Next, in no particular order, I’ll bitch about the bad guys. It’s bad enough that the bad guys were nobody in particular (no subtle metapun intended, I promise), but it’s even worse that we don’t have any reason in particular to be fighting them. It turns out that the Big Bad Plan the Big Bad Villains are pursuing is… they want a place to live where they won’t be persecuted and treated like second-class citizens by everybody around them. Uh, yeah, damn them to hell for their sinister ambitions.
See, the bad guys are The Nobodies, who are people with no heart. In this way they differ from The Heartless (the bad guys from the first Kingdom Hearts) in that the Heartless evidently do have hearts. Never mind that it makes no fucking sense at all that the Heartless have goddamn hearts and you’ll pretty much spot right off that the new villains are exactly identical to the old villains, whereas the old villains get promoted to "kinda-sorta villains" since now they do have hearts.
But wait, it gets dumber. There’s a group called Organisation XIII that’s basically the brains behind the evil plot to get the nobodies a home – as the name implies, there are thirteen of them, and they’re the Big Bad Villains that Sora needs to fight on his way though the game. The thing is, seven of them start play dead. Now that’s as maybe, you say; who really cares? It’s just damn odd how much attention the game pays to this storyline involving some weird rebellion in the past that resulted in half of the group getting killed off when it has no bearing whatsoever on the game – it’s almost like the designers were more interested in telling this weird story they made up about office politics among people with no hearts in a strange universe of Disney characters than they were in making a coherent game. Nobody cares about Organisation XIII because we never have a reason to care – they’re just pop-up bosses standing between us and the excuse they came up with for recycling the boss from the original Kingdom Hearts even though he damn well got melted.
October 15th, 2007
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
no comments
It’s not a secret that, even though I inexplicably liked the first one, I didn’t care for Kingdom Hearts 2. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the one that jumps immediately to my mind is the ridiculous rhythm minigame that is the entire Atlantica level. Now, I’m not trying to imply that I liked Atlantica in the first Kingdom Hearts, when it was an oddly-controlled underwater fighting level, but at least it was roughly consistent with the rest of the game. In Kingdom Hearts 2, however, it’s another goddamn minigame in a game that’s already overfull of them.
But it’s not just that it’s a minigame; it’s the fucking terribleness that really gets to me. I mean, I’ve played games about helping beloved company mascots recover their stolen french fries. I’ve played games about rolling plastic balls with monkeys in them around a checkerboard and collecting bananas. I’ve even played games about turning into a woman and masturbating. So keep this in mind when I say that Kingdom Hearts 2 is the only game I’ve ever been embarassed to play.
I mean, can you blame me?
October 14th, 2007
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
no comments
Half-life 2: Episode Two is out. Fortunately for me, Valve has decided to distribute this game on its own and not exclusively in an expensive package that includes two games I already paid for and two games I don’t want. Disfortunately for me, the fucking thing is a 6500 mofobyte download. So I intend to get to play it sometime and then let everybody know exactly how awesome it is. Alone among all the reviewers in creation, I thought Episode One was the best game in the series, so I have high expectations here.
October 11th, 2007
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
no comments
I figured, since I was a bit terse last time, that I’d write a bit more about the Cubs being eliminated from the playoffs yet again. Specifically, I wanted to distinguish myself from the heap of Cubs fans and say that we did not lose this series because of billy goats, black cats (which I couldn’t find a good link for), or Steve Bartman. We didn’t lose because of evil magic, voodoo curses, or bad luck. We lost because the Arizona Diamondbacks pitched better, hit better, ran better, caught better, and threw better. We lost because they played better baseball than we did.
Let’s face it, gang, there was only one good pitching performance on our side of this series, and that was Carlos Zambrano’s strangely short game 1 start. As for batting, our big three didn’t hit for a damn in games one and two. Derrek Lee pulled out of the October blues for game three, but it was too little, too late. Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano didn’t hit for shit.
So cheers to the Diamondbacks. I may be a CUBS FAN 4 LIFE OMG, but I’m man enough to admit that they flat-out played better ball than we did this time around. I don’t need to hide behind mystical superstitions. I can always comfort myself with the knowledge that this season was a hell of an improvement over last season, and, hey, the Diamondbacks better just wait until next year!
In the meantime, umm, go Rockies!
Edit: This is exactly what I’m talking about.
October 8th, 2007
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
Man does that guy hit hard. We went into this week’s attempt optomistic, but managed only a 2% gain over last week. I was hoping to be able to announce a cheerful victory in the ol’ blog this week, complete with screenshots (and video, if Cynne remembered), but it was not to be. Instead, I’ve composed a song in his honour. It’s to the tune of O Tannenbaum, because it’s more obscene that way.
Prince Malchezaar,
Prince Malchezaar,
You are a pain in my fat ass.
You need to die,
So I get lewts.
I’ll kick your ass,
Now give me lewts.
Prince Malchezaar,
Prince Malchezaar,
O M F G
You are a bitch.
Wasn’t that lovely? Leave a large tip.
October 8th, 2007
Posted by
Darien |
World of Warcraft |
no comments
Ouch. After a nice late-season rally, the Cubs just got swept out of the postseason by the Diamondbacks. That’s a little disappointing, but hardly surprising; we put up hardly more of a fight than the Yankees are against the Indians. So we go a hundred winless years. I guess that’s an accomplishment in and of itself; now that Boston and that other Chicago team have broken their streaks, our hundred years is likely to stand as the longest losing streak in baseball for a long time. Who’s next, anyhow? Houston, at fifty-something?
October 6th, 2007
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
The original Legend of Zelda, on the Nintendo Entertainment System, was a revolutionary game when it was released. It was the first game to feature a battery backup for saving, and one of few games of the time to feature a large, open world that could be explored freely. The came contains nine different dungeons that can be played in (almost) any order, and a much harder "second quest" unlocked after beating it the first time.
The Legend of Zelda is one of the best games ever because of its combination of fast-paced action, exploration, and puzzle-solving; none of the dungeons are a simple "walk in a straight line and press A" style, instead all requiring some degree of secret-finding and resource management to complete. Also, the game’s innovative inventory system led to a large range of treasure being available, some better than others, and a variety of different ways to fight the mobs.
October 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Darien |
Best Games Ever |
no comments
Well that’s just Schadenfreuderiffic. After a whole season of leading the NL East, after being up seven games just two weeks ago, the Mets are now officially out of the postseason. They needed to win all of seven of their last seventeen games to be guaranteed a postseason berth, and they couldn’t do it.
Meanwhile, the fucking Rockies may not have won 14 straight to steal the wild card from the back of the pack, but they only missed one which was good enough for a draw. So we’ll see if they can finish stealing the Padres’ season from them tomorrow. I say signs point to yes.
October 1st, 2007
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
4 comments
I quote Phil Plait:
"Any claim, any explanation of an event, definitely falls within the scope of science. That’s because science is a method of investigation."
This is a great response to the asinine claim that "science doesn’t know everything" that gets thrown around by mystics and charlatans as though science were some sort of naked guru sitting on a mountain that beefy explorers like TV’s Stephen Hawking climb up to consult. The rest of the article is pretty good as well.
October 1st, 2007
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
no comments
