So, I had an update all ready, in which I rambled on for a little while as though nothing was out of the ordinary, then mentioned I was new. It would have been brilliant, I swear. It would have changed people’s lives forever, but because Wedge beat me to it, it is lost to the winds of time. I assume the eddies of probability have already tossed it up on the shores of a far distant parallel universe, where the cities are already aflame. Thus begins my soon-to-be-massive standing grudge against the boss, which I can only assume will eventually lead to the kind of internally-inconsistent explosive mayhem normally confined to movies with more writers than special-effects departments.

For those of you who care about dorkclub.com’s internal politics (the teddy bear who’s been under my desk for the past year and a half reports that he does, so that’s one,) I got the job by actually sending an email in response to an update, the shock of which apparently completely short-circuited Piyo’s brain. The handle has to do with my astonishing lack of anything resembling skill or talent at multiplayer FPSs. In any case, if there’s anything that happens to the new guy around here, I suppose it can officially begin.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me today, as I ceased to be the only person on the Internet who hasn’t seen Two Towers, that the extended edition DVD of Fellowship of the Ring is rather a missed opportunity. Sure, I enjoy watching every single cast and crew member systematically masturbating into the camera as much as the next guy, but isn’t that awfully ordinary? Wasn’t half the point of the LOTR books the way the story kept on going before and after the bits Tolkien decided to tell? If I’m right, the commentaries should have been mainly guys with stuffy British accents pointing out that one hobbit in the background and enumerating his entire lineage, and the documentaries should have been History Channel-esque histories of Rivendell. Not to mention that I’m not sure I want to live in a world where a Special Extended Lord of the Rings doesn’t have Elvish lessons in there somewhere.

So, what to do? I’m not sure, although I have this awful feeling that it involves reading The Silmarillion, which I think I’m going to let other people handle. Actually, come to think of it, I’m prepared to just go back to wondering why I’ve never liked the books even though they’re exactly the kind of books I should like, and leave this sort of minutiae to trained experts.

Forget Super Metroid, Phantasy Star Online: Episode 1 & 2 (not referenced as PSO for Google purposes) is The Best Game Ever. I’ve never even considered paying a monthly fee to play a video game, but something about PSO is endearing enough to coax me over to the dark side. Two somethings, actually.

Something the first: annoying enemies. Taking a page from their inspiration, Sonic Team has managed to create a set of opponents even more annoying than those found in Diablo. While Blizzard North offered the ultra-annoying Fetishes, teleporting Demon Imps, and corpse-spitting Regurgitators, they seem down right entertaining when compared to Phantasy Star’s selection. Enemies include giant flowers which, while constantly emitting a high-pitched laugh, can paralyze and poison players, giant plant-apes who, when not actively avoiding you, freeze players in place before fleeing, and fully-cloaked robots who can leap great distances and unequip your weapon each time their blows connect. Plus, their names are notoriously difficult to remember. It’s bad enough trying to remember the difference between a Fetish and a Flayer, but it’s even harder trying to discern the differences between a So Dimenian and a Zol Gibbon. While many designers try to create enemies which work as a team, use the environment to their advantage, and are able to think critically, it’s nice to see Sega taking some risks and taking the path less traveled.

What really makes PSO stand out, however, is the built-in Engrish support. By arranging pre-created phrases, players can communicate with each other with relative ease. The system allows players to easily let others know that “HIDOOM is near by here .” or that “Everybody,we can ‘slow mo’!”. Players can also map their own phrases to the directional pad for easy access. Me, I have the chorus to the Hanson classic Mmmbop and the url to this site ready to be scrolled across dozens of screens at a moment’s notice. Of course, you could always try to actually type to other people yourself, by slowly hunting and pecking letters from a menu. So, when people aren’t constructing awkward, meaningless, phrases, they can instead communicate by informing their comrades that “U R 2 LOW LVL.”

It’s like this game was made exclusively for me.

ShootMe, The DORK Club’s newest staff member may or may not be introducing himself sometime today. As always, don’t expect the staff page to see an update for a couple of weeks. Now, Asobakata will master TELLEN Lv. 17!

“Excuse me, I don’t speak English.”

“Izvenite, ya ne gavariyu po-angliskii.”

“Sumimasen, eego o hanasukoto ga dekimasen.”

“Ich spreche nicht Englisch.”

(vector_black ne znaiyete chto on dumayete.)

So yesterday I was complaining about the spurious complaints people lodge against each other’s behavior in online games. Today I spuriously complain about how EVERYONE IN EVERY MOVIE THEATRE SUCKS.

I saw Lord of the Rings for the second time tonight in celebration of my little brother’s thirteenth birthday. Secretly for me it was more of a celebration of what an amazing director Peter Jackson is and what a good sign for the digital side of movie making Gollum is, but I didn’t make a big deal of their giving presents to the wrong overweight nerd. For the record: I also bought a hat.

There were Indiana morons (Indiana morons are a very specific breed of moron; they are universally overweight, slutty, and incapable of clearly pronouncing any words but the ones children aren’t stupposed to say) sitting behind us in the theatre. In spite of an entire aisle seperating us, I still heard every word they said.

The little boy complained that the movie was too long and dropped something loudly about halfway through the film, announcing to the theatre that they shouldn’t worry; he would pick it up later. The mother was constantly encouraging the characters to stab each other or put on silly hats, and laughing shrilly at all the most most dramatic portions of the film. Everybody was constantly reminding a biker-type with an unruly beard they called Mike that he was Gimli. Their story doesn’t check out and I found it to be largely irrelevant.

Compounding these problems, the daughter (who had moved an aisle back to register her outrage at being stuck with such a stupid family, a sentiment I wholly understand) was constantly ordering them all to shut up. While I agreed with her on principle, I don’t think we quite see eye to eye on what’s going to reduce the noise level in a theatre: Talking more, or Not.

So apparently the site is currently my show. Tomorrow I’m going to post pictures of my sweet, bare ass, right here on the front page… unless WEDGE has a PROBLEM with that!!

Gee, I go away for a couple days and look what happens. (Nothing.)

Anyway, I spent a good amount of this time away playing Mech Assault, and if ever I wanted an XBox, broadband, and XBox live, that time is now. I think that any game where you take huge robots, and then you get on the Internet, and then you start shooting each other with these huge robots is a good idea. I think that if these fights are intense and very nicely balanced, well that’s just icing on the cake. Big explosions help, as do very functional weapons and widely varied robots.

I had been under the impression, though, that everybody on XBox live, and indeed the Internet itself by and large, is a bastard. Being squarely against hassling with computer gaming and unable to afford broadband, I hadn’t really had a chance to confirm this theory. I found though that this doesn’t seem to be quite as undeniably true as some would have you believe. Maybe I was really unbelievably lucky or something, but I only ran into one truly annoying, stupid person in the entirety of my two days of Mech Assault experience. (He kept using the robot voice filter, and I couldn’t understand a word he said, but that did not stop him from talking. Nor did our constant pleas to kindly shut the fuck up.) Most of them were perfectly reasonable, intelligent people whose presence I enjoyed.

Some of them were a little young, they didn’t all quite understand the game, but they weren’t rude or anything. There was some minor trash talk but nothing I wouldn’t hear in a rock album or rock concert, or non-rock-related-thing. But really there was just that one guy, and the rest were pretty okay.

I don’t know, maybe I’m too forgiving, or maybe the Internet bitches too much. Your guess isn’t as good as mine.

I’ve been playing the copy of Riven I got for Christmas, which is Myst II for those of you who suck or something. Actually I’m not a big fan of Myst or, so far, Riven, simply because I find the lack of character interaction boring. Perhaps some action would help, but there’s none of that either.

The lack of action is particularly material to my point here, because as those of you who read here regularly may remember from a previous posting, I have a theory behind why I like video games: I’m a paranoid schizoid who likes blowing things up and suspects the world is out to get him.

Riven is not a scary game. Ever. Ask anyone. There is nothing frightening about it. There is, so far as I know, no way for your character to die. You can’t even get a slight nosebleed or irritating tummy ache or anything. Nothing bad can ever happen to you except possibly wondering what the Hell you’re supposed to do (which will happen a lot, but is not in any way frightening, just irritating). And yet, I am constantly stressed out and afraid while playing the game. Why? Nothing’s tried to kill me yet. By my logic, that of course means something is always just about to. Also, the game constantly forces me to leave doors open. For those of you who read the other post, well…you know that’s enough to make me wet my pants on its own.

Turns out that Charter joke died ’cause they went out of business, by the by. Which makes me wonder where I can get help.

I’m sure no one noticed that the article I promised for Christmas day was, and still is, absent. Just consider it another addition to the ever-growing heap of unfinished content resting on my harddrive. The article was turning into another boring essay-style affair, just like the majority of articles I’ve written for this site. Of course, it took me four pages to realize exactly this. I’ve now written the first three pages of a completely different article, which, if I ever actually bother finishing it, should prove to not only be more entertaining the read than the standard content available from the articles page with the words “by Wedge55″ under the title, but should also turn out nice and long. I think I might have to split it up into three or four smaller sections, just because I know when people see a tiny scroll bar to their right, they have a tendency to be scared away rather easily.

Remember that one time I actually finished an article and had it online the day I promised I would? Don’t expect that to ever happen again.

I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas/holiday of choice, now go away and play with all your new goodies. Don’t worry, we’ll be here when you get bored.

I just got back from the theatre and there really isn’t anything I can say about The Two Towers that hasn’t already been said a thousand times better by a thousand other people. So I won’t. Instead, let’s discuss the trailer for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

When I first got word of the possibility of another Terminator sequel, saying I was less than thrilled would be an understatement. I really enjoyed the first two films and, given the ending of Terminator 2, I really didn’t feel a sequel was in order. However, after viewing the trailer for Terminator 3, I can safely say it has a possibility of not sucking. Maybe. And if it actually turns out to be entertaining, it means there may yet be hope for even the fourth Indiana Jones and Mad Max movies. Hell, if Terminator 3 turns out to be even half as good as the first two films in the series, maybe even Star Wars Episode III will defy all odds and end up as a worthwhile flick. Or maybe George Lucas will write and direct yet another terrible film, alienating more fans in the process.

I’m realizing more and more what attracts me to gaming even after I became disenchanted with nearly every single aspect of the community I used to treasure.

Every time I see an open door, I have to close it. The same goes for cupboards, and lids of things, and generally anything that can be closed. I also need to turn off things that are not in use. The reason? I am paranoid. The monsters can get through open doors and unused electronics left to their own devices, you see. Every time I walk into the bathroom and see the shower curtain drawn, concealing whatever foul sword-wielding demons may be waiting for me in yonder bathtub, I experience all manner of terrible fears. Swallowing my trepidation, I reach out, and, DRAW THE CURTAIN ASIDE! Only to find that there are no ninjas, no Cthulu, no Sin-Spawn in the bathtub yet again, for the kajillionth consecutive time. And yet this always somehow surprises me.

I think it’s only natural that I should enjoy a pastime whose primary precept is “Everything wants to kill you, but you have a Very Large Gun.” In real life, it’s basically the same, only I don’t have any guns.

My final grades are in and I’ve somehow managed to pass every class I enrolled in. You have no idea how happy this makes me. Warcraft 3, Animal Crossing, Metroid Prime, and even this website nearly bore witness to me failing all of my classes. Maybe next quarter I’ll actually put effort into my schooling and explore this crazy thing called studying. Maybe not.

I don’t know what it is about Animal Crossing, but just as I decide the game is nothing but hyper-tedious tasks repeated ad nauseum, I fall in love with the game all over again. I just can’t stop playing while there’s still hundred of items I don’t have, varieties of fruit I haven’t even seen, and dozens of gyroids waiting to fall under my command. I imagine this is the same reason people continue to play an MMORPG, no matter how boring and repetitive it becomes. We’re all greedy fools who want to be the best at everything, even if what we’re being the best as it a redundant video game that somehow manages to stay compelling even after we’ve spend twenty hours hitting rocks with shovels.

Tomorrow I’m going to see The Two Towers. I’m sorry I wasn’t cool enough to the film opening night, or even opening weekend, because it means that tomorrow you’re going to have to put up with me repeating things you’ve been reading on other sites for nearly a week. Joy.