I survived Christmas 2014 and I'm a bit sad it's already over. I used to hate Christmas, because I've experienced it many times in a family with four teenagers and a pair of stressed parents, whose marriage had broken beyond repair many years ago. But things are pretty chilled out in England, there's just lots of good food, everyone's happy and I'm actually getting presents, which is something that hasn't really happened to me anymore since I was about 16. Everything was just... good. You know, like this:
You can't look much happier than this whilst surrounded by family.
We took Hugo Bosc with us when we came over to see the family and he was a little boring at first. He has this annoying habit of hiding under the sofa, a table or anything else that makes him difficult to pick up. He does it at home, too - hide under the sofa and stalk the cats. Because the moment he comes out from under there, chances are somebody might grab him and put him back in his cage and he doesn't like that. He wants to roam. Which is okay, but sometimes I have to work and if I'm the only one at home, he just can't run around outside all the time.
So he sat under the sofa when we sat together for our Christmas dinner until the smell of food lured him out. Big old lizard decided to check out the kitchen, so he got his share of the tons of meat we had and he just ate until he went into a food coma.
He just kept on sleeping in the living room...
...and in the car.
Last night we even had a bit of snow. Some of the biggest snowflakes I have seen in my life, in fact!
Snow makes everyone in Nottingham lose their shit.
Unfortunately, this stuff never stays around for long over here, so I had to be quick. I'm not super satisfied with the result and I hope we'll get some more snow, soon, so I'll get another shot at it. But it's a start...
I need to drink less to make it yellower.
The first two letters turned out okay-ish, but then the wind got so strong that it became impossible to create any legible writing. I think next time I'm gonna try keeping the hat on for more precision.
I'm not one for new year's resolutions, so I won't come up with any. I couldn't be bothered to keep up with them, anyway. Unless... Claire's sister asked if it's possible to survive 40 wanks (long story). I can do around 20 on a good day, so maybe this is something to look into. For science!
Oh and I am now the proud owner of Forza Horizon 2 on the Xbox One.
I've added a custom paintjob - can you tell?
It's easily one of the greatest racing games I've ever seen. Unfortunately, it's also solid proof that I'm starting to outgrow my hobby and I'm too old for next-gen racing games. I can live on with the tacked-on "story" told by a bunch of metrosexual brodudes, one of which represents the player. You can't change his looks or gender and the game strictly addresses the player as male, because there are no female gamers in 2014. Doesn't fucking matter, it's all about the cars anyway.
What does matter to me, however, is how Forza Horizon 2 dangles all these choices and possibilities in front of me only to take it all away whenever it damn well feels like it. I chose a BMW Z4 for my very first car, because I think it's a cool car and I like having the possibility to tune up any vehicle beyond recognition. I turned that thing into a beast, powerful enough to take on any Ferrari. Problem is, no matter how much you power up the Z4's performance, you're only allowed to race other sports cars. What's worse, every sports car championship comes with a so-called cross country race, which takes you off the road and through corn fields and forests and tall grass and other such happy shit. Which sucks immeasurable amounts of ass when you're in a car with rear wheel drive and an ultra-low, stiff suspension and gear ratios set for speed over acceleration, i.e. a car tuned for street-racing.
Eventually I switched to a Lamborghini Countach to avoid all that cross country crap altogether, which worked well until I managed to finish all of the retro supercars championships. That's when I could no longer progress through the game until I switched to a different vehicle class. Which is something I reeeeeeally didn't want to do, because I've put hours into my Lamborghini painting it, tuning it and what have you. In the end I drove around this thing:
...why?
A bunch of championships later I was told that I could no longer progress unless I changed to yet another type of vehicle. BUT I JUST WANT TO DRIVE MY FUCKING LAMBORGHINI, GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!
So I started up multiplayer mode, hoping I could hop on my favourite car there. Instead, the host had decided to use weak, low-ranked cars, so I was forced to pick a shitty car I didn't want to drive, because the game doesn't let you cancel and opt out of multiplayer until you've chosen a car you didn't want to drive in the first place. Then you get teleported to a race, then you gotta wait for the race to start, THEN you can fucking quit multiplayer, drive (or teleport for ingame cash) back to the nearest garage to switch back to the car you want, join another multiplayer session and be forced to switch cars again. I tried three different sessions, I was never allowed to use the car I want, I could never just cancel and bail when the game told me I had to pick a shitty car and I had fucking voice chat forced on me in ever session. You can only mute each player individually by opening up their profile, which is super convenient IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING RACE!
Hey, anyone fucking remember Need for Speed: Porsche BACK IN FUCKING 2000 where you could just pick any fucking car you wanted, join a game and fucking race? And you didn't have to listen to a bunch of teenage douchebags the entire time? Yeah, that was great. 15 years into the future and online gaming is so fucking awful, I just can't be arsed to put up with it. So yeah... thanks for an entertaining 5 or 6 hours there, Forza. If I can ever just drive my favourite car in single- and multiplayer and ON THE FUCKING ROAD at that, I'll be back. Meanwhile I'm just gonna work on that 40 wanks thing or something.
But wait... there is more!
Oh, while I'm already bitching: can we stop making fucking EVERYTHING a goddamn achievement? You manage to drive a couple inches without crashing? BAM! "Clean Driving!" Extra points. You hit something? BAM! "Wreckage!" Points for you. Just about dodge another car? "Near miss" (also available in great near miss, awesome near miss and ultimate near miss, I shit you not). More points for you. Fail to dodge that car? Doesn't matter. "Trading paint" aaaand extra points. Drifting, high speed, fast acceleration, it's impossible to play for more than two or three seconds without bonuses or achievements popping up left, right and center.
This shit right there is why I play Dark Souls. A goddamn boss comes out of nowhere and his favourite thing to eat is your face? You get killed in one hit? TOO FUCKING BAD, go and get good at the fucking game! No, "At least you tried really hard" achievement or some shit. Achievements are for winners. They're for getting shit done. Modern game designers are like whores. They tell you over and over again how damn awesome you are at everything you do. You know they're lying, they know they're lying, but everyone feels a little better about themselves and the customers will come back to spend more money.
2014 has been one of the most... erm... interesting years in my life. Christmas is approaching rapidly and I finally get to sit down and chill out for a while. Which, of course, is a complete lie, because I'm still writing reviews, posting news and doing a few new things with all that creative energy, since being a freelance games critic doesn't really pay the bills anymore. In fact, I've reached a new low where magazines offer one third of the money that I used to get when I first started writing about these games roughly half a decade ago. Of course I don't accept grossly underpaid job offers like that, but by the end of the day that means I still have my dignity and nothing to eat. So instead of just writing about games I now get to help create them by writing quest text and helping out with translations. It requires more or less the same level of wit and creativity but without the math (German review scores are fucking horrible!) and without a bunch of 14 year old shitheads jerking off all over the comments section. If you happen to be one of my German commenters on any of the websites I work for, yes, I just called you a shithead and I hope you die. If you're one of my employers, please don't fire me. :P
I don't claim to know anything about game design or the development of games, but at least in the case of the game I get to write for, the actual mechanics, the stuff you click on, the things you do in the game are already implemented and working. There is just no story for that particular content. You see, the devs just have this spot on a map, which features a certain setting, players go there to quest, loot, same old, but there is no explanation as to why anyone would have to go there or what's going on. And that's where I come in. It's pretty exciting stuff, because you come up with a background story and a fitting quest chain and then the devs put all your text in the game and eventually you get to play all the stuff you wrote about.
It's complicated, too, because everything needs to fit the overall theme and setting of the game, so stuff goes back and forth for a while, things get rewritten, some stuff makes it in there right away and sometimes a series of quest texts goes straight in the bin, because it just doesn't fit. The whole thing is far from being an impressive AAA-production, but it's fun to help create something, even if it's small and not incredibly significant. Good money, too, so I'm happy. And by now I've written paid columns, adverts, manuals, translations, reviews, game text... wow. And it all started with a crappy little blog like this one.
How to ruin your mood in one easy step: 1. Launch Dark Souls.
We're trying to fit in some exciting shit with all the work I get to do these days, so there's still a lot of Warframe going on and we're also back on Dark Souls, because we're fucking masochists. Seriously, after five minutes of Dark Souls, even the toughest challenges on Warframe feel like a vacation. Especially since their community ladies are being so nice with me.
Burrrr-surrrr-kurrrr...
Digital Extremes are hosting some of the best live streams and this moment really made my day.
And since I'm already linking my shit on Youtube - the channel is starting to see more activity and subscribers, so the new mic must be doing something. With that said, I still went down from 250k views to only a little above 150k when I removed one video, which showed the drawing of a naked lady on my psp's wallpaper for about four nanoseconds. It's a bit depressing, really. I can try voice, no voice, music, guides, reviews, gameplay or what the fuck ever, but all it takes for a video to be REALLY successful is a split-second of vagina.
As for Dark Souls, I didn't actually want to get back into it, but with the recent migration from GFWL to Steam I had to fire it up again, then I had to make sure my old savegames still work and then I played around for a bit and one thing lead to another and... yeah.
So much suffering.
And let's be honest here for a minute: Much of the praise this game is getting for being incredibly difficult but never unfair is a load of bullshit. When enemies, traps and other shit that can kill you in one hit lurk around every corner, usually hidden in a way that makes it impossible for you to react until it's too late, there is very little fair play involved. Forcing you to memorize the layout of a level isn't fair, it's actually pretty bad game design.
So coming back to the game after more than a year of inactivity on a New Game++++ is an exercise in frustration. But there is just something about Dark Souls. The gritty, depressing setting, the sad music, the futility of it all, the whole thing is a very melancholic work of art. And finally beating a ridiculously unfair boss fight after getting your ass kicked for god knows how many hours feels much more satisfying than it should. The game also allows for a lot of different play styles and I'm really enjoying the combat system.
You can dual-wield just about anything from cool stuff that makes sense (claws, knives, fencing weapons + parry daggers) to shit that makes no sense at all (dual shields, dual twohanders), use quick and agile builds, which rely on parrying, dodging and backstabbing or power-heavy builds with heavy weapons and armor, clocking in at significantly fewer swings per minute, but making every hit count that much more.
And I can't help it. Though I've already finished the whole thing and all the bosses multiple times and though I'm playing like a complete and utter noob again after my long break, I just can't stop playing it. I'm using this ridiculous combination of gear where I'm swinging a giant two-handed sword in slow motion, blocking most hits with a shield the size of an average dinner table and shooting baddies with my really awesome triple crossbow. The real fun starts when Claire and I play in co-op and people invade us, so I just stun-lock them with lightning bolts while Claire hacks them to bits. And then we usually get a whole lot of hateful messages for fighting 2vs1 and for not bowing and stupid shit like that.
Do I look like I'm gonna give you a respectful bow before I kick your ass?
This is the one thing that seriously bothers me about the Dark Souls community. People can invade other players' sessions and attempt to kill them in pvp. It's part of the game and I can live with that, even though some assholes spend all day collecting all the most powerful items on deliberately underleveled characters in order to kill total newcomers, who wouldn't stand a chance with or without gear, anyway. It's entirely possible that some dickhead will enter your game during your very first hour on Dark Souls and just thrash you with the game's most powerful items while you're still trying to figure out how to jump. Because people will do anything to win and to gain an unfair advantage.
Ironically, these guys don't just enter your game, chop you up and leave again. They use the emote system and fucking bow before they attack. In fact, it's considered common courtesy to return that emote. Because "honor". "Ohai, I suck too hard to fight consenting PvPers in the arena, so I have to invade noobs. Please accept my humble bow." So if you bow to me during an invasion, it's likely the last thing you'll do. And if you're expecting me to take turns with my team mate and attack you one at a time, well, GO FUCK YOURSELF!
I'm still on the fence about Dark Souls 2. On the one hand it's on Steam Sale right now for 11 Quid. Better dual-wielding, more gear, better magic, much larger game world, more stuff to do. On the other hand, I'm still having fun with the first one and while most people agree that Dark Souls 2 is an okay game by itself, it's a disappointing "Souls" game. There is also way too much troll crap going on in pvp and people on the forums complain about "hackers" a lot. Which is no great surprise, seeing how Dark Souls stores save files locally, meaning any idiot can alter them with a simple hex editor or even change files "live" using a memory editor. Oh hey, look at me, I'm such a total hacker!
And they're already working on a "next gen" DX11 version with the DLC already included, so I should probably just wait a little longer.
Claire is back on WoW. It was actually me who said she should just go and get WoD, even though I hate the idea of her hanging around on there all day while I'm playing other shit by myself, but we're taking a few hours each day where we still do stuff together. And the initial hype has already died down a bit. She's still on there a lot, but she's no longer over the top crazy about it. To be fair, I've heard the exact same stuff from my old man, whose sudden death was, in part, related to his WoW addiction. Make no mistake, he was just the kind of guy who was easily addicted, so if it hadn't been WoW it would have been something else and I don't blame the game. But I just can't play it anymore and wouldn't do it, even if it wasn't for all the changes and simplifications which I'm no huge fan of.
Classic AV was fucking tedious. I miss it a lot.
We had this messed up relationship and never really talked or did anything together. For my 9th birthday I didn't ask for any presents or anything and just wanted to spend a day with him, because he was always working or playing video games. Azeroth was the only place where I could really reach him.
I've done some amazing shit on there with him and Claire. The three of us would tackle instances way above our own levels, just the three of us, and we'd win. He was a lousy father, but he was one of the best hunters I've ever known. What a weird thing to say. Walking around Ironforge, flying over Dun Morogh, knowing I won't see the login-spam from his army of characters, who covered just about every profession there is, knowing he won't send me messages on there and we're not playing any dungeons - I just can't do it. Sometimes I wanna log on there and roll a dwarven hunter and name him Redbeard like the first character who became his main, the first one he leveled all the way to 60. There are plenty of memorials in Azeroth dedicated to people who died in real life, so the idea isn't even that far-fetched. WoW was his happy place. The guy had his problems and he ran away from them when he was on there all day, but it's where he chose to be and where I've buried most of my happy memories about him, for as weird and as sad as it might be. It would be nice to have him remembered on there. Oh well.
We were such noobs back then.
I'm still writing the odd game review here and there, but it's mostly news these days. And hopefully more quest text and translations, because that stuff is a lot more fun than news. I wish I had the time to put something useful on my Youtube channel in between all that stuff, but there are only so many hours in a day and the really annoying stuff usually pays the most. Haha, "pays". Working 7 days a week, every week and being able to juuuust pay the rent and buy food isn't fun. I thought that kind of shit would end when I stopped working in call centres and doing retarded data typist crap, but poverty seems to be the way to go, no matter what. On then, to a poor, filthy 2015! At least we're having fun.
If you head to Nottingham market square right now, you'll be greeted by this:
It's a fun little thing inspired by German Christmas markets, except nobody speaks any fucking German and you get a selection of bog-standard English faire food like burgers and sausages or completely made-up "German specialties".
It was one of those rare and special nights where I was actually a bit sad how neither one of us owns a smartphone, for we have encountered many a weird and wondrous thing and now you'll simply have to take my word for it. Let me start with the happy, friendly faces of the many people who work at all the many food stands. Or complete lack thereof. I ordered a delicious ham sandwich from a lovely young lady, who looked at me as though I had just taken a massive shit on her counter. And before those among you, who know me a little better, are going to ask - no, I did not.
The potato lady wasn't much friendlier, though her menu was a lot more amusing. "Kartoffel is a classic German specialty served with ham, Brockwurst and curry or cheese sauce". Yeah, we sure love Kartoffel in Germany!
Pictured: Fine German delicacy.
What they served was really just baked potato. You know, sliced up and fried, like they do just about everywhere. There's nothing particularly German to that and adding what they referred to as "Brockwurst" didn't change that very much. And it's not just a silly little typo they put in there - by adding the extra R and putting a Brocken in your sausage, you're referring to chunks, as in the kind of stuff you'll be blowing after eating too much kartoffel.
The best thing I had today, aside from a delicious ham sandwich served with a death stare was some fantastic barbecue chicken with sour cream. I also would have tried some mulled wine, but all alcoholic beverages were served in a sealed-off part of the market, with big, scary signs saying NO ALCOHOL PAST THIS POINT and even bigger, scarier guards to make sure you don't ignore these signs. I shit you not.
So, remain stationary with your wine, eat your potatoes and enjoy a cacophony of Bing Crosby, Wham and Techno as every single stand blasts their very own choice of music across market square. It was fucking awful and I loved most of it. Thanks for actually paying me on time this month, work!
My favourite thing I've seen all night has to be Funtastic's Bob the Alien Warrior. You see, we have this super popular shop around here called Poundland, where everything costs a Pound or less. They're a huge chain opening one store after another, all over the place. And they sell hilarious, super shitty toys for a pound a pack. Sometimes you get a bunch of action figures pieced together from discontinued pirates, wrestlers and ninjas, they get some new names and stickers and random oversized plastic weapons stuffed in the pack and are sold for a pound.
Funtastic usually just rip off popular characters from Star Wars, GI Joe, Marvel and the like.
What they had on offer tonight was particularly exquisite. I'm sure you're aware of those stereotypical little grey aliens, which have become hugely popular thanks to the X-Files. You know, these guys:
Now imagine this guy's head put on top of your average He-Man action figure's body. Then they threw in a bunch of generic oversized plastic guns for the little guy and voila: Bob the Alien Warrior was born!
There's not even trying and then there's Bob. Look, I'd agree that maybe they were going for something funny here like Paul (Alien Seth Rogen with Pegg & Frost, anyone remember?), if it wasn't for the whole Rambo getup and all the guns and the fact he's called an alien warrior, for fuck's sake! So of all the names they could have come up with, they chose Bob. Fucking Bob. The Alien Warrior. Now that'll strike fear into the hearts of his enemies.
Of course it's not the first ever god-awful creation they've ever come up with out of a He-Man's body and some disenfranchised head. Look at this shit:
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