Monthly Archives: October 2008

Initial Observations on Fallout 3: Premature Ejacufail

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I’ve played Fallout 3 for about 8 hours now, and my review so far is that it is hideous. There are quite a few borderline-dealbreaker issues that I have with it, and I really have to search for some positives. I had such high hopes for this game, but the clunky functions are just really wearing me down. Minor spoilers ahead.

1. There is so little ammo anywhere. There are giant ants that shoot fire at you from 10 yards away, and all you have is a tire iron at your defense. Oh, you’ve got a sniper rifle, two automatics, three kinds of pistols, a shotgun, a flamethrower, and two laser weapons — but no ammo, anywhere! And when you do actually GET ammo, from a random passer-by who will sell you some — your aim is so wretched that you waste 4 bullets only to land one, so you might as well not even bother, even with the spiffy aiming system.

2. You can accumulate a lot of junk to sell to people, but people have so little currency there’s little use looting up places, and health packs cost you your left nut, each! The shop owners never seem to get any new inventory, and once you’ve exhausted their supply of currency, they don’t get anymore. I’ve tried on five different days so far with the first shop owner and she never seems to get anything new or have any more money. What the frack?

3. Three times, I’ve talked to people and someone is standing in betwen us that I can’t see the person talking and the screen is zoomed into someone’s back. The first time happened in the first 10 minutes of the game. Did they actually have Beta testers? It doesn’t seem like it.

4. Pulling up menus takes way too long, and not that the menus are clunky necessarily (they’re a bit similar to Oblivion) but when you hit the button to go to the menu, such as at an opportune time to pause the game to switch weapons from the last valuable bullet you fired and inevitably missed, it takes like 5-7 seconds for the menu to even appear, meanwhile you’re standing there like a doofus, backing away into other enemies who also somehow posses flamethrowers. That is about 6 seconds too long.

5. The enemy indicator only seems to work part of the time. Sometimes you’ll be walking around and all of a sudden, huge burst of flame in your face because there was a “fire ant” (that really shoots fire, and at a distance that is unbelievably far even for a kitten-sized ant) hiding in some grass. You have an enemy indicator on your radar, and they’ll show up from a sizable distance most of the time, but only most of the time.

My major hold-out that I’m hoping will appear is a dupe glitch whereby I can get way more ammo somehow. My main gripe is the insane dearth of ammo — if there were actually feasible ways to defend myself besides running away (from creatures who run faster than you and have the presence of mind to swarm from multiple directions), I’d be much more at ease.

Dearth of Posts Potentially Upcoming

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Although the fore-scheduled “random images” will still appear, I may be out of commission for a bit as I begin playing Fallout 3 that comes out today.

I will only be paying $28 and change for it — because I’ve gotten a bunch of free Circuit City gift cards from reading MyPoints emails and amassing points to redeem for stuff. I don’t have a referral link (because their referral system requires you to give out your SSN) but if you want to help me out with a few points I can send you a referral e-mail (although I only get 5 to send out per month).

If so, kindly fire off an email to me at ablestmage@gmail.com and I’ll get one out for ya ^_^ Anyhow, expect some Fallout 3 videos by your truly in the near future, also! heh

Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Master List

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This is a master list of all parts of my Mass Effect Serialization project, which tells the story of Mass Effect (a game by Bioware) through edited-together cut-scenes and conversation moments with a minimum of side-quests and actual gameplay. The entire project too many hours to complete: from video capturing (with a Dazzle 80 by Pinnacle, a non-card video capturing RCA-to-USB device) and editing with a fully registered AVS Video Editor that I got from GiveawayOfTheDay.com. I did neglect, regrettably, to record the end credits — but due to the smallness of the text on screen, it may not have been legible anyway (at least that’s the excuse I’m running with) ^_^

Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 01 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 02 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 03 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 04 of 28

Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 05 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 06 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 07 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 08 of 28

Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 09 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 10 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 11 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 12 of 28

Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 13 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 14 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 15 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 16 of 28

Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 17 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 18 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 19 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 20 of 28

Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 21 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 22 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 23 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 24 of 28

Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 25 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 26 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 27 of 28
Mass Effect Main Story Serialization – Part 28 of 28

I do still have the uncut version, which is not edited for time (as some non-crucial scenes were omitted to fit into vaguely 10-minute increments), but have not uploaded it yet. If you’d like it uploaded, just say the word ^_^

Debunking Common Truths: Religion Creates War

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“Let’s disregard religion as a legitimate pursuit — just think of how many wars were fought because of it!”

This may seem like a valid argument, but almost exclusively in an anti-religious context. Taking a step back, it’s actually an overgeneralizaiton of the causes for war: wars were also almost completely fought over land ownership, money, non-religious purposes and beliefs (like pride).. and even things like simply bad attitudes or refusal to accept a compromised peace. Even more generalized, all wars were fought by mankind. So let’s just kickban mankind, no?

The truth is that there are an excessive number of variables that may collectively play into reasons to pursue war, and religion has been blamed near-excusively by anti-religion proponents by simply noting that it was one of many variables and is therefore discreditable. This approach abstains from genuine research into the actually terms waged among wars, which religions in particular are to be discredited, and performing any sort of genuine analysis for avoiding war.

This idea is also a decent example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, by discarding all religions based on the actions of a few who claim to represent a single religion. While I would caution one to not throw out the baby with the bathwater, I would also suggest that one not refrain from throwing out bathwater for fear of throwing out babies. Investigating the actual teachings of a particular religion from the perspective of a proponent (difficult to determine, perhaps) instead of leading outspoken critics of it may be of utmost priority in order to be considered even lightly credible.

What I find especially paradoxical about the over-use of this particular accusation is that the speakers of religion are often also considered to be liars or speakers of falsity — but the moment they proclaim what religion they represent, they speak the undeniable truth. No doubt, at all, seems to fall upon whether the proclaimer of militant Islam belief or outspoken Christian activism is actually who they claim to be, and yet at the same time are regarded as uneducated and lie-bellowing sociopaths.

One aspect that might be suggested of bearers of the “religion creates war” philosophy may be a more simple and broader perspective that, under the guise of probability, the actions of a few in one group represent the actions of all the others in that group — regardless of whether the fact remains they are spokespersons for that group or not. The outright failure to research and further determine whether the entire group shares that belief, makes such a leap of reasoning a serious discredit to the speaker of such assertions.

Uh.. what? Put a shoe on your head?

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I was browsing 4chan, my latest net addiction, when a suggestion was made to go to a certain account hosted on blogtv.com due to the presence of overt cuties of the UK persuasion. They were responding to comments on their webcam, and one suggestion from a flood of new commenters remarked, “put a shoe on your head.” I thought this was pretty funny (and I would have done it myself without a second thought) but I was wondering about it today and decided to look it up to see whether it was actually a popular thing to suggest or if it was purely random.

Turns out, it’s actually a popular thing to suggest, just to see if the person would do it. It doesn’t necessarily imply (while some sites suggest so) poor character to obey the request, and seems to have been initially borne from the advent of live webcam ladies of lesser moral faculties as an aribtrary, non-sensual request.

The idea reminds me of reverse-scammers of the Nigerian 419 sort, whereas Nigerian scammers would actually cater to bizarre requests from people they had intended to scam, but instead their pictures of doing silly things like holding up a sign noting various self-depricating qualities were posted all over the web in a scam-the-scammer prank.

This page seems to make an account of the concept, and further notes that another site, Shoe-On-Head.com was born and presents a slideshown of Flickr searches of people doing precisely that request.

YTMND.com has also created an animation of purportedly one of the initial requests by which the idea became popular, here. Credit seems to lie with “flj” as possibly the inventor, which stands for FlyingLaserJesus. And that’s an awesome username.

Debunking Forwards: Is Snopes Unreliable?

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I just received a funny email forward from both my father and grandfather, to whom I both often link to Snopes articles for debunking things. I think in this case, as I usually do, that linking to a Snopes article to debunk the falsity of a Snopes-reliability accusation would be pretty dumb, so here’s my take on it.

1. To accept the accusation at face value, we’d be relying on the credibility of one single e-mail making an accusation, written by someone we don’t even know, referencing uncited sources, lacking specific evidence and just making general statements.

2. There are some really poorly-laid claims to back itself up. I have not ever found a Snopes article that states Obama never said something, but instead offers much better context and provides direct links to major news agency articles explaining the confusion. “Never said” can both mean, “never uttered those very words” and “did not make the statements in the light you have been lead to believe he made them” often due to selective editing. Foremostly what I find in error with the rationale is that a random, uncited YouTube video is somehow of greater justification of truth than a Snopes article with an insane backstory of firm, reliable credibility.

3. The accusation that the operator is a flaming liberal is just silly. Yes, let’s boil our entire basis for truth upon a purported political stance. The fact that the descriptor “flaming” was used further brings the tone of the accusation down to banter between 7-year-olds at recess shouting, “nuh uh!” at each other.

4. By claiming that Snopes is unreliable in one realm, you’re also refuting the thousands of other articles that Snopes is actually accurate about. By proclaiming a source to be tainted in one aspect, you may inadvertently be trying to establish that all other things produced by that source may be spun in favor of that particular taint — without even bothering to check to see whether they actually are.

5. The accusation that Obama articles are more described as hoaxes while McCain articles are more defined as true — fails to consider whether or not they actually are and are addressing purely hypothetical extrapolations, without even bothering to check! The case for this trait, if true, might be indicative of deeper issues than simply Snopes being hokey — but that McCain supports are actually way better a creating a campaign of deception. I’m not saying they are, but there are at least three sides to every coin — to say that a fire extinguished means that firefighters were on the scene completely disregards the size of the fire, whether it was raining, the nature of the fire, and actual presence of firefighters.

Let’s ask way more questions about questionable credibility of a source that cites specific references than simply assigning truth based on even less trustworthy sources like a single e-mail forward making imprecise and vague accusations.

5. TruthorFiction.com may very well be a perfectly reliable source, but that is no reason to completely abandon another source for truth. The e-mail seems to imply that there is only one choice to be made, instead of both being consultable. Check both, if you like. If TOF cites the identical evidence that Snopes does, is the writer implying that TOF is a flaming liberal? Let’s think about it more carefully before jumping wildly about at the press of a send.