Phil, your picture utterly scares me. Worse than Bloody Mary and Freddy Kreuger combined. It scared me when Gerry was editing it and showing us ‘drafts.’ Each and every time I saw a new link, it scared me. To the point that I didn’t want to click on the draft links for the fear that it would scare me some more.
Children beware, do not, I repeat, do NOT look at his picture for too long. He will come EAT YOU!!! RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As per a special request from The Chad, it is now Fairytale Time™.
Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a boy named Xygzyz’tkt. He was constantly mocked for his name. I mean look at that. That shit’s completely unpronounceable. There’s not even a damn vowel unless you wanna count Y and, honestly, who does. What the flying Voltron Jesus is this. Yes, Voltron Jesus. He is composed of mecha-lion Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and John the Baptist, with King David as the head. He’s so awesome. Absolves you of your sins, and then slices a Robeast in half with His sword.
Well, little captain unpronounceable went through his childhood under the cursed aegis of his name. He was unable to attend school since he was always marked absent by teachers who could not pronounce Xygzyz’tkt, and therefore dispensed with even attempting to determine his presence. He took up a career in scrubbing the grout between tiles on bathroom floors to make enough money to get by. He lived a mostly uninteresting life. His most entertaining story consisted of him once receiving an extra farthing’s worth of change at his local Ye Olde Generale Store-e. He died of name cancer in his bed at the age of 47, and his body was burned by the local community to keep the “name taint” from spreading.
Moral of the story? Don’t name your kid something bizarre and unpronounceable. Please. Even crazy spellings of normal names are out. It’s Mary, not Mayree, or Maari, or any other thing like that. All you’re doing is ensuring your kid gets mocked, and that nobody is ever able to spell their name right for the rest of their life, unless they get fed up and legally change it to the normal spelling.
–P
If it wasn’t apparent from my last post, for the past few days, I’ve been totally engrossed with Super Mario Galaxy. Playing through all the ins and outs on a quest to get 120 stars and unlock the secret. I won’t say what it is for those of you who haven’t managed to do that yet, but I will say about 10 minutes ago I completed just that and it is totally worth it.
Unfortunately, that secret was ruined for me. A disturbing trend I’m noticing in reviewing politic lately is to tell you too much about an upcoming game, including plot twists that may have otherwise been a surprise. I can understand where they are coming from, however. They are the first ones to get a copy of the game in the world. It is their job to play it and give their analysis of this product. They are also gamers, and as such, they want to be able to brag saying, “Yeah, I unlocked this.” Or, “It was so sad when…” But please, you are professionals. You should either put at the top of the article that you are including spoilers in the review. There are plenty of other things to talk about the games other than unlockables and what they are.
Because I am looking out for you, I’m going to put that this next paragraph DOES contain spoilers in an attempt to explain how reviewers are ruining things for every gamers. Though with some of these, if you didn’t already know, shame on you. Back when Final Fantasy 7 came out, one particular review said something to the effect of , “The game does a good job of evoking an emotional response in players, especially when Aeris dies at the end of disk one.” Wait, let me double back there. Aeris dies? And your fucking telling me this in a review? What the hell is the matter with you? Another one I recall off the top of my head was an image in the print EGM. They did a review of Chrono Cross in which one of the screen shots showed enemies earlier on in the game in your party.
I use older examples because I wouldn’t want to ruin some of the surprises of newer games. There’s one site in particular who is very good at this and others who seem to slip up every now and then (no I won’t name them), but there’s really no need to ruin the gaming experience for everyone. When I read the thing about Aeris, I literally stopped playing for awhile. A very good current example is how Gamepro ruined a surprise for Rock Band. I won’t say what the surprise was, but I will say they were not the ones who were supposed to release the information. The good friends of Harmonix, Score Hero, were supposed to release that information.
But what do reviewers care? It’s not like a developer can do anything or the reviewer may blacklist said developer. This is ridiculous. We make these games for everyone. Not just the over zealous game reviewer. Just because they want some attention and are trying to boost traffic is no reason to slip information. I can understand that they need to reveal enough about the game to put up a good review, but there is a point where you need to use some common sense and not let up a big secret or plot twist.
Priorities are going to be a series of posts where I point out flaws that I see, and things that need to change. Please freely express your ideas and comments.
Since I attend school away from home, I rarely get a chance to know what goes on in the outside world. College dorm life is pretty much living in a bubble of campus atmosphere. Occassionally, I like to burst this bubble (and procrastinate from studying) when I decide to go to the world wide web and read some news. You might ask, well you have a tv don’t you? Sure I do, but when you’re a science student you’re pretty much reading your book most of the time than watching tv. In any case, I went to www.ny1.com for my hometown news. The top story: Yankees And A-Rod Reportedly Close To Deal. Please imagine me doing this: …-_-?? Great, that’s the top story that everyone is very concerned about? Don’t get me wrong, if you love sports good for you. But sports is not something that is do or die, unless you’re a sports gambler and please stop gambling. I read on for further stories: Fire Rips Through Lower Manhattan Skyscraper. Now why is this story not the top story? Why is the preference of sports over a skyscraper? In fact, why isn’t there a top story of a missing child that needs to be found, or an emphasis of a robbery or murder happening in your next zip code? I mean, are you going to worry about sports when you should have paid more attention to the picture of a robber who is standing behind you on line for a morning coffee?