[REVEIW] Dead Rising
Friday, April 17, 2009
(This was a very hasty copy/paste job from DQ. Problem with that?)
Right, another badly done review from DQ's one and only TR.
Dead Rising is a game of Skill, Gore, and taking pictures of people's re-animated corpses. You play as Photojournalist Frank West, who also happens to be weapons expert. Or at least, he can fuck a table off your head just as easily shoot you.
The game begins with Frank and his helicopter pilot, Ed flying into
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed
Willamette Colorado! Distingushing characteristics: Jack shit!
The military has quarantined the entire place, and all communications have been blocked. As the chopper swoops closer, Frank starts clicking merrily away. Until it seems, the people start eating each other.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed
What is that, some kind of riot?
A ransacked school bus, an exploding gas station, A woman screaming for help as she reaches the edge of a building. All sights from a traditional riot.
With just one small difference.
It's completely silent.
As Frank spots the town mall, and requests to be taken closer, a trio of military choppers appear.
Ed's a fancy flier, and manages to evade the military. Frank takes a jump, and lands on the Mall's helipad.
As Frank progresses through the mall, he is again struck by the strage lack of sound.
As he walks into the entrance Plaza, he sees townsfolk barricading the doors against...
Zombies. That's the only word for them. Thousands of them, all dying (re-read note: No pun intended!) for a bite of human flesh.
Someone orders Frank to go find something for the barricade. As he does so, moving back into the mall, there is a commotion at the front door.
It's been opened. The barricade is gone. They're coming for you.
It's at this moment when you first take full control over Frank. Before, you were able to run around a bit, but that was all. Now you have a fully-automatic, zombie killing machine.
Although, if it's your first time playing, you'll want to escape ASAP, level system explained later.
As you escape, you return to a saferoom you passed through earlier. You meet a couple of DHS agents and the mall's janitor, who quickly welds the door shut.
After that, you are pretty much free to do what you want. After another quick tutorial on how to rescue survivors, you are literally thrown into the mall. You can either chose to solve the mystery of the mall, fight zombies until the horde consumes you, or hide out until the heliicopter returns for you.
On the subject of the helicopter, you have 72 hours inside the Mall until the chopper returns. If you aren't on the helipad at the deadline, you're pretty much fucked.
As if you weren't already.
The above is a(read-read note: VERY!) whittled down version of the rather long opening sequence. What follows is how it plays.
For a game three years old, I still find Dead Rising up to the Xbox 360's standards. You may notice clipping from time to time, and the survivor AI is downright stupid, but you can see Capcom really put effort into their 'swarm' technology, the Psychopaths (Read: Bosses) and their weapon system.
On the subject of weapons, if you can pick it up, chances are you can use it to bash their brains in. Weapons react how you would assume they would in real life, from everything ranging from lethality to stopping power.
For example: You first walk into the mall wielding a pistol (maybe one or two other melee weapons). You instantly waste the clip within ten seconds, because you didn't know how rare guns were in the game. Then you're down to your melee weapons. Which are, not surprisingly, plentiful in a shopping Mall. Some may not be quite as good as others (Teddy bear Vs Baseball bat = BONK!), and some have hilarious side effects (Putting a frying pan on a cooker heats it up, and you can use this new weapon to burn their faces off!), but where Dead Rising really shines is the sheer FUN of killing zombies using everyday household items.
Another fun aspect of the game is the 'Photjournalist' element. You're a reporter, right? You're getting the story, now you need some photos!
By pulling the Left Trigger, you enter the camera's viewfinder. When you take a photo, the game engine looks for points of interest, how clear the subject is, is it centered, what is the quality like...all sorts of fun and gruesome shots are worth 'PP' (Prestige Points, I think). PP is what levels you up, again, this will be explained later.
What makes the camera element REALLY clever, is that taking pictures of zombies by themselves are BORING. What Capcom want you to do is...spice things up a little.
For example: There's a little brass thing in the Warehouse that you pass through when entering the wall. If you pick it up, you'll see it's a 'shower head'. Wondering what to do with it, you go up to the nearest zombie and attack.
Frank sticks it into their fucking HEAD.
Blood pours out water is supposed to. While this is a horrific image, it'll earn you a shitload of PP, so whip out that camera and get snapping people!
What could be more fun then killing zombies, and THEN taking photos of their double-dead corpses?
Now, the long awaited levelling system.
Ok. So you've bought Dead Rising. You're all excited. You can't wait to lay into zome zombies. As I said before, you walk into the Entrance Plaza, you pick up a baseball ba-
FWOOM.
Dead.
:O
"HOW THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN?"
On the death screen, you're presented with two options.
"LOAD STATUS"
"SAVE STATUS AND QUIT"
Loading, obviously enough, loads a previous save.
BUT! Saving your status and quiting is a different matter. It allows you to save Frank the way he was when you did so including his level and his abilities.
This was such a great idea, I instantly saved and restarted.
I entered the game AGAIN, as a level TWO Frank West (I'd levelled up since starting), with improved health. This time, I managed the opening sequence, and made it to the saferoom.
Not only does this make the game easier as you go along, but it also means that if you earn it, if you really STRIVE for it, you WILL be able to finish this game. I love you Capcom.
Of course, every game has it's bad points. Dead Rising is no different.
As mentioned above, Survivor AI is plain stupid. You gain massive amounts of PP for helping them return to the saferoom, but sometimes it's just not worth waiting for them to COME. ON.
They bounce off walls, they get constantly caught by zombies by running STRAIGHT INTO THEM, and (on one, excruciating occasion) ran in circles around a tree.
I welcome the chance when you have to pick up/offer shoulder/drag by the hand various wounded or stunned survivors, because then you can guide them around dangers without them blundering straight in. Even if you can't use your weapons, it speeds your job right up, and you don't have to keep running back to help them for the twenty-seventh time in a row.
Dead Rising is INCREDIBLY Non-beginner friendly. You get thrown straight into the action, and chances are you will die a lot more than you'd like in your first couple of weeks playing. I would not be surprised if people have been completely put off by this, then when they have to fight that damn Spaniard with the Sniper Rifle.
One final attribute that makes you want to SCREAM when you play. All the good stuff has been hidden, and when you do find it, it's incredibly well guarded. For example, the gun shop is hidden behind a scaffolding in the North Plaza, miles away from everywhere else. It is guarded by it's crazy owner, who is a damn good shot, and replenishes his health while he reloads. There is nothing to hide behind when fighting him, and when you try to get up close and personal, he hurls you away like a rag doll.
They're HIS guns. He might trust those flesh-eating motherhumpers as far as he can throw them, but he trusts humans even less. Come one step closer, he'll blow your fucking head off.
Charming, I know.
And not only that, at about six o'clock on the first day, a trio of inmates take a jeep with a huge mounted gun on the back and start chasing survivors around the massive green in the centre of the mall.
INMATES.
IN A JEEP.
IN A MALL FULL OF ZOMBIES.
Where did they spring from, the local fish restaurant? And OBVIOUSLY, they got the Jeep out of 'Toys 'R' Us'. And the mounted gun?
Oh, that was extra.
This is only a very small insight into Dead Rising. It has a gripping story which I won't ruin, more intense gameplay then I can describe, and it really is a true work of genius from the masters of zombie gaming.
Final Word: Hours of Madness-filled, Gut-wrenching, Gun-toting, Zombie-Killing FUN!
Score: A whopping 8.5 out of 10
~Thunderaven
03/04/09
Palindrome to the max
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
A palindrome is spelled the same way forward as it is backward.
"Dammit I'm Mad"
by
Demetri Martin
Dammit I'm mad.Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I'm in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level "Mad Dog".
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I'm a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash,
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I'm it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I'd assign it a name.
Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:
"Sir, I deliver. I'm a dog"
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I'm mad.
Not exactly what you would expect...
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Not me, BTW.
Follow these instructions carfully
Monday, April 13, 2009
And you shall profit.
Click here to screw the spammers
The rulebook to life has been found.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
1 Carry your opponent’s proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it.
The more general your opponent’s statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it.
The more restricted and narrow your own propositions remain, the easier they are to defend.
2 Use different meanings of your opponent’s words to refute his argument.
Example: Person A says, “You do not understand the mysteries of Kant’s philosophy.”
Person B replies, “Oh, if it’s mysteries you’re talking about, I’ll have nothing to do with them.”
3 Ignore your opponent’s proposition, which was intended to refer to some particular thing.
Rather, understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it.
Attack something different than what was asserted.
4 Hide your conclusion from your opponent until the end.
Mingle your premises here and there in your talk.
Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order.
By this circuitous route you conceal your goal until you have reached all the admissions necessary to reach your goal.
5 Use your opponent’s beliefs against him.
If your opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage.
Example, if the opponent is a member of an organization or a religious sect to which you do not belong, you may employ the declared opinions of this group against the opponent.
6 Confuse the issue by changing your opponent’s words or what he or she seeks to prove.
Example: Call something by a different name: “good repute” instead of “honor,” “virtue” instead of “virginity,” “red-blooded” instead of “vertebrates”.
7 State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions.
By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted.
Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the proponent’s admissions.
8 Make your opponent angry.
An angry person is less capable of using judgment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.
9 Use your opponent’s answers to your question to reach different or even opposite conclusions.
10 If your opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant you any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises.
This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek him to concede.
11 If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion.
Later, introduce your conclusions as a settled and admitted fact.
Your opponent and others in attendance may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.
12 If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favorable to your proposition.
Example: What an impartial person would call “public worship” or a “system of religion” is described by an adherent as “piety” or “godliness” and by an opponent as “bigotry” or “superstition.”
In other words, insert what you intend to prove into the definition of the idea.
13 To make your opponent accept a proposition, you must give him an opposite, counter-proposition as well.
If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical.
Example: If you want him to admit that a boy must to everything that his father tells him to do, ask him, “whether in all things we must obey or disobey our parents.”
Or , if a thing is said to occur “often” you are to understand few or many times, the opponent will say “many.”
It is as though you were to put gray next to black and call it white; or gray next to white and call it black.
14 Try to bluff your opponent.
If he or she has answered several of your question without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow.
If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the technique may succeed.
15 If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment.
Instead, submit for your opponent’s acceptance or rejection some true proposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it.
Should the opponent reject it because he suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject an obviously true proposition.
Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your side for the moment.
You can either try to prove your original proposition, as in #14, maintain that your original proposition is proved by what your opponent accepted.
For this an extreme degree of impudence is required, but experience shows cases of it succeeding.
16 When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions or lack of action.
Example: Should your opponent defend suicide, you may at once exclaim, “Why don’t you hang yourself?”
Should the opponent maintain that his city is an unpleasant place to live, you may say, “Why don’t you leave on the first plane?”
17 If your opponent presses you with a counter-proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction.
Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent’s idea.
18 If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion.
Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.
19 Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing to say, try to make the argument less specific.
Example: If you are asked why a particular hypothesis cannot be accepted, you may speak of the fallibility of human knowledge, and give various illustrations of it.
20 If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion.
Rather, draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.
21 When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see the falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficial character.
But it is better to meet the opponent with a counter-argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him.
For it is with victory that you are concerned, not with truth.
Example: If the opponent appeals to prejudice, emotion or attacks you personally, return the attack in the same manner.
22 If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.
23 Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating their statements.
By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into extending the statement beyond its natural limit.
When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the original statement.
Contrarily, if your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than your intended, redefine your statement’s limits and say, “That is what I said, no more.”
24 State a false syllogism.
Your opponent makes a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from the proposition other propositions that are not intended and that appear absurd.
It then appears that opponent’s proposition gave rise to these inconsistencies, and so appears to be indirectly refuted.
25 If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary.
Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the opponent’s proposition.
Example: “All ruminants are horned,” is a generalization that may be upset by the single instance of the camel.
26 A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent’s arguments against himself.
Example: Your opponent declares: “so and so is a child, you must make an allowance for him.”
You retort, “Just because he is a child, I must correct him; otherwise he will persist in his bad habits.”
27 Should your opponent surprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal.
No only will this make your opponent angry, but it will appear that you have put your finger on the weak side of his case, and your opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.
28 When the audience consists of individuals (or a person) who is not an expert on a subject, you make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience.
This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes your opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs.
If your opponent must make a long, winded and complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen to him.
29 If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion--that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute.
This may be done without presumption if the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.
30 Make an appeal to authority rather than reason.
If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case.
If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance.
Authorities that your opponent fails to understand are those which he generally admires the most.
You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have entirely invented yourself.
31 If you know that you have no reply to the arguments that your opponent advances, you by a fine stroke of irony declare yourself to be an incompetent judge.
Example: “What you say passes my poor powers of comprehension; it may well be all very true, but I can’t understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it.”
In this way you insinuate to the audience, with whom you are in good repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense.
This technique may be used only when you are quite sure that the audience thinks much better of you than your opponent.
32 A quick way of getting rid of an opponent’s assertion, or of throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category.
Example: You can say, “That is fascism” or “Atheism” or “Superstition.”
In making an objection of this kind you take for granted
1)That the assertion or question is identical with, or at least contained in, the category cited;
and
2)The system referred to has been entirely refuted by the current audience.
33 You admit your opponent’s premises but deny the conclusion.
Example: “That’s all very well in theory, but it won’t work in practice.”
34 When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter question, or tries to change the subject, it is sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without intending to do so.
You have, as it were, reduced your opponent to silence.
You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.
35 Instead of working on an opponent’s intellect or the rigor of his arguments, work on his motive.
If you success in making your opponent’s opinion, should it prove true, seem distinctly prejudicial to his own interest, he will drop it immediately.
Example: A clergyman is defending some philosophical dogma.
You show him that his proposition contradicts a fundamental doctrine of his church.
He will abandon the argument.
36 You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast.
If your opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he has no idea what your are talking about, you can easily impose upon him some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.
37 Should your opponent be in the right but, luckily for you, choose a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position.
This is the way in which bad advocates lose good cases.
If no accurate proof occurs to your opponent, you have won the day.
38 Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand.
In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character.
This is a very popular technique, because it takes so little skill to put it into effect.
Sorry for the late post
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Hey, I know MTAC was a few days ago, but I've been really busy recently. Here's my review.
First of all, FIVE STARS.
The people are amazing, the music was amazing, the events were amazing.
Highlights:
"OPEN MY BABY SAUCE!"
"You looking at gay cartoon porn again, Cami?"
"Yeah, mom."
"K."
And slow dancing and slam dancing for the first time in my life on both within an hour.
If you live anywhere near middle Tennessee, and you consider yourself any sort of nerd, I highly recommend this. I already linked to the site, which has much more information that I could ever type.
Hell, if we get in touch, and talk over the next year, I might even be able to give you lodging.
Also, you just lost the game.
MTAC
Thursday, April 2, 2009
So, for all you poor souls that won't be going, I'm going to MTAC, Middle Tennessee Anime Convention. It is what it sounds like. Held in Nashville.
It. Will. Be. Awesome.
www.mtac.net
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