[  Mood: Embarrased ]
[  Currently: Playing WoW ]
Inside your computer box, there is a land. A vast land of pixels and lol. Where night elves frolic like strippers and the undead finally have a small continent to call their own. Behold: all of its blurry, creepy glory.

When playing the game, this view is impressive somehow.

I’ve been playing the trial for several days now. Ten days for free if you’ve got four empty gigs on your hard drive. I hadn’t played in quite a while, but I wanted to give my new lappy a test run. The result?

I’ve spent the past four days with the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life.

How the Hell could this happen? I don’t like nice people. Nice people don’t inspire sin and depravity, my two favorite hobbies. They inspire common courtesy and pleasantry, two of my least favorite hobbies. No! Where are the fat dudes playing fat elf chicks that will cyber for gold? Where are the rows of naked gnomes committing suicide off the top of a holy tower in order to spell "COCK" in giant letters on the ground with their bodies? Where are the vicious, angry twelve year olds weeping into their microphones when they miss out on ph4t 13w75?

They’ve been replaced by people who are kind, share their wealth and treasure, and hide their shame under 1200 points of armor. Goddamnit, what the Hell has happened to the internet? Who the Hell would think that a people populating a virtual realm of colorful magic, hyper active midgets and a constant battle between the forces of good and evil would be more influenced by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien than Hunter S. Thompson and Allen Ginsberg? It does not make sense!

The gameplay is dice based with a series of hotkeys for special abilities. Its simple and easy enough for anyone to get into, but there’s a lot of info the game slowly forces you to learn, a process that will turn anyone into an elite. The addictive nature of the game isn’t limited to just combat, though, as there are several crafting professions in the game that are equally time consuming and rewarding. For women and Ian McKellen enthusiasts, you can also play as various kinds of mages.

More like Gayndolf.

Despite the lack of interest I have in my fellow players, it really has been a good time. I may very well step up from the trial account. But I guess that’s how they get you: the first hit is free. And the good stuff? Well, you have to pay extra for it.

I wub my Gamefly. As with 300, I’m not allowed to see Spider-Man 3 until I can get together with my girl next month, HOWEVER:

Ahhh. Loopholes.

THIS.

Dharma Bum: Watching out for cool stuff on AICN, so you don’t have to.

[  Mood: Neutral ]
There was once a man who ate his own face. He said that it tasted of ham, and also human flesh. I do not need any damn segue! Here are some great games coming out in 2007 that don’t get mainstream attention quite enough.

MASS EFFECT

Hyped early in its development cycle as "Jack Bauer in space," Mass Effect is going to be a seventy hour RPG from the creators of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, BioWare. While the setting is an homage to the sci-fi of the 80s, the story is fairly original.

Humanity has newly been accepted into a long established conglomerate of alien civilizations, and has launched itself into the space faring age. However, its timing could not be worse. Every fifty thousand years, a race of machines plunders the universe of all intelligent life that uses advanced technology, and Earth came onto the scene at the 49,999 mark. It is up to Commander Shepherd and his team to investigate a way to stop this threat, and along the way, he must decide which civilizations are worth saving, and which ones must be sacrificed for the greater good of the universe.

Commander Shepherd is not just another space marine, though. He also has access to "biotic" powers, a series of force-like abilities based on real life theoretical physics. The combat is a third person shooter focusing on either running and gunning, squad leadership, or tactical play that requires thorough knowledge of your enemies’ weaknesses and strengths, and a host of abilities to help take advantage of that information.

It is an RPG, but the level of depth in character development is not yet really known. We do know there is different gear and weapons that can be customized, the player character can be either male or female, and while Commander Shepherd will have a set voice, it can be manipulated by sound filters per the player’s whims. The developers are boasting that Mass Effect will have the most realistic human characters ever seen in a videogame to date, and that the environments explorable in the game will be both well detailed and massive.

Originally anticipated as a May release, Mass Effect is now speculated to be coming out some time in September of this year.

BIOSHOCK

Imagine a world where the painter is free from the censor, capitalism is not hindered by the stupid and lazy, and the scientist does not have to bow to the superfluous morality of the religious man. Truly, it would be a utopia – until you introduce the actual human element. Bioshock explores the depravity and hopelessness of severing academia from the rest of society in the hopes of creating a perfect world, and how the arrogance of the intellectual can be deadly.

A nameless character arrives after the collapse of a civilization like that described above, only to find nothing but ruins. He must find a way to either escape the slowly flooding underwater paradise gone horribly wrong, or assimilate into becoming another one of the depraved souls trapped by their own madness and dangerous addiction to "Adam," the key to surviving in this mad world.

Adam is a concentrated biotic injection that alters its users genetic code, allowing superhuman abilities to be at their disposal. Originally conceived as a means to escape aging, being overweight, ugly, having the wrong hair color or even the wrong gender, Adam rapidly gained popularity due to its addictive nature. Eventually, it became currency, and when people started using it for violent means, it led to the collapse of the Godless society that created it.

Besides the deep social commentary on the flaws in Ayn Rand’s philosophies, Bioshock will also boast some of the most advanced artificial intelligence ever seen. Relationships between enemies will not be scripted, but rather, occur naturally due to what is coded in their disposition by the programmers. The Big Daddy and the Little Sister, for example, have a symbiotic relationship.

Little Sisters are the only characters in the game capable of harvesting adam from dead bodies, and they share that adam with the Big Daddies – large, well armored men who violently and desperately protect the Little Sisters. If you want to harvest Adam in order to survive, you either have to kill a Little Sister, or become a Big Daddy by defending the Little Sister from an attacker.

Bioshock is speculated to be releasing in August, with a slim chance we’ll see it in July.

Indiana Jones 2007/Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Everyone on the face of the planet is familiar with these two George Lucas franchises, but what is perhaps even more interesting than being able to play as a Jedi or as a hobo archaeologist, is the A.I. system being experimented with in these titles. Most games, at this point in development, have moved passed death animations, and into the age of the ragdoll. When an enemy loses its hit points, it then falls over in a very realistic, very uninteresting way. These two titles are handling damage to character models in a different way.

When a character takes damage, they will now know to cradle their wound in a realistic way, or if they’re pushed off an edge, they’ll try to grab an edge and hold on for dear life, they’ll know where cover is and how to use it effectively – and all of that is coded into the character model. The technology is called "Euphoria," and also comes with a particle physics engine that allows realistic environmental damage. Going beyond shattering glass, wood will now splinter, and metal will dent, all based on real life physics algorithms. This is a huge step forward for the game industry, and may perhaps be the future of character models in all games.

Imagine this technology in a world where you can pick up a stormtrooper and slam him into the wall using the force, or fling him through the branches of some trees on Kashyyk, or just let him flail off into the cold depths of the voice of space. Or with Indiana Jones – fights on a rickety bridge, on a moving vehicle, or at the edge of a tall temple will take on all new dangers. Boulders will no longer have the fatal flaw of clipping errors – they’ll destroy rock walls, trees, and ancient traps in the hopes of crushing your PhD’d ass.

Overlord

Admit it: At some point in your life, you wanted to be Sauron. Well, this game should satisfy anyone’s inner drive to be the leader of a destructive army of goblins. As the Overlord, it is the player’s task to manage a group of loyal and over zealous group of vicious, yet comedic, underlings, while you start your reign of terror to conquer all the land that you survey.

When your reputation as either a vicious tyrant or a just ruler grows, your loyal subjects will treat you with the respect you deserve. The goblins will bring you gifts of what they pillaged in order to gain your favor, while farmers will offer you their busty virgin daughters in order to gain your mercy.

Nothing new is being done with this game that anyone knows about, but judging from screen shots, it looks like it will be a fun twist on the Fable franchise.

TimeShift

A new spin on the first person shooter, TimeShift incorporates elements of time manipulation and puzzle solving into the old standard of killing people with guns. Starring Dennis Quaid and Michael Ironside, this game was delayed from last year due to an expansion in budget.

The player will have the ability to speed up, slow down and stop time, making for some very interesting Matrix like moments, as well as some very interesting puzzles. One that was described by the developer involved blowing an armored door open with a rocket to escape a group of advancing enemies, passing through the door, and then reversing time to before the rocket was launched. With that, you and your pursuers are suddenly seperated by six inches of reinforced steel. There is a lot of smart stuff that can happen with this game, and with a heavy hitting cast of highly competent actors, it also has the capacity to be a great sci-fi drama.

So I beat up on Ken Kutaragi for helping run the Playstation brand into the ground the other day.

Meanwhile, the Microsoft brand is doing itself its own disservices, as they always have.

For those that don’t know, that is the brand new $480 X-Box 360 Elite, once believed to be a complete remodel of the flawed launch console. When the 360 originally launched, there was a small, but vocal, minority who complained of severe hardware issues. This included the 360 bricking, unable to maintain power, scratching DVDs and CDs, and ceasing to function altogether during some movies.

When I originally bought my X-Box, it was a used unit that had already bricked during a DVD playback, and bricked again when I tried to play some hard to find Dalek pr0n. It was sent back to me, refurbished, and has not acted up in several hundred hours of play. In fact, I just broke 15,000 achievement points, I’m happy to report, with zero issues besides a poorly designed game freezing up here and there.

Trashy personality quizzes made by junior high students in order to label ourselves like various cuts of meat, that’s what! But no more! I will not stand for it. Go forth and find out whether you’re more like Jar Jar, or more like 3P0.

The Ultimate Star Wars Personality Quiz

(Yes, damnit!)

Far less cool Star Trek Personality Quiz

(No friggin way.)

World’s Shortest Political Quiz

Kurt Russell, Clint Eastwood and I have meetings and poker on Thursdays. You guys should come check it out. Guys? There’s free beer? Guys? Anyone?

Which Spice Girl are you?

Ginger Spice – The Slutty One!

Transformers this time

You are Hot Rod. You are an all around good person. You follow rules until they get on your nerves, then you throw out the rule book and start shooting. You tend to act first and that sometimes gets you into trouble, but you’ve got it under control. You have this incredible need to do what you think is right. When you find yourself in charge, you are rather uncomfortable, but you have the savvy to get the job done. Rock on with your hot-headed self.

Wow, the internet can tell you so much about yourself.

This is a couple of days old, but its pretty significant news for hardcore gamers. Ken Kutaragi has vacated his position as the face and voice of the Sony Playstation. This is a sad end to what should have been an amazing career. Kutaragi’s buzz in the early years of "electronic gaming" put him on the same scale of importance as Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto. Just as Mario’s creator is credited with giving the videogame industry life and a future, the Playstation’s creator is credited with giving the industry a reneissance in a time it might have slowed down and died.

He won’t be remembered for that, though – and rightly so. His memory is forever pock marked by several bad decisions by Sony brass, for which he was the figurehead and the willing scape goat. By all means, the PS3 should be mopping up the competitors and leaving them out to dry, just as the PS2 whomped the Gamecube and X-Box, but that didn’t happen this console cycle. Some people blame the late release of the PS3 for its lack of performance, but I firmly believe Kutaragi is directly responsible for some terrible design decisions made to the console that allowed it to, perhaps not fail, but not reach its full potential.

After all the research that was thrown out the window at the last second, the high manufacturing costs, the unnecessary bluray player, and the iffy backwards compatibility, the PS3 retails for five hundred ninety nine dollars. Add in three extra wireless controllers, at sixty dollars a piece. Four games, sixty bucks each. And let’s add another hundred dollars for miscellaneous costs or peripherals, to make the console unique to the buyer.

That is eleven hundred and twenty dollars to play four games – none of which are worth buying the console over in the first place. Two controllers, and no peripherals, its still almost a thousand dollars. Asking that of a consumer is insane, but Sony assumed they had the fan base to pull ahead.

They don’t. They were arrogant. They were sloppy. And now the Wii is kicking their ass. Ken Kutaragi let it happen, and he does not deserve his job any more.

So long, Ken. Thank you for all you did to contribute to the industry in the past. Hope that you did not contribute heavily to the slow downfall of the Playstation brand with the PS3. And the PSP. I’ll never forgive not having a second analog stick.

[  Mood: Happy ]
When Ellen Feiss and Benjamin Curtis aren’t smoking massive quantities of pot, they’re in your house, messing with your shit. They did not send a robot to hump my Gameboy, but they did decide to gnaw on the power cable on my laptop. I plugged the [Janeway] in to get my internet on, when kachow, I conducted several tens and possibly even hundreds of volts through my thumb and diddling finger. I immediately called India to complain to Dell, the people who sold me the damn thing in the blazing summer of 2003. I told them that, even though the warranty was expired, I wanted them to replace the power cable. Thanks to the technical expert’s grasp of the English language, he decided to send me a free computer instead.

So my old Inspiron 1100 just got replaced by the Inspiron 1550 E. That’s 450 and a vowel better than my old laptop! But that’s not all! This bad boy comes preloaded with Windows Vista, a decent graphics chip, an okay processor, a wider screen, an almost full scale keyboard, a DVD RW drive thingy, a bunch of CDs I’m never going to install and will probably lose, aaaand retails for up to and including six hundred ninety nine dollars!

Eh, yeah, they sent me a shitty new laptop to replace my shitty old laptop, but this shitty laptop is shitty by today’s standards, whereas my old laptop was shitty by 2003’s standards. Which is an improvement? Long story short, after a week with barely any internet, I’m back and posting this for no reason:

I’d like to blow her bubble… eh… That dress would like as good off of her as it would off of my grandm… no… That dog is… nevermind.

[  Mood: Amused ]
[  Currently: Reading stuff I wrote six years ago. ]
Thanks to the lovely and funny Ubalstachaa reminding me that the internet way back machine exists, I can go back and read stuff I wrote for the contests on Zealot. I was always so proud whenever I got on the Top Ten list, or when the HZGs put up one of my rants. It was like Joe was patting me on the head and saying, "Good boy, Dharma. You get a treat." Except that I never cashed out my tokens, as I never really wanted any of the offered prizes. I liked the implied praise a lot better. Almost nobody else rewarded my bad behavior when I was a kid, so it meant a lot to me.

Instead of writing any really original blog entries for a while, Imma gonna reprint some stuff I wrote and do sort of a DVD commentary thing on it. The italicized text will be me, Dharma Bum: 2007 edition, and the regular old text will be me, Dharma Bum: 2001 edition. Start try:

I, ZEALOT
By ImADharmaBum@aol.com

I think the title came from watching Spartacus all day. I was down and out with a sport injury for most of 2001-2002, so I got to catch up on a lot of classic TV and movies.

Being a science fiction fan right now is a very morbid existence. What in the HELL do we have to look forward to? A Star Trek series that’s going to [filk] with the fictional universe’s continuity even more than Voyager did, Matrix sequels that could never live up to the original and a Star Wars prequel that Lucas has hired Fox Family Channel actors to star in. We have every right to spew bile, but why do we do it? Why put ourselves through this world of [sith] when we know we’re going to be disappointed? Why let our minds numb to the point where we bitch about Independence Day not getting nominated for an Oscar, or bitch about Voyager’s doctor being set on fire on Seven Days? (This is really oddly in the same spirit of the opening of my review of The Dresden Files, even though I hadn’t read this or thought about it in years. Spooooooky.) Like most things, this can be answered by penguins.

Oh, Hell, do I even have to explain that? (Not to me, but these other jerks don’t know what we’re thinking about.)

When a large group of penguins get hungry and want to go hunt for fish’n’stuff, they’re frightened that something in the water is going to pop up and eat their ass. (I was just beginning to experiment with cursing like a sailor at this point in my life. It was weird that whoever was censoring me would sensor the F bombs and S bombs, but ass, butt, etc. was just fine. I wish I’d known about the C word back then, it would be interesting to see what the Zealot version of that would be) They all line up in front of the water, and the penguins in the back slowly walk forward, pushing the penguins in the front into the water. If the penguins in the water get eaten by a polar bear, harp seals, Inuits or whatever the Hell eat penguins, the group of birds wait a few seconds, and then push a second and third row of their brothers into the water. They continue this until the penguins stop becoming chew toys for Pooh (I regret this non-sequitor. Working for Disney, I learned that canonically, Pooh is a strict vegetarian, although he will eat animal products (like eggs, milk and honey) ), and then they jump into the water and eat fish’n’stuff. I learned that from watching FOX. (It was a horrible one shot sitcom about a bunch of flight attendants. The show was an attempt to satisfy the WOOOOOOO! crowd after Married with Children went south. Approximately zero members of the cast were hideous, and approximately zero members of the cast were Broadway style gaaaaaaay! Perhaps it was the show’s lack of of realism that led to it being canceled so swiftly?)

Same thing with science fiction fans. If a fan doesn’t like something, like, say, The Phantom Menace, they post something on the Internet calling it "The Pharting Manass" and bitching to others they’ll never meet, EVER, until they have to pee or their Mom hustles them for rent money, and either way they have to make a daring escape through an open window to hide inside a garbage can until it’s safe to come out or they’ve soiled themselves (we all know about government regulated toilets)(And how safe they are *wink*). (Contrary to popular belief, I’ve never used drugs in my life. Being sort of confined to a bed in front of a television for a full two years really did a number on my attention span. Admittedly, my dad smoked a lot of pot throughout his life, and probably was lighting up when I was conceived, so that also factors into my personality. I consider myself a quarter Italian, a quarter German, a quarter Apache, and a quarter Cannabis.) These complaints are replied to with "WHAT YOU SAY!" and "ShUT Up BiTCH, * WARZ iz |< e \/\/ |_ !!!!!" (The leet "e" is actually a 3, whoops) and these poor bastards go and see it. Wave after wave of science fiction fan is pulled in, until it stops sucking and reaches cult status or the movie theaters drop it and we have to wait for it to come to Blockbuster, griping and grumbling all the way through that time period. Luckily, none of us get our asses eaten like penguins, unless we sit on government regulated toilets. (Goddamn alligators. I KNOW YOU’RE DOWN THERE.)

There are also fans of Star Trek who have been fans since they were ugly, uuuugly 10 year olds in the 60s or pimply, piiiiiimply faced 10 year olds in the early 90s. You can’t just give something like that up, it’s like heroin laced candy corn (I made a heroin laced cocaine comment minutes before rereading this! Spoooky!), but I really don’t feel like explaining that too much because I need a fix of DS9 before I go into withdrawal and start shaking like a g’ak facing the business end of a bat’leth. (Comedy gold!)

In conclusion, the sci fi fan’s bile is not going to stop flooding the Earth like the blood of Apocalypse, but that’s the zealot’s nature. I think Mr. T said it best when he stated, "The nature of man is to do what he does, and to avoid all altruistic tendencies until it’s too late for him to realize what he’s done. Those who go against those instincts are idiots."

Mr. T… Nietzche… whatever. If they rhyme, it’s right in my book. ("Those are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others." – Rosa Parks.)

The time to give up the happiest job on Earth in the happiest place on Earth is rapidly approaching. Its been a year since I first moved from California to Florida, and now its time to go back to school. Next month, the big move will swiftly take me from the sweaty, angry, Canadian tourists of Orlando, desperately searching for the Tomorrowland Indy Speedway (its in Tomorrowland). In their stead, I will be delivered into the presence of calm, peaceful, 420 friendly Canadian citizens, bumming around Montana in search of White Castle hamburgers (they’re in the freezer section of your local grocer).

Yes, indeed, its time to stop playing with Chewbacca and go back to friggin’ college. Just in time, too – its getting hot, and I’m all Disney’d out at this point. If I don’t go back to any of the parks for years, I won’t miss it. I’ve seen and done everything, on stage and behind the scenes. I even got to see the animation studios a few times, and have made life long friends with some brilliant artists who are on their way to being the next Brad Bird. I’m King Kool for life because of that.

Like most big changes, smaller changes have a way of tacking themselves on. Not only am I going to a state that I’ve never been to, I’m changing my major for the third time in three years of college. I might also have big news with regards to my life long aspiration to become a video game reviewer for a major website – and, no, not this one, although I understand the pay is the same.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same. With the change in rent, climate, and how many hours I’m going to be able to work, I’m expecting a big lifestyle change, but not huge. As long as I can get cable, high speed internet and… eh… food? I’ll be happy where ever I am. Plus, I can’t wait to go hiking here:

Although, if experience proves correct, something tells me I’ll be giving the female unit a piggyback ride most of the way.