Iron Maiden – Fear of The Dark

Poison – Every Rose has its Thorn

I’m currently looking to either form or join an awesome band.

-Chris

Here’s a bit of words from This FAQ.

Fighting games are about risk/reward. Regular Brawl’s overly defensive metagame has reduced it to a campfest. Brawl+ is here to remove that and bring back the fast paced, adrenaline pumping action that the smash bros series has been known for. To promote a faster paced game and the risky maneuvers that make playing and even watching Smash Bros matches so exhilarating you can expect to be able to combo (and be comboed), actually make use of your tech roll and greatly rely on your ability to DI to avoid being decimated by your opponent. With simply the hitstun code in place, Brawl+ has put every character on an equal ground as every character now has the opportunity to do a sequence of attacks that allow them defeat their opponent. Gone are the games of tag that vanilla Brawl once was. In short, you should expect Brawl+ to be an extremely fun, new experience.

Sounds good to me! But you wouldn’t know it from going to, say, the GameFAQs Brawl board. There resides the tyrannous majority that de Tocqueville warned us about. If you’re not playing a wacky map with all items turned on, you’re not having fun. Ignoring the raging stupidity of trying to define fun, these guys commit the indecency of trying to push that definition of others. These are the sorts of people who say tourney players only play on Final Destination, the flat featureless map of the game. Well, I know some serious Smashers, and I can tell you that that’s only mostly correct.

Melee’s tourney/hardcore scene was upset at the release of Brawl, what with its tripping. Why they be tripping? Well, you try falling down in the middle of a fight. It messes you up, and it happens randomly in the game, and it cannot be turned off. This is bad news if you want to play Brawl as a serious fighting game (which it can be, it’s sufficiently deep that I can’t scratch a real Smash player if I tried), which detractors of that playstyle say shouldn’t be done anyway. Well, screw them. They don’t get the right to tell you how to have fun.

So these asses are saying that Brawl+ shouldn’t be, because it’s changing Brawl. Well,duh. These people are trying to make a serious game out of a game that does everything it can to be otherwise. For standard Brawl, I’m imagining that guy who does wacky thing after wacky thing at a party but can’t hold down a real conversation. Yes, it’s funny and wacky and random, but you want substance after a point.

www.springfestny.com

Check it out! (please?)

Bad.

Terrible.

The movie has bad writing (in spades) and bad acting (except for Lana’s excellent ability to cry, and the Bison actor’s obvious hamming it up). The movie also takes the game’s story, kills it, and does things to its corpse that are illegal in 48 states. Gen teaches Chun-li how to throw a Hadoken.

And yet…

The action was good, unexpectedly violent, and Chun-Li shoots someone in the chest with a pistol. She’s also really badass, a treatment of the character that I did not expect but enjoyed without reservation. She sneaks around, taking obvious glee in slamming people’s faces into doors and cars. And she makes fun of Vega’s face.

So, should you see it? No. The bad parts are unforgivably so, an obvious sign of lack of care. Yet the good parts really are fun, and hopefully someone will upload them to Youtube for you.

Here’s what I’m running – I will have several scripts of scenes (three times etc) from anime, games, and other things that the con crowd would enjoy (Shakespeare, perhaps). I’ll hand these scripts to audience members, who will proceed to come on stage and act them out. Don’t tell anyone, but I got this idea from a panel at Otakon, and it should be tons of fun. If you would, dear reader, what are some scenes that are particularly actable?

Allow me to end this message with a bit of light jazz.

I found my way into a Warhammer Online post-con party on Saturday, which was an awesome time. (Dave and Busters is surprisingly good at making cheeseburgers!). I felt like a bit of a fish out of water at first – conversations opened there with “Hi, I’m so and so, what server do you play on?”, and I don’t play Warhammer. Once I learned what a Squig Herder was, things got better. There was Rock Band – the game’s lead (some sort of Jeff) possessed a rich baritone (and one of his favorite games is Zelda. That’s it, I’m applying at the Enquirer). I gave a particuarly spirited rendition of Wanted Dead or Alive – I should really get out to Karaoke more often. I don’t play the game, but the Q+A session at the end was a lot of fun – almost all of the devs were comfortable on stage, and witty. Afterwards, some of the devs and I went bar-hopping – there was a great Southern Rock band playing at Smith’s Bar, and there was a great crazy old man dancing in front of the stage. The White Russian I had was not so great. The overall feel I got from the devs was one of passion, dedication, and a genuine belief that their game is awesome. I’m not sure if my computer can run their game, but I’ll definitely give it a try – passion always produces great products (say that three times fast).

So, here’s our game. It involves skydiving out of a plane, destroying everyone’s luggage with a big industrial chainsaw while you look for the one parachute amidst the falling wreckage. Here’s the link – I think you’ll like it.

I’m going to Comic Con this weekend, mainly because the Penny Arcade guys are there. Maybe I’ll run into you.

Consistency is awesome. If you do something every day, you’re going to get better at it. My morning exercise is coming along well, but I’m also supposed to be writing 500 words of a book every day. The blank page is daunting, and I’ve skipped out on several days of writing, which is lame. I want to get to 100,000 words as soon as possible, which won’t be very soon if I keep sucking. Do any of you have a suggestion for keeping the words flowing?

What are some things you do consistently?

I got some toast this morning with my pepper, onion and cilantro (or maybe it’s parsley) omelet. It was made in one of those cool toasters that’s essentially a conveyor belt over a Very Hot Thing – they heat bagels really well (really warm in the middle, and really crispy on the edges). I was watching the breads and bagels slide slowly down, inexorably moving towards the end where they would fall. Some of the slices of bread would cling to the conveyor belt towards the end, their weight keeping them in the toaster for a few more seconds.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I’m a slice of toast, and you are too. (I don’t think I’m literally a slice of toast – I don’t think I could afford that much therapy). But we’re all on this conveyor belt for a limited time, and then the ride’s over. Let’s try to get as brown and crispy as we can.

Also, Obama’s Inauguration speech was awesome – the dude’s got at least 20 Charisma. As great as his oratory was, the really amazing thing was the message – he was telling the country to be awesome, to get up and do something great. Let’s do that too.

I’m working on an article about the many reasons people play games, but I also want more people to read that Grinding article – I think it’s pretty good. Time to step up the publicity engine (which is currently three hamsters in a box).