Japanerd
I'm the everyman around these parts, but that doesn't mean I'm not willing to flaunt my excellence now and again.
Posts by Japanerd
Aug 26th
A scout runs and jumps while inside the spawn, jamming himself in the door, and preventing it from opening. The rest of his team looks at him strangely, waiting for him to move. Then a pyro asks, “Is he glitched, or just being a douchebag?”. A medic answers, “I think it’s a little of column A, a little of column B.”
They call themselves Team Roomba. A group of gamers who take it upon themselves to make the game a little more difficult for everyone who happens to be on the same team as them, with frankly hilarious results. Team Roomba is a clan in Team Fortress 2 who devoted themselves to griefing (i.e. making everyone’s lives miserable), and filming it. I wouldn’t recommend clicking the link to their site. It’s just another display of their offbeat sense of humor, but at the same time hilarious.
Team Roomba stands out from the griefing crowd by replacing simple voice spamming with much more creative approaches to the noble art. Engineers building turrets under the map and killing the enemies from complete safety? Brilliant. Jamming the doors on teammates and making them answer trivia questions to open it? Hilarious. Team Roomba has also done griefing Insurgency, though its not the same high quality work as they did on Team Fortress 2. All in all, I’d highly recommend you watch any of their griefing videos. It’s quality fun for everyone not involved.
Aug 11th
Bubble Tanks 2, sequel to the excellent Bubble Tanks, is an incredibly creative shooter. As the name implies, you play as a Bubble Tank in a bubble world flying around shooting other bubbles so as to absorb their bubbles to make your own bubble bigger and better. The game has a lot of bubbles, to say the least, as well as many improvements over the original Bubble Tanks, and is easily one of the best Flash-based games this year.
In Bubble Tanks 2, the tutorial has literally not changed at all from the original. This is quite a blessing, actually. Bubble Tanks and Bubble Tanks 2′s tutorials consist of writing on the background of the first couple bubbles. That’s it. Also the core gameplay is virtually unchanged. You still move from bubble to bubble using W-A-S-D and aim and shoot using the mouse. BT2 also adds an entertaining “Arena Mode” in addition to normal mode. In Arena Mode, you can choose to do battle against any of the bubbly foes you have previously encountered, as well as start your bubble off at any stage you unlocked in normal mode. This brings me to my next point. Players of the original Bubble Tanks probably noticed that there are literally no customization options. Now in BT2, as your tank “levels” up, you can choose which specialization you want. You can go as an agile Fighter Tank, a slow powerful Heavy Tank, or a nice balanced Balance Tank. It adds a nice level of customization to the game, in addition to adding a lot to the replay value. There’s also a new Secondary Weapon feature, which affects your overall strategy in the game. If you’re playing as a balance tank, for instance, shields are useful for fighting bigger enemies so you can block their attacks. Though there are also plenty of useless secondary weapons as well, such as mines. No enemy ever ran over any of the mines I ever laid down, ever.
Overall, Bubble Tanks 2 is a huge improvement over the original Bubble Tanks, which is saying alot because Bubble Tanks is one of my all time favorite flash games. The only real problems I have with the game are the lack of balance between the classes, with many profoundly useless classes such as Sniper, as well as absolutely no carried over traits when you upgrade your tank. The customization really ends with which tank you pick. Also, it ocassionally has lag spikes when there are a bunch of enemies on screen. Overall, however, I’d say this game is an excellent way to spend a little time while in the interwebs.
Jun 28th
A few days ago I downloaded Extra DVD Ripper Express from Give Away of the Day. It’s a handy little program that you use to rip DVD’s to your computer in almost a dozen different possible formats. This way you don’t have to spend extra money to get videos off of iTunes or similar programs, as well as enabling you access to movies that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to get off of programs like the aforementioned iTunes.
Extra DVD Ripper Express, with its frankly ridiculous name, as many pros and cons. One advantage is it provides you with a safe legal way to get DVDs onto your computer. It also looks fairly good. They skinned the program after Window’s Media Player 11, which in my opinion is one of the best looking programs available. That being said, the pleasing visuals don’t help the interface at all. It’s frankly rather jumbled, to the point where it can be down right confusing to use the program. Extra DVD Ripper Express is also rather slow. I ripped rip Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to my computer in the M4P format, and it took approximately 6 hours to be fully ripped onto my computer. Something that may have just been my stupidity, but I choose to blame on the program, are subtitles. It has them on default, and I didn’t notice when I ripped Indiana Jones. In essence, I wasted 6 hours ripping a movie only to find out that it has subtitles when I never asked there to be.
All in all, I would say Extra DVD Ripper Express is decent. It’s slow, confusing and needs to shorten its name, but it works. If you got it from Giveaway of the Day, keep it. If not, don’t bother buying it. Just torrent the movie or something. Not that I encourage stealing or anything.
Jun 24th
I loaded up Addicting Games today and once again began rummaging around for a halfway decent flash game. In a desperate attempt to avoid another stupid stick figure flash game, I decided to play Vulcan. To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t finish this game. It was horrific. At first glance, it seemed promising, then I noticed the blatant Halo rip off. They basically come out and say it’s a Halo rip off. If you shot this game, it would bleed Halo rip off. The main character is a blue spartan-esq soldier named “Vulcan”. In the game you trapsing through the top-down world of narrow hallways shooting Covenant cop out aliens.
The game itself started off on a sour note. Incredibly bad dialogue along with subpar animations made the introduction quite unbearable. Then they thought it would be a good idea to give you every weapon right at the start of the game. Now, let me tell you my beef with this strategy. It may make it easier for the programmers, but it gives the players of the game no sense of progress whatsoever. They have nothing to work for except killing the next enemy in exactly the same way that they were able to kill the enemy on the first screen. They also made this game ridiculously hard. All of your weapons are completely ineffective until you’re almost in point blank range. The aliens begin shooting the second you step out of cover, and their aim is impeccable. They can hit you from the other side of the room the moment you poke your badly animated self out of cover. Along the same line, the game lags terribly whenever there are more than 2 or 3 people shooting at the same time. This makes the game incredibly difficult to play, considering after the 3 or 4th room you can reasonably expect 4 or 5 aliens to be shooting at you at the same time. The weapons themselves are also incredibly poorly designed. The Battle Rifle, my favorite gun from Halo, is about effective as throwing a dead rabbit at the enemies. Then the SMG’s are incredibly over powered. You can basically one shot every enemy using the SMG’s. And the Shotgun is entirely useless. The only way you can get it to work at all is if the muzzle of the shotgun is firmly placed against the targets chest. Also, the levels are designed in such a way that at least half the time every one of the enemies onscreen can shoot at you while you can hit maybe one or two of them. How did the designers manage to make it that way? I haven’t the slightest idea. It’s some sort of chaos theory engine, I guess. But I digress. Onto the finale.
This game sucks. Not Dane Cook suck, or even Superman for the N64 suck. This game achieves its own special level of suck. Dante’s Inferno will be rewritten to include playing this game forever as the ninth level of hell. This game has absoultely no redeeming factors. Stay away from it at all costs! I think I made my point.
Jun 22nd
After many hours of searching for a somewhat enjoyable flash game (which is quite hard to find these days) I found Sniper Assassin. Sniper Assassin is one of the many stick figure shooter games, and I had the displeasure of playing it.
According to the games description, it’s “a job that requires finesse and nerves of steel”. Instead, all it requires is the ability to read, and rudimentary clicking ability. The very unoriginally titled Sniper Assassin presents you with a small area with 5 or 6 same looking stick figures at once. Your job is to pick out which one is your target. This would have been a solid concept if the mission briefings didn’t slap you upside the head with the targets flawless description. This takes away any challenge the game may have previously presented in locating your target. It’s easy, boring, and frankly annoying. I appreciate the attempt to create atmosphere with the music, but it was terribly annoying after the second loop. Game play, it’s solid, but boring. Nothing you haven’t seen in games like Tactical Assassin 2. It’s a repetitive, predictable, and criminally short game with mediocre gameplay. You’d be best off avoiding it.
Now that thats finished, lets take a moment to discuss something. Why are there so many freakin’ stick figure flash games out there? At one point, I would say they were rather enjoyable, but its getting ridiculous people! This is like the fiftieth stick figure sniping game since tactical assassin, and I’m getting tired of it. Are you people too lazy to come up with something new and original? You want a fun, different game? Try The Sniper. At least it doesnt use stick figures. Come on, flash creaters. Please switch up the usual, don’t copy the originals like Tactical Assassin or Thing-Thing, (which are both excellent games), make your own, unique, fun game.
Jun 21st
Shortly before the launch of Firefox 3.0, Opera had a launch of its own. Version 9.50 of the venerable browser signified a turn in Opera‘s interface. An almost complete overhaul of Opera‘s tab interface, as well as many separate new features of its own.
Being a long time Opera user, (though now throughly devoted to Firefox), it was interesting to see the changes over time. I must admit, version 9.50 continues Opera’s long tradition of pioneering in terms of browser tabs. Their new tab interface is sleek, intuative, and best of all, it works. Adding a new tab button to the right of your open tabs, as well as the ability to recover closed tabs simply by clicking on the trash can icon, Opera proves that, though it may be the little guy, it is still capable of innovation. In addition to the new tab interface, it added a Quick Find Bar, almost identical to Mozilla Firefox’s “Awesome Bar”. The new version also adds a new browser engine, making it twice as fast as Opera version 9.2 when it comes to rendering Javascript and HTML, as well as third party plug-ins. It also considerably accelerates Opera‘s start up time, which was not slow to begin with. Likewise the new version added Opera Link, which synchronizes your bookmarks with your Mobile Phone. This allows you to take your bookmarks anywhere. It also revamped the Toolbar system, giving more customization options to the user, and virtually eliminating the accidental opening of the toolbar. (That was a major problem during my use of version 9.2).
All in all, the new version of Opera is fast, sleek, and an overall improvement on an already excellent browser. If you’re a fan of Opera, I whole heartedly encourage you go ahead and download the 9.50. Personally, I’m going to stick to Firefox 3.0.
Jun 20th
To celebrate their latest patch to the amazing game Team Fortress 2, Valve is allowing anybody with a Steam account to download the game for free and use it for the weekend. After the weekend (June 20-22, 2008) you can no longer play the game for free unfortunately. The new patch adds 3 new unlockable weapons for the Pyro class. There’s a shotgun replacement called the Flare Gun, which is basically just what it sounds like. It shoots off a flare to allow you to ignite your enemies at long range, but takes a very careful aim to get it right. It also adds a new flamethrower into the mix, called The Backburner. It removes the Compression Blast ability, but the Backburner always has critical hits when burning an enemy from behind, as well as adding 50 points of health to the Pyro wielding it. The final unlockable is a new axe, called the Axtinguisher. This weapon critical hits any enemy who is on fire, but does considerably less damage to those who remain in a state of not on fire.
The patch also adds 35 achievements for aspiring Pyros to unlock. One of my personal favorites, is called BarbeQueQ. You obtain it by causing a dominated player to leave the server. Other fun achievements such as Freezer Burn (provide enemies with freezecam shots of each of your taunts), make it worth your while to try for the achievements. There are also two new maps added, A capture point map called “Fastlane”, and a Capture the flag map called “Turbine”. All of these factors make it an excellent weekend to play TF2, and if you aren’t already a player, to join the phenomenon.
Jun 16th
So I recently ate some “Mad-Croc” Energy Gum. Well, ate is a strong word. It was more along the lines of, chew for five minutes then spit out because of pure disgust. Mad-Croc is one of the few products I’ve found whose taste goes from fairly good to absolutely unbearable a matter of minutes. I had some spearmint gum first, which was definitely the best of the flavors. It actually tasted fairly good for the first minute or two, then all pretenses of flavor dissipated into nothing more than a sticky pile of sickening goop in my mouth. I mean, if a baby chewed this stuff, I swear you would see his face melt, Raiders of the Lost Ark style.
Moving away from the flavor factor, in terms of working, it’s not bad. The only problem is you have to chew for at least 10 – 15 minutes to get the full effect of the gum, and it is unbearable after the first three. So it’s a challenge to get the proper effect from the gum, but if you’re willing to put up with it, it is a decent energy provider. Two pieces, according to the packaging anyways, is equal to one 8 oz. energy drink. That isn’t bad, I suppose. Not spectacular, but not bad.
So, in closing, I think I would make a great student council representative because of my strong work ethic and willingness to help others. And Mad-Croc Energy Gum sucks.
Jun 9th
In the aftermath of a purchase of Rock Band, I find myself with an acute lack of money. Because of this, I am reviewing whatever I happen to have in my fridge today, which happens to be Coca-Cola. Now, you may be saying to yourself, in your whiny high-pitched 12 year old voice, “But Japanerd! Coke isn’t an energy drink, it’s just a soda!” Well I present to you, my friends, evidence to discount you claims that it’s not an energy drink. While it may not give you a massive buzz like Mountain Dew, it still has a large amount of sugar and caffeine. Do you know what sugar and caffeine does? It gives you energy. Shocking, eh?
Anyways, onwards and upwards to the review. Coke is a wonderful beverage. I mean, it’s the granddaddy of soft drinks, and it still has that great Coke taste. Screw Pepsi, given the option I’d choose a Coke over Pepsi any day. Anyways, I digress. Coke tastes great, and anyone who says otherwise deserves to be strung up naked in town square and by his own entrails, and flogged by his own festering, lying lungs until he is deemed purified, at which point he will be dragged around town behind a horse while passers-by will attempt to shoot him as many times as they can without killing him. Then he’ll die. Yeah, thats how it’ll go down.
Energy-wise, it’s effective, but needs to be consumed in large amounts if you’re looking for a significant boost. During the school year, I’ll generally drink a can of Coke in the mornings as a little pick-me-up, but it’s not something that will keep you up for long periods of time. If it’s any consolation, you can get two 44 ounce Cokes at your local convience store for about the same price a 16 ounce energy drink. All in all, I’d say that Coke, though not technically an energy drink, is definitely a winner in my book.
Jun 6th
Today I decided to step away from energy drinks, and review a good ol’ fashioned zombie slaughtering flash game, just like grandma used to make. Anyways, I popped open Mozilla, and went straight to my second favorite source of flash games, Addicting Games. I looked at their front page and noticed Zombie Arena. That’s where the loathing began.
As a zombie hunting enthusiast, it was my duty to try this game out. First off, I wish to say that the name was very misleading. I assumed that I would be in control of a character in some sort of arena, but that dream was crushed as the player is in the middle of a forest. I decided to overlook this, and proceed with the game. You start off with the only weapon you’ll need, the Shotgun. For my first 300 kills, I used nothing but the shotgun. As the game proceeded, the difficulty barely wavered. In fact, the only time I got close being challenged, I unlocked the Minigun, which allowed me to singlehandedly stave off the entire zombie invasion without moving. Of course, the major fault with the Minigun is that it has no splash damage. Only the zombie who you’re pointing the gun directly at takes any damage. Now, moving more into game play, Zombie Arena is painfully easy. I lasted 11 minutes no sweat, and only died because I left my keyboard. The AI is also incredibly stupid. Even for a flash game, the zombies were getting stuck behind trees, making them easy targets for my ill-gotten shotgun.
All in all, I would say avoid this game. You get a far better zombie shoot-em-up in Endless Zombie Rampage or The Last Stand 2. Go play one of those instead.