Level Grinding Has Nothing To Do With Skill

I have heard more than a few times that RPGs don't require the same level of skill as other games do to complete. I disagree with this, the difficulty of a traditional RPG is hidden in the long term planning. Taking a team through a quest for 50-80 hours, micro managing items and stats and planning ahead can be hard, and the good role playing games make you prove your long term planning ability with an endgame that tests it. However, grinding levels has absolutely nothing to do with skill or ability, and losing a boss fight because I'm under leveled makes me angry. Walking around a dungeon, intentionally fighting the same group of mobs over and over just to increase my stats a little is mind numbing, and absolutely a relic of gaming past.

I'm playing through FF3 right now, and even in the early stages of the game, the grinding required of you is unreasonable. Up top here is a picture of the boss Salamander. He is brutal. Salamander attacks twice a turn and has a fire breath attack that has a dmg range of 175-250 WHICH HE CAN CAST TWICE A TURN. His speed is higher than yours can ever be at this point in the game, so he will go first every round, and his HP is around 4500, meaning even with 4 Blizzaras cast per round (his weakness) you still have to survive 5 turns with this fucking guy. I've read the message boards, I've dug through the internet and every single gamer who has completed FF3 says the same thing, you will spend half of your play time grinding levels. 

I did finally beat the Salamander boss after grinding in the Molten Cave for 2 hours and resetting the game every time he cast fire breath twice in one turn. The game immediately follows Salamander with this guy, Hein. He also attacks twice per turn, and can switch weaknesses on the fly. He can do this mid turn, unlike you, who has pre-selected every move. He will kill a player each round, and with no life spells and unpurchasable Phoenix Downs (you can only find them in dungeons and shit), you will need to beat him before your supply runs out. According to the inter webs, I'm in for another 2-3 hours of random battle after random battle if I hope to beat this guy.

Obnoxious level grinding is a thing of the past, and while I expect it from early FFs, there is no place for it in modern gaming. One of the reasons we all embraced the western RPG movement was because it did away with all of those silly "rules" that JRPGs forced on us. Why does the protagonist have to be a teenager? Why are there always so many dragons in outer space? How come I actually have to dedicate time to grinding levels just because your boss fight difficulty doesn't increase at a similar rate as my party? 

Addicted To Destiny

Just like Rust, Destiny is a social experiment that I have fallen head over heels in love with. There has never been a game quite like this one and since I have put a significant amount of time into building my character, I am starting to experience the true substance of Destiny. As soon as you hit level 20, the game completely changes, altering the way you level up and unlocking exclusive high level factions and missions. 

Now that I have hit the higher levels, I've been noticing that my PvP results have been improving. Completing Crucible bounties is getting easier, and the multiplayer is fun and addictive when you aren't constantly dying. 

I found a soccer ball just resting in an obscure corner of the Citadel. I can't find any mention of it on the message boards or Destiny Wikis. I kicked it around for a while, I certainly hope it wasn't important.

The Destiny experience is made better by their iOS app. I joined a group specifically for dads and you can read all of the extensive lore that the game offers.

I am hopelessly addicted. Not quite as life consuming as Fallout or Skyrim, but Destiny is getting 100% of my game time, and I love it when a game demands your full attention.

Ha. Cracks scanned.

P.T.

The first thing I did after turning on my PS4 for the first time was download the P.T. demo. Hideo Kojima has made Silent Hill my favorite horror franchise with his understanding of how to make a video game scary, instead of just making a horror movie that you can play. Now Kojima has released a demo of the Silent Hill game still in production that is also being written by Guillermo Del Torro. It is fucking horrifying.

What makes Silent Hill games special is that they embrace the medium. Silent Hill is a video game, so the scares it provides are based on the fact that you are sitting on a couch controlling the character's movements. Resident Evil on the other hand, makes a cutscene with some gore in it then tries to scare you with jumps, just like a movie. Silent Hill games never act like a movie, instead they fuck with your pause screen, read your memory card, and give you long tension filled environments that the player must find the courage to explore. 

P.T. continues this ideology, giving the player an endless loop through a series of hallways inside the home of a murdered family. Everytime you arrive at the end of the hallway and open the door, the loop repeats with an ever escalating number of terrifying mind-fucks each time. This little demo looks great, is genuinely disturbing, and pure Silent Hill.

Silent Hill protagonists are usually bad people. The player may take control of a man who has murdered his girlfriend, or is responsible for the loss of his daughter. The town and magic of Silent Hill is cryptic but seems to serve as punishment for those who have committed horrible acts, and this P.T. demo puts you in the shoes of a dad who has murdered his wife and kids. You suffer with him, just like every game in the series, but what makes Silent Hill so unique is that while your character suffers and descends into madness, you know they deserve it. I can't wait.

Hermits And Cults

I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about hermits. I always read stories about people who have encountered one and I am always very interested in what psychologists have to say about why certain people are drawn to a life of seclusion. I am also addicted to any and everything to do with cults. When The History Channel or A&E run an hour long special about Jonestown or Aum Shinrikyo I am a 7 year old with candy. I have no idea why I am so captivated by stuff like this, I am super squeamish with no desire to live in the forest (they don't have video games there) and to boot I am utterly devoid of religion or any sense of a higher power whatsoever. So why am I so eager to learn about people who either devote their entire lives to a dude with nice teeth who thinks he might be Jesus's dad or completely remove themselves from society completely?

I read an article on Gizmodo today that I think every person who is even remotely interested in modern cults should read. Here is the link to the article itself written by Ashley Feinberg, where she reveals that the infamous Heaven's Gate cult still has a website that is STILL maintained to this day. This was the cult that believed a spaceship was behind the Hale-Bopp Comet and the only way to board it was to put on Nikes and drink some arsenic. You can email the two people who are still alive and still members who run the site, and they will actually respond to all inquiries. The article is overstuffed with things I never knew about Heaven's Gate including responses to Feinberg's questions from actual Heaven's Gate members. 

Michael Finkel wrote a story in GQ this month about the Maine hermit that was captured just a couple years ago. He had been living in the forests of Maine for 27 years without any human contact whatsoever. During the harsh winter he stole supplies he needed to survive from the surrounding recreational campsites and homes. The community was aware he existed, every citizen of the town of North Pond had been robbed by the hermit, but nobody could catch in the act or find him. The short summary of the article;

"For nearly thirty years, a phantom haunted the woods of Central Maine. Unseen and unknown, he lived in secret, creeping into homes in the dead of night and surviving on what he could steal. To the spooked locals, he became a legend—or maybe a myth. They wondered how he could possibly be real. Until one day last year, the hermit came out of the forest"

They found him. He was arrested on a bazillion counts of burglary and put in jail to await trial. A man who hasn't spoken a word to another human in 27 years was now being housed in a jail among dozens of other inmates. The article is about Michael Finkel interviewing this man in jail, and about just how odd a conversation can be when your interviewee says that Chernobyl is the most recent world event he knows of. You also get to witness the hermit fall into a sad depression as his wilderness life is taken away from him. He truly was happy out there, alone. Here's the link;

The Strange Tale Of The North Pond Hermit

The Rundown

Dwayne The Rock Johnson is a hero of mine (he ranks below Shatner but above Kel Mitchell), so when he decided to stop wrestling and pursue his acting career, I vowed to support him. Beginning with The Scorpion King, I have to date seen every single Rock movie. None of the people that I get to see personally every day seem to care about The Rock's acting career like I do, so I decided to satisfy my need to rant about DTRJ here in a series of reviews of his films. Let's start with The Rundown.

The Rundown is by far my favorite Rock movie, despite it being only his 2nd film ever. While not as violent or gory as some of the other wrestler-turned-action-star movies, The Rundown has awesome fight scenes. There's a fight with an entire college football team in a hip night club that involves The Rock sliding a bus tray under a fat guy's foot so that he will do the splits, and later there is a fight with a hispanic midget with a whip. Also, The Rundown has the triumphant return of beloved character actor Ernie Reyes Jr.! In The Rundown, Ernie plays a pit fighting South American leader of a rebel militia, but you may remember him as.....

The Korean pizza boy from Secret of The Ooze!!! Added to the delightful turtle nostalgia, The Rundown also has in my opinion the best Christopher Walken scene ever. I started my streak of Rock movies with the best one, which was great at the time, but of course it could only go downhill from there.

The Rundown also has a sweet Schwarzenegger cameo.

Wild & Crazy Kids

I'm 27 now, and I've started noticing all of the more successful people younger than myself. I was reading an article this morning about an accomplished NASA scientist who was just 25 and I immediately thought, "It must be because he doesn't spend his days off binge-watching hours and hours of Wild & Crazy Kids."

Phoebe had a doctor's appointment Wednesday afternoon where she received two shots. Her pediatrician said that she would probably sleep that night and most of the next day too because of the medicine. Yesterday, I was left alone in the house with a sleeping baby for 8 hours and instead of studying astrophysics or building rockets like successful twenty-somethings, I drained a bowl and sat down to an uninterrupted 4 HOURS OF WILD & CRAZY KIDS. I had a great time and this man here has a playlist of every single episode in order, but why? Why is this something I desire? How come whenever I am presented with a significant amount of free time I immediately run to early 90's Nickelodeon youth-centered game shows? Somewhere deep inside this puzzle lies a great atheist statement, perhaps it is further evidence of the absence of God due to the pointlessness of my life experience. Why would that God guy make me if I'm just going to watch a young Omar Gooding's career with all of my spare time? Perhaps that is my purpose.

My New PS4 And The First Few Hours Of Destiny

Amazon promised me that my white PS4 Destiny bundle would arrive the day it was available in stores, and at 9:05am Tuesday morning, there it was. The startlingly pretty box stood out in the middle of my porch like an elegant Prothean beacon. I was just the tiniest bit annoyed that my mail carrier placed a box with a 500$ price tag unguarded right in front of my brown drug dealer neighbors. My Amazon settings clearly state that I would prefer to sign for my packages. I am not trying to be a diva, but I STILL don't have my Dez Bryant jersey because some cokie lifted it off my exposed porch.

The PS2 came out in the winter of 1999, and in Chicago it was near impossible to get your hands on one. Despite the release date being early December and having the money and desire to purchase one, I didn't get my hands on it until the morning of December 31st after waiting in an outdoor Best Buy line for 7 hours. Opening the PS4 yesterday kinda felt the same way. I have waited and waited, patiently and responsibly not spending that significant of an amount of money so soon after Phoebe's birth. That feeling of turning on a Playstation for the first time after waiting for so long, to be delighted in how futuristic it feels is an experience I think only Sony can provide. I missed the millennium because I was on a 24 hour straight PS2 launch game binge, and last night I stayed up until 3am playing Destiny as if I didn't have two kids to take to and from pre-school today. 

Destiny is great. I'm hesitant to start listing any complaints because I'm only at level 4, but so far I don't feel like a part of any community. Not yet. Kotaku has a great list of tips for new Destiny players here, and IGN has a very detailed description of each class here. If you happen to give a shit about my opinion, then I suggest not branching out of the story missions until you hit level 4. Nothing is available you you in those first 3 levels and exploring on your own is a waste of time. You need a ship, decent armor and a little story progression to unlock the different stores and locations. I picked Warlock and went with a look that screams American in a world with no countries. 

I Find It Impossible To Hate Amazon

I don't typically like corporations. If a single store or small chain sells something I need, I will gladly pay a little extra so that Walmart doesn't get any of my money. Just like a good liberal, I look into the practices and history of companies that I intend to buy from, and weigh whether or not I can ethically live with myself for supporting them. I shop at Target frequently despite their hazy past because of all the charity they do, and my childhood neighborhood in Chicago has directly benefitted from their donations. I don't eat at Chic-Fil-A (I have once) because of the way they shit on their employees, refuse full-time positions so that they can dodge health insurance, and their CEO hates queers. Yes, they do a lot for the community, but it's a list of pros and cons, and the cons are numerous.

Amazon is another company that my fellow bleeding Democrat vaginas have been screaming at me to stop patronizing. I understand that they have taken over American retail as we know it and are secretly investing in a drone delivery idea, but Amazon is too convenient to hate. I know it makes me an enormous hypocrite, but for fuck's sake, the Destiny PS4 bundle I bought yesterday will be on my doorstep TOMORROW. The PS4 Destiny bundle isn't released until tomorrow, and Amazon can have it in my house on the exact day it comes out. For free. 

Can Target's online service do this? Sure, but the overnight shipping would be a 30$ charge. Amazon included the delivered-the-day-of-release shipping option for free because they know nobody else can offer that. Yes, that is corporate strong-arming but holy shit is it convenient for me. Just like every hard-working tax-paying American, my morals are only preceded in importance by my money. 

Fox Mulder Is An Oldsmobile Man

Here's Mulder driving a 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera

Just like the dad from A Christmas Story, Fox Mulder (who has been my inspiration for so many years) is an Oldsmobile guy. I know you're sitting there thinking, "How in the world could you know that?", but I assure you I watch A LOT of X-Files, and I love spending time doing investigative reporting on matters that nobody gives a fuck about. 

Here's an Oldsmobile Achieva, driven here by Skinner who is possessed by Mulder's brain in a body-switch

 I suppose it's possible that it is all a coincidence. Mulder and Scully criss cross our nation frequently, and these could all just be rental cars. Or, they could be a sponsor of the show. Those are rational and logical conclusions to come to, and thus have no business being included in any X-Files discussion of any kind. Fox Mulder is an Oldsmobile man, and he doesn't let impossible distances and impracticality stand in the way of a smooth, dependable drive.

Mulder driving an Oldsmobile Intrigue

He's even driving a 1998 Oldsmobile Intrigue in the X-Files Movie! Wake up America!

EDIT: After posting my theory, I was emailed a tip from an anonymous source; this video.

Oliver Starts School

Oliver's first day of school included parents in the classroom for the duration of the day. We shuffled in, and I sat down in a chair made for a 4 year old next to a giant toy castle that I desperately wanted to play with. The kids all gathered together as the teacher called roll call for the first time in their tiny lives, and us parents watched on, most seemed apathetic, others seemed like this moment absolutely must be on Facebook, and just a couple of us, myself included were watching in awe as our kids got excited about being taught something. 

Oliver was outstanding. He recognized his name and put it on the paper apple tree. He correctly told the teacher that 5+3=8, and when asked to talk about himself to the rest of the class, he spoke of his sister and living with his mom and dad. Oliver played with the viking castle with me for a couple minutes before asking to go play with the plastic tools with a couple of the other kids. I let him go, leaving me to shoot the little fake cannon at some barbies that I had set up.

I don't like the other parents. I hear them talking behind me, it's all about social media and celebrity gossip. I hear a mom speaking about how she's been a single mother for 7 years, and the dad she is telling this too is nodding, struggling to seem interested, just like he did when we exchanged boring whatevers earlier. There's a fat mom chasing her daughter around, taking pictures with her cellphone, never letting the little girl actually play. This is my son's first day of school ever, but this is also a new reality for me too. It won't just be picking up and dropping off, I will be a member of some classroom parent group for the next 2 decades at least. 

Oliver wanted donuts after school, I said sure. He had 5.

Final Fantasy 3

It took me 30+ hours to complete Final Fantasy 2, and now that I'm a couple of hours into FF3 I realize just how tragic the previous adventure's leveling system truly was. My FF3 party levels up when they accumulate enough experience points, and their magic damage is determined by statistics, not by how many times they have been cast in battle. I feel like I have emerged from 30 hours of hard labor within a copper mine, and a fellow rescued prisoner greeted me with ice cold water and brotherhood. I am enjoying Final Fantasy 3 more than I should be because of just how awful FF2 was. 

This is the first game that Square ever used their "job system" for. While the job system is better known in installments like FF5, FFX-2 or the Tactics games, it began right here, within FF3. You can switch your job on fly in this game, just like later Final Fantasies, but FF3 lays the groundwork for so much more. If you play FF3 and then return to FF9 for instance, you can see the ability system stealing from this earlier piece of the franchise. I love games that are historically important for the industry, and while largely unplayed and unknown, FF3 has a lot of ideas new to that time. 

I have been unable to completely confirm this, but I personally have never seen an earlier game use a specific class that gives you unique options outside of battle. IF you have a thief in your party you can unlock this door.

Ship battles though! The worst idea that you can program into an RPG other than losing HP as you walk (Lunar) is giving you random battles as you sail around the world map. I know that FF4 does away with them so I'm taking comfort in this being the last game that makes this mistake but fuck, it is aggravating.