McMonday - The Goggles do Nothing!

One long, late night working in the trenches at McDonalds was made even longer by the face that it was extremely quiet. We had just made the transition from closing at midnight to being open 24 hours a day, and most of the customer peon types nearby were still unaware of this fact - which made the late shift quite highly sought after, by combining a lack of effort required to get through the night, as well as extra payment due to being after midnight.

Sweet, sweet time and a half.

However, the quiet shift inevitably made the time feel slower (as it does). It was made to feel even longer by the stupidity of those around me.

At one stage, I had gone to the front counter (no danger of bumping into customers - at that stage we were running the drive through only as our 24 hour option) to grab a drink (while it was quiet, it was still exceedingly warm in the kitchen, since there are grills and toasters everywhere). While I was there, I was stopped by one of the front area serving girls, who wanted to have a little chat with me. Well, I say chat, but I actually mean she wanted to ask me questions while I answered out of politeness. It may sound rude, but I had talked to her at length before, and found that, really, she had the IQ of a peanut. You will come to this realisation in a moment.

So, the usual "When do you finish tonight? When did you start? How's your sister?" (?!?) questions began. Once they were over, she asked me what seemed to be a much more pressing question.

"Why do you wear glasses all the time?"

Prepare to see this image a LOT in the McMonday posts...

I couldn't believe my ears! Here I am at work, speaking to one of the, admittedly not so intellectually inclined people at work. Sure, its McDonalds, and I don't expect people to be super geniuses (I only expect that of myself, and fall quite short), but basic day to day life things like people wearing glasses to bolster poor eyesight is something she should have picked up on in her twenty-something years of existence (she's actually older than me). Whether she learn from school, tv, or just by being around people...

I actually had to explain to her, that I couldn't see very well naturally, and that the devices known as "glasses" allowed me to see as well as normal people. Her follow up question, was much, much more worrying.

"Do you wear them when you go to bed?"

Really? I mean... really?

By this point, I was no longer able to answer her - it was the last thing I had expected. After stumbling over the "Oh shit! I didn't realise people could possibly be this stupid" response that was stuck in my head, I literally couldn't answer her. Another crew member heard this exchange, and jumped in with "Yes, if someone robs him then he needs to be able to identify the burglar". Almost as mind boggling as the question itself!

A lot of the time, when I tell this story, people tell me that I should have said "Yes, so that my dreams are in focus". A missed opportunity, if ever I've seen one.

My glasses are a topic that comes up in casual conversation occasionally. Usually its along the lines of "How much can you see without them? How badly would I see if I looked through them?" and then ends with people trying them on ("I look smart! S-M-R-T! OH CRAP I CAN'T SEE WHAT IS THIS WIZARDRY?!?"), and hurting their eyes because it unfocuses things for them. However, this occurrence stuck in my mind as a shining example of why we really should just remove the warning labels from everything and let Darwinism run its course.

Rage Comics

Recently I have become addicted to Rage Comics. For those who don't know what they are, they are meme-like comics using faces which were originally drawn in MSPaint (or at least look like they were) along with an attempt at some form of humour. A lot of them tend to point out the stupidity of some people, others have extremely random situations, and others are simply crass. However, I can't seem to stop looking at them! It's like they're infectious or something.

Problem?

I suspect that a lot of these images originated on that hive of scum and villainy known as 4chan. I cannot back that up, but its the feeling I get from some of the art. Considering I stay away from that corner of the Internet (I know what's good for me) I cannot say whether the rage comics have taken off there - however, one place which they seem to grow in number daily is on Reddit - to the point where they made a complete subreddit for these comics. It is aptly abbreviated to F7U12.

The reason these comics are called "Rage Comics" is that, more often than not, they include a rage face. However, they don't always. I suppose its the law of the internet - things start one way but get corrupted, though somehow retaining their original title or name. Its quite odd, isn't it?

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I even have multiple iPhone apps that deal with this. One is the Rage Faces app, which is simply a large set of rage faces and the means to copy and paste them into the SMS app (which I enjoy annoying people with occasionally nowadays). Another is the Rage Comics app, so I can look at some of the stuff from Reddit in a decently readable format when I'm on the go.


I have no idea why I'm so addicted to these. Possibly because they are so stupid, and quick to read when I need a moment's break.

Airplane rage

Are you guys addicted to any particular Internet memes?

Portal 2

On a note related to this post, I have updated the backlog post a LOT lately, with new purchases (why oh why do I keep making this harder on myself) as well as a few completions - including the topic of today's post.

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I'm just going to go ahead and say it - buy Portal 2. Now. If you haven't bought it yet, you're a damn fool.

Also, you're committing sacrilege if you have not played the first Portal. I'm serious here. I learned today that one of the guys at work had never played it, so I took matters into my own hands and bought him a copy on Steam. I like to think of it as making the world a better place, if only marginally.

I want one. Now.

For those who don't know the premise of Portal, you are given a gun that shoots portals. Certain types of flat surfaces allow you to fire said portals into them. You can fire a blue portal and an orange portal - when both are laid down, physically entering one will result in you coming out of the other one. The kind of teleportation portals we all wish existed in real life.

Your task is to use the aforementioned portal gun, as well as your brain, to solve a bunch of physics puzzles, that all involve getting you to the other side of a room safely. While this sounds utterly boring when I describe it, that's because, well, I don't describe things well?

It's a first person exploratory puzzle game, if that makes any more sense. In the first title, you are a test subject for a company called "Aperture Science", and your not-so-friendly robot test supervisor GLaDOS offers you... well, less guidance more snarky comments as you progress through the lab. Eventually you escape the confines of the test rooms to try and break out of the lab.

In the sequel, the storyline begins somewhat similarly, in that you are kind of thrust back into the lab test rooms, although they are now badly damaged and gradually get repaired as you continue through the game.

The puzzles originally consisted of mainly buttons, boxes, platforms, the cutest gun turret robots you'll ever meet, and the like. In the sequel, some more elements are added, such as light bridges which can be extended to different parts of the room via portals, goo that makes you run really fast when you walk over it, and a sort of swirling blue antigravity field thing that carries you in whatever direction it is moving.

In addition to all of this, a coop mode has been added, and it is brilliant. There is a certain satisfaction to be had in completing a puzzle, and that is only doubled when you manage to complete a puzzle with the aid of another player. All of the coop puzzles are designed in a way that both players need to get involved, so if you have a player who simply refuses to work with you then I can see how it could very quickly descend into chaos, with the players trying to portal each other into the water (which kills you). Luckily, the game also warns you when you try to look for a coop partner randomly online (it flat out tells you its more fun with a friend rather than some random).

All in all, if you haven't bought it yet, or planned to buy it yet, I doubt I've done much to convince you. However, buy it buy it buy it! It's an entertaining, intelligent game with quite a funny plotline. And the ending to single player is simultaneously hilarious and awesome.

Ubisoft Failwin

Some of you may know, last Friday, Ubisoft had a bunch of games on their Australian online store marked with a 100% discount. If you did not know, don't waste your time looking now - you won't find any free games. It ended a few hours after I saw it. These games were marked as a "promo" on the site itself.

I nabbed 22 games from this.

Yesterday, I received an email from the Ubisoft shop. The text follows, unedited.

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TO OUR UBISHOP CUSTOMERS

Last week, the Australian Ubishop site was showing that nearly all of its games were available for a 100% discount. This was obviously a systems error that has now been fixed.

As you were quick enough to act on this error, we would like to advise that Ubisoft will honour this sale at the full discount. We hope that you enjoy the games, and invite you to visit our website again to view our upcoming PC lineup, and our regular promotions. Admittedly, they probably won’t be quite as generous as the one you have just taken advantage of...

Best regards,

The Ubishop team
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I find this:
a) Hilarious
b) Awesome

Ubisoft is far from being one of my favourite game publishers. They began their downhill slide (in my mind) by over-hyping a game to the point where I was legitimately excited and really wanted it. I then convinced my parents to get me it for present, in lieu of anything else. (At the time, I was a Maccas worker, and not exactly able to afford every awesome game that came out)
I then played this abomination - finding it to be the biggest steaming pile of repetition I have ever encountered. Everything unique in the game was covered within the first hour of play, and the rest simply repeated it. A lot.
I am, of course, referring to Assassin's Creed.

Aside from that, their reputation lowered even further in my mind when they introduced their utterly draconian DRM system, where PC gamers who legitimately bought the software are required to remain online while playing the game that they paid for. Router dies while playing? Too bad, now you can't play the game at all.
I have just read that this system has been removed, but the fact that they implemented it in the first place (or that this got through into the "let's build it" phase in the first place) is a huge black mark from me.

On the other hand, one would expect such a company - one willing to piss off every legitimately paying gamer in order to attempt to protect their property (and in the process providing the people who pirated their games with superior game experiences due to, well, not being cut off from an offline game when their Internet died) to recall every digital copy. How exactly do you do this? By invalidating the CD keys that were generated during that time period when you do your online authentication (which they still do, its just not every 5 minutes any more).

Bravo Ubisoft, for at least doing something right. Now release some games worth playing and we'll talk :P

Now I Put You In the Box! - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

I received Castlevania: Lords of Shadow as a Christmas gift from my brother and sister. This made me happy, because I had asked for it, and was wanting to play this game for quite a while.

I had been told that it rebooted Castlevania, took it and gave it a Devil May Cry-like quality. I can see where that comment came from, however, I felt that gameplay-wise it would be a mish-mash of that with God of War.

However, the God of War comparison stops mostly at the weapon. Like previous Castlevania titles, the weapon is a whip-like chain. This is where inevitable comparisons with God of War stem from. I would like to end the comparisons with God of War right there though, because there is a huge, obvious difference between the two.

In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, your character is not an evil bastard out to destroy the world. In fact, you are out to save the world by killing the Lords of Shadow - the Lord of the Lycans, the Lord of the Vampires (who is NOT Dracula in this game!) and the Lord of the Undead/Necromancy.

Admittedly, he stays on his noble path because he has the promise of power, which he plans to use to resurrect his recently deceased wife, but his intentions are otherwise noble. Gabriel Belmont is, after all, a member of an Order devoted to destroying the supernatural creatures of the night.

The game is quite fun, fast and furious in its combat, and rewards skill over button mashing. After a level or two, you unlock the abilities of light magic, and shadow magic - activating light magic allows you to regenerate health from hitting enemies. Shadow magic deals extra damage. You occasionally find fountains of "neutral" magic to convert into these. Enemies also drop neutral magic - as long as you're not using magic when you kill them.

But more importantly, you have the ability to "gain focus". A bar fills up at the bottom of the screen, as you hit enemies. Taking a hit empties the bar immediately. The bar also fills up quite slowly if you spam the same moves over and over again - speeding up if you vary your attacks. Activating magic pauses the bar's growth - unless you get hit while using magic, in which case it still empties.
Your reward for filling this bar is to become focused. When you are focused, every single time you hit an enemy, an orb of neutral magic is dropped. At this point, you need to balance dodging/blocking to not lose your focus, attacking to generate more neutral magic, and actually drawing it the neutral into one of your magic medallions - since it does not simply sit there forever, fading if left long enough.

This all sounds quite complex, but it is introduced bit by bit. Admittedly, I never became focused for long periods at a time, though this was more due to my natural "kill them all quickly, quick make them die!" playstyle than it was a failure to understand the system.

The storyline is quite a good one. Patrick Stewart voices the character of Zobek - one of the main characters of the game, who also narrates during every loading screen. While parts of the story seem generic and played before, and some sections are downright predictable, the epilogue caught me off guard, and sets up another game quite beautifully. A game that I look very much forward to.

Overall, thumbs up to this game. Definitely worth a play. Its also one of the prettiest action games I've played recently (and it shows in its size... the xbox version is 2 discs!)

It also has one of the funniest scenes I've seen in a game. I won't spoil it for you, but it makes the title of this post much less irrelevant.