Putting the mental in Fundamentalist

I took the family camping again last weekend. It worked out quite a bit better than last time, the kids were behaving and I was able to get my drink on. Of course we at least had stuff to do this time. Cambria has a little schindig called Park Days at the end of July. For a tiny village of 600 it's not too bad, Friday night is 'Mexican Night' (for lack of a better word). They serve some authentic tacos and burritos, etc. and those by themselves are awesome. There's also either a live Mexican band or DJ. Why Mexican night? Well, the one main industry in Cambria is vegetable canning, you do the math.

There's also a slow pitch softball tournament that goes from Friday to Monday that's hilarious to watch too. Mostly it's funny just because these guys show up in $60 cleats and toting 3-4 $100 bats and their $50 glove...just to hit lobbed softballs. On top of that most of them are drunk as hell by the end of the day so that's always funny too.

Of course it ended up being a late night so I had to set up the tent by the light of the car headlights while Pam got a fire going (which turned out pretty well). The kids got their s'mores, I got my b'eers and much fun was had.

Saturday, they have a parade which is pretty decent, and then more fun and games down by the park. They usually have some decent juggler performing down there. While waiting for the act to start the kids saw a tent for facepainting and wanted to do that. On the tent there's also a thing for "Wordless storytelling". Yeah, I said "what the fuck?" too. We go in and they won't paint the kids until they hear the story. Warning bells are now going off in my head, but we're sucked in now. I'll look like an asshole if I take the kids out now, so we sit down and listen to the story.

The girl presenting it was maybe all of 13 or 14 but she already had that glazed over zealot look in her eyes. You know the one where they're trying to look excited about what they are saying but they're looking a little too excited. She has a book with several colors, and I shit you not it went a little something like this:

This color's gold, that's what the streets in heaven are made of. That's where god is and god is awesome. She then pulls out the bible and reads off a verse about how awesome heaven is (wordless storytelling my ass).

This color is black. It represents sin. Everyone wants to do sin and sin is bad. If you sin, you get sent to hell forever to suffer.

Red. Jesus is cool, he died for you

White. Ask for forgiveness and always go to a "bible-believing" church

Green. Continue to grow by following the word of God.

They had my kids pray with her....of course saying they don't have to do "anything they don't want to." Of course, I'm not going to be that big of an asshole and start flailing about, but doesn't that seems like she's pressuring a little? Then the story was over and the kids got their painting done.

First of all let me say that I'm a mehtheist. In other words, I really don't give a fuck if there is a god one way or another. I lean toward there not being a god but I just don't care. It doesn't make me a bad person, but I'd rather my morality come from doing what feels right rather than out of fear of some invisible guy in the sky ready to knock me down if I do wrong. Secondly, I am generally respectful of other people's rights to practice whatever religion they choose even if privately I may mock parts of said religion. All that I ask is that you keep your fucking religion to yourself. I do not need to be saved or otherwise converted. My respect for your religious preference ends when you stick it in my face. I am comfortable in my spiritual viewpoints and when my kids grow up they can do whatever they want.

However, in this case, there are several things that just piss me off about the whole thing. First of all they misrepresented who they were and what really is happening inside the tent. Secondly, talking about going to hell and Jesus dying is a bit much for a 3 and 5 year old, even if they were regular Sunday Schoolers it would be too much (although I get the impression that it was directed at my wife and I). Thirdly, targeting kids is just bullshit. If it's bad for the tobacco companies it's bad for religion. Let them grow up and be able to make their own decisions.

The fallout of this is that on the way back to the campsite, Genna (our oldest) was talking about it but got the message a little garbled. She thinks she's supposed to be good or God/Jesus are going to kill her. Good job you fundamentalist whack job. Now I have to fix my kid's perception of your bullshit religion :( Why do the fundies have to believe their ticket to heaven can be bought with converts? Shouldn't they just worry about being good little followers? Why would they want non-believers to convert anyways? If they don't believe already why would you want to share an afterlife with them?

Anyways, rant over. The rest of the weekend was great and much fun was had by all.

Dog days of summer

It's been a while since I've blogged about my personal life. I guess it's probably because it's a bunch of the same old shit happening and when something different does happen, I'm to indifferent to blogging about it. A few things that have happened are that I've got a netbook now. All that plasma donation has finally paid off. It's nice having a (almost) full sized computer to play with. Also....uh....ah...I can't really think of anything major that's happened since my last post :(

We're getting into the busy part of summer now, so that every other weekend when Pam's not working we've got some big event going on. Last weekend was our first week camping. It went pretty well, considering I'm not an outdoorsy person. We're still streamlining our camping approach, however we still managed to forget a few things (more firewood, seasonings for chicken, etc) but I was able to McGyver a few things together. It also reminded us that it would be nice to have a list in order make sure we have what we need.

The place we were at was Kilby Lake campground, just outside of Montello. This one became our favorite right from the start because all they did was carve out each campsite from the forest, leaving natural barriers between you and your neighbors so that it feels a little more private. However, the first thing Genna did was investigate the site next door and found another 5 year old girl to play with. That normally would have been OK, except that if Genna wasn't over at the neighbor's campsite, their kid was over by us. It got to the point where we literally had to tell Genna that she needs some family time without her friend hanging out.

My favorite part about camping is just sitting by the fire drinking beer and talking about nothing. I didn't get to do too much of that because we didn't take enough wood for the first night, and the second we were too exhausted. It didn't help that the kids just cannot seem to settle down at night, in fact the later it gets the wilder they semm. I don't know how to fix that at all.

Anyways, there was a lot of fun had by all with the berry picking and hayrides and what not. They had a pig roast on the day we were there and that was some good stuff too. The campground has decent wifi up by the office, and I was able to get a better EDGE signal on my cell phone than when I'm at home (that's funny). The game room was mostly filled with broke ass games, but Genna and I managed to get the high score on 1942 (her shooting and me steering).

I don't know why I like camping so much but I'm glad I do and I'm glad we're taking the kids. I didn't get much of that experience when I was a kid so it's new to me too :) It's also nice to like camping because we're doing it 2-3 more times this year.

Belated Game Reviews: Godfather II

Godfather II is a successful followup to the first Godfather game which puts you in the shoes of Dominic, an Underboss in the Corlone family.  The story takes place after Michael Corleone takes over the family and it starts in Cuba with a meeting of five Mafia family in Cuba in an attempt to consolidate their business influence down there.  There's one little problem: Some guy named Fidel Castro decided to pick THAT day as the day to start his little revolution against the government.  Some timing huh?

Of course, once you fight your way out of Cuba and make it back to New York, some other family has to start some shit and then it's on.  The game follows Dominic from his promotion to Don, building an army and then taking out the other 5 families to make the Corleone's the only family in town.

The gameplay is a blend of Monopoly, Risk,  and Grand Theft Auto.  You can view a map that lists all the available businesses you can take over.  If you have enough made men, you can send your boys on their own to take it out for yourself, or bomb it to take it out of the picture for a while.  Most times though, you'll be doing it yourself.  You can add up to three made men to your crew and pay a visit to your rivals businesses.   Ideally, you'll want to take out all the guards before "convincing" the owner of the business to start giving you money. 

Unfortunately, it's not as easy as just taking over businesses.  You have to stock your owned locations with your own paid goons because the rival families are not going to sit idly by while you take over their rackets.  They'll actively send their own made men to take back what was theirs.  You can pull off hits on their made men by doing favors for random pedestrians on the streets.  Yeah it sounds weird but it's the only way to take out rival made men.

Once you take over a family's businesses you can attack their compound and blow it up to take out the entire family and put you one step closer to being the Don of Dons.

The game has taken hits in the media for it's excessive violence, swearing, and nudity but come on it's a game about mobsters.  Name me one mafia movie that doesn't have all the above.  It does get a little repetitive at times but it's still a damn good game in my opinion.

There is an online mode as well which I didn't play but it looks like standard fare (i,e. A CTF variant, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch)

Final Verdict: 7.5/10

Trophy Whores: This ones a pretty easy trophy game, there's several trophies that you have to get before finishing the game because they have to be performed on mobsters and once you're done with the game there's no more mobsters.  Every other trophy is either a storyline trophy or can be easily gotten during gameplay.  2/10 for trophy difficulty

Father's Day Belated Game Review: Tomb Raider:Underworld

I had a pretty decent Father's Day. I got to sleep in, got breakfast in bed, had the kids behave for most of the day, and I also got to play Playstation all freaking day. The game I was playing was Tomb Raider:Underworld. In this one Lara Croft and her sizable assets :) are traveling across the world to find a way into Avalon which is where her thought-to-be-dead mother may be. Through out her quest she comes across many afterlife locales or ancient cultures (primarily Norse) such as Helheim, Xibalba, and Bhogovati.

The story also seems to be a continuation from the last Tomb Raider game, so it's helpful if you have played it, but not required at all (I haven't played it myself)

Graphically speaking, the game is impressive. The ruins are dark and forboding as they should be, it's raining hard in the jungle which has a very realistic look to it. There's different fluid effects for when you're underwater and above water. And Lara's, uh, assets are nicely rounded instead of the pointy boobs of yore :-P

Her character animations are nice and smooth. You can jump to a grabbable ledge, jump to a column, stand on top, turn and jump to a pole which you can shimmy or balance walk over, drop down and swing and jump to another ledge. Navigating the puzzles is very intuitive as long as you can see all the things you can jump to. Combat is fairly nice too. She has her trademark 45's and then has a choice per level of a secondary gun. Targeting is automatic and there usually never too many people to deal with at any one time that it becomes too hard.

Camera control is still a problem as with many 3rd person platformers. Tomb Raider is still very much a 3rd person platformer which means you need precise camera control to make jumps and stuff. Unfortunately this doesn't always happen. Many times you can't get behind Lara when she's on a ledge which means you can't really see what's in front of her, you can move to a top down view, but I don't think it would have killed them to give a 1st person view. When you consider how small some of the platforms are it is really necessary to see what you are doing. Also your actions are determined by the camera. That is to say if there's a wall on your charater's left but you have the camera so that it's on your right, you have to hold right on the controller and then jump. You get the hang of it but it still force you to think about it.

Trophies: As far as trophies go, they're all pretty easy, provided you have a guide for all the treasures and relics. You have to play through on the hardest difficulty but it's so easy in combat and generous with the health pack that you won't die from getting shot at but more often from missing jumps which obviously doesn't change per difficulty level. The Platinum can be had in about 16 hours.

Rating: 7/10

Belated Game Review: Terminator Salvation

This review is not so belated as the game's only a month old :)

Something interesting to note with this game is that the same parent company produced both the game and the movie. You would think that the game would be much better then because they could work with the concepts that the movie side is coming up with without really having to wait until the movie is finished. However, that promise is unfulfilled much like this game. That's not to say Terminator is necessarily a BAD game, but that it could have used another month or two of development time.

You play as John Connor (naturally) and the game story takes place before the movie. In the game, John Connor is just a solidier in the resistance who is doubting his place in the world and in the army. While in the midst of a battle he gets a distress call from a team deep in Skynet territory and against orders goes to save them, picking up people along the way and learning what it means to be a leader.

The game studio was able to get every character's likeness and voice from the movie except for Christian Bale (who just happens to be the lead freakin' character). So in his place is a non-descript created lookalike who doesn't look real at all (it's always the eyes, they can never get them right).

Essentially the game consists of 2 parts, urban fighting where you are trying to find cover amongst the rubble and take out the various terminators that are sent and rail shooting, where you ride a set path and try to destroy the terminators that are chasing you.

The urban part is fairly decent, the big mechanic of the game is that while under cover, if you sneak to the edge of cover and hold the Left stick toward another piece of cover, you will get a pop up of the points you can run to. When you press X John will sprint to the next piece of cover. You can use this to get behind the enemies. The movements look really fluid and natural so that's at least one thing they did right. I would like to see that used more in other games.

You need to be able to get behind the terminators, because for a lot of them that's where the weak spot is. The AI in this game is semi decent as well because you can keep a terminator occupied and they will actually shoot it in the back. The other nice thing is that you can also play co-op if you want another person to help getting to the backside.

Rail shooting is frustrating though, there are too many machines and it's damn near impossible to center on them long enough to shoot. You will be able to make it through but it's tough.

That's realy all there is to the game. You can tell it's lacking as there's only 8 different weapons and 7 different terminators. The game can be knocked out in hard mode in 6 hours and as far as trophies go there's only 12, but they can all be gotten in 1 playthrough on hard and they are all gold.

Final Verdict: An otherwise promising game cut short by having to release on the same day as the movie. It's worth a rent, but not much more than that. I give it a 5.5/10



PS3 Trophies

Belated Game Reviews: Burnout Paradise

PS3 Trophies

I've been having issues with the ps3trophycard site, so I created an account over at Playfire which isn't blocked at work. The results of that are up at the top of the post here.

The next game in my series of overdue game reviews is Burnout Paradise, which is the 7th game in the Burnout series. This version of the game has an open world concept like Midnight Club. You can drive around at your leisure. There are 95 different events set up at intersections. When you are at one you want to start, you hit L2 + R2 and then you'll be given the parameters of the race. There are several different modes of racing:

-Race: Obviously, you are to go from Point A to Point B and come in 1st place
-Burning Route: There is one for each car you can find. All you have to do it go from Point A to Point B under a certain time. You're rewarded with an upgraded version of the car you are driving
-Road Rage: My personal favorite, you have to run a certain number of your competitors off the road in under 2 minutes (although you get +10 seconds per wreck)
-Stunt Run: Pull off chains of stunts to beat a given score
-Marked Man: Get from Point A to Point B, except everyone is trying to run you off the road. This one is frustrating because even if you are driving a truck you will still have cars run you off the road.

Additionally there are 2 scores per road to beat, the 1st is a time score. It starts when you hit the beginning of the street and ends at the end (duh). The second is a showtime score. You can hit L1+R1 to go into showtime mode where you deliberately crash into cars for points and boost, you can use the boost to propel the car down the road. It's graded on the number of cars you hit and how far you go, with buses added +1 to your multiplier.

To progress in the game you need to complete events to raise your license level up from D to Criterion Elite (SSS) [You only need to get Class S for the trophies]. Going from one license to the next will reward you with a new car and after a certain # of events you will be notified that a certain model of car is driving around. If you crash it you get to keep it. There are technically 35 cars in the game but each one has a souped up varient that you can get by winning a Burning Route

Graphically, the game is impressive (although I'd expect no less from the series) Car crashes look very realistic. There is a very nice selection of cars which are modeled on a wide variety of real cars. When you're boosting with the last car you get everything is just a blur.

Musically the game has 40 licensed tracks, with the theme being "Paradise City" by Guns n' Roses naturally. There are also another 40 previous Burnout songs and Classical Music. You might want to turn down the engine noises in the settings because even though they sound nice, they can be annoying after a while (just ask my wife).

I found the game to be extremely fun and replayable, especially because I'm not much of a racing person. It's like GTA in the sense that you can just fire up the game and drive around without worrying about the game. It's also nice because the game is still being updated (in fact the 1.9 update came out last night). Some of the DLC is free such as the motorcycle pack and Online pack. However, other's must be bought, such as the Cops and Robbers, Additional Car Packs, and Big Surf Island.

As far as trophies go, there are a shitload of them but the following apply to the main game only

37 Bronze / 10 Silver / 2 Gold / 1 Platinum

You only have to get all the original trophies for the Platinum, so when you get it your overall % will be around 47. The only hard one I found was getting all 8 people into the baseball stadium. What you can do is start your own online game and then tool around until you have 8 people (took me about 20 minutes). Then start Freeburn Challenge 2, which is for everyone to meet at the stadium and then as long as everyone participates (there are some asshats our there), then you'll get the trophy. Also 1 Bronze trophy requires a compatible USB camera for the PS3.

The Online Pack adds 4 Bronze, 1 Silver, and 1 Gold.
The Bike Pack adds 5 Bronze, 1 Silver, adn 1 Gold.
The Party Pack adds 3 Bronze and 4 Silver (USB camera needed)
The Car Packs add 4 Bronze and 4 Silver (You need all the cars pack though)
Cops and Robbers add 3 Bronze and 5 Silver
Finally, Big Surf adds 7 Bronze and 3 Silver

Wooo, that's a lot. However, it only took around 20 hours of playing to get the main trophies (although there's a lot of stuff in the game to do), the add on packs (if you choose) will keep you busy for a while)

Final Verdict: Burnout is part of Greatest Hits collection (and rightly so), so a new copy can be had for $30 and used is around $15-30. I'd say buy it used and you'll get 65 trophies easy and maybe more if you choose. If you buy all the DLC, it'll be around the price of a new game but with a lot to keep you busy.

Score 9.5 of 10

Belated Game Reviews - Alone in the Dark: Inferno

Now that I'm going through some of these older games for trophies, I may as well tell all y'all what I think about them and the prospects of getting trophies in the games. I'm hoping to try and make this a regular feature here.

Anywho. Alone in the Dark is credited as the first survival horror game, with Resident Evil coming after it. Alone in the Dark: Inferno is the 5th game in the series and some of the ways I've been able to describe it is a smarter Resident Evil and the best bad game I've played.

You play as Edward Carnby, a private dectective/paranormal researcher who is suffering from amnesia. You wake up in the beginning being held at gunpoint in a New York City hotel by two thugs who keep talking about handing over a stone. As the story progresses, you find that not all is what it seems in New York City. Large fissures at random keep opening up in floors and walls, etc. swallowing people whole or corrupting them into the "zombies" of the game, Humanz. The fissures seem to be radiating out from Central Park, which is where you eventually end up and discover the secret of.

Without giving too much away, the story involves the occult and gateways to the afterlife, and is very good. The voice actors do a very good job at conveying the story and what's going on without going too over the top which is something Resident Evil has had issues with in the past. The story is also broken up into 8 episodes. A nice touch is that each episode ends in a cliffhanger and then goes to credits. You can then choose to continue to the next episode or quit out. If you quit a selection of cutscene from the next chapter is shown, similar to a teaser trailer you may see at the end of a TV show. Additionally when you start a chapter from a saved game you get a recap of what's happened which I think is a nice touch. [Trophy note: there are at least 19 trophies from just progressing through the story and not killing a thing, except when you need to]

The graphics are good but not spectacular. I guess the thing is that I've never really seen a bad graphical game on the PS3 so it's hard to say how good they are. If we are comparing to Resident Evil 5 then I would say they definitely not as good as RE5.

Evironmental interaction is where AITD really shines. To start, you're inventory is limited to what you can carry in your jacket. When you access the inventory screen your character actually opens his jacket and looks down into it, which is a nice touch. You only have 1 of two guns during the game, a 9mm and a Magnum, but you have so many other options for destruction. You'll find all sorts of flammable bottles scattered across Central Park (apparently everyone drinks gasoline or Everclear there). The bottles come in glass and plastic varieties and it affects how they work. Glass obviously will smash, soaking the area in gas and making things flammable. Plastic doesn't. You can also find aeresol canisters that can be used as impromptu flamethrowers when used with your lighter, you can even pour gas on your bullets to make them fire bullets [Trophy note: There are 5 trophies for killing creatures in inventive ways]

The combinations of items are quite numerous. Sure you could just use bottles as bombs, throwing them and shooting when they are close to the creatures. You can also wrap the bottles in doublesided tape so they stick to the enemies and then shoot the bottles at the right time to take out more at one time. You can combine a handkerchief with a bottle to make a Molotov Cocktail. You can tape a flare to a bottle for a time bomb or a box of bullets to make a spread bomb. Flares and glowsticks can be taped to walls to add light to a dark hallway. [Trophy note: there are 8 trophies associated with item combinations]

The smartness of the game also extends to the cars, if you come up against a locked car, you can smash out a window and unlock it. Once inside you can check the glove compartment for items, and then check the sun visor for the key or hotwire it. You can also shoot out the gas tank to make it explode, or punch it with a knife to drain the gas into an empty bottle. [There are another 6 trophies related to cars, 4 of which can be had on the 1st car you see]

So by now you're wondering why I say it's also a bad game. Weeeeeellllll, to start the method of killing creatures sucks balls. They have these cracks on their bodies that have to be set on fire or they'll never go away. There's (usually) no shortage of flammable materials but it literally make your aerosol + lighter combo the most deadly in the game and not your gun. Actually unless your gun has fire bullets it's pretty worthless, and even then it's not incredibly useful as you have to shoot 2-3 fissures with fire bullets to kill the humanz and that's hard unless you've knocked them out already.

Secondly, you can only shoot in 1st person view and do melee attacks in 3rd person. Also the 3rd person view isn't all that great (although it's better than the XBox version)

Next, driving sucks and is a pain in the ass. If you hit the smallest bump, you'll fly out of control. Also with some ramps, you can't hit them straight on or it registers as a crash

If you quit in the middle of the chapter, even though you can save you still have to start from the beginning of the chapter with none of the in-chapter progress saved. This is especially a pain in the ass on Chapter 8. Speaking of, in Chapter 8 you have to take on a stupid quest to destroy certain targets which magically popped up in areas you already were in. Of course you need to destroy them all if you want the trophies.

AI characters are kind of dumb, but at least you're not tasked with keeping them alive as the humanz are programmed to go after you only.

You can take quite a beating, but if you touch fire for more than 3 seconds, you're toast.

Also I had the game freeze up on me twice during play, and if you try jumping on a car as a stepping stone the game sometimes recognizes that as getting hit.

The game has it's issues, however, it's still pretty playable....for about 12 hours, because that's all it takes to finish it, and you could probably do it quicker than me. The game has 50 trophies and you can get them with a single playthrough (no difficulty level BS) The breakdown is like this:
-43 Bronze
-3 Silver
-3 Gold
-1 Platinum

Final Verdict: Even though it's about $15-20 now, I'd still say this one is a renter. It shows flashes of brillance but is saddled with some questionable bugs/design choices. I'd definitely pick it up if you're looking for some cheap trophies because there aren't too many games easier than this for the # of trophies. I give it a 6/10