I hate bricks! (Just keep reading)

It's a shame that so many things we love must come to pass. Today marked the going-away party for my 360, after 2 months of frustration. It was almost 1 year old, if I remember correctly... Yeah, I got it as a gift last Christmas. Ironic, ain't it?

The console in question had been working on and off for the past 8 weeks or so, clicking when I put any disc in and refusing to play it. This led to much pounding, punching and blowing into the disc drive by me, as often it took longer to get a fucking game running than it did to actually play it.

So I called Microsoft a couple of days ago, sat on hold for fifteen minutes, talked to some Middle-Eastern dude who I couldn't understand and eventually decided to send it in for repairs. He said it should be back in time for Christmas, but something gives me reason to doubt Microsoft's word.

So now it's time to break out the cartridges and shake up the air filters, because I'm back to playing my big black brick, the N64. This thing is ancient, but it does have a few nice games. Ocarina of Time I still want to complete, and Pokemon Stadium is still one of my favorite pokemon games of all time.

I suppose something good did come out of this situation, as I finally broke off my long standing love affair with Gamestop, after two things happened.

One, the return amount they give is outrageous. I spent 60 dollars on Bioshock (Which I thought was used, by the way!), returned it and only got 8 in return. No thank you, you divy bitches.

Second, the Play N Trade across the street has a whole heaping helping of classic games dating all the way back to the 2600. Plus, their prices are pretty cheap and the people are friendly. I got two games while I was there, Mortal Kombat 4 and Majora's Mask, so I'll be timing myself to see if I can complete them in time for Christmas.

I guess I'll sustain myself over the months by buying a few 64 games while I wait for the Xbox to come back in time for the Christmas flood of gifts.

I'm not really sure why I'm putting this here, if only to inform you that I won't be able to do any game reviews for a few weeks.

Rant: Extremists are pissing me off!

Blech... Hey guys. Strep sucks ass, which is one of the reasons I REALLY, REALLY hate the fall. But something good has come out of my sickness, as it has fueled my rage into something worth blogging about.



As you can tell by the title, today's rant is going to be about extremists, more importantly, religious extremists.


Allow me to expand and tell you a little about myself and my religious views. Personally, I am an agnostic. Now, many people will automatically think I don't believe in God and that I'm a "burn the churches" kind of guy, but that's not the correct definition. An atheist is someone who completely disregards religion. As an agnostic, I believe in a higher power, or perhaps numerous higher powers. That would make a bit more sense.

But, as an agnostic, I am directly opposed to organized religion. If there is a god, then I believe it's content with having us live and die. I don't try and formulate some kind of symbol of a god in my mind or write a book describing my god down to the very last detail, or even build monuments where we can pray to my nonexistant god.


Being someone who believes in a higher power myself, I have no problem with ordinary religion. Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jew, Scientologist; it doesn't make any difference to me. You have your religion, I'll have mine. Hell, I'm fine entering a civilized discussion with people over their religious beliefs and my own.

But there is a very thin line in the sand that people cross all too frequently, and it pisses me off to no end.


There are millions upon millions of Christians in the US alone, and most of them are good, normal people. They go to church, say their prayers and are able to live their lives without the fear of almighty God driving their every action.

It's time to begin our foray into religious extremism, starting with the Fearful Follower.

This kind of extremist is the one who is incredibly afraid of God, so much so that every move they make, they second-guess, just to make sure they're not committing a sin.


"Would you like a free chocolate bar with that, sir?"
"Are you crazy?! That's gluttony! That'd send me to hell! And you're going too for trying to tempt me!"


These people go to church not because they want to pay their respects to their creator, but go because they're so incredibly afraid that God will send them to a fiery pit of torment for all eternity that they feel they have no choice.

This makes no goddamn sense to me. People should be free to worship any god they want to because they're thankful for, you know, being created! Worshiping out of fear is not worshiping at all; in fact, it's oppression, something the United States has sworn to liberate people from.


Moving on to our 2nd Bible-Thumper, we have the Blind Follower.

These are the people who turn a blind eye to everything that doesn't deal with God, namely science and the history of their own religion. These people claim to follow every word in the Bible, which is fairly impossible, mainly for the fact that it's written by so many goddamn people. Why couldn't He just tell one of his disciples to write the book for him, instead of telling so many, and with a large time gap, too. I am of course referring to the Old and New Testaments.


In the Old Testament, God was a certifiable bad-ass, unleashing all kinds of plagues and such onto his enemies. This is where we get the 'put gays to death' and 'all blacks are sinful' works of Leviticus, which apparently every Christian clings onto into this day and age. You know, except for the blacks part, since that's illegal now. Then the New Testament comes along, and suddenly God's all about peace and love and 'thou shalt not kill' and all that malarkey.

So the question I pose to these people is why did God change his attitude towards people? And in doing this, is he admitting fault? This should never have happened, as God is all-knowing and omnipresent.


And let me tell you, 95% of the time, people will answer like this: "God had a plan, and he was executing it. He has a plan for all of us, including you." And the other 5% will skate around the question, not bothering to actually answer it.

We've gone a bit on a tangent here, so allow me to reel this train back on topic. The Blind followers are the people who don't know that Christianity was a sect from Judaism, or that the Crusades EVER HAPPENED. They also refuse to believe anything about the Solar System, beginning of the Universe or anything of the type. I'm fine with not believing evolution, but seriously; sometime you're going to have to wake up and smell the sulfur.

The Blinds are extremely annoying, because most just won't listen to reason. But they're nothing compared to our last class:


The Holy-Crap-Let's-Get-These-People-Some-Fucking-Therapy class.

You guys knew this was coming. These people are the ones who hide behind some obscure religious text as a way to instill hate and fear onto other people. The prime example of this phenomenon would be the Westboro Baptist Church, who combine all three classes of religious extremist.


This church has about 90 people altogether, mainly the Felps-Roper family. These people fucking infuriate me to no end! These people are so sick and twisted that they picket soldiers' funerals, holding up signs that "God hates fags" and "Thank God for IEDs." Their response to why they spread this hate? They "love all of God's decisions, and the military are fag enablers."

What in the fuck's a fag enabler in the first place?! Look, I understand you are opposed to gay people, but what in the name of fuck do you think gives you the right to hate other people for it?

And why a military funeral, you sick fucks? If it weren't for men and women giving their lives on the battlefield, you wouldn't have the ability to worship freely!

And what's more, they actually criticize the Catholic Church for being too soft and fag enablers themselves. What. The. Fuck.

Let me run down some of the other things they "thank God" for. They believe God organized 9/11 as a way to "wake America up," and he did so because he was angry at the fact that so many fags lived here. God will smite us all, and no-one is innocent. So it looks like we'll all burn in hell for things we didn't do.

These people just make me so FUCKING-

You know, I just had an epiphany. These people aren't sick, disgusting people who want to pervert the founding of a decent religion. They're professional trolls!

This entire fake religion was created for the sake of fucking with us! No ordinary human being is this messed up. They're running a 32 year scam on us, and it's been working!

Damn, these people are smart. In fact, I salute you, Most Hated Family In America. You've conned us all into believing you're a family of fucked-up people, and that takes some intelligence.

(Reality: I actually do believe they're faking, at least to a point.)

So, if you've skipped down here to the bottom, I'll give you the TL;DR version. Religion will always produce people like this, which is why I hate it being organized.

If I ever do become a productive member of society, I think I'll be a pastor, so I can save people from going down these paths of idiocy.

Videos to watch: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Darknessthecurse&view=videos Just type in "Religion" in the search videos bar. Make sure you watch the Jesus Camp rant too.

Hentai and common sense forever,
Kyouger.

Review: Left 4 Dead

Yo again, dudes. In a rather stunning twist of fate, I finished one of my most anticipated games of the year in one day, and now feel confident enough to review it.

Left 4 Dead is made by Valve Studios, creators of Half-Life, Team Fortress. Counterstrike, and Portal. Most, if not all of these games have been met with glowing reviews. And so far, Left 4 Dead seems to be heading down the same path.

Story-wise, there's absolutely nothing to talk about. There are 4 different maps, all shaped to look like different horror movies. They are, in order, hospital, deserted town, airport and farm. There's only one cutscene and almost no character development. I could finish each story in under an hour, which makes the entire game pretty damn short.

The one thing I have to mention is the extremely impressive friendly AI. 9 times out of 10, my AI companions were better teammates than anyone online.

The thing that everyone has been talking about is the game's impressive AI director, which spawns enemies at different points every playthrough. But the fact remains that I'm still playing through the same damn levels every time, just with enemies at different places.

The game is also pretty low on variety when it comes to zombies and weapons. There are five different "boss" infected. There's the Smoker, which can seize survivors with its extremely long tongue; the Hunter, which will leap on survivors and tear them apart; the Boomer, which will vomit on people and cause a horde of zombies to attack those in range and the Tank, a brick shithouse that will tear you the fuck apart before you can count shit two bricks.

And finally, there's the Witch, one of the scariest motherfucking zombies you will ever see. She's fast, deadly and will kill you in one hit. And the strange thing is that I'm pretty damn attracted to her.

There are only five weapons (Not counting grenades or machine guns), and three of those are upgrades of the other two. They get boring after a while, but they serve their purpose, just as they did in all of Valve's games.

Online play is alright, even though I'm still playing through the same four damn levels with checkpoints spread thin. But verses mode is a nice touch, allowing us to play as the boss infected, with the Tank spawning randomly.

I never really felt like this was a "Survival Horror" game, as everyone has been proudly claiming. The zombies can't take more than two bullets anywhere in their body, and they do nearly no damage to me. I was never really scared of anything in this game. My heart pounded a couple times when I heard the music change and a horde of zombies come swarming at me, all brandishing dessert forks. It's like the lead designer knew what a zombie horror movie was, and might have even seen posters for some, but he just can't grasp the concept. The only time I ever actually died was when a Tank pinned me up against a wall and kept pounding me before I could shoot back. So this simply wasn't a scary game. If it was headshots only, I would quite easily crap my pants every time I set off a car alarm.

Now that I bring that up, I have to ask something; if the zombies hunt by sound, why are they never attracted by the sound of GUNS? Seriously, I'll clear out a room standing from the doorframe, only to go in and find that three or four were standing not five feet from where I was firing. So the enemy AI is a little touchy at places.

Let me sum this up in three more marketable points. Neat, but repetitive. Cool, but limited. Unique, but linear.

I'm going to start using a different review system now. Instead of giving games x out of 10, I'm going to be listing how much I feel comfortable spend for it on opening day. So I'll give Left 4 Dead 50$ out of 60$.

Review of Gears of War 2

Welp, I can already tell November and December are going to be two extremely busy months. It seems like we're getting a new, exciting game every week. This week's exercise in manly grunting and weight-lifting was Gears of War 2.

My history with the Gears franchise has never been a strong one. I thought the first game was mediocre, and I really couldn't understand why people were giving it such glowing reviews. But people said that this time around there would be vast improvements in nearly every category. Teach me to listen to hype.

Looking back, I'm almost embarrassed at how deeply the hype claws sunk into me. I bought the Collector's edition and strategy guide, which totaled to over 100 dollars. I paid for it in advance throughout the year, so the strategy guide (Which I never had to even use) was the only thing I paid for.

But anyway, back to the review.

This game was... alright. That's all I can say; alright. The entire game is fairly good, but the individual parts of it bring it down.

The unique cover system is pretty much what makes the whole game tick, and it does so quite well. You can get into cover, jump over it, blindfire and so on. However, some of the controls feel delayed, especially the sprint button.

The aiming system also feels sticky. If an enemy gets behind you, then you're pretty much fucked for about 3 seconds. Attacks from behind are very, very cheap.

The plot is actually not that bad compared to Gears 1, which was simply a linear progression of stop-go shootouts with no real goal in sight except to detonate some bomb or something. But again, it's simply adequate; a big step over the original, but still only so-so.

The battlegrounds and where you fight are where this game suffers the most. There are only 5 levels in the entire game, broken up into 7 parts each. These sections take FOREVER to complete and just make you wonder when you're ever going to see a change in scenery. Especially when you're underground (Which is about 70% of the game, I might add) the environments are nearly the same everywhere, which makes it very confusing to navigate.

On the surface, things are a little better. In the bigger shootouts, I actually felt like I was in a huge, gigantic war against creatures that threatened my very existence.

But underground, everything just muddles together; one gunfight seems identical to the one before. It gets so goddamn repetitive.

But the acting... oh boy, this stuff made me want to throw up. John DiMaggio is great as the voice of Marcus, but he presents his lines worse than Ron Pearlman in Turok.

But the true champion of bad acting definitely Dominic Santiago. There's this pointless and shoehorned story about his love interest being captured by the Locust and blah blah blah. And when he actually meets his wife, I just gave up on him.

I honestly can't understand why so many people love this sequel so much over the original. Hmm... I have been hearing the multiplayer is vastly improved over the first game. Lemme go check.

Okay, it's a little better. Not by much, though. There are a few new maps, but nothing spectacular, all just variations of the same destroyed environment theme. The biggest (And perhaps only) thing I liked was Horde mode, where 5 players can face off against increasingly difficult waves of Locust. I've never even made it past the tenth wave. I hate to think what they do once you get up to the higher levels; probably replace all the monsters with velociraptors and give you a shotgun with no ammo.

I'm being overly mean; some of the shootouts are pretty fun and multiplayer isn't bad. Perhaps I'm just miffed because I spent so much unneeded money on it. But it's repetitive, badly voiced and holds very little replay value for me.

I give Gears of War 2 a 7/10.

I think I'm going to start renting games from now on, so I don't fall into these kinds of traps anymore.

BONUS REVIEW!

I downloaded the Call of Duty: World At War demo yesterday, and I'm a bit torn on it. On the one hand, I like the maps, the fact that you can drive tanks and such, and the World War 2 setting.

The reason I'm torn is because it rips nearly every single aspect off of Call of Duty 4's multiplayer. This would be fine if Infinity Ward was developing it, but Treyarch is (There's this weird system where Infinity Ward develops the even numbered sequels, and Treyarch develops the odd numbered ones). It looks amazing so far, but I'm probably not going to buy it; mainly on priniciple. A studio should put more work into making good games, instead of copying ones from earlier in the franchise.

Whatever, I'm done and this is probably longer than the Fallout review. And Left 4 Dead is coming out next week. Ugh...

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Review: Fallout 3

Warning: this review will go on for quite a long time, and cover many different broad subjects. Feel free to skim over parts; that is, if you want to be a complete douche.

Fallout 3 is developed by Bethesda, creators of Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls. The game takes place in 23-something or other in Washington DC and the surrounding area. Nuclear war has nearly wiped out humanity Perhaps not the most original concept, but this is made interesting by the fact that the war seems to have taken place in the 50s, because it's what the desolate world looks like. I think the trailer is a perfect example of this.

I try not to make a habit of reviewing anything until I've finished it. That's why I haven't told you the upcoming Watchmen movie will be awesome, even though I know it will be.

So I thought this review would be quite a long time in coming as soon as I passed the two hour mark. The reason being is that I expected to be in this game for no less than a week. I knew immediately that this was going to be a game that sucked up my free time like a vacuum cleaner with a pufferfish on the end, and suck it did.

I'm not a huge, huge fan of the RPG genre, and I hadn't even heard of the Fallout series before this. And I will admit to my shallowness by saying that the reason I first became interested in this game was because of this single picture:

Can I get a "Boom, Headshot?"

The excitement had been building to a fever pitch until four days ago, when I got to Gamestop at 10:00 in the morning to pick up my collector's edition copy of the game, complete with Vault-tec Lunchbox and Bobblehead.

And after four days of shooting at people, being shot at and subsequently dying, I can officially say that Fallout 3 met my feverishly high standards.

The game starts out with... well, your birth. Can you think of a better way to begin a great game? Here you choose your race, hair style, color, chin length, forehead size, eyebrow fluffiness and so on. The sheer amount of choices is staggering.

Soon (But not too soon) after your birth, your father (Voiced by Liam Neeson, who I think did terrific) escapes from the vault in which you were born, and it's up to you to find him.

In the first five or six hours of gameplay, I basically wandered around the Wasteland, until I got bored and decided to head into the core of DC. Then... I got my Caucasian female ass handed to me by Super Mutants. They all look like this scary motherfucker here:

The game plunged me into DC a little too early, I think. I really wasn't ready for the onslaught of creatures. But perhaps that was only because I wasn't playing the game right. Early on I was playing it like any conventional FPS. That is, running straight in with guns blazing and expecting to get back out alive and with all my ammo. This is what mainly got me killed.

But soon I came to grips with the unique combat system and actually began to feel refreshed by it. As you can see in the picture above, using the Vault-tec Assissted Targeting System (VATS), I could que up individual body parts, see the chance to hit and fire. This lead to much glee and dismemberment. However, sometimes the system can get hung up on rocks or other debris, when it was cleat that your gun wasn't aiming at anything other than the Raider with an AK.

I think the thing I like most about Fallout is the freedom and openness it gave me. I could choose my own path, skills, perks, dialogue and perhaps most important of all: fighting style.

I'm confronted with this situation frequently, so I'll use it as an example. Say I have a building in front of me filled with around six hostile Raiders that will shoot me on sight. I know their numbers, but I don't know their armaments. At any given time, there are about fifteen different ways I could deal with this situation. I could take my time and try to snipe them all from a distance. I could sneak around and try to perform silent kills to take them all out. Or, I could run in with a minigun, lactating testosterone, and try to kill them quickly before they take out their flamethrowers and burn me to a crisp. (Guess which one I picked)

There is also the aspect of "Karma," the system by which your interactions with characters is shown on your wrist. You can either choose to be a merciless, unstoppable badass devil who cares for no one but himself, or you can be a patron flower child, giving out alms to the poor and water for the thirsty. The game gives you bonuses for whatever side you choose.

I somehow ended up becoming a lesser Archangel, simply by disarming a couple bombs and giving out some water to beggers.

Of course, being evil has its advantages and disadvantages. I nearly armed the bomb I disarmed, which would have subsequently destroyed the town. At the last minute, I thought better of it and saved the town instead. By saving it, I used the town many, many times during the course of the game.

Fallout really made me care about the characters in it, even to the point of pulling out some real emotion that wasn't online-caused. I once help fix this election for a small-town mayor, who agreed to pay me after it was done. When it was over, he paid me with a measly 25 Bottlecaps (In-game money. And yes, they are actual bottlecaps.). Needless to say, I was pretty pissed and nearly shot him before thinking better of it.

I think the moment that I truly realized this isn't just an ordinary game was when I walked inside the ruins of Fairfax. It gave me a chill, not only because it's near where I live, it's also that I've walked along its streets before.

Fallout is an extremely easy game to get distracted in. I could be simply heading to a nearby radio station when I discover a town and decide to investigate further, finding out that they have a nasty problem with someone named the AntAgonizer, which leads to me proceeding to convince to give up her evil ways. After which, I find a town populated only by children, which subsequently sends me off to rescue three of their own, imprisoned by the motherfucking king of the fire ants.

Yes, this actually happened. I could not make this shit up.

I do have a couple complaints, though. The ending came out of fucking nowhere in the middle of a gunfight. I was still sitting in my chair waiting for the next quest to start until the credits started to roll. Many expletives followed.

Also, the amount of money I got and its worth in the game are both pitifully small. I feel like the design team was trying to emulate the current economy of the US, a attempt they unfortunately succeeded at. I don't get Bottlecaps off dead bodies, and instead I have to find bottlecaps in metal boxes and the like.

Wow, this is getting long... lemme wrap this up. Fallout is a game that sucked me in and refused to let me go until I paid it. It fills its niche beautifully, and I plan on replaying it to get all the mini-quests completed and get the "Evil Douche" achievement.

I give Fallout 10 headshots out of 10.

I'll leave you now with the opening cinematic for Left 4 Dead, which looks to be another game I'll be sinking my time into this November.

Heroes: A retrospective of pain

If you don't already know, I am a nerd. I can accept this. And one of the shows I latched onto early in my acceptance of my nerdihood was Heroes, a TV serial that was much like X-men. I loved the first season for various reasons which I couldn't quite place. Was it the quirky characters, the strong dialogue or the effing superpowers? I could never tell. But bottom line, the show rocked, but the ending... well, I could tell where this was going.

Heroes is a textbook example of "Star Wars," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Pretty much any damn Disney movie" syndrome. The first movie or season was so excellent that the studio decides to make a sequel and fucks it all up. I'm not saying that a sequel can't be done right, it's just that the studio or director tries to change the formula that made the first season work so well and ultimately ruins the experience for real fans.

Lemme run through the painful second season of Heroes before my brain starts to hurt. At the end of the first season, Hiro (The Japanese otaku who could control time and space) was transported back in time to the feudal period in Japan's history, to meet his hero, Takezo Kensei. He turns out to be a douchebag, a drunk, and a hero. Wait, what?

The first season really did a good job of making us care for the characters, and this is possibly where season 2 stumbles the most: they introduce too many damn new heroes! There are these two Hispanic siblings who want to see Suresh (The doctor character who is working on cracking the genome) to take away their powers. This takes up something like, 30% of the series. Read my lips: I do not give a shit about these guys! I want to see Hiro do something funny with Ando, or have Sylar closely stalk another hero, waiting to kill them.

The second season also focused more on "The Company," the mysterious corporation that was controlling everything behind the scenes. This was exposition alley, and it made the thing boring. Even as these people were being taken out right and left, I couldn't feel anything for them, because we were never given enough time to get to know them. As almost every episode ended, we were either shown a new character brought in on a whim, or someone who inexplicably came back from the dead. This theme of overly dramatic endings still persists today, and it makes it incredibly annoying to follow. I need a fucking flowchart to keep track of all the new characters. If I made one, it would probably take up an entire apartment complex.

And now, the third season is even worse. I don't even need to see the rest of the episodes to know that they're going to suck. It seems like this season is trying to explain the origin of the heroes, how most of them got their powers and how the Company gave it to some of them and blah de blee de blah.

This makes absolutely no sense! If powers are controlled by a kind of gene, how in the hell can Hiro control time or Nathan fucking FLY?! Things were fine when we didn't know the origins of heroes. We didn't particularly care. We accepted it and focused on the characters instead. Trying to explain these kinds of things just opens more plot holes.

So that's my feelings on Heroes. I really hope that this season will bring the closure I need from the series, even though I know it won't.

Pep rallies rule! Except when they suck.

I've never liked sports or dancing with people. So combine football and awkward dancing, and you've got a hot and spicy can of Kyouger repellant. I am of course talking about homecoming celebrations.

Our school pep rallies are a bit different than most. Lemme give you a little bit of history behind them while changing the names to protect the innocent and the stupid. About five years ago, our school was overpopulated. So the superintendent decided to add another school, codenamed Skywalker High. In the coming football season, we at Warrant County got our asses royally handed to us on a platter made of solid irony. So we have a long-standing hatred of Skywalker High and College. Our Pep rallies take on a very anti-jedi tone to them, which I suppose is to be expected.

But on to the rally itself. After squeezing through a crowd that would have embarrassed Japan's subway, the drum line marched in and actually played a nice, rousing theme song which I could've never made out the words to if I tried. Then the cheerleaders came up, and much panty-flashing ensued. They weren't too bad, but they cheered better with music than just singing.

Then we went through a bunch of bullcrap games, like musical chairs and hot potato, played with a football. We then had a nice skit involving the Warrant Wildcat and Skywalker Toucan. In short, the cat kicked the crap out of the bird, as everyone expected it to, and then they engaged in a dance contest to the extreme!!!!!!!!

Actually, it kinda sucked, the choreography blew and Skywalker actually won, though of course everyone in the stadium screamed that we did (And blew out my fourth eardrum in the process).

I actually liked last year's pep rally and got into it, but this one was just annoying as shit. The fangirlish screaming for the jocks drove me insane, and... well, I don't know. Maybe it's because I started cutting down on my caffeine intake and wasn't as hyped up, but this one just didn't do it for me.

I'm not sure why I'm even talking about this, but perhaps that's what a blog is actually for. I'll post the score of the football game tomorrow.