Gametap added Far Cry 2 last week. I'd been looking forward to it. It's one of those games that I've looked forward to playing, but not so much that I'd actually buy it. And Gametap mentioned they were eventually adding it, like, a year ago, so I've just been patiently waiting ever since. I'm already paying ten bucks a month for it, might as well use it.

Anyway. Pretty much all of the reviews I've read have said the same thing. Achingly beautiful world, wonderfully immersive game mechanics, but oh god there's a guard post every 100 meters and I'm sick of every person in the world trying to kill me. And that's more or less how I felt, too. The world around you looks so real, you can almost SMELL it. I almost wished there was an option to remove everyone else in the world so I could just explore. And yes, I was getting sick of the constant guard posts. I was getting sick of how these guys would hound me to their dying breath. How much are these fools getting paid, anyway? Dude, whatever it is, it's not worth it.

And that was when I realized I was doing it all wrong. The early parts of the game taught me how to scope out an area first and approach things with tact. I realized I should be doing this with the guard posts as well. It's much more interesting to hop out of your jeep beforehand, find a nice vantage point, and silently take out everyone you can from afar. It took LONGER, yeah, but it was more fun. Silently skulking around in the tall grass, firing off a shot, running off to a new position, sniping the guys who ran out to where you used to be, picking off the scragglers silently with your machete ...

And it was THEN, after I had turned the game into a psychotic murdering simulator, that I was struck with a profound truth.

There are no "good guys" in this game.

Think about that for a minute. When I first started playing, I was struck with the similarities to another game with similar mechanics, Just Cause. In Just Cause you're a suave CIA agent or something who is working to overthrow a corrupt dictator and liberate the populace. You're the good guy, the citizens are good guys, the dictator is evil and the people that work for him are evil. Simple. Black and white.

Far Cry 2, on the other hand, is nothing but greys. You're sent in to assassinate this guy known as the Jackal who's supplying weapons for a civil war in some small African nation. So you're the good guy and he's the bad guy, right? At first, yeah, it seems that way, but then you catch malaria, fail to kill the Jackal, and now you're stuck in this terrible little hell hole of a country, and you need to work with the two fighting factions so you can find the Jackal and kill him and get out, but then you realize that the two factions are EXACTLY THE SAME, both of them claiming to fight for the people after overthrowing the king, but ... but there are NO PEOPLE LEFT, because they've all fled, because the fighting has gotten so bad, and there's nothing left but mercenaries, and then you hear propaganda on the radio from one of the factions telling the people to fight for their freedom, but that's what the other guys are saying too, but there's NOBODY LEFT because they're either dead or gone, and these two factions are fighting for NOTHING, and and and ...

... and YOU!! You play right into it! You've got to kill the Jackal so that he can't supply weapons, but to survive you've got to buy the weapons he supplies, and you're working for both of the factions, and you're killing the soldiers and mercenaries and making things worse just so you can get out of there, and ...

It's all very bleak.

So that's my take on it. People seem to often complain about game plots, how they're cookie-cutter, or how the choices you make are either sickeningly good or chaotically evil. I'm surprised more people don't mention Far Cry 2. I dunno, maybe I just haven't played many recent shooters. Maybe they're all shades of grey. But this one is just ... so subtle about it. You just start off, thinking you're the good guy killing the bad guy, but then after awhile you realize there ARE no good guys, no bad guys, everyone is working to profit off of everyone else ...



tl;dr - Far Cry 2 is awesome and I don't care what anyone else thinks.

I was 15 in 1999. My parents had enrolled me in a driver's ed class that spring. I was one of those weird kids that really didn't want to drive at all, but I guess it wasn't like I had much of a choice. Looking back, I realize that my life was kind of miserable. Homeschooled, socially awkward, no online life, pretty much only had one real friend. I tended to have the house to myself during the day. I'd spend it playing Descent and avoiding schoolwork. I've always been a procrastinator, but especially so back then.

The only bright spot, in retrospect, was the fact that I had taken up drawing the year before. The only reason I can remember most of this is because I still have sketches relating to events.

Ten years ago today, I spent the afternoon watching celebrations from around the world. Some TV station was cutting to live feeds every hour as midnight stalked its way across the globe. I don't actually remember watching anything here. I don't know if the countdown with the elevator on the Space Needle was started fairly recently, but I think we had to watch a replay of the countdown in New York for some reason. Incidentally, I'm not holding my breath for anything spectacular tonight. The last few shows in Seattle have been really lackluster.

A few months later, in May of 2000, I registered for an account on Side7. That was the first time I'd posted my work online, and it's where I met some of my oldest and closest friends. Since then, I've been able to divide my life into two sections: pre-Side7 and post-Side7. Drawing and having an online life with which to display my work has given me something to live for. Maybe I would have become wildly successful elsewhere in life if I hadn't become a furfag, but that's conjecture. It may be sad and stupid at times, but it's better than what I had. So thanks, everyone.

So I've been playing Dwarf Fortress pretty much to the exclusion of everything else, including sleep, so it must be STORY TIME!

So I've got two squads, one full of axedwarves and another full of marksdwarves. The axedwarves are mostly champions, so I wasn't expecting much resistance when I'm notified of a goblin siege. And indeed, everything's going great until this Fist of the North Star marksgoblin comes out of nowhere and takes down three axelords and injures three others before he goes down.

Now, a little while later, I'm mopping up the mess, recruiting some new soldiers to replace the fallen, when I get notified that a bronze colossus is lumbering towards me. Oh, well, great. Grab what's left of my axedwarves, and ... what? I can't select them? Oh, their leader is sick in bed with a pierced shoulder, and all the recruits are just huddled around him. In fact, EVERY axedwarf who isn't a recruit is in bed recuperating. Where'd my marksdwarves go? Oh, they're still in the tower, forgot to tell them to stand down. Good, they can shoot it from there. Just a little closer, little closer ...

BUT NO! They decide, as a unified hivemind, to go on break and sleep ALL AT ONCE, evacuating the tower. So I ready the ballista I've got situated in a little building in front of the entrance to the courtyard, which of course misses spectacularly, and the siege engineer gets spooked and runs off before he can get another shot off.

So I briefly consider raising the bridge on the moat before the bronze colossus can get to it, but then he just goes and rips off the hatch cover I've got over the secret entrance I've been using for my axedwarves. Wow, ok, note to self: pave over that. So he's skulking around the underground tunnels, punting dwarves left and right, and oh no the tunnels come up right near the bedrooms, and THERE HE IS, spreading doom and destruction everywhere!

Now, an aside: I never put much thought into the fortress guard. I never bothered equipping them with weapons, and pretty much told them to just wrestle any miscreants they find into submission. I've always just thought of them as glorified rent-a-cops. Well, the colossus happens to run into one, and this "glorified rent-a-cop" LEAPS onto this giant metal abomination and WRESTLES IT TO THE GROUND AND SYSTEMATICALLY BREAKS ITS LIMBS ONE BY ONE. These guys apparently spend any time they're not eating or sleeping beating each other into submission as training.

Just then one of my marksdwarves wanders by and tries to help, having "conveniently" forgotten to stock up on bolts, but no, the credit for this one goes to Dastot Ishlumdakost, her first kill. Other people may have to WORK UP to something like that, maybe kill a few dozen goblins first at least, but Dastot? Fuck that! Her first kill was a bronze colossus, WITH HER BARE HANDS.

And then I notice that nearly every single one of the fortress guards are legendary wrestlers. I don't even NEED a military. Anything comes through the front door and these guys will be all over it like flies on stink.



Anyway, uhm. I love this game. =I

I'll try to stop doing that.

Who was it that posted that Yerf site rip?  sulacoyote? Yeeaaahh. Like, a month ago. I just now got around to unrar'ing it and checking it out. I was never a part of Yerf, but it still feels like it was a part of me. Ok, that was corny, but. I dunno. The art, the technical aspect of art, wasn't as good as a lot of stuff I see today, but it always seemed to have more personality. You see very little in the way of digital work circa 2002. The vast majority of colored pictures seems to be made of markers and colored pencils. You'd get pictures that were based off real events, or conversations, or stories the artist had made up. Stuff from art lessons, stuff doodled in class ... and it's not like you don't get that kind of aesthetic anymore, it's just ... it gets drowned out, especially here. I'm especially guilty of it myself. Yerf was a big part of my inspiration and motivation as a young artist. I wanted to be like the artists showcased there. I'd come up with stupid characters and have them act out any random thought that passed through my head, and I'd strive to improve.

And ... I kind of lost that. You can still see elements of that mindset in my early uploads here. Drawing stuff just for the sake of drawing it. And then I discover that I have an audience for my weird stuff, and ... and ... I devolve into rhetoric. How many times have I had this rant? How many times have I decried my lack of progress, my lack of uploads? There was a time when I could honestly say that I uploaded less than 5% of the stuff I draw. Now, it's more like 85%. I just don't draw for fun anymore. I want to, I DESPERATELY want to, but it just doesn't come naturally.

I felt that spark, that DRIVE, when looking through the Yerf archives, if only for a moment. I just wish I could harness it.

TL;DR - whine whine whine.

I guess I was overly negative with my last journal. That seems to be a theme with reviews of this game.

My complaints earlier were fairly minor, but they're the kind of things that can mar a mediocre game. And that's the thing ... Borderlands IS mediocre, at least at first. THAT has to be my main complaint, now that I've played it more. I can overlook all (most) of its quibbling faults now, because it eventually turns from a mediocre game to a fantastic game ... it just takes a very, very long time to do so.

I'm a level 29 soldier, I've been playing for two days, and I feel that I've only recently begun to feel in tune with the way the game plays. I think this is partly the fault of the weapons system. It's not until the early 20s that you start encountering the really interesting guns ... elemental effects, accurate scopes, bizarre variants, etc.

It could also be in part due to my personal skill as a player. I didn't realize until just recently that most of the guns don't use hitscan hit detection. Different weapons have different projectile speeds, and need to be led accordingly. Once you realize this, you can begin to craft your weapon loadout to prepare for different situations. For instance, I have an accurate assault rifle with a scope and a small clip that fires in bursts to attack enemies from a distance. Its bullets travel slowly but pack a punch, so it's good for sniping before enemies notice you. If I'm being chased, I switch to another assault rifle that features a large clip, high rate of fire and fast projectile speed.

But yeah, overall, I'd say the game's main problem is that it just takes things too slow. It doles out features at a snails pace. You don't get skill points until level 5, you don't get class mods until you get through all of Fyrestone, you don't get the ability to fast travel until etc etc.

I've heard you can eventually start picking up parts to customize your vehicles, but I've yet to come across a quest that enables it. It's a little staggering to think that I've been playing this game for two solid days and there are still gameplay elements I don't have access to yet. I'd hate to start a new character and have to go through everything again just to get to the good parts.




But uhm. It's a really terribly awesome game. Really.

... It ... needs a lot of work. It's been out for, what, 28 hours? Yeah, but no, this needs to be patched, like, seriously.

So yeah, everyone's going on about how, for a co-op game, it's impossibly difficult to actually get a game going. Like, crashing your computer when trying to view online games, needing to forward like a dozen ports to host a game, and then STILL NOT BEING ABLE TO HOST A GAME ...

Plus, it's most definitely a console port. Awkward menu controls, restrictive field of view, almost no video options other than brightness and resolution.

But besides all that, there seems to be a lot of glitches involving skills. Like, one class mod will grant me a +2 to team ammo regeneration. That works fine. But another one granting +8 personal combat rifle ammo regeneration? Worthless. Doesn't work at all. Or hey, how about the overload skill? Makes my bullet magazines bigger. That 29-round rifle magazine is 34 rounds now! Until I check my map or inventory. Then it's 29 again. Where did the five extra bullets go?

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's STUPID fun, it just ... it needs a lot of work. Yeah. =I

I was never really that good with managing layers in the first place. When I began to learn Painter, I mostly abandoned them altogether. An average "finished" picture of mine will consist of a background layer, a character color layer, and an ink layer, plus maybe a fourth on top of all that for special effects or post-processing.

And, y'know, that'd be fine, except I'm not that great with Painter either.

So what are your favorite Photoshop/GIMP tutorials? What helped you to really learn their intricacies? I'm atrophying here and I need to work out.

BOY HOWDY, don't you hate it when you plan on drawing all day, and then you get really sick on some bad egg salad, and then you go into a coma for several hours, and then you just waste time online because you feel like shit, and then you check Gametap and OH HEY they added Trine might as well try that out and then suddenly it's 12:30 AM and you need to go to bed?

And then you make a journal about it and become filled with self-loathing?

HATE when that happens.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=N0DGHOCW

Man, you find the coolest stuff on Lulz sometimes.

Is it wrong that I'm really liking this stuff? Not as fond memories, but as actual music? I've had L'Esprit de Paris on an endless loop for like half an hour. It's so CATCHY!

No, not emotional, financial or psychological help! I need ANATOMICAL help! I can't draw arms! Hands too, but mostly arms!

I've gone through more anatomy books than I can recall, but I can't seem to get it through my thick head! I can fake it for a while, but then everything starts to look lumpy and misshapen!

I know roughly how LONG to make each segment, but the finer points of shoulder rotation, elbow placement and forearm shape elude me! What mental tricks/brute force do YOU, the audience at home, use to remember and visualize this stuff? Is there a really awesome guide for drawing arms out there somewhere? Or am I just being lazy and not studying properly?

So Tazel and I wander over to the theater to see 9 and it starts out REALLY COOL but then right before it gets interesting it ends. Seriously, I think it was just over an hour long.

Also, it made no sense in a particularly unique way, in that I don't really care at all. In fact, it didn't make much of an impression, period.

ALSO, the theater raised their prices and I got sick on Crazy Core Skittles. So fuck them! >=C

I bought Saints Row 2 yesterday since it was like five bucks on Direct2Drive.

I'm playing as a fat black woman with a beehive hairdo and lycra pants who enjoys ripping fire hydrants out of the ground with her bare hands and hurling people off of bridges.

This is the best game EVER MADE.

So, I've got an MP3 player. A cheap, shitty little thing. I've been adding music to it by using it as a USB drive and just copying files over. Today, I was trying to add an audio version of The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells, but I'm having a hard time getting the files in order. My player will only list songs as sorted by their date modified, and they're all out of order.

So I figure, well crap, I guess I'll have to just sync this thing up with Windows Media Player.

So I start up WMP and it's like LET ME ADD ALL YOUR MUSIC TO YOUR MP3 PLAYER! =D and then proceeds to do so, without really asking me first. Fortunately I only have a few random songs in my My Music folder, so it doesn't do much.

See, that's another thing. I pretty much eschew the My Documents folder and its ilk. I keep my art, music and videos in my own folders. Why? I don't know. It would make my life easier. Every program assumes I keep everything in My Documents, and when prompted to open a file always starts there.

I just ... I don't know. I just do it to be contrary. It annoys me how Windows assumes I keep stuff there, and that annoyance FEEDS ME.

But anyway! WMP gets my audio book files all nice and organized, then tries to add my My Music stuff AGAIN, and I have to stop it, and then I notice it's put everything into two nice little annoying subfolders on my player, and I'm like, damnit, quit holding my hand! Stop ASSUMING. Do I really need a "music" folder on my MP3 player? Especially when what I just added ISN'T MUSIC AT ALL?

I don't know. I just ... I don't know!!

I am a terrible person.

Ok so me and  tazel were eating at Wendy's, right? And there's this girl that works there, and like, EVERYONE was hitting on her, and this old Mexican dude was trying to get her to give him a free milkshake and it's like he WON'T SHUT UP he's all like "SENORITA! SENORITA!" and then another guy who worked there was hitting on her as she left and then he starts TALKING to us and he's WEIRD, like, going on about how hot all the other employees are, and he's saying he's like half oriental and doing this weird Chinese impersonation and it's like what's going on!? Am I in a fever dream? Wendy's has always been so BENIGN!

Also, Tazel showed me his con' sketchbooks that he's been collecting over the years. It was surreal, seeing actual pencil and ink drawings from artists I've admired for years. I need to get out more. Maybe go to a con'. Maybe. I dunno.

Social skills ... atrophying!

Look at it. Look how SMUG it is. Thinks it's so much better than me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAACa4yb8Do

Man, y'know, I used to do shit like this when I was a kid. Drag out the shoulder-mounted camcorder and record myself playing stupid games, all badly framed and whatnot. It's a compulsion, y'know? I had a cassette recorder, too, and I made a dozen tapes of myself being an asshole.

But I was lucky! I didn't have the internet! My embarrassments were only tolerated by a few close and long-suffering friends! KIDS THESE DAYS! Uploading shit to YouTube! Letting the world see what little bastards they are! No sense of SHAME!

I don't know what I'm complaining about. Oh god, I'm turning into a crazy old man!

So I guess  eviscerator tagged me or something so uhm.

Eight things about blah blah blah whatever, you know the drill.

1) I knew I'd done this thing before, so I delayed for several days while halfheartedly searching for the last iteration, so I didn't repeat myself.

2) When I was about 4 or 5, my grandma bought me a little book on cartooning. It was a reprint of something that looked like it was from the '40s. At the time, I thought it was a load of crap, or words to that effect. Ten years later, that very same book was what started me out in drawing. So, uh. Yeah. You're dead now, but thanks.

3) I've had asthma since I was about 4 or 5, as well. COINCIDENCE? Well, no. Hey kids! Chronic diseases are FUN! And you know what's even funner? Ordering your medications from Switzerland because the country you live in is a capitalistic wasteland! =D

4) What? No, I'm not bitter.

5) Firefox didn't underline "funner" on point number 3. I was under the impression that it wasn't a word.

6) I keep taking on commissions for some stupid reason. I really don't want to. I've neglected to write any of them down. Probably forgotten half of them. I guess if you really want a picture you can bug me incessantly. That's probably the best way to get me to do anything.

7) I hate MMOs, yet will gladly grind away forever in any given single-player RPG. I just bought Diablo 2 last week for reasons I can't fully comprehend. Whyyyyy.

8) I'm depressed and tired of writing this. I'm going back to bed. Wake me up when Borderlands comes out.

Ok, so I've got several people asking me if I'm taking commissions ever since I uploaded that medic pic. So am I?

Short answer: Uhm, well, I dunno.

Long answer: Uhm, well, crap, I dunno.

For a little while there, I thought, "Hey, this was easy! Maybe I could do a run of spray commissions!" And then I thought "WAIT NO you're too apathetic to do anything!"

So uhm.

=<

Ok so Gametap added Rise of Nations on Thursday but it DOESN'T WORK, like, for me or anybody else, and none of the administrators are commenting on the forums about it and so I decided to replay Sacred instead and then I ended up playing it for 12 hours straight and I haven't really slept all weekend but not because of that.

BUT THIS IS AN ART JOURNAL! So I'll say, uhm, I need to draw something. Yeah, that's right. What're you gonna do about it!? Lock me in a cellar with a pencil in my mouth?

I haven't really eaten, either. Except for these awesome hashbrowns I just ate, oh man, those were awes- I mean, good.

Oh, right, art. Uhm.





=I

http://www.minecraft.net/

What? Don't look at me! GO! Mess around with it! It's cool and neat and free (for the moment) and it's a java applet so you don't even have to download anything!

Tried playing a spy.

Got my first backstab. Sapped my first sentry.

Felt good. =3

So, went golfing with  tazel again. I pretty much completely sucked! Didn't bother warming up beforehand and was subsequently UNPREPARED for the trials that lay ahead!

Then we went to a local comic shop and nerd emporium because HOLY SHIT IT WAS FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!! I had no idea! I've always wanted to get my free comic book on free comic book day!! But they were out of free comics. So instead the owner pulls us aside and goes "what's your favorite series?" Tazel goes "X-men!" and subsequently receives two issues. I, not having the time to really think about it, say "uhm, I dunno, I'm just tagging along." So the guy gives me a weird look and reaches into a festering pit of darkness a drawer on the bottom of the shelf and pulls out two comics, Cable and Captain Atom.

Now, I'm a little torn about this. On the one hand, I probably couldn't have picked a better comic if I tried. I mean, CABLE! Rob Liefeld! That's like, comedy gold! I'll have to draw an angry, overly-muscular fur with a thousand tiny pouches to celebrate! On the other hand, I'm afraid to touch them! Cable's from '95, and Captain Atom is from '89, and both are in mint condition inside cute little plastic baggies. Captain Atom has an ad for Bayou Billy on the back. Tee hee! On the gripping hand, they were both marked down to $1.00, so I guess it's not like it matters.

And then we met up at the theater with like ten other furs, local and not-so-local, to catch Wolverine. I can't even remember half of their names, so if you're reading this, like, COMMENT or something!

The movie? It was pretty good. I didn't go in expecting much, and found it to be a nice little action flick. I'm not a terribly big fan of X-men, so I wasn't raging or anything. Haha.

And THEN we went to ROUND TABLE for PIZZA and oh god I just realized I spent eight straight hours socializing yesterday. I'll have to spend like a week alone in a dark room to recover!

I twisted my back really badly last Saturday. Which is funny, because I was going to go golfing, right, but ended up not, and then that night I'm dying anyway, like my muscles didn't get the message and injured themselves just to spite me. So I've pretty much been convalescing this week. Playing Titan Quest. More Titan Quest than any mortal should have to endure. Dream mastery is delightfully overpowered. And a little Left 4 Dead. Survival is neat.

Came to the realization while playing a campaign that I have a bad habit of shooting zombies that are crowded around a pipe bomb, instead of say, shooting the ones that are eating my team mate's brains. They're like fish in a barrel! And I subconsciously want more kills than anyone else.

I've been having really bad insomnia lately. Sometimes takes me three hours or more to get to sleep. The only solution I've found thus far is to go to bed late, like 2:30 AM or later. Everybody else seems upset at the fact that I get up at 11. Yeah, well, maybe if I could fall asleep in ten minutes like you then I could get up at the ass-crack of dawn too, eh!?

Ohhhh gooood I'm a quarter of a century old. I can feel myself aging. It feels like pudding.

I feel bad for corrupting all of my characters. They used to be so innocent.

I haven't been productive in over TWENTY FOUR HOURS. GGggrraahaejhfsgfsfag. If I don't do something productive, I will DIE. Do you understand me?! I will CEASE TO BE.






Incidentally, I got a strange E-mail this morning. From some forum called DoujinStyle. Because someone sent me a private message to my account there. The account I didn't know I had. The account that was created in February of 2007, and hasn't been logged into since.

HMM.