Friday 22 July 2011

I learned a new joke from Overlord II: Fat people.

Alright, so a few things similar to what I've blogged about before have happened again so why not try and update the blog more than once a month.

A few weeks ago I started doing some almost regular exercising, because to my amazement I noticed one day that I actually have grown a little bit of a stomach. Not a whole lot, but just noticeable. Some of you might tell me that of course I'm getting fat when all I do is eat, sit and play video games and my only daily exercise is a half a minute jerking of my knob, but it's weird to me because despite years of inactivity and eating junk food and sweets I've most often been sickly thin and below the normal weight for a guy my height. I thought it might be a good idea to do some pre-emptive weight-losing if the 20-year-old tapeworm I must've had in me has died and can't keep me spaghetti-thin and pathethic looking anymore. And maybe someday, if I exercise continuously for several years, I manage to grow enough muscle somewhere to garner some lonely female's admiration. I do have one strong muscle already, but I've been to court for showing it off to girls publicly.

I also went to my favourite game shop one day, because being the stupid ass that I am I thought it would be a good idea to buy Hitman: Blood Money for PS2 just so I can record a walkthrough of the game in some form. I bought it new and paid the same amount for it that I paid for the first three games in total, so I hope somebody watches the videos.
Why do I put money into walkingthrough even a year and a half after I quit it when I know I never get anything back? And then YouTube's robots shove copyright infringement notifications down my throat like some lifer showing the prison bitch who's in charge, and although a lot of the claims are false and I could prove it if given a chance I'm sometimes too scared to dispute them because 1) there's no dispute option for "the asshole is cheating Google AdSense to get revenue for nothing" and 2) because some of the groups who make the claims are "notable" enough that I have no chance in hell against them in the credibility contest. I'm just left crying in the showers and being thankful they didn't do it in my pooper this time. Oh, well, 'tis an old story that I seem to like to moan about every time I can and this is probably the 257th time I've begun berating YouTube, or mostly Google, for being evil.
But yeah, Blood Money, uploading now. All levels are recorded and edited already, just uploading them at about one day intervals.

I also bought Overlord II for PS3 when I was in the shop and I had the idea that I'd record a walkthrough of it as well since I have one done for the first game and it's add-on already. Unfortunately you won't see me playing it for one very good reason: the game sucks. It's so crap that I don't think I'll even finish it once to see how it ends.
When I recorded the walkthrough of the first Overlord game, I may have been overly critical when talking about it because around the time I bought it I was going through the "I hate everything next-gen" phase that most gamers undergo at least once in their life. The truth is, Overlord was AWESOME, and so was the add-on. Not flawless, but hell of a blast to play through. The game was long despite being linear, it had a wacky style of lampooning known fantasy stories and themes and being honestly funny about it, it had an actual story to it, it had actual characters and it had several fun levels with varying themes and enemies and obstacles to beat.
Overlord II on the other hand, although I haven't yet finished it, doesn't seem to reach the level of fun the first game had. Firstly, although it would seem to have a very solid basis for a good story in the beginning with the introductionary level having you play as the Overlord when he was just a child and causing mayhem in his home town and making a friend when this red-haired girl helps him get even with the mean kids, by the end of what I'd call the first chapter all intriguing story related issues presented in the beginning are resolved. Without even having a decent battle or actually challenging obtrusions in your path you've beaten the man responsible for your exile from your home, taken over the town and made the now grown-up red-head childhood friend your mistress. Oops, there's that storyline done and motive to fight lost, now to just follow linear paths wherever they might lead. Of course the bad guy you beat in the beginning is just a lackey and there is a bigger threat out there trying to take over the world, but as a player I have lost my interest in tracking down some poor schmucks I haven't actually ever met. OK, I'm the Overlord and I aim to conquer, steal and destroy and I know there exists an opposing faction aiming to also put and end to my reign of terror some day and I might as well take the fight to them, but that evil entity is something I, as a viewer of the story, have no actual interest in.
The first game had a very subtle way of leading you from place to place without you seeing any definitive end goal until the moment the Wizard appeared and finally allowed you to find a meaning in everything you did throughout the game. You were constantly drawn to the next area because there was something there you, the player, knew about and wanted to explore/steal/destroy/kill. Overlord II is leading me blindly through narrow paths without me realizing what purpose exploring the new paths would serve.

I really like the visuals, but the level design sucks
The story and a motive to see an end to the New Order being non-existant is a bummer enough, but lack of story is no problem to me if the levels are fun. Sadly, Overlord II's world has been a boring one. Levels are just sort of fluff gameplay sections that are normally created just to pad out a game to make it longer or to separate heavier events or gameplay sections so that the experience doesn't feel rushed, but unfortunately all Overlord II has is fluff with nothing interesting happening almost ever. OK, I sort of enjoyed playing the bit at the beginning as a kid terrorizing the locals and I kind of liked the part in the Empire Building where you controlled a green minion in order to bring the green hive to the tower gate, but apart from those bits the game has been very unentertaining. With the first Overlord I enjoyed pretty much every minute and every area. I found it FUN to ransack the Halfling Homes and kill sleeping Halflings and I found it FUN to eplore the Heaven's Peak sewers killing off hordes of zombies. Overlord II's areas are just boring and repetitive, there's only a couple of differently themed ones and they feel like they were just cutouts from the first game. And there's only two shitty little towns? What?

Big breasts on a slim body mean that she is interesting and everything
she says is funny while she's in trouble because she's hot piece of ass.
At least that's what the devs would like to tell you.
What's a real disappointment is that the game isn't even funny. The first one was very funny and if I dare say the ridiculous humour was in a sense very classy, but Overlord II... dear me, apart from everything lifted from the first game, all Overlord II has is forced jokes a 11-year-old comes up with. It's actually very easy to imagine how the creative process of this game went as far as the writing goes. I believe it went exactly like this:

Worker: Sir, we're worried about the future of this project. I think we've used all the best, most funniest material for the previous game already, and we're having trouble coming up with new things to poke fun at and at this rate the game will be a short one.
Overseer: No probs, kid. Just remember that the minions are energetic screaming morons, all people are dumb cowards, Gnarl hates everything fluffy and the mistresses are nagging pairs of large tits devoid of any personality, because nagging women are funny and large tits are both humorous and make men more interested in the game.
Worker: Yes, yes, I've got all that but the game has to have at least a few new jokes not seen in the first game. I was thinking, there's these mermaids who--
Overseer: ...are fat. Next.
Worker: Oh, yeah, ha ha. 'Cause classic mermaids are depicted as beautiful young women, so these ones are fat. Well, anyway, we need to somehow make the game's main villain, the Empire, a little more lighthearted but still have them be something the player will want to eradicate from the world and--
Overseer: ...so you make all of them fat. Nobody likes fatties, and they're easy to laugh at. Because they're fat.
Worker: Well... I suppose it works out alright. Their population has become fat and lazy and obnoxious thanks to slave labour and new machinery catering to their every wish. Ok. Then I thought about a brief appearance from some fairies since we haven't used them before, and Roy thought that it would be funny if--
Overseer: ...they were fat.
Worker: Sir, I don't think that actually works as a joke at this point.
Overseer: Hmm... make them act like old ladies. Fat old ladies. Fat old ladies that are almost naked. Their repulsive naked fat bodies will be the source of laughter for everyone who hates fatties. Which is everyone.
Worker: Uhh... alright, whatever. We still have some issues about how the elves should act and look like, and they're the other recurring enemy of the game so we need something really good.
Overseer: They're fa-- wait, no. We had them in the previous game already and they were thin. Hmm... You know Postal 2? Take it's basic template for the crazy activist and make that a kid friendly hippie type who loves everything fluffy.
Worker: I suppose I have to, then.
Overseer: And kid?
Worker: Yes?
Overseer: Their priestesses are fat.
Worker: ...Fat.
Overseer: Yup. Fat.

He's fat. It's funny.
I have to admit, I am a gifted playwright if I do say so myself. Of course this little play I wrote doesn't really depict two real life people talking, instead the characters are representations of the two main creative forces behind any game: the worker who enjoys his craft and wishes to only produce something of good quality to entertain the audience without exception, and the overseer who wants to streamline everything and is desperately trying to make a project go forward even when no direction has been chosen, having the final say in everything, aiming to always finish a project rather than finish a project with dignity. Both these "people" can live in one person and most often do. I'm saying this so I won't be insulting any one particular person that I have never met.
She's fat, so she's funny.
Regardless, the exchange between the Overseer and Worker in my visionary dialogue is accurate. The recurring joke of the game is that female characters that aren't the mistresses or regular elves are fat. I admit, fatness can be amusing in some scenarios, but as a person who could apparently become fat in the future, and who has some sense of humour, I don't really think making every character in the game fat is enough to make it a decent parody of anything. Oh, here's an idea I have for a movie: it's a parody of Aliens, but get this; the aliens are fat, and the marines are fat too except for the lead and the nameless chick with large breasts, and then there's this old lady who has a cat that's also fat, and a fat alien eats the fat cat and farts and the fat lady hits the fat alien with her cane but falls over. The End! What a funny story, Mark.
The first Overlord has a fat guy in it as well, a really fat guy, in the form of Melvin Underbelly the Halfling Hero, but you know why it works in his case? He's not fat just because. There's a good reason for it: every one of the heroes you defeat represents one of the deadly sins and for Melvin it's gluttony. He's a halfling, someone who is supposed to be very small, but he has gone so insane about eating all the time that he has become several times larger than a normal human and he has gone so far he doesn't even shy away from cannibalism to satisfy his hunger. In Raising Hell his fatness is made much more humorous through what I would call ingenious little gameplay obstacles, minigames where his round shape is used to proceed through the level. It works there, but here just the fact things are fat is supposed to be funny.
Fat mermaid. Hilarious.

Just to note, I don't know what I'm saying anymore, it's 2.:25 AM and I have a headache because I caught a cold one warm summer day.

Ok, so the game isn't completely without it's charms when it comes to humour as I have found some things very amusing, I have to admit. Gnarl is still as funny as ever, I liked the two sentences the one Nordbergian man says about how he also once in the past... (I wish it was a longer running joke) and I liked the introduction to the gnomes, it was a very funny scene. I also thought the part where the gnome, in order to save his life, hides under the to-be mistress' skirt, looks up and goes ecstatic. It's an often used joke that for example a much funnier parody-comedy game called Conker's Bad Fur Day also used, but a classic one. Also, as gnomes in this game are very tiny little balls of hair, it's logical that one would fancy the unshaved crotch of a human female; it probably looks like a female gnome with a large vagina. I'd pork a female gnome too given the chance, I think, if only there weren't the obvious physical differences preventing me. Wouldn't do it with a large gnome, though. Who'd want to shag a fatty?

Fat women. That's a new one.
Get the fat joke yet? It's that they're fat.
The other crap in the game is... well, crap as well for the most part. Characters are so forgettable I can't remember who, if any of them, have made any actual appearances. No, I honestly had trouble remembering if the person on screen was supposed to be someone they showed before. Only the mistressess are people you recognize. Kelda was easy because she was obviously the one kid who liked the Witch boy and the other one has her gigantic tits zoomed in on whenever she's in a cutscene, and unlike all the Imperial women she's not actually fat so she's easy to differentiate from others. I don't think there's really even been any other actual story-related characters. Borius was just a generic fat 'tard with about two lines of dialogue total before getting an anti-climactic death.
The spells in the game are more of an afterthought than anything, and I don't even think the Halo spell works. Nothing happens when I try it. There's three spells with two different possible effects that don't help you any. Overlord at least had me using the boost and fear spells a lot in fights to ensure victory, here all I do is burn random trees.
Apart from the green hive section entering a minion's body has been less fun than it should, providing only a better look at an obstacle you could handle with just sweeping the minions around were there any vantage point for the Overlord. The sailing of the ship, annoying. It's so damn slow and clunky and serves little purpose other than to make a small area of the map take longer to finish.
The game actually feels less like a full game than the add-on to the first game, Raising Hell. How do you achieve that?
Elves.
Not sure if I'm supposed to laugh. Would help if they were fat.
Lol, fat elves! Where do I come up with this shit?!

Yeah, Overlord II has been so disappointing thus far that I don't even know if I'll finish it once. I might give it another go someday when I'm well again as I may be too harsh on it just because I've taken ill and can't necessarily focus on any video games, but considering I've written this blog post under the same illness, I would imagine it's safe to say playing Overlord II is more boring than writing a boring blog post like this in the middle of the night for no particular reason.
But, maybe Overlord II picks up the pace eventually, and if you believe I were mistaken when judging it harshly based on only the entire first half of the game then please let me know soon so that I can go and finish it and enjoy whatever greatness the developers might've saved for the end.

Since my last birthday I have had the part accidental habit of buying my games in bunches of threes, and I didn't break the combo yet. I also bought a PC adventure game called Gray Matter. I have seen that name on the shop's website several times but have never paid much attention to it, thinking it was just another cheap quiz show game or logic puzzle game. It's not, it's actually a point n' click adventure game from the creator of Gabriel Knight. I have no clear recollection of which adventure game series Gabriel Knight is, the series that's absolute shit or the series that's said to be great that I have never ever seen in action, but I decided to buy Gray Matter because... I... don't play adventure games a lot? Now that I think of it, why did I buy it? Why did I buy anything? Well, I'll try the game out someday once I've finally gotten around to playing through the Broken Sword games I've bought in the past. Got all four of them and have only played the fourth one, because I'm not big on adventure games. Why DO I buy adventure games? Maybe I'm hoping that by playing adventure games I become smart, I don't know.

Two people who the LP nazis on my ass would like to hang.
I was going to black out their names to protect the innocent,
but then I realized that no one is innocent
That's about it. A lot of people have been asking for LPs again, or Fukkarounds as I would like to call them due to the "original" (not the original, the "original") Let's Players being a bunch of whiney ass nazi punks who cry at you if you don't follow the "official" LP formula, but I don't know if I ever get around to recording more, because I personally don't get anything out of the videos and I actually hate my commentary so much  I never even listened to it while editing. God damn microphone I bought will just be sitting useless in the closet, tied to a metallic pipe with a belt because I needed a makeshift stand that I never used.
Might not be writing a whole lot of posts this summer either, as you may have noticed, as it's just too fucking hot and I can't bother. Shame, because I had a lot of screenshots taken of a few games I specifically prepared to rant in length about few months back and I just never got around to writing them. Maybe some day, when I'm cold and lonely again.


By the way, I really like that Blogger has updated the compose mode so that when I switch between HTML and compose it remembers the spot where I was on both modes. Don't need to scroll around as much anymore when making sure everything works out alright.

Now I must end this fat dominated post.

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