Lord Napsack
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Posts posted by Lord Napsack
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I've seen videos of guys playing it, they think they are so tough, but start screaming not long after
This guy:
He openly admits to being freaking scared and a coward, but still plays through it to toughen himself. I want to do this. It will work, darn it!
Also, at one point he gets so freaked out that he has Michale Jackson songs playing in the background to calm him. It's pretty damn funny.
Yeah I still get the "but you're a girl" comments online, I stopped chatting in public games because of that, and some of the remarks I would get, not to mention the many lame pick up lines.
I've had a few friends get that. But I think it works both ways at times. I was president of the Gaming Society at my university last year and got an email from a person who was doing research or something on 'girl gamers'. By the sounds of it she wanted to find out why there were so few girls that were in to video games and how they felt about being such a minority. I was shocked by this as a fair few of the members were female and I know a lot of girls who play games. This research just sounded like it was attempting to reinforce these stereotypes and I outright refused, saying that there were quite a few girls there who were treated as equals, rather than "Ewwww, girl!"
I've been gaming since I was six, my brothers and sisters Atari and Nintendo were my first taste at it.
I started off with something that looked like the Nintendo Color TV Game, but I really can't remember what it actually was, and the Sega Master System and Megadrive. Which were brilliant. Double Dragon and Sonic the Hedgehog are still great loves of mine, though I don't know where my Segas are, so haven't played them in years, though I do have the Sega Megadrive Collection on the Xbox 360, which has Sonic on it. Then it was to the good old grey Playstation, followed by the PS2, Xbox 360 and PS3. Over the last few years I've had a laptop able to run games, so I've been getting into PC gaming too. Also, handheld consoles were all Nintendo: Gameboy, Gameboy Colour, GBA. I also got a Nintendo DS not too long ago for cheap. It's not too bad, but I'm kinda limited on what I want. Fallen in love with the Ace Attorney games, though.
Ah, video games...
Oh, also, any avid board gamers or RPG players? I've got quite a stack of board games, plus I've been in a fair few role playing campaigns over the last couple of years
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I've been really interested in reading this since the release of The Hunger Games and all the comparisons to Battle Royale that came with. Great review above, and thanks for bumping up the topic. I now might actually remember to read this sooner rather than later.
I've read both, Battle Royale first, then Hunger Games. Not only is Battle Royale so much better, but the games are a lot more intense and interesting. When people die it really means something and has emotional weight, rather than "Oh, that means Katniss is going to win."
I think Hunger Games has so much less impact because it is in first person. We can't see all the deaths, we can't get into the mind of each character so much, something that Battle Royale did so well. Hunger Games relies purely on what Katniss sees, and to be fair she sees a pretty small amount.
I felt cheated out of some of the deaths, too. I wanted to see what happened to them, how they fought, whether it was close or not. It wasn't bloodlust or anything, it was just a need for action to spice the book up a bit more. Plus, the ending of the games was really disappointing in my opinion.
Also, in Battle Royale the game itself was handled better. The ground rules were set out well and it felt that they were really forced to fight. I never got that feeling from Hunger Games.
Just my sleepy thoughts, anyway
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I have read all the time for years, fitting it in between video games and TV and films. Don't know how I manage
But you are not alone, my friend. Read. share those opinions, no matter how... opinionated.To be honest, I'm still no great fan of short stories since I read them like one would eat a snack. They are good but not very satisfying. If I have to chose between a snack and a 5 turn meal I would go for the latter.
Totally made me think of this video (14:15-14:53) when I read that (There are some swear words in this video. A lot, actually. Only one in the section I give though).
But I do like some short stories. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is one of my favourite stories and I remember reading a fair few for my English GCSE that were great.
As for short books Animal Farm is dear to me. My copy is only 90 pages, but it's one of the greatest pieces of literature I own. Seriously amazing.
Also, a fan of noble gases are we? Or is there another reason your username has "Argon" in it?
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Oh yes me too, I am super excited about the Last Gaurdian! I only got around to playing ico when I got the hd remake that had both games. I enjoyed it, but it doesn't beat sotc.
No, I agree. SOTC is just so close to perfection. So many great things about it.
Also, just going to go a bit tangential here and say I am so happy no one has referred to themselves as a "girl gamer". I can't help but despise that term and how it goes against girls finally being accepted as playing games. It's been a long hard struggle, but finally people can accept that them females can play games. Took it's damn time, though.
Oh, and I downloaded Amnesia: The Dark Descent the other day. Not got round to playing it yet, but I plan on making myself power through it. I'm such a scaredy cat when it comes to horror games. If I can get through this then I know I can get through so many games I need to play but haven't because I know I'll be too scared when playing them.
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The Saga of Darren Shan is something I will never cease to recommend. Male perspective, vampires, fun, dark, lots of action, lots of character moments. Overall it is excellent and something you should definitely read.
Oh, and though it's not a Young Adult book, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is from a male perspective, though it's more so from the perspective of someone with Asperger's Syndrome. Excellent book. Brilliant story that keeps you going throughout and wonderfully written.
They're really great books too, a lot of depth to them despite being aimed at younger audiences.
I'm sorry, but some of the most in depth and insightful books out there seem to be aimed at younger audiences. I swear. I think it comes from the fact that it's an important time in people's development as a person and helps younger people think more about the world as a whole, as well as helping them connect more so with characters. Just my opinion, though
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I don't know if anyone would know of this game, but shadow of the colossus had a profound effect on me, which is impressive when you find out there was very little talk during the game. It's just you, your horse and colossi in a huge open map.
One of my favourite games of all time. So beautiful in more than one way. Also has probably one of the hardest hitting moments when
Agro falls.
I've played Ico but I wasn't that keen on it. Looking forward to The Last Guardian.
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it just told me that it had no imagery for my location, ill have to try again later
That happened to me and I just laughed. Must try on a post code that might work...
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Sleepy could work. The story almost reads as if in a dream, so maybe the senses could be heightened by being tired
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Well, I recently finished the first book, I'm tired, not able to concentrate properly, so enjoy my rambling. Also, spoiler warnings thrown around in areas I think might be spoilers. I'm always awful at detecting what could be classified as a spoiler, so I'm just being safe here
Can't help but say I was kind of underwhelmed by Hunger Games. I enjoyed the stuff at the beginning. The first chapter made me fall in love with the book with how I came to understand the entire world within such a short period of time, and as it went on I was enjoying myself. I have to admit I was starting to get a bit bored with how everything was dragging out before the actual Hunger Games but I knew I'd get Battle Royale-esque escapades coming up.
And then the Hunger Games started and I just found everything a bit dull. Everything happened far too quickly, with too much bad stuff happening to Katniss within a few chapters. It started getting ridiculous the amount of times she had stuff flying at her. It seemed that Collins tried getting all of the horrible things out of the way to build up a
bland (possible) romance with some bland guy, creating a bland love triangle which appears out of place, especially at the beginning of Catching Fire (only read the first 7 chapters). The love stuff is just so out of place, in my eyes, and ruins the strong character of Katniss and the pacing of the book.
But Collins seems to have some issue with pacing, going from super speedy to boringly.
Regardless, I did kind of enjoy it, but I found it so dull at times. I was constantly wishing for things to happen.
One of the things I think that could have been improved is a bit more focus on the action. I didn't really feel the tension as most of the time she was on her own.
Keep more people alive, have more encounters,
increase the dread. Instead I was just thinking "Yeah, she'll be fine!" which, in a book like this, should not be what I am thinking. I should be wanting her to be fine against all odds. Instead, she has
fire thrown at her and is poisoned but comes out all OK!
The lack of threat could have been due to the fact that we didn't spend much time with other characters.
Cato never seemed to be enough of a threat, just kind of there looking for her and not doing much. Thresh was nothing, Foxface had a couple of cameos, the Careers... existed, I guess, and everyone else didn't matter.
Deaths had no real impact. This, of course, comes from the fact that the book is written in first person, which meant Katniss couldn’t see everything else. But if maybe we heard about what awful things happened then maybe I could care more.
Thresh’s death seemed to cheat us of a good fight scene as it was done off screen. Did it take its toll on Cato? Did Thresh fight valiantly? Was he overcome with rage? What happened?!
And the ending was all kind of... what? I mean... what?
What was with the muttations?
I hope they get explained later in the books, because that bit seemed to completely jump the shark. Not that anyone questioned it, really.
Though, it’s not like anyone questioned anything. So often I thought Katniss would ask questions, to find things out
(mostly asking Peeta why the hell he was with the Careers)
but nope. She doesn’t. Instead she just blindly goes along with everything in ignorance, not even caring to wonder after Collins is done with that bit of the book.
Oh, and am I the only one who thinks Rue didn’t get enough time in the book for us to form an emotional attachment to her? She was just there one minute, then she was gone.
But yeah, those are my rambling thoughts on it. No editing done there, bar spoilers, to really make this make sense, but hopefully it does. So tired, so it probably reads horribly. Like I said, I still enjoyed the book, I just have a lot of issues with the latter parts of the book.
EDIT: Just looked at this with all the spoiler warnings. It looks horrible! Looked all lovely in my Word document...
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Both the Batman games mentioned above I thought were brilliant. I really liked the Riddler challenges in them. Although I haven't heard very good things about the new DLC for Arkham City, has anybody played it?
I wish I could get around to playing the DLC, but I haven't plugged in my 360 for a while and have little time to fit it in around working and doing other stuff. I hope it isn't disappointing, I loved Arkham City so much.
Talking about endings, what are peoples thought's on the controversial Mass Effect 3 ending?
I'm kind of evil. I was gleeful that this series ran itself to amazingly into the ground. I detested the first game so much that I refused to buy the other games. Everything (apart from the ending) was wrong with the first game in my eyes. I just couldn't like it, nor could I understand why people liked it so much. Like with Halo. I... I just don't get it.
But yeah, that ending was pretty awful...
Now, for an ending that was absolutely amazing:
Say what you want about the franchise, but Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is probably one of my favourite games. The other games aren't of such high quality as that game. CoD4 is essentially what every other modern military shooter should be, but none of them are.
But that ending... oh that ending was amazing. I mean, it's cinematic and kind of emotional at the same time. To anyone who hasn't played it then do so. It's not like a lot of the modern military shooters out there. This has a story and characters. Like a real game should.
Oh, and God of War had a cool ending, what with it going all Power Rangers near the end. If you've played it you'll know what I mean.
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We're going way back here to around 20 BC here. The Aeneid was unfinished by the time of Virgil's death and he expressed that when he died it should be burnt. Augustus Caesar was having none of that, told them to ignore his wishes, and then publish the epic with as few edits as possible. The story has a few errors and inconsistencies, but it still tells a pretty good story. Nothing as good as the Homeric epics, but I still enjoy it.
If it hadn't have been for the publishing of the Aeneid then I don't think Dante's Inferno would ever have happened. Most of the Inferno is lifted from the Aeneid, specifically the one chapter that takes place in the underworld. Dante was a massive Virgil fan boy and even put Virgil in as his guide.
Because of the legacy of the Aeneid I'm kinda OK it was published without his consent. It sucks that this happened, but so much has come from it, if only by proxy through Dante's works.
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Borderlands sometimes had that reaction, but somehow I didn't care about the story, I just enjoyed the gameplay. I could just pop it in and start running around and doing things. A great stress relief, and a really fun co-op game.
Walking Dead you can find on Steam, PSN or XBLA. It's nothing like the TV show, which I personally found disappointing, but more so the comics.
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Plastic Beach was a pretty poor album overall (for me) and was in no way as good as Demon Days. Far too much focus on contributing artists. However, it did have a few good songs on it. On Melancholy Hill, Some Kind of Nature, Rhinestone Eyes and Stylo are really the only ones I like on that album, but I really enjoy all of them. -
I had seen there was a game that was done off of Raymond E Feists world, but never played it.
Just checked out Betrayal at Krondor. Looks very interesting. Some pretty good writing and music. Plus, the combat reminds me of Shining Force, so that's always good. Might need to check those out at some point.
Also, I just remembered a game that I am hitting myself for forgetting. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game. A brilliant text adventure, which has an updated version on the BBC Radio 4 website. As with any text adventure it is ruthless and won't hesitate to kill you. But it's also funny and enjoyable. Really recommend it!
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Yeah, this often seems to be the thing. See, I actually preferred the world in Oblivion to Fallout 3, but I still enjoyed Fallout 3. Still need to play Morrowind as I've heard that's great.
If you like that type of setting, though, you may enjoy Borderlands, especially if you have a few friends to play with. The sequel is coming out soon and I couldn't be more excited
Oh, and I'm going to be cheeky and mention some games based off of comic books (not comic-movie-game adaptations), to make this a bit more on topic.
Ultimate Spider-Man on the PS2 was an amazing game, if a bit difficult at times for my younger self. Being able to play as both Spider-Man and Venom was absolutely amazing and the art style was fantastic. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions however was pretty lame. It was mostly average and didn't let you really swing around and have a lot of fun (review here).
Now, one thing that Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions took was an element from one of my favourite games: Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's just an amazing game and you feel like Batman. The combat feels great, the detective stuff is great and the story is brilliant. I loved it so much that I was surprised to find that Batman: Arkham City topped it by miles. It improved upon areas I didn't even realise needed improving. I was noticing where they went wrong in the first game because of what this game did right. I don't have a favourite game, but if I had to choose it would be this. Brilliant story, more gadgets, better combat. Everything's great.
The Walking Dead episodic game has been good. I have yet to play Episode 2, but Episode 1 was fantastic. It felt so close to the comics without actually intruding on the comic's story. It felt a lot like a side story from that universe, and was a lot more truthful to the comic than the TV show is. Telltale know what they are doing, and have made probably one of the best adventure games in a long time.
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I don't know any games based on books either. My two favorite games are : Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. I have clocked up a couple of hundred hours on each, and still have loads more to do. I love the sandbox type games, but can't get into the Oblivion titles. I bought Skyrim, and played it for a few weeks, but it just didn't interest me half as much as the Fallout series.
Have you played any of the earlier Fallout titles before Bethesda took over? Back when they were isometric and turn based.
What is it you prefer about the Fallout games? Is it the post-apocalyptic setting?
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Dante's Inferno I played a bit of, and I liked the mythological characters you could find, but apart from that I thought it was really repetitive. Really just a series of similar enemies followed by a boss. over and over again. Quite nice graphics though.
Sometimes I liked the characters, sometimes I didn't. It really depended upon the description they gave. I remember really hating Tiresias, but if you touch my Greek mythology you better do it right!
God of War definitely has a lot over Dante's Inferno. You see, what Visceral seemed to think people loved about GoW was the combat and the combat only, so focussed on that. Really, it was the plot, the combat and the puzzles. Definitely pick up God of War if you can. If you have a PS3 they released an HD collection of the first two games. Really want to play it now...
II played Broken sword ages ago with my boyfriend, and recently they had the remastered edition for sale on steam. But when we downloaded it, there's now a glowing spot over everything you can look at and pick up, so it's stupidly easy, and there's no way to turn them off. I was very annoyed. There's nothing difficult about point and click games if the computer is going to tell you where to point and click
I actually downloaded that the other day, but haven't got round to playing it. I think the glowing edge comes from people's irritation with point and click games being a bit too vague. Moon logic was never a good things, and sometimes graphics would often be a limitation as you were never too sure what you could or could pick up. Dreamweb is a perfect example as it had some vital items being only blandly coloured pixel on the floor that is completely miss-able. So these game include this sort of function now. One of the best ways to do it, I think, is the way Puzzle Agent did it. Give the frustrated player the option to press a button and highlight nearby stuff you can use.
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Well, there's a lot of video games out there for board games. Played a few Risk video games that have been good (Risk: Factions was pretty good). Monopoly games have always been weird. Bloodbowl, a board game based on Warhammer, has a PC version that is pretty good which you can play with friends. Catan is also meant to be pretty good, based upon Settlers of Catan, which is a great board game.
Oh, we also have the infamous Pandemic 2 flash game which is based upon the board game of the same name (minus the "2"). It's fun, but Madagascar will annoy the hell out of you.
I think Ticket to Ride recently had a PC version come out on Steam.
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I just finished the final book. It moves at a pretty good pace, but I found the inclusion of Nazis a bit odd and somewhat out of place, for some reason. I suppose the series never really focussed too much on human world events, so when this happened it was just strange. I think it worked, but I kept expecting stupid stuff to happen.
The book as a whole was a lot more focussed, and it was still as good and depressing as the rest of the series. There was a pretty good twist near the end, but I think I saw it coming and it was all a little rushed, but the ultimate ending was good, as it linked it with the original saga.
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American McGee's Alice is far better than Alice: Madness Returns and I definitely recommend playing that. Did my own little reviews of both of them, actually (Alice and Madness Returns)
Cthulhu Saves The World is pretty good, but it doesn't seem to have too much bearing on the books other than names.
Dante's Inferno I originally thought was alright, but I replayed it recently and it's awful. I don't mind the fact it doesn't have much to do with the poem, but the gameplay and story are both horrid, boring, and it's a blatant rip off of God of War. So many elements straight up stolen. I was okay with this at first, but I suppose I'm bitter now
Games I haven't got round to playing yet are Metro 2033 and Call of Cthulhu, but both look good
Oh, and watch out for the Discworld games. They can be quite insanely hard, just thanks to moon logic.
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Homer The Iliad
The Odyssey. Read it. Seriously. The Iliad is good and all, but the Odyssey is so much better. Well, in my opinion it is. After that, find Virgil's Aeneid. It's basically a fan fiction of the Homeric epics. Elements from both are there and some of the plot is directly lifted. But that's okay, it's still an enjoyable read.
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I read it again recently within a day or two. If you have the time and want a quick(ish) read then go for it. That's the beauty of Darren Shan books: so much plot in such a quick-to-read book
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There's already a thread regarding the first book, but that had very few replies (Read: One. Me.)
I just want to see if anyone has read this series so far and to see how people view it. Personally, I love The Saga of Darren Shan (or Cirque du Freak in the US). Those books are dear to me and there's nothing that can stop my love for them, even to awful film Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. When I found out that the author, Darren Shan, was writing a prequel saga I was extremely happy, but also cautious.
See, a lot of people seemed to love Shan's stand alone book The Thin Executioner whilst I, and my Darren Shan-loving friend, hated it. I was scared Shan had peaked and was now on his way through a speedy decline.
But I've found I am loving The Saga of Larten Crepsley immensely. The first book, Birth of a Killer was quick, but got to the point: it was showing Mr. Crepsley's rise to becoming a vampire. The second book, Ocean of Blood, was built up around a bit more fun and seemed a bit more positive. There was still a fair bit of bad stuff happening, but it was a bit more light-hearted. Until the ending. Then Palace of the Damned, the third book, picked up from there, starting off depressing, with suicide a major theme at first, but then seemed to level out again... then got upsetting.
See, there's a common theme here. This series is really, really depressing. The amount of awful, terrible things that happen to Larten over the centuries would be enough to break any normal man. But Larten Crepsley is a growing vampire. This is only building his character and making him stronger and more vampire-like.
This, I believe, is perfect. He's fleshing out to be the Mr. Crepsley from the original saga. And this is amazing. Shan is a fantastic author who is making me fall in love with one of the most beloved characters from The Saga of Darren Shan all over again. This all makes me feel great just reading it.
But there's also hints of sadness. Not in the book, but from me. The thing is
Larten Crepsley dies in the Saga of Darren Shan. It is a noble death. It's one of the pivotal points of the entire saga. And boy does it make me feel upset. Just thinking about his eventual death makes me feel upset when reading about his life.
It's powerful stuff, but it's due to my attachment to the characters from previous books.
I'm on the last book, Brothers to the Death and it follows the trend of all the other books. Larten is more fleshed out and feels more like his Saga of Darren Shan self. I'm excited to be reading this book, but at the same time I feel sad that this is the last one. I could read about his life for several more books.
So, has anyone read these books? These are just my rambling thoughts so far, but I'm very interested to hear other people's opinions. Anyone read The Saga of Darren Shan but not these? If you have read these, how do you feel about the books as books in their own right and as part of the saga?
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White Light - Gorillaz
Argon, A Basic Introduction.
in Introductions
Posted
So much love for Castlevania. It hates you, but you can't help but love it, even though you are grinding your teeth to oblivion playing it.
Also, the story about Argon 9 is amazing. I love it!
I too have a favourite protein: Titin. This is thanks to the structure, size, genetics and the length of the full name.