Posted by Amanda Marcotte February 3, 2006 in Entertainment, Link Farming
Oh, the video hits way to close to home. At various points in my life, I’ve been both the perp and the victim in this little situation.
Bonus video: The truth about Marty and Doc.
And even though you know how this exciting piece ends, it’s still a teeth-grinding bit of blogging fun. And I get vindicated, which colors my opinion of the quality of the post in no way whatsoever. Bonus: I knew Dee Dee was my favorite Ramone.
23 Responses to “Video game widows/widowers, someone feels your pain”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
can’t type now. busy playing Shadow of the Colossus. and Replaying the Hitman games. new comp means old savegames are toast.
Yeah, I saw that gamer video a while back, and dang it hit close to home. Fucking MMORPGs.
I just played about a third of the first link, and then paused it to tell my boyfriend to come into the room to watch with me.
Me: “Hey, Eric, come ‘ere.”
Eric: “Aight” (Sound of Final Fantasy XI fight)
Me: “…”
Eric: “Is there any way you could just tell me?”
Me: “No. Take your time. This is just making it funnier for me.”
Yes, My shame is called City of Heroes and City of Villians and soon D and D online.
I’m only here because The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has been delayed until April.
Call of Duty 2 anyone?
Hmm. This evening I won my 69th consecutive game of FreeCell, and got a 42 on intermediate Minesweeper. Not records for me, but records for me on this particular computer. That “Church of the Ornery” ad is gross, incidentally.
btw, did you see the panda picture at Echidne of the Snakes? Adorable. Nice koala pic, too.
Ah, I see below you blogged about the Church of the Ornery “ad.” Are balls the ugliest body parts, or what?
Are balls the ugliest body parts, or what?
I’m reasonably sure that teh ugliest body part looks like ann coulter, it’s just that no one has a clue as to what body part that is.
But it’s definately the most hypnotically shiney body part, I keep getting into staring contests with it.
I’m currently wasting a lot of time with “Destroy all Humans”, wherin I play an angry little alien who kills people and extracts their brains.
The rightwing government/military establishment blames communists whenever I blow things up.
Testicles- I’ve never really seen them from that angle before. They should be treated much like breasts- lots of stroking, no direct pressure.
CoH for me, and CoV soon.
Part of me wants to try this MMORPG thing, but, uh, I just can’t get past how juvenile they look. Granted, I haven’t looked very hard, but I did spend a half hour looking at the World of Warcraft page, and I just couldn’t get past the fact that the artwork and storylines seem pitched at actual geeky 14-year-olds or people who still think that way.
Confession: I think the first two Baldur’s Gates were great games. I liked the storylines, I liked the art, I liked the interaction between my PC and the delicate negotiations with the 5 NPCs. I tried out Neverwinter Nights a while back, and every time I load it onto a machine, I take it off within a week. Why? Because the art’s puerile, cartoonish, and the storylines just aren’t there, and the NPCs suck. I got the same feeling from WoW, except I imagined that the bad NPCs would be replaced by even worse human PCs. Do I want to hang out with most people? No. With teenagers? Hell no.
Short version: is there an MMORPG for smart people?
God, that new picture of Berube is hot.
I’m a wee bit anxious to see ‘Snoopy vs. The Red Baron’ myself…
http://www.namco.com/corporate/pressreleases/index.php?id=129
WoW’s art style isn’t remotely similar to any of the other MMO’s I’ve played. Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, City of Villains, hell even stupid EverQuest 2 all have much more “grown up” graphics (although I really, really hate EQ2’s graphics … their humanish characters look freaking creepy to me). For ones coming this year, D&D Online and Auto Assault both gravitate towards a muted colours rather than the fantastic ones.
That said, if they would just stop with the thong platemail in WoW, I would completely love WoW’s art, rather than mostly-like-it-with-some-reservations. Bright colours and exaggerated features work just fine for me. I get awfully damn tired of hearing how that somehow makes me childish, although this is the first time I’ve heard this also makes me not smart.
Anyway, if you want to get into a MMORPG with darker graphics, where you don’t have to talk to anyone you don’t want to, and has some decent storylines, you might want to try City of Villains. I’ve liked their story arcs so far (the one-shot missions are less exciting but hey, they’re one-shot missions). Of course, you’d be playing a Comic Book Villain, essentially, so I don’t know if that part would appeal to you at all … although you would get to name your characters things like “Bolshevixen.”
although this is the first time I’ve heard this also makes me not smart.
Aargh! Sorry.
Let me rephrase that like a civilized person: ‘for someone whose tastes run in a different direction.’
Thanks for the heads up on this D&D thing. I’ve seen the ads. Or no thanks if it eats my life.
It’s alright, I figured there wasn’t actually any offense meant!
The D&D Online one you might actually want to avoid, simply because it has a huuuuge emphasis on grouping up with other people (my husband is in the beta). I’d have a better idea about it if I ever played it, but I forgot to sign up for the beta and now it’s so close to releasing I can’t be bothered.
All MMORPG’s at least try to eat your life though, so you might want to just avoid them anyway!
Short version: is there an MMORPG for smart people?
Well, Asheron’s Call had interesting content and an intelligent backstory, if you paid careful attention to what was really going on. Unfortunately, most players just rushed straight to the levelling treadmill. And the graphics were dated for the time, but I found them well-executed. Sadly, it was the least popular of the “Big Three” MMORPGs of the time, and none of the MMORPGs that have come out since have appealed to me much. On the other hand, there are interesting things on a smaller scale, particularly Neverwinter Nights “persistent worlds,” although NWN wasn’t really designed for that and many design compromises are necessary.
I miss Qbert. Also, I don’t own Shanghai because if I did, I’d never go outside. Or eat.
Thanks for the tips FO. And thanks for being civilized, Sjohnf. I told my fiancee I was sitting around today fantasizing about us sitting on the couch w/ our laptops, but instead of me working on my diss and her working on her novel, we’d finish that up for the night, and try to kill some trolls together.
She didn’t laugh at me much.
It’s all about Battlefield 2…I even got an ingame promotion today. Now I just gotta work on my commanding skills.
Karl, the main reason I’m eagerly awaiting The Elder Scrolls IV is because I liked The Elder Scrolls III so much. It had, in some respects, the feel of an MMORPG, only it’s a singleplayer game. The gameplay is fun, if rather unbalanced. Like Asheron’s Call, it had a really interesting backstory — only there’s much more of it. There are literally hundreds of pieces of short fiction you can pick up and read within the game, and lots of essays on the differing, conflicting cultures. Also like Asheron’s Call, and unlike most CRPGs, you’re not forcefed some simplistic moral schema. None of the competing factions are likely to be entirely satisfactory, and good and evil are left for the player to define. If you take Voltaire’s line, that if God didn’t exist, he’d have to be invented, and imagine a world in which there’d been several attempts to invent God, none quite successful, then you’d start to get the setting. Anyway, it shows up on discount racks for about $20 now.
I miss QBert.
Me too. That was a fun game. A little too easy, but ego-gratifying: I lost men at a slower rate than I earned new ones, so I could play forever.