New Vegas Bugs

Well fiddle-dee-dee, have I been lazy or what? My Chinese spam machine readers will be happy to know that I am alive and just not blogging. I've been busy. I'd mention with what, but instead, I'm gonna get into the shit that really makes me mad: bugs in awesomely hyped games. Take, for instance, Fallout:New Vegas, a great sequel to a great game, only problem is both games were glitchy as hell.

On the topic of glitches: I would go so far as to say that a glitch is such a deal-breaker that it ruins the game for me. I played Fallout 2 and was really enjoying it (long ago) and then random crashes happened if I, say, picked up items in the "wrong" order. New Vegas, hilariously, has glitches that I will document here.
I haven't seen the best ones, like old head flipper down here, but that's because I just started playing with the new patches. That means that, supposedly, the bugs should be fixed in the version I'm playing. Without further ado:










1. No-Clipping issues. Whether it's a coyote that looks like it is under the ground, a caravan trader inside a rock, or a person stuck in a wall, Fallout:New Vegas has it all. IDCLIP has been slapped down most characters in the wastelands of the Mojave desert. Nothing is more frustrating than watching a companion character keep shooting at an enemy they can't kill because the enemy is surrounded by solid rock.


2. Crashes. I would be expecting this if I were playing a video game on my 486 in 1995, but I am not. I am playing a Playstation 3 in 2011, so this shit should NEVER freeze. NEVER!!!

3. Spider spasm characters after dying. This is just weird. I found an idiot on the internet that managed to record the same glitch. Unfortunately this person puts their retarded commentary on top (warning: not funny). Just watch for the sake of seeing what I am refering to here:

Hilarious guy flying into the sky video on YouTube.

I was out in the desert and these raiders jumped me. I was all "You done messed with the wrong mother-" but before I could finish my badass one liner, the raider started doing the herky-jerk and flew up into the sky! I thought the game would crash (see point 2) so I ran away! I never waited to see the person fall back to the ground. I will probably be walking around in some town and the guy will come plummeting out of the sky. Weird.

4. Stealing from dead people... Basically the "legacy" that the dead leave behind. Bear with me. I know there are these little good/evil mechanics in the game that change how people behave toward you and I know how they are supposed to work. If I kill a nice old lady people will think I'm mean, not because I killed her, but because I lost "karma" and they will not like you if you have low karma. They don't even need to know what I did. I get it. However, check this shit out:

Scenario: I am chasing down a crew of baddies that slaughtered a whole town, including these military guys that are supposed to be keeping the peace in the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout, and some gang members. They also took prisoners. So I follow the baddies to their camp and lay waste to their pathetic defenses. Then I went and freed the hostages, who were gang members (of a gang that I am not on good terms with in-game), so they ran away.

After dispensing this street justice I felt that I should be entitled to some pillaging. I go to the foot-lockers and storage boxes of these city-killin', slave-takin', freedom-hatin' baddies and start taking bullets and health kits, and the game says I lose karma for stealing! What the fuck?! I am stealing from some bad bad people whom I murdered, but stealing is wrong. Whatever. What's worse, after killing the guards, my reputation with the group they belonged to fell. How is that possible? In the middle of the desert I killed 3 guys, who went back to HQ and said "Watch out for BFG9000, he is kicking our asses out there!"? I could kill ever member of a town and my reputation with that now non-existent group would be "vilified" which doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, the game is awesome and fun, but the bugs (of which there are many, ask the internet) really ruin it for me. But I guess the crashes are the game's way of saying "enough fun for one day."

Ant War Part 1: Battlelines

It started off as any other move-in. I was re-arranging all of my possessions in my new place and thought “Hm, there are quite a few ants around here.” I lay a few traps and figured the people that used to live in my rental unit were lazy when it came to destroying intruders. “They won’t last the winter.” I foolishly thought. This was in 2009. Lo and behold, the spring of 2010 dawns and I start to notice the odd ant in my place. Then I found what I thought was a lone outpost outside my front door. No biggie, obviously, I can just run down to the old Home Depot, get some ant traps, and problem solved! Right? Wrong. The insidious ant knows no decency and the ant hill thrived in the face of my $3.99 poison delivery system. This meant war. And killin’ ants is nothing new to me. But let’s start at the beginning.

The first line of defence was probably my greatest mistake, since the senior BFGonia advisers didn't take the risk of ants seriously and bought these crappy things.

August 2009 – Operation Homefront

Upon moving in and discovering that the ant had decided to try and call BFGonia its home, I undertook a basic “homeland security” approach. Token defences included stomping the odd ant to make an example of it for the sake of the others or putting down traps. Needless to say, it didn’t matter, since the Calgary winter kicked in and negotiated an uneasy peace between the Ant Kingdom and BFGonia.

Aoril 2010 - Operation Surgical Strike

After a quick trip outside I noticed some ant colonies. No bigz, I thought, let's use that liquid ant killer stuff and just ice these mothafuckaz like it ain't no thang. The poison was applied, and nothing happened. I threw it all over their hill. The one hill I DOUSED was abandoned, probably because I made the soil basically poison as opposed to actually killing ants, but the remainder were treated too, and they grew more powerful.

Exhibit A - An enemy soldier.

May 2010 – Operation Toxic Embrace

A history lesson is necessary at this point. BFGonia is split into two allied nations: Main Level is the major economic and democratic engine of BFGonia, a region that is ruled by a wise king whose name is leant to the great BFGonia nation due to his benevolence and appeal to the ladies. Back Apartment is the seedy underbelly of BFGonia, where lawlessness and poor hygiene are the rules of the day. The identity of the slumlord that rules Back Apartment is forgotten by the wise BFG, for he has more pressing matters to remember. Anyway, the previous slumlord, while slumly, had an active interest in gardening. The trade agreement between Main Level and Back Apartment was that lawn maintenance would be exchanged for snow maintenance, and there was prosperity for the two regions. Upon the usurping of power by the new slumlord lawn maintenance had fallen by the wayside. Despite the negotiation of an identical treaty to that established before, Back Apartment labourers did not fulfill their part of the deal. This is why one day, no longer able to stand it, the king of Main Level took it upon himself to cut the grass.

What the good king discovered that day has since been immortalized by legend and song. Ant hills, many of them, at least 6, as far as the eye could see up until the fence. When they were run over by the cheap lawnmower supplied by Sze Corp., hardware supplier to BFGonia, the grass seemed alive in a writhing black mass. The king was overwhelmed by ants at times, but muscled through their tiny assault and continued the economic progress until the lawn was shortened. Initially, the front lawn outposts were thought to be the only stations that the ants used to assault the house. Upon inspection, it was clear that a large colony had been set up in the back and drastic action was needed to fight off the scourge of the Ant Kingdom.

King BFG is a peaceful man deep down, thus when he needs to murder mass quantities of living creatures he goes to the hellish wastes of the internet for the good of his people. His first general, General Murder, decided that the plan of mixing borax and sugar would deliver a dose of slow working poison that the ants would take home with them, which they would eat, AND THEN DIIIIIE!!! Unfortunately, after full application to the hills, the damage was zero. In fact, BFGonia scientists believe that the added dose of sugar lead to expansion of the Ant Kingdom.

BFGonian propaganda poster urging citizens to stomp them before they can stomp you!

To be continued.

Housesitting

I hope my boss wasn't too attached to his ice cream sandwiches or his ice cream in general. His washing machines are AWESOME! They clean my clothes so well it's like having new clothes. These machines could launch rockets, they're sooooo cool.

In other news, he owns a Wii. On one hand, I really appreciate what the Wii has done for making girls less likely to diss video games because they remember that time they had fun playing Wii Bowling or whatever. On the other hand, a lot of Wii games are total shit. To link a few. And the controls are kinda lame for most games. For some games they work, but I chalk my hatin' on the controls up to me only wanting to move my thumbs to attain maximum sedentary action!

Holy shit we beat Super C

This happened last week but I only got a chance to inform the greater planet at large now.

All must bow before our greatness. We don't even use our real names anymore, we refer to each other by our Contra names Corrigan and Ramierez. I'm Ramierez. Goddamnit me and Corrigan been through more shit than you'll ever see in your lifetime.

We also deliver wicked one liners like "See you at the party, Richter" and "It's a bomb!" and "Cohm wis me if you want to live" and "GOOOO! GEHT TO DA CHAAAAPAAAA!"

In looking for these quotes I found out that Arnold also gives out serious economic analysis to those who would question the American free market.

Hypothetically Speaking

Let's say you were getting married and you invited your friend who lived two time zones away. Your friend, at great personal expense, decides that they will fly back to their home town, bring their wedding-clothes, get you a gift, and blow off time at work because goddamnit you are friends and this is what friends do for each other when major life events occur. So, your friend RSVPs instantly for 1 guest, then a few weeks later asks if they can bring someone because they became involved with someone in the meantime. Your wedding isn't for 4 fucking months, so you should, presumably, be able to find an extra chair by then.

IN THEORY this shouldn't be a big deal. IN THEORY you should probably acknowledge that (a) your friend is coming back home FOR YOUR WEDDING, (b) your friend is spending a lot of money on that flight (P.S. you are a cheap motherfucker, that's why you would notice this) and your friend doesn't have a real job so they don't make real job money, and (c) it's early enough notice that you can help out your friend who was being pretty cool by letting you know so early.

Would you, after considering all this, opt to say something like "I hate to say this but we're pretty tight for space."? Would you really say that? YOU FUCKER! I BET YOU FUCKING WOULD!! Even after your friend had be all awkward and invite the person before contacting you after dating them for only like 3 weeks, since the person they invited has a batshit-crazy schedule and needs to plan shit months in advance and had to know today if your friend had any plans for the summer. SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME!

Insane Clown Posse

Ok, so, ICP has been around for years. Decades maybe. I think in 2 years they will be 20 years old. For 18 years they have been getting fans from the Grade 9 to Grade 11 cohorts of disaffected high school students. After Grade 11, the cohort moves on but there is a new crew of 14 year olds to hear ICP "tell it like it is." These guys used to be kind of badass, I used to like it when they came on Loud because they had novelty value, like GWAR, except not infallible. Even when they were being dumb (this can't be serious, the beat sounds like it took all of 30 seconds to think up) it was kind of funny in a "it's 1997, I don't know no better" kind of way.

Now they came out with this Miracles song... What the hell? They went soft and just kinda let everyone know how stupid they are years ago, but what is this shit? This is why bands that suck should NOT be allowed to stick around, their dumb true colours come through. I was never a big fan, but this is just kind of sad to see. No matter how much novelty value they have, they should have quit and taken their legacy of being mildly interesting with them instead of just giving it all up and running out of ideas.

Deep-Frizzlin'

I deep fried a turkey last weekend, it was pretty awesome. We were at a party and thought shooting a .22 rifle and deep-frying a turkey would be a good idea. Turns out we know a good idea when we hear one.

Academics need to stop trying to have their cake and eat it too. When doing some sort of statistical analysis people are quick to point out "Oh, my estimates aren't causal" or "This is just an association, not causation." The rhyming is intended to scare away white people (90% of academics) so it normally lets them get away with it. Fine. But then they make a conclusion like "Since X and Y have this relationship, let's give people more X to make them have a more desirable level of Y." This implicitly means that they are treating X as causing, in some manner, Y. After saying "This is not causal" they go ahead and make causal recommendations on policy, etc. The irony would be delicious if it weren't something I am served up daily.

Causation, nooooo!

Cool Place to Park

Ok, ok, so what? I didn't post for a couple months, cut a brotha some slack. I've been busy with... stuff... Like, you know, all that stuff I've been doing.

What have I been doing? Oh, I dunno, maybe listening to wicked new music:

Austrian Death Machine. Hilarious metal band, based entirely on Ahhh-nuld movie quotes. Check out their newest hit single "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle."

The Ravonettes. I had not heard of them before, but they aren't new. Good driving at night in the city music. Check the song that got my attention in my buddy's car. The video kinda sucks, but the music is all you need, so put it on and open a new tab.

Ya, that's pretty sweet, but what else? I've not been playing new video games.
"What's that?" I hear you asking in your mildly bemused yet superior tone, "BFG gave up on playing video games? Maybe he is finally growing up." Think again mothefucka. I'm playing OLD video games. If anything, I've regressed back to a point in my childhood so long gone that I am going to be the first person in history making negative maturity progress. How? The FC Twin, that's how. This borderline legal piece of equipment plays all the old hits for NES and SNES. Let's just say I'm bringin' back Contra. My boy comes over once a week and we take a go at Super C. They just don't make punishing games like they used to and we can get to Area 7, a feat I never accomplished in my childhood.




I dare you to play Super C. I fucking dare you. It will humble you.

"Next Blog"

I clicked on "Next Blog" up at the top of the page a couple of times to test what came up. Let's say I did this about 10 times. 6 of those 10 times, the blog that came up revolved around food, exclusively food. One was some single mom sharing recipes, another was a couple and their food-related travels, and another was a guy that really likes bacon.

Avid food blog reader.

3 of those 10 blogs were religious in some way. The 3 I saw were Christian, but I am sure there are Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh blogs, etc. These were the boring ones.

1 of 10 was a completely pointless blog that I didn't want to read. Kind of like this one. Which led me to wonder, what makes a popular blog? There's the obvious: Being famous, appealing to a subculture, being associated with a bigger more popular website. But what is a small timer to do? Here's the answer: Nothing. There is nothing desirable about having a popular blog. A wise man once said "Fans are clingy complaining dipshits that are never happy no matter how many concessions you give them." Why would you want a bunch of people reading your blog that you don't get paid for? So they could say things like "Gee whiz, that was a long time since your last entry, why don't you type entries most regularly so that I can complain that they aren't even MORE frequent"? You don't need that!

Get away from us, we don't like you anymore.




Anyway, point of the post: We, as a people, need to stop being so fucking obsessed with food that we devote entire blogs to it. What the fuck?

The True Meaning of Christmas is...

... Beating Resident Evil 4 on Professional difficulty, obviously. I often think about these time-honoured traditions, such as battling the Village Boss (whatever his name is) to get the eye and dying a couple of times because I am too cocky, and I think "How could I ever have these valuable rituals if I had kids?" The answer is that I couldn't, they would be eating the controllers and shitting all over the game.



He's comin' over to babysit.

My dear friends recently had a little girl, some other friends of mine (less dear, but still okay) recently announced that they are expecting a round little baby. The first couple don't play video games so the baby can be their new hobby, but the second couple are pretty selfish! I mean, coooome on. This guy is late to everything! How is he supposed to look after a baby when all he wants to do is play Arkham Asylum?

Anyway, all babies and video games aside, the true meaning of Christmas is to watch Christmas movies just because you can. Cancel your motherfuckin' plans, sit your fat ass down, and watch the greatest movie of them all "A Christmas Story." Not because it is a good movie, because you have nothing to do. It's even got rabbits!



Oh Aunt Martha, when will you learn?

I can hear you now "O, BFG, I would if I could but I have to do X, Y, and Z." I don't care, cancel that shit and chill out. Christmas break isn't about doin' stuff, it's about doin' nothing or slightly more than nothing, such as beating a game you basically have memorized for the 80th time.

Whoa whoa whoa... Whoa

The posting of (potentially) fat chick titties is taking your comeback tour one step too far, LF.

Bunnies and Football

Unfortunately, Rocktober is past -- leaving us with November, a month which can only claim fame as the month political assassinations go down, or harbor bombings are plotted.

Fortunately, we can remember the spirit of Rocktober (or at least the picture of it) with this similar poster, as stolen from a fine competing blog to this humble one. Let this be my ode to professional football in all of its sorts, especially the amateur-esque qualities of CIS football.



And, as well, a cute bunny photo, to liven things up more, as stolen from cute overload. Did things ever get sappy here while I was gone. Perhaps I'll break out the recipe book for my favorite brownies next.

Bunnies

They're pretty fuckin' awesome.

Just because everyone likes it...

... Doesn't mean it isn't total shit. Or over-hyped to an embarrassing degree. This is especially true if, say, someone that is your friend is telling you that something you made is "AWESOME!" They don't truly mean that, by standards that apply to the rest of the world, what you have done is awesome. They mean "considering you are a person I know and I never knew you to (a) blog, (b) be creative, (c) do whatever, what you have just done is pretty awesome."

Thus, when one is undertaking something for general consumption, anonymity is the key. Otherwise, people that LIKE YOU ALREADY will tell you they love it and people that don't know you will tell you your face is stupid. Therefore, when it comes to stuff you create, your friend's opinions don't count. Unless they are being honest with you. Just hitting you with platitudes should be your first clue that they are just humouring you. Fucking moron.

Real friends will tell you if you are being a fucking moron.

Anticipation!

Soon my love, soon. Be still, they'll hear you.

ROCKTOBER

Brutal Legend (umlats not included) came out this week and I am all jealous that I can't get it. The demo makes it look like a wicked fun hilarious version of God of War. Mr. Serious Kratos is replaced by Eddie voiced by the hilarious Jack Black. In the demo there is a part where you are driving a car around this giant worm-thing. When the worm-thing hits your car and you go flying through the air you hear JB yelling "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck." It's funny cause that's exactly what I was thinking of yelling at that point. Later you drop a gate on the "head" of the worm-thing and Eddie slides in yelling "Decapitatiooooon" in his metalist voice. AWESOME.


Other stuff is out too, like Demon's Souls. That game is supposed to be punishingly difficult, which is cool, cause I am sick of just having my hand held through games. But what do you want from a guy that has been playing Little Big Planet for the past little while. I need difficulty, and DEATH!

Anyway, Olympics are in Vancouver and it's all over the TV, the internet, books, the newspaper, and yo mama.. Victoria must, yet again, be telling all their friends "But I'm the capital of the province, why does Vancouver get all the action?" The answer is because no one likes Victoria. Moving on, there is nothing interesting about the Olympics. I mean, I guess it's cool cause like, countries win medals and stuff, but Winter Olympics especially are just another hockey tournament for me. I don't really care if Canada gets a bronze in Woman's cross-country skiing. Do you? Does anybody other than the hardest core cross-country ski fans? Some of these sports aren't even interesting, like figure skating. Isn't bowling in the summer Olympics? BOOOOORING. There are Olympics people, however, they are JUST SO INTO THE OLYMPICS. Mainly because (a) they are into one of the sports and are just like "Shit, bobsledding or swimming is on TV only once every four years!" or (b) They just love sports and/or hype. These are the people that are like "Man, I was watching the darts championships the other day, and Nord Jokkussen is awesome!"

Dummies.

Not your thinking-man's movie

Well, I went to go see Inglourious Basterds (or however they misspell it, I ain't googling it, so there) and I gotta say it was okay. That's it. JUST okay. Everyone is like "WHOOOOOOOOOA, DUDE, YOU GOTTA SEE THIS MOVIE BEFORE I EJACULATE!!!" I gotta say, this movie is unique in the sense that it doesn't waste one iota of effort on trying to develop any characters. Brad Pitt claims in the trailer that he wants his scalps, then the next scene with him in it has him scalping Nazis. That's it, there is no other side to him, he is introduced as a Nazi killer and he stays that way until the end of the movie. The most interesting character is an SS Captain and even he is underdeveloped.

Allow me to cut you off before you mouth-breathers answer back with "That's the point!!!" I guess that's what they were going for, but still, it was almost a non-event. QT can do whatever he wants, create any kind of movie, and he made this. I heard that he was writing this 4 years ago, or something. How does it take 4 years to write a 2.5 hour movie with no character development? I'll tell you: Lots of stuff happens. It's fun, don't get me wrong, just think about the people that will recommend this to you. Prior to this movie, their favourite was probably RoboCop 2 or Predator. All fun movies, all requiring about 1/4 of your total attention.

Fat Fuckin' Burger!

Fatburger is the bizzle bomb, yo! Number one burger place in Calgary, bar none.

Hack Attack

Some guy that wrote one semi-sweet book back in the 80's doesn't like gay people. My point: Who cares. This has the same earth-shattering impact as a lame tv actor making a homophobic comment. Point is, what these nobodies think is of zero importance. And who the motherfuck cares about Orson Scott Card? The guy stretched out one book that WASN'T THAT GOOD into a questionable legacy and now the geeks of the present are all torn up that this dime-a-dozen author said that he doesn't like gay marriage.

The guy wrote a book that lots of people have read in the past 20 years, and a bunch more that no one likes/bothered to read. We should not care about his opinion. He shouldn't even be relevant any more.

Fat Chicks

Let's get one thing straight off the bat: There is nothing wrong with fat people in and of themselves. They are sometimes jovial, sometimes depressive, love food, and the ladies generally have big titties. And EVERYONE, male and female, loves big titties.

However, at the bar on Saturday, this one big girl came up to me and started talking. I was giving her the time of day, so she probably interpreted that as "Being totally into her!!!" Then my nipples suffered under her awesome assault! Thing is, it wasn't so bad. If all fat girls come up to you and start feeling you up, then I am going to have to start hitting on fat chicks EXCLUSIVELY. Then I would feel like a million bucks anywhere I go.

I will only be talking to fat girls, starting now. Sorry skinnies, but you had your chances. All you did was act kinda neurotic and have low self esteem. Onward, to the well-adjusted blob-people!