Halo CE Versus Halo 4

 

Halo CE Remastered

I've been half-assing the Master Chief Collection in order to prepare for the release of Halo Infinite in December, so I thought I'd share some observations regarding the first and last games of that series (Halo 5 isn't included on pc, so we shall pretend it doesn't exist).

Halo: Combat Evolved was an enormously influential title. It was a launch game for the Xbox, and had it not been a massive hit, it's likely that Microsoft would've abandoned the console space. It helped popularize first person shooters with a console audience, and it featured spacious outdoor environments and a brightly colored art style that contrasted pleasantly with other shooters of the time. Playing the remastered version in 2021, Halo: CE still feels and looks good. The heavy sound of Master Chief's pistol, the tight controls of a Warthog, the way Elites dive out of the way of a grenade toss--all of it holds up well. Play a couple missions in, however, and the warts start to pop up. The level design is probably the worst offender. Several of the Forerunner-based levels feature copy-and pasted rooms, and figuring out which way you're going can be difficult. The lack of enemy variety is also a problem. There are basically only five enemy types--grunts, jackals, elites, hunters, and Flood zombies. On Heroic (Hard) difficulty, it can be pretty tough, since in addition to his recharging shield, the Master Chief has a health bar that doesn't regenerate. Still, it's fun, especially if you have the patience for the quirks of older shooters.

Halo 4 was the first non-Bungie Halo title. Graphically, it still looks great in many levels, especially when you consider that it was released for the Xbox 360. Artistically, it's a little different--the jackals and elites have a more reptilian appearance, and the lighting is darker and a tad more realistic. The shooting feels solid, and the first few missions are pretty good, if not particularly memorable. The new Promethean enemies are not as fun to fight as the Covenant, unfortunately. Knights resembles large robotic crabs that can teleport, and there are smaller, more agile enemies called Crawlers that explode rather easily. The Forerunner weapons are really just high-tech versions of the basic military guns Halo already had, e.g., there's a shotgun equivalent, a faster-firing assault rife, et cetera. All in all, it's an okay experience, but I'm not particularly compelled to finish it. Hopefully Halo Infinite will be a return to form (Halo 5 also had a mixed reception).

Writer's Block: Creeping Doom

 I think of every tree

every insect

every flower blowing in the wind

drying up

as the heat pours from a shrouded sun

while we drive

and fly

and spout our toxic fumes

high into the atmosphere

in pursuit of profit

comfort

and ease.

Fear of loss

is fear of death.

Dying is more managable

if there is something 

left

behind.

Who knows what the future

will bring?

Maybe there's hope

somewhere.

I want my children

to have what I had.

I want life

to prosper.

I want people

to live like people

and not commodified

instruments of production.

Fuck all the barons of wealth

The tech bros

The politicians.

In the next life

They'll be intestinal worms

or fungi growing on an apple.

There's no way to fix everything

I am but

one 

man.

Lay down the burden

Accept that 

All things must pass.

Thoughts on Deathloop, Halo Infinite Beta

 

Deathloop's art style is out of this world.

Deathloop and Halo Infinite were my big 2021 releases. The former is out now, whereas the latter has a multiplayer beta available. Let's cover Deathloop first since I've spent about 13 hours with it.

Arkane, the creators of Deathloop, are probably my favorite studio. They are the last triple-A studio putting out immersive sims, since the Bioshock series is on the shelf along with Deus Ex and Thief (System Shock is lost in vaporware hell). Both Prey and Dishonored are among my favorite games, so when Arkane releases a title, it's a must-by. Deathloop has a lot going for it, from the swinging sixties art style to the roguelike time loop that serves as its central gimmick. You play as Colt, a man trapped in a loop on a island run by a cult called the Eternalists. The only way for Colt to break the loop is to manage to kill eight Visionaries (the leaders of the Eternalists) in one day, which is harder than it sounds, since there are only four areas with four times of day. So the challenge is for Colt to manipulate events in order to get the Visionaries to cluster together. For example, you can ruin Egor's experiment, which causes him to attend Aleksis's party, where you can conveniently murder them both. As far as gameplay is concerned, Deathloop can basically be summed up as a shooter version of Dishonored. Blink has been renamed Shift, and Domino Nexus; unlike Dishonored, you can only equip two slabs (in game lingo for powers) at once. Colt has a beefy arsenal of weapons, special versions of which are randomly dropped by Visionaries. You can acquire a Fourpounder pistol that shoots poison clouds, or a unique Rapier that has explosive bullets. The shooting feels pretty solid; movement-wise, Colt feels very similar to Corvo from Dishonored 2. You have a hacking device appropriately-named the hackamajig which lets you turn off security cameras and switch movable turrets to your side. The levels are well-designed and full of alternate pathways which come in handy whenever someone invades your game. You see, Colt is hunted by a woman named Julianna, who desires to prevent him from breaking the loop. If you play online, a human controlled Julianna will occasionally invade your game. She's at a disadvantage, however; she has only one life to Colt's three. These encounters are tense and great fun. One of my most memorable happened during the morning in Updaam. I exited on the eastern side of the map to find Julianna sniping at me from the rooftops. I turned invisible using a slab called aether and snuck all the way to the other side of the map, searching for health. I witnessed Julianna shifting over the bridge to Visionary Charlie's live-action game, so I took a shot at her but missed. Slowly but surely, I crept cloaked across the bridge and hid behind a cardboard cutout in the middle. When Julianna ran by, I jumped out and stabbed her in the back with my machete. Good fun!

Unfortunately, Deathloop's AI-controlled enemies aren't much of a challenge. They're pretty brain-dead, and the only time you'll die from them is when about twenty of them have you cornered, since Colt doesn't have much health. The four areas are unique and rich with detail, but you'll soon tired of having to constantly return to them for little tidbits of information. Worst of all, Deathloop lacks any of Dishonored's nonlethal options. Your interactions with the NPCs will totally be of the violent sort. In many ways, Deathloop feels rushed. It doesn't do a whole lot with its time travel mechanic, since nothing is permanent after the day completes. Dishonored 2's a Crack in the Slab mission, which allowed you to travel in-between the past and present of a formerly glorious mansion, let the player manipulate the environment in real-time, and therefore did more with the time travel concept than Deathloop manages. Also worth noting is that enemies lack variety, and the Visionaries go down pretty easily. 

Still, despite my complaints, I'd recommend Deathloop for fans of novel first person shooters or immersive sims. If Prey and Dishonored 2 were 10 out 10s, Deathloop is a 7 or an 8, and it has a style and level of detail that few games can match. Some people have reported performance problems; I was able to run it at a locked 60 fps at 1440p and Very High Quality enabled, albeit with AMD's FSR turned on (my system has a 5700 xt GPU  and a Ryzen 7 3770x CPU, so solidly mid-range).

Halo 3 was my first console shooter and a hell of a time back in college. I have played Halo 1 through 3 as well as Reach, so Infinite, which seems heavily influence by those classic games, is high on my list of most anticipated titles. The beta is promising. The guns feel solid and sound great, and the game looks like classic Halo visually. I played about 45 minutes testing out the four maps with bots, and found them to be pretty good and reminiscent of Unreal Tournament's excellent botmatches. Performance-wise, my experience varied. At 1440p and High Quality, my system managed 60 fps on the smaller maps, yet Live Fire constantly ran in the mid-50s. Assuming there's still some optimization to be done, this isn't that concerning. However, 60 fps in Infinite doesn't feels like 60 fps in most games. I'm not really sure why. It's likely frame pacing, where some frames are not being repeated at the same rate. Hopefully these problems get cleared up by launch. I'm really looking forward to the singleplayer, but Halo is the last arena shooter standing, so it would be fun to get into a multiplayer game again.

Here are some Deathloop screenshots, mostly focused on the artwork, since that's why most people play video games.

 

Thoughts on Matt Bell's Appleseed

There's a certain attitude in the environmental movement that everything would be better, perhaps, if humanity would just disappear. This reaction is understandable, given the ecological damage we are witnessing: oceans clogged with plastic, forests on fire, species vanishing at an unprecedented rate. It is a conclusion, however, that I find incredibly shortsighted and sad. Despite all the devastation we've unleashed, we've also created a lot that has value, from music and art to empathy and philosophy. If the human race disappeared tomorrow, it would certainly be an extinction as terrible as that of any troubled ecosystem. And that is why, despite the beautiful writing and the rather engaging plot, I'm having trouble finishing Matt Bell's Appleseed. 

There are three concurrent stories in Appleseed: one follows a faun and his brother as they plant apple seedlings in the American Midwestern frontier during the 1800's; another tracks a group of eco-terrorists led by a former scientist named John as they plan to sabotage a powerful corporation called Earthtrust as it attempts to remake a climate-ravaged world; while the third tale tells of a cyborg creature struggling to traverse a planet covered in ice as he carries the world's last living tree growing from his body. This is creative stuff; Bell has a great imagination and eye for natural beauty, and his flowing descriptions of the idyllic American wilderness evoke a great deal of sympathy for all that has been lost in the settling of this continent. His bleak depiction of a future America that has become almost unlivable also garners heavy emotions. Here's the thing, though; this book doesn't exactly have a happy ending, unless you consider the extinction of the human race to be a good thing, over all. We have failed in our stewardship, is Bell's message, and perhaps it would be better if we stopped trying to control things and just let nature heal. The book's antagonist, Eury Mirov, wants to delay the rising planetary temperature by releasing self-replicating nanobots into the atmosphere to distribute sunlight-blocking aerosols. She gains this sort of power by essentially buying half of the United States and depriving former American citizens of their citizenship in exchange for refuge and employment at Earthtrust headquarters, a carefully controlled surveillance agro-state populated by genetically engineered plants and animals. Eury is definitely a megalomaniac corporate egoist, but her idea to save the planet isn't necessarily a bad one, despite the feelings of John and his fellow terrorists. A drastic technological solution to climate change will almost certainly be required, since the world shows no real signs of slowing its ravenous appetite for energy. Things are far bleaker in Appleseed than they are likely to be in the future, yet the book's speculation is plausible enough to be distressing. I actually don't know if I can finished the last twenty-five pages or so. I don't know what that says about the novel or myself. The apocalypse always seems to be on the horizon lately, given the state of the world. I say this despite the fact that is is far better to be a human being in 2021 than almost any other time in human history. Still, we know too much, and the last few years have shaken my faith in human progress. The Atlantic recently had a profile on Boris Johnson in which he states that progress isn't a straight line. I think he's right.

If you have the stomach for it, Appleseed is an excellent read. If you're bogged down by bad news, then perhaps you should stay away. What a glowing endorsement, eh?

New Video: Judy Is A Punk

 

A straight cover of my favorite Ramones song. That chug-chug-chug guitar rhythm is deceptively simple. Pulling it off with all downstrokes takes a little practice. As this year winds down, I'm looking to cover a couple more songs and then call it quits covering other people's material. It's been fun, but I haven't written anything in a while.

My Least Favorite Songs of the Grunge Era

 

Just a bunch of cool dudes hanging out.

Disclaimer: Some of these song are by my favorite bands. The 90's was the last time rock and roll reigned supreme. I am nostalgic for that scene. That being said, I'm not a fan of the following songs.

1) Possum Kingdom by the Toadies. "Do you want to die?" No motherfucker, I don't! Despite its obvious pop merits, the lyrics of this classic seem to be referring to a sexual assault, and although I doubt the writer was intending it to be some sort of rape anthem, I can't help but turn the dial when this tune comes on.

2) Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam. Eddie's voice is real hit or miss for me, and this one's a definite whiff. I have no idea what this dude is a saying. All I hear is a hobo gargling chestnuts while singing out of the sides of his mouth. Guitar work is stellar, though.

3) Sex Type Thing by Stone Temple Pilots. Yeah, it's got a killer riff, and lead singer Scott Weiland is quoted saying "I never thought that people would ever seriously think that I was an advocate of date rape" but come on man, you're singing in the first person, what do you think the meatheads are going to think? The problem with satire is that people are too dumb to know what's a parody and what isn't. Weiland was a talented singer, but he had a habit of pulling an Eddie Vedder, although at least you can understand what he's saying most of the time.

4) Glycerine by Bush. I fucking hate Bush. They can be summed up as a British Nirvana rip-off without any of the punk stylings or songwriting chops that made the Seattle rockers interesting. Glycerine is a grunge power ballad. Like everything Bush did, it sucks.

5) You Know You're Right by Nirvana. The last song recorded by the band before Cobain's death, You Know You're Right honestly sounds like something Nickelback wrote. Okay, it's not that bad, but Kurt's singing almost sounds like a caricature, sort of like how Elvis started over-emphasizing certain vocal tics in his Vegas days. Pretty much the only Nirvana song I'll immediately turn off.

6) Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins. This shit sounds like emo. Billie's voice is an acquired taste, yet it's the teenage confessional quality of the lyrics that really make me hurl. Another ill-advised alt-power ballad.

7) You Oughta Know by Alanis Morisette. Okay, Alanis was not for me. Every woman my age holds her in high regard. I really don't have a lot of problems with the song, it's the goddamn vocals that get me. I don't think there's anyone else in music that has a more piercing voice than Alanis Morisette. If you want to kill your dog as painfully as possible, then I'd imagine blaring You Oughta Know at an excessive volume would do the trick.

8) Prison Sex by Tool. What was with the grunge era and rape? According the Wikipedia, this song might be about lead singer Maynard James Keenan's abuse suffered at the hands of his stepfather. That's fucking terrible; however, so is this song. Christ, reading the lyrics makes me want to vomit.

9) Nookie by Limp Bizkit. Can you think of another song that exemplifies the runaway misogyny of the late 90's better than Nookie? 14 year old me ate it up at the time, because teenage boys' brains aren't fully developed and all those budding hormonal urges can manifest as resentment toward the opposite sex. By far the worst song on this list. Shit, it barely qualifies as music. If you put a bunch of handicapped chimpanzees in a room and forced them to play guitar, the results would likely be far more listenable.

10) Thunder Kiss '65 by White Zombie. Man, I almost took this one back after watching the video, which is awesome. That being said, I have no idea what Rob is saying. Duh duh duh da-duh da duh! Thunder kiss baby! Mr. Zombie's tuneless vocal ejaculate spews over the most unmusical heavy metal possible. At least it grooves!

Impressions of A Cincinnati Episode of AEW Dynamite

 

--University of Cincinnati's Fifth Third Center is a nice venue to see a show at. There's a lot of parking and you get to admire the campus. Seeing college kids walking around made me realize how long ago those days were. They all looked like children! Time is a bitch, eh?

--We caught a glimpse of Jon Moxley in a loading area as we were walking to the show, and he's a bigger guy than he looks on TV. We were lucky enough with our seating to actually be filmed as he walked through the crowd in his hometown.

--Best match of the night was Pac versus Andrade, which will air on Friday during Rampage rather than Dynamite. I've always been a fan of Pac (his shirt was my first wrestling shirt) but I didn't realize how good Andrade is, having tuned out of NXT when he was champ. The dude is crazy athletic, and he and Pac put on a clinic. He also has an insanely wide back.

--It's so much fun going to a show with a hot crowd. Our first show in Indianapolis was early in AEW's life, and the crowd was just not as into it. Pretty much anybody who anybody got cheered. Malachi Black got cool heel cheers over Dustin Rhodes, but their match was good enough that Dustin got the sympathy of the crowd (guy's pushing fifty and he can still go). There was a small segment that cheered only heels, which was kind of funny. Guess they've been to too many WWE shows.

--There is a certain aroma that is native to a gathering of several thousand people in an indoor arena that stays with you for a while, even after you've left. I call it "unwashed wrestling fan." It is not pleasant.

--Really every segment was entertaining. I only got up for a bathroom break during a Dark Order tag match. The most pleasant quality about this roster is that there are very few people who aren't watchable.

--Only big names we missed were Jericho, Cody, and Miro. Punk, Brian Danielson, Pac, Andrade, Christian, the Elite, Moxley, Britt Baker, Malachi Black, and MJF were all in attendance.

--Not much else to say other than it was good fun. Our first post-Covid outing. Will definitely come again to another AEW show.  

Hades versus Assassin's Creed Odyssey

 

Hades is an incredibly addictive rougelike set in the Greek underworld. You play as Zagreus, the son of Hades, who is attempting to escape to the world of the living. Beautifully animated and full of gods and vanquished heroes, Hades has a fairly compelling story which is basically a dysfunctional family drama. The lord of the underworld, you see, has forbidden his son to leave, and so every time he dies (you'll die a lot, it's a rougelike), Zagreus has to walk past his grumpy workaholic dad, who has a quip or putdown ready for his rebellious son. The voice acting and writing are excellent, especially for an indie, but this is Supergiant of Bastion fame, so enough said. Gameplay consists of hack and slash combat in randomized dungeons based in four locales (you start on the lowest level, Tartarus). What makes Hades really fun is that Zagreus's build can vary drastically between playthroughs depending on what gods you encounter. The Olympians want to meet Zagreus, and can't help but stick their heads in his business, so they lend their aid by way of Boons, which can greatly determine your success or failure. Zeus can make your Dash movement shoot lightning, whereas Artemus can buff your critical chance. One of my favorites is Poseidon's Tidal Dash, which knocks enemies away from you and often send them into a trap or lava pit. It's all great, addictive fun, and I haven't touched Assassin's Creed Odyssey for a couple days because I can't stop playing. Rougelikes aren't a genre I've ever been interested in, but seeing how everyone has been singing this game's praises for over a year, I think most people will likely enjoy Hades.

I haven't played an Assassin's Creed game since Assassin's Creed 2. Odyssey seems to share much more in common with the Witcher 3 than its earliest predecessors, which is fine by me, since I enjoyed the Witcher 3 far more than those games. It's basically a Greek mercenary simulator, complete with naval combat and a fighting system more similar to Dark Souls than Assassin's Creed 1 or 2. It is also gorgeous and requires a decent system to run on max settings at 1440p. Still, after having finished Red Dead 2 not that long ago, the prospect of slogging through another 90 hour game isn't appealing at the moment, which is why, perhaps, Hades has my attention. That being said, if you've missed out on the Assassin's Creed series for several years, you might be surprised how much they've moved toward open-world RPG territory. There's not a whole lot on my plate for the rest of the year gamewise, other than Deathloop and Halo Infinite, so I'm sure I'll return to Odyssey after my interest in Hades wains.

New Video: Crazy

 

 

Crazy by Gnarls Barkley was omnipresent on pop radio for several years in the late 2000's. I never got tired of it because it was such a kick-ass tune. Of course, I lack the singing chops of Ceelo (I ain't in the same fucking ballpark) but I thought I'd give it the ol' garage try. Did keys, bass, and drum loop in Reason, and then added two guitar tracks, one clean with reverb, the other distorted. Sped up the song just a tad. Kind of sounds like an actual crazy person is singing it, right? The year of covers continues.

Video Game Review: Resident Evil Village

 

Looks like a great place to vacation.

Resident Evil Village is loaded with atmosphere. If you appreciate an intricate level of detail bordering on excessive in your video games, then this is the title for you, especially if you're well-versed in classic horror tropes. Village has baroque castles with dark secrets, a creepy blockaded Eastern-European town full of terrors, and traditional monsters pulled from fairy tales  and tweaked with the series' mutated theme. Seven foot tall vampiress Lady Dimitrescu took the internet by storm, but she's joined by lycans, giant werewolves, blood-sucking witches composed of flies, possessed dolls, and a humongous amphibious catfish that vomits acid. Unlike the last Resident Evil game I played, Village uses a first person perspective, which heightens the horror without taking away the signature gamplay of the series. You'll still have to search rooms for loot and ammo, scrounging what you can while dealing with the occasional puzzle. The shooting feels solid, although the frame of view is too narrow, and Ethan, your doofus protagonist,  moves at the pace of a wounded buffalo, which is fine most of the time, except when you're trapped in a cave or narrow rampart and you have to outmaneuver a giant mutated dragon. The story is nigh incomprehensible, especially for someone who didn't play Resident Evil 7. The game opens with Ethan sitting down to a nice dinner with his wife after putting his infant daughter to bed. A bunch of spec-op guys break in, shoot Ethan's wife, and steal his baby. You start following them, only to discover that they were ripped to shreds by a pack of werewolves. Turns out Ethan and family decided to move to the very worst possible place they could have, the titular village which is ruled by Mother Miranda and her monstrous lords. Resident Evil lore has never particularly interested me, yet the interesting juxtaposition of B movie shenanigans with incredible visual artistry won me over rather than pushed me away. This is the kind of game where your player character has a hand sliced off and sticks it back on about a minute later. Still, the Beneviento mansion chapter, with it's adventure game-esque escape room and subsequent nightmare fuel conclusion, scared the shit out of me. I might have giggled every time Ethan walked off a life-ending injury, but I was immersed enough in the game world to start babbling "oh shit oh shit oh shit" when SPOILER a huge mutated baby fetus started rambling after me. The only real complaint I have is that Village has crashed several times randomly. So far, it's my game of the year.

Screenshots for your viewing pleasure:

A Tour of My Work Weightroom

 

I'm privileged enough to work with my family, and because of that I have a weightroom in their garage that I utilized about twice a week. It's not fancy, it's dirty and grimy, but it's convenient and I really don't need much else. The above picture shows a bench pressing station that my Dad bought me for my sixteenth birthday. I'm now 36, so I've certainly gotten my money's worth. The bench can be adjusted to a decline or an incline with the movement of a steel bar. There's a pulley system attached, with a high pulley for pulldowns and a low pully for cable rows. It also has a simple leg raise/curl station at the front. I've benched around 290 lbs on this station; for anything more, I prefer my power rack. I use the low cable station frequently, although it isn't really built for much more that 120 lbs or so. The leg curl station typically gets ignored.

To the right of the bench station is a pulley machine. I think it only offers about 100 lbs of resistance. I only use it for triceps pushdowns, and I'll often put a dumbbell atop its weights.

To the left I have a rack for squats and standing presses. That metal stool serves as a nice place to rest my ass during box squats. I've squatted 425 lbs off of it, which is probably a little foolish, although it is very solid. I have the following dumbbell pairs: 15, 20, 25, 30, 40. These get used for isolation exercises, although lately I've only really been doing curls. There's also an ez-curl bar that I didn't get in the photos.

I have one 45 lb Olympic barbell and 425 lbs worth of weights, making 470 the total amount of weight I'm able to lift at this gym. I do my deadlift day at my house, where I have 570 lbs of weights, but I usually don't deadlift that heavy so I could still get a good workout in at my work gym. Outside the garage, I have a 145 lbs Atlas stone that's great for conditioning. The only additions I'd like are a couple heavier Atlas stones. Otherwise, this simple gym has everything I need.