Boring? Not really. But if you're a fan of the show, you may have heard me rag on the GTA series on a few occasions, and this column (written by my friend Darren Gladstone, PC World) satirically sums up why.
Darren's column is based on the premise that the GTA world is completely open to the type of play style you bring to the table, and he brings the most boring one he can think of. Now most people in the video game world play the GTA series to blow up cars and smack up hookers and those other supposed other things that you can't do in real life (I guess?), and you will be quick to say that "he's doing it wrong!", but bear with me for a second.
The bonus to all those illicit virtual adventures, is a world that tries to mimic ours, and thereby trying encapsulate the player into the game. That's pretty cool, but it leads to one of my beefs with the series, because the virtual world that they have is very much like our own, with GTA IV being even more so.
As you know, you can spend hours upon hours watching tv, checking email, or just driving around. You can even try and date some ladies by taking them out to a bar.
This is very much like my actual life.
So, with that being said, the only draw to the game for me would be the criminal aspects that you can emulate. You know, the "blow up cars and smack up hookers" part? Well, sadly, it is not a draw for me. I've never been compelled by the series siren song of becoming the The Man, if you know what I mean.
Hold off, though, I'm not condemning the game, I'm just saying that it isn't my cup of tea (so keep a lid on it fanny boys!). The game is fantastic at what it does, but what it does it not something I want, that's all.
And my friend's column, along with being funny, points out that if you played the game by using your IRL behavior, that it would be boring. He then goes to turn that argument on its ear and say that it can't be a murder sim, at least it can't if you don't want it to be. Regardless, he makes a good point: If you're not playing the criminal role, the game is merely a life simulator, and a boring life at that.
Anyway, go ahead and check out his column here to see his take on it, and see what you think. Feel free to contribute your points of view, maybe you guys can help me "get it" with this series. I feel as I may be missing out on something here.
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Hello folks,
If you're reading this, we have all died in a plane crash in Paraguay.
Just kidding! If you're reading this then you are, hopefully, a fan of RetroforceGO! And the reason that you are here at this humble host's Cblog, is the fact that things went a little wonky with this week's episode.
Since you've made it this far, I can only assume that you already know the how and why of it all, so I won't rehash the entire story again. What I will do, is stop rambling and provide you with the link that you'll need to download the Not Really Episode 44.
That link would be RIGHT HERE.
By the way, this week's Highlights! are all of you.
<3's from RFGO!
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So last night, I decided that I was a little too sick to work, but apparently, I wasn't too sick to go out on the town. No Russian pizza delivery guys were harmed in my evening's festivities, but the how, and the when, of how I got home along with the latter part of the evening, is a complete mystery to my memory.
Upon waking up early this morning (for reasons I can only assume to be that I passed out early last night?), I took it upon myself to have some Ramen, and do some cleaning.
What did i find? Well: I hate cleaning; I have a big ol' bump on my head, from what I don't know; and I found a PlayStation 1 Memory Card that I've had since, well, since the PlayStation 1 came out. When finding it, I put it inot my PS2 to see what game saves I still had on it, and lo and behold, there was a FF7 save on there.
Now we all know how I feel about the Final Fantasy series, and how number seven was my turning point for letting it go (I did try again with nine, but some dipshit friend of mine lost my copy of it and I never got to finish it), so I grabbed my roomies original copy from his room and loaded up my saved game.
According to the game, I'm on disc two and in the town of Mideel. I can't remember how far along in the game's narrative I am (do you?), but as you can see from the above pic, I've been playing for 38 hours.
Why is this a big deal? Well, to you it may not be, but one thing that the picture doesn't show is the last time I played the game. Shit you not, I haven't played FF7 since the game came out.
Yes, this saved game file is 11 years old, and still says Dyson. I rule.
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We are the marshmallow peeps of doom. We rend flesh from human bones and spit them out on puppies. We are hiding in your house as you read this, waiting for tomorrow to unleash our glucosamine judgment upon your helpless form. The pink crystals of sugar that cover our bodies bely our true nature of evil. Our power is dark and vast, its reach knows no limits. Our kind is without mercy and our powers are legion.
Fear us, Mr. Cantler: We are coming for you.
(Run Toph! They've already gotten me! -- D)
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So you may have noticed that Dynamic sheep is culling all the numbers that have been put out on the site pages. Please go and check that out (I would put a link here, but BBcode is fucking awful!)
Also, you can do me a HUGE favor and leave me your Brawl and Wii numbers down below. Here's my stuff:
Console number: 7188 1046 5902 9604
Brawl number: 3394-3267-7922
I would go about putting this in a forum thread that I hear is going around, but as some of you may not know, I can't, in any way, enter the forums. The story is long and boring, and mostly due to Niero and I not remembering a password or two, but the result is the same: No forums for Dyson.
So, would you kindly leave your numbers below? And if you would be even doubly kind, add my numbers to the forum list that I'll never see? Thanks, and please enjoy the Fro-hat. It is completely relevant to my interests.
Also, LIVE name is: DysonG. Just make sure to say that you're from Dtoid when you add me ;)
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Please enjoy the picture of Luna, Chad Concelmo's dog. After that, allow me to tell you how happy I am to have gotten Lost Odyssey. I wasn't too sure about picking up this title in the beginning; Blue Dragon had pulled me in with it's promises of awesome, only to let me down.
But thankfully, and as I'm sure many of you already know, Lost Odyssey makes up for Sakaguchi's not-so-epic foray into the 360 universe by bringing its amazing story and extremely satisfying turn-based battle system to the table. Not too into the turn-based battles?
For shame. You may now travel to your nearest fire and die in it. Personally, I have been waiting for a true, fully realized, next-gen RPG for some time, and because of Lost Odyssey's return the things that make an RPG and RPG (to me, at least), I'm SO GODDAMN HAPPY RIGHT NOW.
Seriously. Happy like an insane person who doesn't know he's insane and just thinks that the walls are soft and people love to bring him free jell-o all the time. That happy.
Now that I've spurted my love for turn-based battles all over the place, you may now return to admiring Chad's dog.
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This is just a routine test to make sure that my Cblog software is working correctly. To keep you entertained, though, I've included a rather debonair picture of the young Mr. Husky de la Hog. To test the comment filter, please remark upon his rugged handsomeness in any way you see fit.
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So, in the comments section of our last show, SR388 (great name!) asked how he could download older episodes of RFGO! from iTunes. Well, I looked into the situation and the answer is thus:
I really don't know.
See, most of the time, Destructoid is run by a select few, highly intelligent code masters that work tirelessly to ensure that the site runs like a Swiss clock. But sometimes, when those code masters occasionally collapse from exhaustion, the site is run by an arcane mixture of hope, fairy magic, three AA batteries, an effigy of Winston Churchill, and a vial of Chad Concelmo's tears.
Now, while Dtoid is about 99% the same under both methods of operations, a few details sometimes get overlooked when we're operating under the latter method mentioned. One of those details happened to be the number of shows that we had told iTunes to list for RFGO! (Apparently, that number was ten.)
Thankfully, the boy-geniuses that normally run the site noticed this and went into the heart of the machine and changed the iTune settings. Now exactly when the series of tubes that carries information such as this reaches Steve Job's money-making jukebox, is anyone's guess.
In my experience, iTunes is notoriously slow on the uptake and it may take quite some time for you to be able to download older shows from that service. In the meantime, though, you can download every single episode that we've released over on our feedburner RSS page-thingy.*
I really hope that that helps anyone interested in older episodes, and I would like to give a preemptive thanks to anyone whose willing to go back into our podcasting history. You rule, and thanks for listening.
*Believe it or not, but I'm convinced that the entire Internet is run on the hope-magic-batteries-effigy combination (Chad's tears are exclusive to Dtoid, all rights reserved). And I also have no idea what an RSS feed is, nor how you burn one. Scary, huh?
(Logan's Run pic just because it's awesome.)
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I sent this out the other night to the crew and Ron told me to post this for all to see. So, what this is me being bored and taking one of the five billion PR emails we get a day and breaking it down into normal, honest people speak. If you weren't aware, PR people get aid a whole lot of cash to make shitty things sound good, so you really need to be able to cut through the BS to get to the truth. Below, is the email I sent out in its entirety. Enjoy.
"In an effort to be cured of late night boredom, I've taken the PR tip that Joe sent in today and added my own 2’ to each game description. I was almost worried that the XBLA service was going downhill, but after seeing what the mighty house of green has in store for us, all my fears have been allayed. Besides, I'm bored.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/10/29/microsoft-releases-xbox-live-arcade-schedule-including-new-mutant-storm
* N+ Play as an acrobatic ninja in this addictive action-puzzle platformer. N+ features inadvertently homicidal robots, stylish graphics, a level editor, and intense multiplayer awesomeness.
* Hey. remember that game that you can play on the Internet, for free? Ya' know, the free one? The one that's free, on the Internet? Yeah, that's this game.
* Screwjumper! Players take the plunge in Screwjumper! and free-fall into the depths of the chaotic underworld as a Screwjumper, driving aliens back to their home world by destroying their precious mining equipment.
* Holy shit! Those fucking Earthmen are destroying our GODDAMN MINING EQUIPMENT!! It's almost of if these events are some horrible XNA collision of Miner 2049'er and pure, distilled unimaginativeness!!
* SHREK-N-ROLL Gamers join Shrek Fiona, Donkey, Puss in Boots and 20 other twisted fairy tale friends in this hilarious puzzle game designed for ogres of all ages.
* Pretend it's the year 2000 and you're an Xbox marketing guy. Not only do you spend all of E3 2000 telling anyone who will listen that the Xbox can do bump mapping four times in every fucking sentence, you and your cohorts think that paying a shit-ton of dollars for the Shrek franchise will make the Xbox fly (fly damn you!) right of the shelves. This XBLA title is proof the M$ still hasn't made a single dime, nor a good game, from that decision. (IT"S GOT BUMP MAPPING!!!!)
* SpongeBob SquarePants: Underpants Slam In this quick and fun game, players search the kitchen of the Krusty Krab, the Flying Dutchman's ship, and the Armoury of Atlantis for 99 pairs of underpants.
* Instead of mocking this title, I'll just rate it on the scale of 1 to Nebraska. Nebraska being the most amount of suck you can ass-fuck into the Sponge Bob franchise to completely derive it of any fun whatsoever. This game gets ten Nebraskas.
* Switchball Based on real-world physics, Switchball is an intricate puzzle game set in a stunning 3-D world where players control an ever-changing ball along a narrow, winding course suspended in midair.
* Thank god that someone finally came up with the idea of merging Katamari with high tension tightrope walking. I mean, I know that there have been Katamari tightrope games before, but this one has real-world physics. That's right bitch: Real. World. Physics. When you fall off that tightrope with your Katamari, you go straight muthafuckin' down. I heard they almost had to put this shit on the Xbox 720. But then that would be fucking retarded, wouldn't it?
* Undertow This fast-paced action-shooter sends gamers underwater as they battle up to 16 players for control of the oceans! Players race to upgrade their units as they engage in non-stop conquest-style battles through multiple levels of combat action with some of the most stunning graphics ever seen in an Xbox LIVE Arcade title.
* In this fast paced ... ah!! What the fuck?! I'm suddenly being attacked by giant bees that all have the head of Richard Nixon and are wailing the theme song from Rainbow Brite in unison at me! What the ... Ah ... okay. They've left now. Alright, so what piece of shit game were we talking about again?
* Word Puzzle The classic pen-and-paper word search game is brought to a new level of excitement on Xbox LIVE Arcade, complete with combos, high-score achievements and the ability to compete against others online.
* O_O Are you serious?! No really? I'm not even joking in the slightest way. Someone at Microsoft thought that putting the retarded cousin of the fucking Hide-a-word puzzles on a video game system was a good idea? "Hi, I'm Microsoft, and I have an incredibly bad Meth addiction. I've been sober for NONE days." Retards.
Have an nice day, folks!"
So, yeah, this is what I do when I'm bored.
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