Tag: video games

Getting old sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t play Mass Effect 1 until Mass Effect 2 came out.  Needless to say, I was a bit late onto the ME2 train, and even then I ended up sitting on the game for about three months until I started playing it because I literally had absolutely nothing else to do on a weekend.  Ultimately, it became my favorite game evar, seriously, even surpassing any and all of the Resident Evil games that I’m also very enamored with, due to the strength of its fun game play, compelling story, and brilliant story telling.

Upon completion of ME2, my initial thoughts were “man, I can’t wait for Mass Effect 3 to come out!  I’m going to pre-order that shit, and get it on release day, and if I’m working then, take that day off!”

Yeah no, none of that shit actually happened.  ME3 has been out for 24 hours now, I do not have it yet, I did not pre-order it, and despite the fact that there is a GameSlut within walking distance from my office, I have no plans of picking up a copy of it yet.  Because, frankly, I can’t find any time to actually play ME3 any time soon.  Mostly, due to the fact that I am in fact, getting old.

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This is Ahri before Ahri was cool

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ahri is a character from the online arena game, League of Legends.  She’s based loosely on an Asian mythical nine-tailed fox, that depending on which country you’re asking, has variations on its story.  Most of them depict the nine-tailed fox as an evil creature, mostly utilizing deception, trickery, and/or seduction to commit its evil deeds.  But since the design of the character is so leaning towards Korean in appearance and clothing, I’m lead to the belief that it’s a Korean iteration, the character is loosely based around.

I have this book of translated Korean fairy tales, that a cousin got for my sister when I was young that I somehow came to inherit.  It’s full of entertaining stories and a glimpse of culture differences, but one of the stories dealt with the nine-tailed fox.  And as is the case with most stories involving the nine-tailed fox, it’s evil, and it’s out to kill shit.  But the origins are essentially the same; girl is killed by the nine-tailed fox, nine-tailed fox takes the form of the girl, starts wrecking shit up.  In this story, Ahri kills horses and eats their livers, before killing her parents eventually.  Her brother is eventually the one who kills her, and in the aftermath the true form of a corpse of a fox with nine tails is discovered.

But the above imagery is a stark contrast to the sexified Ahri that’s available to play in LoL today.

Resident Evil fans don’t like change apparently

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After watching the teaser, and this gameplay trailer for the upcoming Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, I can say that I’m very much on board, and looking forward to the game when it releases in late-March. I never played the versus mode available in RE5, but Operation Raccoon City looks like a lot of fun, and the dynamic of the gameplay intrigues me.

Apparently, I made the cardinal mistake of indulging what other people had to say, when I glanced down to the comments section of the most recent Kotaku post about Operation Raccoon City. Somewhere along the line, there grew to be this resentment towards the progression of the Resident Evil storyline/game style, and nowadays there is a staunch faction of Resident Evil fans that resent the series starting with RE4 on. Their argument being that the game took a turn from no longer being a “true” survival horror series, whatever that means, and into somewhat of a glorified action-packed shoot-em-up series.

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I don’t know why I’m at work, so I’ll muse about 2011

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m pretty sure I can count on one hand just how many people are in this office today.  Granted, I’m not complaining at the fact that I’m getting paid to sit here and do absolutely no work, but man, I certainly wouldn’t have minded sleeping in this morning.  But instead, I trudged out of bed at 6:30 a.m. to go run around the ‘hood in 36 degree weather, and here I sit, waiting for a few hours to pass, since I made it all the way out here already.  So with that in mind, and since I’ve pretty much seen the entire work-safe internet now, I suppose it’s not a bad time to sit back and catch up on some writing.  And with the end of the year literally right around the corner, why not use that as a topic?

Since I’m at the office, and don’t ever visit my own sites on the network for paranoid fear that they’ll one day find my online identity, I’m musing most of this based on what I can remember off the top of my head.  But the good news is that, as a whole, I don’t think that the encapsulated 2011 year was a very bad year at all.  Compared to 2010, it was a much improved year.  At first blush I want to say that it wasn’t anything magnificently spectacular, but the more I think about it, I guess I can say that 2011 was a pretty decent year overall.

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A relic of ancient times

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m currently at my parents’ house in Virginia, and I was rooting through some old things in the basement.  I stumbled upon this magnificent jewel of the past.  My mom got this for me back in like 1989 on a cold Saturday morning after Korean school.  It was purchased from a Kiddie City Toys.  The original set of four AA batteries lasted all of three days as I, my sister and one of my cousins sought 100 lines in Tetris.

I can’t believe I remember all these little details.  It’s also hard to believe that the handheld division of Nintendo started with this brick, which actually doesn’t feel so much like a brick any more.  Granted, compared to an SP, it’s monstrous, but in my hands again, it didn’t feel like I was holding a hoagie or anything.  What an amazing journey it’s been for Nintendo in this regard; what started out as the puke green brick, ended up being the only thing keeping the entire company afloat when Pokemon games continued to sell in the midst of the CD-based console wars, and now Nintendo is among the triple crown of game companies all over again.  And now it’s called The 3DS.

But there would be no 3DS if not for this Game Boy.  Funny how things work out.

Neko-Con Stories: Is this really DDR anymore?

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Is it really DDR, if you’re 100% reliant on holding the railing throughout the entire durations of every single song you play?  The game is called “Dance Dance Revolution,” not “Hold the Rail and Stomp Hold the Rail and Stomp Revolution (HRSHRSR).”

And these guys were “experts” in the “tournament.”  In every “match,” there was one guy who had a higher score than the other guy, but let’s face it, neither are winners when they’re completely handcuffed to the railing while they have epileptic seizures with their feet, more concerned with the score and not missing any arrows instead of actually, you know, dancing.

Amazingly, despite the fact that every match looked just like the previous match, there was almost always a crowd to watch.  Either they’re really impressed with their scores, or they’re all also contestants waiting for their turn to hold onto the rail and spasm with their legs to the sound of a beat.