Here at The Somewhat Ambitious, we…

Hang on, I’ve been dead silent for weeks! Where the shit are my manners? I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. To say I’ve been sick/busy would be true, but it wouldn’t make things any better either. So here’s something which will make it all up to you.

You’re welcome.

Like I was saying, here at The Somewhat Ambitious we have something of a beef with North Korea. More specifically, the North Korean regime, which is choking the life out of it’s beleagured, withering populace. Which mightn’t sound funny, but bear with me. Remember video game arcades? I barely see the damn things anymore, but when I was a kid, I pretty much lived at Timezone. In fact, the first time I got mugged was between a four-player X-Men machine, and an air hockey table. I’m pretty sure those tiny jets of air kept me conscious until the ambulance arrived. Anyway, I came across some pictures of a North Korean game arcade, and… wow. Talk about Spartan.*

It brings up a disturbing thought, though.

Why didn’t any of the games I played as a kid have a goddamned periscope?! All I wanted as a kid was a periscope. All I fucking wanted was an abundance of sugar, and the ability to peer above water at my supine, defenseless enemies. But no. I had to play chess with my dad.

Fuck chess.

*”Spartan” meaning “devoid of luxury”, not “having prolific amounts of sex with underaged boys”.

(Link via UK Resistance)

Seriously, the Princess wanted to marry him? Although, if I were Bowser, the prospect of that guy coming after me would be vastly more terrifying than a regulation fat Italian plumber giving it a shot. I mean, look at him. He’d rip your eyelids off as soon as look as you. For those of you who have no idea what on Earth is going on, Lou Albano was a wrestler who also just so happened to play the role of Mario in the kids TV show Super Mario Bros, which aired from 1989-1991. I was 5 at the time, and even at that age I can remember being dazzled by exactly how crap it was. If you want a succinct example of exactly what level of crapness we’re talking about, then behold the single take glory that was the closing credits:

Two comments:

1. “Swing you arms from side to side” and “take one step, and then again” does not a dance make. Although it does look like the only kind of dance a man of that build might be capable of attacking.

2. Was Lou Albano drunk? I’m almost positive he fluffs the landing at the very end. And there’s really not that much of a landing to fluff either.

Not that the general air of mediocrity dissuaded me from watching it. I ate the show up with the same fervour with which I consumed my morning Cheerios (I was in Canada at the time) in the hope of procuring another Mario sticker. Stickers, man! Wasn’t that just the highlight of your 5 year old day? Ah, I wish I had some stickers now. Anyway, it’s sad to see him go. It was too soon. Another couple of years and the world probably would have been ready for a remake.

Now we’ll just have to make do with Weekend at Mario’s.

[via Boing Boing]

The trailer for Guild Wars 2 has finally been released!

I’ve played Guild Wars on and off since it first came out, and I’ve always adored it. Guild Wars 2 will be set several hundred years after the first game, and you’ll allegedly play a distant ancestor of your character from the first Guild Wars. If you’ve never played GW and are curious, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s very different to most MMORPGs, doesn’t have a subscription fee, and is an amazing immersive single player experience.

…And now I’m getting all itchy, on account of wanting to play it again. I think I need a good therapist.

/Paul

(Link via Massively.com)

Look. I never do this. I never trawl the World of Warcraft forums, hoping to find something funny or at least coherent. But if you play WOW, or are familiar with any of the lore, you’ll get a kick out of this. Katinie, from the guild Midnight Eclipse, wrote up a transcript of an interview with Ragnaros, elemental lord of fire and general ballbag. Here it is.

——

Hello, reporting live from Blizzcon and the news on everyone’s mind is of course the announcement of the next World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm. Joining me here with exclusive details on the expansion is Ragnaros, Elemental Lord of Fire.

Reporter – “First, thank you for your time with me today. I understand you are incredibly busy preparing for your role in this expansion.

Ragnaros – “WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS INTRUSION?”

Reporter – “Well I, like millions of other World of Warcraft fans out there, would love to know more about your particular role in this expansion. For example, what are the lore reasons for you to be back in the game?

Ragnaros – “BOLDLY, YOU SOUGHT THE POWER OF RAGNAROS. NOW YOU SHALL SEE IT FIRSTHAND!”

Reporter – “It is reported that you are going to be attacking the World Tree. Anything more you can tell us about this?”

Ragnaros – “BY FIRE BE PURGED!”

Reporter – “So you are intending to burn the World Tree?

Ragnaros – “TASTE THE FLAMES OF SULFURON!”

Reporter – “Right…anywho, next question. Reports have surfaced that Garrosh Hellscream and orcs loyal to him, will be taking over leadership of the Horde. Any thoughts on these big developments?

Ragnoras – “YOU ALLOWED THESE INSECTS TO RUN RAMPANT THROUGH THE HALLOW CORE?”

Reporter – “That’s more of Blizzard’s doing really. Any advice for those Horde players that prefer Thrall in charge?

Ragnoras – “DEFEND YOUR MASTER!”

Reporter – “Will do. Final question before I know you have to go. Any idea when Cataclysm will be released?

Ragnoras – “TOO SOON™!”

——

And after reading that back, I’ve just realised how pointless it is for anyone who hasn’t fought Ragnaros. I promise my next entry will be far less niche.*

/Paul

*Lies. All lies.

Far be it from me to criticise Stephanie Meyer…

What am I saying. It’s right up my alley. If Dan Brown were a pulsing, sweltering carrion bird, infected with every manner of plague imaginable, Stephanie Meyer would be the deer-tick lodged in his bowels. If I were sent to see Twilight at the movies, I’d conclude the experience by dashing my brains out on the exit sign, on account of the fact that a brainhemorrhage would be preferable to a thinly-veiled propaganda film by a cromulent Mormon bint who feels that sex should have all the sensual appeal of shaking hands with a corpse.

…And that, my friends, is how to be hyperbolic. So why am I beating the dead horse that is the Twilight franchise, apart from the fact that said expired equine ghoul appears to be walking around and sticking it’s dick into the brains of teenagers? I’ll tell you, shall I?

Twilight: The MMORPG. And no, this isn’t a joke.

It’ll be like warcraft, only with swathes of sexless vampires, hordes of crying teenagers, and a soundtrack provided by My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park. You can play a crying vampire, or a crying non-vampire. The combat system is largely pout-based, and basically every piece of loot is a love letter, it’s ink smudged by tears over a love that was never meant to be.

I’d rather play Hello Kitty online. Or spay myself, it’s really much of a muchness.

/Paul

(Link via Massively.com)

We all saw how excited I was back in June when we first got wind of the imminent release of not just a new Monkey Island game, but also an updated, reimagined version of the original Monkey Island, replete with voice actors and new graphics. But this excitement was a little tempered by Lucasarts’ continued insistence on a PC-only release model. As a devoted Mac fanboy (Macbook, iPhone and iPod? Why yes, thank you very much) this was not the handiest state of affairs. I mean, sure I could run Bootcamp and all, and have Windows Vista jogging along at a better rate than most PC laptops (ah, the sweet taste of sneering superiority), but it didn’t really make life easy for my lazy and impoverished ass.

Until now. Oooooh. Exciting. Far earlier than predicted and with minimal fanfare, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition dropped into the iPhone App Store last night. It’s fully featured, touch controlled, capable of being zoomed in the usual fashion and can be switched from classic to updated versions with a two finger swipe across the screen. It is, in short, exactly the same as the PC version. It’ll set you back a tidy 999 cents and 350MB, but really, that’s a small price to pay for having such an amazing bit of video game history delivered to your phone. Your phone. Jesus. Six years ago I had a bulky black Nokia with a green and black display, space for 13 messages and a loose battery that had to be held in with brute force if you wanted to be able to read the screen. Now I get Monkey Island. As somebody said when I first bought my iPhone, “I love my iPhone more than any living thing”.

/Luke

[via OSX Reality]

Cancelled WoW Account Meltdown – Watch more Funny Videos

Several highlights:

- When he does the dying fish impersonation.

- When he comes out of the closet.

- When he tries to stuff his remote control up his arse.

This is either a really bad tantrum, or brand new crunkcore.

/Paul

*If you know what that is, you may have seen Transformers 2. If you have, I am so, so sorry. You probably need bowel surgery as a result.

When I was five, way back when in the heady computing days of 1990, my father dazzled the family by bringing home our first PC – a large, grey, boxy 286 Amstrad with a DOS prompt, a 5 1/4 inch disk drive and a black and green word processor. And I loved it. Yes, even then above par wordiness, asthma and a tendency toward pudginess was gearing me up for a school career as a computer nerd par excellence. But the Amstrad was also notable for introducing me to video games, and in 1990 none captivated me more than Taito’s mighty Arkanoid, a kind of one man Pong that had you bouncing a steadily accelerating ball into a series of coloured bricks in an effort to make all the bricks explode before you dropped the ball. All in stunning 16 colour EGA. I like to think I got quite good at the game, but, truth be told, the trajectories along which you could send the ball worked on a grand total of six angles, meaning that strategy and skill in the game tended to be supplanted by panic and an ability to swing the ship back and forth along the bottom reallllllly fast. The game was also notable for its pretence at plot, which was delivered in one breathless, fully capitalised sentence:

“THE TIME AND ERA OF THIS STORY IS UNKNOWN. AFTER THE MOTHERSHIP “ARKANOID” WAS DESTROYED, A SPACECRAFT “VAUS” SCRAMBLED AWAY FROM IT. BUT ONLY TO BE TRAPPED IN SPACE WARPED BY SOMEONE……..”

WHO COULD IT BE? As you discover, the SOMEONE turns out to be a giant Easter Island head named ‘Doh’. Pre-Simpsons. Amazing.

Then you think: that was less than two decades ago. And it was massive. And while maybe it wasn’t the height of technology, it kicked the shit out of Hungry Hungry Hippos. But most of all, it felt cutting edge. I mean how could anything get better than smashing bricks with a loosely controlled ball in 16 colours?

And, well, here we are:

The game is called The Last Guardian and it revolves around the friendship between a boy and a giant wolf/eagle hybrid named Trico as they kill people and solve puzzles in a crumbling ancient city. And, more impressively, everything in that preview was created using the in-game engine. Jesus.

I mean, fuck, it’s for the PS3, which I don’t have, and truth be told am unlikely to get, but that video almost made me cry off its own bat. And as Penny Arcade points out, the game is obviously going to end with the death of either the boy or the giant wolf/eagle hybrid, so, you know, brace yourself for emotional manipulation. Like the time I made it to the penultimate level of Arkanoid with three lives remaining, only to have them destroyed in quick succession by a sequence of glitchy bounces and random clutter dropping through the ceiling. Taito you bastards! Man, I was inconsolable for hours. It was also 2002 and I was 17… and I pretty much let it go after that.

I wonder if you can still get Arkanoid online…

/Luke

P.S. It’s good to be back. I promise it shant be so long next time.

In gaming news, the World of Warcraft mount system has been significantly overhauled. Or at least it will be, in patch 3.2, the same patch which will usher in the awesome new Tauren bear/cat forms, and the horrendously gay bedazzled Night Elf bear/cat forms. Sideburns and eyeliner ftw!

Below are some of the changes involved. Prepare to get a wee bit annoyed.

* Regular land mounts trainable at level 20 (was 30)
* Epic land mounts trainable at level 40 (was 60)
* Regular flying mounts trainable at level 60 (was 70)
* Regular flying mounts speed increased to a 150% gain (was 60%)

The costs for all the training and mount purchases has been decreased outright, with the exception of the artisan riding skill (epic flying mounts). For all mount costs, faction discounts now apply.

What the release doesn’t mention is that they’re also allowing three minute hearthstone timers, and with patch 3.3, they’ll mail you your first mount for free at level ten, along with removing Outland altogether.

Sarcasm off.

What baffles me is this: who was crying about this to such a degree that Blizzard actually did something about it? Is there a large faction of players who find the act of reading quests, following the plot (even loosely) and interracting with the game enviromnent so tedious that they WANT to get to the end and have nothing more to do QUICKER? It took Blizzard about four years to fix the druid forms, and even then, you can tell it was something of a quick fix effort. Who are the crybabies that made this happen? WHO? If this is because Blizzard is actually a private girls school from the fifties and the CEO’s daughter “wanted a pony”, I’ll throw up. On her.

/Paul