Mask of the Betrayer Impressions

Well Mask of the Betrayer was a very good expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2; it fixed all of my major complaints with the NWN2, made the game significantly less buggy, and gave me more toys to play with in the toolset. As for the bad, well the story continues straight from the end of NWN2, but the narrative from that game is almost completely ignored. The best example of this is that there is an optional quest that lets you question one of your old party members from NWN2 about the fates of the rest of your companions. This party member proceeds to give you one sentence answers detailing how your friends and allies from the last game managed to survive or were horribly crushed under a pile of rubble. No interaction, no looking at some old data to see your influence levels or anything like that, just bam, your best friend from the last game's dead, time to move on.

My other complaint is that once again your companions start to feel like nothing more than combat puppets towards the end of the game. While they gave your allies a lot more dialogue and personality, it still wasn't enough, as your allies just stop having anything new to say as the game comes to a close, which is when they really should have the most to say. Another awkward thing is how much influence they gave you, I had maxed out my influence with all my party members before I was a quarter of the way through the game, which felt really odd. Is it too much to ask for a game where they just give you one or two companions that really are fleshed out, have their own motivations and can have new dialogue that keeps up with the plot?

Oh right, Persona 3.

-This post is short and lazy because o the same reason as the last post. I am feeling better, so by Sunday I should be back to my perky self and ready to put some actual work into one of these posts (like proof-reading, or learning when to use paragraphs, and how not to use parenthesis every three words).

Anything Behind Me Didn't Exist

When asked how I felt today I answered, "I feel like only moving in straight lines." Clearly I am tired or sick or something, so no post tonight.

Why Do People Hate Sequels?

The Matrix, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings, what do these three have in common? They're all movie trilogies whose sequels (Matrix Revolutions, Dead Man's Chest, The Two Towers) received major criticism, usually to the tune of, "while good, not as revolutionary as its predecessor." These sequels, while good, were graded harsher, because they brought nothing new to the table; they didn't appear as revolutionary as the first in the series, yet they were usually technically and narratively superior (ignoring The Matrix). Basically sequels get a bad rap.

The same rule applies in video games; expansion packs and sequels never receive as high of review ratings because they don't, or should I say, cannot revolutionize the genre in the same fashion as the original. Thanks to these views sequels are a rarity, especially in the realm of RPG's. It boggles my mind why, after devoting so much time and resources to creating these vast and detailed worlds such as those that appear in the final fantasy games, and after spending hours getting the player to get to know the characters involved, that they abandon it all every single game. Of the RPG's I've played, I can only come up with three that have sequels or expansions that carry their worlds on. These three are: Final Fantasy X-2 a game nearly universally reviled for its dress-up system and sequel nature, Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer an expansion that all but ignores the narrative it is expanding upon, and Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 FES an expansion/sequel that was only recently announced to have an American release. For those who are taking score, I loved FFX-2, it filled in major gaps in FFX's narrative and allowed Yuna to develop over the two years between the games, a design decision that almost all avoid; I'm having a great time with Mask of the Betrayer right now, it fixes all of my major qualms with NWN2, though I do wish it did more with the narrative from NWN2; and Persona 3 gave me a full cathartic experience that all but eliminated my fear of death and allowed me to overcome what I have felt were some major flaws in my character. I cannot describe how happy I am that one of the RPG's that I felt has made the most significant strides in creative a cohesive narrative with the player is getting an expansion.

Also, very tired, might be a little sick, that's a huge paragraph. So to sum up:

Why the fuck are RPG developers not making more sequels!?

FFX-2 wasn't a bad game, you're just afraid of it because the color pink is in it.

I loved Persona 3.

PERSONA 3 FES COMING TO AMERICA!!!

That Is All

Dear Human Race,
Please stop looking for meaning where there is none. Enjoy things simply for what they are.

Sincerely,
Coryn Spencer Ragsdale

Art Is Art

Art and politics, according to those I study, my professors, and my peers, are an inseparable combination. According to everyone around me, art cannot continue to exist unless it performs a social function.

These people are wrong.

Art's only function is to be pretty, sound good, entertain. Art is not here to inspire revolution. It is not a painter's job to fix the inequities with society; all he has to do is make pretty pictures. To force politics, social function, onto art, be it a painting, a poem, a movie, is to kill the creative spirit in that piece. Making a political statement through art grounds your piece in a single time frame one-hundred years from now, nobody is going to care about the presidential race of '08, but works like DaVinci, Michelangelo, Monet, these will live on for centuries to come.

Art is art, that's all there is too it.

My Best Friend Dumped Me In Elementary School

I miss my best friend. I have really good friends up here in Tacoma, and really good friends down in Portland over the summer and winter school breaks, but none of them are my "best friend". I miss having someone to talk to that I could reveal any secret whatsoever and know that he would still back me up. I miss the guy that would play F-Zero for five hours with me only to put the game back in the SNES and keep going. My first, and last, best friend moved away sometime between third and fifth grade in elementary school, and it really breaks me up that I can't remember when. We still hung out and kept in touch, but as the years went by he got more and more distant, and by the end of middle school I didn't count him among my current friends anymore. Since then I've never had anybody who was close enough to really qualify for the role aside from my dog, but even he'd betray me for nothing more than a treat.

My big question right now is if I want to be looking for one in a girlfriend? I mean, it seems to me that this is exactly what one would want. I hung out with my best friend every single day I could and we never got bored of each others company, all of my best times were with him. To me these "best friend" qualities are what I would want in a romantic partner as well. The problem with this is that if I'm looking for a best friend, then that's only going to raise my expectations beyond their already absurd levels, which is something I'm trying to combat. I dunno, maybe I just feel that I've gone too long without a best friend, or maybe it's been too long since I saw my dog.

-Apologies for short post, I'm feeling a little down if you couldn't tell and I have a test tomorrow that I should be sleeping for.

That's So Retarded

Today was yet another eye-opening experience in what appears to be my enlightenment over the last few weeks. The event that changed my view of the world occurred while I was sitting in my nutrition class listening to the class argue for and against artificial sweeteners and artificial fats. The argument started off simple enough, with each side trading facts and studies between each other, but it soon become a bash-fest against American eating habits and consumerism, with Europe and the "Mediterranean Diet" as their lord and savior. I realized that these people, the ones who cited opinions as facts, and couldn't even stay on topic for thirty minutes were college students, just like me. The girl who was vehemently arguing against artificial sweeteners in diet sodas while she sipped from a diet soda, was a college student like me. These were not innocent boobs off the street, these, dare I say, morons, got through the same entrance exam and attending the same university as I. I then realized that my university was one of the toughest on the west coast, so the people at other colleges are more likely to be stupider, and then there were those who didn't go to college, and then those who didn't graduate from high school
, etc... In essence, I learned that the world is comprised of retards.

I wish this weren't the case. I wish that everyone was intelligent, but that's not the case and it never has been the case. There were, however, checks in place to stop idiots before. If a dumbass was too stupid to coat his tent in honey, a bear would eat him. These days there are signs, warning labels, paid professionals whose job is to keep people from harming themselves with their own retardedness, and it's only getting worse. I remember going to playgrounds and learning to not slide my hands over wood because it gave you splinters, not to jump on wet metal because you'd slip and crack your skull on the monkey bars. These days playgrounds are all plastic and retarded. Playgrounds used to have huge spires and other random elements that were perfect for the imagination, now you have cubes with holes in them. We need to stop retard-proofing the world, it's only keeping them in the gene pool longer, and it's making it worse for the rest of us.

I do not apologize for my use of the word "retard", because PC people are retarded, because everyone else knows exactly what I meant and that I wasn't slandering the mentally disabled or whatever the fuck.

Synonym For Maybe?

I think I'm in trouble. I realized today that I don't size up girls in the same fashion as my friends. While I do size-up girls, there's no doubt about that, but all of my friends seem to stop their measuring once they've determined that the girl is a possible and desirable romantic interest. I don't stop there. I test these poor women with every scale in my disposal, and I think I know why. I'm not interested in a romantic tryst, it just seems like a waste of time on everybody's part, and I'm too forward thinking for that.

No, I believe that my problem is that I'm looking for a partner, someone who I could possibly share the rest of my life with, which nobody at my age is interested in. It's a problem on two ends as well, I mean it's a problem in that I evaluate the women I meet as potential partners, and of course very few of them are going to meet that kind of standard on their own, and on the other side of the coin it shoots me in the foot in the dating scene. This "problem" is why I think I got so bored at my last date, we talked and I realized that this girl wasn't what I was looking for in any sort of long-term relationship, so I immediately turned off on her. It's funny, in a time with one-night stands, cheating boyfriends, and divorce at an all-time high, my problem is that I'm too ready to commit.

I'm not entirely sure how to tackle this problem, how to lower my entrance exams if you will. But at least I understand a bit more about myself. Perhaps the key lies in just not caring so much, letting things come as they are and to stop worrying so much. Maybe I just need to stop worrying about girls.

I Am HYPOCRITES Master of Contradiction!!!

Today I received the first "packet" of entries for UPS' literary magazine published every semester, Crosscurrents. Within this packet there were four poems and one short story. From the time I have spent in UPS' creative writing department I have learned that most of the campus, and almost all of the professors, hate fiction that uses supernatural or "Romantic" elements in them. So when this short story mentioned orcs and ogres I was quite taken aback. Here at UPS, "the Harvard of the West" someone actually submitted a short story piece that included fantasy creatures/races. Now here's why I say that I'm a hypocrite. I love fantasy elements in stories, hell, the farther away from reality you can take me, the happier I'll be reading your story; yet when I found out that there were orcs and ogres in this short story I immediately cringed and prepared myself for the worst. The simple fact that this short story had fantastical elements made me assume that it was going to be, for lack of a better term, terrible.

I've often noticed the same sort of double-standard with my views on gaming culture; I like to talk about games, and would preferably decorate my room with gaming posters, but if I meet someone who has done so, when they start to talk about video games with me, I immediately push them away. I assume that they're too geeky to want to hang around with. All of this while I have daily conversations about Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a game that epitomizes gaming culture (MARIO VS SONIC), with my roommate.

The worst part is that I have yet to be proven wrong.

The short story, while a great effort on the writer's part and I applaud their courage for submitting it (I have yet to submit anything myself, even anonymously), was not good at all. It didn't make me question anything, I didn't want to know who any of the characters were, or even what was happening. Worst of all, those fantastical elements were entirely unnecessary for the larger story, and even if they were they were never explained, the author neglects to mention what an Orc or an Ogre is at all, I can only assume that they meant it in Tolkienian fashion.

Even the people I have pushed away (albeit not entirely intentionally), have for the most part turned out to be people I actually would not enjoy hanging out with (or whose voice grates at my very soul).

Yet I still hate this part about me and feel that this tendency to push away those who start to resemble me too much is one of the worst parts of who I am at the moment. I wish I could fully embrace my nerdiness; walk into a lecture hall dressed as Mario with a Final Fantasy ringtone one my cellphone. I hate that I feel awkward and nervous about expressing who I truly am. Hell, even on my date on VD I managed to never say a thing about video games, and they only dominate a good sixty-percent of my life. Why? I was afraid that the girl would think I was a nerd, which is what I am.

Why am I so afraid to say I'm a nerd in public? Why do I hate talking to store clerks while buying video games enough that I almost solely buy online? Why can I talk about video games nonstop with my roommates or on this blog, yet in class I'll never even bring them up with my classmates? The answer is I'm afraid. I'm afraid to commit wholly to something, to reveal a bit of who I truly am.

This summer and winter break I had, at the very least, bi-weekly café trips with my mother where we would sit down and talk for sometimes as long as three hours. These discussions were so frequent that in order to keep them going I had to start delving into more and more personal subjects, and by the end I was talking about some of my greatest fears within half-an-hour of that first cup of coffee. To be able to talk like that helped me sort out how I felt about myself a lot, and it's led (with more than a little help from my Persona 3 catharsis) to massive improvements within myself as a human being. I mean for god's sake the guy who has never even held a girl's hand outside of a classroom was able to ask someone he barely knew the name of, out on a whim. That's the kind of change that I've gone through in the last year (not-even), and these discussions were a major part of that change. I'm still growing as a person, still looking to improve myself, and while I wish I had started earlier, I'm very happy with the person I see myself becoming before I graduate next year.

I Really Hate Valentine's Day

Thanks to my very best friend Valentine's Day, love in all of it's many forms, has been on my mind lately. While I have many, very powerful feelings on the subject personally, I don't really want to share them with the internet, so instead I'm going discuss love in video games.

Love is brought up in video games fairly often, especially within the RPG genre, but for the most part it is a very superficial love, cute and pink and with as much substance as those words imply. Actually, one of the first RPG's ever, Dragon Quest for the NES is a perfect example. In Dragon Quest it was the players goal to save the princess and then defeat the evil dragon king/emperor. After rescuing the princess she would give you an item literally called "her love" (replace "her" with the princess' actual name which I forgot), that could tell you how much experience you had left to level up and if I remember right let you save anywhere in the game (a very handy feature for that game). That was it, she had never met you before, you rescue her and then Whoom, she's in love with you. She has, I think, one line to that extent. While recent titles have had slightly more complex relationships (see the link in my last post), they are still quite simple. Even Persona 3, one of my favorite games, which had enough complex topics covered in it that I had an actual cathartic experience (which actually led to my date on VD which led to this discussion), had simple, woo the girl and then forget about her once she's fallen for you mechanics.

It's not just love either, friendship dynamics are almost entirely non-existant. Take Neverwinter Nights 2 for example. NWN2 is a game that prides itself on it's companion dynamics (it's a feature on the back of the box), but outside of one or two scenes that occur once you get enough companion points (by agreeing with your allies in the dialogue), there is nothing. I long for a game that creates a true companion experience, one where your allies have their own personalities and respond dynamically to the players words and actions. What I want most of all is real relationships, friendships that take a dozen of, "Mega RPG#34's 80 hours of gameplay", to foster. I want soulmates to find that are not obvious from the first cutscene.

Of course all of this wishing isn't really doing anything. Games are really much better described as simulations, so one has to simulate these interpersonal dynamics, figure out ways in order for specific hard-coded events occur from player chosen actions. Even more difficult is the writing for these things, it's not easy to make a relationship that gradually gains strength, it's much less difficult to hop on a train and have two best friends lie conveniently in the only open booth (cough*HarryPotter*cough). In my latest, and by far most ambitious project, a full campaign module for Neverwinter Nights 2, I intend to tackle this difficulty in gaming. I know that I can do a better job than Neverwinter Nights 2, it had a good start, but the designers just seemed to forget about that part of the game a third of the way through, but trying to top something with a more complex dynamic such as Ico will be a difficult test (and one that I probably won't pass, but I have to try). Probably the hardest part will be trying to figure out how to simulate the tactile experience of relationships. Ico had the magnificent aspect of the boy and Yorda holding hands, but in the NWN2 engine I can't recreate that, so I'm going to have to somehow use fade-outs and dialogue to create that physical aspect, and no I don't mean sex. Human relationships, especially romantic ones are full of body language and tactile events, I mean you can literally tell if two people are a couple by the fact that they hold hands (more true for new couples than "older" ones). This is something I have no chance of even simulating in the NWN2 game engine, so I'm going to have to imply that it's being simulated, a really awkward and difficult task to surmount.

On a slightly different subject a surprisingly large number of people have had very strong reactions to my last post, particularly my thoughts on my "date". Some of these reactions have been simple and informed, "perhaps she had a hard day at work and just wasn't all there" to the mind boggling "somehow I was a bad person for finding her boring after being the one to ask her out?" (Sorry Amanda, but I just don't get it, how was I supposed to know if she was boring or not without asking her out?). Let me make one thing clear here, I'm not burning any bridges. What I mean is that I wasn't the one to end the date, she did (had some kind of meeting with her housemates or something apparently) and I'm not avoiding her or anything, if she were to show any indications of wanting to go on another date then I would be just fine with that. Of course none of that means I may find her anymore attractive (outside of physicality), but I may understand a bit more of why I wasn't that interested in her.

I realized after some thought that I really like strong, aggressive women. I like women who want to win. These are traits that female gamers tend to have, which outside of sharing one of my biggest hobbies/interests, makes them very attractive to me. Unfortunately these are also "male" traits that most women don't share, so I'm looking for a particularly rare type of woman. Add in that I'm quite a bit shallow (though there are some interesting studies on why men care more about physical features more than women) and I refuse to date anyone I think is stupider than me. That last one is a biggie, since I'm a pretentious asshole with wayyy too much pride, I think I'm a genius, and thus I can only date another genius. So I'm looking for a physically attractive, intellectual, female gamer, yeah...

P.S. Next post I'll try and have less asides, maybe I'll just remove the parenthesis keys off my keyboard...

I Hate Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day has always held a special place in my heart, mind you, it is the part of my heart that died long ago and has been warped by its own hatred and depression into some kind of demon that you fight in one of the Shadow Hearts games, but it does have its place. My near-undying hatred of this joyous occasion stems from the fact that I have never had someone special to celebrate it with, and it also comes slightly too close to my birthday so it always sneaks up on me (usually ruining my good that's left over from my birthday).

However, this Valentine's Day was different, for I had a date. I spent most of the morning today worrying about said date, and pondering how I felt about finally having a date on Valentine's Day. I eventually came to the conclusion that I was happy with the idea, and was thus excited, and of course nervous, for the date itself. I met the girl and we talked, things were going pretty well, I was talking a bit more, but she had just got off work so I had expected that, but then something odd happened. Thirty minutes into my date I realized that I was bored, not excited, not nervous, not cheery, bored.

The conversation was flowing smoothly, as we were both fans of France and Football (European or Soccer) and so we were talking pretty excitedly about that, and it's not like she wasn't cute, but I was still bored. I'm not being clear enough on what this means I suppose, so I'll clarify a bit. I don't get bored. I can sit grinding the same enemies in a video game for hours, killing the same things, with the same moves, on and on. For those who don't play games, in your browser open a new window, then close it, continue doing this for several hours. I don't get bored doing this, so when I say that I got bored while talking to this cute girl about a subject that I interested in, you know that something is definitely wrong. Perhaps it was because she didn't seem terribly interested in me romantically, maybe it was because I just didn't know her well enough, but I just couldn't shake this feeling, and when we decided to part ways I realized I didn't care if I never saw her again.

This whole experience has changed my outlook of this holiday quite a bit, but for now at least, I'm going to keep it locked up in that cold-place in my heart. Also great Valentine's Day themed article
from Leigh Alexaner (Sexy Videogamegirl and the woman who's writing I am in love with). I really want to write a love story right now, so expect me to keep talking about love and relationships for the next couple of days (I might even post tomorrow and Saturday!. Also excuse the general insanity of this post, I'm still working through how I feel about this whole affair in general, expect more coherency in my next post.

Back In Business

Sorry about the late (and short) post today
, I got waylaid by my parents who dropped by for a belated birthday for me. Highlights include gorging myself at Claim Jumper, getting Devil May Cry 4, and most important, we went monitor shopping at Fry's. That final note has lead to this post being the first I've written on my new monitor, and the first post I've written on my PC in about a month. Monitor looks sexy as hell, and Devil May Cry 4 is everything I expected and more. Now for sleep, as I have a full day of classes and a wooing attempt to prepare for.

This Was A Triumph

Today was probably the busiest day I've had in years, not because of how much I had to do in terms of actual things, but because of how many different things I had to do. Here's a quick breakdown:

Blood Test -8AM

Breakfast

Make Massive Stride Towards Improving as a Person (Extra Bonus: Valentine's Date)

Poetry Class

Lunch

Check Gaming News

Monster Class

Afternoon Snack

Dinner

Crosscurrents Meeting -8PM

Basically I was on high alert all day today, and it wasn't until 9PM that I really got too unwind and really start thinking about what I did (holy shit I asked a cute girl out and she said yes!). Currently I am still reeling from all of this so this'll be it for tonight.

Also check out this free demo, it's really fun. Also, bonus points to whoever can tell me what this post's title is from.

Success?

If you haven't noticed I tried my first attempt at a formal review in my last post. I decided to do my first review on Super Mario Galaxy for two main reasons. One, I had said that I was going to once I finished it, and as far as I'm concerned I have (I've seen all of the stars gotten, have 113 on my file, and my roommates and I are working on getting them all with Luigi so we can get that 241st star). Two, it was an easy review since it was so good I didn't have much to talk about aside from how good it was and a few of my particular nitpicks. I decided to a letter grade or rank scale as opposed to a numeric scale, because I honestly think that the number system doesn't accurately convey sentiments like arbitrary letters do. Just in case you don't know my scale is a simple school grading system (F- to A+) with S thrown in for those titles that are simply must-haves.

With that introduction out the way it's time for me to put myself up for your judgement, what do you think of my review? What could I do better? What do you like? I know for a fact that I need to include more info about the game (kind of forgot about that in my fervor), but is there any other areas that are particularly jarring? Should I add grades for each section? Any comments you can share with me, positive, negative, ambivalent, are really appreciated.

Thank You So Much For To Playing My Game

Super Mario Galaxy is the latest iteration in the long line of video gaming's most iconic character, Mario. This game takes Mario out into space where he must battle not only his rival Bowser and his armies, but the also the challenges the strange worlds he will encounter on his journey to the center of the universe. 

Super Mario Galaxy has been out for several months now, and you've no doubt seen the reviews, but now it's my turn. The questions are, is Super Mario Galaxy a good game, and can Super Mario Galaxy wipe the taste of Super Mario Sunshine out of our mouths?

Presentation

I could nitpick and say that if you look really carefully on a crystal clear HD screen you might be able to see some polygons in this game, or I could say that it isn't as pretty as titles on the PS3 or XBOX360, but that's not who I am. This game looks incredible. The color palette, the art style, even the camera choices are some of the best and prettiest I have seen in a long time. It was so pretty that I would often stop what I was doing just to stare at the beautiful backdrops to the stage I was on. Mario looks like a hero, and Bowser looks amazing. I mean he actually looks like a scary villain! While the water effects are a little dry compared to what I can find on my PS3, the way fur is visualized is something I've never seen in a video game before. The most amazing fact is that this is all being done on the Wii, the system that isn't even trying to keep up in the graphics department with the other two consoles, and it still looks better than most of the titles on those other systems!

Sound

Just as with the visuals, Nintendo really outdid themselves in the sound department. Mario sounds great, Bowser sounds intimidating, and Goombas sound just like they should. The sounds all mesh perfectly with the gameplay, and then you add the music. The music in Super Mario Galaxy is, for lack of a better term, sublime. The old synthesized tracks have been thrown out for a full soundtrack of full orchestrated pieces. The music is like honey for your ears, soothing, catchy, and perfectly fitting the mood of the gameplay. My only complaints in the sound department is that I wish there were a few more songs, just because the ones that are there are so damned good, and a small issue I had with Peach and Rosalina's voice acting. The problem with Peach and Rosalina is that they don't have any real voice acting, they utter the first word of a sentence occasionally, and while it's fine for Mario to be mostly mute, and for Bowser to simply roar, it's a bit awkward when Peach and Rosalina only say these single words. Also, the single words sometimes have an unsettling effect (like when Rosalina says "yes"), that just gives them a creepy factor that isn't a part of their character. These minor, and I do mean "minor" quibbles aside the sound in Super Mario Galaxy perfectly complements the gameplay.

Story

Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach and it's up to Mario to save her. This single sentence has been the driving factor for a multitude of Mario titles, and it's still appropriate, Mario doesn't need a complex plot that calls into question the players own morals, because Mario is fun enough to survive without that. Super Mario Galaxy does go a bit further, adding in Rosalina who has her own story of how she got to be where she is today, which is told through a cute little picture-book that you unlock chapters of as you play. Honestly I wish Nintendo had gone a bit further, there's a small star that accompanies Mario who I felt could have been given some motivation, and Bowser's dialogue is just on the verge of revealing something about his character. We are told by Bowser that he wants to make a new galaxy at the center of the universe, but we never know why, or what is that is so bad about this (aside from kidnapping Peach so she can see it). It's not that Mario needs a compelling story, but I feel that there is so much wasted potential here, they could make it very compelling with just a bit more effort, which is just sad to me.

Gameplay

It isn't nice visuals, good music, or a compelling story that made Super Mario 64 one of the best games of all time. No, it was the fact that controlling Mario was just do much fun that made Super Mario 64 amazing, and Super Mario Galaxy is no different. In Super Mario Galaxy you are given levels where you have an objective that ultimately ends with you receiving a star for your efforts, 60 stars to save Princess Peach and "beat" the game, and 120 stars in all for the completionists. This is very simplified of course, but it holds true enough. What it all boils down to though, is that you get 120 levels to have fun with Mario. Super Mario Galaxy adds a number of new elements, strange planets with weird gravity effects are only the start, and I can say in the end that they are all fun. There was never a time when I was playing this game where I wasn't having fun, and honestly that's all I care about.

Extra+

Bonus points are awarded to Super Mario Galaxy for the inclusion of two-player (limited) and a second play-through with (spoilers!) Luigi. Two-player is just like single-player except a friend uses a second wii-mote to do special things such as stun enemies, freeze disappearing panels in place, or even make Mario jump (much to the player one's ire). Two-player is a great feature, and while not particularly important for hardcore gamers, it lets friends who are watching get in on a bit of the action and is a great way to play this game with your family. The second play-through with Luigi (unlocked after getting all 120 stars) isn't terribly exciting, since it's the same levels as you went through to unlock him, but there a few small changes that will throw you off a bit and Luigi controls differently enough that it's not nearly as repetitive as you originally think.

Final Grade: A

Super Mario Galaxy is a great game. If you have a Wii, go out and buy this game, you'll enjoy the experience the first time around, and I can guarantee that you'll want to dig it up for another play-through every couple of years. I probably would have given Super Mario Galaxy an S (the highest grade I give) if it weren't for two things: the final encounter with Bowser was not as epic as I wanted (totally should've had Giga-Bowser), and the fact that Super Mario 64 exists. While Super Mario Galaxy is more refined than 64, it simply feels to linear in comparison. Super Mario 64 let you go to a world and find stars that you weren't actively searching for, and even when you were it was a puzzle to figure out how to get the star. The world of 64 simply felt larger and more explorable than in Galaxies. Also, while this is hard to take as a complaint, Galaxies is a bit too well-designed, as you can't get amazing speed runs like this one. Also I was heartily saddened at the removal of my favorite Mario line, "So longie Bowser." and the editing of the engrish ending from 64 that is the title of this post.

Today Was A Good Day

Thanks to spamming Facebook (sorry) there may be a few new readers to my site. For all of you who have never been here or who don't know who I am I'd like to formally introduce myself.  I am Cory Ragsdale, I am a student at the University of Puget Sound, and one day I hope to be a video game designer/writer. This site is a place for me to discuss what's on my mind as well as to improve my writing skills, so any comments, whether about my topic, my writing, or how much you hate my breath, I welcome you to post them or to contact me directly, either in person, through my email account (cragsdale@ups.edu), or my AIM (deadlychair). Whatever you have to say, I would love to talk to you (especially if you disagree with me on a point).

This weekend has been one of the best weekends I've had in a good long while (excluding those over Winter break). It started off nicely with my brother surprising me by driving up here to Tacoma to take me out drinking at a bar for my 21st birthday, which was quite fun thanks to pool and my brother actually talking for once. Saturday was a nice relaxing affair, I spent most of the day playing video games, which I surprisingly haven't really been doing lately. Then came Sunday. Sunday was almost perfect. I woke up in the afternoon, still in a good mood from my brother's visit, and I spent most of the day cleaning up my room and organizing my music. 

This may not sound like an awesome day to you, but I was in such a good mood, and I'm really happy with the music on my computer now, that it felt like it was Summer again and I didn't have any schoolwork or freezing temperatures to worry about. I also found a new writer today who I can only describe as amazing. I have her blog (Sexy Videgameland) as a link to the right, and I really recommend anyone to it. Though it's a bit risqué, her writing is some of the best I've read in years and what she says is extremely insightful and carefully constructed.

Also the game I spent most of Saturday playing was Star Ocean 3. Star Ocean 3 and I have what we call, a complex relationship. I love some of the things done in the game: voice acting, battle system, menu sounds, art style, and the universe it's set in. Unfortunately Star Ocean 2 did all of these better. In addition, many of these things I love are hampered by other problems: awkwardly long pauses when characters are talking that ruin the dialogue, too many battles for me to care about them anymore, a unique character art style, but the characters faces are incapable of showing emotion most of the time, universe is made stupid by hackneyed and ugly plot (really Fayt Leingod, who are you kidding). 

Last time I played this game I ended up stopping, because after I spent ten hours or so making my way across a continent I was asked to go back to where I started so I could get a material needed to get the good guys awesome magic beam cannon to work. I was fine with this, a little unhappy, but I could deal with it, since it's an rpg. The material turned out to be copper. The good guys needed copper wire for their MAGIC BEAM CANNON, and I had to trek back across a continent to get it. Couldn't they just, I don't know, melt down some copper they have in their capital, I mean there has to be some right? Whatever, I decided fine, since one of the things I like about the Star Ocean universe is that the main character is from a future space Earth, and he's dealing with people who are still in the Middle Ages, so his knowledge of high school chemistry makes him a god. Then they tell me it's guarded by dragons and I said, "Fuck this shit, I am not marching across a continent to get some copper wire that is guarded by fucking dragons!" 

Fast-forward to Saturday, I got the copper wire, the good guys didn't get to use the cannon in the fight it was made for, and now I need to go get some god-dragon who can lift the damn thing, and again I said fuck it. Perhaps the game gets amazing, perhaps, once I get off the damn planet I'll be happy with Star Ocean 3, but until then, I'm going to go play Star Ocean 2 because as far as I can tell, it is literally better in every single way than its sequel, which is just wrong.

Really, a good sequel should upset people's expectations of what that series is (Super Mario World - Super Mario 64), or it should be more of the same, but better (Devil May Cry 3 - Devil May Cry 4 (supposedly), or Disgaea - Disgaea 2). Honestly, I'd probably be happy with just more of the same, as long as you don't remove features, a sequel should never have less that you can do than before, this is why Armored Core 4 wasn't as good as Armored Core 2-3+expansions, sure it was faster paced, but they got rid of most of the customizability that made Armored Core what it was.

Really, what this all boils down into, is that I can't wait to get my hands on Devil May Cry 4.

Groups

So I have a little bit to say about groups of people today. I started thinking about groups when I was forced to do a group presentation in one of my classes today. Before I say anything else let me mention that I do not mind working with others, especially since I intend to enter a field where everything is done by groups of people working together. However, if there is anything I fear my professor saying than, "small groups" then I don't want to know about it. My reason for hating small group assignments is simple, they're useless. What is the use of breaking up the class into a bunch of smaller groups so that they can discuss the readings from the night before, which of course only a quarter of the class read, without the aid of a professor to guide the conversation or say when someone said something noteworthy or insightful. Of course, all of this small group work is proved useless as the professor invariably asks each group to share what they came up with. Honestly, what's the point of breaking us all up if we're just going to talk about everything we said as a class anyways? I can see small group work's appeal to professors, I mean hey they don't have to lift a finger, but I'm paying these people hefty sums of cash to share their expertise with me, not so that I can tell the three fraternity brothers what happened in the readings they were supposed to do anyways. 

Anyways, back to today, so we split into small groups to discuss our assigned reading (which was a bad decision since the only text we've read so far is Beowulf and they decided to have us split into groups just as we started a new text so the class doesn't really know what's going on), and then we spent the rest of the class period standing in front of the class in groups and saying what we talked about. Devastatingly, we didn't get to all of the groups today, so we're going to pick it up again on Tuesday, and then all of the groups who went today are going to go up again and talk about any differences they noticed now that we've read some more. That's two days of class where my notes are useless, and all I'm learning is how much I hate other students when they're trying to sound smart (not that I begrudge them, hell I must sound like a complete asshole whenever I decide to raise my hand). 

The best part of this, we have two, yes two professors teaching this class together. Not just that, these are two professors who have doctorates in, or at least closely relating to the subject of the class, so I know that they could talk for days about any of this stuff. Well I was going to write about clicks, and how I hate a large portion of the gaming elite (though I count myself among them), or how I hate the general populace, but now I'm just too angry to keep going (and it would make this post late and I want to be on time today). Honestly, several thousand dollars just so I can talk to four people, only one of whom did the reading and we both spent our lunches talking about it...

-Cory Ragsdale

P.S. What the hell is up with people assuming you want to be a teacher if you're an english major? Even my professors assume it, hell the english major curriculum at this school requires a presentation to the class, and or leading the class in discussion as if you were the professor. Can't I just, I don't know, write? Seriously, I've had two classes that have let me write creatively in any fashion, and of those two, one wouldn't let me write any "genre'd" works, so no supernatural elements, no time period outside of the present, nothing that isn't entirely believable (no suspension of disbelief in the slightest), and anything else that I was even slightly interested in writing. Ugh, I had forgotten how much that class tried to kill my creativity.

Vanity Fair?

I won't be talking too much today as I'm still recovering a little from yesterday's outpouring. THe reason for the title is this article. Yes, that's an article about an upcoming video game in Vanity Fair. Far more surprising however, is that it is one of the best previews for an upcoming game that I have read in months, in Vanity Fair. I was expecting something along the lines of FOX News' treatment of Mass Effect or at least the less-than-stellar reporting like in the New York Times (at least when it comes to video games). But no, what was presented here was a well-informed, well-written piece that managed to not only refrain from taking a jab at nerds (this is a STAR WARS VIDEO GAME), but they actually did a really good job of making the game look really appealing. This kind of journalism is something that I've been missing as of late (especially with the political campaigns in such force as they are), and it feels like a cool fresh breeze in the middle of the desert. I just hope other journalists realize how stupid they sound when compared to someone who actually does the work like this, though I hold no such hopes for fox news (I mean it's fox news).

-Cory Ragsdale

My Life Is Exhausted...

Lately I've been thinking a lot about life and death, though mainly death. Honestly when I finished Persona 3 I had an epiphany, it just kind of hit me that one day I am going to die, and I just can't know when that day is going to be. I mean, I had thought about death before, but it just never quite hit me straight on like that. To be honest I was still one of those young adults who see a corpse and think, "that could never happen to me". I thought that I was invincible. 

Probably even stranger was that finally realizing this fact didn't scare me, to be perfectly honest I actually felt myself calmed and comforted by this fact. Part of this was from losing the anxiety that the game was building up for me; I knew that my character was going to die someday, and every one of his friends knew this as well, so it didn't matter that they couldn't win, they would still be living, at least for that moment. The other part did come from me though. I suddenly realized what an amazing life I have led up to this point and I honestly have only one regret so far. That one regret, that one thing that I wish I could change, is that I've never had a girlfriend.

My saying this isn't a desperate plea, and don't take it the wrong way, it's not the desire to "own" a girlfriend, or some kind of bragging right. What I mean is that I want to experience a relationship, the closeness that brings to people together like this, and the feeling of honestly being happy just because someone else is. There's only one thing stopping me in rectifying this one regret, and that's me. If I said it once, I will say it a million times, but was there some day in middle-school where all the boys were taken aside and taught how tostart conversations with girls and make them their girlfriends (yes I know how it actually works, and yes I know that the girl has a part in this process, but that doesn't get rid of this feeling), and I just happened to be sick. In reality, my problem is that I'm terrible at just going up and talking to people (though especially cute/hot/beautiful/mildly attractive girls). Honestly I almost didn't start talking to the people who become my closest friends at UPS just because I sucked so much at starting to talk to people (and two of them were my roommates)! 

Unfortunately, this is just one of the base problems in my nature, and if anybody has ever tried to change something they really hate about themselves, then they know just how hard it can be. I am, however getting better! Last semester I was ready to ask out the cute girl who served bacon at the cafeteria at UPS, but she disappeared before I could, but I found her again, and I swear by next Tuesday at the latest, I will ask her out!

Also this link is entirely topical to this subject, plus Groundhog Day, one of my favorite movies, though it is a little sad to see that the movie was the high point in that writer's career.

-Cory Ragsdale

P.S. The title of this post is a quote taken from the ending song of Persona 3, a game so amazing that I am currently trying to figure out how to condense it into a two-hour format so that I can show it to every single person I know.

Men Are Actually Different From Women?

For some strange reason I seem to only be able to talk about men and women lately. Perhaps this compulsion is due to the large female presence at my university, or it could be the intriguing articles and research that seems to be popping up so much lately. In all honesty it probably has something to do with my own anxieties over never having had a girlfriend as I approach my 21st birthday, but I like the other reasons more as they don't make me depressed so I'll go with those.

I'm actually not lying about the research, as a study from the Stanford School of Medicine on the differences between male and female brains during gaming was released this morning. Apparently when boys played the game they tested (a simple setup where they had to click balls as they moved towards a wall, if they kept the balls a certain distance away from the wall, by clicking, for a set time frame the wall would move forward, gaining territory essentially) the reward centers of the brain were more active in males than in females. What this means in essence is that males feel more of a reward for gaining territory in video games than females, and they also have a higher tendency to continue playing in order to gain more territory, thus males tend to "get hooked" into video games (which are typically based around aggression or territory gain) more easily. 

While there still needs to be a lot more research done to prove the findings in this article, I personally feel that it makes a lot of sense (as the article mentions, history shows that it is primarily men who are the conquerors). This reminds me a lot of an article I read once while waiting at the doctors that mentioned that women respond to social situations with the same "fight or flight" response mechanism that men face in life-or-death situations. I remember reading that article and feeling everything I knew about women "clicking". 

This article also made me realize why I want to find a partner who's as into gaming as I am, aside from the obvious fact that we'd have something to do together and that chicks who play video games are completely hot. What this article made me realize is that the types of women who would enjoy the same type of aggressive video games as me would have a more aggressive personality. These types of women are more reminiscent of the Buffies and Lara Croft's that guys like me have been drooling over ever since we hit puberty. Unfortunately this article also explains why they're more rare (being far different from the norm), which does not bode well for my personal romantic life. Then again, if it were easy to find the kind of girl I desire, then I probably wouldn't want them, or at the very least find them less "special".

-Cory Ragsdale

Woopsie

Apparently I forgot to write up my post last night, so um, sorry. It's really kind of sad considering I spent most of the day thinking about what I wanted to write about as well as lining up the articles that I was going to discuss. In all honesty I wanted to stop talking about men and women, but then monday morning I found three new articles that were written in response to Hymowitz' article (or at least mentioned it). Three three articles: Kathryn Jean Lopez on Juno, Kate Muir's The Dark Ages. and Amanda Marcotte's response to these articles.

I'm not going to go really into depth on these articles (though I feel each one is worth reading for one reason or another), but I guess I can give a little bit of my thoughts (if you want more of my thoughts just ask me questions in your comments). 

Lopez makes a solid argument and a nice review for Juno unless you've seen the movie (or in my case guessed the plot and talked for a couple of hours with someone who had seen it without them realizing that you hadn't seen it, just for kicks), in which case you realize that Lopez focuses her article a surprisingly large portion on one of the smaller characters while completely neglecting to mention the other male who is interested in Juno (the pregnant teen), but isn't a complete douchebag (Marcotte brings this up much more eloquently, and she also brings up an interesting note on the douchebag character that I hadn't thought of). Lopez also seems to fall into the pitfall of using fiction as evidence or support for things in real (like Hymowitz though not nearly as absurd).

Kate Muir starts off her article sounding completely ignorant of what gaming and men are really like, but towards the end of her article she actually seems to get a little more intelligent and actually seems to understand that men are losing all of the things they can do to show off their manliness (sports is really the only area left relatively untouched), and that games are a new venue for this (honestly, what's more manly than chainsawing your way through an alien army trying to destroy everything you care about, chainsaws are manly, killing armies is manly, and protecting your home is manly).

Finally, Marcotte's article (post?) was something that I wasn't expecting, what with female gaming, especially female gaming that isn't in the casual market (Bejeweled, Solitaire, Tetris, Mahjong). Marcotte makes some generic comments against feminism, though her wording sometimes gets a little awkward and it was hard to tell if she though feminists hated men or not, but that isn't the real meat of her article anyways (despite its title). The real meat of Marcotte's article, at least for me, came in Marcotte's insight that if your boyfriend or husband or whatever is sitting around playing XBOX all day, that you can go do something yourself (outside interests for women? Why I never), play with him as if he's playing Halo 3 it definitely has Co-op (two players or more working together to complete objectives, assuming you don't want to kick his ass which is always a possibility. P.S. Most guys will stop playing games when they start losing a lot, so if you "really" want him to stop playing, just hop on and beat his ass down) and you might even have some fun, or if he really is just playing games entirely and completely ignoring you, then dump his ass. At this point in my life I'm used to women not realizing (or wanting) that they can play games with their guys rather than just sit around and watching them but I just don't understand this complete ignorance of the fact that if they don't like a relationship they can just up and leave the guy hanging. WOMEN, you are much hotter than guys, every guy in a relationship that I know of thanks the stars that their girlfriends don't realize how much better than them they could do (though most of my friends at least have good personalities and intelligence to boost them up). And for god's sake if there is something in your relationship that you don't like, tell your partner about it, if the two of you can't work it out, then LEAVE!!! I'm tired of seeing battered women who don't leave their terrible boyfriends/husbands, because they think they can't do better.

Sorry for the massive asides and terrible grammar above, but, well, I just got a bit riled up. My point is that women have a lot more on their side, and a lot more options than they think they do (at least in my experiences with women). And for pete's sake ladies, go out and have fun!

-Cory Ragsdale

P.S. After I get out of class I'll be writing another post today, as an article just came out that may help explain why women don't play games as much and may explain exactly why I'm so interested in finding one who does.

What Makes A Man?

As promised I want to talk tonight about a subject that is very relevant to me, and that is what makes a man a man, rather than a boy, child, youth, guy, male representative of the human species. Personally, and I'm open to discussion on this, there is only one thing that separates the boys from the men, and that is the ability, the drive, the "balls" really to step up when the time comes. When your home is under attack, it is the men who "step up" and fight. When your family is hungry, it is the man who "steps up" and does what it takes, be it hunting, stealing, raiding, or perhaps just getting a job, to feed his family. Being a man is not based on what you have accomplished, a five year old boy defending his sister from the school bully is a man. In the end, there are only two things that can keep someone from being a man. A. They're a girl/woman, or B. They don't have the strength/courage/willpower to step up when the time comes. A guy who is afraid of commitment, afraid to get married to someone he loves and who loves him, is not a man.

This is my definition of a man, though there is one problem that I have with it, and that's that there are girls who often step up like this now as well (Though their man or the men around them should have done it first), and I just don't know quite how to describe them, or assign them a title that they deserve. Woman just doesn't quite seem to cut it in my mind, but maybe that's just because I'm a man (sorry, had a talk with a rabid feminist today who made awesome comments like, "Some men will recognize that women are at a disadvantage, but they never acknowledge that men are at an advantage." I mean really, doesn't one imply the other?)

-Cory Ragsdale

A Mistake And A Glimpse From The Future!?

I forgot to include the link to the article in my last post, and since edit doesn't work on my laptop, here it is. I also forgot to mention that you won't be seeing too many posts like the last one, as I don't really like doing those (too much work finding the actual quotes and choosing quotes that are short, but also talk about what you want to discuss), I much prefer to rant to an audience who either has no idea what I'm talking about or took the time to read the whole article and can discuss the topic as an informed participant. I only did the last post the way I did to try something new, remember the whole purpose of this site is to improve my writing. However, I am not done with the general topic (men, young adults, commitment), so expect to get an insight into my personal feelings of the issue by Sunday evening at the latest.

-Cory Ragsdale