Games played this month: January 2012

Remember when I wrote every week what I was playing? Now I'm doing that every month.



I've a confession to make to you people. Anyone wondering why Bonerquest isn't out yet? The novel version I started writing last year. I can tell you why. I work like all the time, at night. I'm a night man. Even typing this stealing company time, I'm sitting on the toilet at work wearing a three wolf moon shirt laughing.



Work isn't the reason I'm not doing work, video games are. I play a lot of stupid video games, here is what I've done in just January! I missed a bunch of dumb stuff I played for twenty minutes like F-Zero, I played the original F-zero and laughed about how basic it was and how mind blowing all the mode-7 was back when it was new.

-- Dragon Quest 8

I hate not calling it Dragon Warrior, but I'm set in my ways.

This game is better than so many games I've played. The amount of customization for your four person party assures that if you played it, you might do things totally differently. I like using boomerangs, but maybe you wouldn't lean toward that and have your main dude use spears? You can specialize the magic girl to use swords, or do like me and take her hard down the magic route. Just all magic, all the time.



When I quit today, I just made it to the dark world. Most of the later Dragon Warriors have a dark world as a final area. If I'm not within five hours of the final boss, surely I'm within ten? This weekend could be it for me and Dragon Warrior 8.

I took the worst picture of m DQ figures, somehow when I moved, I lost the staff from the hero from five. It isn't like that bothers me to much. I'll just buy another one and set it in the mantle.

The extra dungeon stuff from Five is starting to call out to me. I've decided that I want to do all the post game super bosses for eight. I like it enough that I may roll straight into that from here.

-- Gears of War 3



Everyone said this closes the series. I don't think so. It resolves the fight with the locust, but the characters I like are still around. The further adventures of these burly men will happen eventually, I assure you.

Run. Hide. Shoot. Big dudes with salty language. I laughed at all the melodrama of the story, one moment features the song from Donnie Darko like the old Gears commercial, but overall this was more of the same.

Ice T is in this game for no reason and I loved it.

I played with the multiplayer just a tiny bit. I actually bought xbox live to play online games again, but I really just don't like that stuff anymore. I don't know anybody online, even you buttholes never are online when I am, and actually getting a group of friends to play is troublesome.

--Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne

I will finish this game!



But not anytime soon!

I find that as I get a sense of where to go, I end up as lost as can be. I made it out of a dungeon I was lost in, then just got as lost as could be wandering the world looking for where to go next. A couple new demons fused up and a couple level ups for my main guy and I feel like I've made no progress at all.

The entire time I played I was scrambling through gameFAQs trying desperately to decipher this god damn game. I bumbled my way through that dungeon I was stuck in without the guide then I got lost in a side dungeon for the rest of my time with the game. Beelzebub is waiting for me at the bottom, as is Dante from Devil May Cry.



It's been two years on and off, I'm still struggling with this sucker.

-- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4

I beat it and got the true ending! I was so sour on it, as the first ending I got was such a downer I can't get it out of my head. This true ending feels like an alternate reality, where the exact same shit happens are you ready for the spoiler?

Main character just leaves on a train as everybody days goodbye.



This true ending was a bit interesting, as it sort of answered what the origin of the mystery was, but I was such a badass at the end I bear their super boss without too much trouble. First try, right down to the wire, I had lost my three other party members and there my main guy, random bullseye, was with just a sliver of life. I manage to whoop the final final boss, and that's it.

You know how I said Persona 3 was a must play with an ending that left me feeling like I had accomplished the impossible? Not so much in Persona 4. Closure is there, and the ending is upbeat, even the "bad" ending I got wasn't a total downer, but I'm still not as into it.

However, everything leading to the end, less moments where I had to wander a town looking for a specific character to talk to, Persona 4 was excellent. The characters all felt like my friends by the end of the game, the bad guys were really bad and creepy, and parts of the game felt challenging which I'm always appreciative of. The main plot with the murder mystery was a great choice to differentiate from the apocalyptic story from other Shin Megami Tensei games. Great game was great, I'm almost sad to say goodbye to this world I spent a hundred hours in.

I'm anxious for 5. I'm betting Japan gets it this year, next year America will.

-- Saints Row The Third

I loved moments of this game. It was so silly and wild, that no game would dare sink to the levels this game does.

However, the storyline does nothing to keep me interested. They've taken out the usual drive somewhere pick someone up or shoot some guy missions, for just not having missions. They have missions, but their almost all the many activities from previous games, what little new there was is hilarious. Deckere Die and the Murderbowl were great levels, but they were over so fast I felt let down. All the humor is as filthy and potty like as possible, which I enjoy immensely.



Zombies just show up and take over a sectio of the city at one point, getting the late game weapons from other video games is great, and leveling yourself up is wonderful.

But they limited the customization drastically from two. I feel like this game is in many ways a step backward. I love the tone and atmosphere, but the takes itself too serious story from the first Saints Row seems like a distant memory.

I'm disappointed, but I got to play as a toilet with a mega buster.

I don't know if that means this game was amazing or if it was a lackluster follow up to an amazing game. I enjoyed it, but I'm bothered by so much of it! [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_TttT5t4TUI'm so torn![/url]

You're tearing me apart Lisa!

-- Orcs Must Die

My wife bought this during the tale end of the steam sale, which I'm doubtful she will ever play. Just like everybody who buys things during a steam sale, nobody bothers to play all these damn games except for the most fanatic maniacal video game enthusiasts.

So I played and beat Orcs Must Die, bought and played all the DLC. I really want people to play this game.



Tower defense is usually a dumb genre relegated to flash games or used in very basic ways, not so much here in this game. You build Tecmos Deception like traps to flip and push and burn Orcs. Pretty much the entire game is building traps, building archers & knights, and trying to help them out with your crossbow. This game is just a blast to play, I got it for less then ten dollars and played it for two days straight, I like it.

-- Portal 2

Everybody loves portal! I like portal. I like Valve. I'm not in love with them like a lot of gaming enthusiasts. I just like their stuff in short bursts, if I sit down with a game of theirs for a few hours or loses me. Left 4 Dead, Half Life, and even Half Life 2 all lost me completely after just a couple hours.

So I got a couple hours into Portal 2.

I got to meet Wheatly and GladOs and solve some portal puzzles. I hate the load times, they're as frequent, maybe more so than the first Red Faction. I hate that. This is the future and I keep hitting loads. They might be hidden with elevators, but that still bothers me.

Otherwise, another Valve game Valving it up. Wife got this one on the steam sale, she hasn't played it or the first Portal she bought years ago.

-- Bastion

Hey steam sale, quit having my wife buy games from you. Even if they are incredibly good games that I totally didn't expect to be good. I like Bastion. It is interesting and the gameplay is this weird mix of Diablo with this bright colored story based game.

Bastion is pretty cool.



And my wife actually played it. I'm curious if my game save was deleted by her or not?

-- Mega Man X2

So I was or still am developing a retro gaming focused podcast, people like Mega Man X a bunch do for our first pilot show I thought covering the nearly perfect Mega Man X would be a thing to do, another guy who since left the project suggested we do all the X games and I got through X2 finding myself loving it, but still feeling lukewarm. I started X3 but I just don't love it as much either. It isn't that I hate either sequel, but Mega Man X brings the heat in terms of design, music, scope, and genuinely pushing the Mega Man franchise foreword creating its own sub universe instantly. X2 and X3 just give more of that, which isn't a bad thing, these are definitely top one hundred games of all time material, but Mega Man X is in the top twenty for me on my own persona best of all time.

I find that I like the NES Mega Man games better, maybe not all of them were winners, specifically four was a bit stinky, but I still love the series. The fact that two games in that franchise were made in the old style has to say something to the enduring legacy of this games.

But dammit, I found myself having a ball with X2.

-- Final Fantasy 3

Since the Super Nintendo was hooked up, why not waste more time in the world of ruin? Eventually I will make my way to the end of the game, I just got Setzer back, I like him now. I felt like he just joined up with me, just for the hell of it before the world ended, but the stuff I just finished showing the origins of this specific airship were using and how his attitude was formed from his past traumas really made me like him.

I basically was at the boss of a dungeon, swapped some equipment around, and beat the boss after a couple tries. I feel under leveled and lost, a very bad combination for an RPG. Our airship let me chase a bird to a town where I got lost and quit, trying to find another party member.

-- Dustforce

Wife bought this, I didn't like it. Felt like Super Meat Boy, but it demands you play in a certain way. I hate time limits and I'm not adverse to clones of games, especially when they feel different like this to meat boy.



I didn't hate it, but I don't want to play it again. Wife had some trouble setting he buttons on the Xbox controller for the game, I have a PC hooked up as a game console, do I got to help make the buttons feel right. I beat like a level.

-- X-Men Arcade

I felt like playing some online now that I have Xbox live again, but I'm shooters out. I'm done with military shooting and that same old thing. I like Gears for the co-op and stupid weapons like a chainsaw gun and a digger gun that shoots rockets underground. I'm a beat em up man, and this is the second time I've touched it since I bought it over a year ago. I feel like writing about the experience playing online with five strangers.

But that isn't this article.

-- Watchmen movie game end is neigh and something else



When I'm throwing images into this thing, I feel bad that I ever thought about playing this shitty game.

I played a full level of the first game, then played a little bit of the second half of this games fest level. This was two separate games on the same disc, and boy is it just awful.

I would say it is Jericho awful. Especially for having such disregard for the source material and making a clunky game that looks dull and wet. Everything looks oil covered or something slippery.

This rail was awesome for throwing dudes off. Like eight guys were judged that day.


This thing got long fast. I didn' bring up watchmen a crummy movie game I rented, thinking it wouldn't be crummy as a rental. It has shades of the two Batman games Warner Brothers put out, but the Watchmen game is unfavorably comparable to those systems. I really wanted to beat up dudes as Rorshach, but this game was so bad they fucked that up too. He was a god damn boxer. Didn't anybody working on this actually read the book?

That would have required some actual effort rather than a couple pictures and a fact sheet. I always want movie games to be like The Warriors, this is no Warriors by fucking far.

I can't recommend never playing this r thinking it would be anything more than garbage to anyone. I feel like I wasted a gamefly rental on this piece of shit.



I did throw a bunch of bad guys to their deaths off a rail. I liked that.

-- iOS stuff

Kairosoft has me. Game Dev Story called me back in and I made the worst games ever that somehow became popular hit games. Halfbrick have me as well. Jetpack Joyride is fun in quick bursts, as is the dollar monster dash. I just got the zombie game they made and I like it too.

I think Mrs. bullseye bought legendary wars, I've played a lot of this by the numbers flash-game like game. It is simple, sort of tower defense and a little rtsy, but with some light platforming levels to break things up. I don't love it, but it was free so why not.

-- Baroque

Still as opaque as when I bought it. I have no clue what I'm doing or what is going on, but god dammit I want to find out. I'm almost ready to just look up what the deal is with this bad let it out of my head forever.

There was an iOS port I tried to play but it was of the original Saturn release with a first person view. It ran slowly as well, so no thanks to that.

-- Sonic 2

Coming off Generations, I still love old sonic so much more. I made it to the usual spot without dying, the boss fight for casino night almost always stops me cold for at least one life. I quit after dying and started Sonic 3. But I quit at the first boss, just because.

-- Vectorman



I love this game. I did not beat the first level while playing this time. I suck at games.
__

That's it.

Bandai put out a bunch of vinyl figures of Godzilla, that are the greatest Godzilla figures ever. There are many variety of Godzilla toys out there, these are of Godzilla in his many movie incarnations and of his insane villains, like the robot Godzilla and the Godzilla from space!

I've also got both the three headed Monster Zero, or King Ghidrah as I call him, some folks cal it a Monster X or Astro Monster, I call is a King Ghidrah. Mecha Kind Ghidrah shows up as well as the guy with giant knife arms, Gigan!

These toys are magical for me, I've loved Godzilla since my youth, and today I posed them with video games, because why not?

Rainbow Mothra appears with Poke'Mon Blue Version!



This is Mothra with the blue version of Pokemans. I actually got this back off the kid who I gave my original blue to, this is it. Four full playthroughs of Poke'mon by yours truly happened on this silly little cartridge. Mothra doesn't seem very impressed by it though.

You can tell how great a photographer I am, because of all the negative space I left in.

Heisei Rodan perched on my copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon -- Raiho Special Edition.



Rodan always sits on top of this. I just finished Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army and have barely started Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon. All I could do in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon was just start the game and walk to the first save point, I just didn't feel like getting right back into Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon after spending so much time in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army. Both seemed like great games, but Rodan seems very defensive of them.

I still recall the first time I saw Rodan's solo movie on TNT Monstervision, falling asleep just before the ending as a child. I was so anxious to see where that movie went.

I managed to write out the full titles of those games so many times! I'm so pleased with myself!

Heisei Godzilla poses with Jake "The Snake" Roberts and Splatterhouse



They can't all be winners. Not that the recent revival of Splatterhouse wasn't fun to play, it was just sloppy and had incredible load times. Upwards of two minutes between getting a game over, pressing yes I want to play the stupid game some more god dammit, and then waiting full minutes before going back to a level with lots of one-hit death traps! What a nightmare!

Jake "The Snake" is in this picture for no reason at all!

Space Godzilla - ignoring Demon Soul's on their tail



As we all know, Godzilla's tail falls off triumphantly in a scene during Godzillla vs Space Godzilla. His pyschic powers proved too much for Godzilla, so he was teamed up with Mogura a half robot that became Mechagodzilla in another Heisei Godzilla film! Space Godzilla has mandibles on their face, as well as giant masculine crystal shoulder pads!

Space Godzilla also has a giant bulb on the front of their design, which some argue looks like genitalia.

Final Wars Gigan loves Catherine!



I have no comment for this, other than with knife arms you couldn't' pleasure yourself either. Don't judge a man with knife arms! Their love is pure!

Guardian Heroes against Mechagodzilla Kiryu



Kiryu is the new fancy Mechagodzilla, with a spinning drill arm from Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and the follow up Tokyo S.O.S. Both featuring some of the best robot fighting a giant lizard ever seen! Here, my holy grail of video games poses against Kiryu, laughing at me for costing me over a hundred dollars then having a better re-release on Xbox Live for ten dollars. Go ahead and laugh at me! Their all gonna laugh at me! They're all gonna laugh!

Make the laughing stop!

Mecha King Ghidorah has The Legend of Zelda lean on them



From the Hesei film Godzilla vs King Ghidorah comes the battle for the present from the past of the future, where Godzilla ripped a head off King Ghidorah and then somehow future people or aliens or something, called "futurians," build a robot version which a lady then pilots and tries to fight Godzilla with. There was a scene in the past as well involving a dinosaur being hit with an atomic bomb, somehow that causes everything bad to happen.

Zelda has you rescue a princess from a dungeon.

I like complex narratives.

King Ghidorah has Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey and Retro Game Challenge in their mouths.



Finally those small DS carts make sense to me!

Posed here is Millennium Godzilla, with the greatest video game of all time itself, Zombies Ate My Neighbors in the original box!



For me, this is the best looking Godzilla even if it doesn't have the charm of the old style. I love a giant menacing looking rubber suit. Throughout the course of the Millennium films, Godzilla has a few tweaks to the design, but for the most part, it stays consistant with his appearance in the first one, Godzilla 2000 as we know it, or Godzilla Millenium as the world knew it. As we all know, Zombies Ate My Neighbors is the greatest game of all time. So together at last, two great flavors that taste so good together. Yes, I've had Godzilla movies on while I've played this game, and yes, it is true, it is the best game of all time.

Godzilla is awesome.

You guys are too.

That's it.

Some of these broke and are upside down. I can't fix them right now, I'm busy finishing up Dragon Quest 8 and wanted to one up the front page with my dumb toys and video games. I'm supposed to be working on my novel in this time, this is my only night off work. I took time out of it to do this dumb thing here.

Tim Schafer called me rude. Probably because I was rude. I'm not exactly known for being subtle. Within two seconds of him posting about two new games on XBLA, without thinking I sent him a message about making another game and what he probably took this as bashing his two new games, which I sort of was I guess. I feel so stupid.

So read and laugh about how dumb I am.

Here is what Tim says on Twitter that starts this exchange:



"It was bound to happen sooner or later! We are launching TWO things tomorrow on XBLA: Happy Action Theater, and Rise of the Martian Bear!"

I tweet back at him, this statement:

"God dammit, I don't care about either of those. More Costume Quest is a thing that should happen. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!"



I'm always amazed at how Twitter takes down whatever filters, lines, or blocks that would usually happen when trying to talk to somebody. Finding his e-mail to contact him about Costume Quest is a thing that could happen, but I'm sure that would require a couple google searches or going through a person to filter out stupid comments like mine.

I really feel stupid about this, but I don't have a kinect and I never bought Trenched, so why would I care about the DLC? If I had a way to play them, totally would. I wasn't thinking at all here, which is usual for me, and just sent him a note with a big smile on my face. I say god dammit all the time, with the conviction and joy that any battering ram statement that I throw out. You guys that talk to me know this, but Tim Schafer doesn't know where I'm coming from. I'm nothing to him. To me, this is a big fucking deal, to him, it is literally just a Tuesday.

His response, within a minute of my tweet at him just as the delayed thought enters my head that I probably shouldn't say stupid things to developers, let alone dudes like Tim Schafer who are the greatest. For all I know, this guy worked on the best game of all time. I'm pretty sure he did. God dammit, now I'm feeling really embarrassed and stupid. I think he was in the developers room when you beat the game and I'm starting to panic and feel so silly.

So here is his message back at me:



"@randombullseye You are so rude I'm going to make a new CQ game just so I can ban you from it."

My face turned ghost white and pale for a second, just before bursting with laughter. I pissed off Tim Schafer. Of all the sacred video games dudes to be rude to, I was rude to this guy. I loved the premise of Brutal Legend so much, and god dammit, Costume Quest is among the best games this generation. Now the dude who made these wonderful games hates me forever, I've made an ass of myself, and confirmed another Costume Quest game and that Tim Schafer's learned from Electronic Arts how to ban people from single player games! I'm fucked!

I write all this with a laugh by the way. Tim Schafer didn't block me, so I can only assume he doesn't actually hate me, despite me being completely juvenile and messaging him on the internet with profanities and requesting things. I always feel dumb when I talk to people, because I am dumb when I talk to people. I talk to everybody like we're in a firehouse breaking balls with each other, even women. I've completely fallen into madness now.

Still blows my mind that this sort of thing can happen. I said procedural stories like those in Far Cry 2 were a waste of time to Rev Anthony on twitter. He responded back, "Like a bonerquest waste of time?" I felt crushed and laughed hysterically about that. I'm such a stupid fuck, I'll keep doing stuff like this. I can't help but say the first thing that comes to mind with this delayed, "probably should delete that, oh they, they already responded," reaction. It happens all the time to me on twitter, I really feel like I should give it up, but its so much fun saying stupid things about games and posting angry dinosaur stickers.



I've had Erik Larson have multiple twitter messages back and fourth with me, and that blows my mind. He's one of the heads of Image comics and creator of Savage Dragon, the longest running Image comic still drawn and written by its original creator. I hear nothing but good stories from comic book people talking about him, and still, I feel like every message I send to the guy has that twinge of busting chops that I can't help but do. Suddenly I realize I've called millionaires butt holes over the internet. How can the guy who runs one of the biggest comic book companies not be loaded? The fucking guy is living the dream, drawing and writing his own stories and publishing them, and I've said silly things to him.

I think I told him I didn't read Savage Dragon and liked the bad USA cartoon when I was a kid. And when he wrote about having done all the DC work he wanted, I said without thinking at all, "Why not do some god damn Aquaman!" Which replied back telling me he had already done a year long Aqua Man set of comics. I still haven't read any of those, and this exchange was probably a year ago. I feel like a dick.



God dammit, I'm stupid.

I found This thread which confirms Tim Schafer was involved tangentally in the best game of all time. His contribution was minor according to him, but in my mind, he contributed the best name to any level within a game full of great level names. He came up with "Mars needs cheerleaders" which I often have mentioned when I bring up that game.

I actually put my hands on my head and yelled out with as much anguish as I could, "oh fuck me! He named the best name in the game! Fuck!"

That's it.

Imagine a game that starts up, you're walking with a big group of people getting on a dark train. All you can see is just snow covered countryside through the slits in the train. People are scared, children are crying, and everyone on board has these bright yellow stars on their coats. The train stops, a guy speaking German aiming a machine gun at the group motions for you to exit. All of this is in first person by the way, that sort of free roam Half Life first person where if you want to walk off you can, but here if you do that you're shot in the back. This scenario continues until you see people stripped and marched into showers, where gas comes out and just kills everybody around you and as you fall to the ground grasping upwards, you're supposed to feel this immense shock at "holy shit, this happened."

If you're an asshole, you might laugh at a scene like this in a game. Otherwise, you'll be completely broken spirited by this, as if a nuke had gone off and killed your squad of dudes right in front of you or you, just like in real life, perpetrate crimes against humanity in an airport killing civilians on a massive scale? The world is a scary place, so why can't as an extension of this our evolution of action movies contain scary situations like this? Even for just historical purposes or to give us some sort of emotional connection or better understanding of horrific events.

I'm surprised Call of Duty hasn't tried a scene like that. As World War 2 guns blazing as those games were, why the fuck didn't they ever have you find concentration camps? Oh that was too ugly and horrifying to talk about in a video game? But I can kill Hitler with a rocket launcher, that's ok? What if it was a more recent dictator like Moammar Gadhafi or Saddam? Is that ok?

The scene is your in the dessert, just tending to your heroin fields as a farmer. You're told to walk to the street and buy something, apples, milk, or I know, medicine for your sick child. So you walk down a road towards town, and as you walk through the crowded street a plane flies by dispensing a colorless & odorless gas and you watch as a few hundred people just fall down. Havok physics would make this as floppy bodied as possible, which would be comical sure, but hey, this actually happened in my life time. Halabaja isn't talked about all that often, but it fucking happened. As if that isn't bad enough, the story could even get worse.

I bring all this up, because I watched a documentary about a game I played a few years ago, Super Columbine Massacre RPG! Have you heard of that game? It isn't really a "game," but an RPG maker project a guy made and put on a website. The difference between an actual game and a thing some guy made is lost on any mass media coverage of video games.



It wasn't a very good RPG Maker game anyway, I should know, I made my own game Bonerquest using the same program another joker did. Both our games were in bad taste, but Columbine actually has some victims still alive. People knew those people that were killed. Any crime spiderwebs out in ways no one ever notices, especially something like that that everybody my age, 24, should be well aware of. Schools suddenly became dangerous places we could be shot to death at, but that isn't the point. The point is, it was a rather comical idea that actually presented the material with some thought behind it. I didn't like that they included Marylin Manson CDs as a thing the two kids liked, they hated him. They were fans of KMFDM and Rammstien, like me.

That's the scary thing about Columbine, they were just a couple dudes into monster movies, heavy metal, and video games. They were us.

I'm not surprised people freaked out over it. The doc I watched was pretty poorly made, with lots of talking heads and it actually presents Kotaku as a valid news source which is hilarious. Presenting Fox News as actual news is rough, but Kotaku? You might as well present our a random your the man now dog as evidence of some online conspiracy theory, which actually happened in a thread I can't find now a guy was laughing because his page made it on the History channel.

The scary part of the documentary is bringing up a Canadian school shooting, where it just so happened that this guy on his vampire freaks profile listed his favorite games as including Super Columbine Massacre RPG! Without even seeing news coverage, as I quit the documentary around that point due to a power outage, I could hear the news stories. "Killer practices with video game!" People are so stupid. The game features the two kids killing each other and going to hell an fighting demons from DOOM. It was typical internet humor, but the dude who made it included enough material to make it actually a valid exploration of the Columbine killers. He shows flashbacks of them doing school plays together and spending quiet moments together, the type of thing exploitation movies like Elephant did.



A game like that is a joke. It isn't even really a game. Newgrounds, a popular flash game website has all kinds of offensive games. Any schools hooting or terrifying world event worth making jokes about has a game there. It happens. We can laugh at these things as being outrageous, we can get offended and bothered by them for existing, but can we stop people from making things like this? No. People love tragedy. We fixate on it like nothing else. There are things that happened to me and you that we will never forget. Events that are seared into our memories as time capsule of horror that we'll never escape. But hey, games are way to explore these expressions the same as movies or books.

How many adaptations of Anne Frank's diary have their been? How many of those took a humorous angle to the story where she becomes a frankenstien monster and kills Hitler? Would you watch a movie where that happened? Would you play the video game and be Anne Frankenstien smashing through concentration camps and zapping nazis wit electricity powers? I would. I'd find that hilarious and cathartic. We're all after catharsis, that escape feeling. Playing the scenes of Columbine where the two kids go to hell and fight DOOM monsters is funny, but I wonder, could that actually inspire a kid to go try that?

If I start arguing like that, I have to bring up religion. How many people are killed because of religion? How many wars are fought in the name of things from thousands of years ago? And how many genocides?

The scene in a game I picture, is an easy one to describe. The year is nineteen ninety nine, you own an arcade that just moved locations and is thriving somehow in that time period. You're a fun guy whose got a lot of friends. As you live your life, someone gives you a blow up doll that you hang up on your living room wall as a goof. Your friends come over all get a laugh out of it. As you continue managing your business, weird things keep happening to you. Your brake line in your car was slit one day and you don't know why. Some threatening phone messages are left on your answering machine, these will be inadmissible in court for some reason as well, remember that. Then one late night, you get stabbed to death in an alley way. As a ghost, you get to witness your murderer get a slap on the wrist with a manslaughter charge, despite stabbing you relentlessly to death.

Just a knife.


This actually happened. I can remember standing on my porch with my mother on the phone, I was about to walk down tot he bus stop. It was January. I can still hear her crying when I close my eyes and her wailing about it. The realization that my cousin, whom I looked up to like a big brother was dead, murdered, it hit like a sack of bricks to the face. I'll never be over it. Especially since the guy who killed him, totally free. He's alive and well totally gets to enjoy his life, free to go beating off and playing Call of Duty all night. I know in my soul that this is it, that existence is some sort of cosmic accident, but I really want to believe in religious ideas. This goes beyond video games or anything else, this is me and you reader, we're having an experience right now the two of us.

I know that everything is a joke. I try to laugh at everything. If we can't laugh at tragedy how will we ever get over it? The whole, "too soon" followed by a laugh always makes people feel better about laughing at things. Remember the whole tsunami from last year, the one that may very well have caused a nuclear meltdown? How many jokes did you make about it? I know I made a couple. Gilbert Godfrey made some that got him in trouble. I really do feel terrible about what happened there, but if we can't laugh what can we do. Dale was in that shit at Cheapy D's house, which brings it home in a way that is just terrifying. I don't know either of them personally, but I'm sure I've interacted with them online more than once. I've just become aware of a Japanese company that localizes video games through their podcast, 8-4, and to hear how slippery civilization actually is can be crippling. Then there are stories like this that come out that I just can't find anything funny at all in, because it isn't funny. It is about as bad as genocide in my mind. How do you fix irradiated baby milk?

The line between grotesque and kitsch is a fine one, and I walk that line with my humor. I'm a dark guy. I'll bring up death and murder all the time. Who among us hasn't made a Dahmer joke at some point? Who hasn't laughed at other peoples misery? The whole country seems to think Mike Tyson is hilarious now, despite his troubles. I'm a big Mike fan from when I was a kid, and knowing the horror he's gone through makes his comedy career so much better. He's going to be smelling like a rose in the publics eye forever now. I know the ultimate, Michael Jackson. He very well may have fucked kids. How can we not make fun of him and his fake nose and his weird noises and grabbing his dick in that one video twenty years ago? I can't not laugh at that.

But too tsunami is a thing. We can't laugh at something the day of. Weeks or years later, then we can laugh about it and everything is great.



The video game starts with you on an airplane. Your phone rings. You seen our hand come up with it as you look around at the plane full of people getting meals and just being people on a sky bus. Your wife tells you she loves you, that your unborn child loves you. Then a couple of dudes with box cutters jump up and take over the plane. She's just flipped on MTV and told you how Ja Rule is speaking about two planes hitting in New York. Your voice whispers into the phone that you'll have to do something about this, that you have to stop this. In first person style, you approach and jump a guy, bashing his head into the floor. Let's give it Shenmue quick timer style gameplay, since thats a popular thing to put in a video game. You take the knife that guy had and throw it into another guys eyeball. Unfortunately, that was the guy flying the plane and now you sit in the pilots seat, desperately trying to flip switches as you see Pennslyvania form beneath the view screen.

Why that video game hasn't been made, I don't know.

That was one of those things. It was a normal Tuesday, I was playing cards with a kid named Rodney in High School. My Math teacher rushes in, tells our teacher to turn on his radio. Nine eleven was happening with a dude who sounded like Raymond Burr describing it. The experience felt like I was in Godzilla, listening to him describe this event to me. I heard as the second plane hit, live on air. It was a real life horror movie. My only thought was to compare it to Godzilla. The class bell rings, I go to my Match class. A guy who would die in a car wreck two years later comes in brazenly yelling, "lets kill some fucking towel heads!" It never occurred to the man on the radio that this was an attack, but this guy, I think his name was Jerry but he went by J.R. was yelling about it. I was scared, but I kept trying to make jokes and be calm. About twenty minutes later, school got let out early. I walked home and sat on my front porch, as I didn't have a key to get in. I sat and thought about what just happened. I had no jokes. I had no material at all. I was floored.

But then, ten years later, I bring it up in a user blog for you guys to read. A video game where you sit in a classroom playing black jack and suddenly nine eleven happens on the radio could be a thing right? Would that be too much? Including the dumb asshole who wants to compare it to Godzilla attacking, is that too much? Maybe the scene in my version of the Pennsylvania thing where you Jack Baur a knife into a mans eyeball is too much? I was pretty graphic there, I never saw that movie they made or remember all the details exactly, so I turned it into an action movie where you shoulder roll around and kill bad guys. I editorialized it, but should we as people do that? The way our memories work and how we change or add details that weren't there. I'd like to think if I was there, I'd jump over the seat and knock a guy out. Marky Mark got in trouble for saying what every bodies thinking, "what would you do, in that situation?" A video game would let us play out that very situation, saving the day like we all wished we could.

We can laugh about JFK's murder, because people my age are so far removed from it, but if I was fifty five I probably wouldn't have found JFK reloaded a fascinating game. You attempt to prove the warren commission correct, or in actuality, see what wacky results happen when you shoot a world with super floppy bodies in this one scenario over and over and over. I was unsuccessful at proving the commission right, but I could totally shoot Jackie's hat off and land it on JFK.




As a direct result of everything that happened that day, a couple guys I was close with now has confirmed kills from his time in the Middle East. People I know, killed other men. It wasn't a bad thing either, we should celebrate them as heroes, shouldn't we? Any other situation other than war, murder isn't something celebrated at all. I don't think it should be for war either. The story I heard about somebody I was close to, was that while standing in the middle of a town a guy ran up with a grenade screaming and my cousin, whom I'd played army men and G.I. Joes with as a kid, picked up his rifle and stabbed this man with a bayonet. Soon as he got back to the states, he moved away from his parents and everyone that knew him, like we'd be ashamed to find that out. I'm proud of him. He saved his team of guys who hadn't noticed this screaming asshole rushing them, but what was the story of that guy he eighty sixed? How do you not have dreams about doing that after it happens?



I feel awful about the world, but if we can't make jokes or try to learn from past experiences what can we do? We've all heard about army virtual reality simulators, Full Spectrum Warrior was based off of one of those programs. I'm curious to see where that goes in the future. Simulated warfare scenarios are totally a real thing, and what effect does that have on people playing them? I wonder if my cousin being an owner of the Atari Jaguar and actually owning a copy of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game that I played at his house ever enters his mind? My other friend with confirmed kills flipped out completely from the war. Last I saw him, he was farther gone than anybody I'd ever seen, but when I brought up video games he was able to talk about playing them in his down time. A soldier I talked to online explained to me the importance of playing Call of Duty and Gears of War in his downtime, that it somehow took the edge of of real war. I was shaken to my very core by that.

I'm still expecting holodeck like gaming to be a thing sooner than later. Strange Days had that idea of living other peoples memories, but simulating their last moments in a video game context would let you change things. I've always said if my cousin had been a gun owner and not a pacifist, he would be alive and I'd be hanging out with him right now telling pussy stories and laughing about aids, but he's dead. He was a good man who was never into violence. I for one am a gun owner. I don't like the thought that somebody could just stab me to death and I've not got protection. Something my father said about guns, "never aim one at somebody unless you really want to kill them." That always stuck with me, and I've never aimed a gun at anybody.

It bothers me that video games are blamed for violence. There are some really gross games that exist out there made by racists and extremist groups for propaganda purposes, their very existence make me stick.

That's it.

I love you guys.

As I write my novel, I begin to think about piracy. Yup, I'm actually writing out a full novel called "The Bonerquest," that I will self publish myself. People are going to download it for free. I don't have a problem with that. I want to make money off something I spent months working on, but I want people to read it. Lazy, broke, or just plain out "I won't pay money for that" are perfectly good excuses, but like assholes we all have them. I can come up with an excuse for anything. Piracy is stealing as we define it today, but is stealing a copy of something necessarily a bad thing? And can we ever actually change the definition of piracy and stealing to something more like sharing? I want people to read my work and make money, but if the choice was to have them read it and not make money, I'd be happy with just that.

Share everything, I say. Who cares? That new album is out, let's take a listen. A new episode of a dumb TV program? Stream that from a nefarious website. Go ahead and read all the latest comic books and of course, play all the latest PC games completely for free. Growing up poor and never having everything, having everything available for free is pretty fucking awesome. I mean it is literally right there, go find it. The problem is this guilty feeling imposed upon me about piracy, that I can't shake. If nobody had ever said it was wrong, would anybody have ever felt the least bit guilty about file sharing at all?

At least last Thursday, in the year two thousand, music sharing became a very popular thing. Who wouldn't want to listen to all of Metallica's music? I mean all of it. Ride the Lighting and all the early stuff was all there, easy to find. It took a hundred million years to download one song from Napster, but it would work. I wasn't in on Napster, but a lot of dudes were into it. Metallica wasn't exactly fond of people getting their music for free. "How dare our fans share our music! Those assholes!" Lars and the boys of Metallica were not exactly thrilled that people could do this, and made a big stink about it, ultimately making piracy a thing everyone knows about. You boners!

Flash forward, a few years. Programs such as Kazaa and WinMX show up, now you can share anything. Any file you can put in a folder, you can peer to peer with someone, you can share. Be this a zip file with a bunch of Super Nintendo role playing games or pictures of Dragonball Z characters naked, you could share anything now. The world was at everyones fingertips, still slowly grinding away, but it existed. Taking and sharing things makes sense. Where else would you find a bunch of prank phone calls? Or lines from Titanic, dubbed over with fart sounds? The possibilities were now endless, but the speed just wasn't there to share things properly.

And then, somewhere around the year of our lord two thousand and four, bittorrent happened. Suddenly the internet opened up, and here we are now in a world of rapidshares, megavideos, and everything else.



The story I've heard, a gentleman involved with TechTV's Screensavers program and several others, worked on this thing called bittorrent that just changed everything. Instead of just getting a one to one share from someone, now you could get pieces of a file from multiple users in a swarm. Instead of downloading, a video game, you could download several hundred. Instead of song, get an album. Why stop there? Why not go for the full discography in .flac format! Now everyone is sharing everything. You can find all sorts of shit online. It is all there, and now what the fuck do we do with this technology?

I've always liked loaning things out. I got a video game you don't have, you have one I don't have, why don't we swap for a week and see if we can beat each others games? Why not do that with five games for a month? I've done that multiple times with many people. Not since I was ten, but I'm nothing if not stuck around that age. I still loan out games, foolishly, and then get angry when they come back all scratched up. Not that it really matters, but having my precious video games destroyed bothers the fuck out of me. If only I could send someone something and let them experience the video games I had, without risking them breaking my shit. If only we had that. Wouldn't that be a good thing? A great thing even?

The problem is that this makes making money off of a product more difficult.

Not impossible, more difficult.



If Lewis C.K. can do as well as he's done, fuck anyone who says piracy ruins sales!

I find myself with a thing I want to sell. Nobody gives a fuck about it. You guys do, some of you, but would you buy a dumb book from me? Would you listen to an audiobook version that you've paid money for to have on a CD? Wouldn't you want to hold it in your hands and actually look at it, and turn the physical real pages, not some shitty iOS ap that pretends to be a book, but an actual god damn book. Wouldn't you want the satisfaction of that moment, the moment when someone looks over on a bookshelf or just laying out on a coffee table, The Bonerquest, splayed out for everyone to give a strange look too? I find that asking anyone to buy my book makes me feel like an asshole, but putting time and money into a project like this and just giving it away is foolish too.

And I know how the internet works, the second this thing is out, and if a guy cares enough, it will be online for free, if you really want it for free. It happens. Doesn't matter what it is, if it exists, it will be put out for free somewhere if you search for the right words on the right websites. This is twenty twelve, piracy exists, deal with it.

At one point this summer, I was looking into having a celebrity read the book. That it would make the joke of this book even better, if I could get Dave Foley or Jason Mewes to read a chapter of my writing, sell it to someone, and then have them hear it. I'm still considering options for how to do this, I've quite the voice myself, but I'm so close to the material I wouldn't have the same experience reading it as someone else. A well paid guest speaker would have a whole other take on the book. I would hope to have tape of talking about how dumb what was happening was, and include everything they say in the actual release of the audio book. But the expenses and time to do all that seems like too much when I think about the piracy issue. If I throw thousands of dollars into having a guy make fun of my book, and then sell two copies, to myself, what kind of business is that?



In the interest of everyone having a copy of the book, and knowing the material, I feel like I have to give it away for free. However, in the interest of quitting my job so I can write more, I feel like waiting a year from the physical release of the book and actually releasing it myself in as many formats as possible, in as high a quality as possible.

My thought is, where I'm at now, if I find it posted somewhere, I'll link to it from here. Why would I do that? I want everyone to read it. I don't want you guys to wait a year, I'd feel like an asshole. So now what do I do? I can't give it away for free, I've invested so much into it. I can't not give it away for free, I'm totally for that in the share and share alike way I've always been. I don't hate my fans. I love you guys. Read my stuff, steal it, share it, and talk about it. I don't care. Take it.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have this same thought like I do. That "hey in a year, I'll give it away."

I say people, but I mean companies. Corporations more specifically. There are a handful that own everything, Viacom, NewsCorp, Disney, Time Warner, CBS, and General Electric, they just own everything. If you fart sideways and work for them or their subsidiaries, they own that fart. I wish I was making this up, but I'm not. These guys own it all. If they own a company that makes something, aren't they entitled for their share? Sure. But what about sharing that share with everyone else? If I was super rich, I'd want all the pokemans for myself too. But I'm not. And I realize that what I work on should be seen by as many people as possible, and that I'm not owned by a company. That I'm just Josh Hayes, or Charlie if you're a friend of mine, or whatever title you wish to impose upon me. King, doctor, lawyer, fancy lad, troll, fuck face, or sex symbol I could be many things to many people.



But I'm none of those things. Not really. I'm just guy who wrote a book, I want to not work a soul eroding job and make people laugh. Is that such a big deal? Isn't that what everyone dreams about? People act upset about having copies or clones of their work put out. Why? The archetypes of literature only go so far. My novel follows the quest structure, with many religious elements thrown in as well as influence from folk tales. I want my story to be an honest folk tale, where the characters are all surprised by the way the world works, and often just run from their problems. If they succeed or fail depends upon how they approach a situation, if they can talk their way out of it, make it worse, or make their feeble attempt to fight for something, it is on them to do it. Just like my book, I'm doing it. Fuck everybody that said you can't just write a book and publish it, I can do that. I can do anything. You can too.

Never let anybody hold you back, from anything you want to do. That every moment we live is over before we realize it, and all we can do is hope to enjoy the moment we're in. Sieze the day guys. Life is for the living. If you're broke and want to watch a series of old cartoons, the internet has that for you.

Getting upset about piracy is bullshit by the way.It isn't anything new with the internet either. When the printing press was invented, people were fucking scared about it. Knowledge from book were going to be mass produced? Are you insane! How do you think people felt about a library, a public library, where you can go and get books for free! Surely, no one will ever buy a book ever again now! That is totally over! And radio, who wants to listen to live music or stage acts, when they can just listen on radio! Those cocksuckers have ruined everything! All is lost! Hope is over! I'd imagine having a written language to share information went over well.

If we can't grow the fuck up and laugh at everything, how can we ever really share anything with each other?

Recording a VHS off of TV or a cassette tape off radio is the same thing as online piracy too by the way. You don't own that, you're sharing it with other people who don't own that. What is ownership? Even of an idea? Can you copyright a concept? Elves and dwarves appear in everything, which is why I wouldn't dare put them into my book. My book has giant dick monsters, like DUNE and Beetlejuice, but with balls and described as being like penises. Just in case anybody misses it, the book is not going to be subtle. I've compromised bringing an outside impartial editor in for her to go over the numerous grammatical and spelling errors that I bring with me to everything, but other than that, I'm not compromising. The language I used and the deliberate circles within the novel and fast pacing are all things a book people will actually read demands.



To tape that Generation X TV movie Fox did, then pass that around to your friends to make their own copies of it, isn't that piracy? Because I know a guy that did that in the early nineties. Look at jolly old England and their video nasties list. What the fuck were these assholes thinking? That banning movies would make them not be available to people that really wanted to see horror movies? No. You can't keep anyone from anything. If a guy with a hard enough dick is horny, he will find something to do with it. That vulgar logic applies to anything. If it is pleasant or unpleasant depends upon your perception of the situation. If you're making money off something, great. If you're getting something for free that your friends all have, great. If you're losing money because people are sharing things you made, bad. If you're paying for "quality" products that are available for free if you look around, bad. So what do we do? How can we stop the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity?

I don't know. How do we stop these assholes from clubbing in the internets brains out?

I really want to be successful with writing. If you want to read my shit for free, steal it. I'd rather have you read it for free, then never read it at all. Same with the eventual audiobook, steal that too if you don't feel like buying it. I want it to be super professional and expensive to produce, just like the book, but if you want it, take it. If you end up liking it, buy a copy or tell me you liked it. I'll put my e-mail right up front, with a notice saying "if you read this, tell me how you felt about it." At the very least do that much for me, because at the end of the day if I don't know you bought it, how would I ever know anybody was exposed to Bonerquest in the first place? I'd think it was a failure and a waste of at this point almost a year of writing and editing.

I don't know everything, but I know where I stand on piracy.

SOPA and PIPA can get the fuck off my internet. I want the laws to be changed to where piracy isn't piracy anymore. We're back to sharing information and files with each other freely, without any added guilt trip. I like what Alan Moore wrote in Watchmen, "Existence is random, it has no pattern save what we've chosen to impose upon it. "I say that all the time, because I really feel that way. Nothing has any value or meaning until we've chosen to apply it. Piracy is sharing with each other information, the same as VHS tapes, burnt CDs, or libraries full of copies of books. The only difference is that it is an advancement of that same idea of sharing information done better.

Look for, The Bonerquest, the first novel from Josh Hayes coming soon.

Also, cocks.

Sometime early last year, I was in the middle of strategy heaven. All those Nippon Ichi games and spending time with old Gold Box games really made me love strategy all over again. I've always been a chess player. Something about controlling my team of dudes and killing another team of dudes does it for me. I forget who, I think it was a European friend online, convinced me to try out X-Com. As a huge fan of fantasy like X-Files, how in the holy hell did I go twenty years without knowing X-Com UFO Defense? The alternate title for UFO Defense being Enemy Unknown, in case anybody feels confused. The copy I played said UFO Defense, so that is how I keep referring to it as.



As I start writing, I'm trying to pinpoint exactly when I played the game. It was definitely before the announcement of the new first person shooter game. It was around the time I was playing MAG and Mass Effect on two TVs, as well as cheating on my PS3 and 360 with the PS2 version of Onimusha 3 on a third TV. While this was all going on, I got copies of both X-Com games. I say "both" because they're only two that are really for real X-Com games. The others are spinoffs that don't really play the same at all, but are merely set in the same universe. A major shame, as X-Com is one of the most fascinating strategy games of all time.



So I'll cover UFO Defense and Terror From the Deep, both of which are amazing games worth playing. Both of these are really easy to describe in terms of gameplay and mechanics. You have to controlling phases of the game. One is a view of the earth where you monitor for alien attacks or alien space ships. While on this map of the earth, you build army bases for your dudes and research new weapons, while manufacturing others and maintaining jet fighters. As you spot an enemy attack, you then dispatch a ship loaded with a team of guys, whom you can arm individually with the armor and weapons you've bought and then this starts the combat phase.

During combat you'll have to one by one, position your squad outside of a drop ship, then seek out each individual alien. Killing them all results in a win, however, as I experienced very often while playing, killing as many as possible and making a retreat for the ship and escaping was a valid strategy. Often I would lure out aliens into the open, while I had several guys with rockets waiting near the ship to blast the crap out of them. Early encounters on low difficulty settings are relatively easy aliens with laser like weapons, but later they get some particularly nasty enemy types that I won't dare spoil for a new player.

UFO Defense is absolutely brilliant. The deceptive simplicity of the game that could last for infinity is so simple to play, but utterly complex and hard to decipher. I say that, as when I started my base and set a group of guys out to attack, I had absolutely no idea how to get them to leave their ship. Luckily, I was in the year twenty ten, and the internet was a thing I could use to find out how to play this game. Each of the little icons doesn't have a hover over tool tip to teach you how to play. And you can totally have your guys shoot rockets into your drop ship, killing six of your eight dudes in one move. I did this, and laughed out loud at my stupidity.



This intense learning curve made me want to play the game more. That this game would dare to be like this intrigued me. Once I got the hang of moving my characters, spotting my first enemy alien was an event. At this point, I had not learned how to manufacture weapons at my army base. Once I got all that figured out and armed every guy on my squad with rockets, blasting holes into buildings and rushing in to kill aliens in this turn based game did it for me in ways no other game ever could. When I realized I could taze an alien, pick up their unconscious body, then take him back to my army base and study him, that was one of those gaming moments that I'll never be able to explain to anyone that hasn't had that for themselves. I just laughed and laughed about this game.



Terror From the Deep is actually a re-skin of most everything in UFO Defense. However, weapons work differently as most of your combat takes place underwater. When forced to fight above water, weapons like torpedos don't work the same as they do beneath the sea. Subtle changes to the way the game is played for this underwater setting drastically changes the game. Forcing you to have at all times a team for above ground combat as well as an underwater wet works team. I like the word combination wet works for some reason, I think it was a brand of Spider-Man toys at one point? Either way, Terror From the Deep feels a lot like UFO Defense. The art, the way it works, all of it is just reskins from UFO Defense put underwater. New aliens and weapons show up, although they all had a counterpart in the original game that was eerily similar. I still found it to be an interesting game, but seems like an expansion pack than a proper sequel.

Both games have a staggering amount of options for how to deploy your dudes, what to equip them with, how to build your army bases, what to do inside those bases as far as preparing weapons or research. Once I got laser weapons that could evaporate dudes, I really felt like I had accomplished something. Even if my time with the game never really got anywhere outside of me fighting a losing battle against an enemy I didn't understand, I felt like both games were excellent ways to spend time. Even now, I feel like loading it up, setting it to the toughest difficulty, and seeing just how long I can make it with my piss poor skill at the game.



The game adds in all these extra layers on top of everything else with having to watch the mental health of your squad while they enter combat. Occasionally seeing an alien will make a guy freak out completely. And not to spoil the enemies for anybody, but the really nasty aliens I mentioned have mind control powers that can wreck even the best ideas on how to deal with that. Worse still were the guys who created super alien zombies from my dead team mates. I just couldn't hang with that. The game kept throwing things at me that I just couldn't understand and I've yet to spend time reading a guide and learn more about how the game works and how to properly combat an alien that can take control of your dudes. When I quit playing, I had just figured out how to properly use tanks with lasers attached to them, which was amazing.



As for sequels, there have been several that I've already mentioned. Apocalypse adds a real time element that I'm not a fan of. It still plays a lot like UFO Defense, but it isn't necessarily as closely related as Terror From the Deep. X-Com Interceptor is a space sim, for better or worse, that exists. Another game, a shooter spin off that feels totally unrelated exists with X-Com Enforcer. I've seen a lot of Eastern European dudes trying to recreate X-Com with their own fan games, but none that I've seen or played capture the essences of these two games. There really was some magic being created here, if you're into strategy take a chance and pick these up. They're on Steam and several other downloadable services for fairly cheap, so go give them a try!


Did you ever play X-Com?