Political Polling is a Waste of Time

            Currently there is a presidential election going on.  Election Day is more than 1 year from now, but already millions of dollars have been raised and everything is underway.  Everyday there are new polls tracking what candidates are “favored”, “leading”, or “detested”.  I would like to explain to you why those things are completely pointless and are making you dumber.

            People only have so much room in their minds, they allow themselves to forget details all the time, phone numbers, names, dates, and even things that were deeply affecting to others or of global importance fade in people’s minds.  This is less than ideal, but also understandable.  You cannot know everything and since you have a role to play in society you must know certain things and other facts must be sacrificed for this knowledge.

            Sadly, there is a side effect to this.  People must know certain things.  And since the things they remember most clearly tend to be very important to them, say the face of a loved one, a deeply affecting story, or the launch codes, people start to make a logical fallacy.  That fallacy is:

“I remember it” = “Important”

            This has always been true of course, it is why advertising is a thing.  Using novelty and trickery to have a product stand out in the minds of people means they will conflate that product with importance.  Hence why “Just Do It” evokes Nike in the minds of anyone who watches sports regularly or who has played sports for any period of time.  Or why “Apply Directly to the Forehead” makes you think of charlatans who are trying to cure your headaches with a giant tube of Chap Stick (this is a thing).

            Why am I talking about this?

 

This is why.

            Donald Trump has spent his entire adult life trying to will himself into importance.  He has plastered his names onto giant buildings, casinos, golf courses, and TV shows.  He has done his damnedest to make sure you know who the hell he is.  And whether you know WHO he is… That is not important, what is important is that you remember the name.  And remember:

“I remember it” = “Important”

            Donald Trump has built his entire professional career out of this concept.  He is the loudest, therefore you listen.  He is the most known, therefore he is the most important.

            The obvious retort to this is, “What about Jeb!”  Actually that wouldn’t be much of a retort, because the Bush family (of which he is a part) is important.  They are exceptionally wealthy political carpet-baggers who have been governors and presidents, and who are friends with numerous diplomats and political king makers.  You don’t necessarily know Jeb, but your brain remembers “Bush”.  And as we have established:

“I remember it” = “Important”

            And that (along with millions and millions of dollars) is why TRUMP and BUSH were the initial front runners.  But, in more recent time others have begun jockeying for position and this is when you point to the current “frontrunner” (after TRUMP) is Doctor Ben Carson.

            Carson was previously unknown so why the hell would people remember him?  I think you already kind of know the answer but you feel bad for knowing it.  Here is a hint.  In the picture below, can you pick out who Carson is thru the blur?

 

Try and identify all 10.  I can't now and I am the one who blurred the photo.

            He is the only black candidate running for the Republican nomination.  That means that people will be able to google the phrase “black GOP candidate” and get him.  Only one other candidate, Carly Fiorina has that kind of advantage (andhere numbers go up significantly shortly after each debate once people have had time to digest who each of these candidates are).  But Carson is also the only medical doctor running (unless I missed someone) giving him another slight advantage when it comes to being remembered.

“I remember it” = “Important”

            Now is the time you can point to Senator Rubio and Governor Jindal and say, “Your theory doesn’t hold up because these two minority candidates are not doing well, and they are somewhat known for having given speeches in rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union addresses.  Surely they would have enough going for them.”  And then follow it up with, “And besides, BUSH, is no longer near the lead, his star fell pretty far, how do you explain that?”

            Here is how I answer that, because all three of them are now being remembered for sucking.  BUSH is not well liked, people voted for him initially because he was the only name they knew (aside from TRUMP) and so they said, “Yeah, sure, I guess I would go with him, at least I know who he is.”

This is the most memorable thing I know about him.  And I am from Florida.
Hell, I would bet most people don't even know he is a Florida Senator.

Jindal and Rubio are both known for giving rebuttals to the president, but they did a bad job of it, also they are massive hypocrites on the topic of immigration, and why they are focusing on that topic bewilders me because all the crazy jingoistic people are already voting for TRUMP, and since they are the least educated people out there they are the ones most likely to just pick the big name and stick with it because they don’t want to have to learn a bunch of other names, they have already made room in their memories for remembering Donald.

“I remember it” = “Important”

            And I know lots of people are already writing me off when I write this.  I am ignoring issues for the most part, having only mentioned when talking about Jindal and Rubio.  My points might also come off as racist and elitist because I am painting the GOP as unable to remember more than a couple names and overly fixated on race.  I am also not talking about the Democratic primary which currently only has 5 people running (I would like to point out that the dominating front runners are a woman that shares a name with a previous president, and a Jewish man who cursesin political debates, making them somewhat more memorable).  Those are all fair criticisms, but the reason I wrote this was to point out the real problem.  These polls are god awful.

            Political polls that ask you about people fall victim to this huge problem.

“I remember it” = “Important”

            No one asked, “Who do you think you will vote for?” is being asked, “What do you care about?” or “How do you feel about the economy?” and they have ZERO ability to ask for nuanced questions that require nuanced answers, “How do you feel about recent peace talks with Iran, and why do you feel that way?”

            Instead, these polls tell people, “This guy is popular” and herd mentality starts to cause a snowball effect.  “This person is popular, I should remember them.”

"I think their bias is towards sensationalism and laziness.  I wouldn't say it's towards a liberal agenda.  It's light fluff so it's absolutely within the wheel house."

“I remember it” = “Important”

            And the failings of these sorts of polls rests squarely on the news.  They want names to be important because names create a narrative, an unfolding drama that can be played out and serve as a reflection of the highly nebulous “mood of the nation”.  Rather than asking the nation about the nation’s mood, and then talking about how each of the candidates might address the concerns.

            It is the job of the media to gather information not on how people are metabolizing names, but how people are living their lives and to talk about how political parties can make people’s lives better.  To debate ideas and ask candidates to explain their ideas.  Instead they are asking people about names, and people can only remember so many names, so the people with the biggest names get remembered.

“I remember it” = “Important”

I have no idea who the guy on the bottom middle is.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

LootCrate "Summon"

            Continuing off of last month when I talked about my experience with the Villains 2 Lootcrate, this seems like a fun thing to comment on and so here I go.  This month’s theme is “Summon” and judging by the promo art and the “completely freaking obvious to nerds” logic of my brain I had thought that Magic: the Gathering would be featured, and was happy because Magic is awesome.  I was totally wrong.

The colors of this promo art even align to the color wheel of Magic the Gathering.  Black (really more dark purple here), Blue, White (more like amber here), Green, and Red

Maybe I am wrong to dislike Hearthstone just because I think of it as derivative... I don't think I am, but maybe.

             Here is the first batch of goodies.  This is the typical collection of little stuff that is supposed to revolve around the theme.  To start is the tiny hot wheels car (top left) from “Supernatural” a show I watched the 1^st season of and really liked, but have not found the time to commit to further watching of the program, but since the show is mostly about BANISHING things, rather than SUMMONING things.  Am I wrong?

            Then there is two Hearthstone items, the stress ball with a spiral in the middle there, and the collectable coin at the center of that promo thing just to the left of the spiral.  The collectable coin is kind of cool as is the stress ball, but since I do not play Hearthstone the utility of the free pack of cards is a little lost on me.  This also sticks in my craw a bit because I consider Hearthstone one of the most egregious imitators of Magic the Gathering.

            On the right is a card game, which essentially boils down to Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock, and is completely useless because it requires me to have a friend who also has a set… I have no such friend.  And the “this defeats that” rules are obtuse.

            I do intend to try out the mobile game on the lower left hand side, but since my phone wasn’t optimized for “Fallout Shelter” I do not hold out hope that this will even work.

 

There is also the monthly pin which reminds me of a Mandala, but with Pikachu and Hearthstones.

            This is my favorite item of the box, a Homer Simpson Buddha that holds prayer beads and a pretzel while sitting on a giant donut.  It is a quirky little knick-knack that I think is cute and am currently keeping it on my folding-table-which-serves-as-a-desk.  Whatever the hell this has to do with summoning?

 

Behold, this month's star prize.

            Lastly is the big ticket item, the Pikachu hat.  Even if I did not live in Florida, where it is far too hot to put this on, I am still a gigantic man who would look silly by any standard wearing this.  I do however feel this is the perfect sort of item for a typical anime fan, I could see my friend Sam wearing this.  More than likely I will just box this baby up and keep it on tap to use as a gift in the future to someone I think will really like it.

 

Alright, one picture of my big fat face framed by the ponytail-ish things to the side.

"A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he's not afraid of anything" -Wash, "Firefly"

            Overall, I do think this box was a solid fine.  The theme was a little unclear, my expectations did not line up with what they were doing, and the biggest treasure in the box was not really for me.  I still enjoy Lootcrate and look forward to the next one.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

"Fallout: Lonesome Road" Review

I finished playing "Fallout: New Vegas" the other week. It is the 2nd time I have played thru it and I played all of the DLC. I decided to play "Skyrim" a bit and it is good, but I miss playing Fallout. It is just a more interesting universe.  Fallout, for those who do not know is a dark comedy action RPG, it is set in a post-atomic war wasteland, but contains technology that is akin to a 1950’s vision of the future, personal computers that have black and green displays, robot security guards that look like Robbie the Robot of “Forbidden Planet”, an emphasis on the “Golly Gee” era of television, and Norman Rockwell like fashion.

Fallout has laser weapons straight out of sci-fi b movies of the 1950’s, and it makes lots of commentary on social engineering, forms of government, and perceptions of who people are, what they believe, and why they believe it.  While the 1950’s is key to its foundations the post-apocalypse angle is also at the forefront as ruins dot the wasteland of the old world, most of civilization is based around scraping together resources from the past, and making due with what they have (for instance, the currency of the wasteland is Bottle Caps, because they last for a long time, and are difficult to replicate).

            Until the upcoming “Fallout 4” due later this year, I guess I will just talk about the four DLC adventure packs for the last game with each of their positives and negatives, because none of them are flawless… And some of them are more slag than ore.

Let’s have some categories for evaluation: Story (which considering how this is an RPG and writing is probably the biggest draw, it is pretty important), Environment & Characters (because Fallout has always been about exploration), Enemies and Loot (who do you kill and what do you get from their corpse), and lastly any Gameplay issues (cause it is a game and that is a big deal).

 

"Lonesome Road": from a writing standpoint THE WORST ONE!

Story:

            A man you have never met, blaming you for something you never did, lures you to a place you’ve never been, to destroy a place you have never seen.  And the thesis statement of the antagonist is, “you are an asshole for having played thru this.”

Environment & Characters:

            I hope you liked the drowning-in-brown-fog of “Dead Money” cause this thing has so much fog and dust in the air at the start you will have a hard time seeing buildings let alone the skinless goons you are trying to fight.  Admittedly that only occupies the 2^nd chapter encounters.

And chapters is the best way to describe this, as the whole DLC is a linear corridor with 5 distinct sections. 1) The initial bunker in which you fight some robots, 2) the dust bowl, in which you fight your inability to see who is shooting flares up your ass, 3) an underground area, in which you fight lizard like morlocks who are frightened of the flares and flashbangs you stole off the other guys, 4) an overpass, which you will come to know well as you are murdered multiple times and have to trek it again and again, and 5) the temple in which you have the most frustrating Sisyphean boss battle ever against the worst character in not only the DLC, but the entire game.

            Who are the characters you will encounter on this journey?  There are 2.  One is a robot who only communicates in beeps like R2-D2 and who occasionally plays audio logs.  The other is the antagonist… The worst character I encountered.  Ulysses, AKA “I do not fit the tone of these games at all”.

Why is Ulysses god awful?  All he does is phone you up from time to time via your tiny robot pal to call you an asshole, and lay blame on you for how completely fucked this whole area is.

He is the dullest and most self-serious character in the game, rambling in pseudo-intellectual musings every time you encounter his voice.  And you can tell the creators just loved him, as his entry on the Fallout wiki is nearly as long as the central villain, Caesar’s entry.  Apparently he was supposed to have been a companion at one point in the game’s development, the only one who was to support the Legion’s cause of slavery and autocratic cultural annihilation.  Yeah, go fuck yourselves.  At no point does this mopey Mary Sue jerk off even approach the coolness that you think he has, instead he is just the emo kid in the back of class who won’t shut up about how we’re all so awful.  BARF!

Apparently there is a small number of Ulysses fans out there... As I was shocked to learn this artwork is not ironic.

Enemies and Loot:

            There are some robots which you have already seen in the rest of the game, and the human-ish soldiers you fight are a group mixed from Legion and NCR troops that got stuck in this valley, there is also an obnoxious number of Deathclaws, or as they could be more accurately described: the earthly manifestation of Satan and they will wreck your shit.  The new bad guys are the aforementioned subterranean lizard men with venomous claws, who use swarm tactics to take down the Deathclaws and (in theory) my fat ass.

This guy freaking nailed it.

            Thing is, many of these bad guys are totally wrecked by the treasure, which gives you the Flare Gun and turns fighting Deathclaws into a game of red-light/green-light.  The flare gun causes all Aberration type monsters to flee when hit with it, meaning that you let your robot pal shoot at the fleeing Satan with its tiny laser pistol while you just flare the thing whenever it starts running back to attack you.  You have 500+ shots for the flare gun when you get it so you will be fine so long as you just occasionally hit with it.  For the lizard men… the flare gun also works, but you can use flash bangs to spook off even more of them at a time if you want.

            The game does have a signature weapon which shoots tiny rockets at a ludicrous speed and you get an accomplishment for fully augmenting it with 40,000 caps worth of modifications… The thing blows, I found it too frantic for my usual play style of deliberate and cautious attacks, and it adds yet another visual effect to obscure the screen when you are fighting in the dust bowl.  It ends up becoming one of the most expensive guns in the game and it does nothing for me.  Maybe it was supposed to be a parody/joke element, the name is RED GLARE, but it makes no sense as a joke.

Gameplay:

            Let’s go back to talking about the final showdown with Ulysses.  This guy is wearing a sleeveless leather coat and he fights with a bow staff.  I am wearing power armor and unloaded 6 missiles at him (and I know a few things about explosives at this point) and it dropped him to 10% of his health, he then regenerates so quickly that I could not finish him off.  Apparently this asshole has one of the highest hit point totals in the game and one of the highest regeneration rates.  Even when I tried pinning him in a corner and grinding him with a chainsaw he just blocked me with his staff.  It is a bullshit fight.  And it caps off a long line of fights that are frequently laborious repeat uses of the same flare gun then laser gun rinse and repeat strategy over and over.

            The only exploration aspect of the Lonesome Road is blowing up nuclear warheads that litter the landscape to access new areas… which massively cheapens the role of warheads in the setting, and does a lot to rob the area of danger.  Especially when preventing a nuclear attack is the goal of the final fight, “Why bother stopping the launch?  I have been setting these things off all day, what’s one more?  The things are only powerful enough to blow up a gas station and the radiation disappears in a minute.”

 

"Oh No.  A snow globe, the recurring motif used to illustrate Mr. House's obsession with keeping New Vegas pristine and locked away forever as his personal possession is broken.  Further illustrating how this expansion is so out of tone with the rest of the material."  Or maybe that is just my reading.

Overall Final Verdict:

            I am going to spoil the plot of this encounter.  Apparently prior to the start of the game your character delivered a package to the town that used to be on the Lonesome Road.  Ulysses was in that town and liked it.  That package caused a warhead to go off destroying the town, so now Ulysses wants you dead.  So a guy you have never met, wants to kill you for something you as a player did not do, to a place you as a player have never been to, and even if you did do all of those things you did not mean to cause the explosion so it isn’t your fault anyway.

            THIS IS BAD WRITING FOR AN INTERACTIVE MEDIUM.  It is also an easy fix.  Just have the game’s first mission be delivering a package in the area and then you get shot in the face by Benny and end up in a coma in a vault medical facility, you wake up and get treatment by Doctor Mitch, and then you are sent on your way.  The explosion of Lonesome Road happened while you were in the coma, nothing else changes, and you get to see the before and after of the place.  That seems to be something they are doing with “Fallout 4” as your character is from the pre-nuke world and emerges in the wasteland having been frozen in the interim, so it would work here.

            This thing sucked, and between the bad guy being boring to talk to, the story being so disconnected, and the ultimate conflict being both boring to play and lacks impact because of the nature of approaching that conflict (you can’t have someone explode a dozen+ nukes and walk around in it and then expect me to give a shit about a few more going off)… I loathe this expansion, and only labored to finish it out of a sense of obligation.

This is a Deathclaw.  Do you see the "Satan" thing I mentioned earlier?  Or maybe more of a Krampus?

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

"Fallout: Old World Blues" Review

I finished playing "Fallout: New Vegas" the other week. It is the 2nd time I have played thru it and I played all of the DLC. I decided to play "Skyrim" a bit and it is good, but I miss playing Fallout. It is just a more interesting universe.  Fallout, for those who do not know is a dark comedy action RPG, it is set in a post-atomic war wasteland, but contains technology that is akin to a 1950’s vision of the future, personal computers that have black and green displays, robot security guards that look like Robbie the Robot of “Forbidden Planet”, an emphasis on the “Golly Gee” era of television, and Norman Rockwell like fashion.

Fallout has laser weapons straight out of sci-fi b movies of the 1950’s, and it makes lots of commentary on social engineering, forms of government, and perceptions of who people are, what they believe, and why they believe it.  While the 1950’s is key to its foundations the post-apocalypse angle is also at the forefront as ruins dot the wasteland of the old world, most of civilization is based around scraping together resources from the past, and making due with what they have (for instance, the currency of the wasteland is Bottle Caps, because they last for a long time, and are difficult to replicate).

            Until the upcoming “Fallout 4” due later this year, I guess I will just talk about the four DLC adventure packs for the last game with each of their positives and negatives, because none of them are flawless… And some of them are more slag than ore.

Let’s have some categories for evaluation: Story (which considering how this is an RPG and writing is probably the biggest draw, it is pretty important), Environment & Characters (because Fallout has always been about exploration), Enemies and Loot (who do you kill and what do you get from their corpse), and lastly any Gameplay issues (cause it is a game and that is a big deal).

 

"Old World Blues": AKA "The Best One" and "Arguably the Only Good One".

Story:

            After finding a downed satellite at a drive in theater you are teleported to the hidden laboratory of THE THINK TANK.  A collection of mad scientists who have removed your heart brain, and spine replacing them with cybernetics.  You must hunt thru the crater their facility rests in, battling robot scorpions, cyborg dogs, robots, and mutants in hopes of getting back your brain.  This place used to be an underground mountain fortress until SCIENCE happened and turned it into a crater dubbed the Big Empty.

            Smaller stories and hints to the events of the other DLC packages are present as well.  Elijah, the mad scientist asshole who forced you to help him rob the Sierra Madre in “Dead Money” got the bomb collars he used from here, as a section of the Big Empty is an old style prison camp used for human experimentation.  A pathetically sad moment happens when your character approaches the prison camp area, and the prisoners charge you rather than trying to communicate, all of them still have their bomb collars on (thanks Elijah) and immediately die of head explosion when they pass thru the gate to attack you.  Little stories within the bigger narrative are what keep Fallout a rich and interesting universe.

 

They do not really explain why a satellite dish would have been in a mountain facility, I guess it was built in the crater later.

Environment & Characters:

            The environment while uniform in many respects, all the action does take place in a single massive crater still manages to be varied and interesting, with pipes, satellite dishes, hills, bunkers, caves, and a chasm filled with gigantic glowing red crystal.  Some of the testing facilities are made to look like a high school or an idyllic neighborhood adding another strange layer to the cake.

            There are 6 other characters you must interact with, 5 of which are the THINK TANK who are responsible for your missing brain and the mutant horrors that are out and about.  They are all brains floating around in robotic bodies with computer monitors serving as creepy disjointed faces.  They have a variety of personalities encapsulating scientists, those obsessed with furthering knowledge, another is standoffish, another is put upon, one is strangely sexual, and the last is interesting in showing up everyone who ignore him in high school.  The other character you must interact with is Dr. Mobius who takes residence in the Forbidden Zone generating a legion of robo-scorpions to wage war and the THINK TANK.

Modern movies have perhaps given us a sense of, "seen it all before".  But when you think about it... a lot of this stuff is weapons grade fucked up.

            Some optional characters are the various artificially intelligent appliances around your lad headquarters, dubbed “The Sink”.  A tiny robot obsessed with coffee mugs, a couple of catty light switches, a germ-aphopic sink, and a murderous toaster are good examples of what you can expect.  They all have some useful abilities that you can augment via finding more files to upload.

            I cannot emphasize enough that this whole DLC has the most and best dialogue in spite of all of that dialogue happening in 3 rooms.  It is a hilarious salute to the strange over the top and surreal science fiction of the drive thru era of B-Movies.

Enemies and Loot:

            Gold Stars in both categories.

Since this is the birthplace of numerous monsters of the wasteland it is populated with a hugely diverse group of enemies.  Too many to list, and more than a half dozen unique boss monsters that will wreck your shit.  They are fun and even though you do not talk to them they have personality in how they fight and how powerful they are.

Also, bad guys inspired by an episode of "Doctor Who" written by Steven Moffet, so mild-screaming-terror is not unreasonable.

Expect to find a lot of cool weapons even when fighting the common enemies.  A highly useful weapon is the Photon Ax a melee weapon that is super helpful against all the robot scorpions wandering around.  There are also lots of outfits with useful properties, a Gatling gun with a dog’s brain and several items that are plot points to retrieve and upgrade.

If you conquer the Big Empty you will get a teleportation device that will allow you to return to the Sink and use it as a super powerful home away from home.

Gameplay:

            Here is the only real ding in the chassis.  This mother is hard.  You will frequently find yourself getting your ass kicked by legions of bad guys and that ignores the instances of horde closets, opening a door to a dozen regular guys and a boss monster and you being totally unprepared.  Melee is a must as tons of mutants will close the distance and wail on you before you see them let alone before you can ready a gun.

            Have healing supplies, I played this in an instance in which I ran out of stimpacks having started the thing with more than 100 and had to just abandon the character to never completing the mission.  It was only later that I tried playing thru again… and had the good sense to lower the difficulty, so I was not running away from one legion of murderous monsters only to run into another legion.

            I can’t think of any sort of character build that would give a super advantage… Though Speech, SCIENCE, Medicine, and perhaps Energy Weapons fit with the theme.  The unique energy weapon you get is better than the unique regular gun, so consider that.

 

There seems to be an eye motif, but I couldn't tell you what they are trying to symbolize in the story.

Overall Final Verdict:

            No real confusion on this point.  I loved this DLC even when it was kicking my ass.  So turn down the difficulty, and play it.  (Maybe someone will read this and think, “What a casual gamer that he couldn’t dominate this DLC on hard difficulty”, maybe, but I really just play games to unwind.  Feel free to use your skills to show me up, have fun.)

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

"Fallout: Honest Hearts" Review

I finished playing "Fallout: New Vegas" the other week. It is the 2nd time I have played thru it and I played all of the DLC. I decided to play "Skyrim" a bit and it is good, but I miss playing Fallout. It is just a more interesting universe.  Fallout, for those who do not know is a dark comedy action RPG, it is set in a post-atomic war wasteland, but contains technology that is akin to a 1950’s vision of the future, personal computers that have black and green displays, robot security guards that look like Robbie the Robot of “Forbidden Planet”, an emphasis on the “Golly Gee” era of television, and Norman Rockwell like fashion.

Fallout has laser weapons straight out of sci-fi b movies of the 1950’s, and it makes lots of commentary on social engineering, forms of government, and perceptions of who people are, what they believe, and why they believe it.  While the 1950’s is key to its foundations the post-apocalypse angle is also at the forefront as ruins dot the wasteland of the old world, most of civilization is based around scraping together resources from the past, and making due with what they have (for instance, the currency of the wasteland is Bottle Caps, because they last for a long time, and are difficult to replicate).

            Until the upcoming “Fallout 4” due later this year, I guess I will just talk about the four DLC adventure packs for the last game with each of their positives and negatives, because none of them are flawless… And some of them are more slag than ore.

Let’s have some categories for evaluation: Story (which considering how this is an RPG and writing is probably the biggest draw, it is pretty important), Environment & Characters (because Fallout has always been about exploration), Enemies and Loot (who do you kill and what do you get from their corpse), and lastly any Gameplay issues (cause it is a game and that is a big deal).

"Honest Hearts": Make of it what you will.

Story:

            You are left alone in Utah after a trade caravan you are traveling with is slaughtered by a war tribe called the White Legs.  Managing to hitch your wagon to a pair of honorable tribes, the Dead Horses and the Sorrows, you must help them fight back against the White Legs and then get the hell out of Utah and back to Vegas.

            As far as stories go it is a good adventure outside of the urban and into the wild world, the emphasis being less on politics and a more straightforward good vs evil conflict.  Of the four, “Honest Hearts” is the straightforward DLC Narrative, and that sort of simplicity can be appreciated, the first time I played “New Vegas” the dizzying levels of choice available caused me to quit the game (4 years ago) and this provides a respite from that.

 

Sometimes it is good to have a world worth fighting for.

Environment & Characters:

            I liked this environment.  Canyons with rivers, trees, bridges, and a sense of not-being-a-wasteland-beyond-saving.  There are views that were graphically very pretty when the game was released, now they are merely good.  I like how much of the game is exploration of old camp grounds, encountering wild animals, and looking into caves.  Reading Gary Paulson survival fiction when I grew up fostered an affection for these types of stories.  It is also cool to see an area of Fallout that is made up of Indian tribes, tourists and campers, and survivalists that evolved into a new society in the isolation of the canyon.  It also has one of the coolest characters learned about only via lore and reading journals, Randall “The Father in the Cave” Clark who is just such a bad ass.

"Saw to the old couple. Sat them up against car, let them hold and comfort each other. Told them I was going to get help, everything be okay. One bullet through both heads. Instant."

            The 4 prominent characters to the story are each interesting, one is a young tribal scout who wants to see the world, another is a tribal warrior and mother who just wants to get back to her family in a new home safe from the White Legs, but the last two are where the narrative shines.  One is David, a Mormon missionary that presents something you don’t see a lot of in Fallout, religious conviction that isn’t presented ironically or subversively.  David legitimately wants to help people as an act of faith in god, but is also wracked with guilt for all of the other tribes that the White Legs destroyed and the loss of his home this puts him in contrast to the best character, Joshua “The Burned Man” Graham.

            Graham is a former general of Caesar (the biggest villain in the main game), he is wrapped in bandages after having been burned alive as part of a failed execution by Caesar.  Joshua is a fiercely intelligent psychopath who sees himself as an instrument of divine wrath and has been evading assassins since his escape from execution.  Joshua has become a legend in Vegas, and seeks to use his skills to destroy the White Legs, in contrast to Daniel who wants to flee to safety.  You ultimately have to decide between the two’s methods, either brutal enough fighting to win, or crafty enough evasion to get away.

Enemies and Loot:

            While the White Leg tribals are the primary antagonists there is also a lot of giant lizards, mutant bears, big bugs, and killer plants.  Things are colorful, bright, and at times weird in a fun way.  For instance, one mission has you get high on sacred fruit and fight monstrous flaming bear so that you can fashion a claw weapon from one of its paws.  The Mutant Bears are established from the series’ canon and are the most difficult things you will fight, so be aware of that.

            There are lots of guns and tribal gear, but there is also a variety of poison to use and a number of weapons, like the bear claw and a type pf war club.  Joshua has a signature pistol that is actually pretty nice in that it has easy to use sights.  I can’t classify the loot as a draw of the game, just that it is adequate for the game.

 

"Drink.  Tea is strong.  Tea is bitter.  Wisdom is strong.  Wisdom is bitter.  You see?"

Gameplay:

            This is a little mixed, often enemies will spawn in areas like a Dungeon Master rolling dice on a random encounters sheet, “Let’s see, two giant mantises, a giant cazador, a trio of baby giant geckos, and one White Leg warrior with a 9mm machine gun.”  Or you will just be ambushed by encounters that are obnoxious, “Oh you thought the last encounter was silly, okay tough guy how about three giant killer mutant bears!?”

            The companion abilities are lame, which is to be expected, they are meant to be used for a little bit and then forgotten about, they can only be used in this little adventure, so rather than having broad utility powers they have abilities that are contextual to Utah.

            Ultimately the final mission is too long, stretching to areas all over the map it feels decompressed, and when I got to the end and found out I had missed a group of survivors I was supposed to save… I just shrugged my shoulders and left them to die because going back meant walking so far thru uninteresting fights.

            Lots of perks can be useful in this area, the variety of animals and insects along with all of the tribal opponents, and the number of literal camp sights and need for rapid movement all indicate some useful abilities.  “Hunter”, “Animal Friend”, “Travel Light”, “Entomologist”, “Home on the Range”, “Tribal Wisdom”, and my favorite “Sneering Imperialist” which gives some condescending speech options with your enemies and allies.

 

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. Remember, O Lord, The Children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem who said, "Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation." O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed. How happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."

Overall Final Verdict:

            It might prove to be too straightforward considering how open the environment is.  Kind of a paradox.  You can go anywhere, but there seems to be no option to join the White Legs and sell out the good guys.  Considering you can be a villain in the main area of New Vegas, the idea that you are a good guy here by default is a little thin in the story department.  There are bad endings and you can be a foe to everyone if you want, but that limits the story even more.

If you like the environment you can walk back to the area where a chest full of all the unique guns and costumes will be waiting for you, which sort of cheapens your efforts to get treasure and participate in the world.  You also can’t tell Caesar about Joshua because Caesar can’t acknowledge that Joshua is still alive… it would be to admit weakness, you see, and a violent dictator can’t do that.  So even with a story that is kind of tied into Vegas well, it also has no impact.  At the very least you should get to keep 1 or 2 of your companions to go back to Vegas with, but no you don’t get that.  “Honest Hearts” is fun enough, but is simple and lacks impact.  Make of that what you will.

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"Fallout: Dead Money" Review

I finished playing "Fallout: New Vegas" the other week. It is the 2nd time I have played thru it and I played all of the DLC. I decided to play "Skyrim" a bit and it is good, but I miss playing Fallout. It is just a more interesting universe.  Fallout, for those who do not know is a dark comedy action RPG, it is set in a post-atomic war wasteland, but contains technology that is akin to a 1950’s vision of the future, personal computers that have black and green displays, robot security guards that look like Robbie the Robot of “Forbidden Planet”, an emphasis on the “Golly Gee” era of television, and Norman Rockwell like fashion.

Fallout has laser weapons straight out of sci-fi b movies of the 1950’s, and it makes lots of commentary on social engineering, forms of government, and perceptions of who people are, what they believe, and why they believe it.  While the 1950’s is key to its foundations the post-apocalypse angle is also at the forefront as ruins dot the wasteland of the old world, most of civilization is based around scraping together resources from the past, and making due with what they have (for instance, the currency of the wasteland is Bottle Caps, because they last for a long time, and are difficult to replicate).

            Until the upcoming “Fallout 4” due later this year, I guess I will just talk about the four DLC adventure packs for the last game with each of their positives and negatives, because none of them are flawless… And some of them are more slag than ore.

Let’s have some categories for evaluation: Story (which considering how this is an RPG and writing is probably the biggest draw, it is pretty important), Environment & Characters (because Fallout has always been about exploration), Enemies and Loot (who do you kill and what do you get from their corpse), and lastly any Gameplay issues (cause it is a game and that is a big deal).

 

"Dead Money": I both love and loath this thing.

Story:

The mad scientist ex-leader of the Brotherhood of Steel has located a massive technological wonderland from before the nuclear holocaust.  The Sierra Madre Casino was cloaked in poisonous gas the day of the Nuclear War and since that time it has remained untouched by the outside world, hidden in its mysterious cloud.  The mad scientist, named Father Elijah (who is referenced as a major character in the game proper, but is not seen until now) has gathered you and 3 others to “help” him break in and take control of the Sierra Madre, using its wealth, defensible location, and an elaborate resource system he will be able to create his own little kingdom in the wasteland.

This is a great pitch for a series of adventures, it is a heist with a team that you cannot trust and are forced to work with by an unseen villainous asshole.  Your equipment is taken from you to keep you from being too hard to control and you are strapped with a bomb collar to keep you from ditching the mission.

I guess the use of bomb collars makes some sense, because the main villain is a thunderously large asshole about the whole enterprise, especially when he could have just politely asked for help in exchange for a share of the spoils, people would have helped him, lots of people work together in the wasteland in situations just like this without the need for bomb collars.

 

"So all you want is the Facility?  We get the money?  Yeah, okay."

Environment & Characters:

            Sadly the environment is as unpleasant as they come.  You start out in a Mexican villa style resort village outside the Casino, and it all looks the same.  Boring repetitive architecture randomly choked with brown poison fog and the occasional vending machine.

            Inside the casino is a little different, but it too gets very same old same old.  There is also the issue that the automated vendors in the game use pre-Nuke money, not the standard currency of casino chips that the vending machines use, and not the bottle cap currency of the rest of the wasteland, but the game still uses bottle caps to do exchanges, so if you want to sell off some useless gear rather than just having the game figure out how much pre-nuke currency or chips to give you it instead forces you to figure out how much pre-Nuke currency to ask for, so I hope you like doing algebra where finding “x” means how much fake money you have to ask for in exchange for a 200 year old 9mm handgun.

            There are four speaking characters, along with an elaborate background story to what happened to the Sierra Madre.  I feel that the main villain, Father Elijah is competent, driven, and dangerous, his voice actor does well, but I see a few holes in his plan.  The rest of your team is full of colorful characters, though their dialogue is really repetitive, I liked the final resolution to their stories, but only liked interacting with the mute woman because she had no dialogue to repeat endlessly (though even that had issues because when you talk to her they have text to describe what she is miming but the descriptive text is not on screen long enough for you to read all of it).

 

"...a mysterious blood red cloud began to roll across the Mojave, then West toward the Republic, no one knew where it had come from. Only that it brought death in its wake."

Enemies & Loot:

            The only enemies that you will regularly encounter are giant cockroaches (which are piss easy) and the Ghost People, who are mysterious jerks in hazmat gear that live in the sewers beneath the Sierra Madre.  The GP leave traps everywhere so be prepared to have your legs crippled every time you walk thru a doorway.  The GP also regenerate and pretend to be unconscious to ambush you later, so you have to dismember them or burn them to dust to make sure they don’t get back up.

They are very creepy for a while, unless you know how to use a spear.

            The loot is alright, you are given a steady number of casino chips to spend in vending machines, and the Ghost People have some rather brutal weapons, like a gauntlet with a bear trap affixed to it that cripples your limps.  The real issue with the money comes in the final confrontation  (SPOILERS for the rest of this paragraph) in which you are forced to leave behind a few dozen gold bars (each worth 10,000+ caps) in order to escape the casino’s lock down, otherwise you are entombed and lose the game.  It kind of plays into a story theme about letting go, and being dragged to hell by the weight of your own greed.  You might just end up feeling like you went on a grand adventure just to leave (mostly) empty handed.

Gameplay:

            And this is where it all goes to pot.  The bomb collars are the WORST.  They can go off because you are too close to a radio or speaker that is playing a strange signal, you have a few seconds to back up before you are killed… But you often have to go thru an area with a speaker and you have no way of figuring out where it is if the thing is hidden behind a wall or stack of shelves, so you often have no chance to shoot out the speaker/radio.  You will die A FUCK TON.  I think I died 40+ times from this bullshit.

            The Ghost People would be interesting bad guys, but quickly become boring, they just lack variety.  And if you have the “Bloody Mess” perk which causes people killed by you to explode in gore, they the GP’s only clever feature of getting up after pretending to be dead to be a non-issue.  And the whole mission gets even easier if you have a lot of ranks in melee weapons which are all over the place and will be the default way of killing things, and the GP are aberrations, so if you have the “Purifier” perk which gives you a melee weapon damage bonus against aberrations then you will go thru them like butter.  And nearly all of the traps that serve to soften you up and slow you down are rendered close to useless if you have the “Light Step” perk.  If you have the “Them’s Good Eatin’" perk then the whole thing becomes fantastically easy because you will have plenty of time to recover from injury by eating all the sausage you will find.

 

This image does a lot to encapsulate the humor of the main game.

Overall Final Verdict:

            I might have lied about loving this.  The more I think about it the more flawed this becomes.  It is claustrophobic, lacks variety, and is excessively oppressive without enough dark humor to balance it out.  And the cherry on top: you can never go back, all the other DLC’s allow you to return to their environments to fully explore them, get more gear, and other fun little completion activities, this one doesn't.  So the game basically tells you, “and stay out” as soon as you exit, like it didn’t even want you to play it from the get go.

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LootCrate "Villains 2"

            I have been getting LootCrate for 4 months now and this is the first time I had the bright idea to just post pictures of the stuff on this blog, I have no idea why as it is accessible content that appears regularly and my initial experience in getting the stuff was as a birthday present from my roommate so it makes for a good story about friendship… I guess I just blanked on it.  Regardless of past months, let’s look at the items this month.

            First up is a Los Pollo Hermanos kitchen apron from one of the best TV shows ever, “Breaking Bad”.  Since I do not cook this is one of those fun but impractical (for me) entries in the crate.  Most likely the use I will find for it is as a display medium for the numerous pins and buttons that come in a typical crate.

"Breaking Bad"

             These are this month’s button and pin.  It is standard for each loot crate to come with a themed pin (and often they come with pins from other franchises related to the theme).  This one is a villainous monster mouth.  The pin is a highlight of the box, a prop replica of those used in the movies.  While it does seem odd to wear the C’Thulhu esc emblem of a Nazi super-science cabal, it is still cool in spite of the Nazi connection.  Fun aside, the reason there were almost no “real Nazis” in the Captain America movies has to do with toy sales, it is really hard to sell toys that have swastikas on them.

 

"Captain America: The First Avenger"

            Next we have a wooden Joker Toy with a switchable face.  The arms, hands, and to a lesser extent the legs have movement and can be posed.  It is a quirky display item and I like it except for one issue: what do I do with the second face?  There is no storage slot or place to put the extra piece, so it is destined to get lost.  I still like it, stylized representations of characters are always cool.

 

"Just One Bad Day"

            This is the highlight of the box, one of a pair of mugs, I of course got the Carnage mug.  Carnage being a popular villain character of the 90’s Dark Age of comics.  He is a symbiotic alien monster like Venom, but instead of being attached to a jock loser like Eddie Brock, Carnage instead attaches to a serial killer.  The murderer’s mania allows him to bond more perfectly with the alien and they go on several thrill killing adventures in the Marvel universe.  I don’t really like Carnage as a character, but the mug looks awesome.

"A gun that shoots good feelings"

            Lastly we have the LootCrate magazine and the box itself which depicts a Joker hideout where he is building a giant attack size version of the wooden toy.  The magazine is a little thin, it talks about each item and has an article about people in your own life whose toxic personalities might mimic those of Batman’s list of foes, kind of a heady article with a strange framing device.  The magazine’s real drawback is the use of dark red font on black backgrounds which makes some words hard to notice or read.

            The Box is actually badly designed.  There seems to be no logical way to fold it to show all the art it offers.  There are 6 surfaces with art, one is on the bottom of the box, and another is covered when it is folded into a box with the art facing out.  It almost works, but falls short.

 

"Is anyone else getting a little bit of Batman and Joker fatigue?"

            Overall I think the mug makes up for a lack of a t-shirt (I usually find the shirts to be the highlight of any crate) and the other stuff is of high quality and cleanly on theme.  Not a lot of clutter or fat to be cut.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.