Creepy’s Tavern

I’d like to promise the next time i update this i wont talk about video game related matters but sadly Bioshock is coming out in 4 days time for me and i wont be able to resist blabbering on about it.

For now though i wanted to talk about Achievements. Everyone seems to think the Wii has revolutionized video games and changed them, a step into the future. I disagree, all the Wii has done is rework the controls. It’s no different than changing the buttons about on a controller.

You still play the game the same. Look at Zelda, take a look at metroid when it comes out in a few days see if it plays any different from the older ones. It wont. All they’ve done is change the controls. Isn’t all that impressive once you get over it.

Achievements though? They’ve changed how many people play. In many different ways. People no longer play a game to complete it, to get to the end level or beat the last boss.

Oh no, now people load up a game in order to Nail people to cars or push there skills in that game to see just how good they are.

Even i couldn’t resist the charm, i never even knew about Achievements till i brought a 360 and i got the message come up for completing chapter 1 in gears of war. There just such a basic, minor thing but they change so much, they add so much value to a game.

I don’t buy games anymore without first checking the achievements - I brought Dead Rising the other day, a game I’d usually pass by cause lets face it, stuck in a mall with thousands of zombies? How repetitive is that going to get? Not at all anymore. And it in fact has a fucking great story line going for it, very complex game a lot more than just mindlessly killing zombies like i originally thought.

But what swung it, what made me buy it was because the moment i saw the achievements they was exactly what i like. And while ironically some of them are exactly what made me avoid the game in the first place there also what attracted me the most.

Some people play there games now purely to boost there gamerscore. They’ll Rent game after game, it doesn’t matter if it’s a crap game they’ll rent it in order to boost that number up some more. Even if they hate the game, if it has easy achievements they’ll rent it.

Why they do this i can’t say, perhaps they like to compete with others, perhaps it’s just an ego boost. I don’t know why as my reasoning for collecting achievements are different.

I collect achievements not for the number, i don’t care about that nor do i do it for bragging rights. I do it purely for the challenge. Kill 50k+ zombies? That’s fucking insane, think of the dedication it’ll take (admittedly, it isn’t actually all that hard compared to others.) why on earth would someone bother?

Well i would bother and as I’ve said, that’s one of the easier ones compared to other such games but then it does have various ones that are nothing short of mentally challenging

For those not in the know, a day in Dead Rising is exactly two hours real time. So to survive for 7 days? That’s 14 hours. Total. Not to hard right? That’s what you think, you have to play 14 hours straight. No breaks, if you die within those 14 hours you lose. If you turn your console off you lose. If you go away from the console and leave your character in a “safe spot” he will starve to death.

Oh and if it wasn’t hard enough, what with needing to stay alive for 14 hours in a mall full of zombies, having to sit there and play for 14 hours none stop, if that wasn’t enough of a strain on your mind you also do need to feed him but to make it worse, theres limited amounts of food. So you need to figure it out before hand, plan the entire thing out and get yourself organized, ration it out properly cause if you fuck up you could fall short at the 12th hour and die and i don’t know about you but I’d be pissed off.

So -why- would anyone do that? I can already imagine the amount of “no lifer”thoughts i just got but when you consider it, you probably sit in front of your pc for a stupid amount of time each day. And i probably wont play a game for a couple of days after pulling that one off. XD I’d usually only play a couple of hours a day at most anyway.

But on with the point of why? Well, for the challenge. Can i do it? It’ll push you, it’ll drive you up the fucking wall and it’ll be nothing short of bloody hard. But if i can pull that off, if i can unlock that achievement, if my planning and work falls into place and i manage it then i can’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction from it.

The way i see it, an achievement is the developer, the maker of the game coming out and saying “Hey, i bet you can’t do this.” and i like proving him wrong on that. But most importantly i love the challenge, the more challenging the achievements are the better.

In my opinion, the greatest thing to come out of this new generation of video games is the achievement system and i hope to god Sony and Nintendo follow suit and get there own versions of this. As a matter of fact, i hear a rumor Metroid Prime 3 will in fact have it’s own achievements, if it’s  the same as the 360s i don’t know, I’d hope so because while there such a small thing, they add so much to games.

From fun wacky things like nailing people to a car, to extreme ones that take planning, organizing and hard work like surviving for 7 days. Now that i have them, i couldn’t go back to playing games without them.

How does everyone else feel about them?

Comments(11)

The following spawned from this topic:

http://forums.rsbandb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55802

It got me going and now i want to list in full detail why most (not all) but most RPG games suck ass.  Now ok I’m a video game dork, i admit. I like some role playing games (Oblivion, Fable, Jaden Empire, golden sun) but the mass majority? I hate them. With a passion.

And i hate even more how popular they get. I can’t understand WHY.

Why is Final Fantasy such a popular game? I’ve played several versions of it, on several platforms and i hated them all. It was nothing short of dull, uncreative and i’d seen it all before in several other RPGs. I’ve given RPG’s a fair chance. I brought Knights of the old Republic 1 cause everyone claimed it was amazing. It was dull.

I even rented Knights of the old republic 2 to give it another chance and i hated it even more.

So what is it, in my opinion that makes RPGs so crap?

Well for a start it’s the sheer amount of text. I get it, it’s “depth” it’s to suck you into the game world and make you feel like you’re actually playing the role of whoever. The problem with that is, most of these games have about 10 voice actors for hundreds of characters. It’s dull hearing the same voice over and over. And whats worse? The game always shows you there face when talking to them, it’s not fun to watch this guys lips move unrealistically up and down while he occasionally blinks like some robot.

HOW is that in the slightest bit interesting? The mass majority of the characters have NOTHING interesting to say, they talk CRAP, they do not help you progress, they do not provide an interesting story, they usually just talk dribble.

I was scared in knights of the old republic to talk to people because i would get sucked into wave after wave of text.

How can this be solved? Well in my opinion you should be able to just walk off. If someone was boring me in real life, I’d walk off. OR even better you can take oblivions approach but go one step further, see in oblivion you can kill anyone. Well, there should be a “shut the hell up” button, press it and you stab them in the face so they can’t talk anymore. That would make rpg’s more interest.

NEXT is the combat. Most RPG’s are heavily reliant on two things. Text and Combat. Most go with traditional turn based combat. And it is boring. It’s slow paced.

They try to create these epic battles with 5 enemys against you but they all attack in turns, what the hell? And the moves, christ there ALL the same animation. Once you’ve seen it once you’ve seen it. That’s it. He will do the same stance, same movements over and over.

Don’t believe how boring turn based combat is? Watch this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P0JfBOz9zwk

I DARE you to watch that all the way through. Just look at it. It’s dull, it’s repetitive and between the stupidly long text? It’s all there is. The boss just SITS there and lets them kick the crap out of him. He doesn’t even do anything. They all just stand there calm and relaxed to like it’s a freaking tea party.

Turn based fights are boring, uninspired, repetitive and agonizingly long when it comes to bosses.

So the solution? Well, Oblivion is on the right track, it’s gone with real time combat. But it’s still the same repetitive crap. It’s hack and slash.

Hack, Hack, hack, hack, hack, run away, heal, heal, heal, heal, heal, heal, hack, hack, hack

That’s oblivions combat. It is boring as hell, RPGs are supposed to be epic, the combat makes that flop so badly.

Fear not though, because it looks like Mass Effect is going to change that. Real time combat, with a cover system and multiple weapons. Although the makers did make KOTOR so i don’t hold out to much hope for it. However I’ll probably buy that one.

Role playing games would be 10X better if they gave you the ability to shut people up, if someone could come up with creative combat instead of the same over used repetitive crap that’s been done over and over. If they could get decent and lots of voice actors with some decent animators to make the text parts interesting.

The whole idea of a role play is to go in, get lost in the world and become a character in the game. The character is YOU. And personally, I’m short tempered and have a short attention spam, so give me the options i need to make the game more enjoyable.

In short:

Final Fantasy is crap, it’s boring, it’s repetitive and i cannot see why anyone likes it. Same goes for KOTOR  and most other RPGs, it’s about time someone came in and redid the whole genre, redefined it and created something worth playing cause right now, you might as well buy a book, it’s cheaper and it’s a lot more interesting.

Comments(22)

So the day i heard Brandt was fired i already knew there was going to be some back lash and a lot of one sided story’s going around and of course, people believing everything they hear because it’s so much easier than believing it was done with good reason.

So it’s hardly a surprise i wake up this morning and see several people making comments and the works. It’s not the first time this has happened and like last time (Crysala ring any bells?) I’m not allowed to say why he was fired.

That doesn’t mean i cant put an end to a few mythes that have been pissing me the hell off and putting across the other side of the story. So excuse me while i vent and put across my side of the story.

Unless you was locked away in a big black hole i can’t say it’s going to come to much of a surprise when i say he had some issues with me and didn’t have a problem being out spoken about them. And yes I’ve heard it all already, this shit gets back to me and it’s nothing short of upsetting.

Biased? Corrupt? Can’t do my job? Others can do it better than me? Break rules? Favoured by site owners? All this bullshit. And i use the word bullshit because that’s all it is. It’s what I’ve put up with for months on end and not ONCE have i gotten myself involved with it.

I stood by and let my name get bad mouthed because I’ve been doing this job for a long time now and honestly, i do my best to stay clear of the dramas that are involved now a days.  But it’d seem i can’t help but get sucked into it anyway, i kept out of it and Mike and Shane did what they thought was best in the end and I appreciate it - you know you’ve got some good friends when they’ll stand up and put a stop to those that go out of there way to bad mouth someone who’s simply trying to do a job and enjoy themselves at the same time. Put a stop to Someone clearly just looking for a fight.

So now it’s all “unfair” and they was wrong to do so. I put it to you - How do you know? Cause of what you’ve been told? And what have you been told by WHO? Just because we refuse to give out information on these things hardly makes us the bad guys. It’s not a personal choice it’s something that’s in place and something that needs to be obeyed.

If they honestly did favor people do things out of spite and for the hell of it do you honestly fucking think this site would still be going after all this time? There not two middle aged men like most of these fansite owners with nothing better to do with there time and money to spare, there a couple of fucking guys, around your age paying out a bloody fortune monthly for something they enjoy. Why the hell would they bother if things was like that?

They do there damn best to keep things fair, stable and fun. And if someones causing trouble and bad mouthing members of the staff then that’s not right.

Nothing pisses me off more than seeing people throw this back in there faces and everyones face who works hard for this site. People just eating up shit that’s spread by people who have clearly been banned/removed for reasons. Brandt wasn’t the first and it’s happened time and time again.

And yet I’m sorry to say it but people can’t use that damn Grey organ between there ears and remember we are a FANSITE we don’t piss people off and do horrible things to people, that’s not the aim of the site.  If people would stop lapping shit up and have some faith in us for once it wouldn’t bug me so much, it’s not like we try to distance ourselves, you can talk to us in game, on site, some of us on msn.  Find me another fansite as open as that.

You KNOW us and you -should- know what we’re like and know better than to believe shit.

Now i don’t like dragging msn into this but it’s shit like this:

(4:11 PM) Brandt: and he banned someone from chat cause they didnt listen to him

that gets spread about and it’s complete rubbish. As if the chat isn’t monitored? As if anyone could get away with doing that? Now ask yourself if you got told that would you buy it?

I’d be willing to bet you would. So the main point of this entire, huge essay if you’ve bothered to read it all is to STOP believing every little thing you hear from people and just enjoy the site, that’s what it’s there for. We do not have some great evil plot going on to ruin everyones fun and conquer the world, we aim to provide fun. So please, the next time something happens and you hear half a story, stop and think twice about it before you jump off the gun and start getting upset over it.

Now this is long enough but i’m not done. I wish to put an end to some rumors about me that are not only complete crap but are hurtful to, believe it or not i don’t like getting personal about myself or going into what i’ve done but enough is enough and it’s time all this shit came to an end.

“I break the rules and get away with it all the time.”

This ones the most common and the most ridicules. I’ve not always been a moderator, i was a normal user for over a year and i didn’t even know any staff. And guess what? I never once got in trouble. NO ONE had any reason to favor me or let me get away with rule breaking. As of this day my record is spotless and anytime someones accused me of breaking rules they amazingly can’t find any of these rule breaks.

More to the point, when i became a moderator i was the one who pushed for Admin guidelines to be put in place, yeah believe it or not Moderators don’t get away with murder. Admins have there own set of guidelines and if we get enough strikes we get demodded. Those are the rules and that’s how it goes. Those are the rules i demanded be put in place to stop corrupt moderators running a muck and getting away with rule breaks. Seems a bit fucking thick to do such a thing if my intentions was to break rules myself.

“I’m biased”

Give me a break. I can’t even remember the last regular member i warned it was that long ago, i don’t pick on anyone and I’ve always tried to be fair. I’ve pushed for people i LIKE to be banned before because i thought they deserved it.

And one more thing:

http://forums.rsbandb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55056

I’m amazed at this but in case the poll, sarcastic message or seven fucking pages of sarcastic comments didn’t give it away is a joke. Drama queens can stop crying over it now, find me one single rule break in that topic. FIND  me one single thing in that topic that is breaking the rules. And if you think Kelsey is insulted, go and ask her yourself. Shes one of my best friends on the site i know her better than most and know she would never be offended.

I’m sorry this is so long, I’m sorry this is so heavily about me but i’ve been dealing with shit being thrown at me for months now and kept silent about it and remained fair. I’ve done my job and I’ve tried to have fun while doing it.  I’ve ALWAYS been like that, people seem to think a moderator is supposed to be serious and whatever,that’s not me. I use that site for my own pleasure, for my own fun and i try to do a job at the same time because i love the site and don’t want it to go down hill.

If you read all of this then damn, you’re gud. I hope in the future people will remember this site is here for the people, to provide them with fun. And me, like every other moderator does not have some evil plot going on, we’re normal people trying to do a job and we use this site for our own pleasure and fun at the same time, so give us a break. We’re entitled to make a fun thread or fun comments once in awhile.

-Creepy

p.s yeah this is my blog, i guess, it’s ugly cause i had to pick from crappy skins. Will be updated sorta often. Excuse me if something makes little sense in this, it’s late, i’m tired, i’m annoyed and i’ve sorta just thrown this all down without thinking twice.

Comments(24)