I think I should just get a job as a movie critic/game critic. My only problem would be, I can't be bought. If I hate a movie, I hate a movie. If a game sucks, a game sucks. I'm not going to write a glowing review for something that I couldn't stand. I'm just not that good a liar. Also, it stops me from being a salesman, a politician, a lawyer, a doctor, or a customer service agent. All jobs where lying is just required to make any money at it.
SO being a critic is probably out too, since the big commercial game/movie producers would shitcan me because I don't like any of their crap products. Ah, well. I can still do it as a hobby! :-D
So I watched "the girl with the dragon tattoo" via netflix. This isn't the americanized version, but the original. I'm not sure if it was from sweden or germany or where the hell it came from (honestly, I didn't really think of looking through the 5-minute long credits to find out), but if it's the same place that made "let the Right one in" and "Dead Snow," then hollywood is just assured of good movies for the next ten or 20 years or so because they're RIPPING OFF EVERY MOVIE THAT COMES OUT OF THAT PLACE. Yea, I know, why bother finding good american movies or coming up with your own scripts when you have a perfectly good foreign film, complete with script, that you can just rip off and know will do fairly well because it did so well in it's native country? Because you aren't a spineless jellyfish with no creative talent, that's why. But, american movie producers apparently ARE spineless jellyfish with no creative talent, so we're left with a cheap knockoff of an excellent foreign film. Sigh.
No, don't even give me that "but you haven't even SEEN the american version yet" crap. I don't know who they got to play the girl in the american version that just hit the theaters, but the guy is played by daniel craig. Daniel Craig, the same guy who continues to destroy the james bond series.
Let me just take a moment here to explain something. Either Daniel craig played james bond as a gay man, and subsequently is the best actor currently working in the world (because I believe wholeheartedly that daniel craig is gay), or he really IS gay and can't act for shit, which is my informed opinion. You only need watch the emo-driven remake of "Casino Royale" to understand what I mean. Now I don't have a THING against gay men and I am not homophobic in the least (in fact I am quite happy they recently made same-sex marriages legal in my state, yay!), but the only line he delivered in casino royale that I believed AT ALL was when he said he "didn't care in the least" about the woman who he had slept with that died. Now, as we all know, the standard james bond plot line is, james woos some chick away from the evil boss that he's going after so he can get inside info from her, she ends up getting killed over it, and that makes james bond all killy-kill-kill, which ends up going badly for the bad guys. This is just standard fare, it's what we're all looking for, it's what we know. So to have one of the signature plot devices in the entire james bond series to be wholly undone is either the performance of an acting genius, OR a gay guy just futzing up the acting. Now which do you think is more likely in Daniel Craig's case? Keep in mind, he was spotted several months after the release of the second james bond movie he did, in a seedy nightclub (I think it was in paris?), kissing another man. And again, if you want to kiss another man on your own time, fine, but don't fuck up your acting because of it. Having seen Daniel Craig act, Keanu Reeves' most wooden performance is oscar-winning by comparison.
Now, that having been said, back to the foreign version of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. This movie is your basic "who-done-it" murder mystery. Essentially, there's a rich guy who believes a girl was killed some 40 years back, and it's just bugging the crap out of him since he really liked the girl, and he finally breaks down and hires a reporter who can't be bought (hey, another man of integrity, like myself! :-D) to investigate because he knows the reporter will (1) stick with it until he finds out what happened, and (2) will be honest with him about the results. So the reporter gets down to business and eventually meets "the girl with the dragon tattoo" about an hour into the movie. Now, it's not that they haven't shown her at all til this point, and in fact, they went so into detail about her that it was almost two separate movies. I would have had NO idea the two stories were going to intersect at some point if it hadn't been for the movie's title. So in any case, the girl assists him with the investigation and then things begin to get hairy, as they say in werewolf school. Not that this movie has anything to do with werewolves, I'm just saying.
Now I read one of the reviews on netflix saying they'd figured it out who-done-it when the family had gathered all in one place to meet the reporter about an hour and a half in, but if you're smart like me, that's WAY farther in the movie than you need to go. I figured out who-done-it about two seconds after the reporter meets the guy who is hiring him to look into the murder, BUT, what can I say. I am a genius, completely unlike daniel craig.
The movie itself was beautifully done. Two and a half hours long, and they could have done without some subplots that delved into some perverse territory, but then I suppose that wouldn't have shown off how smart the girl herself was, even though they really weren't germane to the plot. The actress who played her was ... well, hell, if I was the reporter, I'd have fallen in love with her myself. She was young, hot, a bit strange, but I like that in a girl. None of her actions seemed the least bit unusual to me (though I am sure they did to the other people in this tale), but then again, I've known girls like her, so maybe I have some insight. In any case, both she and the mostly-male cast did excellent work in this film. It probably helps that I didn't have a clue who any of these people were, so I can only associate them with the roles they played in this particular movie, but I believed every bit of the acting. Honestly, if they'd pulled this story out of the newspapers and just redid it on film, it wouldn't surprise me, that's how realistic it seemed. All that and nudity, too! :-D
I wouldn't waste 5 minutes watching daniel craig in the american version, but the 2 and a half hours was well spent on this one, and didn't seem to drag in the least. I only stopped it once because it was either pause the film or wet myself, and i haven't done that since last wee- errrr, a long, long time ago. yea. So. Um. Good movie, then. yea. Enough about that.
Happy New Year! I hope me and everyone else I like does well in the new year, and all the cheap lying no good sacks of monkey shit do badly for a change. I don't want to get off on a rant here but it seems like, the better a liar you are in this country, the more money you make. Wtf is up with that? And now they are trying to pass a law that says they can jail you (you being, the average american citizen) indefinitely without trail for no particular reason just because they feel like it (or just suspect you of "terrorism"), so telling the truth is about to become pretty goddamn rare in this country, since you can apparently now get jailed for it. Without trial. Indefinitely. Fuckin wonderful. Did I mention they are classifying the Occupy Wall Street protesters as terrorists now? Yep. Peacefully disagreeing with someone (someone having money or power, that is) is now terrorism. Why don't they just tear up the Constitution and write their own, for all that the politicians are actually following it now? Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick.
They say all evil has to do to win, is for good people to do nothing, and I guess that's really true. I'm just hoping the good people actually do outnumber the evil ones in this country, because we're going to need the numbers to win this one.
Maybe I should just hope all the truly good people have a safe and prosperous new year and leave it at that! :-)
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Merry Xmas!
Christmas is almost over. All the relatives have gone. Nobody had to be carried out in a bodybag. It's a christmas miracle!
It's at times like these, when my house is a mess just 24 hours after it was spotlessly clean, that I wonder why we invite the relatives over at all. I suppose there's some social significance to it. Speaking as a biologically-trained anthropologist, the family unit is probably helpful in terms of long-term survival, but at the moment I can't remember a single instance where most of the people who came to the house today were particularly useful at all. Still, I guess you never know. It was probably good to see them again and they were good for a few laughs, is about all the emotion I can summon up for them at the moment.
At least they left me some pie. :-D Time to eat some and listen to the last of the Christmas music before my favorite radio station switches back to the likes of lady gaga.
Have you ever been asked a question so stupid that it was just, totally annoying in addition to being stupid? Like the person asking it just immediately got put on your naughty list, before you've even thought of a way to respond to the question, which usually has no good answer? Well, I've been thinking of such questions, as I am wont to do from time to time, and considering responses to them. I think on occasion from now on, I am going to end my post with them, like this one, seasonally appropriate:
QUESTION: Is your Yuletide gay?
ANSWER: You bet your sweet ass it is, motherfucker!
See, now the asker is trying to be a cutesy little fuck by saying that if you enjoy xmas you must be gay, and of course, you could just call him a motherfucker and punch him in the balls so hard that he can wear them as earrings, but more important is the desire to out-flippancy the fucker so bad that he never even thinks of being cute with you again. So you imply that, not only is your yuletide gay, but if the asker persists in his line of questioning, he's going to find out just how fucking gay your yuletide is.
This of course, only applies to straight men. Should both parties be gay, then replying with "you bet your sweet ass it is, motherfucker." would probably end with cheesy hump music and some man on man porn. Or woman on woman porn, since I don't want to sound sexist or anything. Come to think of it, if two women had this exchange and then proceeded to make some hot lesbian porn, it'd probably be the best porn movie ever.
Happy post-xmas hangovers, everyone! I'm saving cleanup til morning.
It's at times like these, when my house is a mess just 24 hours after it was spotlessly clean, that I wonder why we invite the relatives over at all. I suppose there's some social significance to it. Speaking as a biologically-trained anthropologist, the family unit is probably helpful in terms of long-term survival, but at the moment I can't remember a single instance where most of the people who came to the house today were particularly useful at all. Still, I guess you never know. It was probably good to see them again and they were good for a few laughs, is about all the emotion I can summon up for them at the moment.
At least they left me some pie. :-D Time to eat some and listen to the last of the Christmas music before my favorite radio station switches back to the likes of lady gaga.
Have you ever been asked a question so stupid that it was just, totally annoying in addition to being stupid? Like the person asking it just immediately got put on your naughty list, before you've even thought of a way to respond to the question, which usually has no good answer? Well, I've been thinking of such questions, as I am wont to do from time to time, and considering responses to them. I think on occasion from now on, I am going to end my post with them, like this one, seasonally appropriate:
QUESTION: Is your Yuletide gay?
ANSWER: You bet your sweet ass it is, motherfucker!
See, now the asker is trying to be a cutesy little fuck by saying that if you enjoy xmas you must be gay, and of course, you could just call him a motherfucker and punch him in the balls so hard that he can wear them as earrings, but more important is the desire to out-flippancy the fucker so bad that he never even thinks of being cute with you again. So you imply that, not only is your yuletide gay, but if the asker persists in his line of questioning, he's going to find out just how fucking gay your yuletide is.
This of course, only applies to straight men. Should both parties be gay, then replying with "you bet your sweet ass it is, motherfucker." would probably end with cheesy hump music and some man on man porn. Or woman on woman porn, since I don't want to sound sexist or anything. Come to think of it, if two women had this exchange and then proceeded to make some hot lesbian porn, it'd probably be the best porn movie ever.
Happy post-xmas hangovers, everyone! I'm saving cleanup til morning.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Captain's Log, Stardate oh fuck it
Just an update on my personal life during this joyous time of year!
Nothing crazy going on, just the usual round of viruses attacking my otherwise seemingly helpless immune system. Sure, I survive them and they don't really give me a lot of downtime, but don't i have a first line of defense or something? You'd think there would be a bunch of white blood cells wandering around on patrol in my bloodstream or something, but no, you'd be wrong. No, apparently they are all asleep in the barracks til the alarms go off and then they trudge out to do their work in the most lackluster fashion imaginable. If I was their boss I would fire them and get new white blood cells. Then again, maybe I am complaining too much, they usually get the job done eventually.
So both of my friends got married this year. The real-life ones, not counting the online ones or the ones actually related to me in some way. I find that strange for some reason, one i've known for about 23 years and the other I've known for ten, and i would have sworn both were going to be unhitched forever, for different reasons. But no! I was wrong. Then again, I was also wrong about Debra never finding out about Dexter being a serial killer on this past season of showtime's "Dexter," so I guess I can be wrong about things and not have it be unusual. Sorry if I spoiled that for anyone, but seriously!!! :-o OMFG as the teen girls would say.
One of my nephews recently told me I was out of touch with today's youth. I was not surprised by this in the least. I find it funny that he is not fond of justin bieber nor the twilight series of movies, yet he thinks he IS in touch with today's youth. Ah, kids! So eager to make fun of old people and totally unaware that they will be made fun of just as bad by anyone younger than they are. I think just by knowing what a justin bieber is and having an opinion on twilight, I am still in touch with today's youth. Of course, my opinions on both are completely negative, so I could be wrong.
But back to my friends. So, one of them moved to australia to hook up, and I am proud of him, I doubt I'd have had the balls to emigrate to another country for a piece of a... ah, a chance at a relationship, but eh, love does funny things to people. of course, I haven't heard from him in about a month now, and he's the type to send out emails once a week, so either his wife has changed him, or he's been eaten by a rampaging pack of funnel web spiders. I am sure they hunt in packs, I saw a documentary about that on the Syfy channel. So he's probably been entombed in webs, slowly being drained of all his life's blood as he silently screams and screams but is unable to make a sound due to the paralyzing effect of the venom, going slowly insane while he edges closer and closer to death. What a horrible way to go. Then again, he is married so I guess the same thing is happening to him even if there aren't any funnel web spiders involved. Poor bastard. :-(
So I'm doing my usual cheating thing while playing skyrim the other day, and my nephews drop over for the holidays, and they ask how badly I am cheating, so i tell them. Now, I never really understood why you'd ask someone a question if you didn't really want to know the answer, but nobody around here seems to understand this simple bit of logic, so they ask anyway. So after I tell them how badly I am cheating, they ask me "Why even bother to play the game?" Now there's a question I do not understand at all. I play the game to have fun? I mean, that's sort of why they call it a "game" and not "work." Obviously if it wasn't fun, it would be "work," but kids and/or people nowadays don't seem to grasp this simple principle. Or maybe they find work to be fun, and fun to be work? Who knows? I don't get it. But I will try and explain in more detail.
So your average RPG (role playing game) involves running all over the game world for quests, killing things, and if you die, you either reload the game from a previous save and try again, or do something else. Almost all of them involve leveling up your character from a puny weakling to a rampaging beast, tricked out with the meanest gear you can find. Now, here's my problem with the process, if you are going to be a rampaging beast anyway, why not start out that way? Why do all games have to start out with you being a weakling and everything else being stronger than you are until you reach their level of strength and you can finally take them down? Why play the game by everyone else's rules? Is it more fun for you to start out as a puny weakling and do hundreds of meaningless quests until you can match or overpower your enemies? Does that somehow feel more like real life to you? How often in real life are you allowed to reload from a previous save when you fail and die? And on the flip side of that coin, how does reloading a game a dozen times until you finally beat the boss monster, feel like an accomplishment to you? Is THAT more like real life? Do you also live your life the way everyone thinks you should, or do you try and do things differently? Even if you do, even if you are a milk-drinking little sheep in reality, why do so in a game, that has absolutely no effect on reality? Why not go a little crazy in the game, have some fun?
Now keep in mind, the same nephews asking me these inane questions are the same ones who don't bother to pay for games, they just pirate them. Now, if you want to cheat a gaming company that installs useless DRM that just screws over the paying customers and still manages to make a 500% profit on every game they sell, I don't have a problem with it. Pirate away! Somehow those lawyered-up corporate pricks will manage to tell their insurance companies that the $50 they lost from you is actually costing them 5 billion, and then spend a half billion on advertising and lobbyists to get harsher laws passed that will allow them to charge even higher prices for games so they can make even more money.
But if I don't have an issue with people pirating games in real life, why have an issue with me being a pirate in a game? Makes no sense to me at all. Yet these same people will run quest after endless quest, doing the same things over and over, and reloading a game a dozen times, and call that fun? How does that make sense? Sounds more like work to me. I mean, when I HAD a job, I pretty much did the same thing... a bunch of useless tasks, the same ones over and over, at the behest of nameless and faceless NPC's (non-player-characters, or in this case, bosses, I think I am going to start calling every boss I ever have an NPC just to separate them from the real people, lol). Sounds just like work to me. Maybe that's why people pirate games so badly nowadays, because the games are so much like real work that people just can't bring themselves to pay for them?
So here's how I play a game. I start out as a god. Something jumps out of nowhere at me, it finds it can't hurt me very much, if at all. I leisurely choose what method to use to slaughter it, then either cut it in half or blast it to bits. The bloodier the better. Someone sends me on a quest, I either teleport there instantly (if possible) or kill everything easily on my way to get there. I kill the boss on the first try. if i ever choose to reload from a previous save, it's to try something completely different because i think it will be more fun, not to have the same fight with the boss monster over and over again. I do not mine for resources. I do not kill 100 ostriches to get enough ostrich feathers so i can have an ostrich feather cape that makes me look pretty. If I want to look pretty, i use cheat codes and give myself an ostrich-feather cape. I do not chop wood to sell it for gold. I give myself as much gold as I need to buy whatever I want, whenever I want to buy it. I explore, I watch the story unfold, I do random things as the whim takes me, I watch the cute little monsters attempt to defeat me and fail. I laugh, as a god should, at their pathetic attempts. Then I blast them out of existence and admire the simple beauty of a winter's storm as I ponder what I want to do next.
Now doesn't that sound more fun than mining iron for hours so you can make a sword so you can fight a giant halfway across the world so you can fail and reload your game a dozen times? I think so. And you want to chop wood to make money in a game? Pfft. Do that in the real world and see how much money you make. I've never particularly found the usual drudgery of the real world particularly enjoyable, so why would it be more fun in a game? Hell, you usually get PAID to do drudgery in the real world, with REAL money. I mean, shit, if I got paid real money to do drudge work in a game, it MIGHT be worth it, but I don't live in china, so that's not an option for me.
Now I guess everyone is different, and if you like working your ass off in a game to get an ostrich feather cape so you can look pretty, and you want to pay a monthly fee for that, well, hey that's your business. But when did we start letting gaming companies get away with making games more like work than fun, and have us still paying for them? I mean, I just don't get people who will spend all day in an office, slaving away at pointless, meaningless tasks and earning a day's pay for it and call that "work," and then come home, spend another eight hours playing World of Warcraft, mining iron to make a sword so they can sell it to get some in-game gold so they can buy a weapon to accomplish a quest that involves killing a thousand rats in a dungeon somewhere on the other side of god-knows-where, all while paying out the money that they earned that day for the privilege, and they call that "fun?"
Sounds like the only real difference is that one you get paid, and the other you pay for. (shrugs) I've heard games and play are supposed to teach you how to overcome real life situations, but seriously? How is this teaching anyone anything they can possibly use in real life? If at first you don't succeed, ragequit life and try again later? Don't fight an ogre unless you can reload your life from a previous save? Life's full of NPC bosses who are going to tell you to do meaningless tasks over and over again for no real benefit to you, but that helps them a lot? I think if everyone doesn't know that last one by now, they never will.
Oh well. Other than my rant, everything is going fine so far for the holidays. We're actually two days ahead of schedule this year. I personally am shocked. That the tree is all ornamented before xmas eve just blows my mind. I wasn't sure what to do with the extra time, so I watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation again. Best holiday movie ever, forget that miracle on 34th street or it's a wonderful life crap. If Christmas Vacation isn't more like your real life than either of those movies, I'll eat my own edible chocolate g-string underwear!
Happy Holidays, Merry Xmas, and Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!
Nothing crazy going on, just the usual round of viruses attacking my otherwise seemingly helpless immune system. Sure, I survive them and they don't really give me a lot of downtime, but don't i have a first line of defense or something? You'd think there would be a bunch of white blood cells wandering around on patrol in my bloodstream or something, but no, you'd be wrong. No, apparently they are all asleep in the barracks til the alarms go off and then they trudge out to do their work in the most lackluster fashion imaginable. If I was their boss I would fire them and get new white blood cells. Then again, maybe I am complaining too much, they usually get the job done eventually.
So both of my friends got married this year. The real-life ones, not counting the online ones or the ones actually related to me in some way. I find that strange for some reason, one i've known for about 23 years and the other I've known for ten, and i would have sworn both were going to be unhitched forever, for different reasons. But no! I was wrong. Then again, I was also wrong about Debra never finding out about Dexter being a serial killer on this past season of showtime's "Dexter," so I guess I can be wrong about things and not have it be unusual. Sorry if I spoiled that for anyone, but seriously!!! :-o OMFG as the teen girls would say.
One of my nephews recently told me I was out of touch with today's youth. I was not surprised by this in the least. I find it funny that he is not fond of justin bieber nor the twilight series of movies, yet he thinks he IS in touch with today's youth. Ah, kids! So eager to make fun of old people and totally unaware that they will be made fun of just as bad by anyone younger than they are. I think just by knowing what a justin bieber is and having an opinion on twilight, I am still in touch with today's youth. Of course, my opinions on both are completely negative, so I could be wrong.
But back to my friends. So, one of them moved to australia to hook up, and I am proud of him, I doubt I'd have had the balls to emigrate to another country for a piece of a... ah, a chance at a relationship, but eh, love does funny things to people. of course, I haven't heard from him in about a month now, and he's the type to send out emails once a week, so either his wife has changed him, or he's been eaten by a rampaging pack of funnel web spiders. I am sure they hunt in packs, I saw a documentary about that on the Syfy channel. So he's probably been entombed in webs, slowly being drained of all his life's blood as he silently screams and screams but is unable to make a sound due to the paralyzing effect of the venom, going slowly insane while he edges closer and closer to death. What a horrible way to go. Then again, he is married so I guess the same thing is happening to him even if there aren't any funnel web spiders involved. Poor bastard. :-(
So I'm doing my usual cheating thing while playing skyrim the other day, and my nephews drop over for the holidays, and they ask how badly I am cheating, so i tell them. Now, I never really understood why you'd ask someone a question if you didn't really want to know the answer, but nobody around here seems to understand this simple bit of logic, so they ask anyway. So after I tell them how badly I am cheating, they ask me "Why even bother to play the game?" Now there's a question I do not understand at all. I play the game to have fun? I mean, that's sort of why they call it a "game" and not "work." Obviously if it wasn't fun, it would be "work," but kids and/or people nowadays don't seem to grasp this simple principle. Or maybe they find work to be fun, and fun to be work? Who knows? I don't get it. But I will try and explain in more detail.
So your average RPG (role playing game) involves running all over the game world for quests, killing things, and if you die, you either reload the game from a previous save and try again, or do something else. Almost all of them involve leveling up your character from a puny weakling to a rampaging beast, tricked out with the meanest gear you can find. Now, here's my problem with the process, if you are going to be a rampaging beast anyway, why not start out that way? Why do all games have to start out with you being a weakling and everything else being stronger than you are until you reach their level of strength and you can finally take them down? Why play the game by everyone else's rules? Is it more fun for you to start out as a puny weakling and do hundreds of meaningless quests until you can match or overpower your enemies? Does that somehow feel more like real life to you? How often in real life are you allowed to reload from a previous save when you fail and die? And on the flip side of that coin, how does reloading a game a dozen times until you finally beat the boss monster, feel like an accomplishment to you? Is THAT more like real life? Do you also live your life the way everyone thinks you should, or do you try and do things differently? Even if you do, even if you are a milk-drinking little sheep in reality, why do so in a game, that has absolutely no effect on reality? Why not go a little crazy in the game, have some fun?
Now keep in mind, the same nephews asking me these inane questions are the same ones who don't bother to pay for games, they just pirate them. Now, if you want to cheat a gaming company that installs useless DRM that just screws over the paying customers and still manages to make a 500% profit on every game they sell, I don't have a problem with it. Pirate away! Somehow those lawyered-up corporate pricks will manage to tell their insurance companies that the $50 they lost from you is actually costing them 5 billion, and then spend a half billion on advertising and lobbyists to get harsher laws passed that will allow them to charge even higher prices for games so they can make even more money.
But if I don't have an issue with people pirating games in real life, why have an issue with me being a pirate in a game? Makes no sense to me at all. Yet these same people will run quest after endless quest, doing the same things over and over, and reloading a game a dozen times, and call that fun? How does that make sense? Sounds more like work to me. I mean, when I HAD a job, I pretty much did the same thing... a bunch of useless tasks, the same ones over and over, at the behest of nameless and faceless NPC's (non-player-characters, or in this case, bosses, I think I am going to start calling every boss I ever have an NPC just to separate them from the real people, lol). Sounds just like work to me. Maybe that's why people pirate games so badly nowadays, because the games are so much like real work that people just can't bring themselves to pay for them?
So here's how I play a game. I start out as a god. Something jumps out of nowhere at me, it finds it can't hurt me very much, if at all. I leisurely choose what method to use to slaughter it, then either cut it in half or blast it to bits. The bloodier the better. Someone sends me on a quest, I either teleport there instantly (if possible) or kill everything easily on my way to get there. I kill the boss on the first try. if i ever choose to reload from a previous save, it's to try something completely different because i think it will be more fun, not to have the same fight with the boss monster over and over again. I do not mine for resources. I do not kill 100 ostriches to get enough ostrich feathers so i can have an ostrich feather cape that makes me look pretty. If I want to look pretty, i use cheat codes and give myself an ostrich-feather cape. I do not chop wood to sell it for gold. I give myself as much gold as I need to buy whatever I want, whenever I want to buy it. I explore, I watch the story unfold, I do random things as the whim takes me, I watch the cute little monsters attempt to defeat me and fail. I laugh, as a god should, at their pathetic attempts. Then I blast them out of existence and admire the simple beauty of a winter's storm as I ponder what I want to do next.
Now doesn't that sound more fun than mining iron for hours so you can make a sword so you can fight a giant halfway across the world so you can fail and reload your game a dozen times? I think so. And you want to chop wood to make money in a game? Pfft. Do that in the real world and see how much money you make. I've never particularly found the usual drudgery of the real world particularly enjoyable, so why would it be more fun in a game? Hell, you usually get PAID to do drudgery in the real world, with REAL money. I mean, shit, if I got paid real money to do drudge work in a game, it MIGHT be worth it, but I don't live in china, so that's not an option for me.
Now I guess everyone is different, and if you like working your ass off in a game to get an ostrich feather cape so you can look pretty, and you want to pay a monthly fee for that, well, hey that's your business. But when did we start letting gaming companies get away with making games more like work than fun, and have us still paying for them? I mean, I just don't get people who will spend all day in an office, slaving away at pointless, meaningless tasks and earning a day's pay for it and call that "work," and then come home, spend another eight hours playing World of Warcraft, mining iron to make a sword so they can sell it to get some in-game gold so they can buy a weapon to accomplish a quest that involves killing a thousand rats in a dungeon somewhere on the other side of god-knows-where, all while paying out the money that they earned that day for the privilege, and they call that "fun?"
Sounds like the only real difference is that one you get paid, and the other you pay for. (shrugs) I've heard games and play are supposed to teach you how to overcome real life situations, but seriously? How is this teaching anyone anything they can possibly use in real life? If at first you don't succeed, ragequit life and try again later? Don't fight an ogre unless you can reload your life from a previous save? Life's full of NPC bosses who are going to tell you to do meaningless tasks over and over again for no real benefit to you, but that helps them a lot? I think if everyone doesn't know that last one by now, they never will.
Oh well. Other than my rant, everything is going fine so far for the holidays. We're actually two days ahead of schedule this year. I personally am shocked. That the tree is all ornamented before xmas eve just blows my mind. I wasn't sure what to do with the extra time, so I watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation again. Best holiday movie ever, forget that miracle on 34th street or it's a wonderful life crap. If Christmas Vacation isn't more like your real life than either of those movies, I'll eat my own edible chocolate g-string underwear!
Happy Holidays, Merry Xmas, and Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!
Friday, December 16, 2011
Minecraft Final Review and Xmas List
So i haven't played minecraft in about 2 months now. And they released the final version version about a month ago, so you'd think OH BOY THE GAME'S FINALLY DONE WOOHOOO NOW EVERYTHING WORKS but you'd be wrong.
When i first heard about Minecraft I wasn't too keen on it. A block building game? crafting? Sounds like a cheap RPG with the combat ripped out of it. Then my creativity kicked in when i realized you could build entire worlds out of the blocks, or at least, a nice castle of your own design if you don't have the time for entire worlds, and that was pretty cool. It reminded me of Stronghold: Crusader, an excellent strategy game where you build castles and manage farms to feed your troops so you can defend your castle.
So me and a few of my friends played minecraft and went around creating towns and villages and exploring and building and every new update the past year or so has introduced bugs into the game, but also something new you could use as a resource. New monsters to defend your castle against, or new farm animals to mate wi.. er... breed... and cook and eat... yea... and crops to grow, and sure it wasn't perfect and the updates kept any mods (there's a huge mod community built around minecraft) from working correctly, but it was still in development, so you dealt with it and assumed those would eventually get corrected.
So about two months ago, notch (minecraft creator and main programmer) decided to release a final version. Now he'd been making millions off of this game, enough to start his own company and hire other programmers, but instead of focusing on minecraft, easily their biggest selling (and at that point, only) game, notch and his mojang programmers decided to spread out. So the last few months of minecraft's development were, notch working on something else, and jens being left to fix bugs. And there's pretty much been no new content added for months now.
In the meantime, notch has stopped working on minecraft altogether, and moved on to other games. jens, the only programmer at mojang (notch's company) currently working on minecraft, is more focused on his own other projects than doing anything for minecraft at all. So basically minecraft is currently abandoned and adrift in limbo.
This wouldn't be so bad if the game were actually finished. There's bugs that jens is supposedly working on, but they don't really interfere with the game that much, and what's left is a block building game with a few monsters that pop out at night. There's different biomes with different vegetation, but the same animals (your average selection of farm animals) pop up in every biome, and basically at this point the game is a farming simulation with zombies, since you have to grow some kind of food to keep yourself alive now. But all of that at least works correctly for the most part. So if you want a farming simulation with zombies, you're all set.
They tried adding villages. They really did. but the villages end up so few and far between that it's a miracle if you find any, and the villagers they added to them aren't done yet. They just wander around and get lost in the wilderness if you let them out of their homes. They had plans to make the villagers interactive, and they were going to hire an AI specialist to help program them, but that never happened.
So at this point, once you've built yourself a castle, or farm, or immense, world-spanning tower if that's what you felt like building, then you're done. There's not enough gameplay to hold anyone's interest past this point. And I'm not just talking about me, either, everyone i played minecraft with has the same problem. Building is fun, but once you're done with that, the game becomes lifeless and boring. Final grade for the released version of minecraft is INCOMPLETE, and i've never given that score to another game before. Minecraft started with such promise, and ended with such disappointment.
On the future games front, I am betting skyrim is going to outsell everything else this christmas. I already have the game, still playing it. It's earned its metascore of 95. There was a TON of work put into this game. Every rock, tree and snowdrift was artfully crafted, every monster and dragon looks great, and now that i have fixed the nagging sound issues, I can hear all kinds of things going on in the game. A lot of gaming companies forget about sound when they make games, not really sure why, I mean, i understand visual cues are the most important for actual gameplay but sound is invaluable for immersion in a game. Have you ever watched a movie with the sound off? Why would you, right? But some gaming companies are giving you the same experience when they produce games without much in the way of sound, and that's just pointless. In any case, i think skyrim is easily one of the best games of the last 5 years. Would be even better with multiplayer options, but everything is so heavily scripted and since there's no random events, that cuts down on replayability and totally cuts out multiplayer options. However, I can already see the end of skyrim coming, since there's very little replayability with the lack of random events (every new playthrough has the same quests, in other words) I will eventually grow tired of it and skyrim will be over.
So what's new on the gaming front? Well, Star Wars: The Old Republic is coming out in 5 days. It's an MMO, and my history with MMO's is horrible. They are all made the same and they all end up playing the same... much like skyrim, I can see the end of them as soon as I start playing. Same quests over and over. But i may get it anyway, in case it surprises me. The trouble may be Origin, EA's (electronic Arts) answer to steam, a gaming service that offers games for sale. Steam, which I currently use, offers just about every game for sale that's on the market, past or present. Origin has a PC library of precisely 154 titles, about 100 of which are sims games and their expansions. So you may find your options for gaming purchases limited. Currently SWTOR is not available on steam. It would seem to me if you want your game to sell, you make it available to the most amount of people, but what the hell do I know, right? Right.
Other than that, there's literally nothing new out this Xmas. Next year, Diablo 3 is due, along with a bunch of other games. Sure, all those games were due this year, too, but they got pushed back til next year. So hopefully we'll see them by next xmas. Will they get pushed back again? Maybe! I still find it funny that Diablo 3 has been up for pre-order all year. It may not be out til 2015, maybe 2020 at this rate!
With any luck, I'll have a job by then.
in the meantime, I am listening to xmas music, playing skyrim and watching a charlie brown xmas. if I ever get a dog, I am naming him snoopy. Or her. I don't care. I may name one of my kids Snoopy.
Oh and my current favorite xmas song is (I think) titled "can't wait for xmas" by mindy aber? Not sure how you spell her name. It's got a snappy little beat to it and it pretty much just sets the mood for the holidays... not the one I currently HAVE, since it's like a week before xmas and I haven't got any lights or my tree up yet (not my fault, I swear), but the one I WANT, because she sings about having everything all set up and just waiting for it to come while enjoying the moment with some wine, which just sounds bloody awesome to me. I'd LOVE to have a xmas where we WEREN'T just finishing the decorations on the 24th, you know? Oh well. Maybe next year! Still haven't heard it on the radio yet this season, so I may have to go on the internet and listen to it at least once before the end of the year.
Happy holidays everyone! Hope you are enjoying skyrim, brando!
When i first heard about Minecraft I wasn't too keen on it. A block building game? crafting? Sounds like a cheap RPG with the combat ripped out of it. Then my creativity kicked in when i realized you could build entire worlds out of the blocks, or at least, a nice castle of your own design if you don't have the time for entire worlds, and that was pretty cool. It reminded me of Stronghold: Crusader, an excellent strategy game where you build castles and manage farms to feed your troops so you can defend your castle.
So me and a few of my friends played minecraft and went around creating towns and villages and exploring and building and every new update the past year or so has introduced bugs into the game, but also something new you could use as a resource. New monsters to defend your castle against, or new farm animals to mate wi.. er... breed... and cook and eat... yea... and crops to grow, and sure it wasn't perfect and the updates kept any mods (there's a huge mod community built around minecraft) from working correctly, but it was still in development, so you dealt with it and assumed those would eventually get corrected.
So about two months ago, notch (minecraft creator and main programmer) decided to release a final version. Now he'd been making millions off of this game, enough to start his own company and hire other programmers, but instead of focusing on minecraft, easily their biggest selling (and at that point, only) game, notch and his mojang programmers decided to spread out. So the last few months of minecraft's development were, notch working on something else, and jens being left to fix bugs. And there's pretty much been no new content added for months now.
In the meantime, notch has stopped working on minecraft altogether, and moved on to other games. jens, the only programmer at mojang (notch's company) currently working on minecraft, is more focused on his own other projects than doing anything for minecraft at all. So basically minecraft is currently abandoned and adrift in limbo.
This wouldn't be so bad if the game were actually finished. There's bugs that jens is supposedly working on, but they don't really interfere with the game that much, and what's left is a block building game with a few monsters that pop out at night. There's different biomes with different vegetation, but the same animals (your average selection of farm animals) pop up in every biome, and basically at this point the game is a farming simulation with zombies, since you have to grow some kind of food to keep yourself alive now. But all of that at least works correctly for the most part. So if you want a farming simulation with zombies, you're all set.
They tried adding villages. They really did. but the villages end up so few and far between that it's a miracle if you find any, and the villagers they added to them aren't done yet. They just wander around and get lost in the wilderness if you let them out of their homes. They had plans to make the villagers interactive, and they were going to hire an AI specialist to help program them, but that never happened.
So at this point, once you've built yourself a castle, or farm, or immense, world-spanning tower if that's what you felt like building, then you're done. There's not enough gameplay to hold anyone's interest past this point. And I'm not just talking about me, either, everyone i played minecraft with has the same problem. Building is fun, but once you're done with that, the game becomes lifeless and boring. Final grade for the released version of minecraft is INCOMPLETE, and i've never given that score to another game before. Minecraft started with such promise, and ended with such disappointment.
On the future games front, I am betting skyrim is going to outsell everything else this christmas. I already have the game, still playing it. It's earned its metascore of 95. There was a TON of work put into this game. Every rock, tree and snowdrift was artfully crafted, every monster and dragon looks great, and now that i have fixed the nagging sound issues, I can hear all kinds of things going on in the game. A lot of gaming companies forget about sound when they make games, not really sure why, I mean, i understand visual cues are the most important for actual gameplay but sound is invaluable for immersion in a game. Have you ever watched a movie with the sound off? Why would you, right? But some gaming companies are giving you the same experience when they produce games without much in the way of sound, and that's just pointless. In any case, i think skyrim is easily one of the best games of the last 5 years. Would be even better with multiplayer options, but everything is so heavily scripted and since there's no random events, that cuts down on replayability and totally cuts out multiplayer options. However, I can already see the end of skyrim coming, since there's very little replayability with the lack of random events (every new playthrough has the same quests, in other words) I will eventually grow tired of it and skyrim will be over.
So what's new on the gaming front? Well, Star Wars: The Old Republic is coming out in 5 days. It's an MMO, and my history with MMO's is horrible. They are all made the same and they all end up playing the same... much like skyrim, I can see the end of them as soon as I start playing. Same quests over and over. But i may get it anyway, in case it surprises me. The trouble may be Origin, EA's (electronic Arts) answer to steam, a gaming service that offers games for sale. Steam, which I currently use, offers just about every game for sale that's on the market, past or present. Origin has a PC library of precisely 154 titles, about 100 of which are sims games and their expansions. So you may find your options for gaming purchases limited. Currently SWTOR is not available on steam. It would seem to me if you want your game to sell, you make it available to the most amount of people, but what the hell do I know, right? Right.
Other than that, there's literally nothing new out this Xmas. Next year, Diablo 3 is due, along with a bunch of other games. Sure, all those games were due this year, too, but they got pushed back til next year. So hopefully we'll see them by next xmas. Will they get pushed back again? Maybe! I still find it funny that Diablo 3 has been up for pre-order all year. It may not be out til 2015, maybe 2020 at this rate!
With any luck, I'll have a job by then.
in the meantime, I am listening to xmas music, playing skyrim and watching a charlie brown xmas. if I ever get a dog, I am naming him snoopy. Or her. I don't care. I may name one of my kids Snoopy.
Oh and my current favorite xmas song is (I think) titled "can't wait for xmas" by mindy aber? Not sure how you spell her name. It's got a snappy little beat to it and it pretty much just sets the mood for the holidays... not the one I currently HAVE, since it's like a week before xmas and I haven't got any lights or my tree up yet (not my fault, I swear), but the one I WANT, because she sings about having everything all set up and just waiting for it to come while enjoying the moment with some wine, which just sounds bloody awesome to me. I'd LOVE to have a xmas where we WEREN'T just finishing the decorations on the 24th, you know? Oh well. Maybe next year! Still haven't heard it on the radio yet this season, so I may have to go on the internet and listen to it at least once before the end of the year.
Happy holidays everyone! Hope you are enjoying skyrim, brando!
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Why I Don't Get Flu Shots
Alternatively titled, I'm a negative critical whiny sonofabitch.
Now before I get into this, let me just say, I am probably the most easygoing, cheerful guy I know. I don't worry about most things. But a few things just tend to bug me. Here's what they are, in no particular order!
I do not get flu shots. I have several reasons. Pretty much the same reasons i don't vote, meaning, both activities are completely pointless. The voting I am not going to go into because I've mentioned it before, but this is cold and flu season, so let me explain.
(1) "flu shots don't give you the flu." this is what they tell you. Supposedly, the virii in a flu shot are either killed by chemical or radiation means before they are injected into you, allowing your body to assimilate the virus without actually being infected with the flu. This is utter crap. I personally cannot verify whether the viruses contained in your average flu shot are alive or dead, mainly because my eyes aren't good enough to see if the little sub-microscopic buggers are breathing or not at the time of injection. I will say this. I've had two flu shots in my lifetime. I came down with two of the worst cases of flu I've ever had... the day after getting the shots. So it was either the actual flu, or flu-like symptoms, but there was no way for me to tell the difference. I'll talk about flu-like symptoms in a moment.
(2) "Flu shots may offer some protection for this year's flu." This is a direct quote from a web page explaining flu shots. I don't know if you know how they make flu shots, but let me sum up. They take the strains of flu that were most prominent for the previous year, replicate huge doses of the virus that caused each of them, then kill them (supposedly) and inject you with them. Now, since flu viruses mutate on a yearly basis, and there is no way to determine how they are going to mutate from one year to the next, there is no way they can give you ANY protection from THIS year's flu. Mainly because, it takes about 6 months to work up batches of flu shots. By the time they have shots for this year's strain, it's already summer and flu season is long over. Look it up on the internet if you don't believe me. It's fact. Basically, the shots can offer some protection IF you haven't already gotten last year's flu.
Let me explain this in simple terms. Say you are a bouncer at an exclusive dance club. There's a clean-shaven guy in a yellow raincoat flashing the ladies in the women's restroom. So you eject the guy from your club. This is the equivalent of getting the flu, and then getting over it. If, say, two weeks later (or even a year, your body remembers these things), a clean shaven man in a yellow raincoat tries to get into the club, you are going to tell him to take a hike right away. And if he keeps trying, you are going to keep telling him to buzz off. Now, the flu shot is the equivalent of the club manager coming to you with a picture of a clean-shaven man in a yellow raincoat and saying "don't let this guy in here." To which, you of course reply "Of course not, I threw this guy out two weeks ago and haven't let him in since." Now here's the problem, if the guy dons a fake beard and wears a blue raincoat, you let him in... because that's the new disguise for the flu this year. So the moral of the story? Don't let any viruses in wearing a fake beard and blue raincoat. Sneaky master of disguise bastards.
Flu shots generally contain 3 different strains of the flu virus, the 3 strains that were most common last year. This year's flu shots also contain the swine flu strain that killed so many people in south america last year, and your doctor won't tell you that unless you ask. So two things are going to happen when you get injected with a flu shot. Either your white blood cells (your body's bouncers) are going to go HOLY SHIT MASSIVE INVASION OF CLEAN SHAVEN GUYS WITH YELLOW RAINCOATS! and pitch a fit (giving you flu-like symptoms, which are your body's natural reactions to nullify the effects of any viral invaders, dead or not), OR, your white blood cells are going to go "oh, that clean shaven guy with a yellow raincoat again? pfft, he's no trouble, he's not getting in here." and nothing happens.
That's right, I just said, if your body has NO reaction to the flu shot, it means you already had all of last year's flu and just paid $20 for nothing. If you body does have a reaction, congratulations! You just spent $20 to protect yourself in case you somehow find the 14 people on planet earth who haven't already been exposed to last year's virus, and they get it, and somehow manage to pass it on to you. In that rare case, the shot may help you fight off the flu easier. However, for your body to actually process that viral protection into all of it's white blood cells... it triggers the flu-like symptoms. Since each flu shot has the 3 most prominent strains from last year, even if those strains were not prominent in your area, you are almost guaranteed to get the flu from it. And like I said, if you don't, you've already had it and didn't have to worry in the first place.
Now moving on to my whiny bitch status, I noticed after watching Stephen king's "bag of bones" last night on Tv that I am unusually hard in my reviews for PC games, and rather easy on my movie reviews. I thought Bag of bones was about normal for a stephen king movie. Lots of build up, horrible ending. Think storm of the century, carrie, the shining, well, you get the idea. A stephen king movie without a horrible ending just wouldn't be a stephen king movie! And it's not really that the ending was horrible, but, come on... the guy seems to have no problem whatsoever resisting the "curse" despite everyone else being affected, and he stops the curse by fighting of a tree and dissolving some bones. ooo. Thrilling stuf zzzzzzzzz...
So why am I so easy on movies? Well, about 5 years back, the last blockbuster store in my area closed. I used to rent movies there, old-timey horror flicks from the 70's and 80's, and it cost me about 3 bucks per movie. If I spent an hour and a half watching it, and it sucked, then i was out 3 bucks. if I spent an hour and a half watching it, and it was great, then it was about a dollar's worth every half hour. Shit it costs me, er, some people i mean, not me... just what I've heard, some people will spend 3 dollars a minute on a sex line. But that's not bad for an hour and a half of entertainment, good OR bad. Movies are cheap, and you never expect them to last longer than 2 hours.
Games, on the other hand, are not cheap. Skyrim just cost me $60. Sure, it turned out to be a great game by most accounts, and perhaps I was exceptionally hard on it's drawbacks in my review of it, but it still plays quite well for all the minor faults. But even the crappiest of games might cost you $50. So if you spend $50 on a game and end up playing it for an hour, when you expected to play it for weeks, then obviously there are going to be some bad feelings on your part, and you are out tons more money.
Now let's think about this. Games have gotten to be huge productions nowadays, basically costing about the same to make (and the same time frame) as movies. So if a game and a movie both cost a million dollars (just pulled that number out of my ass) to make, and say, a million people see the movie over the course of it's time at the theaters, and each spend 10 dollars on it, then the movie made nine million dollars in profit. Following me so far? Now moviegoers can spend 10 dollars on a movie because LOTS of people see movies, but not so many play games. So game companies have to charge more to get the same amount back... or at least, they used to. Nowadays, a LOT more people play games, but I see game prices just going up and up... take skyrim. First PC game I ever spent $60 on. Usually anything over $50 is a collector's boxed set or something. With action figures. lol So bethesda is probably making BAJILLIONS of dollars right now, at $60 a pop, with skyrim selling like it is.
Which makes game reviews so critical, especially the metascores or customer reviews. You don't want to spend $60 on a crappy game that you only play for 5 minutes because it blows chunks. And yet, gaming review magazines only pay for positive reviews, or I should say, the magazines won't get advance copies of games if they have a reputation for giving bad reviews. which hurts the gaming mag, because then they can't review their games in a timely manner, and someone else beats them to the punch.. usually with great reviews that they sell in exchange for advance copies of games.
I'll give you a perfect example of this. For this christmas I was looking at games I might want to get. According to the metascore website, 22 critics reviewed Modern Warfare 3 and gave it an average score of 80. That's not too bad for a game. And yet, 4200+ average gamers give the game an average score of 2 out of 10, or 20 when compared to the 80. That's 20 out of 100. I couldn't even pass college with that. If that doesn't illustrate some serious payout going on for the gaming mags to get some positive reviews, I'm not really sure what does.
That's all for now, Happy Holidays if I don't get a chance to post before xmas!
Now before I get into this, let me just say, I am probably the most easygoing, cheerful guy I know. I don't worry about most things. But a few things just tend to bug me. Here's what they are, in no particular order!
I do not get flu shots. I have several reasons. Pretty much the same reasons i don't vote, meaning, both activities are completely pointless. The voting I am not going to go into because I've mentioned it before, but this is cold and flu season, so let me explain.
(1) "flu shots don't give you the flu." this is what they tell you. Supposedly, the virii in a flu shot are either killed by chemical or radiation means before they are injected into you, allowing your body to assimilate the virus without actually being infected with the flu. This is utter crap. I personally cannot verify whether the viruses contained in your average flu shot are alive or dead, mainly because my eyes aren't good enough to see if the little sub-microscopic buggers are breathing or not at the time of injection. I will say this. I've had two flu shots in my lifetime. I came down with two of the worst cases of flu I've ever had... the day after getting the shots. So it was either the actual flu, or flu-like symptoms, but there was no way for me to tell the difference. I'll talk about flu-like symptoms in a moment.
(2) "Flu shots may offer some protection for this year's flu." This is a direct quote from a web page explaining flu shots. I don't know if you know how they make flu shots, but let me sum up. They take the strains of flu that were most prominent for the previous year, replicate huge doses of the virus that caused each of them, then kill them (supposedly) and inject you with them. Now, since flu viruses mutate on a yearly basis, and there is no way to determine how they are going to mutate from one year to the next, there is no way they can give you ANY protection from THIS year's flu. Mainly because, it takes about 6 months to work up batches of flu shots. By the time they have shots for this year's strain, it's already summer and flu season is long over. Look it up on the internet if you don't believe me. It's fact. Basically, the shots can offer some protection IF you haven't already gotten last year's flu.
Let me explain this in simple terms. Say you are a bouncer at an exclusive dance club. There's a clean-shaven guy in a yellow raincoat flashing the ladies in the women's restroom. So you eject the guy from your club. This is the equivalent of getting the flu, and then getting over it. If, say, two weeks later (or even a year, your body remembers these things), a clean shaven man in a yellow raincoat tries to get into the club, you are going to tell him to take a hike right away. And if he keeps trying, you are going to keep telling him to buzz off. Now, the flu shot is the equivalent of the club manager coming to you with a picture of a clean-shaven man in a yellow raincoat and saying "don't let this guy in here." To which, you of course reply "Of course not, I threw this guy out two weeks ago and haven't let him in since." Now here's the problem, if the guy dons a fake beard and wears a blue raincoat, you let him in... because that's the new disguise for the flu this year. So the moral of the story? Don't let any viruses in wearing a fake beard and blue raincoat. Sneaky master of disguise bastards.
Flu shots generally contain 3 different strains of the flu virus, the 3 strains that were most common last year. This year's flu shots also contain the swine flu strain that killed so many people in south america last year, and your doctor won't tell you that unless you ask. So two things are going to happen when you get injected with a flu shot. Either your white blood cells (your body's bouncers) are going to go HOLY SHIT MASSIVE INVASION OF CLEAN SHAVEN GUYS WITH YELLOW RAINCOATS! and pitch a fit (giving you flu-like symptoms, which are your body's natural reactions to nullify the effects of any viral invaders, dead or not), OR, your white blood cells are going to go "oh, that clean shaven guy with a yellow raincoat again? pfft, he's no trouble, he's not getting in here." and nothing happens.
That's right, I just said, if your body has NO reaction to the flu shot, it means you already had all of last year's flu and just paid $20 for nothing. If you body does have a reaction, congratulations! You just spent $20 to protect yourself in case you somehow find the 14 people on planet earth who haven't already been exposed to last year's virus, and they get it, and somehow manage to pass it on to you. In that rare case, the shot may help you fight off the flu easier. However, for your body to actually process that viral protection into all of it's white blood cells... it triggers the flu-like symptoms. Since each flu shot has the 3 most prominent strains from last year, even if those strains were not prominent in your area, you are almost guaranteed to get the flu from it. And like I said, if you don't, you've already had it and didn't have to worry in the first place.
Now moving on to my whiny bitch status, I noticed after watching Stephen king's "bag of bones" last night on Tv that I am unusually hard in my reviews for PC games, and rather easy on my movie reviews. I thought Bag of bones was about normal for a stephen king movie. Lots of build up, horrible ending. Think storm of the century, carrie, the shining, well, you get the idea. A stephen king movie without a horrible ending just wouldn't be a stephen king movie! And it's not really that the ending was horrible, but, come on... the guy seems to have no problem whatsoever resisting the "curse" despite everyone else being affected, and he stops the curse by fighting of a tree and dissolving some bones. ooo. Thrilling stuf zzzzzzzzz...
So why am I so easy on movies? Well, about 5 years back, the last blockbuster store in my area closed. I used to rent movies there, old-timey horror flicks from the 70's and 80's, and it cost me about 3 bucks per movie. If I spent an hour and a half watching it, and it sucked, then i was out 3 bucks. if I spent an hour and a half watching it, and it was great, then it was about a dollar's worth every half hour. Shit it costs me, er, some people i mean, not me... just what I've heard, some people will spend 3 dollars a minute on a sex line. But that's not bad for an hour and a half of entertainment, good OR bad. Movies are cheap, and you never expect them to last longer than 2 hours.
Games, on the other hand, are not cheap. Skyrim just cost me $60. Sure, it turned out to be a great game by most accounts, and perhaps I was exceptionally hard on it's drawbacks in my review of it, but it still plays quite well for all the minor faults. But even the crappiest of games might cost you $50. So if you spend $50 on a game and end up playing it for an hour, when you expected to play it for weeks, then obviously there are going to be some bad feelings on your part, and you are out tons more money.
Now let's think about this. Games have gotten to be huge productions nowadays, basically costing about the same to make (and the same time frame) as movies. So if a game and a movie both cost a million dollars (just pulled that number out of my ass) to make, and say, a million people see the movie over the course of it's time at the theaters, and each spend 10 dollars on it, then the movie made nine million dollars in profit. Following me so far? Now moviegoers can spend 10 dollars on a movie because LOTS of people see movies, but not so many play games. So game companies have to charge more to get the same amount back... or at least, they used to. Nowadays, a LOT more people play games, but I see game prices just going up and up... take skyrim. First PC game I ever spent $60 on. Usually anything over $50 is a collector's boxed set or something. With action figures. lol So bethesda is probably making BAJILLIONS of dollars right now, at $60 a pop, with skyrim selling like it is.
Which makes game reviews so critical, especially the metascores or customer reviews. You don't want to spend $60 on a crappy game that you only play for 5 minutes because it blows chunks. And yet, gaming review magazines only pay for positive reviews, or I should say, the magazines won't get advance copies of games if they have a reputation for giving bad reviews. which hurts the gaming mag, because then they can't review their games in a timely manner, and someone else beats them to the punch.. usually with great reviews that they sell in exchange for advance copies of games.
I'll give you a perfect example of this. For this christmas I was looking at games I might want to get. According to the metascore website, 22 critics reviewed Modern Warfare 3 and gave it an average score of 80. That's not too bad for a game. And yet, 4200+ average gamers give the game an average score of 2 out of 10, or 20 when compared to the 80. That's 20 out of 100. I couldn't even pass college with that. If that doesn't illustrate some serious payout going on for the gaming mags to get some positive reviews, I'm not really sure what does.
That's all for now, Happy Holidays if I don't get a chance to post before xmas!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)