17 posts tagged “me being nerdy”

You know when someone is talking to you, and you aren't paying attention but still keep up your end of the conversation with actual responses (i.e. not just "yes" and "no" or grunts) and then later when they ask you about it you are like, "what the hell are you talking about?"

That kinda just happened to me online. I wasn't talking to someone, but I was browsing through a site that I visit consistently throughout the day and suddenly found myself deep in the bowels of a post on that site and I have no recollection of every clicking a single link to get there. I just clicked back to that tab and was like "how did I get here?"

Unsure if this is scary, amusing, or both. Though I'm pretty sure it means that I spend far too much time online (even on fucking VACATION like I am now. Damn you Internet.)

This entry was written largely to alleviate my own boredom (what's that? You're supposed to go out and do stuff on Saturday nights?) and also for my own sake to just, like, talk about totally frivulous things. Like I usually do. I promise I don't bring up school or classes ONCE in this entry (except for just then.)

I just got a random inspiration to play a lot of old games that I have never finished. Xenogears, Silent Hill 2, Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (I own Half-Life but don't own a Windows PC, so I dunno how I'm gonna swing that one. I have HL2 for the 360 though). Plus some new games like Gears of War 2, Mirror's Edge and probably some others. I want to check out Left 4 Dead but I have a feeling that will be a bad idea since I usually don't like online games (I cry when people in WoW want to play with me, and that's an MMO!) and while Left 4 Dead does have an option for single player with bots, I feel like that would be silly. So we'll see. I played the demo and it was oodles of fun, but I played it solo.

I also just suddenly really want to buy StarCraft. I'm ashamed as a gamer (and fair-weather RTS fan) to say that I have never played StarCraft. Or Diablo. Hell the first Blizzard game I played was WarCraft III around when it came out a few years ago. And I was still in a messy love affair with Age of Empires at the time, so I didn't play WarCraft III all that much. I know! I suck. But I have to go buy rat bedding tomorrow so while I'm oot and aboot I'm going to pick up the StarCraft Battlechest thingy for like 20 bucks. I've actually been sort of meaning to buy it for a while, whenever I go to Target I see it there and think to myself how I really should play it, but I never do for some reason. Maybe I'm just embarrassed to be buying an ancient classic game. Like when I bought a used copy of Final Fantasy VII a couple years ago because I had lost one of the discs of my original copy, and got ribbed by the guys at EB for "just now buying it." I told them to (kindly) stfu.

I'm also looking forward to Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (good lord that's a long title) even though I freely admit to totally sucking ass at any and all fighting games. Maybe it's because I never had anyone to play it with, so I never could really hone my skills, but I was never that great at Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting on the SNES. That's the only one I've played to any extent...but I think I'll get HD Remix for shits ang giggles, as long as it's not too expensive.

Infinite Undiscovery arrived in my mailbox a few days ago and I played that a bit, I'm about 1.5 hours into it. I haven't played a JRPG in a while, and haven't played a non-Final Fantasy JRPG in a REALLY long time, so this was...interesting. It's still very Squaresoft [ETA - omg did I really just call it Squaresoft? I really DO need to get with the times], but is more action-y and stuff. So far it seems compelling, though some of the characters are already annoying me.

Anyway....I was debating bringing one of my systems home with me for Christmas break, but I think I'll just play some old games on my PS2, or some games on my computer. Like StarCraft, that I'm totally excited to get tomorrow. 1998 called, I think they want their game back.

Holy moley. I hate watching TV shows that have been out for a while and have tons of seasons (and by "hate," of course I mean "love"). I watched almost half of season 3 of Buffy today. Today! So now my brain is totally fried @.@

It also doesn't help that, when I wasn't watching Buffy, I was playing Crisis Core. And beating Crisis Core! Such a good game, I'm jonesing to New Game+ it soon. The end was so sad, which of course everyone who's played FFVII knows, but actually playing it...was quite an experience. It totally made me cry, and I don't think that's happened...since...well, since FFVII, heh.

*sigh* I need to get out more.

I just beat BioShock (I'm seriously on a roll with this whole "beating games" thing, this is like the fifth or sixth game in a row that I've beaten within a month or so of buying it. That never happens!) Here are just some random thoughts on the game, so there are some spoilers.

Overall I thought it was an excellent game, it wasn't overly difficult nor overly easy, so I never really got bored or frustrated. I liked how a lot of the back story about Rapture and its inhabitants was relayed through the radio diaries that you picked up here and there, so that it didn't interrupt what you were doing but you still got to learn a bit about everything. Very cool setting, very cool atmosphere.

I thought the ending was better than what most people make it out to be, I was expecting something hella lame and disappointing like ".....but it was all a dream" or some crap, but I thought it was a decent ending. Could have been a lot longer, I guess I kind of felt that the whole story was building up to what HAD to be a deliciously long ending, but alas, no. I'm curious though how the ending differs if you chose to harvest the Little Sisters rather than save them (I saved them all, and the end part was very dependent on them helping me, so I'm wondering what the alternative is.)

I had a couple beefs with it though. One, the distribution of items and ammo was kind of wacky. Sometimes I'd find myself walking around with no first aid packs, no EVE hypos, and little to no ammo for any of my weapons. I'd soon get some, but I found myself worrying about it too much. Just a teensy bit more ammo here and there would have been nice, especially since the ammo didn't seem to do all that much damage, even after getting upgraded. My second beef is the one plasmid you get that allows you to find extra items in boxes and on bodies and stuff (it was called like, "scrounger" or something?) You'd hit A to check and see what items were in the box/corpse, and then hit the right trigger to see what "else" was in the box/corpse. But you couldn't get both things, which pissed me off. I'd check a box and it would have, say, "15 dollars, 4 machine gun rounds." Ok, peachy, but let's hit the right trigger to see what else is there! Oh...it's....5 dollars and a screw. And you can't go back and get the 15 dollars and 4 machine gun rounds, once you've "looked" for the other stuff, you're stuck with it. This was especially annoying when you'd search something, find some goods, then search more and find nothing. So then you got...nothing. How does that make sense? If I look in a box and see a $5 bill, then look a little deeper and find a $10 bill, I'm not going to suddenly lose the $5, its not going to disappear. I'm going to get both of them. Major irritant, mainly because it was such a stupid little thing and I felt like SOMEONE who tested the game would have been like, "hey, this kind of doesn't make sense and is really annoying, maybe we should change it."

But anyway! Good game! Probably one of my favorites from the past couple years. Though no game in recent years has hit me quite as hard as any of my Big Three: Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Cross and the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I'm waiting for a game to come along that makes some magic for me on the level that those games did (still do!) Please?

Anyway, next on my list is...Shadow of the Colossus, which I've had like since it came out years ago and have never played more than 10 minutes of. It's supposed to be short and sweet so hopefully it won't get too in the way of my lively social life or my massive amounts of homework (one of those is a joke. Guess which!)

Oh! And because I'm an attention whore, my gamertag is Aeris87. Add me, bitchez.

warning: a couple little spoilery tidbits for the 4th season of Battlestar Galactica. And, obviously, spoilers for the first three seasons as well.

I stumbled upon this image today (why have I not seen it before now?!) and let out a hearty squee of joy. It was in Entertainment Weekly along with some info from Ron Moore, head honcho man of the show.

EW "Last Supper"

Here is the article I read that has the information I'm going on.

Just when you thought things couldn't possibly get nerdier here in the Wonderful World of Katie (*hides her box set of Xena DVDs, action figures and millions of video games underneath a pile of Lord of the Rings paraphernalia*), I go and do something crazy like buy a wizard rock ("wrock") Christmas album. In my defense, it was for a charity through a Harry Potter site that I've been going to since like 2001 (wizard rock is, as you might have put together, music about and inspired by Harry Potter. Yes, that's Nerdy, with a capital N.) So far it's good though! What's not to love about Harry Potter and Christmas music?!? Actually don't answer that....>.>

While I'm on a Nerd Ramble, I might as well say that Battlestar Galactica: Razor was totally what I needed in the middle of all this "season 4 not airing until April" business. I wasn't a huge fan of Admiral Cain's story arc during season 2 (which Razor is centered around), but I really enjoyed Razor and all the fun character development it had. Good stuff all around.

Warning Number 2: This is a rambly, perhaps spoilery, post about RPGs, other games, and baby Jesus, though it all has something to do with Mass Effect.

A bit of a follow-up to yesterday's (was that yesterday? My concept of time is way off) post about Mass Effect, since I just beat it. This is easily the best game I've played in the past few years (the most recent game that I consider to be one of my "absolute favorites" was released in 2000 on the PS1 heh). I blasted through the main storyline, and it clocked in at around 15 hours. Which is really short, yes (though not by today's standards it would seem). I didn't do any sidequests, though I had initiated a lot of "please save my daughter from a band of pirates" type pleas from people, so I imagine there are TONS more hours to squeeze out of it with sidequests. But even though the main story was shortish, what a great 15 hours!

I'll admit the end battle was a bit...meh. I dunno. It was fun, it was relatively challenging, but it wasn't one of those "holy shit!" boss battles (I still maintain that the Dragon God from Chrono Cross is the best boss in any game, ever. It's a long battle, it's fairly difficult unless you know what you're doing and have a solid strategy, but even then you need to keep adjusting your strategy as the battle goes on. Brilliant battle. But I digress). Anyway, the boss battle...yeah there were better battles in the game. And the ending was kind of...nonexistent? I know it's a trilogy of games, and it totally leaves it WIIIIDE open for the story to continue, so that makes the lack of a real ending less painful. But still, I kinda wanted to see my whole party together on their ship, sort of patting each other on the back and taking a bit of a breather. And wtf?! I have sex with one of my other party members, and then go on the last mission, and that's the last I see her?! No like, dramatic "OMG I THOUGHT I LOST YOU!" or anything?! C'mooon! A lack of happy reunions makes baby Jesus cry.

I am going to replay it, probably not until I get back to Gunnison on Monday (ugh, I don't want to go back to the real world...-_-). I think there's a "New Game +" option, though I'll probably start completely anew, so I can make a character whose nose and mouth don't look weird from the side (hey, she's hot from the front...) Plus then it'll be more of a challenge and it'll be more satisfying to max out my characters from a clean slate instead of starting out all beefed up.

Anyway...this is why I shouldn't go off on a tangent about RPGs and whatnot when I'm really tired. Sorry if you read all that. Night!

Mass Effect

On Tuesday I got Mass Effect, which was essentially the game that convinced me to get an Xbox 360 in the first place. It is....quite amazing. I'm only 11 hours into it, but so far it's definitely lived up to my expectations. I do have some complaints, mainly the fact that the auto-save feature SUCKS, so I've started getting in the habit of saving manually often after getting so pissed off every time I would die doing something stupid, only to find that my last autosave was 20 minutes ago before I battled those swarms of enemies, that one boss and went through like a thousand scenes of dialogue (more on that later!). Also it's evident that this game is pushing the 360 damn near its limit, there are some weird graphical problems like the textures on the environments and character models won't load right away, so you'll have a funny plasticy looking person, and then after a second or two their facial features will load and they'll look how they should. Also the weapons/armor swapping system kinda sucks. You have to have someone IN your party in order to change their armor or weapons, and you can only change your party when you're leaving your ship (which has to load each time you enter and each time you exit). It'd be nice to be able to at least view what all everyone has equipped even if they're not in your party.

Other than that though, everything is just peachy. Especially the dialogue/characters/story/etc. The story is kind of traditional space opera fare, some shit's going down and it's up to you to "save the galaxy." Yay! The characters are all pretty cool, though I haven't really interacted with anyone other than Liara, but that's also cuz she's more essential to the plot than the others (so far. Remember I'm only 11 hours in!) The dialogue system is pretty damn cool, conversations feel a hell of a lot more real than they do in pretty much every other game. Topics lead into each other and it flows and you feel like you're watching a sort of interactive movie instead of playing a blocky game with a main character who you really never get to know or care about. I think a lot of games have the "silent protagonist" in order to "let the player become the character," but that's always done the opposite for me, because I end up not caring about my main character. Not so in Mass Effect...my character (who I named Starbuck because I'm a dork) has a personality that I feel I've helped shape, and I actually genuinely care about what happens to her and her crew. Also a lot of that stems from the fact that it's not a linear game, so if I do something and someone gets mad at me for it, it's not just "part of the game," it's something that I could have controlled, could have done differently, so I might stop and think about how I maybe shouldn't have done it. One thing that has actually upset me, personally, and has had essentally no importance in the game, is killing guards and stuff. In the past few years I've gotten more sensitive to killing human beings in games, and I really don't like fighting guards in Mass Effect. "Saving humanity, by killing all these human guards." I know it's a means to a greater good in the end, but it still bothers me. Call me a hippie, but...well...

And speaking of combat, it's really, really not RPGish at all. It's like, third person shooter with the option of going a tad RPG on the situation. I've always been more of a "run and gun" gamer (hence why I suck at the Metal Gear Solid games and SOCOM) so I pretty much dismiss the "mass effect" abilities and whatever unless I want to see what a new one does or am desperate or something. Combat usually goes pretty quickly though, so I honestly don't have time to hit a button, bring up the abilities wheel, select an ability, select a target for that ability...I'd rather just bust in with my shotgun and blow things to bits. Preferably robot/insect/things-that-don't-talk enemies, natch.

It is a bit like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which was also developed by Bioware. KOTOR was a pretty sick game in its own right, and this is KOTOR times a thousand, minus the Star Wars, and plus better characters. Though with a lot of the same voice talent! The one generic human male member of my party (who I had the option of pursuing a relationship with, but who I decided against in favor of pursuing a blue-skinned alien girl. Hey! She's a better character!) is TOTALLY Carth Onassi (sp?) with bigger eyebrows. I can't even remember the kid in Mass Effect's name, I just call him Carth. I'd recognize that voice anywhere. And the lovely Jennifer Hale, who's been around the voice acting block quite a bit, is the voice of Commander Shepard if you make her a...her. I don't know if she's lovely, but she has a lovely voice.

Anyway, should probably go to bed and dream sweet Mass Effect dreams, because I won't be able to play it much tomorrow. Thanksgiving ftw!

I have, I believe/hope, fully gotten over that "can't get excited for anything since Harry Potter" thing. I'm sure there's an erectile dysfunction joke in there somewhere, but seeing as I'm both a girl and healthy in that regard....well nevermind. ANYWAY, I have spent the last couple days positively peeing my pants in anticipation of three glorious video games, one that I will be playing on Friday (Assassin's Creed), one sometime next week (Mass Effect) and the third hopefully at Christmas (Mario Galaxy). I haven't been in this "must doodle video game characters on my notes" mood for a while, it's kind of nice. Kinda like having a crush on someone after you haven't for a while...well, ok, maybe not. But that's fun too (fun? Or...whatever).

*sigh* I drive home on Friday for like 10 days of Thanksgiving break...I'm debating whether or not to go to Geology or just skip town early. Of course in Art today, my teacher was like "so in class on monday blah blah blah WE'LL BE GOING OVER STUFF THAT ISN'T IN THE BOOK THAT WILL BE ON THE TEST THAT YOU WILL FAIL UNLESS YOU'RE IN CLASS ON MONDAY." Pfft, fuck that. All my other classes are canceled on Monday/Tuesday, I'm going home, bitch. Though I'm kinda sad to miss it for other reasons (recall the hint at a crush earlier in the entry.) Fuck all I feel like I'm in 6th grade again. D:

And we conclude this "Pointless and Rambling Entry of the Day" with something so incredibly dorky, you can't help but love it.

Today I watched not one, not two, but THREE Disney movies. Three of the best Disney movies, might I add. I started off with some Lion King, which I hadn't seen in a long, long time (though I still know most of the lines and the lyrics to all the songs...). Then I jumped right into Beauty and the Beast, and rounded it off with some Little Mermaid. Half of the reason I love Disney movies so much is that I used to watch them religiously when I was younger, so they stir up rather fond childhood memories. Plus, the MUSIC. omg. The Beauty and the Beast song (is that the actual title? Or is it "Tale as Old as Time" or something?) I think is my favorite, though I'm totally a fan of "Part of Your World" and "Kiss The Girl" as well. I never particularly cared for "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" but when I watched the Lion King today that song totally got me. That whole damn movie totally got me. I seriously started crying from the "maaaaan savenya mamadee zeetavah" or whatever beginning part of "Circle of Life" on throughout the whole song. That movie is SO DEPRESSING. But so, so good.

I didn't watch it today (amazingly) but Aladdin has some pretty awesome music as well, mainly "A Whole New World." Is it just me, or is that song totally gay? Like, really gay. Just the basic concept of "a whole new world with you," plus lines like "I've come so far, I can't go back to where I used to be" just scream "sexual discovery," and then, of course, there's the line regarding a "magic carpet ride" that hardly needs any commentary. It's probably just me, but, well, there you go.

Unfortunately, now I have to actually do stuff (i.e. study for a test tomorrow) but I'm going to do it while listening to Disney's Greatest Hits vols 1 and 2. Hell yeah!