Demented Rants

The hilarious and lovable crew who brought you The Gamers & Dorkness Rising is asking for your help!

Ok, DG fans, we need your help! We scored a *great* deal on build space for the JourneyQuest sets, but now we need to return the favor. So come to “Company” this Thursday at the Seattle Musical Theatre. We’ll be there too, so let’s make a night of it!

Call (206) 363-2809 for tickets. Get $10 off if you mention JourneyQuest!

That was their latest post on Facebook, and here’s a link to a post on their site. It goes into more detail as to why you should go see “Company”

Dead Gentlemen Productions Blog

Hey guys! We are selling our wii!
And it’ll be autographed

We never used it, but maybe 5 times in the past 2 months. It’s just been collecting dust.
It comes with:

Wii system, 2 controllers, 1 nunchuck, 1 classic controller, what’s left of our 1 year/same day replacement warranty from Gamestop (We bought it at the end of Feb.), a few games from the WiiStore, a gamecube memory card and these games:
Death Jr. : Root of Evil
Wii Play
Wii Sports
Trauma Center: Second Operation
My Sims

We spent about $500 on it all together, but are only asking for $300 obo. + s&h (varies depending on which service you want, how far you are and if you want insurance or not)

If you are interested, send me an email – missathenahollow@gmail.com

Ok, well it’s not exactly the T-Virus.
But it’s damn fucking close, if you ask me.
It is called ANEW CLINICAL Derma-Full X3 Facial Filling Serum.
It is to make you look younger (sounding familiar yet?)

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) for Avon, it is the IMAGE that bears the striking resemblence to the Resident Evil T-Virus.

Come on now, there’s no freaking way you can say that this is total coincidence!

Avon’s Serum

T-Virus

I think it’s about time we all stock up on shotguns, hand grenades, flashlights and our very own The Zombie Survival Guide with maybe a couple The Zombie Survival Guide…

I thought I had seen it all folks.

But this is the most awesome reason to buy a video game ever.

Rock Band offers the ability to upload your characters from the game, to their website, and in turn you can pay to have them turned into 6″ figurines!

Who said rock toys were reserved only for KISS?

Rock Band “Merch” Table

While you’re at it, sign up and add me to your friends list!

Athena Hollow @ Rockband.com

In Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), the United States Supreme Court held, in a unanimous 8-0 decision, that the First Amendment’s free-speech guarantee prohibits awarding damages to public figures to compensate for emotional distress intentionally inflicted upon them.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now, onto things that don’t cause me to spaz my retard alert…

OMG Rockband 2. Rockband 2 OMG. I love this game. I spent probably $250 on it total, thus far. There’s just too many good goddamn downloadable songs! And there’s at least $50 more that I want, but I am going to be good and not get them for a few weeks. Might as well perfect the ones I have.

Onto the Wii…

It’s been said 1000 times that the Wii isn’t in the next-gen console wars. I have to agree. It’s in a standalone competition by itself.

Nintendo is always up for the challange of being different, and succeeding every time. My only real complaints are due to the fact that if you are playing a precision game, it can become quite difficult.

I started playing Trauma Center: Second Opinion. Best I can tell, it is a remake of the DS version of Trauma Center. Fun ass game on the DS, even though I got to a level that was absolutely unbeatable and never finished it, I still had a blast when I COULD play. Unfortunately, I’m a slightly shaky person, and because of that, some of the stuff that was simple and scoring me “A’s” on the ds, are scoring me a “C” … disappointing.

The actual decision on getting the Wii though, was for the emulator and gamecube compatability. I mean, had we went out and bought all of the systems it actually supports, we’d have spent WELL over what the Wii costs.

I don’t know about you, but I loved quite a few Gamecube games, and am quite pleased that I will finally get to play Baten Kaitos. (It was my white whale. When I COULD find it, it was damaged, but finding it was rare indeed.) And I will also get to beat BOTH Paper Mario games.

Also, the Wii is going to be my new Workout machine. Instead of spending thousands on a workout thingy just for it to take up gobs of space in my already limited bubble, I put money down on Wii Fitness (not to be confused w/ the $90 Wii Fit). It doesn’t come out till May, but goddammit, I am GOING to use this thing to get in shape.

So there you have it. Yes, the Wii is pretty nifty in it’s own right, but is it in direct competition with Sony and Microsoft? Not a chance. It appeals to a totally different audience even.

The Wii targets families, kids and casual gamers, and whereas the 360 and ps3 wouldn’t mind having a slice of that pie, they just can’t justify coming out w/ games that are essentially Tamagatichi’s for kittens/puppies/horses/whatever.

Three reasons why I haven’t posted in a few days:

1.  I got my tax money on Friday, and have been on a slightly conservative spending spree.

2. I bought Rock Band 2 (’nuff said)

3. Microsoft decided to make my computer act retarded.

To elaborate on the 3rd…

Everything was working fine. Kid was watching a movie on my computer, it went kaput, I restart, and get a stupid “Reload boot” error.

I didn’t feel like dicking with it, so I let it go for a couple days, figuring that somehow the boot file or MBR was fucked up. I know how to fix those problems, but was kind of enjoying the days off to be honest.

Well, I give in and try to fix it today. Neither fixboot, fixmbr nor bootcfg fixed it. So, what was the problem? Oh, that my main drive was jumpered as slave.

Now, this would normally be an issue that could be corrected the first time you use the drive. But no, I have been running this copy of xp pro on my computer for oh, about 7 months now. Not a single problem. And then *poof* Windows decides that it has to be on a master jumpered drive. WTF? I didn’t realize that Windows had such a picky AI installed.

But, needless to say, all is well in Athenaland now. Computer is back up and running better (because I also can-aired out the psu, cpu and gpu) and I will be back soon to give some insight as to why I both like and dislike my spiffy new Wii.

Recently, Sony announced that there are roughly 20 million registered Playstation Network accounts, which is about 3 million more than that registered for xBox Live.

Really? Well, I mean, it makes sense, since the xBox live network is being calculated solely on xBox 360 accounts, and the playstation network is an all encompassing set of numbers for both Playstation 3 and PSP.

I’m pretty sure that means that yes, Playstation may be doing better on raw signups, but does that necessarily mean their networks are better?

Here’s just a couple of differences of the pros vs both networks:

PSN pros:

* Free
* Utilized for both PSP and PS3

XBL pros:

* Exclusive downloadable content for games that AREN’T xBox exclusive games
* Exclusive demos for games that AREN’T xBox exclusive games
* Netflix integration

Yes, xBox live costs money, but with that money they are able to negotiate exclusive DLC, along with other major points of content interest such as the netflix deal.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather pay a whole $50 a year for something that will get used on a daily, or semi daily basis; has excellent uptime; offers unique content, than get a ps3 where I personally don’t know of a single game that is exclusive that I would enjoy enough to justify paying $400 for a console.

As any good gamer from the past 15 years can tell you, gaming has come a very long way. It has gone from 8bit to nigh realistic graphics, explosive render times, and the ability to play with people across the planet without having to pay long distance charges.

Unfortunately, game companies seem to have lost sight of the idea of a convincing storyline. Don’t get me wrong, I love my games that are built more for multiplayer than solo, but that doesn’t mean I want EVERY game to be like that.

I remember the first time I beat Final Fantasy 7. It took around 40 hours of game play just to do the main storyline. Now, mind you, at least 10 of that was beautiful cutscenes, but none the less it was amazing. In-depth story, as convoluted and contorted as a conch shell, with murder and love mixed with a bit of whimsy and fun. It was one of a kind, unfortunately.

Since then, developers have seemed to dwindle to 13 hour (max) single player stories that really aren’t more advanced than a run of the mill children’s book. There’s no twists or turns, no hooks, nothing to really keep you going except for that achievement you get to display on your gamer profile that proves nothing more than you had finish the game so it doesn’t look incomplete.

Every bit of budget is spent on graphics, which is fine and dandy, but when you look back at the fact that some of the biggest selling games of all time had top of the line graphics for their time period and could STILL work in a fantastic work of literary art, it saddens me.

And I won’t even get STARTED on what’s wrong w/ the phrase “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game“, except for the fact that there’s no role being played. You are hacking and slashing your way across the map just to make sure you are level 50 before your buddy in your 4th period English Class.

We need new blood, or really old blood, in the gaming industry now. Everyone seems to think that going to DeVry or any other college that teaches you video games, will somehow make you the most awesome developer ever. Problem is, they teach you how to make the same exact game that the class an hour earlier was taught. Everything is cookie cutter. There’s no innovation. But, why should someone be innovative when people are buying up the same crap with a different title and skin?