Omygosh! John Kinosh

 

The man on the left is a fucking idiot.  US Marines Gunnery Sergeant John Kinosh (though in court they refered to him as 'Adam').   This cab driver was going to save him some money by picking up another fare going the same way.  John was drunk and stupid and in the heat of his own paranoid delusion of what was transpiring literally smashed the cab drivers face in.  The misperception being that the cab driver was trying to scam John out of his money.  Unaware that he was being recorded on tape until 6 days after the fact.  A week after the fact he checked himself into a (unnamed) 'Mental Health Treatment Facility'.   'Oooo...looks like I'm in trouble ... I better go pretend to get help for my being a total fucking retard'.  (oh...nice tattoos)

What beats my ass are all the people who say how he was a combat veteran and that we should be compassionate.   Okay...if he was a combat veteran then he would know how to stay cool under preassure.  The mark of a soldier is being able to think even though someone is trying to blow your head off.  Either all he REALLY wanted to do was to hurt this meek cab driver (Hawkesworth) to get his rocks off or he's a loose fucking cannon that shouldn't be ANYWHERE NEAR a combat situation. 

Hawkesworth had two titanium plates inserted into his cheekbone and under his eye socket on Sept. 13.  - Jacksonville Daily News

I've been exposed to the military long enough to know that there are two types that go for this kind of life; The noble and the bullies (same with cops).  I don't have a problem with the noble.  When they get home the struggle is more internal and I fully support rehabilitation.  The bullies nurture their new, more viscious, selves.  In past wars, former combat soldiers would return home and be a terror.  Rates of murders and suicides involving ex-servicemen would drastically increase.  It's really fucking hard to go from Hero (with bullets flying everywhere) to Zero (Run of the Mill everyday life).  I get it.  Take up Skydiving.  Take up Boxing.  Take up Spelunking.  You can get your adrenaline fix without having to hurt other people...unless...UNLESS...you want to.   If you want to hurt people then you are no different than anyone else that wants to hurt people...a criminal.  

Seriously...this is 'Aggravated Assault'.  2 Titanium plates ... in his FACE?  There's no excuse for it. 
 
I saw a video clip earlier of John (or Adam) Kinosh running away from reporters with his lawyer.  Tried to do a search on it and found this picture instead:

Claudia Sampedro

 

My verbal rampage was diverted by a clever Marine diversionary tactic.  Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Have a good one Everybody! :)

 

Survivor - Philippines

Well the Summer dramathon of Hell's kitchen is over and Survivor has started up with a fresh batch of faces and drama for our arm-chair sociological pleasure.   Dividing into 3 tribes will, hopefully, manage the voting domination factor (where one tribe with the majority after merge votes out members of the former opposing tribe).  Even now the producers of the show strive to keep things interesting...into the 25 season.

Unfortunately one tribe ( Matsing) seems to be plunging hard.  These poor bastards were given 2 princess's and a very recent former smoker. 

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The first princess was a beauty queen from Utah: Angie Layton; Miss Teen Utah 2010.  She's 20.

  I've heard a lot of people describe her as a 'Dumb Blonde'.  I don't agree.  I believe she's open and perhaps a little too naiive.  She has a fresh, bright mind...she just needs to put more stuff into it.  In the challenges she doesn't reach deep down enough and attack it like some do.  Phoning it in will get you voted out.  It hasn't happened yet but She's now on a team of 4 with the other 2 teams having 6 players. 

Roxy blabbed that she was cuddling with Malcolm making the other team members nervous about an alliance.  Really?  It's too early to worry about alliances.  For this tribe it's all about survival.  If they vote someone else out then Barbie doll is history or the tribe would be -quite literally; too stupid to survive. 

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The second princess' name is Roxy Morris.  She was voted out this week.  I don't mind being around religious people...generally.  Usually they are slightly nicer than the average bear enough to put up with an occational bible thumping here and there.  Some of the nicest people I've ever met have been of 'Faith' (Christian, Budhist) ...but then again...some of the most aggressive (both passive and not so passive) ... but that's another story.  

Anyways, our princess wakes up in the night to find that Angie and a fellow team member, a 25 year old man named Malcolm, were cuddling...initiated by Angie.  OH MY GOD!  THEY AREN'T EVEN MARRIED! 

 

Oh...I'm sorry.  When a 20 year old former Miss Teen Utah offers to cuddle with you on a cold night; it's a little hard to say 'no'.  To be honest, Malcolm showed great restraint. 

Anyway Roxy the Bible thumper was crying in the rain about the rain.  When it did stop raining she was praying to God and speeking in Tongues.  Her trying to get the team to vote out Angie to break up the obvious friendship had backfired because she was such a wack-a-doodle that even Russ, her supposed ally, shook his head and said 'enough'. 

When she said 'Goodbye' to the team with the words 'God Bless you all' or something ...the way it was delivered you could have replaced the words with 'You can all go fuck yourselves' and it would have seemed about right. 

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The very recently former smoker:  A fellow by the name of Zane Knight was voted out from this team the previous week.  Quitting smoking is hard.  Zane had a good idea that he would stop smoking at the same time as he started Survivor.  The problem is your body is working overtime to survive and fight the effects of withdrawal.  That's a hell of a burden to put on your heart.  He was dragging the team down during one of the challenges.  Deciding to take the opportunity to flush out what the team was thinking he went on the option to say that he had failed the team and would be the logical choice to get voted out.  Figuring his honesty would be his saving grace as everyone was already fixated on voting off Russell (for being bossy with no real leadership skills).  He underestimated his own ability to sell his initial point...and was promptly voted off. 

 

I've always run across smart people who think they are more intelligent than they actually are but the only dumb people I find that think they are actually smart are the ones with tattoos.  Why would you put something on your body that would be too tacky to put on your wall?   Anyway...the Tattoo tirade is for another time.

 

RAGE by ID

Here is the kicker about RAGE:

The Code was made excellent by old time 'C' Programmer wiz and one of ID's founding members: John Carmack.   His crew was outstanding.  You get solid frame rates and it rarely crashes.  Realistic lighting and details that were made more believable by the smoothness.  The AI for the opponents varied from group to group...and was solid to the point where it allowed for characteristic idiosyncratic behavior without sacrificing effectiveness.  (In other words each group acted unique and was still a challenge)

The Artwork was fine.  Nothing wrong.  Each 'Dungeon' was uniquely crafted to reflect the inhabitants.  No copy and paste here.  The shanty towns and settlements...perfectly suited for what they were.  All of the virtual world here...I can't complain about any of it.  It really is amazing that they could create virtual art of such high quality.  This really is where science and art come together.

The gameplay:  No problem.  Early in the game, you get to choose one kind of suit that you will wear for the rest of the game.  In the future...no one can do your laundry.  The 'Suit' represents your life choice:  You could get discounts at the stores, better protection, or be really good at making the various engineered items.  As far as replay value with different choices, it isn't 'Deus Ex'  or one of the other Bethesda RPG type games.   You don't load up the story and feel that you are in an elaborate tube with a 'Beginning and End'.  There is the main story but there are a ton of side missions that you really should do or you will run out of money pronto.  Indeed there is no coasting on your check book.  Money is easy to spend and hard to get...the way it should be.   You don't bog down like you would in many Bethesda games.  When you pick something up off a shelf, you take everything off the shelf.  Stuff that is pure monetary value alone gets thrown on a 'You can sell this... because that is all it is worth' pile.  Useful stuff has an icon to represent itself as such.  Selling stuff happens in a few seconds...making stuff is fast with the Engineer interface (I wish they had this for Fallout - New Vegas).  You can carry a ton of stuff and a ton of weapons because someone figured that a game should be FUN...not an excercise in Inventory Management.  Bethesda!? About fricking time!  How many hours sorting between Gummy Bears and Gum Wrappers is only fun for the OCD.   Driving?  Well...if you die in a race, you come back to life seconds later alive and well and with a car in full health.  NPC racers do the same thing.  You get the feeling you are playing a computer game rather than driving an actual race and it breaks your immersion. 

The voice acting?  Can't complain.  Among the talent is John Goodman and J Grant Albrecht.  Well articulated and natural given the characters.  The lines were a little cartoon like but that wasn't the fault of the talent.

So...The Artwork is professionally exquisite.  The coding is tight.  The gameplay is smooth and balanced.  The AI is challenging and eclectic. The voice acting is superb.  What is wrong!?

 

Your honor, I give you exhibit 'A'

 

Matthew Costello couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag in the rain.  Lets look at the facts, shall we? 

 

The plot to RAGE:  

1) "The 'Authority' is bad"
                                 
2) There is money for turning you into them.
                                 
3)  If you are useful then no one will turn you in.
                                 
4) You are being too useful; The Authority has noticed and you have to leave
                                 
5) Repeat

"Bandits are bad".  They are lawless scum who prey on civilized folk...and their numbers seem to be out of control "It's pretty much their world".   "The Authority" are officious scum who seek to control everything with an iron fist.  Okay Matt...is it global lawlessness with islands of civility, or global oppression by a totalitarian state?  "Both" is not really an option. 

Despite having servo-prosthetics and nano technology, preserving digital images must have been destroyed in "the big bang" because the "Authority" never knows what you look like, despite having run into them over and over again.  Perhaps they should covet the technology JK Stiles is using to record his shows...and maybe steal broadcast technology from him as well.  In other words, you could drive a 747 through this plot hole. 

Accents seem to vary with different bandit groups.  Distinctively British, Russian, First Nation and American within a short distance from each other.  It's fun but...it doesn't make sense. 

In Half-life 2, you got a real sense that the combine was an oppressive force.  They made a huge effort to let you know how people felt about them as well as what they did to earn the hatred and fear they invoked.  In Rage, people tell you that the "Authority" is bad.  You are "Told" not "Shown".  Maybe, near the end, some effort was made...but it could also be construed that they were peace keepers who's members were targeted and the trail led them to the town you were operating from.  There was no expression of fear and no scripting.  It was more like anger and frustration like a tax auditor showing up. 
 
With so many holes, the meat of the game is...Tofu.  It's anemic.  The worst part about it is that everything other than the story is clearly great. 

  

...and now for the exciting conclusion;  Go to this ark (elaborate cryo sleeping device - one of many).  Captain Marshall gets the bit of information from this cryo chamber and says quite literally 'This information is quite simply THE KEY TO EVERYTHING'.  Whoa! DEUS EX MACHINA!  I guess writing this masterpiece turned out to be a little too taxing for our writer and he needed ONE way to wrap it all up.

...Another time you squatted down and crapped out the Crown Jewels was when you brought some toxin the 'Ghost' clan was using to poison Wellspring's water supply to Dr Kvasir.  Who exclaimed Eureka! as this random mixture of toxins somehow completes the Kvasir's Nanotrite weapon which causes the exponential growth of nanites in a host.  Wow.  At this point I have to wonder if the writer is actually trying to be ridiculous.  Oddly enough, he describes the failure of the weapon before the "new discovery" as being exactly what the weapon does AFTER. 

With this information, you slip into 'Authority' central...(the people who are in charge if you haven't guessed) and use their satelite communication system to wake up every inhabitant of EVERY ark on the planet where there is someone standing by to say:  "The Authority is bad." 

 

This is a turkey dinner with all the trimmings served on a shit platter.  It would be a 10/10 with a decent story but the plot and story were so bad that it actually lost 3 full points.  I couldn't actually find a really good picture of Matthew Costello...but if I got paid good money to write shit this bad?  I wouldn't want anyone to see my picture either.  (7/10)

Fallout New Vegas - Honest Hearts (3 out of 10)

Okay well...I stood there looking up the reviews for this game and found them all seemingly written by those who were in league with those who MADE IT.  This DLC is the most deceptively annoying expansion that has ever existed for a game. 

First thing is that you walk in and the caravan you were escorting is shot up by a tribe called the 'White legs'.  You fend them off and are the sole survivor.  This is a good way to start.  Looking out you see the magnificent landscape stretched out before you.  Perfect.  You are thinking 'I have barely started this and I'm REALLY liking it'.  Your first follower ambushes one of the last 'White legs' to get a shot on you.  His name is 'Follows-Chalk'.   He becomes your follower and takes you to see the 'Burned man': Joshua Graham.  'Holy Shit!' you exclaim 'I get to see the man himself!'.   You meet Joshua and find that he is an exceptional man, very religious, knows his guns, and leads the Dead Horse tribe.   Yeah.  Oh...he's also a vendor.   I can't help but think that the opportunity for a marvelous story got flushed straight down the shitter.  What would have been better?  Well okay... how about this.  Cut scene...Caesar throwing a burning Joshua down a cliff.  You get to play one of the people who rescued Joshua...or maybe Joshua himself.  You play a tribal with say 100 in Survival as you scramble to find ingredients that will make various Holistic medication in order to stablize his condition.  This would be player controlled (obviously) but with a different skin and skills.  Eventually Joshua is saved and returned.  But we get to experience what he went through.  That is right off the top of my head. 

The missions are firstly:  Go here...go there... get stuff...take it to this other guy up North.   

About 10 minutes into the game, you have heard everything FC says at least twice.  He doesn't just say sentences...but whole paragraphs...about 3 of them that he says every 15-30 seconds or so.   About 15 minutes into the story you just want to turn around and tell him to 'Shut the fuck up!'.  After 20 minutes this guy is the verbal version of Chinese water torture...his words burrowing a hole in my brain.   The 'Grand Vista!' is suddenly not so special as you realize getting around it is consuming a lot of time with not the proportionate amount of entertainment value...in other words; shit gets old fast.  The white legs pop literally out of the woodwork to ambush you.  I had 100 sneak and 10 perception and the only way you aren't jumped is when you sneak around everywhere ... slowing the game down to a crawl...and you will rarely find them first.  Eventually you say 'Let them attack first ... I don't care; as FC tells you about his opinion on gambling for the 50th time.    Fortunately you can dismiss your companions.  Do it!  You can stand on a mountain top overlooking one of the very few enjoyable qualities of the game much better without some idiot babbling on and on and on with the New Vegas version of that idiot from Fallout 3 with the party hat.  What blows me away is they put that in the game without actually catching it as a self pop-cultural satire - what the Fallout series is actually known for.  Wow...someone was sleeping.  I guess 'Beta-testers' weren't in the budget. 

  This game just loves traps.  You will find bear traps and trip wires EVERYWHERE;   mostly in a series of caves sprinkled all over the place where an actual GOOD STORY exist in the logs of VARIOUS COMPUTERS.   Finding those caves sucks out an even greater proportion of enthusiasm for playing the game...but there is a good story there.  The traps in these caves are often well hidden.  You will most likely trip a dozen or so during your travels.  You could probably find them all if you SLOW DOWN EVEN MORE!  (Ooo...feel that boredom seeping into your pores!).  The Story (a simple written series of log entries - not even audible) is like a reward system for putting up with the pain of monotony.  To reflect this, one needs to take out a really good book and a hammer.  At the beginning of every chapter, take the hammer and hit yourself in the thumb then say the words 'I reward myself for putting up with this pain by reading a chapter'.  There is only two types of games that use reward systems.  MMORPG's and MFRBG's (the 'RB' stands for 'Really Bad'; I'll let you figure the rest out on your own).  As a higher level character, your less than 'kick ass' weapons suddenly shoot 'Jello Shots' on the 'white legs' who eventually get wobbly and fall down if you give them enough.  Actually, scratch that, if you did use 'Jello Shots' you actually might get a reaction from them.  Apparently just getting shot in the head isn't enough to have thes guys even look at you sometimes or even reach toward the affected area and say 'Ow...my head hurts'.  That's right!  It's the 'Rhino Hide' version of gaming we come to know and love from Bioshock.  And you can shoot 19 rounds of 10mm pistol rounds into their heads and the 20th one causes their heads to explode like they were hit in the eye with a .50 cal. Rifle round.  This and many more annoyingly unrealistic qualities make immersion impossible.

I just don't fucking get this.  If you are going to spend 10 000 man hours coding a game...why not spend 10 hours on a decent story for it??? 

If you like the views in this game?  Get the fuck out of your home and go to Zion National Park in Utah (Yes it is a real place).  You will fucking love it. 

All actors are whores...?

Well...consider this;  You call up the local Professional sex worker saying that you might have work for her but she needs to 'Audition' (\click).  You tell her that there are only a few people vying for this bit of work and that she has a good chance to get it.  Once she gets to the reception, however, she realizes that there are more than 300 people being scrutinized for this test (\leave).   She gets to the audition room and there are 10 people in attendence all of them so-called 'experts' and none of them older than 26 (\leave).  In front of these strangers, the client tells the professional that she needs to reach inside her and pull out the most painful memory that she has and display it for the room (\kickhisballssohardthathiseyeballspopoutandarereplacedbytesticles).  Once she has this memory, she needs to read words that should practically be written in crayon to reflect the stupidity of the writer.
Half-way through reading this script, some emotionally detatched fag (and I don't mean homosexual) yells 'NEXT'.

A Professional sex worker wouldn't put up with what an actor does on a regular basis.  So is an actor a whore?  Hey...watch what you say about whores.