October has been an interesting month, Bonerquest was supposed to release this month, but time makes fools of us all. As I assembled this together this afternoon, I’m in the midst of a vicious cold. My head hurts, I’ve thrown up, and I missed work again last night. Not a lot of video games when I’m feeling this rough, I can barely deal with my stupid dogs.

I shared an old thing I did with everybody this month, go read it! I like the werewolf story, I’d love to do more with it, but I’m busy with Bonerquest. I’ll try to blow it out into a real comic book another time.

And by busy with [i]Bonerquest[i/], I mean I played every game ever instead of writing.

Here is what I played in October -

Yakuza: Dead Souls - PS3

"It's been a while."

"Time to kick some ass!"

This is actual dialog a guy says, after a zombie bites his metal arm that then turned into a Gatling gun. Also this is a bad guy from the Yakuza 2 who now you play as.

I finished up the last but with Majima, who was a rival/villain in all the other games but is now playable here. Love that character, his part of the game was excellent, and I wish I had dozens of hours to just explore the city with him and do all his side quests, but I don't.

So I finished the next story mission, which was a boss battle that ended wit Majima batting a grenade into a giant cockroaches mouth! Yakuza games are wild. I love it.

Playing as the Gatling gun guy went by fast, I ignores all side quests, just barely tripping over one where these guys wanted blondie to be in a movie. I finished his quest and started the next main character, Kazuma Kiryu the dragon of dojima. He was the main guy from all the othe games and fights zombies, with his bare hands. I love this game.

Borderlands - Steam

I am not a fan of borderlands. I've nearly finished it, and here I am playing it. I used the world warp for the first time, the fast travel stuff feels a little unnecessary, but it was nice to have to walk a thousand miles back to the junkyard guy and deliver the two stupid quests I did for him.

Total War Shogun 2 - Steam

My wife bought every Total War game on steam, simply to get outfits for Team Fortress.

I loaded it up, got into a historical mission and was overwhelmed by the amount of troops I had. After clicking around for a few minutes, I gave up. I just couldn't play with it.

Civilization V - Steam

Rather than finish up my domination of a small map, I decided to start over and play as America, but do so with a world size map with countries all over the world. My goal was to play so much that I end up in a nightmare scenario like that Civilization 2 player, who has has a game going for twenty years! His country and two other computer opponents are locked in an apocalyptic death world, where few humans survive on the patches of Earth not irradiated. I love that, that hell speaks to my heart.

X-Com: UFO Defense - DOS

The old X-Com is butthole difficult. I love it.



As I start my game, I found an alien base. I tried approaching it from different angles, until finally I thought to get a couple guys better armor and to better equip my guys, heavy plasma and flying armor aren't things everybody has, but the dudes that do, don't fuck around, they're killers.

I also discovered that proximity grenades are among my favorite things ever.

Not since Goldeneye 64 have I lived in a world so full of explosives. Every match turned into camping sessions, daring one another to step into our territory. As one of us pointed out they had the lead, you see the other three players make a mad dash to try and get past a wall of mines, dying, or even better being baited into the bathroom and then being shot with a rocket launcher. I love it!

That is pretty well my strategy with these aliens. I'm camping and baiting these bastards out. At this point, I am openly angry at the aliens. I've been destroyed by crystallids one time too many. They fucked with the wrong guy!

I managed to dominate that base with minimal casualties, then kept upgrading my dudes equipment. I also managed to capture their leader alive, and now I am researching a solution to the Martian problem, or as Larry Flynt said, "Fuck all you, mother, fuckers."



I actually flipped off the screen and said out loud, "I am coming for you fucks."



To my surprise, I am then told I need an alien commander, which I had, but already researched which accomplished nothing. Around this time, Brazil made a pact with the aliens. So now, fuck Brazil! I should have known they were up to no good, these cunts let them build that first base, and now I have another to deal with. I entered and exited quickly after meeting much harsher resistance than I wanted to meet.

I then followed an alien craft that landed, where I encountered Mutons for the first time.

These green bastards took a guy out before he even stepped off the damn shuttle! He took a full rocket and heavy plasma to die. Then I began spreading my dudes out and found the entrance to the ship, where I laid a trap that I wish I took a picture of.

I had six guys surrounding the door, they were well enough away that they wouldn't shoot each other or get but by the proximity grenades I laid down for just out front of their door. As a guy steps out, he steps on the mine, then my guys with heady plasma, laser pistols, and plasma rifles just lit him up. I destroyed maybe nine guys that way.

The reason I did this was for the elliruim-115, which I need for better airplanes and armor. I got a shitload, more than enough to build planes to nuke the world four times over. Also, I can now build stun grenades and probably the blaster thing that just decimated my dudes.

Now I can fly above everybody and shoot missiles at the ground, blowing the butts out of everything. I love it, all I need is more time to throw at the game and work my way to having my guys all have jetpack and plasma rifles.

But that. Didn't work, my base got invaded just after I saved. I can't avoid it, and I tried to save my base multiple times. Can't do it, I'm done, they win! Again!

I played the day after as Dtoid people, that turned out awful.

XCOM Enemy Unknown - Steam

This game might be one of the best new games I've played in a long time.

It is modern, it is by no means a masterpiece or perfect, but it is a fun thing to play. I did so for ten hours in a row. I only quit because this happened.

I was losing when that happened, but I felt like I could bounce back and pull off a stunning victory.

But things were not looking good for my Xcommandos.

All my veteran soldiers had been slaughtered by mutons and heavy floaters. A very hard mission I took, thinking their experience and advances weapons and armor would be helpful to them. That was not the case, as I desperately tried to revive them, a car was lit on fire. My two remaining guys, a heavy and a newer support trooper, I had them book back to the jet to take off, but I hit the wrong button so the mission didn't abort.

Things got worse from there, cyber disks killed so many of my guys with their grenades and support drones, my veteran soldiers who were wounded in a previous battle, before the other group was slaughtered. The laser shotgun assault trooper and sniper were both, wait I messed up, this battle happened before the other, because I managed to save the sniper by aborting the mission. Part of why I lost all my other dudes, all who were majors, was that my sniper brought his regular rifle not his laser rifle. I got so frustrated when I saw that, but I thought I was on iron man and couldn't reload. I found out later, that I didn't check that box, so my save from just the mission where everything boned up is there, my heavy and the support still alive.

But the mission continued without these veteran soldiers. Their presence was missed.



Every new guy I had sucked, horribly. They kept dying, the ones that lived were not winners, all of them were support guys. I brought in some new guys, a couple were heavys which I needed. Unfortunately, I just didn't have the weapons to give everybody and nobody seemed to like living, so when I too the base assault, I wanted to bring along a robot with us, which the game gladly wouldn't let me do.

The alien base was rough, full of mutons and beserkers, and right up front I fought a cyber disk, those are the worst. All my guys attacking it brought it down, a cautious advance splitting my guys up, I did fairly well. Until I opened a door and out ran three mutons at my three guys.

I know I wrote it somewhere, maybe on my other computer, but I’ve gone on way to long about XCOM. I played a ton of it, finishing it on normal and getting pretty deep into the classic difficulty. I like it a lot.



Little Big Planet 2 - PS3

I wasn’t a huge fan of the first game, this one lost me after a few minutes too. I’d love to build my own level, but going through so many tutorials isn’t a thing I want to do. The alternative is something like RPG Maker, which just turned me loose to attempt to make something worthwhile. I mean the one on the Playstation, which I bought new and found exciting. Without that experience, Bonerquest wouldn’t have been made on the PC years later, but I look back at that version of RPG Maker as horrific. It was just awful and a pain to try to do anything.

Back to the topic, I played a Ninja Warrior themed level, which made me giggle.

Mrs. Bullseye likes this game more, she played a lot of the single player beyond where I quit. I only got a few stages in, she made it more than a dozen or so before quitting.

Pac Man Championship Edition - PS3

PS Plus has done me a lot of favors. This is another game I liked the demo of, but just never bought. I’m really happy with it, the speed at which I can get in and get out is pretty awesome. My pac man scores are pretty good, I don’t suck at Pac Man, and I like this bite size championship version quite a bit.

Retro City Rampage - PS3

I like it. The gameplay is fun, Grand Theft Auto style gameplay with a lot of referential humor. The only crutch of the game, are these refrences. I’ve experienced a lot of media, and even I have had trouble following everything. In the first mission alone, you’re playing out a scenario where you rob a bank with the “Jester,” that goes a lot like the opening of the The Dark Knight, including school busses. As you make your escape, you’re fighting the A-Team, Ninja Turtles, and the guys from Contra all in a matter of seconds. It’s a lot of fun, but I don’t love it. The storyline leaves a lot to be desired, a series of mcguffins leading to more references, like riding a giant Donkey Kong.

The game pulls from everything, but lacks an identity of it’s own. Aside from a geniune feeling of chaos and that anything can happen at anytime, from Time Travel to suddenly having a tank with nitro boosters.

Also, going with a look like that of the first Nintendo Ninja Turtles over world, sort of hurts the game.

I want to play more of it, I laughed at a lot of it and the gameplay was amazing. Every mission felt unique and interesting, which I love.

Minecraft - PC

I wasted too much time playing this, again. I built a pumpkin patch and kept letting myself get killed when I went mining stuff. Also, my big railway system is starting to really take shape. They’re only made of iron, not rearden steel like I’d really want. Sorry Dagny!

Rock of Ages - Steam

Wasted an evening playing a few levels of this. I need to set aside time to really get in deeper. I still haven’t played these dudes other game, the really weird one, beyond the demo. I bought it, I have it, but I just haven’t touched it since.



Double Dragon Neon - PS3

Playstation Plus is a service I found worth my twenty dollar investment, just for the games currently available. I would have bought Double Dragon Neon on it’s own, this is definitely my type of game. I like it a lot, but I’ve only made it to the third level. Beating up dudes in this feels great, as does the upgrade system that uses mixtapes that are remixes of old Double Dragon music. I love that too.

Tokyo Jungle - PS3

The most interesting rouge like I’ve ever played. I’ve only unlocked a handful of the story mission, but it is a fascinating game that to say anything else about, would spoil it for yourself. I got it for twelve dollars, and that investment got me tons of laughs. That’s the only currency I really care about, laughter.

Katamari Forever - PS3

While showing off Tokyo Jungle to a group of friends in town from Boston, I showed off this. Such a lovely and fun game, shame I couldn’t play it more. I have no idea how many levels are actually in this thing, but I’ve unlocked a ton of them and the one I thought was the end, turned out not to be. It really could have ended with me rolling up the world, but it didn’t. I know, most of the levels are from the other games in the series, but having them all in one package really works for me, I kind of like that. The sumo level is my favorite, which I didn’t play this month or show off.

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine - PS3

Plus gave me this for free, which I already had on Steam. It didn’t run at a frame rate I found acceptable on my computer, neither did Darksiders, which I’m fairly sure uses the same engine. As I said about this game before, it is a blast to play. I did a little of the multiplayer, which seemed very functional and ok. Not really my thing anymore, I’m sort of done playing with strangers online. If I knew people who wanted to play with me, I would, but I don’t. I joined Destructoid to find people to play with, but that hasn’t worked out so well lately. I’m trying to rush back the point in single player I quit on the PC at, I think it was right before the big reveal that Chaos Marines are the bad guys where I quit. If they somehow aren’t the bad guys, then my story senses are all wrong. There was a guy who was clearly going to turn out to be a bad guy introduced, that guy has final boss written all over him, but I don’t know for sure. Curious to finish this up.

Skyrim - PS3

Going to sell this to a guy I work with, I had a bad experience trying to sell off Dragon Quest VIII, which I’ve since relented on. I’ve never sold off any of my games, I feel like they’re precious or something, but I need money. Plus, I can probably buy Skyrim on Steam in five years for cheap, if I still care by then.

My relationship with this game has been upsetting. I loved it, hated it, and loved it again. As I tried to finish the game up, I finally just gave up. I’ve no interest in fighting the final dragon at all, I just don’t care. I care so little, I didn’t even go look up what happens at the end. I just, don’t care. It isn’t like he was Luca Blight and I was compelled to see this battle through to the end, the main villain is just a big dragon. I’m told he’s mean, but never really witness anything worth getting interested in. Which describes Bethesda games, I never really see anything interesting, but occasionally story beats in one off sidequests or weird dlc are compelling.

I’ll miss this game.

Mortal Kombat - PS3



In my quest to make friends, I befriended a guy named Phil, whose real name isn’t Phil. I’m pretty sure he was on one of the people who read Bonerquest, but I never brought that up while we talked over skype. Instead, I chose to talk like Vinnie Jones and attempt to play Mortal Kombat with him. Both our matches ended with the server dropping, then I decided to try a round online with some random person who beat my brains in. Fighting games require practice, I hadn’t touched this since last year when I never successfully played multiplayer. Just as I was getting my butt whipped online by this one guy, the game lagged up again and I just quit. Why bother?



King of Fighters XIII - PS3

This was free on PS Plus as well, so I tried it out. I traditionally have always hated SNK fighting games. I find the look of the sprites great, but the actual art design lacking. There was a karate man, one of the ikari warriors who is now completely roided out, and the chick with a rack that dangles that I picked for my only run on the arcade mode. For some reason, you pick a team of three and play. I saw in my five or six matches characters that I couldn’t connect with at all. Guys who looked like girls, guys who looked like Street Fighter characters, and characters that just looked crappy to me, with nothing interesting about them. At least the big guy from Ikari Warriors and Metal Slug is now roided out with giant muscles and stands about two feet taller than other fighters. His moves mimicked Zangief, but I felt with the controller I have, I couldn’t play him all that well. The karate man wore a gi like a Gracie brother, but seemed to do more traditional striking rather than jiujitsu. Mai Shrinrui shot fireb and fans out, all while her breasts bounced in the most exaggerated manner. I recall the name because a friend of mine was obsessed with SNK fighters and talked about her all the time, I’m not friends with that guy anymore and I don’t ever want to play King of Fighters XIII again. The sprites had something wrong with them, the clean lines of Street Fighter 2 HD Turbo Remix maybe spoiled me, but I don’t ever want to see the weird lines around sprites again, which is partially why I’m not sure if I want the Darkstalkers remakes that got announced this month.

Zen Pinball and Another Pinball Game with a name I forgot and also deleted - PS3

I played both of these out, they had trials that practically gave the games away for free. I played an avengers table, that seemed ok in Zen Pinball. The other game, whose name I forgot, had licensed tables based on real life ones I’d actually played, like the Elvira one or Bride of Pin-Bot table. I really liked that, but I’d rather spend a couple hundred dollars and actually buy an Elvira pinball machine than have a fake one that isn’t taking up lots of room and isn’t nearly as loud as a real pinball machine. That’s my favorite thing about pinball, how god damn loud they are. They’re always set to the highest volume, which always amuses me.

NFL Blitz - PS3

PS Plus gave me this, but I don’t know why I played it. I thought maybe I would like it, I guess. I played as the Giants, whom I’m not a fan of. I’m not a fan of any sports team. I don’t know anyone on any of these teams personally, I know somebody who had a nephew who played for the Jaguars, who according to wikipedia is drafted to the Steelers now, but I don’t know these people. I don’t have a favorite animal or any allegiance to any of these teams at all. I don’t understand sports fandom at all, it isn’t like the players, coaches, or owners are from that area, they don’t give a fuck about the area they’re from. That’s how the Great Lakes Lakers became the Los Angeles Lakers.

I realized after playing this, that I don’t need to play everything just because it’s free. Bloodrayne whatever was “free” on PSN Plus, but that demo left me upset. It juts wasn’t good. I don’t feel like playing Scott Pilgrim again, maybe some other time I will. I don’t know, this service is interesting, but it seems like a mixed bag. It isn’t that Blitz is a bad game, it just isn’t a game for me.

Infamous 2 - PS3

If the Doomguy suddenly had a voice that was as lispy and snarky as Cole from Infamous, I doubt I’d ever play another DOOM with the same level of satisfaction I’ve had with it for twenty years. The same with Mario, if suddenly he had a shrieking high pitch voice saying only a couple phrases, I’d probably not like him as much. Oh wait, that happened, and suddenly my reasons for not liking Mario 64 have a basis in reality that I can ground an argument onto.

Regardless, Infamous 2 still plays like a fun game. Moving around this city is fun, collecting power ups and giving your guy more electrical powers, that’s fun.

Trying to decipher this storyline, hurts. I’m actually feeling physical pain trying to figure out why things are happening and who these characters are and why they’re suddenly important or not important. Allegiances seem to not matter at all, a bad guy from the first game is now your best friend again. I don’t know who wrote this, but they fucked up. There is also a female character introduced sloppily in a comic book cutscene, who everybody seems to know really well, but I have no idea who she is or why I should.

That and I keep dying a lot, have made my couple hours with inFAMOUS 2 less than favorable, but when I'm running up buildings and shocking dudes or monsters with electrical powers, it sort of works enough that I can have fun. The level design, or open world design, is especially good. Compared against Assassins Creed and how they copy and paste their world designs in such a piss poor way that I can't figure out where I'm going or what I'm doing, infamous 2 has a much better city. And furthermore, the sense of momentum you can get rushing around buildings is a lot of fun. Too bad the story is as silly as it is.

Later characters are introduced sloppily as well, villain characters from the first game who lived have vanished from existence and are never mentioned. That bothers me too, if you're trying to establish a canon, why forget everything that happened the first time around, barely referencing major plot points, like the fact that the main bad guy in the first game was your character from the future who came back in time somehow, then killed your girlfriend to motivate you to fight "the beast" who turned out to just be Cinder from Killer Instinct.

If I hadn't got this for free, probably wouldn't have played it.

In fact, that sort of goes for everything on PSN Plus, which wasn’t ”free,” but as a package I’ll take a dozen mediocre games for twenty dollars for three months. I want to finish Infamous 2 and give it a score, as it has a lot of problems besides the storyline.

Payday The Heist - PS3

Tried this again, still don’t like it.

This is like Left 4 Dead with bank heists, but I don’t like Left 4 Dead either.

Diablo III - PC



There was some kind of promotion to play this for free, so I did. Turns out, I didn’t like it. That was on Halloween, where I was hours late for work and couldn’t sleep, but managed to watch the ending of Son of Frankenstein and the very beginning to The Wolf Man. I feel like seeing the ten minutes of Frankenstein’s monster throwing things into a volcano and then being kicked into said volcano, was much more fun than my time with Diablo 3, which was over an hour of nothing interesting, boring gameplay, and generic designs. Even the blown out computer graphics cut scenes, which Blizzard usually delivers on, felt lackluster. The stuff from Civilization V looked so much better, I feel bad for Blizzard. I loved their games, Rock N Roll Racing, Lost Vikings, Blackthrone, and both Starcraft and Warcraft hold special places in my heart, but they’ve lost me as a fan. I don’t like MMOs, because they all feel like Diablo clones and I don’t like Diablo, because it feels like I’m wasting my time powering a guy up to beat a final boss who isn’t as tough as the tougher difficulties I’m expected to keep playing through to. Everyone explains that to really enjoy the game, I need to invest hours upon hours of play time into this thing and finish it on the tougher difficulties. To those people, I say fuck you. Persona 3 was an excellent waste of time that compelled me to finish it, the one god damned time. It is awesome that it had a new game plus, but I’ll never play it, just like Disgaea, Makai Kingdom, and Dragon Quest VIII. I really would love to sink years of my time into these games to explore their content, but I just don’t have that time.

I waste my time writing user submitted articles to an internet gaming website, where I’m notorious for being an asshole, hilarious, and unpredictable.

___

That’s it!

Not sure if I'll publish the handful of articles I wrote, as always I write way more stuff than I actually publish. I've a couple of Old School Games articles that I'm feeling proud of and want to publish and I wrote some thoughts about what Athiestium is having happen to her. It looks like the internet has unloosed hell on her. I've not contacted her, nor plan to, but I feel sympathetic to her being talked to viciously through the internet. I'm not sure what she did or didn't do, nor do I plan to look into it any further than what I hear on podcasts while I'm at work. Alls I know is, she was a member of our internet community and we should stick up for each other.

Yesterday, I posted them with all the author notes stuff and it sort of clumped together badly. So today, I present without any interruptions, my old werewolf comics.











































And remember, only silver can kill a werewolf!

In the year 2007, I did some werewolf comics. I can only sort of recall doing them, they were a part of my final internet comic experience where I would try out many different styles of story telling and characterization. This particular story, I loved so much I spun it off from the rest of my old comics, which are now all offline, lost in a hard drive crash, and maybe buried on a CD-R somewhere in a pile of unlabeled CD-Rs. I doubt I still have those, but werewolf is here for all of my new friends on Destructoid to read. I've a couple problems with my old werewolf comics, which I'll outline at the very end, but to be honest, I'm happy with how these turned out. They're funny and interesting, which is what I always try to do with writing.

But first, I'll briefly go over my history doing comics online.

In the year 2001, I got into doing comics over the world wide web. It was a thing I did for about eight years, ending sometime after I joined Destructoid. I did many comics across many genres, all poorly drawn with lots of spelling errors. Over that time, I gave up, making the worst possible comic with the worst possible name, just to house all my dumb ideas and every day over the course of a few years, I put together a new page in that silly comic, rarely taking breaks or missing any days. It was where I learned how to write without any restraints, and let me be as awful as I wanted. It was a lot of fun, but other than as practice it was a tremendous waste of time.

There are no backgrounds, fill those in with your own imagination.

The artwork is simple. Often I cut and paste the same pictures over and over, changing layouts to make things look more interesting.

Every comic was accompanied by "authors notes" which relate to the page of the story with a definition or explanation of an idea expressed in that page.

So here are my old werewolf comics, twenty pages of a story I did in 2007. I'm sure there are a few spelling or grammatical errors, I never fix those to this day.





In anatomy, a viscus is an internal organ of an animal (including humans), in particular an internal organ of the thorax or abdomen. The viscera, when removed from a butchered animal, are known collectively as offal. Internal organs are also known as "innards", or less formally, "guts" (which may also refer to the gastrointestinal tract).

The adjective visceral is used for anything pertaining to the internal organs. Historically, viscera of animals were examined by Roman pagan priests like the haruspices or the augurs in order to divine the future by their shape, dimensions or other factors.



Anxiety is a physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. These components combine to create the feelings that we typically recognize as fear, apprehension, or worry. Anxiety is often accompanied by physical sensations such as heart palpitations, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, or headache.

The cognitive component entails expectation of a diffuse and uncertain danger. Somatically the body prepares the organism to deal with threat (known as an emergency reaction): blood pressure and heart rate are increased, sweating is increased, bloodflow to the major muscle groups is increased, and immune and digestive system functions are inhibited. Externally, somatic signs of anxiety may include pale skin, sweating, trembling, and pupillary dilation. Emotionally, anxiety causes a sense of dread or panic and physically causes nausea, and chills. Behaviorally, both voluntary and involuntary behaviors may arise directed at escaping or avoiding the source of anxiety and often maladaptive, being most extreme in anxiety disorders. However, anxiety is not always pathological or maladaptive: it is a common emotion along with fear, anger, sadness, and happiness, and it has a very important function in relation to survival.



Group therapy is a form of psychotherapy during which one or several therapists treat a small group of clients together as a group. This may be more cost effective than individual therapy, and possibly even more productive. Group therapy often consists of "talk" therapy, but may also include other therapeutic forms than such as expressive therapy and psychodrama.
In group therapy the interactions between the members of the group and the therapists become the material with which the therapy is conducted, alongside past experiences and experiences outside the therapeutic group. These interactions are not necessarily as positive as reported as above, as the problems which the client experiences in daily life will also show up in his or her interactions in the group, allowing them to be worked through in a therapeutic setting, generating experiences which may be translated to "real life." Group therapy is not based on a single psychotherapeutic theory, but takes from many what works.



The jugular veins are veins that bring deoxygenated blood from the head back to the heart via the superior vena cava.

In popular culture, the jugular is stereotypically what dogs and other animals are thought to go after with the intent of killing another animal, generally because of the awareness that it will incapacitate the opponent with little effort. In reality the injury that does this is to the carotid artery, as the flow from venial bleeding is easily stopped.



Choice consists of the mental process of thinking involved with the process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them for action. Some simple examples include deciding whether to get up in the morning or go back to sleep, or selecting a given route for a journey. More complex examples (often decisions that affect what a person thinks or their core beliefs) include choosing a lifestyle, religious affiliation, or political position.

Most people regard having choices as a good thing, though a severely limited or artificially restricted choice can lead to discomfort with choosing and possible an unsatisfactory outcome. In contrast, unlimited choice may lead to confusion, regret of the alternatives not taken, and indifference in an unstructured existence; and the illusion that choosing an object or a course leads necessarily to control of that object or course can cause psychological problems.



In a species that reproduces sexually, sexual attraction is an attraction to other members of the same species for sexual or erotic activity. This type of attraction often occurs amongst individuals of a sexually-reproducing species, although in many species it serves no immediate reproductive goal indeed, some sexual behavior among primates is undertaken as a social activity. Certain aspects of what is sexually attractive to humans may differ amongst particular cultures or regions. Influencing factors may be determined more locally among sub-cultures or simply by the preferences of the individual. These preferences come about as a result of a complex variety of genetic, psychological, and cultural factors. The sexual attraction of one person to another depends on both people.



A serial killer is someone who murders three or more people in three or more separate events over a period of time for largely psychological gratification. Many serial killers suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder and usually not psychosis, and thus appear to be quite normal and often even charming, a state of adaptation which Hervey Cleckley calls the "mask of sanity." There is sometimes a sexual element to the murders. The murders may have been completed/attempted in a similar fashion and the victims may have had something in common, for example occupation, race, sex, etc. However, many times the race of the victim is not the same as the perpetrator.

The term serial killer is widely believed to have been coined either by FBI agent Robert Ressler or by Dr. Robert D. Keppel in the 1970s (the credit for the term is disputed). Serial killer entered the popular vernacular in large part due to the well-publicized crimes of Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz in the middle years of that decade.



Lunar phases are the result of our eyes seeing the illuminated half of the Moon from different viewing geometries: they are not caused by shadows of the Earth on the Moon that occur during a lunar eclipse. The Moon exhibits different phases as the relative geometry of the Sun, Earth, and Moon change, appearing as a full moon when the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the Earth, and as a new moon (also named dark moon) it is not visible at night when they are on the same side. The phases of full moon and new moon are examples of syzygies, which occur when the Earth, Moon, and Sun lie (approximately) in a straight line. The time between two full moons (or between successive occurrences of the same phase) is about 29.53 days (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes) on average. This synodic month is longer than the time it takes the Moon to make one orbit about the Earth with respect to the fixed stars (the sidereal month), which is about 27.32 days. This difference is caused by the fact that the Earth-Moon system is orbiting about the Sun at the same time the Moon is orbiting about the Earth. The actual time between two syzygies is variable because the orbit of the Moon is elliptic and subject to various periodic perturbations, which change the velocity of the Moon.

It might be expected that once every month when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun during a new moon, its shadow would fall on Earth causing a solar eclipse. Likewise, during every full moon, we might expect the Earth's shadow to fall on the Moon, causing a lunar eclipse. We do not observe a solar and lunar eclipse every month because the plane of the Moon's orbit around the Earth is tilted by about 5 degrees with respect to the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun. Thus, when new and full moons occur, the Moon usually lies to the north or south of a direct line through the Earth and Sun. Although an eclipse can only occur when the Moon is either new or full, it must also be positioned at (or very nearly at) the intersection of Earth's orbit plane about the Sun and the Moon's orbit plane about the Earth (that is, at one of its nodes). This happens about twice per year, and so there are between 4 and 7 eclipses in a calendar year. Most of these are quite insignificant; major eclipses of the Moon or Sun are rather rare.



A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software.

Most social network services are primarily web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on.

The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with MySpace, Bebo and Facebook being the mostly widely used in 2007.



An electroshock weapon is an incapacitant weapon used for subduing a person by administering electric shock that may disrupt superficial muscle functions. One type is an electroshock gun or taser that fires projectiles that administer an electric shock.

Stun guns, stun batons, and electroshock belts administer an electric shock by direct contact.
This type is similar to basic design to an electric cattle prod. It has a metal end split into two parts electrically insulated from each other, or two thin projecting metal electrodes about an inch apart, at an end of a shaft containing the batteries and mechanism. At the other end of the shaft are a handle and a switch. Both electrodes must touch the subject. In some types the sides of the baton can be electrified to stop the subject from grasping the baton above the electrodes. They are often carried in a sheath slung on a belt. Some such devices are available disguised as other objects, such as umbrellas or cell-phones or pens. Sometimes they have an option to make a noisy visible electric arc between the electrodes, to warn potential victims.



A bone fracture is a medical condition in which a bone breaks. A bone fracture can also occur as a result of certain medical conditions that weaken the bones, such as osteoporosis, certain types of cancer or Osteogenesis Imperfecta.

* Closed fractures are those in which the skin is intact, while open (compound) fractures involve wounds that communicate with the fracture and may expose bone to contamination. Open injuries carry an elevated risk of infection; they require antibiotic treatment and usually urgent surgical treatment (debridement). This involves removal of all dirt, contamination, and dead tissue.



A harbinger is a sign of things to come. Throughout history and literature, harbingers and omens figure prominently, and are responsible for major decisions which have altered the course of both.
If legend were fact, Christianity and Western civilization could owe their existences to signs. The legend has it that Constantine the Great saw a vision in which either (depending on which version we read) a cross, a fish or a Labarum monogram was emblazoned in the sky. A loud, steady voice then allegedly told him, In hoc signo vinces ("By this as your standard, you will conquer"). Conquer he did, bringing Christianity to the Empire.

If legend were fact, Christianity and Western civilization could owe their existences to signs. The legend has it that Constantine the Great saw a vision in which either (depending on which version we read) a cross, a fish or a Labarum monogram was emblazoned in the sky. A loud, steady voice then allegedly told him, In hoc signo vinces ("By this as your standard, you will conquer"). Conquer he did, bringing Christianity to the Empire.



Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman. Each god helped create her by giving her unique gifts. Zeus ordered her creation as a punishment for mankind, in retaliation for Prometheus' having stolen fire and then giving it to humans for their use. She is most famous for carrying a jar (pithos) (or box) containing all the world's evils. She releases these evils, but closes the lid before Hope can escape.

Lemarchand's box (or a Lemarchand box) is a fictional lock puzzle or puzzle box appearing in horror stories by Clive Barker, or in works based on his original stories. The best known of these boxes is the Lament Configuration, which features prominently throughout the Hellraiser movie series. A Lemarchand box is a mystical/mechanical device that acts as a door to another dimension or plane of existence. The solution of the puzzle creates a "Schism" or open pathway to another realm through which beings may travel in either direction. The inhabitants of these other realms may seem demonic to humans. An ongoing debate in the film series is whether the realm accessed by the Lament Configuration is intended to be the Judeo-Christian version of Hell, or simply a generic dimension of endless pain and suffering.

Box describes a variety of containers and receptacles. When no specific shape is described, a typical rectangular box may be expected. Nevertheless, a box may have a horizontal cross section that is square, elongated, round or oval; sloped or domed top surfaces, or non-vertical sides. A box normally may be opened by raising, sliding or removing the lid, which may be hinged and/or fastened by a catch, clasp, lock, or adhesive tape. Whatever its shape or purpose or the material of which it is fashioned, it is the direct descendant of the chest, one of the most ancient articles of domestic furniture. Its uses are innumerable, and the name, preceded by a qualifying adjective, has been given to many objects of artistic or antiquarian interest. Objects are often placed inside boxes, for a variety of reasons - see storage.



Marching refers to the organised, uniformed, steady and rhythmic walking forward, usually associated with military troops.

Marching is often performed to march music, and often associated military parades.
Marching is part of basic training in the military in most countries. In most cases, marching uses a system of drill commands. Learning to march by obeying commands is considered a form of discipline.

Hypnosis is defined as a trance-like state of intense concentration that resembles sleep. It is believed to be induced by a hypnotist, whose suggestions are readily accepted by their subject. Some supposed hypnotic indicators and subjective changes in mental state can be achieved without relaxation or a lengthy induction by means of simple suggestion or waking hypnosis, a fact that increases the controversy and the misunderstandings which exist around hypnosis and the hypnotic state. However there is also considerable controversy over whether there is any such thing as hypnosis at all or whether the term merely merges unrelated phenomena and lacks a scientific basis. Many of the effects produced by 'hypnosis' have several alternate theories to describe their occurrence.



Sodomites may refer to:

Those who engage in sodomy, usually limited in usage to Homosexual men. In some jurisdictions, heterosexual couples who engage in oral or anal sex are designated as engaging in sodomy, although the laws are rarely enforced in these instances.

Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings that are renowned for subsisting on human blood or lifeforce, but in some cases may prey on animals. Though vampires have widely varying characteristics, they are described for the most part as reanimated corpses who feed by draining and consuming the blood of living beings. Almost all vampire lore comes from the southeastern region of Europe, particularly the Balkans and Greece, with the term being popularised in the early 18th century. Folkloric vampires were depicted as revenants who visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were living. They wore shrouds, did not bear fangs and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or darkened countenance, markedly different from today's vampire.

The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of The Vampyre (1819) by John Polidori; The story was highly successful and the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century. However it is the 1897 novel Dracula which is best remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provided many traits which have been incorporated into modern vampire legend. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century with books, films such as Dracula and television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Today, the vampire is generally held as a fictitious entity, with little actual belief in the creature surviving, although superstition in vampiric creatures such as the chupacabra still persists in some cultures.



Homosexuality can refer to both attraction or sexual behavior between organisms of the same sex, or to a sexual orientation. When describing the latter, it refers to enduring sexual and romantic attraction towards those of the same sex, but not necessarily to sexual behavior. Homosexuality is contrasted with heterosexuality (attraction, behavior, or orientation between opposite sexes), bisexuality (both sexes), and asexuality (neither sex).

Etymologically, the word homosexual is a Greek and Latin hybrid with homo (often confused with the later Latin meaning of "man", as in homo sapiens) deriving from the Greek word for same, thus connoting sexual acts and affections between members of the same sex, including lesbianism. In the English-speaking world, the term gay had been used within the subculture for decades before becoming popularized by the gay rights movement in the 1970s. In a narrow sense, gay refers to male homosexuality, but it often is used in its broadest sense, especially in media headlines and reports, to refer to homosexuality in general. Lesbian, however, always denotes female homosexuality.

Homosexual behavior occurs among numerous animals other than humans, particularly among social animals. Not at all in Werewolves.



The testicle (from Latin testis, meaning "witness", plural testes) is the male generative gland in animals.

Male mammals have two testicles, which are often contained within an extension of the abdomen called the scrotum. In mammals with external testicles it is most common for one testis to hang lower than the other. It is estimated that in about 85% of men the lower hanging testicle is the left one. This is due to differences in the vascular anatomical structure on the right and left sides.

The basal condition for mammals is to have internal testicles. Only the Boreoeutherian land mammals, the large group of mammals that includes humans, have externalized testicles. Indeed their testicles function best at temperatures lower than their core body temperature. Their testes are located outside of the body, suspended by the spermatic cord within the scrotum. The testes of the non-boreotherian mammals such as the monotremes, armadillos, sloths, elephants remain within the abdomen. There are also some Boreoeutherian mammals with internal testes, such as the rhinoceros.

Marine boreotherian mammals such as whales and dolphins, also have internal testes, but it has recently been shown (e.g., for dolphins) that they use elaborate vascular networks to provide the necessary temperature lowering for optimum function. As external testes would increase drag, many boreotherian aquatic mammals have internal testes which are kept cool by special circulatory systems that cool the arterial blood going to the testes by placing the arteries near veins bringing cooled venous blood from the skin.

There are several hypotheses why most boreotherian mammals have external testes which operate best at a temperature that is slightly less than the core body temperature, e.g. that it is stuck with enzymes evolved in a colder temperature due to external testes evolving for different reasons, that the lower temperature of the testes simply is more efficient for sperm production.

1) More efficient. The classic hypothesis is that cooler temperature of the testes allows for more efficient fertile spermatogenesis. In other words, there are no possible enzymes operating at normal core body temperature that are as efficient as the ones evolved, at least none appearing in our evolution so far.

The early mammals had lower body temperatures and thus their testes worked efficiently within their body. However it is argued that boreotherian mammals have higher body temperatures than the other mammals and had to develop external testicles to keep them cool. It is argued that those mammals with internal testicles, such as the monotremes, armadillos, sloths, elephants, and rhinoceroses, have a lower core body temperatures than those mammals with external testicles.

However, the question remains why birds despite having very high core body temperatures have internal testes and did not evolve external testes. It was once theorized that birds used their air sacs to cool the testes internally, but later studies revealed that birds' testes are able to function at core body temperature.

2) Irreversible adaptation to sperm competition. It has been suggested that the ancestor of the boreoeutherian mammals was a small mammal that required very large testes (perhaps rather like those of a hamster) for sperm competition and thus had to place its testes outside the body. This led to enzymes involved in spermatogenesis, spermatogenic DNA polymerase beta and recombinase activities evolving a unique temperature optimum, slightly less than core body temperature. When the boreoeutherian mammals then diversified into forms that were larger and/or did not require intense sperm competition they were stuck with enzymes that operated best at cooler temperatures and had to keep their testicles outside the body.

3) Protection from abdominal cavity pressure changes. One argument for the evolution of external testes is that it protects the testes from abdominal cavity pressure changes caused by jumping and galloping.




Confrontation is a state of discord caused by the actual or perceived opposition of needs, values and interests between people. It can result in stress or tension and negative feelings between disputants. A conflict can range from a disagreement, or clash, to a fight, which may consist of harsh words, or may involve the use of force, armed conflict, or (in societies), war. In political terms, "conflict" refers to an ongoing state of hostility between two or more groups of people.

Conflict as taught for graduate and professional work in conflict resolution commonly has the definition: "when two or more parties, with perceived incompatible goals, seek to undermine each other's goal-seeking capability".

One should not confuse the distinction between the presence and absence of conflict with the difference between competition and co-operation. In competitive situations, the two or more individuals or parties each have mutually inconsistent goals, either party tries to reach their goal it will undermine the attempts of the other to reach theirs. Therefore, competitive situations will ,by their nature, cause conflict. However, conflict can also occur in cooperative situations, in which two or more individuals or parties have consistent goals, because the manner in which one party tries to reach their goal can still undermine the other individual or party.

A clash of interests, values, actions or directions often sparks a conflict. Conflicts refer to the existence of that clash. Psychologically, a conflict exists when the reduction of one motivating stimulus involves an increase in another, so that a new adjustment is demanded. The word is applicable from the instant that the clash occurs. Even when we say that there is a potential conflict we are implying that there is already a conflict of direction even though a clash may not yet have occurred so to speak.



A plot twist is a change ("twist") in the direction or expected outcome of the plot of a film, television series, video game, novel or comic. It is a common practice in narration used to keep the interest of an audience, usually surprising them with a revelation. Some "twists" are foreshadowed and can thus be predicted by many viewers, whereas others are a complete shock - most are somewhere in the middle with some people foreseeing them and others not.

When a plot twist happens towards or at the end of a story, especially if it changes one's view of the previous action, it's known as a twist ending.

Revealing the existence of a plot twist may be enough to spoil a movie for some, as the time spent watching would be used to "search" for the twist itself.

A device used to undermine the expectations of the audience is the false protagonist. It involves presenting a character at the start of the film as the main character, but then disposing of this character, usually killing them.



A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which most everything turns out for the best for the hero or heroine, their sidekicks, and just about everyone but the villains.

In story lines where the protagonists are in physical danger, a happy ending would mainly consist in their surviving and successfully concluding their quest or mission; where there is no physical danger, a happy ending is often defined as lovers consummating their love despite various factors which may have thwarted it; and a considerable number of story lines combine both factors.

A happy ending is epitomized in the standard fairy tale ending phrase, "happily ever after" or "and they lived happily ever after." (The Arabian Nights have the more restrained formula they lived happily until there came to them the One who Destroys all Happiness (i.e. Death). Satisfactory happy endings are happy for the reader as well, in that the characters he or she sympathizes with are rewarded.

The presence of a happy ending is one of the key points that distinguishes melodrama from tragedy. In certain periods, the endings of traditional tragedies such as Macbeth or Oedipus Rex, in which most of the major characters end up dead, disfigured, or discountenanced, have been actively disliked. In the eighteenth century, the Irish author Nahum Tate sought to improve Shakespeare's King Lear by rewriting the ending so that Lear survives, Cordelia and Edgar marry, and the three sisters are reconciled. Most subsequent critics have not found Tate's amendments an improvement. Happy endings have also been fastened to Romeo and Juliet and Othello.

______

That's it!

This was my big push to do something that wasn't the usual humor of my "main" comic at the time, which served as a showcase for ideas like werewolf. The usual humor I do is all there, and some of this stuff carried into Bonerquest. I love how silly this turned out, I forgot that I drew my friend Nick as a wizard in this story, that's funny. I also included the two homosexual vampires that would show up in penis, usually accompanied with someone saying the line, "blood's not the only thing they suck!" My own misinformed sarcastic joke about Anne Rice and her wonderful stories that I always said. Now I use that same joke about Twlight.

I've a problem with two things in this story.

First of all, a scene is right ouf of the cartoon Harvey Birdman. He sits quietly, moving pencils back and fourth in one scene. I could easily say this was a homage, but it isn't. I feel looking back, that I must have watched that and had it in mind at the time when I was drawing this stuff up. I'm ashamed of myself.

The other is the character of the Harbinger, his design feels lifted from Hellboy. I'll let you judge.



Otherwise, the use of pandora's box doesn't bother me or the Fight Club name and characterization used. Those feel apropriate as homages or parody, maybe these other two examples are. I was wathing pretty closely, reading each page as carefully as I could do notice dumb things I left in. I really like these comics, I showed Tascar when we were working on the Bonerquest game together. I probably showed some other people on Destructoid these before, I'm really proud of them.

These types of references or reuse of ideas, I don't want to write or do in my work. I want to do original stories. I've worked to keep my next big thing, completely out of my own mind and not using humor or designs from something else, unless in an incredibly round about squint and you'll not get it way. All the plot points, major characters, and plot devices are all dumb things that I thought of, and can't wait to share with everybody I can.

As werewolf relates to the novel Bonerquest, it doesn't. At least not story wise. Some of the same plot ideas are used, portals to hell, wizards, and wild violance are all used thematically in all my writing. I'm very happy with how things are going, I'm now aiming to publish my book in April instead of this October, as I originally envisioned. Aparantly, I'm a slow writer. I've little free time to compile everything off my iPod where I do the majority of my writing, I'm usually wasting that time playing games or watching Community with my wife. And on many occasions, I'm cleaning up the poopies of my puppies, Pepper and Frankenstein. Those little dogs crap every day and seem reluctant to clean up their own poops.

I hope you guys like my comics and don't think I'm stupid. The next chapter I had barely an outline for, it was going to be all a satire of films like Boys N The Hood, focusing on gang violance and growing up in the ghetto, with a werewolf. I think that could have been really funny, if I ever draw comics on the internet again, I'll do that. Or if I ever publish a comic book, I'll do that there with all my other bad ideas.

I'm curious to hear back what you guys think, if you hate it, if you love it. I've wanted to put this on Destructoid around Halloween since I first put it online, but I've never had the time to, until this morning when I made time for it.

Thanks for reading!

And remember, only silver can kill a werewolf!





Oh and this is video game related, because one of favorite games inspired this, despite having nothing to do with it. Other than having werewolves.

I made the mistake of checking out twitch.tv on the Destructoid community channel. It worked well enough that I want to invest in equipment and show you guys how awful I am at video games. If you've played online with me, you've seen how terrible I am. But, I always have a ball when I'm playing games, just laughing and doing silly voices constantly. If I had a call in Skype channel open and streamed games, that would be fun. Especially if I showed off my weird games, like Robot Alchemical Drive. That game needs to be seen and I want a reason to play it more, just so I can imitate those voices again.

Anyway, here is what I've been playing in September!!

Dragon Quest III - Super Nintendo

Ive decided that Dragon Quest games are some of the best I've ever played. The sense of scale and growth, even when every game follows the same formula with enough differences to keep things fresh, I feel so good playing these. Especially when I find my rhythm and my team of dudes becomes killers.

This game allows you to change jobs, something I knew over a year ago, but forgot when I played it these last couple months until, suddenly I was presented the option to change jobs. My wizard became a fighter and fighter became a cleric, while my cleric stayed a cleric for much longer than they should have. It wasn't until many hours later, that I realized I had the thing to make the cleric a sage that I did so. This makes them learn healing spells as well as attack magic, but I didn't know until I was in so deep that I felt silly. My Mage, whose name is mageb because the one I named Mage had crappy stats early on, stayed a fighter and the fighter who was a cleric, whose name was fighter so I wouldn't forget, is now a warrior.

Now that your confused, I'll try to explain all the things I did. Ive reunited lost lovers, used a magic staff that changes my party's sprites - seemingly changing my Mageb into a cat forever, which I like. I've beat up pirates, I've let my dealer(whose name was dealer) move to a new town, then laughed as they jailed him and my characters who are killers, not helping him. I got a boat, I flew on a bird, I did all kinds of cool shit.

More than anything, I wandered around fighting battles. It was rather calming to do actually. I listened to some Joe Rogan podcast, and had the laptop playing Burn Notice on another occasion. Just fun, easily accessible gameplay. I love that.

One of my favorite things in an RPG is to over extend myself against a boss I haven't fought yet, in the hopes that I might be better than him. The big bad guy, whose name was beramos in this translation, was pretty well and ferocious. I had just changed fighter to a warrior, so he wasn't at about half the levels of my other three dudes. My team got wiped down to just him and the Mage fighter, and neither could revive my other party members. I made a choice to simply attack for a couple rounds, see how that did for me. Mageb got took out, and it was just the warrior all on his own. I hit him about four times, his health drops to the red. My final attack and then I would bare the shame of losing a fight, however, he survives that round and on the next round, with barely any health left, I kill the boss.

That is why I play video games.

I had lost my faith, my strategy failed when the only two guys who could revive somebody died. Unless I'm wrong, this was the boss that kills my main characters father in their volcano battle. This was the entire motivation for my quest in the first place, and I just barely whipped this son of a bitch. I love that

Of course, like most all Dragon Quest games after beating that guy, a second guy who was already mentioned briefly appears, just as the king of the first town is giving my team medals or something, opening up a dark world where my map doesn't work, all the enemies are much tougher, and I'm back to where I was before, wandering around trying to find my way with just my wits.

And the Internet when I get stuck, which is where I'm at now. I got four of the six orbs I needed with no help, which was awesome, but now in this dark world with no map, I'm sailing blind. Everything looks the same world wise, and I feel lost.

After looking at a map, I feel much more confident. The dark world is literally the world from the first Dragon Quest and I'm so invested in this. I had to gather three more mcguffins together, creating the same rainbow bridge as that first game, and then, enter into the big bad guys castle, and beat the freaking game! It turns out, this might be the best of the Dragon Quest series. I loved it, it was incredible. I considered trying to beat the extra dungeon, but after seeing what it actually was on youtube, I don't think I'm going to do that. Still cool that it exists, and I had a ball playing this game.

This was my jam.

Godfather 2 - Xbox 360

Another weekend, another game that was here, that I just played because I have it. I beat this when it was new, I liked it a lot, and here I am playing it again. The idea is to play as a mafia godfather, taking businesses from computer controlled mafia godfathers. You assuage their goons, and occasionally there are story missions sort of related to the story of the movie. But really, this has almost nothing to do with any movie, it is a mafia game where you can do single button executions, much like my beloved volition's Punisher game. All of these are amazingly violent, years after this came out, I still look at certain ones as I do them, and think I've done something horrible.

Your basic execute move is balling your fist up, then just repeatedly slamming a person in the face. You can do that to female characters, including topless dancers, which allows for just a ludicrous level of violence. Fun times!

The mindless mechanics of trying to outsmart the computer mafia is fun for me, as is all the violence. This is one of the better b-tier games that exist, easily a cheap game by now, go pick up a copy! This game is actually fun, but not because it is well made or tells a deep narrative. Don't go in looking for that, but it delivers levels of violence and a sadistic level of control most games don't deliver, when I drive around with a bunch of dumb computer goons, I feel powerful. I feel silly slapping people in the face, and more than that, I feel entertained by a simple video game. This game is butt ugly, controls a little loose, doesn't fully explain the mechanics of capturing enemy bases, and isn't very friendly with your time, but in short plays I had fun with this thing this month, when I had nothing else to play around. I was somewhere else for a couple days, and nearly grabbed my copy of Dragon Age Origins to try another intro and see what they were like, as I only played through the two elf characters origins, that would be all new content t me. But that would tempt me to try and play that game again, bad idea.

Borderlands - Steam

This song describes how I feel. So lonely from team America. I just can't get into this thing, I give up. Fighting a giant octopus and jumping in his mouth sounded like something I really want to do, a gentleman named Chet who now writes for Touch Arcade described this and I want to do it.

The game opened up, letting me cruise around in a vehicle, but it feels shallow. I don't know why exactly, but I really don't dig this game and have pretty well decided not only that I don't want to play it anymore, but that I'm probably going to pass on the sequel as well.

Here's a picture that I laughed at. Has nothing to do with Borderlands.


After writing all this, I played the game more and still have a distaste for it. It feels like busy work, I feel less like my character isn't substantially more powerful, nor have I been to interesting locations or done anything I haven't done in another shooter. Yes, the guns have levels and special properties, which amount to burning or shocking bad guys. Nothing I haven't done elsewhere, like in Bioshock, but much much more interestingly.

I'm just a guy in a dessert collecting guns doing fetch quests, until I fight a boring boss fight with a no-personality character who I simply shoot at until they die. I love the simplicity of shoot at until they die bosses, however, I expect something. Maybe they taunt or introduce themselves to me, but all I get is barely a text introduction and then they just show up. It's dumb and I feel dumb for playing it. I'm in an area called new haven, someone I asked said I was near the end. "I've made it this far. Might as well see the end."

Secret of Mana 2 - SNES

My save works now, I'm back baby! I really thought I had erased it like an idiot, but I didn't! I loaded this up, ready to start as another set of characters, when I found out that my save worked!

The point I'm at, I just got a second party member. So my werewolf has teamed up with a ninja! Video games can be amazing.

That's about it. My two dudes just ripped through a cave, met the third party member who didn't join yet, and that was it.

I'm sort of curious about starting over as different characters, just to see how different this game can be. It seems really neat! Areas don't stretch forever like in the first secret of mana, which is appreciated.

When I quit, I was in the next town and spent all my gold buying equipment I didn't need. This game has a horrible menu, among the absolute worst I've ever seen anywhere! Just dreadful controls for it on top of that, makes for lots of confusion. Game is still a recommend, still fun to play in spite of that. I spent a short my time playing in these menus, just barely using them at all in hours of playing.

[i]Earthbound! - Super Nintendo

I just noticed NESS in the top of this giant robot on the box. Spoiler!



I got to Fourside, my main guy was over leveled by about ten levels. He is level forty while the other two characters are barely level thirty. I found my way into the gold mine and found where to take the gold, all I have to do us come up with time to actually play this. I really enjoyed my time with it, but it still doesn't light my life up or make me feel like it is a life altering experience as many I talk to describe. I wish I had that experience, I really do.

I just haven't had that with this game.

That isn't to say it isn't a great game, easily a very well made and polished game that nobody should miss. I've put it off and put it off, and like Secret of Mana, I just never found the right time until now to actually play this. I did the same with Mario RPG and Final Fatasy V & VI. When I find the time, Fourside will be waiting for me and I'll have this as a record, telling me where I was and what I was doing.

Why did I put this off so long? Well, are they making new super Nintendo games?

Team Fortress 2 - PC

My wife loves Mann va machine, we play this together with random people we don't know on servers we don't know. If only I was on an Internet website full of people, and explained that team fortress is completely free now. That it wouldn't take much for you to play it wit me, but why bother looking for anybody to partner with. You don't want to do it, I'm tired of asking. I like playing with people, but I don’t know anybody and much as I try to wrangle people together for anything, it seems to never work. Boners!

Phantom Brave - PS2

I got kicked away from Dragon Quest 3, thanks wife, and so I started playing my ps2 back in the back room. Shadow Hearts was left in here, I'm so deep into the other game, I feel better playing something I can just dip into. Like, Phantom Brave!

I tried to level up, but I'm confused how to do anything. I'm unsure if just having guys on the field levels them up, if they need to attack, and I'm unsure how to get more items. I'm lost. About two hours of this, across a week, and I'm just done.

Also, it froze on me. I think it was my new special PS2 that can play import games. For some reason, these machines break so easily. I'm just pissed off. Fuck everything, dammit to shit.

Kingdom Rush and 8bit Ninja and Grand Theft Auto III - iOS

Two silly iPhone games I've played a ton of. Both were free, couldn't be more different games. I dodged fruit and defended towers on the iOS. Also, I stole cars, shot people, and drove over people listening to the soundtrack from Scarface. Not a bad thing to do at all.

F.T.L. - Steam

Finally, a game I actually like!

This sucker was ten bucks and allows me to live out Star Trek fantasies of diverting power from engineering to shields, blasting aliens, and the realization of a dream I’ve had since Alien: Resurrection. I’ll explain what the game actually is first of all.

Your view is locked on your space ship, showing you only the information that you really need to see. Your ship is separated into different rooms, which I imagine are the “decks” mentioned on many space shows. Some of these rooms contain different systems, like shields or weapons. You control your crew, moving them from room to room which applies boosts to those rooms, having a guy actually at those controls. Plus some rooms won’t work unless your crew are there, such as the medical system or your pilot system, which makes sense. You can’t heal your guys unless they’re standing in the medical bay and you can’t fly a ship without a guy standing in that room with the controls, if I can figure all that out, anybody can.

What makes this game interesting, is the way that it plays. This game has you traveling across a galaxy map, jumping from one star point to another. Each “jump” costs one space gas, which you can purchase from convenient “stores” located in these star maps. What propels you foreword is that you’re being chased by a rebel fleet, which slowly advances behind your ship on these star maps. Each system has an exit which once you hit, lets you travel to the next system. System travel diamonds out, allowing you some choice of where to go, like visiting an alien controlled system or a rebel controlled system. I mentioned all this stuff was randomly generated too right?

Every time you play, the maps are totally different, as are the things you do.

What makes this game really great, is the way you battle enemies. It feels like a classic sci fi TV show, maneuvering my guys around and firing the different weapons you can pick up at enemies. As you defeat enemies or make allies, you gain more of the game’s currency, scrap, which lets you purchase more weapons or upgrades for your ship. By the time you hit the final star system, you should have a decked out spaceship with lots of weapons and armor, capable of taking on this giant rebel flagship, which serves as the final boss of the game.

I’ve yet to kill it, but I’ve come close a couple times.

Now I didn’t mention the aliens yet. There are a handful of different aliens, some of which I’ve barely encountered after playing the game more than a dozen times. Some I’ve managed to have become my crew members, which I find pretty awesome. The weak humans have no extra talents, while the praying mantis like mantis aliens can run much faster inside a ship as well as have a bonus to attack invaders on board your ship. Yes, your ship can be boarded and you can board enemy ships. Yes, this is awesome, but wait, it gets better! You can control all the doors on your ship. Let’s say an enemy is inside your medical bay shooting it, why not open up the outside doors leading into the medical bay, so that all the oxygen slowly gets sucked out, letting these buttholes die a painful space death? Because can totally do that.

Also, you can target an enemy ship’s life support, watching as they dash from their weapons to repair that, leaving them vulnerable. I’ve managed to take out an enemy ship or two by just repeatedly knocking their oxygen out, letting me salvage their weapons and collect more scrap.

Also also, you unlock more spaceships the more you play, and the achievement system within the game allows you to unlock a variant of those space ships with different starting crew members and weapon systems.

This game is dope, buy a copy if you like outer space bullshit.

Civilization V - Steam

Nothing like a free game to make me feel good, when I bought X-Com: Enemy Unknown this was a free bonus for pre-ordering it!

My history with civilization goes deep. I had the Super Nintendo version of the first game with the mouse, one of a handful of games that actually supported it. There I spent far too much time conquering the world with military dominance, in spite of the limited graphics.

Civilization IV I got a copy of, and played the hell of it and maybe had one of the expansions. It was pretty much all I wanted to do, until somebody told me about Rome: Total War, which I got a copy of and promptly never looked back at Civilization IV. It was slow and boring, compared to the faster pace and real time combat in Rome: Total War. Plus, I could ride war elephants and watch as they squashed little soldiers, that’s pretty awesome.

The simulation aspect of world dominance I like, but the slow pace of Civilization has always been a big put off.

Thankfully, Civilization V plays a lot faster than the older games, I like that.

DEMOS! DEMOS! DEMOS!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Steam Demo

Everything I've seen of this made controlling with a controller look easy, but that was not the case. My analog sticks felt like I was pushing far uphill to try and move around my guys. I found out, that the system couldn’t be changed to use my controller once the game had actually started, so I played through the entire demo with the keyboard and mouse, then with the controller, then a couple days later, played again with the controller.

Well, this game is fucking awesome.



I want that as a quote on the back of a box, Destructoid.com's randombullseye says “....fucking awesome...”

Because this game is fucking awesome, I can’t understate that.

It’s a strategy game that takes the ideas from the original game, streamlines them, and adds a lot of cinematic polish to make the game more dyanimic to look at and a lot friendlier to play, but keep in mind this is, “That’s XCOM baby!” Your soldiers will die and you’ll probably lose the game a couple dozen times trying to get anywhere with it. I love that, I love how as I played the demo, I learned from my own experiences with the aliens, one enemy I fought exploded into a poison cloud. Didn’t know that was a thing until I was standing in that poison cloud.

I'll talk more about this next month, when I've played the piss out of it.

I pre-ordered the game from Steam, so we’ll see how the full version handles in two weeks. I’m going nuts watching video after video of this game, I haven’t done that in years. I actually want a new video game and am not disappointed when I had my hands on it.

It's times like this I wish I was in the press a little better than I am, so I could get my hands on some preview code or a review copy. I want to review games, but I'm too mean and dumb to get taken seriously.

Double Dragon Neon - PS3 Demo

Everyone seems to have said this was a terrible game, that it was awful. The Destructoid review explains this, which bothers me, much like with that Ninja Turtles from a few years back, I feel everyone is wrong, that this is actually good.

In fact, I think I might go buy a PSN Card and buy this thing, I really want the full version. If it can play just like this, with big bosses and lots of dudes to whoop on, that is worth the price of PSN Plus, where the game is actually free this month.

Adding light RPG stuff with mix tape power ups and special moves really makes the game interesting to me. The fact that the game is actually funny, that helps too. Combat is based around a duck dodging mechanic, that I'd you time properly, powers you up Bruce Leeroy style. Yes, this game was influenced by The Last Dragon, one of two amazing American kung fu movies I watched constantly as a kid. The other flick? Sidekicks with god damned Chuck Norris! I still say the Karate Kid sucked, I hate that flick, fuck Ralph Maccio, I’d rather watch Sidekicks.

While I'm on a tangent, why is there a Double Dragon board game?


This pushed me to pick up Playstation Plus, because it retails for ten dollars, with Playstation plus I get it and a bunch if other shit like, Infamous 2 and little big planet 2, plus I'm only committing to twenty dollars worth, which is three months. Although, as I type this I do the math and think a fifty dollar card for a year might be better, but thats the price of a new game I'll own forever, but if I, I'll stop right there. I'm going with the three month card, let's see if they can convince me ps plus doesn't suck.

I did not buy the PSN card as of me publishing this article. However, the plan is to still do that, almost entirely for Double Dragon: Neo. I really should write about how much the first two games influenced me and my love of video games, but I’m so busy all the time.

Resident Evil 6 - PS3 Demo

I did not expect the reaction I had to this, but I should have known it would turn out this way.



I never published my initial reaction to the big trailer everyone commented on, because I never watched it. I was told about it, that the president shows up and there are now three protagonists. Leon, Chris, and a third guy who used hand to hand combat. The article I tried to write exists somewhere, I'll see if I can find it.

First, positively, the damage models on enemies is much improved from previous games. Seeing bits of gore fly off as chunks now visibly become removed from enemies, that is awesome. It reminds me of House of the Dead and how flesh seemed to melt away as it got shot. Enemies also feel more zombie like, at least in the Leon section. I played the first games because they were about fighting zombies.

Unfortunately, things are so visibly dark that I could only sort of see what I was looking at. Even adjusting the brightness up all the way, couldn't see what I was doing.

Leon's section felt like it wanted to be interesting and more like a horror flick, but it was so dark, and the president character I am unsure who he was or why he was at this college this section took place in. Waste the president of the country? Of the school? I don't know, I didn't like the forces co-op once again, and I especially hated scenes full of furniture and me being stuck on them when trying to move around while shooting dudes. It had some awful moments too, like having to defend a door, it was awful!

Chris's level was worse, but funny. I cackled with laughter as I joyfully blasted bad guys, only to find them nearly impervious to bullets. They laughed as I shot full clips into them. Some guys even grew giant arm shields? I'm just upset by it. I liked the slide move I accidentally did, I believe the other characters could do it too. Stallone does this in a movie, where he slides in his back and fires a gun. I like that, but it felt so out of place. I liked that a giant monster showed up, but I couldn't tell if I was actually killing it or not, and I don't think even when I killed it that it died. This section? Also a bad piece of video game. Now that the winter snow level is set during the day, I can see how blocky the animations are and just how crappy a job anti-aliasing characters are. They all seemed to have a white outline.

New guy Jake and for some reason Sherry from Resident Evil 2had a very dumb section where bad guys would turn to stone, then burst out of those statues as lizards. From the way weapons felt to the almost pitch darkness of this stage, and even the powers this new guy, Wesker Jr. he sucks. I hate him. I hate all this Code Veronica bullshit. I've no idea what is going on here, it is just awful. If this was all this game would have been, holy shit is it a turd of a game.

I'll sum up why I hate this with quick hits:

* Dark! This game is sitting in obstructed view the entire time. * Shooting enemies doesn't seem to effect them, I blew enemies to pieces and they kept coming at me. * Quick time events are worse than ever, thanks Capcom. I mean fuck you. * The storyline is incomprehensible and gave me no context for anything in this demo. Why am I with a president? Why am I fighting a winter war? Why am I Wesker Jr. why does he have Sherry with him? * The gameplay interface, your health bars, are over designed messes. * The characters all play the same. There is no reason to be anybody else, they're unique special attacks all do about the same things. * New "characters" are worthless, as worthless as the black chick forces on the last game. * Also cocks!

Dragon's Dogma - PS3 Demo

This is different, slightly from the other one.

Once I got to town, I chose the knifes and bow class. What makes this game incredible is jumping onto monsters, why wouldn't I want the class that does that? But, I has the thought, "this is probably the full games opening, wouldn't things be simpler to just play it the one time when I actually get a copy of this?" Which is what I decides upon. I like that auto correct wrote decides.

I want to buy this, for fifteen dollars. See you next year Dragon's Dogma! Hell, if I wait until 2014, I can buy the complete version with all the DLC for that price! Video games!

NHL 13 - PS3 Demo

I’ve played a fair share of hockey games in my day. The classic SEGA Genesis games being among the better ones, although Electronic Arts has put out some decent games, seemingly every other year or every three years. As with most sports games, some years are better than others, some add features that are easily exploited by maniacs who only play this one game everyday for a year, but I’ll take my chances. The game I’m presented with is a recreation of the Jersey Devils and LA Kings for the championship, I’m going to defy history and play as the Kings for the loss, as every game of hockey I’ve played in the last year has been a losing game.

I managed to trip a guy from behind, which was pretty awesome to me. I pulled all kinds of fouls and penalties, slamming dudes from behind and just being an awful player. At one point I rocked a guy flipping around face foreword, landing that guy on his head. In real life, he would be brain damaged forever, if he was lucky enough to not be paralyzed from such a hit. Physics engines are the best part of video games.

Oh fuck, look at us being all legitimate! E3 awards or any pre-release awards are always bullshit. They’re more adverwards than actual real awards that mean anything. But still, every time I see Destructoid somewhere on anything, it makes me feel good. I wonder who gave it this award? Was it Samit, whose no longer working for Destructoid? Does that still count?



Now I’m not much for sports, I bore of them easily. I much prefer watching martial arts like boxing or MMA to a traditional team sport. Rooting for a team based on geographic location always seemed like the dumbest thing in the world, especially when the players and coaches aren’t even from that location! So, I don’t especially like watching hockey, but playing it is very satisfying. Even if I lose spectacularly, I can slam players into the wall, using my Mutant League Hockey strategy of taking out the other team, unfortunately I can’t seem to kill ice skaters in this game. Not that I didn’t try in this demo, I did. I really, really did. I wanted to try and break the glass with a hit as well, that’s something I’ve always wanted in a hockey game. It was supposedly added in NHL 12, but I own NHL 11, which doesn’t feature that.

Much like all my other passwords to everything, I somehow have an EA account but have no idea how to actually acess the son of a bitch. It connects automatically on every sports game, but if a gun was put to my head, under penalty of death, I couldn’t even guess what this password could possibly be. Modern video games are the worst!

But this seems like a pretty solid hockey game, but not one I’ll buy.

Sleeping Dogs - PS3 Demo

Ok, installed and ready to rock! I’m curious if this is the open world game with martial arts that I’ve always wanted. That feature has been really poorly presented across many games, at this point, the best game I can think of to feature hong kong martial arts is Kung Fu for the Nintendo. That game rings authentic, even with the snakes and leprechauns! You remember in those old Bruce Lie movies, when he fought a leprechaun throwing snakes? No I didn’t make a typographical error, several gentleman posed as Bruce Lee in movies that appeared similar to his, there was a Bruce Lie, a Bruce Li, and in the film The Last Dragon a Bruce Leeroy! Sho nuff!
I decided not to listen to any of the dialog, instead blasting techno music into my head, which seemed like a fit for martial arts. One thing I’m noticing is that the Asian’s actually look oriental. That is to say, not like the vaguely Asian lady whose supposed to be Japanese back in the X-Com Enemy Unknown demo. Video games never seem to represent these people right, they always look more like mutants or crack addicts, but not here. This adds a level of, “oh yeah, this is a kung fu movie,” to this that most games of this nature lack.



I accidentally just changed a guys race, by pressing square. Let me explain what I just did!
As the demo starts, a cutscene played that I didn’t pay any attention to at all. I mean really, I was looking at the subtitles, but if I could never recall a single thing mentioned there, other than the name dogeyes, which means nothing to me and sounds silly. I started off in a fast food resteraunt, which I promptly punched out the windows of, then jumped back across with a cool contextual press of the x button. Then I pressed square, kicking a guy in the face until it morphed and blood soaked it. I grabbed him with circle, then pressing square again, slammed him into the ground killing him.

This is a pretty bad ass game. After killing a few civilians, I then walked around the city streets and bought a soda from a vending machine, like any wild maniac killer would do. Then a nice lady sold me a soda that increased attack damage, while another guy sold me some noodles that gave me regenerating health. Virtual Hong Kong has all sorts of interesting things to see and do, I like that.

I feel bad for this game, it started off as some awful female protagonist having martial arts B-tier bullshit, then morphed into a True Crime game, which is somehow lower than the new IP no one wanted Black Orchid. When I think of what this could have been, I’m so surprised it turned out as amazing it has. This is actually a good game, one that I need to buy and play through.

----

Games Bought This month! How much money did I waste?

F.T.L. - $9.99 Steam
XCOM: Enemy Unknown Steam $49.99 Steam preorder
Total War Franchise - $29.99 - Steam

___

I’m looking to get into streaming videos, if anybody knows anything, let me know in the comments or email me at randombullseye@gmail.com and if you want to read some Bonerquest, ask me in an e-mail. Probably won’t finish the book this year, but next year this thing will come out. Just imagine had I knuckled down, it would probably be out in October instead of needing more polish and pieces of it scattered across my ipod, my email, and my laptop. I did get back a draft from the editor of the book, she seemed to think it was clever and funny. I hope I explained that factual information definitely influenced the book, but that it is a fantasy world, so when things aren’t exactly realistic, it’s done for comedic purposes. I’ve tried to layer the book in such a way that it means a bunch of different things, but first and foremost, it has to be funny. I can’t put out something that isn’t funny and ask you or anybody else to pay for it.

Oh and I'll be putting out some videos to promote Bonerquest



That's it.

People come and go from our little community all the time. Some disappear without any big announcement of where they go, some go off and write about games elsewhere, at least one guy went to draw cartoons, and then some dudes actually make it into writing for games. Granted, Aaron Linde, who hates Ocarina of Time, claimed only to have written songs for Gears of War 3 that I really, really searched for when I played through that game, but couldn't find. Even on you tube, I couldn’t find them. I was so proud of him, that he made it to Microsoft and contributed something to a video game everyone had heard of. This wasn’t something for iOS or a downloadable, this was the real deal, he actually contributed to a real video game! He has since left Microsoft, now he’s a writer at Airtight games, where I hope he'll write something more substantial and noticeable, like Anthony Burch has done for Gearbox's Borderlands 2.

As a guy who writes silly things online, it fills me with what I hate the most, hope. It makes me think I can make it like he has. Anthony started off with Destructoid posting about how important Shadow of the Colossus was as an experience not to be missed. I always saw it as a puzzle game hiding behind giant boss battles, but he explained all about how metaphorical it all was. How the ending could actually make you feel like you've done something wrong, killing all these beautiful rock monsters for the selfish goal of bringing back your lady friend for the dead.

And then, there are all the other things he did for Destructoid. I'll only link to ten things you should check out, if you've missed out on what he's done. So here are ten things Anthony did, that I found to be interesting or related to me personally:

* Retroforce Go! was a podcast on Destrucoid, where in the middle break Reverand Anthony would do a "rev rant." He would go off about how much he hates timers or just talk about indie games, but it was always interesting to hear. Later he did RevRants as a video series, wearing a suit and showing off a masculine beard.

* This post he did, came from one of two conversations I had with him while trying to be his friend over Xbox live. It was when Grand Theft Auto IV was new, I invited him to play in the free play mode where we discussed how crappy Playstation 3 was as a brand and favorite games, which surprised him when I spoke so highly of Volition's The Punisher. I like it because I'm a maniac who enjoys toasting bad guys alive and stabbing them in the brain through their chin. He explains why the game is interesting a lot more elegantly.

*Runner an indie game he made that he kept updating for several days in a row.

* This Blockbuster article about lies they tell their customers. Not actually for Destructoid, but absolutely hilarious. It really gives insight into the wit and attitude of our beloved Reverend.

* Hey Ash Whatcha Playing? Is a thing I was never super into. I didn't get it. I didn't like it, even now I don't love it. I feel bad that I don't love it, I wish I did, but this isn't for me. I don't want to bullshit anybody, if I don't like something why wouldn't I tell you? A lot of people really do seem to love it, go check it for yourself.



* AMC is a television channel that tries to make itself seem like they take movies as an art form seriously. It makes perfect sense that Anthony wrote a series of articles for their website, one of which was about a thing I discussed with him, a certain video game voice actor starring in a b-movie featuring lots of rubber suits, Guyver 2: Dark Hero. When we played Grand Theft Auto IV that one time, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots came out or was coming out soon, and I didn't awful Solid Snake impression, bringing up that dumb movie and how excited for it I was as a kid. I really like guys in rubber suits hitting each other in the face. I can't seem to find that article, but he wrote it, or I imagined it. Either way, he did write things for AMC.

* Podtoid was Destructoid's podcast, where new releases and news were discussed. Around episode thirty, Anthony began hosting, giving the show a focus on critical discussions about gaming without losing the humorous editorial tone of Destructoid at that time. Every episode is great, if you want to know someone without knowing them listen to them on a podcast over the course of several hundred hours.

* Would any other website run an article about a demo disc Pizza Hut gave away for free? I feel the same as he did with that demo, as a lot of people did. It was one of those strange zeitgeist moments, where so many people had the same shared experiencing something none of us were prepared for. Metal Gear Solid changed video games, forcing you to pay attention to what you were doing and making enemies have some level of perceived intelligence by following your foot prints in the snow or "listening" as you as Solid Snake tapped on a wall, and then allowing you to savagely sneak up behind them and break their necks in a homoerotic humping pose, where you press the button seemingly thirty times, that is damned important to video games by itself. Anthony often brought up the importance of the story, which definitely mattered more in that series than others at that point, and the way the demo hooks you by the end, it was perfect. It gave you just enough to flesh out the world, show off the gameplay, and oh yeah, introduce a storyline in a way that wasn't as jokey as other games, this was an industrial thriller on par with a Steven Seagal movie. Suddenly video games now had to have stories and this demo disc given away with what some argue is vomit on bread, well that's an important thing to bring up.

* Somewhere Aaron Linde is crying, the title of the post when my failed game attempt at Bonerquest came out. It was failed, because I had so many bugs and scripting issues, and I'm not a computer guy at all. I can barely do the forum coding in blog posts, but I kept updating several days in a row in a frantic attempt to make my vision of a game realized. I forget which Podtoid it was, but on one Anthony discussed his time playing my game, describing how he liked that one of the townspeople ran around yelling, "I like men!" That is an actual thing, actually in that game.

* His final post to our website, where he discusses why he is leaving and how the experience of writing changed him. Which is why it surprised me when Game Informer short changed him, saying he had just written, “Some stuff” for Destructoid. I could say I wrote “some stuff” for Tomopop, but Reverand Anthony was front and center for Destructoid for a very long time. I feel like they snubbed Destructoid with that, those Game Informer jerks!

To know Anthony and be proud of him makes me feel good. He wrote Borderlands 2, and will probably go on to write more games or even movies, I think he's got the potential to do just about anything wants. Especially with a successful video game writing credit. He could parlay that into anything, and I for one, will be there to check out whatever he's doing.



Even if I don't know him that well at all and he probably rightfully thinks I'm a dickhead because of my confrontational humor and the way I never forget dumb things like late night conversations I had with a guy five years ago, I'm very proud to see him do something like this, I'm very proud to see anybody from our site go on to success. I somehow was convinced he just wrote flavor text or did a once over on dialog to make it funny, but according to him in this Game Informer interview, he came up with the villain and a majority of the games content. That sort of thing makes me need to play this game as soon as possible, rather than wait for a price drop or just pass over it entirely. After playing the first game and not really liking it, I had thought maybe I could just pass this over, but no. No this is our Reverand's game, he wrote it. Knowing he worked on it made me want to at least play it and try to find his contributions, as I did with Aaron Linde's songs that I just couldn't find in any shanty town I went to in that stupid game. Fact of the matter is, if I even remotely know your doing something, if I've followed what you've done previously, why wouldn't I want to see what your new thing is? I don't want to play Borderlands 2 but knowing that a guy who did according to Game Informer, "some stuff" for Destructoid, I need to play this game.

Recently I told him over twitter that I watched Firefly because he mentioned it and that I didn't like it, he told me I was crazy. I don't think I am, I think I watched an overly ambitious cancelled show that had moments that were brilliant, but ultimately I felt underwhelmed by the show and mostly fantastic the movie. I would describe it all as mostly fantastic, the way it treats personal character arcs and occasional death of those characters, that is the brilliance of that show. When it attempts to build a larger mythology and believable world, it came off as shallow to me. I told him that over twitter, or tried to, and he called me crazy, which is true.

My last interaction with Anthony was probably the Firefly twitter thing, but the one that somehow hurt me, was being removed from his Xbox buddy list. One of the few times leader boards actually had been interesting to me was with [i]Super Meat Boy[\i] and I could see he was so much farther than I was. About a week later? Maybe two, he mentioned on a podcast that he had finished the entire game completing all the extra levels and everything, while I had given up after it deleted me unlocking characters and progress. I decided that it would be very easy to look on the leader board for his name, that would tell me how many levels where in this silly game. As I looked, to my surprise, I didn't see his name.

He had removed me from his friends list!

That sort of thing never shocks me, I remove people or block people all the time from everything. Especially something like Xbox Live, that only allows so many people. Being THE Reverand Anthony, I can imagine multiple reasons not to have a maniac like the infamous randombullseye on your friends list. Doesn’t bother me, but I thought it would be a funny anecdote to include here, as that really did happen to me. I looked and thought I was looking in the wrong list, which I very well may have done somehow, or even crazier, I removed him from my friends list and forgot. Modern video game consoles feel so complicated with all those god damn menus!

I'm always curious to see where our friends go, as I said before, Destructoid isn't where I come to talk with Destructod anymore, twitter is. Other people use the forums or our user blogs more regularly, and we can play games with each other in the comments sections on our site, there’s a you tube show with the hell that is you tube comments, and I have no idea what the hell is going on with all the Justin.TV stuff, it exists and is a thing. Also there are those secret regional group emails, that counts too as part of Destructoid. The site expanded into so many directions, I can’t follow whose coming or going, whose making fun of actresses, and who it was I looked in the eyes at PAX East and said, “I look foreword to trolling your website.” I know it was Hamza for sure, but I can't recall who it was standing beside him who I said the exact same thing to, looking dead in the eyes. As a side bar to all that, isn't it interesting that I can recall a conversation I had with a guy over the internet years ago, but something that happened this April in person, I'm drawing a blank on?

The fact of the matter is, I’m excited about Destructoid being a thing, and to see that our group has such expanding influence, it makes me proud. I feel like I'm involved, even if I'm not the one wearing a dress and being silly, my voice is still heard around here. It's Rev Anthony's fault that I ever said anything to anybody on this site, he showed up on Rob Summa's YouTube show, which I somehow began watching every week. He was talking about the horror film [Rec] and mentioned how cool Destructoid was. And well, here I am, amongst friends.



Man I really busted all over Linde in this little article without even meaning to, I really am proud of the guy for doing songs in Gears of War 3 and I hope to see what he does for Airtight. He was nice enough to let me use Bonerquest as a title for dumb things, and here I am talking about how hard it was to find his songs. If anybody can locate those on youtube, please link them to me, I’m damned curious to hear them. I love Aaron Linde, I love Anthony, I love everybody on this website. I really hate to break kayfabe and say that, but not really, I do love this place. No where else can I post the same picture of a dog scooping up it's own poop over and over, somehow laughing harder every time I do that. I've tried to write about games other places, it just doesn't feel the same. This is home, and when of family does good, I want to openly say that I'm proud of them.


That’s it!

This month has been busy for me. My work has picked up a lot, I do night shift stock crew at a krogers, and this month starts the trend of nightmarish nights for the holidays. Plus, I've been writing a book you might have heard of, that takes time away from gaming.

But, given two nights off in a row the very last week of the month, I got into some weird stuff nobody else anywhere is playing. But here I am, talking about what I played.

Earthbound - Super Nintendo

My experiences with the mother series have been brief. I tried out my copy of Earthbound to see if it worked, several years ago. Then I got just a little deeper, where I in my most classic move on RPGs, saved at the first save point and quit.

I started over,as I only sort of recalled the beginning, and as many people know I was not positive about the game, the art style and humor put me off, and I wasn't enthusiastic about the battle system.

So how do I feel now?

I like it. if the spoiler tag worked, highlight over it to read my opinion!

I've played quite a bit of it, I'm in Fourside, which is the fourth city. The seeds of Poke'mon's cities and design and Paper Mario's humor, feel like they started with the mother stuff, very clearly. I don't love everything in Earthbound, but when the fucking Blues Brothers showed up, I got super excited to see where else the game could go.

I spent a lot of time leveling up, and Ness is now ten levels ahead of my other party members, they're closer to thirty, he's closer to forty five. I just figured out where to go next, a gold mine, and I'm exploring there, when I finally had to quit. It was late at night, the battles with their hypnotic colors actually hurt me to look at.

Dragon Quest 3- Super Nintendo

Hey hey! I thought I lost my save game, turns out, not true at all! As I find it, I'm level 10, with a B-team of characters joining my guy. If I remember correctly, the original mix of guys just wasn't cutting it, and it felt like I always use the same mix of all offense in games like this, so I made three new guys to level up with me. Instead of a fighter, mage, and warrior I had brought a thief, cleric, and "dealer." For some crazy reason, merchants are fan translated into dealers.



I don't know either, but this party ate dick, so I brought the fighter and Mage back, dropping the thief and cleric, in an effort to make more gold. That didn't work as well as I had hoped, when I found the dungeon I needed to be in, I just didn't have the juice to heal my guys properly. So I swapped the dealer for the cleric, leveled him up a bit, then swapped the Mage for the dealer, and used that party to make it through a dungeon and get the "magic" key.

Then I quit, wanting to play more, but you know, sleep. I found that watching a procedural show and playing, worked perfectly. I love just grinding levels and solving very basic mysteries at the same time, is that weird? I'm not rocking two tvs now, I use a laptop and Netflix for all my secondary tv watching.

7th Saga - Super Nintendo

Ugh, I wanted to play Earthbound again, but I found this turd instead and felt like trying it again. This game is dirty looking and with a strange way of telling its story. Somehow this game steps backwards from where RPGs should have been, where Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy are charming 8-bi games on the original Nintendo, 7th Saga is an ugly, poopie filtered game, that I've been attempting to play for ten years.

I spent several hours playing this stinker.

It has some interesting ideas, like letting you choose which one of its main characters to play as. Last time I put any tries in on this, I played as the demon, who looks like smithe for spiderman. This time I decided to play the robotic, who has a certain clockwork steam style to him. I say him, but I was unable to see a penis or vagina.

Anyway, I made it through two dungeons over to the second town. This meant fighting two bosses, both of which were jerks. My robot gained an electrical attack that seems to put a hurting on enemies, so I do that a lot and just buy lots of magic point refills. A couple level ups after that, I got one that hits multiple dudes, making my robot much more of a badass.

I'm unsure exactly how it works, but defending then attacking does more damage. Some guy in the first town cryptically said something about that. Also weird is that the second boss was a bounty hunter with a name, something like Percy. What kind of bounty hunter is called Percy!

In the next town, some of the other characters you could pick from showed up, the game implied of I got stronger I could bring the cooler dudes with me, like the demon or dwarf. I was powerful enough to bring along a cleric, who seemed sort of useless, so I didn't save and reset the game.

Two weeks later, I never touched the game again. Four weeks later, I looked at the box and considered it, but no. Will I play it again, ever?

- Fallout New Vegas - Xbox 360

My wife went away for the weekend, so I thought it would be nice to spend time with my parents. That they would like having me stay with them and bring my dumb dogs, but somehow I ended up playing a butt load of my old 360, the one that I left here for my nephews, and New Vegas was here. So I wandered about shooting things.



I decided to team up with the boomers, so I did all their stuff, for the third time. This was after I found a new place I hadn't been, a vault full of powder gangers.

Just as I quit, the lady from the brotherhood of steel, the one whose voice actress a Destructoid intern called worthless on twitter, that girl finally said lets go back to the brotherhood of steel. Which actually seemed like an interesting thing to do, that I haven't done here. I've killed them twice, but never teamed up with the brotherhood. I'm sort of interested to do that.

Sometime later this month, I was back over staying with them and found myself with a couple hours to do anything I wanted. I thought I'd take a moment to point out why when I reviewed New Vegas I gave it a low score, and why I'm still playing it and have any interest in it.

So why do I want to play this game?

Two words:

Mad Max.

More specifically two other words:

Road Warrior.

Beyond Thunderdome isn't in the same league as either of the other Mad Max flicks, but if I catch it on there are some choice scenes that are incredible to see. I love the idea of the Thunderdome, but nearly everything in Mad Max and Road Warrior are about the coolest things, I've ever seen.

Road Warrior is easily one of my favorite films, it is why I like movies, furthermore, it is why Fallout New Vegas holds any appeal to me.

A game where the shooting is piss poor, the slow motion effects lags the gameplay in awful spots, and overall most every thing you're asked to do is go somewhere, get something, then bring it back. The industry term for this is a fetch quest, and this game is absolutely nothing but fetch quests. The characters are one dimensional, save for the super mutant whose a little old lady, that's pretty different and interesting. Every time I think I find something interesting, I just find more fetch quests.

But, on a day when I have nothing else to do, other than work that I should be doing that I'm ducking into a video game to avoid, New Vegas can be fun. But the walking around, it is awful. Places are either too large or too narrow and confusingly lagged out, worse than Halo games, which I've found have some of the worst level design. Everything looks the same and plays the same, which for better or worse, is what this game is.

Fallout New Vega is also wildly glitchy, more so than a lot of other Bethesda games which are all broken, where I thought Fallout 3 was new and interesting, New Vegas feels like a mod or expansion tacked onto the same game. I feel bad for the guys who made it, these types of games take a lot of work to make, but I just can't ignore the fact that this is just another Fallout 3, but you know what? If they did another game just like this, I'd play it. Same engine, same tile set, I would play it. But I don't know if I would love it, Fallout 3 came out at just the right time for me and the fetch quest nature of it felt more structured that the all over the place quest design in new vegas.

Ok, so the brotherhood of steel stuff is all boring. I went through vault 34, which I thought was the powder gangers but it turned out to be underground and full of mutants, it was lots of running back and fourth with radiation frying my player character, all do I could open a dumb armory and find a weapon that shuts off power armor when I shoot it.



Problem is, I can't get anybody to let my character wear power armor, which is one of the cooler things from Fallout. The bunker that these guys are in for New Vegas had the look of the original Fallout down very well. It feels like I'm looking at a full featured 3D representation of those games at times, but things just ain't do pretty on the 360.

Next time I'm over here, I'll play more and try to find something interesting. It feels so much like Skyrim, in that to really enjoy this, I have to get creative myself. I don't want to do that for a video game, I want to play a game like this or Skyrim and power up until I save the world or damn it.

Also did some Fallout 3, finishing up Motheship Zeta, but having a problem where my character can’t drop anything they’re carrying. I wandered around to Megaton, where I just shot people. I don’t know, these games are boring forever, then briefly very interesting. The problem is the size, the walking, the clunky interface, and the combat is a little loose - which is still made up for by the slow motion VATs bullshit, but it isn’t made up enough for me to enjoy it like a full shooter.

Left 4 Dead 2 - Steam

Tubatic, Qalimari, and myself have tried to schedule a session to play this together forever, and we’ve yet to actually do it. So I played by myself, with random people found on steam. We got slaughtered, and I quit. I’m not super fond of Valve stuff, but I do like monsters and co-op, so here I am playing this.
Team Fortress 2 - Steam

I never touched the actual versus stuff, but the Mann vs. Machine co-op stuff, I really like. It’s fun to play with people and try to come up with strategies, but unfortunately, I don’t know anybody. Even my wife, whose super into Team Fortress, won’t play with me on the laptop and her on the PC. I still liked it, it was fun to play. I feel as though I accomplish nothing with it, no great narrative or immersive experience, but god dammit, it was fun to play. I love flamethrowers, they’re bad ass. And coming up with different strategies to use against the computer was fun, my wife has tons of weapons unlocked, so I’m using her account and dusting robots with this flamethrower that does critical damage when it hits enemies from behind.

Anyone want to play this with me? Randombullseye@gmail.com Email me, we’ll hook up and play sometime!

[size=40] Astro Story / Dungeon Story - iOS

Both of these have lite versions out, and I love just about everything kairosoft puts out. Simulation stuff has always appealed to me, but I was unsure if these were just building a place, like the hot springs game and the school game. Both play similarly, with enough differences beyond just sci fi and fantasy to make them interesting to play.

As you build up your cities, new people show up to move in. Then you equip those people to go explore and fight monsters. Astro story gives slightly more control over this, allowing you to position your team before battles, but over in fantasy there are more slots to equip items. Both give you no control directly over your dudes, nothing new for kairosoft. The racing game wouldn't let you drive your cars, nor would the soccer game have you control those players. It is a simulation game to the tee, where you watch your little people do things. If that appeals to you, these both are pretty cool games. I may or may not buy them, I'm busy and don't need them as distractions.

Batman Forever and other games - Super Nintendo

Sometimes, there are games that are bad. Then, there are games like Batman Forever, that have promise and actually look good, but then are just vomit to play. That describes Batman Forever, but it doesn't do justice to just how terrible this piece of ass that this game is.

I had more time later in the month, and played tons of awful games I have. Stuff I had no idea what it was, like Kendo Rage. It was not a fun game. Even Star Fox, which a couple months back I was positive about, now I hate it again. It issn ugly game with an unrelenting camera, that always finds just the wrong spot to focus in on.



A Super Nintendo game that isn't bad, Final Fantasy 6. I'm at a spot right before getting the airship in the world of ruin. I'm thinking I might restart, as a lot of the game I'm blanking on. It was so good, but so confused, I just can't recall what was what and where, and I also messed up and can't use the ninja anymore. I don't know if you guys know this about me, but I love ninjas, they're badass and not having him around, bothers me.

Also, Super Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, because fuck me. I didn't make it to the end of the second level, it was rough. As rough as I remember and just difficult as can be.

Mario All Stars got touched too, Mario 3 there is my jam. I blasted through with some warp whistles to world eight, getting myself dusted by the second battleship, no, it was the first. I did terrible, then my friend showed back up online. Awesome!

Borderlands - PC

It was an afternoon, I'd just spent hours with some RPGs, I felt like doing something more action. This is still here, and I still don't love it. Feels like a waste of time, uninteresting characters, a bland plot, and the art design doesn't work for me.

But Anthony Burch wrote the sequel, or parts of the sequel, and I'm really curious what his influence would be. And it comes out in the next two weeks, so yeah. I want to finish this, this week, which is the sat week of August. Wish me luck! I want to at least try to finish this thing, but it is slow and lonely going. I like blasting things and becoming more powerful, but I'm just not feeling this one.

My two hours in this game, I can never get back.

If anyone wants to play on steam, contact me somehow. It would make it more fun if I could talk to someone and have some backup when I'm swarmed by bad guys.

After a couple days, I know why I don't like this game! I figured it out. It is, an MMO style game, without the massive online stuff. The quests feel as poorly written and lame as MMO games. I’m really down on Borderlands, but I have a sub machine gun that shoots fire bullets, and the vehicle I got that is difficult to drive, has a rocket launcher that I never want to go to any mission without now. I’m going to finish this thing, but I’m just not feeling up about it, especially without co-op partners. If you read all these things, I always say I never have co-op partners. A guy I work with has talked about Borderlands 2 being something he really wants, so I’ve set up a play date to get the game and us together, so that we can just take a day and play the entire game begging to end. I’m just not sure if I can buy it, or if it would be better to just rent it. I should send a twitter message to Anthony and ask if he gets any royalties if I just rent it from like a redbox or gamefly. The way game companies pay there people is so dumb, and just like games journalism, everyone wants to be super cryptic about it and not tell anybody anything. I’m always frustrated by non answers. Type type type type, words words worsd, screw flanders.

Tony Hawk HD - XBLA Demo

Awful. It looks ok, but it doesn’t feel like the Tony Hawk games as I knew them. I would buy it at a discount price, especially if Spider-Man is in there, but it just isn’t something I’m actively looking for or excited to try out. I’ve played more than enough Tony Hawk, give me that new X-Com strategy game and Dishonored already, I want to try new stuff that builds on old ideas, not new stuff that is just built on top of old stuff.

The level in the demo was one of the crappier ones from the first Tony Hawk, which I wasn’t a fan of, I got on board for the second and third games, but part four and beyond past me by as one and done rentals, and even then, I’m unsure if I played all of them. If I could play as KISS and Wolverine and Darth Maul, then I’m in, but just playing as skateboarders is boring to me. BORING! I want to skateboard as Mike Tyson, up a building, then punch a dinosaur, jump onto the side skirt of a helicopter, then climb into it and use a machine gun to blast aliens. Video games are never as fun as I want them to be, which is a shame.

____

What games did I buy this month?

I had the idea to write down what I bought, in a month when I didn't buy, anything. Here I am, not knowing if I bought anything. I'm an addict, a horrible dirty addict.

I have a months worth of podcasts to post, all about retro games with me, Bianca, and Tony talking about video games. Good stuff!

That's it!