Hello again friends and acquaintances!

It's been a little while since we last spoke, are you doing well? Are you leading a steady career? Really! Well, that sounds fantastic! Glad to hear.

I bring to you a desire, or a favor, if you will.

My dream, on this planet, is to make film and music for the people who exist within communities such as Destructoid.

With that being said, however, I feel as if I lack an audience. This has been a primary difficulty for myself to overcome in the creation process. I want people to enjoy these things, not just let them sit around! I want to create, but as a creator, it's frustrating knowing that whatever you put up there, you're the only one watching or listening.




My goal here is to one day, hopefully, develop a fanbase. I know it takes time, and I understand this is just me peddling my product, but I don't see too many other ways to get yourself out there.

I'm currently in the process of recording an album entitled "I HAVEN'T CHOSEN AN ALBUM TITLE YET." Which may, or may not, feature the great Jonathan Holmes upon it's release.

So stay on the "lookout" for me while I will most definitely "cookout" my way to the top.
HA! See what I did there!?!?!?

And if you guys want me to do anything particular, let me know. This website has been very generous to me, and I can't thank its community enough. You guys are like family.

Follow me on Twitter: @EverettFortner

Enclosed, is some of my work thus far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3-P_mwQ7-s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcuMk5w-EA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLbm0LOtxVE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LEQk16RcpA

Web link
Check it out ^

Hey everybody, I know I haven't posted a new Cblog in quite a while.

Sorry for the shortness of the post, I just wanted to introduce a musical piece I composed.

It's a Techno/Industrial song sampling Podtoid ep. 157: Muddy Buddies.

As we all know, this episode will live in infamy, due to Jonathan Holmes' Willem Dafoe movie pitch.

So, I just took some clips from the episode, and shoved them right into a piece that I've had written for some time.

Hope everyone enjoys!

Thanks,

Love-
Mel Gibson

So this past week my comment was read on the latest installment of Podtoid.

I would like to take a moment to thank all the little people, that helped me get to the level of international recognition that I have obtained.

For those who don't recall the exact details, I will relay them in text.

During the last three minutes of Podtoid: 167, Tara Long read my comment: "You guys are my only friends...". Which Mr. Jonathan Holmes responded to with "Awwwwwww". AND SIR DAME JIM STERLING READ MY FUCKING USERNAME I'M SO GODDAMN FAMOUS.

But there was one statement that truly irked me.

That damn Max Scoville, that doesn't understand that I'm AN ENERGY VAMPIRE, just had to say "HURR DURR, THAT'S STUPID."



I CHALLENGE YOU, MAX SCOVILLE TO A CRAB BATTLE. TO THE DEATH!

AND OMG JIM TOTALLY READ MY USERNAME!

I can finally end my life, I think I have the courage.
A poet I am not, but I am most definitely a teop.
It should have been a better shot and got him in the head.
I hate cough syrup, don't you?

Soon I can ride the sweet Nic Cage filled road to oblivion.
His disembodied head guiding me to FuncoLand.

Agents J and K killing aliens with ferocity.

I lead myself into the fiery pits of imaginative hell.
The Event Horizon screaming in my face.

My last wishes are that I be buried with all 4 of the Alien films.

Enter a new dimension, one filled with candy dreams, and horseradishes.
One where man can truly exist, knowing of his calzones.

An eternity as an internet celebrity.
I'm pretty sure I'm zabadoo, pie eating contest.

Enter, HOPE.

I'm really starting to think that Majora's Mask is out to get me. I see it sitting in my Nintendo 64 mocking me, haunting me. Every time I keep the game in the console overnight I have horrible nightmares. Yes, I have read the famous creepypasta surrounding it:

http://inuscreepystuff.blogspot.com/2010/09/majora.html

Majora's Mask was the first Zelda game I've ever played. It's always been extremely disturbing to me, and often I would just shut the Nintendo off when I was younger, because I looked up at the moon. Frankly, the game still disturbs me to this day, albeit without the same poignancy from years ago. It's just a completely unsettling game.

The past few nights though, I've been having dreams that directly involve the game. The most recent dream I've had isn't so much frightening, as it is extremely abnormal for a dream to affect me in the way it's managed to.

The dream centers around incredibly fucking disturbing ghosts. They gather together to haunt me, one after another, my only way of disposing of them is very simple. I wait until they turn into wolves, yes wolves, and then they fly through my window and I must break their necks. But this is only after I survive a trial that they present to me. They were all stupid tasks, akin to very twisted carnival games, but one was absolutely terrifying.

The goal presented to me before the last ghost would end up killing me. The goal was to play a "modified" version of Majora's Mask. I loaded up the cartridge and what I saw horrified me. All the game was was Link continually dying as he walked through piles of corpses, ReDeads would scream and grab you as you walked through the bodies. At the same time, flashes of the most horrible images you can imagine flew across the screen. I couldn't handle it in my dream, lost the trial, and was ripped apart and eaten by the final ghost.

I know this is just a product of an overactive imagination, but I'm not touching Majora's Mask for a little while.

Splinter Cell: Conviction could have been a marvelous experience. The gameplay throughout the single-player campaign is interesting and challenging, focusing almost primarily on stealth. there is an extended sequence, however, that turns into a normal shooter, but evens the pace of the game nicely.

The Deniable Ops missions add some new challenges to the mix, and with a competent partner co-op is easily the most enjoyable experience of the entire game. Where did it go wrong, you say? The story was dreadful.

Conviction's story is a great example of a story written as a movie, that was just thrown into a video game. It's dark and bland, with the possibility of being next Summer's hit. You sit there and have to ask yourself the question: "Do I really care enough about Sam's daughter to do this." For me, the answer was a definite no.

Sam's daughter is nothing more than a tool used within the story. She's implemented to show the player that Sam isn't completely ruthless and does have the capacity to care about people. Now, Sam may care about his daughter more than anything in the world, it doesn't change the fact that you literally kill almost everybody in your way throughout the game.

Sam is a killing machine, plain and simple. Attempts to humanize characters in games almost always come off poorly, id est Dom in Gears of War 2, and Conviction is no exception.

Furthermore, Sarah is not my daughter. I do not know her as a character whatsoever. She's Sam's daughter, and Sam is absolutely not me.

Ergo, I do not, or ever will. care about Sarah. If the developers had included more sequences similar to the one in the beginning where you father Sarah, things might have been quite different. As it stands, however, she has nothing to do with the story other than fueling Sam's rage.

The motivation of our antagonist Tom Reed is possibly the most ludicrous I've seen portrayed in a video game. His entire evil plot centers around a fear that the President will cut funding to Third Echelon because she feels that Third Echelon is no longer needed.

So, in typical villain fashion, he tries to destroy Washington D.C with EMPs, kill the President, and frame Sam Fisher. I don't care what mad, villainous type of evildoer you are, these "killing the president" plans never end well, ever.

Tom Reed seems to be more of a parody of certain people today believing that the government is going to "take away their freedom (guns)" than a real villain.

Upon reflection, I think this picture sums everything up nicely.

Back in 2001 I was handed what was to be one of my most loved and cherished consoles, the Sega Dreamcast. The details of how my sister obtained it are still somewhat unclear, but I most definitely believe she stole it from her then-boyfriend. I was also given three games with the noisy white box, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing 2, and the most appealing of them all Sonic Adventure. I was very familiar with the Sonic the Hedgehog series, having owned a Sega Genesis and Sonic 2 at the time, so immediately I became excited.

Needless to say, I completed the game and loved every bit of it back then, some stages I wasn't particularly fond of, but I truly enjoyed the game. Sadly though, the Dreamcast train was swiftly derailed in 2005 when I sold it on eBay. But back in May of this year, being the collector I am, I purchased a used Dreamcast from eBay. I did this with the hope of re-exploring some games from my past, and discovering games that I had been unaware of at that time. Of course, Sonic Adventure was on the top of my list and I purchased that right along with my box of dreams.



Unfortunately, the game is, in reality, one extended facepalm that makes you want to punch your dick, or uterus, so hard you become sterile, thus saving any new children from ever playing any of the new Sonic games.

The Game has 6 playable characters, each with their own cringe-worthy campaigns. Every campaign is slightly different than the last, so let's take the time and go through all of them.



Sonic the Hedgehog

This is where the game coerces you in, saying "Oh look, Sonic's in full 3D now, with a huge open world, isn't it awesome." The problem is that it is most definitely not awesome in any definition of the word. The first stage, while relatively enjoyable, sets you up for an experience that's almost completely devoid of challenge. Each stage seems to get progressively worse as you make your way through the quest to save Station Square and stop Chaos from collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds! That's undeniably the game's largest pitfall, its atrocious, terribly written and performed story. It's like being skullfucked by your Uncle who's only excuse is "I thought you wanted it!" Its attempts to entertain you with a new and odd story just end up being misplaced in a Sonic game. This still carries over into the newer Sonic games today, as Sonic Team continually includes stories that not only insult your intelligence, but have served only as a detriment to how Sonic games have been viewed in the gaming community.



Miles "Tails" Prower

Tails' stages within the game are literally the same as Sonic's, the game just forces you to race him to the end of the stage. Every stage within his campaign is rehashed as a way to advance the "plot". Now, though, everything is clunkier and poorly paced, because the stages were designed for Sonic. At this point in the game a deeply unsettling feeling begins to form. Sonic's campaign wasn't too discouraging, but now you begin to realize that soon enough, you're going to be swimming naked through a river of shit.



Knuckles the Echidna

Knuckles has always been my favorite character in the Sonic universe. This game raped him. The developers gave Knuckles the simplest and most paper-thin part of the already awful story in Sonic Adventure, and made his gameplay absolutely dreadful. Knuckles controls are akin to that of a flying tank, with his stages being even further re-treads. Knuckles' stages are turned into big treasure hunts where you try to find bits of his beloved Master Emerald. Knuckles was thrown in the game as an afterthought, a character who's always there, but treated like a ghost outside of the main story.



Amy Rose

Amy Rose is wholeheartedly the embodiment of everything evil in this world. Her stages drove me to insanity. Her overbearing attitude and incessant nagging are similar to a horrendous pillow of dislike, smothering you until everything good is removed from your being. Or as my friend once said, "She's a fucking cunt, and I hope she dies of hedgehog AIDS."



Big the Cat

I had no hope for anything left in life once I reached Big the Cat. "Why?" I screamed to myself. The premise of Big the Cat is so fucking ludicrous, that I honestly believe that the character development team at Sonic Team is made up of mentally ill children with crayons and a bag of shit they shove in their faces. Big the Cat is a mildly-retarded, overgrown feline, who's objectives in the game are to fish for a frog that contains the manifestation of all evil. Yes, now fishing has been added. This isn't a Sonic game whatsoever now, it's just a conglomerate of terrible choices.



E-102 Gamma

Gamma is the only redeeming quality of this game. His stages, while re-treads, are much more frantic and faster than Sonic's. His campaign's story compared to the rest is brilliant. He's a machine built for evil who defies his master and traverses through a quest to destroy his evil, robot brethren. His gameplay is focused on action and speed, giving you a time limit that only gets longer if you destroy enemies while navigating the stage. Gamma's only issue, however, is that he leaves you with a glimmer of hope that something interesting is really there, a hope destroyed by any Sonic game that has followed Sonic Adventure.

Upon completing the game, the only thought running through my mind was "This is where it all began." Sonic Adventure had managed to become the substratum from which more recent titles in the franchise would take ideas and gameplay mechanics. Nothing is as likely to be as disgusting as 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog, but Sega and Sonic Team don't quite understand that Sonic games don't perform well in 3D. Sonic's great downfall lies in the past, alongside Sonic Adventure.

Although there have been many attempts to resurrect the old Sonic, none have really caught with consumers. Sonic Generations looks very promising, but why does it need the inclusion of the 3D levels? Unless Sonic Team gets its act together, we can mark December 23, 1998 as the day Sonic the Hedgehog died.

Oh, and the music is fucking trite too.