Hard-Rockin 80s Until the Day I Die Posted December 30, 2013
It's hard for me to not get all teary-eyed and wistful about the great music of the 80s. If that wasn't enough on it's own,
MTV just came out and bands were figuring out how in the hell they make something funny enough to be memorable.
So, that basically means the following : Over-the-top guitar theatrics? Check. Girls with big hair in tube-tops
and mini-skirts dancing provocatively? Check. Guys with candy-floss poofed hair? Check. Neon? Check. Spandex? Check. Pure unadulterated 80's cheese?
Check. And if you managed to box that up into a cereal, I'd eat it every god-damned day for breakfast.
All the good stuff I remember as a kid growing up in the 80's.
This is an unapologetic love-letter to my childhood. If you don't like it, you probably didn't grow up
during the 80s, or your sister found your Cabbage Patch Doll collection or something, so go read another fucking blog!
Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They Aren't After You! Posted December 30, 2013
Ok, with this year coming to a close, I think it's high-time for yet another Warren Spector masterpiece. Some would argue this being his swan song, given that
the game's gotten onto just about everydamnBest100Gamesever list
and ended up with a Game of the Year Edition, from, guess what? Curing cancer.Inventing air.Electrocuting gun-control advocates with car batteries.Starting a porn empire. Being the Game of the Year.
Put simply, Deus Ex is an old-school, plot-driven, choice-heavy RPG played FPS-style with a Cyberpunk theme. So, think Megacorps, hacking,
long leather shiny trenchcoats, sunglasses 24/7, and the enmeshment of man and machine Borg-style, just snazzier-looking. What made this game fun was the
storyline, character development, and the sheer importance of choice that this game heaps upon you as a giant gift; like one of those cakes where the dancing girl jumps out. Those ones.
It's primarily a RPG, so, yes, you develop your character through the use of augmentations that give certain abilities.
But I'll come back to that in a minute. Because what really does the job here is the story.
Terrorists, bombings, anti-terrorist agency, conspiracies... so far it
sounds pretty standard tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist meets NSA meets the Matrix. But you get the cool plot twist of agents in the
government being behind a
planned mass murder of the population (Sometimes I wonder if this would be such a bad thing) and
some other stuff that I don't want to spoil for you, especially if you're a Deus Ex virgin. I don't want to
be that douche.
The story takes you along, learning how these things are occurring, traveling the world to gather intel,
and trying to save the race pretty much. There is a lot of NPC interaction, and how you talk to people
can effect if they help you. Chock full of good dialogue with an exception made for some of the dialogue in Hong Kong. I don't know if
it was meant as a joke or what, but some of those conversations leave you feeling as though you
just watched a badly translated anime film where All Your Base Are Belong to Us.
Now onto the gameplay itself. You have a vast array of tools and weapons
available, including lockpicks, emp grenades for disabling bots and other electrical fields, and tools for
bypassing security computers. But if you want to just blow the crap out of stuff, you can do that too. Choices my good chap!
Enjoy killing anyone in your path, go for it. Feel like trying a different approach and just
incapacitating them like stealthy Ninja with some moral streak, you can do that also. The choices and methods add a fun and unique style to
this game that you don't normally get in a game with a FPS perspective. Of course, this isn't to say there aren't ramifications for choices.
You can blow the hell out of everyone, Rambo-style, but you're not going to get to do that too
often in Deus Ex, and you'll probably end up paying for it in one way or another.
You get those augmentations that I mentioned earlier and you'll encounter a number of them throughout the game, and each aug
leaves you a choice as to how to use it. Once implemented though, you are stuck with it for the rest of
the game, adding an element of replability to see what would happen if you picked the other choice. You've got Run Silent, Speed Enhancement, Combat Strength,
or Microfibral Muscle, just to name a few. A couple of the other augs do leave you with harder decisions,
such as Radar transparency from all electric sources, or Cloak from all living enemies? Both are good. And the game
gives you a bunch of these sorts of choices.
The bottom line is Deus Ex continually keeps being mentioned in lists of best ever games for good reason. Find out why.
We'll be watching you!
Yar Mateys! Get yer sea legs ya scurvy dogs! Pirate Metal Ahoy! Posted October 29, 2013
Well, it's officially Halloween and normally I'd throw up some badass evil-sounding music that fits the part
for the holiday. But, 1. I already posted the good options for that earlier, 2. There's only so
many good options for that stylistically and 3. Enough people go as damn pirates for Halloween that I can totally justify
it (sexy pirate wench anyone???).
Ok ok. I'm taking liberties, but this music is fucking awesome, so sue me.
Borrowing just about every possible option from legendary pirate metal bucanneers Running Wild, the best god-damned
band ever if I don't mind saying so (though their comeback albums have about as much wind in their sails as an
asthmatic squirrel blowing through a straw at them). Let's see here : The name of the band Blazon Stone
is a Running Wild album. The name of the album is "Return to" tacked on yet another Running Wild album. And the
riffs blow the door off anything Rock'n (now known as Dusty) Rolf has put out in the last 6 years; capturing all the
mach-speed surge of the best-of-the-best albums by them, notably "Death or Glory", "Pile of Skulls", and "Black Hand Inn".
Ok, they're frickin' amazing.
So, Happy Halloween from your evil breathren here at EvilSoft. And you don't even have to go to the local mall with a
fake parrot duct-taped to your shoulder with your friend walking a bit behind you doing the voice for it and making
a girl run away and cry when she asks you to make the parrot talk again, you tell her "Rawt! She's got junk in the
trunk!", and her boyfriend laughs, to enjoy it. Not that this has ever happened or anything...
Happy Halloween, EvilSoft-style. Posted October 29, 2013
If there is a game company that specializes in horror games, that honor far and away belongs to Frictional Games.
They're well known now for Amnesia : The Dark Descent (though the outsourced sequel is said to suck hairy johnson).
And modern lists of scariest games ever include that usually right at the top (now adding Outlast to the list).
Prior to all that hub-bub was their fantastic Penumbra series.
Using a term that means literally "Nearly Shadow", an obvious reference to the light fading, the game of course
thrusts you into dark hostile environments, and lures you through a horrific story by alternatively drawing you in and then kicking you in the ass against your will. You're not totally abandoned,
though the game will make you wish you were. Unlike Amnesia, you do have the ability to attack but you suck ass
at fighting, making running the usually smart option. The game's more cerebral than Amnesia as a general rule. It's bigger on implications of
horror than outright jump-scares. Trust me, this is a good thing.
The game uses a custom-made 3D engine, well-titled
as the HPL Engine, a direct nod to H.P. Lovecraft, the undisputed father of modern horror.
It works extremely well, showing off dark decrepit creepy environments readily. The story starts with a nearly direct rip off of Lovecraft's
"At the Mountains of Madness" with you trapped in the arctic, looking for shelter.
From there, it diverges into it's own story rapidly.
I'm hesitant to reveal too much as I don't want to spoil the experience
for you, because that experience is awesome. But, suffice to say it stands amongst the likes of Amnesia without batting an eyelash.
Let's put it this way. If turning all the lights out, the speakers up, and working your way through mind-bending puzzles and torturous nerve-wracking
events that the game throws at you, all while drenching yourself in an evocatively-told horror masterpiece sounds like a Halloween
well-spent, then you'll fucking love this game. The end.
