Well, it's that time of year again. Welcome to the Ultimate Game of the Year Awards, 2016 edition!
We've done this twice already in the past. The first year, 2014, was done in a series of blog posts, whereas 2015 had its own two-part video. This time, however, I have a lost less time to spare than I have in the past, and I'm also all on my own.
So instead of making this time a super big deal, I just decided to list off who I thought was the winners and losers this year and leave it at that. If I feel like something needs to be elaborated on, I'll add a small extra piece -- but for the most part, it will just be a brief listing.
Best Story
Nominees:
Final Fantasy XV
Uncharted 4
Oxenfree
Firewatch
Dark Souls III
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Winner:
Uncharted 4
Best Soundtrack
Nominees:
Pokemon: Sun and Moon
Final Fantasy XV
Uncharted 4
Overwatch
DOOM
Rez Infinite
Winner:
Final Fantasy XV
Best Visuals
Nominees:
Final Fantasy XV
Uncharted 4
DOOM
Battlefield 1
Dark Souls III
Hitman
INSIDE
Winner:
Uncharted 4
Best Remaster
Nominees:
Valkyria Chronicles
Day of the Tentacle
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Gravity Rush
Winner:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Best Party Game
Nominees:
Pokemon GO
Pokken Tournament
Dragon Quest Builders
Winner:
Pokemon GO
This award universally seems to be fading in relevance as time goes on. After all, what is a party game? I don't even know. Anyway, I decided to choose Pokemon GO as the winner of this award simply because it really is a game that you go out with a party and play.
Most Anticipated Game
Nominees:
FF7 Remake
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Kingdom Hearts III
The Last of Us: Part II
Death Stranding
Nioh
Persona 5
Winner:
Nioh
Best Online
Nominees:
Overwatch
Battlefield 1
Titanfall 2
Street Fighter V
World of Warcraft: Legion
Winner:
Overwatch
Hall of Fame Entry:
Akira Yamaoka, best known for his work as composer for the Silent Hill franchise
Best Action/Adventure Game
Nominees:
Hitman
Dishonored 2
Firewatch
Uncharted 4
Winner:
Uncharted 4
Best Shooter Game
Nominees:
Titanfall 2
Rainbow Six Siege
Gears of War 4
Battlefield 1
DOOM
Overwatch
Winner:
DOOM
Best RPG
Nominees:
Monster Hunter Generations
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Dark Souls III
The Banner Saga 2
Fire Emblem Fates
Pokemon: Sun and Moon
Final Fantasy XV
Winner:
Final Fantasy XV
Best Indie Game
Nominees:
The Witness
Stardew Valley
INSIDE
Hyper Light Drifter
Firewatch
Oxenfree
Winner:
Stardew Valley
Best Mobile/Handheld
Nominees:
Monster Hunter Generations
Clash Royale
Fire Emblem Fates
Pokemon: Sun and Moon
Winner:
Pokemon: Sun and Moon
The Best Mobile/Handheld category is another one that has gotten a lot of flak in recent years. In order to surpass some of the complaints people have given it, I decided to give it only to the games I felt were the most deserving -- games that were discussed a lot as real games this year rather than generic mobile trash.
Most Disappointing Game
Nominees:
No Mans Sky
Street Fighter V
Pokemon GO
Mighty No. 9
Winner:
No Mans Sky
The second year running for this award, it was much harder this time to find nominees but not hard at all to pick a winner. Still, I guess its good that not as many games that were released this year were disappointing.
Worst Company
Nominees:
Nintendo
Hello Games
EA
Ubisoft
Konami
Winner:
Nintendo
My rationale for picking Nintendo this year mostly centered around their poor business practices and choices to shut down numerous fan projects over the year. The usual baddies -- EA, Ubisoft, and Konami -- were moreso mediocre this year. And Hello Games is mostly just dull.
Best Company
Nominees:
Square Enix
Blizzard
Naughty Dog
Capcom
IO Interactive
From Software
Winner:
Square Enix
Winner for the second consecutive year in a row, Square Enix has been showing booming success all around. While in previous years it was mostly centered around theoretical decisions like announcing long awaited titles, they proved themselves this year by making up on those promises -- from games like Final Fantasy XV, World of Final Fantasy, and I Am Setsuna being released by their eastern studios, and their western counterpart Eidos Interactive releasing Hitman and Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Square Enix continues to be on the rise.
Worst Game
Nominees:
No Mans Sky
Pokemon GO
Mighty No. 9
Umbrella Corps
Winner:
No Mans Sky
And now, as always...
Previous Games of the Year
2010 - Mass Effect 2/Red Dead Redemption
2011 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution
2012 - Dishonored
2013 - The Last of Us/Grand Theft Auto V
2014 - Bayonetta 2
2015 - Bloodborne
And what you've all been waiting for...
Ultimate Game of the Year
Nominees:
Final Fantasy XV
Uncharted 4
Pokemon: Sun and Moon
Overwatch
Doom
Titanfall 2
Civilization VI
Fire Emblem Fates
XCOM 2
Dark Souls III
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Dishonored 2
Hitman
Stardew Valley
Winner:
Final Fantasy XV/Uncharted 4
And, for the first year since 2013, two games have tied for game of the year. Uncharted 4 was a really solid game that came in much earlier, but I had been waiting for Final Fantasy XV for years and it held my eye for the remainder of 2016. The game turned out to be one of the most enjoyable experiences I had this year... much like I had felt with Uncharted 4. As it came down to me choosing the various winners of each award, it became more and more clear to me that the winner had to be both.
Bonus: Most Nominated Games
1. Final Fantasy XV - 5 nominations
2. Uncharted 4 - 5 nominations
3. Overwatch - 4 nominations
4. DOOM - 4 nominations
5. Dark Souls III - 4 nominations
Saturday, December 24, 2016
Sunday, November 6, 2016
Mario and Luigi: Dream Team -- Review
It's been a long time coming, but I finally beat this fuckin' game.
Before I get into this review though, I want to explain some things. I did a host of video reviews on my YouTube channel a few months ago, and though I do enjoy making them they're incredibly time consuming and time is something I have to ration off pretty hard nowadays. However, these written reviews take about one third of the time, and given how often I beat games (IE: barely ever at all) I could probably throw these out much more easily. So, here's the plan: if I beat a game that I can't get my own footage for, I'll make a written review. If I beat a game that I can get footage for, I'll post it on the YouTube. Besides, its been awhile since I've posted here, hasn't it?
So this review probably won't be that detailed simply because it took me so long to beat this game. I've pretty much been working slowly but surely on this game since I got my 3DS and the Dream Bowser fight fucked me up so hard (we'll get to that very soon) that I dropped the game for about eight months. But finally I got down to it, beat all three of the final bosses, and now I'm done and ready to review.
First, lets start off with the positives. Probably the one thing that kept me from dropping this game early on were the soundtrack and the art design. Shimomura is great as always, so that's not very surprising. Normally I mute handheld games but this one I played with sound simply because I enjoyed the music so much. The art design was also fairly good; the enemies had interesting looks and the settings (especially in the dream worlds) were intricate and lovely. Even the story was cute for a time. For a good chunk of this game I really genuinely enjoyed it -- and that's the problem.
As the game continued, the game seemed to drag farther and farther on. The cool battle system that dealt with well-timed button presses and expert dodging skills became tedious and frustrating. The story began to get nonsensical, as tasks began to list up farther and farther seemingly solely to extend the game time. Hell, I was still getting tutorials twenty hours in, and given how much I hate tutorials in general this was NOT very fun.
So why did they feel the need to extend this game so far? It's a standard that RPGs are around 30 hours long -- how long this game is -- but I feel like having it much shorter while still enjoyable would probably be much better than just giving more game time where the game time is completely boring. Also, the tutorials halfway through the game make me feel like they just kept adding in gameplay gimmicks in just because they didn't know how else to extend gameplay.
Suddenly during the last part of the game however the difficulty increases to a ridiculous level. For the most part the game is fairly easy until you get to the final castle, where things turn crazy. I had to turn on easy mode, mostly because I just wanted to get the game over with but also that I found I was getting one shot by some ridiculous dodging instance. However, easy mode wasn't available in perhaps the most bullshit boss of all -- Dream Bowser.
Now as time went on I got better and better at this fight, but with every failure in it you're forced to go back to the very beginning of the fight which includes some long boring speech by the yellow dude who's name I forget because the story ended up not being very good. There's also a part near the end of this battle which I'm pretty sure wasn't playtested because its literally impossible (also if you lose you still need to go back to the beginning). So during the final phase against Dream Bowser you need to hit him with an even bigger star attack. This part is hard enough as it is -- you need to use the 3DS gyro controls and a lot of the meteors that attack you are hard to predict until you've memorized the patterns (which in all honesty isn't too hard). Still, if you fail then it's Bowser's turn, and he tries to stomp you.
I tried dodging this attack about twenty times total. It asks you to swipe up as fast as you can. I swiped so hard I thought I was gonna break the god damn screen and I STILL failed it every single time. Sure, there might have been harder challenges that took me longer, but none of them did I fail every single time like this one.
Overall my problem with this game mainly came from the length and how it outstays its welcome. My original review of this was going to be 8/10 but now that I've actually finished it and given some time to think about it I think I'm going to have to give this one a 7/10.
Monday, June 6, 2016
E3 Predictions -- 2016 Edition
E3 is only a week away, and so far, nothing's been leaked yet (probably a new record). So, I figure I might go the same route as yesteryear and make another predictions post (though this time not separate it by conference because that's a hell of a lot of work).
- The biggest part of the upcoming E3 will be, without a doubt, the official announcement of the "upgraded" consoles -- PS4 Neo, Xbox One whatever it is, and the NX. Though these new consoles have been advertised to not replace their current systems, I feel like that's not likely. Of course, that's not an E3 prediction -- my E3 prediction is that we'll be hearing a lot about these new consoles, as well as big releases to be shown as the spearheads of the new consoles -- one or two of them might be a special surprise to get people really interested.
- Based on news I forgot, this might already be deconfirmed -- but I feel like the smartest thing for Nintendo to do right now is show off a healthy amount of the new Zelda, as well as clear up some things about the game. Zelda's status has changed a million times -- from a Wii-U exclusive, to a Wii-U and NX game, to coming out on NX first, to who knows whatever it is. I feel like an extended demo with some concrete explanation will help the game.
- For Ubisoft, we'll likely see some footage of a new Assassins Creed or Far Cry or some yearly release game, as well as some more of the For Honor game they showed off last year. For Ubisoft's mandatory "special suprise" game, we'll probably be seeing Watch Dogs 2 -- a game that was already leaked earlier this year.
- Obviously, we'll be seeing both Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. Don't be surprised to see CoD trying to win back its audience after its reveal trailer bombed -- they're already announced an extended campaign demo on the floor, and they're likely to go even farther beyond that at Sony's conference.
- We'll probably see the last trailers for games coming out soon -- the most likely being The Last Guardian and FFXV. Also don't be surprised if we see even more of the FF7 Remake -- it seems like its a big deal for both Sony and Square Enix.
- As for this year's krazy prediction, I'm gonna say that there will be a FF7 Remake demo packaged with FFXV. I don't... really have anything to go off of on this. I mean, they put a FFXV demo inside Type-0, so the next logical conclusion is... this? Listen, my main reasoning for doing this is because I've had a strange feeling it was going to happen and if it does I want to say that I had a sick E3 2016 premonition.
Well, those are all my predictions for this year. I'll be sure to make a predictions review and wrap up post similar to how I did last year for E3. There will also probably be an episode of the AstukaGaming Podcast dedicated to E3, though it will take place a few days later.
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- The biggest part of the upcoming E3 will be, without a doubt, the official announcement of the "upgraded" consoles -- PS4 Neo, Xbox One whatever it is, and the NX. Though these new consoles have been advertised to not replace their current systems, I feel like that's not likely. Of course, that's not an E3 prediction -- my E3 prediction is that we'll be hearing a lot about these new consoles, as well as big releases to be shown as the spearheads of the new consoles -- one or two of them might be a special surprise to get people really interested.
- Based on news I forgot, this might already be deconfirmed -- but I feel like the smartest thing for Nintendo to do right now is show off a healthy amount of the new Zelda, as well as clear up some things about the game. Zelda's status has changed a million times -- from a Wii-U exclusive, to a Wii-U and NX game, to coming out on NX first, to who knows whatever it is. I feel like an extended demo with some concrete explanation will help the game.
- For Ubisoft, we'll likely see some footage of a new Assassins Creed or Far Cry or some yearly release game, as well as some more of the For Honor game they showed off last year. For Ubisoft's mandatory "special suprise" game, we'll probably be seeing Watch Dogs 2 -- a game that was already leaked earlier this year.
- Obviously, we'll be seeing both Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. Don't be surprised to see CoD trying to win back its audience after its reveal trailer bombed -- they're already announced an extended campaign demo on the floor, and they're likely to go even farther beyond that at Sony's conference.
- We'll probably see the last trailers for games coming out soon -- the most likely being The Last Guardian and FFXV. Also don't be surprised if we see even more of the FF7 Remake -- it seems like its a big deal for both Sony and Square Enix.
- As for this year's krazy prediction, I'm gonna say that there will be a FF7 Remake demo packaged with FFXV. I don't... really have anything to go off of on this. I mean, they put a FFXV demo inside Type-0, so the next logical conclusion is... this? Listen, my main reasoning for doing this is because I've had a strange feeling it was going to happen and if it does I want to say that I had a sick E3 2016 premonition.
Well, those are all my predictions for this year. I'll be sure to make a predictions review and wrap up post similar to how I did last year for E3. There will also probably be an episode of the AstukaGaming Podcast dedicated to E3, though it will take place a few days later.
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Follow us on:
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Thursday, June 2, 2016
"So what was with #IStandForHateSpeech on Twitter?"
Assuming you saw it trending last night, you're probably asking that question. I was asking that question as well, though I had a small bit of context.
The second I saw it, I knew it probably had something to do with the ... Gamegates? The Anti-Feminists? Not sure what they're calling themselves nowadays, but the point still stands. Anyway, a bit of research later and I found that the hashtag was in response to a European Union ban on all hate speech across major social networks. Okay, that makes a bit more sense -- here in the United States things tend to go more around the way of "You're allowed to say what you want, but you're going to have to suffer the consequences for it". A ban like that would likely never be allowed in the US, so its reasonable to believe that Americans -- particularly the young conservative "anti-SJW" kind -- would be very upset at such a ruling. And to be honest, it makes sense, and I too disagree with the ruling. So, that's it then? Actually not. In fact, that entire paragraph was just the context. In reality, this article will be answering a different central question:
Who the fuck thought this hashtag was a good idea?
Awhile back, I wrote an article called "Opposing Fronts: Why both Radical Feminism and Men's Rights are Stupid". Looking back on it, I don't really like a majority of the article because it feels like for the most part I was trying to stray away blame that I wasn't actually receiving. The whole thing seemed kind of pointless, except for one key part:
"...some moron somewhere decided it was a fantastic idea to name two opposite ends of the spectrum the same thing. Seriously, I used to have an early post up called "Feminists are fucking hilarious" because it was before radical feminists were even called anything, not even SJW. People just decided to go all "literally" on it, except "literally" isn't an extremely controversial topic that constantly gets confused on which one you're talking about. "Yeah, I saw a guy bashing feminism..." Which one? The one we all believe is wrong, or the one we all believe is right? I understand that most of us by this point have been able to find our own words for radical feminism besides just feminism, but I feel like there's just enough of the population who is using the same word for both that it STILL manages to be an issue."
And could this statement be ANY more right than with this case right here? Like I feel as though I don't even need to explain it any farther than that. Of COURSE the hashtag "IStandWithHateSpeech" is going to sound bad to practically EVERYONE who isn't involved in your movement, and isn't the point of a movement like, I don't know, to get other people into it? Like which autismo on 8chan stepped up and said "You know what? Know what we should call our hashtag? We should call it ISTANDFORHATESPEECH". And who AGREED WITH THAT? Who actually thought that was a good idea? If you gave people some fucking context on the topic, they would likely agree with you. But if you just say "I Stand with Hate Speech" they're going to think you're some sort of bigoted white supremacist. It's like saying "I hate white people" in a crowd of white people when in reality you're just talking about like the Nazis. And then you get mad at those white people and call them Nazis for liking the Nazis, but then the white people think you're just calling them Nazis because you hate th- listen the point is that this whole thing is really stupid and you all need to STOP
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
The second I saw it, I knew it probably had something to do with the ... Gamegates? The Anti-Feminists? Not sure what they're calling themselves nowadays, but the point still stands. Anyway, a bit of research later and I found that the hashtag was in response to a European Union ban on all hate speech across major social networks. Okay, that makes a bit more sense -- here in the United States things tend to go more around the way of "You're allowed to say what you want, but you're going to have to suffer the consequences for it". A ban like that would likely never be allowed in the US, so its reasonable to believe that Americans -- particularly the young conservative "anti-SJW" kind -- would be very upset at such a ruling. And to be honest, it makes sense, and I too disagree with the ruling. So, that's it then? Actually not. In fact, that entire paragraph was just the context. In reality, this article will be answering a different central question:
Who the fuck thought this hashtag was a good idea?
Awhile back, I wrote an article called "Opposing Fronts: Why both Radical Feminism and Men's Rights are Stupid". Looking back on it, I don't really like a majority of the article because it feels like for the most part I was trying to stray away blame that I wasn't actually receiving. The whole thing seemed kind of pointless, except for one key part:
"...some moron somewhere decided it was a fantastic idea to name two opposite ends of the spectrum the same thing. Seriously, I used to have an early post up called "Feminists are fucking hilarious" because it was before radical feminists were even called anything, not even SJW. People just decided to go all "literally" on it, except "literally" isn't an extremely controversial topic that constantly gets confused on which one you're talking about. "Yeah, I saw a guy bashing feminism..." Which one? The one we all believe is wrong, or the one we all believe is right? I understand that most of us by this point have been able to find our own words for radical feminism besides just feminism, but I feel like there's just enough of the population who is using the same word for both that it STILL manages to be an issue."
And could this statement be ANY more right than with this case right here? Like I feel as though I don't even need to explain it any farther than that. Of COURSE the hashtag "IStandWithHateSpeech" is going to sound bad to practically EVERYONE who isn't involved in your movement, and isn't the point of a movement like, I don't know, to get other people into it? Like which autismo on 8chan stepped up and said "You know what? Know what we should call our hashtag? We should call it ISTANDFORHATESPEECH". And who AGREED WITH THAT? Who actually thought that was a good idea? If you gave people some fucking context on the topic, they would likely agree with you. But if you just say "I Stand with Hate Speech" they're going to think you're some sort of bigoted white supremacist. It's like saying "I hate white people" in a crowd of white people when in reality you're just talking about like the Nazis. And then you get mad at those white people and call them Nazis for liking the Nazis, but then the white people think you're just calling them Nazis because you hate th- listen the point is that this whole thing is really stupid and you all need to STOP
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
Friday, May 20, 2016
Why Donald Trump is so Successful
As more people progressively talk more and more about the election, it may come at a surprise to many of you that, especially after promising for more political articles, I haven't mentioned the star of this year's show -- Donald Trump. In fact, I don't think I've mentioned him a single time either in private or public conversations until this article. Well, now that I'm finally making this, I might as well mention the reason that I haven't brought him up until now: I don't support him.
Trump is a stupid genius. Though his policies and statements may sound dumb, he knows how people work. He knows how to manipulate groups as small as an individual campaign opponent and as large as international news media. You see, Trump doesn't need to convince people to vote for him -- well, maybe a little -- but for the most part, he already has a very large, very loud group of people playing as his marketing card for him. It's the people who criticize him.
Yes, I'm talking about YOU (well, unless you're a Trump supporter, but I guess I'd still be talking about you?). You who post day and night articles and shitty memes on Facebook and Twitter on how Trump is literally the next Hitler. You who can only seemingly talk about how bad Trump is as a starter discussion for anyone in any environment. You who's punchline to a shitty joke is simply the name "Donald Trump". You constantly seem to be looking for reasons why he tends to be so popular, but you've checked everywhere but one last place -- yourself.
Let me explain this via an example. Very recently, a ton of drama and controversy was drummed up over Kanye West via a series of tweeting rants that made him look dumbfoundedly delusional. Also and coincidentally very recently, Kanye West's new album, Life of Pablo, came out. Or, was it really a coincidence? I mean, what are the chances that Kanye's rants begin shortly before the release of TLOP and end shortly after the release of TLOP? I mean, it's sure convenient -- after all, those rants have gotta have a bunch of people seeing his name, only to find the album itself, then having a listen to it to find out what this guy is all about...
...In case you haven't realized it yet, Kanye's controversy was planned -- by Kanye himself. Now, I'm not saying he faked it; Kanye is a pretty genuine person, and would think of the type of crazy shit that was mentioned in those tweets. However, he could've asked Mark Zuckerberg for money any time he wanted (most preferably in person or perhaps as a PM on Facebook) but instead decided to say it live as apart of one of his rants, live to the world. And so, people thought it was stupid. And further so, people decided to talk about it. People decided to talk about it a lot. And because people decided to talk about it a lot, The Life of Pablo ended up being the most successful digital only album of all time, despite also being the most pirated.
What Kanye West used -- and what Donald Trump is using -- is a technique called Large Crowd Manipulation. LCM (not to be confused with Least Common Multiple) is when an already popular figure appeals to the act of controversy by stating particularly dumb ideas or goofs that the public will find stupid, thus strengthening their popularity for some time before people finally get over it. Of course, for Donald Trump, people haven't gotten over it -- and its because he pulls a particularly controversial stunt every few weeks or so. Could it be, perhaps, that this is a case of Trump using LCM to its maximum effectiveness? In reality, yeah -- probably. It's very likely that, when Trump does these stupid things, he himself understands the stupidity of it, and that's how he's able to get ahead so easily.
Now, here's the real kicker -- there's nothing we can do to stop him. Think about it, how do you stop someone from being so popular? You stop talking about them. But to get people to stop talking about Trump, given the massive amount of people who are talking about him, is just straight up impossible. Even if we were to reach this message out to every single individual who talks about Trump all the time, many will likely forget about this message and continue to talk about him a few days later regardless, thus kickstarting the trend once again. Trump in a lot of ways has America in the palm of his hand, and he knows this -- despite a large amount of America not. He won the Republican party nomination the day it started -- and he may very well go on to do it in the general election. A reasonable person would see Trump's claims and policies as absurd, but only a fool would refuse to recognize that his campaign is perhaps one of the most ingeniously designed campaigns ever run.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
Trump is a stupid genius. Though his policies and statements may sound dumb, he knows how people work. He knows how to manipulate groups as small as an individual campaign opponent and as large as international news media. You see, Trump doesn't need to convince people to vote for him -- well, maybe a little -- but for the most part, he already has a very large, very loud group of people playing as his marketing card for him. It's the people who criticize him.
Yes, I'm talking about YOU (well, unless you're a Trump supporter, but I guess I'd still be talking about you?). You who post day and night articles and shitty memes on Facebook and Twitter on how Trump is literally the next Hitler. You who can only seemingly talk about how bad Trump is as a starter discussion for anyone in any environment. You who's punchline to a shitty joke is simply the name "Donald Trump". You constantly seem to be looking for reasons why he tends to be so popular, but you've checked everywhere but one last place -- yourself.
Let me explain this via an example. Very recently, a ton of drama and controversy was drummed up over Kanye West via a series of tweeting rants that made him look dumbfoundedly delusional. Also and coincidentally very recently, Kanye West's new album, Life of Pablo, came out. Or, was it really a coincidence? I mean, what are the chances that Kanye's rants begin shortly before the release of TLOP and end shortly after the release of TLOP? I mean, it's sure convenient -- after all, those rants have gotta have a bunch of people seeing his name, only to find the album itself, then having a listen to it to find out what this guy is all about...
...In case you haven't realized it yet, Kanye's controversy was planned -- by Kanye himself. Now, I'm not saying he faked it; Kanye is a pretty genuine person, and would think of the type of crazy shit that was mentioned in those tweets. However, he could've asked Mark Zuckerberg for money any time he wanted (most preferably in person or perhaps as a PM on Facebook) but instead decided to say it live as apart of one of his rants, live to the world. And so, people thought it was stupid. And further so, people decided to talk about it. People decided to talk about it a lot. And because people decided to talk about it a lot, The Life of Pablo ended up being the most successful digital only album of all time, despite also being the most pirated.
What Kanye West used -- and what Donald Trump is using -- is a technique called Large Crowd Manipulation. LCM (not to be confused with Least Common Multiple) is when an already popular figure appeals to the act of controversy by stating particularly dumb ideas or goofs that the public will find stupid, thus strengthening their popularity for some time before people finally get over it. Of course, for Donald Trump, people haven't gotten over it -- and its because he pulls a particularly controversial stunt every few weeks or so. Could it be, perhaps, that this is a case of Trump using LCM to its maximum effectiveness? In reality, yeah -- probably. It's very likely that, when Trump does these stupid things, he himself understands the stupidity of it, and that's how he's able to get ahead so easily.
Now, here's the real kicker -- there's nothing we can do to stop him. Think about it, how do you stop someone from being so popular? You stop talking about them. But to get people to stop talking about Trump, given the massive amount of people who are talking about him, is just straight up impossible. Even if we were to reach this message out to every single individual who talks about Trump all the time, many will likely forget about this message and continue to talk about him a few days later regardless, thus kickstarting the trend once again. Trump in a lot of ways has America in the palm of his hand, and he knows this -- despite a large amount of America not. He won the Republican party nomination the day it started -- and he may very well go on to do it in the general election. A reasonable person would see Trump's claims and policies as absurd, but only a fool would refuse to recognize that his campaign is perhaps one of the most ingeniously designed campaigns ever run.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
Thursday, May 5, 2016
In Response to The Hollywood Reporter
Ah, fuck. Here we go again.
I promised I wouldn't do another article about this sort of stuff. Ever since the ol' gamerampage-Battlefront scandal a few months back I had finally decided to throw in the badge and retire from this rage inducing, cherry-picked outrage garbage. Gamergate sucks -- it has and always will. Like, really? Gamergate? Are videogames that important to you? Why does this movement against radical feminism even have the word "gamer" in it in the first place? Didn't you all agree that the word "gamer" sucked anyway?
Anyway, the point is that I quit. However, I guess the old idiom(?) rings true -- a good content cop never stays away for too long.
What brought me back was an article that was published by apparently an actual notable website. Hollywood Reporter, a website whose major viewerbase is made up of what I can only assume to be underpaid soccer moms and college students with those special vibrant color hair dyes, recently released an article discussing the fact that the new trailer for Ghostbusters had now become the most disliked youtube video of all time. And yes, their case is just that (as of this moment) 674,142 people (myself included) just happened to really hate women.
Now, its 10 o clock on May 3rd, 2016 when I'm writing this. That being said, I'm not even going to bother going to the effort to make a deeply worded response to this dumb article. Instead, I'm going to use other people's opinions -- those who posted on the youtube comments -- and just pick out the ones I feel like generally respond to my feelings on the trailer itself:
(click the images to expand them if they're too small)
Alright, so that's the general stuff out of the way. Let's get to the article -- but, before I do, I want to address an obvious point I've never really addressed in one of these before: the fact is that 99% of people recognize this is bullshit and thing the "misogyny" argument is retarded. Let's be real with ourselves -- this isn't some giant threat to society that we've cracked it up to be. It is simply some extremely vocal minority that the media has been utilizing to get a few quick views while spreading fear of a "censored society" to the masses. In a few years, it's very likely that the movements will die out, and the colleges and universities that have decided to follow through with the stupid demands of these movements will finally concede and remove them. I'm sure some aspects will always be the same and continued to be argued about in the years to come, but I think the main reason I hated shit like Gamergate was because it picked very underground, specialized, and possibly even fake articles of "the atrocities committed by radfems" in order to seem like its a bigger deal than it is. This is the same strategy many anti-muslim forums have been making as well, focusing exclusively on the violent acts of islam and completely blocking away any possibility of something positive. Anyway, that mini-rant over, that doesn't change the fact that this is still a stupid article, and I'm still replying to it.
Oh, come on dude. I haven't even gotten to read the article yet and I'm already being bombarded by dumb shit.
Now, I feel like the "film is a victim" argument was addressed by the youtube comments above, so instead I'm going to focus on something else: nerd culture? Nerd culture? What in the god damn fuck is a nerd culture? Is it culture as in like, Mexican culture? Is there nerd festivals? Do nerds come together to commit rituals and sacrifice to their holy nerd god? Is there a some subgenre of music called nerdwave? I admit, I get pretty mad when the word "fandom" is used, but "culture" sounds even worse to the point where its borderline offensive. I still can't help myself from laughing everytime I read a post that says "gamer culture". Like nigga, how you even type that shit and be serious? How does that word come out of your mouth and your first thought is "Oh yeah, that fits perfectly towards the situation." I mean, then again, this woman is saying that bad trailers = sexism so I guess word choice is the least of our worries.
Secondly, what the fuck is a nerd in this context? Ghostbusters is like, a pretty damn popular movie. Like, its a classic. A serious classic. Everyone has seen Ghostbusters. This movie isn't like, some underground classic that has only been seen by a small Tumblr minority. This is a pretty well hyped release. Also, it has nothing to do with comic books, or Star Wars, or any of that shit. Hell, what does the word "nerd" even mean? What constitutes a "nerd" over a "normal human being"? What makes you special for being a "nerd"? For now, I'll just assume that by nerd culture she means Star Wars, Marvel, and the like. Here's a few points on that:
The first problem I'd like to deal with in this statement is the formatting. Like, good lord. It's real easy to fix this problem. It took like like 30 seconds to find where this continues off of in the actual piece, since in that its surrounded by all the other garbage. Secondly, don't both these statements mean pretty much the same thing? Can't "looking dire" still fall into the category of "something strange"? Anyway, I'm assuming the first part is supposed to be the right answer, but unfortunately for us, the author of this opinion chose wrong.
It's because the trailers themselves weren't bad. Both the Fantastic Four and Batman v. Superman trailers opened up the possibility to new interesting ways of telling the stories in their respective franchises, and although the both ended up failing horribly, the trailers themselves aren't bad. Unlike this one.
90% positive? Last time I checked, Facebook only had a like button -- no, scratch that, three like buttons. Where are you getting this 10% negative from? Are you just reading the comments and are going "Hmm yes, by my calculations it seems that relatively 90% of these comments are positive"? I literally just saw an embedded Facebook video like a few minutes before writing this. Unless its some secret hidden Facebook Gold membership feature, I'm pretty sure you're making this shit up. I would also like to point out how straight up conspiracy theory this article is getting, which apexes in the next point.
I think there's an assignment you do in late elementary school here in America where they show you a graph of the popularity of one thing and a graph of the popularity of another thing, and you're asked if that means that graph A caused graph B. It turns out that is false, and that is your introduction to faulty causation.
I feel like this statement is yet another example of faulty causation. The author is implying that amount of largely dislike videos starring females is the direct cause of a large increase in sexism, when that isn't necessarily the case. Still, let's take a look at the videos in the playlist she mentions.
Huh, well, would you look at that. She's right. There is a female majority. However, there is one thing she failed to notice.
THEY'RE ALL MADE BY THE SAME THREE FUCKING PEOPLE
You can't just say it's all females when there's only three god damn females on the list and its just multiple of their videos. I'm pretty sure you need more diversity in order to make that point anything but moot. If you do continue down the line of disliked videos, an interesting pattern develops -- all of the downvoted female videos are critically and popularly panned songs made by popular contemporary female artists who have a history of being critically and popularly panned. In fact, its not just women, either -- most widely despised male artists are also on this list. Hell, I don't even think there is a female majority in these videos. It seems pretty split between males, females, and viewbotted childrens videos.
Anyway, I've now spent an hour on this post, which passes my "actually putting hard work in" time limit. I promised I wouldn't spend too much time on this, so it looks like I'm outie for now.
In case (for some terrible reason) you want to read my gamergate trilogy, you can read it here, here, and here.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
I promised I wouldn't do another article about this sort of stuff. Ever since the ol' gamerampage-Battlefront scandal a few months back I had finally decided to throw in the badge and retire from this rage inducing, cherry-picked outrage garbage. Gamergate sucks -- it has and always will. Like, really? Gamergate? Are videogames that important to you? Why does this movement against radical feminism even have the word "gamer" in it in the first place? Didn't you all agree that the word "gamer" sucked anyway?
Anyway, the point is that I quit. However, I guess the old idiom(?) rings true -- a good content cop never stays away for too long.
What brought me back was an article that was published by apparently an actual notable website. Hollywood Reporter, a website whose major viewerbase is made up of what I can only assume to be underpaid soccer moms and college students with those special vibrant color hair dyes, recently released an article discussing the fact that the new trailer for Ghostbusters had now become the most disliked youtube video of all time. And yes, their case is just that (as of this moment) 674,142 people (myself included) just happened to really hate women.
Now, its 10 o clock on May 3rd, 2016 when I'm writing this. That being said, I'm not even going to bother going to the effort to make a deeply worded response to this dumb article. Instead, I'm going to use other people's opinions -- those who posted on the youtube comments -- and just pick out the ones I feel like generally respond to my feelings on the trailer itself:
Alright, so that's the general stuff out of the way. Let's get to the article -- but, before I do, I want to address an obvious point I've never really addressed in one of these before: the fact is that 99% of people recognize this is bullshit and thing the "misogyny" argument is retarded. Let's be real with ourselves -- this isn't some giant threat to society that we've cracked it up to be. It is simply some extremely vocal minority that the media has been utilizing to get a few quick views while spreading fear of a "censored society" to the masses. In a few years, it's very likely that the movements will die out, and the colleges and universities that have decided to follow through with the stupid demands of these movements will finally concede and remove them. I'm sure some aspects will always be the same and continued to be argued about in the years to come, but I think the main reason I hated shit like Gamergate was because it picked very underground, specialized, and possibly even fake articles of "the atrocities committed by radfems" in order to seem like its a bigger deal than it is. This is the same strategy many anti-muslim forums have been making as well, focusing exclusively on the violent acts of islam and completely blocking away any possibility of something positive. Anyway, that mini-rant over, that doesn't change the fact that this is still a stupid article, and I'm still replying to it.
Now, I feel like the "film is a victim" argument was addressed by the youtube comments above, so instead I'm going to focus on something else: nerd culture? Nerd culture? What in the god damn fuck is a nerd culture? Is it culture as in like, Mexican culture? Is there nerd festivals? Do nerds come together to commit rituals and sacrifice to their holy nerd god? Is there a some subgenre of music called nerdwave? I admit, I get pretty mad when the word "fandom" is used, but "culture" sounds even worse to the point where its borderline offensive. I still can't help myself from laughing everytime I read a post that says "gamer culture". Like nigga, how you even type that shit and be serious? How does that word come out of your mouth and your first thought is "Oh yeah, that fits perfectly towards the situation." I mean, then again, this woman is saying that bad trailers = sexism so I guess word choice is the least of our worries.
Secondly, what the fuck is a nerd in this context? Ghostbusters is like, a pretty damn popular movie. Like, its a classic. A serious classic. Everyone has seen Ghostbusters. This movie isn't like, some underground classic that has only been seen by a small Tumblr minority. This is a pretty well hyped release. Also, it has nothing to do with comic books, or Star Wars, or any of that shit. Hell, what does the word "nerd" even mean? What constitutes a "nerd" over a "normal human being"? What makes you special for being a "nerd"? For now, I'll just assume that by nerd culture she means Star Wars, Marvel, and the like. Here's a few points on that:
- The female version of Thor was criticized primarily for the writing of the comic, not for its depiction of a female Thor.
- Much of the problems people have had that involve these changes are mostly due to censorship, the most popular example being the Batgirl cover that was recently banned as some saw it as "implied rape" (what?)
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which featured a main female character and a main black character, was criticized by primarily Rush Limbaugh and the rad conservative krew, not by the majority of people much like this trailer is. The trailer which first featured John Bodega (? idk the british dude from attack the block just google it) had very little dislikes in comparison to likes, and the main outcry at that time was for lore reasons, not problems of race.
The first problem I'd like to deal with in this statement is the formatting. Like, good lord. It's real easy to fix this problem. It took like like 30 seconds to find where this continues off of in the actual piece, since in that its surrounded by all the other garbage. Secondly, don't both these statements mean pretty much the same thing? Can't "looking dire" still fall into the category of "something strange"? Anyway, I'm assuming the first part is supposed to be the right answer, but unfortunately for us, the author of this opinion chose wrong.
I feel like this statement is yet another example of faulty causation. The author is implying that amount of largely dislike videos starring females is the direct cause of a large increase in sexism, when that isn't necessarily the case. Still, let's take a look at the videos in the playlist she mentions.
THEY'RE ALL MADE BY THE SAME THREE FUCKING PEOPLE
You can't just say it's all females when there's only three god damn females on the list and its just multiple of their videos. I'm pretty sure you need more diversity in order to make that point anything but moot. If you do continue down the line of disliked videos, an interesting pattern develops -- all of the downvoted female videos are critically and popularly panned songs made by popular contemporary female artists who have a history of being critically and popularly panned. In fact, its not just women, either -- most widely despised male artists are also on this list. Hell, I don't even think there is a female majority in these videos. It seems pretty split between males, females, and viewbotted childrens videos.
Anyway, I've now spent an hour on this post, which passes my "actually putting hard work in" time limit. I promised I wouldn't spend too much time on this, so it looks like I'm outie for now.
In case (for some terrible reason) you want to read my gamergate trilogy, you can read it here, here, and here.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Uncharted 4 Apparently Contains Hint at New Crash Bandicoot Game
A post by shortsFortallpeople on NeoGaf seems to imply that Naughty Dog might be planning something with the Crash Bandicoot series soon. The image, now deleted but described by NeoGaf users, shows a copy of an old PS1 Crash Bandicoot game in the upcoming Naughty Dog game Uncharted 4. Naughty Dog, during the PS1 generation, was the developers of the Crash series, but the franchise would end up being sold to Activision by Sony. This isn't the only instance of a hint at a new Crash game, however -- Naughty Dog's corporate profile on social media was recently changed to a new model of the character, as well as Playstation executive Shawn Layden wearing a Crash Bandicoot t-shirt at the latest Playstation Experience event. It seems that if there's plans for a new Crash game, it will likely be announced at this coming E3.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Note of Inactivity (And new game in the works)
Hey guys,
I know I haven't been particularly active on this sub blog recently (the normal blog is active though!) so I decided to post this update, which I'd normally post on Codex of Aegis, here instead.
Right now I'm working on a new game for Guardians of Enthia, known simply as "Guardians of Enthia: The Text Adventure". The game is made in Quest and follows a side story not related to the core Guardians of Enthia series. As of right now there isn't much done, so I can't really discuss it in detail -- however it has been planned enough that I can safely assure that at some point it's coming out.
How I'll probably release it is I'll finish the first few chapters, and then release that and continue adding chapters on once in awhile after that. It is extremely easy to add on to Quest games (as far as I know) so it shouldn't be that big of a hassle. Quest also works in browser so it should be easily available to everyone.
Another thing I'd like to mention is that this is NOT the summer game project for this year -- this is simply a writing exercise for me as I've gotten really lazy when it comes to the actual act of writing shit. Anyway, that's all for now.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
I know I haven't been particularly active on this sub blog recently (the normal blog is active though!) so I decided to post this update, which I'd normally post on Codex of Aegis, here instead.
Right now I'm working on a new game for Guardians of Enthia, known simply as "Guardians of Enthia: The Text Adventure". The game is made in Quest and follows a side story not related to the core Guardians of Enthia series. As of right now there isn't much done, so I can't really discuss it in detail -- however it has been planned enough that I can safely assure that at some point it's coming out.
How I'll probably release it is I'll finish the first few chapters, and then release that and continue adding chapters on once in awhile after that. It is extremely easy to add on to Quest games (as far as I know) so it shouldn't be that big of a hassle. Quest also works in browser so it should be easily available to everyone.
Another thing I'd like to mention is that this is NOT the summer game project for this year -- this is simply a writing exercise for me as I've gotten really lazy when it comes to the actual act of writing shit. Anyway, that's all for now.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
Monday, March 7, 2016
Academy Awards 2016 Recap
Oh, yeah. The Academy Awards happened. Anyway, I figured I'd make a response video to my predictions (not hopefuls to keep it short) on what I thought would win versus what actually won. I'm also only doing the major awards, since those are the only ones that are important/I remember the winners to.
"Best Picture: The Martian"
No idea why in the world I chose this one to win. I knew it wouldn't be Mad Max (not drama) and I also knew it wouldn't be The Revenant (very few directors have gotten Best Picture twice in a row). I guess people still liked The Martian at this point so I just figured it was the best throwaway answer? Spotlight winning did surprise me at the time, but looking back on it now it seemed really obvious. The movie 100% passed the Oscar checklist, and it also wasn't Mad Max or The Revenant.
"Actor in a Leading Role: Eddie Redmayne"
Also no idea why I chose Redmayne over DiCaprio. Though it would be hilarious to see Redmayne win over Leo in another oscar-bait role, Leo was obvious from the very beginning. Seriously, the entire Oscars promotion leading up to the Show (even in the Pre-Show) was hyping up DiCaprio's win. If you didn't see this coming, welcome to the Academy Awards, cause this must be your first time.
"Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett"
I don't even remember who won this award. I think it was Allison Brie? Wasn't she in a comedy movie once? Eh, whatever.
"Actor in a Supporting Role: Tom Hardy"
I think this went to some dude who played a Russian in Bridge of Spies won this award. To be fair, I heard a lot of people say that he was the only reason they stayed awake for that movie, and his reel footage seemed pretty good, so maybe the award was well deserved.
"Actress in a Supporting Role: Rooney Mara"
This was kind of a throwaway pick as well. I knew Jennifer Jason Leigh likely wasn't going to win the award, but I didn't really see anyone else who would've gotten it besides Mara who was probably the most popular person in the list. Instead, they gave it to Vikander. Not much special with this award.
"Animated Feature Film: Inside Out"
They just can't keep getting away with it! Okay, sure -- maybe it was weird for Anomalisa to be there in the first place. And Ghibli's bid this year wasn't as good as its been in the past. But this Disney-Pixar domination in the Animated category is just straight up getting dull. I wouldn't be surprised if they flip it next year and give it to someone else.
"Directing: George Miller"
This was probably the biggest (unfortunate) surprise of the night. Not only did Innaritu (?) seem unlikely to win Director two years in a row, but George Miller actually had a pretty strong case for Best Director, seeing as he had been working on the film for such a long time. It's not that I don't like Innaritu, its just that I don't think he deserved the award this time around.
"Documentary Feature: The Look of Silence"
Another fairly unfortunate surprise. I mean seriously, who cares about Amy Winehouse? Besides, The Look of Silence also fit perfectly into the criteria the Academy uses to choose winners, and yet it lost anyway.
"Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul"
Fortunately, no surprises here -- Son of Saul did win. To be fair, none of the other films in this list had any traction, so if there was a surprise in this category, it would be a pretty big surprise in deed.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
"Best Picture: The Martian"
No idea why in the world I chose this one to win. I knew it wouldn't be Mad Max (not drama) and I also knew it wouldn't be The Revenant (very few directors have gotten Best Picture twice in a row). I guess people still liked The Martian at this point so I just figured it was the best throwaway answer? Spotlight winning did surprise me at the time, but looking back on it now it seemed really obvious. The movie 100% passed the Oscar checklist, and it also wasn't Mad Max or The Revenant.
"Actor in a Leading Role: Eddie Redmayne"
Also no idea why I chose Redmayne over DiCaprio. Though it would be hilarious to see Redmayne win over Leo in another oscar-bait role, Leo was obvious from the very beginning. Seriously, the entire Oscars promotion leading up to the Show (even in the Pre-Show) was hyping up DiCaprio's win. If you didn't see this coming, welcome to the Academy Awards, cause this must be your first time.
"Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett"
I don't even remember who won this award. I think it was Allison Brie? Wasn't she in a comedy movie once? Eh, whatever.
"Actor in a Supporting Role: Tom Hardy"
I think this went to some dude who played a Russian in Bridge of Spies won this award. To be fair, I heard a lot of people say that he was the only reason they stayed awake for that movie, and his reel footage seemed pretty good, so maybe the award was well deserved.
"Actress in a Supporting Role: Rooney Mara"
This was kind of a throwaway pick as well. I knew Jennifer Jason Leigh likely wasn't going to win the award, but I didn't really see anyone else who would've gotten it besides Mara who was probably the most popular person in the list. Instead, they gave it to Vikander. Not much special with this award.
"Animated Feature Film: Inside Out"
They just can't keep getting away with it! Okay, sure -- maybe it was weird for Anomalisa to be there in the first place. And Ghibli's bid this year wasn't as good as its been in the past. But this Disney-Pixar domination in the Animated category is just straight up getting dull. I wouldn't be surprised if they flip it next year and give it to someone else.
"Directing: George Miller"
This was probably the biggest (unfortunate) surprise of the night. Not only did Innaritu (?) seem unlikely to win Director two years in a row, but George Miller actually had a pretty strong case for Best Director, seeing as he had been working on the film for such a long time. It's not that I don't like Innaritu, its just that I don't think he deserved the award this time around.
"Documentary Feature: The Look of Silence"
Another fairly unfortunate surprise. I mean seriously, who cares about Amy Winehouse? Besides, The Look of Silence also fit perfectly into the criteria the Academy uses to choose winners, and yet it lost anyway.
"Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul"
Fortunately, no surprises here -- Son of Saul did win. To be fair, none of the other films in this list had any traction, so if there was a surprise in this category, it would be a pretty big surprise in deed.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
ALB Quickie: Once upon a Newgrounds
The Astuka Looks Back series is now on this blog as its not really a "high-quality" piece per-say and doesn't fit the "feel" of Codex of Aegis -- though its mostly because I said so. Also, that "Astuka" shit was getting really confusing.
So a long time ago I posted my magnum opus to Newgrounds. Now, take in mind this was a long time ago -- 2010 to be exact -- and my magnum opus has since changed hands many a time. In comparison, this work (entitled "Subconsciousness") probably sucks even compared to the most dull, rushed pieces on CoA. Probably.
I say "probably" because I've never actually read the thing since 2010. You see, it was the first time I had ever posted something that I made so genuinely for the critique of others. And so when I was told the truth, that it was "okay" (not even that it sucked) I had fled the scene embarrassed, and never touched down on it again.
I just didn't know how to deal with criticism at the time -- I had only been writing at this point for a little over a year and the idea of having someone else critique your work seemed alien to me. Even to this day, I refuse to read the actual responses to the piece.
However, I do intend to read the piece itself; after Newgrounds had recently found its place back into my mind I remembered this forbidden work and I figured the best way to utilize its legacy to the fullest would be to shit on it in the world's least liked, least reviewed review series, Astuka Looks Back. So let's go on and see what we got.
This was back in the "Show not tell" era of my career (an era given its name by another Newgrounds user 3 years later) and so from what I could discern probably what I was going for here was one of those cool spy movie things where in the corner they tell you the date and the location. Then again, Subconsciousness was supposed to be modeled after the type of writing found in something like a Charles Dickens novel (take in mind I had never read Dickens at this point, nor any classical novel really), so it could really go either way. Also I'm pretty sure that's not what an address looks like even in Britain.
Not really that bad of description here, which is surprising seeing that this is the same time frame in which I wrote Empty World and the first draft to Guardians of Enthia. To this day I'm not sure if 3 miles is a long or short road (though I don't understand why its not in proper brit kilometers heheheheh) but what I have learned is the word "pub", which I was probably trying to replicate by saying "Ale house".
Alright, starting to slip a little here. There's a few grammar mistakes in that first sentence, and the detail is getting a little too detailed and unnecessary (do I really need to know the life cycle of the rain drops?) but overall its still fairly decent. Let's read on.
Alright I'm serious famicom, you gotta stop with this raindrop shit. Also, how did the Bolshire Mansion history aside fit into this paragraph at all? Took me for a loop thinking the plot was gonna progress and then brought me back to this dumbass detailin'.
Alright, I'm officially off the wagon. Now you're gonna have to make me do my bullet point shit:
Okay, that second to last part made no god damn sense. Are Mrs. Hughes and the Chef sleeping together? Is this high of scandalous behavior already being mentioned? Or is it implying that the chef just sleeps at the house, which I don't think actually happens. More importantly, why does he always keep a pocket knife* on his table? It's a massive house in the middle of no where and the only people who live in it are employing you. I'm pretty sure you're okay.
And that's where it ends. I don't really have much to say about it other than that it starts off on a high note but ends up just like any of the stories from this era. Still, I think its much better than most of them and give it credit for that.
//End
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
So a long time ago I posted my magnum opus to Newgrounds. Now, take in mind this was a long time ago -- 2010 to be exact -- and my magnum opus has since changed hands many a time. In comparison, this work (entitled "Subconsciousness") probably sucks even compared to the most dull, rushed pieces on CoA. Probably.
I say "probably" because I've never actually read the thing since 2010. You see, it was the first time I had ever posted something that I made so genuinely for the critique of others. And so when I was told the truth, that it was "okay" (not even that it sucked) I had fled the scene embarrassed, and never touched down on it again.
I just didn't know how to deal with criticism at the time -- I had only been writing at this point for a little over a year and the idea of having someone else critique your work seemed alien to me. Even to this day, I refuse to read the actual responses to the piece.
However, I do intend to read the piece itself; after Newgrounds had recently found its place back into my mind I remembered this forbidden work and I figured the best way to utilize its legacy to the fullest would be to shit on it in the world's least liked, least reviewed review series, Astuka Looks Back. So let's go on and see what we got.
This was back in the "Show not tell" era of my career (an era given its name by another Newgrounds user 3 years later) and so from what I could discern probably what I was going for here was one of those cool spy movie things where in the corner they tell you the date and the location. Then again, Subconsciousness was supposed to be modeled after the type of writing found in something like a Charles Dickens novel (take in mind I had never read Dickens at this point, nor any classical novel really), so it could really go either way. Also I'm pretty sure that's not what an address looks like even in Britain.
Not really that bad of description here, which is surprising seeing that this is the same time frame in which I wrote Empty World and the first draft to Guardians of Enthia. To this day I'm not sure if 3 miles is a long or short road (though I don't understand why its not in proper brit kilometers heheheheh) but what I have learned is the word "pub", which I was probably trying to replicate by saying "Ale house".
Alright, starting to slip a little here. There's a few grammar mistakes in that first sentence, and the detail is getting a little too detailed and unnecessary (do I really need to know the life cycle of the rain drops?) but overall its still fairly decent. Let's read on.
Alright I'm serious famicom, you gotta stop with this raindrop shit. Also, how did the Bolshire Mansion history aside fit into this paragraph at all? Took me for a loop thinking the plot was gonna progress and then brought me back to this dumbass detailin'.
Alright, I'm officially off the wagon. Now you're gonna have to make me do my bullet point shit:
- *entrance
- why is he holding a lamp in 2004? certainly the mansion is updated?
- "shines a large mass" what
- "grayish red"
- "other highness"
- I think 17th century is a bit late for knights dude
- "something you would see in a haunted mansion movie" is a terrible analogy for something so serious but fits with my style from this era
- "grabbed hold on the knob and turned it, causing it to open" we know how doors work this detail is 100% unnecessary
- I'm trying to picture a "large ceramic purple table" but all I'm getting is visuals of a shitty 3rd grade art project
- "passing the two granite pillars" whoa wait hold on a minute, where in the world are these pillars? are they just like, outside the door to the kitchen? wouldn't they be the centerpiece of the room and not that stupid fucking table? how in the holy fuck is this room set up?
- "just a sudden gust of wind" if you're hearing doors close due to sudden gusts of wind this far into this massive house there is definitely something wrong
Okay, that second to last part made no god damn sense. Are Mrs. Hughes and the Chef sleeping together? Is this high of scandalous behavior already being mentioned? Or is it implying that the chef just sleeps at the house, which I don't think actually happens. More importantly, why does he always keep a pocket knife* on his table? It's a massive house in the middle of no where and the only people who live in it are employing you. I'm pretty sure you're okay.
And that's where it ends. I don't really have much to say about it other than that it starts off on a high note but ends up just like any of the stories from this era. Still, I think its much better than most of them and give it credit for that.
//End
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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
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Monday, January 18, 2016
Academy Awards 2016 -- Predictions and Hopefuls
With the Oscar nomination list just recently announced, I'd figure I'd bite (despite only seeing three of the movies on the list) and make a list both of the movies I want to see win as well as ones that I think are more likely to actually win -- separated as hopefuls and predictions respectively. Since most of these movies I'm just going on general praise and word of mouth I'm not gonna have any big discussion on any of them -- just lay down what I think and then maybe after the awards have a recap, similar to how its done with the E3 predictions. Anyway, here are the lists:
Actor in a Leading Role: Leonardo DiCaprio
Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett
Actor in a Supporting Role: N/A
Actress in a Supporting Role: Jennifer Jason Leigh
Animated Feature Film: Anomalisa
Cinematography: The Revenant
Costume Design: Mad Max: Fury Road
Directing: George Miller
Documentary Feature: The Look of Silence
Documentary Short: N/A
Film Editing: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul
Makeup and Hairstyling: Mad Max: Fury Road
Music -- Original Score: The Hateful Eight
Music -- Original Song: N/A
Production Design: N/A
Short Film (Animated): N/A
Short Film (Live Action): N/A
Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Sound Mixing: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Visual Effects: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Writing (Adapted): The Martian
Writing (Original): Straight Outta Compton
Actor in a Leading Role: Eddie Redmayne
Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett
Actor in a Supporting Role: Tom Hardy
Actress in a Supporting Role: Rooney Mara
Animated Feature Film: Inside Out
Cinematography: The Revenant
Costume Design: Carol
Directing: George Miller
Documentary Feature: The Look of Silence
Documentary Short: Last Day of Freedom
Film Editing: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul
Makeup and Hairstyling: The Revenant
Music -- Original Score: The Hateful Eight
Music -- Original Song: Writing's on the Wall
Production Design: The Martian
Short Film (Animated): Sanjay's Super Team
Short Film (Live Action): Stutterer
Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Sound Mixing: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Visual Effects: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Writing (Adapted): The Martian
Writing (Original): Spotlight
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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
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Hopefuls:
Best Picture: Mad Max: Fury RoadActor in a Leading Role: Leonardo DiCaprio
Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett
Actor in a Supporting Role: N/A
Actress in a Supporting Role: Jennifer Jason Leigh
Animated Feature Film: Anomalisa
Cinematography: The Revenant
Costume Design: Mad Max: Fury Road
Directing: George Miller
Documentary Feature: The Look of Silence
Documentary Short: N/A
Film Editing: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul
Makeup and Hairstyling: Mad Max: Fury Road
Music -- Original Score: The Hateful Eight
Music -- Original Song: N/A
Production Design: N/A
Short Film (Animated): N/A
Short Film (Live Action): N/A
Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Sound Mixing: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Visual Effects: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Writing (Adapted): The Martian
Writing (Original): Straight Outta Compton
Predictions:
Best Picture: The MartianActor in a Leading Role: Eddie Redmayne
Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett
Actor in a Supporting Role: Tom Hardy
Actress in a Supporting Role: Rooney Mara
Animated Feature Film: Inside Out
Cinematography: The Revenant
Costume Design: Carol
Directing: George Miller
Documentary Feature: The Look of Silence
Documentary Short: Last Day of Freedom
Film Editing: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul
Makeup and Hairstyling: The Revenant
Music -- Original Score: The Hateful Eight
Music -- Original Song: Writing's on the Wall
Production Design: The Martian
Short Film (Animated): Sanjay's Super Team
Short Film (Live Action): Stutterer
Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Sound Mixing: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Visual Effects: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Writing (Adapted): The Martian
Writing (Original): Spotlight
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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
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Sunday, January 3, 2016
Essential Free (Downloadable) Games
As it turns out the last time I posted something on this blog was 2 months ago, and 2 months is usually what I believe to be enough time to believe a project is dead. So in order to make sure you don't think this blog is dead, here's a lil post about some of my favorite free games. I'm also not including images and therefore work because like I say is lil post fuck you first thing
Chex Quest really is just a Doom clone, but you get to play as a single piece of chex which is pretty sweet. Also there's a hardmode that's pretty dank too. Someone once recommended I play this when I was still streaming on Twitch, and I think I played it for three whole hours before I got bored (which is a pretty good set of time for me)
Okay so there's a $15 version and browser version of this game as well but FUCK those cause this is about both free AND downloadable games.
This game (mostly the browser version) helped me survive my boring as all hell freshmen tech class. However, the downloadable version is much more expanded on the browser version and I damn near went a craze when I saw that shit. That being said its still a fairly simple roguelike so if you're not sure whether or not you like roguelikes I suggest trying this one out first and foremost. However, if you're ready for more advanced stuff...
Now Dungeon Crawl is some true, HARDCORE shit dude. If you thought Desktop Dungeons was baby gay shit, this is some REAL, FINE, 100% PURE ROGUELIKE ACTION. Out of all of the games on this list, this is by far the game I both played the most of AND enjoyed the most. If you know you like roguelikes, the amount of content that you're getting out of this game is INSANE. No wonder its considered one of the best and most essential by the roguelike community.
So I once played this game with a guide and at that point I kind of understood what was going on but then I stopped playing it for awhile and every time I tried to pick it back up I once again had no idea what the fuck was going on. However, during that time I was understanding the game I remember having enjoyment with it, which is why I'm putting it on this list. Before you download Dwarf Fortress, I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND having a guide close by, because otherwise you won't know what the FUCK is going on.
Elona is both as fun and confusing as Dwarf Fortress is, however Elona does, to its benefit, have an in-game tutorial, which DF does not at least from my memory of last playing it. Elona is pretty much just a roguelike with DF-elements inside of it, which funnily enough happens to be where most of the confusing parts come from.
Before Dan-Ball's Powder Game, there was nothing. After Dan-Ball's Powder Game, there was Powder Toy, which is literally just Powder Game on steroids. Its like playing Super Smash Bros 64 and then going straight to the Wii-U version. Seriously, the amount of content in this game is fucking crazy. There's probably like 200 different elements compared to Powder Game's like 5 -- also you can play other people's places, which means there's plenty of new cities and places to blow the fuck up.
There isn't much to say about Realistic Summer Sports beyond the fact that is a goofy, mouse-only game with fun physics. However, its also fun. Play it. Really.
Okay so SpaceSniffer isn't a game, its a software -- but its a pretty useful piece of software which is why I've decided to include it on this list. SpaceSniffer is a way of visualizing all of the dumb bloatware shit you have on your PC and makes it really easy just to get rid of it. My only problem would be in the loading times,. but speaking that its cataloging every single thing on your computer it probably makes a lot of sense.
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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
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Chex Quest Collection
Okay so I can't really remember whether or not I torrented this or if I just got it off somewhere for free, but the Chex Quest games DID come packaged in cereal boxes and this was like 20+ fucking years ago so unless General Mills or whoever renewed their licensing for their shitty doom clone its probably both legally and morally okay to download this. That being said I now can't find any download links for it so you're unfortunately on your own if you want to find this gem.Chex Quest really is just a Doom clone, but you get to play as a single piece of chex which is pretty sweet. Also there's a hardmode that's pretty dank too. Someone once recommended I play this when I was still streaming on Twitch, and I think I played it for three whole hours before I got bored (which is a pretty good set of time for me)
Desktop Dungeons
Download page: http://www.desktopdungeons.net/media/Okay so there's a $15 version and browser version of this game as well but FUCK those cause this is about both free AND downloadable games.
This game (mostly the browser version) helped me survive my boring as all hell freshmen tech class. However, the downloadable version is much more expanded on the browser version and I damn near went a craze when I saw that shit. That being said its still a fairly simple roguelike so if you're not sure whether or not you like roguelikes I suggest trying this one out first and foremost. However, if you're ready for more advanced stuff...
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
Download page: http://crawl.develz.org/download.htmNow Dungeon Crawl is some true, HARDCORE shit dude. If you thought Desktop Dungeons was baby gay shit, this is some REAL, FINE, 100% PURE ROGUELIKE ACTION. Out of all of the games on this list, this is by far the game I both played the most of AND enjoyed the most. If you know you like roguelikes, the amount of content that you're getting out of this game is INSANE. No wonder its considered one of the best and most essential by the roguelike community.
Dwarf Fortress
Download page: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/So I once played this game with a guide and at that point I kind of understood what was going on but then I stopped playing it for awhile and every time I tried to pick it back up I once again had no idea what the fuck was going on. However, during that time I was understanding the game I remember having enjoyment with it, which is why I'm putting it on this list. Before you download Dwarf Fortress, I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND having a guide close by, because otherwise you won't know what the FUCK is going on.
Elona
Download page: http://homepage3.nifty.com/rfish/index_e.htmlElona is both as fun and confusing as Dwarf Fortress is, however Elona does, to its benefit, have an in-game tutorial, which DF does not at least from my memory of last playing it. Elona is pretty much just a roguelike with DF-elements inside of it, which funnily enough happens to be where most of the confusing parts come from.
Powder Toy
Download page: http://powdertoy.co.uk/Before Dan-Ball's Powder Game, there was nothing. After Dan-Ball's Powder Game, there was Powder Toy, which is literally just Powder Game on steroids. Its like playing Super Smash Bros 64 and then going straight to the Wii-U version. Seriously, the amount of content in this game is fucking crazy. There's probably like 200 different elements compared to Powder Game's like 5 -- also you can play other people's places, which means there's plenty of new cities and places to blow the fuck up.
Realistic Summer Sports
Download page: http://gamejolt.com/games/realistic-summer-sports-simulator/9769There isn't much to say about Realistic Summer Sports beyond the fact that is a goofy, mouse-only game with fun physics. However, its also fun. Play it. Really.
BONUS: SpaceSniffer
Download page: http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/download.htmlOkay so SpaceSniffer isn't a game, its a software -- but its a pretty useful piece of software which is why I've decided to include it on this list. SpaceSniffer is a way of visualizing all of the dumb bloatware shit you have on your PC and makes it really easy just to get rid of it. My only problem would be in the loading times,. but speaking that its cataloging every single thing on your computer it probably makes a lot of sense.
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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
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