Jul 21, 2010

Public Plea to Blizzard

CATACLYSM BETA KEY.


PLEASE.

That is all.

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Jul 16, 2010

Dissidia, let's finish this.

So I wanted to go through each character in the game. Well I decided I should not because most of the characters act the same!. It's so silly..


They have slightly different motivations, but its so silly that they just seem to be slashing their way to the end of the game. They want to resolve everything with one thing: fighting. Most of the conversations can be resumed in 1-enemy appears 2-useless banter occurs 3-let's solve this by fighting!

I think this game would have been so much better with a lot less story. Yeah, it's weird to say that with a Final Fantasy game, but this is a fighting game. In most fighting games you get a couple of lines of dialog before each important fight (which is just the final one, most of the time) and that's enough. This game grinds its way through the conversations, and its all so hollow discussion and sometimes it just doesn't make sense at all. I was skipping EVERY conversation and cutscene on the last characters because I knew it was just 5 to 10 minutes of the character and the enemy taunting each other while delivering asinine comments about some silly quest or purpose.

To recap things real quick:

1-The warrior of light is an asshole
2-Firion is a pussy and wants a world covered in roses so he beats the living snot out of everyone who stands in his way.
3-The onion knight is supposed to be like a super smart genius but he falls in such silly traps and delivers lines so crappy that I ended up feeling a bit dizzy from all the eye rolling I did over all his nonsense. so stupid...
4-Cecil was actually cool, his story made a lil more sense than the others, and there was some conflict goin on with him.
5-Bartz was a breath of fresh air with his cheery attitude but the humor was a bit childish and.. not so funny.
6-Tera is as insecure as ever but I was very glad she wasn't sulking around all the fucking time like in ff6.
7-Cloud was just cloud being cloud. That is, a crappy character that is emo all the fucking time for no reasonable reason and is lusting for sephirot all the time, pissing me off to no end in the process.
8-Squall... was... *gulp* actually an interesting character! wow! what the fuck, I thought I would never say that in my life. But in this game, he wasn't emo, he was kinda badass, and there weren't ALMOST any "whatever.."s and the "I will be a stupid asshole for no reason"moments were almost non-existant! He wanted to be a lone wolf, but just because he wanted to protect the friends he cared about! best interpretation of squall, ever.
9-Zidane was as meh as ever and as interesting as the coffee-soaked napkins sitting below my empty coffee mug.
10-Tidus is cheery, brave, and all around the same character that I love in ff10 but that some retards tend to hate because he isn't emo all the time about stupid crap.

About the villains, I can safely resume them all in 4 words: boring, pointless, blabbering idiots. Except for Kefka. Kefka is great, he's the same psychotic clown that enjoys inflicting pain on others just for the sake of it, or because he's just bored. Or maybe he doesn't have a real reason and just want to see everything buring and each one of his enemies suffering while he eats popcorn and watches, literally. He's the ultimate troll. He's the same Joker on steroids plus superpowers, and I loved him for staying in character since ff6.

So there you go. Some of them I felt changed for the worst, and really, this game should have been much, much more lighter in story. Anyways, this game is still a must for anyone who enjoys FF games, even if it's not a classic FF RPG.

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Jul 9, 2010

The boss is down, pick up your loot

So the RealID debacle has ended.


In good time too, I was out of popcorn and coke already. Anyways, Blizzard took the right (may I add, NO-BRAINER) decision to not include our real names on forum posts for all the internet to see. The RealID boss is down, nerdscreams were heard, people are re-subbing.

SO is there something left to learn from this cataclysmic event?

I think there's plenty. For Blizzard to even consider doing this in the first place, it's mind-blowing. Considering how practically everyone capable of rational thinking knew this was a horrible idea it begs the question (In my best angry videogame nerd interpretation):

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

It could have been pressure from Activision. Or maybe they were testing the waters for a full facebook integration. Maybe they didn't think it through very well and went with the first idea someone sugested.

What do I think? It could be a mix of all of those reasons. I know what it wasn't though: It certainly wasn't just to get rid of trolls. It's stupid, it's complete, utter stupidity. It's an argument that contradicts itself. You are telling us that trolls who are people that enjoy seeing other people pissed off, will stop posting because they will have fear of using their real names? why would they have fear? ah, because someone can use that information against them, like how trolls always look at your armory or equipment as the first source of harassment. OH WAIT.

I want to think the people leading Blizzard are smart. If they weren't, they wouldn't be at the very top like they are now, so that argument doesn't make sense in the slightest.

Anyways, things are returning to normal, my anticipation for cataclysm has been renewed, so let's go back to business as usual. The forums will be getting an update, with ranking systems and the like, and that's something I think will contribute to better discussions.


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Jul 8, 2010

RealID Debacle Continues

Well, it's been an amusing 2 days for us WoW players. I posted before about the utter stupidity that is the new announcement about the official forums requiring RealID, posting your real, full name on each thread that or post you make. Blizzard customers aren't happy.


The thread where Blizzard is carefully herding all complains has reached over 40,000 posts in just 2 days. This has to be the fastest growing thread in internet's history. With over 12,000 unique users, and with a disaproval rate of over 90%, it has to be the biggest display of universal discontent over a new policy for any company of this type.

The media is all over this as well, with reports even from prestigious sources outside the industry like (unbelievably) the Wall Street Journal and the BBC. The question in my mind right now is, will Blizzard change its mind now that it is undeniably evident that this is not what their customers want?

Well, there's a lot at stake. I'm pretty sure that, as players themselves, the creative team behind the game are against this, but the big heads over at activision and blizzard just recently signed a deal with facebook in order to connect their games to the social network, and in turn attract more people to WoW and Battle.net.

This is just the start. Players know it, they know it, and it's been made clear that this is just the beginning of more things to come. Facebook "Likes" inside the game? instant feed to facebook/twitter accounts on game accomplishments? yes, yes and more. All of this comes with the privacy issues that currently surround these social networks.

If there's a time to make a stand against this, it is now. If this goes through, I'm pretty sure there will be no end to the things Activision and Blizzard will make with their customers' personal information. As i said before, I don't really mind from having my personal info being made public (as it is right now). But purposefully making a profit out of it when I never joined the game for that purpose? that's something I won't be a part of.

I grabbed my popcorn and I am watching from the sidelines. It'll be interesting to see where this ends.

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Jul 7, 2010

Battle Net's RealID

So there are news for us World of Warcraft players, the new RealID system that allows us to link our accounts under the same battle .net account, and also communicate with other players in-game regardless of server (or blizzard game), will now require us to use our real name on the official forums instead of our characters name.


This has got to be one of the worst idea, no, in fact, is the worst idea that Blizzard has ever come up with.

My name is all over the web, it's public at OCRemix. However I won't support this because it's a very different environment in there. Trolls will continue to be trolls regardless of having their identity shown to everyone, and the only people who will be hurt by this are the people who don't want their information made public.

Some people defend the decision saying that people can't do much with just a name, but I want to direct them to 4Chan or Encyclopedia Dramatica, where people's DoB, Address, and every personal detail are investigated by internet trolls by searching the web, and in many instances, hacking email accounts, etc.

In a game where you're supposed to be playing it to escape reality, this thing comes as quite the hypocrisy. I expect a lot of backlash and cancelled accounts over this.

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Jun 24, 2010

Vuvuzelas?

Every way you go, every website you visit, the common theme is The World Cup. Even in countries like mine, where Football isn't popular at all, everyone seems to be all over it. There's another common theme going on in the interwebs lately, and that is how the vuvuzelas are the most annoying thing ever.


I didn't know what was a vuvuzela, until I decided to look up a video of someone played them on youtube. To my surprise, these are the same kind of trumpets used in baseball games, carnival, concerts, and other events in my country. Are people really new to these loud things? There are even louder ones made of metal!. I don't find them annoying at all, I actually find them to be a part of any big sports event. I was baffled that people around the world have never heard of them! Even more, people complaining about hearing them in the tv transmission.

Anyhoo, hurray for the "vuvuzelas", for they make loud events even louder!

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Jun 23, 2010

Toy Story 3

So after reading some reviews I decided to watch toy story 3 this week. I called a friend and we went to a theater close to where I work. As we were looking for a good place to sit down I started hearing and seeing a lot of kids in the crowd, which is normal for this kind of movies, but I told my friend "Ugh, there are a lot of kids around, trying to watch the movie with kids yelling and laughing all the time is going to suck".


Turns out the kids were mostly quiet, and I was the one laughing all the time!

I don't know if I was laughing to loud or not, I didn't really care. I was genuinely having a lot of fun with this movie. And I wasn't really laughing at the cheap slapstick humor or anything, but at the silly situations created by the plot. Even little things like a teddy bear, a clown and a baby toy hitching a ride on the back of pixar's planet pizza pickup truck were completely hilarious for some reason. It was the silliness of these toys acting this deep, complex plot that created such a nice contrast for me.

I watched the two previous films, and while they were enjoyable, they can't hold a candle to this movie's deep plot. I am not going to go into too much detail but suffice it to say, this movie has everything, and everything is well executed. It's one of the best pixar films and that's a lot to say. It will be one of the best movies of this year, if not the best. As with wall-e, this is a contender for best movie of the year, but probably won't get that recognition because people apparently can't get over the fact that animated movies from pixar are most of the time better than whatever Hollywood spews every year.

One thing though: do not watch this movie in 3D. The 3D was VERY weak. I could take off my glasses and it wouldn't have made a lot of difference. But if you want a movie that will make you laugh, will make you care for the characters, and will make you wonder what's going to happen next all the time, then go watch this movie.

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