Anime review #2 - Serial Experiment Lain

Serial Experiment Lain - directed by Ryutaro Nakamura (1998)

The thing that drains you of your life force, one episode at a time

SEL is an experimental anime that disappoints across the board.

Even this picture sucks, because it mentions Lain.

The plot is minimalistic to the bone. An adolescent girl gets hooked on the internet (which is called the "Wired"), visits a club with her friends, finds out her parents are actually actors or something, discovers she is only the material reflection of her "ghost in the machine" actual self (in other words a program), meets the "God" of the Wired (who turns out to be a forgettable loser) and ultimately rescinds her material existence to remain a silent, virtual watcher.

Now if you think something like - Wow, this is somewhat similar to the Matrix, this could be awesome! - No. This is nothing like Matrix. Not even like the sequels, and it hurts to use those as a positive example.

Describing SEL in only one word is easy, and the word is BORING. There are really no words for how watching the trickle of extremely repetitive events (well, traces of events), none of which ever form a coherent plot, bores the living shit out of the viewer! Watching Lain is best described by an analogy describing the results of eating spoiled (or really, any) fast food: Shit flushes through you, leaving no traces behind. What I can actually remember of the occurrences in Lain (like e.g. a girl committing suicide in the first episode) is not even worth mentioning because the mindless drone level of the series shuts out any event from being interesting, meaningful, or consequential! Watching this as an anime is utterly pointless. While viewing Lain I briefly thought about the idea of somebody creating an audiovisual collage from the footage, but that thought passed quickly. To boil down Lain to an essence, nothing happens and what happens... amounts to nothing.

One thing that usually never distract me is the unusually bad voice acting (we are talking about the original Japanese here of course, I don't watch dubs as a matter of principle). Lain, especially the fake one (I'm as confused as you are here...), has a really ugly, unsympathetic and toneless voice. Also, the obligatory stupid trio of little kids ("cool" wannabe protagonist boy, bratty girl infatuated to aforementioned and snot-nosed loser sidekick - so Naruto didn't even invent that... huh) has voice actors even the lousiest fandubbers (now that's a tautology) wouldn't hire.

What remains from Serial Experiment Lain are the bear pyjama (if that had been featured in a BETTER anime, it naturally would have assumed cult status) and Lain's stupid hair tie thingy. By the way, Lain has the ugliest eyes I've ever seen by far. Geinus (sic) idea, by the way, making her eyes the same colour as her hair. *puke*

That quote about the abyss staring back at you never was more appropriate.

Some episodes had visual noise comparable to the battle scenes in Puella Magica Madoka in it - I really hate that shit.

Oh yeah, and contrary to what the screenwriter stated, the Evangelion ripoff shots really pile up. But what's new in Animeland... what's new.

With all it shortcomings and lack of any good material or ideas whatsoever, SEL luckily still can't conquer the title of worst anime of all time... that honour remains with the dreadful vortex of suck called... no. Let the horror be unnamed for now...



...or not. Naruto Shippuden. The horror.

Youtubers I love #3 - Andrew's Games Display

Andrew's Games Display (2013-)

Andrew from Canada is a video game collector who focusses on Nintendo products but has hardware and games all the way back to Pong consoles. Apart from showcasing his collection he also Let's plays a multitude of different retro games, mostly random-game-of-the-day-style.

Andrew's about the nicest guy you could meet on the internet, and very knowledgable about all stuff retro. He was active in the SMW hacking scene, and my dream is to one day play a hack with him co-op style over the internet. ^^

Go check him out now!!!

https://www.youtube.com/user/andrewsgamesdisplay

Interactive Fiction review #5 - Episode in the Life of an Artist

Episode in the Life of an Artist by Peter Eastman (2003)

Episode in the Life of an Artist details the daily routine of the everyman/simpleton protagonist, from getting up and dressing, to preparing breakfast and taking the bus to work.

This game does a good job defining the personality of the protagonist by showing his view of the things he encounters. The mundaneness of his (apparently lonely) working-class existence is juxtaposed with his favourable self-view. The protagonist even considers himself an artist of mechanical genius, when ironically his job is so simple a machine is developed to replace him.

The counterpoint to some very interesting writing is the defectiveness of the programming. While still very playable, there are instances you will curse the author's tendency to require very specific inputs. (The final turn of the game is especially bad with this.) At least one one-time-only event is repeated every time you perform a certain action. The final (of fortunately few) puzzles is pure guesswork. You cannot read the victory message of the game because it is unfortunately automatically skipped. The scoring system was left in the game but is never used.

While, like mentioned above, the writing is interesting and done well, there are some weird instances that jar with the rest of the story. Putting fantasy elements in otherwise realistic settings is something I have a strong dislike of and in this game does not benefit this story in any way. In fact, the author's decision to let this story take place in a Zork-based universe is baffling and serves no obvious purpose.

Episode in the Life of an Artist is an interesting piece of work that is unfortunately hampered by abovementioned flaws but certainly worth being tried out.

4/10

...and RIP (in) Path of Exile too

DEAD tired of the ridiculous damage spikes

Well, I've been having some bad gaming experiences lately. First the LoL atrocity, and now that I've died for a second time in Path of Exile's current hardcore league (Tempest) from a completely unreasonable one-shot, I'm pretty much out of a game to play.

My build (Sweep + Vigilant strike endurance charge sustainrauder) and gear in both cases were definitely stronger than I had ever been before, especially in a hardcore league (I used to avoid those because of my tendency to leave the computer to do something else and then die afk in the wilderness because I didn't actually go back to town *facepalm*).

-) First one-shot came at level 63 from a Haku boss in an area 6-7 levels below mine... I almost quit for the season right there. Sure I had no charges in my health flasks left (because annoyingly enough you can't tp in a master zone...), and got distracted by an annoying person, but the sudden damage output (like 100x of a regular monster) was bullshit, plain and simple.

-) The second and TRUE one-shot (from max health to death in one attack!) was delivered... by the VAAL OVERSOUL! I mean, what the fuck, I've never died from that idiot since I was a complete noob! The only thing that was not perfect in my state was that I only had like 3 endurance charges at the moment instead of my maximum 7 (cause it's hard to get your charges from a single enemy in my build - in 99.9% of situations I have multiple enemies to work with), but that was it! 3500+ health, total tank build, one fist smash I couldn't dodge due to no quicksilver charges (and I always run 2 with +charges), BAM DEAD. I literally couldn't believe that shit! (level 66)

-) So am I gonna do the whole thing again, spend 30-40 hours (or more!) to get to the level I had, build everything the same AGAIN (cause I stand firmly by the statent that my build was very much ready to reach endgame - in other words mapping), get all the same gear I had (hundreds of alts to get perfect flasks to AVOID this kind of shit death) AGAIN and get randomly raped by some other suddenly overpowered piece of shit enemy GGG programs in to "make the game more challenging"?

No.

First, this hack and slash shit ruins my mouse hand. I've had carpal tunnel syndrome once before, and games like this are poison for my right hand. I've never had any problems while playing LoL at all, so it's the fact you have to hold down the mouse buttons for a very long time I cast the blame on, and that's unfortunately not avoidable at all in this genre.

Second, I've been banned for virtually no legit reason twice on the forums, in a very short time. The posts that DON'T cause me to get banned are virtually always ignored by other people, so that forum always has been a very negative experience for me.

I don't even want to go into all the other crippling problems PoE has, which are never ever tackled by Grinding Gear Games or even commented on, lest I would have to write 10000 words and I have better things to do with my time than say what everybody playing Path of Exile already knows themselves. So long story short, I deleted PoE (and LoL too) today. Probably will get back into playing the game once the next expansion is released, but it's so so very likely that also will be only a temporary experience once again...

...I need a new game

EDIT: Nevermind, I'm playing this 24/7 again. ^^

EDIT 2 (2.11.2015): done playing this until some new endgame system is introduced. I will never grind a map again until there is some long-term reward for it. I'm dreaming of a stronghold/land owning system, it's an idea of mine taken from old turn-based strategy games that could perfectly be integrated in this hack and slash to broaden the spectrum of the gameplay by hundreds of per cent. EDIT AD INFINITUM: and as of 4.2.2017, I'm still playing this shit... showcasing how miserable my existence is.

RIP League of Legends :-(

Or rather Rito too dumb to live

So, yesterday was the introduction of patch 5.14 of League of Legends. I have suffered through a lot of stupidities on Riot's side, the worst of which certainly were the Summoner's Rift update which ruined my game experience for MONTHS til I could adapt to it (the bugs didn't help, and even at the end, I was still missing at least 1 in 3 last hits due to how last hitting was fucked up with the new minions), forcing me to ARAM and later Dominion modes instead of normal play. Also, of course, the atrocious champion "updates" (more like CRAPdates), which caused me to never tough Veigar, Zilean and Ryze again after they were changed, out of pure principle. FUCK adding more skillshots to champs who didn't have them before!

But the 5.14 HUD update is the end of the line. I don't have words for how bad and UNNEEDED that shit is. I was invested heavily in LoL, emotionally, playing more than 3000 games, but with this change (and of course in typical Riot fashion it's FORCED on you, whether you want it or not) I can permanently quit the game relatively painlessly. I for one won't take Riot's shit anymore and refuse to adapt to an ugly, confusing as hell, UNWANTED HUD after more than 3000 games. Enough is enough. More people already seem to hate this, so there is a slight possibility of them giving you the option to revert to the standard UI - I would of course return to playing in this case - but I'm not banking on it. Since the competitive MOBAs are unplayable for me because of their developers I'm out of a multiplayer game now. Oh well...

EDIT: needles to say, I'm back at playing this. Deleted and reinstalled three times so far. Playing this modern garbage version of LoL is chasing the ghost of a memory, but somehow I can't completely separate myself from it.

EDIT 2: deleted again. sure hope it stays that way.

EDIT 3 (2.11.2015): well you know the drill. playing again... though only ARAM. season 6 doesn't seem to improve the flaws in Rift, so I don't think I will ever have motivation to play ranked.


My final stats:

Normal - 593 wins, 17863 takedowns, 117794 minions

Dominion - 609 wins, 19226 takedowns, 8688 points captured

ARAM - 604 wins, 32745 takedowns, 601 towers

so all platinum badges except for normal wins :-( and minions (well 200000 was a long time away)

Youtubers I love #2 - Finngamer

Finngamer (2009-)

Finngamer is a Finn (well duh) called Janne, who collects video games and consoles, focussing especially on the Nintendo 64 and limited/collector's editions. What seperates him from most video game collectors and reviewers is his calm, mellow, in other words typical Finnish attitude and expression. He also very readily answers to comments, which many bigger collectors on Youtube don't bother to do. For people interested in seeing a vast and constantly increasing collection of both retro and modern games and consoles, there's no better European channel to check out!

https://www.youtube.com/user/finngamer

Interactive Fiction review #4 - The Thirty-Nine Steps

The Thirty-Nine Steps by Jack Lockerby (1995)

Nintendo Hard Spectrum game

The Thirty-Nine Steps by Jack Lockerby is a mystery/detective-like game based on the same-titled book by John Buchan. I'm not familiar with the source material, but games based on works of literature, movies, etc. are generally something I would like to see a lot more often.

This is a ZX Spectrum game, which will likely limit your save options to only one save state (ramsave), unless you're an expert with the system, I guess. The slowness of the parser is a huge problem, more often than not letters are swallowed because the software cannot keep up with an average typing speed. After doing some research I assume this to be a problem of the hardware itself.

The Thirty-Nine Steps has some interesting features. The room description is displayed in a separated partition on top of the screen and updated in real time. Likewise, the passage of time moves the game time forward. Time window puzzles combined with the abovementioned typing speed limitation lead to frenzied backspace manias.

The Thirty-Nine Steps is an extremely hard game. There is little time for exploration (literally), objects are barely manipulable and usually hidden (sometimes even in plain sight). The inventory management is sluggish and confusing, the size of items seems to matter when putting them in a container, but illogical situations still arise (e.g. placing a table in your coat pocket). Puzzles pretty much require you to know exactly what the author intended you to do. Even when you have stumbled on the solution to a problem, you will be forced to start this game again and again to optimize your path - wasting time will make you miss the time windows and leave you in limbo. In one situation you are required to carry no items in your inventory (except if they are in your container) - you better anticipated this and dropped all items you deemed unnecessary for your progress ON THE DAY BEFORE!

I managed to complete a fifth of the game, based on the score, but got stuck in an illogical situation where a cab driver rats you out to the police even though you have never met him before (or committed a crime, for that matter).

This game is not necessarily bad, but its crazy difficulty ensures that you will not get far without a walkthrough (to my knowledge, none exists) if you're not a text adventure god with a lot of time on your hands.

No rating