You better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why


(Christmas noobs)


Only a few days left until a large section of the world’s population celebrates the year’s most special and anticipated event: the arrival of the Christmas-noob.
With this in mind I think it is time to consider creating new accomplishment-medals for all of us serious COD-kids out there. The occasional 4-Piece-Medal got stale already and if we are utterly honest to ourselves we are in dire need of more realistic awards in the yearly Call-of-Duty iteration.
Realistic in terms of actual occurrence in actual gameplay on an everyday basis.

So, Treyarch and Infinity Ward do listen to this! And pay me a lot of money!

Why should a lucky grenade-toss in domination should be rewarded with a chic multikill-medal and the accomplishment of hitting nothing at all due to lag-interference goes totally unmentioned? I think that’s just unfair.

A very important step and breath-taking innovation would be the introduction of mic-medals.
I heard that you cannot not communicate, that seems to be very essential..
Social stuff and communication. You have to implement much more of that.
And social media!



Everybody seems to complain about the abuse of the microphone function in modern FPS-shooters. Instead of complaining, we should probably adapt and introduce some mic-related awards. A crying infant in the background? That deserves a price, I suppose.







Also: user generated content.




In fact, everbody deserves a price for everything. All the time.









(see also: gallery)

When I started posting on Destructoid I used to do some small illustrations, especially Forums-related stuff. In order to illustrate my point or to honor an especially entertaining or inspiring person.
May seem like a waste of time and effort but It just felt so right whenever I did a picture.
I had fun…malicious fun sometimes.
You may know some of these already but I posted them mostly into Forums-threads and other people’s commentary-sections.

I simply want to archive them within my own personal blog-o-sphere as well.
Right or wrong, my country!






Panzadolphin is one of the aforementioned equally entertaining and inspiring persons.
I want to open his skull and crawl inside. Who wouldn’t like to do this?
That name alone, “Panzerdelphin”…makes me think of a deadly device, constructed somewhere in a secret laboratory hidden deep within the Alps’ vast cave-system. A superior weapon to finally win the war.



The same is true for Mr. Zombieplatypus. Exactly the same…
As if this wasn’t enough already, he creates images which steal a part of your soul when you look at them.
(as seen here together with my impression of Herr Usedtabe [also, the same: see above], frolicking at the beach)


two guys one tub





This one I did for a Destructoid contest. I won a laptop-bag but unfortunately failed at reading the conditions of participation.Oh, bitter fate.


Isaac-chan no Wonder Kitchen
Dead Space always felt a little cooking mama to me.


The Pinkie
The Forums’ index-thread made me do this

My regards.

It is time for a stub again:

I did some loosely game-related works several years ago I completely forgot about.


Well, I just rescued them from the depths of my hard-drive.
They feel a little retro to me but I still believe them to be neatly crafted.
A little cramped maybe. And the colours are...
...let's say somewhere between eye candy and eye cancer.
The quality of the fotos sucks a bit I'm afraid - they were taken early in the age of digital photgraphy.


Anyway.
For your enjoyment.








Nosferatu and Balloon Kid…. all about unfulfilled sexual desires (obviously)








Abubu…just…Abubu








EEK! (I am terribly afraid of RL-violence but do I love Street Gangs)







I don’t even know…Fatty Arbuckle in front...some Wizard of Oz...and is that Eichmann over there, stuffed into the Arcade?
It burns in the eye.



Seems to me I mostly watched movies and played games during this period of my life…. What a jolly good period that must have been
.

Thanks for your interest
...Abubu

As always...I cannot decide


Me Moai


"(...) Pieces of me are scattered throughout the cosmos. Eventually, another will become sentient and exact retribution. You will never escape the shadow of fear! (...)"
(Venom)

I distinctly remember playing Nemesis (1985) on my cousin's GameBoy.
The only other game he owned was Othello (1988).
My cousin shot himself some ten years later.
When I started to get into videogames my level of frustration tolerance was significantly lower than it is today. But already back than I knew that I would never ever play virtual Othello, so I had to stick with Nemesis, spiteful enticing Nemesis.
I hated it - even so I simply could not stop. Desperately holding back the bitter tears of almost constant failure I had to recognize my own imperfection. I was not a child anymore
(was this Othello's nemesis?).

I still admire the game for its design and structure. I still admire myself when the game reflects my own self, while i am processing its design and structure.I admire the elegance of my own reflexes and my unlikely survival within a beautiful but nevertheless essentially hostile environment - it is survival of the fittest all over again. I enter a beast-like state.
I am still very pleased with myself whenever I beat the game, my early nemesis named Nemesis.

What always fascinated me the most about the Gradius/Nemesis-Multiverse were the Moais, those giant stone-faces spitting glowing Cheerios at the player, raw human figures representing powerful individuals of the past.
The individual in all its egocentric, megalomaniacal glory.
The Maoi: phallic monoliths with neither consciousness nor conscience, satisfying only the most basic of their needs.
Mere mouths to eat and to shit/shoot alike.

A monolith spitting Cheerios of enlightenment.

That clearly is me.



The Hive


"I am my own opponent? Ha. This will be difficult!" (Guan Yu)

Dynasty warriors 3 (Koei 2001) created first doubts about IGN's interpretational sovereignity
(Fist of the North Star. Ken's Rage made me leave for good eventually and led me into the light that is Destructoid. Nowhere else did this masterpiece recieve a more favourable reception).
Apart from this moment of awakening I like the Dynasty Warriors series because of the overwhelming feeling of omnipotence it is evoking.
Finally i can believe that I am not one of the masses.
Because the masses are asses (L7 1997).
In effect though, the game is all about the masses. The uncountable peons, organized in a kind of collective hive-mind, subjects to authority (the generals), subjects to the Empire
(Hardt/Negri 2000).

That might be me.




Its gonna work because I'm pushin' it right
Super Puzzle Fighter (Capcom 1996)


"It's not whether I win or lose, just as long as I piss you off!"
(Morrigan)

Absolutely nothing is sultrier than a Puzzle Fighter-Gem, swollen to gargantuan proportions and ready to shatter into your opponent's face. (choke on it Devilotte, please do choke).
You apply constant pressure while preparing for this very last and very sweet moment of releasing steam. A not too utterly veiled ambiguity I totally approve of.

Nevertheless, I think that it I'd like to conclude this with a vague, half-baked Space Odyssey analogy now (because: monoliths had been mentioned).

Apart from functioning as a symbol for swollen male genitalia, Puzzle Fighter-Gems obviously represent the postmodernist fragmented indiviual under the influence of information society and the entertainment industry. Multifacetd, colorful and bloated, yet focused and in a state of flow.
A genuine spacechild (or something).

Me me me!





(I am little fascinated by myself right now - all in all this turned out to be a little heavy on the dick-side. What exactly is it the cosmos wants to tell me here?)

There are many great blogs dealing with issues of morals in games in great and learned ways.
...


Personally, I always found sandbox-games to be somewhat unsatisfying.
Perhaps I am just too susceptible to all these colourful pictures promising hitherto unknown freedom. I tend to buy them if the scenario is to my liking. Yet, I am often severly disappointed when I play these games.
Games generally offer choice, choice within a limited framework, the illusion of choice - I am content with that. In sandbox-games or games like Mass Effect (with its abundant pseudo-social network) the question of morals eventually rises it’s ragged head. At which point the game loses me. Morality destroys the illusion of choice.
I don’t want a multiple-choice-test (at the best), I want a fluid, evolving, mutually interdependent relation between individuality (as represented by the avatar) and the ethics of the virtual playground. Because I think that is how morality works. Games only manage to offer a gradual development (being good, medium, super good or a little bad to ultimate evil ).
They promise but don’t deliver, unnerving me.
I am not of the opinion that a game set in a specific time and a specific social context should leave the tracks of its inherent narration, just so that I am able to have my will as a moral being and a gamer. I don’t necessarily want 21st century values in my Red Dead Redemption (they are present of course, in a twisted way).

I just want a little more of the illusion.

A Commander Shepard who does not give a fuck, a silent Barbarian proclaiming a terror regime of love and peace, I would like to know how Niko Bellic would do without violence in the dog-eat-dog-world of Liberty City. Instead of drifting into the world of organized crime, Niko could try it the hard way. And I don’t mean taxi-driver-missions. A full fledged story-line is what I want!

(Also, I ‘ve got this problem…I cannot be the bad guy in my games, as hard as I try)


A good heart these days is heart to find. A good heart!


(That’s why I like the Way of the Samurai-franchise, despite its obvious faults. With it’s possibility of multiple play-throughs and intersecting story-lines it at least recognizes the player as sentient and moral entity, as well as a samurai assassin with giant cat paws.)


Let me sum this up:
I want my Niko Bellic Due South.

I had some strange and metaphysical dreams.
I don't have the time nor the motivation to make an in-depht-Freudian-dream-interpretation right now, so i just share some visual output triggered off by my recent nightmarish experiences





There could be some kind of connection to my intensive engagement with Dead Or Alive 5 during the last few days. I suppose so.


Also, feet:






BTW:
Did somebody else here ever have videogame-related dreams?
I shudder when I think of Doom's pink pig-foes, who haunted me for years...