Tag: video games

The entertaining absurdity of baseball rules

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When mythical wife showed me a picture of the score of this game, my jaw kind of dropped.  It turns out that 29 runs is some sort of National League record, that I don’t really have the motivation to look up the finer details of.  All I know it’s not better than the 30-3 thrashing that the Texas Rangers dropped on the Baltimore Orioles some time ago, and doesn’t quite erase the stink of the 20-2 drubbing the Yankees dropped on the Braves in Turner Field’s final season.

But anyway, of course I’m entertained generally pleased by any Braves win, but it’s not the 29 runs scored that amused me the most, or the seven home runs they clubbed en route to their scoring barrage.  No, a nerd like me finds amusement in other parts of the box score, like the fact that the starting pitcher for the Braves, Tommy Milone, didn’t get the win for a game in which his offense dropped 29 runs on the opposition.

In fact, as satisfied as I am any time I see a W for the Braves, it’s actually very much a bad and concerning thing that Tommy Milone allowed eight runs to the Marlins.  It’s not every day that the Braves are going to score 29 runs, much less ten runs, much less five.  But lost in the pandemonium of the Braves blowing up on the Marlins is the fact that their own starter was pretty abysmal in his own right, and he absolutely did not deserve to get the win in this game, and I think the Braves did the usual Barves thing during the trade deadline, and went after a jobber like Milone to fill in their pitching rotation, instead of going after a starting pitcher that could really fortify their chances to capitalize on the short season.

Instead, the win goes to Grant Dayton, a reliever that I’ve never heard of which isn’t difficult considering how far off the baseball radar I’ve dropped off, but anyway, he gets the win, solely based on the rules of Major League Baseball which states that the pitcher on the mound while the team has the lead and finishes out the 5th inning, is the guy eligible for the win.

Basically, this is the equivalent of going into arcade, walking up to the six-player X-Men arcade game, where five other players are at Magneto, he’s already blinking red and close to death, and jumping in as Dazzler because nobody ever played Dazzler, hitting him once with your mutant power blast, and taking credit for beating Magneto.

That’s basically what Grant Dayton did.  By no fault of his own, of course though.  Tommy Milone sunk $7 worth of quarters into X-Men and stunk up the joint getting past the Blob, Juggernaut, Wendigo and White Queen, and needed a bunch of people to come carry him through the rest of the game, with Dayton getting the credit for beating the game.

Continue reading “The entertaining absurdity of baseball rules” →

Father Time catches all eventually

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whereas Ken Masters is still hanging around the World Warrior tournament, wearing an UnderArmour compression shirt to hide the fact that he’s getting old and his physique is starting to sag, Chun Li has accepted the idea that after nearly 25 years, perhaps it was a good time to throw in the towel on fighting in the street and pursuing M. Bison and Shadowloo, and settling down with a real job.

Perhaps it was her side gig over the last quarter century, or maybe her accolades as a world-renown martial artist got her elevated so quickly, but instead of Kikokens and Lightning legs, Chun Li will instead be a VP for Lazada, a subsidiary company of some sort for Alibaba Group, the giant Amazon-like conglomerate based out of China.

Also, it turns out that Chun Li was a dude all along.  Cue the jokes about those gigantic thighs.

New Father Brogging, #006

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the most important things that I’ve learned as a first-time dad is that whenever you feel like you’re getting a grasp of raising a baby, behaviors will inevitably change and then you’re back into a position of knowing nothing all over again, and feeling helpless when your baby is reduced to crying and finding great difficulty at what may be causing your child distress.

When my baby is crying, it could be a variety of things that could be causing it; might be hunger, even if it might be improbably because she ate a full feed just 80 minutes ago, but a growth spurt could be in play, meaning she’ll want to eat pretty much every single hour.  Maybe it’s indigestion, to which there are only a few things that can actually bring her relief, like pressing her up against the warm body of a parent, or medicinally with gripe water or newborn anti-gas drops.  Maybe she needs to be burped more.  Maybe she’s cranky because she needs to take a nap.  Lately, she’s become cognizant to the discomfort of having a soiled diaper, something that hadn’t been the case in the first five weeks.  And sometimes, she just wants to be held by mom or dad.

The point is, there have been numerous times where I feel like I’ve identified a behavioral pattern, only to rely upon the knowledge of yesterday for today’s problems, and find out that everything has changed all over again, and then I’m left feeling dumbfounded and useless that I can’t figure out how to bring comfort to my own child.

I never once discounted the difficulty of parenting, for the first time much less, but as I expected it would be, parenting is not easy.  This does not deter me in the least bit, but I am just confirming that it’s about as difficult, and occasionally frustrating as I imagined it would be.  There’s nothing like changing a diaper, only for the kid to rip a wet fart and soil it seconds after being put on, only for an after shock to hit two minutes later, and make me throw my hands up at the frustrating of changing three diapers in the span of 120 seconds.

Ultimately I wouldn’t change a thing, and I’ll change a trillion diapers if I have to in order to raise my little girl right, but damn can I at least say there are times when I just have to say, what the fuck man?

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #006” →

FEH’s game pass subscription is more like MEH

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first heard that Fire Emblem: Heroes was introducing a monthly subscription “Feh Pass,” my initial reaction was more like, not mad… just disappointed.

I mean, there’s little reason to get mad about a gatcha game introducing more ways to make more money, because when the day is over, the ultimate goal of every gatcha game is to make money.  But like most F2P mobile games I ever come across, my goal is to always spend as little or no money at all.  At the very moment I’m writing this, I’ve played both Pokémon Go and Fire Emblem: Heroes consistently since their respective launch dates, and I’ve spent approximately a total of $14.99 in total.  Yet, I’ve gotten tons of enjoyment and have pretty stacked accounts in both games, mostly out of longevity, but the point is that I haven’t spent much money but still gotten just about all that I’ve wanted from them.

FEH has always kind of had kind of a pay2win methodology available at all times prior to the introduction of the Feh Pass, but it was still required to have some skill in the game’s mechanics, as well as the luck of the draw of actually getting the random characters that you’re aiming for.  But the Feh Pass, by virtue of giving those who pay for it an actual statistical stat boost, now un-levels the playing field, and truly becomes a game where you can buy superiority over players that do not.

However, I’m actually writing this after the launch of Feh Pass, and aside from the fact that I’ll always have this annoying glorified ad trying to get me to pay for a Feh Pass, in order to cash in on some rewards I’ve already fulfilled the requisite tasks for, it hasn’t really been all too intrusive to my every day playing of FEH.  I imagine that will change in time, as Feh Pass subscribers begin amassing more and more subscription exclusive character variants with stat boosts, and then I’ll start running into them in modes like Arena and Aether Raids, but for the time being, it hasn’t affected me yet.

Regardless of the inevitability of things like this, I’m still a little disappointed in FEH for going down this route.  It’s already basically the most lucrative mobile game in Nintendo’s portfolio, so to me this is like them just being greedy on top of being already greedy.  It’s not going to stop me from playing the game, but now I’ve got this automatic instant resentment for Feh Passers, and I’m looking forward to taking down these whales with my Klein+10 and three dancers cheese method.

I shouldn’t have left the house

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ever have one of those days where something feels amiss?  Like there’s a sinking feeling in your stomach or in your mind that something is off?  I can recall a few here and there in my life, and without much question, they’ve often times things have gone bad in some way shape or form.  But the important thing is to identify when days like this are transpiring, and knowing when to be extra careful with the little things, that might seem like auto-pilot in other times, like driving around.

I got pulled over for speeding on a road not that far from my house, because I mostly just wasn’t paying any attention.  I took for granted the typical behavior in which I drove on this particular road, and didn’t really consider the speed limit, and when I saw the cop standing in the middle of the road with his hand outstretched, I thought “oh shit,” and immediately knew what was happening.

Honestly, I’m not upset with the police, after all they’re just doing their job, and I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was the unlucky schlub who got caught.  I’m more upset with myself, because one, I should have identified how the day was going, because I had been in a funky mood the entire day prior, and two, I frankly didn’t even need to leave the house in the first place.  I went out, because I was bored, and I was on my way to go play some Pokémon Go because I thought it might cheer me up.

Yeah, I got a ticket for speeding while on my way to go play Pokémon Go.  It’s embarrassing to admit it, and it’s like the worst possible reason to ever get a ticket.  I wasn’t late for an important meeting, I wasn’t late to meet up for dinner or anything, nah, I just went out on a whim to try and go catch some Pikachus, and I got punished for my negligent driving while being out when I totally didn’t have to.

Continue reading “I shouldn’t have left the house” →

This is what will get me back to real gaming

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Call a spade a spade: creators of Left 4 Dead, now going under Turtle Rock Studios, announce zombie co-op shooter entitled Back 4 Blood; insist that it is not a sequel to Left 4 Dead

Turtle Rock can insist all they want, there’s little reason for anyone to believe that Back 4 Blood isn’t basically, Left 4 Dead 3.  The internet has already gotten their hold of the unofficial designation, and it’s going to be declared as such until it’s unofficially official.

That being said, it’s about fucking time there’s been a sequel to Left 4 Dead 2.  L2D was getting to the point where it was basically just like another one of Valve’s iconic games that fans have been begging for a sequel of in Team Fortress 2, and no amount of fan-made maps or campaigns would be able to fill the void that was official, canonic content that everyone demanded more of.

In spite of their claims and insistences, which I’m guessing is kind of their way of trying to temper expectations and hedge their bets, the bar that’s set for Left 4 Dead 3 Back 4 Blood is going to be monumental.  There are few games in the history of video games that I played more than both L4Ds, and despite the fact that I haven’t really played a console game for the better part of the last two years, I could very easily see myself coming back to it, for a sequel to the beloved “zbs” that was indicative of playing L4D, probably 340 out of 365 days of the year, for at least 3-4 years.

Continue reading “This is what will get me back to real gaming” →

Hi praise for Hi Score Girl

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I really wanted to say that it was surreal to be binging on an anime again, as if it were the year 2000, but that wouldn’t be that accurate.  Within the last year alone, I watched stuff like the last two seasons of Initial D, and I watched through Kakegurui on Netflix, so I have in fact watched some anime beyond 2000.  Regardless, over the last week, I binged through an anime series, and as if I were 16 years old again, I’m looking forward to when Netflix gets the reigns to the rest of it.

I’m going to assume it’s either Castlevania (which I guess would have classified as anime) or all the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episodes I’d been watching over the last few months that prompted Hi Score Girl to populate in my recommendations on Netflix, but I guess I have to admit that Netflix does kind of know me, because the preview got my attention enough to where I’d fast track and actually watch it, as opposed to putting it into my list and then never actually watching it until like a year later.

And I absolutely loved it.  Without question, Hi Score Girl is a love letter to old school video games and video game culture, and all too often, I felt rushed back to my own childhood watching the daily gaming mania and obsession with video games of Haruo Yaguchi.  I was super into Street Fighter II, and I poured hours upon hours into the game, and at differing points of my life, thought I was the best player in the world, until I went to the arcade and occasionally got my ass handed to me by players better than I was.  I can’t say I was as maniacal about improvement and wanting to be the best, but I’m still attuned enough to gaming culture to completely understand and relate to some degree.

Intertwined through all the gaming nostalgia is a sweet and fairly innocent love story between children growing up, and the trials and tribulations that come with different classes in school and society, the expectations of a family name, and the innate need and want to simply live our own lives.

Continue reading “Hi praise for Hi Score Girl” →