WTF WEDNESDAY! JAPAN #4 ROBOGEISHA!

WTF WEDNESDAY PRESENTS!

ROBOGEISHA!!!

Two Words:

 

WORD OF THE DAY! 11/1611

 MAGIC GAME TIME by Zac Gorman

immersion [ih-mur-zhuhn]
noun
1. an act or instance of immersion.
2. state of being immersed.
3. state of being deeply engaged or involved; absorption.

EX. The level of immersion in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is so intense and beautiful that after playing the game for several hours, your perception and expectations are altered.

NERD CULTURE SMACKDOWN! PRESENTS I LOVE CALL OF DUTY Pt. 2

11 Reasons I Love Call of Duty 6-1

(Note: I decided to leave any specific game off the list, otherwise COD 4 would probably be #1)

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1, 11-7

6. BOOM GOES THE EVERYTHING: VEHICLE MISSIONS 

From manning the turrets on a gunship to driving tanks to riding in the nose turret of HIND, Call of Duty is not known for its vehicles but when you get a chance to play in a vehicle driven mission it is a treat. The eye-in-the-sky-missions were the most delightfully destructive treats as you rain fire and judgement on your enemies from above. 


It would be great to see them make vehicles a bigger part of a multi-player mode or spin-off title some day.

5. EXOTIC LOCATIONS: MAPS & MISSIONS

Location. Location. Location. One of the innovations of the Call of Duty series was to first take the World War II setting into both fields of battle as Americans, British and Russians. This innovation was carried out further in the Modern Warfare series, and in MW2, had you jetting to warzones and bases in America, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and South America. It became clear that one of the things setting the Call of Duty series apart from its competitors was its use of locations. This carried over into the maps.

From the sweaty favelas of Brazil to the frozen research centers of Antartica, Call of Duty takes players to exotic locations and builds maps of all sizes and shapes and, though, to be fair, their maps are no where near as large as those in Battlefield, varieties. The maps have personality and everyone has their clear favorites. The following are my favorite maps for each game since COD 4 on:

COD 4: MW- The Bloc

COD 5: WaW- Castle

COD 6: MW2- Terminal

COD 7: BlOps- TIE: Summit/ Nuketown

4. MUTTONCHOPS AND MOWHAWKS: CAPTAIN PRICE & JOHN "SOAP" McTAVISH

In the tutorial mission of Call of Duty 4, you are a young rookie to the SAS, nicknamed SOAP, and you meet your leader and mentor Captain Price. Price is almost undoubtedly the descendant of a World War 2 hero character of the same name and is a cigar chewing badass. Price and Soap met up in Call of Duty 4 and have stolen the show ever since as the protagonists. Price is unstoppable and Soap is unkillable. Most importantly, the two have become strong comrades in a war against the bad guys. Bromance of the century.

GUY LOVE! 

3. SNIPER MISSIONS: "ALL GHILLIED UP" AND NO WHERE TO GO

Pripyat, 1996. It it set 11 years before the rest of the Modern Warfare series. You are Lt. Price. You and your partner are sent to assassinate an ultra-nationalist terrorist by the name of Zakhaev in Pripyat. Armed with a suppressed M21 and a ghillie suit, you and your partner crawl through radiated wastes of Pripyat to find a vantage point. All the while, you must avoid packs of wild dogs, enemy soldiers and snipers. When you reach your destination, you set up the shot with an M82, later reclassified as the Barret .50 Cal, and take a fire at one of the most dangerous men in the world.

This was the mission the demonstrated at Xbox 360's E3 Presentation in 2007. I was sold but I had little idea of how big the series would become and, that within the the next four years, the series would come to not only dominate the first person shooter market but become on the biggest series in entertainment history.

2. SHOCK AND AWE: THE STORY OF CALL OF DUTY

Call of Duty's Campaigns are like a Michael Bay movie. Now, I am not a big fan of Michael Bay's film but being a hero in one of his films would be incredible. If that's what Call of Duty does, it at least does it well. The big action moments and ridiculous twists that take place in the campaign settings are often imitated but never bested by the other games of the FPS genre and its a blast to play these fast pace stories out.

On the flip side, Call of Duty, doesn't lack substance and is known for moments of uncomfortable trauma that stick with you for ages. SPOILERS! In Call of Duty 4, in the part of the campaign where you play an American soldier, you witness the devastation of a nuclear bomb going off. The game then has you wake up, crawling along the ground, as everything burns around you. For a moment, you believe that you can make it and then you are taken by whiteness. In World at War, you are given the choice of killing a group of Berliners by Reznov with your gun or letting him kill them with a Molotov cocktail. In MW2, there is the infamous No Russian scene. In Black Ops, you try to assassinate Castro. The list goes on of moments that both trouble me and make me think.

1. MULTI-PLAYER: RANKING, CUSTOMIZATION, & POINT/KILL-STREAKS

 This is where Call of Duty makes it happen. Starting with Call of Duty 4, we were introduced to a new level of class customization relatively unseen on consoles, a system that ranked you based on your accomplishments as a players leveling you up until you do it all over again and gain prestige and a kill-streak system that rewarded you for multiple kills. Since 2007, this has evolved and grown from game to game by adding more customization, new modes of play, new types of kill-streaks and so much more. The reason COD's multi-player is so accessible and addictive is a fast "carrot on a stick" approach.

The quick-game play and the role-playing element of leveling yourself through progress and challenges, unlocking new guns, kill streaks, equipment, perks, pro perks and improving every facey of game-play pulls the player through tens to hundreds of hours of game play. You feel like you are progressing even if you aren't in the top 100, 000 on the leader board because, at the very least, you are making progress in your leveling, prestige and unlocks.

I could do a whole article about this number alone but instead...I think I am gonna go play SKYRIM! (lol)

WORD OF THE DAY! 11/1511

equestrian [ih-kwes-tree-uhn]
adjective
1. of or pertaining to horseback or horse riding.
2. mounted on horseback.
3. representing a person mounted on horseback.
4. of or pertaining to horse.s

EX. This years all equestrian production of Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back was enthralling.

MUSICAL MONDAY! SONG FOR ULVAAK!

 MUSICAL MONDAY!

Well, as you can see above, this week's entry is so personal that I posted the background for my blog as the headlining picture for this article. If there is only one thing you should have figured out by now, after I have been blogging for over two months, and posting quite frequently, it is the following:

I Love Dungeons and Dragons.

If you  haven't figured that out, I apologize for making outrageous presumptions about your attentiveness and apologize further if you are total newbie to my blog. But, it is an undeniable fact that only after playing dungeons and dragons for a few years, it is that playing or game mastering dungeons and dragons, or more correctly, pen and paper roleplaying games, is my favorite past time.

Above is a pretty good approximation of my first dungeons and dragons character. He was a somewhat grumpy and big-mouthed but terribly clever, loyal, and generous dwarf cleric (think warrior priest) by the name of Bumble Bootsbane. I played the character up until I had to retire him. He had become so powerful and important in the world that he was just not as much fun to play (being Dwarf Pope, happily married to a Dwarven paladin, and Head Councilman of his own country, Freeland) and as such I retired him. Yet, I'll never forget how important Bumble was and is because, perhaps the most easily lost beauty of dungeons and dragons, is that one's character does not simply have to be a fantasy or avatar (though there is nothing wrong with that) but instead can be so much more. Bumble Bootsbane was an extension of myself, the best version of myself, and when I played him in my best friend Zach's dad's A D & D campaign (a campaign that is older than me) I played Bumble as if I was in his boots. (A full story about Bumble will come out some day when I feel like I am ready to tell the whole story.) Moving on to the subject of today's Musical Monday Post, I think Patton Oswalt really understand the idea of how important this game is to people.

Patton Oswalt is, undeniably, one of us. He pokes fun at nerd culture and his own nerdier past (and nerdy present) with the gleeful and child-like relationship that we should all be able to have when poking fun at our identities. This year, he released a humorous memoir, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland.

In the book Oswalt makes a lot of references to D & D and other pop culture in the piece. Included in the book, is the Song of Ulvaak. It is a sad but beautiful ode about a D & D fantasy world. It follows a warrior who discovers his world is not all as it seems.

THE SONG OF ULVAAK BY PATTON OSWALT

What does this have to do with anything? Well, Allie Goertz, an awesome youtuber and musician wrote a fan-song adaptation of the piece called Song for Ulvaak. Just as the Conan the Barbarian! The Musical! video from the Kaplan Bros. sold me on Conan the Barbarian, its soundtrack and their talent, Allie Goertz achieved similar results. I ordered Zombie Spaceship Wasteland from Amazon, subscribed to her youtube channel, and am just in love with everything about this song. I loved the song so much that I quoted it in the two D & D books I gave my friend, Rachel, as a birthday gift.

SONG FOR ULVAAK- BY ALLIE GOERTZ

On the right, Allie Goertz and on the left, her friend Megan.

The song is about a warrior by the name of Ulvaak who is on a quest to kill a lich king. He is surprised that the lich king does little to stop him. As the lich king died, it informs him that their world is not so real, and it is all a game to some far-off gods. Ulvaak at first refused to believe the lich's words but after seeing the empty faces of the people around him, realizes the truth and dedicates his life to find out the truth and making his creators pay. The themes implied here are so poignant. The most important part of role-playing is to be able to detach oneself from reality and engage in an imaginary world. Realists and people who have trouble grasping metaphysical concepts about reality tend to have trouble playing the game. Children, story tellers, gamers and actors tend to be the best players because they are so willing to play pretend and pretend the imaginary is real.

But who is to say that imaginary world isn't real?

WORD OF THE DAY! 11/1411

ROBERT BYRD HATES POKEMON "TRAINERS"

barbaric [bahr-baer-ik]
adjective
1. uncivilized, primitive; without civilizing influences.
2. of, like, or befitting barbarians.
3. crudely, rich or splendid.
4. brutal, cruel, heinous.


resound [ree-sound]
verb
1. to echo or ring with sound.
2. to make a metallic echoing sound.
3. to be celebrated or vindicated in history.
4. to proclaim loudly.


EX. "The training of these poor creatures, to turn themselves into fighting machines is simply barbaric. Barbaric. Barbaric! [Pause] Barbaric! Let that word resound from hill to hill and mountain to mountain, from valley to valley, across this broad land! Barbaric, barbaric. May god help [Pause] those pour souls who'd be so cruel. Barbaric! Hear me! Barbaric!" -Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), 2007, a speech following the Michael Vick trial on the subject of dog-fighting.

NOTE: This speech drives me nuts because of its ridiculous delivery. It sounds like something from Planet of the Apes.

ANNOUNCEMENT. "TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES"

I am sorry but I am afraid this week I will be taking large breaks from my usual blog schedule. We are suffering technical difficulties on Dumbledore Shot First, and you can blame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Syndrome, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Nerd Spasms and other such nonsense.

Dumbledore Shot First office.

Our boys will be working double time to get my operating again.