Sunday, January 31, 2010

One would think...

So, Apple released a new product not to long ago. If you haven't heard they released the iPad. What is the iPad? Well, from the looks of it, it's a big brother of the iPod that supposedly does more than the iPhone, and has similar features to the iMac but with feel of an iBook.

So when is Apple going to release the iDon'tCare?

Because I don't. Because basically what they're selling is the same device they've already made 4 or 5 times, only this one is bigger. Yay? It's not like it actually adds anything to the market we haven't already seen. Sorry guys but Nintendo already wowed the crowds with touch screen technology years ago. The only practical use the thing has is being a portable web-browser that doesn't have all the extra things a computer normally does. It apparently runs apps like an iPhone, but can't make phone calls. Great, so what I'm getting from Apple's current stratagy is instead of releasing one product that simply does everything that Apple's current technology is capable of, they're releasing individual products that if you buy them all can give you the same abilities you can get on a regular Dell Laptop. Oh, well except the touch screen. You win that one, Apple. Huzzah for you.

But seriously, what is the point of releasing this thing except for the fact that people are getting bored with all their other iProducts and need something else to waste their money on? The thing doesn't even support Flash. How do you build a portable web browser that DOESN'T SUPPORT FLASH?! 98% of the web uses Flash and yet Apple in it's infinite wisdom passed down from ancient gods who's names can not be pronounced on this plane of existence has decreed that Flash is unnecessary for web-browsing, just like a second mouse button serves no purpose on a computer since you have a keyboard full of buttons and were butthurt because the Windows key didn't do anything on their machines, so they forced you to hold down their 'command' button (i.e. windows key) to right click on anything. As you can tell, I'm not a fan of Apple. The only thing that makes any reasonable sense in this strategy is that Apple has plans to release a yet unknown number of iDevices and when the final one is released (Probably some time in 2012) they will all join together in some Voltron-esque fashion and become the iDestroyer, slayer of mankind and destroy the world in a flurry of multicolored plastic death.

Needless to say, Apple is once again trying to flaunt it's superiority in the field of creating shit that has already been done but isn't yet available in Bubblegum Pink. And people will buy it. Because people are stupid.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

I think I've done this before...

You know, I like to consider myself a gamer. A person that plays games. Video games for those of you who actually went along with that duchebag commercial in which they promoted a gamer as a beer battered cheese head football fan who spends his entire paycheck on pay-per-view sessions of every sporting event known to man kind and corn nuts. That is not a gamer. That is a complete waste of flesh. There's a difference. But that's not entirely what my rant is about today though I would like to take a few moments before I start to mention that just because you play video poker online and are able to keep yourself entertained for 30 minutes playing the newest incarnation of Bejeweled does not make you a gamer either.

Also, if you actually own and play any game with Madden in the title, you are also not a gamer. You're a pretentious fratboy who thinks that being good at a game that plays by itself if you leave it alone is actually something to be proud of. You also apparently don't know the difference between a sequel and an expansion pack...

But I digress on the subject of who is and isnt a gamer. The point of today's rant is the fact that a gamer requires something important in order to satisfy their needs as a gamer. And that would be games. Good games, preferably. Unfortunately the gaming industry has hit a rut and there's hardly anything on the market that's worth playing at the moment. There are a select few, but opening a new year with about three playable games does not bode well for the industry. In fact the gaming industry and Hollywood seem to be cheating off of each others tests because they're both doing the same thing in digging up old franchises that should have stayed dead. This is almost as bad as when they try to make games based on movies or movies based on games. When was this ever a good idea and why do they keep doing it? I can understand the movie based on game aspect but the only good game based on a movie was 007 GoldenEye for the N64. Well, there was also one other one for the PS2 but I forgot which bond movie it was from. Most games based on movies are designed to increase the overall revenue of the movie, not actually make a playable game.

If you're going to base a movie on a game, here are some ground rules you need to follow:
1. Don't change the main character to someone no one knows. If the main character is male and GOOD, don't make it a female character just because you think following around a pair of tits is a way to make money at the ticket booth. (Yes, I'm talking about Silent Hill. And while you're at it, Resident Evil)
2. Don't get artsy with character design. People like the way characters look for a reason. Suddenly deciding that your costume designer who thinks the pinnacle of gaming is Snake on her blinged out cellphone has a better idea of how a main character should look than the original creators is fucking STUPID.
3. Follow the fucking story. Video games are not religious texts. There is no interpretation required. The game was good enough to be overheard by the artsy douchebags in Hollywood because it's sales records stated that people liked it. Why would you decide to write your own god damn story and just slap something else's name on it? You know who does that? Yaoi fanfic writing fangirls who come up with ideas like Sonic banging Tails in the woods behind Knothole Village. Sonic is not gay, and even though Tails acts like it at times, I'm pretty sure he's not either. DON'T CHANGE THINGS THAT WORK.

Sadly the only movie that was almost exactly like the game it was meant to portray was Tomb Raider. And that's simply because the game only consisted of a thin plot revolving around putting a female lead in awkward positions while the camera was designed to show her ass and/or tits as much as possible. And guns. No surprise the film-makers got this one right...

Okay, so going back to the original topic, there hasn't been a good game to come out for a while. Not like there used to be. Everything is basically a 'like this game but' game at this point, all of them copying off of each other trying to do something the other hasn't but in reality just fucking up something that worked properly the first time. And then you have all the sequels that are losing steam. Even the GOOD games are falling prey to the sequels falling apart at the seams. Devil May Cry has all but become a game of 'let's see how ridiculous of a combat system we can come up with'. I mean in 4 you basically get a chainsaw with no chain that requires you to hold the button down to charge it up for an attack. The whole point of Devil May Cry is to string attacks together so rapidly that you keep your combo counter going so you get that coveted S rank as often as possible. So how is giving you a weapon you have to charge add anything useful to this system? I have no idea. Then there's Resident Evil. I'm a fan of Resident Evil. I've played if not owned nearly every game with the title that has been released, (Except the shooter and the 'cronicles' games on the wii). That includes both of the Outbreak games. Now, they have Resident Evil 5.... a game that offers me so little that I hardly even care it was released. WTF is this?! I bought a gamecube... a fucking GAMECUBE just to play Resident Evil 4. What the fuck happened? I mean sure I was a little bummed they took out the zombies in 4. But the mechanics made up for it. Now, they decided to throw away the whole zombie thing all together completely, put you in control of the most pointless and bland character in the entire series - Chris Redfield - and pair him up with a set of walking tits that you have to BABYSIT half the time. The whole thing that made Resident Evil scary was being alone in a city, and running into someone who was still alive was a godsend. Now they pair you up with a military trained chick in a skintight catsuit that follows you through the entire game. You know, they could have just added a few more slots to your inventory and got rid of her all together. That would have worked better. And speaking of the dead.... the thing that made Resident Evil good was not knowing when and where the dead would rise. They came out of windows, out of the ground, and woke up after you passed them a few times. Now they're all wandering around, and you can see them coming a mile away. The only thing scary about it now is that they move faster and can dodge your already limited bullets. Frustration isn't an acceptable substitution for Fear. Feh.

The only decent games released recently were Little Big Planet (Which I barely got to play since it came out on the PS3 which is a pointless waste of money unless you happen to like watching movies in slightly higher definition than DVD. Yay.), Blazblue, and surprisingly, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The last one surprised me because they added a feature that was sorely lacking in every other CoD game. That being when you point at something and shoot, you actually HIT what you're aiming at. It's like the developers finally figured out that in a first person shooter the point is to SHOOT things and not to see how much ammo you can spray before randomly hitting the enemy standing 2 feet away out of pure chance.

Nothing else of note has even been mentioned except Starcraft 2. But that was only announced TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO. There's no rush Blizzard, really. I'm sure you have your hands full with your new expansion pack for WoW. Because your level 80 players are getting bored buttfucking demons in the ninth level of hell. But hey, now they can start a new character at level 1 and mindlessly do it all over again. But this time they can be a goblin. Or a werewolf. (Which is actually kinda cool, if I still played the fucking game. There's more farming in WoW than that stupid Farmville game on Facebook I keep hearing people rant about. You want to play a good farming game? Play Harvest Moon.)

Ghaah.... well, I guess I can try finishing Bayonetta. It's not exactly a great game, but for a game who's main focus is on making the character naked, it's not really that bad.

Friday, January 29, 2010

To be fair...

So.... it's been in the news. I don't watch the news very often because it's boring, but you can't avoid it sometimes. Haiti. Apparently there was an earthquake.

And apparently the world is supposed to care.

I would say I don't understand what the hell is going on here, but I do. There's been a big disaster and everyone thinks that if they donate two dollars by texting on their cellphone, it makes them an upstanding citizen. Riiight...

Am I the only person who didn't know much about Haiti until this happened other than the fact that they were a poorly represented minority that all have bad Jamaican accents in movies and games? Oh, and apparently they love selling drugs. Now, the earth decides to swallow half the country and everyone is up in arms about how this is a 'horrible disaster that has killed thousands!' Where were these people a few months before this happened? Were any of them eagerly keeping track of Haiti's economic and political status to make sure these poor individuals that just got squashed like bugs were doing alright? Probably watching the new season of Lost. Right. An earthquake hits and suddenly the Grinch's heart grows 3 times larger? Why is it that it always takes a natural disaster for people to care about other people?

You know, I'm not racist at all. I have nothing against the people of Haiti and I don't think what happened there was a joke. But I'm going to be honest. I didn't care about Haiti before this happened, so suddenly caring about it now makes me feel like an inconsiderate twat. If I actually cared about these people I would have been keeping tabs on the country long before any of this happened. But in order for some people to feel like they're not a complete waste of resources they feel like they have to jump on every single crusade there is and throw their money at it because it makes them feel like they're being a part of something they don't even really care about. Everywhere you go there's things saying, "Would you like to make a donation to the Haiti Relief fund?" I have to say no. If I didn't, I'd be a hypocrite. And broke.

I'm sure some of you would say, "Well if you had family that died there, you'd care!" and the answer would be yes, I would. But I probably would have cared before the quake hit as well, because they're my fucking family. I'm not a heartless individual and if I could stop the quake from happening I would have. But suddenly pretending to give a damn about a bunch of people I didn't even know existed suddenly because CNN told me to feels kind of evil, in all honesty. You know, like that McDonalds Scholarship sort of evil. The kind they hide in fine print below the table-top ads for the new McStupid they have on the menu for $0.89. You know why McDonald's offers a scholarship? Not because they care if people are smart enough to find employment beyond their fine establishment. It's because they can offer that money up, not pay taxes on it and at the end of the year they can simply go, 'Oh? No takers? Well, if you insist...' and put it back in their pockets. It's that kind of evil.

Do these people need help? Yeah, but they obviously needed help way before this happened as well and no one gave a shit. I feel sorry for Haiti, I do.... but on the same token I really didn't care before and I really can't say I care now. Call me an asshole, but at least I'm an honest asshole.

Update:
There's another thing I have to say after reflecting on this post for a bit. It's not like I don't appreciate the sacrifices the men and women who have uprooted their lives to physically go over to the country and dig these people out of rubble with their bare hands. These people I respect, and I will gladly agree with their efforts. The one's I'm ranting about are the ones who sit in their BMW's in the middle of rush our traffic, hear a notice on the radio about the Haiti disaster without even knowing where Haiti is on a map, punch a few numbers in on their cellphone between sips of their non-fat soy chai-latte with no whip and think they're just as useful as the people pulling the chunks of debris off the victims. It's these people I'm bitching about. If you want to donate money be my guest, I'm sure they can use it, but don't go flaunting around the fact that you're suddenly Mother Teresa because you decided to get a Tall instead of Venti to help support the suffering of the Haitian people.

You must be this tall...

So, I've been tinkering. And editing. And tinkering. I like to tinker, it's fun. Fixed up the blog a bit, made it shiny. And bigger. Bigger is good.

So anyway, I'm toying around and I notice this little next blog button at the top and being the curious person I am, if there's a button and I don't know what it does, I just gotta press it. So I press it and it turns out it randomly throws me into one of my internet neighbor's house. 'Kay.

So I'm cycling through some of this stuff and I come to realize, "My god, there's housewives and soccermoms on the internet." I knew this was true in the back of my head, just like how you know your mom and dad have had sex at one point or another. It's just when faced with the reality, it's a bit more harsh on the brain. So I'm floating through and see pages about normal families that have nothing better to do than post about how little Tommy just coughed up his first tooth and they have to post the same picture in like 40 different angles just to get the point across that their little loinspawn is growing up. I don't like kids. I especially don't like babies. But you know, I can get past that, they exist, and everyone had to be an annoying brat at some time in their life. I'm willing to accept that. But dear god, do we need National Geographic style article on why your child is the most amazing thing in the world because he can go for 10 minutes without being cross-eyed and drooling on himself? Though, I have to admit for the average person that is quite an accomplishment in this day and age...

My point is... this never used to happen. The internet used to be this mystical space of dark corners and hidden gems that only those willing to delve into the depths were able to enjoy. Remember when Newgrounds was new and didn't care about offending anyone? That was the internet. Then the term 'user friendly' was announced sometime in early 1999 and suddenly the internet was open to anyone! Huzzah!

Oh wait, no that's not a good thing. I have to deal with these people in the real world. Why is it that this Martha Stewart irritation is flooding my digital vibe? I dunno. I don't claim to be more important than any of these people. That's not what I"m getting at. It's just the internet used to be my little playground, along with the rest of us denizens from years gone past. This was our turf. You know, it wouldn't be so bad if we got a little respect for being here first. It's like the occupation of America all over again. We're being sectonalized into little camps, which are getting smaller and smaller as the 'normal' people show up. Because 'normal' people are weird. 'Normal' people get offended. I mean hell, there's a warning you have to pass to get on my blog just because I occasionally use the word fuck. I mean technically I could turn it off, but all I need is little Timmy reading my shit and his mom deciding that I'm a bane to her son's existence because I use bad words on the internet, heaven fucking forbid. Every day you hear news reports of, "OMG, guess what?! We found naughty stuff on the internet! Who would do such a thing, those heathens!" because their little bubble world has been shattered by the fact that when you take away someone's face they don't really give a shit anymore about trying to keep up appearances.

Again, this isn't the core of what irritates me. If these delusional fucks wanna play in my pool, I don't mind. I'm not a greedy person, the internet is a great asset for everyone to enjoy, but when you start pissing in it and claiming that you can do it better because you're an important person with 5 kids who knows a lot of things about life, like grocery shopping and balancing a checkbook, I get a little miffed. Whatever. You're not in your world anymore. You're in mine. The rules are different here, and you don't get to vote. But as the saying goes, never underestimate the power of idiots in large numbers, and it rings true here as well. Get enough people to complain about something and the government tries to step in and say, "Oh god! You offended the sensibilities of someone who drives a minivan and pays taxes! You better not do that again!" Only they have no idea how this works either and try to apply real life laws to a digital society. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, I'm going to blow off some heads in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory while you enjoy your Peggle. Just don't strain yourself, cause you might miss out on all the exciting offers the Google Chrome Yahoo Assfuck toolbar has to offer. Like knowing what the weather is like in Cuba.

I claim this land in the name of...!

So, here I am. Who am I? Well, as the title suggests, I'm an internet nobody. I'm not a famous artist, or a moderator for a gaming service. I'm just a presence on the internet that has been watching things for a long, long time.

You might be asking yourself then, "Why start a blog?"

There isn't a good answer for that, really. Mostly, there are things in this world that irk me. A lot. Like.. a lot a lot. And I've ranted to my friends, I've ranted to co-workers, I've ranted to complete strangers. I like to rant. It's my thing. So I figure, "Hey, you've been on the internet long enough, you should stake a claim somewhere." and since I have no actual talent at anything besides ranting, I've landed myself here. So, if you're interested in viewing the world from the eyes of an observer who has had just about enough of the bullshit the world has to offer then maybe you'll find a bit of entertainment to be had.

And since we're on the topic of blogs, that leads me to my first rant...

So, nearly every day I'm asked the same question by someone.... "Oh, you're on the internet? Do you have a Myspace?" Feh... If I had a quarter every single time this topic was brought up I would have been a very happy child whenever I went to the arcade. Unfortunately I can't seem to profit off of the mass stupidity of other people even though it seems like gold mine sitting in the open. No, I don't have a Myspace. You know why? Because I already did that. Back when it was called Geocities. And it sucked. It still sucks. I really don't have the time or want to submit myself to the mounds of immature teenage psycho drama that floods everyone's page. In fact, I don't even have to go to Myspace. I can describe nearly every page on the damn site. Picture this:

On the one side, you have horrible 'chat speak' posts about what people did over the weekend, and how they have some kind of stupid political view on something not important. Like the legalization of pot or some other pointless banter. In black text. Now, this wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the background image wasn't a picture of them and their friends in a poorly lit room making stupid faces at the camera. Tiled. Top it off with the fact that when you scroll, the content is the only thing that moves and the background doesn't, and you basically can't see shit. Luckily, most of the time you wouldn't want to. Then comes the background music. One horrible generic rap song on loop talking about whatever it is rap 'artists' do. Oh, and then there's the, 'check out this funny vid i just found' post on the side, linking to a Youtube video of a flash movie that was made in 1998... then take all that, copy and paste it about a hundred thousand times and you have Myspace in a nutshell.

Yeah, no thanks. I was tempted to go to Facebook, which is basically the same thing only with a different color scheme. I actually made an account there and then went to build a page and realized that the place is basically like a dating service for the socially inept. If it wasn't cramming fourty thousand links down my throat trying to get me to 'find friends on the internet' it was trying to get me to list everything about myself in detail like it was attempting to sell me on the black market to the highest bidder. I'll pass.

So, here I am at Blogspot. Seems simple enough, good interface, full control over what people can and can't see, and thankfully no constant reminders that there are 'friends on the interwebz' that I desperately need to have linked to my page. But, it's my first day, so maybe I just haven't opened all the closet doors yet. We'll see how it goes.

...and no, the name is not based off "A Clockwork Orange". Never saw the movie, and I have no intention to. Don't ask.

P.S.
By the way, I did a search and apparently there is A clockwork kitten on Myspace, but rest assured that artsy little retard is not me. I feel dirty.