Simple and Clean

When you walk away you don't hear me say please oh baby don't go simple and clean is the way that you making me feel.

Too bad things arn't that easy huh? Kingdom Hearts is on the mind. Probably the ultimate paradox in gaming..well..ever..possibly. Maybe. Yoshi's Island is up there as well (best Mario game ever IMO)

Why? Well, I saw the ad for Kingdom Hearts:Chain of Memories (of course mainly hearing it is the key word, it did a head swivil. Probably the same as hearing that Woo-hoo song on those insurance ads..wtf?) . So I booted up KH. And boy is the game a paradox.

Let's get this straight. It's a Disney licensed game. A GAME. And it's probably better than anything Disney has put out in-house in at LEAST a decade. Why? The dark tone actually fits the characters better. A dark tone! Man, that's a paradox in and of itself. It's probably one of the darkest toned games I've ever played. And it's Disney! Geeeeeez...

And the game is short. But it's long. It FEELS short. But in my game clear file, very few sidequests done, I have a playtime of about 45 hours. That's not short. That's loooong. RE4, which is overal much shorter, feels much longer. And the camera sucks. But the combat is oh so fun and addictive. And the game is deep, figuring out which AP powers to equip is a brain scratcher.

Transcend yourself. That's the lesson for the day. Of course, when I say Disney hasn't put out a good animated movie since..well..Lion King (and that's oh so borderline. Stupid f'n musical scenes ruin the mood), that's not including Pixar and the wonder that is The Incredibles. Of course that movie was wonderful for the same reasons that KH was. Its tone transcended eveything. It defied expectations. It was everything that it really SHOULDN'T have been..but oh there it was, all in its magnificent dark glory.

Review:Resident Evil 4

Ok, I'm going to start to keep this updated a little bit more..the last month was pretty hectic. First thing right off the bat. My reviews come down to two things. Gameplay and cool stuff. Graphics and sound fit into the cool stuff catagory. And the Gameplay part is going to be VERY detailed. Not like what you're used to.

Ok, here we go.

Resident Evil 4. Capcom. One of the Capcom 5 announced forever ago. Just missed the voting for game of the year for 2004...

And that's a shame.

I'm not a big fan of Resident Evil. The controls are awful, and it tends to be more about shock factor than being what I consider "survival horror"..think Dawn of the Dead. Mowing down tons of zombies..but they still keep on coming. But this game...man..this game is wow.

The gameplay is tight, but challenging. View is over the right shoulder of the character, Leon. Hold down the Right button, and the view zooms in, and a laser sight shows up showing where you can shoot by pushing A. B reloads in this view. You can't really run in this view, which does kind of suck, but oh well. It's fine. You can outrace pretty much any enemy. Besides, it's about taking them down before they get to you.

Full location damage system. Shoot a guy in the knee and he goes down. Then depending on the weapon, a couple of shots to the head will take them out. The guy disappears, and usually leaves some ammo or money (for upgrading and buying weapons). So it's much about NOT having to run, as being able to stop them before they get to you. Some enemies throw axes and the like which you can deflect with a well timed (it seems to auto-aim for this) shot. Dymanite throwers..well..take out their legs and they can't throw. Boom.

You don't want to get overwhelmed, so choosing your ground is everything. By hopping over fences, or through windows (including 2nd story windows!!!) you can get a location edge, as the zombie/alien people whatever will try to climb through the window after you. Kick down ladders, whatever. It's very interactive.

Lots of ammo around. NOT so much health, so you have to be a little careful. 3 hits and you're dead generally speaking, although it depends on how badly you're hurt.

And did I meantion traps? Oh no. Nasty traps. Triplines that trigger explosives. Even worse, beartraps. Yes, beartraps. And that's not nice. A shot triggers the traps, rendering them harmless, but it keeps you on edge. Not to mention the occassional Kill Bill style snake trap.

Gameplay is stiff, think Metroid Prime, but it still works. It feels different but that's a good thing in this case. Shooting uses a lasersight that's neat but kinda challenging to use.

Cool stuff:Blowing off heads is always cool. Vine-like things coming out of the spine AFTER you do this is even cooler. Not so cool when they get too close and the scyth-like arm of the plant tries to come after you. I've actually had an old-school RE style instant death, 2 chainsaw guy were after me, one got me from behind....OFF WITH THE HEAD. With blood pooling. There's blood everywhere. Wonderful ragdoll physics. Shoot a guy in the chest and he'll go back a few steps. Taking out an ankle is great. And if you shotgun a guy right close, he'll fly back into other baddies, knocking them all down/back.

Music is great, sets the tone right. Nice spanish guitars in the intro. The characters are good, and the story is very interesting. Even the girl you're supposed to rescue..well...very good AI, she follows right along.

Great set scenes. The bosses are hard but interesting, and a siege of a farmhouse is just beyond fun.

RE4 is great. It's the best RE yet by far..actually it's the realization of what the series should have been the whole time anyway. It's probably a contender for game of the year.

Already.

(Personal Progress through game 2-2 just after the farm house siege)

Baten Kaitos

Back on topic. Playing through the beginning of Baten Kaitos right now. It's a very interesting game. For anybody not familiar with it, it's basically a card based RPG, where you make a MTG type deck for each of your characters and fight using that. It brings in an element of luck of course..but not as much as you would think. It works, mainly because it has some interesting mechanics that allow you to remove a bit of the luck involved.

Mainly, each deck is composed of several basic types. Attack, Defense and Healing. Some cards even do more than one. The problem occurs when it's time to attack and all you have is defense and healing. What allows you to mitigate that, is that to end off any play, you can basically discard one card. So if you only had two defense, but there was an offense you wanted to get rid of, you can just throw that away. It's not in the instruction book as far as I can tell, and it might not be even soemthing the designers intended, but it works.

And you have to think fast, because you only have til the end of the animation to declare the next card.

It's rather difficult. But fun. Battles are longish, but you level up rather quickly, and don't really fight allt hat much.

The only other bad part is that the game at times is unclear on where you go next. But oh well. That might just be me.

Re:A Fighting Faith

Hey JMM,

Just needed to respond to the talk about that Beinart article that's currently making the rounds. I read it, and I wasn't too impressed about it at all. Mainly because it was assuming that the conventional wisdom is the only way to go with this, at least as it comes to fighting terrorism.

It's not.

The reality is, the "boredom" you see among those on the left, is mainly
because of the realization that, for a variety of reasons, we're not going to be taken seriously anyway. We're just going to get mocked and laughed at and derided. Ok, that usually happens. But because of the emotional trauma of 9/11...which still affects everybody, we just don't have the heart this time.

I'm not speaking for everybody, but I am speaking for myself. I'm a hawk on terrorism. I've always been a hawk on terrorism, from everything from para-military groups to hate crimes (which I believe are a particularly bad form of terrorism.) That includes the series of US-inspired groups that have sent terrorism throughout the globe in order to maintain hegemony.

When I saw the bombs start to drop, my first thought that we basically surrendered the war on terrorism. To me, and others like me, fighting terrorism means discrediting terrorism as an acceptable tactic. It means you have a mature discussion with the world about what terrorism is, apologize and make amends for past mistakes, and you get serious about making people
realize that civilian targets are off-limits. Period. Then, the US, and the West by proxy are NOT the bad guys anymore. The terrorists are. They are not freedom fighters, or patriots. They are criminals. But not everything is terrorism. The attack on the USS Cole, as wrong as it was, is not a terrorist attack. Same with attacks on the troops in Iraq. I hate them, and wish they wouldn't happen. But terrorism? No.

But because of 9/11..nobody wants to talk about that. Can't blame them really, everybody..and I mean everybody in the world is still traumatized from that. It's a simple black and white issue. But if we make it a black and white issue, to the other side we're the evil guys. And that makes
terrorism an acceptable tactic. And that allows the terrorist groups to gain funding, resources, cover and supporters. Exactly the things we need to be taking away from them.

So that's what it's all about. Nobody is really ready for a serious talk about terrorism. They may never be ready. So those of us that DO take it VERY seriously, well..we await the day that it moves out of black and white, and we can actually help eliminate terrorism once and for all.

The future, the stock market, and you.

Off topic post, but like I said, it's my place, so bleh bleh bleh. Besides. It's important.

Over here at Political Animal, Kevin Drum is hosting more of a debate about Social Security privitization. Same thing over at MaxSpeak.

Both fall into the same trap. The assumption is being made that the stock market is well...real. It's not. It's a media created operation that people think is an investment, but is merely speculation. You're waiting for another sucker to come along and buy your stock at a higher price. Period. Dividends? Merely a pittance. And the storm is coming...

Some quick math. The figures I hear toted, you have about a 20 P/E ratio. (Price/Earnings) But in reality, only about 60% of profits are actually given out as dividends (as far as I know that's horribly high/optimistic. Very few companies are even paying out dividends.) That makes an effective P/D ratio (Price/Dividend) of...33.3 to 1. That's going to get you an average return of about 3%. Not a very good return, at least in the scope of things.

But what about capital gains? And 3% for free isn't a bad thing, is it?

It really is all in the stock price. And the market for stocks is going to shrink very fast very soon, for a number of reasons. The retirement and sell-off by the baby boom generation. This sell-off will make any projected problem in SS look trivial by comparison. More profitible investments/speculation, mainly oil and water. As well, just a general disfavoring towards stocks. The various scandals, making it more clear it's an insiders game. The final factor, is the destruction of the American middle class, reducing the number of guppie investors. (Because that's what you are. If you look at a table and can't see the guppie. It's you.)

So 3% dividend growth (at a best-case estimate), well..what if your stock price drops 1 or two points a year? Errr...that's not good, is it? It would make it pretty much a wash. Mise well just leave it in the bank, huh?

Nobody is talking about this, mainly because the media has been damn good in brainwashing people that the stock market is investment. (Here's a hint. Very rarely does stock money EVER go to the company. IPOs and internal stock sell-offs. Doesn't happen every day) And investment is a good capitalist thing and therefore the stock market is doubleplus good.

So why are they doing this?

Here's my theory. Not that they're actually saying, making them liars if this is the motivation. But here's the thinking. And what they'll be saying in 10 years if this gets by.

All the additional money in the stock market will actually float stock prices for quite a while. That will mitigate the coming storm in the market, as well as give the average person a horse in the race, making governmental aid easier. So you'll actually see short-term gains, until the other factors make the whole house just fall over that much harder.

In any case, the REAL problem in America is consumer debt (that will sufficate the service industry), and health care (which is sufficating..well..everything). If those are not taken care of soon, things are going to get not just ugly. But fugly.

When people don't get it..

The comment thread over here at Political Animal seems to be saying how games are rotting minds, basically.

How easy is it to get on your high horse, and put down what someone else is doing. Playing a game is a whole lot more intellectually stimulating than well..just about anything else. That blank stare you see? That's not blank. That's concentration. What happens afterwards? Thinking is hard work. When you're doing it hard, it makes you tired. Yeah, your common everyday run of the mill thinking, you can do that forever. But most of these people have never felt the rush of falling into something.

Then on the other side, you compare the latest best-seller novel..well..I'd compare it with the great stories told in say..Final Fantasy, or even something immersive such as Half-Life. Gaming is here, and it's going to stay.

Get used to it.

Prince of Persia:WW

Played through a bit of PoP last night. Not the best game in the world, but not bad either. It was supposed to be more combat orientated, and it really is. The combat more revolves around using your environment to fight, be it a pole or a wall. At least I've found that's the best way to do it, using the grab and toss attacks to keep the bad guys together.

A lot has been said about the tone of the game, and they're right. I don't like it. It's too much, it's too "x-treme"..and I don't like that. I LIKE my games and my heros just a bit on the geeky side. Don't need to make it dark and broody.

Not that snark in a leading character is bad...but don't make it the ultra-dark goth emo type person.

Today continues the hunt for Viewtiful Joe 2. Hope I find it. I want to Henshin a-go-go baby :(