Gaming in the Baroque Era

Warning: really long post.

Sting somewhat recently gave Atlus the rights to an interesting game; Baroque. What is Baroque?
I have no Idea. I just got a copy of the game, and it's incredibly strange. There is some sort of storyline, but it is definitely nonlinear. There is two pervasive clues to what Baroque is: it's a world of 'twisted pearls' and your goal is to 'absolve your sins'.

OK, let's pop in the disc!
That's actually a misunderstanding, as I actually transferred it to my new HDD and played it from there. More on that later. Maybe.
Instantly, one is assaulted with a pretty damn amazing hand-drawn animation of epilepsy-inducing random scenes distorted in various ways. Seriously, it is impressive. But still, it gives no hint of what the story is, goddamnit.
OK then, let's start a new game.
Opening cutscene. It's short, and makes no sense.
Without any form of notifying you, you are thrown into gameplay. Kinda - you're on the surface. you can talk to people and stuff, goddamnit. And there's this goddamn character who keeps cursing.
I don't know exactly why, but I really like the pervasive dissolved fading effect. It looks like you're playing a demented film from hell. I'm not kidding, it's awesome. Some people say it makes the game look terrible because they think that their TV is going bad. They are idiots. It's obviously good graphical design.
Back to the gameplay, as you try to get to the oddly-named Neuro Tower, a strange (yet sexy) angel stops you, comments on your defects (so you know that you're not getting a date, unfortunately), gives you a gigantic gun that 'has meaning in you using it', and sends you on your way.
Now you're in the neuro tower. There are more angels there. They're kinda fun. You start at level 1, of course, and weaponless. Happily, you can get weaponry and armory around the tower, if you would just look. Of course, nobody explained what you're supposed to do. Supposedly, doing this dungeon run is supposed to be what tells you what you're supposed to do. They don't even tell you the simple things, like attacking from the sides and back gives more damage, or that you can throw things for damage, and bones have special effects. There is a tutorial dungeon where they'll tell you some of these things, but there are several things that nobody will ever tell you EVER.
It doesn't really matter if you actually finish the first run or die from it. The same result happens either way.
The things that they do or do not tell you can really piss you off. I know it does for me. It really is extremely confusing. They tell you confusing things that you won't understand nearly always, or they'll tell you how to get those odd idea sephirahs [sic] and baroques that litter your understanding of the world. But you won't know when they're doing that because they sound EXACTLY like the nonsense they spew out all the time. Now here's the weird part: you find out later on that they were actually making scene, and they were giving either foreshadowing or storyline elements that you don't understand.
And this brings us to the idea of time. You know that it isn't exactly straightforward because you die and go back to the beginning, and yet things change based on what you did. At best guess, it's awash, or maybe concurrent. Or does time exist at all?
Since dungeons are the bulk of the game, we should really focus on that. It's hack and slash - and throw. Throwing is the major twist in gameplay. Throwing usually gives out a great deal more damage then straight out slashing, plus they have special effects, especially the bones. There's bones that explode, bones that make the effected sweat, bones that makes you sleepy, and bones that make the effected invincible. Notice that instead of saying 'you' or 'them'. This is because items can effect either yourself or enemies (meta-beings, which you kill by purification... Yeah, it's weird.) Then there are weirder items, like the summon torturer which summons every monster on the floor to the room that you're in. That sounds like a terrible item to have, but then you find that there's a half torturer, which kills every monster in the room. Use the experience bone, and you'll get major experience for it. Awesomesauce. And you get to do it to this excellent atmospheric music while doing it.
But then you get your AT. I don't quite remember what exactly it is. It's your vitality, but it's also been described as your soul. It constantly goes down, so you have to fight meta-beings in hopes that they'll drop a crystal which will give you an incredibly small number of AT points. The good thing about AT, however, is that while you have it, your HP will gradually increase. But when you don't have any, your HP will drop. This effectively forces you to move into the next floor quickly and keeps the action flowing.
Another weird thing is death. Death is not the end. In fact, you kinda need to die. It's the only way to get out of a dungeon if you can't finish it. This is just weird. But it doesn't matter anyway. Either way, you start off at the same spot again, and at level one.

OK, this game is weird (duh). But after playing it long enough, the WTF layer goes away and it starts to make scene. Oh god. Saying that makes me feel sick / partly insane. Like baroques: they're for the people to tolerate their world (or something like that). And then the game becomes reviewable, which is where I am right now.
Since this only happened recently, I can't say what's going to happen, especially because the game is so fucked up in so many ways. I think that the overabundance of christian symbolism could possibly add up to a very good story, if it works out. But I have no idea where it's going because of the extremely nonstandard storytelling techniques.
But working through the game through the first 'real' run through the neuro tower really explains a lot and makes the story make scene. Having an amnesiac persona is cliched, but Baroque pulls if off in a good way. Its out-of-order storytelling techniques makes amnesia a requirement. Oddly enough, the storytelling method concretes the overall theme of a broken, twisted world, while keeping it interesting. In fact, if it was presented from the beginning in order, it would be extremely boring. To think that someone said that Baroque would be better as a book or manga. The fool, I had to create a gamespot account just to chide him.

Baroque completely destroys JRPG stereotypes. Since the story actually glides past you as you're playing instead of interrupting it, it plays much more smoothly then probably any other game. Like Evolution (another STING dungeon crawl), it innovates and modernizes the rogue-like dungeon crawler genre while creating a great involving game.
In a scale with ten being the highest score, I give Baroque a rating of 9. Surprised? I know, it seems weird, but this is a distorted world, isn't it? The only real problem about this game is its cliff-like learning curve. People have said that the graphics suck, but that is so far out of the park that the team got three points. This is one of the few games where the actual gameplay models look exactly like the final character designs. It's like the drawings have come alive, it's so good.
It's been a long time since a random dungeon crawl has been so creatively and originally executed. For this alone, this game is worth a buy. But be wary; I've heard that the Wii version of the game suffers from bad controls. But luckally, the PS2 version of the game is sexelent.

The Best Things

Lately, I've been thinking about an idiom. “The best things in life are free.” It got me thinking, what are the best things which are free? Since it is an idiom, I immediately began thinking about the things that the people who say the phrase would say they are. Like the sweetness of an apple, the refreshing flow of water, the beauty of a sunrise or sunset, and spending time with a special friend.

But then I've noticed that most of these things have been spoiled, at least here in Vegas.

Why was Las Vegas even founded? It was a mining town. There was silver in these great dusty mountains surrounding us. But then the silver dried up; no more reason for prospectors to stay. What was it that motivated people to stay here? There were no rivers to drink from, no food for livestock; there was only miles and miles of dust and dirt. The only thing they had going for them was that Nevada had legalized prostitution. The state still does, but ironically, now that Las Vegas is so large, it's illegal in this county.

So here we are, stuck in a land where the best things in life are imported for a heavy price, our water is barely drinkable, and our beautiful skys are ruined by our own ambitious land development projects (let's not even mention that sword of light pollution, that pointless waste of our planet's limited energy, that symbol of monetary power that steals away our once marveled night sky).

Network Statistics

I've probibly violated the AUP, but who cares!

I captured some packets from the school's network, with some suprising results. Here they are; as I first noted them.

20813 packets captured in total
5782 ARP packets captured
7788 DCE/RPC packets captured (all malformed)
2467 NBNS packets captured
802 ZIP packets captured
381 BROWSER packets captured
59 IGMP packets captured

5 computers used in local room alone
421 seconds of capture

6943818 bytes captured total, out of a 65535 byte packet size limit. So there is an average of 334 bytes/packet.

All these protocals are used to automate network structure and IP addresses. Only 3534 of these 20813 packets are used for actual 'work' packets. If the network were properly configured, 41 packets/second, or 13679 bytes/second could be saved.

Split in Twine

Good news, those of you tired of me complaining about my abysmal romantic life!

I'm not going to bitch about it anymore!

At least not here. I've decided to bitch about it on my dating profile. No. I'm not telling you where it is. So if you are my stalker, ready to pronounce your love for me, go ahead and do it already. My Email address is all across the internet (and some bathroom stalls).

See? A joke. It means that I'm ok.

God, I need to get laid.

That Which Has Been Learned

 The title of this post has a link to an interesting Wikipedia entry. It's on Learned Helplessness.

 The idea interests me. Having this new knowlege of a cause of depression opens up the boundry of self-exploration. The only problem is that I'm not completely aware of what it is that caused this learned helplessness, if I have it.



 Wow, that was short. Why did I even start writing this?