November. Time for Starbucks to roll out the Xmas cups. Eff that. I’m sticking with Halloween for one more week.
Haunted Halloween. Like last week’s featured community level, this one is an entry for the LBN Platforming Perils contest. Also like last week’s level, the music here is questionable. Unlike last week’s level music it’s not terrible, though, just confusing and annoying. Confusing because the first half of the level is accompanied by the song Thriller and the second half by Ray Parker Jr.’s Ghostbusters theme song, and I don’t know how a community designer can use those songs and avoid falling into a licensing quagmire. Annoying because these are terrible synth versions of the songs, with some dude doing an amateur rendition of the Thriller read. Please…don’t do that. I beg you. Note to designers: voicing your own level is always a bad idea. Doing so while aping Vincent Price, a crime.
Music aside, the level is a decent platformer and has some really cool images. I just don’t understand why the Ghostbusters theme song is shoehorned into it. You can pay homage to the movie without subjecting us to that horrible song.
After the jump, listen, do you smell something? Continue reading →
One of the Battlefield servers I frequent is hosted by the [ISI] Christian Clan. I figure religious folks are more inclined to good sportsmanship. For instance, I accidentally team-killed someone on a non-religious server and was told “thanks for the tk nigger”. I had even typed “sry”. Sometimes friendly fire isn’t.
But the [ISI] Christian Clan server runs a looping message that reads, “Please watch your language, as we do not give warnings”. Which is fine by me. I don’t really cuss around folks I don’t know. The server also loops a verse from Proverbs, but it’s a good one that even a Buddhist or Muslim could dig on: “As iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another”. In other words, it’s more fun to play with people who don’t type “thanks for the tk nigger”.
Is it bad that I find some of the contextual dialogue particularly hilarious on this server? When you’re playing the Americans and squad members are getting killed or taking damage, they will scream “I’m getting my shit pushed in!” or “We’re really getting fucked in the ass over here!” I love the voice acting in these games, and I support making it as gritty it needs to be. Let’s get all Generation Kill up in here! But on this server, when they say those things, I put my fingertips over my pursed lips and give a wide-eyed Church Lady take to the camera.
Since I’ve been hitting my internet connection hard and heavy with some serious Battlefield 3, I didn’t think anything of another connection problem when I tried to log in to Xbox Live. I got some odd message about my profile being locked and needing to recover it. Whatever. Sounded pretty straightforward once I found the “recover profile” option. It took a while. I just played a few rounds of Battlefield 3.
So I eventually get back onto Xbox Live and, being a wanna-be Batman nerd, I head over to buy the Nightwing DLC for Arkham City. But for some reason, the 4000+ Microsoft spacebucks I had in my account are listed as 120 points. What? A quick check of my purchase history reveals that earlier today I tapped out my account by purchasing NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, the Gears of War 3 Season Pass, the Horde Command Pack, the Retro Lancer Launch Collection Weapon Skin Set, and Bastion. Except, of course, that I didn’t. But I applaud my thief’s choice of Bastion. That’s a seriously great game.
Anyway, here’s hoping Microsoft’s spacebuck theft department is more efficient than their broken Xbox department, which has repeatedly been a thorn in my side. I understand that Microsoft hasn’t acknowledged any widespread hacking issues, so as with my broken Xbox 360s, I appear to have been that one in a million guy. Again. I should play the lottery.
