Worse than MacFarlane

I’m a little torn. One one hand, I want to share the PowerPoint presentations I’ve done for work with the internet because everyone at work gets a kick out of them. Or at least everyone lies about liking them. On the other hand, I kind of hate the one I’m currently working on (pictured above) because it’s mostly just stooped to Family Guy style references of “Hey, remember G.I. Joe?” I know I’m better than that, but I just don’t really have any good ideas rattling around in my brain right now.

The very first one was great because it was mostly original content with some clever, more subtle references. A lot of it was just learning how to use PowerPoint, and in the end it was a big mess of using every option available and pushing the program as hard as I could. For the second one I stuck with a Spider-Man theme throughout, and kept the bells and whistles to a minimum. That one was easily the most well-liked of the trio. The third was original ideas again, spoofing the Choose Your Own Adventure books that I adored as a child. It is probably the most complicated PowerPoint presentation ever created, but most of that is under the hood so it’s just good fun for viewers.

So you have a bit of an idea why I’d want to post those ones. It’s mostly irrelevant though. I will never put them on the internet because they contain secret company secrets. Okay, so policy and procedure isn’t exactly the most classified of info, but I think it could still land me in hot water. And that’s something I really can’t afford. It’s really too bad, becaue it’s something where I’ve been allowed to be creative, and done a pretty good job at it! I guess you’ll just have to settle for that teaser image.

Recurring obsessions

I have so many images sitting in a folder on my desktop that are there specifically to be blogged about. For some reason though, I just cannot seem to get around to resizing, renaming, and uploading them. I’m looking at the folder right now and it’s taunting me, telling me I’m a lazy hack. And I kind of am, but that’s besides the point. Let’s talk about video games some more then.

I’m terrible at finishing video games. I have no idea what’s gone wrong with me lately, but it seems that I’m having a lot of trouble sticking with a game to the end. Oh, wait. This isn’t new at all. I could update that list with every game I’ve failed to complete to my level of satisfaction in 2012 so far, but I feel that doing so would probably cause me to break down and cry like a little girl. I suppose the backlog will be nice in the upcoming couple years where I won’t be able to afford new video games, but still. Ugh. I’m such a flake.

I think a lot of it stems from the fact that a lot of the games I really like are games that don’t really have well-defined win states. Take Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite for example. Technically, there are two monsters that are considered “final bosses” (one for online, one for offline), but even once they’re defeated there are still things to accomplish. Have you finished every single quest? Do you have all the Guild Card baubles? If you answered “yes” to both of those… wow, you’ve got a lot of free time. But you can still play online and there are a whole buttload of event quests that you can download for free. Basically, if you’re into it, you could restrict yourself to playing only MHFU and it could still last you for the better part of a year. And that’s before you start dicking around with stuff like self-imposed challenge runs. I shudder to think of what will happen to me if Monster Hunter Tri G actually makes its way overseas.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is similar, but different. Being a rhythm game, it’s already more about enjoying the music and getting high scores than finding the end. There’s a point where new content stops unlocking via rhythmia points, but those Dark Notes are randomized. For each Dark Note you beat, a new one is unlocked, so you could chase those forever. It’s not like you could even collect them all either, since you can only have up to 99 at any given time. Besides, I’m kind of curious to see if the rhythmia counter will roll past 999,999. Not that I’ll end up playing Theatrhythm that much or anything. After two weeks with the game I’m at just about 35,000rm, but it’s a burning curiosity. I’m sure someone in Japan has gotten that high and posted it on YouTube.

I suppose that technically Spelunky does have an ending, but I don’t think I’ll ever get there myself. Between the PC and Xbox versions, I’ve only made it to the temple stages two or three times, and never to the boss. So it’s kind of like there’s no end. But good gravy, that game is addictive. Besides, it’s secretly another high score game. Sure, you did pretty well that run, but don’t you think you could do better?

And then there’s Minecraft. I don’t know how, but I still sink entire nights into Minecraft. How is it that I keep going back to Minecraft, but haven’t even made it halfway through Xenoblade Chronicles? At this rate I probably won’t get past the intro of The Last Story when it’s finally released.

At the very least, I was able to stick with Final Fantasy XIII-2 to the end and even get all the achievements. That was pretty cool.

Share It Maybe

You can probably guess that I’m not a huge Carly Rae Jepsen fan. She’s pretty much the embodiment of cookie cutter pop music. Nothing special or original going on there. Anyway, it seems that one song, “Call Me Maybe,” has become something of an internet meme. Which would annoy me if her music was bad, but as it is she’s merely uninteresting. Far more tolerable, but a bit less hilarious than Rebecca Black.

Anyway, here’s the best thing I’ve seen to come from this particular meme.

Awesome stuff like this is why Sesame Street has persisted so long in such a cynical world as ours. Also, check out this hilarious video with Kermit and Cookie.

MMMMMMeh

So I finished VVVVVV yesterday on my lunch break. I’m kind of not sure what to think about it though. I think it’s a neat little game with a neat little concept, but I can’t in good conscience say I like a game that had me saying “F*** this s***” at every turn. Probably wasn’t the best game to be playing at work.

I still think the core concept (flipping gravity instead of jumping) is cool and fun, but the problem with the game is that Terry Cavanagh hates everyone. I was totally disarmed by the simple graphics and cute little smiley-man characters and the fun, breezy demo. I figured it would be an enjoyable throwback to the days of yore, but it’s just so hard. And not fun hard either. Hence all the potty mouth. I gave up on the stupid Veni Vidi Vici tunnel (you know the area) after like 100 deaths. The bouncy area was a lot of fun though.

The problem I have with VVVVVV is that it’s a game about precision. And I mean 100% precision. You hold that d-pad for even a fraction of a second longer than you should and it’s death. Probably over and over again. I’m not a big fan of laser precision. That’s why I’m not a doctor. I like to have a little wiggle room. I gave up on the stupid collectible thingamajigs because the challenges I needed to pass to get some of them were ludicrously difficult, and I’m a person who would normally be completely obsessed about getting all the doodads. Especially when there are only 20 of them.

Beating the game unlocks some time trial modes, and being good at those in turn unlocks No Death mode, which is the stupidest stupid crap I have ever seen. I died well over 500 times in the hour and half it took me to beat the game. No way in Hell would I ever even consider trying to beat it with no deaths.

On the upside, the music is really great. Not particularly memorable, but it surely was fun to bop along to while I was playing. Also I was playing the 3DS version because it was on sale, and is the first thing Nintendo has put on sale ever. I would have been much more put out if I’d paid more than $5 for VVVVVV.

Mass Review Time – Honeymoon Edition

Internet, I have a problem. I’m addicted to Fargo.

Maybe it’s not so bad as addiction, but the summer trip south to Fargo has become a tradition that I can surely not break free of. I need it. I need it so bad that I managed to convince my now-wife that it’s where we should spend our honeymoon. So maybe it is bordering on addiction. I’m not a psychiatrist, I don’t know these things. Surely there’s a better way I could have started this article.

As usual, the trip was mostly to get away, relax, and just be together for a few days. And from what I’m told, that’s mostly what a honeymoon is about too. So to that end the voyage was perfectly successful. Of course we also spent a buttload of money. Like, way more money than we were even allowed to spend while down there. By some random stroke of luck, the amount you’re allowed to spend when crossing the border increased on the day we came home, so we didn’t have to pay duty on what we spent over the previous limit. It’s the first time crossing the border was a truly pleasant experience.

To that end, I should note that this is by no means a complete list of things I bought in the States. I’ve obviously excluded anything The Wife bought, because this website is about me me me me me and God forbid I give anyone else more than a passing mention. I also spend a bit on a few little house things and some clothes that I don’t feel are nearly interesting enough to write about. On that note, let’s take a look at exactly what I judge to be “interesting.”

Continue reading Mass Review Time – Honeymoon Edition

Filler at its worst

Don’t you hate it when you don’t really have anything important to talk about?

I do, but that’s not really my problem lately. The problem is too many awesome video games, and too much time spent at work to play them all.

I’m only four levels into Lollipop Chainsaw. I should have finished this game weeks ago. I think there are only two or three more stages anyway, but still. And this feels like a game where playing it over and over for high scores and cheevos will be fun and not just compulsion.

Dragon’s Dogma continued to suck up all my video game time, because I love it to pieces. I try to be careful about using the word “love” when I describe material objects, but man do I love Dragon’s Dogma. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it’s a huge dick when it comes to fast travel. But the world isn’t that big, so it’s mostly not an issue. It would kind of ruin the point anyway, when the only time I end up needing to traverse the entire map is during escort quests.

Then Theatrhythm Final Fantasy came along and ruined everything. I fear that I might not play another game for weeks. I already have a real thing about rhythm games, but when it’s a rhythm game that also tickles my nostalgia bone? Big trouble, but in the best way.

The biggest loss is that I’ll be completely ignoring the Xbox Live Arcade version of Spelunky, which I have been absolutely frothing with demand for and finally launched yesterday.

And then there’s still Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite, which I will probably be playing until the day my PSP dies. And then I will buy a new PSP and continue to play Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite. Unless Monster Hunter 3G is better.

Someday I’ll finish Kid Icarus: Uprising. If it even has an ending.

I love that my primary hobby is so consistently wonderful. 🙂

Craftimals: Adorable Slave Labour

So last week I peer-pressured Edwin into buying Craftimals: Build to the Sun. I kinda feel like I owe him a dollar.

To be fair, I don’t really deserve all the credit. Craftimals dangles a carrot that seems to be just slightly outside the three-minute trial limit, and between my insistence that it could be reached and his own need to reach said carrot, we ended up playing Craftimals for the better part of the evening.

Now I had played the trial version of Craftimals long ago, but I wasn’t able to put down the 80 Microsoft Points required to access the full game. Quite literally too, at the time I had 40 points. I probably would have bought it otherwise. It’s probably okay that I didn’t too, because Craftimals is just a big ol’ time sink, and two players make it go slightly faster.

Well, two players make it go faster if the second player is contributing to the cause, anyway.

Continue reading Craftimals: Adorable Slave Labour

The hunting cycle

It’s almost Canada Day, and Canada Day means two things to me: the Lac du Bonnet fireworks show, and Monster Hunter. Over the last couple years, it’s been a new part of our Canada Day traditions for me to tote my PSP down to LDB for the weekend and play Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite during the time that is not used for adventures or fireworks. Of course, the PSP’s battery life doesn’t last nearly as long as it needs to (there’s not that much to do around there), but for me those four hours are as important a part of the weekend as the journey to Pinawa to get ice cream from the Burger Boat, trying to collect enough silly things from the Bargain Shop for an article, and the fireworks show.

Summer in general is also just kind of when my Monster Hunter cycle restarts itself. For MHFU anyway. Me and the game have sort of a love/hate relationship where I’ll play it obsessively for a while, get stuck on a tough quest, and then put it aside for months. Regardless of where I am in the cycle though, an impending Canada Day always brings me back around to the Monster Hunter.

The first time I hit a brick wall was actually on Canada Day. I had just bought MHFU after spending the couple previous months completely obsessed over Monster Hunter Tri on Wii; when I discovered that the PSP game had roughly three times as much content, as well as giant crab monsters, I knew I had to get it. It wasn’t long after I dove in that I discovered what would become one of my most hated parts of Monster Hunter: piscine livers.

Piscine livers are an item dropped randomly when you defeat a monster known as Cephalos. Cephalos are strange looking monsters that are something like a cross between a hammerhead shark and a chicken. Most of their time is spend swimming through the sand, where it’s very hard to damage them. There is an item that can force them out of the sand, but the sonic bomb isn’t available to purchase, and the items you need to create them are somewhat rare. So once you waste the two sonic bombs that are supplied to you for the piscine liver quest, you’re stuck waiting for the Cephalos to jump out of the sand by their own volition. Which can take forever. And of course the piscine liver isn’t the only thing a Cephalos can drop, so if luck isn’t on your side you can very easily time out on these quests.

You’ll see, if you follow my Monster Hunter LP, how annoying these quests can be. It’s not until about a dozen episodes in (so it won’t be uploaded until quite some time after this blog post), but I think it takes like three videos for me to finish the stupid quest.

I did manage to wrangle up the necessary livers eventually, but the quest left a sour taste in my mouth. And I won’t even get into how I feel about the fishing quests. No, I hit my first stopping point when I met Cephalos’ big brother, Cephadrome. He does the same damn thing where he swims around in the sand and doesn’t come up for nobody. Even worse is the fact that you’re stuck fighting these jerks in the desert, where the intense heat will literally drain the life out of your hunter. Cool drinks can temporarily stop the drain, but even if you bring five in with you, they won’t last the duration of the quest. If Cephadrome decides he doesn’t want to play, there’s a very real chance that the heat will kill you.

So I tried the fight against Cephadrome a couple times. I think I died from heat stroke once, and my time ran out on another attempt. I may have even been killed by Cephadrome himself once. He’s not a terribly strong creature, but at the beginning of the game his body slams can be pretty deadly. Once my failures had stacked up enough, I decided that the quest was garbage and stopped playing the game altogether. Monster Hunter Tri had no such bullcrap; the challenge was fair and sensible, so I went back to that. Even though it didn’t have awesome giant crab monsters.

It probably wasn’t long before I picked MHFU back up though. It was still a fairly new game to my collection, and easily the best PSP game that I owned (still is!), even with the crappy quests. I took on Cephadrome again, and while I don’t think I managed it on my first try, I did eventually fell the beast, and everything was wonderful again for a while. That was, until I met Tigrex.

I’ve posted about my hatred for Tigrex before, and fairly recently, too. It took me forever to eke out a victory against one of those guys, and I’ve only slain one more since then. Tigrex isn’t really that strong, but he is fast. A lot of monsters have a thing where they knock you down and then trample over you or blast you with a fireball before you can get up and out of the way. It’s kind of cheap, and that’s basically all Tigrex does. Most monsters leave an opening to get a hit or two in, but Tigrex generally turns around and launches into his next attack long before you can close the gap and smack him up some. And then there’s rage mode.

The majority of large monsters have a rage mode where they hit harder, move faster, and gain new attacks. This is usually brought on by special circumstances, like if you deal out a lot of damage in a short period of time, cut/break off part of a monster’s body, or when they come out of a stun. I’d say that once you carve off roughly 20% of Tigrex’s life, he goes into rage mode every time you hit him. Or at least it seems that way. And it’s the worst, because the very last thing you need is an already too-fast monster getting a speed boost. It’s no wonder I stopped playing because of him.

My latest brick wall was the mighty Lunastra. She’s referred to as a dragon, but looks an awful lot like a big blue lion with wings. Lunastra’s not that hard, and I think I put down the game last time more due to being distracted by other games than because I couldn’t beat her. I know I lost a couple fights against her, but they were losses caused by my own inexperience and impatience.

The trick to defeating Lunastra, and indeed many other large monsters, is patience. Knowing when to strike is key, and it might take a couple rounds to really figure that out. Her attacks are easy enough to avoid, but if you aren’t paying enough attention and get caught by one, you’re in trouble. The flamethrower attack, for instance, is super easy to see coming, and even easier to dodge. But the damn thing hurts if you’re clumsy enough to get caught in it. I was killed instantly with 3/4 of my health bar once because I got hit by a rage mode flamethrower. It was a little embarrassing, but it put me in my place. Upon picking up the game again last week, I took Lunastra down on my first try, and with a fire-element sword and fire-susceptible armor to boot. I could not have been more poorly equipped for that fight, but I came out victorious because I took my time and fought smarter, not harder.

The next challenge on my list is Teostra, Lunastra’s stronger, redder, male counterpart. I don’t feel confident that I can take him out, because I’m still kitted out in that weak-to-fire armor set. But it’s got a super-strong physical defense rating compared to everything else I own! Sometimes it’s hard to know whether you should be worrying more about physical or elemental resistances. At least I don’t have a fire sword equipped anymore.

Will Teostra be my next gamebreaker? Probably not. At least, I hope not. I’ve only been playing MHFU again for about two weeks now. It’s far too soon to be rage-quitting already. Plus it’s Canada Day weekend, and I don’t know what else to do between the time the Bargain Shop closes and the fireworks start.

*NB: I stole the images for this post from the Monster Hunter Wiki*