I checked my email today and I got an email from Sony telling me that they want me to come back to Everquest, so they've reactivated my account for free for 30 days. So I guess I'll take advantage of it and play it... So I'll have Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call, and Everquest all installed at the same time. My AO account doesn't expire until the 3rd of March so basically I have 3 active game accounts. Fun fun fun.
And uhh... Splinter Cell is a great game, and I suggest that everybody illegally download it... or buy it, whichever you prefer. If I knew how to take screenshots, I would, but I don't, so I won't. I'm trying to get through the whole game without killing anybody. So far, I'm on the first level... but I haven't killed anybody yet. I've snuck up behind and knocked out quite a few people, though. The gameplay seems pretty complicated at first, but the game is basically a mix between Metal Gear Solid and Thief. I think that would be the perfect explanation of the game right there, MGS and Thief rolled into one. It gets pretty simple to play after you get used to it. I got pretty annoyed at first because it was pretty hard, but I stopped overestimating the bad guys and realized that the AI is pretty easy to figure out.
First of all, if you shoot out all of the lights that can be shot out, it's way easier to get around. Sometimes it's just not possible to get by without getting caught if you don't shoot out the lights, so just take out that little gun and shoot the lights, then hide in a dark spot when the guards check out the noise. They can walk directly past you, almost bump into you and they won't notice you if your light gauge is all the way to the left... so as long as you can stay in the dark, it's pretty easy. The whole trick is figuring out how to get from point A to point B without having to walk through any light. If you gotta walk through light, make sure that nobody's looking in that general direction when you do it, or you'll get caught and then you'll have to kill people, and if you're trying to get through the game without killing people that means you gotta load your quicksave, and if you load your quicksave it means that you have to start from an earlier spot and that sucks because sneaking around is SLOW and doing it all over again is sucky. Run-on sentences kick ass. Quicksave is your friend.
Before I end this post, I must suggest that everybody check out this site. Scroll down and watch the videos, and then click on "next batch" and watch more videos. Comic genius. It makes me laugh a lot.
In all of that bitching about Unreal 2 and how you watched Panic Room (dumbshit) I forgot to link to Nick's comic. It's a wonderful story with an absolutely intriguing plot twist at the end... I'm talkin like Metal Gear Solid 2 style plot twists. Nah, this kicks MGS2's ass, because instead of that faggot Raiden there's me, and I could kick that pussy Raiden's ass. Grab him by that stupid white hair of his...
This isn't the only post I made today, read the one below this... I updated twice today... It's not even noon yet, I might go three, maybe four times.
Seriously though, if I could do backflips and shit and all of that cool flippy shit Raiden does, I wouldn't always be crying like a bitch all the time... Solid snake don't pull that "why me" shit all the time, he gets the job done, and he does it right. He may ask questions sometimes, but he puts up with the shit. Raiden just pisses me off. If I didn't beat the game when I rented it, I would probably take the game back if I bought it. Actually, I probably wouldn't. That game kicked ass.
Welp, I got the game downloaded, extracted, burned, installed, patched, and cracked. And it's a wonderful game. It gets a little sluggish when the lighting effects get intense, but unlike some games *cough Unreal fucking 2 cough*, I can lower the settings in the game and it actually enhances the performance. What a concept... a game runs slow on your comp on high quality, so you turn it to low quality, and it runs fine! This allows less powerful computers to run newer, more graphics intensive games but at the cost of not looking as good. What a wonderful idea! Unreal 2 should do that. I mean, they should release a "good game" patch that transforms the game into something more than a pile of shit. Splinter Cell looks better, plays better, runs better, is better.
Did I mention that this game is beautiful? I mean, even at the lowest lowest quality, it looks absolutely beautiful. Splinter Cell's low quality is about equal to Max Payne's high quality when it comes to texture detail and sharpness and all that crizzap. Bizzatch. Even on the highest quality settings, the game is playable, but when there's a bunch of lights (and every light casts real time shadows against objects that it hits), the game slows down a lot. Changing the quality of the graphics mostly changes the quality of the lights and shadows and stuff, but they still look absolutely beautiful even on low quality. Seriously, and the game runs well... and it's not a pile of shit... like Unreal 2... because if you weren't already aware... Unreal 2 sucks. Ass.
I saw the movie Old School yesterday, and it was a funny movie. It was like a college movie... except with old guys and a really fat guy instead of a bunch of people that you would see as guest hosts on MTV's "TRL" show. The guy that fucked the pie didn't even show up in the movie, which is quite a rarity by today's standards, as he is in every fucking movie made after American Pie. Seriously, he's in every movie. I'm pretty sure I saw him somewhere in Daredevil. And that Panic Room movie... I saw him in that... seriously... no, seriously, I'm telling the truth. Watch it... watch Panic Room, it's a wonderful movie... it's about a room, where people go to panic. Like say when I played that shitty Unreal 2 game, I could have went to the panic room instead of putting a brick through my monitor. I didn't put a brick through my monitor but I was really close to doing it.
Did you watch panic room yet? You did? Hah hah, you fucking dumbshit, I've never watched that movie in my life. It looks shitty. And you watched it. You wasted the time out of your life to sit down and watch the movie, and you were probably asking yourself, "Where's that guy that fucked the pie?" and guess what? He's not in the movie. I MADEI TUP. AND YOU BELIEVED ME< DUMBSHIT.
No, I don't have it yet. I hear that it came out in stores today, or yesterday, or something. I've seen PC reviews for it popping up everywhere, so it's gotta be released by now. It's also starting to surface on the newsgroups, 3 cd's long. I still have yet to find a full post of it yet, but I've found many partial posts. I don't mean that I happened to refresh the newsgroup while they were uploading the files, but that they just uploaded part of the first CD and then stopped.
I figure I'll have this game before the end of tonight. I haven't slept since yesterday though, so it'll be a challenge staying awake if I manage to download it. I'll probably just start downloading it and then go to sleep, and wake up to a nice happy surprise fully equipped with an arsenal of stealthy tactics and weaponry while you TRY TO NOT GET SEEN BYH THE BAD GUYS BECAUSE THEY WILL SHOOT YOU AND PUSH ALARM BUTTONS IF THEY SEE YOU OR SEE YOU SHOOT A THING OR YOU SHOOT A THING AND LEAVE THE CORPSE SOMEWHERE THEAT THEY WOILL SEE THE CORPSE
I was reading Real Life today, and I finally decided to start from the beginning and read through the whole archive. I only got about eight months into it though, because the server started going really slow. Like 56k slow. 28.8kbps (the true elite hacker speed... not l33t h4x0r, but elite hacker... get it right NEWBIE) even. Greg seemed to have the same problem with Ultima Online as I'm having with Asheron's Call. I keep coming back to it. I'm just not going to fight it anymore and let it be the only game that I subscribe to.
It's got everything I want in an online RPG:
Extremely in-depth character development, allowing you to choose exactly what you want to specialize in, or allowing you to make a very spread out and diverse character that is still viable and not underpowered.
A level-based experience system where you have a general idea of how powerful a character is by looking at the level, but also the ability to spend experience points on skills and attributes as you earn them, giving a feeling of constant character development.
Fast-paced battles that rely not only on character stats/skills/buffs, but also client-side responsiveness.
The ability to play solo without fear of getting utterly destroyed by bigger monsters.
Lots and lots of quests and unique items to earn, some that can be done by yourself, some that need a group in order to be completed.
A huge, huge huge huge world with NO ZONES... After playing AO for a couple months, I realized how shitty zones are. Loading times make me cry no matter what game I'm playing. Final Fantasy IX was a very sad game for me.
Yeah... If anybody ever hears me say that I quit Asheron's Call, you can automatically assume that I'll be playing it again in a few months at the most. I've been playing it for over three years now, but it's a constantly evolving game... and they don't charge you for a new game every fucking time they update. They have a fairly decent sized patch scheduled for every month, adding new content and balance to the game. They've only released one (1) expansion pack for the game, which is quite impressive compared to how many expansion packs have come out for its' competition.
I'm finished explaining why I went crawling back to AC... and I just found the first Splinter Cell cd. Only two more to go. Yay.
It's been over a week since I posted. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but it has.
I resubscribed Asheron's Call. There's kind of a story behind it, but I'll just go ahead and tell you because I need to take up space on this page.
As you all may know, I have been looking for free online games that are fun to play and have depth and blah blah and all of that crap. There's always Neverwinter Nights, which I paid $40 for just to play online, but for some reason I get incredibly intimidated whenever I join a server. It seems like whenever I go out and fight, I get slaughtered. Grouping with players helps, but I don't like depending on other people, and I don't like people depending on me. And then, I also had a subscription for Anarchy Online, which (I'm sad to admit) got old really quick.
I feel bad to say that AO got old, because I went on and on about how good it was when I first started playing it. It was a new experience and it wasn't anything like the abysmal AO beta test. When you start off, it's very easy to move along by yourself, and accumulate some really good xp in the process. Eventually though, stuff gets way harder, and your character development doesn't really catch up with the difficulty of the monsters, so grouping is pretty much required if you want to be doing missions higher than the medium difficulty setting. Like I said before, I'm not a huge fan of grouping. I don't mind talking to other people or trading items with them or socializing or whatever, but I feel that I don't work extremely well in a group, because I always feel like I'm not pulling enough weight around or I'm pulling too much. If I'm not pulling enough weight, people don't like me for taking advantage of them. If I'm pulling too much weight, I should be able to get experience faster by myself.
Have I lost you guys yet?
Anyway, I stumbled across a game called RPG World Online. Here's a screenshot of this beautiful game. So, it's not really the most impressive looking game ever. It's not even impressive at all looking. One would go as far as to say that the game looks like a finely woven basket of shit. But, the difference between this game and the other free game is, that this game has depth. I mean, there is so much stuff to do in this game. You can create the typical character classes: fighter, mage, archer, rogue (kind of). You can also craft stuff out of items that you find, you can set your character up to be a vendor so you can work like a shop and make money while you're gone.
The character creation was very detailed, allowing you to decide exactly what you wanted to specialize in. Four different types of magic (Red, Blue, White, Black), lots of different weapons, trade skills, deception skills, lots of stuff. You also chose how to allocate your stats. Immediately when I saw this, I knew that they completely ripped off the Asheron's Call character creation. I mean, they added some new trade skills, and took out some other skills, but it's basically the same character creation.
When I further played the game, I realized that the magics were almost exactly the same as Asheron's Call. Red magic was the manipulation of player/npc stats and skills, just like creature magic in AC. Blue magic was the manipulation of items, like making a sword do more damage or a shield defend more. White magic was exactly like life magic in AC, where you have heal spells, protects, vulnerabilities, transfer spells (drain), etc. Black magic, obviously was just like war magic, with attack spells.
The graphics and speed of the game was just unbearable though. I tried to enjoy the depth and quality of the actual game than the graphics and speed, but I couldn't. It was almost like playing Asheron's Call, except a much earlier version, much much earlier. Then, I realized that I had a subscription to a game I rarely played anymore, Anarchy Online. So I cancelled the AO account, and resubscribed my AC account, and have been enjoying it for the past few days. Yay!
I heard that Splinter Cell went gold for PC... I'm gonna try to find that, it should be surfacing pretty soon if it really went gold.
You know there's something wrong with a game when it's pay-to-play, but you can't enjoy it even when it's free. I understand that people enjoy this game... I just don't understand why. I guess it takes time to enjoy, but I don't want to invest time in a game just to see if I will enjoy it later. I want to enjoy it NOW.
I'm very impatiently awaiting the day that there are fully-functional Asheron's Call free servers on the internet. Asheron's Call isn't really worth paying for anymore, but it's definitely worth playing for free. Much better than UO.
I've just been looking for something new to play, like an online RPG or something. I can't find any MUDs that are good, I can't find any free Ultima Online servers that are good, I can't find anything that is good.
Here's a few of the games I've stumbled across in the past few days, with a short review for each:
First Star Online - More like first shit online.
Blademistress - More like shit mistress.
Dransik - More like Dransik... of shit.
Endless Ages - More like Endless bag of shit Ages.
I'm glad movable type is working again, so I can update you guys with all of this super-useful information.
I'm thinking maybe I should... uhh... post an update or something. So here I go.
Unreal 2 sucks. Sad but true. Epic needs to drop their stupid fucking unreal engine and just use the quake engine for their games. Then it will actually run on computers. It is a computer game, so being able to run on computers is a plus.
I've been downloading a bunch of music, mainly full albums. I feel really bad for not buying the albums. But my feeling good for saving lots of money cancels out the bad feeling-ness for not buying them. Here's some of the full albums I've downloaded in the past five days:
Metallica - Load
Slayer - Decade Of Agression
Suffocation - Pierced From Within
Anthrax - We've Come For You All
Apocalyptica - Reflections
Pantera - Projects In The Jungle
Iron Maiden - Powerslave
Dream Theater - Forbidden Dreams
Pantera - I Am The Night
Pantera - Cowboys From Hell
Arch Enemy - Burning Bridges
Arch Enemy - Black Earth
Anthrax - Among The Living
Iron Maiden - Best Of The Beast
Anthrax - State Of Euphoria
Queens Of The Stone Age - s/t
The Two Towers Soundtrack
Chevelle - Point #1
Green Day - Nimrod
Green Day - Insomniac
Green Day - Dookie
Apocalyptica - Plays Metallica By Four Cellos
Dr. Dre - The Chronic
Dr. Dre - Chronic 2001
40 Below Summer - Invitation To The Dance
The Vines - Highly Evolved
Zwan - Mary Star Of The Sea
Tenacious D - s/t
Tenacious D - Higher Ground
Radiohead - Kid A
Radiohead - The Bends
Rage Against The Machine - s/t
Death Cab For Cutie - We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Judas Priest - Jugulator
Megadeth - Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good!
M.O.D. - U.S.A. For M.O.D.
Lockup - Hate Breeds Suffering
Death - Human
Burzum - Aske
At The Gates - The Read In The Sky Is Ours
At The Gates - With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness
Alice In Chains - Dirt
Megadeth - Rust In Peace
S.O.D. - Bigger Than The Devil
(hed)p.e. - Black Out
Yep... I'm downloading mp3's as I'm typing this too. Lots of new music to listen to. There's a few albums in there that I'm really impressed with. The new Apocalyptica album (Reflections) is excellent, it's a fully instrumental metal album where the only string instruments being played are cellos. No guitars at all, just cellos with drums in the background, and I think there's a piano in one of the songs. The S.O.D. and M.O.D. albums are both awesome. They both thrash like Metallica stopped doing over a decade ago. Also, the two Radiohead albums are awesome. I never listened to Radiohead much before, although I'd heard about 4/5ths of The Bends before I actually listened to the whole album. They're an extremely good band regardless of musical preferences.
So yeah, a bunch of the stuff I downloaded was suggested to me on the comments on a previous post (because I asked for suggestions). Thanks for doing that. Suggesting music I mean.
I could have sworn I had something else to say, but I don't remember what it was, so it must not be that important.
Is that your hair or a Tina Turner wig?
You should be ashamed of yourself.
So now you shave your head, and that's a fashion too.
Nice ears, you look like an elf.