This is sort of a modern version of a Western movie but with a botched drug deal and some Mexican cartels running around looking for stolen drug money. The highlight is this huge menacing psychopathic outlaw that goes around killing people in Texas. He basically goes around messing with people to decide whether to kill them or not and genuinely enjoys the selection process.
About halfway through, I realized that there had not been any music in the entire movie. None. No Country for Old Men relies on the hardness of the action and the perplexity of the conversations to move the story along without any embellishment. That, and a huge menacing South American hitman with a deep croaky voice.
This movie doesn't have a fucking ending. Rating: 50%
This movie sucks fucking kong balls. What the fuck.
What is this about? The plot is some shit about Bruce Lee somehow related to a bunch of under-appreciated Asian people and about how many Asian people you can cram into a shitty movie. The cast is comprised of the cast of Better Luck Tomorrow PLUS any other Asian people and unemployed actors they could find dressed in faggoty costumes. For 84 minutes, they give mock interviews about shit nobody cares about, they whine and complain on camera, they dredge up racial issues.
As I watched it, I felt this....feeling...sort of a mixture of boredom and the feeling you get when you watch really pitiful acts of desperation. I'd had enough. I just couldn't finish it. After about half an hour, I ejected it and dumped it in the trash.
Satire doesn't work if what you're showing isn't funny and you are just bitching a lot instead. Rating: 5%
More HK movies. This one has Andy Lau in it, which automatically means that the plot is about deception and being witty, which it is.
It was nearly the end of the Three Kingdoms Period in the war between the states of Cao(or Tsao) and Liu. The generals of the time were shrewed strategists, resulting in many surprising upsets in battle. In an attempt to end the war, the Kingdom of Liu executes a plan to crush the cities of Cao and sends their greatest general (Andy Lau) to do it. But the plan is cut short by the scheming granddaughter of emperor Cao, driving the armies of Liu into the hills where they are annihilated.
At the prospect of his impending death, Andy Lau reflects upon his lifetime spent on warfare. "What have we accomplished in our pursuit to unite the kingdoms? Where is the peace we fought for?", he asks.
This same idea is the theme of the movie Hero. It says that you must sacrifice your own ideals to allow "One China" to exist, which, surprisingly enough, is how Chinese people justify killing Tibetan monks, torturing political dissidents, and other crazy things. It is considered noble and wise to give up in the face of futility. Funny isn't it, how eagerly Chinese people are used as pawns?
Ending line: "The long united must divide and the long divided must unite." Rating: 70%
GAY okay so this is another Wuxia movie with famous Chinese celebrities that dress in ridiculous armor, but with a twist: They throw in one white guy.
The story starts with a dumbed down version of Sun WuKong for kids, but instead of being imprisoned by the palm of Buddha, the Monkey King is defeated by this "Jade Warlord". The white guy falls into possession of Sun WuKong's magic staff and must use it to resurrect him. The problem is that he keeps getting stopped by imperial soldiers with ridiculous armor and is hunted by an Asian dominatrix with wispy white hair.
Jet Li and Jackie Chan are there to protect whitey with idiot-style shaolin arts and to teach him how to "get some Gung Fu". After kicking him around for a little bit, he goes to fight the Jade Emperor. Fighting ensues, and after a protracted battle, a blundering idiot with a stupid face saves China from tyranny.
However, the story does not end there. After being returned to his own dimension, he uses his newfound fighting power to put down a gang of thugs that has been bugging him. Then he makes friends with the owner of a Chinese pawn shop and gets noticed by the reincarnation of an orphaned girl whose life he failed to save in the timeline that he was in and blah blah blah
"Bullshit. If a white guy appeared in ancient China, they would've thought he was a ghost, killed him, and made dumplings out of his flesh." Rating: 40%
Gay Games aren't limited to just Warcraft 3 anymore, thanks to the infinite modularity of Garry's Mod, the Half-Life 2 source engine physics engine abuser and posing utility. Originally comprised as a fun way to fuck around with the Source engine in interesting ways (such as creating huge, physics-y Skinner boxes to kill yourself in or spawning fifty antlions to see how fast they eat you, or possibly a combination of the two), Garry's Mod has become a neat little way to make minigames and stuff LIMITED ONLY BY YOUR IMAGINATION.
In a drunken rage I bought Garry's Mod online from Steam, and it was only too helpful in complying with my need to spend money. It was so helpful, it even let me buy Counter-Strike: Source about 10 minutes later after I discovered that half of the objects and textures in Garry's Mod require you to have it installed. So, 30 bucks or so later, now I can just join a random server and all the files I need (for the most part) are helpfully downloaded into the computer and the Gay Games can begin.
Zombie Survival
While sort of crude, this mod was obviously made with a lot of interest and effort. The people who took the time to put it together are not just a bunch of teenagers dicking around, but zombie film fans hoping to re-create the experience of a horror flick in which you're one of the hapless living trying not to get munched.
The player models are all from Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike, and the Zombie models are all from HL2, so the whole thing has a sort of HL2 feel to it at first glance. You'll see a bunch of Alyxes and Kleiners and Combines desperately trying to barricade doors and other bottlenecks with sofas and tables while a headcrab zombie (minus the headcrab) swats at them and screams horribly. One player in each game is randomly chosen to be the first zombie who initiates the infection process by killing the humans. It might take him a while, as humans generally at first camp the poisonous green smog that designates the Zombie spawn zone to get kills to earn better weapons, but eventually some idiot will get too close to the slavering jaws of the undead and fall over dead, only to pop back up as another zombie a second later. Everything just escalates from there, as more zombies means more dead humans which eventually leads to a rotting horde bearing down on the last cowering survivors.
Zombies unlock different player classes as the game goes on and they whittle down the human side, allowing them to choose headcrabs, fast headcrabs, fast zombies, chem zombies, etc. Each zombie has its strengths and weaknesses, and the basic zombie never becomes useless. However, only fast zombies can climb walls and only headcrabs can get into small spaces (and, like tiny little crack spiders, are next to impossible to kill with a pistol.) Also, to make things more fucked up, zombies can see the glowing heartbeats of the living wherever they try to hide.
The best part about this mod is that it very closely follows the classic sequence of events in zombie films which lead to the complete infection of everyone in the area. You'll at first be hanging out on a rooftop, sniping away at the few shuffling zombies you see without a damn care in the world, when suddenly after a few minutes you find yourself trapped in a small room with 10 other panicked individuals all firing wildly at the stream of undead climbing through the windows. If one of these survivors falls and comes to life as a zombie, for the most part it's basically over. Even if you're the most loyal human survivor on the planet, the very second you become undead you're going to start eating your former buddies like tater tots, I promise you.
Score: 5 out of 5
Prophunt
In PC Gamer they listed this mod as the best Garry's Mod game of the bunch. I'm not so sure about that, but it is pretty fun for being so simple. Combined with that, it's also pretty polished, so it isn't that gay of a game at all. One side are the Hunters, brandishing shotguns and machine pistols and such, and the other side are the Props. Props spawn as scientists and have 30 seconds to find a random prop strewn around the map (A CS: Source map, there aren't any custom ones out yet) and hit the E button. Doing that, you instantly become a clone of that prop and are free to run around and try to hide yourself wherever you think you won't stand out.
It's fun to make yourself a barrel and try to sit innocuously somewhere while the hunters run past you, but it's even funner when they find you out and chase your ass around the map. You'll see combine soldiers chasing half-empty beer bottles, oranges, traffic cones or concrete blocks as they try to score a kill. If a hunter shoots an object that isn't a player, his health goes down, so they have to look closely at things that look out of place. Props can also use random taunts to give hints to the hunters.
The problem with this mod is that little teenage faggots like to play it and disguise themselves as the smallest, most hard-to-hit object they can find (like a money clip from CS_Assault) and jump around like idiots at your feet while you flail around trying to hit them. All the time somehow they're able to type "lolololololol" and eventually the game ends with you pissed off. This is the only real problem with this game.
4.5 out of 5
Stranded
The mod that originally drew me to the Garry's Mod scene is Stranded, a wilderness survival mod ('cause I'm obsessed) that puts you on a desert island with a bunch of other survivor types with nothing but your wits and a gravity gun to save you. The wilderness survival aspect comes from you having to eat, drink and sleep to keep from dying. You can forage the ground for seeds to plant and grow watermelons to eat, you can attack a tree for wood and rocks for stone and iron, and when you have enough resources you can build things like campfires, tools and objects from HL2. You see people building some cool stuff like little shacks and lean-to's, skulls on sticks and ramshackle gates to keep people away from their watermelons.
The real problem with this game is it's mainly pointless and the map never changes, so it's mostly a bunch of bored people harvesting resources and building things to keep themselves amused. Once you exit the server, all your stuff disappears and you have to harvest/remake everything when you rejoin. Combined with that, you have some people who've been playing on the server for years at a time and their harvesting skills are so high that they get like 100 wood from a single swipe at a tree. Then they somehow build a stargate and warp to a completely different map. I'm not even kidding, this is what they do. I can see them chatting about it, and it makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my pathetic shelter that consists of a board on top of two traffic barriers.
4 out of 5
Spacebuild
This mod expects a lot of the people who are playing it. It expects us not only to know what we're doing with the Garry's Mod tools (I don't) but to have a knowledge enough of rocket physics to launch structurally sound vehicles to other planets. Spacebuild's maps are enormous in scale, comprising about 10 planets which you can vaguely see from your starting launchpad, all of which are reachable. In order to cross the interplanetary void, you need to weld together an abomination of metal and random HL2 objects, stick a bunch of rockets to the back of it, get in and hold on tight. This won't, however, save you from extreme temperatures and the lack of Oxygen in outer space. You need to have a power plant, life support, heat shields, some other stuff I have no idea about, and tons and tons of free time in which to put all this crap together.
I have never actually been able to get into outer space yet, mostly because my brilliant creations explode or fall over or get fucked with by some other player, or most likely I just run out of interest. A bunch of important Spacebuild objects (like cockpits) don't work for me for some reason, replaced with huge ugly ERROR messages (which are physics objects in themselves) that make everything look like crap. Maybe if I can figure out how to make it work I'll be able to launch myself to another world, which would actually be really cool.
3 out of 5
Defend the Core This game is ugly and stupid, presumably made by the same guys who made Zombie Survival, but still inexplicably bad. Some of the ideas are cool: you build up your base at the beginning with turrets and walls and shields and other crap in order to defend your core, then choose a class to play as as you assault the enemy's core while defending your own. You can be boring things like magicians or knights, or interesting things like the Gun Mage or Leeroy Jenkins. The Gun Mage is cool because you have a revolver pistol, but you supplement it with spells like fire bullet or bouncing bullet to make things interesting. Leeroy Jenkins you have to purchase with "silver" which is the currency for the Noxious Net servers (the guys who made the mod). You can also purchase a big stupid snowman head to replace your own, or maybe a traffic cone or bucket to wear as a hat.
Anyway, the game is ugly as sin and the gameplay is anything but smooth. People are running around and are incredibly hard to hit, and smacking the "core" with a crowbar as a weak Pilot (because they blew up your vehicle spawn points and piloting vehicles is all you're good for) while avoiding lightning bolts gets repetitive really fast. Also there are teenaged little psychos who will rant at you for not defending the core well enough (???) and Leeroy Jenkinses suiciding into you constantly, combined with a few other factors making it an unpleasant experience.
2.5 out of 5
Simple Games Simply put, simple games are simple. There's footrace, where you try to run a circuit while picking up powerups and shooting the guy you're racing against. There's freeze tag, where you run around smacking people with a crowbar to freeze them. There's dodgeball, where you shoot bouncy balls at your fellow PE students trying to kill them. They're fun, except for footrace which is just stupid. Actually I haven't gotten to play freeze tag yet, but PC Gamer says it's fun so I'll just believe them.
Edit: The "Freeze Tag" PC lamer was talking about is a completely different mod from the one in simple games, so I guess I've never played either one. You know what, fuck simple games.
2.5 out of 5.
More Gay Games to follow as I discover them. If your computer can't run Source, give the fuck up and just upgrade.
“Neglected by Congress below, distressed with the small-pox; want of Generals and discipline in our Army, which may rather be called a great rabble, our credit and reputation lost, and great part of the country; and a powerful foreign enemy advancing upon us, are so many difficulties we cannot surmount them.”- Benedict Arnold Wise words from one of the greatest military minds in history. Indeed, succeeding at Warcraft III takes patience, study, cunning, and most of all, dedication. To win at 1v1 ladder games, you will need to excel at many different skills including:
1. Game mechanics 2. Race selection 3. Hero Skills 4. Basic creeping strategies 5. Organizing your army 6. When to attack/retreat 7. Micromanagement 8. Good sportsmanship
....PSYCHE. To win at this shit, you don't need any of that. Throw it all away in the garbage and spit in Sun Tzu's face. All you really need is disdain for your fellow man to make a total mockery out of a serious opponent. Just remember: anyone else playing ladder is a sub-human douchebag not fit for existence.
Now that you are in the right frame of mind, this guide will teach you how to not only slap your dick in your opponent's face, but also to improve your own win/loss record. Actually, since my account was banned from ladder play because of maphacking, this is not so much as guide as it is a demonstration of how you can turn 1v1 ladder into a total joke.
Hiding The Tree I'm not going to go into great detail of how to set this up, but here is a short breakdown:
1. Choose Night Elf 2. At the beginning of the game, detonate all wisps 3. Uproot your Tree of Life 4. Find a good patch of forest and move your Tree of Life towards it 5. Start eating away at single trees to create a path into the forest, deep enough to hide the tree from normal view
The reason this works is because to technically win a standard game of Warcraft, your opponent must destroy all of your buildings. The purpose of this strategy is to hide your only building at the start of the game so your opponent cannot locate you and therefore, cannot win. Since trees block vision, your Tree Of Life can almost remain hidden from your opponent for most of the game. The Night Elf race is perfect to set up this condition because:
1. You can detonate your workers, erasing any trace of them 2. The Tree Of Life can eat away at trees, making entry into a forest easy
As easy as the concept seems, there is a bit of skill required to know where to burrow into a forest, and how to minimize the number of trees eaten to cover up evidence that you have entered a forest. You also want to make sure that you are adequately hidden from view within the trees.
Victory
Using this strategy, victory is gained from your opponent quitting the game. This may occur for several reasons:
1. Your opponent believes there is a bug in the game, and that no opponent has spawned on the map. Your opponent then thinks that there is no way to win the game and quits (70% of victories) 2. Your opponent believes that you have somehow hacked the game, allowing you to become totally invisible, and quits out of fear (15% of victories) 3. Your opponent realizes that you have hidden the Tree Of Life, but rather than spend all the effort tracking you down, quits out of laziness (10% of victories) 4. Your opponent, for whatever reason, quits anyway (5% of victories)
Personally, I have managed a 50% victory rate by Hiding The Tree. So that means that half the time, your opponent will quit by any of the reasons mentioned above, and the other half of the time your opponent will track you down and kill you.
At first, 50% may not sound that good, but as a long-time ladder player, I would have a 50% win rate even if I had played normally. This brings me the next reason why this is a superior strategy:
Opportunity Cost
I was once a dedicated player of Warcraft ladder games. I would spend a lot of time practicing, reading strategy guides, watching replays, and working on my micromanagement. After a while, I realized that no matter how much effort I put into this game, someone was always gayer, expending that extra effort to gain that extra 2% advantage to win the game.
But this is where the elegance of the Hide The Tree strategy comes in. When a game starts, your opponent is usually working away like mad building units, directing workers, and managing creeps, all to gain that advantage at a great speed. On the other hand, you have spent at most 2 minutes total eating away into a forest and hiding your tree. After that, you are free to do what you want, like study, watch TV, whatever, while your opponent all the while is feverishly building his army in preparation of an epic battle.
So even if your opponent hunts you down and kills you, think about what he has gained. Has he gained any utility from playing this game with you? Nope. Unless your opponent enjoys clicking on black spots on the map until he finds a pixel with a different color, he has wasted all his years of Warcraft practice and study because it amounts to nothing when you consider that his opponent hasn't built anything. Your opponent has gained a win, but has he done so any easier than if you were playing for real? Hard to say. At the beginning of the game, your opponent is treating the game like any other, so he is expending the same amount of energy and effort. You are not handing him a victory, you are making him work almost as hard for it and without deriving any enjoyment.
And if your opponent quits, you have won a game, plus your opponent feels like shit. It's win-win.
Advanced tactics
As usual, if you want your opponent to quit as fast as possible, go into Ironman mode. This means no talking to your opponent at all under any circumstances.
By remaining cold and distant, your opponent feels the desolating loneliness of his existence in this game, and will hasten his quitting. This usually results in the highest percentage of quits.
On the other hand, you can increase the chance that your opponent quits because he thinks there is a bug in the game by crafting an error message:
That covers the Hide The Tree strategy. I find that most of my enjoyment comes from the long verbose insults my opponents throw at me, but sometimes, the shorter the sweeter:
This is sort of a modern version of a Western movie but with a botched drug deal and some Mexican cartels running around looking for stolen drug money. The highlight is this huge menacing psychopathic outlaw that goes around killing people in Texas. He basically goes around messing with people to decide whether to kill them or not and genuinely enjoys the selection process.
