April 

Every month I keep tabs on what games I played and what I thought about them! 

I forgot to do this, until like the last day of the month. I meant to start doing this before Boston, but I stayed busy all month. Bonerquest is totally happenings, things are moving foreword I really want to have this done and you reading it as soon as possible. It just, takes time, which goes faster than I want it to when I work all night, sleep all day, and keep playing video games like all the time. I also recorded two podcasts this month, you can listen to an early edit of one of them already. When we get that going, hopefully we can do one every week of every two weeks at the least. I'm all over the place, do it can be tough to get everybody together. I'm postin this from my iPod, so no pictures.

Here are the games I played in April! 

Drago Quest 3 - Super Nintendo

I got that English version, that some dudes translated just a few years ago. It is absolutely wonderful. The DS games are a higher resolution imitation of this, these sprites and that classic super Nintendo sounding music are just delightful. Haven't ran into much difficulty either, but we'll see. I really want to finish this up, I played this early this month, soaking about twenty hours into it. Even going so far as to play it while in Boston.

Star Fox - Super Nintendo 

Starfox 64 is one of my favorite games ever. It feels so perfect, for me, that I could play it any time. So much depth and such a silly storyline that barely makes sense, and most importantly, solid gameplay. Barrel rolling laser beams and shooting bombs, blasting big robot blocky bosses, that game had everything. 

I only played Star Fox once.

Once, but for many hours is more apt. 

I rented it one night, after staring at it on my super nintendo box and seeing the tv commercial,  I was fascinated as to what this game would be. I manages to get a boss that killed me just as I figured out how to kill it. The room was rotating around, and I just barely made it to that fight. It was time to return the game and when I went to rent it again, rental place had gotten rid of it. 

Then, as video games became readily available maybe fifteen years later, I just couldn't hang with star fox anymore. Starfox 64 was so dope, and played so much better, I just couldn't do it. The early 3D hurt to look at, instantly stopping me. 

And this month, I finally got over myself and began to enjoy this game. It feels so similar to Starfox 64, but a step behind. The level depth is there, but it isn't the same as 64. I feel like I'm finally ready to enjoy this thing, I barely got a couple levels in, I'm terrible at video games. But every time I played I ended up quitting instead of dying, so that counts for something. 

Mega Man 2 - Regular Nintendo

I live tweeted myself playing this early in the month. Loved that experience, it was dope. People chimed in telling me how to beat Quick Mans level, but I kept fucking up. I always do, always have. I love it though. Such a fun way to play a game. 

Tiny Toon Adventures - Regular Nintendo 

When I was at the panel 1up did at PAX, a dude talked about how great Tiny Toons was. This is an opinion I agree with, having played a lot of it in my youth and enjoying the hell out of it. Playing as a tasmanian devil and the cat that climbs walls and plucky duck is so much fun. I can't figure out why you play as Buster Bunny, at all. 

Castlevania HD - Xbox Live Arcade

I realized I had Friday off I my vacation, I had no plans so like back in the old days of Deatructoid I hosted playing silly old school games. Like two people joined me, Bianca was there and somebody else whose name I forgot. I talked to that guy for two hours, can't remember his name. I'm the worst. 

I want to make this a regular thing. Not Castlevania hd but me hosting Friday nights again, that was a fu thing to do. 

Super Monday Night Combat - steam 

This was at PAX but I lost musical chairs for a chance to play it. As everyone got up, a mad dash happened. Chairs went fast. I wasn't much for the regular monday night game, it wasn't my bag. Still, I'm ready to play anything. 

This is more like defense of the ancients mixed with team fortress style gameplay. I shot robots, I leveled up. Not really my game, but if someone I knew wanted to play, I would. 

I was I'm the beta, but I guess the game actually came out now.

Yakuza : Dead Souls - ps3

As a follow up to Yakuza 4, this is an excellent game. Absolutely brilliant game! The sense of humor that this game has seems never ending. Laughing about off the wall zombie humor is great, especially when the gameplay once again forms a solid foundation for the actual game. 

Adventure Bar Story - iOS 

A delightful RPG for my iPod. I like grinding levels as I work nights, c

Shadow Hearts 

Again, humor is so important for me in everything. It isn't just hilarious. This game brings the heat with a heavy horror influence that is thus far, very consistent. Being set in the 1920s gives it this wild steampunk atmosphere as well. I love that beside the Chinese wizard who shoots fireballs is a blonde spy who calls air strikes on a giant radio. This game is wild, I spent my time over leveling and just sort of playing at the game, as I was deep into Bonerquest work when I was playing. I need to pick up those two sequels. 

Jim shot me a twat saying he was into the game, if that means anything to anybody. I got my copy for like twenty bucks, maybe two or three years ago? I feel like that was fair for this little hidden gem of a game.

Onimusha 2 - Playstation 2

Fantastic! Samurai beat Em up survival horror, I'm in!

Walking Dead Demo - PS3

Similar gameplay as Heavy Rain, except instead of stealing plot elements from movies like Saw and Seven, it's all homaging zombie flicks. Loved the demo, but I will not buy the game until every episode is out. Same way I read walking dead, living issue to issue kills me, I usually take a year off and anxiously await the next dozen comics. 

As a piece of a part of a full product, I enjoyed this enough to want it. Like now, I really want to play this thing in full.

Dragons Dogma demo PS3 

I love dark souls, and this is Capcom attempting to do that.  It doesn't seem to work the same, the first section of game I was using some character the game made and my team of dudes were fighting goblins and then a chimera, where I could climb it's back and hack off the snake tail. Love that. 

Designing my own monstrous looking character is always fun. I had an Afro and a build like Dolph Lundgren. My partner I designed, was a giant transvestite. Literally a god damn giant, with a sour dwarf face, and pretty blonde pigtails. The game let me make that, and then use that to fight a gryphon. 

It wasn't until I was thrown by that sexually confused man threw me into the air, where my black Dolph Lungren grasped this thing and stabbed the shit out of it with knives. I had a bow when it threw me to the ground and started leglolesing this mother. Then night fell, shit got real

And by real, I mean real dark.

Pitch black, except for my lantern. The gryphon was nearly dead and still pissed off. The wizard with me had spells that lit up as his fireballs went through the night. Holy smokes, this game.

I'm ready to rent this thing.

Steel Battalion - Kinect 

So at PAX was this thing, I played at the end of the day with an angry lady guiding me, or attempting to guide me. After I died four times, I felt like I had my fill and that somebody else should get a turn, so I bailed. 

But the twenty minutes I played was do,  m m GNP 

Penny Arcade RPG 3 - 

Lots of mimes! So many mimes of every variety, even a octopus monster was a mime. The game was a bit slow, but it felt enough like final fantasy 3 that I would play this. I'm no fan of penny arcade, but the guys making this did Cthulhu saves the world. With such a fun pedigree, this should turn out ok. 

Gaucamelee - using 360 controller

Tony Ponce told me this was worth playing, and I sort of agree. Its a metroidvania style game, with Mexican luchadore wrestlers and a day of the dead light and dark world mechanic, which was interesting. It felt a little floaty to me, but it seemed well enough for a downloadable title on steam or xbla or PSN. Thing is, I just couldn't enjoy it at the show. I felt pressured to play quickly, and after a brief play through, I was done with it. These dudes did a couple of blob game for Sony consoles, so if I was a betting man, I'd imagine this stuff would be on those consoles, vita or ps3. 

Secret of Mana - Super Nintendo

I haven't played this since I was twelve. I barely played it then, I know I was about twelve because this was over ten years ago. My guy was named Snake, which is silly. But I did it like ten years ago. 

I started over,  not realizing I was at the very start as snake. I played passed the part with the water temple, and into a big town, but after wandering trying to find where I needed to go, I quit again. Maybe forever this time. I just, I don't know. I like the game, but I just don't love it. 

Sieken Denestsu 3 - alias  Secret of Mana 2 - Super Nintendo

I've started this about four times, it feels like it has influence from the SaGa games, in that it has multiple characters to choose from and to choose your eventual team mates, meaning a lot of variety. 

First I picked a warrior, whose story started me in an arena battle which was interesting, but I quit that out.

I picked a werewolf, by accident, and his story of turning feral and killing someone close to him, actually emotionally gripping within five minutes. That is hard to do, as a writer I respect that. 

His personal conflict escalates out into a disagreement with his fathers politics, as he wants to ethnically cleanse out all the regular humans. Yes, this story goes there within an hour.

Within a couple hours, I met a ninja, who described his struggle to me, however it all went so fast I missed most of it. He seemed to want to team up with me, but unfortunately I had to go somewhere while this was happening, which was a bummer. My save was right before I met the ninja, I hope, and I feel like that this is a game worth playing. 

I had a moment where I was impressed by the graphics. Mode 7 hit me bouncing in the air off a toadstool spring thing, it showed the world map, which seemed pretty large. 

I feel awful that this was never officially translated to English, but some great dudes who were just fans of square and Japanese games translated this thing, so we might as well enjoy all their hard work. 

Sniper V2 Demo - PS3

As expected, this game is pretty  awesome. Sniping nazis is great, but having the camera follow your bullet into an X-ray of s nazi whose eyeball bursts and his skull blasts apart, that is the next level. I love that, so much. The stealth doesn't seem to work in this game, despite seeming to want me to be stealthy, I played it as maniac killing dudes in the open, loved it. Can't wait to play a full version of this.  
__

I probably played some other things, but I can't do anymore typing on this thing. I think this hits everything, I will try harder next month to keep tabs and stay  up on my writing. Trying to get a first draft of Bonerquest finished is proving all consuming, but incredible. 

That's it. [b]

This is episode 001 of Retro Games Show! Starring Josh Hayes & Bianca Torres!

If you're here, you saw me post this on twitter, Retroforce's forum, or maybe I sent it to you in an e-mail, I hope you like the podcast we did, we tried to make this awesome and I think it shows.

This rough cut has a couple things I will change when I upload it to lisybn, there isn't a tag up front saying "you are listening to a randombullseye podcast" and there is a five second gap between a sound effect up front and the loud guy talking where I want to add Bianca saying "Retro Games Show!" Otherwise, this is the final version of an episode for a Retro Games Show.

This is for Destructoid, fans of retro gaming, and everyone ever. I hope you like it. I want this to be a thing I do every week. Hopefully we can carry on in the spirit of RetroForceGO, Destructoid, and boners everywhere!

HERE IS THE MP3 CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD IT!!

I never asked anybody if I could do this, but I have been super vocal about Retroforce GO coming back and more old school games being a thing for Destructoid. I don't want to take all of Retroforce GO's thunder or use all their tropes and in-jokes, I want to do my version of a revival of that show for Destructoid. Just like I did Bulltoid as a revival of Podtoid, but I wanted to present this as a direct revival. I've been talking about doing this since before Bulltoid was a thing, Bianca and some other people who'll be in and out on the show seem super enthusiastic about doing this, I'm enthusiastic about doing this, and I do it with nothing but love.

A guy who was new to Destructoid asked me while I wearing Retroforce GO shirts at the Sunday PAX dinner if I had anything to do with the show. I answered, "No, but I always wanted to. I wrote in a lot, they talked about my weenie dog, and it meant a lot to me."

That's it!

Just as my one and done Sunday adventure at PAX was closing, I walk by the giant X-Com - Enemy Unknown booth, right when the door closed and I felt super bummed about that. I became a huge fan of X-Com a couple years ago, this was the one that was actually a strategy game not the first person shooter. I can only assume that is canceled or pushed back another year, no one mentioned it as far as I can remember. A vaguely asian public relations lady asked me "Do you want to go see X-Com?" I said excitedly, "Sure." She responded, "Well go right through that door!" A nice blonde lady opened up the door for me, and I got to sit in this little theatre that was set up to show off a live demo, not a playable public demo.

They explained that I wasn't supposed to take pictures or anything like that, so I didn't make any attempts to snap pictures. This was a live demo, so a guy who was faux-excited about X-Com began by asking if everyone had played X-Com before, so me and about ten other dudes raised our hands, there were maybe a dozen people in this little booth. He said, "How about any of the X-Com sequels?" So a couple people raised there other hand, so did I. He nodded, then the demo began on what I would guess was a projector screen in front of us.

The demo shows off a cinematic of your big space ship landing at a gas station, he calls out your four person squad: Support, Sniper, Heavy, and Combat. Each of which had their own strengths and weaknesses, the support guy could lay down suppressing fire and pin an alien, which happened within the first minute. A group of the nasty grey aliens were scrounging around, the person playing moved his squad around as the PR gentleman described what he was doing.

This looked like a scenario these guys had ran over and over, they had it down to a hard science.

Your squad can either do half a move and attack, do a full move, or just do an attack. The sniper had a really neat grappling hook that let him get on top of the gas pumps, positioning himself a couple times before he was able to do anything useful. It was said that the sniper is unable to attack on a half move, since he's such a badass and can usually kill things in one hit. One sectoid grey alien went inside a building and did a mind meld with another, which was some sort of buff for the both of them.

The combat soldier came up behind them with a shotgun, pretty well devastating them. The support guy threw a grenade, at a gas pump, which resulted in an amount of destruction that satisfied even me. The third sectoid was splattered inside his building by the sniper who after several turns finally was in a spot to use his rifle. It was then that they positioned their guys around again, when three larger enemies appeared over inside a building.

I imagine it was just to show off the destructible environments, but he had one soldier walk right in front of a door where these big red mutoid, which is what they were called, not muton's like in the old x-com, and there was a third with blades called a "beserker." Why is that the catch all name for big melee dudes in video games? Anyway, as expected, they blast the dog shit out of the guy standing by the door, which exploded very nicely leaving this big gaping hole in this building.

His next turn he showed off an ability that shotgun soldier had called "run and gun," where they could do a full move and attack, why this wasn't being used the entire time on every turn I should have asked. One blast to the back with a shotgun took out a red muton. The heavy pulls out a rocket launcher, and makes the hole at the door of the building even larger, killing the beserker. Finally, this new hole allowed the sniper to see the last alien alive, whom he one shotted as well. Every attack played out a very action-movie like attack, which I thought was really dope. Even reaction attacks showed a soldier running past the sectoids dinky laser gun in slow motion as they run from cover to cover.



Then we're shown what he called "the ant hill." This was our home base. PR Guy described it as a GI Joy carrier toy that our rich friend had when we were kids. I don't think anyone understood the, I got the idea. As I look it up now, the toy he wanted to say was the GI Joe headquarters, which looks pretty much identical to what I saw. Each section inside the X-Com base seemed to have characters doing things, which you could zoom in and see, such as soldiers in the infirmly or over in a gym working out. Things then switch to a research lab where, as in the original, you have scientists study things you recover from previous combat missions. He then switched over to the engineers part of the base, where they used that research to build armor for our troops. Done deal.

Our demo ended with some sort of alert playing from the mission control part of the base, where then a cinematic played. Seemed like the type of game I want to play.

We then asked questions:

- The PR guy said this was a full retail release. That shocked the shit out of me. Coming to PC, Xbox 360, and PS3, as a full retail release.

- Ship to ship combat hasn't been implimented yet, "back at the office" they're working on how to resolve that now. They did show the interceptor in the X-Com base, where he claimed it would be "fully customizable."

- Game would be coming out "Fall 2012." I would not expect it until later in the year, hopefully by Christmas we'll be blasting aliens in X-Com.

- I would have asked the guy about capturing aliens alive, had I not tripped on the metal stairs on my way out and felt like stupid.

- This video Samit posted from last month, has footage snippets from the gas station demo.

Hello Destructoid! We did this three years ago, then I did it alone in twenty ten, and even I forgot about it in two ocean's eleven, but this Millhouse is back this year once again. Ten things you didn't know about me, here they all are, I typed them out while I was at work and they're all true. This is lengthy, like everything I write, and I put my ass into it, but decided not to publish it a couple months ago. Now that this is a thing again, let's do this!

I'm looking foreward to meeting you guys this weekend at PAX, I'll be in Boston until Wednesday and want to meet everybody I can. If you want to eat pizza or play video games on my laptop with me, e-mail me: randombullseye@gmail.com

And here we go!

Ten Things You Still Don't Know About Me!

10 - I got married.

The elusive Mrs.Bullseye is now actually Mrs. Bullseye. We're like adults who have lots of silly toys and posters with robots wrestling alligator men in our house. I've prominently displayed a bunch of Godzilla toys and have Jason, Leatherface, and Freddy Krueger hanging on the living room walls. My life is awesome.

9 - I am a big Kaiju fan. Read: Japanese monster movies are fucking awesome.

My live of giant rubber monsters knows no end. I picked up a big box set of Ultraman DVDs super cheap, and I watched nearly every episode. I watched some Kanen Rider with my pals on Touya, Shawn, Mo, and Benje, the group that I did Bulltoid with.

But Godzilla, Godzilla is everything. I've a bunch of figures I bought from Japan when I was an intern at an amazing toy website, I even managed to get an article about one of them published. I've found that I can't watch Godzilla every day, I tried for a while, but I started feeling like this was how movie maniacs are formed. Like that guy in Se7en writing those journals everyday, did it start off as not being weird and him just talking to a diary? I don't know.

Fact of the matter is, when Godzilla's music comes on I feel a rush of every emotion all at once. As a kid, I would cheer for Godzilla to win, especially against the wimpy military. When he fights a giant crab or a robot version of himself, I get so interested. I've found that not watching them all all the time lets me enjoy them more when I finally do watch one, I tend to let things get fuzzy in my memory, and I can watch something like the one where he fights the smog monster like it was new all over again.

8 - This is what I look like. I never showed you guys before, like ever.



So I got rid of facebook, where I was "Randombulls Eye." It was a decision I reached, because I thought facebook was girly like myspace. However, I loved having Mrs. Bullseye take pictures of me wearing masks and posting those as my pictures and showing them off to people, because it was so dumb. Since I don't drink, there are no pictures of me out there at bars hanging out with my best friends in the world to show off online. My best friends in the world are all busy with their wives, work, in jail, or dead, and I'm not taking pictures with them when I see them every six months when they wander into Krogers at night. I hate sports and family gatherings, so both of those are out. I hate concerts, I hate everything. That leaves seeing me at weddings, which people have posted to facebook which I hate, and seeing me at my job which is a thing I never want to talk about ever. I hate my job. Haters gonna hate!

Here is a picture of me with a Catherine pillow I did for the SOPA thing. We sure stopped SOPA by making ourselves look like idiots. J Ro put me up to doing this, so I did it.



I don't know why I like hiding my face in pictures for stuff, Elsa thought I looked like some blonde skinny dude, which seemed funny to me. I'm a burly bear man, who happened to have a Catherine pillow that I thought would be funny to take a sad sopa picture for Destructoid's SOPA bullshit. Mine was in color where everybody else had gray, so again, I'm always doing things wrong or differently without any intention to. It feels like that with everything.

So yeah, I guess I'll do videos now that people know what I look like. I feel like I could do that and talk about games like I know something and get all pissed off.

7 - I like horror movies and comic books more than video games.



This is a strange thing to admit, but I do. If I can get into a good horror movie, I'm so happy. If it somehow features disgusting things or spooky situations, I feel so joyful. Big monsters always do it for me too, I love those, and ones that skulk around killing dopey teenagers make me laugh so much.

Problem is, 9 out of 10 horror movies are wastes of time. They're terrible.

I find myself with less time than ever to just waste watching something that isn't good or so bad its bad, but just bad movies that aren't very good. Netflix has me now watching ten minutes of a movie and judging if I care to watch another ten or just turn it off. I've turned off more garbage on Netflix than I'd care to mention. My passion for horror films is so intense, I tried to do a radio program about horror movies last year, Random Horror. I loved doing it, but it became tough to find time to do, the last couple episodes we couldn't actually get to our main topic for doing news stories and what we had been watching. While I love doing that stuff, if I bring the show back in some format, I'm sticking to talking horror. Give it a listen sometime, myself and my co-host, Jason whose now writing movie reviews, had a lot of fun doing it.

And as for comic books, I hate nothing more than reading a single issue of a comic book. About four times a year, I have a pile of comics for series that I'm into that just pile up. Once a year I read all the main universe Marvel stuff I care about, catching up with Hellboy and the B.P.R.D., The Walking Dead has me forever, and sometimes I'll just pile up stuff to try out or books you never heard of, like The Boys or The Authority, and I'll be consumed by those for a couple weeks. My best experiences with comics was reading Preacher over the course of a week, I feel like that changed something about me, what I don't know, but it was an excellent read that any adaptation of would feel like a slap in the face to the original comic books. Same thing with Watchmen, changing it from pictures with words takes everything from it.

I'm dumb when it comes to comics. I feel like I'm always forgetting things people tell me to read, I just lose where I've written it down or it piles up somewhere and I've lost the physical book. I'm also lost of what is actually canon or actually happened anymore. DC has lost me almost entirely, the endearing qualities of Batman and Superman are wrapped in this strange universe where green men chant and have magic rings and hawk men both exist as things. The origin for Hawk Man has changed so much, I don't even think DC knows who he is. I hate that type of bullshit. Marvel just changes everything, then scales back from those changes within a year to change everything again in some other dumb way. Like Spider-man having a mystical origin maybe and revealing his identity to the public were interesting story threads, that just got thrown away a couple years ago. I feel like I've had my time wasted with that type of bullshit. And the X-Men, I can't even talk about the X-Men anymore. But I love the books I've read, I love comics.

So as you can see, playing video games feels so simple by comparison to reading comics or watching horror movies. I'm not as invested, so my complaints aren't personal or super enthusiastic.

Maybe I'm in denial, I haven't gone without playing video games of some kind in years now.



6 - I am writing a novel called, "The Bonerquest."

Writing a novel feels dumb.

I feel like a dumb person trying to do something that people would pay for.

I'm tired of my day job. While I would love to write more articles freelancing around the internet and doing podcasts, those aren't ways to make money unless you're friendly. I'm not especially friendly. I don't mind doing free work or anything if I think I'm having a good time doing it, I love talking and writing. My two news articles for Destructoid are still a personal highlight. Professionally writing about enthusiast hobbies is not a thing I'm pursuing actively anymore. I still might do podcasts or videos, but writing about games feels silly.

Now I'm all about fiction writing.

I've blown a couple decent comic book offers several times. I tend to be a fuck up, asking to own my own writing or submitting wild ideas that get rejected, knowing that they might be too much to submit. I hate that. I own an intellectual property that I'm just sitting on and I have a lot of great stories and characters in my head to put into things, so writing a novel doesn't sound so bad. My first book I've already announced before, I don't want to get all advertisey with it, but I'm excited to finish it up and self publish it and put it out there for people to read. I want you to read it. I want you to accept The Bonerquest, me, and once or twice a year I'll write a full novel that is just madness.

Writing is one of those things that I feel like would be a legacy too. Like that guy who wrote Confederacy of Dunces and killed himself, if I have a book manuscript laying around and one tenacious person trying to get it published, I could have some lasting impact on the world with Bonerquest. But I don't want to die, and I'm a tenacious enough person to get my own book published god dammit. I'll go into debt up to my asshole to realize a dream as stupid as this, if I could just make enough money to match what I'm making at my day job, I'd feel like the biggest success in the world. I want that to happen. I want to write silly books and have a good time in life and not have to physically exhaust myself every day just so I can pay for candies and soda pop. I've some outlines and started researching for other ideas, like my take on a hard sci-fi story and a romance mystery.

My first book is all but done, this year, I want that book published. I'm going to make it happen on my own, no kickstarter, no bullshit. Just me, my words, and my own personal savings to throw at an editor, self publishing, and maybe a celebrity to read the audiobook.

That book is, The Bonerquest.

I dedicate it to you guys, Destructoid, this is home. I'm not a super social dude anymore, this is where I go to hang out. This is my cheers. I like you guys. I'm loud and wild, but I love this place and having it here makes everything else seem less shitty. I might write in the book that I dedicate to boners, but you guys are boners. You're my boners. I love you.

5 - Finally, I saw a movie that disgusted me!



I've a cold heart.

I laugh at damn near everything, especially brutality in a horror film. I giggle at French realistic looking splatter films of recent, and the American fake looking cartoon special effects delight me. At this point, I know nothing will ever look real in a horror flick. I love special effects and what computers can do, but it just isn't working with the heavy computer generated bullshit.

I sort of like the violence, the rape, the burning, the scalping, and all the many modern phantasmagoria usually in modern movies. Evil Dead has a girl dragged into the woods by trees and then violates by those trees. This was remade in Evil Dead 2, even more gruesomely. I can hang with that. I can hang with Korean revenge flicks where things get so deep and so dark, every character is a bad person. There are no heroes in Sympathy for Mr Vengeance but I loved how depraved and weird it got. Same with I Saw The Devil and Oldboy, really just fine films I could recommend to anybody, even my mother I gave a copy of Oldboy to and was told that she liked it. Evil Dead 2? I gave that to my two twelve year old nephews. Myself, my father, and the two of them watched it all at the same time, they liked it as much as I did when I was a boy, then we watched Evil Dead 3: Medieval Dead. You might know it as Army of Darkness, which is a contender for the most fun movie ever.

However, I hit my limit! I had found hell itself and looked into the soul of darkness itself! It made me uncomfortable. I was upset watching it, my stomachs wretched, and I felt dirty after watching it.

I've seen movies where wolf men eat people and are visited by mauled decaying corpse ghosts, nothing.



I've seen a movie where a mad doctor sews people ass to mouth and forms a human centipede. It was one hundred percent medically accurate. I laughed about it, and the sequel that was a hardcore European flick, which I watched last night. I laughed. Hell, I ate pizza and ice cream while watching them!



I've seen a movie where a lady was raped by a couple rough looking guys and their retarded friend they force to also rape her. She then kills them all, hanging the fat retarded guy and cutting one guys wiener off in a bath tub. I showed a friend of mine the movie, commenting on how hilarious it was the entire time, also the title is hilarious, "I Spit on Your Grave!"

Still, this movie I'm talking about was worse than all those!

The movie is, "The Girl Next Door."

In the last five years, one of my favorite podcasts is the Horror ETC, these guys aren't up their own ass like Bloody Disgusting or come off as rude like Dread Central. It is a podcast with a forum and last I checked, the site was nothing more than that and I love it.

One name strikes fear when the two hosts speak.

Jack Ketchum is that name.

Unlike Girl With a Dragon Tattoo and knowing about the big rape scenes, I went into this blind. All I knew was it was disturbing, which I'll watch. This is all about an older man recalling an event from his youth one summer, where this neighbor lady held a girl captive and let her sons and his friends sexually assault her, beat her, and inflict upon her genuine sadism. This wasn't a cute hacker goth chick with a lip ring and dragon tattoos, this was a thirteen year old innocent girl in a scary basement with a dirty mattress blindfolded, being fucked to death. Picture this scary scene, repeated and going on while a kid tries to enjoy his summer fishing with his pals. Things end in the only way they could, sad, and from there when I researched the movie to find out who made this and why, I found out it was real.

This was based on a true story. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Likens]This happened.[/size]

Not "based on a true story" like Texas Chainsaw Massacre took some ideas for necropheliac Ed Gein. This actually happened, and I was destroyed emotionally for a couple days. It was the worst feeling ever. I loved it. I felt alive in the worst way. I felt human at last.

I couldn't imagine reading this guys books, I saw another Jack Ketchum adaptation, the Lost, which was rough, but I found myself not disgusted by that one nearly as much. I don't feel so bad for teenagers (read: twenty five year olds playing teens) and how they get slaughtered or raped, doesn't matter at all. You throw kids in the mix and it gets spooky. Friday the 13 part 6 did this a little, but Jason never just blasted a kid in the face with a machete, let alone kidnap one and let all the neighborhood kids fuck her to death while he watched.

Now I approach any Jack Ketchum film adaptation with an anxiousness unlike anything else, but his actual writing I'm undecided on. I'm considering buying and reading them, and maybe corresponding with the guy and see what he's actually like. If I interviewed him, my first question would be simple. "How do you write a story about a thirteen year old girl being fucked to death by other children?"

4 - My "day job" is a night job stocking cereal.

I hate it. Worst job ever. My work isn't so bad, but working nights has devastated me personally. I'm always drowsy, I'm missing appointments for things and apologizing after the fact because I just can't sleep when I want to. Some days all I can do is sleep. Other days, all I can do is try to sleep. Those days are scary, because I suddenly become a hate filled monster yelling at everything and usually my angry writing comes from bloodshot eyes and ninety hours without real sleep.

And it messes with me eating as well, I make it a force of habit to eat when I can, because I have had some scary days without eating. I just didn't know where one day starts and the next begins.

3 - RandomHorror is over. Bulltoid is over. Retro Games Show is coming soon!

Doing an excellent show that doesn't record is heartbreaking. I now have in place fail safes, meaning a computer and laptop both with recording software on my end, and I would much prefer everybody on the show to record their own audio the mix it myself. This is work, which a lot of people puss out on. This is wh when I have a guest or a topic, I spend every free minute trying to research and prepare.

I love all the people I did podcasts with, it was great. I don't talk to them as often as I did, and I miss that, but I will never forget their contributions to my shows and how much work they put in doing the same research I did. I love them and thank them in the most sincere way possible.

It makes more sense to me right now to just be a producer or "behind the scenes" guy for a podcast. My classic gaming podcast like any good project, has hit some snags along the way, but if I could do that, I'd put my soul into it. Right now every week I love writing into Podtoid, I've yet to put something that was read on air that resulted in less than laughter, which makes me happy. I'd love to do a real podcast for Destructoid about role playing games or retro stuff, something I'm passionate about instead of just a gaming news or new releases show.

Oh yeah!

This week, I recorded a podcast with somebody super enthusiastic about podcasts, almost as I am with a geniune sense of humor and an experience base different from my own. Our first episode we recorded was about Castlevania, I'll try to post it sometime soon and let you guys check that out. This time I'm going to use lisbyn and make it as professional looking as possible.

2 - Abbey "the retro dog disappeared last summer.

Longtime readers know Abbey, Stella on Retroforce Go or me in their comments for sure names her the retro dog. She was a loyal companion who would sit with me, watching me, play my old school games with glee.



One day, after she had a second set of puppies, she just disappeared. Coyotes maybe got her. Maybe she had milk fever and her own milk killed her, this almost happened with her first set of puppies. Since she was such a lovely dog, some jerk off might have stolen her. I've a theory that maybe my wife's father found her dead somewhere, maybe hit by a car or something, and just wouldn't tell my wife for fear of breaking her heart like she was still five and couldn't handle it. If he had shot it to put it outs of its misery, I can understand never telling her about it, but if it was something like seeing her blasted by a car, I don't know. He of all people loved the dog, so why he would lie about it or why I would pose a theory like that is beyond me. Other than my own paranoia about in laws, I have no validation or reasoning for such a theory to exist.

I loved that dog. There were times when she was my best friend, my only friend. Not having her around is heart breaking.



But there is a silver lining, introducing, Pepper the Classic Gaming Puppy!



As I said, Abbey's disappearance was about before my number one story, both of which were before getting married. So we've got this dog that chews everything and poops upstairs, and I couldn't love her more. When I was playing Mega Man X2, this dog was sitting on my lap watching like it was invested in everything I was doing. So much that I jumped in the air in game when I noticed her head bobbing watching Mega Man jump around. I love that. So yes, Abbey's gone, I miss her, I didn't want to tell anybody because I was hopeful that she might show back up, but now Pepper's a part of my life and probably will show up in posts I do where I need pictures to just throw in hence fourth. I like using horror movie stuff or pictures of my dogs, you know, pictures I just have laying around on my computer.

1- I nearly died in July bleeding out the asshole.

This is a true story.

I'd been staying at my parents place, and I had a copy of Duke Nukem Forever I was all excited to play. I was laughing hysterically at how bad it was after getting off work, but I felt terrible, more so than usual. I lay down to sleep that morning, it was a Friday, and when I woke up I had a pain up my ass like nothing else I could describe.

It was the type of pain I picture eternal torments being made of, up my ass.

I do the man thing of "I have to go to work, I'm not going to a doctor," which after about six hours, I realize there is no way I'm going to go to work that night. I'm fucked up bad. My girlfriend, now wife, takes a look up there and explains that I've a large hemorrhoid formed and that it looks awful. So now I get to go to the hospital with crippling pain up my ass.

Hours later, I'm given some creams and suppositories and told these will clear it up by Sunday, when I can return to work. Ok. Great. I get to put medicine up my ass, this is fantastic. This is exactly the type of thing I write a blog on the internet for. I can't go on Jimmy Kimmel Live and explain how I stuck white bullet shaped objects that melted in my hand up my ass, but here, I can describe that to you guys in full detail. And this story gets deeper.

Sunday, I'm still at my parents place, and I'm beat to hell. The pain is still crippling. The witch hazel pads have helped, but sticking medicine up my ass has been intrusive, especially with a giant growth to wrangle around. I tried to make the best of it and played Terreria and Mount and Blade, good procedural story based games that I could just hang with and quit and start at my own pace, but I just couldn't hang with them for more than fifteen minute bursts. Finally, about two in the morning, I decide to go take a bath and get up. I've been laying face down ass up for three days, taking baths in a couple inches of water and soaking my sore anus like the doctor had told me to.

When I got up, I noticed a big red patch on my bed.

It was gigantic.

I reach back and touch my butt, pull my hand up and see that I'm bleeding from the ass like a stuck pig.

At this moment, I'm terrified, but the doctor told me it would bleed some. I go do the sit down bath thing like the doctor told me, and this hurts uncontrollably, I notice within a second of sitting down red red kroovy pillowing out in the water, and I know I'm going to have to wake my parents up as a grown man and tell them that I'm bleeding out the ass and need rushed to the hospital.

After getting there, they stick me in a hospital room to which I decide, I should probably bleed all over their sheets. I have to stop the bleeding, since they're stupid and don't care, so I stick their bedding up my ass trying to hold in what insides I have left. Four hours later when a doctor shows up, he says I've lost a fair amount of blood but things have stopped bleeding now. He tells me a surgeon will show up and cut off the growth, five hours later she shows up. This is where the nightmare really begins. I will now tell you about how I had masculine pain tears and my legs thrashing about like a wild man, while a two women cut off a thing that was up my ass. They giggled when they came in about hoping I wasn't a bleeder like the last guy they operated on, which really reassured me. I had been given heavy dosses of morphine, which did nothing but make me feel like throwing up. I don't think I can describe the surgery accurately, I told the two broads that I could write a book all about the pain I felt as they did that, but I'll sum it up here in a silly way.

Pain does hurt. Patrick Swayze is a fucking liar.

I was down for three weeks after that. I couldn't do anything at all. I tried podcasting, but I wasn't at full blast like I usually am and I think I only tried the one show. My writing just wasn't happening that month. And as for video games, I could piddle at stuff, but I never felt like I was accomplishing anything. So my only solace was Joe Rogan podcasts. I listened to most every one he had done up to that point and much like Retroforce GO, Horror ETC, or any good podcast it felt like I was hanging out with friends and having a conversation. The pain that I felt, and still feel lingering months later, is indescribable.

It was only about two weeks ago that I began talking about this with any seriousness, when I realized just how much blood I had lost and just how close to deaths door I was. I thought at the time, dying bleeding out the ass would be a funny way to die. People would remember that! They wouldn't, it would be a dumb way to die. If I could pick things to repeat, that wouldn't be on that list. It was scary realizing as I told a guy I work with how close I was to deaths door. I was joking around about people that do that sort of thing, and I started talking about being in the hospital, and now I realize the severity of almost dying.

It isn't until you're bleeding from the ass that you fully understand the value of life. Even a life spent posting dumb things to the interent, watching horror movies, reading comic books, and playing video games is worth saving when you realize what kind of pain is possible. I felt so alone and so scared through that whole experience. I got married about four months later, it just sort of happened. I'd been dating Mrs. Bullseye for years, she said she wanted to get married, so we did it. And here I am now, on her mac book, typing this all out for you guys to read. I'm sure I wrote about this before somewhere and I think I talked about it on Bulltoid, but realizing that I nearly died has shaken me the last two weeks. I almost died, bleeding from the asshole.

That's it.

Today's the first of March, at least it was when I wrote some of this part. I always write a big thing, then erase almost all of it when I finally publish these things. Going to Boston in April, by that I mean this Friday. PAX East is a thing, but I feel really anxious about it.

I'm kind of a jerk, and being around people usually makes me more of a jerk. I want my picture in the robot helmet, I want pictures of me and everybody, I want to be aggressively loud the entire time in in Boston. If I make it home without dying or being arrested, I'll feel like I did something. I might write more about my pre-PAX jitters, I wrote a thing already about how all I want to do is wear the dtoid helmet and take pictures with you jokers, but this has nothing to do with video games I played this month.

As always, this stuff is less for you the reader, more for me and my lapses in memory. Keeping a log of what I'm playing and when is sort of important. -

But hey, let's see what games I played this month!

Space Marine - Steam

I got super into Warhammer 40,000 last year. I spend six hours at a comic book store watching dudes play a single tabletop game, and I was in. I was invested in watching two guys play a tabletop war game, with units I didn't understand and mechanics I barely grasped. I have a set of half painted Orks and Ultramarines that I bought, I'm about two hundred bucks into Warhammer counting this game and all the other stuff relic put out.

Fuck, I have a lot of time wrapped up in the silliest universe of content.



I mean that. Compared to Dragonbaall Z or Ninja Turtles, both universes had me hooked in my youth desperate for information to decipher them, but I was a kid. Spending hundreds of dollars on miniatures seems crazy, speeding hours painting them is madness. I did just that, I spent hours reading books and listening to Internet radio shows where dudes talked about all this bullshit, and I loved it.

Then video game busy season hit, I played every major release that came out, missing maybe two games. I haven't looked or thought about all this bullshit for the last six months.

And now I look at steam and accidentally installed Space Marine again. I said to hell with it, I'll play it, forgetting that my saves were lost in a computer switch. So I tried put multiplayer!

This game has a horde mode, which was patched in after release. It plays like any other horse mode, survive twenty waves of bad guys and you win. Bad guys get stronger each round, and there are optional challenges you get randomly to give you extra points to level up your guy. Unfortunately, I lost all the points from this round I played. The game glitched up and the two guys I played with said we couldn't just play again with each other, all games are matchmaking. Weird right?

I wasn't discouraged, despite killing the shit out of bad guys and losing tons of points, I wanted more. Much like Brad Nicholson said of the game, this multiplayer is fun to play. It is a blast to do, and it looks to have lots of customization options.

But after a couple versus rounds of capture the flag, I hadn't gained a single level. I felt dumb and like this would take a million hours to get anything cool. You can copy the equipment of dudes who kill you do you can use better weapons, but I just felt so boned and out classed by guys who played this and only this for six months.

I will say, the graphics in this game are astounding. Love the look of everything, the feel or this game is a little loose and the sound stutters on my computer, but blasting dudes is fun. I like it. I might play more, I might not.

Pokemon Diamond

Got eight by badges, and I'm done. I think Pokemon and me are done. I love the style, but the intensity of competition with their min maxed nightmares are something I don't want to be a part of. The game just on its own, I feel is imbalances. I used to like being a badass in a game and out thinking it, now that makes me feel like the game should try harder to beat me. I don't know. I loved this game last month, now I don't feel like talking about it.

Mass Effect 3

Picked this up on Sunday, the 19th in Charleston. Bought it because I know it will be spoiled for me if I don't. I loved the first game, was softer on the second, and with part three, I'm in.

I know some people who don't like this franchise. The cool parts of this game is just talking, so I can understand why some people wouldn't like it. Having influence in situations is what takes this game up a notch for me, I can be a space dick and save the universe? I'm in.

What really brings it all home is how relationships have paid off in this one. My allegiances with Wrex in particular was pretty satisfying, I had a space hug with a giant monster who respects me and said that his people would remember me standing up for them for generations to come. Every level I go into has crazy vistas off in the background of shattered planets and wild battle scenes where these dudes are throwing everything they have at giant space robot spiders that shoot the biggest god damn lasers possible. Every level has shit like that, just off in the background.

Plot wise, you'll be lost if this is your first Mass Effect. They said you wouldn't be, but this is Electronic Arts, who are have been known as cunts for generations.



Mass 2, I didn't do great. I talked about it on Bulltoid, we did one all about mass effect where I couldn't recall who lived and died, because I redid the final mission. Garrus was eaten by space bats out of nowhere while opening a door, so I did that again and it happened to Jack. I said, "too bad for her" and just kept going, I think. Samara, Legion, and the batarian guy all died I'm pretty sure. I was certain Morden bit it too, but he showed up and was awesome. Seeing all these dudes back again and having their stories have played on without me is pretty cool. Like Grunt, who is now a badass dude, I feel pretty good about where characters ended up. My save said six dudes were alive, I wish I knew which six. Garrus, Morden, Miranda, and Grunt have all shown up, but I'm missing some dudes.

Right when the game starts, if I was a reviewer, this game loses a point for what has to be the shittiest bug of all time. I'm playing on a profile fro before I was randombullseye, so no Xbox live or any multiplayer for this profile, and part of that is so my dude can look like the guy I made. Well, there is a glitch where you can't import a face from two from one to three. Something I the way mass effect made faces needed to be changed in the second game for the third to be able to use that face.

So what do I do, I don't have two on anything but Steam. I rented it for the 360, fuck I thought. I pop in the first game, load a save, and take a picture on my phone of my guy. I remake him, without his scar, and now I'm me again, just slightly fatter faced. If I was playing this game as a guy who didn't look like the mutant I made five years ago, the game wouldn't feel right. Especially having everything from one and two matter here in part three. I've had about fifteen hours of a great game, I look foreword to finishing I and writing my thoughts in the ending.

Right now, I just teamed up with the krogan and turians, and I've hired mercenaries. This has pushed my war number passed the minimum, but I want to get try and find the quandaries dudes.

One last thought, krogan women wearing space burkas is pretty hilarious. As a swan song for Bioware, mass effect three is a lot of great concepts added in, and I think these concepts included in the actual release were enough for me. I feel bad I never met the Jamaican prothean, but who cares.

Really wish I had bought a pc copy, I have both in there but haven't played either on that yet. My old save on an old profile still works, but multiplayer never happened for me. My galactic readiness bullshit was me doing as much as I could, until finally I just said fuck these side quests and finished the second half of the game out.

I beat it.



The last choice, I picked the middle individual path.

Shin Megami Tensei already did the chaos, law, individual ending thing based on choice, but it doesn't let you pick at the end. And doesn't tell you just before what those three endings are, which I found silly.

Am I crazy, or in the final battle did everybody forget where to shoot the bad guys?

I might write a big thing about this later.

The game worked for me. I loved it.

Darksiders

Started and quit before the tutorial ended.


This game and me have had a weird relationship. That demo I didn't like, and now this. If I get gamefly back, I'll rent it and part two and check them out. My computer was having trouble running this, more so than Space Marine which stuttered but not like Darksiders.

Baldurs Gate

Several more hours wasted trying to get the super mods to work. I hate myself. But I actually managed to play it, with magnify on my windows computer on my TV. The D&D battle system ensured that several of my characters were killed nearly as soon as I met them, and that setting up things for them to do without me telling them to attack wasn't exactly obvious. It was after maybe thirty minutes of using four dudes in battles when I walked up to this other town and was playing with their gear that I noticed I could set them to actually do things on their own. Thaco, the magic system, and all the other AD&D rules and D&D 2 rules are incomprehensible, by the way. I look foreword to trying the remake, hopefully I can play that full screen without using weird accessibility tools.

Dungeons of Dredmor

That spirit I have to conquer games that are difficult pulled me back in again.

Binary Domain demo

The yakuza team have their own version of mass effect in a cyber punk terminator game? I'm in. When I get some extra cash, I might buy this and support SEGA and my yakuza guys. Feels like they learned from Gears of War and Mass Effect, if Japan has a set of developers that know what their doing, the yakuza team does.

Mass Effect 3 multiplayer demo

I did this to check it out, I did it on PS3. It plays like horde from Gears of War with evolving objectives like Killzone. Not much else to say, it worked, it has ultimate team mode card bullshit, thanks Electronic Arts!

[size=20]Mine craft

I like digging for hours.

Streets of Rage Remake

I know you guys forgot about SEGA, taking down a fan game that took a guy years to make, but I didn't. This game, a fan game, took years to make. And SEGA busted it off the Internet scientologist style! But unlike them, I guess SEGA really didn't give a shit because this thing is super easy to find. And I found a save that unlocked everybody from the start.

So now I have a eat em up, with branching paths, with lots of characters, and the whole thing looks amazing. When I played as the effeminate biker teamed with the kangaroo, this is what video games should be. Even if it ran slow, this was amazing. If I play again I'll adjust some things and make it work better, but god dammit, playing with this biker was the best.

It wasn't just that he was this leather queen character, all his attacks reflect that. He is not your typical beat em up character, which was great. I love playing beat em ups with unique dudes and I've not played with a more unique character, unless it was from like Battle Circuit. Play Streets of Rage Remake, it is incredible.

Far Cry 2 - Xbox 360

We all remember Reverend Anthony talking about Far Cry 2. I went as far to call this a waste of time, which got Anthony to reply back with one of my favorite twitter messages I've ever received.

(it would be stupid of me if I passed this by and didn't post the message.)

But I find myself staying somewhere for a couple days, I've got my other other 360 here, I have a hard drive on it that I don't remember getting but ok cool. I busted out far cry 2 and now I see everything Anthony was talking about. I'm in. The giant world that forces you to play smart is a delight to play in, especially if you roll with the thought that you only have one life to live, like a rouge like.

So my adventures had me play a Chinese guy and blast around Africa helping out this warlord guy, somehow I got a buddy of mine killed, which sucked. He saved me like three times, and on the fourth time, I guess he stood there with his shotgun shooting nothing until someone showed up to kill him. That ass.

Once that hit me that I had one life to live and that if I die, I die; this game got intense quick.

So I start rolling as a sniper keeping my distance for dudes. Blasting through checkpoints suddenly gets tougher and I ran out of malaria medicine. I take a mission from the gun dudes, thinking I'll get new guns, but first I stopped in town to talk to a priest man who said talk to him for medicine. This joker gave me a mission to go talk to a general store. So now I'm dying of malaria, I have one life to live. Shit got real.



I managed to get to the general store, being chased by checkpoint buttholes the whole way. I took them out, got my medicine and when I left I started down to the gun mission to kill some dudes. I think someone's shooting in my direction, I get on my trucks gun blasting them, but i cant hit them. They ran away from my gun? so I get out to blast at them, but another truck rushes beside me that I didn't see, killing me instantly.

I died the shittiest death ever.

I might play this again next month, see if I can get any farther. I might start a new game or play from my save from a million miles away, I don't know. I liked it.

About five hours? Maybe six? I spent a lot of time with this. I feel like I lose time when I do, just driving Africa shooting.

Super Street Fighter 4 - 360

So like I said, I was at my parents place two days in a row, I moved I with them for a bit and when I got married I left a ton of shit here, stuff I didn't even know I left. All those PS2 games I bought, all sorts of weird action figures, I've had all my classic stuff over here, but today Ive been playing on the Xbox I left for my nephews to play on and eating slim jims. So I start going through cabinets packing all my DVDs and hitting out all these ps2 games and even some 360 stuff I left behind. Including Super Street Fighter 4, which was on Street Fighter 4s box. I guess I took that to my new place.

Street Fighter 2 was never my game back in the day. I liked it, but I didn't love it or have the connection with it like I did Mortal Kombat. I got into it pretty heavy when the HD remix came out, and I bought two of the three versions of four that came out. The online was so solid, and my zangief is fierce. So much so I want go to EVO and play Zangief.

I'd get trashed from not using the force attacks or understanding EX moves, but I'd compete.

I managed to do decently against some very good players. I actually got into Street Fighter the way guys get into pool, where you play and play and seven hours in you get your stroke and then your playing a game for real. I had days with both of these games where I would practice at it, fighting random online dudes every day and just trying I perfect my style with this game. Me and a another Destructoid user had times where we would play each other for two hours, using just the same two characters. Fei Long vs Zangief over and over, and then we would start at opposite ends of the select screen and just play with all these dudes. I'm good with grapplers, my friend was better with dudes like Ryu or Ken, but was amazing with Fei Long. I still love the time I poured into this game, but god damn Ive played so much of it and stink. If I'm decent with Zangief, I blow with every other character.

Today I felt like playing as Dee Jay, I could play with him before, but today playing just the computer I got smoked. I set it to hardest and got assaulted. So I switched to Zangief and blitzed like five rounds, but I got too cocky and got beat by Cammy. I'm always beat by Cammy. Fuck Cammy. I'm always angry at this, stupid Zangief can't dodge her shit. If I play, he can't dodge her screw attack bullshit. So yeah, fuck Cammy.

I quit after that one loss.



Feels like fighting games and me might be done. I loved Mortal Kombat, but after the story mode and some challenge tower, I was done. Online never works on the PS3 I tried to do their patch bullshit and it still wouldn't work right, so fuck that. Marvel vs Capcom 3is too fast for me, I might pick up Ultimate but god damn is it fast. Too many variables for me to really keep track of.

If I had a group of dudes to play fighting games with all the time, I would be in heaven. Especially of they were all about the same as me.

[size=20]Borderlands - Steam

Fuck, I can't skip any of those story bullshit at all. I really don't need any reason or motivations to go shoot bad guys, even if they're good and I'm bad, not necessary. If I have a gun and can shoot, I will figure it out. A half hour or longer for a tutorial is not necessary.

Considering that I only care about Borderlands because Reverend Anthony's writing something for the sequel, I probably should pay attention to this stuff.

I got this months after borderlands was new, steam sales are cool. This game, not so much. I love the idea, but the limitations imposed on me and multiplayer is not an option for me. I joined Destructoid to make friends to play games with, but that never happens anymore. Are you going to want to play this at seven in the morning? And what if we aren't in the same time zone?

And if we do manage to get online at the same time, we have to use god damned gamespy. Really? Gamespy still exists and is a thing? Gross!

This tutorial bullshit, I'm so angry about it. The slow way the HUD loads so dummies who never played a game before can get the idea is crazy to me. If you can't figure out health systems and how your ammo works, somewhere somebody fucked up. If I could get in on Goldeneye and figure that system out, this is easy.

The look of this game was better as a military shooter, I was more interested in the idea then. I know, the game looks great with this look, but I liked the other one more.

I find claptrap annoying.



But, the cel shaded look makes this stand out against things like Prey or Quake 4, or The Darkness. All games from four years ago, but still. The recent Rage, really wanted to do what this and Fallout does, but it just couldn't compete. If you compare Borderlands to Fallout 3 or New Vegas, even with bugs, I'd rather play one of those.

But the charm of loot collection is very much front and center In Borderlands. Equipment with different colors for showing which is better, right out of the massive multiplayer bullshit. It makes it easy to tell which items are better, but it makes me feel stupid somehow. I get caught up reading each little plus or minus and really trying to pick the right thing, then just say fuck it and pick something. I rolled with a machine pistol that had a fire element most of my time with borderlands. Just like Dead Island, I find that I can coast with one weapon or a good thirty minutes or hour, then find one that Julie's everything else out and I'll use it. Which makes me feel dumb, but I do it anyway.

Fallout New Vegas - Steam

I just wrote that I would rather play New Vegas, knowing full well that I actually did that. I decided to play it, and try more melee combat out. That might be fun. Then I recalled every check in the game is a speech or science check, so my other points went towards those. Knowing that I can get cyborgs implants to better perception and all the hats and glasses can buff that up.

So after four hours not playing the DLC, I just wander around being a dick killing things. I got Boone, because he will shoot anything that moves and the two of us are killing everything! I love it!

The DLC at the movies told me I needed to be level 15, so I started my quest to dick around! Hooray!

I played for maybe twenty hours? I took out ceases legion with Boone and Ede, which was cool. I feel like I'm just walking around killing things.

Onimusha 2 - Playstation 2

Fuck yes I played the shit out of this game. A good two hours of me kicking ass as a samurai motherfucker. I love it!



Decided to restart this thing, why not! I love it. Great gameplay, no analog control is jarring at first but using the dpad feels great. I love the way I can block and it blocks anything, that always makes using block feel like I should use it.

I tried looking into the partner system, and how giving presents works, but I just confused myself more. I'm just going to give dudes stuff when I see them and if they help me they help me, fuck it.

Contra Shattered Soldier

I think Shin Contra is a cooler name, but whatever. I want to write about contra soon. I wrote about Mega Man and Castlevania, now I need to do stuff like Contra. All of the Contras are so fun, even the bad ones, I want to write about them next month. Yell at me if I don't.

Super Nintendo Games Surprise!

Friday, the last Friday of the month, I'm picking out some games for my vacation next week. I'm going to PAX but I won't be there at the thing the entire time, so I'm picking stuff out I want to play but haven't.

Rickman & Forte

Mega Man 8 jr, but actually great unlike 8 - and without any annoying cutscenes. I feel like I need to write about this and Mega Man 8, been years since I've played either. A cool feature in this is picking between Mega Man and Bass and the two play differently, I love that. Bass has a machine gun that he can aim, he comes back again with those same mechanics in mega man eleven, nearly fifteen years after this Japan only game. And I still like playing as him, at least as an option.

Secret of Mana

I played this the most, I had a save game where my name was Snake and I was level three. I didn't know how deep I was, I restarted only to find out I was in the first town. Oh well.

I played up to the point I quit ten years ago, the water temple. I'm anxiously writing this from work, as I plan to go back and hit this game running today.

Earthbound

I was in the first house in the first town, level three. I may or may not restart this, but I really am not feeling Earthbound. I never have.

Dragon Quest 3

I got it in English and looking badass. So excited to put a hundred hours into this sucker. I wrote about playing the regular Nintendo game, and how I want to play this version. I almost played the gamboy color one, but I really like this. Especially on my big screen tv. Soon as I'm done writing this, I want to play more of it.

Include picture from iPod here, or yell at me because I passed by this bad forgot to do that.

Seiken Densetsu 3!

I've started this a couple times too. I never made it out of the intro where I picked a ninja twice, this time I was a warrior and got into some sort of battle at the start. It was kind of cool, I think this does the live a live or romancing saga thing. Where everybody has their own story, I'm in. This is Secret of Mana 2, which is really secret of mana 3, but I think it crosses over with Saga and Final Fantasy Legend, and I hate that. I hate that I am now standing at work typing and I can't recall what this fucking thing was a part of, even tangentially. I know for sure it is very much Secret of Mana like, which is a good thing.

Thought about looking it up today what series this is actually from, but I don't care. It doesn't bother me, I want to get this done and be out of here, sorry! I did put the correct title in, so that is a thing I did.

Games I didn't play!

YakuzaDead Souls

Ive called this Yakuza with zombies since it was announced. So excited for this thing. I'm going to pick it up new, I really hope it doesn't suck. I ended up buying mass effect 3 instead this month, I feel ashamed of myself. I really want to buy this, maybe when I get back from Boston? I want it and a couple days off work just to play it.

Okami!

It was in the red ps2 cd case, which I left at my old place before I got married and moved to this place. Of course one day I'm flipping through games trying to find it, and realize I don't have it or Gradius V with me. I get so pissed when I want to play something that I know I have, and I left it somewhere where I'm not.

__

Recording some new podcasts this week, haven't done any in months. I want to start some new projects, Bulltoid is over and RandomHorror sort of stopped too. Big things in the works! Big big big!

Also I'm going to PAX. If you want to meet me and hang out, randombullseye@gmail.com is an easy way to contact me privately and arrange something.

That's it!

I tried not to spoil stuff, and just allude to things, but fuck it. If you really want to play the game, play it. I’m considering giving my 360 copy away, so ask nicely, maybe I’ll let you have it.



Last night, I managed to finish what was about a hundred hours of video gaming. Between the three games that all link together, I’m invested. I’m in. I want to see this thing through and finish it out. Good or bad, I don’t give a fuck, I just want things to wrap up. Mass Effect has always been a series that took the core of Bioware’s tried and tested three dialog choices. Their usual light side and dark side mechanics and put those into a standard third person shooter. Say what you will, the shooting is on par with The Club, Stranglehold, or any other third person shooter still using bullet time, I was a soldier in all three games, I used bullet time pretty continuously in all these games. What made Mass Effect work, is that it adds the Bioware mechanics from Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. To argue that the system isn’t nearly identical, is to prove to me you’re fucking idiot, this is the same bullshit they’ve done, and they do this bullshit in such a way that I’m in every time.

They added in a great deal of characters, races, and the histories of these people. I love that. Talking to your team on your ship while you’re between shooting missions is great. Especially when a giant lizard monster whose tough as nails is telling you the story of how his people had been all but completely sterilized by a race of scientist frog aliens, and you can romance a blue chick, like classic Star Trek, but instead of it being completely out of nowhere, it sort of makes sense that you would bone la blue girl right before the big suicide mission. All the while, a big bad alien robot is cruising around and you’re the only guy bad enough to stop him.

This formula was repeated in two, with the stakes being raised and elaborated on. There you work on assembling a bigger team, all of whom now have the possibility of dying in this second game. Also, depending on your choices in the first game, those characters you came to know and be friends with, they could die based on what you did or didn’t do.

That lizard man who growls your name after speaking with him changed his character arc from this marauding space bandit, to the only guy with enough stones to rally his people. Seeing him as a leader, as the leader of his people was sort of a big thing. The way he was now, after several years had passed doing this, it was amazing. And in Mass Effect 3, he’s still very much the leader of his people, and I got to help him, his people, and managed to come out as some sort of hero to his people. That was fucking awesome, and it wasn’t the A story. It was at best, the C story that played throughout this entire adventure, and I was into it.

I played these games, as a dick.



I was a renegade, with minimal light side choices in all three games. I punched out female reporters, even the one who was once on Podtoid. I kicked guys out of glass windows, and occasionally I just left aliens who tried to jive talk to me to die. Any chance to do the dickhead thing, I did and I laughed my head off every time I said or did anything cold blooded. I’m just that kind of guy I guess. Occasionally, I did the right thing and saved characters, and made what seemed like the right thing to do at the time to me.

Regardless of these douche choices, your character is still the hero at the end of every story. You come out smelling like a rose, even if you didn’t save all the aliens or do exactly the right thing in the right place, you’re the hero of the galaxy. The whole crutch of the first two games is about these giant robots, one of which you manage to whoop in the first game, while the second focused on bad guys who worked for them, I think. The ending showed that there were tons of these big robots, and that you were fucked. I’m pretty sure the ending text said “next time on Mass Effect: you’re so fucked!”

Luckily, the third game ties in all the choices and relationships you’ve established in the first two games, into this new mechanic where you get assigned points based on which war assets you gain. Say you saved a frog alien in the first game, him and his squad are twenty five points. This score is automatically halved, unless you play the multiplayer horde/killzone bullshit. No thanks Electronic Arts, this is a single player RPG. There had to be at least one guy who stood up in the office and raised his arm, implying with his gesture, “what the fuck!?” But there wasn’t. This game shipped with multiplayer, that was tied into the singleplayer, that I wasn’t going to play. I’m not paying another sixty dollars to play online, type this stupid code in, and then play horde mode with evolving objectives, like Killzone 2 did, and have that be the reason why I save the galaxy.

This led me to doing sidequests, trying desperately to do as many of the boring fetch quests I always ignore in RPGS. Remember those boards in Dragon Age: Origins with all the quests? I never used those, once. Didn’t need them. I don’t like going and getting bullshit for people and bringing it back to them, that was my job when I worked construction, I don’t need a virtual version of me getting coffee and hammers for fuck’s sake. Here, I felt like I needed every ounce of anything for this ending. I wanted to save the galaxy with a space armada that could take on god, the devil, and batman all teamed up with steroids, crack, and a couple of really pissed off hillbillies. My space army was going to win this thing, and god dammit, we were gonna win it good!

This high score I was building, didn’t factor into anything. I never saw each specific fleet that I brought many items from scanned planets to. I never saw the buttholes I teamed up with shouting as their space ship went into battle. I got a really generic, hobbled together mess of a cutscene where it was the basics. “Humans, reporting in. Other aliens here. And these other aliens.” Then an awkward cut to another set of aliens, and their canned appearance. That was it. That was all I got to see of any of that. It seemed so binary in its presentation, that I actively felt insulted.



I kept yelling at the TV while this final battle raged, “why aren’t you fucking idiots shooting their weak spots? I showed you fuck faces how to do this, Metal Gear Solid 2 style, god dammit!” Kinect was incapable of knowing what this meant, proving that our video games have yet to have sentience outside of a Dreamcast thinking. I don’t have a kinect, but a friend of mine did. Well, no, no he didn’t. But you could imagine if he did, and I was yelling at it, it would have no idea what I was talking about. These guys entire everything depends on winning this fight, yet they won’t shoot the bad guys in their weakspot? The big glowing red weak spot, that any idiot would know to shoot at. I’m pissed about that.

There was no final boss encounter, which surprised me.

After fighting a rouge spectre agent and the terminator, I expected to fight some wild big boss battle. Instead, I fought a guy, about an hour before everything ends that I guess was supposed to be the final boss? There is an encounter, where you talk through a situation, but at some point I want the actual game part to matter for something. So after that, I limp my way to a choice between chaos, order, and individuality? I mean that. I actually limped my way to a choice. Shin Megami Tensei does a better job at letting the decisions you make impact your ending using the same three ideals, but here I’m presented with what each of these endings will be, and I limped to the individualist ending, which is where I usually fall in my thoughts.

The moral black and white of the world is always apparent to me, even if it isn’t actually there. I’ve burned a lot of bridges, but I’ve let them burn for what I thought were the right reasons. If the world is in gray or not is irrelevant to me, I see it in black and white, as do game developers despite telling us bullshit the NCR and Ceaser's Legion are neither good nor evil. In the course of playing Mass Effect 3, a major character committed suicide directly because of a choice I made. Despite my attempts to save them, I failed. As the final goodbye conversations are happening, I began trying to write the feeling it gave me, that as part of this story with my cypher, I had made friends with these characters and that this is it. This is the final battle.

Like everybody else, I was confused as to who lived in my ending. It certainly seemed like the two characters that went with me, had to be dead. That there was no way possible that they could have lived, and how the hell did this character who showed up in the main end, get back on the space ship? I understood the ending completely. Nothing I haven’t seen in films like The Matrix before, just presented with a happy conclusion here. The whole argument the final talk has bothers me, they made a thing that would kill organics so that things built by organics wouldn’t kill them. This is bullshit, as evidenced by this Xzhibit macro.



To nit pick this ending more, requires information I don’t have. GameFront suggested that something in the DLC for Mass Effect 2, contradicts all three endings. It was explained as being from The Arrival, which I didn’t play. In fact, I didn’t play any of the DLC and had a fantastic time with this game. If I play Mass Effect 3 again, I might buy the downloadable add-in character from the start. Same with Mass Effect 2, if I do that again, I want Liara on my team. My Sheppered romanced her, as I would, simply because of William Shatner blue chick bucket list talk. If I met a female alien, of course I’d try to fuck her. Especially if she was blue.

Bad endings are a thing I wrote about before, about how the ending I get is the ending I consider “cannon.” Even if it is the worst thing imaginable. Which, I think I got the best ending for Mass Effect 3. At the very least, a better ending. The arguments for light side and dark side are contradicted by the light and dark endings, or so I was told. I don’t think I’ll ever watch those endings, unless I play Mass Effect again with the intention of doing the worst possible light side playthrough, where I just screw the entire galaxy over by being a big soft pussy good guy.

Ultimately, I think that is why I like Mass Effect. Video games typically make me feel like a big pussy. The heroes are often inept, like Samus from Metroid and Aries from God of War, they always lose all their powers in their sequels, never building on anything they learned in previous games. Master Chief and Mario are hardly even characters, they speak, but their look is enough to be what matters more than anything. Maverick Sheppered was a character I made, he looked vaguely Jewish, I imagined him like a badass Israeli commando type. A direct descendant of the holocaust, he’s not one to stand for ethnic cleansing. He’s willing to save the universe by any means necessary, and isn’t afraid of doing that which he considers the most foul himself, if he has to. This backstory, I made up. One race was wiped off the map during my play through.



As I write all this, I’m watching David Lynch’s ending to Twin Peaks.I'm trying to take that ending to my thirty hour commitment in, while contemplating a hundred hour commitment from a video game. Sometimes, I wish the ending I saw for Army of Darkness wasn’t the awesome one where he gets the girl and fights the demon in a shopping mall, but the one where he goes to an apocalyptic future, that the rest of the world got to see instead. Alternate endings and endings matter, if an ending retcons another ending, ok. I’m in, if it is a hilarious retcon, like the dog peeing on Freddy Krueger or when Jason was dug up and had lighting strike him, or even better, Frankesntein falling into a convient basement cave in the windmill and surviving. I love shit like that, comic books are bred on that type of bullshit, and I’m curious to see if the rumored Truth DLC is actually real or not. I have high hopes for what Mass Effect 4, I know they will release something eventually, this is Electronic Arts. Their too stupid to let a franchise lay dormant, unless that franchise is the gold box games, specifically Buck Rodgers on Genesis, which Mass Effect directly pulls ideas from several times. I loved that game for the same reason I love Mass Effect, it was me making my team of dudes and carving my own path through the universe, ultimately trying to save the day.

That is what is is all about right? I was to save the day. I'm the hero, or anti hero, and I'm going to save the day. The choices I was presented with let me do that. Knowing how life goes, I don't know what to tell people that can't take a bummer ending. The problems is logic, I have a problem with, but they happened. Done deal, so who cares. I always like to compare our lives to stories, that people who died that I know, their story ends, and mine keeps going. Endings are important. I knew the ending to The Bonerquest, early on. The best way to write, is to write backwards knowing where things are going and what your ending is then tying everything to that moment. Victory, pain, and redemption are all important ideas for an ending to have, as a tragedy or comedy, every story needs elements of both in their ending. I found the final epilogue after the credits on Mass Effect 3, hilarious. The old man calls the kid "my sweet," and Sheppered is reffered to as "the sheppered," so now you're Jesus? I love it. Things got as dumb as they possibly could, and I love that.

I really thought it would be me either saving the day or destroying everything, but the shades of gray in all three endings blurs that line. I think I saved the day with my ending, and that the other two were not even options to consider. But that's just my opinion.

My final verdict? I liked Mass Effect 3. If I had to review it, I'd cite the known import glitch, the galactic readiness being vague, the reaper chases, and strange graphical and sound glitches being rampant. There are no excuses for these things, they exist. Might lack replay value and their are hard to ignore faults. 7/10

My final thought about the series? I liked it.

I wish it had just been one, long full game with no “optional” downloadable content, like Persona 3.

That’s it.