I'm a lazy bastard with too much time on my hands, so I browse online picdumps a lot. And I see ancient jokes on there, stuff I didn't find funny when I first saw it 20 years ago. And when I check the comments section to see if anyone agrees with how old and unfunny that crap is, I see a bunch of kids, who act like it's a super awesome new joke they're seeing for the first time. Chances are, some of these little shits weren't even born when I first saw that stuff.
Oooooooold!
Some kid kicked his ball into our backyard the other day, so I came outside to help him get it back. Cmon, we've all done that kinda thing, sometimes you make a new friend that way, kick that thing around a bit. Poor fella was petrified, nearly crapped himself. I was wearing pants and everything, but I had to realise that I've changed from this:
Ask my friends and family, I fucking looked like him until I was 15
to this:
Well... almost. My sense of fashion might be a tad better, but with more holes.
There was a house party across the road from us the other day and this hot young girl talked to me as I walked past there. And I thought, "Hey, still got it!". She asked if I was here to pick up my kid. Ouch! Awright, I can understand I'm too old to be anywhere near the shag-radar, but surely I'm not old enough to be your parent! I just don't know what's going on anymore.
You see, when I write my articles and reviews, some of them end up online and there's always a certain amount of dipshits posting stupid crap under my stuff, telling me how I've got no clue wtf I'm talking about (joke's on you, fucker, I get paid and you don't!), so sometimes I check on their profiles, see they're born in 1990something and think they're just stupid little brats. Until I do the math and realise they're legal adults.
What really gets me is when some dumbass 16 year old posts shit about how awesome the 90s supposedly were. "Proud to be a 90s kid" and what not. What the fuck do you even remember from the 90s? Crawling around on all fours and shitting yourself?
You know what the saddest thing is? I don't think I even want to be cool by today's fucked up standards anymore. Do you know wtf kids these days are into? Fucking ponies! My goddamn little pony, dubstep and fucking candy-flavoured beer and vodka for kids. Calling everyone "bro". Just... don't. Okay? Don't you fucking bro me!
You know what I'm into? Reptiles. Look at how our new beardie is doing:
As for Dark Souls, well... you either cry about its difficulty like a bitch or you keep at it and become... badass.
Yay! Another blog about animals! Our animals, not random weird ones like these:
Sad news first: Poor Chompy expired just a couple hours after I posted my previous entry. Have you ever heard somebody say how a loved one just "peacefully passed away in their sleep"? I can't tell how different animals are from humans when it comes to these things, but having found her dead after a stage where all she ever did was lie quietly and sleep, I find it hard to believe in peaceful death, let alone dying with dignity. I guess the only way one can look at it which isn't entirely depressing is that she's no longer suffering.
We buried her under a little tree at the edge of town, near where we buried the little red kitten that died a few hours after our cat gave birth to it. I'm not at all religious or spiritual, I don't really spend a lot of time believing in things. But I cared about our pet and I'd rather have a tree watching over her than wrap her in a plastic bag and chuck her in a bin. A friend of mine once said that energy never simply vanishes. It can be stored, transformed maybe, but it never just poofs and disappears. And that, in a way, all life could be considered some kind of energy. Suggesting that, you know, nobody is ever truly gone. That might be a bit of a naive, simplified way to look at it, but I like the thought. Life doesn't know justice or fairness. It feels nice to be a little naive sometimes, if only to cope with things. No worries, I'm not gonna go all weird and sentimental.
The whole thing is a bit fucked up. I haven't seen my old man in over three years, we rarely ever talk and I have zero contact with the rest of the family. When my friends back in and around Germany throw hints and want to come for a visit, I generally ignore them. I'm not much of a people person. But hand-feeding sick pets, caring for and cleaning up after them, finding them a peaceful spot when they pass away instead of throwing them away like they're some kind of broken toaster... yeah, I do that. I don't know what the fuck that says about me. Probably nothing nice.
Anyhow. Today I've gone and done something that will (rightfully) make some of you want to ask, "Why? What the fuck is wrong with you?"
I took home another bearded dragon.
I'm not trying to replace Chompy and I'm not going through lizards like Lisa Simpson goes through cats, don't worry. Chompy was my first ever reptile. She's the reason why we rescued Bakara and why we own Hugo. She is why Claire went from absolutely nothing but snakes to mother of dragons:
We genuinely cared about Chompy and we miss her dearly. So what's the deal with our new friend here?
First of all, Bakara was all alone in her tank now. She was with another beardie before she came to us and she has been with Chompy for as long as she lived here. Some beardies like to be left alone, they compete over food, the best basking spot or who is best at headbanging. They just like being dicks.
Then there's Bakara, who is as peaceful and social as it gets. We like keeping our pets near us and out of their tanks when we have the time, but when we both have to work and there's simply no time, it's nice when our beardies keep each other company.
The other reason is that I've always liked this unwanted little beardie up there. You see, every once in a while people bring animals to Claire's shop and it's always for one of two reasons: They no longer have the time to care for them or they split up with their partners and nobody wants to keep the pet. The latter excuse is cruel, the former is simply bullshit. We're talking about a pet, whose maintenance value is a fragment of any cat's or dog's. They eat fruit, salad, fucking dandelions which grow right outside your fucking house. You clean them up every two or three days, if that. They don't want to be walked, they don't bark or make noise. They don't ask you to throw a stick. They just sit there and demand a little food now and then. That's what, five minutes of effort a day? And you mean to tell me you don't have five minutes?
Anyhow. I don't remember exactly whether it was reason #1 or #2, but this adorable little creature was returned to the shop, along with a starving male beardie, who died a little while later. Those guys weren't looked after, they've been treated like crap, one of them had to die because his owners were a bunch of lazy, heartless, irresponsible shitheads. But the female made a full recovery. That was quite a few weeks ago now, back when Chompy was still alive and kicking. I got her out of the tank now and then when I visited Claire at work, because I've always liked her.
Beardies are fun, hyper little creatures when they're babies, but they tend to get a little slow and derpy as they grow up. Bakara has a hard time eating her lettuce without one of us helping her. She'll bite the air a good foot or two away from the food bowl, then it'll take her a minute or two to realise she's not really eating anything, so she makes a small step towards the food and tries again. It can easily take her a half hour to actually reach her bowl and headplant right into she salad to get the food she craves so much. She's as dumb as they come, even for a beardie, and I have never actually seen her catch a locust. She needs to be fed by hand when it comes to bugs and live food.
I know, she's a bit of an extreme example, but some of them just get a bit dumb and lazy.
Her new cage mate is the exact opposite. She's a skilled huntress, she's curious and always looking at what's going on and she's a very talented climber. Poor thing is so tiny, when I pick her up she just sits in my hand, holds on to my thumb (it's 4am right now, I'll update this blog with a picture after I had some sleep) and she's good to go. When I got her from the shop today I just picked her up and we walked home together. No box or anything.
Bakara didn't even react to her when we put her in the tank. Sure, she looked at her, but that's about it. She probably just thought, "Oh hey, Chompy is finally getting better." Okay, that's a bit sad and macabre, but at least there was no fighting, no head-bobbing, no nothing.
It's still strange to see them together. Bakara is one of the largest, chunkiest beardies I have ever seen and the new arrival isn't even half her size. Not remotely. I'll upload a video tomorrow, so you'll see what I'm talking about.
So, don't be too hard on me. When friends of mine lost a beloved pet, the very thought of getting a new one offended them and that's perfectly understandable. But Bakara doesn't have to be alone now and that little female, who was no longer welcome at her old home and who couldn't get anyone to buy her at the shop will be cared for and fed and looked after for as long as she lives. She can join the ranks of unwanted or slightly defective special needs beardies that we end up taking care of. ;)
Now all she needs is a name.
In other news, Hugo doesn't like Chicken McNuggets. We went to McDonald's today, sat outside and enjoyed the sun and I offered him some of that stuff (I actually peeled the damn nugget), but apparently our spoiled friend only likes real, proper chicken. Not some weird, pressed, shaped crap what was pre-chewed by a machine. Can't blame him. I wish I had such self-control when it comes to junk food.
You wouldn't believe the insane amounts of people stopping and staring, stroking him, asking questions or taking pictures. I like it. People around here can be incredibly friendly and open-minded.
Before I close this entry for the night, I need to bore you with one more cool feature I have just discovered in Dark Souls, a game you could probably only care less about if I finally stopped bringing it up: The Book of the Guilty.
As Claire and I are reaching the final stages of our coop-playthrough, we've been open to invasions from hostile players pretty much all the time. And we're getting invaders. Lots of them. And with one exception, where Claire got smashed to pudding by a giant before we had a chance to fight our potential assassin, we've beaten every single one of them. And here's the cool thing: When people are being dicks and invade and harass you and (try to) kill you, you may report their sin (the game actually calls it that) and they'll be named and shamed in aforementioned Book of the Guilty. The really interesting bit is this: Not only can you look up all those asshats who get a kick out of invading peaceful players instead of fighting people fair and square in the arena. You also get to see their gear and stats. And you wouldn't believe the amount of blatant cheaters in that book!
When you see level 1 players with every single attribute maxed out, you can't help but despise certain "gamers". It's one thing when you intentionally invade some random player's session to kill a guy, who is most likely not specced and geared for or even experienced in pvp. It's usually a pretty easy, cowardly victory. But it gets really sad when you have to max out every last one of your stats, give yourself godly items and then go after people who cannot fight back anyway. How great is it then, when there's a list with their gamer tag, their character names and all their fucked up attributes and stats, which show off just how cowardly and shit at this game they really are? Sure, if somebody is out into grief play and trolling, he won't really care about that sort of thing, but there is no more "benefit of the doubt", no bragging rights, no "OMFG look at me I'm killing everybody!1" on youtube. I like it. I think I actually prefer this to the usual anti-cheat garbage, which never really works, anyway. It gets twice as good when you encounter these bastards and beat them anyway. I'm having the time of my life here.
We destroy boss baddies and invaders alike. And yes, that's a wolf , using a sword in his mouth to attack a boss. Asians, man.
I'll add updated pictures and a little video later. Need sleep now. Fucking birds are screaming their heads off out there. Bleh. Also, brain surgery:
Ooga booga!
Me Cat! Me no internet! Me no tv! Me no fucking clue what to do with myself!
Seriously
though, I’m writing this blog offline right now, because cable is dead and has
been dead all day. To make things a little more fun, we seem to be experiencing
rolling power-outs right now, so I may very well lose this text in the middle
of the creative process. Oh well, guess I’m gonna do it like Jesus and save.
Harhar!
My friends
back in Germany like making fun of me for living in England and bring up the
usual stereotypes whenever they get the chance. You know, English food, English
weather, English oral hygiene, that kinda thing. Which is okay, I’m a bit of a
troll, myself. “Still enjoying your cancer, Bob?” Jokes aside, England and
Germany really aren’t all that different. Germany has better beer, England has
better comedians, but they both have the same supermarkets selling the same
stuff, they both run the same shitty “reality” and “talent” shows on tv and
Opel cars are branded Vauxhall and have the steering wheel on the
wrong side, but they all still drive German cars around here.
Aaaaand I just had a blue screen of death! I
wonder if my PC got damaged due to the power out while it was running. Can that
still happen with today’s modern hardware? I’d look it up, but since there’s no
internet…
And that
brings me to one of the things, where living in England feels medieval at
best. For about a week now, the internet would simply stop working for no
apparent reason. Sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for an hour. Boom! No
internet.
Great. The minute I finished typing that last sentence, the internet actually
came back on, so I fired up my browser and BAM – power out! So I waited for electricity to come back,
rebooted my PC, restored this text (thanks, Word recovery feature!) and now the
fucking internet is dead again. Nice. Having a kickass day here.
I don’t
know what kind of ancient technology they use around here for power and basic
cable, but if I had to guess, the whole thing is probably handled by the same
guys who are in charge of water and facilities. I have seen bathrooms in East
Germany in the late 80s, before the fall of the Berlin wall. The poorest,
shabbiest areas, which were still recovering from the war. And facilities were more
modern over there than the bathrooms they have around here today. “Oh hey, I
want to take a bath! Better push a button and wait a whole hour to get some
fucking hot water! Or maybe I should take a shower instead. Oops, water is
still cold! Silly me, I should have pulled the little string on the bathroom
ceiling to make the water go hot!”
Yeah, our internet is like that. Sometimes it just dies and nobody gives a fuck. See, that's another difference between England and Germany. If this kind of crap happens in Germany, people complain, they demand their money back and if it keeps happening, they change ISPs. Which, essentially, doesn't do shit, as they all use the same cables and connections anyway, but it makes us angry Germans feel better. Your service is shit, watch me tear up the contract. Around here? Pfft!
I dunno if people in England are just happier and more relaxed. Or maybe they don't really trust that new invention called the internet. I mean, they still advertise fucking audio CDs in this country!
I'm not entirely sure how Queen qualifies as "trucking music", but that's a different story.
Speaking of things that die - Chompy, our bearded dragon and my first ever pet reptile, has taken a turn for the worse and I'll be surprised if she's still with us by the end of the week.
There is that cheesy saying that you don't choose your pet, but pets choose you. Chompy would jump out of her tank and climb all over me at the shop, which ultimately lead to the decision to buy a beardie in the first place. I know, that lizard probably just wanted food and would have jumped any random idiot at that time, but you gotta bond someway, right?
Unfortunately, something was very wrong with Chompy and her siblings, who all turned ill and had to be put in quarantine a short while after we bought her. Our beardie grew a weird bump on her back and started showing off-coloured scales, which later turned out to be yellow fungus, whilst her siblings started dying back at the shop, one after another.
So we treated her, put wound healer on the sores and infected areas, bathed her a lot and kept her warm and clean until she seemed perfectly normal and healthy. Well, "normal"... she would never shed her skin properly and no amounts of peeling, bathing and helping would stop one of her feet from growing an increasingly thick layer of old skin. She'd drop a claw, then a toe and eventually the entire foot became petrified until she lost it.
We took her back to the shop for intensive care and she made a full recovery, aside from the obvious missing foot and a milky eye, which had gone blind. Chompy could no longer chase after locusts in her condition, so Claire would feed her by hand.
She was a bit of a sad sight, but she ate, basked, had relatively normal weight and everything was fine. Until last week, when she no longer ate any bugs at all. Didn't seem like much of a problem at first - sometimes they're just not hungry. But she'd refuse them the next day and the day after that. Eventually we had to force-feed her. We stuffed her full of fatty worms to stop her from losing weight, gave her vitamin treatment, but she lost more and more weight every day. The strange bump on her back, which had disappeared roughly two years ago, is back. So is the yellow fungus.
We're putting wound healer on the infected areas again, we're keeping her clean and we've fed her all week long, even though she doesn't want to eat, but she's not getting any better. She is practically skeletal. If we weren't so attached to her, we probably would have put her in the freezer by now to put her out of her misery. I have never seen anything so depressing. Nothing seems to help at all. Right now I'm not sure which option is more cruel. Stuffing more and more food down her throat, hoping for a miracle or putting her to sleep and taking away all chances for a recovery, however unlikely.
Oh and since people are rather quick to judge on the internet when it comes to animals: We've rescued a beardie about a year ago, who is happy and healthy, we have a very healthy royal python and our savannah monitor is perfectly fit. We take very good care of our reptiles, as does the shop where we get them from. Whatever problem Chompy is having and whatever killed off all the other beardies in her clutch, is down to the breeder who gave them away in the first place.
It's frustrating. I don't know what to do. It feels like I'm not doing enough, but what could we have done, that we didn't already try anyway? This is not how I was expecting to lose her, and after only two years at that.
It finally happened! I was getting worried she wouldn't make it before the release of Dark Souls 2 in March 2014, but Claire finally finished her first playthrough of Dark Souls. I'd make fun of how it took her a whole extra week or 75 extra hours of game time, but she tends to read this blog and strawberry week is coming up, so I'll just congratulate her and celebrate her long overdue success.
Now we can finally team up like this:
and do that:
Our coop-experience in Dark Souls is a lot like Rainman. You know, it's pretty amazing and does some really cool things, but you just can't deny that it's retarded.
Remember when games had a multiplayer option right on the title screen and you'd get to choose whether you want to join or host a game and whether you're in the mood for a coop-session or a deathmatch? What the fuck happened to that? Whatever the hell they were thinking when they made this game, Dark Souls simply doesn't work like that. At all.
Let's say Claire has to fight a dragon and I want to help her. So we both launch the game solo, we both have to stand in the exact same spot at the same time and then I have to scribble summoning runes on the ground. Claire now has to wait a minute for them to appear in her game, before she can activate them to summon me. Because that's so much more convenient than a join/host or adhoc-join via buddy list option. There is also a chance that some other player will find my summoning runes before they appear in Claire's game, meaning that any random fucker could force me to join their game, instead. I have no influence over who ends up summoning me - the first player to activate my rune summons me to their game and that's that.
It's a bit like sneaky outdoor sex. You gotta find some dark, deserted alley where nobody will find and interrupt you before you get to have any fun. Then she has to wait for me to get it up (the rune!) and jump it before anybody else does. I can appreciate that they wanted to encourage play with random strangers, but making coop with friends so awkward as a result is a major oversight.
It's annoying, but not annoying enough to stop teaming up from being fun. So let's stick with that dragon from our example, Claire summons me into her game and we battle our way through a dungeon to get to said dragon. And on the way there, we get invaded by enemy players. Because that's just one of those things about teaming up: If you open your game up to friendly players, you may also get invaded by player killers at any time. Which was fun in our case, because we kicked our invader's ass, but if the hosting player (Claire) gets killed by an invader, it will automatically terminate our session and teleport both of us back to our last respawn point ('bonfire'). Solo.
To make things a little more awkward, a summoned helping phantom (me) cannot use their healing potions ('Estus Flask'). When Claire heals herself, the game will restore some small portion of my health, but that's about it. If I'm defeated, I get kicked out of her game and transported all the way back, meaning we'll have to meet up again for another summoning attempt.
Sure - it makes sense in the spirit of the game's insanely tough difficulty level. It makes the whole experience seriously challenging for 'player two'. It's also anything but user-friendly and convenient. But eventually we made it, fought invading players, zombies, basilisks and lag and ended up fighting (and beating, yay!) that dragon. What happens is that I get some small portion of Claire's reward for helping out, then the game kicks me out of her session and teleports me back to where I placed my summoning rune, because the area boss is dead and my job is done. Oh and here's a fun detail: The dragon is only dead in her game, but it's still alive and kicking in mine, meaning we have to meet up again, Claire has to place a rune and I have to summon her as a phantom to help me kill the dragon in my game.
Basically, the idea behind this whole coop feature is to make people say, "I can't do this bit alone, let's summon another player to help me for a minute." There will be parts of the game, which Claire and I are going to play solo for the sake of only doing them once. We're probably gonna team up for every boss fight in this playthrough, which means we'll have to kill each and every one of them twice. Which sounds a lot more annoying and time-consuming than it really is. It's more enjoyable to beat the same boss twice as a team than failing a dozen times solo. And most boss battles are fun enough for us to enjoy them several times.
I think we'll manage to beat the first half of the game today and get through the rest as we get closer to the weekend. I hope lag, crashes and player killers won't prove me wrong.
It's Monday, all my friends are at work and I'm just sitting here procrasturbating. Meanwhile, booking face has been interrupted by a bit of a low blow:
We've been studying your profile and think this is relevant to you.
Facebook suggested I like Hitler the other day, now it's offering me to like Satan himself. I gotta start clearing my browser history more often.
My Dark Souls New Game + is calling my name and I want to play so hard! I have just started getting into this:
Stereo. Fucking. Greatswords.
I am only beginning to understand the real depth of this game's combat system, which is actually rather basic and straightforward on the surface. You put an item in your main hand. Swing it with one hand, two-hand it, totally up to you. And if you feel like it, put one in your left. Classic sword & board come to mind. Or a sword and a parry dagger. Or dual daggers if you want to be taught how MMO-style rogues make absolutely no fucking sense. I have seen youtubers beating the game dual-wielding shields. What the fuck, indeed.
Offhand-weapons don't magically double your attack power. A rapier may make it easier to parry and counter an attack, a greatsword may be swung and double as a crappy shield and an actual shield protects you, for as long as you actually remember to lift that fucker and aim it at whatever bad stuff is coming your way. Some folks block with one shield and bash with the other, just for challenge's sake and to prove it can be done.
All weapons come with different amounts of range, damage, speed and even their own set of moves and attacks. Over the course of the game you get to enhance your items, beef up that broadsword to "+15" or add a bit of fire or lightning damage to it, cool visual effect and everything. Naturally, some combinations make more sense than others, some are infinitely more difficult to play, but at the end of the day, every weapon and every fighting style is valid if you can learn to pull it off. I have seen people beating every single boss naked, swinging nothing but a nailed club. Which must have taken greater amounts of practice than I dare imagine, but I like that it can be done if you're really fucking good.
Meanwhile, Claire is running around on there like this:
Fucking dragonslayer armor. It's silver by default, but it's very easy to override textures in this game, so... yay. Now, if she could finally finish that first playthrough of hers, so we can finally play our NG+ in jolly cooperation, I would be so happy!
Teaming up isn't the only reason I want another playthrough. It turns out that the entire plot and the way I've interpreted it, is a lie. When I finally realized how much I've been manipulated and lied to, I felt like an American watching the Eurovision Songcontest.
Without getting too much into detail, let's just say I had no idea what was happening, because I'm too used to all the hand-holding and obvious decisions in most RPGs today. Some goddess tells me I'm the chosen one, I have to defeat some guy, light a fire, allow the world to continue as it is, yada, yada, yada. Heard it a thousand times, let's be nice to these important NPCs, impress them with my badassery, finish my epic quest, end of story. Turns out the goddess is an illusion, that whole prophecy stuff is a load of crap and not only does "saving the world" mean sacrificing yourself, but it also ensures that mankind will continue to be enslaved for many happy years to come until some other "chosen one" puts you out of your misery and replaces you the way you did with the final boss.
It's depressing, as there are no happy endings in Dark Souls. Not for you or any of the characters you meet along the way. They all go insane and/or die in some messy, dramatic way. What's nice, though, is how there is no good, benevolent god or a good king or some other pure white character, who tells you to slay some pure black bad guy and that's that. But I fully believed that's how the plot worked until I was done. I didn't question what's going on, I just did as I was told and... well, shit.
In other news, Hugo is growing. A lot. In case you don't remember, Hugo is this guy here:
We went outside with him last weekend and I'm still surprised by people's reactions. You see, he's a huge freakin' lizard. And lots of people are afraid of reptiles. Or so you would think, judging by how many people want them banned as pets, how lots of people consider them dangerous and slimy and venomous and deadly and all that sort of thing.
So we walked around town with him and people would stick their heads out of their cars as they drove by, people would stare and you could see that many of them weren't really sure how to react. It's a mindset thing around here. People don't point, they don't approach you and say, hey, that's one bigass lizard.
Well, kids do. And that's what amazed me the most. Some grandpa was taking the kids for a walk. Rugrats, no older than five, if that. Kids always ask questions, they always want to pet him, they never seem afraid at all. Interestingly enough, even the oldtimer wasn't at all put off by Hugo. Some people are a bit scared at first, but their curiosity usually wins and they all end up touching him and asking questions. I really like that. I won't lie to you - of course my inner attention whore is getting off to that kind of stuff. Nobody gives a shit when you bring a dog, but everybody wants to check out that giant reptile. But it also makes me happy to see how open-minded people can be. I believe that much of the reptile hate around here, and how some people want to see them banned, is born out of ignorance. I bet you all know that guy who knows another guy who owns a huge snake and one day he woke up and the snake was suddenly in his bed, next to him, getting ready to eat him. People actually believe that kinda crap. They believe a lot of stuff about reptiles, because believing is all you can do if you don't know.
If I had to choose, I'd rather be bitten by an angry ball python than an angry pitbull. And at the end of a day, most intelligent pets are only as good or as bad as you raise them. They can be a mirror of your personality and asshole pet owners usually have asshole pets. So maybe, instead of banning certain kinds of pets altogether, make it more difficult for people who don't really care to get a pet, any pet, in the first place.
I think I'm gonna move my desk to a cave. Take the laptop with me, do all my work there, save it, upload it when I get home. Yes, I'm having one of those days again.
Dear mystery neighbour. If I don't respond when you knock on my door, even though you can hear me in there, then I probably don't want to talk to you. Please don't start hammering against the back door. Please don't knock on my window. Go. Away.
Just because I'm sitting in front of my PC all day does not mean I'm lonely and waiting to socialise. I'm trying to do my fucking job. During the day, this place is my office.
Yes, you may see me playing video games with no pants on whenever you peek through the window. That still means I'm working. My job is that awesome. Or you may find me testing my controller's rumble function with my genitals. A lot. Which means I'm not necessarily working, but I'm still not longing for your company.
So before you knock on my fucking door, ask yourself: Is my house on fire? If not, fuck off. Are you on fire? If so, call 999 or bother some other neighbour. Are you currently bleeding to death? Same thing. Are you on fire and/or bleeding to death, your phone is dead and none of the other neighbours respond? Fine, knock on my door if you must, but then please wait the fuck outside the house, where I can hose your remains off the stairs. Don't burn or bleed all over the carpet in the god damn corridor.
Maybe I should get a new job. Game design sounds fun. Sell people the same shit every year and they never notice it until they've given you their money. Seriously, have you nimrods learned absolutely nothing in the 8+ years WoW has been around, successfully destroying all of its competition within just a month or two?
Every year, with every fucking MMO release, I see the same shit repeat itself. Neverwinter. Holy fuck. The euphoria on the forums. The vast amounts of stupid people. Game wasn't even out yet and people posted about how they have spent hundreds of dollars on founders' packs, cash shop currency and all kinds of useless fluff. And the way they justify their own idiocy, god fucking dammit!
"I have a good feeling about this game and this company. I know I won't be disappointed when I support them, I know a good thing when I see one." Blah fucking blah. What happened? The game turned out to be just another MMORPG. Not a bad one, mind, but there are dozens of good MMOs out there, most of them more or less free to play. No one gives a crap about good anymore. Good ain't good enough.
Anyone looking at closed beta footage, previews, interviews, you know, fucking information you get for free on the internet with little to no research involved, you coulda seen it coming. It's not really a surprise or anything. But look at the Neverwinter forums now, a little over a month after launch. Sorry, "open beta".
The same dipshits, who originally bragged about spending hundreds in real currency on a game they didn't know shit about, now demand their money back. Some of them go as far as having everything refunded through the credit card company, which borders on fraud. The American way. Customer is always right, "if this game was a car", that kinda shit. So you go and spend a ton of money on mounts, dyes, pets and god knows what, you receive all of that stuff, it all works, but then you don't really like the game, so you go and charge your money back. For stuff you've received, that wasn't broken or faulty. Nice. I'm starting to see why some people throw out so much money on virtual shit to begin with. Doesn't really hurt when you're planning on taking it all back a little while later, huh? Assholes.
Now the exact same thing is about to happen with Elder Scrolls Online. Random poll on Facebook. "Do you think this game is going to be the next MMO hit?" And I dared to say no. Because the game doesn't really offer anything new or groundbreaking. Holy shit. The last time I've seen so many personal insults and death threats on facebook was when somebody posted a video that showed someone "drowning" a bag full of puppies. Mind you, I never said the game was gonna be shit or anything, I merely said it's nothing new. People actually demanded I "prove" these things instead of just saying them. Because, you know, the internet isn't full of previews and fact sheets and shit, available to anyone who is willing to look for them.
According to the lynch mob on Facebook, this game is gonna be the next big thing, because of (optional) 1st person combat and because of the "fantastic game world" you'll want to explore, sans quest hubs and all. Right. Because a modernized combat system totally helped Age of Conan, Tera and Neverwinter to become major blockbuster games, right? 1st person perspective as a groundbreaking new feature? Funny fuckers. And the whole "go explore, no questhubs" stuff is great, but that didn't make Guild Wars 2 the next big thing, either. In fact, people just look up maps on the internet and walk from one important location to another, just the way they do in MMORPGs with exclamation points and quest markers. Durrr! And what else is there? Raids? PvP? Yay. Never seen that kinda stuff before.
And don't get me started on Tamriel. Why do people suddenly consider Tamriel to be such an amazing setting? It's generic, derivative high fantasy. And even if it was as great as people make it out to be - since when does a powerful setting or franchise make a good game? Is anyone still playing SWTOR? You may love or hate Star Wars, but you can't deny the SW-license is infinitely stronger than Tamriel. And what good did that do, again? Lord of the Rings? Conan? Warhammer? Ha!
But the whole drama repeats. People are blind, naive and stupid. They believe this is the next big thing. If anyone disagrees, they consider it a personal insult. Then let them play for a month. Maybe two months. Until they see they're still playing just another MMORPG, where people do the exact same shit they do in every MMORPG. And suddenly, the same idiots who openly attacked everyone for not getting all hyped up get butthurt. Worst game ever, nothing but empty promises, huge disappointment, don't play this shit, blah, blah, blah. SWTOR all over again. Neverwinter all over again. Every fucking online game since WoW all over again. The cycle repeats. Over and over. People learn nothing.
Let me give you a little hint, you bunch of sheep: Have you played WoW to death, possibly since day one, got more and more annoyed with it and eventually gave up on it because even the thought of coming back bores you?
Don't. Buy. Fucking. MMORPGs.
What bores you isn't the setting. It's not the classes, the balance changes or the damn dungeons. It's the very genre. Repeat the same shit over and over again for years. Farm tokens. Repeat daily quests. NOBODY likes that shit. Why do you think people quit playing SWTOR when they were done with the personal story? Because after that, it's WoW with lightsabers. On a funny side note, I said exactly that during the beta of SWTOR. People told me I'm clueless and I should go fuck myself. You know. Those guys who stopped playing four weeks later. Because it was actually just WoW with lightsabers. Did I mention this is exactly what's going on with TESO right now? :P
Why do you think there is absolutely zero information on Titan, other than PR-bullshit stating it's gonna completely re-define the genre? Why do you think they had to "start over"? Because nobody fucking knows how to stop MMORPGs from being so fucking repetitive and boring when you reach the level cap. Guild Wars 2 tried it by completely removing the endgame. So people bitch about how there's no endgame. Neverwinter lets you buy endgame gear with real cash, so you don't have to do daily crap and dungeons if you don't want to. People bitch about that, too. And classic, WoW-style endgame, where you farm tokens, reputation and other shit for meaningless purple crap. Come on - that's the kind of stuff which made you believe games like TESO could end your misery in the first place.
Maybe the era of MMORPGs, if there has ever been such a thing, has come to an end. Maybe there should be more decent RPGs with (optional) multiplayer. Because what is it that many of us enjoy the most, really? Level up, unlock new skills, explore vast new landscapes. We only stop when the growth and the exploration ends and the grind and the repetition start. A good (offline) RPG ends where MMORPG endgame begins. There's your problem.
Hot damn! I don't think I've died, failed and suffered so much in any game since Dark Saviour on the Sega Saturn. Which was possibly the only platformer-RPG-adventure hybrid thingie I've ever played to 100% completion. But I digest.
I'm probably going to repeat stuff I've written in previous posts now, but I'm too hyped up to care. Rarely have I been so satisfied after finishing a game - and all I got was a confusing 10 seconds cutscene and a tune by Motoi Sakuraba (♥!) on a bland credits sequence, then it all just started over - New Game +
And believe it or not, that sense of achievement really came from the game's absolutely ludicrous difficulty. At its worst moments, Dark Souls is the videogame equivalent to getting raped with a pineapple. Ironically, the game relies on a mechanic which has been criticised and loathed in games since the 8/16bit era: Failure is almost certain the first time (or first dozen times) you try something and you won't get better until you learn and memorize every single step of the way to the next safe spot ('bonfire'). In fact, if I started a new character right now, I could probably finish the game in far less than 50% of the time it took the first time around, because now I know all the traps, monster attack patterns and shortcuts.
That's not to say you can't beat a dungeon or certain boss baddies on the first try if you're very perceptive and gifted with superhuman reflexes. But some deathtraps are hard to foresee until you die to them at least once: A 'treasure chest', which grabs and swallows you whole, an elevator, which gently carries you into the nearest spike trap, a crumbling floor, which takes 50% of your health through falling damage and sends one of the game's toughest boss baddies your way, who will one-shot you the second you grab your healing potion. Knowing about these lethal mechanisms makes the game significantly easier, but in most cases you won't know until it's too late for you or at least some other player near you.
You don't usually see other players around you except for rare moments, where they fade in and out of existence like ghostly phantoms, reminding you that other people are facing the same dangers which are killing you time and again. But players can leave messages and warnings to other adventurers, which will appear in your game. "Trap ahead!" "Illusionary wall." Some players are not so lucky and just leave behind a blood stain, which tells you how they have died when you touch it.
There's a bit of a pseudo MMO flair to it, which is where much of the motivation to keep playing stems from. Because you know that other players are failing at the same part of the game at the very same moment. Some of them leave frustrated messages. "I can't take this!" Peer pressure. We're all in this together. And I'm better than those suckers, so I'll get through this. You get the idea.
That and it's just so good! Even if that boss kicks your ass a dozen times, if some fucking undead fencer riddles you full of holes with his rapier or you get pancaked by some random passing boulder, the fighting, the jumping, everything feels so solid and fun, you just don't want to give up when you die. You want to try again and again and again. Within reason. High velocity controllers have been seen flying around our very living room, but rarely so. You wouldn't believe the screams of anger, frustration, but also sheer joy, which have echoed through our house over the weekend. I just can't remember the last time we've been so emotionally involved in any game.
There is this constant pressure. One false move, one step in the wrong direction and you may lose all your experience points ('souls'), which could otherwise buy you level ups, an important weapon upgrade or a new set of armor. And most of the time it's your fault. Fucked up a dodge roll, mashed the attack button too rapidly, walked off a cliff, ate the hail of arrows from a trap and forgot to raise the shield in time. The sense of relief when you safely make it from one bonfire to the next, get that level up, keep your progress, is immense. So is the crushing despair when you get killed on the last step of the way and you have to start over. Ideally, you learn from your mistake and avoid it the next time. Most of the time I just get pissed off, try to rush back to where I died and die again on the way back.
Soloing these guys as an inexperienced player = World of pain
Even a generally helpful feature like summoning 1-2 other players to help you tackle some of the extra tough bosses can result in humiliating death. Because once you make yourself visible to potentially helpful players, you also make yourself a potential target to those, whose demeanor is considerably less than friendly. This happened to me when I summoned somebody to help me fight Smough and Ornstein, a nasty tag-team of boss baddies. Both me and the guy who wanted to help me were heavy tanks, which makes the game a lot easier from a pve point of view. Full plate absorbs loads of damage, greatswords dish out lots of damage. Win-win. Then we got ganked by some high level fucker using light armor, a spear and lots of magic. Suddenly, the game was no longer about killing the boss. It was about getting to the damn boss in once piece without getting killed by that asshole player.
Wearing only light armor, the guy ran laps around us and our greatswords were far too slow to even hit him. Which makes sense - if you focus on killing players more than monsters and bosses, you'll use a completely different set of stats, skills and items. Something the average pve noob won't beat. And that's what he did there.
"I don't suppose we can talk about this?"
Now, before you scream bullshit at the idea of random people invading your game to murder you - this is purely optional. You can play in undead ('hollow') form, making it impossible for all players, friendly and hostile alike, to interact with you. But that means you also can't summon anyone for help. You can't have it both ways. Play solo, don't get murdered. Team up, have player-killers invade your game.
Oddly enough, pvp is a strangely friendly affair as far as slaughtering random people goes. I had invaders waiting or even helping while I was fighting off enemies, rather than just stabbing me in the back. They'd bow before attacking, then bow again when the fight is over. It's a far cry from WoW's /spit /point /laugh open world pvp. That said, no amount of friendly gestures and animations will change the fact that you're here to kill me, halt my progress and cause me a fair amount of grief, so don't be surprised when I chop your fucking head off while you're bowing like this was some kind of friendly, honorable, consensual encounter.
Not all companions and invaders are human, either. This boss here...
...may very well end up helping you with one of the game's toughest battles.
Well then. Time for New Game +, where all the baddies hit twice as hard and have a ton of extra HP. And for as much as I love my job and the money I get for playing all kinds of games, I'm actually hoping for a really quiet week or two, so I can fully enjoy Dark Souls. Best 13 Euros I've ever spent!
