Terwynd's Topics OFFICIAL THREAD

(DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD, POST ON THE DISCUSSION THREAD)

Hello, This is Terwynd, and welcome to TERWYND'S TOPICS. I will be writing a mini-series here exclusively in the GAC about what's going on in the world, the facts, and my general opinion of what's going on. There will generally be more topics Game-related than others, so if you've never heard about the BP oil spill or the recent Battles in Afghanistan, no worries, You don't need to worry about it taking over the series So, without further ado, Let the First topic begin.
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EPISODE I:
Video Games and Scammers

......... There are generally three types of people on the internet. Those that are Security-smart, those that aren't, and those who wish to take advantage of those that aren't. Why i'm saying this? Well, that applies to you. Are you smart enough to reject scams, are you not, or do you dish the scams out? Most people are smart about it. You know not to accept these ridiculous offers. BUT, if you are not, or if you are unsure of what is and what isn't a scam, then this post is for you.

........ Now generally, most, if not all scammers out there will treat you to an awesome deal, spice it up with some authenticity, then ask you for your username and password. Let me give you an example of a common scam:

Message from: WarWorldgiftz3568, lvl 1 Ninja
Congratulations! Your account, along with 49 other people have been selected to receive a prize of 100,000 virtual dollars in preperation for the upcoming WarWorld expansion: Revenge of the Necromancers! Go to www(dot)wtffakewarworldwebsiteomgz(dot)com, enter in your account information, and reap the benefits of the Treasures of the Ancients!
-Signed, the WarWorld Admins.

Now, let's look at everything that SHOULD CLICK TO YOU that this is a scam.

1:

Quote :

Message from: WarWorldgiftz3568, lvl 1 Ninja

Note the random Username, and the fact this is not an actual Admin to the game, rather, a level 1 ninja.

2:

Quote :

Go to www(dot)wtffakewarworldwebsiteomgz(dot)com

Take a look at the website URL, This OBVIOUSLY isn't an official WarWorld Website, and the fact he uses (dot) instead of just typing a "." indicates him trying to bypass the game's anti-scam censors.

3:

Quote :

enter in your account information, and reap the benefits of the Treasures of the Ancients!

Ok, this is why so many people lose their accounts. THEY GIVE OUT THEIR USERNAME AND PASSWORD. In fact, last time I checked, you only need to enter your account information if you're logging in. That's it. That's ALL you need your password for! If you give this to someone else, they can access your account and, if they decide to be a jerk, they can commit all the crimes they want against you, your friends and the community. You will be in a load of dung if you screw it up and give some random guy your password.

....... Now, let's go to a time where I myself was faced with a scam, back when I used to play Roblox. A guy, Who was impersonating an admin with a similar username, PMed me, and said that there is something wrong with the Veteran Accounts. He explained the "situation" and asked me for my username and Password on his website so he could reset my long-term account history. Now first of all, Back then, I nearly believed this load of dung. then I clicked on the link, it sent me to a blank page with the Roblox logo and ReeseMcBlox's avatar picture, along with an area where I enter my account info. It was then that I said "Screw this, this is a scam." and reported the offender to the Admins. He was IP Banned shortly afterwards. (The real Admins Notified me.)

Yeah, there are lots of people out there who want to steal your account. I'd talk about the whole Swavi.org debacle, but since there are kids on this forum, I won't. In short, If you get a Message that treats you to a reward or tells you to enter your account info to save your account, stop and think first. If looks too good to be true, it usually is.
I'm Terwynd, and this is Terwynd's Topics, giving you Nothing but the Truth, always.

Oh, I didn't mention the actual scammers? Oh... well, if you DO issue in-games scams out there, GET OFF OUR GAMES you swine...

-This is an Official Terwynd Production, do not duplicate for any reason.

(DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD, POST ON THE DISCUSSION THREAD)

Episode II:

The Clone Spam Wars

.......Hello, and welcome to Terwynd's Topics. Now, I've wanted to do this topic ever since I started the first episode, yet I felt a tad reluctant to do so, as now I feel like I'm feeding the troll. Which troll you ask? Well, I'll tell you. The GAC user PwntYou. You all know him. You all hate him. You all hate how people reacted to him. Now, you'll hate me for revie- ...Wait, what? *sigh* anyway, Here's the Game Plan:

The Game Plan
1: Write an awesomesauce Intro- DONE
2: Introduce and test the new "Game Plan" feature-DONE
3: Give the facts, History, and minor info.
4: State my general opinion.
5: Add some humor to the end for comic relief.

.......So, now that that's over, sit back, relax, and read. (Drainkin, lock all the doors and windows.)

.......History and facts: Well, this all started when someone started an account called PwntYou and posted a reply to a post consisting solely of this picture:

Spoiler:

THE END

Credits:
Written and created by: Terwynd
Inspired by: Too many people to credit
Special Thanks to: mrbean5317 for the similar idea, Hutch for the great leadership actions, and PwntYou for giving me something to write about. (yeah, you heard me right.)


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Message time! Today we have a letter from some guy called TROLOLO10101, and he writes, "Hey Terwynd, your precious series SUCKS" ... wha...? wuh, HUH? Why did he write that... OMGOMGOMG Y WOULD HE DO THAT?! OMG HE'S A TROLL! NOT A TROLL!! TROLL ALERT! TROLL ALERT! TROLL! TROLL! TROOOOOOLLL!!!! ALERT THE FORUM, ALERT THE COMMUNITY, ALERT THE GOVERNMENT, ALERT OBAMA, WE HAVE A TROLL IN OUR MIDST! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! *cries and hides in a box*

Well, It's been awhile has it not? Well, to give you a bit of reward for waiting all this time (assuming you actually care for this show) for a new episode, I will do something big. VERY BIG. Bigger than Chuck Norr- Ok, maybe not Chuck Norris. More like Bruce Leeee- no, not him either. Anyway, before I go to the inescapable depths of the Off Topic Nether, I will be starting Game Reviews. I've played enough of them to know what's the real deal, and what's just a cheap ripoff off of another game with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (believe me, you have NO IDEA how many games are in my game cabinet that fit this criteria). First off, I WANT YOU to vote on the discussion thread on what game I should review first next Saturday. The choices are as follows:

Portal (360)

Minecraft (PC)

Super Mario World (SNES)

Sonic Adventure 2 (Genesis)

Oblivion: Elder Scrolls IV (360)

I will have the vote start today around 6-8 o clock today.

Happy voting!

This has been an official Terwynd Topics Ad.

(DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD, POST ON THE DISCUSSION THREAD)

Terwynd's Topics Episode III:
Revenge of the Sith Miffed

.......Hello, and again, Welcome to Terwynd's Topics. After a long period of neglect to this series (and the forum itself), mostly due to School and other things, I have finally reached a window in which I can let loose and enjoy. What better way to do this than return to the GAC and do stuff.

.......Now, This topic is mainly about the whole LOM fiasco and how some certain people decide to react to having their stuff downrated. Without further ado, let the topic begin.

........Facts and History: {Inaccuracy ahead} Apperantly, according to my sources, there was a user on Spore, creating away, when she decided to downrate everyone who bullied her online using mass accounts. This moved onto people questioning her motives. {Innacuracy end} Then came the DizzyBiz incident. This sparked outrage within the community, and caused many Anti-LOM groups and some LOM protection movements. In between all this, there came an anti-LOM group like never before. This one was dangerous. Although it is unsure WHAT this group's name is, everyone knows it exists. This group's apparent mission is to downrate anyone who stands up for LOM, including those who make any form of sympathy to her. Many people on Spore today are being ravaged by this war, even today. While LOM claims to have stopped

ExcaIibur wrote:

This childishness

The anti LOM groups still persist to silence anyone who dare stand up for her no matter what happens, while Maxis sits back and does NOTHING to help, rather, focus on their Darkspore contests.

.......My Opinion: Now this has got to be one of, if not THE most damaging thing that happened in the Spore community. Many people have been caught up in this whirlwind of hatred including the elite creators, and this fiasco has no signs of stopping anytime soon. Why this is happening? Well, I'll tell you the why it's gotten bad: THE OVERZEALOUS KIDS WHO STARTED THE RETALIATION EFFORT. I cannot stress how much confusion is in my head about why people retaliate against the downraters. If you get downrated, then you downrate the creations of the downrater, you are NO BETTER than the actual D-raters! If people didn't start retaliating against LOM in the first place, we wouldn't have hundreds, maybe thousands of people abandoning Spore and never returning! Don't get me wrong though, I am NOT standing up for LOM for what she did, but even when I was a downrate victim, I did not seek revenge, and later on, I forgave her for acting this way when she asked for forgiveness. A day AFTER I said that, BANG. Three people comment on my page, one of them ExcaIibur thanking me for the kind words, and two average creators expressing hate to me for forgiving quote: "that ****ing *****" After reporting the two and blocking both of them, I checked my creations, all 10 of my most recent ones were with an orange face. That’s right. This actually happened and has gone on for a week. This has gone on far enough. Maxis needs to just INTERVENE ALREADY. They’ve ignored the situation for too long, and the only way we can get this madness to stop is to rally the people of the community to stand up and send Maxis messages, and a whole lot of them. You might not think this will help matters by sending in only one message, but just think about it. If we get at least 300 people to E-Mail maxis about this fiasco, telling them to intervene, that’s 300 messages in Maxis’ inbox! Soon enough, Maxis will NO LONGER be able to ignore our messages. This will stop. With only 300 people on our side, We can show Maxis that we have problems too. Not just them.

…….This has been Terwynd’s Topics. Have a nice day, and remember. We have the power to end a massive war, not just by ourselves, but as a group. Don’t ignore that power. See you next time! New Topics to come, good ones this time instead of all this stuff I've been talking about these last 3 episodes.

Written, created, and scripted by: Terwynd
Inspired by: Too many to credit
Special thanks to Glasspinne with the WAR suggestion. Hey, it IS a war, isn’t it?


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ALRIGHT MEN, TONIGHT IS WHEN WE MAKE A REVELOUTION, WE WILL HAVE FREEDOM! TONIGHT, WE WILL NO LONGER BE HAUNTED WITH THE FEAR OF DOWNRATES... TONIGHT, WE DINE IN H- *the army is mass banned for spamming the inbox*
*stares*
Wha- I- guh-huh-wha-he-Maxi-ba-wha? *sigh*
Madness I tell you.

(DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD, POST ON THE DISCUSSION THREAD)

(Dead sorry for this being late, this took longer to review than I thought. :P)

Terwynd's Topics: Game Review 1: Super Mario World

(Since Gelatino95 was the only one who voted, I've chosen to review Super Mario World first!

.......Ah, Super Mario World. This was quite possibly the first game I've ever played, and may very well be the reason I play video games to this day; It pulled off something great, which is what I'm going to review in this episode. I will rate games as follows:

Gameplay: (What is the game's purpose? Is it fun? [THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO A GAME]) 50%
Playability: (is the difficulty just right? How glitchy is the game?) 15%
Replay value: (How long can you play this game until it gets old? How good is the multiplayer[if applicable]?) 15%
Game Depth: (Is the game and it's story long and well made or a short game made without any effort?) 10%
Sound: (Does the Music and Sound effects reward or annoy you?) 5%
Rewarding Experience?: (What did you get out of the game OTHER than entertainment? What did you learn out of the experience? Example: After playing Assassin's Creed 2, I got interested in learning about the Renaissance and events that happened in 15th century Italy.) 5%

Rating scores are as follows:

Zero: E.T
1-9: Horrendous
10s: Terrible
20s: Bad
30s: Mediocre
40s: Flawed
50s: Fair
60s: Average
70s: Good
80s: Great
90s: Awesome
100: Top of the Line

So, Without further ado, LET THE RATING BEGIN.

.......Gameplay: Super Mario World is a 2D platformer, so generally, you'd want to have gameplay that makes you test your reflexes and reaction time. Super Mario World does this. There are some levels that make you use moving platforms to progress through the level while dodging flying Koopas (turtle minions) and FRIGGIN CHAINSAWS, which was fun! Mario, the hero of this tale, has just 3 abilities: Running, jumping, and Pile-driver jumping, so, you'll need some powerups if you wish to get into the RIGHT castle this time. There are only around 7 powerups in the game, which is USUALLY a bad thing, but SMW puts these powerups to great use and importance. The Super Mushroom makes you grow (hear that kids?) and makes you survive one hit before you die. The Fire Flower lets you toss bouncing fireballs of doom. The Feather gives you a cape, which lets you fly and become a human tornado, knocking any foe out of the way. The Green Shroom gives you an extra life, the rare, elusive Moon gives you THREE. The Star makes you go rainbow colors while playing a catchy tune (DE DE DEN DE DE-DE DE-DE-DE...) and makes anyone that touches you die from your awesomeness for a few seconds. Finally, Yoshi lets you eat things, enemies and berries alike. there are 8 worlds to travel through, two hidden zones, and 8 boss battles, all of which are quite fun. Super Mario World pulled it's gameplay value off greatly.

.......Playability: As a kid, I had mild difficulty playing through the first 4 zones. Then came the Forest Zone. I had NO CLUE what to do at that moment. I've completed all the levels there, but in the end, all that was there was one big path set in a loop. After a while, I gave up and quit playing ol SMW for a while, then when I was 11, I found out how to beat it. You have to find a key and carry it to its lock in one of the levels! If anyone has had this difficulty as a kid as well, comment on the discussion thread, just so I know I'm not alone ;) as an 11 year old, I was able to beat Bowser after around 10-15 lives. No biggie for a final boss. But then I found the Star Zone. I couldn't pass all of the levels. it was HARD. Just 2 years ago though, I completed the Star zone and sighed in relief. Then another path appeared. A path to the Special Zone. Playing those 8 levels was the most fun I've ever experienced while playing this game. It presented a hard, long challenge, and gave me the feeling that I've mastered the game. Why I told you this life story? Difficulty and replay value. Kids find the game mildly hard at the start, then it's TOO hard at a point, which is good and bad in a sense, when they're older and return to it, they can complete it after 5-7 game overs, and when they're my age, they've mastered every part of the game. No more difficulty. Like I said before, this is good and bad at the same time. You should have at least SOME difficulty even after you've mastered it in my opinion, but since this is an old game, I'll let it slide through this time.

.......Replay Value: See above for how long you can play it. The 2-player mode for this was flawed, as you couldn't play at the same time as your buddy. You have to wait your turn, and if you suck at the game and your buddy is Super Skilled, you'll have to wait quite a while for only 1 minute of gameplay. Other games in and before this era of games had the option to play simultaneously, why not this game? needless to say, 2 player is quite flawed, as no one wants to wait for their turn.

.......Game Depth: I can't really rate this game on this. Mainly because it's an old 2D game (BA DUM CHH) But it's story is short and simple, which isn't bad in certain cases. You, a plumber, have to fight through 8 dragons to save a princess you've already saved 2 times in previous games, and have to do it by going through 8 different lands to do so, fighting one of Bowser's kids at the end of every one. Like I said, short, simple, get's the point across good!

.......Sound: CLASSIC. From the Steel Drums and "whooing, poot, and PWOEE PWOO" sounds of the overworld to the hectic music, the "Click, OO BOUM" and death music while fighting bowser, you're in for a trip down Vaudeville!

.......Rewarding experience?: Yes, this game enhances your imagination and gives you happy thoughts. Nuff said.

Gameplay: 47/50
Playability: 13/15
Replay Value: 8/15 (2/7 multiplayer 6/8 Replay value)
Game Depth: 7/10
Sound: 5/5
Rewarding experience? Yes. 5/5

85/100


This has been a Terwynd's Topics Review.

(DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD, POST ON THE DISCUSSION THREAD)

EPISODE IV: Deals With Devils

(Yes, I've run out of Star wars names, DONT JUDGE ME!)

.......Hello guys! Before I start this topic off, I'd like to give a huge shout out to everyone who reads these entries, especially to Gelatino95. Thank you all for reading, critiquing and supporting the series up to it's fourth episode. I highly appreciate what you all have done. But, to you who read the entries but don't post on the discussion thread about how I did, suggesting a topic for me to do, or critiquing an entry, please, by all means DO that! I've realized that ol Gelo is the only one who steps up, reviews and truly cares about my series, yet, I know that a handful of people do read my entries, due to chats on the box. So, I'll put this pre-episode message briefly:

Your voice aids the series. Simply looking at the entry and not commenting on how I did or your opinion on the topic I've established doesn't help as much as actively supporting the series. as far as I know, Gelo is the only pillar this series is supported by, and one pillar isn't going to be strong enough to support the weight of the topics and the work I've put into them. In the inevitable future, if I see that no one seems to care about Terwynd's Topics, I may very well need to close down this mini-blog down for good. I've put a lot of work into giving you something to read, so, all I ask for you is to care. Support me, and I will give you eternal thanks, and more interesting things to read! This series is heavily based on what you guys want to hear, and quite frankly, over the past month, I've noticed a wave of silence. So please. All I ask of you is to discuss, review, critique and support my series. these are all simple actions that mean A LOT. Thank you for listening, and, without further ado... LET THE TOPIC BEGIN.

.......Ok, this topic is going to be about a real-life issue, but actually... It also affects the game world as well! So sit back down, you right there in the 7th seat to the right in the 4th row. Yeah I'm talking to you, sit back down and listen to this, this is good stuff. The topic today is about Gambling. Yep, THAT gambling. The only thing where you can get nothing for something, and how it's affecting our world of games. So, sit down and listen. The topic begins right now.

.......Ok, so, Gambling has been around longer than civilization has. It's the act of betting an item of value for a random chance to win a greater item of value. You see this being done every day now, this shouldn't be alien to you. Even the simple act of sending your army of Imperial Soldiers to attack a Rebel Base to attempt to capture it could be considered gambling; you either win big, or lose everything, all in a quick turn of events. Picture yourself as the commander of this Imperial Army: You don't know what awaits your army at the Rebel base, you could be fighting against a small squad of troops and only suffer minimal losses with your AT-ATs backing you up, but the Rebel Alliance might have a powerful military force awaiting your mid-sized army, and more war machines and starships than you have attacking the base. You are crossing your fingers as your AT-AT slowly climbs a hill blocking your view of the Rebel base, and you know you could very well lose your entire military force in one fell swoop, but in the slight possibility of a small force awaiting you, you press on as your AT-AT finally climbs the hill and you see the rebel base along with it's defending forces...

.......This is scary when you think about it. over 2 million people around the world right now are at a Casino as you're reading this. Some of them are betting everything they have to win, even just once. While this possibility of winning is very convincing, and downright compelling to reach, but, it is a very slim chance. On the other side, if you win, you truely WIN. There is nothing better in the world right then and there if you win the big prize! I know this feeling all too well. When you've won that 1 million dollars, you feel like the luckiest person in the world, you feel like God smiled upon you that day. You feel as if this was the most important moment of your life! Then what do you do with that million? I'LL TELL YOU WHAT YOU DO! YOU... (get ready!) waste it all on other bets throughout that night. Did I get'cha? I hope I did anyway. How this affects your gaming life you may ask? Well, have you ever played a poker game with other people? the chances are slim, but if you win, you get the chips. (both the plastic ones and the snack variety.)

Heavy wrote:

GET ON POINT STUPIT.

.......Ok, ok, fine. How gambling affects gameplay? Well, gambling affects your gameplay by giving you a sense of excitement and suspense while playing. Also, in casino-esque games like Poker Night at the Inventory, Gambling gives people of adult age something to relate to rather than them just having a FPS which they cannot relate to at all. However, Gambling can start to get out of hand with the whole "Real Cash Bets" Games out there, and, quite frankly, gambling is getting to be overused nowadays. Every game you see out there today has either a Gambling element in them, or a gambling Mini-game inside of it. In total, Gambling is an element that I fully agree should be used in games, but, just don't exploit it too much. Seriously, most of those "Real Cash Bets" games out there are either corrupt or rigged. Usually it's both. SO, This has been a Terwynd Topic, and this has been Terwynd, signing off.

CREDITS:
Written and created by: Terwynd
Inspired by: OK FINE. Extra Credits, Yatzee's Zero Punctuation, and others who I've forgotten. :P
Special thanks to: Gelatino95 for supporting this series, and being an overall good pal, and you for reading this entry!

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Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EkV7aRdKdI
AWRIGHT! I have 2 7s on this slot machine... Please please please ple- *bar* *que 0:57 of the video*
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO- *Insert Happy Exit theme here*

Copyright Terwynd Productions Inc. Do not replicate.

(DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD, POST ON THE DISCUSSION THREAD)

Episode 5: Rated M for Mature

....... Hello guys! Today, I'm going to focus on something that I feel I'm going through, as well as most of you teenagers out there. NO, NOT PUBERTY. No, I'm talking about the outcome of that: MATURITY. When we were kids, we used to do all sorts of stuff most of us wouldn't do today. You know, like holding a contest to see who could burp the loudest after a can of pop, trying to blow snot bubbles, and running down the hallway screaming "THEY STOLE ME LUCKY CHARMS" after inhaling helium for a bet (I have no clue how I came up with these. *innocent whistle*) just to name a few G-rated things. What happened to the good old days? One word: Middle school. In Middle School, you aren't expected to act like you did when you were grade 6, 5, 3, or 1, You are on your way to MANHOOD. That and High school with the credit system and all that. Since this is the final semester I have before I entering grade 10, I've chosen to write about this and how important it is to us. So, without further ado, LET THE TOPIC BEGIN.

.......Well, If I had to guess, maturity kicks in around when you're 14. That's the year many people get their learner's licence for driving ever since the new laws (in Canada anyway, not sure about the U.S) So, with such responsibilities and the fact you're hitting puberty, it's time to grow out of the child you were. Sure, I know many people who haven't grown up yet, and some that are still a child at heart (me included) but believe me, if you want a good reputation in your school, your workplace, your forum or get any chance of becoming a Moderator, you need to take note here. I'm going to take note of every aspect of a mature person, a slightly mature person, and a child to start you on your way:

MATURE PEOPLE...
Know between right and wrong
Know when to draw the line
Know that younger people than them aren't as smart or mature as them, but don't hold prejudice against them
Don't add swears to spice up their speech, and only use them when needed
Don't act on impulse or let feelings interfere with their judgement
Don't put themselves ahead of others
Don't place a game as their whole life
Don't take anger out on other people
Have a sense of humor
Have a sense of humor that doesn't involve sexual topics every two minutes
Have the will to lead and the will to follow.
Aren't afraid to talk about sexual topics, but keep it away from people when needed
Aren't afraid to issue discipline when needed, even to a friend
Aren't afraid to admit that they're wrong
Aren't afraid to stand up for what's right
Aren't afraid to ask for help when needed
Know when NOT to ask for help
Can be trusted with important matters
Can forgive others, but know when not to.
Can follow orders
Can go with their gut feeling even when everyone else does the opposite
Can show mercy to those who need it, but can see through false mercy



SLIGHTLY MATURE PEOPLE...
Are somewhat unsure of what's right and what's wrong
Usually afraid to say "Enough is enough" but isn't afraid to continue with: "I have HAD IT with these mother****ing snakes on this mother****ing plane!" (aka, they bring humor into serious topics)
Sometimes swear to get a point across
Cannot issue discipline to a friend, but can to people they dislike
Tend to slip into immaturity when trying to be serious
Can admit they're wrong, but can't seem to admit they're wrong in something they think is important

IMMATURE PEOPLE...

(insert exact opposite of mature people here. Just to save a huge list)

Tend to act mature when in trouble.
TEND TO TALK IN ALL CAPS, LIKE THIS
Tend to talk about and joke about sexual topics A LOT
Tend to group together with other immature people
Tend to get in trouble on purpose
Find excuses for any and everything they do wrong or don't do.
Blame others for their mistakes
Accuse people without evidence, more so for feelings towards the person
Pick fights with mature people
Whine over little things
Are arrogant, and won't let others speak against them (Jack Thompson fits this criteria perfectly)
Tend to mess with people's heads through deception
Swear every two seconds
Lie a lot
Are power-hungry
Seek to be the center of attention all the time, whether through good deeds or bad

.......I can't stress how important it is to be mature. Even in this forum, you have encountered and will encounter an immature person. Is it enjoyable to meet him? No, it most likely is not. Because we are older, we dislike having people act like 7 year olds anywhere we go, as it is an extreme annoyance to us grown men/women. I'd put up a list of people that were on this forum that were banned for their immaturity, but that would be SCREAMING for a flame war on the discussion thread, so I won't. So, this has been Terwynd's Topics, running out of topics since 1996.

.......Seriously, I need some suggestions for topics. I've run out of em.

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CREDITS:
Written and created by: Terwynd
Inspired by: Too many to credit
Special thanks to all the mature people out there.

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"Terwynd, you've been playing CoD for 12 hours. Get off and help me with thi-"
NOO SHUT UP DRAINKIN AHM PWNING NOOBS GO **** A CREEPER
"Ok, fine, geez. and they call ME immature." If you can count exactly how many things were immature in that sentence, you win a cookie.

Copyright 2010 Terwynd Productions. All rights reserved

(OH, YOU SHOULD KNOW NOT TO POST ON THIS THREAD BY NOW, M I RITE?)

Game Review 2: Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped

.......Anyone who has had a PS1 should be no stranger to Crash Bandicoot and his rival, Spyro. Both of these franchises had EXCELLENT replay value, controls and storyline, however, nowadays the games aren't getting any justice, I.E, both teams have forgotten what made them so great in the first place: for crash, It was the pain-inducing difficulty and classic feel, and for Spyro, the glide mechanics and great-playing boss battles. Today we're going to look at the Crash Bandicoot game that stood out the most for me: Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. So, without further ado, let the review... BEGIN!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rwdz7cWXXI

.......Gameplay: Crash Bandicoot 3 is a 3D action platformer, meaning the game has to test the players depth perception, reaction time, and their use of the field and the abilities given to them. Crash 3 starts you out with a jump and a spin attack. Nothing too special. But as you progress through each boss, you receive a double jump ability, an upgrade to your spin, a dash ability, and a FREAKIN ROCKET LAUNCHER THAT SHOOTS FRUIT. Every 100 apples you collect, you recieve an extra life, and HOO BOY, you are going to need that extra life. The game operates much like I Wanna Be The Guy, it's about trial and error and memorizing the obstacles that killed you last that will get you to progress to the next level. Aku-Aku, your deity in a mask, appears inside boxes to give you a protective barrier against your foes, however, get 3, and Aku-Aku goes headcrab on you, latching onto your head without letting go for a short while as you mow down any and all in your way. However, after this, your protection is gone, and you'll need to get another Aku-box in order to survive that surprise- GRANADE! *boom* Crash Bandicoot is infamous for its difficulty "mountains and valleys", you might start off one level with 16 lives and come out of it with just 3, while the next one gets you dual Aku protection and 5 extra lives to boot to prepare you for a Game Over in the next level you choose. Oh, did I mention that you could CHOOSE which levels you do first in each zone? THAT WAS AWESOME! These things I've mentioned are the icons of a Crash game. You know a Crash game is good when it has the 6-level zone layout and the "mountains and valleys". Halfway through each level you receive a JEM. This is like a key to the boss level. After you complete the level, you can re-enter it to complete a time limit, which, when completed, awards you with either a blue, silver, gold, or platinum relic. These relics will unlock something quite awesome. I will not tell you what it is for various reasons.

.......Playability: This game had great controls and a good difficulty system. End of story. As for multiplayer, there IS NONE, so I can't rate this game on that. For the difficulty, I DO have one concern with the M & V system. Some levels are just not fun to play due to it. Either they're so hard you want to toss the controller at the screen, or so easy you could train a chimpanzee to play it for you. I could name a lot of levels that fit the criteria for the hard part ESPECIALLY THE UNDERWATER AND VEHICLE LEVELS.

.......Replay Value: This game is quite long for it's generation. I've had it since I had a PS1 and I STILL haven't completed the game! [offtopic] If you're like me, when you get a game, you want to complete it, you won't settle with just completing the main objective, or completing the story mode. No. You want to complete every challenge and optional quest in the game, unlock the best weapons and abilities, build up a detailed plan on your character's build, whether it's a stalwart warrior with a 68% chance to reflect and counter damage back at an enemy, or an ice mage with 80% off cast time and recharge, and detailed strategy plans to progress through every dungeon.[/offtopic] Same thing with Crash, you want to plan out your speed run to get that platinum relic, which will take you a while, and when you complete it, you may want to go back and revise the plan to achieve a lower time! Same with bosses.

.......Game Depth: CB3 can really immerse you into the world, then knock you out of it with a cheap death, so, this game suffers a little for it. other than that, the story is nice, short, sweet, yet detailed.

.......Sound: Like Super Mario World, the soundtrack and effects are classic and upbeat. the developers did a good job, as the "WOAH" sound was the only thing that prevented me from tossing my PS1 out the window in anger from dying too much.

.......Rewarding Experience: Yes. The game enhanced our approach to difficulty, made us react faster to obstacles and made us want to spin every time the school bully came to us only to have us get ridiculed for it .

Gameplay: 43/50
Playability: 12/15
Replay Value: 15/15
Game Depth: 8/10
Sound: 5/5
Rewarding experience? Yes. 5/5

TOTAL: 88
GREAT

This has been a Terwynd Review. Thank you for waiting.

Episode VI: On With the Show, This Is It.

.......Everyone knows about Roleplaying. Whether it be a Roleplaying game (RPG) or the Grox War RP, or Blackstar RP, All of you have been exposed to it. Some of you guys roleplay yourselves! However, there are some people who have negative thoughts about RPing, and some other people obsess over Roleplaying *cough cough*WoWRPserversandonlinedaters*cough cough* so, The topic today will cover any and everything about Roleplaying, both negative and positive. Que argument in the Discussion thread.

.......Roleplaying has actually been around for quite a while. Roleplaying originated in, get ready... ANCIENT GREECE. Yessir, The Ancient Greeks took a simple concept and took it toward retelling stories through a simple form we all know of: ACTING. Yes, acting in itself is roleplaying! Think of it, You are wearing a mask portraying a fictional character, along with all of his or her actions and words. Acting has affected us through movies, plays, Shakespeare, and always will affect us in the future with some new way in the future. Hell, even VIDEO GAMES portray a bit of roleplaying even if the game isn't an RPG, as you are controlling a character.

....... Anyway, Roleplaying is quite widespread throughout the world of forums. I can guarantee you that if you find ANY unofficial gaming forum, You'll find at least one RP and an RP section. I'm not joking, it is THAT wide-spread, which can get quite annoying at times, seeing 2 RPs in the top of the most recent posts and/or most popular threads can get REALLY annoying, especially if some of them are THOSE types of RPs. The ones that consist solely of online dating, sexual topics and po- [censored by federal law; THINK OF THE CHILDREN] Ok, ok, that's enough Mr. Government. However, as an owner of an RP myself, I can't really say too many bad things about RPs, as they can really get story-driven. In my mind, a good RP has to have a good array of skilled, mature people with a huge knowledge of character development; emotion, backstory, personality, and relationships. In any RP, once someone posts in a character, in order for the RP to retain a good reputation and/or gain a good one, the RPer must take in and study the other RPers characters and their development, then take all of that into account to create his own character, different from the rest of the others to open up some originality. Next, he must add a lot of detail in every post he makes. He must also consider the fact that the other RPer's characters have their own personalities, necessarily the same as the owner's personae. Also, the RP must have some sort of purpose, is it about survivors trying to survive a nuclear fallout? Is there a bomb squad looking for a series of antimatter bombs scattered around a highly populated city? Is it about young super powered animals in a school? Is it about people trapped in a hacked virtual reality system trying to kill the hacker? The story and purpose should be taken into account.

....... Well, That's all for this part. I will see if I can create a 2nd part later about WHY people RP. So, until then, See you later, and thank you for reading. This is Terwynd, signing off since 2010!

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Written and created by: Terwynd
Special thanks to: Gelatino95 for the RP suggestion, everyone who has joined Blackstar RP (ego trip... hehehe) and YOU for reading!
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So Drainkin, tell me about this new RP you just joi- OH GOD.
"OH, uh, Terwynd!"
What is this, WHAT IS THIS?! You've joined one of those po-
"Nononono. This isn't what it looks like. You got to believe me, man!"
What the hell is wrong with you?!
"Well, I've noticed that you were RPing on this RP, so I decided to check it ou- WAIT. ...Terwynd. You're ridiculing me, while you... ...Ter."
Umm... Yeah. I think I got to go to a bowling tournament... ...in another country. ...for 4 years. Bye.
"... Anyway, back to my little post. Hehehe..."

This has been a Terwynd production.

Top Ten things I Hate in Video Games

I don't know about you, but I play video games for three reasons: One, for the action and unique immersion that video games have, two, for exploring another person's imagination, and three, just because it's enjoyable. However, SOME video game developers decide to put things in their games that just make me hang my head in shame. These are the things I believe are the plagues of the video game industry, so please respect my opinion if you see me bash something you like, or praise something you hate. Without further ado, let's get this over with quickly.

#10: Continues.
Y'know, I think only I'm bothered by it, but, I gotta put it in here anyway. Continues just bother me because of what they make you do. Today, if you suffered a Game Over, you'd have to restart all over again from the last checkpoint if there WAS one. In the Arcades, if you lost all of your lives, you'd have to either A: cough up a quarter so you could continue where you left off, or B: suffer a Game Over and have your entire progress deleted. The Metal Slug series were the WORST offenders of this system. I died literally twice per minute because of the enemy placement, and due to the fact that Metal Slug only gives you 3 lives per quarter, I had to scrounge out a TON of quarters just to beat the first 2 levels. Now I know why arcades aren't so popular nowadays.

#9: Annoying enemies
Listen, I have nothing against having the player go up against enemies like the Medusa Head from Castlevania, or the Falcon from Ninja Gaiden, but do you really have to fight them every level? No you do not! It's especially bad when you have one block of health left and you encounter one of these guys. They've killed me more times than I can count!

#8: The Unstoppable Brute
These guys are even worse when paired up with Annoying Enemies. Why so? Because these guys are so hard to kill that when you actually DO kill one of them, another one pops up in the middle of the next room! I'm going to take the Boomerang Knight from the original Castlevania as the example. He takes way too many hits to die, and when paired up with the Medusa Heads on the way to fight the Grim Reaper, you will die frequently. AS IF THE BOSS FIGHT AT THE END DIDN'T KILL ME ENOUGH!

#7: Repetitive Dialogue.
You know what? I'm just going to use three videos to explain my point here. Listen to them at the same time for effect.


*shoots bullet in mouth*

#6: Bad Controls.
It doesn't matter if it's the best game in the world, it will suck if the controls are bad. For example, Resident Evil 5 is an action game, so naturally, you'd expect smooth, easy to use controls. Not the case. Also, in Too Human, the attack button is the freaking RIGHT CONTROL STICK. You know, the stick that usually controls the camera? It doesn't matter if the game is Super Mario Galaxy or Minecraft, or World of Warcraft, if the controls are bad, I'm not playing it. Plain and simple.

#5: Jump-Scares
You know what these are. It's when something scary suddenly pops up in the screen and startles the ever living **** out of you when you feel the most calm! In Dead Space 1 and 2, you will get startled a lot. A LOT. Eventually, the scares just kinda fade away after a while because you adapt to becoming startled, and half the time, if Jump-Scares are THAT common in the game, they become really predictable, and you'll start to yawn when a jump-scare occurs! Don't even get me started when you're startled for the first time in Penumbra: Overture. Oh, don't worry, I wasn't going to use that pair of undergarments anytime soon!

#4: Overly Frustrating Game
... I Wanna Be The Guy, Ninja Gaiden, Super Meat Boy, and every Bullet Hell game out there. That's all I'm going to say. GAH.

#3: QuickTime events
Picture this: you are running along a nice stretch of land, minding your own business, looking for some monsters to kill, and a cut-scene appears and Holyhelltheresamonsterabouttodecapitateyouunlessyoupressthexbutton but you weren't ready for it so you die and have to restart from the last save point! Yeah, QuickTime events are just frustrating due the low amount of time it takes for you to react to them and the sheer repetitive nature of having to press a certain button combination over and over again! I wanted to kill a Jedi Master in Force Unleashed, not play a game of Simon, DAMMIT!

#2 Escort Missions.
These things are ALWAYS bad. In an escort mission, your objective is to get someone from point A to B without having them die. This is very frustrating because the AI for the person you're trying to escort moves ridiculously slow, fights enemies before you even notice that they're there, have low health, and to top it all off, enemies spawn in your path frequently. The worst offender by FAR is World of Warcraft. In one of the low-level dungeons, after you kill the 4 Serpent Lords, you have to escort a Tauren Druid ALL the way from the entrance of the dungeon to Narrilax's chamber. He sure takes his sweet ****ing time getting there too, he walks all the way there, which took around, oh, I don't know, 10 FULL MINUTES? This was boring! He walked slower than actual players could walk, and whenever an enemy appeared, he started to run to fight, then, when the fight was over, he would run BACK to the point he stopped walking, AND WALK FROM THERE. THANK GOD THE CATACLYSM VERSION OF THE DUNGEON FIXED THAT ISSUE.

#1: Dissapointing/Terrible/Random/Easy Final Boss.
When I think Final Boss, I think of a battle of epic proportions that plays great, signifies the plot, has a ton of build-up, and outright had at least SOME thought put into it! That doesn't seem to be the case with bosses like Necron from FFVIII, 323 Guilty Spark from Halo 3, Lucien From Fable II, Jasper Batt Jr from No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle and the Giant Bowser from Super Mario Galaxy 2. These bosses are just terrible in every way due to their low memorabiliy, and the fact that some of them pop out of nowhere! Seriously, I wanted to fight a God-like Kuja, not some random deity that literally comes out of nowhere! In 323 Guilty Spark's case, He's the Final Boss for the whole Halo trilogy, instead of something like the Arbiter or the Gravemind which both had some build-up and would actually be a nice challenge. With Lucien and Jasper Batt Jr, it's the sheer, uncanny dissatisfaction, and from the Giant Bowser, he's insultingly easy! Final Bosses are the biggest point of a game, so if you screw it up, you just left a bitter taste in the mouths of your loyal fans! I can not stress this fact enough. Final Bosses are supposed to be fun, engaging, satisfying, hard, have build up, and, in a nutshell, not suck!

I'm Terwynd, this has been a Terwynd Countdown, and I think these bosses deserve to be fed to the Finding Nemo Seagulls!
----------------------------------
Credits:
Written and typed by: Terwynd
Inspired by: The Autarch of Flame (peanut3423) and The Fiery Joker (joshschorcher)
Special Thanks to You for reading!

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"Maybe we DO know where he went, But I'll never tell YOU! HAHAHAHA!!!"
*Holds up crab from the surface of the water*

MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!
MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!
BURN TO THE GROUND! BURN!! BURN!! BURN TO TH- BURN
LEON! LEON? LEON!! LEON... LEON
GET A LOAD OF THIS. GET A LOAD OF THIS. GET A LOAD OF THIS.
HEY. HEY. LISTEN! HEY! HEY LISTEN
NO GRAHAM DON'T! GRAHAM, LOOK OUT! CAREFUL GRAHAM, LOOK OUT! GRAHAM, DON'T STAY TOO CLOSE TO THE EDGE!!
Oh, GORDON FREEMAN! HEY GORDON! Aah... GORDON FREEMAN. I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO TELL YOU TO SHUT UP. Sometimes.... I DREAM about cheese.... CHEESE.
STAB STAB STAB! STAB STAB STAB! POOT DISPENCER HEER. NEED A DISPENSER HERE! NEED A DISPENSER HERE!
Where's that DAMN fourth chaos emerald?

"OK, OK, I'LL TALK, I'LL TALK!!"

-.-. .-. . .- - .. --- -. .-- .- ... .- .-.. .. .
TOP TEN THINGS I LIKE IN VIDEO GAMES

Well, now that I'm back and all, I'm going to show you a countdown I had a lot of fun making. Since I made a countdown about the top ten things I hate in video games, I think it's about time I make something about what I actually LIKE in video games. I am also going to include games that I have played as great examples, so try em out if you haven't already! Alright Engie, take this one from the top will ya?

"Yeah! ERECTIN A COUNTDOWN."

#10: Character Creation
RPG-wise, I personally like having a character that I make from my own preferances from fighting. When you see me on any online RPG like World of Warcraft, you'll usually find me being either the Warrior or the Rogue. I also like the fact that on some character creators, you can customise your character's look. Now, every online game out there has this feature, but I prefer the big budget ones, like the ones Bethesda uses in Elder Scrolls and Fallout. My favorite of all time is without a doubt Oblivion's. Uriel Septim, meet FATCAKES McCHEEK the ugly Wood elf!

Uriel:"Your face... I've seen it in my dreams."

...*shiver*

#9: Fun Things Developers didn't intend for you to do
The only reason this isn't higher on the list is because there are such a few amount of games that allow you to do such things like spamming text to speech on the moon, or making everybody's arms and legs go crazy, or going under the map, or falling under bedrock, or going to world -1, or making everybody in the Sistine shapel go "LEAVE ME ALONE, I'VE DONE NOTHING!!", or even walking the Dinosaur. All these things contribute to the game's fun factor, and if it wasn't for things like this, Certain games would never have recieved the attention they recieve today, like Moonbase Alpha.

#8: Awesome Attacks
You know what? Just play Mike Shadow: I paid for it!(<--link) for around an hour and you'll know what I mean. PURE EYE CANDY.

#7: Tutorials (done right)
Just imagine going into a game not knowing what the hell you press to attack. Yeah, having an easy tutorial level or even a training mode can really help a first-time player and can even undo the effect of bad controls to a degree.

#6: Online Multiplayer
I think I speak for everyone when I say that multiplayer makes the game experience way more fun when you battle against actual players. Examples? Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, World of Warcraft, and Minecraft servers. It's especially fun when you're actually playing with a real-life friend of yours or with some guy you met and made friends with on a forum.And I know that it's nothing but pure fact. Isn't that right, Engie? "Spai sappin m-" *death scream* "Ahem. Howdy, partner." I will take that as a yes, buddy.

#5: Assassination Stealth
I don't like having to go the traditional Metal Gear Solid way of stealth that much. It's not bad, don't get me wrong, but it's not my thing. I'm the type that prefers to sneak up behind a patrolling guard while he's out of the other guy's line of sight, swiftly yet quietly killing him via a knife to the back, disquising as him, then walk past a guard post onto my main target, which I assassinate, then escape quickly before I get either set on fire or get ganged up on by 6 Brutes. So basically, Team Fortress 2, Assassins creed 1, 2, and Brotherhood, and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

#4: Destruction
Hell. Yes. It really gains a game my high regards when you have the ability to blow stuff up. It just gives you a sense of power or superiority over your enemies. Games that portray this VERY greatly include PROTOTYPE, where pretty much all you do is destroy the ever living HELL out of Manhattan, and Destroy all Humans, which lets you shoot [dr.evil]FRIGGEN LAZOR BEAMS[/dr.evil] at buildings out of a UFO, and send METEORS against armies. In terms of racing games, Burnout is the undisputed champion of the bunch with it's genious crash mechanics and the Crash mode, so if you're a Burnout fan out there, I salute you, and may your crashes be fast and destructive.

#3: Open World Environments (Non-linear gameplay)
When paired up with destruction, there is almost nothing that can top this. I don't think I have anything else to say other than Grand Theft Auto, Spiderman 2 and 3, PROTOTYPE, inFamous, Minecraft, and Just Cause 2.

#2: User Generated Content
You all know what I mean. Little Big Planet, Spore, Darkspore, The Sims, Garry's Mod and Minecraft say it all. When you have a game that gives you the option to create your own world and everything in it, the game just gets so much more depth and fun factor especially when you .

#1: Immersive World
Think about it. When have you ever played a game, felt immersed into the world, and it didn't feel good? When a game immerses you into the world it portrays, there is absolutely nothing that can prevent you from having fun. Take a Bethesda game for instance. Obviously, a lot of work was put into it to make you feel like you're inside of the actual world whether it's in a fantasy land or a post-apocalyptic USA. The environments all stay to the theme which it portrays and makes the game much more interesting to play. Horror games like Amnesia use immersion to promote the fear and overall paranoia that comes with it, monster encounters are truly horrific and puzzles much more satisfying to complete. All in all, the way that some developers make the worlds interesting and realistic to the point of believability makes this my favorite thing to see in a video game.

If you have any game that matches any of the things I added to the list, please recomend them to me, I have a growing library and am anxious to get a new game. Thank you for reading, and have a good day.
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Written by: Terwynd
Special thanks to: Too many to credit, but mostly to YOU for reading!
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Terwynd's Topics: Ter's Recomendations 1. Free To Play

Hello, this is Terwynd, and I'm going to give you something that stays true to what I promised in a post on the Discussion Thread. The promise that I will stay positive for a while. I'm going to give you a couple games that I find are interesting. I'm not saying you will like them. I'm saying that they are interesting and you should probably go try it out. I will be giving you only 3 games today, so enjoy!

Russias Army




Genre: FPS, Multiplayer
Overall, Russias Army is a great free FPS. It's got 6 weapons, the pistol, the shotgun, a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher, an AK47 and a sniper rifle, all of which have their ups and downs. The only real issue that I have with it is that when you die, you are kicked out of the server and must rejoin. This gets really annoying after a while. The rockets and grnades are a tad overpowered, but in having them, it's a surprizingly good way to practice playing the Soldier and Demoman from TF2.

Pros:
Good gameplay
Low system specs

Cons:
Disconnect on death
Wonky Hit Detection

Ace of Spades




Genre: FPS, Multiplayer, Creative.

What do you get when you smash guns and Minecra- I mean, blocks, together? You get Ace of Spades. The objective of the game is to capture the enemy briefcase and bring it to your base. You also get a nice plane of land to mine tunnels, along with some blocks which you can use to build bases and erect sniper towers. The game is so low in system specs that it merely says, "Your grandmother's rig could run this game" However... The pixelation effect he added, as you can see in the second picture, is very annoying, especially when you're trying to find your way out of a tunnel system that leads either straight up or straight down. Still, Ace of Spades is good for killing the time.

Pros:
Great combonation of elements from Minecraft and FPSes.
Low System specs.

Cons:
Horrible pixelation effect
Good servers are hard to find

Kerbal Space Program




Genre: Creative, Simulation
Kerbal Space Program is very similar to Spore, but is way different. KSP lets you design your own rocket and send it into space. May not seem like such a big deal, but when you play it and blow up the first time, you'll never stop. Kerbal Space Program is still under HEAVY development because it's been released very recently as an Alpha. So far, the choice of parts is limited unless you get some mods, but the parts are very useful. and can be placed pretty much anywhere. But the best part? The explosions.

Pros:
Great physics and destruction engine
Rocket creator is almost identical to Spore

Cons:
Very hard to get rockets into orbit
Very little content

LINKS
Russias Army: http://www.gamevial.com/playgames.php?game=russiasarmy
Ace of Spades: http://ace-spades.com/
Kerbal Space Program: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/

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Credits:
Written by Terwynd
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Special thanks: You for Reading!

-------Well ain't this a spectacle. I'm back and all I see is a gray screen in which I'm supposed to type clever things to make you laugh. How dreadfully dull, and to think I was about to do this show on freaking YouTube. So for the uninformed, if you were wondering what happened to the show, I got two things to tell you: one, You obviously have been living under a rock, and two, on a related topic, Patrick Star wants his rent payed, and he's brought a flash mob to come collect it. No, not with pitchforks, I mean a literal flash mob complete with Trenchcoats. And butt cheek flags. And no signs of underwear in the premises... and no, Mrs. Puff isn't there you hormonal Rule 34 worshiper.

-------But the real point of the post today is to talk about a certain epidemic that's been plaguing North America for a while now. It's an insidious, highly infectious disease that has killed hundreds already, and shows no sign of slowing down. A chaotic scene that arrives with a full blown apocolypse up and knocking our doors, posing as our favorite Gamestop employee. And yes, I'm talking about zombies, but not in the way you'd expect. You see, we all love us some zombie action, but there's certainly something missing about them. You see, behind all that rotting flesh and deteriorating, ruptured organs which you probably shot a couple times with a sawed-off, there's some unexplainable thing with the idea of zombies that drives everyone to prepare for their arrival in movies, games, and even literature. But they're not a direct threat to the fun, presumably drunken scene after your wedding, rather, they're the life of the entire damn stag party. That's what zombies have turned into nowadays in all forms of media; they're the perfect target practice for the zombie apocalypse. However, to most people, it's their dream scenario rather than a horrifying statement of the fragility of the human mind, and the whole human race as a whole. This was what they tried to do (and failed to) back in the 1960s, but was pulled off rather well recently with the new Dawn of the Dead TV show. And that's why we love zombies, they're versatile and can fit pretty much any scenario a game developer can throw at your little eyeballs and smack on your game controller, with zombie games coming out so quickly that I swear to god that when you compile all the recent releases, they look like a cheesy poster backdrop for a really bad horror movie from the 80's. You know, the kinds that are aimed towards young teens, and contain 2 minute long scream queen scenes?
Yeah, that kind of movie.

-------But the point is, we've been coming out with a lot of zombie titles nowadays that all try to do something different with the idea. We just got ZombiU which put you as a randomly generated dude just trying to survive with what remained of London to help you survive, we're getting Dead Space 3 which pits you against different looking necromorphs from the first two games, equipped with space-age weaponry which you craft yourself and get jump-scared every mission, we got the Left 4 Dead games which focus on coop between 4 people versus the insanely powerful Special Infected, we've got Dead Rising which goes all goofy in a zombie-infested shopping mall with the real threat being psychopathic humans, We've got DayZ which is basically a zombie MMO, we've got various Resident Evil sequels, cartoony zombie games, realistic zombie games and uh... *ergh* Dead Island... I'll get to that later.

-------And in fact, while all these games do something genuinely different and interesting from one another, they all just feel like they're overused as a villain to a game. I mean, look at Lollipop Chainsa- NO, not up Juliet's skirt, dammit, look at the setting and main villians. The zombies could have been easily replaced with anything else, even brainwashed humans if you want to get down to specifics, but really, the zombie situation in that game was really random. Not that I don't like random, randomness always has a charm to me, but this type of random makes the setting in Lollipop Chainsaw look rushed, as if they were desperate to find an idea to use, and while the game really wasn't serious to begin with, poking fun at music genres and washed up stars from old times, it really bugs me to see zombies being used for every possible situation, eventually tearing the game down. You want more examples? Sniper Elite Nazi Zombie Expansion completely negates the purpose of being a sniper when a horde comes rushing towards you, Saints Row 3 changes an entire island into a zombie breeding ground out of nowhere with no forewarning of it ever happening, Dead Isl- *agh* ...and Dead Island is just... I'm honestly at a loss of words of how to describe it, so I'm going to call its main problem Dead Island Syndrome.

-------But what exactly is Dead Island Syndrome? Well, I'm about to tell you, ya silly wally, now sit down and listen. Dead Island, as you all have heard, was advertised in it's freaking amazing trailer as a somber, emotional tale of you as a survivor in a vacation resort, with a realistic gore engine as the icing on the cake for all your zombie smashing needs. However, that's not my gripe about it, nor were there any lack of emotion or sad moments; those were actually well paced and were executed well, but It seems to me that the developers of Dead Island got cocky with what they wanted to do with the game. They added way too many features into the game, trying to be a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to a zombie game, and they failed so miserably at it due to how many of these features were ripped from so many games! They've got a levelling system which I swear to god is almost exactly the same as Borderland's system, They did some Dead Rising 2 styled crafting which made insanely overpowered weapons that made the game a breeze to walk through, they added in human vs. human missions where you awkwardly try to shoot gun-toting bandits while they're behind cover while failing to notice the painfully hidden exploding barrels, and they added Special Infected that suspiciously resembles the specials in Left 4 Dead 2. And when I say suspiciously similar, I mean blatantly ripped off! The Ram has identical abilities and traits as the L4D2 Charger with the exception of the hand smashing and the Floater is literally exactly the same as the Boomer, in addition to copying the abilities, they didn't even bother to make it at least look different than the boomer. I mean look at it, it's damn hilarious when you compare the two:

Spoiler:

-------So yes, Dead Island along with Dead Island Syndrome is the result when a game tries too hard to be a multitude of things, focusing on so many aspects yet failing on every platform. and really, that's a problem with zombie games; the devs never seem to decide what they want their game to be. Even in Dayz, the game awkwardly switches from a survival game where you scavenge for food while constantly running away from the string of zombies you attracted towards you while doing so to a shoot-em-up where you can kill other players for all the goods you need the moment you find a firearm or a good melee weapon, then switches right back to the run-away-fest when you expend all your ammunition, only this time with players hunting you down as well due to your bandit tag. It's almost always a system of extreme power diverging. The zombies are always a threat when you've just started your zombie survival adventure, but that danger always fades the more and more decked out your inventory gets. That power leap always happens with every zombie game out there. At least with Left 4 Dead 2 is involved, the game doesn't start you out completely useless, it gives you effective weapons to fight off the horde, and when the bigger weapons come into the game later, They really don't do anything noticeably better for you other than personalize your survival strategies against different Special infected, with snipers effective against campy Spitters and Boomers while shotguns take down Chargers, Tanks and even witches extremely quickly at close range, and to spice things up, machine guns can pick off the horde quickly. But whenever a survival based game tries to make the game interesting by adding in powerful weapons, it kills the whole sense of "Oh my Jesus, oh my damn, zombie horde in my way, wat do?" and instead replaces that setting with "Zombie Horde? Ain't nobody got time for that!"
So there; point made. let's move on before I reference more memes. I think I'd better stop now before I make a Harlem Shake reference. Who wants to put up with that in a TT episode?

-------So I propose a game where you stay helpless throughout the whole game, even when you find firearms. A game where zombies will withstand the buckshot you unleash on them and use the horde to their advantage at the same time. A game where you liberate and lead an entire small town in the face of the apocalypse and head this new safe haven's scavenging quotas while defending against the dead bashing down the walls you just made. In fact, you want a good zombie game that covers this idea, look at the flash game Rebuild, along with its sequel, Rebuild 2. Those games execute the feeling that you're running a save haven almost perfectly. It gives you the feeling that the dead are always slowly tearing away your barricades, and you need to manage resources and different clearing missions effectively before the next horde wave comes. Now I really don't see any reason to keep going into specifics as to how I personally want a zombie game to be like; it sounds pretentious and optimistic without looking at the practicality of how a game is made, so I'll narrow it down into points.

-------WHAT A ZOMBIE FPS SHOULD BE LIKE:

1: You must manage a team holding a maximum of 200 dynamic AI'ed survivors in a small town as your main base, all of which can gain experience from doing jobs assigned to them. In order to keep your men alive, you must send teams (and participate in them as well) to scavenging missions set in bigger cities, which are rich in resources, but overrun by zombies. Doing these institutes survivor bases by doing the scavenging and zombie clearing missions. How do you do those missions, set up bases in these cities and discover better equipment? BY PLAYING THE GAME, STUPID. For balance reasons and for the sake of reason 2, leave these cities small, real locations that house only 10,000 at most, but remain an extremely dangerous environment for even the most experienced players.

2: Game in total must be truly horrifying. I'm not just talking about gory, scary zombies that look like something out of a horror film that go splat when you hit them, I'm talking about eerie scenery, realistic, near pitch-black lighting in dark rooms or at night, grinding SFX accompanied by Amnesia-style vision blur when in melee combat with a zombie, and chaotic, muffled screaming noises and powerful, thumping bass when a horde is running straight for you, getting louder as they get closer, and softening only when the horde can't find you in your hiding spot. however, if they do find you hiding in that closet... They sneak up to it and yank the door open as you die slowly from the feast on your flesh, completely helpless as you wait for the game to give you the option to load your last save. Also, it would help to never, EVER mention large cities such as New York, let the player imagine what those metropolises would be like. Game must also support large amounts of dynamic AI to support the sheer size of both the zombie horde and your survivor army.

3: Armor and weapons do not have to be fancy to be effective, and this means *da dun da doo dee doo* A crafting system. However, this crafting system must be extremely restrictive and is meant for making makeshift weapons and armor, not to make extremely overpowered weapons to make the game a breeze to walk though *AHEM* DEAD ISLAND *SUBTLETY* *AHEM* Yes, this means wearing cardboard and tin armor and armed with a fireplace poker with bent spikes, while it sounds goofy, could end up saving your life in a zombie fight, and hell, the combo could be tailored to your needs in combat. Would you take a normal baseball bat, or mod it with nails, which do more damage, but risk having it stick to the zombie you hit, leaving you basically weaponless if you don't have a backup? Will you use that aerosol can to rig a weak version of a frag grenade to stun an incoming horde or save it till you can make a flamethrower, which actually makes the zombies more dangerous for the time they're still alive?

4: Weapons must be largely ineffective against a horde rushing towards you. The absolute largest amount of zombies you can take in a fight, even with the best weapons and gear in the game must be no bigger than a group of 50. Without taking any damage at all? Try around a group of 10. Mind you, this is with top tier gear with a high level character where hordes can reach sizes of around 300 zombies, or even more than that. You want to take out a horde that size? Bring all your men to fight with you, and watch some of them die helping you.

5: There must be a slight possibility of being infected with the zombie plague whenever you're attacked by a zombie. There is a cure, but that cure is rare and takes larger dosages the longer you've been infected to serve as punishment for not having a cure ready with you at all times. The infection must be quick acting, but slow enough for you to find yourself appropriate dosages on the occasion where you run out of it, punishing you for not taking it in time with increasingly severe status ailments and disabling the saving system followed by an inevitable death if you can't find one in time.

-------So there. I've said my peace about it. That's what a freaking zombie survival game should absolutely be about. Horrifying and immersive environments and SFX, Heavily about training a survivor army and managing a safe haven, and all about true survival. If you see any games that do these well, please show me so I can play them. I know that No More Room In Hell is a lot like this, but if there's anything else that fits any of the criteria listed above, please give me the name of the game in the discussion thread so I can look it up and spend my life savings on it and possibly live my life as a park bench warmer. kthxbai.

-------WELP! That's that! This freaking pilot is finally done! I hope you enjoyed reading more than I enjoyed writing this with the deadline I set, and I hope this episode doesn't feel rushed, I set an almost impossible deadline, so the quality of the episode might not have reached the quality that it should have. But by all means, please give me criticism on this episode, it improves my writing and gives me some red lights to watch out for if I ever have to rush another episode again. It's all about giving you guys the best possible piece of writing to wake up to in the morning, or for you Aussies in the GAC, the best possible thing to come back from school from. This has been the first episode of Terwynd's Topics, and I hope this series goes as strong as I hope it will.

-------Terwynd

----------
-------Just a warning to anyone who hasn't completed both the original Bioshock and Infinite, there will be HEAVY SPOILERS. If you don't want to be spoiled because you haven't finished the games, read no further, I will not go through the process of trying to hide certain parts of the game from you. Trying to make this article as legible as possible is hard enough with my style of writing without being abliged to censor certain parts. Besides, Infinite has been released a long time ago, you should be done with it by now.

Now with that out of the way, let's begin.



Bioshock 1:
-----------
-------Turns out being under the sea isn't exactly the perfect utopia The Little Mermaid envisioned. It wasn't a reality for Andrew Ryan, and it sure wasn't one for the people who played that one game that took place in his city. What game was it you ask? Of course you aren't asking that, everyone knows what Rapture is. It was the anarchic, dead city where Bionicles I mean... Bioshock... spent the whole game guiding you through. The plot? Your plane crashed near a lighthouse which happens to be a secret entryway to the city, and now the whole splicer-overrun town wants you dead. It was a cool game for the most part, it had a great intro, awesome sound work and it was definitely more of a psychological horror adventure than a standard shooter. All this translated into what some people call the closest a video game has come to art, and in that sense, I agree with them. The ambient feeling of being stuck in the middle of a crematorium as splicers stalk you throughout came almost as eerily as Amnesia: Dark Descent did. It truly was a horrifying experience despite the fact that you have weapons to defend yourself with. But even in a game like this, there lie some problems. Problems that I honestly find a little hard to explain without showing you gameplay footage, but problems that bothered my play experience.

First, I found the combat to have huge difficulty gaps. The combat against splicers in the beginning where you would never use a first aid kit would quickly shift into a full-on deathmatch when you fight your first Big Daddy. I used almost all my health packs and still died twice due to the Daddy's powerful attacks; three or two hits and you're dead! It honestly caught me off guard the first time I fought one, even though I had plenty of warning from both the appearance of the Daddy itself and the characters themselves. The times when you set off an alarm were also a bit harsh, I know that there had to be some kind of punishment for setting off an alarm, but just because I fail in hacking a defunct turret doesn't mean I deserve to fight off a full minute of flying machine guns, right? I guess I do deserve that if I fail the easy hacking minigame, but when you've survived, all the ammo you've been trying to conserve goes straight down the drain. Speaking of ammo, Ammunition is actually really hard to come by, which is tricky when you need to fight off Big Daddies and shoot cameras out from a distance. Then comes the situational uses of your Plasmids. A lot of times, a certain situation will require you to use a specific plasmid to progress through the game, and while this is okay if it's just introduced, it's not okay to do it again halfway through the game when your energy levels are exhausted from battle. Coupled with the fact that you can only equip two Plasmids at a time, You will be visiting the Plasmid selection menu a lot during these situational encounters.


-----------
-------But ok, I think I made my point. While I really couldn't explain all the problems I had with Bioshock, as most of them are personal nitpicks, I personally didn't enjoy it all too much. I was a little disappointed, to be honest. Though the game was scary and it had a good atmosphere, it didn't hit all the right notes for me. It had its good moments, like the whole Fort Frolic level with Sander Cohen, and the beginning 2 hours, but after that it burnt out, and left me bored, which isn't right. I know that Bioshock's not supposed to be an action game, and more of an interactive story, but feeling bored is not a good thing when you're playing a game. This left me to stop playing the game entirely, still lying in my steam library as the one game that you never get back to, but even for the sake of this article, I couldn't bring myself to play it again, and I don't expect to return to it ever again.

So I'm guessing the question at hand is: Did Infinite fix these problems and add more new things? ...Well of course it didn't fix everything you big dumb. YA BIG DAMB. If I could summarize what they did to change the game, I could narrow it down to the following headers:

1: Cinematic Feel

2: Money/Ammunition Supply

3: Combat in General

4: Elizabeth


Cinematics:
-----------
-------Let's talk about the cinematic point first, as it's easily the most positive change to the game. Now what bored me about Bioshock was the fact that you were just kind of... there. You didn't talk, you couldn't really hold a conversation between anyone because your buddy Atlas was too busy ordering me around asking if I could kindly do stuff for him. What you did in the game, with the exception of killing Ryan, you never really do or see anything that dramatically changes the city of Rapture, or anyone for that matter. In Infinite... You storm the airbourne equivalent of the Statue of Liberty single-handedly to kidnap the girl who lives there who can open tears in reality, then survive an onslaught by her flying Big Daddy as it destroys the statue and sends you into an artificial pool, leaving you to drown before waking up, traversing half the city to go through not one, but TWO alternate universes, killing thousands of people from two different warring factions along the way, including both leaders of said factions, then you gain control of the girl's Big Daddy and use it to destroy an entire fleet of zeppelins and finish off the statue that it almost completely destroyed earlier in order to give the girl godlike improvements over her already impressive reality-warping powers, transporting you to the multiverse in order to kill you before you become the bad guy who captured Elizabeth in the first place- *GASP* You see that? That's a pretty big deal. Not only do you do this mostly all on your own, but you get to see the results of your actions, something Bioshock 1 didn't have much of. Other than two moments; Atla's Betrayal and the ending, nothing you did seemed to matter because the splicers always do more than you. Kill the most famous surgeon in the city? Don't worry, that's never mentioned again. What about all the sudden Big Daddy corpses littering the city around the path you took? That's not mentioned either.

Now, how about when Elizabeth kills the Vox Leader? ...bad example. How about when you kill Comsto- no... um... The ghost of Elizabeths mother? No, not that one either, the waves of police deaths i- C'mon, there's gotta be something inside the game that notices and cares about what you did, right?
RIGHT?

RIGHT?!

Well the answer is actually a blunt NO.

Despite the circumstance you're in, the infamous False Shephard doesn't receive a lot of credit for what he does. The big 'AD' tattoo on his hand coupled with how much you're hunted down throughout the game by the Columbian police should be enough identification for townsfolk to run inside and board all the windows, but no; after a lot of harsh, bloody conflict in Battleship Bay's ticket booth and the bloodbath in the history museum, you literally open a garage-door to a calm district of the city right beside all the gunplay. Nothing's mentioned, the town watch isn't going rampant about how the False Shephard just took out an entire Secret Police force and a rogue Mercenary Squad single handedly in the buildings next to them; there's just an ice cream shop right out the door where people and police alike just stand there like nothing happened! What, does brainfreeze deafen people at high altitudes? What's going on in the minds of Columbian citizens, were they too busy listening to Duke and Dimwit Announcements? If so, they're obviously not doing a good job at not being a Dimwit!

The same thing applies when you, Elizabeth, and all the rubble starts falling into Battleship Bay before the previous incident happens. Songbird just destroyed a bridge and a flying Statue of Liberty and you wake up to a beach where people dance and perform yoga. Look at the following video and note how much debris falls into the beach here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnuHLPvCi-8

Now look at this scene 15 minutes afterwards where everyone suddenly notices what happened to the statue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=q2yDw0OwvQQ#t=900

Shouldn't that have been their reaction from the get-go? I mean if all that debris poured into the beach from the former video you'd think at least one person in that heavily populated beach would've noticed the tides look a little different or something. I don't know if I'm looking into this too hard, but the point I'm trying to get across is that YOU DO awesome stuff, YOU DO notice what you did, but the game and everything in it, including Booker himself, doesn't care. It's like winning money in a game show without an audience; it doesn't matter what you end up winning, there's going to be dead silence coming from the stands, and you're going to be the only one in the building yelling your lungs out that you won the million dollars.

Dollars n' Brass:
-----------
-------But enough about that and on to the second aspect of the game that's changed: Money and Ammunition Supplies. In Bioshock 1, there was no such thing as saving up for a huge upgrade because A: You couldn't buy them with cash to begin with, B: Money was hard to come by, and C: All the money you DID have would be spent on Ammunition and Medkits to keep you ALIVE. You were never rich in the game, and when you were, it was because you braved it out using nothing but your least favorite weapons and your wrench, before going back to poor when you realize that using a gun requires ammo and guns equal less deaths. When you loot bodies for ammo in Rapture, you'll find that they had about as much ammo as you had; next to none. This all helped you feel like you were in a crumbling city, fighting for your life like everyone else. In Columbia, the setting is the exact opposite; a utopian society on the verge of destruction, but hasn't reached Rapture levels just yet. This means that there's more ammo and money to toss around in Infinite. Enemies are fully loaded at all times, and so are you, for the most part. Plasmids -I mean Vigors are supplied with more than enough Salts to keep you at Dumbledore levels of powerful throughout a fight, and when you run out, a certain someone helps you out. I'll get to that later.

This supply of ammo and cash to upgrade your weapons and Plasmids -VIGORS overall fits well in Columbia, even if you can only carry two weapons.

Terwynd wrote:

even if you can only carry two weapons

Terwynd wrote:

you can only carry two weapons

Terwynd wrote:

two weapons

...

Sadly... no, I'm not. Instead of 7 like in Bioshock 1, you're stuck with two, and this is where the ammo problems arise. There are a total of 14 unique weapons in Bioshock Infinite, double the amount in the original, that means the enemies you fight have a 1 in 7 chance of carrying ammo on their bodies that you can use without switching weapons every two fights, and it gets annoying at times when a certain someone doesn't feel like giving you ammo. normally I'd let this slide, but half the guns are simply reskins of the same gun that operate slightly differently, like how the Vox variations of the carbine and machine gun only fire in 3-round bursts. While I'm fine if it uses at least uses the same ammo, the difference is that they use entirely different ammo, and in essence, are the same weapon. With the combination of a dumbed-down arsenal and expensive weapon upgrading, they might as well have been used as ammo types instead of full weapons. Hell, if ammo types could be included as separate weapons altogether, then Bioshock had a total of 21 weapons accessible to you! In Infinite's case, with only two weapons, you might as well not buy the weapon upgrades if just switching weapons all the time is better for ammo than with the two same weapons the whole game, even if you get the damage upgrades. But the battles in Infinite are all designed with the thought that you need to perfect your weapon loadout, with all sorts of possibilities in every battlefield you run though, whether you get close and personal with the shotgun and flak cannon, or pick them off from a distance with a carbine and sniper rifle. It's a feature that's put in the wrong game. The reason some games limit your weapon choices is because it's meant for action between weak enemies in close-quarter shootouts or for multiplayer balancing, not for a large, dynamic single-player battleground that extends for hours on end! In infinite, the battles are almost designed like puzzles, with some weapons having a huge advantage in some areas and lacking in others, much like early shooters like, say, Doom. If that's the case, why was this downgrade added to the game? You want to know why? Fine, I'll just tell you straight up with the point 3 of the changes in Infinite: The Combat.

The Combat:
-----------
------- I'm not going to beat around the bush here, Bioshock Infinite tries too hard to be a Modern Shooter and the combat mechanics suffer as a direct cause of it. Don't believe me? Allow me to list the traits and what they do: You can have only two weapons equipped at once, this means that you will run out of ammo often unless either Elizabeth gives you some (we'll get to that later), or you find a vending machine. This borderline FORCES you to switch weapons every time you enter a new battleground because enemies aren't going to drop ammunition for weapons they aren't firing, which can make it really, really hard on you if you just spent all your cash on a damage upgrade for your favorite weapon, only to have the enemies drop ammo for everything BUT the ammo said gun needs. You have a shield which regenerates when you're behind cover, a shield that, even when fully upgraded, is broken after a few seconds in enemy fire, prolonging fights by awkwardly having you run for your life in dire situations. Now the problem here is how persistent the enemy AI is on getting up in your face. Most of the time the shield is gone if you're directly fighting an enemy, and while it ends up protecting you from a LOT of damage if you upgrade it enough, it only serves to reinforce the fact that you can just blindly run through enemy fire without worry instead of planning your approach. So already those are two mechanics that work well in Halo, but not here. Now for the enemies. The common enemies have low health and serve only as cannon fodder in between Motorized Patriots, and occasionally, Handymen. they don't really pose too much of a threat unless they gang up on you, which they do all the time, and reward you when you search their bodies. Their bodies reward you a little too much; having a cake drop from every enemy that restores like an eighth of your health just kinda ruins the challenge if all you're going to do is kill 5 guys and restore all your health and salts back. Now the Patriots are actually really good. They're not too strong, but deal a ton of damage, and require you to use your Plasm... -VIGORS and Elizabeth's reality tears wisely in order to beat them. It was also cool how you could pull a friendly one out of a tear and let it grab the attention of the enemies. I'd say it's one of the best robot enemies I've seen in a game yet. On the other hand, there's the Handymen, oh god the Handymen. They're exactly like the Big Daddy; bullet spongy, ludicrously high damage output, relentless puzzle fights, but the glaring difference is they attack you with almost no prior warning. While it might not seem like much, It's why the Handymen are so freaking annoying to fight. In the Big Daddy's case, you had time to prepare for an encounter with them, you could stock up on health and ammo before you fought them so that you're always know that you're in for a challenge. In the Handymen's case, it's very, very cheap to sic one on you after you run through 3 floors of enemies in the endgame zeppelin fight. When I fought the handymen, almost every single time, mind you, I had low health, next to no ammunition, and no salts, AND I had to fight off the lackeys as well! They're not just badly placed in the game, they're cheaply placed. It's like Irrational wanted to make the game hell to play through if you played the game for the GAME, and not the story! I'm not saying the story's bad, it's a freaking amazing story with the best ending anyone could ever ask for, but Jesus! I never really died from the Handymen that much since there are skyrails all over where they appear, so it's easy to regain shields, but it was genuinely frustrating trying to fight something that soaked up that much bullets and dealt so much damage in such short amounts of time.

But we've missed something out of all this: one enemy type that almost made me stop playing Bioshock Infinite altogether... no, not the ghost boss, that was actually a cake-walk for me. Nope, not the turrets, or the flying ones either, nor the Boys of Silence and its minions, nor even the Vigor enemies like the Firemen and the Zealots!

You're missing something.

"But Terwynd, there are no other enemy types in the game, you've covered all of them!"

No I haven't. There's one more. Need a hint? Ok. What do you get when you take the health and armor of a handyman, stuff it into a common soldier, and give him an RPG with enough damage output to kill you in two shots?

...


Still don't know?

YOU GET THESE:


YOU SEE THIS GUY? THIS GUY AND HIS STUPID EXPLODEY GUNS ARE THE WORST. THINGS. EVER.

I knew what this guy had planned from the first rocket. Hiding in that stupid little mask and his-... sleeves... or something, is a lifetime supply of Volley gun and RPG ammo that you can't collect when you kill him. And to add insult to injury, he's got both of them at once. It doesn't matter if you get up in his face and fight him close range, he'll shoot you point blank with a rocket and you'll DIE and lose your hard earned money, and the bugger won't take any damage from it. See what you accomplished by going up with your puny lil' shotgun? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. So that rules out all hope of a close range fight, what about using the carbine or sniper ri-

people who are actually good at this game wrote:

shhh... ssshhhhhhhhhh....... calm down... calm down, Ter. don't be silly, no one uses the sniper rifle and carbine in this game except for you, Ter. I know you feel like you're left out, but don't be like that... shhhhh....

B-But it kills them easier!

everyone wrote:

GODAMMIT TER NO ONE GIVES A SHI-

But surely there can't be that many of them in the game compared to the Vigor enemies like the Firemen, right? Again, you're wrong. EVERY fight always, and I mean ALWAYS has at least 2 of them whether they drop in on those derpy airboats or camp a staircase; they're everywhere and you can't avoid them. This is when the low ammunition starts to become a huge issue. Most of time you're using like 5 to 20 bullets on regular enemies anyway to start it all off, and then boom; up come these guys who take around 7 times that many bullets right after you killed the lackeys. Even if you do end up landing every shot in his head for the critical hits, instead of receiving the standard x2 bonus, their helmet soaks up ALL critical damage, and then when the helmet is shot off, he only takes x1.5 damage when you pump his face full of lead. Why? I don't even know. Next section.

Elizabeth:
-----------
-------Now comes Elizabeth.nofugtrupno This is an... interesting gameplay addition. While Elizabeth serves as the damsel in distress that you, Booker, have to save from the big bad other Booker so that good Booker can have his daughter back before bad Booker uses her to bomb New YokayWHATTHEFU- She also serves as a helping NPC that finds you health packs, salts, and ammunition that you've missed during the chaos of all the gunfighting. This is cool; Elizabeth saves you more times than I can count with her surprising little "BOOKER CATCH" and tosses me a full medkit right as I'm about to die from the Rocket Launcher dudes. It's also kinda neat how if you don't buy something from the upgrade booths because you don't have enough money, you're kind of just bummed out and everything because your fire plasmi- vigor-... won't do more damage now, when all of a sudden, right before you leave the vending machine room, "BOOKER CATCH" and boom, you have enough money to buy that cool damage upgrade. Used your Vigors too much an--- wait a minute, did I just say it correctly this time? No, I'm serious you guys... *sigh* okay, I think I'm good now... Anyways, if you use them all your salts, "BOOKER CATCH" and boom, you have full Salts. In fact, why don't we take this time to reenact what she does for you, in the words of someone playing the game:

"BOOKER CATCH" -Okay, guess I got full ammo now. Thanks. "BOOKER CATCH" Okay, cool, I was at 75% health and Now I'm 100%. Co- "BOOKER CATCH" Wow, Elizabeth, you've really outdone yourself this time. One dollar. I'm sure that'll come in handy in, like... getting fire rate upgra- "BOOKER CATCH" DAMMIT ELIZABETH, I only used my vigor once, Why'd you give me a full bottl-OH HA-ALE NO, TWO ROCKET DUDES AT ONCE? HOLY CRAP, I NEED HEALTH, HELP ME ELIZABETH! "But I need more time before I pull something else" Lemme get this straight. So this whole time, you could've waited just ten seconds before my health plummeted, instead, you give me a refill I didn't need, and now I have next to no health, and you have to wait before you can give me what I actually need? Well that's okay! That's fine, you know why? Because I just killed them using almost all my ammo,-scratch that- ALL my ammo, to kill them, and now my health regenerated after eating the cakes that dropped from their corpses! I hope y- "BOOKER CATCH" ...Oh, well... Thanks, I guess, I, uh, now have full ammunition... thank you for uh, doing that...
Y-You're-uh- a good...
...person.

If you're like me and can't decipher what the hell I just typed up there, here's the same thing, but simplified; Elizabeth's AI seems to jump from actually being helpful to just being an annoying 100% filler in a matter of seconds, making her a very unreliable partner in the harder firefights, especially when a Handyman paired with multiple Rocket dudes are involved.

But the thing worse than that is how used to her you get. If you need ammo, you don't even have to think about scavenging for it yourself because she'll just "BOOKER CATCH" automatically. It ruins the difficulty of the game at times. And no, not the 'difficulty' of fighting Handymen and Rocketmen, that's just fake difficulty that relies on annoyance and cheap attacks. I'm talking about the true difficulty of surviving this constant battle of attrition; everyone and their dog is out to kill you and you have to survive the storm mostly on your own. Elizabeth's "BOOKER CATCH" in terms of changing difficulty is just the game automatically giving you what you need despite the circumstance, even if you don't need it. And do you know what that does to you? It makes you think less about complex strategies to survive the battle, and more about "Oh... I ran through the room and I'm in trouble, I wonder when Elizabeth is going to save me, oh there she did. Whoopie Goldburg, this is really frikkin' boring." Mind you, I played on hard mode the whole game, and this mechanic persisted all throughout. What's the point of having a difficulty setting if the game's just going to scoot you though all the time? I wanted to have some way of feeling like I'm responsible about my own choices in combat, not become a machine powered by Elizabeth's help! Oh wait, you're going to strip her from me before the hard-as-balls stealth portion in Comstock's manor? WELL THANK YOU, IRRATIONAL GAMES! THANK YOU FOR TAKING HER AWAY RIGHT AS I NEEDED HER SERVICES!

The Manor mission is the worst example of getting you used to having your hand held the whole game, then stripping it from you abruptly. I could've survived the whole game without her help, Rocketman fights and all, but going through that manor mission and being attacked by hordes of enemies a minimum of TWICE with no ammo drops and no vigor or health packs anywhere in the whole level was honest-to-god torture considering my situation. I had a carbine and a sub-machine gun; the worst ammo-chewers in the game, mind you, and I had 30% full of each. By the time I fight the first mandatory statue fight before all the stealth action, I burnt up all my carbine ammo and half my sub-machine ammo, finally resorting to melee for the last 7 statues still alive. I got so used to having her with me that I blindly wasted my ammo on a fight I easily could've survived without chewing through ammo.  


Conclusions:
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-------If it seems that I'm being really negative about the game as a whole, it's because you're absolutely right. However, that's not to say Bioshock Infinite is bad. It's just the game. Let me repeat that; Bioshock Infinite isn't bad, it's the game that is. What I mean by that? Allow me to say a few things.

First off, I can respect the amount of work put into Infinite's story and cinematography. What I can't respect is the work, or lack thereof, put into the actual gameplay. Bioshock 1 nailed them both; it was fun to play and had an interesting story, but Infinite seemed to focus more on having a good story  and atmosphere, which also happened to be Bioshock 1's biggest sources of praise. What happened at Irrational was this: Bioshock 1 received a lot of praise for its artistic elements; symbolism, reflections on societies as well as views on utopianism, capitalism, politics, biological engineering and the effects of said engineering on the public, specifically youth.

Then Bioshock 2 ditched the story while also dumbing down the combat. Irrational saw how well critics and players responded to those story elements in Bioshock 1 and how badly they responded to 2's story, and focused the budget for Infinite's story and atmosphere over good gameplay, not seeing that the combat in Bioshock 2 was an equally important issue.

In my opinion, Infinite ended up having a much greater world and story, dealing with more core-human faults while still having some messages that stick with you for a long time. But the difference here is that if you didn't care about the story in Bioshock, that didn't prevent you from having fun. You still had a good game that, as icing on the cake, had an immersive world and a meaningful story, something older games lacked. However, it's getting to the point where developers can get away with a bad, brainlessly made game as long as they made pretty cutscenes and spent some budget on making a story. This is why I'm not a fan of Dragon Age, The Last of Us, Dead Island and even Metro 2033 to some degree. I'm going to ask you to try something for me right now; take those four games and pretend the story ended up really simplistic. Like, for example, pretend that all the characters are mute, your character's a generic, faceless, mute soldier and there was no lore or backstory to describe the world around you other than the absolute basics like "It's a city destroyed by zombies" or "A nuke dropped here and there's monsters swarming the area".

Take some time imagining how those games would be rated by critics and what the opinions of people who played the game would be like.

...


It's not looking good is it?


In my humble opinion, Bioshock Infinite would have fared way better as a feature-length film because it NAILED everything that films would like to capture; it had great action and scale, a good plot, well-written characters and a good overall theming and a masterful soundtrack. Hell, it even lasted around as long as a film did, if you took away all the fighting portions unrelated to the plot. That ending would have made it the modern equivalent to Inception; where you'd want to watch the movie again a second time to get a completely different film after you understand everything that happened! It would've been brilliant! But unfortunately, I ended up not playing Infinite again because I simply wouldn't be able to stand playing the game twice due to the last 3 points I put up at the beginning of this episode.

Because of these huge faults in gameplay, Bioshock Infinite unfortunately ended up being the modern equivalent of Lord of the Rings; it had a great lore, but was a pain to sit through in one go, containing a lot of boring segments to prolong the experience before coming to the reason we sat through all the annoying bits; the important story changers, and shortly afterward, the ever-distant ending.