Monday, May 28, 2012

Russain Square Plus

This was an awesome computer game to play back during the early 2000s when Windows had some new update. It also had quite a soundtrack, I managed to download all three songs, they're really great to listen to. But the one thing that this game had was it's challenge. This game had quite a challenge during the last few levels, and if you have no idea what you're doing, you're basically going to lose the game.

The entire objective of the game is to clear the board. Well, how are you supposed to do so? Well, each level has a small squared-shape board with different colored squares. You're supposed to match up each color by placing them either vertically or horizontally in the square. You cannot match them diagonally. I believe as soon as you reach the fifth level, it becomes a bit harder. There's also a time limit during each level. There is no game over until you reach the ninth level. If time runs out and you're on the ninth level, then you lose. But, if you somehow have the timer run out on level three, it just adds a new line of colors that you have to try to eliminate. The challenge though is when you're at level nine and you're just about there eliminating all of the lines. The timer gets ridiculously fast and if you don't react as fast as the timer, you're going to get quite a lot of those blocks getting added back onto your square.

How do you get the blocks to move? You just use the directional keys. Yeah, I cannot tell you how close I came to carpel tunnel with how fast I pressed those keys.

There is another challenge though...

There will be something called a "Stopper" that will randomly choose one square to lock onto for a limited time. This prevents you from moving the entire line of blocks up or down. It mainly stays in the inside of the square, never on the outside lines. There's only two of them that will spring up throughout the later levels of the game. You can get rid of these things. Hopefully, they land on one of the colors that you're working on to eliminate. Once you see the Stoppers landing on a color that you're working on, you're going to frantically get the remaining colors in that line before the Stopper moves to another block. They will not come back after you eliminate them, even if a line was added to your square.

What's interesting about this game is the music. During the first few levels, the music isn't really as catchy as you listen to. You're basically building the game's music to become catchier throughout the game. So there's like a repeated loop that slowly plays for like the first three levels. Then, the music becomes more tense and powerful as you go through the levels. The music will also change depending on what level the square is at. So, let's say you're playing level nine and you managed to eliminate the lines down to where you're at level six, so the music is going to change drastically towards the eliminated blocks. But, if you somehow let time pass you and get more blocks added back into your square, the music will go back to that specific spot.

I really wish there was someway to get my hands back onto that game. I really don't know how anyone can get it now and days. There was another game that came out for Windows during this time, I forgot the name of it though. It was this maze game where you have to guide this ball through a series of different mazes while avoiding holes and each level has a particular theme to it. I really miss this game.

>'-'<

Monday, May 21, 2012

Are Video Games Really to Blame?

I've done countless of essays and speeches that talks about violence in video games and how it effects ourselves and I must say, those who actually believe that video games actually causes us to become violent people are out of their minds.

I've played dozens of violent video games for years and you don't see me trying to decapitate people, running down pedestrians, or trying to find a gun to shoot someone all because a video game made it look cool.  Video games are not to be blamed here, blame other sources that could cause someone to get out of line.

I'm talking about parents, salesmen, and Jack Thompson.

The reason why I'm blaming the parents is because I'm sick and tired of watching kids play nothing but video games when I'm walking around a store. I literally saw a ten year old being pushed in a stroller all because he's too damn occupied by playing his handheld console, it's really amazing how the mother isn't getting embarrassed at all. It actually seemed like she was proud that her son was just being strolled around as if he was king of the world. I cannot believe that there are parents like that.

If the kid cannot get off the game because there weren't any limits set upon him/her, who's to blame? The parents. You're in control of how many seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, etc., your children plays video games. If you set a limit of how much time they have to play this game, they'd be better kids understanding rules a heck of a lot better rather than having to pry the controller out of the kid's hand when you say "times up" and they've been playing the game for at least eight hours straight. I have witnessed parents getting injured because of their child's reckless behavior after playing long hours of video games, and it's astonishing to see how the parents just don't care that their kid isn't doing anything great for themselves other than developing eye issues.

One last thing to mention about the parents is their amazing ability to ignore the ratings. You see, every video game has to be rated by the ESRB before it gets shipped off into the world. They rate the game depending on the material that you see in the game. If a ten year old is not allowed to see a rated R movie, because the parents say so, but yet they buy the kid a video game that is rated Mature, (which is the same as a rated R movie) what are you trying to prevent to your child by doing that? Nothing, because they'll witness what they can't see in a movie, in their video game. If you want to make sure that your children are not playing video games that deems too violent or graphic for them, by all means, pay attention to the damn rating the game has on both sides of the cover box.

The salesmen are also to blame in this situation because they all have to follow a simple rule that's really easy to follow. Children are NOT allowed to buy video games that they do not meet the age requirements to unless a parent or legal guardian is present. It is against store policy to sell a game to a minor if they don't reach the required age the rating has for it. So right there, it tells you, if a salesmen decides to sell a game to a minor, well guess what, that salesperson can easily get fired by not doing their job properly.

Last but not least, we're going to talk about the video game industry's worst enemy, Jack Thompson. This sonofabitch believes that ALL video games, unless he likes them, are nothing but murder simulators that helps brainwash children's minds to become violent killers. Apparently every singly video game that deems too violent will get branded as a horrible game because Thompson here just despises anything that has to do with violence. I mean, let's take a look at Bully, a very funny and an awesome video game, that has you take role of a kid who kinda has to be a bully to get to the very top of the school. Thompson believed that the game was nothing more but a "bully simulator" that "helps teaches kids how to become a bully." Yet sadly, I've witnessed bullies BEFORE this game even came into our lives. He also thought that this Teen-rated game deserved to be rated Mature due to a hidden thing you can do with the protagonist. Throughout the game, you can make out with several of the girls that are in the game, but there's one BOY that you can manage to make out and such. Thompson wanted this game to be Mature rated because it showed graphic, homosexual material that seemed too disgusting for viewers. He even has some smartass comment to say to Rockstar: We just found gay sexual content in Bully as Jimmy Hopkins makes out with another male student. Good luck with your Teen rating now."

Yes, he said that. So, not only is he nothing more but video game industries' biggest pain in the ass, he's also a homophobe! Great!!!

He also tries to make it seem that video games were the number one cause of certain murders that happened. He tried throwing in things into cases that would automatically get declined or just ignored because he had no significant evidence to even prove that the motives behind the killer was due to excessive video game playing.

I mean, hell, people try pitting Id's Doom on the Columbine killers when Doom wasn't even responsible whatsoever with the two killers at all. Sure, they made a few references to the game every now and then during their shooting spree, and yeah, they made a few maps for Doom (although many have claimed that one of them had made an exact replica of Columbine High School,) but nothing proved that their motives had anything to do with video games. The claims that these guys made a replica of the school by making a map in Doom was proven to be false.

 Video games aren't the reason why people kill. They're just ignorant assholes who had bigger issues than some old geaser trying to say that they were provoked by a violent video game they played. Honest the truth, if you blame video games, then you have to blame the rest of the media. There's nothing that shows video games causes people to kill. Sure, you have those who do say, "This game made me do this," such as the teen couple that killed a four year old they were watching because they were trying to imitate moves they saw in Mortal Kombat... But cases like that rarely happens now and days.

Have some common fucking sense people... It's not the video games that are being caused by this... It's just people who cannot see things that are right in front of them.

>'-'<

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Diablo 3 and Um... Some Issues... And a Review

Okay, so I went to the midnight release, went home and slept, woke up, ate breakfast and played the game. Played for three hours with some breaks in between...

Then... servers crashed at around 3-ish or so leaving me to do something else for the remainder of the day. Which I did and not decide to constantly check up on the game every five minutes to see if the servers were fixed.

Unfortunately, there's a bit of some issues that are still being addressed with this game. So, I guess there are some reports claiming that some of the achievements that were completed have gone missing. I will confirm that this is true because I do have missing achievements... And quests as well. Yeah, one of the two boss fights for the first act apparently went missing and I didn't like that... So I had to do that all over again, despite that it was really easy this time becuase I'm level 16 and I was much lower when I encountered that boss the first time.

And then, not too long ago, I witnessed that ANOTHER quest is missing. One that I didn't really appreciate undergoing but I had to anyways.


So, that's been my experience with this game so far. I'm not too happy that this happened and Blizzard should have been totally prepared for something like this and prevent it from happening but... I don't work at a game company yet so I have no idea what they could have done.

Anyways, that's my little rant about the game... Actually wait, let me continue it before I get to the good. I'm not liking the Demon Hunter at all... She's only level 5 and out of five classes that there are that I have past that, she's died the most times than all of my other characters at that level. I think I was level nine before my witch doctor died for the first time. I get that the Demon Hunter is supposed to be ranged, but for some reason, they don't start out with good abilities that are really helpful in crowds. Yeah, being ambushed by zombies and such with those flying electrical bats zapping you as well doesn't help me out at all as a ranged character. I guess I have to level her some more by doing something else.

And for some reason, your maps go blank every time you leave the place for a bit... I'm  not liking that I can't retrace my steps and know where I'm going if the maps just go blank.

Okay, my rant is over... Now it's time to actually review the damn game.

This game is awesome. I could end it with that, but unfortunately I'm not. This game actually made me appreciate the Barbarian class for once. I never liked it in Diablo 2, but I really liked what they did with it. I wanted to start out with the Wizard first, but I somehow didn't and ended up playing as the Witch Doctor... Which so far, I've leveled it the most. I dig this class a lot. Sure, it "replaced" my favorite class, the necromancer, from the previous game, but that doesn't really make a whole lot of difference. The Monk and the Wizard I'm still toying around with a bit, I haven't leveled them a whole lot yet, but I will some time in the future. But like I stated before, the Demon Hunter, right now, isn't really a likeable class. Although that could really change if I go back and play it some more.

The story is improved a lot since the last game. I really like how each character has a different story, even though they share the same quests together. Their purpose for this adventure is something that the other two games didn't have. It's basically having your character just be there as the hero without any kind of sole purpose unless I never really read further into the Diablo lore. But the characters never really had any kind of distinguish personalities unlike these characters, who actually talks throughout the game not just by some sort of click of the button to a NPC (non-playable character) or pressing a number in the numerical pad. (Diablo 2) Although that was specifically for the online play and has absolutely no effect on a solo player game.

You get helpers and crafters with you rather than doing everything yourself. Although it costs to make stuff and shit like that, still, it's not that hard to obtain gold in this game. I normally like to just gather everything that drops, even when it's completely useless to me, you never know how much gold it sells for to the merchant. I've gotten plenty of gold before hitting a double digit level. (And back in Diablo 2, I'd max out my gold before leaving the first act)

Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil anything in the game because I know people. I know that there are people who read my blogs, otherwise the counter wouldn't go up constantly. So the story is completely gone from this review.

Gameplay wise... it's totally like WoW, just with a Diablo touch. I mean, the menu screen couldn't look anymore like WoW and some of the ways the game plays couldn't act more like WoW as well. But, do I see a problem with this? Absolutely not. The game is more fun and enjoyable this way, rather than the previous game. I HATED the way I had to only have two spells up the entire time, and when I wanted to change it, I had to click and search for the ability I wanted. But the problem is, unless you memorize the description of what abilities were what, you'd have to scroll over your mouse onto the picture and wait for the box to pop up, giving you the description of that power. It never really told you right there and then, what power you're going to have equipped. Now, there's a picture AND a description of what the power is. Although, the clicking thing is an issue, and it's a giant menu that pops up rather than the picture boxes, still, at least I can still move around and such while I'm trying to get my powers and while I'm clicking around to avoid the monsters, the screen doesn't go away.

So, overall, I really appreciated the changes they made to this game. I've waited twelve long years to finally see a direct sequel to Diablo 2 and I cannot wait to see what awaits for me further into the game. Despite that I enjoy taking my sweet, sweet time and try to find all of the achievements to complete for act 1 right now, I don't care. It's not like I have to be the very first one to beat the game.

No, I'm not a crazed fan... I'm just a kitty.

>'-'<

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Streets of Rage 64? No, no... and No

So, my boyfriend and I decided to go to Disc Replay the other day and I see this game in the N64 rack that caught my attention. An old beat-em' up game called Fighting Force 64. I personally enjoyed this game back as a kid because all you have to do is just fight your way to the end. No puzzles, no interactive cut scenes, just pure fighting. Of course, this game wasn't perfect, it has its flaws, but nonetheless, it's a nice game to just play for a few hours.

The game has you playing as one of four characters, Alana, Mace, Hawk, and Smasher. Each kind of have different abilities, but it's hardly noticeable. Like how the girls are supposed to be weak and the guys are supposed to be strong. Each also has a special to perform, but why it drains some of your health is beyond me. I HATED that. It makes no sense.

The enemies could be a bit cheap depending on if they have a weapon in their hand or not. Those that has a gun will hardly miss, really. One shot and it sends you to the ground. Man, these guys can take a bullet to the chest. Heck, even a missile. Yeah, towards the end of the game, you get to avoid missiles that randomly attacks you while on an elevator that takes you to an impossible height. The enemies also have random names like Hotdog, Agent X, Poison... Yeap.

When fighting against the bosses, there's really not a specific strategy to follow, just try to knock them down by any means necessary. One boss has you throwing things at him the entire fight, and while it's a change for once, it's not like it's completely interesting to do. The reason why I disliked this fight is because when you're playing as a character that's not as strong as Smasher, they pick up heavy items really slowly, and this basically gives the boss a perfect opportunity to knock me flat on my butt with his electrical projectile. The characters takes their sweet, sweet time to get up, and by the time I'm back at the thrown item, the guy is floating around in the air where I can't touch him.

It's frustrating that this game can be really slow at times. If you're not holding down the run button, it just seems like it's taking forever to get to the next section in the game.

Mind you the title of this blog. This game was originally supposed to be Streets of Rage, but they changed it completely. You remember that Sega game right? Especially where the third one had that Japanese-only flamboyant boss? Yeap. I don't remember the entire thing on why it was changed, I just remember a tiny bit of it.

Like I stated, this game has its frustrating moments, but if you want to kill time, I wouldn't mind recommending this game to you. It's really fun to play, but not with a partner... Because if they want to be really douchey, all they can do is just beat you down and, HEY you're dead!

Yeah, you and your partner can beat each other up and do damage, there is no friendly fire in this game.

>'-'<