Good Old Games are awesome!

So, nothing much has happened so here's a short post. I've begun uploading HD videos, starting with a 720p walkthrough of Thief: Deadly Shadows, which, despite what I claimed in the description of the first part can't be considered to be too good of a quality because of the occasional texture flickering. The flickering is caused by my AMD HD graphics card with it's updated drivers and whatever, as apparently new AMD stuff doesn't mesh well with older games made with NVIDIA in mind. I could potentially fix the flickering by downgrading something specific related to the drivers but considering how dumb I am and what problems I created for myself in the past when I started tweaking stuff with the first two Thief games, I better just leave things be. I did try to remove and/or resize some of the intrusive HUD elements to make the walkthrough a more comfortable viewing experience, but that caused some game breaking issues in various spots in the levels. I also decided against turning on subtitles, because they are LARGE, right in the center of the screen and easily broken by random noises in the world. And, well, honestly Thief is one series of games where the hard of hearing cannot get the experience due to an easy 50% of the game being all about the sound. I'm sorry, deaf people, but there are certain things in life you just can't be a part of, same way that double-leg amputees can't have foot-rubs and I can't enjoy anything that requires thought. We all have our problems.

I also uploaded an HD Hitman: Blood Money fukkaround video because I thought I fixed the issues I hads with the sound recording, although I still couldn't hear a lot of the stuff I know I said and had to edit out certain sentences where it sounded like I was just whispering or moaning even though I actually spoke out loud. I recorded some more fukkingaround in A Vintage Year the same night, or to be more precise I recorded the cutscenes and briefing and only a minute or two of the actual level, but decided to stop for the evening as recording in HD takes a lot of space and I realized one thing: no matter how much I love Hitman: Blood Money, I just can't come up with anything to say about it while playing. So what I guess I'll do is upload A Vintage Fukkaround someday and then leave the rest of the game, as usual with my LPs and Fukkarounds, to be finished later and start thinking about doing Fukkarounds of games I haven't played yet, including Barbie Diaries: High School Mystery. I promised to do that and I stand behind my words, especially since it should be a lot more interesting for a Fukkaround than a game I like and know inside and out. And there's people's testicles involved, more specifically Martin alias GamerBomb's. Only reason I wish to stall with the Barbie stuff is that the games cost a fortune and while I don't mind making myself look stupid buying and playing a Barbie game, I do mind making myself look stupid by buying and playing an expensive Barbie game. I may be a bit insane, but I am still primarily a cheapskate.

Admittedly it has been a long time since the last Fukkaround and some people have asked me what Fukkarounds are. The answer is simply that they're Let's Plays done by me, just named differently because some sad elitist LP wankers spend more time trying to shoot down others for crimes against the artform know as "Let's Play" than recording their own videos, and Fukkaround is a more descriptive title for my videos. Sure, "A load of Bollocks" could be an even better title, but Fukkaround is fine. When the LP crowd, and I am exaggerating when using the term "crowd", asked me why the hell my videos suck so much, they couldn't understand it when I said that it's my way of doing LPs, but now that I call them Fukkarounds nobody questions the quality of my running commentary. Some people think LPs are guides, some think they're comedy riffs of games, some think they're casual gameplay, but Fukkarounds are always bad. It's that simple. If you do a Fukkaround it sucks, and if it doesn't then go LP.
I don't really hide the fact that personally I don't like my own LPs and Fukkarounds. I find them to be crap and I'm mostly just ashamed of myself, and one (or more) could ask then why I upload them for the public. Because some people like them for whatever incomprehendable reason, that's why. I find the process of recording videos so amusing that it doesn't take a whole lot away from me to record and upload some bad ones for others to see if they enjoy them, just as long as I don't have to watch them myself. I'm really bad at doing commentary, sure, but why stop because someone like myself criticises myself for something I've done to hurt my own reputation?

The HD videos, I'm still only trying out different video settings to see what's the best for me and iron out the kinks. Basically every Thief: DS video, which I have six done now (three uploaded), has been rendered differently. Oh, and the videos aren't 1440x900 anymore. I still do record the game at that resolution, but the edited videos I upload are smaller to save some time. Still large enough to be 720p, though, don't worry. In fact, try and spot the changes in quality if you can. I doubt you're able to.
Naturally rendering and uploading considerably larger files than before takes more time and so there's no way I'll upload more than one video a day even when I have some already done, but the only times when people have actually complained about my rate of uploading it's always been about uploading too many videos at once, so there shouldn't be any problems there. Nobody complained even when I didn't upload anything for 6 months, which is kind of sad if you think about it, so why start now.
One thing I really hate about HD, though, is that I get much more video errors now and often can't use the recorded footage "as is" without encoding it with some other program first or re-recording the whole thing again. Fraps recordings sometimes suffer from these small errors that only cause slight stuttering in certain media players, which wouldn't be a big problem if it also didn't cause freezing and crashing in the horribly picky video editing software known as Sony Vegas. But, Fraps is still the best screen capture program, wouldn't catch me saying otherwise. Sure it has it's limitations, but I've tested several other programs in the past and Fraps is easily the best for my line of "work". If something's gotta go, it'll be Sony Vegas when I have money for another editing software again. It's just too bad that Studio 10 and Pinnacle stuff in general doesn't seem to work with 90% of computers and other programs, from my experience.

And, lastly and leastly, I have created a GOG.com account. I had some spare dollars left on my PayPal account that I didn't bother to withdraw so I created the account on a whim and bought Deus Ex GOTY and Dungeon  Keeper 2. I also finished Dungeon Keeper 2 after so many years of yearning to play it again, and it's a really fun game, albeit quite easy. I wonder why so  many people give it so much shit. I know, a lot of people do love it like I do, but in the past I have read more negative reviews of it (usually tagged along with nothing but praise for the first game) than positive.
Also, in the past, some people asked me how they could donate me games to record. Most wanted to send me copies in the mail or pirated ISOs through email (probably just to steal my identity and send me worms) and nobody ever donated me money, not even when I cried and begged them to on my knees, but if you really want to send me free games then the only way I'd ever accept them is if you gift them to me on GOG.com. Or Steam, but I'm still not big on Steam. But you never will send me anything now will you, you cheap bastards, even though I know you either have a GOG.com account or will have one because signing up is free and nets you 6 free games (good ones at that) and GOG.com is simply put awesome, even if I do rather sleep with physical copies of games. Hell, I can burn the GOG.com games on DVD discs and sleep with them if I really want, am I right?

Go join GOG.com! It's the only way of downloading games that I condone!
And send me free stuff and money, you freeloading cheapskate bums!

High Definition is today's word. Or two.

When I was young, we didn't care about screen resolutions and picture quality as long as we had a vague flickering image of the Knight Rider on the telly in the afternoon, but in today's modern world, however, a person without the means to receive, or in my case record and stream HD video footage of something people only care to glance at work because nothing else is available is practically worse off than the starving deathly-ill oppressed orphan children in Africa. Well, except that the children don't have High Definition either, they still use old VHSs and SCARTs, so we're pretty much even.
Because of this HD fad I have bravely taken the leap of faith into the mysterious new world the rest of you call "today" and I have put all my money that I could invest in my education into high-end technological hunkajunks in hopes of earning heaps of more money doing basically nothing. In the previous blog post I already informed you of my new Personal Computer with loads of cores to handle tasks, and now, just earlier this week I went out and bought a Hauppauge Highly Definitive Personal Video Recorder and a component cable to boot. Funny thing, I never knew about the other U in Hauppauge. What all that means is that I can finally record PS2 and PS3 games in 1080i. Not that PS2 games were viewable in 1080i, but they will look sharper. Just thought I'd let you know.
Here, take a look at my stupid little HD video I made:

And if the world keeps turning and churning and all this expensive electronic stuff of mine turns into yesterday's toys before it has paid itself back thrice over, I'll murder someone with an HDMI cable.

On a nearly related note, why doesn't YouTube allow embedding in widescreen? The video changes back to 4:3 when I post this even if I edit the width and height in the HTML code manually. Also, doesn't it just suck that YouTube forces everyone to use that ugly and boring new channel design come March? I honestly gave the new design a fair chance already, and I hated it. Sort of makes the waiting for it even more depressing, knowing for sure what's coming.

I bought a new computer

For all my life I have had the habit of lagging years behind everyone else in terms of gaming technology, especially when it comes to PC gaming, but I think I'm finally catching up as I went out today and bought an expensive piece of machinery. It's an AMD P6-2020 A8-3800 with 2,4 clock speed and 8GB RAM and Radeon HD 6570 to handle the moving pictures. Naturally with Windows 7, 64-bit.
I have no idea how good of a PC that is these days and how soon it's declared absolute deadweight for the common user by the more technologically inclined out there, but I can at least play Hitman: Blood Money, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Thief: Deadly Shadows on it at max settings with 1400x900 resolution with perfect framerate. Never done that before. And from what I have seen of the system requirements of the more recent PC game releases, I should be set to play quite a few games with quite high graphical settings quite well. The gaming side isn't the only reason for this purchase, but it is something I'll probably do quite a lot.

What my new PC purchase means for my walkingthrough business is this: I can, in theory, record and upload videos in HD quality now. At least PC games, but I have thought about also buying an HD capture card once my bank account recovers from today's beating.
I promised already to record more of Deep Water (a surprisingly popular game on my channel) and try and record Animaniacs for SEGA Mega Drive, and I suppose I should stick to my word once every 5 years or so, but I do want to at first test my ability to record and edit high quality videos that take years to upload with my slow internet connection.
Some games I'm already planning to record on PC are the aforementioned Hitman: Blood Money (probably a LONG series of Fukksaround), Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Thief: Deadly Shadows, as well as Death to Spies and Condemned: Criminal Origins. I would also possibly do XIII and Beyond Good and Evil if they work properly, but both of those two I had issues with before despite meeting the system requirements with my old PC.
I am still planning to record more PS2 games, especially Maximo vs Army of Zin, but unfortunately having a new PC doesn't change the fact that Dazzle only records low quality video and since I have plans to upgrade that part of my technology as well I'd like to wait until I can get the best possible footage from the consoles.

That was about it.
Regarding my physical condition, the legs are healing fine. I do still walk a bit funny due to the minor pains and certainly couldn't run a marathon. Not that I'd ever run a marathon, working legs or no.

Johnny Comes Limping Home. Again.

Well, as you may or may not know, in Finland every man who turns 18 is drafted into the Finnish Defence Forces. Three years ago it was my turn and the visit was shortlived due to my knees failing. I spent 5 days trying to march with the pain in my legs, then 5 more days lying in bed of a temporary hospital in the garrison listening to some large metallic thing bang on the wall outside my room day and night. I was sent to an actual hospital where the doctors screwed up in a few ways and sent me back to the garrison too early. I was then released from service and driven to the parking lot of a hospital in my home city with only a modest amount of cash on me and a nearly dead cellphone.
Only things I got from that fun little trip were a haunting pain in my knees that has lasted over the years, arms badly bruised for weeks from literally more than a dozen bloodtests they took during the last 5 days in the all of them hospitals (4 times in a row at one of them because the nurse kept screwing up my social security number and had to redraw my blood every time) and a rather large hospital bill that my mother had to pay because I had no income. And I never got my pay for those weeks I did spend in the army because the clever bastards released me exactly 6 hours before the payday, so I wasn't in their system or eligible to receive the payment anymore at the moment they would've sent it.
There's lots that went wrong that I'll leave out from this post, but overall I can say that it was a shitty trip and I never figured it could get worse.

Well, three years passed and earlier this month it came time for me to retry this shit again. My class was lowered from A to B due to my knees so I thought I could handle it this time. Those in class B are supposed to have it slightly easier due to their physical conditions, you see. Well, on the first or second evening there a corporal came and told all of us that we shouldn't expect anything to be easier even with our class B papers, that it's just for publicity and in reality it has no bearing in the army. He actually said that, I could put quotation marks around that sentence.
Of course I thought "what the fuck?" and decided to ask about it from a doctor later that week and see if it's true. Indeed, when I asked about it the doctor said "yep, it's true, everybody goes through the same treatment the first two months before you choose you specialisations." Well, I didn' get through even one month three years back, how the hell am I supposed to get through it all now? The doctor told me to "just try" and sent me away.
Of course, over time the pain in my knees got worse and worse to the point that walking became difficult (again) and I had to go see a doctor about it (again), and I was again told to just try and finish my service anyway. I didn't get any painkillers or anything, and I had to still try to do the same shit that everyone else did that I couldn't have done even with healthy legs.

I got so pissed off that I made my mind and decided to quit the army and pick the alternative way to handle my duties as a Finnish person. Of course, it wasn't easy because at first the lieutenant asked me to rethink and go talk to the captain the next morning if I hadn't changed my mind. Of course I didn't change my mind, I was dying in there and I didn't get any help from anywhere, what fucking choice did I have? Stay there until I couldn't even crawl anymore and then get driven back home again to pay a few more hospital bills with no money?
The captain tried to talk me out of it as well, only he wasn't as nice about it as the lieutenant. I'm not even going to try and explain everything he said, but he's a stuck-up dick who doesn't seem to care about other people, and I'm not just talking about my situation. The captain was an overall jerk and tried to scare me to stay. What he basically told me, in a nutshell, was that he couldn't just throw me out of the army with bad knees and insisted that I at least go speak with a doctor (again).
Well, I'll skip the waiting and walking and talking even though it was a pretty rough day and just get on with it. The doctor at first didn't want to get involved because it's not his job to discuss with me about my choice to leave the army, but agreed to sign a paper that basically said that my knees would get better over time and that I would be able to walk normal and handle my civil duties someday (even though he doesn't really know that for sure). And then he fucked up and had my classification changed to "capable of regular military service", but nothing ever came from that so I won't dwell on it. And I still didn't get any painkillers or anything.
I finally returned to the captain who made another speech about how I shouldn't quit and blah blah, but grudgingly let me go and fill a form that you quit the army with because he had to admit that it's my right to choose and he couldn't keep me there against my will. It's one of the few rights people still have in this country, I do believe, but it seems to be a constant struggle to keep it. At least in my case it was.
Well, I returned the form but of course it wouldn't get sent anywhere that day because I was running stupid errands all day and apparently the big shots in the army like to stop working an hour and a half too early and since it was Friday my paper would't get processed until Monday, so I decided to go home for the weekend. This isn't the end of my day, though.

We were released 1 hour 40 minutes AFTER the last bus for the day had left and our garrison is in the middle of nowhere, so of course getting back home was going to be a teensy bit tricky. Thankfully I got to know some great guys in the army who offered me a ride to the bus station of a nearby city so I wasn't left just standing there in the snowstorm, but unfortunately what none of us knew was that this city is apparently a shithole and has no busses going to my home city. Yup, great, now stranded in a slightly larger place in the middle of nowhere, at night when it's cold and snowing.
Well, long story short (too late), I took the next bus to a completely different city where I then caught another bus home and when I got back here I had to take another bus from downtown (dubbed the "drunk-train") to get all the way home. I arrived home at 05.30 Saturday morning, and I had left the garrison 17.30 Friday evening. 12 hours of traveling with a fever and two legs I can barely walk on. I ran out of money paying the bus fares and only barely made it home, by the way. And the army doesn't compensate for those rides either. They would if I had only taken one bus, but since I had to take several they won't. Kind of a shitty situation to be in.
I spent the weekend at home and then on Sunday evening went back to the garrison for one night to wait for my paper to get processed, and indeed the next morning I got the word that I was getting out. It was a rough day, running back and forth carrying loads of stuff around, but I got through it with the help of a cruch and loads of painkillers I took from home since, once again, the army didn't provide me anything, and at last I were a free man again. Still not quite the end of the story.

I missed the last bus home. Yup, I had very slowly walked to the nearest bus stop in the middle of nowhere and missed the last bus to anywhere for the day. I actually got to see it as it drove past me as I had gotten to the stop, which is much more infuriating than missing it by 20 minutes or something. And it was again cold and snowing, and I hadn't eaten all day. Well, nothing else to do but walk about 5-6 miles in the middle of dark woods I don't know to the nearest "city" I've never been in (it's a smaller place than the neighbourhood I live in, not much of a city). Took me several hours and several stops for moments of silent crying, but I pushed through. Probably mostly thanks to the painkillers.
Once I finally found my way to the "city" I had a quick bite in a local fast-food joint and then sent a message home regarding my current whereabouts. Of course this "city" was the very place where all those "last busses for the day" leave from so now I would've been promptly stuck there for the next 10 hours. Thankfully my sister claims to be wealthy (she's only doing better than me and my mother) so she called a taxi to get me home and paid for it.

Now I'm home, unable to walk and I'm told I have bronchitis. At least I didn't lose 20 kilograms like last time.
That's the story of Johnny in the Finnish Defence Forces. I'm never going back there!

By the way, walking 5-6 miles in pitch black woods in the middle of nowhere when you're sick, have two busted knees, are dehydrated and haven't eaten anything besides painkillers is a really fucking stupid idea and I can't blame the army for that. Though as far as I'm concerned, they now owe me about 330 euros for all the expenses.

BUT I'M BACK!

KA-BLOOM!

Merry New Year! Or almost, in a couple of days. You'll probably read this in 2012, though, so it doesn't matter.

Haven't been in any Christmas spirit thanks to the damn army, but I'm still going to list the gifts I got like I do every year. I won't take any pictures this time, though, because I just can't be bothered. Damn army!
I got candy, sports clothing, the fifth season of McCloud on DVD, a film called True Gun on DVD, a Terence Hill film called Man of the East on DVD, a John Wayne film called The Barbarian and the Geisha on DVD, a book about the artist Kaj Stenvall, a Kaj Stenvall calendar, an oddly official and fancy Disney's Mickey Mouse notebook that is so fancy I won't dare to ever write anything in it, AND I got Saints Row: The Third for PS3.
I wasn't supposed to get anything much for Christmas this year because my mother already bought me a new PS3 when my old one broke and she also decided to pay for the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim hat I got last month, and those were chalked up to being early Christmas gifts because I wouldn't stop insisting on paying for them myself.

Already finished Saints Row: The Third once and it's the new walkthrough I'll start uploading today. Fun game. I like how the game is so insane that absolutely anything can happen, but it still feels like the feet are somehow kept on the ground. I also really like the amount of character customization and the freedom of changing your character completely during the game whenever you want after the first two missions if you get bored of looking the same all the time.
I thought the best person suited for the action in this game, or any game ever made, was Cate Archer so I created her once I found the the go-go suit.
Seriously, Cate Archer is the most beautiful video game character ever and has been into more shit than most video game characters combined. In fact, a lot of actions sequences in Saints Row: The Third bring into mind the No One Lives Forever games. Does freefalling from an airplane without a parachute while gunning down goons ring any bells? Yup, NOLF had that and Saints Row the Third has that.
I also created a perfect lookalike of Agent 47 from Hitman, but switched back to Cate because, quite frankly, Cate has breasts. Cate's breasts beat anything. In fact, Cate herself refers to them as good "weapons" in NOLF1 chapter titled "A Man of Influence" when Tom Goodman wonders how she's going to get to Dumas, and in a game as crazy as Saints Row the Third you need all the special weapons you can get. Also, I'm a lonely heterosexual young adult male, I like breasts. What's so wrong with that? While were on the subject of breasts, Saints Row the Third also has excellent breast physics, best I have seen. Only problem is that large breasts in the game look ugly, so you're better off going with smaller ones. Mmmm, breasts...

Oh, I also got 50 euros from relatives so I went and spent it right after Christmas (I don't have a lot of relatives).
You remember that top ten most wanted games list I did a long, long time ago? Remember game #3 from that list, Maximo vs Army of Zin? Just try and guess where I'm going with this.
Yes, I bought it. New copy, too. Been hunting for it since 2003... or was it even earlier since I learned about it from a demo and a preview article? Anyway, it's instances like these that give life a meaning. You look for something, and almost a decade later you find it. I'm almost not even bothered by the fact that I don't have any time to actually play it until next summer thanks to this army business, because I have obligations as a YouTube Partner and must spend the next 11 days recording, editing and uploading just so that the Fullscreen people don't think I'm a complete shithead that disappears into thin air for 6 months. I know I've already proven that I am, but I don't want THEM to think that.
Fucking army. Would it be too much to ask for world peace and laws against military training for the start of 2012?

I bet that right when I'm returning home later next year I'll get run over by a bus before I get to my PS2. It would be just my luck.

I am a YT Partner

 Achtung!

I haven't proof-read this blog post that I wrote in a hurry so it most likely has hundreds of typos

and half-done sentences that make absolutely no sense! Keep this in mind just in case.

I haven't felt like doing anything this whole month and I just didn't feel like writing blog posts before that, but I suppose I have to try and pretend there's still life here and give you, one person, the general jist of things that have been going on before I receive a delivery of my own copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and lock myself away again for a few weeks.

This past month all I've wanted to do is sedate my brain with video games and movies and forget everything else for awhile, and I tried out some games I've had sitting around for a long time.
I finally managed to install Jagged Alliance 2, after a few failed tries, and played it for a few days. I have to say I was expecting a little bit more from it, possibly out of desperation to find a new awesome game to keep me occupied for weeks, but it's still alright. It's a bit like Fallout in a non-apocalyptic (debatable) setting if you replaced majority of the quests with straight up firefights and added in this mercenary business element you have to keep in mind.
One of the reasons I was eager to play Jagged Alliance 2 was that I really loved having firefights in Fallout and Fallout 2 and JA2 is just more of that basically, but I quite frankly didn't like many of the areas I ended up having fights in. I really enjoy shootouts indoors in rooms and corridors and with stuff I can take cover behind and strategize with, but during my first 24 hours of play I only ever saw open areas like airfields and not-so-dense forests. The few times when a fight could've taken place somewhere with stuff, the enemies always stayed in the wide open where I couldn't possibly get to them without having my ass shot up. Seriously, my healthy mercenaries with 85-95 (out of 100) marksmanship armed with rifles (long range weapons) couldn't hit the enemies as often as the enemies armed with revolvers (close range weapons) hit me when firing from great distances, so trying to attack enemies standing in an open space was ridiculously dangerous considering the circumstances. I eventually became too careful with my moves, only moving an inch at a time with the entire squad and as the battles got slower and slower the fun drained out. The movement speed both in battle and out of battle is soooooooooooo slow even for the fastest characters that it really got tiring.
When I realized that my first owned mine could actually run out of ore and stop giving me money, and would actually do that soon, I decided to stop playing. I was just trying to learn what everything does for the first time ever and threw money around like it was nothing once I took over the mine, and if I wanted to continue playing I would've really needed to start a new game and play better, and I just couldn't be bothered to spend another two-three days redoing the fights in the open spaces.
But, it's a fun game and I understand why some people love it so, and I know that even I have times when I could really get into it. Just not right now.

I also finally downloaded Team Fortress 2, because I can't say no to free stuff even if it's from Steam and takes a quarter of a day to download.
I can definitely see why it's a hit. The gameplay is fun and hectic and any way you want to play it, you can, because there's a class for everyone for every situation. What I really appreciate is that they also added in an offline practice mode, which I think is rare for full online multiplayer games. I know there usually tends to be a quick tutorial mode in every game to teach you the controls, sure, but TF2 has an actual offline battle mode that has a really good AI for the bots and feels almost the same as the actual game with people. This really great because one of the problems with online multiplayer is that once the game has been out for a while new players have a lot more trouble trying to fit in with the old crowd that has already learned all the tricks and make fun of all the people who haven't, and TF2 is especially difficult to get good at because there's so many classes and each one is so different from the others, but with a practice mode you can hone your skills in private without the fear of everyone calling you a noob fag in the chat because your repeated failing at a backstab is the sole reason tyour team lost. I can personally vouch that the offline practice mode helped me get in to the game faster AND it was fun to play.
Over the course of two days I played on two servers, one Finnish server which seemed fun and friendly although there was very little chat activity, and the Video Games Awesome! server that had much, much more talking and clearly most of the people were good sports, but there was one guy who talked smack to people he thought weren't good enough. Didn't say anything about me, but being a noob fag myself I take offense on behalf of the other people.
So, can you expect to see me playing TF2 a lot from now on? No, for one very good reason: my graphics card is crap and whenever the there's a lot of movement onscreen, which is all the time in TF2, it gets a little bit choppy even at the lowest settings. Not so much that it would ruin the fun entirely, but it's annoying nevertheless and I could never be able to play a spy, a sniper or a scout like that seeing as how those classes demand speeds and precision around enemies. I might still play on occasion when I really don't have anything else to do, but really not going to be very often and the only thing I will ever play as is the demoman, or sometimes the medic. And I never know when is the best time to release über as medic, although I haven't had any complaints so far.

I also played Fighting Angels for PS2, which I'm sure is all of your most favourite video game ever. It's a Japanese budget title originally from the Simple 2000 series, and it's a bit like a really crappy version of Rumble Roses. It has no voice acting, it has no story, it has really only one arena, all the outfits are shared between all the fighters so there's no differences between one fighter or the other, the controls are awful, he idea that some matches in this wrestling game are to the death and allow you to use a M16 is ludicrous BUT sadly the game is not ridiculous enough because the M16 deal is the ONLY funny aspect of the game, and what's really the last nail on the coffin is that the game covers far less fetishes than Rumble Roses.
If you want to jerk off to a video game about Japanese women wrestling in silly settings, get Rumble Roses because it has most of the types of sexy fantasies playable, whether it's an almost naked ninja girl, an obviously underage school girl who "officially" is 18, a sexy teacher, a sexy nurse, a latex devil, a biker in a black leather catsuit... well, you get the idea. All Fighting Angels really gives you is almost identical bikini chicks.
Trust me, you have to be really pathetic to buy Fighting Angels as it's worth nobody's money despite it being a budget title.

And yes, I am pathetic for buying Fighting Angels, but I had a good reason to get it: I collect Simple 2000 series games as a joke. I actually like some of them.

I also played Commandos: Strike Force for PS2. Commandos 2 is really the best isometric real-time strategy game I have ever played and I actually prepared a big review post of it months ago that I never actually completed, but it's always questionable how well a game like that translates to a first- or third-person viewpoint. I'd say it works really well in Strike Force, I actually liked it. Of course, the game really isn't anything like Commandos 2, as you have much, MUCH smaller missions, much less characters and much more shooting action. In Commandos 2 you infiltrate these ginormous installations patrolled by a couple of hundred enemies and it can take you several long hours to complete a single level, so some of the missions from Strike Force seem like Wario Ware games in comparison, but then I suppose that's always the case when comparing a little more action oriented 3rd person game to a point-and-click strategy game where action usually means game over.
The only things that bug me and bug me bad about Strike Force are the horrid controls and the damn loading times on PS2. I don't know about the PC version, but the controls feel a little clunky on the controller and what stopped me from playing the game further was the fact that whenever you fail you have to start the ENTIRE mission over and suffer through the awfully long loading screen again, and repeating sections of the missions just gets boring.
But, I do think I could enjoy it on the PC if some of the problems don't exist in that version. I really liked Death to Spies, and Commandos Strike Force is a lot like a Death to Spies lite with it's sniper/spy oriented stealth gameplay sections where you strangle people dressed in a disguise and sabotage equipment or sneak in bushes and stab enemies in the back when they go off alone and then snipe some other guards from a distance.

I have also played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion a lot recently, and I do mean a lot. I decided to give it another go to see if it's really any good and if I should think about getting Skyrim. You may be aware that I didn't think very highly of Oblivion in the past, and I have said such things as "the level up system is designed ass-backwards" and "it's time consuming in a bad way" because while I have put a few hundred hours into the game I never got much entertainment out of it. It always just tricked me into doing chores in hopes that I start having fun soon and before you knew it I had leveled up too high and became weaker in comparison to the ever-growing-in-power regular enemies and had no fun fighting stuff with my abilities because almost every common enemy at that level can take anything you dish out to them.
Well, having played a stealth based, almost full-thief/ranger character and then a full mage character with no effort put into blades or any of that crap, I at first had tons of fun roleplaying a character. I had exciting battles where I almost lost and sometimes easy ones where I dominated, and I started to regret everything bad I've said about the game. I thought I began understanding the logic behind how the level up system works and how the leveled loot and enemies make sense, but again, once I reached level 20 or so, which was really soon because I followed the game's ass-backwards recommendations to how to build a character, the fun was gone again. I could turn the difficulty down but that's not really fun either after a while. I don't want everything to be easy, I just want variety in the encounters. On normal difficulty I kept running into these behemoths of adversaries who can soak 400 points worth of damage, and having literally a dozen of those 3-5 minute long battles during the travel from one city to another got tiring, especially since they're supposed to be sort of easy, and in comparison to quests that take you into tight spaces they are. When kiting a Minotaur Lord around the forest and blasting at it with poisoned daedric arrows with a daedric bow with 100 marksman  (and 100 alchemy + expert equipment for the poisons) for 5 minutes becomes your most common "random" battle, the game gets DULL as all hell.
Seriously, this is a well known fact and I can't stress this enough if you ever want to enjoy Oblivion: make your major skills something you NEVER would use and then stop leveling up at around levels 12-16 if you really want to feel like you actually grow in power. If you take the game's own advice on what kind of character to play as, you become WEAKER over a very short period of time due to the constant use of the skills that raise your level.

I couldn't have gotten tired of Oblivion (again) at a better time because although I already made the choice of not getting Skyrim, after watching Angry Joe's review of it I reversed that decision immediately. If what the reviews say is true, Skyrim fixes every problem that ever stopped me from having fun in Oblivion, and really I don't think Oblivion sucks that horribly either, just the level up system screws you over bad if you get too carried away playing instead of counting skill points for hours.
I really hope Skyrim, which I should have in my hands literally within the next hour, really is as good as advertised, and while I am a young curmudgeon who hates everything I hate to admit I am really excited about playing that fantastically awesome piece of shit game from the lovable incompetent people at Bethesda. I'm just joshing of course, developers like Bethesda, despite their occasional bugs and design mistakes, don't really deserve hate. It's too popular to be hateful of big titles these days, and when an exaggerating hatefilled little cock like me says that, I think it means something.

Maybe it means that Christmas spirit has crept into my black heart. Now that I think of it I have had some heartburns lately...

I also watched the Fred Astaire film The Band Wagon last night. It was fun.


Oh, yeah, and I'm a YouTube partner now thanks to the kind people at Fullscreen.net and their seemingly limitless patience with me and my doofusness with worng email addressess and whatnot.
This means I will be putting more effort into the YouTube channel than ever before, which really isn't a lot, and not until I get my share of Skyrim. Also means that people don't have to keep repeatedly asking me why I haven't been accepted as a partner yet despite my thousands of crappy videos. I am a partner now, happy? No? Why not?

No next generation for you, dudes

The story behind this post is that in the GameFaqs Batman: Arkham City PS3 board someone asked in a topic if people think the PlayStation 3 will continue to get new games for another 3-4 years or will the next generation of consoles get announced soon. To my horror clear majority of people replying to him foolishly believe that this generation will last only a year or two at best, some waiting for a new Sony or Microsoft console in 2012 already. One guy there even believes that the WiiU is the first console of the next generation, not really understanding that it's just Nintendo trying to catch up and get their cut from this gen.
So, in my wisdom I posted my reply. This is it.

Like it's been said by other people already, the technology leaps right now for the next console would be so abysmal it's not worth it to produce a new system. Sure, there's always some potential for an upgrade but right now the new technology a PS4 or X720 would need to be worth buying for the average gamer would cost too much to produce in mass and sell for a price the regular consumer could afford.

Furthermore, it's not the consoles themselves Microsoft or Sony get profit from, it's the game sales. In fact, Sony has lost a ton of money with PS3 as a console, because they have to sell it for less than it actually costs to manufacture, but this tactic pays off in the end when they get their share of money from the games. Without a console there would be no game revenue so the initial loss is perfectly acceptable.

The only reason Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will create new consoles is to have the advantage. The consumer is a dumb animal who obediently follows the leader for shallow rewards, and if one console is much more advanced than others then people are likely to be more interested in buying that one for many reasons. Maybe they think it'll last longer than the previous generations of consoles or just believe that the new technology will open new worlds for game design. Regardless, the company with the console that sells or has sold a lot is the one that is like to also sell more games. It's why Sony didn't hurry PS3 out and why PS2 games were being developed even after PS3 came out, because so many people already owned a PS2 that it was guaranteed that PS2 games would continue to make profit, for a short while even more than PS3 games when we count in what they lost with the actual console.

WiiU is just Nintendo's way to get their share of current gen game sales. It's not any more advanced as a console than PS3 or X360 is, but when it's out those old Nintendo fans who so far have only had Sony and Microsoft to offer them the many popular HD titles in recent years will get a chance to jump back on the Nintendo wagon and give them their money.

You have to understand that Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft don't put out new consoles out of love for technology or because they like to amaze their customers, but because they want to make a profit. Sometimes it's just a good business tactic to put out a new console.
Right now, Sony and Microsoft are on top of the world because they are selling games like crazy. Putting out a new console now would be stupid of both of them because they wouldn't be able to get any significant advantage over the other and would risk losing money on the manufacturing costs. They will milk this generation until it looks dry, and THEN move on.

So yes, I do indeed think PS3 has another 3-4 good years left.

I posted this message here on this blog for two reasons. One, I have nothing else to fill the blog with again, sorry. Second, this post is a good way to show you that I do indeed write long rants on the Internet on a daily basis. I often write this much even on YouTube comment sections for crying out loud, and it's the exact reason why I'm always so amazed at being seemingly unable to post new stuff on my own blog more often. I suppose I always need a discussion starter, something to break the gates.

I didn't buy Dead Island, and I guess I never will

Sheeet, I'll just write this blog post out so that I'll have something new up here.

So, if you haven't followed my twitter updates like you should because I'm awesome, there's a few completely uninteresting things I can tell you about here and now in length.
Despite my bad habit of spending everything I have on shitty games nobody's ever liked I have actually been saving money lately so that I can buy Batman: Arkham City on the release day, BUT some weeks ago I got a little oddjob to do that paid me enough to buy one new game in addition to Arkham City, and I kept precariously teetering on the brickwall of choice between Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dead Island for quite a while. It wasn't so much that I didn't realise Deus Ex was definitely worth getting now because I have had my eyes set on it ever since I heard Spoony and Angry Joe talking about it a year back in their 2010 E3 videos, but it just seemed like Dead Island's co-op alone could be worth getting that one now and get Deus Ex: HR cheap for Christmas. I kept watching days worth of playthroughs of Dead Island and read reviews of both games like mad while trying to figure out what to buy. I even got so frustrated with not being able to make a decision that at one point I figured I'd better not buy either of them if it's this difficult. Thought I better save that money and buy something shitty, old and used instead, like Quest For Sleeping Beauty or Street Boyz. Yes, I will buy those two games someday, I'm just waiting for my loose screws to drop.

Eventually, though, I decided to buy something new for once and I came into the conclusion that although there is a chance that I could have a fantastic co-op experience in Dead Island with Gamerbomb, who I thank for offering to play it through with me, it's not a game that deserves to be paid in full for. It seem Dead Island derives all it's best qualities from other, much more successful games, and while there's nothing wrong with taking existing ideas, you still have to make the fucking game playable. Dead Island is such a lazy effort from the developers that even I get mad at it just by watching other people play it. It looks to be a game that mixes some basic ideas from bigger hits like Borderlands, Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 but ends up being a repetitive, unimaginative 'smack mad people on the head and collect a few dollars from their corpses to rub on your weapons' type of experience covered in glitches, sometimes horrible game breaking bugs. The idea of taking the weapon level/rarity/upgrade system from Borderlands is just silly with the weapons being kitchen knives and sticks (that are relatively rare for a supposedly realistic world), the story seems to be just awful, the characters lack character, the environments seem dull, the whole game is about beating up zombies in such  a manner it doesn't seem fun after the first hour (which should be impossible to do because killing zombies is always fun), and the mechanic of fixing your weapons with nothing but money every 5 minutes is a lazy attempt to make the players feel like they're doing periodic maintenance of equipment and being self-sufficient and pro-active in the post-apocalypse.
Seriously, I got so mad at Dead Island just by watching other people play it that I dare not fathom what might happen if I actually spent any of my own money on it. I honestly feel that Dead Island with it's boring presentantion of what are supposed to be tried and true game mechanics, riddled with bugs that were only made worse with the patch that was supposed to fix everything, does not deserve to be bought at full price. I don't think I'll ever actually buy it myself, and I don't think I'll even mention the title to anyone in case someone from my family gets an idea to gift the game to me.
I don't care if the developer is a small-time studio that could use the support and I don't care if it's actually the publisher's fault for rushing the unfinished project out, because the one thing than matters is, "is it worth buying in my current situation". To me it seems like Dead Island is not.

So I bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution and have actually already beat it twice, and I can tell you now that it is one of the relatively rare games that really deserves to be paid good money for. It's a lot of fun with a lot of replay value regardless of whether you prefer gunplay or sneaking, although I think it's mandatory to enjoy things like reading stuff and listening to dialogue because half of the game is just straight up story. I'm not sure I would say it's a masterpiece or definitely the best game this year yet in terms of overall quality and polish, but it is such a solid and entertaining game that it feels greater than the sum of it's already decent enough parts, and I now have faith in Eidos Montreal's ability to make Thief 4 an entertaining experience. And let me just tell you here and now, it is NOT an RPG like some people call it, it only has vague RPG elements. It's a linear action adventure game with occasional hub-like city areas you can momentarily roam in with optional tasks to accomplish and a plethora of alternative methods of play to try out, with RPG-like elements on the top. I think I'll actually write a detailed and lengthy review of it some day, but I was thinking I'd try recording a walkthrough of it first so that I'll get at least three runs under my belt and have a more solid basis for my final thoughts, and that way I'd also be able to get screenshots for the review without relying on outside sources.
If you don't remember or didn't follow me way back when, I originally created this blog ONLY to serve as a throwaway general update page for my then website johnnydfox.com (courtesy of D. Stygle from PSDProtocol, thank you Darren for paying my bills for one year) that I could update easily without logging into my server host all the time just to update one file with two short sentences, but after being left with only this blog I have decided over the past year to aim at only posting three types of updates: full reviews of games and films, long-ish rants of individual aspects of games and films that alone would serve as good discussion points if anybody cared about what I think, and lastly as well as leastly the completely useless posts that only serve to link my walkthroughs and LPs to this blog (like the previous four posts), and I really wish to be able to provide whatever images I use in reviews myself and not have to pilfer them from MobyGames everytime. So basically, only deep thoughts or nothing with only self-took screenshots or nothing. Of course I haven't come even close to reaching this goal, like, ever, but a man can dream. Unless he's mentally unable to do so, which I think you'd have to discuss with a doctor of some kind instead if you have such problems.

Personal life updates like what the colour of the hair of the girl that gave me an embarrassing boner in the bus was or how my digestion is, like am I still crapping green nuggets or is there blood in there, I would hope to keep between me and my twitter followers.
So, in 2027 there will be nothing but insightful articles on this blog and nothing but shit in the twitter. Stay tuned till then, my deranged pals from another uncle.
This has once again been a 3 in the morning update for no reason other than me being bored while waiting for videos to upload, from your smoking hot neighbourhood adonis who shouldn't ever open his mouth in public.

Be seeing you.

---

EDIT:

Regarding the suspected time of availability of the Deus Ex: HR walkthrough, it's probably going to take a while. I really like sticking to recording one game at a time and I really want to do the Thief games back to back which takes a couple more weeks to finish. I also want to try and do Batman: Arkham Asylum in anticipation of Arkham City's release. By the time Arkham Asylum is up, if it stays up and doesn't get taken down by 12-year-old kids who found out YouTube's greatest weakness, that being that the service is unreliable and often easily manipulatable crap, I'll already be playing Arkham City, unless it's release date gets pushed like it probably will. I'd say you can expect Deus Ex halfway through November, at the earliest.

If you actually read all the way through this post without skipping a single line when there aren't even any images to look at, get your head examined. I think it may be cracked. Why are you even reading my blog in the first place?

Thief II: The Metal Age
PC

Slip through the shadows. Steal to survive. On the streets and rooftops of a darkened city, where the forces of a corrupt sheriff loom, it takes someone with a soft touch and even softer step to stay ahead of the law. For a master thief like Garrett, the choices are clear: profit or perish. Thief II: The Metal Age expands on the smash-hit "first-person sneaker", Thief: The Dark Project, demanding a whole new level of stealth, strategy and skill to survive.

Recorded with Fraps

A great game. An awesome game. A regular masterpiece. Took all the great things that the original Thief gave birth to and made them better. The definitive sneaking game.

Thief: The Dark Project

PC

Sneak... Stalk... Steal... Survive! Sneak through the shadows of 12 treacherous missions including haunted cathedrals, subterranean ruins, and forbidding prisons, in a dark and sinister city. Stalk your prey on the quest for stolen goods with your blackjack, sword and an assortment of unique arrows. Steal for money and uncover the hidden agendas of your allies and enemies as you play through an unravelling story of deception and revenge. Survive in a world where shadows are your only ally, trust is not an option, and confrontation results in death!


Recorded with Fraps

Classic game. Recording this walkthrough made me appreciate and love Thief: The Dark Project even more than before, but it's still inferior to the second one, the Metal Age.

Hitman: Blood Money
PlayStation 2

Hitman's back, drawing you closer than ever into his deadly world where staying anonymous, being smart and totally ruthless are the key to a perfect execution. Lucrative contracts on the rich and powerful in high profile locations make killing for money good business. But when a rival agency enters the scene it's war and only the best man will be left standing.


Recorded with Pinnacle Dazzle Video Creator Platinum

I looove this game. Love it so much I bought it twice.

Hitman: Contracts
PC

When you kill for money, there are no rules.
Hitman: Contracts takes you deep into the mind of Agent 47. Enter a world of crime, sin and greed. Encounter his greatest adversaries, completing the work that made him so ruthlessly efficient and deadly precise, the ones that shaped him as an assassin. Understand, nothing counts except the target. Anyone can kill, but can they make the perfect hit? Take on the role of 47 and do what you must to get the job done, because in a professional Hitman's hands everything becomes a weapon.

Recorded with Fraps

I love this game. I didn't like Hitman 2: Silent Assassin at all and expected Contracts to be crap as well, but I was positively surprised at how the developers managed to take all the gameplay elements that Silent Assassin introduced to the series and make them actually work.
Read about my first ever playthrough of Hitman: Contracts HERE!

Johnny Fox's Top Ten "Most Wanted" Games

Simple top ten lists made by all kinds of people about all types of things can be often seen all over the Internet, because making them is as easy as counting to ten and a lot of people over the age of six can do that. That's why I'll be doing one here and now, as I'm chronically lazy yet I still wish to keep updating my blog somewhat actively.
Still, there are some positive sides to a top ten list as well. When done with thought it can be ten little capsules of information in one big spoonful that helps explain something about a larger context, like a person's fascinations. Why not try and clarify my eccentric taste some with top ten lists, as I am the guy this blog is about and I do like talking about myself. And at least I'm not a preteen doing a 30 second video for YouTube about "the best horror films of all time" where the top spots are held by the Hostel, SAW and Scream films. Seriously kids, you suck! Stop sucking!

This particular list is about my "most wanted" videos games. It's perhaps even more pointless than simple "favourite" lists but may need a little bit more explaining. See, I'm not talking about games I'm looking forward to or hope are going to be made or games I can't afford to buy right now, I mean games that have been already released long ago that I just have serious trouble finding here and now. Games that I would most likely choose over a better game at a store even if the price was a little bit more than what I tend to pay for used games. Games that I may know nothing about, but desperately seek out so I can place them on my shelf and finish a "quest". It's one of the great joys of video gaming, searching for games to buy. It's why you call yourself a "collector" and not just a gamer.
I got the idea for this list when I realized that just recently two spots from this list were vacated when I bought some games I have been looking for for ages: BMX XXX and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. So, the point of this list is that I have some strange obsession over certain titles I sometimes know very little about, and I really can't say if many of these games are actually any good.

1. Urban Chaos, for the PC.
I think I found out about this game when it was a recommendation next to some shitty beat 'em game I was looking up on GameSpot, and it has been sitting at the top of my list ever since. I hear it's a beat'em up action adventure game with varying indepth sidemissions. And no, it has nothing to do with Urban Chaos: Riot Response, that one that's SWAT 4's inbred cousin.
I want the PC version specifically because I hear the console versions of this game suck tremendously.

2. Death to Spies: Moment of Truth, for the PC
I first heard about Death to Spies the same day I bought it. It's a Hitman-esque stealth-infiltration game where you play as a SMERSH operative in the second World War wearing disguises, strangling people in silence and spending hours upon hours replaying one single fucking mission because there's just too many regular sentries everywhere that prevent you from apprehending those damn snipers undetected. Well, Moment of Truth is the sequel to Death to Spies, and seeing how much I enjoyed the first one despite never finishing the stupid 8th level with even a hint of professionalism, and seeing how Hitman is one of my favourite series of games ever even if Death to Spies can't even compare to it, I really want this game. Want it bad.

3. Maximo vs Army of Zin, for the PS2
I had and still have the demo of Maximo vs Army of Zin on one of those PS2 demo discs that you most often got with larger gaming magazines and which I actually uploaded videos of on YouTube that one time years back, and the demo is what got me excited. Too bad I never found the damn game anywhere despite looking for it around when it was released.
All I know about Maximo vs Army of Zin is that it's a cartoony medieval action-adventure game starring the main character from Ghosts 'n Goblins, heart boxers and all, and that the demo rocks. I also know that there exists another, earlier 3rd-person Maximo game called "From Ghosts to Glory", and I suppose I want it as well even though it's title hasn't been burned into my brain that bad yet.

4. Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive, for the PC
I got the demo disc for Desperados:WDoA from a Kellogg's cornflakes package a long time ago, and after I finally got a PC that met the system requirements a few years later I got hooked. I borrowed the full game from a friend once and even started recording a video walkthrough, but sadly Giovanni Vindigni, the guy who did the music for the game claimed copryight infringement and almost took my damn YouTube channel down. No, seriously, I know the differences between a regular notice, a video take-down notice and a "Your account is just about fucked" notice, believe you me.
Inspite of the game being really crappy, simple Commandos-type of isometric point-and-click strategy game taking place in the old west with laughable but supposedly serious voice acting, without any of the great features that I know at least make Commandos 2 so great, I still like it a lot and really want it sitting right smacking next to the even shittier sequel, Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge that I bought in a fit of madness. Don't know much about the 3rd game in the series called Helldorado, other than that it allows you to cause an accident by sending a wagon into a watertower at some point, and I have little interest in it.

5. Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death, for the PC or PS2
I was a pretty big fan of Judge Dredd comics back when I was a kid. I accidentally stumbled across the  adult comics section of our local library one day and after finding that the stuff with sex and violence was better than most of the cookie mysteries found in the kids' section I started visiting the library regularly for the Judge Dredd comics, and occasionally a few other comics I was WAY too young to borrow but did anyway. I've even thought about buying Judge Dredd comics to fill my own shelves with several times but damn they're expensive, even in second-hand bookstores. I also liked the Judge Dredd movie when I was a kid and I still have it on VHS, but not even my childlike mind back then could believe it to be true to the source material. I just liked it as a funny Stallone film.
The reason I'm not talking about the game yet is that I know very little about it other than what the demo showed me, which was Judge Dredd shooting and arresting a few street thugs with incredibly iffy controls. But I want Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death for PC or PS2 regardless. I have actually once heard a guy say that the game is awesome, but that was the one and only person I've ever heard of that actually played this game, so the credibility of that statement is suspect.

6. Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, for the PC
It's a 3rd person action adventure comedy game about a guy who died in the nineteenthirties and rises up as a zombie in I what I recall is sort of a futuristic fifties, and during his quest to cause massive chaos in the new modern city built over his resting place and turning the people there into zombies as a revenge for his death he also finds his old love and a long lost son.
I've seen the game played through twice, and I want it. For the PC, since I don't have an Xbox.

7. Jaws Unleashed, for the PS2
It's... uh... a game about a big killer shark terrorizing an island resort that was shaping up to be such a poor product that the creators decided to get the Jaws license to save what little there was to be milked out of the project. And I happen to be missing a game where you play as a killer shark from my shelf.

8. Messiah, for the PC
Messiah tells the at least partly comedic tale of a little cherub sent to the futuristic cyberpunk Earth by God to clean up sin and corruption, and it was developed by Shiny. Why wouldn't I want this game?
I still remember the first time I heard about Messiah. There was this television channel called MoonTV back then that had a lot of music and video game related shows, and sometimes they even showed things as simple as 15 minutes of unedited gameplay without adding any sort of commentary, and that's where I saw Messiah being played. And that's when I decided I'd want the game.

9. MDK, for the PC
Another comedic 3rd-person shooter Shiny title I think I saw being reviewed on MoonTV when I was a kid. You know it, I want it.








10. Dungeon Keeper 2, for the PC
Got a German ISO file of Dungeon Keeper 2 once just out of interest, and got hooked. I didn't understand a single word, it was prone to crash and the file was missing some textures apparently, but I liked the gameplay so much I still tried to play it. I did try the first game out as well, but it's not the one I fell in love with.
Sadly, though, DK2 is also the one game I have little chance to play again, for with a copy of Dungeon Keeper 2 I would also need a PC with a version of Windows that could play it. Oh, and I really want an actual existing physical copy, not a GOG download. Downloading isn't collecting.



Aaand that's about it. It's why this list sucks, I can't say much about many of these games for certain and so I can't say much at all. But hey, at least I have a new update on the blog. It's not like it matters what it is, nobody reads my posts anyway.
There are several other games I really want to get as well or I'm at least interested to learn more about, but these are what after some serious thinking seem to be my absolute most wanted.

Cover images from MobyGames.com

BMX XXX

I just recently went out to buy games again and came back home with 8 new titles with an average price of 3,45€ per game, and one of these games I picked up was the infamous sleaze-fest BMX XXX that threatened the public safety with nipples and sexual references in the early naughts. Those of you who are younger than me and missed the brief debacle this game caused back in the day, let me take the time to tell you what it's history was and how the game was received in around 2002-2003 when the game came out, or what little I know and remember at least. Don't ever fully believe anything I make out to be factual.
BMX XXX was the third bmx game from the developer Z-Axis and publisher Acclaim (Dave Mirra BMX "3" was released some days later), and was to be another Dave Mirra endorsed title. However, during some point in the game's development the developers decided, for some unconfirmed reason, to turn the previously innocent little trick-biking game into a heavily adult-oriented celebration of profanity with unlockable real-life striptease videos, teats and all, as a means of reward for completing certain challenges. As you might have guessed, the game was not a welcome addition to store shelves once it became public what a Satan's perversion of all that is good it really is. Dave Mirra himself, whoever the hell he is, demanded to get his name off the project once he heard about the game's new content and tone and then sued Acclaim when according to Dave they continued to use his likeness and name to promote the game anyway. Sony demanded the game to be censored in North America before they would let it be released on PlayStation 2, while oddly the Gamecube and Xbox versions stayed as they were, or that is what I have been told. Despite the censorship that ensued certain US retailers, the nation's foremost morality-police that would never deal in anything that a person could use to harm themselves or others physically or mentally, still refused to stock BMX XXX.

Real* live breasts, with nipples on top.
Yeah, not taking any chances with the blog.

* Real as in fake ones that physically exist

I never were into knowing anything more about video games than what the random titles on my shelf were until 2005 when I created my GameSpot account, and back when BMX XXX came out I had only just bought a PlayStation One, didn't have Internet and were not a subscriber of any gaming magazine, but the outcry caused by the game's immoral offerings was so loud that the sound of it managed to reach my eardrums. I still remember one Saturday morning when I caught a review for the game on a Finnish video game show, and got more and more excited the more the reviewer bashed the game. As a male going through puberty around that time and already developing an uncanny taste for video games I of course wanted to someday own this sexually charged shitty titty game no young one should ever lay eyes upon, and the title was forever archived somewhere in the dark fungal growth of the back of my brain. Years it sat on my own personal "most wanted games" list and now, here in 2011, the start of the the decade that I predict sees a much needed change in the non-gaming mass' opinion on video games and how they should be rated, I actually own it. I have personally experienced what some silly people have called the worst game ever, or at least most atrocious and depraved title to be released on consoles, and I can truthfully answer the main two questions that many people may have asked regarding BMX XXX: Is the game really that horrible? Is the nudity really so over the top it should've been banned? No, and not really, not in my opinion.
It may very well be that I'm just an adult now and have a healthier outlook on life than the many smallminds back in the day and have learned to finally rate video games using more than two grades. Or maybe I have just played too many horrible games and can't tell what is good and what is bad anymore, and maybe I have been desensitized to sex and violence by games like Conker's Bad Fur Day, Postal 2, Barbie Horse Adventures 2 and Sexy Beach 3. I don't know. All I know is that in my opinion the fuss regarding BMX XXX and it's content was an overreaction, as usual, and people who say the game is the worst ever have probably never played more than five games. The game isn't good by any means, but there's no reason to exaggerate, games shouldn't be rated in the extremes. Except whenever I see it fit to do so.
Oh, right, you're thinking that I can't talk about the nudity because I have the PS2 version, but that's where you'd be wrong: the rumours were all true, the PAL area version is in fact uncensored. It's probably due to the French, their casual use of nudity in films has liberated our continent from sexual repression.
But anyhow, I suppose I should get to describing the actual game sometime soon.

BMX XXX takes a dump on the player.
Yes, it's only pigeon poo,
the game's not THAT depraved.

BMX XXX has two modes of play: the Hardcore Tour and the multiplayer. The multiplayer offers three different modes playable on five different levels taken from the Hardcore Tour. The modes are called Skillz, Paintball and Strip Challenge.
Skillz is your usual who-gets-the-most-points-in-two-minutes mode, and I see no reason to explain it further. Paintball is a little bit more interesting in that in it one player has 90 seconds to collect as many boomboxes scattered around the level as he possibly can while the second player uses various different types of "paintball" guns to try and ki--... erm, non-lethally drop the other one, and after either the active rider has lost all his health or the time is up the players switch roles. There's a good assortment of different types of guns like the pistol, sniper rifle, machine gun, rocket launcher and grenade, and while the game calls them painball guns, I would seriously contest that. There's no paintball in sight, the sounds are straight from a (cheap) shooter game, and although the game lacks blood when the player falls down I wouldn't have been surprised to see some. Considering that the game's biggest problem is the lack of effort, seeing a neat and usual idea like this for a multiplayer mode is surprising. In the less inventive Strip Challenge mode both players try to get high combos with a clothing article removed from the opposing player's rider everytime a new record for highest combo is set. It's a rather dull and short mode, because a couple of combos are ridiculously easy to do and the round ends after one player has set the record four times.

BMX XXX:
Literal pile of shit

The Hardcore Tour, the game's singleplayer mode is divided into 9 levels, or at least that's what the back cover says even though I count eight levels. Two of these levels are so-called competition levels where in order to continue you must get to the top three list by doing certain amounts of all types of tricks and getting a high score within a two minute time limit, twice. The rest of the levels are called challenge levels where you have 20 different challenges spread across the playing area that you can do rather freely, with ten challenges needed in order to unlock the next level. I actually personally find it a little annoying that competition levels exist and are placed between challenge levels, as competition levels are more boring. The playing areas seem like excerpts from the challenge levels with a duller backdrop and a couple more halfpipes, and the fact that you can only play in these levels with the two minute time limit takes away any fun of freedom. I also found it  little bit confusing on what I was meant to do in order to get higher score from the judges, as in order to get better scores you need to pull off all types of tricks several times each as well as get a large amount of points. Just getting the points and doing one or two of each type of trick isn't enough.

Pointless violence can be funny...

... but you need lots more for it to work

The problem I have with the challenge levels, however, comes from the serious lack of payoff for what you're doing. I have to say that for the most part the only thing that kept me going was the prospect of seeing what stupid shit the game will throw at me next in the form of not-so-funny jokes and cutscenes depicting wanton mayhem, but sadly, out of 20 challenges a level only a few of them actually have any "point" or variety to them. Several of the challenges are the exact same ones in all of the levels; collect 45 tokens, find all gaps, deliver 5 people to a certain place, get a high score, get an even higher score, get the highest score, get a high combo. Then there tends to be a couple more challenges where all you need to do is complete a certain gap or two (which you'd finish while going for all gaps anyway) or do a "long" grind, wallride or a manual, sometimes in a specific place. Then there's the four or maybe a whopping five challenges where the task is given to you by a "comedic character" and completing it rewards you with the level getting opened up a bit in a challenge ending cutscene.  The game really suffers from this, because not only are there so few "humorous" challenges that could keep your interest in playing, as you might have already guessed the content of the cutscenes is also not the most entertaining. I like to think I have a well developed sense of humour and I can appreciate the kind of crazy, sleazy, immature, even dark type of comedy where people cause large accidents with puke, tits are the focus on many occasions, cardboard planes can fly and a guy is decapitated for no particular reason, but BMX XXX's humour falls short of the point where I'd find it amusing so often that I honestly couldn't crack a smile at any point in the game. A larger quantity of these bad jokes would've actually helped to press on, as seeing so bad it's almost funny humour is better than nothing during a several hour playthrough. Must admit that it's not the worst stuff I've seen, though. Considering how bad a bad comedy game can possibly get, BMX XXX actually has surprisingly decent ideas for jokes and a lot of the humour could be saved with some very simple fixes to how the jokes are presented. Living in a world where a frighteningly large amount of people actually find things like Disaster Movie or Epic Movie funny, I have no reason to believe that the in comparison superior brand of comedy of BMX XXX couldn't have it's fanbase as well. That's IF those potential fans were old enough to play this Mature-rated game. That's another mistake the ratings boards made, because this game is more immature than anything. If it wasn't for some bad language, a decapitation scene and eight nipples (six real ones) I would give the game a rating of T personally.

Even redneck Johnny and his mullet can do tricks in BMX XXX

I mentioned earlier how to me the only thing worth playing for were the brief custcenes, and one could say that's where my problem lies as alternative sports games like this are meant to be played for the fun of riding around doing tricks, not story. While I admit that I'm personally not big on just messing about and going for the points in games most of the time, BMX XXX shares at least some of the blame. The game isn't really challenging in the least and although the mechanics behind the performing of tricks are very good and the control scheme works, the ease at which you do everything just helps to devalue the act of pulling of the big stunts. My only problem throughout the game was that my game didn't come with the manual, maybe it had raunchy enough imagery to be good spank material for the previous owner or something, and so it took me a while to figure the individual tricks and which buttons activate them, and still, once I realised what the modifier button was for I started doing 540 Nothings out the ass during huge transfers. Even if you messed up a trick and are about to land sideways, the game is so lenient as to let you latch on to nearest grindable object with the press of a button everytime, even if you're not even close to it. It's like Sly Cooper physics and takes very little actual skill. When the most hardcore tricks can be performed by anyone with two thumbs, it doesn't take long for an averige player to wish for some point to it, and because tricks are so easy to pull of completing any challenges that require performing tricks feels redundant when they can be completed within literally seconds.

The only difficulty the game presents is for all the wrong reasons. While performing the tricks is easy, the general steering of the bike is much more iffy. The bike blasts off like a rocket from a complete stop, doesn't halt very easily, turns mostly in 50 degree increments and hitting a wall bumps the bike to a new direction without slowing down the speed. Furthermore, the biggest challenge of many of the, well, challenges is in spotting the collectable objects or even the challenge givers themselves in the level as they have oddly short draw distances sometimes, and when you mix the speed at which your bike tends to go with the need for calm movements to scan the area even the simplest objectives can become brief exercises in frustration despite the small level sizes. Then again, once you do find what you're looking for, the challenges become so easy again that you wonder why they exist.

Rarely gets more adult than
tits during the actual gameplay

The skitching in this game is pointless. There is supposedly a mechanic available that allows the player to hang on to cars and get more speed, but this is the most useless feature ever. Only time you EVER use it is for the challenge in the first level where you need to skitch a police car for a short while, and after that it becomes impossible to do on levels where some extra speed would help with certain objectives. Not that it would increase your speed any even that one time you can do it.
There also some bugs and problems with the game. Certain few ramps and halfpipes seems to be broken enough to often make you fall on your ass immediately upon riding on them, and an especially big nuisance on competition levels is a weird glitch where the rider is stuck in first-person view and will no move no matter what you do, until after about 20 seconds of mashing buttons.
Still, no game seems to be completely without their problems and despite BMX XXX's flaws the gameplay is still adequate and while casual gamers may find the fun shortlived I can assure you that a huge fan of games like these, like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Matt Hoffman's whatevers, should be able to get some kicks off of it. It's not complete shit, at least compared to it's peers. In my opinion the best gameplay in any alternative sports title is found in EA's Skate, where doing the smallest tricks feels more rewarding than any built in challenges, messing around is worth your while and exploring the town for neat spots to trick is something you do on your own. Buy your copy of Skate, today!

The audio of BMX XXX is a bit lackluster in many regards. Most of the voices seem to have been recorded some place other than a recording studio, possibly a seedy downtown alley, as the sound quality is a tad crap. I think two of the speaking characters are voiced by a real living kid and kids are always annoying, and many of the characters sound just like all other similar characters from every single crappy comedy game. The pimp sounds exactly like what you'd imagine if you've ever played a comedy game with pimp character, the hippies sounds exactly like the crappy hippie voices from any other game, the sad guntoting hick of a sheriff with only one bullet sounds like a stereotypical smalltown hick sheriff... you get the point I think. Then again, I think maybe BMX XXX preceded a lot of the games I'm thinking of, so maybe it both gets points for being original firestrater and should be destroyed for it's crime at the same time, because I hate stereotypical shitty voices in my crappy cheap games!

The sounds during the levels are unimaginative and mostly annoying. The weak sounds the bike itself makes, like the rattle of the chains and the sound of tires hitting the floor are nice, but everything else from pedestrian shouts to the simple boop-you-completed-a-challenge sound get on my tits after a little while. Seriously, the happy sound, the chime that tells you you've done something good should never annoy you and that's what it does to  me, maybe partly because it just tells me I really didn't achieve anything by completing a so-called challenge. The pedestrians often each have their own things to say, one or two of them, and they keep repeating their favourite line everytime you ride anywhere near them. The pimp shouts "I'm gonna cut you, bitch" or "What did I just say, bitch" when you go anywhere near, the hookers yell "Wanna ride me like a bike?" and a street vendor keep advertising his "hot salty nutsack" when in shouting distance. It gets preeeetty damn tiring, hearing that same crap over and over and over again. But, I must remind you right about now that no matter how stupid the hot salty nutsack joke is, one year later the popularly believed to be a superior alternative sports title endorsed by a big name sports figure, Tony Hawk's Underground did pilfer that same joke and kept on repeating it about as much as BMX XXX does in the Manhattan level, so it's not like BMX XXX is the only game to have crap jokes. A lot of games, good and bad, are guilty of many of BMX XXX's crimes.
The soundtrack is abysmal, or at least it feels like it. I count 19 songs that you can cycle through in the options menu during the game. Unfortunately I only find three or four of them good enough to listen to and it gets tiresome having to constantly pause the game to skip to De La Soul's The Magic Number or Green Day's Basket Case, and let's just get it out of my system, when one of the best artists on your soundtrack is clearly Green Day, your selection stinks regardless of the fact that Basket Case is their best song.
I know, I know, it's probably a money thing with the artists or rather the thieves that leech off of the artists, but in these kind of games music is crucial to keeping up good mood and the will to play on, and choosing a good soundtrack is important. I don't want to have to shoot myself over what I hear on the forefront while playing.

The visual gag is funny, the attempt to
drive the joke in through dialogue was not

I suppose that's about everything one really needs to know and say about BMX XXX, and my final verdict is that the game is a subpar alternative sports title, and that's the keyword. Subpar. The game's biggest problem is lack of effort and general polish that clearly stems from the developers' realisation that they were working on something that was doomed to pass unnoticed by the public and be forgotten within weeks, a game damned to the garage sale hell with all the other sports titles nobody ever wants but somebody's stupid aunt keeps buying for gifts. BMX XXX isn't even close to being one of the worst games ever, just one of the more forgettable and possibly only the worst you'll ever play. Even from my pitiful 100 game PlayStation 2 collection I can name about 14 games worse than this, and a few more that are on par solely because of a personally interesting or so-bad-it's-funny premise. The reason BMX XXX got and still keeps getting so much shit is for the controversy it got when it was released. People who wouldn't have ever bought or even heard about a third game in the Dave Mirra series ended up focusing their adolescent attention to this new, notorious titty-game for a few minutes and went with the popular opinion, only they were and still are largely commenting on other reviews or gaming forums where there is never even a vaguely grey area, only hate or love or get the fuck outta here.
Well then, was the decision to add raunchy humour and nudity a horribly wrong choice? No, of course not, the game WAS noticed and it WAS bought by people who othwerwise would've never shed a single penny on it. Even without the 30 second striptease videos and constant fuck-all humour the game couldn't have saved Acclaim from their downfall, on the contrary it probably would've been a quicker death. At least there are still insane people like me around who are proud to add BMX XXX to their awful collections because it was so well known for a little while, and the content isn't so bad I would feel like committing a crime placing it on my shelf or playing it. The step over the line the game took was only ever very minor one, even if the striptease videos are rather titillating.

Yeah, I admit that picking up the game in the store and placing it on the counter took enough guts that I probably would've passed on it if that one good looking female worker had been there to handle the transaction that day, and I admit there was that invisible presence that speaks in silence in my room yelling at me "You're playing that game for the titties! You sad, lonely pervert!" But once I played a few levels that feeling went away. This isn't a game you hide from your mother, this is a game you hide from your grandmother. And video game snobs.

Now I must go reflect on my life and ask myself why I wrote this much about a game I bought for the sake of novelty.