Da blues

Just a rant.

Been unusually bored lately, and pretty lonely, so I've gone and done something stupid, i picked up Ragnarok Online again, a private server of course, I'm bored, but i wouldn't spend money on it. It's a mid/high rate server though. there's a tiny detail about it though: they modded the game's sprites on it into a more... adult nature. they are decent sprite edits, but i quickly got bored of it and make another patch to disable the adult sprites.

I have just felt incredibly inept towards art in general, even spriting. and that's why i picked up RO. I was enjoying it because i never got any characters at level 99 before, and on this server i got 8 characters past it and it feels pretty neat. i got a few insta-cast characters and some with incredible attack speed. But, most people on the server are german, and some are stupid. here's a convo i actually had on that sever:

Me - "What does the Geographer card do?"
Random Guy - "Yes it is."
Me - "No i mean, what does it do?"
Random Guy - "Yes it's a Geographer card."
and then I walked away...

Shigoto started playing on the RO server i play to stop my "i'm just playing alone as usual" bitchin, but i really barely got to play with him at all and last couple of time he was just doin his own thing and didn't even look me up. Zach refuses to play on it and it's probably a smart move.

I haven't played league of legends as well because no one wants to play with me, and come to think of it, all people will play with me is like, L4D2 which got boring after the first play through.

I played Tatsunoko Vs Capcom same day i played No more heroes 2, but it's such a regular average Capcom VS fighting game i didn't feel like making a review for it or even replaying it all that much. I have to b honest, the Wii's limited resolution on my current TV just looks like a PSX. I know graphics aren't everything, i preach that all the time, but it's just an average fighting game, if there was one thing that would help it it'd b the music of the graphics, neither do it for me. Gameplay is average so yea, nothing interesting there for me.

Just for curiosity sake here's the characters i made on the RO server I'm playing on:

Game review: No more heroes 2

I raged, I laughed and then I raged some more.

I'll start by saying that No more heroes 2 has a lot of improvement over the first game hands down. But, still far from perfection...



I'll try to not rant too much, but can't promise anything.

Plot

because of the trailers for the game, it's no spoiler to say that Travis is fighting in this game to avenge his best friend. The plot seems like a minor detail in a game that breaks the 4th wall the sec Sylvia shows up. Seriously, Travis asks her directly what's happened since the last game and she says she won't tell because it'd bore the player.

Gameplay - Fight System

JESUS FUCK CHRIST THEY DIDN'T FIX A DAMN THING!

It's not that the gameplay is bad under optimal circumstances, but that rarely happens so yea it's fucked in the ass. here's issues that annoyed me to death:

• Stun lock - not actually a stun lock, it's just what i call it: on many bosses, I had no chance to do anything and just kept being hit juggled. right off the top of my head, this happened on the last 3 ranked fights, and i got really pissed about it for the #2 fight because i had her down to 90%, i was actually dodging, counterattacking, being careful and technical about it, and she hit me and i fell down. i had just grabbed a full life pizza, and every time i tried to get up, her projectile hit me and knocked me back down. I tried to get up faster, take longer, anything and it didn't work, she JUGGLED ME FOR 100% OF MY HEALTH! Any combat system that allows this is fucking shit.
• I'm no in the "you can hit me now" animation - Just utter bullshit from the first game that still exists for no reason. You cannot damage bosses unless they allow u to. sure there's gameplay reasons for that, but u know what? from a player point of view, that is just fucking lame.
• Oh wait, I'll dodge in a sec - what's the point of a dodge system if in order to dodge u can't do anything else? if u slash and you're gonna need to dodge, you're gonna take the hit because u can only dodge when your animation has completely finished. There are game which are similar to this and pull this off well, i think god of war does it really well, so why can't they do that in this game? especially pisses me off when the bosses themselves actually do it!
• I got u locked n... hey where'd u go? - The "lock on" system is so... it's a joke, again it works under optimal conditions, aka, the enemy is standing still in front of you, however you'll often want to dodge in this game, and when you'll actually dodge past a boss' attack and behind it, in perfect position to attack them from the back, and suddenly, you're not facing anything anymore. Where the heck the boss go? I'm still pressing L, so why aren't i locked on to him anymore? These are the questions you'll b asking yourself over and over. sometimes the damn lock on system gives up on me in the middle of a FUCKING COMBO! target is right in front of me and Travis just decided to go past him in mid combo.
• Down, down! DOWN! I AM PRESSING DOWN DAMMIT! - This was literally what i said at the very end of the last fight. as u know, all bosses in no more heroes have to b killed through a quick time event, not a hard one, but something's not working right, very often i did the motion the quick time event asked for, and nothing, not a damn thing happened. on occasion i had time to do it 3 times, and it didn't work. I've come to realize that if u do it TOO FAST the game won't register it. I lost quite a few battles because i "missed" the final blow.
  

The one good thing though, is that you can play this game with the classic controller, and i have to say it's so much more... well, better. it's just a lot easier and comfortable. I am so glad you're given the option of not using the stupid Wii gimmick.

These are really decent, almost enjoyable.

Gameplay - Other elements

There's lil improvements to the rest of the game:

• No more traveling - You no longer have to ride your bike to get anywhere, now the map opens, u pick the location, and you're there.
• The part time jobs - All of them, except the last one, are pretty much NES games. so they load fast, they're actually kinda fun, and if you lose, u can instantly retry with no wait. simple and nice.
• No more $ farming - Doing the part time jobs is completely optional now, the rank fights do not require u to pay anything. if you want u can do all the rank fights back to back.

On 2 occasions, you get to play with 2 other characters: Shinobu and Henry, and that is bullshit! and here's why:

You get to sort of enjoy using Shinobu cause she takes out 2 ranked assassins, you play 2 levels with her and 2 boss fights. She's ok to use, instead of punching and kicking like Travis, she has the ability to jump, which is bad cause they make u use it to get through the levels u play with her in ridiculously unnecessary annoying way.

Henry, well, he's fucking awesome and seems like he'd b fun to use, VERY fun because his alt action is dashing, omg yes, dashing! It's really fun! and why does that suck? because you get to use him once! in a dream sequence! that's it! he kills a figment of his imagination and he's gone!

Fuck yea! Shinobu!

Characters

I was gonna b detailed about each character, but seems pointless. Travis is Travis, still the same, maybe a lil more angry but in the end still the same. Sylvia is just a whore and for the life of me can't tell why Travis even likes her. Shinobu has a crush on Travis and they even kiss, she's hot and she's really nice to Travis, Travis is a fucking retard for picking Sylvia when Shinobu was hotting on him, Henry's pretty cool, i like him, but we don't get much of him.

Aside from the main chars, Dr Naomi is SO HOT!

Verdict

I mainly played cause i hoped for improvement in both the fight system and in the game in general, and 1 out of 2 isn't too bad i guess. Despite the horrible fight system this game has, i enjoyed the story and some of the fights. #2 was memorable even of she stun locked me to death 5 times.

It strikes me weird as hell that some of the things u fight are supposed to b assassins for hire, "for hire". if you play this game, try to keep that in mind. the bosses in the first game sorta fit this theme even if it was in strange ways, but in this one... just no.

if you're into the characters, humor and story, play this cause it's no worse than the previous game, otherwise, not sure you'll enjoy it.

I'll go with "Sort of want" for this one.

CPS: Relatively

Just a few concept sketches of some relatives of some of the main Cutie Pie Sorceress cast.

Razz's mother and grandmother, Strawberry Jam and Cranberry Sawse, Vinegar's not-really-as-nice-as-she-acts upside-down alter-ego, Honey, and Kimmy's as-of-yet unnamed(though I'm thinking of using Mary and Luanne) aunts and their pet iguana, Yog-Sothoth(or just Yog or Yoggy for short).

Who knows. It never hurts to keep your options open, even if you don't use your ideas. Hell Kojima took a scrapped character from MGS2 and split them into two characters in MGS3.

Whenever i reinstall windows, i lose these

My bookmarks on Firefox that is.

I don't really reinstall widows often, normally one instalation lasts me over a year, previous one lasted me over 2 years. So whenever i backup, i always forget something. lately i've been looking into making my software portable, not in the sense that i want to put it on a flash drive and run it anywhere, but in the sense that to "reinstall" all the programs i use on another computer or windows installation, all i'd have to do is copy the folders.

I've always been a fan of programs that don't require being reinstalled, and games too.

Anyway, Firefox saves it's favs up windows' ass somewhere, up along with a few games and applications. which annoys me, the documents and settings folder is really fucking annoying me because i can't set up a new one with tweakUI for XP, it'll always b on the partition with windows so it'll "die" on the format, that location is always default. Software just keeps saving it's crap there and i never know about it, but, why the fuck does it do that? anyone else miss when software had their lil folders and kept to themselves in it? I swear i once used something that saved it's data in 3 different locations and the windows registry. Gawd!

So anyway, the one thing I'm always gonna forget on Firefox is the favorites, and today i did a quick search for plugins for it and found the Xmarks plugin for Firefox that basically keeps your bookmarks updated on their server, and you can restore you stuff if you ever lose it.

I had a quick look on the Xmarks site and seems it has a Chrome, IE and Safari version too.

No More Heroes 2's Naomi

Damn...



I'd pick her over Bayonetta any day.

Walmart

I hate walmart. Everything about it makes me feel dirty just looking at it, and it is not the perverted dirty either. I would avoid walmart at ALL cost. If I was stabbed by some random knife hench man from Streets of Rage, I would rather bleed before voluntary shop there. I would rather engage in a poop war with a monkey. That's how much I detest it.

If you have ever stepped into a Walmart you pretty much know who the targeted demographic consumer are.

Anyway, here is a site that presents to you a small portion of those people...

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

As I was browsing through it I could not help but laugh, but then I began to feel sad that this is what America has boiled down to. However, after being sadden a bit I started laughing again, but by then I did not know if that laugh was of humor or of worries.

Moody feline bump

The very rare L4D2 spray bug

This is becoming an annoying fad... What am i talking about? the fad of having to figure out what's wrong with games and how to fix them.

bah humbug!



Since i got L4D2, i had never been able to set a spray for the damn thing, even sprays i used in L4D1. It seems to b a very random glitch seeing as my friends could use the exact same files i was trying to use.

I asked steam tech support, which only said the images i was trying to use were all corrupted (sure, blame the images). But with their silly advice of using infraview to save jpg sprays, i found out the reason for my bug:

Why the bug happens:

On some copies of L4D2, the game will not accept your spray unless the DPI setting for it is 300.

How to fix it:

Set the DPI to 300, save, fixed. (depends on the software you're using obviously, google how if you don't know)

Yes, the DPI setting. for some copies of L4D2 the game will assume an image is corrupt if the DPI isn't set to 300. I can't get over how random that is. Tested on BMP, JPG and TGA files, all seemed to work fine.

Hope it helps someone.

The Truth

This year is so slow

I don't know what it is, but everything's so uneventful so far. i thought I'd let you guys know what I've been doing.

Steam had a free week for Zero Gear, it's a kart game with multiple modes that include just racing, a hard as hell tag type game, luck based maps like pachinko and sort of sport maps where you have to push a ball or puck into the enemy goal.

Zach and me tried it, and i think we both agree that game has like no concept of loading, changing maps is really really fast, and unless it's racing, you're caught off guard into the new game mode most of the time.

Truth be said, character customization is crazy fun in this game

It is fast and pretty fun though, weapons are original and it's simple to pick up and play. Zach and me played for what felt like 5 hours and damn, this game seriously took it out of me. It got boring and repetitive at the end though, so i won't be getting this game. Don't get me wrong, it's really well coded and it has interesting modes. but there can never be a replacement for mario kart wii in my heart.

A while ago i was introduced to League of legends, which was made by the guys who made DotA, and it pretty much is in fact DotA done right.

Now in the past I've said that DotA is a boring ass game that was needlessly complicated, and it is. But this game removes one of the aspects i hated: the recipes.

The character design is actually pretty toony except on earlier characters.

Actually i lie, the recipes are still in the game, but in such a way that you don't need to learn them, you can skip them and they're well sorted out now. What's more, the character you choose has a recommended item list, which is what i get most of the time so the item annoyance part is completely removed out of the equation.

Gameplay wise, they changed and perfected things quite a bit. It's subtle but although it feels like Warcraft 3, a lot has been simplified. The spells are very original for the most part and so are the heroes.

I wouldn't buy it (although you can) so i just play from time to time with bots (which is cool that they let you do). what buying the game dos is give you riot points that you can use to purchase stuff ingame, however, there's nothing you can't acquire with a "free" account, just takes longer.

Also...

For a while now i have been the ashamed owner of L4d2



Zach decided to surprise gift it to me on steam, i think he did it to torment me though.

Also, my opinion on the game hasn't changed at all, After playing through the normal campaigns once, we rarely pick it up. not much to say there that i haven't said before. I am quite pissed however that for some reason I can't set sprays in this game, so in short, it's a broken L4D1 upgrade.

I glanced over the steam forums for this and people are already complaining about this game and how the L4D development team is a joke. and if yo think about it, they always bother the TF2 team to help them finish their shit AND charge way too much for their very linear games.

Oh and all custom campaigns for this are bugged to high heaven.

The only game that YouTubePoop itself

"No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle" for the Wii has some strange trailers:



Weirdest advertising ever, but it sure is working for me.

Merricah! FUCK YEA!

Ending is pretty win.

USB/portable software

You know how sometimes when you're at work or even in college it's pretty handy to be able to carry your favorite applications with you in case your need them or just cause you can't install anything on the computer you're using.

Myself, i like using Roboform to book plane tickets for my dad cause those involve filling in a lot of stuff and doing it manually each time is just too much. However, sometimes i check for the price of the tickets on another computer and i have to wait til i get to my own to book the flights.

Couple of days ago i redownloaded Roboform to install it on this PC, and noticed on their site a new app: Roboform2Go. It's pretty much the same thing, but u install it on a USB drive and it'll run on any computer.


So it got me thinking... what other apps can run off a USB drive? did a lil research, and found a few that could b useful:

• Firefox Portable - Haven't looked into it, but I'm assuming it's a portable version of Firefox that u can configure however u want and run anywhere.
• Portabilizer - Very very interesting concept, it's an app to make other apps portable. I might look into it to make paint shop pro portable cause you never know when you're gonna need to do photo editing.
• eMule Portable - This would had been handy for me when i started college and didn't have decent net connection at home.
• Gimp Portable - I'm not a GIMP user myself, but it's worth mentioning.
• USB Key Drive Data Recovery Software - Longest app name I've seen in a while, but as it implies it'll help you recover data from damaged USB drives.
• OpenOffice Portable - Always useful to have around.

The list goes on, I'd suggest checking portableapps.com and pendriveapps.com if you're interested in this kind of stuff, you can find pretty much anything you'd need.

TF2 crafting changes

I'm not sure when this happened, and according to the TF2 official forums, it seems that it came out of nowhere.

People have been complaining about the fact that u couldn't craft any of the spy watches, and that some classes didn't have primary/secondary and melee weapons for the recipe. Yesterday or so, someone tried to craft watches together and it worked, and then someone tried and ambassador and the 2 watches and it worked, and some others tried even more stuff, but in short:

To make scrap metal all you need is any 3 items of a class.

It's a much nicer simplified recipe to remember and works better for all the classes and with all items. It's a welcome improvement.

On other notes, someone found that there's files in TF2 for the fire resistant spy suit:

Details are still unknown about it though, does it resist fire damage? does it only reduce the afterburn damage? No one knows yet.

Also, clever lil comic i found: