This is Your Tank On Quack

http://eternal-throne.deviantart.com/art/Amx-40-The-Duck-452762378

That is all.

Brain Barf

Blarg and hail to the spambots!  Thanks for letting me pretend this shit gets attention.

Things are ok.  Most of my IRL friends have gone into hermitage; don't even want to play video games.  I wish I could blow money on game service I don't use like that.

Somebody brought boxes of red velvet doughnuts to work last week.  o.O  Damn things were...suggestive.  Think actual raw-flesh-colored doughnuts.  And yes, some came with frosting.

Damn I actually typed that last sentence.

Did not eat the damn things, though.

Also been tearing my way through Final Fantasy V.  The bad guy is a tree (!) and the good guys are freaking morons.  The plot feels like somebody decided to stick a Power Rangers plot into Final Fantasy.  I love every minute of it anyway.  I don't think I've ever run into anything else where characters commute via frickin' meteors!  Maybe the Tunguska Event was really some dumbass from Mars taking a wrong turn trying to get to Europa.  Same thing with what killed the dinosaurs.

Well damn,  We just made stupidity into something incredibly badass.  It's like the opposite of a Uwe Boll flick.

Attack of The War Plushies

Blarg!

It's been a rough (but not horrible) few days.  I should finally be over the hump soon, at least.

Been tearing about in various games, with an emphasis on Diablo III and Final Fantasy V.

A highlight of current Diablo escapades was dealing with a huge mob of teddy bears that had the Molten and Mortar traits.  It was fairly fun. actually, like letting the Small Soldiers from back in the day arm a pack of Beanie Babies.  They're still not as scary as old-school Care Bears, though.  Those crazies tore about and flashed people to death with weaponized good feelings and stuff.  Taste the Rainbow, motherfucker!

Nor are they as hardcore as modern ponies.

>>
<<

I admit nothing.


Also, a bit more RPG = WTF in my life.  Spoilers:  The Big Bad in FFV is a scary Vader wanna be that's actually a damn tree.  The Dwarves were right, the trees want to kill us all.  Time to break out the flannels and chainsaws.

Screw modern JRPG bishie bullshit, Old Wan Willow as a Sith Lord is just damn awesome.

Random Insane Idea

Blarg to the spambots!

I've been mostly going to work and loafing about.  Came up with this horrible concept talking about canned tuna.

The whole idea is that the poor little tuna wind up in a cross between The Little Mermaid and Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.  Instead of Mola Rom we have the Gordon Fisherman giving gory sacrifices to a giant Big Daddy Statue.  Really crazy shit like chaining Dory to an anchor and ripping out swim bladders.  While poor saps swing upwards to Bieber music,  the removed organ starts bubbling.  The day is saved when somebody brings in some drunk Angler Fish and scares the shit out of everybody.

Godammit, I think I just made a pitch for a Uwe Boll animated film.

Beware, I Live!

Gwahaha!  You spambots thought you were rid of me!  >:D

Been busy with the holiday drama at work.  The customers have been decidedly more pleasant this time around, even accounting for the fact that I don't get to play with a chainsaw and slaughter trees in public.  There are a few idiots in the bunch.  Note to our customers:  We are not Amazon, we are not Overstock dot com.  There are things on the website that we do not have in physical stores.  Spew your petulance at management; that's what they're paid for.


Been avoiding the XBox, mostly since I don't feel like being all social right now between shifts.  No offence to my online buddies.  You don't deserve work-induced vitriol, and all I really want to do is smash evil and set fire to their fortress.  This phase will pass.  The clarion call of trundling death has finally breached the miasma of meh I have going right now.

It got me thinking.  I've done a good deal more smashing this year, and I want to share my thoughts.  I believe that I've played more hours overall in the past two years than most of my post-teen life, as well as the most varied overall games.

Borderlands 2.  Get off my plane and everybody gets a bullet.  Honestly, shooters have never really enticed me until this came along.  My brother loves the first two Medal of Honor games, and I have good memories of Battlefront 2 and Goldeneye from back in the day.  But this monster lured me into something I never expected:  pouring ridiculous amount of time and energy into lobbing almost enough dakka against advancing hordes of random sociopaths.  The loot and leveling systems actually made me look forward to mashing right trigger and pwning bastitches like a boss.  WE LOVE YOU MARCUS!

Star Ocean:  The Last Hope.  Dammit, Square Enix actually did it to me again.  I think I an in the tiny minority that actually likes this damn game.  The protagonist is the biggest whiny bitch this side of Advent Children Cloud for a good part of the game.  The battles are badly unbalanced in one way or another.  The soundtrack su-huh-ucks!  But it's just plain fun somehow.  Welcome to a JRPG where a paladin archetype doesn't suck mechanically.  Welcome to a place where you can hang out with the anime cliche/fetish of your choice, and it works.  Welcome to Bacchus D-79, a space elf Robocop that can summon killsats, mecha, and frickin BLACK HOLES.  No Welcome to Sarah, though.  You deserve to be left in ignominy forever, the only escape from which involves a vore furry dressed up like Bubsy.

Skyrim.  Holy shit is this awesome.  Tearing about being Nordic on my undead horse that is surprisingly nice and well-behaved.  Killing random moronsand stripping their corpses bare as a warning to other tards.  Going through dank dungeons toight undead viking wizards with Jedi powers!  The only fit music for those fights is produced by Manowar,  Setting the undead viking ninja wizards on fire with a sun-powered sword of +1138 Undead Ignition known as Dawnbreaker.  Punching angry grizzly bears to death like a boss.  Smashing dragons is fun, but somebody else did it better.  I put this game down for the next two, but I will come back eventually, to snag the the +9001 Bow of Summoning Anti-Undead Killsats and kill a Dracula Wannabe.

World of Tanks.  Wow, a freemium game I like and want to play.  Tearing about in a WWII tank, making other tanks miserable, and building a stable of vehicles that would make the Top Gear guys go crazy (well, crazier).  Showing people that Hetzers gonna Hetz, and that ramming stuff with a Stuart makes for hilarity.  I've thrown way too much money at this thing, plus it;s a online game that makes me actually want to play with strangers.  CoD can join Sarah.

Diablo 3.  I.  Don't.  CARE.  What other people say.  This shit's awesomesauce.  Another genre entry-drug for me.  I've now discovered hack-and-slash RPG goodness, and it is beautiful.  Whether it's smashing faces with a barbarian, going ninja crazytown with a monk, or bringing the dakka with a demon hunter, it just doesn't get old in Vanilla.  Then frickin Reaper of Souls came, with more mooks to smash, an angel with a frickin Holy Avenger Rocket Launcher with a altfire Keen Vorpal Flamethower, and the Crusader.  Holy crap.  My build for this guy involves hammers.  Lots of hammers.  Enough hammers to run a thousand hardware stores.   Oh, and the Crusader/Templar bromance is funny as hell and strangely endearing.  Let's Smite Something Together.

Well, I need to go, I'm getting incoherent.

Just when you thought it couldn't get crazier

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dragonmech

The Swag Train Has No Brakes!

Chuggachuggawootloot!

You know, for a game with a final boss that looks like a gay Balrog, Diablo 3 is the shiznit when it comes to handing out the shinies.   Gearbox had better have its shit together when I finally can cough up for Pre-Sequel.

Been tearing about on my rare weekend off.  I had a birthday, and now I'm a score and a dozen,  Next year we'll break out the good stuff and the dozen will be baked.  I celebrated by devouring large quantities of spicy chips and flinging hammers at monstrosities.  The Zakarum faith was originally sponsored by Craftsman or something (or originally Sigmarites from another dimension), I swear.

In other news, Homestar Runner is back in business, and things seem to be doing well.  Now all we need in an announcemnt that Games Workshop is rolling back its prices and we could have the nerd trifecta.  Well, another one.  There's always Dachshunds-Panzers-Bratwurst.

And why the hell are all my friends cat-people?!  Friggin' heretics.  Don't get me wrong.  I like cats.  They taste good in sweet and sour.  

Task Force Aflac

Blarg and Hail to the Spambots that "read" my yammerings.

The French tank line for World of Tanks is now out.  The consensus that they look so much like ducks that Wargaming really should hire Gilbert Godfrey to do the voice messages.  Prick or not, it really fits.

I've decided that I do like the new Ops system they got going, however.  Getting little goodies for actually playing the game helps keeps things fresh.  MOAR BITZ PLZ!

I've also been tearing about, working on some kooky concepts.  Some of the highlights include catapults that lob rocket powered grizzy bears at things I don't like, and a old wonko idea my old boss had, basically a home improvement store run by barbarians.  Crazy shit like orientation for new hires is that death mill scene from the first Conan movie, forklifts are powered by Brahma bulls.  Maybe some other stuff like instead of the usual DYI demos, you get things like the plumbing people showing the best way to kill stuff with an iron pipe, the lumber guys showing how to make an instant wood fort of doom, and hardware uses drills as trophy pikes.  Watch them heads spin!  Oh and instead of being tossed out, problem customers are ritually flung into a pit filled with angry Pomeranians.  Very slow, fuzzy, and yappy demise.

Yeah, I need to go away for now.

Attention Trekkies!

This guy has declared that gagh is for pansies!

http://oskarpannier.com/en/monster-meal/

These guys eat land-roving electric eels.

Also check out the other comics here, this crap is the beast kind of nerdy funny: Nerdy, funny
 truth.

In more zany news, I have an inexplicable urge to construct and use a catapult that lobs angry honey badgers at stuff.  Also, RPG.  Rocket Powered Grizzlies.

The Call of The Wild Ordnance.

Random Horrible Idea

The gist of it is this:  Random scenes of carnage and lootiful lootiful shinies dropping from all sorts of lootiful games, with this as the background song:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_wFEB4Oxlo


Salvador laying waste to midgets, demons exploding into goodies, somebody shouting Draugr to death, The Warrior exploding into guns everywhere, somebody getting stabbed by a Tonberry, the Badassasaurus tearing around, more shinies spraying everywhere.  You get the idea, I presume.


NOTE: I don't own the above video, but you just have to hear it to get the idea.

Game Economics

NOTE:  This is not a Wreckonomics post.


Been tearing about in Adventure Mode on Diablo 3.  They've added randomized dungeons chock-full (chock!) of shiny goodies, especially on the quite lootiful Torment Difficulty.  Unlike Best Shooter Ever, they ramped up the difficulty but clearly remembered what this whole solo play concept is, and actually made the legendary drops more frequent but also more meaningful.  Gearbox needs to take notes, especially since this is the big daddy of procedurally generated goodness.


Lootiful is my new favorite not-a-word now.


Unfortunately, they added a mechanic that I honesty am quite ambivalent about.  There is a new secondary currency called Blood Shards.  They're mysterious shiny bits of mystery, and since Scooby Doo isn't around, nobody really knows what the hell they really are.  Their only function currently is for this 'gambling' mini-game.  Pay X shards, get a loot drop.  One might get better goodies doing this on the insano Torment 3-6 settings, but right now it's really just been a roundabout way to turn shards into crafting materials, which already grow off trees at these levels.  Literally, tree demons drop this stuff.


It got me into thinking.  Games have been trying to do secondary currencies since friggin forever, but they've very rarely done it right.  Some examples, both good and bad:


Borderlands 2:  Several secondaries, particularly Eridium, Torgue Tokens, and Seraph Crystals.   Eridium started as the stuff for extra storage space and therefore useful, plus needed for access to the main bonus boss.  Later on, you got more bonus bosses that require Eridium to access, plus whole extra things like chests that enhance results and redonculous gambling machines of goodness, keep the stuff relevant and useful.  Tokens were used for specific vendors, mostly granting access to some nasty legendaries with minimum fuss, and were very easy to farm.  Crystals...well they were also used for special DLC vendors, but you either burned ridiculous amounts of Eridium to get them, or fought bonus bosses at max difficulty.  This requires a party to pull off, so frankly Best Shooter Ever dropped the ball for forced lone wolves like me there.


Final Fantasy VII:  One secondary, GP.  This stuff is pretty much putt-putt tickets for the Golden Saucer fun dome of terror.  Spend cash on the games there, do good, get GP.  Chocobo Racing (but not betting in CPU-only races) was very profitable for this stuff, especially for folks going for the Golden Chocobo.  The real use for GP was the Battle Arena, which had it own secondary (tertiary?) system called battle points that vanished if you left the lobby (total bullshit).  You got Cloud's level 4 limit break plus other nifty toys there.  Overall, the whole thing was fairly well done, since it really just amounted to getting goodies from doing random fun stuff, without slurping up your cash supply.


Star Ocean: The Last Hope:  One secondary, Fight Tokens.  While I do feel this game gets a lot of undeserved hate for not being Final Fantasy (and I smell that not the FF7 remake a lot of RPG nuts want), it has some flaws, some stemming from being a Square B-list title, some just quirks gone wrong.  One flaw is Fight Tokens.  You get them from fighting in the battle arena, and spend them at one specific vendor for specific goodies, most of which only available from there.  The flaw is that to get the stuff unique to this place, you need to either do Disgaea-style uber-grinding so you can afford them when they're useful as upgrades, or wait until the post game, then uber-grind the arena, but with less hassle.  In either case, the rewards (from the shop itself) are very underwhelming, and really the stuff you get are only good for crafting, and arguably not much good for that.  Glorified putt-putt tickets, given out for really boring grinding.  Bleh.


SaGa Frontier 2:  One secondary, Chips.  I already covered this in the Wreckonomics article for the game.  To wit:  You turn most of your gear into chips, which you can either convert into Crowns (the primary currency), with better rates for higher amount of chips, or use them (plus crowns) to make nifty high-level gear.  What you can make is dependent on your overall chip-stash size and in-game skill levels.  You really don't have much choice about getting this stuff, which can be a pain since that means either whaling upon critters until your weapons break for chips or finding the very vendors that convert stuff directly into chips.  The whole system really feeling like an attempt to both avoid the usual RPG lol-heug gold inflation problem and give a bit of magic-ey, crafty flavor.  Okay overall, but kinda feels half-assed.  Still not sure if right cheek or left cheek, though.


One final example, that doesn't really fit in.


Secret of Evermore:  Instead of secondaries, we actually have four primary currencies:  Claws, Jewels, Gold Coins, and Credits.  All four are indigenous to one particular region of the game, and there are merchants that exchange one currency for another (typically in the listed order).  Money was earned in the usual manner (i.e. killing stuff).  This was actually very workable overall, and helped give some character and contributed to the whole idea of diversity the game was going for.  Pretty well done, though I still can't figure out who decided individual jewels are crappier that gold coins in value.  Maybe the money jewels are flawed, or really cubic zirconium or something.  Other interesting economic features included a (limited time) trading bizzar where you could exchange one commodity for another, in hopes of various stat-bonus goodies, plus a token (spheres of annihilation if I remember correctly) usable in only one instance, in this case a cool undead ferryman doing business in the desert.  Technically a secondary, but really just a macguffin.


Anyway, as you can see, secondary currencies in games are not a new thing, but really, it's very rare for a game to do them any better than "Meh."  Hopefully Blizzard gets its crap together about it.  Maybe use it as an in-game fee to actually trade legendaries between players (dammit Blizzard).  Currency is only any good insofar as it actually being used and valued through use.

Brain Barf

So here we are again...


Still tearing about in Diablo III.  My Crusader has proven to endure like a boss, vindicating my giving him the name Tankred.  In funnier news, I wound up with a Puzzle Ring that didn't have horrible stats, so now my big grim do-gooder is being followed around by his loyal treasure goblin, Giggles McLootsalot.




A funny glitch happened, too.  I was tearing around a graveyard, laying waste to zombies.  One of the shambling dead got a hilariously funky death animation, where his head and body went in different directions, but the neck remained intact, resulting in a corpse with a neck at least 20-25 feet long slapping up against a wall.  That's right, the Nephalem just kicked the shit out of an undead Mr. Fantastic.




Some quiet insanity has been percolating in my head, mostly with some of the weirder, darker bits, in mind.  Even in a setting grim enough to warrant comparison to 40k (including massive pauldrons as a status symbol), who in their right mind makes a huge boiler room cavern thing full of bones from all sorts of  creatures underneath their city?  That is not how fossil fuel works.  And why?


In less funny, but no less mockery, I read an old issue if Game Informer I had at work.  This was from the glorious period where they had a damn sense of humor, and the funniest geek captions.  One article was about the then-new release of the 360 version of World of Tanks.  The guy writing it gave off this whole vibe of passive-aggressive apathy, whining about how dated the graphics work, but you got a chance to have "nuanced" shootouts.  then he proceeded to prove a complete lack of fact-checking, misspelling the M3 Stuart and referencing a "German UC 2-pdr."  The UC 2-pdr is a British vehicle.  Both of these mistakes were in the same damned sentence.




But hell, the loser snidely stated he didn't care about the historical side at all, despite the simple fact that in-game, there isn't exactly a mountain of lore or even a database to root through.  Almost everything is historically based, but to get more that a short blurb, you have to actually research things in the real world.  Everything he said amounted to what felt like a bizarre hipster-esque complaint that he couldn't have killstreaks and teabaggings, so it didn't belong on consoles at all.  Just not vapid enough for him, I guess.  Thank God that it was not a full review with a score, and that nobody listened anyway, from the way things went for the game afterward.


Oh, and he whined about the kiddies getting on the mikes and using their paltry profanity prowess to cover their immaturity like it was specifically endemic to World of Tanks.  Idiot.




The lesson here, kiddies, is that if you don't like a game, say you don't like it.  There's plenty of games out there I've played and filled with indifference, some with even outright loathing; but I was intelligent about my criticism.  Acting like an egocentric, self-important twit with a spoiled sense of entitlement and "I'm too smart for this crap, my audience is a bunch of morons" simply because you either didn't like something or felt like half-assing a job is something best left in the pits of Facebook and 4chan.    




The sad part is that current GI issues are all pretty much nothing but this...bizarre mess.  It's like a glimpse into an alternate universe were Yahtzee isn't allowed to swear like an angry sailor and stuck doing free-verse at nighttime coffee joints.  All the honest hostility has been replaced with passive-aggressive hipster cattiness.




Not that us Philistines would get what they're whining about.  Also, Philistines were actually a helluva lot more advanced than most people realized, so nyah.

Diabolic Ramblings

Been tearing about on Diablo 3 some more.  Cleaving a bloody swath through the hordes of wickedness and grabbing all the shinies doesn't really get old, to be honest.


Whether any of us admit it or not, a typical playstyle for just about everyone is smash-and-grab with capers.  I still like having crafting  along for the ride, especially since it's reliant on recycling excess goodies.  Diablo is actually a good deal more upfront about the whole thing.  Tristram's economy is based on looting dungeons, pillaging monsters, and robbing the dead.  Even all the heroes and followers, who really come across as people that don't give a kobold's ass about filthy lucre, tear about and take everything that isn't nailed down.  The scoundrel seems to be the only openly greedy one of the bunch.


By the way, the Crusader/Templar bromance the dialogue implies is fricking hilarious, but hell, closer to reality when it come to warrior types.  Just no air guitar, please.


In other news, my thumbs kept mysteriously sliced open.  Took two damn months to figure out my apparent subconscious emo tendencies were actually my belt developing some ever-so-slight burrs on the buckle.  Wish the truth hadn't been so costly, though; tons of bandages and an out-of-print Videssos book all bloodied up now.  Still better than finding a secret stash of Green Day and black candles hiding somewhere though.  September's very over, so I'm awake now.

Shiny Shiny Bitz

Hello again!


Been cheerfully tearing about on Diablo III again, since I went and nabbed Ultimate Evil Edition.  When I stopped playing the vanilla version, I mostly figured I'd never really see better drops without hours upon hours of grinding away.


I was wrong.


Holy crap, did they ramp up the goodies in this thing.  It's become an idyllic Fruitopia, rich in kickass stuff, and not-suck-ities.  (Aside, autocorrect recognizes Fruitopia.)     They add ridiculous extra difficulty levels, with tangibly better drop rates, and then made it so you see more bitz once you max out a character.  Then they added random raid mechanics to get more bitz, then they added even more legendary stuff so you can have MOAR BITZ!!!1!one! 


The forces of badness got a bit deeper, too, with a whole new subset of freaks known as Reapers.  Since my dudes aren't a sheaf of wheat, the reapers got sow reaped they wish they not sow reaped.  Bastards can go and reap some goats, far as my dudes are concerned.  Wretched little goat reapers.


I plan to keep on with the mindless dungeon crawling for a while, and start working my way through with a Crusader (who looks so much like the Black Templar character from Damnation Crusade that he probably endures like a boss).  My only real gripe is apparently a crafting system in place that got a lot deeper, then got kinda shallower soon thereafter.  The crux is that they came up with oodles of unique crafting materials for legendary goodies, then decided to remove these things and simplify the recipes overall.  I wouldn't care so much if the damn things didn't still drop.   Now my inner crafting addict is getting all annoyed that there is cool stuff to make things with, but you can't make things with them.


Well, that just calls for that old saying:  You can lead a horse to water, but you can't have sex with a unicorn.

Epic Fish Slapping

http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/04262010


That is all.

Brain Barf: RPG = WTF

Grargalarg to the spambots.


Been tearing about in various games, mostly that Rim Sky thing.


Starting thinking about things and came up with something I doubt is original, but wanted to say anyway:  RPG backgrounds are frickin' weird.


Do not get me wrong; I'm pretty hardcore in my addiction to the vidya game monster mashing and looting.  It's just that, well, I've also been doing this for-frickin'-ever.


Take the Elder Scrolls games.  The least bizarre thing is that the local furries are all crack heads.   Its so pervasive I'm amazed "WillYiff4Skooma" isn't a meme.  Maybe I should fix that.


Those moons?  The corpse of a god.  By the way, from what I gather about the lore, there's a third black moon out there.  Totally not a Dragonlance reference.  Also when the three are aligned properly, its extremely significant to the cat-folk.  That's the plot of a whole damn Dragonlance book, damn it.


And these are tame compared to some of the other crap in there.  Celtic Zulu with plant hearts.  A god whose background reads like what would happen if the Kama Sutra became a religious text.  Artificial gods made from mech-sized golems that break time over their knees.


Like, damn man.


It got me thinking.  Other RPGs are usually no slouches in the bizarre department either.


Take Chrono Cross.  We start with the primary (but largely ignored and all but unexplained) antagonist being a fusion of a giant space termite thing and a princess.  It manages to manipulate all of space and time within the game world, creating two primary antagonist factions.  The first is a supercomputer and it minions from the future, set adrift in the past and watching over the descendants of their creators, using what amounts to hypnotherapy and eugenics to get its way.  The second, somewhat nastier bunch, is a city of dinosaur-descended reptile folk ripped from an alternate universe by the planet itself as a counter.   Highlights include these elemental golem...doll...things, and a biocomputer that is an embodiment of all the local magical elements and happens to be a dragon with some sort of jewel laser mouth cannon.  Oh, and after an apocalyptic battle with the first bunch, the biocomputer was fractured into seven dragon gods; three in one universe, three in another, and the seventh set adrift to screw around with main characters.


All this nuttiness is compounded by nobody bothering to explain this crap until the two final dungeons of the game!  This was right when Square was in the middle of there hipster-esque "minimal explanation means maximum profundity" phase.


This is only two examples out of the many, many RPGs out there.


Please don't get me wrong.  I'm not some dullard that only goes for smash-and-grab, screw-the-plot antics.  I love having complex stories and interesting backgrounds.  There's a reason I own stuff like Tactics Ogre, Atelier Iris 1-3 (not at straightforward as they seem, trust me), multiple SaGa games, and so on and so on.  But sometimes, I really don't get why game writers seem to come up with stuff that requires enough hits to buzz a Grateful Dead concert to actually figure out.


Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find something uncomplicated to do for a while.

Random Stupid Campaign Idea

So I was having my usual midnight brainbarf random though session and came up with an idea for a game campaign.


The concept revolves around friggin' tooth fairies.  The characters are freshly sparkled dentition feys.  Whether or not they are actual fairies spliced into d20 modern (or equivalent) or we come up with Borrowers-style antics are irrelevant.  The campaign would be more-or-less mission-based, with two primary variants.


The first one would be nabbing kid's teeth and exchanging them for the usual reward.  Random ninja-like antics would ensue, making stealth and/or pickpocket checks so you can make the snatch with waking the kids or the parents.  More sociopathic (read: most) players would probable come up with crazy-ass schemes involving pliers and keeping the dough.   Curbing such tendencies is optional, but child abuse should be met with the usual GM bullshit against freaks anyway.


The second variant would be the various horrible schemes to get the damn quarters to begin with.  Relatively pedestrian stuff like raiding soda machines to holding up rest stops, maybe culminating in a climactic Death Star run on an armored car at Six Flags.


The endgame would involve revealing why we need all the teeth:  The Dread Lord Bunny of Esternia is about to return, and his only weakness is stuff voluntarily removed from a child's skull for monetary gain.  Preferably lauched at high velocity from a 12-gauge.  Failure would mean the fairy people must toil for eternity mining for mineral eggs.  One internet for guessing where I stole this part of the concept from.


All sorts of looney shit could be tossed in, like factions of tooth fairies competing for the most teeth.  Wackjob mad dentists capturing characters for demented purposes like Cthulu-esque rituals to invoke the Dread Lord Bunny.  Some asshole seeing through the masquerade and dissolving random schmucks to make pixie sticks.  Horrible, horrible Tinker Bell-themed nightclubs. 


Anyway, this is what was percolating in my head tonight. 

Thought Experiments

They just got pwned.





That is all.


Pic found on Cheezburger.

Live Oaks is Bad, And WG Should Feel Bad

I hate that damn map.  Dying with a face full of soggy wood does not make my day.


Been quietly considering getting back into 40k.  Some of those models look damn sweet, and to hell with the damn rules anyway.  The Dark Blood Templar Wolf-Smurfs will probably be back in action soon.  Deathwing Knights FTW!


Skyrim is going very well.  I no longer live in fear of bandit chiefs, while most everything else stopped being a threat long ago.  Looting dwarven ruins is still an absolute hoot, though.  Legate Wulfe the Unhinged is happily making those damn Gollum wannabes snarl for their mama and turning robots into shiny shiny bitz for the bitz can.  Windstad Manor AKA The Swag Shack, is finally fully operational, with materials kindly donated by idiotic bandits and the dumbest giants this side of New York.  The process had been accelerated greatly thanks to that guy in Morthal and the respawning vampire menace nearby.  Now if I could just get some damn general merchants or fences to move closer.


Oh, and they handed me explosive crossbow bolts.  Run my shiny chunks of XP, RUN!

Original Thinking

It doesn't happen much anymore.


Another tale of Legate Wulfe The Unhinged came today.  Did the Malacath daedric quest more or less for the hell of it.  Wound up at this stronghold of Klingons--wait, Orcs getting ganked by a giant.  Apparently the chieftain, Gowron Yamarz managed to displease Kahless Malacath.  He was summoned by the Monks of Boreth Atub and told the guy to man up.  After some oddly manly whining, he got squished by a different giant and I wound up with the Sword of Kahless Volendrung, which looked kinda Khorne-ey.


I also digged up some info on the Dark Brotherhood quests.  You get to wear a chef's hat.  Behold as the Dragonborn tears about with the fearsome shout  BOY AR DEE, that smothers his foes in canned ravioli and BORK BORK BORK which summons deadly ethereal chocolate mooses.  And finally CHEF  RAM  ZEY, that doesn't do much but intimidate anybody within 50 meters of a cooking pot.


Also, burninating trolls never gets old.

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie...

Clear your browser cache, dumbass.


Anyway, been tearing about with the new tanks in WoT.  Came up with a funny concept.


Battlebrix, new from Hasbro.  Look in wonder as mighty heroes and vile villains struggle to reach speeds of THREE!  Gaze in awe while they pour milk on fresh fired shells and proceed to munch!  Behold in reverence as they throw tracks like a boss!


We could have special sets like the Churchill Brothers that guzzle tea and be all stiff upper lipped.  The Mighty TOG that has special steamtroller powers.  Make them mooks go squish!  These guys could even have limited runs painted in blue and including free jelly babies.


Then things like D.W. that delivers pain in 30 minutes or less or your money back! King Tiger, the first tank to attend a Furcon!


Hell even E6-X, with its supreme scare-the-locust-shitless powers.


Battlebrix!  Buy them today and watch them squash evil...eventually!

How to wreck a GM

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Old_Man_Henderson


That is all.


Also, surprise boatsecks.

Wreckonomics -- SaGa Frontier 2

That Skyrim is a pretty cool guy.  Eh kills Thalmors and doesn't afraid of anything.

Yes old meme is old, but I don't care.

Anyway, welcome to a very overdue Wreckonomics article!  Today we're covering SaGa Frontier 2.



SaGa Frontier 2 is copyright/trademark Square Enix.  All mentions, discussions and shenanigans are for review purposes only.

Ah, SaGa games.  One of the delightfully wacky RPGs series from that epicenter of eccentricity known as Japan.  Unfortunately, this series let its quirks completely overwhelm everything else and is effectively dead, especially outside of Japan itself.  This particular installment has just enough quirk to have, well, character.  The combat is your usual turn-based monster mashing, centering around skills called "arts."  These arts come in three basic flavors, Weapon Arts that allow you to deal damage in flashy ways, Spell Arts that do magic stuff in flashy ways, and Hybrid arts that do extra flashy things to the poor monsters. 

The monsters themselves are mostly well-done, with just enough whimsy and animated tones without looking like something that crappy cartoon villains toss out in dozens to be wrecked by spunky teenagers.  Though to be fair, they do get wrecked by the dozen by spunky teenagers...  That said, they typically pose a good challenge, requiring a decent amount of strategy.

The story is split into two simultaneous parts.  The first part is the one highlighted by everyone, a unusual mix of politics from something like the Holy Roman Empire's formation and the plot from the Darksword Trilogy.  If you don't believe me, Google both while you play this thing and you'll see exactly what I'm saying.  It's actually fairly interesting, but unfortunately gets bogged down and confused in Square's signature "silence means profound" storytelling strategy, leaving us with the second storyline, the usual "dudes go out to get rich, wind up saving the world from certain doom" that's done to death ten years prior, but with interesting twist of following three generations of adventurers.  There are some losses, some victories, and in the end, a horrible abomination dies in an appropriately flashy fashion.  If you're me, usually from getting whacked with a stick.



Theoretically Unlimited Wealth:  Yes, but with severe barriers.  Encounters are quasi-fixed, and respawn upon leaving and entering zones.



Limitations:  Hoo boy.  First and foremost, you have two currencies to deal with.  Crowns (shortened to CR in-game) act as the traditional gold pieces for use in shops.  You start with a decent amount (typically 1000) for each storyline, but earning more is extremely slow and difficult, especially starting off.  This is exacerbated by gold farming being viable in only two dungeons, and the drops are so low as to be painful.  The second currency is Chips; the primary way to get those is to break your gear. 

Oh yeah, this game has breakable equipment, actually semi-justified.  Magic is so prevalent in the game world that melee weapons made of wood and stone are actually quite effective.  The downside is that the vast majority of weapons wear down upon use, and upon breaking yield Chips.  Chips have a good amount of uses, primarily to be cashed in for CR (the more you can cash in a given time, the better a rate you get too), and for special "custom" weapons and items.  Chips are also shared by all parties in the game (unlike CR), as does the inventory.

This inventory, unfortunately, is actually fairy limited in space, egregiously so for a JRPG with a random drop system in place.  A streak of good luck can actually result in things like a choosing what to throw out.

The final blow to the shinies is both the least important and the most infuriating.  This game actually came with a mini-game for the Pocketstation that would regularly yield all sorts of goodies, including some the best stuff in the game.  The problem being that Pocketstation was never released outside of Japan and your average schmoe couldn't get one without ridiculous amounts of time and money.  You can tell the loot system is balanced to account for a regular influx of items, but since you don't get that influx, things just sort of plod along.  Total bullcrap.

Gas Pedals:  Really, there isn't much to be had.  Gold farming is tedious, even by JRPG standards.  The best farming strategy for gold drops is to hunt for Ghouls and Ghoulas (local zombie equivalents) in either Hahn Nova (thankfully a starter dungeon) or the Ghoul tower (a revisitable optional dungeon).  Be advised that the drops are pretty damn low, and you have to bring either steel or Quell (local artifact equivalent) equipment if you want to spend any prolonged time doing this.

A much better option exists, however:  The Frito-Lay Factory.  This relies upon deliberately breaking gear for Chips.  The game has a habit of constantly throwing low-level weapons plus "trinkets,"  magical accessories that can be used to either fuel basic Spell Arts (one type of trinket for each magic type) with limited charges, or to enable higher level Spell Arts without using charges (bassackwards, I know).  Advanced Spell Arts merely require access to the magic type on the user's person.  Take all these little disposable bits and use 'em up!  the best place to do this is the Vogelang Desert, with has a town with a free inn, a shop you can buy the usual stuff, turn in Chips for CR, and have custom tools made.  To sweeten the deal, there is also a vendor after the first visit that can directly trade any non-steel, non-Quell item (including most armor) for it's Chip Value right then and there. The other real advantage is that just about any party can go there between story chapters, whether it makes sense or not.  All this serves to both hand you all the Chips you need and clean out your inventory space.  Oh, and your party gets a good bit of training out of using up all those bits on the mostly hapless monster population.

By way of closing, a question.  Who in their right mind is going to hand out magic crystal bits for a hat or a pair of work gloves?  These vendors are crazier than normal...

Invisible TOGs Rule The Base

Today I learned that you can ram people in World of Tanks and go undetected.  Pretty sure it was a glitch, but either way I know that someone out there on the webernets wound up with a severe case of OMGWTFBBQ syndrome.  Oh, and the 10.5mm German death cannon is still really great at making enemy tanks disappear in a puff of awesome.


In more Skyrim news, Legate Wulfe the Unhinged is still tearing about, making the forces of badness wish for their mamas.  Many Falmer have had close encounters with Tard Basher, my new custom Dwarven Mace of Energizing.  I've also acquired Nightingale equipment, and those weapons are really great at trolling things that annoy me.  The bow in particular is really great at killing dragons and allowing me to be all Shang Tsung of the Vikings. 


I'm currently planning to finally getting back to Dawnguard, smacking vampires and quoting Castlevania.  I'm really looking forward to the Divine Orbital Strike known as Auriel's Bow, combining that with Dawnbreaker to mow through the most undead seen this side of Plants Vs. Zombies.  Oh, and battle trolls.  I really need to see that in action.  "Bleh I'm all bloodsucky and emo!"  KRUMP!  "Blarg I'm a battle yeti, U Mad Bro?"

Ahab, Eat Your Heart Out

Things are coming around in their usual schizophrenic manner, but nicely for once. 


Been tearing about like a lunatic in World of Tanks some more.  The TOGII*  is still a frickin' hilarious bundle of death.  A buddy and I tore about and actually outmaneuvered people in these things, unleashing all sorts of lulzy doom.  Some highlights:


Actually managing to snipe British AT tanks and making them go boom.
Sidescraping a StuG III up against a wall, leaving it a sitting duck for our guns.
Letting some lights circle us and pretend it was going to work and being all "lol no" and making them go pop.


Also tried out the M7 tonight, realizing that there are very good reasons this thing never saw any action at all.  Damn thing just doesn't have what it takes.  Plus it has a badonkadonk.  Tanks should not have badonkadonks, dammit!


More randomness is forthcoming; too tired to write much right now.

The DW 2

After extensive research and much exploding, I have come up with an appropriate appellation for the tank in WoT officially known as the Durchbruchswagen 2.  It shall be henceforth known as the Pizza Box. 

The reasons for this are quite simple.  Its armor is made out of high-quality cardboard, and it is well suited for keeping the tankman sausage bits inside nice and toasty when somebody gives it an angry look.

So let it be written.

In other nerdy news, Legate Wulfe the Unhinged is still happily tearing about the countryside.  I'm now expecting a Google search for Draugr to come up with some damn bands; you can't tell me that fighting undead Vikings that can shout Force Push and shoot lightning isn't totally fucking metal.  This is pretty much Manowar the Video Game. 

The whole civil war baloney is total crap, however.  Maybe if some RTS looney made a hack for Total War with the Elder Scrolls it would be done justice.  Lobbing random mooks and redshirts in platoon-sized units (at most) with starter-level gear and no real 'boss' dudes up against a PC that usually combines CQC prowess, magical shenanigans, and frickin' Force Powers does not an epic war make.  The politics and background are interesting, the whole semi-Risk capture the hold thing is nice, but the damn nitty-gritty can be mechanically replicated by a lawnmower simulation.  Go here, mow some bermudagrass.  Go there, tell the boss the bermudagrass is looking kinda shaggy, mow that.  Go there, chase some gophers off, mow more bermudagrass.  Go way over there, mow some more damn bermudagrass and shank the dumbass peddling bags of bermudagrass seed.  Now the fescue empire shall rule over all!

Watching a dragon be all "I'm all scaly and immortal!  Suck it bitches!" at the College of Winterhold was frickin' funny, though.  It was like watching...hell, a random dumbass of your own choosing run up to a pack of Sith Lords and dropping their pants.  Hilarious, but lightning bolts are not comfortable there.

Chihuahua Pit Fights

They are bad, and you should feel bad for laughing at them.  Unless the losers wind up at the Chinese place down the road; then they're economically useful.

Been tearing about on World of Tanks some more.  Things took a turn for the zany with the August Tank-contest thingy.  Everybody got a free light tank.  It goes zip-zip-boom, no real surprise there.  Since we all got it, we all took it for a spin and wound up in matches with 20-odd of these things, which quickly devolved into some sort of hardcore bumper car deathmatch of terror, not unlike Star Wars Demolition from back in the day.  Much screaming of random obscenities and "AH'M INSAAANE!" ensued.

In other news, Skyrim is going on rather well.  Halls now resonate with tales of Legate Wulfe the Unhinged, Stabber of Trolls and Violent Advocate of Literacy and Shiny Things.  The Stormcloak heretics quake in fear that this terror will find them and introduce them to spontaneous combustion while screaming about spine tinglers and how Rarity is best (canon) pony. 

In slightly more serious news, I came up with a concept that I'll likely babble about shortly.  Before then, everybody out there think happy thoughts like how some dumbass parked his tank on a ferryboat and wound up with a Luchs to the face.  That is still hilarious.

Brain Barf

Now its Coward Killing Time!

The Soviet tanks have come, and they are awesome.  More trundling death is always welcome.

In any case, I realized a few things today.  My friends and I were discussing what would happen if a Halo Scorpion tank was included.  The consensus was that the obvious weak points (the driver is exposed and usually bright green, crew of two, can't handle high-end ballistic weapons worth a damn) would make it little more than a nice squishy novelty at best.

Realization 1:  A fictional tank in a grim dark future, a product of a ridiculous amount of time, resources, and research, can probably go squish to tank designs twice as old as the developers that created it.  Even worse, this can be deliberate, since the problems are actually gameplay decisions more than anything else.

Realization 2:   A group of grown men with grown men jobs and grown men lives and grown men problems were going on about whether a fictional space tank could handle a panzer.  Damn we're nerdy.

Realization 3:  Now I want WoT to release a Scorpion.  I'd want 40k tanks even more, though.

Emergency, Everyone To Get Off Of Street

Hello to the spambots that quasi-read this.

Been tearing about in World of Tanks for the Xbox.  Things are actually going well.  Wargaming is going to finally release the Soviet tech tree, so soon All Patriots will be able to bury the Imperialists in an avalanche of steel, lead, and Heavy quotes.

No, I'm reading up on my Marx and shit, just getting excited about having EVEN MOAR TANX to tear about and wreck things with.  Very excited.

In other news, a Wreckonomics post should be forthcoming within the week.  This time will be a very tough nut to crack, SaGa Frontier 2 for the PS1.  It's one of the hidden gems of the era, when Square wasn't covering everybody with belts.

I may as well talk some about that before the rant the post will require comes up.  It's actually a very good game with a challenging combat system with lots of surprises.  The graphics combine watercolor--but not cutesy--backgrounds with very distinct character sprites.  There are some pitfalls in the artwork, including the classic invisible walls, but overall its very well done.  The sprites are nice too, but the close-up version of one main character looks less like a badass and more like Ronald McDonald had one of Indiana Jones' many, many lovechildren.

The music is also very stunning; stunning enough that I hunted down the soundtrack years ago, and when a disc cracked (sob!) I hunted down a second copy.  If you're actually reading this, go on youtube and search for Freiluftmuzik and Zauberkraft for a good taste of it.  Oh yeah, the composer spent a good deal of time on Germany, so all the song titles are in German.  That gives us a soundtrack done by a Japanese dude (Masashi Hamauzu) with German names gushed over by a redneck-ish American guy.  Being provincial is for the weak!

The story is...well it's a SaGa game.  It's linear and convoluted at the same time, with many, many viewpoint characters.  You need to experience for yourself.  Suffice to say somebody managed to take late medieval history and politics, Lord of the Rings, the Darksword Trilogy, and more and managed to make this bizarre, but tasty, plot smoothie; and it works!

I'll get into the combat mechanics later for the Wreckonomics post, since they are intimately related to the ecomonic challenges of the itinerant dungeon looter.

Just remember, Coward Killing Time on set for June 3rd.  Come and let us give tanks!

Wreckonomics -- Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

Finally, another Wreckonomics post!  It has been quite a while since I've babbled on about how to destroy a game's in-universe economy, and soon I'll have more to show as well (hopefully).

This one deals with Dragon's Dogma.

Dragon's Dogma and Dragon's Dogma:  Dark Arisen is copyright Capcom.  All content discussed in this article are strictly for review purposes and related discussion.

Holy crap, did Capcom actually deliver for once!  This is one of those RPGs that really need to be played once.  While the plot is somewhere between bland and cliché, the combat is truly a wonder.  It's face-paced and brutal, and very much real-time.  You fight all sorts of wonderful nasties, from goblins and angry lizard-people to bigass cyclopes and dragons.  The big boss fights are a joy, actually expecting you to climb on a huge monster and whack the hell out of it, clinging to dear life.

Another nifty idea is the Pawn system.  Not only do you get to create a badass main character for yourself, but you get to make a second character to be your personal kickass henchman.  Both of these characters take advantage a very deep customization system, with basic physical stats derived from your body type, musculature, height, and so on.  And once you're done, you can get your hands on all sorts of armor and clothes and play Badass Dress-Up.  Once that's over, you can hire two more pawns created by other players to make a party of sweet monster destruction goodness.

The customization system and equipment combinations are extremely deep, but there are...well not so much flaws as there are possibilities for all sorts of weirdness.  Rainbow Pimp Gear syndrome is very extant in this game, compounded by crazy skin/hair tones and body types.  For example, I frequently encounter a pawn that looks like a fat giant Smurf and dresses like a bad Mortal Kombat OC sketch.  Oh, and this abomination talks like a reasonably normal 20s-30s-ish woman!

Everything got cranked up to 11 when Capcom decided to make an expanded re-release of the game, Dragon's Dogma:  Dark Arisen.  They added some needed features, including an improved fast-travel system, plus a whole new dungeon set and a new layer of monsters, suitable for high-level characters and/or total battle addicts.  Protip:  Go ahead and get your hands on the vanilla game, then get Dark Arisen.  The fast-travel improvements are even better if you start with a vanilla savefile and then update.

I could really keep going, but you need to play this game to really get the taste.  Fortunately, there are versions for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and are reasonably prices all around.  Then come back for the nitty-gritty for destroying the monetary system.

Crafting System:  Both Direct and Indirect.  You can combine all sorts of items and ingredients to make stuff from curatives to charms to offensive items and bombs.  The recipes are the classic Item A plus Item B equal Item C.  Most of them are intuitive, and the game will let you do this sort of crafting at any time, provided you have the ingredients; you don't have to unlock recipes.  Equipment is found and/or purchased, with an indirect enhancement system.  There are only a few places that offer enhancement, and these consume gold and items according to a static table, dependent on the gear involved.  One thing to note is that there a second layer of enhancement, which starts after fighting and defeating dragonkin.  This "dragonforged" equipment are the highest versions available for that particular piece in the vanilla game, but the Dark Arisen version includes "rarification" services, which provides two more enhancement levels, consuming rift crystals (the second, more rare in-game currency) and harder-to-get items.

Theoretically Unlimited Wealth:  Oh yes.  While there is an encumbrance system in place to keep you from carrying around too much junk, the game has an easily accessed storage system, with no upkeep costs and no unlocking required.  You can literally hold enough ores, foodstuffs, herbs, and arms, and other sundries to supply the entire realm indefinitely, plus a very generous wallet size.

Limitations:  First, the aforementioned encumbrance system, which is really in place to keep your party lean and mean at any given time.  The more problematic limitation is classic Breath of Fire Economy Syndrome.  While getting curatives and basic supplies is easy, prices for equipment are pretty damned steep; enough so that keeping your main character and pawn up with the game's unlocks requires a great deal of farming and selling.  This is aggravated by fairly low cash drops.   The good news is that the enhancement system is a viable way to upgrade without burning the proceeds of multiple dungeon crawls, and that there are equipment drops in chests all over the place.  The bad news is that enhancement services are more expensive monetarily and materially for higher level equipment.

Gas Pedals:  There are multiple, which is a godsend. 

First, and the one most often mentioned, is the souring/molding system.  There are a several curatives that are time-sensitive and decay.  The interesting part is that the first stage of the decay for most of these (where the item becomes sour, rank, or moldy) is much more valuable than the preserved state.  It was so crazy that a player could buy an large number of these (carrots were the most popular) let them decay to the moldy state, reap a huge profit on resale, and repeat the process indefinitely.  This was patched to an extent (shops have hard--but restockable--limits on these items now) in the Dark Arisen version.

Second is basic farming.  This game's version is actually made easier by a quirk:  chests actually refill after a certain number of in-game days (usually five), along with mining spots, harvesting spots, and fixed item locations.

Third is my personal favorite:  The Arisen Mining Company.  One of the earliest dungeons unlocked is an area known as the Quarry.  This dungeon has many advantages going for it.  After you clear it out for the first time (make sure you pick up the quest, and finish it), the monsters never return, and a shop opens up inside.  Hand out pickaxes to everybody and go to work!  While you do not see anything particularly spectacular, there are a lot of things to be picked up, mined, and harvested, plus a few chests with usually good loot inside.  You can load up on goodies and sell them at the shop (extra funny note, there's a pouch of gold coins right on the counter to nab, no repercussions at all).  What this place offers is there is a rest camp just south of the western entrance, so you can leave (smack critters and harvest stuff on the way) then rest for five days and return to do it all again!

Finally, a variant of the above, the Bitterblack Mining Company.  I only recommend this for experienced players, and it is best done before beating the final boss of Bitterblack Island for the irst time (or do this on a second playthrough).  That said, you can do this after beating the boss, but make sure you have a well-prepared party.  Because this is a dungeon meant for high-level parties, the drops, mining.harvesting points, and chest contains very valuable loot (chests tend to yield vanilla end-game loot, for example), and breakables tend to hold more things more often to pick up.  The hub zone itself contains several mining points, chests, and breakables, all risk-free!  You can go in, clear a couple of floors, leave and return in five in-game days, and clear the floors again!  The reason I recommend doing this before beating the final boss is that the second (technically third) area remains a safe zone, and has a ton of harvesting points, mining deposits, curative herbs to gather, and wildlife to hunt.  Beating this boss activates high-level encounters for the zone, which typically aren't all that terrible, and tend to be profitable, I just prefer the safe version so I can snag a bunch of herbs and ores and chest drops in peace.

So there you have it, several fairly simple ways to get the cash you need to tear around Gransys in style!

Rumbling Death

Hail to the spambots that quasi-read this:

Been quietly busy laying armored death upon the unfortunate in World of Tanks.  While I've yet to achieve any real mastery of the finer points of the game, I have found a few things I'm good at.

One of the most fun is the tanker equivalent of skirmisher tactics.  If the stars align, you can actually do insane things like have friggin' car chases in tanks!  This game has lots of speedy li'l scout tanks that are capable of being all GTA in the enemy's face, and when two or more light tanks square off in an urban map, it turns into a lulzy doom-fest that combines high-speed maneuvers, explosive death, and crazy stunts.  It's like Pac-Man with guns!  WakkawakkawakkawakkaBLAM!

Oh, bumped into a guy going by Geshtahl of all things.  Soon an insane clown is going to rule the ExBawx from atop a mountain of recycled assets and various grimdark memes.  Will the Returners bring hope?

HMS Tank

Hail the Spambots!

Been a crazy month.  Now I'm busy with all sorts of fun explodey goodness, plus it looks as if my hardware job is now permanent.

In nerdy news, I have been tearing about in World of Tanks for the 360!  I've already made some fellow tankers fear the guy that's rampaging about screaming random quotes and making the other team go squish.

World of Tanks is a fun game, with just the right combination of tanks, cash, tanks, grinding for guns, tanks, proving your dominance over noob bitches, and tanks.  And they have tanks too.  Protip:  The Alecto (light British Tank Destroyer) is meant to shoot tanks to death, no ram them.  Whoever that was, thanks for the entertainment for me and the free kill for my teammate.

I've been grinding my way through the American and British lines, and honestly, some of these things are beasts.  Whoever stuck a howitzer on a Stuart is friggin' crazy awesome.  Not to be outdone is the British TOG II*.  It's a tank-boat that drives like a whale, looks like a whale, and hits like a whale.  I wanna paint mine white.  Beware Moby Tank!

Now to find my plushie and tear about some more.  The Sharp demands tanks and cake!

Call to Agriculture

Hail to the spambots!

Been busy farming for goodies in Borderlands 2.  It's a cycle of firearm-based abuse;  I shoot various freaks, they drop goodies.  Then, I take the goodies and shoot bigger and angrier freaks so they drop better goodies.  Finally, I plan to use the goodies on gigantic and furious freaks so I can have the best goodies. 

How the hell Pandora isn't completely covered in spent brass is beyond me.  You'd have to mine a few solar systems to get the copper, iron, tin, etc. needed to keep the guns supplied, without accounting for propellant, oh and building the guns themselves!

In other news, I've stopped playing Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana again.  I've the worst reason ever:  I'm bored.  I can't say I hate the game.  The mechanics are somewhat flawed, but not terrible.  The story is a unique setting on a blender filled with anime and RPG tropes.  The economics are a bit unusual, but pleasantly so.  I'm probably going to do a rant, and almost certainly going to do a Wreckonomics entry about it.  The only thing holding me back is the I don't want to until I've beaten the game and ensured I've found the gas pedals.

I plan in trying another RPG soon, most likely something darker like Legend of Dragoon, or perhaps Divinity 2:  Ego Draconis.  I'm also planning on continuing to play B2 and some more of Diablo III.  Loot, loot, loot!

Back in Business With Big Guns

Hail the spambots that read this!

It's been a helluva month.  Short version, my leaders are craven.  Pfah!

Anyway, I've been happily tearing through Atelier Iris, enough that I'm likely to post a Wreckonomics entry about it.  It is very plain that this is item crafting fan's game, which is one of the reasons I have trouble putting it down.  Bombs, laser cannons, dead fish, booze, meteor strikes?  Final Fantasy wishes its consumables were this cool!

I've also been tearing with my mini-clan on Borderlands 2, and I'm happy to report we have started getting our hands on Pearlescent level guns.  We're in the middle of training up a couple dudes so they're ready for Ultimate VH raid bosses so we can start getting Seraph level gear too.  The Florintine shall be mine!

I admit that I find it very irritating that they locked the Seraph gear to Ultimate.  I see why they did it (to prevent farming in True to get Ultimate gear later), but to be honest, they should have kept the gun drops in True while leaving crystal farming to wait until Ultimate.  Even Seraph gear loses its power a few levels into Ultimate if you only bring level 50 versions.

But gripes aside, the guns you can get in Ultimate are the kickass!  I've wound up with the Butcher and a Tunguska thus far, and damn if they aren't nasty.  The Butcher is effectively an AA-12 with all but unlimited ammo and ridiculous fire rate.  The Tunguska is the Nukem's angry big brother; very dangerous, but oh so killy.  There are better launchers for straight damage (Norfleet, Badaboom, high end purples), but behold as whole rooms of mooks become smoking relics and shiny shiny loots!

Well, I need to go.  Must find food...

More Inane Babble

It's a new year spambots, deal with it!

I've been busy with work and destroying bandits in Borderlands 2.  Ultimate Vault Hunter mode is frickin' awesome, by the way.

More and more kickass guns are finally making it's way into my collection of death, thanks in no small part to my little band of buddies.  This game truly comes into its own with friends involved, and the drops increase in awesomeness accordingly.  I am also strongly considering doing some work on one of the wikis, adding in solutions for the more obtuse puzzles, plus EVEN MOAR references that are being missed in the wikis.  You know you're nerdy when you catch things that are way out of the genre's usual reference pool.

In work news, been lurking in hardware for a while now.  Some poor dumb bastard brought in a gun; turned out it was an airsoft rifle that some other idiot had shipped without some retaining screws.  What is with this time of year and people becoming total morons?  Are some brains cold-blooded and need sunlight to function properly?  Are holiday parties an experiment in shorting out synaptic pathways?  Are our lives really being controlled by a secret cabal of bronies, and soon marshmallow unicorns will inherit the earth?  Who the hell knows?