Saturday, May 26, 2012

Why did I hit the "Publish" button?

I watched a Burger King commercial with Steven Tyler being stupid. I had no idea what the Hell he was doing, but after looking it up, I discovered he was promoting chicken strips. How the heck was I suppose to know that from what went on, and why would chicken strips need to be advertised? Chicken in strip form! Until now, I would have thought such a thing to be inconceivable! What an original... ok, that's enough of that!

Looking over the ads I grabbed from the mailbox, it makes me wonder why more people haven't realized that those deceptions are insulting to our intelligence. Dish Network's "America's Top 120" package for only $24.99*! The * being that this price jumps up another $20 after the first year, while the "Top 120" seems to include a bunch of niche Sirius radio stations, another bunch of DishCD music channels, the Liquidation Channel, Jewelry Television, TV Guide Network, and Buy!. This is America's Top 120? I've never even heard of Three Angels Broadcasting Network, and why would that American list include Russia Today? Is Horseracing Television really that popular? Seriously, Dish, why? I would imagine the response to be something along the lines of, "People are buying the package, so the ads must be working!" You know, because it's not like people actually buy it because many of them still like to watch TV. Many view television as a necessity. It's the same with buying a vehicle. If a car commercial shows off the brand new 2012 Overpriced GT going down an empty road while someone talks about all the award-winning this and that associated with it's company, there's a good chance that a person bought it simply because he needed a car. He didn't see it during the commercial breaks of his favorite show on Dish Network's Earth channel (which, I'm told is also one of the top 120 channels in America) and say to himself, "I must get that right now with the $40,000 I have burning a hole in my wallet!" Of course, this situation is even less likely to happen for those of us who are just trying to make ends meet, but, either way, this isn't the same thing as an impulse buy available at the checkout lanes. The stuff we see on TV, in papers, online, and hear on the radio are constantly resorting to the same tricks we've been exposed to for decades now. I can't be the only one who gets angry at the idea that these people actually think I'm so stupid that stale marketing stunts are what drive me to make my purchases. What pisses me off even more is that individuals are being paid to come up with it all. "Steven Tyler in a Burger King being a burden to the working staff? That's brilliant! It ties in perfectly with chicken strips!" Some marketing genius earned his money with that gem. Let's not forget that it's 2012, so there's also the oh so wonderful mud-slinging campaign ads to endure until November. Presidents can serve two terms only. If a president gets that second term, what incentive does he really have to try and help America? Give the commander his four years and just move on to the next guy. I don't care about what he did right and what he did wrong. That's going to be the same for everyone we elect. That second term should be given to the select few who go above and beyond to help this country. As election time nears, I'm guessing two-thirds of our commercials will be about politics:

1. "President Obama hates you and here are a list of reasons we came up with by taking various actions and comments he made and using them out of context." 
2. Papa John's Pizza is reminding me that better ingredients make better pizzas, but they can't prove that the pizzas I buy at a particular location utilizes these "superior" ingredients, nor can they verify that the pizzas I eat will indeed be better than what they would have tasted like had they been made with merely good ingredients.
3. "Obama can do no wrong. He is more glorious than a double rainbow made out of Skittles and treats every other American as a loving member of his family." 

(-___-) Please, just tell me the basic shit and let me make my own decisions. No sugarcoating, no vilifying, and, in the case of Burger King, don't assume that people like myself are going to be buying chicken strips because the Demon of Screamin' vaguely told us to do so. Just say, "Here's what we got now. Get some if you want." I like chicken. I'll probably buy them at some point, because I like chicken. I highly doubt I'll hear Livin' On the Edge and go, "Holy shit! I needs me some BK chick strips pronto!"

Less importantly, and completely off topic, why does Diablo 3 have such tiny font for it's channels? Someone, if not everyone, playing it in beta must have mentioned this issue on the forums. I can barely read it. Raynor and I were conversing in all caps, though I felt silly doing so. I love the changes to everything else, with exception to the barbarian class. It wasn't so bad in Diablo 2, but Blizzard has somehow managed to transfer nearly all the shortcomings of WoW's warrior class to this hack and slash. I was getting my butt kicked in the last two acts of the normal difficulty whenever I tried to experiment with each of the new abilities and their runes. Nearly every situation calls for my survival talents. Breaking away from this to increase damage and build upon my killing combos for even short period of time typically resulted in Juppiter's painful demise: screaming as his body falls over while the mob around him backs away to avoid stepping in the mess he makes when his muscles relax and the remains of his last meal empties onto the floor...  strips of fowl he was coaxed into purchasing by some aging, spoony bard with bad hair he met in Act I who was carried off soon after by a group of zombies who had mistaken him as being one of their own. I was having fun changing the combination of talents in the first three acts. Now I have to always carry a shield for added protection or else my ass will get banged like a drum that Todd Rundgren mentioned in one of his songs that the old people I work with have never heard of before, so they assumed it was something brand new and complicated that all the kids are into nowadays, just like that Pac-Man fellow I once mentioned. I guess I could go back to Juppiter on WoW, but the only fun I get out of that now is PvP, and literally everyone who is a legitimate PvPer has said that warriors are the worst choice for arenas. Many forums even claim warriors are only useful in BGs as flag carriers. Sigh. Perhaps I'll just go back through Golden Sun 3 again and type up something about that on here which also won't be read because everything I say is nonsensical, long-winded, and boring. A post about my long-awaited sequel would, of course, be one more added to a long list of ideas I've been kicking around in my head for years now. It's just difficult to focus on something like that when there's the combination of work, sleep, anime, and video games taking up the bulk of my time. It used to be TV, instead of anime, until Boston Legal was taken off the air. America is airing too much other crap (different from my crap) on television. Well, Japan is doing the same thing, but most of that changes every three months. If The Big Bang Theory was only 12 episodes long, even I could tolerate it. Oh, I do have Mario Galaxy 2 to finish! Paul honoured me with his permission to play through the first one. I had never experienced a Wii game before Galaxy that involved utilizing motion detection (I don't count Wii Sports, because the controls on that were brainlessly simple). My moments with the Wii only involved Gamecube titles, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and playing Punch-Out! by turning the wiimote to it's side and using it like an NES controller. Once I got the hang of it though, Mario Galaxy was a lot of fun. Nintendo still manages to create a challenging platformer without making it feel unbearably difficult. Paul told me Galaxy 2 is suppose to be a bitch. I'm sure I'll have feelings of regret once I get into it, and not the kind of regret I had while playing Farm-, City-, and Castleville to help send crap to my dad. I'm typing about that other sort of regret that will be replaced with pride once I finish the game. As for Zynga and their library of -villes, everything about them is just abominable! The tactics they use in their games are blatant. A complete disregard for any sort of subtly in their pursuit for more wealth, it's the business equivalent of clubbing you over the skull with a blunt object while screaming, "Stand still while I club you over the skull with this blunt object!" Even now, I go to Castleville and I get "Hey, Jerod! For a limited time (with "limited" meaning until the company finally dissolves), if you give us $100, we'll give you 1000 crowns, instead of 800!" What justifies this as a sale? Because Zynga gives me an added 200 bits of fictional currency for my money that involved no added effort on their part to accomplish? And why do I need it? Because I can only buy diseased, in-bred mutant livestock and hideous, tacky decorations with the gold I acquire within the game, or is it to provide me with some form of alleviation from the headache of the constant stream of inane "quests" I'm expected to complete while my eyes are treated to the same few pictures of the characters over and over again, because it would cost the company an extra fifteen bucks to have a person draw just one more unique image of the Duke? "This treasure chest is cursed! It'll take at least 8 quests to break it, but for now, I need you to grow 100 plots of carrots to attract bunnies, then plant clovers all over the kingdom, and craft enough glasses of bubbly grog to turn my liver to stone within one day. This grog is for me just in case the rabbits' feet and four-leafed vegetation aren't strong enough and I suddenly wish to drown the sorrow I'll experience from your failure." Wow, these tasks are going to take forever. Wait a minute! For ONLY $100, I could buy crowns and use them to help me skip these daunting steps. Thank goodness for Zynga for providing me this inexpensive alternative from the grief of these ongoing quests that they were the creators of in the first place.

I think I've rambled enough for tonight. If anyone actually reads this whole thing, feel free to email your complaints to my yahoo account of dpamaregoodtome so that your comments don't divert attention away from those charming bits of spam that half of my old posts are already infected with. 

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

7 Destinies to Bored Glory

I finally finished playing Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials to Glory: World Championship Tournament 2005... and some other piece of garbage. 

Many moons ago, my friend Jeremy bought me this, along with Yu-Gi-Oh! Destiny Board Traveler, for my birthday. At the time, I just kinda took these... "games" and thanked him for the gesture. The thought that crossed my mind was that of the old episode of The Simpsons where Homer bought Marge a bowling ball for her birthday. What the Hell was I going to do with these two? I didn't know anything about the card game. Yeah, I watched a bit of the anime, but that's like watching Pokemon to get an idea of how to become a great trainer. The heart of the cards, just like the bond shared between Ash and his team of unevolved failures, isn't going to do me any good when I've got Tristan beating me silly with a weapon-equipped Goblin Attack Force while I am trying to figure out why it hasn't died from having a defense of zero. Any logic I picked up through Magic: The Gathering only made matters worse when I sent three creatures to their doom and killed myself in the process thanks to the damage I took from each of them being destroyed. As a result, I became frustrated and set this present aside to try out the other game I was given.

Destiny Board Traveler is like some cheap-ass knock off of a Mario Party title featuring the main characters (and Rebecca Hawkins) of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. It lacked any sort of tutorial for understanding how to play, so I was clueless as to what I should have been doing. I guess Konami believes I'm supposed to just know this stuff, as I am with the card game variation I had tossed back into my dresser. I admit, this isn't entirely true, since lengthy explanations can be found within the instruction manuals of both games. It's a nice chunk of reading, but I found it to be an added pain trying to go back and forth between the game and manual to help understand what was going on. Destiny Board Traveler gave me plenty of time to practice, since each match takes over an hour to finish! The special powers the characters have are worthless, and the computer-controlled players are so fucking slow to do anything that my mistakes made little difference. I'm suppose to endure this to the end, actually win the games, and do so repeatedly with specific characters to unlock things?! I could understand if this was something made by Natsume Inc. Their "serious fun" approach to gameplay is one of the most excruciating forms of S&M I have ever had the painful pleasure to experience. When I demanded more flogging and hot candle wax on Farmville, Natsume came along and released another installment of Harvest Moon. I got to hoe, seed, and water 1000 small squares of soil on my touch screen while Witch Princess would periodically stomp on my back with her high heels, strangle me with her whip, and call me a filthy pig.
If you're allergic to latex, a bowl of rainbow curry will also make her happy.

DBT, on the other hand, managed to make me miserable (and flaccid) by omitting any sort of save feature during play. My only options were to either stick it out for hours at a time, or turn the game off and restart the stage later. I decided to turn it off, put it back in its box, and let it sit in my shoe box for another five or more years. 

"It's time to d-d-d-d-durr!"

Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials to Glory: World Championship Tournament 2005 is not a great game by any stretch of the mind, unless, of course, you compare it to Destiny Board Traveler or anything made by LJN .

LJN: 1970 - 1994 Good riddance!

You are a new duelist in Battle City (great fucking name, btw!) who is given enough duelist points (DP) to buy a starter deck at Grandpa Muto's card shop/nudie bar. After a lap dance or two, you then go out into the world and have matches with every person and animal that you come across. The world, however, is only twelve screens shared within five locations and not all that interactive. Each spot has opponents shuffling back and forth outside of buildings and arenas, while some are just standing around in the middle of the street. It's about the same with nearly every other video game featuring NPCs, but because of the lack of space, everywhere seems a little crowded. About half of them are generic players, like an elderly couple, a business man, and a little girl, while the others are characters from the series. I was really hoping there would be more named duelists, like Pegasus or Bandit "I'm an American!" Keith, but 7 Trials compensates for this by granting the cast with advanced versions of their decks once you've finished the first half of the game and includes two decks per person once you unlock the shadow world, which is simply called "???" on the map. While Battle City bans certain cards and limits the use of others, the shadow world has no such regulations, and it's with this concession that a player must create a few new decks to be able to hold his own. It's also because of this that opponents you face in both areas will have different, but similar, decks. Be prepared to see the same cards used over and over again. Fissure, trap hole, man-eater bug, hane-hane, and penguin soldier are all common sights in Battle City, while residents of the shadow realm will always have their hands filled with banned cards, such as raigeki, mirror force, monster reborn, and change of heart. Granted, it was naive of me to hope for this, but I really wanted to see a better mixture of cards. Pot of Greed is all well and good, but I don't need to put three of them in every deck. One particular flaw I discovered in the CPU involved the card Stumbling. Since every face-up monster entered play being tapped, one would have to wait a turn to be able to attack. Unfortunately, the computer will never bother to put his creature back into the attack position, so just playing that spell card is usually an automatic win for you. The exceptions to this are Tea, who has no real offense to begin with, and the Rare Hunter, who utilizes one of the cheapest strategies in the game. The R. Hunter spends the entire match drawing cards until he gets all five pieces of Exodia, which will allow him to win instantly. I had to create a deck specifically designed to counter his, because the concept of the Exodia deck, similar to Magic: The Gathering's commonly seen Burn or Counterspell decks, is just that powerful. It certainly isn't something to be proud of, though I'm sure in casual play there were many elitist tweens challenging their friends with one and bragging about their success because of it.

"Oh I say! Exodia! You gents lose again!"

I like how I can hold up to twenty decks, and building one just for the rare hunter isn't really an issue, but playing against him in the dark survival tournament and having to use it against everyone else just for the sake of beating him ruins any sort of personality I may have wanted to incorporate into my game-winning creation.
Boring credits roll by, I collect a nice chunk of DP for my victory, and now I can go back to unlock the rest of the 1000 cards to... awww, fuck it. There is very little replay value in this. I didn't care if I had them all or not. Once I grabbed the final trophy, I turned it off and put it right back in the shoe box with my other Game Boy games. To this day, I can still enjoy Contra or Gradius on my NES, but I very much doubt I'll ever have an urge to pick up this Konami title again. It is what it is. Like the Pokemon or Mega Man series, 7 Trials is just another bland sequel offering little more than what was found in the previous one. Then again, I guess I can't fault the game too much, since MTG's Shandalar didn't come out until 1997, and Pokemon Trading Card Game didn't arrive in America until April of 2000. Both are superior card battle video games, but they also had a few more years of technology to support their development.

At least Yu-Gi-Oh! didn't get any worse...
Sign spinners are killing enough motorists nowadays! We don't need the added distraction of dueling!