What do you get...

What do you get when you try to incorporate:
A. Elements of a free roaming sandbox game;
B. An arcade racer;
C. No real plot?

You get a steaming pile of poo called Burnout Paradise.

I've been a big Burnout fan since the beginning of the series but this is, by far, one of the worst to come out. The reason I included "no real plot" is because when Need for Speed shifted to a free roamer, at least it added plot elements. In Burnout Paradise, free roaming only exists so you can find events, billboards to crash, special cars to takedown (which usually appear within a mile of you once your notified they're out there 'somewhere') and jumps to do. To be perfectly frank, the "free roaming" of Burnout Paradise is nothing more than a large and elaborate (also pointless, lengthy and annoying) menu system.

What was wrong with the original formula of "Pick a style, earn stars to move up the progression ladder, blow stuff up, win cars"? Instead, they turn it into a piss poor "sandbox wannabe". And, in typical EA fashion, there are ads everywhere. Not just on occasional billboards which would be somewhat realistic, but.. everywhere. I find it amazing that there are so many CompUSA billboard ads in the game when CompUSA, shortly after the release of this game, shut down nearly every retail location for good.

Showtime mode is nowhere near as engaging as old Crash mode. While it's fun to rack up a big Showtime chain the first couple of times, after that it just becomes boring. In Racing events, I don't find myself caring about taking down my opponents anymore because it doesn't really matter as long as you find the fastest route to your destination. Road Rage is about the only event where Takedowns matter anymore; If you try to takedown people in Marked Man, you just end up with a very damaged car.

Which brings me to cars. Now I have to worry about 3 classifications of cars and go to a junkyard to get the best car for an event, repair my car (trashed by default) and then drive back to the event starting area? What the bloody fuck? Again, what was wrong with the old method of getting progressively faster racing/road rage cars and progressively stronger crash mode cars? Nothing.

This entire title wreaks of EA influencing Criteron Games to make Burnout more like Need for Speed, and, in my opinion, it's an abysmal failure. If I want to spend time driving around a fictional city looking for things to wreck and things to collect, I have GTA, Saints Row and Crackdown. Burnout used to be an awesome arcade racer that you could pick up and play for a long time or play for a little and then put down but still have fun either way. Now it's a frustrating pile of crap that tries to be too much - most of which simply doesn't fit in the Burnout "universe".

If there's another Burnout title, I hope for Criteron's sake they go back to the old menu driven, takedown/destruction laden system instead of this half ass "find your own route and then go do superjumps" system.

Posted by Captiosus @ 3:45 am EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments

Politics

Let me start by saying I don't trust any of the 3 major players seeking the office of President.

Despite that I still like following politics because every 4 years when we go through this Presidential election cycle, we really get to see spin masters working their charm.

A great example is this whole "debate", as it were, on so-called Foreign Policy experience. Explain this to me.. why does this matter? Bear in mind the following little tidbit: Our last two Presidents, including the current sitting one, both became President after being Governors. What Foreign Policy experience do freakin Governors have? Zero. His lack of foreign policy experience did little to assuage people from voting for Bush in 2000 - even if he didn't win the popular vote. And yet in 2000, such experience was still pretty relevent: Terrorism was on the rise and becoming more brazen (Remember the USS Cole?), and the fragile tendril of "peace" between Israel and Palestine was starting to show its weaknesses.

So when I see people attacking Obama for his lack of foreign policy experience, it makes me want to laugh. Sure, McCain has more of said experience than him, but it was McCain's party head (read: The POTUS) who got us in this foreign policy mess to begin with. And what was with that hardline McCain took about other nations like Iran and North Korea that sounded an awful lot like Bush's "Axis of Evil"/"You are either with us or you are with the terrorist" comments. Have the Republicans learned nothing these last 4 years?

Newsflash to the GOP: Most reasonable people like the idea of pursuing every avenue of diplomacy before resorting to bombing someone to the stone age. 'Every avenue of diplomacy' is not the same as "appeasement".

Now, before anyone thinks I'm all anti-Republican, this on-going fight between Clinton and Obama is pissing me off. And what is Clinton's primary argument? She has "experience".

Folks, "experience", when said in a political context, is the same thing as saying:
"I can maintain the status quo. I know how to exploit government loopholes, accept underhanded PAC funds, and play hardball while looking out for number one. I'm a Washington Beltway insider."

I would rather have someone with 2 years of Washington DC "experience" than someone with 30. Public Service, in my opinion, was never designed to be a freakin' career choice. People shouldn't aspire to grow up and want to be a Senator for 30-40 years. People with lots of Washington DC "experience" are career Politicans, no more, no less, and like everyone else with a career, they want nothing more than job security. [This, of course, is why I'm a very staunch advocate of term limits. No more than 6 terms as a Congressman or 2 terms as a Senator - that's a total of 12 years. And if you go to the Senate from the House of Representatives, you can only serve the number of years which equal to a maximum of 12 (for example, a 2 term Congressman who takes a Senate seat would only serve one full term as a Senator plus 2 years).]

Like I said, I don't trust any of them. And if I even bother to vote (thank you, George Carlin, for your enlightenment on why voting is useless), I'd vote for Obama over McCain and even Hillary over McCain. 8 years of a Republican president is enough. I don't think anything would change with a Democrat, but lets give them a chance. They can't screw us worse than, oh, I dunno, a needless war that has been a multibillion dollar drain on our economy. Even with higher taxes and bigger spending on federalized programs, we'd probably still see a multibillion dollar drain on our economy - but maybe we'd have something more to show for it than dead soldiers and more people who want to kill us.

Posted by Captiosus @ 3:51 am EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

Seeking Tattoo Advice

I know there are plenty of other folks around these parts who have tattoos, so I'll drop some lines here and see what responses I get.

I have a couple of tattoos already. Nothing major, both are just fancy text tattoos. But it's time to up the ante. I want to get a portrait tattoo done on my upper right arm.

This link is the subject matter of the tattoo.

Now, before anyone asks, "Why the hell do you want to get that?!", please understand that I have a personal rule that I won't get a tattoo done unless it has significant meaning in my life. That picture is, for all intents and purposes, a picture of one of my kids. I'll never actually have kids so my pets are my kids. He was one of 7 that I helped raise from his birth and he was very much my boy. He, and his siblings, helped me a lot through many dark days and trying times. He's been gone for 3 and a half years now and there hasn't been a day where I haven't thought about him and miss his affection and attempts to cheer me up. This tattoo is no longer something I merely want, but something I feel I have to have done as a tribute, not only to him but to all the others who have brightened (and those who will brighten) up my life.

Alas, I've rambled long enough, back to the matter at hand.

As you can see, he's a white rat. I'm a medium tone (not fair, but not dark) light skinned person. I don't think a lot of white will work well. I seem to recall that it may tint to an off yellow and look very poorly. The only change to the original picture is I'm going to get the tail to go down the length of my arm instead of being straight out as in the picture.

So I'm wondering what to do.
Would this work well as a black and gray portrait?
Perhaps black and gray but get the eyes the proper color?




Posted by Captiosus @ 3:42 am EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments

Haven't been here a while

Haven't been around here for a while.. for that, I blame Warcraft. And the two months I spent fighting off MRSA Cellulitis in my foot which nearly put me in the hospital but, instead, got me on a cocktail of antibiotics which made me lose about 10 pounds and sleep most of the day.

I just needed to find a place to ramble for a couple minutes because I had to have my last remaining, albeit elderly, pet rat put to sleep today. He had heart and lung troubles as well as advancing arthritis in his legs. He was 3 years old.

I always hate having an animal put to sleep because part of me knows I did the right thing but another part of me feels like I betrayed him or didn't do enough for him. Admittedly there was little that could be done. He could have been put on an antibiotic cocktail, too, but that wouldn't have addressed his heart problems or arthritis.

Anyhow, I buried him earlier today beside the grave of one of my other pet rats. I miss him terribly already. He wasn't the most social of rats we've ever owned but he did brighten up life around here with his presence.

Posted by Captiosus @ 3:22 am EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

Rock Band/Party Game thoughts.

Rock Band makes me both happy and sad.

It makes me happy because it's a great game, it whips Guitar Hero under the table, and it's very fun to play over and over again.

Yet, at the same time, it makes me sad because until they patch in the online Band World Tour (which they've promised according to both OXM and IGN), I'm extremely limited to what I can do. This is a byproduct of being an older gamer and having to coordinate with friends regarding when they can visit (or when I can visit them) around work schedules and busy lives. Add to this the fact that two of my friends can't play at the moment because they have borked hardware and it makes me really sad.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind sitting here playing solo guitar or solo vocals (or quickplay bass) at all, but I've only had a small amount of play as an actual band and that doesn't look to change until they give us the online BWT patch because it's a lot easier to coordinate online band play than trying to get multiple working adults (with kids) in the same physical location for a couple of hours.

It's this same "sadness" which keeps me from picking up SceneIT. I'd love to play SceneIT, but I would spend more time trying to coordinate getting people together than I would actually playing the game.

Posted by Captiosus @ 2:22 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments