Tabletop Tits

Introduction (otherwise known as Read At Your Own Risk)

2014-01-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

FYI, this isn't the most recent post. Scroll down for that.

Hello and welcome to Tabletop Tits. I'll be your hostess for the duration, and if it turns out you have a problem with me you can direct any and all comments to that brick wall over there.

I'm a girl gamer. Always have been. Some of my earliest memories involve an Atari 2600 and programming in basic. Sure, I started out with three line programs that involved PRINT and GOTO, but who didn't?

There are Pac-Man scores in my baby book. Do I really need to justify myself as a geek any further?

I'm really, really fucking tired of hearing "wow, we didn't know a girl could do that" over and over again. Yes, I play D&D. Yes, I own all three next-gen consoles (including two Xbox 360s) and at least six Game Boy systems (including the first generation one that's the size of a VHS cartridge). Yes, I can probably kick your ass six ways to Sunday playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I own memory chip earrings and more gamer t-shirts than I probably should. I read webcomics while wasting valuable work time.

I also have an incredible rack, thank you for noticing.

I want this blog to be a look into my gaming world. I play D&D twice a month with a group of friends all whom I've known over five years; that's in addition to the time I spend console and PC gaming.

Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times. Thank you for visiting Tabletop Tits and have a nice day.

Update

2012-02-04T14:46:00.000-05:00

New post coming by the end of the day. :)

Bit of a non-sequitur.

2011-12-01T15:04:00.004-05:00

I have never been more proud to consider myself a geek than I am today. www.reddit.com pulled together yesterday in the most amazing way to help my lifelong friends raise enough money (thousands and thousands of dollars) to fund their 3 year old son's bone marrow transplant this coming January. To everyone who donated, thank you for restoring some of my faith in the kindness of strangers. To my friends, everything is going to be all right as long as you keep believing. To all geeks everywhere, keep on doing what you do. Together we can accomplish anything. ♥ ♥ ♥

Memories... in the color of my mind...

2011-11-27T05:27:00.005-05:00

Time really gets away from me these days, it's like I blink and another year has passed by. I keep meaning to get back to this blog, and then something happens (and keeps happening...) and I never update. I've still been gaming on and off this whole time, and I have a whole new set of rants for the gaming arsenal. Some are based on new games, and some are based on old games -

ok really now, does anyone else believe that Alone in the Dark came out in 1992?!? as in NINETEEN YEARS AGO?? or that the first Halo game just released its TENTH ANNIVERSARY remake? I didn't used to feel this old, but damn, what the fuck happened? -

Anyway, sorry for that small rant, but seriously. Anyone who's been playing games as long as I have understands what I mean. I've been spending a lot of time revisiting older games and remembering the first (or second, or ninth) time I played them, and it always brings back a flood of memories. Old apartments, old computers lovingly built by hand, old consoles... some people look at scrapbooks the way I look at old games.

Stay tuned, because my latest addiction has been horror-genre games. Oh yes, there will be ranting. And cursing. Much cursing.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

2010-08-04T16:40:00.004-04:00

A lot of what I write on here is a dose of humor with bits of truth sprinkled in. I write about my own opinion, sometimes with a healthy dose of sarcasm and four-letter words. I stay away from personal subjects, things that are too emotional for a gaming blog. Things that are too "fourth wall" in my own mind, I suppose. But today I want to talk about something that's been heavily in my thoughts for a few weeks. This is to let a few of you into my head, to see a little more of who I am instead of what I think.

If you scroll back, you'll see an entry I did regarding Guitar Hero and mentioning how it was one of the few games I've played where I had faith in my ability.

"Faith in my ability." That's a strange term, isn't it? You would think that by admitting you have an ability it would automatically mean there was faith to go along with it, right? But - at least in my own mind - that's not the case.

I have been gaming on and off since I was a toddler. I've programmed on an Atari, played Math Blaster (the original, thank you) on an old-school IBM, and owned every variation of the Game Boy. I've saved the princess, almost cried during the end of Final Fantasy III (the Super Nintendo version), and logged hundreds of hours playing games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. Don't even get me started on the days I've spent playing World of Warcraft. One would think that after all that playtime and all that experience, I would confidently proclaim to the world that I am a girl gamer, that I can hold my own as one of the Geek Incarnate. Sadly, no.

Even with all I've mentioned above, I have a difficult time with many things. The issue I will write about today - and my most frequently experienced one - is that I primarily play against (or with) male counterparts who have spent far more time and effort in whatever game we're playing, yet I continually hold myself to their standard instead of my own. I create an intangible goal I feel should be reaching in every game, one that is usually far out of reach and too stressful for me to have a good time. For example, when I first started playing Halo 3 a few months ago, it was my very first FPS and my very first Halo game (shut up). I was playing with someone who had played all three Halo games and beaten all three on Legendary (the hardest setting, for those unfamiliar). Within about ten days of playing casually, we had beaten the game on Legendary together. He was amazed that I'd picked up the game as quickly and as adeptly as I had; I was busy beating myself up because I wasn't as skilled as he. In reality I should have been feeling pride, and instead I was frustrated and upset.

It was only recently - after I left a Guitar Hero game in a huff because I wasn't playing as well as I thought I should - when I realized I carry this sentiment in nearly every aspect of my life. It's a huge, towering burden to shoulder; this feeling that I'm never as good as I think I ought to be or as good as others believe I ought to be.

It's a difficult existence, always feeling like I'm behind the 8-ball and running to catch up. When I think of the opportunities I've had or the happy times I've missed because I was too busy fretting over my level of performance, it breaks my heart. How many games could I have enjoyed if it weren't for my self-imposed rule of "make sure you look good in front of everyone else?" How many experiences could I have had if it weren't for the voice in my head saying "you can't do that, you'll look like a fool and everyone will laugh at you?"

I've played games with close, trusted friends and still felt touchy and upset when I'm last on the score roster. I've played with men who have seen me naked (this is my journal and I'll determine what's TMI thank you) and still felt ashamed that I couldn't keep up with them in MarioKart.

Where do I go from here? I don't know. Maybe I begin to communicate to my playing partners that I have a difficult time not being unhealthily competitive. Maybe I take a break from games altogether for a little while and reassess what made me a gamer girl in the first place. I need to find some of the passion and love I once had for games and gaming in general.

Ultimately, I have to take a long look inside myself and find out where this feeling is coming from. Why I am so predetermined to believe I've failed before I even start, and how it came to take over most aspects of my life. Not a fun thing to contemplate, but one that is absolutely necessary.

Once I come out the other end of this journey, I hope to not only have rediscovered the integral Geek part of who I am, but also on how to be a little freer and easier on myself because of who I am.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled gaming bitchfest.

You are victorious!

2010-08-01T20:59:00.003-04:00

For those of you not familiar with the image to the right, allow me to introduce you to the first "puzzle/RPG" game released. To explain more fully, a set of developers took two of the most addictive genres known to gamers and combined them; both roleplaying and puzzle elements turn into a game about as addictive as Tetris. If you're familiar with PopCap games, this is the "thinking man's" Bejeweled. If you don't know what Bejeweled is, Google it and play a few rounds. I'll see you next week.

This genre is pretty much the S&M of gaming. You get so frustrated at the game you want to scream because you're doing the same thing over and over and over again, but it's so goddamn much fun that you go back for more every time.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords was released back in 2007. Puzzle Quest: Galactrix followed suit in 2009, and Puzzle Quest 2 was released about two months ago. The concept of each game is the same - walk (or fly a ship) around, go somewhere, and play a puzzle. Sometimes there's a minigame based on the same idea (unlock a door, open a warpgate, mine an asteroid). I have played and beaten all three of these games, and I enjoyed them all immensely. Mostly.

You see, the main thing that drives me batshit insane is the same thing that actually makes the game; the repetition of the puzzles. I know, I know. The game is called Puzzle Quest, therefore I should understand that the game will have fucking puzzles in it. That's fine, I get it. But I have to say that when I enter a room and see three monsters I have to fight, get through it and then go into another room where there's three more monsters to fight - and each "fight" (puzzle) takes between 10-20 minutes... well, let me just say my eyes were bleeding after about an hour and a half. If you've read my previous posts, you have a general idea of what I sound like when I get frustrated (lots of swearing interspersed with vivid imagery of inanimate objects being shoved in places they don't belong). I get frustrated a lot when I play Puzzle Quest.

It should also say something about the brilliance and addictiveness (is that a word?) of this game that I kept playing even though I was that frustrated. There is something so simple and so enjoyable about the similarity of the puzzles with just enough variety to make it challenging and interesting that I kept going back to them. I would get so pissed off after an hour that I'd shut the game off and sit on the couch muttering to myself for ten minutes - but less than half an hour later I was playing it again. I couldn't stop.

Fun, cursing, frustration, fun. Frustration, fun, a lot of cursing, a very strong mixed drink, more fun. Puzzle Quest is a cruel mistress that knows exactly when you're about to snap and then loves on you until you forget all the bad stuff.

If I ever meet the developers who came up with this series, I'd love to pat them on the back... and then slap them across the face. After all, that's what their games have done to me for three years. Oh, but it hurts so good. So good.

Tanking: The best way to get hit on!

2010-02-24T22:50:00.011-05:00

Hi. Remember me? Yeah, I'm really no good at this whole "I'll update soon" thing, but I'm going to try to post at least twice a week from now on. Part of the problem is that it's FAR more difficult to be witty and amusing on a regular basis than I thought it would be; things that are pants-wettingly funny in my head are not nearly as hilarious when I get them down in print.

However, my first post back shall be about something near and dear to my heart.

Tanking.

Now, for those of you uneducated heathens (re: non-MMO players) that have no idea what tanking is, let me give you a brief outline.

There is a big, nasty, angry slavering creature in front of you. It's looking at you like you're a Grand Slam from Denny's and it hasn't eaten in six weeks (which is probably why it's contemplating eating anything from Denny's)...

Do you:

A - jump backwards and commence firing on it from a distance,

B - run forward and start hitting it from behind with a large stick, or

C - tell it to kiss your ass while doing the macarena, forcing it to constantly hit you and ignore everything else?

If you said A, you're what we call ranged DPS. If you said B, you're what we call melee DPS. If you said C, you're a fucking moron *cough* a tank.

A tank's sole purpose is to take as much damage as possible so that everyone else can whale away at said monster to their heart's content. Tanks are also responsible for making sure the monster doesn't lose interest in providing damage to them, so they have a multitude of options in order to ensure they keep aggro -

Wait, what the heck is aggro?

Taken from WoWWiki:

"Aggro is a jargon word in WoW, probably originally derived from the English words "aggravation" or "aggression", and used since at least the 1960s in British slang. In MMORPGs, such as WoW, aggro denotes the aggressive interests of a monster/NPC."

Aggressive interests, eh? Sounds like a shitty date I went on once.

Anyway, I digress.

It takes a certain person to play a tank. Tanking can be stressful, especially when you're new to it and have no fucking idea what you're doing. The main problem is that if you "lose aggro" on any monster - i.e. it's already heard the insults you're hurling at it and decides someone else looks far tastier than you - the odds are whomever it targets will bite it in not only a spectacular fashion, but also in record time. This generally does not bode well for said tank, as getting your group (or guildmates) pwned in the face is not what's supposed to happen.

Tanks often have huge armor bonuses to ensure they can take far more damage than your average player. They also generally have huge egos to go along with these massive bonuses - a giant e-peen cloaked in a impenetrable shield. Tanks generally blame anything and everything else if something goes wrong; the healer didn't heal them enough, the DPS was getting in the way, the sun got in their eyes (at 10 p.m.), the cat jumped across the keyboard, they were too busy preening and forgot what to do...

I bet that last one's happened at least once.

On the OTHER side, however, are the frustrations a tank has to deal with. Healer paying attention to American Idol and looks away at the wrong moment? You die, so does everyone else, and you get blamed for it. DPS gets too trigger-happy and does too much damage to the monster before you have proper aggro on it? They die, so does everyone else, and you get blamed for it. Ranged DPS pulls a monster before you're ready and they suddenly start chewing on your feet without warning? You die, so does everyone else, and you get blamed for it.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

I fell into tanking unexpectedly because it was needed and I was too stupid not to do it. I happen to play a character on WoW that is capable of tanking and decided it might be fun to try it out. I'd already played both melee and ranged DPS, and there's only so much of run over here and hit this or stand there and hit that I could take. So I started to gear up my toon and get her ready to foray into the Great Unknown of getting the living shit kicked out of her on a regular basis.

Now, remember I said earlier that tanking can be stressful. Good tanks who have been in the position for a while very rarely get stressed, because it becomes second nature to them. When you combine a player with a couple of brain cells to rub together, the right gear and the right set of abilities, all is well with the world and they become a valued and very important part of the team.

I, however, am not one of those people.

Am I good tank? Yes, I'm a very good tank. But this is pretty much what you'd hear if you sat next to me during any major fight:

"Come on you son of a bitch THAT'S RIGHT no I said get over HERE no HERE you fucking idiot I have to position you so that ten other people can hit you properly wait what the FUCK was that oh I don't THINK SO you motherfucker look at me I SAID LOOK AT ME you piece of shit that's right BITCH I am IN YOUR FACE."

I am not exaggerating, sadly. Combine that with trying to make sure I do all the right things at the right time, and you might understand why I would take Xanax for a four hour raid. Tanking is the most unique and rewarding experience in a MMO I've ever had, and it's ironically the one that burned me out the fastest. Never have I had so many people relying - intensely relying at times - on me as I have as a tank. It's both rewarding and frustrating at the same time, so frustrating at times I thought I was literally going to explode and nothing would be left but a pair of shoes and a whiff of sarcasm in the air.

I love tanking. It makes me feel like more of an integral part of the game than any other position has.

And one day - maybe even sometime soon - I'll be able to do it without wanting to flush my head down the toilet.

hahahahahahahaha!

2009-08-23T11:30:00.001-04:00

I just saw someone found my blog by googling - I shit you not - "let me see ur tits".

If this blog ever takes off, I will make hundreds of men frustrated and angry every day.

Oh well.

There's nothing I can say that will add to this picture.

2009-08-07T13:38:00.001-04:00

Seriously. This is the best shit EVER.

D&D&LRN2PLAY

2009-08-04T16:30:00.001-04:00

I don't usually take quotes from other people, but I'm going to start this post with something from Scott Kurtz (who is the creator of PvP, one of the webcomics I read regularly). This was in regards to when D&D released 4th edition, much to the chagrin of a few (who were incredibly vocal about said chagrin).

"Guess what? Your 3.5 edition stuff did not disintegrate into a pile of black dust today. Get over yourselves. Nobody gives a shit that you committed all the old books to memory and figured out the math of the rules to totally max out your character. Nobody wants you at the table. We only invited you because you got all the books and so many goddamn miniatures."

Fucking well said.

I've been playing D&D on and off for approximately 17 years now. I started - like most in my generation - with 2nd edition and continued up through the ranks, finally landing with a scream and a thud on 4th. The groups I've been fortunate to play with not only playtested every new set of rules with vigor, but we purposefully tried to break them. In many cases, we succeeded admirably. Do you know anyone who makes it their life goal to exploit every goddamn loophole they can possibly find in order to make the most broken fucking character possible? I know several. They are good at what they do. Very good.

Now, I'm not going to get into gameplay schematics. We've all playtested the new rules and we all have our opinions on them, and that's just fine and dandy. Do I disagree with some of them? Absolutely. Do I agree with some of them? Absolutely. Is it worth getting into an opinionated post about? Nah.

What I do want to talk about, however, is the lost art of roleplaying.

role-play-ing

-noun

1: A method of instruction or psychotherapy aimed at changing attitudes and behavior, in which participants act out designated roles relevant to real-life situations.

2: The modifying of a person's behavior to accord with a desired personal image, as to impress others or conform to a particular environment.

There's your refresher course. Now, that's not quite what we do when we play D&D, is it? But it's pretty damn close. We create a character, supposedly with their own history, skillset and persona, and we play them in a fantasy setting that is under the control of someone else (yay DM).

But tell me something.

How often do we gloss over that history and that persona in order to get into the meat of the game? How often do we forget we're not playing ourselves with a bunch of friends sitting around a table strewn with miniatures, Doritos, Mountain Dew and about six dry-erase markers in different colors? We wind up lost in the art of rollplaying rather than roleplaying. You know what I mean by "rollplaying" don't you? How many times have you pawed through your set of dice looking for your favorite d20 because if you botch THIS roll the entire party will be subject to Very Bad Things that you really don't want to be responsible for (not for the good of the party, mind you, but because of the ribbing you'll take for the next five sessions)?

Yeah. I've done it too.

The art of actually taking time to create a character, draw up a background, think about how THEY would act in a given situation rather than how YOU would act is a difficult thing to do these days. Trying to do all that while dealing with an increasingly complicated set of (sometimes brand new) rules is even more difficult. Trying to do all that with the two situations above combined with one or more of the people Kurtz was talking about? Damn near impossible.

4th edition, while flawed, is trying to get the players BACK into the mindset of roleplaying vs. rollplaying. Yes, they did oversimply some things, blah blah blah... but the bottom line is that the rules were streamlined so the players could focus more on actually PLAYING. The first time I ran a gauntlet based off 4th edition rules? That? Was AWESOME.

What is the point of this post? To remind us that sometimes, D&D isn't all about the numbers or the rules or the dice or even the Doritos and the Mountain Dew. D&D is supposed to be about immersing ourselves in a fantasy world with fantasy characters that should have depth and history to them. The best D&D sessions I've ever been on were less about the dice and more about the story, and the very best session was actually like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book that was being written as we were playing the game. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about.

One of the key words in "roleplaying" is the word PLAY. Let's try not to forget that amidst the sea of dice and Fritos and rulebooks and caffeine and Taco Bell.

Play on, you crazy D&Ders. Play on.

Camaderie, adventure and steel on steel. The stuff of legend! Right, Boo?

2009-07-18T16:08:00.013-04:00

If you don't know where my title came from or who the picture to the left of my words is, then you should immediately revoke your RPG license, run to the nearest bathroom, stick your head in the toilet and flush.

He is Minsc, otherwise known as the lovable-yet-completely-fucked-up-in-the-head ranger in the Baldur's Gate series. The little hamster in his hand is named Boo, and he is "the only miniature giant space hamster in the Realm." I'm going to talk about Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn today, as I did say I was on an old-school game kick.

I've always been a RPG queen. My first foray into D&D was when I was a sophomore in high school, I beat Final Fantasy 3 for the Super Nintendo when I was on vacation because I begged my father to take the system with us (which he did, not only because he is awesome but because he wanted to see the ending just as badly) and I wasted hours upon hours of my time on classics such as Dragon Warrior (now known as the Dragon Quest series), Chrono Trigger (I still think all games should come with a "New Game +" feature) and the rest of the Final Fantasy series.

Note: Yes, one day I will write about Final Fantasy. No, I will not have the comments section degenerate into some pissing contest about how 7 was the last "great" FF, how X2 was just an electronic version of Pretty Princess Dress Up, etc etc. My opinions are mine, and that's why I have this blog. Your opinions are yours, but you will not defile my space by yipping about how Cloud was a shit main character or which cutscenes you can see Yuna's nipples in.

Ahem. Back to BG2. Basically this game took everything I loved about D&D - rolling individual characters, set in the Forgotten Realms, really cool customizable weapons and armor, and an absolutely epic fucking storyline - added excellent graphics (for the time) and a decent game engine, and then included a small "starter" packet of crack in with the manual. Oh, and in case I didn't mention, David Warner is the voice for Jon Irenicus, the game's main villain. You know David Warner, right? Stage actor. Chancellor Gorkon from Star Trek VI. Incredibly sexy yet evil voice. *cough* I know Irenicus was a terrible person, evil through and through and wants to steal your soul, etc... but I still would've fucked him so hard he would've passed out and woken up during the middle of next week.

Have I shared too much? Sorry. No, I'm really not.

Wait, what? Your copy of BG2 didn't have the crack with it? You must not have sprung for the super deluxe version.

Anyway, I played this game until my eyes crossed. Then I made my ex play it until his eyes crossed. About that time I would be ready to play again... lather, rinse and repeat. Between the two of us, we played every class, alignment and side quest available. I don't regret a thing.

Note part two: This very same ex has recently converted BG2 into a tabletop version using D&D 3.5 edition. While I have not experienced it personally, I desperately want to, not only because I would love to see how it turned out but also because he's one of the best DMs I've had the pleasure of playing under. Double entendre intended.

What, you want a synopsis? All right. Wikipedia sez:
"In the beginning, the player finds out that their party was ambushed by assassins of some sort and taken captive into a mysterious dungeon. The player character awakens in a cage being experimented on by a mage, Jon Irenicus. As Irenicus prepares to perform more "endurance" experiments on the captured player character, he is interrupted by a jailkeep golem servant. The golem reports a commotion in the upper levels of the dungeon, and Irenicus is forced to depart as a band of Shadow Thieves raid his underground complex. Also kept in the dungeon are old friends Imoen, Minsc and Jaheira from the original Baldur's Gate game, who will make the player character's escape from the prison very easy if they are all conscripted. Missing from the first game are Minsc's witch companion Dynaheir and Jaheira's husband Khalid, both of whom were killed while in Irenicus' captivity, greatly distressing Minsc and Jaheira. As the main characters seek their way out of the dungeon, they encounter Yoshimo, a thief from the far away country of Kara-Tur, who introduces himself as a captive of Irenicus. On the way out, evidence is found for Irenicus' longing for an unknown woman (eventually revealed to be Queen Ellesime), as he has gone so far as to clone her. When the player character finally escapes the underground complex, he finds himself in the city of Athkatla. Irenicus is using his magic to fight the thieves at the entrance to his dungeon, when Imoen, angered by what Irenicus tells her about unlocking her inherent power, casts a 'magic missile' spell on him. As unlicensed use of magic is banned in the city of Athkatla, both Irenicus and Imoen are seized by the powerful mage organization called the Cowled Wizards and sent to be imprisoned in a distant detention center, Spellhold."

I'm leaving the links intact on the off chance one of you might be interested in knowing more about the game than I do. By the way, that's the first paragraph of the game synopsis. The rest of it you'll have to go read on your own (or obtain and play it, which is the much better option).

This is truly the first game that made me realize how incredible video games really were. The plot was fantastic, the characters believable (even the annoying ones fuck you Aerie if you whine about losing your wings one more time I'm going to set you on fire), the commentary hilarious, the graphics advanced enough to make it look great and the playable content long enough to be quite satisfying.

Note part three: Ex's retort on my Aerie comment above: "I intentionally made Aerie more talented to offset her annoyingness. Level 3 cleric, level 3 wizard, level 6 mystic theurge - she is whiny, yet badass."

Well played, Trebek. Well played.

I can't sing this game's praises enough, so I'll let GameSpot do it for me: "...the only reason [Baldur's Gate II] can't be called the best game in its class is because in a sense there's nothing available that compares to it."

I'm back. Run for your lives.

2009-07-16T14:20:00.005-04:00

So. After the constant nagging of several people (mostly friends who are getting tired of their regular webcomics/internet Java games/standard things to complain about) I've decided to continue (*coughstartcough*) this blog and after a year has gone by I have plenty of good gaming fodder to extrapolate about.

However, I thought for my first few posts I'd start with a little nostalgia and write about some games I used to love back in the day. You know the ones I'm talking about; these are the games you speak of fondly with a wistful look in your eye, and you'll generally end your soliloquy with the phrase "they just don't make them like that any more" while your fellow geeks nod emphatically. Today I'll talk about a game that scared the crap out of me when I first played it.

I consider this game to be one of the granddaddies of the PC horror genre scene. A game that is near and dear to my heart in many ways - The 7th Guest.

The 7th Guest was released back in 1993 by a company called Virgin Games (later renamed Virgin Interactive), and it was one of the first computer games to be released only on CD. Virgin - sold to Electronic Arts in 1998 - didn't make a huge amount of noteworthy games at the time; it did, however, help springboard the career of several notable developers that went on to kick major ass.

I'm going to take some of the gaming synopsis from Wikipedia here, because I'm too lazy to make my own. My comments are in italics.

"The game is played by wandering the incredibly creepy mansion, solving logic puzzles and watching videos that further the story. The main antagonist, Henry Stauf, is an ever-present menace taunting the player with clues, mocking the player as they fail his puzzles ("We'll all be dead by the time you solve this!"), and expressing displeasure when the player succeeds ("Don't think you'll be so lucky next time!").

A moderately complex plot of manipulation is gradually played out in flashback through film clips, as you progress between rooms by solving twenty-one puzzles of shifting nature and increasing difficulty. The first puzzles most players encounter is either one where players must select the right interconnected letters inside the lens of a telescope to form a coherent in some languages sentence or a relatively simple cake puzzle where the player has to divide the cake mmmm cake evenly into six pieces, each containing the same number of decorations "two skulls, two stones, and the rest is just icing." Other puzzles include mazes, chess problems, logical deductions, Simon-style pattern-matching, word manipulations, and even an extremely difficult game of Infection similar to Reversi that utilizes an AI (and would later go on to make an encore appearance in the sequel)." I don't know ANYONE who actually took the time to win that goddamn puzzle. Extremely difficult doesn't even begin to cover it, it was more along the lines of froth-at-the-mouth-and-make-up-new-curses difficult. It was fucking impossible.

Doesn't sound so bad, right? Until you add in relatively good graphics at the time, real life actors that played "ghost clips" and advanced the story, and one of the spookiest soundtracks I'd ever heard (done by the brilliant George "The Fat Man" Sanger). The puzzles ranged from relatively easy/cheesy (The sky is ruddy, your fate is bloody!) to "let's make a sentence out of no vowels and lots of y's" (Shy gypsy slyly spryly tryst through my crypt - leading into the maze/cellar) to "holy shit this is impossible and what the hell were they thinking?!" (see above; also included in this category is a puzzle where you have to swap eight vertically lined up bishops - four on either side - on a chessboard using only diagonal moves).

When I first got this game, I made the incredibly brilliant yet utterly stupid mistake of playing it for the first time in the back room of the house after night had fallen with no lights on. My very first "scary" genre game, complete with ghosts, crazy music, dripping water and a skeletal hand for a pointer... and I played it in the (best) creepiest way possible.

Oh, did I mention that when you quit the game, Stauf screams COME BAAAAAAAAACK! at you with no warning? That was almost enough to give me heart palpitations and forced me to sleep with the lights on for several days afterward. Also, after that, I'd always turn the sound down before I quit the game. I'd already tested my ability not to pee myself for several hours, and I didn't need that one last instance to drive me over the edge.

But that's not why I love the game so much.

The reason I love this game is because it STILL scares the crap out of me some sixteen years later.

Have you ever heard of "Let's Play?" It's a really nifty concept where you can look up games and watch either videos of someone playing it real-time or text-based reviews with select posted screenshots in order (often with hilarious color commentary). I was rummaging around the internet the other day and found a Let's Play of the 7th Guest.

I had to watch it with the volume turned down and the lights on.

I have played this game upwards of a dozen times. I know pretty much every ghostly scene by heart, where all the triggers are, and am almost two decades older - yet I couldn't bear to sit back and watch it on my (incredibly awesome) 42" plasma television without making sure the doors were locked and I had 911 on speed dial. It was like I was playing it again for the first time, and even the witty and subtle color commentary did nothing to lower my blood pressure or slow down my heart.

I haven't had a game do this to me before or since - not leave an imprint of "scariness" on my mind that was strong enough to last me three places to live, four significant others, two colleges, about fourteen random jobs and THE TRANSITION FROM ADOLESCENCE TO ADULTHOOD.

/wistful sigh

They just don't make them like that any more.

Chains... no whips, no handcuffs, just chains.

2008-07-25T14:27:00.003-04:00

Right. So an entire month has slipped by (again) and I'm not sure I was really cut out for this whole blogging thing. But, thanks to the constant nagging of a certain person (you know who you are) and having way too much time on my hands due to me quitting my crap job a couple weeks ago, I can at least attempt to get a couple things down before life whips me back up into the mundane again.

I haven't done a huge amount of gaming recently, nor have I really been able to think of anything witty or profound to write regarding games. The only game I've been playing with any regularity is Pokémon Diamond for the DS, and if you scroll down a bit you'll get a fairly clear idea of what I think about regarding the game since it's what I talked about in my last post.

However.

There is one more thing I'd like to talk about regarding pokémon before I close the door for a little while, and that is the topic of chaining.

Yes, chaining.

What is chaining? Thank you for asking, because I had no idea what it was up until about a month ago. Apparently the creators of Pokémon decided that things like effort values weren't enough to keep us fanbois and fangurls interested, so they put a spiffy little thing called chaining into the game. Chaining is, in essence, when you fight the same pokémon over and over and over in the hopes that eventually you will find one that looks slightly different.

Seriously.

There are rules that go along with this, too. Not simple rules, either - rules that are complex enough that I needed to have a goddamn guide open at the same time I was attempting to begin said chain. How can they not be simple, you ask, when five year-olds play this game? Right.

As I give you a brief description of the chaining process, please note that I have replaced the word "pokémon" with the phrase "little bastard." This is because I don't really get along with chaining yet; we're still in the "getting to know you and by the way, did you bring a condom" phase.

First you have to find the right sized patch of grass where the little bastard you want lives. Next you have to use a special device to find out which individual patch of grass the little bastard might be hiding in and go walk on it - but first you have to use a repel to keep all the other little bastards away. Rinse and repeat until you find the correct little bastard.

Then the fun begins. You have to follow an increasingly complex set of rules. For example: the next piece of grass you move to has to be no less than 4 and no more than 8 squares away and can't be on an edge that isn't surrounded on other grass. You can't pick differently colored pieces of grass, they all have to be the same. You have to make sure the chicken's head is facing in an eastern direction before setting it on fire, and the bowl you use has to be cobalt blue; none of this robin's egg blue shit.

Yeah, so I'm exaggerating a little about the whole grass thing, but you get the idea.

Again, let me reiterate why you do this: to get a slightly differently colored pokémon than everyone else. They are called "shiny" pokémon. Shiny. As in "oooo, shiny!" As in the noise your little demon friend Cespenar makes in the game Baldur's Gate 2. "Cespenar gladly serves the Great One!"

There is no other reason to make the time and effort. The pokémon itself has no different stats than a "regular" one, it only looks different and takes between one and four hours to get as opposed to ten seconds (maybe two minutes if your poké balls are being stubborn).

And I want one so fucking much.

let me see ur pokemanz

2008-06-12T11:41:00.012-04:00

Right. Doing regular updates apparently isn't really my thing, as you may have noticed. My life-outside-the-game has gotten a little crazy recently; I'm trying to get back into the habit of getting something down here even if it's not particularly long or entertaining (sorry if you've come to expect the entertaining part, shit happens).

So let me talk to you about Pokémon. That's right, I'm even putting the correct accent over the 'e' - because serious pokemanz is serious.

My first Pokémon game was Yellow for the GBA. Yes, I'll admit it, the only reason I bought it was because I wanted Pikachu following me around. I love that big fuzzy (okay maybe it's not really fuzzy but I don't care because I like adjectives) yellow rodent, and if they were real you can bet your ass I'd own a couple of them. Why? Because they shoot lightning. Yes, I know all pokémon have various special abilities (and my beloved Pikachu is not the only lightning pokémon out there) but I love it anyway and don't question my choices or I will strike you repeatedly while gleefully yelling "Pika-a-a-a-a-a!"

Ahem.

I want my next sentence to mention how I've been a casual Pokémon player for some time, but only recently have I realized that there is no such thing as a casual Pokémon player. There are two options when Pokémon is involved, and I will detail them as follows:

1: You have no idea what the fuck you're doing and are perfectly happy to run around catching random cartoon animals in grass and having them beat the piss out of different random cartoon animals. You will never compete in a tournament and don't particularly give a shit whether or not your Pokédex is completed or if you've caught 'em all.

-or-

2: You know way too fucking much about the game and not only can detail what region they're found in, what their strengths and weaknesses are and what the best moves to keep are, but you also know that things like stat calculators and effort values exist. You have worked to raise said effort values of different pokémon and have unlocked the national Pokédex; you've also competed in tournaments (potentially won a couple) and made at least three six year-olds cry, you callous bastard.

I had no idea Pokémon games were so complex. There are entire websites devoted to the science of raising pokémon, and you have to understand that for someone who thought she was pretty badass when her Pikachu decided it actually wanted to hang around with her, it's a little overwhelming. I have two friends in particular who fall into the second category detailed above, and while I speak tongue-in-cheek about it, they actually have a spectacular array of knowledge and have been more than willing to teach my uneducated ass a few things about the game.

I also have to admit since I've learned all this the game has taken on a whole new meaning. It's not nearly as simple as I once felt it was, but there are also tons of different things I can explore that I never even knew existed. The game (which had become tired and a little repetitive) is brand-new again, and I'm actually thrilled that it has captured my attention again. This is one case where ignorance is not bliss, but I'll miss not wondering whether I've evolved a pokémon at the right time or if I've maxed my effort values out on the right things. Such is the price of being educated.

I'm still in love with Pikachu, though.

Pik-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!

I'm what you call a "Guitar Hero."

2008-05-29T09:29:00.011-04:00

I'm really good at Guitar Hero.

It's taken me some time to admit this freely, but after having most of my friends tell me this (and not believing them I might add) over and over again I can finally agree with them. It took a specific set of events for me to get to this point, and of course I'm going to talk about it here - both because I've been a bit lax in updating due to the holiday and I'm also currently procrastinating while at work.

For those of you that don't know what Guitar Hero is, please consider crawling out from the rock you've managed to curl up beneath and Google it. You will be inundated with not only articles and reviews for the series (Guitar Hero 1, 2 and 3 plus Rocks the 80s and now Aerosmith is on preorder) but you'll ALSO find videos of people playing the game on YouTube because I've discovered you can find damn near anything on YouTube these days.

Go on and take a look. Don't worry, I'll wait.

All set?

Yes, Guitar Hero is basically a version of DDR with your fingers instead of your feet, and you play the music instead of flailing around wildly to it (although I have to admit that there can be flailing involved in GH, especially when things are going terribly, terribly wrong). There are four difficulty levels: easy, medium, hard and expert. Most people start on easy, but because I'm a musician and my cousin is a fucking sadist (he introduced me to the game, the bastard!) I started on medium and worked my way up to expert relatively quickly. I also started playing the game on the PS2 because I didn't own a 360 at the time, a situation I have since remedied.

Let me make this absolutely and unequivocally clear: I fucking LOVE this game. I don't just love it because I'm good at it - although it helps tremendously - but it combines two of my favorite pastimes in the world. Playing music in a video game? THAT's what I would have asked Santa for if given the chance, not a fucking pony. Fuck ponies (no offense meant to people who love ponies either in the traditional or more carnal sense, but if you like the latter then get the fuck away from me and stop reading my blog).

I digress.

I could write post after post about this set of games, but what I really want to focus on is the ability to play complete strangers on Xbox Live in Guitar Hero 3. Basically if you're willing to shell out money for the privilege of a Gold Live account (which I initially wasn't because I'd rather spend my money on purses and shoes since I'm a girl and that's what we do, hur hur hur) you get the option of going onto teh intarwebz and randomly selecting people you've never even thought of to thrash against. You can do this in one of two ways: rated (which is something I haven't dared to select yet because it's just a touch too competitive and I'm fucking stressed enough as it is without a goddamn video game adding to it) or unrated (which is SUPPOSED to be fun and casual).

Notice that sentence? Yeah, supposed to be fun and casual. It's not. This is also how I figured out that I am pretty fucking good at this game to the point that it's actually started to piss me off.

One of my friends who finally got sick of hearing me say I really wasn't that good and would he please stop insisting otherwise bought me a year subscription to Xbox Live; this was specifically so I could take advantage of aforementioned thrashing against random people (thank you again, by the way). As soon as the words "your account has been upgraded" flashed across my television, I was already looking for people to rock out with.

This is where things started going downhill.

All right, you motherfuckers. Read my words very carefully here. These matches are NOT RATED. It doesn't FUCKING MATTER if I beat you or if you destroy me, because they are supposed to be CASUAL MATCHES. Therefore, if we start playing the first thirty seconds of a song and I happen to be hitting more notes than you are, DO NOT QUIT THE FUCKING MATCH because apparently I hurt your feelings and damaged your e-peen by gasp BEING BETTER THAN YOU ARE. I am FUCKING SICK of actually getting to play ONE out of every FIVE matches because you are too FUCKING IMMATURE to handle the fact that SOMEONE might outplay you, especially when NO ONE CARES and you get NOTHING for losing or winning. PLAY THE FUCKING SONG and have a good time, and if I beat you by 300,000 points then maybe knock down your difficulty level or laugh about it because IT IS A FUCKING GAME and we're supposed to be HAVING FUN HERE. Do NOT take away MY fun because you are a BRAINLESS FUCKING MORON with an inferiority complex, plzkthx.

I am not joking. I wish I were, because I truly do enjoy playing other people. Another unexpected bonus is the guitar actually having a jack to plug in the Xbox headset so I can talk to whomever I'm rocking out with at the time. I've come across some pretty cool people this way (after sifting through dozens of assholes), including one guy who told me I'd just given him the best match he'd had all year and managed to conceal most of his shock when a female responded (other than the holy shit you're a girl, awesome statement).

This notwithstanding, I still love Guitar Hero et al; I'll still continue to play on an almost nightly basis and (sometimes against my better judgment) will seek out others on Xbox Live in the hopes that I will be able to have a good time and make the yearly subscription I have worthwhile.

Seriously, though. STOP QUITTING THE FUCKING MATCHES. Now.

Hugs and kisses,
Geek Girl Extraordinaire

zomg h4xx0r3d

2008-05-26T09:54:00.008-04:00

"My account's been hacked."

That phrase should be enough to strike fear into the heart of any seasoned MMO player. Knowing that your account - and characters - have fallen into the hands of someone other than you can be frustrating at best and (as I discovered yesterday) inspire wrath like the fire of a thousand burning suns at worst.

Of course we all know there are risks playing any sort of game with a ton of other people. There are warnings all over the place; some of them are well-warranted, some not-so-much. Yes, if you have the common sense of gravel you should know never to give your password to someone else. Yes, it's helpful if you have a firewall running. Yes, people will post "leaked" patch notes and embed backdoor scripts in it so they can get your account information. Yes, you probably shouldn't look at MMO character based fanfic/porn if you don't have aforementioned firewall.

I'm what should be considered a casual MMO player. I've had an account to this particular MMO for about three and a half years now, and though I belong to a fairly large guild and have the capability to run the latest instances and see the newest content I choose not to. Somewhere along the line the game became less of a pastime and more of a chore for me to play - unlike some of my friends who still enjoy the game wholeheartedly and have several (I use this term lightly) max-level characters, I only have one. The game has turned into an expensive chat service with high level graphics for me, and I've finally decided to suspend my account for a few months to see if I actually miss anything about it.

Back to the subject at hand. No, I didn't get my account hacked. A close friend of mine did after he experienced one of the examples I gave above (no, not the porn *coughthistimecough*). He was looking at some leaked notes for an upcoming expansion and - lo and behold - his machine got infected. Granted he wasn't running a firewall and that was his own fault, but neither was I until I heard what happened to him (come on now, Windows Firewall is a huge pain in the ass and I was too lazy to procure and install a more reputable one up until recently).

So I got the text above. This was upsetting enough seeing that he's also had his account as long as I have and has put FAR more work into his characters, but whomever took the account actually had the brass balls to continue playing the account AFTER they hacked it. That takes some serious cojones, let me tell you.

They renamed and transferred his best character onto another server and cleared out not one but two guild banks (that's how I got directly involved in this - the second guild bank belonged to the guild I run on the side). They sold anything that wasn't nailed down and then started farming (we're pretty sure it was with a bot). This was over a period of 12 hours, but the worst destruction happened within about two. Three and a half years of work completely destroyed in a couple of hours... if I hadn't already been so pissed off I might have been impressed at how efficiently the account got shredded to pieces.

This particular MMO, like most things these days, offers a "security question" you can use to get a new password mailed to you if something such as this happens. Mine is something concrete, because I'm flighty enough to put something fucking stupid in on a whim and not write it down (my mother's maiden name probably won't be changing any time soon). My friend, on the other hand, decided that "favorite activity" was a good option - and I could have killed him, because there are few things as goddamn ambiguous as "favorite activity." Come on, those of you reading could probably fill in about fifty different verbs on any given day, right?

Turned out the actual answer was hilarious and I will tease him about it for the next couple of months, taunting him in the singsong manner almost exclusively reserved for kindergartners on the playground. He was able to reset his password and get his account back under his control; once he was back in-game he contacted a GM and explained the situation so they could start to fix the damage that had been done.

I have to say this about the GMs and this company in particular - they have their shit together when it comes to recovering stolen accounts and lost items. Within about thirty minutes he had most of his items and gear back, and though it might take a few more days eventually everything that was fucked around with will be back as it should be. Also, the GMs like Rock Band, and as far as I'm concerned that already puts them a cut above the rest. After the situation had been disclosed and the resolution had begun, the GM's advice was as follows: "So to relieve all this stress you've been going through, I recommend you blast 'One' by Metallica."

MMO GM FTW.

Now, my friend was lucky in the above regard. Some of the hackers have gotten so crafty that they'll not only change the security question on your account, but they'll also change the email address - so even if you try to reset the password via email you won't be able to. In that case you have to contact the company directly and they'll fix everything for you over the telephone. This is fine, of course, but it's a holiday weekend here so he would've had to wait until Tuesday to resolve it... and that's about as comforting as knowing you have a root canal coming up.

After everything was said and done, all's well that ends well. But there is a moral to this story - be careful when you look at information on third party sites, and remember that no matter how cautious you are or how difficult your password is you can still get hit and hit hard.

Oh, and make sure you run a goddamn firewall.

lulz lookit mah IQ!

2008-05-23T10:31:00.003-04:00

Today's post is going to involve two topics: the Nintendo DS and IQ trainers. Specifically Brain Age and Big Brain Academy, since those are the two I happen to own.

I love my DS. LOVE. I have the girly pink one, and if you can get me to look up from the touchscreen long enough to make a snarky comment I'll probably hit you in the face with it. I also have a matching oversized pink case (it's oversized because it was made for the Advance, not the DS) and it is full of games. Some of them are great, some of them I played for an hour and put away with the sad realization that I'd just flushed $30 down the drain, and some are the portable equivalent of crack.

Here are examples. Remember, this is solely my opinion (which is correct, of course).

Good: New Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, MarioKart DS, DragonQuest: Rocket Slime, Pokemon Diamond/Pearl et al, anything with Final Fantasy included on the title (I am a complete Square fangirl, period) and the Phoenix Wright series.

Bad: Whack-A-Mole (don't ask me why I own this), Solitaire Overload (if you can get overloaded on fucking SOLITAIRE then you need to see a doctor), Need for Speed: ProStreet (the controls were clunky and it's really hard to feel cool when you're playing a racer on a pink DS) and Myst (the game sucks no matter what platform you play it on, and no I'm not saying that because I couldn't beat the puzzles).

Crack: Cooking Mama (both 1 and 2), Puzzle Quest, the entire Nintendog series, Animal Crossing and Brain Age/Big Brain Academy.

Oh god, those fucking brain training games. I don't even want to think about how many hours of my life I lost to trying to beat my own time for figuring out whether three green cats weighed more than two trucks or if three quarters, seven nickels and a penny was more than five dimes, two nickels and eight pennies in a fraction of a fucking second.

Big Brain Academy "weighs" your brain and tells you how smart you are, while Brain Age has a creepy fucking floating head that tells you how "old" your brain is (younger is smarter, but that always made me laugh because 20 year olds don't know shit about shit - no offense meant to any 20 year olds reading, you'll understand when you're older). Both allow you to take tests (one quick, one more involved) to figure out aforementioned scores, and then you can "train" in the different categories to get better at them and lower (or raise) your score.

I never in my life thought that I would be cursing at a piece of plastic because I couldn't figure out how to get a dog through a maze quick enough. The words that fell out of my mouth were unintelligible at times and at worst bordered on a ritual used to summon Cthulhu.

"Oh my FUCK BULLSHIT you stupid game I remembered that right... wait a minute NO I AM A FUCKING MUSICIAN I can remember which sounds repeated in the correct order fine we'll try again WHAT DO YOU MEAN okay fuck this let's try something else NO I DON'T KNOW WHAT WEIGHS MORE and now my time's running out THANK YOU NINTENDO FOR HAVING ME SPEND MONEY FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF YOU TELLING ME I'M A FUCKING MORON!!!!"

I'm not exaggerating. Really.

The reason I call them the equivalent of crack is I KEPT PLAYING. After a session complete with screaming and frothing at the mouth I would be BACK AT IT not two hours later. It didn't occur to me until weeks later that I was torturing myself for the sake of a creepy fucking floating head telling me I was 20 or a stick figure with a mortarboard on telling me my brain weighed 1700 grams... and then I realized something very, very important.

I am an IQ masochist. You won't find any fucking 12-step programs for THAT one, will you?

Killz n killz n killz u

2008-05-22T15:44:00.001-04:00

Brace yourself. What I'm about to say will shock and infuriate you, and potentially drive you from reading any more of my witty-yet-cynical writing. Are you ready?

Really, are you?

I don't do FPS.

Yeah, I know. How can I consider myself a card-carrying geek if I don't play games like Halo and Bioshock and Half-Life and whatever the hell else is out there these days?

I get bored easily. Sure, I'll blow seven or eight hours playing a good RPG like Baldur's Gate 2 or waste half my life trying to get that ONE riff in Cliffs of Dover perfect, but I simply can't get into:

Runrunrun.Hide.Look.Runrunrun.BLAM.SssssshhhhhPOW.Runrunrun.
SwitchWeapon.GrenadeOHGODIT'SSTUCKTOMERUNRUNRU..... ... ..

"HAHAHA U DORK."

I played GoldenEye - the 007 game for the Nintendo 64 - a lot. I mean a LOT. I was the designated pain-in-the-ass sniper that would find a quiet corner and examine her nails until the target came into perfect range. I also had a soft spot for the room with all the mirrors in it, as breaking them repeatedly provided me with far more entertainment than it should have. Glass shattering is pretty damned satisfying, especially in mass quantities. Sniping was awesome, and I spent many a happy hour blowing people to small bits from far away - but I also understand this isn't what the experience is all about. You're SUPPOSED to discharge a grenade close enough to the other player (or monster or idiot NPC) so that you both might shit the bed, that's the beauty of a FPS.

I don't have anything against the genre, I really don't. I've watched my friends play for hours on end and laughed hysterically at some of the situations they've gotten into, but as far as actually playing it - well, I just can't get into it. I suck at them, too, and although it's hilarious for the other players to have gerbil fodder running around like some sort of deranged yeti waving a gun in the air, it DOES tend to get old after the second hour. You know how you get titles after a match in Halo? "Most Frags," "ZOMG Deathdealer," "General Grandmaster Flash," etc? Mine are always "Idiot," "Wow You Suck," and the ever popular "Don't Quit Your Day Job."

So I watch my friends play Halo and blow the shit up out of each other... and then I make them play MarioKart Wii so I can laugh at them. Oh, MarioKart Wii, how I love your little plastic steering wheel of You Look Like An Idiotness.

But that's another post entirely.