Causality

2009-01-27T18:27:00.000-05:00

So as most people probably know, I’ve played video games like crazy, and I play paintball. What most people don’t think of though, is that Counter Strike and paintball have a lot in common. I’m mostly going to be talking about the competitive aspects of both of these and while I’m not even really CAL-IM in CSS and not even Division 3 in paintball, I know *in theory* how games are supposed to work and stuff in both. Of the two, I’ve obviously played css more just because it’s much easier and cheaper to play. Keep in mind that I’m using CSS, not 1.6 as my counter strike reference because I have much more experience with it, but as of right now, 1.6 has most of the professional competition. There are really not that many differences though, so this applies to both source and 1.6 except for walling and some small gameplay mechanics that make 1.6 harder. Because most people that’ll probably read this will not know much about either competitive CSS or paintball, I’ll try to explain most stuff briefly as I bring it up, but I don’t want to bother going much in depth on it.
I’ll start first with the things that aren’t in the games themselves, but have to do with them. Both competitive CS and Paintball have the following traits: Lack of understanding by the general public, prohibitive cost (much less so for CS), similar players, and lack of proper public exposure and acceptance. Now the first point is easy to make. Think of paintball and then think of CS. Chances are if you don’t play CS competitively, you think of some random people playing in some server on de_dust2, some kid is mic spamming, some guy is hacking, and everyone is envious of that guy who’s going 20-5. If you don’t play paintball competitively, you probably think of a bunch of kids either wearing random clothes, or dressed up in military type clothes in some random ass field, or like in a forest or some shit. If you play both, then congrats, you’re awesome. Either way, neither competitive CS nor competitive paintball is like this, and people often will think you’re a fucking retard who needs to do something else if you mention that you play either. Competitive CS and paintball are actually nothing like this, but since this part is about stuff outside of the game, I’ll go into the actual games later. The second point, prohibitive cost, is also a reason why few people play either games. Playing video games properly requires a setup that gets around 40-50 fps minimum (which if you buy prebuilt usually is around $700), a good mouse that’s at least 800 DPI to prevent spinning out (usually more than $30), and a good pair of headphones to hear people before you see them (About as important as the mouse, $80-$150). Paintball is much much MUCH more expensive than CS, but has more public exposure. Most people know what paintball is at least, but playing tournament style paintball costs a FUCKTON of money. Just a decent setup is like… $300 marker, $100 tank, $100 jersey/pants, $50 pod pack/pods, $100 loader, $50 mask, and finally, $50-70 every time you play. That’s like $700 + $70 a week, and once you get really high end, Egos, DMs, and Luxe’s cost over $1000 for newer versions. Now for similar players. I’m just talking about the average tourney paintball player, and the average CAL/CEVO player. I really don’t know why, but a lot of the shittier D3 and up kids in paintball like to talk a lot of trash and bunker rentals, while the better guys will usually help out the crappier players and tell them what they’re doing wrong, etc. A lot of paintball players also seem to act ghetto. I don’t know why, maybe they spent all their money on paint and they really are ghetto, but most of them have jerseys and fucking Ego’s (which are like… $800 for last year’s ego) so I’m sure if they really were ghetto they would sell that shit and use an ETEK or something. Counter strike players are also the same. The amount of fucking shittalking that goes on in CAL-O/IM scrims is amazing. Anyone talking on alltalk pretty much gets ripped, and then players on each team take turns calling each other shitties and people get kicked from scrims like crazy. The better CSS players also seem to be assholes most of too, but I’ve found that once you get really high up (cal-I, cevo-P), they can be pretty helpful. Lack of public exposure and acceptance is pretty easy to explain and I think I’ve already covered it. Tell most people you play competitive paintball and they’ll think you’re obsessed with what they think is a shallow game of shooting people in woods. Tell someone you play competitive counter strike and they’ll think you’re some retard who takes games way too seriously, probably because when they think of CS, they think of public servers, and when they think of paintball, they think of woods/shitty recball.
Now for comparison of the actual games themselves. Individual skill level is very similar in both games. While in CS, being able to rip kids like crazy is really useful, it really doesn’t matter as much as teamwork in most games. What is important however, is knowing where the enemies are. That’s why when a CAL-O team plays a CAL-IM PUG (basically a group of random people who are better than them but not on the same team, a pick up game), its either even, or the O team wins. That’s because that even though 1v1 the IM guys would mow every person on the open team down, not even the best people can play through a team with good enough teamwork. If unimpaired, the IM player might be able to take out 3 of the O players, but with the correct strats and calls, the IM guy might get one kill at post. For example, (Cal-O guys are T, CAL-IM guys are CT) the five guys decide to rush B. They all bought out (they all have the correct guns), while the IM guys don’t coordinate buying so one guy will have an awp, and the others will have SMGs and pistols. The open team smokes and flashes long A a bit, and then runs around to B, flashes in, runs in backwards, flashes and nades back of site, smokes doors, and plants. Chances are, since the IM pug has no coordination, one of the B players is on his way to A because of the fake flashes at long. This means that when the T’s push B, its 5v1 and the guy in B is probably flashed to fuck. If he’s only half blind and manages to kill the first guy in, he’ll call the spot, and four other people will assrape him. Now assuming the guy in B was the awp, the CTs just lost their awp and the rest have SMGs, the Ts have an extra awp, and the bomb is planted. There’s pretty much no way that the IM guys can beat the open team in this situation unless they REALLY suck. Any attempt to move into site will involve facing a bunch of people who are probably playing the bomb (hiding, listening for defuse sound, popping out and shooting until the CT is dead or stops defusing, then hiding again and waiting for a defuse, effectively making it hard as hell to defuse the bomb), and being flashed and naded on the way up. Situations such as this show that teamwork is a lot more useful than personal skill in a CSS match, but when the skill gap is high enough, not even teamwork can save you. I’ve played against a bunch of CAL-I guys just fooling around when we were actually trying and we got RIPPED. You peek, maybe shoot them for 64 in 2, they peek and 1 AK you. You go up behind them, shoot 3 shots, maybe dink them once, they spin around and one deag you, etc. One guy left, you flash him, he turns to avoid flash, turns around, and sprays down your entire team when you run in expecting a flashed guy. Stuff like that. Just like CS is a game of positioning, calling, and angles, paintball is pretty much the same, but skill seems to matter much more as communication is harder and you can’t talk while you’re out, but in vs teams of equal skill levels, strategies and positioning plays a huge role. If you’re snapping against someone and they’re much better than you and pretty much snap you out every time, you can still win because if one of your teammates has an angle on him if he pops out a little more, he can put his guy in his bunker, and try to wrap around really quick and shoot out your mirror, or whoever has been keeping you in. You can then move up and open up a shitload of new angles. Paintball seems to rely much more on personal skill than CS, though. I’ve heard of pros 1v10ing some new tourney players and winning, but in CSS, I’ve played against people like Clown back when he was on hyper (basically the dynasty/Ironmen level players of CSS) and been able to kill him a few times. 10v1 he wouldn’t stand a chance against a bunch of decent IM level players. Public misconceptions of the way both games are played is probably the biggest cause of lack of respect for either game. Both Counter Strike and Paintball are trying to be recognized as sports, although paintball I think is officially a sport and seems to have done it much more easily, probably since most people can see that paintball can be really physical, while to most people counter strike is a bunch of fat kids not moving at all. Interestingly enough, competitive players of both games seem to not like each other much. Competitive CSS players think of paintball is a bunch of woods and scenario games, and paintball players think of CS as some shitty 32 man office server. Both games have the problem of a competitive aspect that is radically different from the “leisurely play” aspect, which makes most people not think of either as serious. In reality, competitive counter strike is played in private servers that no one can join, and games are found via IRC channels that you probably don’t know about unless you’re part of the “scene”. Competitive CSS games are 5v5 style games with lots of strategy and adrenaline (not really in scrims, but I remember my first cal match went into double overtime and I practically shit myself). With leagues that offer prizes of a decent amount of money. Teams switch after a set amount of rounds, and maps are chosen based usually on competitive viability. Paintball is played on speedball fields (inflatable fields, not shitty woods) with a standardized setup with bunkers that are shaped certain ways to create a lot of possible strategies. Teams are usually of 3,4,5, or 7, guns, clothing allowed, etc are all standardized to make it as even as possible, and there are also many tournaments and leagues for paintball that offer a decent amount of money. Interestingly, Paintball players and CS players that play professionally both make pretty much the same amount also. The best pro players for each game make like $50k a year at most and get sponsorship on pretty much everything that has to do with paintball or CS. Not really the best money.

I feel like I’ve thought of other shit to write about this topic before, but I really can’t think anymore right now, so I guess I’ll post the rest of this whenever the hell I finish it. If anyone can think of anything different, tell me. Although I only know two people that even know enough about competitive paintball and CSS to really think of good stuff so… Yeah. Whatever if anyone thinks of anything, tell me.

SO BORED FUCK

2008-12-11T06:59:00.003-05:00

Need haircut.

so fucking bored. I swear I need a new interest or something. Gaming is so boring sometimes, paintball costs a SHIT TON and can only be done like once a week at most, and.. Fuck that those are my only hobbies. Too lazy to do anything. I don't even know wtf I'm doing anymore lmao its like I get home, do nothing until 12, sleep, repeat. Must be able to drive and then go to college. Maybe then it'll be awesome. I want to just random ass go to New York and fuck around but It'll probably end up in me getting mugged or somehting. Hmm.. Funny how paintball is like the only sport I've ever liked in any way at all. It actually made me not hate running as much. I guess I really just like shooting people or something. I always thought it would be awesome to take a bus to like... Some random state and just see what happens. I want a phonograph/record player also..Pretty awesome seeming, too bad it costs like 9001 dollars. Oh well, you can't always get what you want.

Older songs are epic.

Can't sleep again..

2008-11-30T04:32:00.002-05:00

Wow, first day in a long time I've been able to just play video games for an entire day without being bored. Then I just went on r9k for a while. Fuck that was pretty awesome, I miss being able to do that all night long on weekdays and just not give a fuck about anything that involved rl. Reminds me of the spectre days and 8th grade. Reminds me of WoW too. Damn that game was awesome while it lasted. It was so boring playing it but reminiscing about it is awesome, just because the game is awesome moments mixed in with long periods of monotony. I can just forget the boring shit and remember the boss kills, fucking around on vent, retard arena teams, etc.

ado:

First, to continue the whole thing about me complaining that like it was impossible for me to gain weight. I didn't really mean impossible, more like extremely difficult to the point that the effort required outweighs how much I care. I honestly don't care that much about being skinny. Eventually, I'll end up metabolism=slow and then thats pretty much it. It happened to all my uncles and cousins that were like me (yeah jeff's dad was like skinnier than I am.. Or about the same LOL). I care that people care... if that makes any sense. Like When I'm by myself I don't give a shit, but a lot of people annoy the FUCK out of me, and it would really be convenient if it stopped being a part of my day, but whatever. I don't care about a problem that'll solve itself. The only problem I have with it really is FINDING FUCKING CLOTHES. Pants are easy enough now that I realized what size I am. (My mom was just like buying size 16 child shit and its basically meant for fat children so all my pants were like too short and too big at the waist LOL), but if I ever have to wear a suit or tux for anything, I'm royally screwed. My jacket size is like.. 32 or 34r (34 is pushing it) and they don't even make 32s. I probably won't ask anyone for prom this year or next just because I don't think I like anyone, so that won't be a problem, but interviews for internships and jobs in college, especially if I'm going for business... Fuck.

And "Fashion- I need to get fashion." Eh, I know stuff about it and thats pretty much it. I never bother putting it into practice. I'll end up looking like one of those kelvin/kevins and spend all my fucking money. I'll stick with dressing normally. It would be pretty fucking awesome to do what Ben Ro does though. Kelvin's style and Luke's kind of piss me off. Kelvin does the extremely tight clothes and sweaters/cardigans with pants that are SO SKINNY thing. Luke just looks fucked up half the time. Wearing things that are meant to be formal too but like 5 sizes larger and random ass ties and scarves are just retarded. Peacocking is gay as hell. Some anon made a site about fashion that was around /b/ for a while. wellcultured.com. It isn't that bad actually lol. Dress like an anon.

And finally, the whole meaning of life thing. Everyone's thought of it some time in their life, and there really is no answer. We just have to deal with it and stick with what we know. There could be some afterlife, or we could just.. End. What happens when we die shouldn't affect what we do now. Do the right thing when it really matters, and you'll be in the favor of any just god. Plus, your whole "THE PAIN ISNT WORTH THE GOOD" thing doesn't really make sense. There honestly isn't much pain in our lives and there could be some pretty awesome times ahead. Either that, or we're all going to die. Not knowing is the fun part. We're all lost, some people just like it that way. I know I do.

Oh, and biologically, the meaning of life is to have secks and make babies. LOL I think I'll fail.

asdlkj

2008-11-18T23:48:00.003-05:00

Omfg can't sleep. Might actually start writing shit if I feel like it... I'm always too tired when I get home though its like OMFG TIME TO DO ALL THIS SHIT I WROTE DOWN AT SCHOOL and then I just sleep or watch movies. Fail.
So I'm awkward as hell all the time. I don't know why. I never actually make eye contact with people unless I know them which usually leads to me never knowing them. Guess I should do something about that. Not going to look away next time random eyefuck girl decides to eyefuck me again. I think I care too much what random people that I'll never see again think about me. When I'm driving im like OMG THE GUY BEHIND ME IS PISSED THAT IM GOING SLOW I BETTER SPEED UP! Even though I'm the one thats going to be dying in a ball of warped steel and not him when I crash. Fuck that.

Luke is retard. Styles his hair, talks funny, and just dances around all the time. He's really not that stupid, he used to be my "philosophy dude" that I talked to but I just kind of realized that he's smart but all he cares about is like... Trying to be a pick up artist for no reason.

travis is an asshole. He's like Luke but with my social qualities. Yeah. Worst combination ever. He has the exact same problems with talking to people but I suppose he has better looks than me. Actually I don't even know. I wouldn't say better but he definitely has a better first impression advantage than me. Anyways, he's an asshole somtimes. All he does is complain about how he doesn't get shit in classes and then sit there and not do shit. Fuck I do more than him when I'm not even trying. Then all he does is tell people he doesn't really like to shut the fuck up and tell anyone thats smart that they're losers. He just cares about girls. Fuck so stupid. He was wondering why sam actually cared when acey like accidentally decked Matt. I just said because he was worried. Travis didn't get it. He's like WHY SHOULD HE CARE? retard.

Back to the first impression thing... Apparently my interests/thoughts are NOTHING like how I look. I look like generic azn study kid who plays wow a lot. Fuck that, I really don't study at all unless I have to and wow sucks a cock. it gave me so pretty damn awesome times but its like "boring fun". You're bored but its somehow fun. So annoying. The only people that ever really talk to me randomly are people that want me to do their homework, want to make fun of me for playing wow, want to know how I'm somehow Jeff's cousin, or just to fuck with me. People who do shit from first impressions are retarded. I really want to know where this Indian guy lives that keeps fucking with me so I can rape his cable box. Comcast took all the locks off cable boxes in our area. its awesome to be able to just shut off someone's internet for 2 weeks just because they piss you off.

I suck at caring about school stuff. Everything is so useless. I thought physics would be fun but its just gay physics. I don't find basics interesting, and I don't find things like math interesting. Things that everyone can get pretty easily don't interest me. Quantum physics and string theory is the shit. Abstract things that most people can't figure out unless you explain it to them word for word are interesting. Not how far a damn block falls. Math past 8th grade should be an elective.

Acey, you hate people too much. I'm really not sure what Daro told you but I'm pretty damn sure I don't see her walking around punching walls and people. All you do when you do that is make people think you're fucked up and messing up your hand. Stop killing yourself and learn 2 go to sleep. Heres the point, a lot of people are stupid. Stop imagining their faces and punching them. Its not worth your time or effort to even concern yourself over people who don't even know how insignificant they are. I'm not sure wtf you did to your normal emotions but turn them back on. What you're doing is concentrating on the negative. Notice how the reasons you do things are never positive? You always talk about how stupid everyone is, and not how awesome the rest of us are, or that someone you knew for a long time figured it out and "showed you the way" so to speak. You don't listen to peaceful songs because they make you feel happy or calm, they just make you feel less like killing people. Things like that. Stop killing yourself. Sure your parents might not make sense, you're pretty much poor, and you aren't your parents' favorite kid, but everyone has their own problems. I don't have financial problems, but I've had one parent for the past 4 years, I'm skinny enough that most people think I'm fucking anorexic, and I have like super social anxiety or something, and I don't constantly want to kill and/or injure everyone around me. Reality isn't that bad, you're just focusing on the bad parts of it. Stop looking at the shittiness of everything and look at the awesomeness. We go to college in a year. If you found smart people at south, I'm pretty sure you'll find more wherever you're going. I'm pretty sure Daro would agree with me and I don't even know her.

The reason you were intense when you were fucekd was because you actually had you know, real emotions. You weren't just like FUCK I NEED TO KILL EVERYTHING. You cried over the stupidest shit I've ever seen and wrote the worst love letter I've ever seen, but it was a change, and not a bad one. You still have not shitty emotions, you're just forgetting about them. And no I'm not telling you to constantly be smashed so you can feel stuff. Figure it out and stop being so emoboiiwanttokilleveryone. We all see the same things, its how we interpret them that makes a difference.

Kay I probably wrote the same thing like 99999999 times but I really don't care. need to piss and sleep. pz

What the fuck is a "daro" anyways?

I finally update

2008-09-27T02:08:00.006-04:00

So I haven’t blogged in forever and Arnold says I should actually blog about more things about me and not random movies and game shit without referencing myself since that’s what a blog is supposed to be or something. So anyways, yeah this entry will probably be super serious and really reflect what I think about some shit.

I’m going to just start with some random shit anyways just while I’m thinking of something else to talk about. I’ve been getting into a lot of older stuff lately. 80’s music, movies from the 1960s-1999. They seem so much better than the shit they’re cranking out right now. Popular songs from the 80’s have such a happier feeling to them. Probably because not much bad happened in the 80’s or something, I don’t really know why but the music from the 80’s (Take on me, I’m gonna be, we got the beat etc) is just so fucking awesome to listen to. I actually listened to the Jonas Brothers for like a week and then I kind of realized they sucked and stopped listening to them. Look up their “take on me” cover to see them ruin one of the most awesome songs ever. This also brings me to older movies. Back before we could film movies in rooms full of green paper, people had to use practical effects sparingly and movies had to have good and innovative plot/setting/characters to be appealing because you couldn’t just throw an extra 20 mill into the movie and get some cool action scenes. Basically, it just so happens that movies from the 1980-1998 or so have the best combination of writing and effects most of the time. There are actually a lot of exceptions like old movies with fucking terrible writing and newer movies with damn nice storylines but after watching like… 2TB of movies in just the past year or so, I’ve found that the older ones are better (this might just be due to the fact that there’s 20 years worth of movies to choose from in that time period and only like the past few years of movies to choose from of relatively modern movies) but still. Older movies are epic. I came to this conclusion after basically watching a bunch of newer movies and then watching a bunch of older movies so this might not be such a good theory… Oh, and those fucking parody movies like scary movie # are the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. Ever.

Ok, so now onto the RL shit. Basically my college choices are rather limited. All I can really go to are the Rutgers level schools anyways. Pace, Rutgers (not business), penn state and stuff. I think I decided that I’m going to end up going to go to a business school in like finance/management (not sure which one to major and which to minor yet) since I find business and economics really interesting. Uh, Sat stuff has been pretty gay since I can never break 2100 but whatever, I’ll just take it like 15 times and hope I do good enough to offset my sad excuse for a GPA. I’ve read somewhere that the college people go to doesn’t really matter though in the long run. It takes longer to get started if you don’t go to college (or community college), but once you get into the decent colleges (rutgers is actually decent contrary to a belief held by asian moms across the townships around here), there’s not really that much of a difference.

Alright, now for a possibly long and intense rant on something that has basically been pissing me off for about 10 years. So as background info for anyone who actually doesn’t know me and read my blog (the guy who accidentally types .co.nr instead of .com into his browser and doesn’t know he’s on the wrong site), I’m like super fucking skinny. Like 5’9” 105 lb skinny. I think I’m so skinny that I basically don’t exist on those BMI charts the doctors use to graph your height and weight. Anyways yeah… So I’m really skinny you get the point. Anyways, what really pisses me the fuck off is when people ask me if I know I’m skinny. Basically this is what I feel like saying. “seriously are you fucking retarded or something? No I didn’t know I was skinny, thanks for the info. Kill yourself so the world has one less fucking retard in it please,” Instead I pretty much just don’t say anything. Now I really don’t care when people I’ve never really talked to before remark on the fact that I’m skinny as hell since its pretty damn hard not to notice but when someone does it in the stupid ass way mentioned above, or just asks me if I’m anorexic I get pissed. Speaking of which, I’ve also had a lot of peopleask me if I’m anorexic. Does anyone even know what anorexic means anymore? Anorexic people are people that think they’re fat but really are like… not. Not “people that are skinny. And even if I was anorexic, why the fuck would I tell you? Either way the question is fucking stupid and the person asking it is usually even stupider. ,” Basically when I was like 10-12 I got so fucking tired of every conversation going something like this that I just stopped talking to people at all. This pretty much makes everyone think I’m antisocial even though I’m like not.. Anyways, just to let you know. Every time someone says that to me I feel like fucking murdering them and their family. The whole double standard thing kind of pisses me off too. Since models all over the place are always trying to get skinnier for some weird ass reason, everyone thinks of being really skinny as something that’s not really that bad or something so. This usually means that certain “special people” like to constantly tell me I’m really skinny like its some sort of weird ass compliment. Would you seriously go up to some fat kid and constantly tell him he’s fat? Maybe you would but that’s not the point. Its insensitive as hell. Just kidding, I don’t care if you’re insensitive since I’m like desensitized to everything. Its just retarded. Kill yourselves.

So yeah… The paragraph above is basically how annoyed I get on a daily basis with a lot of people. The more I think about it, the more I don’t like half the people in our school. Basically anyone who doesn’t keep up with stuff outside of school to me is usually stupid. If you don’t know whats happening in the economy, if you don’t care about politics, if you don’t follow the news most of the time, read the paper, or check some sort of online news site, you’re a fucking idiot. (except Arnold, for some reason he doesn’t know anything about anything but he isn’t stupid. Exception that proves the rule.) The only reason school even matters is so you can learn how to learn and get a degree which will help you get a job. Do you all really think that what you learn here even matters at all? Probably 90% of stuff you learn in school doesn’t matter at all until college, and even then, probably 25% of that you’ll never use either.

I’m not actually this cynical… Like ever. I only get cynical/pissed when I actually think about stuff. Otherwise I’m usually pretty optimistic (LOL ITLL WORK OUT is pretty much what my natural reaction to everything is). Yeah… People piss me off when I really think about it but its all good, I’ll probably never do anything about it anyways. Hopefully when I go to college I won’t have to deal with such retarded people. At least after I graduate that I can at least choose who I have to talk to. if I think something is really stupid and/or I want you to go away I usually just do a weird chuckle thing and attempt not to continue the conversation. If all I do is fake laugh when you talk to me, I probably hate you. Sometimes I really just have nothing to say though so don't assume I hate everyone D:

Hmm… Half the people who I know in real life probably don’t know how many things annoy me. Oh well… Basically, I just find it really funny most of the time.. Until I actually think about it. Then I get pissed off and write angry blog entries.

Its 2am Friday and I have to get up at 8.. Fail.

Starship Troopers 3

2008-07-24T11:38:00.004-04:00

First of all, this movie is definitely a lot better than the second one (complete piece of shit), however that isn't saying much. I'll just start off by listing the pros and cons of the movie.

Pro:
Johnny Rico is back
Jolene Blalock is hot (but why are her lips so damn huge?)
Sky Marshal singing was the best thing ever.
Costuming was pretty cool
Story wasn't that terrible

Con:
Morita (the gun) looks like a gigantic plastic block of crap
What the fuck is with the girl with the thickest accent ever?
Why the hell are the special effects worse than the original? Actually, why are the special effects worse than Starcraft?
Religion?
EVERY SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER HAD FAKE BOOBS. (seriously.)

Starship Troopers is one of my favorite movies actually, just because its extremely awesome. It has sort of a crappy reputation because many fans of the book went to see it, expecting something like the book. The original was somewhat like the book in that it had satire, but it wasn't really that obvious at all, and honestly no one really cared about it in the movie. The most epic action sequences, amazing special effects for the time, and huge battles involving a bunch of space marines that are a lot like the marines in "Aliens" and Starcraft made it awesome.
The second movie was a complete piece of crap with random nudity for no apparent reason and flashlight guns. The budget was only like 9 million or something, so you can't really blame them for such a bad movie. I was just kind of annoyed that the production company decided to ruin such an epic movie with such a fucked up shitty sequel.
I was hoping the third wouldn't be so bad, but after seeing it, well, its ok but it should have been so much better. The first problem is the budget which causes many of the problems I had with the movie. Why does every sequel in this series have to be worth so little? The first movie grossed a decent amount, won a few awards and was nominated for an oscar. Why does no company want to give it a good budget and theater release? Beats me really, but whatever.
So anyways, first of all the special effects were terrible. The bugs looked decent in most shots, but they moved like SHIT. I read in an interview that they tried to copy the movement of the bugs in the original SST, well they failed pretty badly. The upper bodies of the bugs don't sway or move at all while the legs do this little spiderlike movement, it looks like they're trying to dance or something. The marauders also look like something straight out of starcraft. The models had no detail whatsoever and were textured with basically solid colors. Cutscenes in any video game made after like 1998 look better than the effects in this movie.
As for the sound, the gunfire was what annoyed me the most. Every time they shot, it sounded like their guns were shooting 9mms or something. No wonder they all died. The soundtrack was by Klaus Badelt, but from what I can remember, I don't even have a clue of what the theme or anything was supposed to be. Normally, when you think of a movie, you think of some sort of song that goes along with it. SST1 had "klendathu drop", Terminator has that little theme, LotR has its theme etc. SST Marauder just has... Silence and shitty gunshots.
The story wasn't so bad compared to the second, and it had a nice little twist in it with the Sky Marshal and brain bug. I don't really want to reveal too much about it for anyone who hasn't really seen it, but the writing was actually kind of good. The only thing that really annoyed me was the random ass religious theme it had. Some people will say "oh it was making fun of religion. You see them use it as recruiting tool at the end!" but during a certain part of the movie, the Marauders are basically represented as angels as Jolene's character is praying with this random ass character that no one cares about and spouts religious bullshit the entire movie.
Acting and other stuff.. Casper and the guy who played the Sky Marshal were actually surprisingly good. Rico kind of ruined the coolest line from the first movie though... It was so overdone like *bugs randomly stop, people all look at rico as he cocks his gun and stares straight into the camera, it does that zoom out while pulling in effect, and then he goes "come on you apes, you want to live forever?"* I almost stopped watching there.
Another thing I noticed is that a lot of the uniforms changed in Marauder. The changing of the uniforms from gray to black made the generals look much more nazi-esque than in the first movie, and a lot of the propaganda cuts were also more obviously satire than the first movie, but the MI troopers looked really messed up in their black fleet looking armor and crappy looking plastic moritas.
So yeah, basically, Marauder had a lot of problems, but it wasn't actually as terrible as I'm making it seem. The story wasn't bad, acting wasn't that bad, and it even continued with the satire that was present in the first movie (and completely missing from the second one). As I said earlier, the biggest problem was the lack of a good budget which made it impossible to shoot any sort of really cool large battle action sequences that the first movie had (Whiskey Outpost comes to mind as one of the most epic "defend the fort" sequences I've ever seen.). I'm going to hope SST4 breaks the trend and someone finally gives a continuation to this series the budget it deserves. Its been like 11 years since the last good "epic battles space marine action movie", and I really want to see another one.

Tales of the past 3

2008-01-18T16:20:00.000-05:00

So I never really liked World of Warcraft machinimas too much until I saw Naxx the movie, but nothing's really compared to it until now. Tales of the Past 3 is FUCKING EMAZING. The editing is amazing, music works great, video quality is awesome, and the story is heavily lore based, involving Arthas and the Ashbringer. Basically, its the best fucking machinima I've ever seen. The Anime style fighting annoys some people, but I think its great. I'd rather watch people flying around swinging two handers at the speed of light and shooting random energy balls at each other than a shitty fencing match. Anyways, Tales of the Past III. Fucking watch it.

Raiding in WoW?

2008-01-18T15:50:00.000-05:00

So I came across this article here, http://random-battle.com/2007/11/30/how-raiding-hurts-wow-more-than-it-helps/
and I thought it was pretty interesting, but removing high number raiding from the game would make it fucking terrible. The entire draw of MMOs to me is the fact that the harder you try, the longer you play, the cooler shit you get. Now, making raid content available to everyone would not make that many more people play it. It would simply make fights fucked up. How does a 5 man group do fights like A'lar and High king? You can't just scale down boss fights and expect them to work. The only way to make raid content 5 man is to make it extremely boring and shitty. Much like every 5 man in the game right now. The argument that making raid content 5 man will want to get more people to do it is also retarded. A 25 man raid and a 5 man heroic take pretty much the same time, and to keep the "epic feel" like the article says, the instance needs at least several bosses, each taking a decent amount of time + trash (I kind of hate trash but it definitely adds to the "feel" of the instance. ), it'll still take a few hours.

The reason that people don't do PvE is because they don't have enough time, not because "its too hard to get into a raiding guild". Raiding guilds are all easy to get into if you want to, as karazhan doesn't require any gear and you only raid like 1-3 hours a day for like 3 days a week anyways unless you're extremely hardcore. The reason people don't do PvE is because blizzard gives them OPTIONS. They can PvP which is pretty fun, and doesn't require the time commitment of PvE. The penalty is that they don't see a lot of story and content that raiders get to see. If raids were 5 man, I doubt they would do those either. It still will take 1-3 hours and its still fighting against scripted encounters, which is one of the reasons PvPers hate PvE. So then someone is going to say "why don't you just take out all the trash! We should just have instances that are 6 easy boss fights in a row with no trash and can be done with 5 people!" Why doesn't blizzard just fucking let you create level 70s with full T6? That would solve all our problems! Oh wait... It would make the game completely pointless. The reason PvErs are still playing is because they're trying to progress and feel superior to people that don't raid. The reason PvPers are playing is because they dislike scripted encounters, like to kill other people, and don't have enough time without interruptions to do instances in general. Making small group raids would get rid of the "epic" aspect of them, cause a lot of raiders to leave, and cause a lot of PvPers to... Do exactly what they were doing before. If the new "5 man raids" had a progression mechanic, then there would be less than 2% of the population on 5manBT, because it would still take as long to get there. It would just require individuals to pay much more attention, and most of the hardcore PvErs would be gone. I know if they made raids a lot easier, I would either find another MMO, get SC2, or play CSS again.
The only reason lots of people play MMOs is because if you put in time, you get something. The more you play, the more raids you show up to, or the better you are at arena, the more epics you get, the cooler you look, the bigger you e-penis is. If everyone has a huge e-peen whats the point? WoW is extremely luck and class based anyways, and PvE is just about paying attention and reading a few guides. WIthout the progression, effort, and social aspect (OF 25 PEOPLE NOT FUCKING 5 PEOPLE) of raiding, its not fun. You might have lots of purples but does it really matter?

New shit?

2008-01-08T21:32:00.000-05:00

Yes, this is my blog... I might post here, I might not, but if I do, I'm going to act like people are actually reading this because maybe then.... People will!