The Best Kind of Dragons, Infinite Dragons.

You know what's cool?

A Dragon.

And might you so happen to know what is even cooler than a Dragon?

Two Dragons.

And of course the best kind of dragon is an "Infinite Supply of Dragons".

If you don't know what I'm talking about, PC Gamer recently reported that Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, will have "an unlimited amount of dragons", or, as I like to call it, "Infinite Dragons."

That's right, Infinite Dragons! If you were to calculate that amount of dragons on a multi-sided die, it would be an "Infinite Sided Die"

A, "d-Infinite", if you will, as opposed to say, a "d20". Except the "d" doesn't stand for "dice" it stands for "Dragons", and instead of six dragons, or twenty dragons, we have infinite dragons.

Now, I have talked to a few people and read a few arguments against having an unlimited number of dragons to slay with magic, swords, or your bare hands. Some argue that the amount of dragons will make fighting a dragon less special, and that the mystique of fighting a dragon is often that they are so few in number.

Well, my argument to them is this, yes, I concede, that the more something happens, the less unique it becomes. However, what makes dragons so amazing and awe-inspiring is, for the most part, not how rarely you encounter them, but the fact that they are giant, flying, fire breathing, tanks, made of scales and death.

Dragons are like a force of nature; One does not simply fight a Dragon, one survives a Dragon. When you see something like that, which has through video games, table top games, fantasy novels, and myths been so feared, you have two responses, fight, or flight.

Then there is what fighting and killing a dragon means in Skyrim. In Skyrim when you kill a dragon, you absorb it's essence and become more powerful. You're become some form of Dragon Kirby that kills it's enemies, eats them ,and then absorbs its powers.

The only thing that I really hope is that many of the dragon encounters vary enough in terms of difficulty, strategy, and that the encounter itself is designed to make you feel like you are the heroe in some kind of Norse epic poem.

No one will really be able to determine that until the game comes out. I can't wait until release when I can begin slaying dragons, an unlimited amount, and constructing some form of dragon-bone castle from them, now there is a lair for a true hero.

Achievment Unlocked: Games are federally recognized as art.

So before you continue on, read this.


Seriously, I know you're still there, take a quick look.
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I'm talking to myself now, aren't I?


Welcome back! So as it seems the NEA can now give grants for video games as public works. I won't go into further detail on the specifics, as you just read them, but this could have some really interesting possibilities.

Games that wouldn't normally be granted a budget, on account of graphic content or niche appeal, now have a chance of being made and distributed publicly.

I would like the greatest public project the world has ever known... H.P. Lovecraft: The Game, you basically play as Lovecraft who has to fight monsters from his own story.

It's a 3rd person actions rpg, and you, as Lovecraft, wield an evolving Victorian Pen-Sword.  Or something like that. It would be very awesome.

I Just Realized: Sony's Videogame Division has had it rough.

It's like Sony just keeps getting abused over and over by this thing we call fate.

To begin with Sony had a pretty terrible PS3 launch, thanks to a 600$ price point, and some pretty egotistical statements by Sony representatives at the time.

Then we had the PSP, which has done poorly compared to the DS, and even worse if you compare it to smartphones, if you're of the opinion that smartphones are a mobile gaming platform. In addition, the PSP Go was as successful as a Roman orator with a speech impediment and missing a tongue, a.k.a. not very successful.

This generation many of what were previously Playstation exclusive titles, such as Final Fantasy, and Grand Theft Auto, have appeared on Xbox 360.

And the cherry on the top of this abysmal ice cream sundae of economic woe is the recent PSN debacle.


I fully realize there are other sections of Sony involved with things other than video games.

But at the same time, I can't help but feel a bit bad for how they have done this generation, I wish them the best of luck in the coming years.

Realization

So, I've come to the realization that I won't always be able to have long, introspective rants and soapboxes on video games, and meanings, and trends in the industry, so I may once in awhile just delve into discussion about current events, or things I have noticed lately.

I may have posts called "I Just Realized:" with something that I just realized about a game or subject after the colon.
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Well, for now I'll round up some of the more interesting bits of news I have seen this week and comment on them, give my take.

Well,  looks like the PSN fiasco might finally be ending soon. Took them long enough. They delayed telling people that their info might be stolen. This even went down right around the release of Portal 2, probably hampering its sales on PS3.

I don't even really know what to say at this point about it. Governments are investigating Sony, the PS3 is jailbroken wide open. These things along with the dismal sales performance of each PSP. If there has been one company which, at least video games-wise, has been in a rough spot the past few years. It's Sony.

I'm not one to start up "Which console is best" arguments, but if I were to argue what company was the "Loser" financially this generation, it would by far be Sony.

Till next time, one reader who possibly stumbles into this forsaken blog by accident...till next time.

Lack of Updates.

Sorry about the lack of updates, whomever might be reading, with AP exams coming up, I haven't had time to play many games, and I won;t be playing Portal 2 for awhile.

I'm sure by now many of you have heard of or experienced the whole PSN ordeal going on, it seems like between that, Duke Nukem Forever, and more, that anything is possible right now.

Also, Wii HD, no one knows what it's going to be, so I'm ignoring all rumors until E3 when we hear more info.

Been playing a bit of Fallout New Vegas here and there, seems like the next piece of downloadable content, which will hopefully be good, as opposed to the much hated "Dead Money".

I'll probably have another update towards the end of the week, when I've taken my final AP Exam, till then, folks, stay frosty.

Tim Schafer must hate french fries..

...Because I just got to the french fry quest (In Costume Quest), a main quest, which is bugged so that it cannot be completed, there is no planned patch to fix it, and no way to get around it.

The only solution is to delete the save and start a new game. At that point I had played over halfway through the game.

Maybe I can buy some kind of simian creature to play the game for me, but that requires, money, and the technology to train a monkey to play video games, neither of which I have.

I will never finish Costume Quest, as much as I love Tim Schafer, and Double Fine's work, I will never finish that game because there isn't any real replay value. It's a good game, but nothing changes enough on replay to still be entertaining.

It's irritating how more and more games ship with bugs, big ones at that, at release. (Earth Defense Force sized bugs, so, the size of skyscrapers)

I realize how complicated games are nowadays, such as Fallout New Vegas with it's many variables, quests, content, and etcetera. And I can deal with the occasional "reload from a point 3 minutes from where you were", or , "Oh, all of the character's heads are spinning nonstop, 'Exorcist'-style".

But there is very little reason that a game should ship, or become available to download, with a bug that prevents you from beating the game.

If I ever meet Tim Schafer at a convention, I'll ask him why he hates french fries so much, and why he's such a foodist.

Finally!

The endless onslaught of work has been ended.

I can't believe it, it couldn't be happening, pinch me girls, it couldn't be happening...

Oops, too much acting, sometimes I still slip into talking about lines from my recent musical.

Things have been very busy with college acceptance and all, and I hope to post up some more video game/nerd related post within the week as it is now Spring Break, and I should soon have Dragon Age 2.

So I may post stuff about that as I go through.

That reminds me, I made it 3/4'ths of the way through Tales of Vesperia, finally, and am considering whether or not I really want to finish the last bit of it for reasons I will explain in another upcoming post.

So till then...

Also, watch out for bionic squid-men, I was nearly attacked by one on the way home today.

I had to fight it off with a Kukri.

Less is More (Collectibles in Video Games)

So I've been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed 2 recently, I bought it and played it recently (As part of a winter sale at a store), and I'm enjoying it a lot more than the first Assassin's Creed, which I quit half-way through because I was tired of hiding amongst wandering crows of priests and an extremely bland environment. It became very boring, very quickly.

Out of the things Assassin's Creed 2 does a lot better than the first, I think one prominent spot is in it's collectibles.

Now I'm not someone who desires to collect every achievement in every game, as most of the games I've played range from 250-750 in number of points I have collected, so achievements have never really provided me the drive to collect thousands of out of the way items. This is where Assassin's Creed 2 really shines.

The Codex Pages give you health bar upgrades for every 4th page you decode. The Glyphs each have interesting puzzles for you to solve and are located on or near famous landmarks which your quests often take you on or near. Between the two of them, each rewards you with additional story bits, The Glyphs combine to create a hidden scene that has story implications, and the same goes for when all of the codex pages are gathered together to create a secret picture of some sort for more story implications.


I'm a drug fiend big fan of story telling and additional pieces of fiction that fit into the overall story of a game, Mass Effect 2's own Codex Entries are an example, so for me, this seems like a much larger reward than intangible points. As well, between Glyphs and Codex Pages, there aren't too many of either, making it much easier to collect both of them than the typical 100+ collectibles in other games. Now I'm not saying that the system is perfect, There are 100 feathers in the game you can collect, which as far as I know don't provide much of a reward, but the game does a much better job of implementing collectibles than some other games.

So all I'm saying, is it doesn't take many collectibles to make the system good, in fact it doesn't take many, size doesn't matter and bigger isn't necessarily better in this case. A decent sized amount of collectibles for each world/level which are generally easy to find and have some reward beyond just achievement points. now of course this can be changed, say in a game like Fallout or Dragon Age, you could have a smaller amount of harder to find or collect objects which could unlock a power piece of weaponry or armor.

What seems to be the optimal method of collectible items or such in games is that the amount of collectibles is equal to or less than the value of the rewards it provides, as well as being placed in interesting areas that you are likely to visit either on account of the gameplay or the world/level's beauty.

Why "Laser Bee"

Well, Laser Bee, why the name? Let me explain.

To begin with, it sounds catchy, and i liked the ring to it, it seemed fairly original to it. I got my inspiration from such sites as Giant Bomb and Games Radar, a simple two word name.

As for the next reason, it's pretty basic, a bee made of concentrated light would be pretty awesome. You already have Honey Bees, followed by Killer Bees, and then you have the boss-type Laser Bees. They would probably be in the futuristic level, or the time-travel level.

Also, getting a symbol of some kind of high-tech bee, or a bee mounted with laser cannons would be pretty intriguing in terms of it's design.

Really, I just like the originality of it, and as I'm somewhat anxious in writing publicly for the first few times, and I have a fear of bees, you could draw some form of psychological conclusion.