The Binding of Isaac (Wrath of the Lamb) is better than Super Meat Boy

I found out why The Binding of Isaac (TWoTL) felt repetive: it was because I was playing it tooooo muuuch.

And now to the main topic. Why's  The BoI (TWoTL) better than Super Meat Boy?

Simple: The Binding of Isaac gives you a lot more interesting stuff to see and do. There are thousands of combinations of items (and looks for your naked Bible children); there are many different bosses (which ones will you fight this round? Who knows?); there's even a more interesting story (for an arcade-style computer game, that is).

Super Meat Boy, meanwhile, has this for its story: rescue your girlfriend. And many of the levels feature, basically, the same exact stuff, just arranged differently.

This isn't to say that SMB isn't worth 15 dollars. But having said that, there's no need to finish the game because once you've played enough of it, you've played enough of it; there's really nothing more to see. And based on my experience I'm not even sure if it gets more challenging near the end, if that's what you're into.

The Binding of Isaac (with The Wrath of the Lamb DLC), on the otherhand, is nine dollars.

The Binding of Isaac Gets Repetitive

Eeeeh, I didn't see this coming. With the same monsters and bosses fought many times, those enemies, a great portion of the personality of their game, become uninteresting, and thus their game uninteresting. It is a case of the "familiarity breeds contempt."...Minus the "contempt" part...More like "boredom," then.

(Some humans say that people even get kinda bored of having sex with the same, admittedly super hot person, after having had them enough times. Well - maybe not "bored"; although the proverbial person would most certainly prefer someone new eventually; preferably someone experienced and in their young-twenties and STD-less.)

What were we discussing? Oh yeah. The Binding.

So, will I finish it?

Maaay-be.

A decade from now.

What I really want to write here, though, is why I decided not to become a games journalist. I've already written a two-page long essay on the subject to a friend, so to you -- dear, maybe-reading-this, reader -- I say: I decided not to be a journalist because I don't give a damn about journalisming.

I know that many other writer types opine that not giving a damn shouldn't deter one from seeking whatever it was those writers were talking about; I didn't really listen. All I know is that I don't care about providing people the news and analyses and facts and other whatever-who-cares.

And there's also the "now it's nearly impossible to obtain employment in games journalism" thing.

This post is boring.

A POST!

I have something games-related! So, I shall write about it on this blog that no one reads!

Yesterday I watched most of a StarCraft II tournament. The kind with a live audience of 1000+ people, with shoutcasters (live sports commentators) and giant screens for the audience to watch the game.

I watched the tournament to see if watching the most exciting sport was fun.

Yes - StarCraft II is the most exciting sport. Proof - In your typical non-computer game sport, the "ball will be in play." In StarCraft II, "the mothership, the Zerg, and nukes are in play."

But back to the real question: was watching a tournament (online) fun?

No, not really.

The shout casters, including the usually fun Day9, spoke as if in chains, never swearing or telling creative jokes. [Was it one of the sponser's (Red Bull's) rules? No colorful commentary?] And too many of the games weren't close ones. StarCraft II, like any other sport, doesn't actually provide many unique shows. But now and then it shows intense, close matches. Close matches involving alien races killing each other in space.

But the unfortunate thing about a tournament is that there's no promise the next X number of matches will be close. And when the matches aren't close, the drama doesn't hold up, and the show ends up mostly boring, a boringness exacerbated by that lack of colorful dialogue from the leashed shoutcasters.

So, unless you're emotionally attached to a team or a player, don't watch StarCraft II tournaments. It doesn't give you enough for your time.

(Funday Monday on the Day9 Daily is fun, though)

Done

Changed my mind. I'm done with games journalism. All I really want to write are poo poo jokes.

Good bye.

Three More Games

"I won't be a games journalist." Yeah, that might be too strong. I suspect that there may be non-review jobs.

"I suspect"? Well...that probably means that there aren't.

OK. I'm going to review three more games and make a final decision over that question: Do I care about writing reviews?

Right now I think the answer is no. And if that answer is "no," I will just write humor, satire, and short stories, and submit the humor to games sites that want them.

A Good Review

Okay, I'm postponing the end of serious posts.

I have decided not to stop trying to be a games journalist, for now.

Again, my issue is the reviews. So far I have not enjoyed writing them. I feel like my reviews of games have been a waste of the hypothetical readers' time, that they've been either unfunny or too long. And there's nothing I can do about the funny part; the average game (that I have played) has been too good to review humorously. [Yatzhee can review even good games humorously because of his drawings which double opportunities for humor.]

I'm not ready to abandon games journalism yet because I think I've found a structure for the typical game review, one which will at least make the "boring" reviews concise and thus useful to the reader.

The structure goes like this:

1) A hook to entice the reader for the coming luscious parts.
2) An explanation of what the game's about: what type of game it is and what the player's role is and what makes the game unique.
3) The things that make the game not as good as it should be.
4) Conclusion; overall opinion of the game and a sexy last sentence.

The better the game, the shorter the review. The worse the game, the longer and funnier the review.

If I can master this format, I think I can grow to like review-writing. But if that doesn't happen, then I'm done with games journalism. And if this divorce occurs, I'm going 100% for humor-writing.

Hold My Horses!

You know what? Before I abandon serious writing (i.e. games reviews), I should do some writing for an actual website. 

Not to say that the amazing Stage-Zer0 is not an actual website. It is! You have to find it on the Internet.

But no one reads Stage-Zer0 (no offense).

Perhaps the reason I'm losing feelings for reviews-writing is that no one reads my reviews.

So, I'm going to fix that. I'm going to write for websites. Starting when I get back from Denmark.

Until then, I'll be here.

DayZ Coop Day Last and Final

NO MOAR!

Upon joining a server, my friend told me that he had been murdered (back on the southern coast, of all places). So he respawned (on the east coast of all places), and agreed to meet me in Berezino, the big city on that coast.

Long story short, he got there first, climbed a ladder to snipe zombies, got hit by a zombie that climbed that ladder, fell through the railing, and broke his legs and died (again). I uninstalled the game.

THE END

DayZ Conclusions

Message to my friend:

Dale! I deleted Arma II (AKA DayZ). I couldn't stand how broken it was and how there was no end game. All you do in DayZ is spawn, sneak around zombies to collect items to not die, and work with your friends to hunt other players. Maybe helicopter-restoring occurs. 

The length of time you survive and the people and zombies you kill do not get saved anywhere. DayZ's creator Dean Hall says, in a future game (which won't be the mod) he would like to add base-building. Until that game comes out, I feel like DayZ mostly wastes the player's time. And it's buggy as hell. My friend kept getting knocked through railings (which is physically impossible) and thus falling to his leg-breaking deaths. My ammo mysteriously disappeared upon joining another server once. Bugs like these are bad.

At the same time, I'm excited to see the games that this mod will create.

Tribes: Ascend (Review) 2nd Opinion

I, like you, read Paul's review of Tribes: Ascend, downloaded the game, and was convinced Paul is dumb as bricks.

Here's the make-up Stage-Zer0 review:

Tribes: Ascend is a team vs. team, PC shooter (played in the first or third person, depending on your preference) in which you zoom across maps at 100-200+ miles per hour. This speeding is done via the game's unique "skiing" mechanic. At least, that's what the game calls it; I like to think of it more as ice skating with guns. You hold down spacebar and the laws of physics glide you across the ground as if there's no friction. And there's still gravity, so what you'll want to do to go fast is jet pack into the sky or to the top of a hill, and "ski" down the hill. When you're skiing brings you to an incline up a hill, jet pack to the top (maintaining your speed) and ski down the new hill, making you go ever faster than before.

The game is free-to-play, although you can unlock tools and weapons with XP you gain in matches or with cash. This is not what prevents the game from being great.

The problem with the game is the auto-balance. It doesn't occur enough. And I'm not even sure it works. What this failure does is makes most matches one-sided, ski-fests. You might as well play waltz in the background.

And yes, this makes the game a waste of your money and, if you continue to play it after learning the new mechanics, a waste of your time.

DayZ Days 4 and 5

Day 4

My Mormon friend and I decided to meet outside of Cherno. But to make things less suicidal we joined a mostly vacant server. Perhaps it was this that convinced my friend to run through that dangerous capitol city. Or maybe it was because I asked him to and he trusted me for some reason.

Anywho, he got everything he ever wanted in twenty minutes in that city, and finally he liked DayZ. I reminded him that, in the five hours he played before, he didn't get as much as he just did now.

After this we trekked northeast, away from the city, for half an hour, traversing a sixth of the map. In a forest we called it a night. It was nighttime in that server.

Day 5

His friends weren't online today. So we changed plans; instead of heading to the east coast where they were trying to restore a UH-1 helicopter, we decided to head towards the center of the map, where the town Stary Sober lay, where a small military post was, where military stuff been?

During our trek there, I told him about how the military post would almost certainly hide a bandit, just waiting for players.

We stopped at a castle. It was nice.

As we neared Stary Sober, I re-realized how big the town was. For one thing, it had a water tower. Towns with water towers usually mean big towns. And big towns in zombie apocalypses have lots of zombies (See? This game does teach useful things).

We began crawling into the town. And then, for whatever reason, a zombie attacked us. We shot it to death. And then ten zombies attacked my Mormon! I killed them (just the zombies), and my Mormon friend went unconcious (in the game). I revived and bandaged him. Then he said something like, "My blood is at 4,000, and I'm seeing black and white." So I gave him my one blood bag, restoring him to full health (12,000).

We attempted to cross the dirt road. For whatever reason related to us standing straight up in the middle of the day with zombies roaming the place, we got attacked by two zombies stumbling from town. After shooting them, twelve zombies attacked! And I nearly died, my AK-74 (tiny edition) felling most of them. My health was at 1,800. The screen was black and white and blurry and blind.

"So much for sneaking into the town and not raising the suspicion level of nearby players." We said.

We sneaked (and by "sneaked" I mean "attracted the attention of a zombie," which failed to follow us up the stairs) up to the second floor of this giant, rusty, metal warehouse. It was my idea. I forgot my friend's tall-buildings curse.

He fell from the second floor and broke his legs.

He bandaged himself, but he was now unable to walk. Crawling became his way. Not the worst thing really, we didn't want anymore zombie attention. And to make him feel better I lied to him by saying that the military camp might have morphene (lying is important). As we neared the military camp - which comprised fifteen of those half-cylinder-shaped, green tents - we were attacked by a horde of zombies. My health, which was at 1,800, went to -300; so I died. My friend survived, however. "Hey Paul! The zombies are eating your body! Lol!" Not that I felt bad about that, because there was not going to be morphine in that camp. "PAUL! I found morphine! I found morphine! And there's just one!"

He fixed his bones and then entered a forest and left the server.

I restarted on the southern coast, determined to go back to that town and get my avatar as loaded as his.

My respawn was near the southern airport. I sneaked into a medical military camp, which was surrounded by barbwire and filled with zombie soldiers. They attacked me, of course, so I climbed a tower. When they got bored of me I climbed down and found the bodies of two players, which were loaded. I took an AK-47 and some ammo. I got out of the camp and ran across the airfield. There was an unarmed player on the runway, running away from me in jubilant fear. I told him he didn't need to fear me but that if he followed me I would kill him.

Once in the forest north of the airfield, I sneaked along the airport to where the control tower was, knowing there would be military loot in it. The tower was surrounded by someone's barbwire. But they didn't barbwire off the ladder. Blah blah blah blah blah.

Halfway to Stary Sober the server crashed. I joined another server and discovered that all my ammo was gone. "Servers" they're called. Ha.

So I sneaked into Stary Sober and attracted NO ZOMBIES (I now suspect that Mormons are zombie magnets). I even got a new gun (an AK-74), with ammo. I went to some bushes in an open field, lay down, and logged out.

The End of My Games Journalism "Career"

This, I hope, is the last serious post I post.

I am tired of treating games seriously. Games are not serious. Even so-called serious games are not serious. They ask you to play with them. Only the e-sports community proclaims playing computer games is serious, and they come off as silly.

Although games' inner workings sure are interesting, I don't find game rules and game theory exciting. Rather I find the experiences games create exciting.

I see myself aging. Twenty-four is not young. I, am quite done spending my creative time making unexciting things.

So this is the end of my game reviewing career, which is to say I am not going to be a games journalist; I'm pretty sure games journalists are supposed to focus on disseminating information - tell the truth, entertainingly if possible.

All I really want to do with my life is hang out with my friends and make poo poo jokes. I want to make great poo poo jokes.

Tribes: Ascend Review

The Olympics are boring.

The fastest man in the world cannot outrun a cheetah. Sharks swim faster than Micheal Phelps. Team sports are mere sports. And athletes winning and not winning medals do not show how awesome their countries are. 

Tribes: Ascend, however, is awesome.

Imagine a first-person shooter. Good. Now imagine one in which you're zooming around a large map at one to three hundred miles per hour using a "skiing" mechanic (going down slopes speeds you up). Imagine you have a jet pack that quickly recharges whenever you don't use it. Now imagine this as a red vs. blue game. That's Tribes: Ascend. And it's free to play. Why even read this review? Just try it! There's nothing like it. If you don't like it, then at least you'll have done something new.

"But game critic! Everyone knows Free-To-Play isn't REALLY free-to-play."
.....What?
"We mean that in free-to-play games, if you're willing to spend money, you can buy perks that make your whatevers stronger than those of non-spenders?"
.....And?
"That's not fair!"
Okay, yeah, you do level up certain bad-assifiers faster by spending some cash. But why care? The game is fun and free. It's not to be taken seriously. And it's so fun being in a close match, while shooting and skiing at 200 miles per hour.
".....Wow, that sounds awesome!"
Penis.

Ah, I have one complaint: when you're on a team that's really losing , the buzz gets killed. But even then, if you play well, you'll still get XP, which you can use to purchase stuff that, if you wanted sooner, you would have paid cash for; it's unfair; but, well, this isn't exactly the world's elites stealing from us we're talking about.....Or maybe it is. Maybe this game was created specifically to distract our children from studying enough to compete with the prep school-prepped inheritors of the control of the human race.

Erm. I mean - it's just Tribes: Ascend.

Tribes: Ascend features capture the flag, team death match, domination (think Unreal Tournament, where the idea is to hold parts of the map, and the more parts you hold the faster your team's score goes up); there's also a mode called "Arena," which I didn't get to because one has to reach level 8 to unlock it. 

Is Diablo III Worth Playing Knowing That Expansions Are Coming?

Uh. I don't know. Just remember to play Diablo III, over skype, with friends. And only play the Hardcore mode.

In review, to make playings of Diablo III worth it, you'll need:

1) VoIP conversation
2) With Friends
3) In Hardcore Mode

If you're missing even just one of these, don't play Diablo III, it's a fucking waste of time!

Driver: San Francisco (Singleplayer) Review

 DON'T GET THE PC VERSIONS OF THIS GAME AND ANY OTHER GAME BY UBISOFT. HERE'S WHY.

Driver: San Francisco is another big-publisher, actually-good game that not enough people played.

Don't let its obvious driving-based gameplay make you think, "Oh, another run-away from the police and racing game, yay whatever." This one's not derivative! How exactly? Well, for one thing, it features not-shit writing. It also has a silly story. It's about an actually-original protagonist who is a driver and in coma; most of the game you play in his coma dreams. In those dreams he gets the power to possess almost any other driver in his imagined San Francisco. The conversations he has with people riding shotgun are wonderfully awkward.


Contrast this plot scenario with that of most other racing games:

Illiterate Protagonist Male With Sexy Body: "I'm a special, underground car-driver who races on tracks and/or in the streets, yo!"

Antagonist: "I have stolen your fake money and your hot ass virtual woman!"

Protagonist: "I'm going to win at least twelve hours of races and maybe escape from police a bunch of times, eventually getting my stuff back in order to promote materialism; and then I'll be famous to imaginary people! Or, if there is no antagonist and nothing has been taken from me, I'm still going to become the best racer and promote materialism and narcissism!"

Driver: San Francisco promotes saving San Francisco from criminals, via vehicles, whilst in a coma. And the dialogue is quite good.

[Note: I played Driver: San Francisco in Spanish, and the characters spoke really fast, so don't take my word on the good-dialogue-ing without a grain of salt; in fact, don't take my review without a grain of salt.]

[Note: What does that even mean? "Take X with a grain of salt." I mean, salt is....salt. Seriously, I don't understand what I wrote.]

"How does the protagonist, named John, save S.F. whilst in a coma?" You ask. Well, that would mostly involve spoilers, but part of the answer lies in the game's not-famous "shift" mechanic. Basically how the mechanic works is, you zoom the camera out from your car with the right stick, you find another vehicle, and you press the "possess driver" button. You can zoom out really far to get an airplane's view of the city, and of course you can zoom back in so that you can actually see vehicles. It's fun dropping into vehicles and crashing them into others.

Just ignore the sidequests. They are basically more of what you'll be playing in the main story line. They are useless fat, and despite being that the game encourages you to play them. It encourages you in two ways: one, by not letting you listen to most of the game's fun, independent music while driving in the main quests; two, by rewarding you with fake money and new vehicles that you don't care about.

You can get the song list here and listen to them on YouTube.

And, unless you just feel that there's not enough DRM in your life, don't get the PC version (See first paragraph). The PC version lowers the frame rate after each CGI cinematic on my computer. This automatically means it will slow down on your computer, forcing you to restart the game now and then. It is Ubisoft's way of encouraging PC gamers not to play games too long in our bad-for-our-backs seating position, and it's annoying.

Day Z Not-Coop, Between Days 2 and 3

In days 1 and 2 we spent five hours getting killed. So today (yesterday) I decided I'd accumulate items by myself, so that when we co-oped again we could begin a long, danger-less, forest-filled trek to the east coast. Over there we'll meet my friend's friends.

Upon joining a server I appeared west of the capitol. I got shot at once at a military airfield, but he missed and lost track of me. I then sneaked into the eastern part of the capitol and raided a supermarket, an apartment complex, a fire station, and some player's (virtual) corpse.

Here's what I collected: enough food for two people to survive for five hours; enough soda for two people to survive for four hours; a new, camouflaged rucksack, a canteen, two injectors that revive unconscious people, two hunting knives, a hatchet, a compass, a watch, a makarov pistol with lots of ammo, an AK-74 SU and 90 of its bullets, and a tent. I got more stuff in less than an hour than my friend and I did in five hours.

The lesson: If you spawn next to Cherno, loot Cherno and escape before you get eaten and/or shot.

I sneaked out of the city to a forested hill next to some power lines. There we'll re-meet.

Day Z Coop, Day 2

In my opinion, this day was quite good, but in my friend's opinion, this day was quite gay.

We spawned on a forested hill. Towards the north, where we headed, the hill dropped into a clear valley. Well, clear except for a highway, plus eight buildings surrounding the highway.

The first thing we did was accidentally anger zombies. They ran up the hill to eat us. I told my friend, "Don't worry. I got this with my makarov pistol."

I ended up not having this with my named-after-a-fish pistol. After clearing those zombies, my health was reduced to under 5,000, which meant seeing the world as a blurry white. My friend still had 7,000 health.

We snuck into the non-village. There we found nothing and agreed to go to the largest city on the East coast. We needed a hospital, bloodpacks. We crawled north, across the street, and hid a moment in a backyard. Between that building and the next forested hill, to the north, was a clearing roamed by twenty zombies. We decided to crawl through them. "This is like frogger." My friend said.

I replied something like, "Don't worry! I am an expert at sneaking past zombies. Just keep crawling; they won't see us."

Of course they saw us. I ended up using half of my fish ammo.

After I got eaten, my friend, who had escaped, got lost and bored. He realized that the game was really REALLY unforgiving, and noted that, when you aren't in danger, it is a "running-through-the-forest simulator." This observation is full of truth (in that it is true), and it underscores the importance of having a helicopter.

Eventually he reached the east coast, and I respawned (over and over for twenty minutes) on the westernest part of the southern coast. He followed railroad tracks till reaching a town with cranes. Once there he decided to climb a building, and, in an attempt to reach another building, by running over a gap between the two, he fell and died, lol. He also broke his legs (in the game).

After many respawnings, he respawned just east of the capital city, which is located in the center of the southern coast. We decided to meet each other in Cherno (i.e. the capitol); our reasoning was that it was the most dangerous place in the game.

It started to rain. Then the server crashed. Later that night I learned that the weapons were nerfed in the latest patch.

Day Z Coop Day 1

During the latest Steam Summer Sale I bought my high school Mormon friend Armed Assault II: Combined Operations. Before that purchase, I was worried that his parents would run out of reasons to think I'm evil. No seriously I bought it for him because I felt he'd learn beautiful things about human nature while playing it. I.e. I wanted to play DayZ with someone.

I had no idea if he would enjoy Dayz until Wednesday, when, before we had even played it together, he told me that DayZ was "amazing."


Without me asking, he said, "I played DayZ with six friends! And you didn't, and you played the game by yourself for twelve hours!"

After this horrible, bad conversation we started our DayZ coop. Here's what happened on day one.

First we spawned six kilometers away from each other. He was killed by zombies. I killed myself. Suicide is an important part of the DayZ experience, especially if you play it by yourself...

But this time I killed myself because we figured if we respawned enough times we would eventually spawn close to each other. And we were right. We both spawned at the 2nd largest city, Elektro.

As we headed north, towards the town center from the port, my friend caught the attention of a crawling zombie. He decided - against my advice of simply outrunning the crawling zombie - to climb up a ladder onto a building. Then, against my advice, he decided to run over the gap between roofs. He fell down said gap and broke his legs.

The zombie lost track of him.

He tried to kill himself, but because he was in shock or something the game wouldn't let him pull up the menu with the suicide button.

I didn't have any morphene to mend his bones (yes, that's what morphene does), so I decided to drag his body into the ocean. We fell into the ocean. He regained control of his controls and committed suicide, so my plan worked. Ten minutes later I was killed by zombies.

I spawned in Elektro's port again. My friend respawned a couple kilometers away; we agreed to meet north of Elektro at a powerplant. I swam to the west side of the city and sneaked past the infamous westside-of-Elektro zombies, reaching a forest. Northwest of the town, I saw the powerplant half a kilometer away, to the North of Elektro. Then shots. Bandits were trying to kill my Mormon friend!

Long story short, he was cornered by two assholes, and he tried to kill the assholes with a hatchet. Unfortunately his hatchet attack was soundly countered by their gun-firing strategy. He totally died, lol.

An hour after we had started playing, we met at a barn north of the city. There we found junk, and we alt-tabbed to our browsers to map our course. The Internet has maps, like this one. We decided that we should go to the barn northeast of the Topolka Dam. We needed something to drink, and we knew large barns tended to have survival goods (actually they tend to have empty soda cans).

On the way to said barn, we found a few zombies wandering the wilderness, an uncommon thing. My friend said, "I'm gonna kill one with my axe! Watch my mad skills, Paul!"
I responded with: "I don't think you should try killing any zombies right now. Seriously, don't kill any zombies. And remember the last time you didn't do what I said. You broke your legs and committed suicide in the ocean." As I was reminding him of how amazingly smart I was, from behind us this zombie attacks. "Look out!" I dramatically yelled. I pulled out my axe and murdered the zombie. We slaughtered the others. One of them had canned food :)

Eventually we reached that barn. In it were seven hatchets and a crowbar; my friend took the crowbar; later on he dropped the crowbar.

After deciding to murder all the zombies around the barn, we noticed that we would soon begin dying of thirst; we proceeded to the nearest town.

The next two hours shortened into seven sentences - we ended up hunting zombies with our axes. Our blood (or health) was low, but from the bodies of the undead, we had the soda we needed to quench our thirst.

The server crashed. We joined another server.

Later on we met up with one of the my friend's friends. He was wearing a ghillie suit and had a scoped AK-74. I was once killed by someone like that.

The server crashed.

Total War: Shogun 2 Mobile Suit Gundam DLC now available

Creative Assembly have announced that the new super mega elite unit pack for Total War: Shogun 2 is available for download.

These new units come armed with weapons never seen in a Shogun game, such as nuclear missiles and giant laser swords. These "futuristic robots," says Sega, are "twenty times the size of the average soldier, can fly into space, and are masters at destroying everything that isn't another giant fighting robot."

The DLC costs five dollars and features two robots.

We at Stage Zero are concerned that a purchase of the DLC could result in a loss of five dollars. Why use the regular samurai soldiers when you can just use your mobile suit gundams? Balance problems, it smells.

Day Z Diary, Part 1/1, Take 2

I lied. I had one, just one thrilling Day Z experience when I played it solo.

STORY!

After a playthrough that had until then lasted one and a half hours, I was running through a barn, in the middle of nowhere, while being chased by zombies. On the other side of the barn was a fence and a dirt road, and across that road was a small, unlocked house. And there were a dozen zombies staggering around.

I ran across the street and into the house, hoping the new zed didn't notice me. The zombies pursuing me got lost in the barn (their AI is thankfully dumb). I gave a sigh of sighing; then I searched the house for loot.

The sound of a jeep's engine. I stopped breathing (in real life). I went prone on the wooden floor.

I heard the jeep drive past the buildings, down the dirt road. And as the sound of its engine began to disappear, I got up.

"I am in the middle of nowhere. Was that guy tracking me? No...." The jeep sound returned. I returned to the floor.

There in front of my face was ammo for my automatic pistol.

Forgetting that grabbing loot means going into crouch, I grabbed the loot and crouched. While crouched I saw, through the window, a ghillie suit firing a silenced pistol at zombies.

I went prone again, hoping he didn't see me.

After a minute, the sounds of zombies and shots went away.

I crawled to the room where the front door was. I closed the front door and the other door separating the first room from the kitchen/dining room. It took me thirty seconds to close both doors, as Arma II's wonky object-interaction system made me open and close and open and close the front door over and over, ensuring that the ghillie suit man was going to investigate the house.

I got into a corner I didn't think he'd expect a player to hide in. I figured that he'd figure that I would be in the larger room. The corner I was actually in was right next to the front door.

Footsteps. My heart raced.

He entered. He had a scoped AK-74. He was looking at the closed door! I had fooled him!

I shot at him and missed too many times. He turned around, looking confused in the way a ghillie suit looks confused. He unloaded his automatic weapon in my direction.

In Other News

I WUV MY KEYBOARD! [sickening adorable face]

My keyboard feels like butter.

I mean it feels good. The keys press clickingly, smoothly; and the keyboard is big and heavy enough to kill with....I mean, my keyboard has a good heft.

BIG GAMING SURPRISES!

Before I begin, just a reminder: I am on a break from writing. And this does not count as writing, and if it does then tomorrow I will do no writing. Minus some at work.

The first big surprise of the week is: I am still playing Day Z (the great multiplayer mod) singleplayerly. For some reason I want to badassify a character. Or: I want to make a character that will impress all my friends, if they were to suddenly appear on the same server, in the same place, at the same time, aka suddenly care about Day Z. So basically I'm preparing for the not-going-to-happen. Yeh!

Plus I want night vision goggles. Something about being in a zombie apocalypse and having night vision goggles (at the same time, in the same game) makes me happy. At least thinking about it makes me happy. I don't know if it actually happening will make me happy. Maybe I will get my night vision goggles and then suddenly be killed....

Anyways! The second big surprise is: Diablo III hardcore coop is actually kind of fun. With a friend. Plus there's the patch that makes the monsters not more damaging just because more players have joined the game. This patch precludes enemy damage spikes (i.e. instant player death). It also makes the strategy of play-the-game-in-the-non-hardcore-mode-to-be-ready-for-the-hardcore-mode no longer promotable. Yeah it's still true that the practice in the non-hardcore mode will make you less likely to perma-die, but, unlike the past, it is not THE way to beat Hardcore mode.

All that is to say: Hardcore Mode Diablo III seems fixed. Plus not many people are playing Diablo III, making the servers not lag.

In conclusion, I am not writing. Not rewriting. Will not write tomorrow.

Taking a Break

I am going to try to take a break from writing. Just for a week. I have a bunch of random work to do (on top of the day job). A little stressed. Just want to relax with some gaming, with friends (rainbow :).

Day Z Singleplayer Review

Don't play Day Z without a friend.

You know how they say Day Z is the closest thing we have to a zombie apocalypse simulator (woo hoo)? And you know how everyone says that, in a zombie apocalypse, being friendless and quite often attacked by zombies and trigger-happy other survivors makes you feel extra lonely?

Well that's what playing Day Z without friends is like. You could meet a friendly survivor. But chances of meeting a friendly survivor (in my experience) are 30%; and (in my experience) they nice ones tend to be dying when you meet them, and have lost the will to kill you. Sad, I know.

ARMA II Singleplayer (REVIEW)

Being a former lover of Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, I was stunned (yes! stunned!) by all the unhappy reviews of Armed Assault II. And so, finally, I have played a day's worth of Armed Assault II to make my own opinion.

My opinion is that the singleplayer portion of Armed Assault II is unhappy.

Armed Assault II's singpleplayer is basically Operation Flashpoint's singleplayer with better graphics and worse writing.

In the campaign, you play as a modern day, Force Recon marine being manly behind the lines of a "communist" division of retards who've failed to realize that the Soviet Union died. Said division has also failed to realize that trying to defeat today's United States military, conventional warfare-style, is even dumberer.

To balance this out, your spec ops team of manliness (Team Razer) is incidentally also composed of dumbasses. They are so dumbfoundingly stupid that I wonder if Bohemia Interactive intended it. Example of their stupidness: When we spec ops goons were in the huey helicopter flying towards the LZ for our first mission, one of them asked "So what's the terrain like?" And then his ex-teammates didn't throw him off the helicopter for being the worst commando in the universe.

HE'S ON THE HELICOPTER HEADED FOR THE LZ AND NOW HE'S ASKING WHAT THE TERRAIN'S LIKE?...

Later on they marines continued to say a bunch of retarded, gung-ho things in weak-body, nerd accents. And often their sayings would make no sense given what they had just said. Here's an example (not an exact quote): "Get you're (bad word) (badword) together marine. The enemy isn't going to make it easier on you when you fail to do stuff." Followed by, "Meesa like ice cream!" Does Bohemia Interactive think humans talk like that? NO! What happened is that they worked hard on making the Direct X 9 version of Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, and not on writing dialogue that should exist. 


The writing wasn't good in Flashpoint either, but at least I was younger and retardeder when I played that one. I don't recall it being this horrid.

[I have positive things to say: three years after its release, Arma II runs pretty well, even on today's low-end gaming PCs. Also, the forests look really foresty; given the history of computer games forests, this is quite an accomplishment. Also, I like Bohemia Interactive. Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was one of the best games I ever played.]

Now pretend that you ask, "But what about Operation Arrowhead? The U.S. Army in 'Takistan' campaign?" Well, I couldn't get myself to play it. But before you dismiss this review as tripe, here's why I couldn't: Arma II's singleplayer missions and tutorials failed to activate mission-and-tutorial-ending triggers 4/10 times on my machine. So, uh, yeah I didn't want to play an entire campaign of potentially-4/10-times-the-level-won't-end-for-some-buggy-reason. Back when I was a kid I might have, but again, kids are stupid.

So why buy Armed Assault II: Combined Operations if you're not going to play Day Z? Right now I don't know. I imagine that the coop or team vs. team multiplayer might be cool, with it's playing-military-with-actual-non-Team-Razer-people. Although I do fear that multiplayer missions won't end 4/10 times.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent (REVIEW)

Because not many games sites have reviewed Amnesia, this time I will write a comprehensive review explaining all the things that make this game great (and not).

Just kidding! FART


Seriously. Under this line I begin a serious review.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is about Daniel, who is suffering from amnesia and is making a dark descent. But there is something that makes his amnesia not merely another boring amnesia: he is suffering amnesia in a horrible castle of horror. It's the type castle wherein the only living things are giant cockroaches and rats, plus a few people. And the deeper Daniel goes, the more tortured cadavers, and the more memories of their becoming cadavers, he finds. There are blood splatters. There's this pink, dangerous, throbbing matter slowly growing throughout the place. And almost everything is the color dark.

So you, Daniel, will need to light candles - when it is possible and desirable - and NOT run out of oil for your lantern, for staying in darkness too long makes you - the player - go insane and that makes the screen go blurry (you will hope: temporarily blurry). The game's developers understand that blurry darkness is scarier than just blurry or darkness. And they threw in dangerous monsters, here and there, whom you cannot fight; looking at the visible, mutilated monsters makes the screen blurrier.

What I am saying is Amnesia: The Dark Descent is excellent. Not excellent as in "fun," but excellent as in "makes you scared." The world needs more of these.

It's not just the darkness that makes the game scary. It's the scary music. The scary monsters (whom you cannot fight, but can only hide and run from). It's that running out of oil and hoping that you'll find more. It's the medieval torture devices and your imaginings of how they were used, combined with Daniel's memories of the begging and screaming. It's the slow revealing of the kind of person our hero Daniel is. And there's little of the cliche SURPRISE!! A MONSTER!!! BOO!!!!

Amnesia won't make you pee your pants, I think, but I think it will raise the hair on your arms. Thus it is good.

The game plays in the first person, gives you no weapons, and has manifold puzzles, and not too many.

Kickstarter Project: Give Me Your Money

Hi. My name is Ralph, and, through Kickstarter, I want you to give me lots of money. The thing is, I don't want to get a boring, soul-crushing, full time job. I just want the money, because money would allow me to do much more of the things I like, like play computer games, buy prostitutes, and eat microwaveable food.

PLEDGE $10 AND YOU WILL GIVE ME $10.

PLEDGE $25 AND YOU WILL GIVE ME  $25.

PLEDGE $50 AND YOU WILL GIVE ME  $50.

PLEDGE $100 AND YOU WILL GIVE ME  $100.

PLEDGE $500 AND YOU WILL GIVE ME  $500.

PLEDGE $1,000 AND YOU WILL GIVE ME  $1,000.

PLEDGE $2,500 AND YOU WILL GIVE ME  $2,500.

PLEDGE $5,000 AND YOU WILL GIVE ME $5,000.

PLEDGE $10,000 AND YOU WILL GIVE ME $10,000.

I, Ralph, pledge to give 5% of the profits back to the Kickstarter community. More information on Kicking it Forward

What to Be Excited About

As saturnine and pessimistic as I am about everything, I'll admit: gaming is beautiful. And it has some exciting things going on, which I will discuss below this sentence.

Little Ouya the Console System. I'm putting this on the list because I pledged $99 to the project. I am 50% sure the project will fail in the long run, because it sounds too good. A pro-indie console system, not being funded by billionares, that costs more than $100 to make, yet is sold for $100 dollars, and runs on a micro-transaction, free-to-play business model. It so might not make it. I HOPE IT MAKES IT. NINETY-NINE DOLLARS!

Day Z: Game companies are doing a bad job convincing me that we need new, global warming-boosting, super computer consoles. Unless I consider Bohemia Interactive.

Can you imagine awesome, open-world games with graphics like Arma III's? Yes? And it doesn't really matter? Okay. True. Direct X 9 looks good enough. And there's Arma II, which looks good enough, although moves awkwardly (but really, that's just bad design).

And there's Day Z, which apparently will go a Minecraft business model and won't rely on Arma III? We'll see. For now the alpha version of the mod is Rockpapershotgun's game of the year.

The World Economy Not Collapsing: This of course is hopeful thinking, as everything looks like apocalypse. The average 1st worlder isn't willing to sacrifice comfort and instant gratifications to do the things that would make their lives worth living.

And the governments are out of money. Unemployment is rising. Daily work hours are increasing. The increased pay rate remains below the increased rate of inflation. Too many people still marry not because of friendship, but because of money, "love," and the desperate need to perpetuate their genes no matter the torture and irrelevance it imposes on everyone. The cowardly U.S. legislature hates itself too much to do what must be done. And the presidential candidates suck.

Also, global warming, and the small possibility that the Sun will wipe away our electricity next year in a powerful coronal mass ejection.

Cool Indie Games: Nobody can stress enough the good that is independent artists. So what - that not all their work's good? At least they make original things with the potential of being awesome. As opposed to almost every big game company; although, yes, there are exceptions to the all-big-game-publisher-games-are-crap rule, Xenoblade Chronicles being this year's example.

Valve: Because Valve is Valve.

My humor writing: It is gaming-related. No lie.

John's Kickstarter Pitch, Transcribed

"Hi motherfuckers!

I'm doing like this project on the tropes vs. the abortions of homogay colored babies in video games.

I'm like very surprised that, like, no one's done an analysis of the abortions of homo colored babies in video games, 'cause there's a lotta them.

Here's an example from the 21st century cartoon Samurai Jack:

[Show clip of Samurai Jack killing Chinese dragon monster]

As you can see, this cartoon is, like, super boring. My plan is to analyze video games in the same way I just analyzed this cartoon.

I will analyze just twelve video games, although there are lots with the problems. I will put twelve analysises videos on the Internet, one each month. But I won't do it without your kickstarter help. I need 150,000 dollars.

It takes a lot of time to research shit, and money means time, and time means money, and money means 150,000 dollars, so I can make like the tropes vs. the fag aborted fetuses that are black in video games."

Advertisement for Xtreme Pizza

"This is our advertisement for Xtreme Pizza. Our pizza is so good that it will make you fat, so buy lots of our pizza so we can make money. Our pizza is called Xtreme Pizza because it is extreme."

Why We Must Go Nuclear

We need to go nuclear so that we can fight Global Warming so that we can keep playing computer games. 


Now I know some Ukranian and Japanese and Earth people may think this is not the way to go. But they're wrong.


Here's why: according to the people who live in university buildings, the world is going to end if we don't stop Global Warming next year (Scientific Formula: Current Year + 1 = Next Year). And according to Germans, the only way to get us off greenhouse gases is to go nuclear. So we must go nuclear.


I will admit though, I'm not sure exactly what they mean by "go nuclear." I know going it would fix our energy/global warming problems, but does it mean we build nuclear power plants or nuclear weapons? 


I'm just kidding, of course. They mean both. 

First let's deal with the nuclear weapons bit. We already have a billion of them. So we're safe there. Now let's move on to the nuclear power plant bit.

I understand that some of you may think nuclear power plants are bad, with their mutating our children into five-headed people qualities (although, five heads are better than one; just sayin'). Plus the plants explode and destroy the nations they're in. Yeah, that sounds pretty bad. But I bet, if you read through my summary of the nuclear power plants incidents, you'll find that said incidents are, in the future, quite avoidable.

1) The 3-Mile Island Nuclear hoedown: This, readers, was caused by the company not training its employees how to do the things necessary to run a nuclear power plant. For one thing, nobody told them where the plant was. So they were unable to run the plant. Then suddenly on the news there's this nuclear meltdown, and the workers were like, "Oh! It's in Pennsylvania!"

2) The Chernobyl Thingy: Basically, this one occurred because the interface between the power plant workers and the nuclear meltdown was completely unintuitive. For one thing, whenever the plant had an issue, the plant's main screen would light up and show the workers these options: "Battleship"; "Chess"; "Pong"; "War and Peace (the video game)." And you'd think they'd pick Pong. But in Pong they had to win many matches before the plant would say what the issue was. So they normally picked Battleship. Anyways, it was because of this system that they couldn't stop the plant from exploding.

3) The Fukushima Nuclear Tsunami Incident: Basically the problem with this plant was that it was in Japan.

So there! All we need to do to prevent nuclear power plant-related nuclear reactor meltdowns is to make sure we: one, train the nuclear power plant workers; two, make it so the workers don't have to beat video games to see the status of their plants; and three, not have any of these plants in Japan. It's not like Japan needs electricity.

And we have to do this. Otherwise we will either be forced to abandon electrical devices "at the last minute" and not be able to play computer games, or we'll be destroyed by Global Warming and not be able to play computer games. Either of those would make life not worth living.

Why People Still Can't Have It All

Three days ago I was using the bathroom, if you know what I mean. And what I mean is, when I was finished pooping (into the toilet), I reached for the toilet paper and found that it wasn't there. I froze, of course. I mean, I stood still for a moment. I looked at the thing that normally holds the toilet paper, and just stared, stricken, at the brown cardboard cylinder, for I had realized the horror, that I could not have everything I would want in life.

Eventually, I did get TP. It took a minute of strange walking. Hmm...I guess that kind of ruins the point of this essay....Anyways....Um....Forget everything you've read so far. The point of this essay is that people, whether they be big or small, rich or tall, intelligent or retarded, cannot have everything they want. And because this is a games website, I want to stress that this goes especially for gamers. Like, for example, when I was a kid, I played way too much Diablo II and StarCraft and Unreal Tournament and Medal of Honor and Homeworld Cataclysm and Red Alert 2 and Age of Empires 2 and Operation Flashpoint and Warcraft III and Wing Commander: Prophecy and StarFox 64 and Ken Griffey Jr's  MLB (N64). I want a time machine whereby I can travel back and advise myself not to play too much of those games and to not play Ken Griffey Jr's MLB (N64). But, although I want a time machine, I just don't have one. You see? I'm saying that I can't have everything I want and therefore neither can you. Not that you can't have what you want just because I can't have what I want. I just mean you can't have everything you want....

Now that you understand what I'm saying, let me give you another example of other real people not getting everything they want.

We had Buddy interview people of his choosing to do this for you:

Mr. Sordofstabin: "Well my wife and I used to have many an adventure in the World of Warcraft."


Mrs. Sordofstabin: "Yeah we used ta play da game a lot."


Mr. Sordofstabin: "I was an attorney of the office of Big & Boobies."


Mrs. Sordofstabin: "Yeah he used ta make a lot o' da mahney."


Mr. Sordofstabin: "One day, from my wife, twins were born."


Mrs. Sordofstabin: "Oh yeah they was beautiful. Wan was a girl, and wan was not."


Mr. Sordofstabin: "Eventually I stopped leaving for the office. It cut too much into my time in the World of Warcraft."


Mrs. Sordofstabin: "Yeah, I stopped workin' in da haus'."

Mr. Sordofstabin: "We got our adventures in the land of Azeroth to be what we desired: sixteen hours a day."


Mrs. Sordofstabin: "Oh yeah, da house looked laik a hole, and smelt laik wan, too."


Mr. Sordofstabin: "Then our babies died."


Mrs. Sordofstabin: "Yeah, we was sad. They had kild demselves. I had ta stop playin' WoW ta dispose of der bodies."


Mr. Sordofstabin: "Well you got what you came for. Can we end this? I had no knowledge they allowed visitors here beyond the time of ten day hours."


Mrs. Sordofstabin: "Yeah. I hate id when dey hit me wid da black sticks."


Uh.

Right.

Buddy found and interviewed those people. Good job, Buddy. What was the point we were?...Oh yes! People can't have everything they want. The Sordofstabins?....Wow. I mean, they wanted to have children and maintain a house and play eighteen hours of World of Warcraft per day and...yeh.

Bioware Fixes Mass Effect 3 Endings. Fans Still Pissed.

This week Bioware amended the endings to the ending of the Mass Effect trilogy; despite this, thousands of fans remain angry and depressed.

Earlier this year when Bioware released Mass Effect 3, thousands of fans became outraged over the three, brusque, nearly identical endings to what was a one-hundred+ hour trilogy that made players feel like they were actually living a hero's life. Players stated that the endings left them with negative feelings, such as "a need for more closure" and "a sense of meaninglessness" and "a crushing sadness that left me crying in dark corners." 

Mass Effect player John Boringson explains, "I've played and replayed Mass Effects one and two multiple times so that I [Commander Shepard] could have the best ending for me, my friends, and the galaxy. Bioware told us that the decisions we made would affect how it all ends. But all I got was the realization that my life is s***."


Thousands of explanations similar to Mr. Boringson's flooded the Internet for weeks after the game's release. Most of the messages were more concise than Boringson's, stating things like, "f*** Bioware," and "hope everyone at Bioware dies," and "nothing ever mattered..." Mass Effect fan Bob Losermun even went as far as to take the issue to the United States government. In his letter he wrote, "Please, government, make Bioware fix the Mass Effect 3 endings. If they don't fix it, I will die." 


The new endings are now out and can be downloaded and played in the game, or viewed on the Internet. Every plot hole has been filled. There's plenty of "closure." And, in the Stage Zero opinion, although they maintain Bioware's tradition of okay writing, the new endings are good. The. New. Endings. Are. Good. AND PEOPLE ARE CRYING ABOUT THEM. Wow.

Tekken Producer Tells Fans to "Shut the fuck up you whiny fucks!"

Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada, in a response to hundreds of letters asking his company to only use the voice work from previous Tekken games in the new one, has told fans to "Shut the fuck up you whiny fucks."

Mr. Harada's latest comments come after he had already responded to over a thousand letters and ripped his hair out.

"We have new voice work. We already paid for it. Tell your readers to deal with it." Said the exasperated boss to the games press. "I can't believe they actually take the time to write these letters." He then showed us some of the letters, many of which had large, greasy finger prints on them.

"Some of these are really bizarre." Continued Mr. Harada. "This one says, 'When I make out with my daughter, I like listening to the old voices from Tekken, so I turn on an old Tekken game and play it with my free hand. But I just bought a PS3 and I want a [sic] the better graphics Tekken. But I want the old voices, too, because it turns me on. Please put the old voices in the next Tekken.'" After reading this the producer said to us, "That fans of this game can be like this makes me regret my life. I am considering suicide."

So we at Stage Zero want to make this a public service announcement. Please do not send letters to Namco Bandai about how you are pedophiles with your children. And also don't ask for the old Tekken voices in the next Tekken. This may cause someone to lose their life. Plus the new voices will probably be better anyway.

In other news, on Monday Diablo III's game director Jay Wilson responded to angry fans who live in the  Battle.net comments section, by saying, "Come choke on my dick you useless, virgin, obese sacks of shit."

Square-Enix Reaches Out to Female Gamers by Killing Prostitute Nuns, Beating the Shit Out of Lara Croft

This month Square-Enix released an ad for the new stupid Hitman game plus the E3 presentation of their next big Tomb Raider game. 

Here's the Hitman ad. Yes. Women are so going to pre-order this game.

As for the Tomb Raiderness, Square's done a lot to make the next entry in the series appeal to women. The new Lara Croft is younger, says "sorry" to animals after killing them, will have a hot voice actress, and no longer has nuclear missile-sized titties*. Her garbanzos are smaller now, and this should connect with more women; not that we at Stage Zero are saying that most women's garbanzos are lesser than the big garbanzos of women who have big garbanzos. We think small garbanzos are great! They're awesome!

Anyways, Square-Enix has also made it so that Lara demonstrates tons of girl power™, mostly by having her get raped. Not literally raped, of course. The journalists at the E3 presentation weren't applauding a female video game protagonist getting raped. That would be aaawk-waaard. No, what happened was we saw the new Lara get brutalized more than any other gaming protagonist in any other game ever. Am I wrong about that? Doesn't matter. Lara gets totally raped up. Thus women will definitely love this game. Only Kratos (a buff, half-naked guy) comes close to getting as raped as Lara; Kratos gets a pillar and a sword thrust through his abdomen; Lara gets a spike stuck thrust into her body, plus a million other things. According to the YouTube comments sections, many male gamers are excited for this game.

Stay tuned to Stage Zero for more stories of feminism in gaming.

*"titties" means "garbanzos," i.e. boobage.

Why You Shouldn't Eat A Gaming Computer

There's a great problem in our country (The United States of America), and it is ruining the lives of many United States of Americans, by killing them. Yes, you know what it is. It's the eating of gaming computers.

Obesity, generally caused by the habitual overeating of less then wholesome foods, has been a problem in our country for years, but now we are on the brink of national destruction via this new trend. The eating of too much people-bloating food was one thing. The eating of large boxes of plastic and metal that in the past couldn't fit into people's mouths is even worse. I mean, it's a gaming computer. It's equal to three American meals in one. And it's getting eaten! Even most nutrition experts agree that it shouldn't be possible. Yet it's happening, and the rate at which it happens increases everyday.

We must all encourage anyone we suspect of an eating problem to NOT eat any gaming computer. Here is some of what you can say to save someone's life:

1) Say, "Do not eat a computer." Even just trying to fit a regular computer into one's mouth is (usually) extremely painful. Plus computers are relatively expensive (five hundred dollars for a low-end gaming PC these days).

2) Inform them that the human body cannot digest computers. The things tend to get stuck in some part of the digestive system (usually the face), and cause many unwanted symptoms, such as facial cramps, choking, problems with sight, cavities, drastic increase in weight, and death.

3) While computers are expensive, food is cheap. Even Walmart sells organic food. Again, make sure the person you're helping understands that computers are expensive and are neither food nor organic.

And that should work. If it doesn't, call 911 and say, "My (friend/relative/fellow American/guest from foreign country) is trying to eat a gaming computer!" Make sure you mention that it's a gaming computer. If they think it's a regular computer, your call will get redirected to the nearest poison control center.

THE FINAL STAGE ZERO POST ABOUT DIABLO (WARNING: NOT HUMOROUS)

Today we discuss whether or not Diablo III really is better than Diablo II, with a focus on death and dying.

"How can you even bring this up?" You ask. "Diablo III is the latest and best take on its genre. Or maybe I'm trying to say that Diablo II was dark and scary and trying to do new things while Diablo III is elegant and colorful and all about doing almost nothing new."

You are correct. But that doesn't get to the core of what makes those games better or worse than the other. It is how the games handle death and dying differently that makes one superior (to the other). Let us actually begin.

The modes. The Diablos II and III are basically two games in two. Or four games. Whatever! Two's called the "Hardcore Mode" and the other two's called the "Not Hardcore Mode." This is why when we begin comparing Diablo II and Diablo III, we'll actually be comparing their takes on those (two?) modes! ARGH!

1. Why Diablo II's Not Hardcore Mode (NHM) provides a better experience than Diablo III's Not Hardcore Mode: It's because Diablo III abandoned the The Average Enemy is Dangerous So You Better Spam Your Health Potions system. Instead it uses the God of War Health Orb and You-Can't-Spam-Your-Healing-Potions systems. At first, I did like the new systems; they made the boss battles have a sense of I-can't-just-press-the-health-drinking-button-to-win; plus I didn't have to waste time making potions of rejuvenation.

But it also made all the non-boss battles either too easy in all of Normal Difficulty, or, with the higher difficulty elite monsters, impossibly hard without the right loot, which takes forever to get. Or in short: Diablo III's monsters end up being too easy or too hard, while Diablo II's monsters are variations of "about right," unless you play D2's Barbarian (google iron maiden Diablo II).

But that's actually not really why Diablo III's NHM is worse than Diablo II's; Blizzard has recently patched Diablo III so that the higher level, epic monsters aren't so ludicrously difficult; it doesn't change the fact that Diablo III's normal difficulty is stupidly, boringly easy, but...oh well, at least a D3 player can say, "Well, the graphics are prettier, and it's easier to start a game with my friends and get items - via the auction house. And the interface is pretty."

The best way to convince yourself that Diablo II's NHM is better is to realize that, until you get to level 53 in Diablo III, D3 doesn't punish you for dying (and yes this is a bad thing). In Diablo II, dying would cost you XP, a chunk of the gold you were carrying, damage to the stuff you wore and wielded, and temporary nudity which would result in you having to retrieve your items from your corpse. In Diablo III, the punishment is minor damage to your adorned, wielded stuff....and that's it; repairs cost nearly nothing until you've played through 2.5 of the game's difficulties. Diablo III (in not hardcore mode) takes forever to provide the thrills of risk.

2. NOW ON TO HARDCORE MODE! Which game's is better?

Diablo III's. The auction house shortens the time it takes to get the items you need to beat the game.

3. And now, the final word on Diablo: which game is better? D2 or D3?

Answer: Who cares? Both games are a waste of the times of 99+% of everyone who plays them. Neither game is particularly fun and neither provide great social experiences; and no, I do not consider giving friends "legendary" loot great social experiences, especially since all it does is motivate them to bore themselves in a boring game even more.


And it doesn't help the case for these games that the only intellectual growth they offer goes in the form of, "Stop playing me! Life's too short!"

Diablo III Review Score Updated AGAIN?

NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First off, we don't do scores at Stage Zero. That 90% of the reviews on this site end in review scores isn't evidence against the fact that we don't do scores. We've never done scores. What are scores?

Yet I'm feeling an urge to change the Diablo III review (thinking of alternative word) vagina. I won't change it, of course. You see, I went to bootcamp where, for weeks, they taught us not to change our vaginas of games. And now you know why our Diablo III review vagina has never been changed and why it will remain what it was and is.

So then, why mention this at all? 


It's because the top Diablo III player in the world, Kripp (actual name), recently explained that, yes, the weeks-worth-of-time-saving way to beat Hardcore mode is to play all of Softcore mode. This means playing the game on all its difficulties, twice. 


This is evil, because softcore mode is boring. Hardcore is how I like it and how you like it. Don't pretend you don't feel the same (wink wink).


Where was I? Ah! Mr. Kripp. Yes, he not just said you have to play softcore, too, to not lose your sanity dying in hardcore mode, but he also said you have to play softcore with the same character class you plan to beat Hardcore mode with. It shows you how the monsters fight and allows you to find out what gear is optimal for never dying in Hardcore.


In short, this game is designed to needlessly waste weeks of your time and is thus junk.

Blizzard Releases Diablo Patch Whatever

This week, I think, Blizzard released Patch 1.0.something for Diablo III. Basically it changes the game. Here are some of the changes:

• Inferno difficulty is easier. Who cares.

• Something changed with the grenades.

• There have been changes to the character classes and stuff.

• Repairs cost more not-actually gold.

• The elite, pointless items are easier to get.

• There's something called "The Staff of Herding." Ha ha, I guess.

• The patch notes page has a comments section where children say "FUK U BLIZERD" and talk about how they used to play the game 42 hours a week because they're idiots.

• The game will, overall, be better after a few years. Not that that matters.

Space Pirates and Zombies [& Bounty Hunters] (Review)

Oh! I so wanted to love this game! It was made by two guys. 

"Anything made by two guys. I love." I'd whisper into the ears of girls.


Unfortunately, I can no longer say that sincerely, as it's suddenly false. I am going to spoil the verdict of this review by now stating: Nurp.

I will now use another voice, represented by italics, to explain what's unique about the game.

Space Pirates and Zombies is the epic tale of you doing the same things over and over again for most of sixty seven hours. There will come a moment when one of your friends on Steam will notice that you're playing this game. This friend will be a kid, and he'll say something like, "Hey Paul! That game sounds funny! Is it good?" And you, knowing that this game has only been fun for four of the last forty hours, but also you being self-conscious about the fact that you don't want anyone to think you're a loser who's willing to be bored for dozens of hours, just to write a review almost nobody will read, will say, "Oooooh yeeeah! It's sooooo good! It is the computer game equivalent of hot, oil-covered, panther sex! Oh! I totally don't envy anyone who's not playing Space Pirates and Zombies right now! And overall I don't recommend it." At some point you'll send what you'll call "explicit shot shot shots!" of the game even though the kid didn't ask for them.

"Look at those real-time graphics!" You'll tell the kid. "You get to play with one ship at a time. You can switch - so freely - between them. You'll eventually be able to bring fleets of four. Little ships. Big ships! You can swap resources with space stations and pick up 'goons' (wink) to 'crew' your 'ships' (wink wink)." 


But then I realized....you realize you're sounding too much like a pedophile, and you'll fix the tone by saying, "Ships can get zombified. Self-destruct or vent the crews. How's school goin'?"

Luckily for you he's logged off. No pressure to warn him of the game's leveling up addictiveness. RPG addiction...


And that's the good of the game in a nutshell! Or, in a smaller nutshell: "The game provides a totally unique experience. Can you think of any other game that has you play out space battles amidst a zombie apocalypse?"

"....Homeworld: Cataclysm?"

.....Okay yeah, that's one. But this game lets you choose to travel to nearly identical star systems! And you get to play the same missions over and over again as a means to "quickly" build up resources! And you can trade the same items over and over and over! OKAY I GIVE UP! I WANT MY LIFE BACK! (SIXTY-SEVEN HOURS!!!!!!!!!)

Let me describe how exactly this game will waste 90% of the time you put into it by noting something Tom Chick said. Tom Chick, as you know, is the best games journalist in the universe. He rated Space Pirates and Zombies an "A" (which is a good score), and named it the 2nd best game of 2011. For that reason I bought it.

The only unhappy thing he had to say about SPAZ was that it might be "too grindy for some players."

"Ha ha!" I said. "I can take a little "too grindy for some players'!"

What I didn't know was that by "grindy" he meant: "The vast majority of SPAZ's gameplay requires that you do little thinking and exercise little skill."

"How does SPAZ manage to achieve this?" You ask.

Well, the battles you must fight to beat the game are best beaten by performing a strategy, such as: "Wait for the enemies to kill each other; stay cloaked; tell your ships to 'hold fire.'" Or "Play as a carrier and fly away from the enemy while launching missiles at them until they die." Or "Something else that's also simple to execute and works in those situations in which the carrier strategy doesn't work."

Now, I'm not saying there's no depth to the gameplay. With all the different weapons, which affect different things on different enemies, and with the cloaking and the jettisonable armor, and with the shields, and the drones. And did I mention that the game features self-destruct?! That's practically synonymous for "depth." The game has the depth.

But at the same time, it doesn't, because most of the battles involve so many ships that your piloting skills become not really important, while your Remembering-The-Strategy-That-Is-Easy-To-Perform skill is super important. And since you probably have an I.Q. over "3," this ends up making SPAZ's gameplay experience not so deep. Unless you think assigning experience points to skills is the deepest of deep gameplay, in which case, yep, this game provides a wonderful experience.

The game ends with a unique yet anti-climactic battle. This could be because I was playing it on "Normal difficulty." Or maybe it's because the final showdown was easier than half of the last 67 hours of battles. I don't know.

And that's the review! I wish I had loved the game. Two guys made it. And I played it for 67 hours.......67 hours.

[According to Tom Chick it even gets the Zombie mythology right. And according to my brain, I don't care!]

Verdict: Sixty-Seven Hours....Sixty-Seven Hours......Sixty-Seven Hours.

BREAK!

I am writing on another blog for a bit.

EA Announces Pee In Your Mouth

For months EA has been trying to convince the world that they are not the company known as "Electronic Arts" but rather a non-profit (of the losing money kind) that supports electronic arts. They even went as far as to fund some indie games and release an "indie bundle." And they even charged for it the low price of fifteen dollars!

Ha ha! Just kidding! Actually they charged seventy dollars, and a cat.

The official response from the world to EA's indie attempt was: "A CAT?!!"

Yes, it's been a tough year for the non-profit. But they are finally on the verge of resurrecting their image from the graveyard of disgrace, and turning it into the zombie of mirth, by doing the most artsy, philanthropic thingy in the company's non-profit's history.

Two days ago, EA quietly announced that they are funding and marketing Pee in Your Mouth. An indie game.

To learn more about this -- yesterday we sent Buddy to California to interview EA about the project (they won't answer our emails and phone calls; in fact, nobody does; nobody reads our blog...). But, because of our strapped budget, we decided that Buddy should go by Greyhound bus. And, unfortuntately, we found out -- via a computer in the local unlocked neighbor's house -- that EA posted e-very-y-thing about the project on the web. And Buddy's still out there, on a bus. Probably in Arizona by now.

Anyways, EA says, on the choosing of the project, that they spent a week googling all the indie game projects in the world, and (this is what finally gives them their indie cred) at random they chose to support one. And they just happened to choose Pee in Your Mouth.

Pee in Your Mouth's only designer, John John John, states in the official EA announcement post: "It is my dream come true. I am so excited to bring this game to the world. There are so many games that let you be a general or a president or a soldier or whatever. But my game will let you be someone who drinks pee."

EA says they plan to spend forty million dollars (U.S.) in developing and marketing Pee in Your Mouth. It will utilize the motion sensor technologies of the Kinect, PlayStation Move, and the Nintendo Wii.

VALVe Hires An Apocalypse

Valve has done something completely out of their happiness-promoting character. They have hired an economist. Yes. This bizarre move apparently has something to do with economic research (i.e. boring), and, in the "but" sense of the word "and," the details spell potential unhappy doom.

Their economist's name is Yanis Varouououfakis, and reports are coming in saying that he is Greek. Now if "Greek Economist" isn't enough to make you poo your pants, then just remember that Valve has hired one.

Another sign that this could be the end of everything is how the guy looks. Just look at the guy's profile pic:

Image: Yanis Varouououfakis (Source: Valve Software)

I'm not promoting that we "judge books by their covers," as the saying goes; but, at least to me,  Mr. Varouououfakis has an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Kratos, the Mr. God of War. And the last time we saw someone who looked like Kratos, the world ended, and the Gods died; not very positive results (sarcastic voice).

And if that doesn't scare you, then this will. It's what the Kratos said in his first Valve blog post:

"This is how my relationship with Valve blah blah blah. Valve’s burning desire to blah in something much bigger than just video games."

Did you notice the words he and not I just bolded, underlined, and italicized?  Well if you did, you'll also notice that this man believes, somehow, that there is something "bigger" than "just" video games.   

Also, he's married. Remember what happens when you mix Kratos with married? (Answer: Apocalypse)

Assassin's Creed III Voice Cast Revealed!

Ubisoft today released its voice cast list for Assassin's Creed III. And we at Stage Zero are not happy with it:

Jessica Drake
Jenna Haze
Sasha Grey
Tori Black
Ocean Aletta
Bree Olson
Tom Byron
Katsumi
Alexis Texas
Lexi Belle
Monique Alexander
Kayden Kross
Jennifer Hale

Only one male in the cast! What an outrage! What an insult! Sure we always knew that the Assassin's Creed series was designed for women, with its rugged, well dressed, horse riding protagonists killing all the poorly dressed, boring, asshole (stereotype) men, but this is more than just mere appealing to women. This is SEXISM against men. In protest I will never play the game. I somehow even feel sorry for Mr. Tom Byron. No doubt he'll feel like the man who survived while his brothers were left behind.

Saints Row: The Third (The Review)

Unlike Grand Theft Auto IV, Saints Row is a game featuring 100% more tigers in your car, 100% more laser jets, 100% more zombies, 100% more luchador gangsters, 100% more goth/geek/electronica-loving gangsters, 100% more Japanese ads for illegal energy drinks starring gangsters, and 100% more fun. Yet, it is a Grand Theft Auto game. Here's some proof:

This is a map of Steelport; it's the city in the game (Source: Internet).

Saints Row: The 3rd lets you wield purple dildo bats (and other things) as weapons. You have probably heard of purple dildo bats. That would be because of this game. There's also liberal use of the term "motherfucker"; and many beautiful, big-boobed women walk the streets wearing only thongs and bras and angel wings.

But these are not the only reasons why Saints Row: The Third is great and way better than Grand Theft Auto IV.

Remember the snap-to-cover system I hate? Well Saints Row doesn't have it; and (not surprisingly) it controls so much better than every game with a cover system. In SR I can just crouch, via pressing the dedicated crouch button. I can crouch behind cover, reducing my chances of being hit, and it's so elegant. It is such an advance over the snap-to-cover system of Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter, Gears of War, Red Dead Redemption, and GTA IV, that I want to end this sentence reminding you that the Playstation 2 GTAs (and every shooter before this console generation) did not have the evil snap-cover thing.

"Why then" you ask, "did the GTA devs go the snappy route?

I've got two theories -- one: Rockstar wanted to make their game to look more realistic in order to make their game look more realistic; and two: the masses believed they liked the snap-to-cover system.

I don't know which of these reasons was the real one, but lets roll with the too-realistic one, because it segways into my next point, which is: Saints Row's vehicles drive the way you wish vehicles in real life would drive: unrealistically. Saints Row's cars do not easily skid. Its autos take lots of damage before exploding. Vehicles don't flip over easily. BDSM gimps dragging carts, like horses, explode. And any tire can be armed with a spike. While GTA IV tries hard to make your car obey the boring laws of reality, Saints Row tries hard enough to break them.

Another thing Saints Row does better is difficulty curve. The main story missions follow the classic, gradually-increasing-in-difficulty one, with the optional side missions being labeled "easy," "medium" and "hard." GTA IV meanwhile follows the real-life difficulty curve; for a bit it will feel ridiculously easy, and then ROCK-EATINGLY HARD! WHY?!! And then easy again for a long time. And then HAAARD! FOR HOURS! And then incredibly easy for a mome-HAAARD!!

Another reason Saints Row is better is that it makes sense. Yes, despite having missions in which you have cars 'n trucks run over you so that you can bankrupt your health insurance company, Saints Row generally makes sense while GTA IV does not. Remember how GTA's player protagonist Niko Bellic was depicted as this thinking, morally complex man? He would say things that made you think: "Hmmm...maybe he's not a psycho mass murderer," and then you'd hijack a dozen cars and run over a thousand people. Well, Saints Row avoids this schizophrenic story-telling by making it quite clear that The Steelport Saints are a bunch of egocentric, people-killing yahoos who are only interested in money, whores, and their celebrity status as criminals. You learn that some of the Saints care about each other, yes, but regarding those outside their clique, as long as the whores and money and fame come their way, everything is right.

Not to say GTA IV is a bad game. Although it does rely on the snap-to-cover system, so it kind of is. No, seriousness, okay; GTA IV provides one of the great satires of American Capitalism, and it happened to come out right before the Recession began. (Not that I'm hinting that GTA IV was a possibly cause of the Recession. Though it was a record-breaking seller, and it wasn't short. Plus it relied on that cover system....)

GTA IV does have better radio than Saints Row.

Speaking of Saints Row, another way by which it's better is its smart phone. Both games give you virtual smart phones, but in Saints Row, calling someone actually gets useful stuff delivered to your location, such as gang members (from your gang), or a helicopter gunship, or a tank. In GTA IV, NPCs would often call you and ask if you'd like to drive them to some boring place and build virtual relationships with them. "Hey Nico! Want to go to the pub and make the player watch you drink something that they won't be able to taste?"

But, woefully, it is now time I should say some hateful things about Saints Row, starting with its better-than-GTA IV's smart phone. Its annoyance occurs when you call an ally for help and they're "busy." "Beep beep beep," It says. This is what we call, in humanland, a pointless "waste of your time"; And it's somehow realistic. I also don't like that some of the main story missions are exactly the same as some of the side missions. The game is at least an hour too long. Also, I don't like how lines get repeated during some battles, especially early in the game.

And that's it!

The game features something called "Whored Mode" for single and multiplayer. Basically it is what it sounds like, yet it's not nearly as fun as the main game.

Apparently there's also a coop, campaign mode. But I couldn't get it working, so don't take my word for it.

And now, onwards to the end of the Gears of War Healing and Cover System, Third Person Shooters Review (Part 2). Saints Row: The Third does use the auto-healing system, and it works. You know how, in Gears of War, you'll get hit, and then you'll just remain under cover and wait for your health to regenerate, and then you'll shoot at the enemy and then do all this a thousand more times until you've beaten the game? Well in Saints Row cover is fun, in part because it's hard to find. If you're taking too much damage, you'll end up running around the place in frantic excitement/fear; perhaps you'll hijack a passing car (perhaps with enemies in it!) just to stop the receiving of pain and restart the auto-healing. And none of these methods are guaranteed to work. The autohealing system, combined with the not-having-a-snap-to-cover system, well, works.

I like to think that one of the original causers for Halo's auto-healing was to make it so the XBOX player wouldn't die as much due to their bad FPS controls. I.e., with good FPS controls, health packs are funner. But in a GTA-style game, regenerating health makes sense. A level designer shouldn't have to figure out where to place health in a dynamic, city-sized, free world game, that largely has no levels.

You've probably noticed that I prefer this game to Grand Theft Auto IV. But that's not doing it justice. Saints Row: The Third is better than every Grand Theft Auto game. And the coolest thing is it was made by Volition, the creators of the classic space fighter sim Freespace 2. What makes this cool, other than seeing a relatively small developer being the best in two different genres, is knowing that finally they got paid. Freespace 2, as good as it was, sold something like twelve copies (I bought one! Me!). Saints Row, though, has sold something like six billion copies. That's almost six billion more than twelve! It makes me proud.

Verdict:  It's one of the best games ever made, but has somethings preventing it from being palatable to everyone.   Available for PS3, PC, and XBOX 360

How to Choose Your Mouse and Keyboard

Hello everybody! Today I give you mice and keyboards-buying advice. Specifically for gaming. Beginning with mice.

There are two schools of thought on mice. One's called the Get-a-Comfortable-Laser-Mouse-that-Is-Durable-and-Works University of Smart People, and then there's the other called the We'll-Buy-Anything-if-It's-Dark-and-Made-by-Razer Kindergarten Class of Yay It's Recess.

Now, many of you who have seen the prices of Razer mice might be thinking, "Why would anyone be childish enough to buy a Razer mouse?" And the answer has to do with The Claw. That is, the shape your hand makes as you hold the mouse (think "talons" -- or "eagle hands"). Many hardcore gamers in the First-person shooting and real-time strategy communities like claw-inducing mice because....well......I actually don't know why. In fact in my experience, claw mice seem most effective at making long, click-heavy game sessions uncomfortable.

Not that I'm saying the Razer school is completely wrong and composed of easily-manipulated, primarily male money-wasters. Razer mice are light, built to last, are easy to clean, and look silly with their 'snake' LED lights. Also they come in black. You can buy them on the Internet.

Both schools of thought happen to be against insertable weights. Weights make things heavier.

If you like to snipe others (in games), you might want to look at the R.A.T. 7, as it has a dedicated sniper button that raises and lowers the mouse sensitivity between two configurable settings. And when you've finished looking at the R.A.T. 7, go buy some other mouse, as many R.A.T. 7s tend to develop tracking issues. Mine did. It cost $99.

The best advice of all is to get rich and buy all the best-reviewed mice and then dump all the ones you don't like onto starving, poor people. Also, you could look for a store that lets you hold the mice, click the mice, pet the mice.

And now, keyboards!

There are many schools of thought on keyboarding, and I've compiled what I believe are their least silly views.

Least silly view number one: More than anything else, you want a keyboard that won't break. And yes, all keyboards are designed to break.

The next views worth looking at concern weight and stuff.

Do you walk, instead of drive, to millions of LAN parties? If so, you should get a light keyboard.

Do your LAN parties feature very little table space? Then get a small, quiet keyboard.

Otherwise you want a big, heavy, mechanical keyboard. The kind that can be used as a melee weapon and whose key-pressings sound like banging rocks.

And that's it! This post ends with answers to frequently asked askings:

A) Should I get a wired mouse or a wireless mouse?
A) Yes.

A) Should I get a keyboard with LED lights or no?
A) Ask your primary care provider.

A) Should I get a high-quality mousepad for a low price?
A) No.