Fallout 3 - Never-Ending Finale

I play Fallout 3 and I have trouble stopping. There often has to be a pain in my wrist or some emergency situation before I stop. If I'm not playing it, I'm always wondering why not. I didn't realize it only came out recently. I figured I was so out of the loop it had been out for months, but it wasn't. Everybody's been playing it, and here's the Stolen Pixel that helps make clear how polarizing this game is. Hate it or love it, I love it. You do what you want.


I like the dialogue...is there something wrong with me?

Shawty Lo - Dey Know (Million $ Mano Remix)

Warning: Bad rap can be dangerous to your health. These effects can easily be countered by little dancing Korean boys. better song

Videogames are like drugs because...-More Fallout coverage

You know when you're smoking with a dude and he won't fucking shut up about the weed? I smoke to get somewhere. I don't smoke because it's an art or some shit. Shut the fuck up about the weed. I would smoke skunk weed if that's what this was because I like to smoke. You're treating smoking like it's a magazine should be written about it.

Yeah, there is a magazine isn't there? Ugh. See that's why I like to smoke with junkies. They know what the weed's there for.

This is kind of awkward given that this is a videogame blog, but I just had a pretty lame conversation about video games. I've got a friend who asks questions whose answers he doesn't really care about, he just wants to have some conversation. I guess that's cool. He asked me a series of questions while I was playing Fallout. Some of the ways I've answered here, I didn't answer then because it would be dickish.

What are you playing?
Fallout 3

Can I watch?
Sure, I mean I'm not really doing anything interesting. I walk to locations in D.C., kill people, go to towns, talk to people, do quests. I basically just try to do good things in a hard world. It's like I live here.

What level are you on?
Umm...my character is level 15 out of 20.

No, like where are you in the story?
Well, I'm in the Capital Wasteland.

No, I mean like how far are you in?
Like ten hours in maybe. I haven't been counting.

Is there a story?
Yeah, but...I dunno...I'm more interested in what I'm doing now. If this game is anything like the last two games, they'll come a point where I have to finish the story to keep playing. I'm doing what I want until then.

Are there any cool bosses?
Umm...I fought a really huge super mutant, but I don't think that was a boss per se.

Can you show me a cool cutscene?
All the cutscenes seem to be in-game.

But I bet there's a good one at the end, right?
Maybe, but I don't know what the need would be for it.

What's the background?
China & the US fought some pointless war which ended up with the bomb being dropped. I don't like that though. It's putting present prejudices into the future. The first two games didn't really point a figure at anybody. Humanity caused the great war over some stupid shit. I don't really remember actually. I should replay them.

So, China is the bad guy?
Well, there are Chinese people who attack you, but there aren't really bad guys.

Why are those things red?
It means those belong to other people, and taking them counts as stealing.

So, why don't you take 'em anyway?
That would make me a bad person.

Like a bad-guy?
Sort of. You do bad things, people tend to react unfavorably to you. I like doing good things to make people nicer.

So, there are people who do bad things then?
Yeah, but it's not like they're one organization I'm fighting. I might not be a fan of the Commonwealth, but I don't know a lot about them.

You're good, so why did you just kill that guy?
One of the security guys said I could.

Isn't that a bad thing?
Well, the town doesn't think he's a good person, and kind of wishes he wasn't around. So it's bad that I killed him, sure, it's murder, but no one's really gonna miss the guy. It's kind of a great point of moral relativism.

Are you trying to get all the trophies?
Umm...no...I'm kind of just trying to enjoy myself

Are you at a good stopping point?
I just sold off the inventory I got from scavenging the capital building. The lady just gave me a new quest to check out the robot production company called RobCo. That looks really interesting. I was gonna head out there after I sell out all the special items I've been collecting for people.

Do you think this game is going to win for best graphics of the year?
No, I think Metal Gear Solid will win.

Really?
I don't know.

What do you think is going to get best game of the year?
According to who?

Just the best game of the year?
It was kind of a slow year.

What was your favorite?
I really liked Dead Space. I also like Fallout 3. I haven't played Resistance yet, but I'm interested in it too.

Which was the best?
What the fuck does it matter? They were good. I played them this year, but I could play them next year and still think they were good. What is this "of the year" bullshit?

What do you think of Animal Crossing?
I don't know what that is.

Do you think Killzone2 going to be a Halo-killer?
Do I think gritty realism and really tight game design is going to beat a well-established game? No. It's like saying will Killzone2 kill Goldeneye 007. If anything, Call of Duty 4 should have killed Halo.

FALLOUT 3 - MORE TO COME!

Edit 11/24/08
Did that play it 'till 630 in the morning thing again. Actually, I was going to keep going. I didn't see a reason to stop. RE: Dreamsower's comment. I generally do not like lame-ass LOTR knockoff fantasy settings (Ouch, that was harsh. Why did you say that when it's not always true. You liked Willow.) I loved Willow. I wasn't as on-dick as every one else was on LOTR, but I enjoyed it. It was beautiful. I think I hate the culture associated with that type of movie. Also, shit that's popular and every one thinks is good always upsets me because a lot of times there's stuff out there that's better.
Yeah, Fallout involves a lot of walking, but even that is fun for me, or at least poignant. I walked into a home where two skeletons were sleeping next to each other, holding each other. That upset me very much. I'm in Arlington Cemetery right now. My grandfather is buried there. The records of his burial are probably lost. His gravestone might even be knocked over. Fallout 3 is helping me realize how attached I am to the area around my home. There's history there, and that fucking means something.
Fallout 3 Falls Church looks nothing like real Falls Church, but that's cool.
The space in Fallout 3. The amount of area you can walk in is very intimidating. I don't like going into towns because I really don't have time to track down every inhabitant and talk to them about their life, but there is value in it unlike a lot of other RPGs. Less is fucking more.
Walking sucks, but Fallout 3 does a pretty good job of putting in warp points to cut down on the walking.
It's a very open-ended game. I got mad because I completed a story quest last night. I didn't actually complete it, I was just in the "next" part of the game. I've been doing what I find interesting, and that works for me. The father plot is weird. I like helping make the wasteland survival guide.

I'm late for an appointment.

Edit 11/23/08: I have played this game until 6 in the morning. I could not concentrate in class because I was trying to come up with the perfect character. I still am working at that.

I don't really like Bethesda. They made the Pirates of Carribean names. They made the Elder Scrolls. Everybody was on Elder Scrolls dick, and I never understood why. Then again, you may have figured out that I'm not as big on RPG culture as I was. I really like good RPGs (KOTOR, FF7, Arcanum, Fallout1&2, Baldur's Gate 2), but I judge all others fucking harshly for rehashing good RPGs over and over. I mean that's true of a lot of shit though. W/e.
From the start, you know Bethesda's not Black Isle or Interplay or Troika or any of the people who made the original games. This is a work of fan-fiction, and one of the big Retcons is that the Vaults are social experiments. I don't like this. I don't think it makes sense, but I guess if the game goes into the history of the Vault-Tec corporation it would become clear. It's also a really easy to fall back on cliche because it seems like your character was the experiment which was done very recently in another game that I kindly don't want to mention by name. They made a history for the war so that you could connect it to the present day, and it really wasn't necessary. In picking up a game like Fallout, you know you're going into another universe. The point isn't how we get there. The point is what to do when we're there.
I long for the days of the simple premise: your vault's water purification chip is broken, get a new one or your tribe is dying, get them a Garden of Eden Creation Kit.
I don't know.
The game has a lot of walking without a lot of clarity as to where you are walking to, and my biggest hiccup right now is I don't have the time to go walking around and learn another world. I got fucking homework. The combat system of the game is really good. The character-leveling system is pretty good. Nowhere near as hard as the one from the first two games. The motion-capture is great. The dialog options are great. The voices of the enemies are also great. I miss Black Isle's writing. I miss knowing where to go in each town. I wish I had an HDTV for it, because right now people have bright flashlights for eyes and it looks stupid.

Liam Neeson talks very fucking slowly. I haven't slept much. I'm stressed out. I'm going to go have a smoke. Why didn't I think of that before?

Lil Jjjjjjjjj

Get the girls to come in and see us, yeah

Slug's an asshole (I mean, just look at him!), but he pretends he isn't sometimes:



These people are fucking gifted.

Oh yeah, and the kid is Brother Ali 's son. Sometimes Ali even takes him to shows. Hilarious this shit.

Lyndon "Buck Tha Fuck" Johnson's Tips for Survival Horror (More Dead Space coverage)

Just beat Dead Space again on hard. Eventually I'm going back for another run on Impossible mode. There is only one plot-hole I can't explain, and I think EA knew about it, they just knew they needed it because without it, you can guess the twist.

So, I wanted to lay out some things to think about in playing the game. These tips might work on other games too.

1. Pickups are random
They are based on some sort of calculation of your current health (if your health is low, you're more likely to get health pickups), the position of the game, and what weapons you have in your inventory (there's a tendency to favor one type of ammo).

This has all sorts of implications for the game.

2. Your health is your only infinite resource
Continues are conveniently located to limit your frustration in playing the game, but they also mean that you dying isn't that big of a deal even though this fucks with the story and your personal feelings towards your character. Try to keep it on the back-burner: you are expendable.

This has all sorts of implications too.

3. Never buy health or ammo
You have continues. The game provides ammo off dead critters. Why would you waste credits that could be spent on power nodes to upgrade your weapons on ammo that you'll get later? If you have extra ammo, you shouldn't be hoarding that shit you should...

4. Sell your extra ammo and medpacks
The less you get hit, the less ammo you use, so you can sell it for credits you can spend upgrading your weapons so that you kill faster (and thus take less hits) with less ammo (thus conserving ammo).

5. Keep your health low.
Health items sell for the most. The lower your health, the more likely you get health items, so keep your health barely above yellow (yellow makes you move slower), and you'll get some nice shit. If you follow this strategy, sell all your Large Med Packs because they're full health re-fills (which you don't want) and they sell for high.

6. Upgrade weapons first
Health is an infinite resource because you can always continue. Upgrading weapons will keep enemies from hitting you because you fuck their shit. In the end, you work much more efficiently by killing faster.

7. DO NOT UPGRADE CAPACITY OR RELOAD TIME
Money is a really limited resource. Power nodes are even more limited. Only spend that shit when there is a damage upgrade in it for you. Damage is what is most important. Once you got that up to max and you upgrade your health to max (and the worth of that is even questionable) then you should definitely upgrade the capacity on the line gun, the speed on the force gun, and charge on the contact gun (but this gun is only really useful for fighting big slow things. It doesn't hold much ammo, so missing is heart-breaking).

Those are the most important tricks I think I picked up playing this game.

Top gun picks were Plasma Cutter, Force Gun, and Line Gun.

Plasma Cutter is probably the best weapon in the game, but really bad by the end when enemies get very very aggressive.
Line Gun is kind of slow. Capacity is also really low. Width is also necessary. Top width fills the screen with a line that goes straight through a line of enemies.
The force gun doesn't really dismember folk, so it's kinda questionable. Good at the end to make folk back the fuck off.
The ripper dismembers real well, but is hard to use in a pinch. You get scared. Your aim goes to shit.
The pulse rifle seemed to take too much ammo to dismember folk, and was hard to use when you're scared and your aim goes to shit.
I haven't really tried the flamethrower. It might be good. I'm curious.

I'm excited to pick up Fallout 3 even though reviews are mixed and I thought Oblivion was boring and assinine. Leveling in Oblivion was a cool idea, just...not fun...

Yes, there's an extra s in asinine the way I spell it. Assinine.

Vote Day, Rock On

Random stuff.

Awesome Little Big Planet, guy made the first stage of Gradius and brought Schmups to LBP.




After having completed Dead Space I've begun to cure my itch for some ridiculous RPG binging and I'm trudging through Nocturne once again but on Hard mode now. I have gotten to the notorious Matador fight and will undoubtedly be at this location for some time. That is about it for now, get out and vote! Also :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Tl8bur1QI is an awesome video.

Dead Space

LBJ covered most of what Dead Space is about for the most part previously. I completed my first run through last Sunday and absolutely loved it. I would like to say something which I am not sure if I had mentioned before with games in general for me. If I had said it previously then I'm just clarifying the point yet again. There are very few games that I genuinely dislike, I end up enjoying and loving most games for whatever unique or tried and true aspects they bring to the table as another memorable experience. So for the most part I end up liking most games and then these varying degrees of appreciation are set apart by how many details of a game bothered me or resonated with me negatively.

That being said, I personally found very little to be discontent with in Dead Space. It had a fair share of sections that were genuinely difficult due to the large quantity of necromorphs that come at you. Yes the bosses were not that difficult, but in terms of shock value and terror and relevance to story I found them delightful. One issue I felt they had a nice balance with in the game is the necessity to use various weapons. With the differing types of necromorph anatomies that you face as well as limited ammo you learn the many scenarios to best implement your tools. This forced me to actually acknowledge the lack of a "best" weapon so that I had to use particular tools for separate situations. In most games the need for a particular weapon in your arsenal often feels forced or constrained to a specific section and never used again. I didn't feel that was the case in Dead Space.

What appeared to almost be an atmospheric aura around any of the creatures helped raise tension before they sprung out. This let you know they were nearby in most cases but you never knew when they'd make their move, as the ball is almost always in their court. The art direction of the ship and outfits and most everything I found delectable too. I was inducted into the Aliens series when I was in kindergarten, it scared me half to death while at the same time beginning a slight obsession with the lovely bastards. While almost unable to handle the fright at the young age I was all for playing the awesome toys they had of all the aliens. What ultimately sells me on Dead Space being so fantastic is the oddly nostalgic value I felt while playing.

I saw a TV spot for the game where one of the development members highlighted the difficulty with Sci-Fi Horror in that Horror relies on a grounding in realism so that you are genuinely scared while Sci-Fi naturally relies on a jump into the impossible. My favorite type of Sci-Fi has always been one that has had deep roots in fact and scientific laws while making occasional stretches beyond fact. To me Dead Space managed to pull this off astronomically well. I think it payed homage to the greatest of the great in Sci-Fi and horror while being an original and unique incarnation in its own right. From my perspective I found it to be nearly flawless, so much so the lasting effect completely erases any problems I had with it, and I can't wait to play through it now on the hardest difficulty.