tekHedd – the blog

So here I am in a nice hotel room in Penang Malaysia, and I just cut my finger opening a can of cashews from the hotel minibar. I have no idea how much they’re going to charge me for opening this can. Probably something they think is humorously outrageous. And it probably is, in local currency, but the exchange rate is still pretty good for US dollars. But hey, even with exchange rates, the prices for beer here are amazingly high. Fortunately, I have a sixpack of warm beer from the supermarket in the hotel room… Room temperature… Sure, the minibar also has a refrigerator, but the temperature inside the minibar fridge is exactly the same as the temperature outside it, which makes me wonder why they even bothered.

So I’m here for a week and it’s really really nice. Now, if you hate spicy food, or if you hate seafood, you might have problems here. Actually, there are a lot of things here that might I suppose freak out Americans. But hey if you’re going to list things that freak out “most Americans”, you need to include vegetarians, black people, gamers, stuff like that. So I guess forget about that.

Most people would, at this point, say something like “…now, I don’t think of myself as a typical American”. I would love to use this kind of segue, but in fact I *do* think of myself as a typical  American. I like hamburgers, I love my Mom, and apple pie is great. Oh sure, Mom gets on my nerves sometimes… “Why don’t you go to church and meet a nice girl”. Mom, I met several girls in church, and none of them were what you’d call “nice”. :) Um… OK where was I going with this. I digress…

Yeah, culture shock and your average American. Seriously. Narrow streets, old buildings, and tiny cars do not constitute culture shock. Rice? I’ve eaten that. Socks optional? I have plenty of hippie friends.

OK, so is there culture shock to be had? Sure plenty. On both sides. I have bright red hair. I come here and everyone here is freaked out. I visit a country and the locals get culture shock. Although the locals mostly stare, and when I catch them staring they continue smiling and wave. Whereas when I catch Americans staring they look away and get angry. Why are Americans angry when you catch them staring at you? That’s a subject for an entire thesis…

And yeah, to some degree I’m a bit overstimulated, but to be honest once people have shown you how to eat the local cuisine (no knife?), you’re set. Why didn’t people tell me travel was this easy? I’d be living on the moon.

Um, but that’s not the point of any of this. The point is that this laptop sucks for gaming. I’ve been playing MegaMan ZX on the DS, and it kicks the balls out of any MMO I’ve played lately. Sure, it’s a stupid side scrolling game with a stupid asian plot and stupid ability to absorb the DNA of any boss you beat and become… you know, that’s not stupid at all. This kicks ass. Find me a MMO that lets you *become* any boss you beat, and I’ll play it. If it lets you stomp around in a huge robot suit, so much the better. I wonder. Tabula Rasa, but with big stomping robots?

Where is the stomping robot MMO? (And no I don’t mean Manga, I mean MECH Warrior Mercenaries!!!)

Peace out.

Whether it can actually live up to its reliability claims, I don’t know. But after a lot of experimentation, I’ve decided that I don’t want a fancy keyboard, I just want a really good one! Pictures and impressions to follow…maybe…if I get around to it later.

Also, I dropped my Hellgate:London subscription. Yes, hardcore makes it worth playing. No, hardcore is not worth $10 per month. I’ve been playing Tabula Rasa, and it gets better and better. A class act.

So, a week ago last weekend, I went out and got a life. It wasn’t a planned thing; I just somehow ended up out drinking all weekend. And of course I had a wicked hangover Sunday that made band practice into an act of pure willpower.

I don’t really like to drink that much–well technically this is a lie. I love to drink, but there’s the whole “death” thing that takes the fun out of it. But, man, there’s nothing else to do. Why is it that 100% of the people out “having a life” are drunk? “Having a life” seems very similar to “being an alcoholic”. If they are, in fact, the same, I can drink at home and save on cab fare, with the added bonus that I’ve greatly reduced the risk of waking up with a hangover next to a spectacularly unattractive woman.

So, this weekend, when I wasn’t standing around in a cold converted garage going deaf as part of my lifelong strategy to be an international rock star, I tried to finish Mass Effect. Naturally, I still haven’t finished, and I’ve clocked something like 60 hours and 250 saves. That’s 10 hours of gameplay, 10 hours of conversation, and 40 hours of walking. What game does this remind you of? Baldur’s gate!

Not since the original Baldur’s Gate have I spent so much time walking. And Baldur’s Gate was great, in its own way, just as this game is, but there was so much more plot in BG, whereas Mass Effect is, well, when you set aside the Visual Splendour(TM), the game’s pretty simple:

• Plot
• Inventory Management
• Shooting Things
• Driving a 6-wheeled RC rock-climbing vehicle
• Inventory Management

Ah, inventory management. Not since Dungeon Seige 1 has there been a game that makes inventory so boring. In old-school, D&D style games, inventory management used to be fun and easy, and getting new gear was sometimes actually exciting. If you have a +1 short sword, and you find a +2 Short Sword, that’s fun. Wow, now I have +2. If you find another +2 Short Sword, that’s uninteresting. In Mass Effect, it’s like you find a +1.9 Short Sword, and a +2.03 Short Swort, and a +1.99 Short Sword and you have to look at the three attributes of each one to decide whether it’s good. By the time you find an actual +3 Short Sword it’s not really that exciting. You can’t escape noticing that what drops is always almost exactly the same as what you’re currently using (ala Oblivion), and viola!: you’ve successfully removed the fun of having cool weapons. Of course, there aren’t any swords in Mass Effect, but really that’s not the point. Combine this with being totally sick  nd tired of driving a toy six-wheeled car around on nearly impassible terrain, and you’ve got everything bad. And yet now I’m into the plot far enough that I want to see the rest. And I will power my way through to the end, at which point I will with great pleasure turn off the hoover..um, I mean the X360 and remove this game from my life.

At this point, I realize I have sat through almost an entire work week of filler. Bioware, I hate you.