No Lives Left

I always love how discussions of “realism” in games come down to graphics and physics. I ultimately think that neither of those factors ever made a game more "real." Sure, when a trailer plays for the new Call of Duty or Final Fantasy, the graphics do look amazing. The facial features and lighting are very life-like, and the voice dubbing is top notch. But just because something looks real, doesn't make it feel real. There is nothing in those games that pulls at something inside you. A good game may make you feel different emotions: anger, love, sadness, or joy—but not futility or helplessness. And I understand that it's not supposed to. Most games just use the graphics as an immersion factor, but the ultimate point of the video game is just for entertainment. But still, people want their graphics real and it always cracks me up. Look at dem in-game graphics! It's so real! And if it's not graphics, people harp about the physics. The way a gun shoots or t...

     I don't know what it is about me, but I have a bittersweet fascination with terrible crafted video games. I don't think its a small feat to develop any type of software. So when a game comes out that fails in most levels of execution and entertainment, I get confuzzled. Sometimes the games are laughable and provide fond memories (i.e. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing). Others are lazily done and hurt an already established fan-base (Duke Nukem Forever). But the worst games are so mind-numbingly  boring that some how they take a mind of steel to complete. There is nothing inherently wrong with the game, it's just bad. It's not fun, it's stupid, and doesn't have any compelling factors to it. There are a lot of games that I could bring up: The Nancy Drew video games, Evolution Worlds, and even some of the licensed Wolverine games. But the story I'd like to share this week is a very special game. This game was actually "gifted" to me on a Steam sale...

WARNING: SPOILERS ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!! If you don't know what Assassin's Creed is, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog. But I'll try to give a short summary just in case people are rusty. In the Assassin's Creed series, you play as Desmond Miles, a no-good, do-nothing bartender who ran away from his crazy, hippy parents. Turns out his parents were part of the league of assassins and have been fighting the "good fight" against the nasty Templars who (obviously) want to dominate the world. He gets kidnapped by Abstergo, a company formed to do the Templars' bidding. They put him in this crazy, Matrix style machine called the Animus. The Animus lets the user play out memories of their ancestors. Turns out Desmond isn't the only one who was kidnapped, but a whole slew of people were kidnapped and put in these things. Abstergo's main purpose is to find the "Apples of Eden" that give the user the power to control minds and bod...

I haven't played Borderlands 2 for very long. Maybe it was just for a few hours or so. But I did experience  enough of Borderlands 2 to tell you, yes it's a good game. Not exceptional, not great, just good. The game is more of the same Borderlands 1, which is great if that's what you're after. But it somehow didn't grip me as much as I thought it would. The story is still secondary to the loot. You won't really care about the characters more than you'll care about what they'll give you in return for your services. And there is so much loot on the battlefield that sometimes it's hard to concentrate on your enemy. Especially if you're playing with friends. Guns (the main focus of the game) are first come, first serve in Borderlands 2. So if you're late to the treasure chest party, too bad. You'll have to beg your friends to give you that amazing, stupendous, and radically cool weapon. This race for loot puts the game in a strange paralys...

I'm not much of a traveler. I'm used to staying in my Southern California bubble. I never really moved around much except for some early childhood trips to India and Pakistan (where my family is from). I even went to school in Southern California and if I did travel, it was mostly to San Francisco to visit my over-worked sister. So naturally, after graduating and getting a real job, I decided to allocate some funding to travel and see the United States. Hopefully after visiting most of the major cities (and getting a pay raise at some point), I can tour Europe, Asia, and all the other continents below the Equator. But for now, I'll tell you a little about what I did in Seattle. Don't worry, some of it was video game related. View from the top of the Space Needle facing Puget Sound Seattle is surprisingly a very busy town despite its size. Maybe it was because of the labor day weekend, but there was a surprisingly good amount of people touring the city. But fro...

Ramadan is almost over, but it's not done just yet Good Evening All! Looks like Ramadan is in almost over, so a belated Ramadan Kareem to all my fellow Ramadaneers out there! I had this article written for the whole month, but just never got to posting it. So if anything seems out of place, sorry for that! I'm still early in on this blog, so I guess it would be a good idea to display my faith. It's the biggest part of my life and it does control what I do on a day to day basis. It also sort of dictates the type of games I play, though not by much. Anyways... For those who don't know, the month of Ramadan is the holiest month in the Islamic calender. We believe that our Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was first given the first parts of the Qu'ran during this month. With that, it's also been prescribed by Allah (or God) that we fast during this month. It's also recommended to do more good in anyway you see fit. This could result in being more charitable, ...

Work. *Sigh*      Looks like my plans of keeping a weekly post has gone out the window. So I started working this past week and getting ready for this job the week before, so I really haven’t had time to post at all. But I guess since most of the chaos has simmered down. I can talk about video games and comics and the what-not. Yeah, super awesome        The Dark Knight Rises is coming out in a couple days. I thought I’d shift over to comics for a bit (though I am pretty much a noob when it comes to collecting). Batman is probably my most beloved franchises of all time. I would like to believe that I know most of Batman’s lore. It’s not true because I haven't read much of the Golden Age and Silver Age arcs, but still, I can dream. I mean, my first post on this blog was about Batman video games; Games I used to love as a kid and play to death despite how bad they were. Even the movies-my god, the movies. I remember how much I loved Batman Fo...