Last days: Cliff notes version

And so it was, that for 4 arduous days, our young hero and his crew delivered cardboard standups and limited edition mini sets to wonderful, interesting and most excellent Star Wars fans. They all did so well that they sold out of everything before the show ended.  The hero's heart was full of a strange mixture of joy and sadness as he boarded the flight back to his ordinary life, but the experience would remain with him for a lifetime....

"For, the force is my ally; And a powerful ally it is."

Day Two. Knowing now what to expect, our intrepid hero and his stalwart crew jumped into the fray with both feet, yet again selling a ton of stand ups and meeting wonderful people and fantastic creatures alike. It was in the midst of this day that our hero began to truely feel his connection to the force, and those around him, begin to grow stronger....

"Life creates it; Makes it grow. It's energy surrounds us, it binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the force around you."  - Master Yoda

A very short time ago in Anaheim, California...

A 28 year old boy named Adam was given the opportunity to take part in an event that would forever change him. That event was the Star Wars Celebration  2015!!!

Using only his wits, charm, good looks and an incredible amount of groveling and begging, Adam earned the coveted (mostly only by him) trophy of working the Advanced Graphics booth with his boss and two of his comrades.

Together they stormed the show and, squealing and jumping up and down like a 12 year old girl at a Justin Bieber concert, Adam took pictures of a ton of awesome shit. This is just a taste of the first day of his adventure.....

Heart

What world lies in the heart?
A verdant field of swaying grass that shines,
All flames and dull gold with eternal sunset,
Truth locked forever in it's tawdry chains of memory?

An endless forest, otherworldly,
Splashed in vibrant colors of future's pallet, to keep unseen the twisted limbs of forgotten promises that reach and rip the soul?

A river perhaps?
Rolling both directions in its cutting bed.
Upstream the roiling torrent of unknowable fate,
While down the stagnant beauty of certainty,
That meet before us in a sinuous whirlpool of experience and hope?

All these and none, a solid landscape,
Strobing in and out with beats of emotion;
It's reality assured by the falseness of its forms.

What world lies in the heart?
A wet, red world that drips with honest lies
And forms pools of fetid beauty
In which we gladly drown.

PS1 Review: Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi

Howdy folks and thanks for reading my first review..... EVER!!!  I recently started playing PS1 games again, for the sake of nostalgia and boredom, and I decided I really wanted to try some games I never had the chance to play when I was a kid. So I started asking around and got some really great ideas and some ideas that are sure to be terrible, and it was then that I resolved to review them all.

This first game was suggested by my friend Nariman, in what I believe to be an attempt to show me the "dark side" of PS1 gaming. (Yes, bad puns are essential to my writing process) So let's dive right in.

                                        A Long Time Ago etc, etc, etc......

So, I feel I have to lead into this by saying that I don't play a lot of fighting games, as they often bore the hell out of me. But, given that this is a Star Wars game and anything with those two words on it fills me with an unnatural lust that would make the Roman emperor Nero blush, I was excited to play this game.

It starts out promising with a pretty decent title card and an opening movie full of flipping and lightsabers and blasters and all the shiny things that make Star Wars amazing. The menus are cut and dry, in what I consider to be pretty typical fighting game fashion. Then the excitement got kicked up in the character select screen.

I mean, look at that! What Star Wars fan doesn't find the hologram chess board and giant floating head motif glorigous!? The portraits aren't even bad looking, considering it's a PS1 game. 

The roster is a little light at first, but with unlockable characters like Darth Vader, Mara Jade and a Stormtrooper that I can only assume is the very same one who smacks his helmet on a low hanging door in Episode IV, you have something to look forward too. Plus, all the original trilogy mainstays are here, barring the droids and Lando Calrissian (I assume he was left out because even the likeness of Billy Dee Williams was too fucking awesome to be contained on the disc), so it's hard to complain too much. And then the game begins....

                                                        Round 1.....FIGHT!

My first thought when the fighting started was, holyshitthisgamelooksawesomeandthesoundisfantasticlookatthebadassbackgroundstuff!!!  

Honestly, the backgrounds are awesome. Excellent stages like the Rancor Pit (pictured above), Hoth, Degobah and Bespin (both inside and out) are very detailed and vibrant. They all have unique background action, like snowspeeders doing flybys and Slave 1 just hanging out on the landing pad and the ambient noise is authentic and ripped straight from the movies.

So for the first few moments of gameplay I was blinded by the aesthetics and found it all quite enjoyable. It wasn't until I started to pay attention to the controls and feel of the fighting that this game began to stink like the inside of Darth Vader's codpiece.

The fighting is done at a snails pace with little or no flow to any of the moves. Attempting to string together combos is almost impossible and every movement feels labored, as if everyone on screen is fighting through molasses. 

Weapons come into play whenever you want, giving the game a cool soul caliber-esqe element, but they are completely imbalanced. The blasters are basically made to be cudgels until you get your special meter up and then they become a single shot waste of energy, since that one shot barely does any damage anyway.  A lightsaber plays like a Louisville Slugger (which is actually pretty fitting in Luke's case) and you get some pretty fancy force assisted moves with your special meter filled, but they are overpowered in comparison to anything else and just eat up half your life bar if they even come near to hitting you.

And while those basic mechanical problems are enough to make this game nearly impossible to enjoy, the major problem is......

Yeah, remember all those really fancy levels I was talking about earlier? The bad news is THEY ARE THE SIZE OF A FUCKING POSTAGE STAMP!!!!

For some levels, that would at another degree of challenge and understandable, like the landing pad on Bespin. But no. It's not just that. It's every.....damn.....LEVEL!! There is no excuse for a ringout on the snowfields of Hoth! IT'S THE SAME ENDLESS EXPANSE OF FUCKING SNOW IN EVERY DIRECTION!!! 

Now, I understand the technical limitations of the system and that making the ring a uniform size is essential for the character mapping and polygon count and blah blah blah, but the damn ring size got me killed me so many times it was all I could do not to cast the controller into the nearest Sarlacc pit in a fit of righteous fury. 

                                                   The Saga Continues......?

So, after all that, what do I think of this game on a whole, you ask (I assume, so that it gives this review some purpose)?

Well, it does look pretty good for it's time and if you just want to watch Han take out Boba Fett or, for some reason, watch a Sandperson beat the shit out of Leia with a gaffi stick, then it could still provide a few moments of fun. Assuming you actually get to do more than side step your way out of the unimaginably tiny ring seconds after the match begins. 

Its visually appealing, yet impossible to enjoy for any length of time due to dismal gameplay, unbalanced move sets and severely limited ring size. And though I hesitate to dismiss anything related to my beloved Star Wars, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna feed this game to Gentleman Shark and try to forget how may times I watched Luke fall over into the snow and die like a bitch.

Okay Nariman, you win. By Ringout. Go forth and revel in your hollow victory.

To whom it may concern....

Well, I haven't done this for awhile. But I figured l ought to start back up because.... IT'S 2014!!! (I know it has been for some time now, but piss off)

Anyway, a lot of new and exciting things happening this year. I'm going to make sure of it. I'm a few steps away from being enrolled in college already and that's pretty big on it's own. Besides that I'm determined to make the most out of my free time by doing more camping and fishing and just generally experiencing more new things.

In that spirit, I'm going to try and dedicate more time to this blog and perhaps go in a different direction with it, though it will essentially remain a swirling vortex of randomness, entertainment and foul language.

So for those of you who want to read what I have to say, this year should be much more rewarding for you. And for those of you who don't, go fuck off and read your pussy food blogs or something.

-HC

Even Gentleman Shark is getting in the spirit!!! Thanks, old chum! (Ya see what I did there. Eh?)

Getting Married? Try this....

So, I've been hearing alot about marriage lately. My best friend is working out his wedding plans, a few friends are attending  weddings and basically all of creation is consumed with the prospect of nuptials. I'm sure it's because I'm married now, but it seems like all married people talk to other married people about is being or getting married. It's marriage-palooza.

Anyway, I was asked to comment on attending a wedding or funeral for someone I don't know. Since funerals are a complete waste of time and fundamentally useless to me, I'll do the married guy thing and talk about weddings.

A wedding is a joyous occasion in which family, friends and strangers gather together to be completely miserable and pretend to like each other for a few hours for the sake of a couple of people who won't even have the time to notice or care that you are there. That being said, they can be fun if done correctly.

I like going to weddings for people you don't know or barely know. That way there is no pretense. Everybody there knows that your just there to throw a toaster at the bride/groom, eat free food and then bow out and go do something enjoyable with your time, so you don't have to worry about anything.

As I mentioned, weddings can be fun though. If you have the right people getting married in the right place, it's a blast. Best weddings are usually thrown by Jews, Mexicans and anyone willing to go to Vegas. In my humble, yet all important opinion, weddings shouldn't be formal occasions. Your supposed to be celebrating. There will be enough suffering after you're actually married, so there is no reason to put yourself out anyone else through an entire day of stress and drudgery to get things started.