Not only is it my birthday tomorrow, but it’s also the day the movie Doomsday opens. And it just so happens that Doomsday is the handle I used to use back when I played LAN games of Descent with my friends.
Coincidence?!
Author Archives: Soapbox Preacher - Page 4
Doomsday
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on March 13, 2008
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Wanna know the name?
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on March 11, 2008
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After a grueling all-weekend affair with Devil May Cry 3, I finally finished the game on Sunday night. By the end I had maxed out all of the styles (except the somewhat useless Royal Guard) and had enough purple orbs to Devil Trigger for fairly ridiculous stretches of time. I think one of the reviews I read when the game came out said that you should just stick with the Trickster style, and they were probably right.
I got wrapped up in the high-damage style of Swordmaster, but letting any of the later enemies hit you can really mess you up. Better to have level 3 Trickster to Star Dash out of trouble than to take a 4-bar hit from something.
Anyway, with DMC3 out of the way, I can finally start to play Devil May Cry 4. I’m trying this new thing where I have to finish 2 games before I can get 1 new game. This is in the hopes of clearing the ridiculous backlog of games I have, and to stop wasting so much money on them. My friends have already told me “good luck with that.”
I Invented You, And I Will Destroy You!
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on March 5, 2008
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A bit like Arcade Fire, a bit like Broken Social Scene. I’ve been listening to this song constantly since I first heard it.
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on February 29, 2008
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At the urging of a bunch of friends, I’d signed up for a Facebook account about 4 or 5 months ago.
For those of you unfamiliar with Facebook, it’s one of several online social-networking portals, similar to Myspace, Friendster or ConnectU. At it’s heart, Facebook is designed to let you connect and talk to all the people you liked talking to during high-school/university/work, and also all the people you didn’t like talking to that much, but didn’t want to be rude. It does this by letting you maintain a list of “Friends”, which can be people you know from school, work, or that killer party at Brad’s parent’s cottage, oh my god we totally bonded, don’t you remember that?
Once “friended”, your friends can look at each other’s profile, as well as the profiles of their shared friends. Facebook also lets them upload pictures of the beautiful spouses and offspring that you don’t have, as well as letting them provide details about their lifestyles and jobs as a doctors/lawyers/International Rockstars/Millionaire Gadabouts. At present, there are no plans for allowing you to upload clips of yourself sobbing quietly on your couch.
We Contribute Nothing, and History Will Not Remember Us
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on February 27, 2008
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GDC 2008
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on February 25, 2008
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I just got back from a week in San Francisco, attending the 2008 Game Developers Conference. Our flight got back at 6am, so I’ve been sleeping most of the day, trying to recover. This was the first time I’ve been to SF for any significant amount of time, and last time I was here I didn’t get to see around the city that much. It’s a pretty amazing place – the streets and sidewalks are so wide, and everything seems so well maintained. Walking around Union Square, I saw all the fashions I see on TV and wonder “who would ever wear that?” Well, I guess the answer is “people who don’t live where it snows.” I can’t imagine how the average person lives in the city, since it’s so fucking expensive though.
Dante Must Die (a lot)
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on February 13, 2008
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I’m currently racing to finish Devil May Cry 3 on the Playstation 2 so that I can start playing Devil May Cry 4 on the Playstation 3. Somehow with all the WoW playing I did last year, I got distracted with only half the game finished. It took a while to get used to the game since it’s a bit more difficult than everything else I’ve been playing. I just beat my first new boss since starting up again, and got a new weapon – it’s a scythe shaped like a guitar, and, uh, you can play riffs on it.
I had a talk with a co-worker about DMC. He said that it’s a great looking game with a nonsensical story. My position was that it’s supposed to be the most ridiculous, over-the-top game you can think of, and if I had to write a paper to back that up, I would take a screenshot of Dante playing his scythe-guitar while bats and lightning bolts shoot out of it and hand that in.
Bad Touch
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on February 6, 2008
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Dear Apple Motherfuckers,
Why are you sending me an email telling me you’re now making a 32 gig iPod Touch? You know I bought a 16 gig Touch from you in November, as evidenced by you sending me the email to the account I used when I registered said 16 gig Touch.
Does this new one come with the twenty dollars in applications that you would like to charge me for, or are they free like they are for everyone who bought a 16 gig Touch after January first? Oh, I know the answer is “Nope, haw haw”, I was just fuming about it. What amazes me is not that you are constantly changing your product lines in a ways that generates a burning sensation in all your customer’s pants, it’s that I am always surprised by it.
Yours, Soapbox Preacher
PS: Please eat the poop from my butt. I can’t believe you got me twice on the same product! Jesus Christ!
Down with the Sickness
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on February 2, 2008
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I’ve been battling some sort of cold for the past week. I thought it was beaten on Thursday, but it seems to be back with a vengeance now. So I spent most of today sleeping and watching movies. I just finished Lost in Translation, which I only watched because I saw Bill Murray in Groundhog Day this morning. I think I like Lost In Translation because it’s just a movie about being. I also think I like it because it’s almost a love story, and there’s something refreshing about that compared to most of the romantic comedy pap that gets made. M and I saw “27 Dresses” earlier this week and it was pretty disappointing for something that should be much better, given the people involved.
Demos A Go-Go
Posted by Soapbox Preacher
on January 25, 2008
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In between rounds of Oasis’s “Wonderwall” in Rock Band, I took the opportunity to download two new demos – “Devil May Cry 4″ on the PS3 and “The Club” on 360. Both games are due out in a few weeks; That’s right, the incredibly brief gaming drought is over already. I hope you all finished up Uncharted, Call of Duty 4, Assassin’s Creed, Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect and Orange Box in the last few weeks. Oh, you didn’t? Well, too bad.
I’ll talk about “The Club” first, since it doesn’t seem to be getting very much coverage. You might know the developers by their other famous franchise, “Project Gotham Racing“. At first glance, PGR might seem to be just another arcade racer filled with scores of shiny expensive cars. Unlike Ridge Racer or Need For Speed, your objective isn’t just to win races, but to impress everyone by racking up Kudos at the same time. Drifting through corners, 360s and drafting all earn you Kudos points, as does completing sections of the track without hitting anyone. If you can string together these different types of feats with a minimum amount of time passing between each one, you will build up a combo meter which increases your total number of Kudos when the combo finishes. It’s unique enough that PGR’s publisher, Microsoft, owns a patent on the system. Incidentally, this is only one of two patents for a system in a videogame I’m aware of. The other describes the Sanity System for Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.
“The Club” is like PGR, except instead of controlling a car, you control one of an assortment of 8 mercenaries. And instead of pulling off car tricks, you shoot people.