortions of history, and with our current culture it's hard to explain to people that there's more going on in $INSERT_ERA than what the secularist presents. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, our education needs a). critical thinking classes (i.e. philosophy), b). better history, c). a return to classical literature. Most of this would, in time, help to curb this sort of garbage reasoning.
*sigh* Fundamentalism is tiring in the secular arena. | | |
| It's my vacation, and I've gotten to play through ODST. Since I'm limited in time, I played it on legendary from the get-go. The game is quite fun. It is also quite flawed. It needed a few more months of development.
Let me sum up its strengths. First, the single player story is good. It's a nice change of pace. Halo's stories have almost always been something like "Look, the Covenant are about to fire a Halo and wipe out all sentient life, and the Flood are about to get out." Wash, rinse, repeat. It was a little different in Halo Wars, but it was a radically different kind of game. It wouldn't make any sense to repeat that there. It would've worked here to some degree, but they didn't do it. The original has the best story, the second was enjoyable, but the story portion of both three and wars is simply forgettable. This one, while not the best, is at least a very good and ambitious story again.
It also has some new ideas: you don't get a motion tracker, they have disguised shields (it's "stamina" now), and Cortana's workalike isn't a smartbutt hologram. These were all great ideas, and they were enjoyable. The firefight idea is a good idea that they ganked from Gears 2, and it works. You fight wave after wave of Covenant, and the skulls keep getting turned on. This adds to replay value, because it is effectively survival. I like this. It's hard, and I might buy it for that.
I'm rather glad I played it through on legendary the first time. I didn't know what was coming, and I was frequently caught off-guard, with the wrong weapons, and cut off from the right ones. I had to make do with what I had. Of course, since I only fought, effectively, brutes, jackels, and grunts, this wasn't a problem unless I encountered a hunter. Sometimes, however, I got a trap sprung on me that I didn't know was coming, and I wouldn't have the ammo. Yes, that was fun trying to find a way around the problem. For instance, I got caught in one scene in the center of a crossway in a building without the best guns (I was already making do). Soon, I found myself defending against wave after wave of Covenant running through the door. I could hide, but if I peeked out I might get caught by brute shots from two different directions. The key to that scene was to abandon my plasma pistol/carbine combo in favor of a plasma rifle/carbine combo. I also encountered some fights where I didn't even have much cover at all. It was very fun in that respect.
For the most part the level design was often a blast. There was one sniper level that was an absolute blast. If I could kill my companion to go it alone, increase the number of enemies, and so on, I would. That level was simply fun. It was one of the best sniper levels I've played, and I've played a lot of games.
The flaws, however, run deep. It's a short campaign, but I understand why in this case. The flaws are different. First, it's buggy. Yes, buggy. Bungie usually produces good, clean, stuff. Not this time. Four times I was checkpointed in a situtation such as being caught in the blast of a scarab or in the sights of three snipers. Halo has always had quirky checkpointing, but this was another level of problems. The closest I've come to it is getting one in Halo 1 while I was falling off a cliff. It is infuriating to have to restart, over and over hoping that maybe the snipers would miss or you won't take enough damage from the scarab to kill you. That's all I could do. I was often stuck for a couple of hours retrying. I like difficulty, but that is not difficulty; that is a design flaw. There's a big difference. This sort of difficulty isn't ejoyable and mars the enjoyably difficult scenes.
Why didn't I just restart the mission? Because I had encountered too many bugs already. That brings me to bug #2. I occasionally lost my save data. I would save and quit. When I reloaded later, it was as if I hadn't played at all. This didn't happen much, but why would I want to risk it? Spending a lot of time and finding out none of those checkpoints were saved was infuriating. Why, Bungie, why?
The HP wasn't always consistant. I encountered this twice. One time an enemy didn't respond unless I got close. He was invulnerable. Shots passed through him, sniper bullets didn't hit him, grenades went through him. If I shot him from the distance, he didn't respond. If I got close, he shot me. I had to go through him. Of course, just my luck, he had a fuel rod canon. One time, though, he suddenly started responding (yes, losing to an invulnerable enemy will piss you off). He died in two shots with my covie sniper just like every other brute before. Why did I have to spend thirty minutes trying? What changed his status? I don't know.
The other similar instance was an enemy I believe was designed to be tough. I attacked his buddies, killed them, and wasn't ready. This would've been a fun fight if not for the bug. Unlike the previous example he did respond from a distance, and I could hit him. Several times over I stuck him with four grenades (three plasma, one spike), over-heated a plasma pistol on him a few times, and shot him with my carbine. He did not die. Then one time I stuck him with one plasma grenade, no pistol overload, and he died. What changed? I can't say.
That's not all the bugs I encountered, though. The preceding seem fairly uncommon. I didn't find anyone with the same bug with a cursory search, and I do have to remember I have a knack for finding very weird bugs almost nobody sees. This one, however, was commonly reported. In the late game, you have to drive a warthog, while someone shoots for you. He consistently misses until you get a bigger vehicle, and he aims at enemies that really don't matter. For example, I could be driving, being shot at by ghosts (you can't shoot while driving a warthog), and a dropship passes overhead. He can't destroy it with a chain gun, it's not shooting at us, but the ghosts are. What does he do? Shoots at the drop ship. Grunts are peppering us with fuel rod canons. What does he do? Almost nothing. He litterally almost never fires a shot. Dying repeatedly to an AI is acceptable. Dying because I am dependent on bad AI is not. If I have to depend on AI, it should do its job.
Those are software design flaws. They're bugs, and they should've been found. They made the game much more difficult than its design should have warranted. That, in itself, is not a problem. These sorts of bugs, though, sap the fun out of a game. Nobody likes respawning in a sniper's range of fire to live for a few seconds and not being willing to restart the mission because the save system has proven funky. Nobody. It literally sapped the fun out of whole levels.
To add insult to injury, the last fight includes fighting off waves of Covenant. I had two AI companions. The companions, while having bad AI, are invulnerable and have infinite ammo. There was a rocket launcher and a sniper rifle nearby I could give them. Guess how difficult it was for me in that last fight since I had adequate cover. After working that hard, I basically got to sleep through the last fight of the game. I did have to exert some effort, so that makes it better than a certain other game's boss.
Another problem is the multiplayer. Early on, I haear this was going to focus on single player action in an interview. That made me excited. Then it seemed Bungie backtracked and announced that its new multiplayer features would be the highlight. Given that I like single player most, this made me skeptical, and I didn't want to preorder it. It was almost certainly believable. Most people play Halo for its multiplayer content; I'm rather odd in being turned the opposite way. However, all it did was reproduce the Halo 3 multiplayer and add the firefight mode. That's it. Essentially this means you are getting a single-player game with a good survival mode and where both campaign and survival ("firefight") include optional multiplayer. People who want multiplayer and have Halo 3 had best wait for it to go down in price. There really isn't much there, and what it reproduces from Halo 3 it does so on a separate disk o_o.
I can't complain about the graphics. The art is quite good, and I can understand the low polygon count. There are a lot of effects in this game. it's not easy to get all those out. I'm actually impressed that Bungie makes it look as good as it does. The same thing applies to the sound. It is, as always, enjoyable, and the soundtrack is a break from the standard fare. It has a different feel and sound to it while still being a remix of the older music, and it's not bad.
This game could have used some serious work. It is a very good game marred by being released too early. The campaign was short, but I can't fault it for that. I can't think of any way of extending the story without tarnishing it. Maybe adding 30% to level content, action-wise, but the story couldn't really allow for any more levels without pushing its natural length.
In the end, if it were thirty dollars, I'd think it worthwhile, but sixty is a bit steep for a game with no real added multiplayer component, a short (but very good) single player campaign that has several bugs. It probably should have been DLC or been put through a longer development. In the end, I'd give it just above and 8, as in 8.1-8.3. It's a good game, but it's not a great game by any stretch. | | |
| I'm going to have an interesting time at work (aside from the fact that this will be my last day before vacation). Yesterday when I removed my head gear after work, I managed to overhear a discussion between three people. One of them said, "He can't eat pork, becuase the Bible says he can't." The oldest gentleman responded, "But the Bible doesn't say you can't eat pork." The third, the one they were speaking about, was silent.
I listened for a bit, and was rather amused, but after a little bit, one turned to me and said, "And what do you think? What does the Bible say?"
Well, I responded, "In the Old Covenant certain types of food were forbidden. Anything that walked on four legs had to split the hoof and chew the cud in order to be clean. Pigs do not fit the criteria, so they were forbidden. It's right there in the first few books of the Bible."
They turned a little white, then older one asked me, "So, a Christian can't eat pork, right?"
"Jesus made all foods clean; that is clear in the New Testament. The Jews avoid eating pork, because they have rejected Christ."
This settled things down a bit, so they got to talking to the third guy again. I hadn't heard him speak yet, so I didn't know he was somehow the nexus of the debate. Before too terribly long, I heard it start up again (these two were drilling this poor guy). "What? You don't drink beer?"
They didn't debate this time, they just looked over at me, "Does the Bible forbid us to drink beer also?"
They seemed to have missed the point the first time, but I said, "No, but the Koran does. If I'm right, he's a Muslim."
I hit the nail right on the head. The poor guy didn't get a reprieve.
They started wailing away on him about how stupid it was that they couldn't make an image of Muhammad. He tried to answer their questions, but neither side understood the other well enough (he didn't speak much English). Eventually, I interjected, "They don't make images, because Islam is a monotheistic religion, and when Muhammad created it, Mecca was full of idols. It was forbidden to put a hamper on idolatry in the culture it was created in."
I deliberately answered that way, because a). it answers the question, and b). it keeps me from having to endorse Islamic theology (I am no iconoclast, after all).
They left not long after, and it left the third guy (I now know his name is Shaiffie, but I know I'm not spelling that right; I've only heard it spoken). He wanted to compare notes with me about religion, and he's taking the tack of Christians and Muslims being the same religion.
This is going to be very difficult. For instance, he said, "We believe that Jesus is a prophet, but Muhammad is the final prophet." I explained to him that we believe Jesus is the final Prophet (I put it in caps, because there are prophets and then prophets like Moses; only two prophets in history ever gave a new law, Chirst and Moses), because Jesus is the Word of God. No prophet can give more revelation than the Word of God Himself. He didn't understand, and we don't have a common vocabulary.
We discussed several things, and I winced, because he still hasn't learned polite language, though he was trying to be polite and clean in his language (he's going to be embarrassed by this in the future). He tried to introduce me to the concept of Ramadan (which I am already aware of), by saying, "We just stopped fasting. When we fast we do not eat or drink all day long. We do not f**k our wives." He was trying to be polite lol.
Lastly, he started quizzing me about marriage. "I just got married. I met wife here in America. Are you married? You have kids?" "No, I'm not married and have no kids." He then proceeded to try and console me about my position and promise that God will deliver someone to me (he doesn't know me very well lol).
He can't keep my name straight either. He asked for my first and last names, and he prefers my last. But rather than calling me "Gardner", he prefers to call me "Guardian". I couldn't get him to understand that those are two very different words.
So it seems I have a Muslim man who wants to talk religion with me (and probably fulfill my religion since it is lacking in his view, and I can't fault him for that), and he apparently considers me some sort of guardian angel. But then, given the amount of flak he was catching (and probably has when I wasn't around), I can't really be surprised by it. They were merciless to a man who could barely speak to them.
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