kemosabi03-blog

[kemosabi03-blog]

Failure

So, this all started as a plan to force myself to enjoy the things I already had. Then time slipped away and I couldn't commit to the stupid tasks I made for myself. The grand plan was to absorb all the things I surrounded myself with, then dispense with the physical things. For no older than I am, I've accumulated a fair stack of things.

It occurs to me that I got ahead of myself with that. I have a long time to amass a collection. Moreso, the important thing about collections are the appreciation that goes with them. I can buy every great book I've ever heard of, but nothing come from not reading them. I tend to not read them. 

I'm not saying I'm shutting down this little project. But perhaps a bit of redirection is in order. It is now October. Baseball season, as my father called it, is upon us. The reality is that I have about 6 months before I'm staring a move in the face. This mass of unread literary history is not coming with me. Perhaps The Backlog can become a record of those proceedings instead. 

Anybody want to take bets on how long I stick to that?

[kemosabi03-blog]

How I beat League of Legends

This whole blog started as an attempt for me to save money. That was the core of it. If I stopped buying things and enjoyed the things I owned already, I’d be better off. Well, I failed. Miserably.

So lets call this a return to form. I’ve beat League of Legends. I’ve finished it. I need to be finished with it. Let me explain.

League is a Multi-player Online Battle Area (MOBA) game for those that don’t know. 5 players pick a champion character and square off against 5 other characters on a map. There are a lot of things happening on the map, but the core is attack the enemy base and destroy it before the other guys destroy yours. It’s all based on a modification-become-a-game Defense of the Ancients for Warcraft III. It’s a big deal. Thousands of people all over the world play. There are professional tournaments and players and leagues with sponsors and cash prizes. I watch those leagues and find them entertaining enough.

You can, as a normal player, play official matches to become ranked on that same international stage. You could, in theory, become a professional LoL player while sitting at home.

I’ve never played League of Legends for that reason. I have zero drive to want to be a ranked player. I liked messing around with the champions and their lore and their mechanics. I liked learning the roles of the game. I liked playing with my friends. I liked leveling up the player profile and getting new powers and perks. But I’ve finished that. I’m level 30 now. There is no progress to be made. I’ve not played all the characters, and that’s a bit of a shame, but I’ll get over that.

Also, I’m old for the League of Legends fanbase. Yeah, 24 is old. I think the median age is something like 16. So, the other people you tend to play with are…immature. That’s a kind word for it. And this is the Internet, so…they’re all anonymous. That’s never a good combination. What I’m saying is the people you play against, and often times with, are no pleasant people. It’s even worse if you couple it with the thin margins of error the game type allows and the competitive nature of the game.

I believe ‘worst online community’ is the typical moniker used for the general League of Legends populace. The development team has done some very interesting things trying to improve and manipulate the behavior of the community. I enjoyed those internal discipline systems and experiments. The ‘Tribunal’ system was fun and fascinating, for example. It was a system of sifting through reports of negative player behavior by giving ‘punish’ and ‘pardon’ powers to higher level players. I can log on each day and look at 20 cases of players who have been reported for various negative things and vote on if I believe their behavior warrants a punishment. My vote joins many other votes and that outcome is either handed up to actual employees who administer punishment or dismissed entirely. I enjoyed that to a point.

But I need to leave. I’ve done all I want to do and the community isn’t something I want to be a part of. The Tribunal system was fun, but now I don’tI feel like reading people sling obscenities and racial slurs at each other over a video game anymore.

Finally, League of Legends was becoming a tremendous and leeching time sink. A game lasts anywhere from 20 minutes to up to an hour. Hour long games tend to only happen against real people when neither team can close out the game. Against computer opponents, the game was usually over in half an hour. But even then, that’s a half hour that I’m fully engrossed in the game. It demands full attention and has no pause system. More than once, I’ve ignored people I didn’t want to ignore because I was playing League. That’s something addicts do. I needed to get away from it.

So I played a game tonight and realized that I’m not enjoying it anymore. I’m just going through the motions. There is nothing to gain from it. So I uninstalled the game. I’m still going to watch Professional play, if only because I don’t have cable and can’t watch real sports. But that’s different. I can’t keep playing this game.

I’m done. I’ve beaten League of Legends. It was fun.

[kemosabi03-blog]

Losing My Edge-The Album

So, you might have seen or heard that their is a new Daft Punk record out. Its uh...been out a few weeks. 

Yes, I'll admit, I suck at this.

Anywho, the hype around this record was CRAZY. And it was strange too. Daft Punk has never been a blockbuster group. Their records didn't sell crazy amounts. They started in a small scene, before the rise of the internet. They released their high watermark after the launch of iTunes and the death of the album. They were a band of singles that everybody knew but albums nobody bought. Then Alive 2007 happened. Suddenly their 'small scene' of EDM was stadium sized and spectacular and it was all their fault. 

A lot has happened since '07. EDM has become a much larger thing in the U.S.. 'Dubstep' happened. Bands like Justice and Hot Chip are seeing (college) radio airplay. My generation is absorbing this stuff like it was no big deal and we love it. So then it comes time for Daft Punk to make a new record.

At this point, they might as well be crowed the God Fathers of EDM in America, if only because of 'One More Time' and their crazy visible masks. So what do they do? They pull a James Murphy:

"I hear you're buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real. I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars."

Daft Punk made a record with real people and real instruments. And its damn good. Did it hold up to the crazy hype storm around it? No. Nothing could. But the hype did prepare us for this. They teased a huge list of collaborators who each talked about their own approaches and the experience of working with Daft Punk. All of their stories shared the same thesis, 'We're bringing the human element back to EDM, and we're doing it with a proper album. We're going back to the way things used to be.'

And that is exactly what happened. Random Access Memories is exactly what they promised. Its an album that showcases both what Daft Punk can do, and what they can do with help from some of the best artists from both the past and present of disco and EDM. It does it all with a fantastically engineered sound; its one of the best sounding records in years. 

I was most down on Daft Punk when they annouced they were doing the soundtrack to TRON. It logically seemed like a perfect fit, but when I listened to it, it was boring. I was exactly what I expected from a Daft Punk TRON soundtrack, which was sad because it was a perfectly workable soundtrack. But what I really missed was the sense that I could be surprised by Daft Punk. That is what they have always done well. Homework sounds little like Discovery which sounds little like Random Access Memories.

That is what brought me to Daft Punk in the first place. They were strange and different. They were hard to describe to people. You just had to listen to it. RAM is the same way. It shifts from what could be a soft rock song, to crazy experimental techno, to amazing Niles Rogers disco guitar, to sounds that would be at home on a TRON soundtrack to songs that are going to be amazing on the next ALIVE. Its a surprising and cohesive record that shows Daft Punk back at their innovative best. 

Maybe, they seem to think, the best way forward for EDM in the current landscape isn't so much headlong into the future as it is reflective on the past. I, for one, will agree with them this time.

[kemosabi03-blog]

God Only Knows - On BioShock, Mass Effect, and Choices

This piece contains spoilers for both BioShock (2007) and BioShock Infinite (2012) 

I'd like to imagine that there are any number of moments in a person's life where a piece of media has made them sit back and mutter something to themselves in astonishment. I believe those pieces then become what are known today as classics. I know I've been stunned by many things: Dark Side of The Moon and O.K. Computer both rewrote what I knew music to be. 1984 and Snow Crash both messed with the way I read books. I've got quite a list of things, and I'll be adding BioShock Infinite.

The original BioShock would most certainly be on any such list I would make. It was absolutely striking when I played it way back in my Freshman year of college. BioShock has always excelled at 2 things: creating a world, and then telling a story within that world. The places you explore, the underwater Rapture and the floating city of Columbia, are so vivid and fascinating that I sometimes forget that they are first-person shooters. And of course everyone remembers how they reacted to the death of Andrew Ryan and the events that followed, as I'm sure they'll remember the confrontation between Lord Comstock and Booker DeWitt. These games manage to tell a story that would be right at home in a tome next to Lord of the Flies. But to tell them first-hand through a game is just so different.

There were a lot of things going through my mind as I played BioShock Infinite. I remember thinking about an interview I'd read were the Lead Designer Ken Levine talked about how they had crafted the game, and the twist, around a basic assumption that games and gamers have about the question "Why did you do that?" He said something about how gamers answered either 'Because the game told me to' or 'Its the only way the game moves forward, I had to' or simply 'I don't know.' So Levine and his team took those responses and built it straight into the game as the famous "Would You Kindly" reveal. 

As a player, the idea that I'd been completing objectives not because thats what somebody does in a video game, but because my character was being mind controlled by the very person giving me those objectives was absolutely shattering. It subverted every norm I understood about games. You mean the voice who had guided me this whole time was really the villain using me as a tool? Worse yet, I as a player had no control over my actions? It was goddamn genius, and I've remembered that moment ever since. 

So I went into Infinite looking for Levine's trickery again. Of course that was a stupid idea, 'You never pull the same gig twice.' This wasn't going to be another mind control reveal, but surely they would still mess with the same fundamental design questions? Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why do I follow the objectives?

By the time I'd finished the game, I realized once again that Ken Levine and his team are geniuses. But this time it was for a different reason. In the first BioShock, the idea was that the game was telling you what to do, both mechanically and narratively, but you still have choices when it comes to saving or harvesting the Little Sisters. Those choices affected the ending of the game. In BioShock Infinite, the entire game makes the leap into quantum theory and the idea of multiple realities. The idea is that the game doesn't have to tell you what to do or how to do it because everything has already happened and will always happen the way it does in this reality. The game presents the player with a series of small choices which it then immediately irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you call the coin flip heads or tails, it'll get marked heads. It doesn't matter who you throw the ball at, you get attacked. That's just the way it is here. Or rather, the way it needs to be. The plot gets slightly more convoluted when you realize you are being shepherded by characters in the game who have seen all the different ways your decisions play out and are trying to force you into the reality that contains the best solution.

Now, in terms of the story there are a few different reasons for that. First is the idea that everything you do has already been done in a quantum sense. There are no surprises to the Lutece's because they've seen what they think are all the possibilities. They, the game, keep pushing you towards what they think is the proper sequence of events. This is not the first time your character has attempted the feats you attempt. It likely will not be the last. And they will manipulate you until you reach the end. The game can only end one way. It has already ended and will always end that way.

The concept of removing player choice and control from the equation is a fascinating one, and it made me think of another game that was recently lambasted for the way it handled player choices: Mass Effect. Now, I played all the Mass Effect games and think that they stand as a high watermark for what English RPG's can be. If nothing else, I admire the ambition of BioWare in crafting a story over 3 games and something like 120 hours. Thats just ballsy stuff. And having tried to write stories myself (none even close to that scope) I understand that endings are always the hardest. I understood that the ending to Mass Effect wasn't going to be the greatest thing ever. BioWare had put off a real ending for 2 games already while handing out story-altering choices like they were candy. There was absolutely no way that anybody could write an ending that made everyone happy, if for no other reason than the fact that nobody played Mass Effect the same way.

In its own way, those choices make up their own instance of a multiple realities situation. You and I will not play the same Mass Effect story. Miranda died in ME2 for me. She was a bitch, and while I was determined to bring everyone back out of the Omega-4 relay, I failed. I also failed to bring Grunt out alive. Those two persons represent a tiny fraction of the variables and decisions that a person could put into what is basically a reality generator, and everybody gets a different outcome.

There was no way to produce an ending that could account for every single reality's outcome. So Bioware created an ending that should have fit everyone's needs. You and I as players know best how our Commander Shepard would react to the final question of how we'd like to save the Universe. So we got to choose what kind of Shepard we wanted to be. Then the game ended. I was happy with my choice. My Shepard ended exactly the way he needed to.

So we have two distinctly different ways games explain player choice. One gives the player a myriad of decisions only to place the result of all of those decisions into one final, all-consuming decision with faith that the player will have created a suitable narrative for themselves. The other absolutely refuses to acknowledge player decisions while at the same time creating a world that recognizes all of the decisions the player made, could make, and will make. 

So while it wasn't 'Would you kindly 2,' the big reveal in BioShock: Infinite certainly showed me what you could with game design...again. It showed that linearity is neither bad, nor to a point avoidable. Some things must happen for a game to function. Mass Effect 3 had to end somehow, and that abrupt bit of linearity threw off a lot of people. BioShock has always forced you to progress in a certain fashion, they've always just been creative about why. 

But this time I'll take their quantum theory with me into how I think about other games, and that is really what I played it for.

[kemosabi03-blog]

Why Ken Levine is ruining my backlog project.

Bioshock Infinite.

I have to play it. Seriously. The first Bioshock is still burned into my mind after playing it way back as a Freshman. I still remember my roommate and I both glued to our laptops, up late killing splicers. We'd sit around all day not playing because the atmosphere in-game just wasn't the same if it wasn't dark and creepy outside too. I remember I had to stop playing and just walk away after the now-famous twist. I remember immediately playing it again to catch all the little clues I'd missed the first time. I think I've now bought it 3 times in different mediums and I still have a save file on my XBox. One day, that file will be presented here, along with an entirely too long treatment of just how amazing Bioshock really was.

But today, on the day before, I sit and wait. Wait for my pre-load of Infinite to unchain itself. The reviews are starting to come in, and I go no farther than the titles. So far it sounds like a worthy follow-up, maybe even enough to wash away any memory of Bioshock 2. I've held on to cautious optimism this whole time because of the first sequel. I never even took the time to play it. I worried about the pre-sales of Infinite. Something in my head equates promoted pre-orders as a sign of a publisher knowing the have a sub-par product. But I'm ready to be amazed again. 

Goddamn Ken Levine.

"Would you kindly pick up that shortwave radio?"

[kemosabi03-blog]

The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed

“We can’t always fight nature John. We can’t fight change.”

It took me just about 2 years to beat Red Dead Redemption. Let me be very clear, it is a masterpiece of a game. Most games by Rockstar studios have been. But at the same time, I almost wish I hadn’t finished it.

Maybe I missed them during my playthrough of Grand Theft Auto 4, but there are some serious and deep themes running through RDR. Hell, redemption is right in the title. But the way the game ends, and the questions it leaves about its themes was just a downer.

For those that aren’t familiar, Red Dead Redemption is the story of a man named John Marston. Mr. Marston was the member of a gang that robbed banks and were general outlaws. But there was a falling out in the gang, and John was left for dead by his fellow outlaws. After that, he tried to put that life behind him and start anew. He got married, had a son, and tried to become a rancher. About 15 years pass, and that brings us to the start of Redemption.

The government, represented by two real bastard proto-FBI agents, have taken John’s family hostage in order to extort John into hunting down a member of his old gang-Bill Williamson. Being a badass, John marches right out to a fort that Williamson has hold up in, and promptly gets himself shot. John manages to to get himself fixed up again, and wrangles some help. He has to chase Williamson to Mexico, as well as fight for both sides of a the Mexican civil war. Fast forward a bit and after Marston captures/kills not just Williamson but their former gang leader as well, the U.S. Marshals let Marston and his family go free.

Redemption splits itself into 4 chapters. Chapter one is Marston recovering from being shot and coming back and attacking Williamson’s fort. Chapter two is Mexico. Chapter three is the Marshals extorting John into taking down his former gang leader. Chapter four is the family reunited. Chapter one is the longest, and each subsequent chapter gets shorter. I picked up the game again towards the end of chapter 2, 37 missions down with only 19 to go. But I want to skip down to chapter 4.

When I finished chapter 3, I thought I had won the game. I thought it was all over. I had done everything the game had asked me to, killed the bad guys…surely I was done. Why was the game still going? Why was it letting me continue? I was uneasy about the whole thing. Yet, I had managed to reunite John Marston with his family. Mr. Marston and I had achieved the redemption John had been shooting for the whole game. Now all he had to do was put his past life behind him. So chapter 4 is all about that: Buying a herd of cattle, teaching the son to hunt, selling corn to the local town after an attack of weevils.

It was a strangely restrained bit of gameplay from Rockstar. Chapter three saw an armored truck with a mounted machine gun, not just a handcrank gatling gun, and like the third raid on a fort. I think the death toll of just the last 3 missions of chapter 3 has to be over 100. The death toll of chapter 4 is...maybe 5, and those guys are cattle rustlers and you don't have to shoot them.

So why is the game still going? Why do John and his wife keep talking about their past life every mission? Well, the last mission answers that. The army and those two bastard FBI agents show up at the Marston Ranch hellbent on killing the last remaining member of John's old gang-John Marston. 

I was pumped. Surely this would be my chance to finally kill those rat-bastards. Seriously, they were awful men. And that, that right there is a question Red Dead Redemption raises. Can a man with a frankly terrible, murderous past really manage to put it all behind him? Better yet, can he manage to sequester his murderous past while shooting the people that used to populate that past? Mr. Marston and I killed piles of people just trying to free his family. Clearly how Mr. Marston, and Red Dead Redemption on the whole, comes to an end had to happen. It was the only way. John Marston, no matter the motivation, was a cold blooded murderer. Maybe he just wanted a better life for his wife and son, and maybe he didn't have any other way to do it, but killing a small town's worth of people was a terrible way to do it. 

So I thought the game had ended. Time jumps forward. Mr. and Mrs. Marston are in the ground and you get to play as the son if you want to reach 100% completion. I thought I was done. I turned the game off and told Facebook that I had beat the game. 

Then I had two friends on Facebook immediately tell me that I hadn't beat it.

"So big shootout at the farm and then, credits?"

"Nope. Big Shootout, huge 100 gamerscore achievement, but no credits...Ok I didn't beat it."

At this point, I love Red Dead Redemption. John Marston died to save his family. He reached the Redemption that he fought so hard for. His wife and son are safe. Everything is amazing, and I'm happy. But back I go, for one more side quest. As the son, Jack, you hunt down the FBI agent that killed John. You go from his old office, to a small cabin by a lake where you meet his wife, to the Mexico side of the river to meet his brother, then farther up the river where you confront him in person. There is one last standoff, and then Agent Ross is a dead, and Jack Marston slowly walks back to his horse. Splash title of Red Dead Redemption and roll credits.

Damn it, Jack. Damn it all. You were the redemption and you threw it all away. Clearly redemption is much more difficult than anyone in the game realized. Obviously morality quandaries really are quandaries. At least Red Dead Redemption had the balls to treat them like they are. I respect them for that. In reality this is the way I should have expected this game to end, I just don't have to like it. The game is amazing. 

And now I get to put in on a shelf.

Now I'm really not looking forward to finishing L.A. Noire.

[kemosabi03-blog]

Nowi Wins!

I've beaten Fire Emblem: Awakening once already. I beat it on Easy with perma-death turned off. I did that to see the sights and win the game. Now I'm playing it on hard with perma-death back on. 

I've also broken the game. 

Correction-Fire Emblem: Awakening is broken in the BEST WAY. They changed the Class system in FE:A. Old Fire Emblem games had a class system that worked very simply. Characters had a class, say Archer, and they capped out at level 20. Anywhere from level 10 to 20 you could use an item called a Master Seal on a character and 'promote' them to an advanced class. Archer would promote to a Sniper (same thing but stronger) or a Bow Knight (archer on a horse). Upon promotion, that character's level resets to 1 and can level to 20 again while keeping the stats they obtained in the first 'base' class. So 1 to 20, promote, 1 to 20 again, done.

FE:A adds another seal. The Second Seal. It may be the best item in any game ever. The Second Seal allows a character to become another class at level 10. So, take an Archer to 10, and make them something else. I made a mage this play-through. You still promote people, and the Second Seal can change promoted classes as well. People never stop leveling. Sure, they slow waaaaayy down. But by that time the characters that are on their third and forth classes they are tiny demigods of war.

Its just the greatest thing. 

Take my last play-through. You get a little girl named Nowi. Nowi can turn herself into a small dragon. That's pretty damn cool. Nowi is also startlingly weak for a girl that can become a dragon. But I stuck it out and raised her up then made her a little girl that rides a Wyvern around and kills stuff with an axe. Then I promoted her to a little girl that rides around on a griffin and kills stuff with an axe. Now, in Fire Emblem anything with wings is weak to archers. Pegasi, Wyverns, and Griffins all die practically instantly to archers. Each map has some archers on it to keep you from raising an army of flying death and running all over everything. 

Except I have Nowi. And Nowi can kill ANYTHING in the game. She can also move across most, if not all, of the map. So, the game's strategy of defending itself with an archer goes out the window because I just run Nowi up to said archer and that archer dies. 

I enjoy games that I can win, and win easily. I've played tactical games for as long as I've played games. The first Command & Conquer title was one of the first games I ever even saw. I like playing them and steamrolling things. I play Sins of a Solar Empire on easy just so I can feel good about crushing entire planets with giant-ass spaceships. 

But you can break FE:A in such a way that the game, even on harder settings, gets easy. The first 9 chapters where hard. I restarted many, many times. But now, a little over halfway through the game, my demigods are ready and swords and spears rain down hard on my enemies. 

Beyond the mechanics, the story, characters, dialog, graphics and everything else about the game are just sublime. It may be the prettiest game out on the 3ds right now. The characters are amazing. There is a reason Nowi made it to the title. She matters. She and Stahl and Gregor and The Vaike and Sully and Panne all matter. They live or die by your decisions. They have personalities and bulid relationships as you play. I've restarted levels more times than I can count because I've lost someone in battle. Its just the best game.

And it is soooo much fun. You own a 3ds? You like tactical games? Go buy this thing. 

[kemosabi03-blog]

RETCON

So, there are new ending on Mass Effect 3 again? 

Didn't everyone beat that like a year ago? I thought so. I watched the endings again. They added about 5 minutes of content to each ending, and its a worthy 5 minutes, but its not that big a deal. Really, it took EA and Bioware a year to put together what is essentially a slidshow? I guess we can throw that on the pile of reasons to hate on EA, along with this newest SimCity thing. 

I haven't played SimCity. I feel it necessary to say that. But I've heard terrible things

[kemosabi03-blog]

Its got a good beat, but I can't dance to it.

I got my first iPod sometime in high school. I think it was christmas sophomore year. I remember having a CD player about the same time, so it makes sense. I kept it in a rather badass duct tape case that a friend made me. Sadly, that case wasn't perfect and left adhesive all over the iPod and left it looking rather poor. Now, that poor workhorse made it through high school and my first year of college. But after a period of time, and collecting everything from Freshman year of college, it's poor 40gb frame just wasn't enough. So, my first paycheck of my first real job went to buying an 80 gig replacement. That brings us to today, when that poor 80 gig iPod has more or less been replaced. I don't listen to music the same way I did.

I've got a smartphone now. I've got a set of bluetooth headphones. Google Music is a thing. I can walk around town, awash in 4G LTE goodness, and bathe in every song I have the fortune of owning whenever I feel like it without actually carrying the files. Its been a subtle shift from needing to carry around all the music I need to all the music I need just floating around in the ether. I don't have to cull down all of my songs to fix the 80gb bucket that I had. 

So I've got this old 80gb iPod sitting around doing nothing. It was full of a bunch of crap I didn't listen too and I hadn't added anything to it for about 4 years. So I attempted to back it up, just incase there was anything I wanted. I failed miserably at that. So I abandoned any attempt at backing it up, so I just erased it. 

I rebuilt it by just picking things I tend to listen to now using iTunes and its sync feature. Now I just need a reason to use the thing again. My car doesn't have a fancy radio to plug it into or even a tapedeck to. It sits here, like some strange anachronism decked out in a fancy British Mod/The Who skin. So few things I own will interface with it, and that is a hard truth to admit when it once ruled so much of my free time and existence. 

This was supposed to serve as some sort of eulogy for the poor bastard, but it isn't really dead. All this has done as make me want to reincorporate it into my life somehow...Do I even own a pair of headphones anymore?

[kemosabi03-blog]

This lasted a really long time.

So, the new Fire Emblem game came out. I love tactical RPG's like this. I played the shit out of Fire Emblem on the GBA, and I'm working on the DS remake of Shadow Dragon. Not to mention the HUNDREDS of hours I logged on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance...

I'm going to have to buy the new one. I made the mistake of playing the demo, and goddamn it's cool. I will say I've restarted FFTA2 for this project. Considering that game hates everything and I hated it. 

What I'm trying to say is I bought the new FE game. I broke the code. So...expect a writeup of Fire Emblem: Awakening soon-ish?

[kemosabi03-blog]

Lets just run that slant route again.

This is the completely fictional story of the Army Black Knights football team that exists only on my copy of NCAA Football 2011. 

My goal in this game, along with my roommate at the time, was to take a terrible team to the national championship using the games 'Dynasty' mode. We both chose teams that garnered only a single star on the game's 1-6 star scale. He picked the Idaho Vandals, and we don't really care. I picked the Army Black Knights. 

I picked the game back up, after about a year and half, at the end of my 3rd season as the coach at Army. According to the game, I have a perfect approval rating with my school and have achieved all 3 goals for the year: Beat Navy, Win 9 games, and Beat Nebraska. I have a career record of 37-1, a perfect 11-0 record against Top 25 teams, and I'm 2-0 in bowl games. My only loss, I think, was to Temple in my first year before I decided that I just wanted to win a National Championship and didn't care if I had to EZ-Mode the game in order to do so.

So, firing up the game I find that I have to play the USC Trojans. Just as a recap, I've beaten Nebraska, Iowa, Miami, Michigan, Alabama, and my rivals Navy and Air Force. I know Alabama was #1 when I beat them...they ended #5. Army is #4 when I pick the controller up. 

So, I go into the game against a ranked USC team. The game will always assume I lose. I have to fight it every step along the way. And of course, at the end of the first quarter I was down 7-0 after a crap interception. In the second quarter, I managed to tie it up at 7-7. Early in the third quarter, I managed a long (for Army) pass of 23 yards for a TD and made it 7-14. I managed to screw up in the fourth quarter and gave the ball up on downs at like the 31. This let them equalize at 14-14 with only 2:26 to go. So, now I've got all of two minutes to take a slow, option-running team down the field and score. 

Of course I did it. A short pass with 1:28 to go made it 14-21. I managed to recover a fumble with under a minute to go. Funny fact, the fumble was caused when I sacked the USC quarterback Dick Pound. Seriously, the game randomly named the little digital QB Dick Pound. I laughed. The game recommended that I just take a knee a few times to run the clock out, but I decided to ignore it. I made it down the field and scored as the clock ran out for a final score of 14-28. 

Because screw USC.

I'm not sure why I got to kick an extra point considering that time ran out during the last pass, but then again my QB is named Matt Smith. Clearly having a Time Lord for a quarterback lets you do that sort of thing. 

So clearly having finished the season undefeated and beating all those big ranked team, I'd be playing for the National Championship, right? 

WRONG. #2 Oklahoma will be playing #1 Arizona State for the NC. I'll (#4) be playing #11 Wisconsin for the Rose Bowl. I suppose it could be worse .#3 VaTech has to play #21 USF. Either way I'm still kinda pissed. What's a team got to do to get a National Championship?

I should just ask myself, considering after I started writing this I found out that I won the National Championship as Army in my second year...

So lets count that one as finished, shall we? 1st game down. I'm going to keep it around incase my girlfriend decides she wants to improve on her 1 for 1 record against me (still not sure how she beat me, and she didn't just beat me she destroyed me) and to hopefully play against an old friend of mine online. But in terms of single-player goodness NCAA 2011 is spent. The Army Black Knights won the National Championship under me in just 2 seasons. 

On to the next one. 

[kemosabi03-blog]

Some Wack-a-doo Shit

The last few weeks I've wondered to myself at exactly what point did I become the kind of person that is a fan and modest collector of stand-up comedy. When did I become that person, and what kind of person is that? 

Standup is just a strange thing to me. Just, as a concept. Comedy is such a broad thing. My sense of humor is rather specific, yet how can there exist people who I've never met that know exactly what I find hilarious? At that point, I've over-thought the whole concept, but lets move on. 

I like comedians like Lewis Black, Mitch Hedberg, and of course Patton Oswalt. But this isn't about them. This is about Kyle Kinane and his recent record/special Whiskey Icarus. I first read about Kinane after the A.V. Club website reviewed the record and gave it an A. Considering that the last comedy record they gave an A was Tig Notaro's Live (which was absolutely stunning and the best $5 I spent all year) I decided to listen to it. I forget if a friend recommended Kinane before or after I listened to the record, but I take recommendations from that particular friend very seriously and he was absolutely on the money. 

Kinane is some kind of futuristic HoboGod. He introduces himself as 'Uncle Barbecue' who is going to 'tell his dumb-dumb stories for a while.' He tells stories about being too drunk to go to Wendy's for chicken nuggets so he calls a cab, a shady guy eating pancakes out of a bag on an airplane, and the lowest point in his life-the day BEFORE he got arrested for a DUI. 

Kinane has flashes where he is one of my stupid-hilarious friends. "These farts are just contractions for the turd baby I'm going to have later." That is about as lowbrow a joke as you can even make, and I have friends that would think Kinane stole that from them. But the fact that Kyle uses it as his own lower bound makes him instantly familiar. Clearly myself and all of my friends would gladly hang out with this guy and we would be on a similar level. 

Yet the level of craft Kinane shows in other places, the highlight 'pancakes on a plane' story, betrays a real versatility. This dude clearly has the brain to weave amazing stories and fully embody the 'wise high school janitor' look he portrays. Kinane is equal parts 80's hard rock and American story teller. He is instantly accessible and simple, but has places to go that are worth repeating. He goes from the lowest places to telling stories trying to illustrate his attempts at being more accepting or name dropping Akira Kurosawa (a director that will show up at some point here) and Bobby Fischer.

At the end of this, all I've found is that it is really damn hard to write about standup comedy without just quoting said standup. Should 'Whiskey Icarus' come up on Comedy Central again, or if you have Spotify, you should absolutely get in on that. It is fantastic. 

"This process starts with a blanket statement I make to the entire cabin: 'I'm gonna go to the bar!' If you want to know how to tell if you've been over-served on a airplane, start with a blanket statement to everyone, and in that blanket statement include a part of the aircraft that doesn't exist."

Only the one quote...I swear.

[kemosabi03-blog]

&%$#?@ %&*#!$ Blue Shells!

Anyone who has ever played a Mario Kart title knows exactly what I mean.

Last night I managed to finish Mario Kart 7, the latest MK title that happens to be on the 3DS. For this game I'm defining 'finish' as winning every single Grand Prix event in each difficulty. I had beaten the 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc GP's many months ago, and had even made a whole chunk of progress toward the final Mirror GP's. 

Last night I fired the game up again to find that I only had 2 Mirror Grand Prix events left: The Leaf Cup and the Lightning Cup. These two cups represent the last events in the 'retro' family of race tracks. All of the course in these two events are pulled from previous MK titles. In fact, those two cups have courses from SNES, N64, GameCube, DS, and Wii Mario Kart titles. 

So I decided, having seen how close I was to completion, to finish out the game. 

Mirror Cups are set at the 150cc speed, so I went for the fastest cart set up I'm comfortable with. Metal Mario, the Zucchini, and standard wheels. Yes, I know the Blue 7 kart and Monster wheels would be faster, but I really can't drive that stupid thing. 

Now, It would have been fantastic if I had separate stories for the 2 GP cups I ran, but I don't! Both sets came down to the exact same situation and ended in the exact same way. I dominated the first 3 races in each cup and accumulated 30 points for my 1st place finishes. The next best racer only managed 20 points in the same three races. Now, a 1st place finish is worth 10 points, so even if the racer in 2nd managed to beat me in the final race, they would only tie my score. So to win, all I had to do was finish in a place that scored a single point. If I remember correctly a single point was scored by the racer who finished 7th in the field of eight racers in all previous MK titles. So all I had to do in the final race was not come last.

In the Leaf Cup, I was almost certain I would win the final race. Maple Treeway from MK Wii is one of my favorite tracks from the Wii title. If this were Mario Kart Wii, and not a mirrored course, I'm absolutely sure I would have won, but this isn't any of those things. All I needed to do on Maple Treeway was not come last, but I did. I didn't just come last, I was embarrassingly last. I left the track at least 8 times. I was way too speed happy into to many open curves and became a victim of drift under-steer. It was horrible. By far my worst performance on that course ever.  

Now seems like a good time to mention that an 8th place finish in Mario Kart 7 awards 1 point. I finished the Leaf Cup with 31 points, which was all I needed to win. And win I did. I finished the Leaf Cup with the minimum single star finish. 

The Lightning Cup when the exact same way. I dominated the first 3 races, including Koopa Cape from the Wii which is my favorite track ever, and went into the final heat sitting on 30 points...again. And again the 2nd place racer had only 20 points. This time, after my Leaf Cup fiasco, I knew I was guaranteed a win but I wanted to finish higher than 8th place this time.

I didn't. The last track in the Lightning Cup is the SNES version of Rainbow Road. For readers not familiar with Mario Kart, the final race of the final cup in each Mario Kart game has been a Rainbow Road. They are all different, but they have similar characteristics. Rainbow Road has no, or very few, rails which means racers are very likely to fly off and plummet into space. The Road also tends to have unique obstacles. The newest Rainbow Road in Mario Kart 7 has boost tunnels, a gliding portion, and even drops you onto the surface of a moon for a stretch. 

But I wasn't racing on the Mario Kart 7 version of Rainbow Road. I was racing on the original Rainbow Road from Super Mario Kart. Its the shortest Rainbow Road ever. Its completely flat, unlike all those that came after. SNES Rainbow Road has Thwomps that can, and will, send you flying off the track. In MK7, those Thwomps also send shockwaves through the track which can launch you slightly into the air.

I made it through almost the whole race in 1st place, but at the very end at the last set of Thwomps, I ate it. I got hit by a Blue Shell, hit a Thwomp, left the track, got hit by a green shell, and came dead last again.

Goddamn Blue Shells. 

Either way, I beat the game. For beating it, I now have a set of golden tires for my karts. I also get a single star next to my name when I play online. So I immediately know when a 2 or 3 star person is playing and I'm not as disappointed when they beat me.

Which they do. Repeatedly.

[kemosabi03-blog]

I'm only into Season 2 of Adventure Time, but I had to try making the Bacon Pancakes from the newest season. 

They were delicious. If you have some bacon and some pancake mix, there is no reason you shouldn't try this. 

Not sure if 'making bacon pancakes' qualifies for this backlog, but I've been meaning to make them for over a month. Normal service will resume soon.

[kemosabi03-blog]

Whelp, come October it looks like I'll be buying another Pokemon game. I'm going to resist any 'play them all' puns this project would be prone too.

*sigh*

[kemosabi03-blog]

Knee Surgery

Here is my funny story about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I was unemployed when it was released early in November 2011. It was one of the biggest games of the year and made many, many GOTY lists that year. I played ES:III Morrowind when I was in middle school and I don't remember much of it. I played IV: Oblivion in college and didn't get very far. Still, I liked both of those, even though they were very complex and expansive. 

So I, like everyone else, was psyched about the release of Skyrim. Unfortunately I was broke at the time, so I got to watch all of my friends who had jobs and money talk about how awesome the game was when it came out. So I told myself that when I got a job, I'd buy it. One of those little self-incentive things.

Luckily that didn't take too long. By the middle of December I had a job. While I was on the phone finalizing my offer, I was simultaneously buying Skyrim through Valve's Steam platform. I was hired in the middle of December, but didn't start until the 2nd of January. In that time I managed to get to something like level 9 before I forgot about the game completely. 

Part of my 'forgetting' is that Skyrim runs only on a Windows OS partition. Fun fact about me, I run Apple computers almost exclusively anymore. Now, both the laptop that got me through college and the iMac that I got for graduation have Bootcamp'd partitions on them, and as great as Bootcamp is, it has its downsides. The main downside for me is that a restart is required each time you want to change operating systems. So its wee bit of a commitment for me to want to reboot my computer and play a Windows only game. Yeah, I know=First World Problems.

So, Skyrim sat on the dark side of my computer for many months. Then, in I think in August a new used game store opened here in town. I went once, and it was ok, but then a month or so later I went back on a whim to pick up a copy of of Final Fantasy X-2 (which will be part of this eventually) and on a massive whim I saw a copy of Skyrim for the Xbox for like $20. 

So I bought it...again. 

That was September. This is January (all of a sudden) I decided to pick it up AGAIN. That is were this story begins. 

I somehow have 2 character saves on the Xbox. A level 9 Wood elf and a level 9-ish Orc. I know the Wood Elf was my second attempt at being a sneaky archer. That was what I started on the PC in December. But I had problems with dying and not being able to kill much. Thus, the Orc=Heavy Armor, Two-Handed Weapons, and Blacksmithing. Boom.

Oh man, that build is so much fun. I'm level 21 now, in about 2 days. My highlight was doing a quest for the Mages College. I had helped with an excavation that found some crazy artifact. Of course, none of the mages know what it is, so they put me in charge of finding out what it is. This involved talking to my new favorite character-Urag gro-Shub, and Orc librarian in charge of the College's Arcanaeum. In my first conversation with him, he threatened to kill me with a summoned elemental if I harmed any of his books. Dude's a badass. So in my search for this artifacts history, Urag sent me to find a stolen book. I guess some freshman stole it before running off with some rogue mages.

So, my quest is go to the cave and recover the book. Its clearly a quest built for mages. The whole cave is full of mages that specialize in different schools. It would clearly be a challenge for a mage character to have to counter all the different fighting styles. But I only have 1 fighting style- HACK IT WITH AN AXE! I cackled through the whole cave. 'Oh, you're an illusionist? Axe to the shin.' 'Necromancy, eh? Axe to the kidneys.' 'Fireballs? You throw fireballs? AXE TO THE FACE!' It was so much fun. Just a wanton disregard for tactics. All for a book. 

Urag also sent me for other books. Urag, in his typical fashion, is an asshole. The first book he sends me after is WAY out in the corner of everything. So I haul my ass all the way out to the marker, and when I get up the mountain to the marker, I'm met by a guard. Mr. Guard tells asks me to help with his mission. He was sent out to this godforsaken place to recover the mask of a long-dead Dragon Priest. 

Dragon. Priest.

Ohhhhkay. Sure. Ghosts, Zombie Nords, and a Zombie Ghost Dragon Priest. I died many, many times. But in the end I killed that fucker and took his mask (which looks fucking sweet) AND recovered Urag's stupid book. As much as I like Urag, I'm gonna...go do work for people that don't send me to certain deaths over petty items quite so much. 

So I ran out and killed a pair of dragons. 

[kemosabi03-blog]

Now, STAND BACK for your own safety!

Did you know the Aquabats have a TV Show? You did? Well you're an asshole because NOBODY TOLD ME! If you don't know who the Aquabats are, well I'm going to tell you!

The Aquabats are a ska band who, as part of their stage act, dress up as superheros and fight various 'bad guys' throughout their concerts...or so I've been told having never been to an Aquabats concert. I guess they have a show now, which is essentially an extension of their superhero act framed for children as a sort of Power Rangers-esque thing.

I just now found about about this show last week when it appeared on Netflix. It is straight up called The Aquabats! Super Show!. Now I will admit that this show was not on the backlog when I began this project, but I like the Aquabats and I like stupid things from time to time, so I have to watch this show. 

I've made it through the first two episodes, and its gloriously stupid fun. Each of the Aquabats, using their stupid stage names like Ricky Fitness and EagleBones Falconhawk have some sort of superpower and they drive around in their RV type thing and fight evils like ManAnt and a giant bird-thing. 

Words really don't do the show justice. Here's the opening to each episode.

Its just a stupid fun show, much like the music of the Aquabats themselves. The titles of each show end with an exclamation point, just like the tracks on most their records. The episodes also contain little cartoons, which are contiguous across the episodes and tell a greater story about the adventures of the heroes.

By now, I'm sure you're wondering about the legitimacy of a show based on a 3rd wave ska band, and my next point may or may not help that doubt, but hear me out. The creators of the Super Show! are also the creators of Yo Gabba Gabba, which is apparently a successful kids show that has been loaded with some amazing guests. I pulled this guest list straight from Wikipedia:Elijah Wood, The Killers, Enon, The Clientele, Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday, Datarock, Devo, Joy Zipper, Of Montreal, Chromeo, My Chemical Romance, Weezer, Hot Hot Heat, The Faint, The Roots, Mates of State, MGMT, Jack Black, and The Ting Tings. So the leader of the Aquabats made a kids show, and managed to get an amazing list of guests to appear on it, then turned around and made a crazy show based on his own band.

At the end of everything, its an exciting show that is just fun to watch. The characters are over the top in their sub-par superhero exuberence and its infectious. And sometimes infectious happiness and energy is all that I want. And that really is what The Aquabats! Super Show! and the Aquabats in general are all about.

Why are you not watching this yet?

Also, if you enjoy the Super Show, I highly recommend their music albums The Fury of the Aquabats, and Charge!