One small step for douchebag, one giant leap, for douchekind.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Haterade #nerdrage



Oh?  I'm using hashtags now instead of gawker tags.

On Protectionism
So, here's our yearly butthurt over Japanese devs bemoaning their lack of relevance to the global market.  I'm going to give a quick analysis of two titles that I feel merit some discussion.

Exhibit A: Quantum Theory
First of all, it's a pretty fresh dev team and working with Tecmo.  Trying to enter the shooterspace.  Well, this could have been a great chance, were it not for a few massive issues.  It's great that you, smalltime dev, are trying to make a Gears of War clone--seriously, new ideas are always welcome.  But the controls are too different: making sprint and wallglue on two different buttons, wat?  Cursor acceleration (that can't be turned off?) WAT.  Using action-game controls (X for light melee, Y for heavy melee) instead of Gears-friendly B and holding B?  Listen, games that do this (looking at you, Call of Duty and Bad Company), piss us off.  Even Bayonetta did this, but those we learn to adapt by remapping internally.  Even if this were a Japanese action title, this would be unacceptable.


Exhibit B: Lost Planet 2
Sigh.  You were fun, sort of.  You thought that its failure was "Americans don't want Monster Hunter with guns."  Are you shitting me?  We WANT MONSTER HUNTER WITH GUNS.  You delivered something very short of that premise.  It didn't go with the cycle of 1) stock up, 2) locate, 3) tag, 4) combat phases.  If you, Capcom, released this experience as value-priced DLC, copies of LP2 will be selling at full retail again.


I think this points to big problem with Japanese devs across the board.  Your definitions of Western gaming are completely wrong.
1) You see big dudes with big guns, we see an insertion / empowerment fantasy (something your RPGs do quite well).
2) You see over-the-top violence, we see a victory well-earned.
3) You see FPS-centric mechanics, we see agency and intentionality.


You see our titles from the lens that made yours successful, so why not look at the ones that we eat up without any localization efforts?  We love shmups and fighting games because of tight controls.  We love visual novels and Persona because it facilitates insertion.  Japanese and Western gamers have very similar core motivations with a few nuances.  I'm going to attribute this wave of cultural insularism to an unwillingness to blame yourself for your failure as cultural observers.  Or, at the least, blame your fucking market researchers.


On Rivalries
So I own both Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2.  I clearly enjoy both, and will purchase Black Ops and Bad Company 2 Vietnam when they come out.  (Medal of Honor hasn't been able to capture me but that's a nerdrage for another day).  BC2 talks a lot of trash to MW2 in its narrative, specifically referencing characters and setpieces.  However, it clearly doesn't note the similarities.  Both have a team of English-speaking men fighting the Russians.  Both pit you against a singular boss who has a history of backstabbing.  Both contain gratuitous violence against helicopters. Both deal with EMP-like weapons systems.  And in a nod to MW1, the final playable scene in BC2 is a close-quarters fight on an aircraft.  I can vaguely hear Michael Bay cackling in the background during the end credits for both games.


As Art
A lot of people have offered their opinions on MW2, so I'll just stick with new material.  I can see where the development process sort of fell apart.  The campaign was based on a handful of powerful vignettes that probably had great target renders.  MW1 had parallel arcs that came together (something we see in virtually all CoD titles).  However, the narrative of MW2 has no direction and attempts to create anger at Makarov and Shepard (with only Shepard receiving a cathartic resolution) rather than make any effort to develop characters and explain motivations.  It missed a golden opportunity to turn Price into a villain, but instead opted to keep him around for a sequel.  Financial expediency trumping narrative quality, huh?

On Escalation
Play Bayonetta.  Just when you think shit just got real, shit gets realer.  Then play on Hard mode.  Ninja Gaiden 2 would get rock hard over Bayonetta.  This game has nearly infinite replayability.


On Promises
I bought and played Civilization V.  It's great.  It does culture somewhat well, with mutually exclusive tech trees.  Touche.


On Copycats
So, Alan Wake is great.  Its pedigree really shows, as the ending and 1st DLC really explore the metaphysical on top of the psychological.  This game is basically built on top of the idea of foreshadowing--Remedy has really taken the narrative style of Max Payne and have tweaked it nearly to perfection.  The gameplay should be familiar, your flashlight knocks down shadow and the bullets damage flesh.  You're basically playing Halo.  The rock concert showdown will draw inevitable parallels to Left 4 Dead 2, not that I think anyone will complain.  Each episode is timed at around 1 hour and has a pretty fitting ED song.  Alan Wake would have troubles as a weekly TV show, as the pacing is far more deliberate and has a clear sense of escalation.  Still, I had a great time.


On Inevitability
As of today, Halo Reach has eaten nearly 80 hours of my life.  I'll steer away from the multiplayer aspects, as they're just as fun as ever.  I'll start off by stating that I think content was cut that could have made the narrative more complete.  The only character death that I really felt was Jorge's, it's personal, referenced repeatedly, and Noble in design.  Kat's was pointless and drawn out with silence--I would've liked to see the team franticly attempting field medicine.  Subtitles indicated that something was cut here.  It was a wasted opportunity.  Jun doesn't die, he just goes missing in canon.  Carter gets a one-liner send off, a bit more time for the player to dwell and think about his sacrifice would have been appropriate.  Emile, while your death was clearly badass (in a 90s action movie pulling a grenade and taking the enemy with you sort of way), the player doesn't have any sort of emotional response.  It's like we're not supposed to care.  As if he were placed there so we'd have a reason to go there later.  But, I suppose all is forgiven with Lone Wolf.  That one level alone is a very fitting end that meshes nicely with the prologue.  This was quite possibly the first sequence to have been penned, and it's sort of a core idea that, sadly, doesn't play as a motif in the narrative.  Dear Bungie, your audience isn't too dumb for an in media res plot.  I thought ODST was probably the strongest story to date.


On Obsolescence
So I'm playing Splinter Cell Double Agent.  Note that I've already beaten Splinter Cell Conviction (or, as I call it, Rainbow 6 District of Columbia--since I can beat it with unsilenced weapons, not using stealth at all).
1) Checkpoints pause the game.  Wow, my hard drive isn't that slow.  Seriously, there aren't that many variables to save.
2) Interface depends on OMGFUTURISTIC typeface.
This one is much worse than both Chaos Theory.  I'm going to play just to try out the coop missions.


On Sympathy
I saw The Social Network and found myself strongly identifying with Mark.  His conceptions of revenge really resonated with my own.  His doe-eyed acceptance of Sean and the hedonist seeking of the frat lifestyle, not so much.  Still, I've had the ending line, "You're not an asshole, you just try too hard to be one." thrown at me before.  In fact, his attempt to reconnect with Erica also paralleled my life.  This ending was sublime.  The narcissist anti-hero had learned his lesson.  He had fulfilled the moral criteria for audience acceptance.  Luckily, Trent Reznor's contribution to the soundtrack was barely noticeable, save for the opening credits.  The droning of the piano combined with a running guy in a hoodie seemed more at place in a horror film.  I had heard that some felt that the dialogue was too "smart and witty" and that women were poorly represented.  I disagree with both, I felt that the back-and-forth was right at home with my daily speech, and that the female characters had little to do with the narrative except for Erica, the casus belli for Facemash, and the barometer for Mark's internal struggle for perceived accomplishment.  Asian starfucker girl only served to parallel the visual stress on Eduardo, who served more as an alter ego (sort of an anti-Tyler Durden) than a character foil.  Go see this movie.  I'll probably go see Easy A later, since it tries to parallel The Scarlet Letter along with the theme of a-scheme-goes-bigger-than-the-inventor-can-control.

Other Thoughts


Red Dead Redemption is pretty good.  While the social commentary isn't quite extraordinary, it's well-delivered.  Not a fan of spurring horses, though I suppose it's supposed to be fatiguing and would actually work towards a 1:1 of player action to pawn action.


GTA IV had a good ending.  I fought it very fitting for Niko to make it to the Statue of Liberty.  A culmination of everything the player has learned (combat, vehicles, chases) after all the trials and descents into worst the American experience has to offer, the protagonist is finally welcomed by the city's mascot as one of her own.


Blur should have a playlist just for Mount Haruna.  We really miss the Initial D games here in the States.


The Event is not nearly as good as Lost.  The latter would have episodic structure where the two parallel plots would share a common motif or narrative significance.  This new show just thinks that mystery and cliffhangers will keep us coming back.  You shouldn't have to have texts indicating timeskips.  Both plots seem quite boring on their own.  And together they barely manage to evoke a "meh'.


Hawaii Five-0 is quite good.  The first episode establishes the signoff "Book 'em Danno", and the third establishes the team identity.  They're not hamfisted, trying to force it to please fans of the original.  But in terms of a police thriller, this does quite well--the chemistry of the two white cops is very entertaining, but it doesn't quite use the Korean star power to its full potential.


Shows from last season that were good: Highschool of the Dead, Mitsudomoe (is the new Minami-ke), Amagami SS (blows KimiKiss out of the water) (Shin over at Atarashii Prelude seems to enjoy this quite a bit) and Asobi Ni Ikuyo! (give it a chance, it's actually smarter than its premise will promise).


Lost Odyssey made me cry like a little girl.  Not only is it an impactful character death, they just drag it on and OH MY GOD THERE'S A DDR CLONE FUNERAL PYRE MINIGAME WHAT THE FUCK.  Had puffy eyes the next day.


You know what's a very competent stealth action title? Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. I don't have any particularly strong feelings about it, but I found it quite engaging.  But a few bugs and random difficulty spikes make me just fucking give up more than once.  Yes, a segue into a signoff.  How pretentious of me.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

kill it with freitag!!! [HXB]









I wish we had 10 tracks for this battle, I had so many! These are my favorites that didn't make the cut for reasons of narrative and variety.
Vegastar - 5h dans ta Peau (France) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP4e2pC_YuU
Singleton - If I'm Falling (Ukraine) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-2hAg9kasM
R.I.O. - After The Love (Germany) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJaW9Ai67lA
Emiliana Torrini - Jungle Drum (Tolo Remix) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuwHPSa3zU0 (Note: She's based in London now, so I've replaced her with Sykur, another great act from Iceland)
Juri Gagarin - Kids on Fire Remix (Germany) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxW6YBLSryk
Gramophonedzie - V Got Hacked (Serbia) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7NJLQKDFZ0

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

HXB--Mixtape 1



1) Mark Ronson & The Business INTL - Bang Bang Bang
2) Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside
3) Amanda Blank - Might Like You Better (GRVRBBRS Remix)
4) The Dirty Secrets - Five Feet of Snow (Miami Horror Remix)
5) Biffy Clyro - Born on a Horse

I've got a 2nd playlist ready and I'm ready to put together another 2 if anyone's up for the challenge.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

reluctant timesinks [bitch & moan]



I didn't have internet for a few hours while I got my oil changed (that's what she said).  So I wrote a blog post.


Anyone that's played a 4X game in the last few years has their personal favorites.  There are the Civ variants (Civilization, Rise of Nations, Empire Earth), the MoO variants (Masters of Orion, Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilization, Sword of the Stars).  Okay, that last one, Sword of the Stars, is actually unapologetic in its focus on combat.  It's a timesink that I'd rather not discuss, like a threesome turned into a drug deal turned into a Mexican standoff.

First of all, I'd like to applaud Civ and Sins for addressing nonkinetic competition through expansions, namely Beyond the Sword and Diplomacy.  They allow turtlers to open up a race-wide stat war that is comparatively cheaper than fleet production.  I've only installed Beyond the Sword and never really gotten any play out of it, so pretend I don't know shit about it.  Likewise, Diplomacy is too far down my play queue to warrant a time commitment.

Pre-DLC, Sins was a great 4X game.  Its cultural aspect was sadly, limited to a single planetary structure and its research tree, while better than the mostly multi-linear path of most strategy games, was still limited to economic and expansion buffs.  Sure, these are design decisions that keep the gameplay constrained to a tight mix of statistics, but it poses as an aggregate for the arts and entertainment.  I'll go as far as to say that warfare and culture are inseperably related, and that their implementation in contemporary strategy games is now irrelevant due to the very thing that made them so popular--computer networks.

Strategy games have greatly benefited from the internet, allowing groups of basement-dwelling nerds to do more than play Warhammer or Age of Empires on a LAN.  It's ironic that the fruits of the technology ignore the other resultant cultural phenomenon.  For instance, Latin America has a fairly large heavy metal following, but mostly limited to suburban teens who had no other means of sharing their interests than niche communities such as the internet.  It allowed communities to be formed around interests rather than ethnicity.  There's no such representation in strategy games.  In Sins, culture is a singular statistic belonging to a single state, competing with cultures from competing states.

The best representations of communities formed around interests within states are (and get ready to groan), are from Battlestar Galactica.  Yeah, I managed to drag BSG into this, shut the fuck up.  First, there's the reconciliation movement pre-Occupation.  A mostly underground movement, aspects of the internet allowed it to thrive--anonymity and memology of message.  Sure, we can extrapolate to past movements using flyers (even fake ones, such as the meme of Atlas in Bioshock).  Second, there's Baltar's radio program--lack of anonymity, but insanely popular.  The equivalent of a fireside chat (or, a more lol-worthy example, Glenn Beck's daily psychopathy), exists within a nation where the state is hostile to such a message, without necessarily a state-based sponsor.

Let's spew random historical examples of my hypothesis!  Information always travels faster than conventional combattants.  A viral video will travel faster than a cruise missile, from CONOPS (idea for video) to payload delivery (lulz).  During the age of Ancient Warfare (your 1st generation warfare), messengers were dedicated channels of rapid information delivery.  If combatants were faster than information, there'd be no reason to cipher "ATTACK AT DAWN" (by the way, this is a classic encryption text).  It's also why AWACS and other early warning radar platforms are built--because were it not possible to intercept using time-sensitive targetting data, we'd just keep a contingent of intercepts in the air at all times (as well as completely flooding airspace to dangerous levels).  So why is it that it takes me a damn hour to culturally undermine a planet and only 30 seconds to bombard and colonize it?

Where are the nonstate actors in strategy games? Well, there are creeps/pirates but they're almost always dealt with kinetically.  The closest examples we have are your various infection/mind control units (see: Starcraft) and ambush troops from the GLA in C&C Generals.  State-sponsored insurgencies are worthy of exploration, even at the expense of game mechanic simplicity.

I wouldn't be a pretentious douche unless I brought up the origins of Hellenistic culture--it was Macedonian conquest (and in turn, subjugation) that created a lasting effect on cultural exchange.  Resisting urge to bring up BSG again.

One last fucking topic:  the influence of religion in strategy games.  The British split from the Catholic Church fueled generations of legitimate and insurgent conflicts.  We've yet to see a strategy game that can capture the mechanics of the Irish civil War.  This style of insurgent kinetic operations would really appeal to fans of micromanagement.

In any case, I can understand the various design decisions that abstract nonkinetic aspects of warfare into an ineffectual last ditch for turtling players, but it's as if the onus to provide clear victors stifles any efforts to capture the cyclical nature of conflict and its relationship to culture and media.

I've already decided that Civilization 5 will be boring, Firaxis sux, and fuck you for pointing out that I'll end up spending 20 hours in the game.

Coming next time is a spray and pray, I promise.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

rag(e)s to riches: the game [Bitch & Moan]


I'm sick today, but I'm still blogging dammit.

Other than the whole mortal coil angle, let's take a look at two notable Western open-world games, the GTA series and the Saints Row series. Both use story events and revenue-generating activity to provide the player with a sense of growth. The stat-based character growth that we last saw in GTA San Andreas is seen also in Saints Row 2, but these are rarely the loci of capital management--the heart and soul of these games is the accumulation of wealth, where clothing, cars, real estate, and social capital are merely status symbols indicative of player progress.

First of all, it's interesting that there's no barometer for total net worth. Well, there are stats such as total money earned and total money spent. However, these are hidden in statistics pages and aren't central to the design--which flies in the face of these games' purpose--not to advance a story (though these are important for setting motivations). In Saints Row, there's a style meter, which grows as the protagonist purchases clothing and real estate. This translates to a multiplier buff in a metacurrency, reputation. GTA 4 goes in the opposite direction, where social capital is the most easily measured (your number of friends, and for some reason, the wallpaper on your phone). These divergent designs both work for different reasons, and no doubt contribute to a feature differentiation. Not that I'm complaining (yet).

The meat of the issue is the cost of goods and arguably services. Since I'm currently playing Saints Row 2, I'll pull from these prices:

A jelly donut:
Real Life: $2 at most
In-game: $85.
Real Life: Delicious, probably a thousand or so calories.
In-game: 70% health. Okay, I suppose this is an incredible value.

20rds 9mm Ammo:
Real Life: $5-10 depending on where you shop.
In-game: $100. What.
Real Life: Fun for the whole family.
In-game: Mostly useless.  Ridiculous. I'm assuming these are pre-loaded and come with the magazine. Then, we're close to real life.

Plastic surgery:
Real Life: $thousands, risk of death, not covered by insurance
In-game: $500 all-you-can-eat. Instant recovery.
Real Life: Evade law enforcement, look awesome.
In-game: Evade law enforcement, loow awesome. Fine, for the sake of gameplay, we can ignore the recovery time.

Sweet downtown loft:
Real Life: depending on location, $500k-$2M. Then there are the condo fees, taxes, etc.
In-game: $50k. Cash, no financing. For starters, 50k is what I'd pay in real life for a down payment on a property.
Real Life: Shelter, possibly happiness? Tax shelter? Rent it out?
In-game: Right now I have strippers and ninjas hanging out and drinking booze. Oh yeah, I get access to a bottomless garage and a helipad.

Bonus: Hookers from GTA:
Real Life: hm, I'm not familiar with the market but I'm assuming a few hundred for street meat and thousands for an escort service.
In-game: approx $100.
Real Life: Realizing your life is empty
In-game: Nothing really, your car just bounces up and down. There's no STD statistic.

I'm interested in costs from Fable 2. Anyone got numbers?

In any case, we see a drastic inflation of costs for everyday goods and a significant discount for larger capital purchases. If we were to take in-game prices to represent a different currency, a conversion rate would correct your everyday costs-of-living to be about market. However, this makes the big-ticket items even more affordable.

We can attribute these design choices to two factors: player progression and disposable income. Making the switch from couch surfing to renting usually takes a stable income. The transition from rental to ownership is even more drastic, requiring the ability to make a down payment and afford upkeep costs. Ownership usually sets back the purchaser's buying power temporarily--and while this effect is preserved, the player is able to claw his way out of the burden of ownership rather quickly, if he subscribes to story-centric tasks with an exponentially increasing reward size but fixed reward schedule (the player's willingness to fulfill mission objectives). This is the reason for a logarithmically flat cost range: to avoid a financial grind that players are actually trying to escape (oh look, let's call it Financial Escapism).

One interesting design choice from Saints Row 2 is the ability to purchase businesses--which provide a 20% kickback on purchase price. This amounts to a 100% ROI in 5 in-game days. And since there's no inflation or taxes and the returns are fixed, it's an investment scheme that, for me, makes about $13k/day at the moment. This is a minimal-risk investment (the only risk being running out of cash to purchase food and ammo). These merely make story progress harder but not impossible. Protip: start fights on the street to obtain ammo. This assumes you expend less ammo than you collect, so don't suck at shooting, k? Protip: The Fight Club activity provides free food during matches. Throw away those blunts and fill up on burgers being thrown into a sweaty octagon.

Tangent: In racing games, two opposite attempts have been made in this topic. In Need For Speed Underground 2, car purchases were based on vouchers based on sponsorship instead of vehicle costs. This tied your stable size to your story progression and kept us from windowshopping all day. But game developers also understand that we ENJOY the process. Latter NFS games as well as the Midnight Club series use approximate real costs and enjoy success because a) there isn't really a sub-$10k market for new cars, so your entry barrier is much lower and b) story progression demands exponentially increasing reward sizes with a fixed schedule.

Tangent: Let's take another genre, my masochistic favorite, the Armored Core series. In the early game, there's a focus on trading parts and working with a budget to accomplish goals. Sure, it's a spreadsheet simulator of sorts, but difficulty and reward are matched with story progress, along with a logarithmically flat cost range, make progression bearable. Sure, there's a bit of a grind in this series, but it's mostly your fault--using parts that use more expensive ammo, failing to invest in PA-centric parts, resulting in a higher cost in armor repair, picking more expensive wingmen. There's not much grind for financial leeway, moreso the OCD is instigated by the impulse to obtain an S-rank more than the urge to obtain exotic parts.

Bleh, so that's it. We play games with money in them because of Financial Escapism and its more important features are logarithmic cost range and reward scheduling via story progression and risk to disposable income.

This sorta makes me wish This Is Vegas would finally come out so I can economicanalysisnerdraeg about that game too, but I fucking gave up on that title already.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Baka-Test 4 [Field-Stripping]

a nice cup of doom[yep...i just used comic-sans just to irritate you]

If the first three episodes were any indication, hilarity & brain damage will ensue. (ampersand WIN)

[0:15] explanation of "punishment bearer" (akihisa) as something prodigious
[0:23] Real explanation: akihisa is a gofer
[1:00] Cue OP
[3:08] event! with loli shouko = cue upcoming abuse
[3:38] college life SAVANT + bad ramen math
[3:52] apparently that was a tsundere (
minami) flag...gah...
[4:08] flag failure - no lunch
[4:20] akihisa + stupid comment = SUPLEX!! (through portra
it scene cut)

chalkboards are talking...again (a la pani poni dash X zetsubou sensei[chalkboard a la pani poni dash X zetsubou sensei]

[4:28] gah...the chalkboard is talking...
[4:38] oh crap...new loli (hazuki)
[4:42] confirmed as tsundere sister
[4:50] oh, look, it's like a standard character comparison sheet
[5:00] wtf...it's only the 4th episode. *cue love pentagon/gram
[5:12] narrator laziness "We'll explore the details later"

yeah...this'll export well[yeah...that'll export just fine]

[5:27] wtf secret society inquisition complete with black KKK-style robes
[6:00] tsundere flag - reactivated. lunch delivery
[6:20] sibling betrayal
[6:30] trap character (hideyoshi) calling out tsundere
[6:47] the hell? german tank?
[7:05] shy/boob character(himeji) made "extra" lunch too...gah..i might call out the rest of the episode

predictions
-love triangle/square/pentagon fight-o
-one of the girls (if not both) sucks at cooking
-more than akihisa will try it and suffer
-feelings hurt + akihisa abuse
-add some yuuji abuse since he's there
-trap character glamor shot (just because)

this is a death flag - thank you persona 4[thank you persona 4 for making primary female character bento a death flag]

[7:24] more stylization of character design on simple backgrounds. budget anyone?
[7:28] shy/boob character vs. tsundere/dfc - challenge issued
[7:36] more secret society inquisition
[7:50] plea by shy/boob character for mercy
[8:00] plea fail = extra abuse (off camera)
[8:18] INSERT COMMERCIAL HERE
[8:40] rooftop lunch (with himeji) to inevitable fail?
[9:00] yuuji interruption
[9:05] hideyoshi interruption
[9:07] voyeur interruption

side character death in EP4...wut?[all that we need now is a generic explosion to remove the corpse]

[9:20] everyone dies (fucking called it, +4 points)
[9:34] smell test = pain
[9:40] reel swap. okay..where did this cut come from (film borders?)
[9:42] serious face
[9:52] gate to hell/FMA reference
[10:04] trap back from the dead
[10:12] fatalism WIN
[10:30] feign ignorance at bad cooking flag
[10:45] trepidation at drink...doom? cue crisis
[11:10] akihisa feint - will probably fail
[11:17] wow. taking the middle route. impressive +paragon +renegade

answer: it's over...you're doomed[conscience manifestation - yet another sign of doom]

[11:34] the damning sentence "I wanted you to be the first person to try it"
[11:36] art style change - aki death flag
[11:56] last second save by yuuji? switch to pencil-paper mode
[12:30] extra death flag - yuuji tells aki love will save him
[12:35] final words? wow...those were dumb
[12:42] switch reels - back to the gate?
[12:50] death
[12:55] yuuji admits to lying
[13:25] aki zombie + tsundere = round 2?
[14:06] tsundere flag activation?
[14:16] miharu (lesbian/fang) interruption
[14:22] another bento layer. goddamnit
[14:50] round 2 delayed + fancy classrooms?

more predictions
-more miharu interruptions + class A gay dude = aki life fail

[15:10] traveling montage - school edition
[15:40] more inquisition...jeez
[15:51] wow...go japan. change the color of those robes and this can't be exported as is

another cut sort-of-out-of-context[just wait for someone to take this out of context]

[16:04] aki's doomed by the same face...again
[16:30] crossing paths - fang interrupt imminet?
[17:15] tsundere fail
[17:20] enter gay class A student (called it +1 point)
[17:40] requisite lunch offer = tsundere interrupt
[18:20] tsundere resignation
[18:55] train station lunch = meal of champions/rich hobos
[19:00] teacher/narrator entrance?
[19:24] accidental pain to detention. all lunch plans fail
[20:05] tsundere venting
[20:50] aki entrance at trash can = wants to scrape dish clean?
[21:08] haiti reference? TLs must be screwing with me
[21:30] tsundere cheerup
[22:00] ED - after scene next (please)?
[23:36] no after scene... :\

Eh...too much work for +5 points. Maybe I'll do another one of these for a less joke driven show. If this doesn't get you to have an opinion on this show, I fucking give up.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

State of the Union [Spray and Pray]



Let's destroy The Shagohod your mind, one piece of culture at a time.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Beta
I've gotten the Xbox 360 demo and the PC beta.
360:  Little lag.  Plays just like Bad Company 1.  Vehicle controls are better.
PC: Lags like shit.  Server browser causes CTD.  Lags like shit.  GUI is poorly-designed, uses too much abbreviation.  Lags like shit.
General: Still no prone?!  UAVs = fucking awesome.  Destruction 2.0 = the camping-killer.  New unlock system = CoD4-inspired.  I'm ambivalent.  But, it's still in the Bad Company subfranchise and so of course I'll play it.  For now, stick to the 360 demo.  Ranking is locked at Private II and all class unlocks are limited to Lvl 2.  You'll start with the AEK-791, 9A91, PKM, and M24--and unlock the XM8, SCAR-LC, M249, Type 88, and the tracer dart.  Happy hunting.

Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu
This show is the brain-melting culturally-aware show of the season.  It's pretty much pure gold to anyone who consumes the anime medium.  Let's count!

  1. Zetsuboushita! A bit too early to reference the 3-season juggernaut that is Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei?
  2. Hideyoshi has a magical girl transformation.  Despite being a guy.  And transforms into his own clothes again.  This trap-ism becomes a gimmick for the rest of the show, and there's already porn of him.  Yes.  He's essentially the show's mascot.
  3. There's a running subtitle side conversation, in the style of Colbert's The Word.  It's new to the medium, but the content is stale.
  4. I love how the SPECIAL ACE of the team is actually the most useless.
  5. There's another running gag where the seme/uke relationship is consistently disgusting.
  6. Usually saved for the season finale, the ultimate battle plan fails.  In episode 2.
  7. Oh god, the Ranka Lee (Macross Frontier) gang sign is viral.  We'll be seeing it in the Gundam 00 movie, Christ.
  8. Tons of visual gags and great design choices, which really make the most of the genre.
Watch this show.

Chuu Bra
I don't know what to make of this show.  If we were to take the narrative from a purely textual point of view, it'd be a story about female development, societal mores, and amateur couture.  If you actually watch the show, you'll find it to be what amounts to Japan's next wave of statutory rape.  Somehow, the Batman-style transitions makes me think that Adam West is going to pop out and fondle little girls.  Another thing to note is that they reference the job of an industry monitor, which, as I understand it, does not cooperate with the design house.  Those guys use fit models and the feedback stays in-house.  The previews are creative and are omake-esque.  Overall, the show is too risque for its best audience--young girls 12-16.

Dance in the Vampire Bund
I haven't followed this show much, but from what I can tell, it's weird, quirky, and different.  The character designs are detailed and a lot of care went into adapting it from the manga.  Watch the pilot all the way through and decide if you're into it then.

Durarara!!
Show of the year.  Yes, I've already called it.  It's the perfect followup to Baccano!, as the same animation studio does the work.  The original story comes from the same author and the character design comes from the same guy who did Yozakura Quartet and it shows--the show makes constant nods to Quartet, Spice and Wolf, and Baccano.  Hell, there are way too many cat ears in these shows.  Go ahead and check, I shit you not.  This blog will still be here when you come back.  Fucking boot up the Googles and look for the cat ears.  And suffer the knowledge as I do.  The plot is far less confusing than Baccano's, which had far too many timejumps for the typical viewer; this show's episodic structure deals with the narrative with thematic selection.  There's a typical white vs black conflict, but that's not fully explored so far and for some reason there's the brown man, a black Russian (what the hell), so we've got a three-way power struggle that makes no sense but is hilarious.  There's also a mystery group, the DOLLARS, whose colored visual vocabulary has only been hinted.  Why are you still reading this start fucking torrenting.






Sora no Woto
This is basically the new K-On.  5-piece band in a post-apocalyptic world.  Oh look, AMAZING GRACE IN THE FUTUUUUURE.  There's a walking tank (is there any other kind?) that serves as the retrofuturist lampshade for the premise.  I'm hoping for a little more musical emphasis (K-On had a little, but it was for a few brief moment), particularly regarding brass instruments.  Our main female lead has a terrible weakass embosure, it makes me cringe.  Anyway, the setting reminds me of the Festival de la Tomate, so it's trying to be somewhat Euro-centric.  Oh yes, the token tsundere plays the clarinet, what a big fucking surprise (I play the clarinet as well.  Does that make me a man-tsundere?).  They have a mascot, an owl, which is on their unit patches--this instantly made me think of Pumpkin Scissors, but instead of a giant killing machine they have lolis.  The OP really catches my eye because it reminds me a Elfen Lied's OP/ED, pulling from the gold leaf murals of Gustav Klimt (the only Sezessionstil artist you will ever need to know).  Drop this show unless you like K-On.




Caprica
GENTRIFICATION IN SPAAAAACE.  Only seen the pilot, missed last night's episode.  Okay, it's not terrible but the plot is very easy to mock.  Replace Cylons with golems and we've got a crappy fantasy show. The Greystones are your typical well-to-do family with a typically rebellious daughter.  Zoe is some mastermind genius religious character.  The Adamas are interesting, as the plot paints their origin as Taurons to be something of a mix between the Sicilian mafia and the Palestinians.  The mixing of technological, ethnic, and religious topics is interesting, so I'll be following this show because there's a BSG-sized vacuum in my life.


Johnny Foreigner - Cranes and Cranes and Cranes and Cranes



Desert Sessions - You Think I Ain't Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire



Owl City - Strawberry Avalanche



Philip Glass - Metamorphosis (Movement I) 


T.O.K. - SHOTTAS/HOTTA


Nanquan Mama feat. MC Hotdog - Here We Go


Ultraviolet - Spin Like A DJ



New Boyz feat. Ray Z - Tie Me Down



G-Dragon - Heartbreaker



Ramona Rey vs Ayuze Kozue - Find Sundae & Take It




Fujiya & Miyagi - Knickerboxer



Hail Mary Mallon - D-Up



I'm spent.  I fucki-  Oh look, how about you stick around for some dessert?


Spice and Wolf S1 OP



Fucking give up already. (Today's pop culture count: 25)

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal! [Bitch and Moan]




This is going to be a more srs post, but not too in-depth because I haven't had breakfast.  This week we'll discuss something Anthony Burch brought up in a Rev Rant way way back, oh look, a link.  Audiences in all media experience surprise when expectations are proven wrong.  However, the sense of betrayal is slightly different in that it causes more dramatic behaviors such as cognitive dissonance and raegquits (in the academic community known as balking).



Case 1:  My First Null Hypothesis.  Let's take a look at a genre with surprise but no breach of expectations.  Greek tragedies are an example of rituals where the endgame is already known.  Surprise comes from individual experience, such as timing and delivery.  The same can be said of one of my favorite traditions, Guy Fawkes Day.  We know exactly what we're going to do to the straw man, but the often secret selection of our Guy Fawkes reenactor offers a modicum of surprise.  Note that balking is minimal in these instances, unless you have serious objections to straw-on-fire violence.



Case 2: Breach of Expectation Without Balking.  This is best characterized by the Mystery genre.  As I mostly hate the genre since it's one of the bastions of shitty pulps that only survive because of a combination of fanatical otaku-like readership and somewhat meh gimmicks, I'll post some that are out of the mold but still fit.  Two films, Memento and Clue are great examples where escalation of surprise (albeit in different ways because....eh...just go fucking watch those two movies, you won't regret it) acclimate the audience, thus avoiding sudden and arguably inevitable betrayals.  A lesser example is anything related to Law and Order, as the plots generally dodge and weave as new evidence is revealed.  However, episodes where complete reversals of the typical ending where the villain-de-jour is brought to justice are rare, and thus repeat audiences can generally bank on a formulaic exposition.  The exception is the spinoff Criminal Intent where the criminals have their own concurrent subplot.  In any case, this type of betrayal actually increases audience engagement--usually because these pieces all exist within a historical context.  The form of betrayal changes with each medium and period as we are trained to add another dimension of comparison, so in the age of serialized novels it would have been unexpected for the detectives to be perpetrators (nowadays we have Michael C Hall plays the same asshole in everything he's in but we still love him like we love Christopher Walken) and in more modern times, having the villain played by a confederate in the audience thereby breaking the fourth wall (I seriously have no example because I don't see many stage plays and that would be impossibly expensive for a movie, not to mention the DVD although I'm sure Rocky Horror fans would beg to differ).





Case 3: Shit, It Was In Front Of Me And Nobody Said Anything.  I guess this is where Polaris comes into play.  When the mimesis offers no cues into an unknown, the audience simply projects themselves into these gaps.  However, when they are revealed, the shock can result in balking behavior.  The reveal of a gay main character is something of a shock as no cues were given as to the character's nature, and in keeping with the narrative and player's own projections of sexual normalcy, create a female.  The resulting shock is something of a cognitive dissonance, where players were fine with portraying a heterosexual female but not a homosexual male.  In KOTOR, our facelessnamelessevengordonfreemanhadaname protagonist was revealed to be Darth Revan.  Oh, yeah, spoilers.  Too late.  Whatever, get over it.  Note that this is avoided completely in its spiritual offspring, Mass Effect where backstory is chosen to player taste and Shepard's heroic destiny is chosen by literally a deus ex machina.  Back to KOTOR, the fact that our investment as players was changed because suddenly, instead of our own projections, our character was now Revan, playstyles were changed and balking may have occurred.  I guess you could say the same thing about Sixth Sense but honestly that scene was created so you'd jizz in your pants.  This effect comes from audience alienation.  When the mimesis doesn't offer sympathy, audience members look to their peers.  Individuals try to reaffirm that they are not alone in the shock by looking for signs of distress anywhere available, this includes bitching and moaning on the IMDB forums.  KOTOR had other characters note their surprise but quickly restate the mission to force us to move on.  I guess one way of recreating this effect is to watch a foreign comedy film in a theater full of native speakers, where you don't get any of the jokes but they do.  You'll likely sink in your seat or laugh alone to avoid alienation.  And somehow I just sold some copies of Rosetta Stone.





Case 4: Fixed Reward Scheduling.  This comes from mostly episodic experiences, we'll start with gaming. Because games mostly revolve around a risk/reward mechanic, and playtimes are split into consistent chunks, we have an effect where our ultimate goal is only partially met for our efforts.  In old-school Mario titles, the princess is in another castle.  We have, however, eliminated an enemy stronghold and never have to go back (doing so would dramatically result in balking).  If it were revealed that the princess was raped and murdered before our porcelain protagonist is able to produce said prodigal princess, a player would abandon his plan to procure royal poon and accept what is called sunken cost.  Yes, I used alliteration for no reason than to piss you off.  The same could be argued of Dead Space, where we're dealt two consecutive blows--first finding out that our escort mission to save Nicole was for naught, thus negating Isaac's raison de PLASMA CUTTER, and later having undead Nicole kill(?) Isaac, robbing us of our consolation goal, getting the fuck out.  This is an economic effect:  humans understand the concept of sunken cost and respond to it by abandoning the investment or escalation.





Case 5: You Suck At ___ FPS, GG UNINSTALL. Sometimes we just hate losing, it reminds us that we're not as good as we think we are.  Also, I hate children on Xbox Live.  It makes me want to open an abortion clinic.  Besides, I'm better than you are at ____.  You should just fucking give up.  Unless you want to play Hookerbrawl 6 (Tekken).




I'll be posting a Spray and Pray later (maybe today or tomorrow), I've got hot new music and the Q1 2010 anime season loaded on my leechbox.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Army of Three: Forced Replay Value [Nolan North Strikes Again]



In lieu of a Bitch and Moan and Spray and Pray, here is my weekly post.  Seriously, I've done thing but play this game this week.

First of all, let's just get this out of the way.  Nolan North = Elliot Salem.  FML.  People who know me in real life are aware of my well-documented meltdowns whenever Nolan North and Karen Strassman are in a game I play.  It's inevitable.  All that's left is for Nolan North to be in a Persona game and the universe will likely come to an end.

Anyway, Army of Two: The 40th Day, starring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, is a buddy action comedy directed by Michael Bay.  Of course most literary duos do consist of an umpbridge and a loose cannon.  On a side note, we need more Steve Zahn because he performs brilliantly as the latter--his appearance on an episode of Monk is an exaggerated example of those pairing, while his role in Sahara, not so much.  I allude to Bad Boys, for multiple reasons.


1) Michael Bay jacks off to disaster porn.  Full disclosure: I am from Shanghai.  I have an attention to detail.  I bitch and moan.  The architecture is very Western-inspired, and makes me wonder if the team actually took reference photos outside of Pudong.  Let's discuss environments: the game mostly takes place in the Pudong and Hongkou districts, with the chapters starting out in a post-60s office building.  Do note that over there, construction uses far more bamboo for struts and temporary supports.  We waterslide down a mid-30s skyscraper and are treated to all sorts of falling buildings, just to show off the physics engine, and I presume, not to preload textures for the next portion of the map.  You think they'd learn to utilize the Unreal engine a little better if they have time for pointless unskippable cutscenes.  Later on you traverse the streets of Hongkou, which are admittedly sorta close to real life, though there aren't nearly that many winding alleys and the run-down places are far more run down than this disaster porn can capture.  The zoo is filled with dead animals.  Hippos, gorillas, monkeys, elephants, etc.  And optionally, a dead tiger should you choose to kill it to unlock weapon parts.  The hospital is very westernized and strangely devoid of random blood everywhere, so it felt out of place as I have actually gone to a hospital.  Google for China Hospital Lines for an example of how people actually get trampled to death waiting for medical care in China.  In real life.  The mall is actually close to what a real mall in Pudong looks like.  Except for the giant satellite receiver.  Which you blow up.  Unsurprisingly.  Next is The Bund, a faux-colonized street with plenty of German-derived architecture.  It looks quite nice and, if we were to take away all the cover, stationary guns, mandatory crates, and GIANT SHIPPING CONTAINERS, it'd resemble real life.  Except for the green tint, which I guess is a good thing since the earlier portions of the game were very red/orange and visual variety does help.  Finally, we go to the "temple" which, in real life, is just "the old city" and is a tourist trap.  There aren't stairs or anything, just lots of shopping vendors and Starbucks (Xinbake, ask for it by name or you'll get ripped off).  And the icing on the cake?  You C4 open the inner keep to confront your enemy.  If the FDI troops don't destroy something, it's you doing the destruction.


(You know what this game is missing?  Violence against Space Elevators.  See: Gundam 00, Halo ODST.)


2) Michael Bay jacks off to helicopter porn.  Again, whip out your Google Fu and you'll find that Michael Bay always has helicopters flying into a sunset in his movies.  Bad Boys.  Transformers.  The Island.  Here, we've got helicopters crashing into buildings, dropping off heavy troops, and finally UN helicopters flying back into Shanghai.  Search Youtube if you want to have a peek.  A few I couldn't identify easily but I did spot a Mi-17 and a MH-53s.  The MH-53s at the end are incredibly detailed and I just realized I've basically sold 20 copies of this game to Michael Bay fans.


3) Somewhat capable female ally.  Alice Murray was complete trash in Army of Two.  You had to carry her on your shoulder and were limited to your secondary weapon and slow move speed.  Now she's back, wielding a G36, and able to do anything your partner can: heal, pull aggro, make sandwiches.  I've also noticed she has breast physics.  Quite the upgrade, my dear.  How is this fap material for Michael Bay?  Just replace her with Tea Leoni and you've got the same thing.  Edit: How could I forget Scarlett Johannsen and Megan Fox?


Well, let's get on with a more serious look into the game.


Language - Four languages are spoken.  Bro English, Shitty English, Mandarin, and Wu.  Fake accents are fake, Nolan North is actually a convincing actor in this role, and the Chinese languages are used correctly.  News broadcasts are in English and Mandarin, and actually make sense in a Cloverfield sort of way--exposition via emotion rather than content worked, but an ability to speak Mandarin will let you actually understand two broadcasts.  I love the hostages.  They speak authentic Wu, and are whiny arrogant bitches.  A man says "I don't want to die, I have children" right before he's crushed by a bus.  A woman says "You think you're all that just because you have a gun?"  A few more "please don't kill me" and "please don't shoot your gun" and "what are you doing" scatter the dialogue. (Word of the day: polysyndeton).


Customization - This is what made the prequel very fun.  Now, you're just purchasing parts and mixing them with receivers for....weird and ugly combinations.  I suppose it's why we have paintjobs and camo now, to cover up the ugliness of our guns.  I was turned off by this since the demo, but I've discovered that only on the 1st playthrough is this an issue--you gain more parts and eventually there isn't much motivation to keep that ugly part because a more visually symmetrical part does the job almost as good.  I've found out that if your gun looks good, it actually functions quite well for its role (I've recreated a Special Operations SCAR, turned the AK-47 into a 74 paratrooper carbine, and the FAMAS into what I've seen in the FELIN project vision).  So, try to keep your guns visually similar (by using a floating rail on your M416 and keeping AKM barrels on your AK-47) and they'll perform well.  You can actually tune your guns to perform to any stat level with this system, so I guess it all comes down to preference.  Some guns are incapable of headshots and some can receive exclusive part upgrades, so keep this in mind before you try to turn an AK into a marksmanship rifle.  We now have bayonets.  They give us satisfying animations that don't necessarily kill enemies faster.  I'd recommend not using them, as they only go on shotguns and rifles.  SMGs and pistols allow you run faster, which is ideal with a bayonet, but cannot equip them.  We now have ghetto mods, which are ultimately pointless unless you badly, and I mean BADLY, need a silencer or a bayonet.  I will note that the Rusty Stock part is actually very useful.  Slap it on the MP5 and, with the right suppressors and camo, will generate no aggro.

Mile High Club - Remember the end of MHC where you have to save the hostage?  This happens all the time in hostage situations (which has caused many quickloads because my partner is a little bitch), as well as twice with your partner (forcing us to quickload out of failure to form bromance).  It's a stolen gimmick but in the former scenario, is quite fun.  Blatantly stolen and frustrating because...

Completionists and OCD - The game takes a mandatory 2 playthroughs to unlock all the parts and see all the comic book cutscenes.  That's about 12 hours commitment.  Extraction Mode plays nothing like Gears 2's Horde or Halo ODST's Firefight.  Various enemy types from the campaign return, but with different weapons (the flamethrower heavy now uses a SCAR, the grenade launcher heavy uses an RPG) and are far more aggressive--they'll run around and give you a much harder time. To survive this game mode, you'll need to memorize spawn patterns on top of managing 4-man aggro to finish off the easy ones first, and then gang up on heavies, one at a time (as sometimes 2 will spawn at once).  There's no way to get around this, it's something like Firefight in that knowing spawn patterns let you finish off the mass cannon fodder.

Removed features - Overkill mode was a great way to let your partner go stealth and rack up some kills, but that's gone now.  It's actually part of the design by default, but there's no more bullet time and damage multiplier involved.  Co-op snipe is now built-in, and can be done at any time.  Certainly makes more sense than sniping a propane tank.  Weapon swap is now absent, but that makes sense as we now have anytime weapon customization and public co-op.  I miss this feature the most as it lets new players get a taste for more powerful weapons.  Feign Death is now changed so we can't use it as an aggro-cleanser, and lets one partner go full stealth for a rushdown.  This can all be overlooked because new features, such as mock surrender and the ability to equip a primary weapon to the special weapon slot, are vast improvements on the design.

Mandatory capture level - Yeah, get caught, get your weapons taken away.  It's a freaking staple of the FPS genre.  Half-Life did the best because right before you're captured, you fight backflipping latex spies.  The room going dark right as you approach the door is just so fitting.  Half-Life 2 does it even better by replacing your arsenal with the most fun weapon in all of video games, a messed up gravity gun.  In 40th Day, it's somewhat fun since throughout the game, you're allowed to temporarily take dropped weapons and add to your arsenal.  This level isn't as disruptive to the game design and really captures the procure-on-site feel.  One note is that there are two weapons, the flamethrower and the gatling gun, which are exclusive to this feature.  I'd suggest using it as your high-aggro weapon or your main rifle, as those are the most common weapons (Remington 870, M4, SCAR-L, G36).


Extra party members - For some parts of the game, you get a 3rd or even 4th party member.  Alice and Breznev are very combat capable, and working with Breznev just feels awesome--he's got similar gear, his own personality mask, and a machete.  He's like Clyde from Army of Two but foreign and on your side.  Why isn't he playable in multiplayer?  Qin, the little boy, is cute and all but he doesn't do much.  A zookeeper just gets in the way and soaks up bullets.  In the final level, if you were in positive morality, will have 2 random Chinese guys sent from Dr. Wu to help you out for 2 arenas.  They're pretty useless, don't cooperate with you (just sorta go off and shoot stuff), and are completely unrealistic because it's established fact that Chinese people can't shoot.  Still, it is interesting to have more than 2 party members in this style of game--and should possibly be explored in future titles in this franchise.  But when it's a decision to choose between money + weapon parts (evil) vs allies + weapon parts (good), I'd go with the evil route for the first playthrough.  The only real draw of good morality is that Dr. Wu will unlock the automatic Glock 18 for you--which is essentially a poor man's SMG and great for low-aggro rushdown, but not essential if you're playing on Casual or Normal.


Bleh, morality - This game is all about escalation.  Fights get more intense, bosses are more in number (up to 3 on the last arena), the hostage situations get harder, and the morality choices get more interesting.  It's interesting because the last two involve violence against children--but mostly because they have moments of irony, culminating in a classic Dead Man's Switch scenario with an expectedly reversal.  These cutscenes might as well be an advertisement for the upcoming comic.  This is part of a larger problem, as free will is just another gaming gimmick.


Collectibles - meh.  Japanese cats?  How does that make sense?  Cute and all, but really?  Well, it does make some sense because this game is more and more converging on Metal Gear Solid.  (MGS3 had the cute frogs, so I guess cats are close on the cuteness).  The radio transmissions, wow, it's a stolen concept from System Shock 2, Doom 3Bioshock, Halo ODST, et al.  But these transmissions are played only in menu, so in essence this is a step BACK in technology.  It does ultimately make sense since the other games have long lags of loneliness, and the Army of Two series is much faster paced.  This makes me question the very need for these collectibles--the cats are cute and placed in weird places, but the radio transmissions just have newscasts, one is just a 3-second long scream, and the others are just Jonah preaching to China.


Jonah - I hate Jonah.  He mixes patches from Army and USAF.  He talks about modern society from some weird Biblical perspective and aims that message at China.  He clearly doesn't know much about China, even after we make an allowance for the Bystander Effect (we're callous, yes, but we're all about connections).  He's only seen in menu screens until the final cutscene.  He's the worst villain in literature, ever.  No attempt was made to develop his personality and his hypocritical doublecross is easily expected.  Are we going to get DLC where we actually get to fight him like we did for Dalton in Army of Two?  The Biblical allegory finally comes into play in the final cutscene for only one of the 3 endings, refering to the legend of Minerva's 40 days to repent.  And how do cruise missiles and running over civilians accomplish Jonah's goals of making humans reconnect?  Or is he so arrogant that he believe himself to be God's device?  Haet.


I fucking give up.  Buy this game when it drops down to $40 after the rest of you get Extraction unlocked, and download any DLC that comes down the pipe because it'll likely be good.  Online versus is brutal (makes playing Gears look easy).


Bonus:  My singleplayer setups:


Balanced:
Primary: Vector Kriss-V with 50rd mag, RDS - this is great for anti-heavy ops.
Secondary: Glock 18 with 33rd mag, silencer - great for rushdowns against cannon fodder, also pretty accurate so you can sharpshoot
Special: Milkor MGL with 10rd mag, Masterkey undersling - cannon fodder, high-aggro ops


Sniper / High-Aggro
Primary: H&K M416 customized for damage + precision - just remove the scope and you've got a medium range weapon.
Secondary: IMI Desert Eagle - if you're low on ammo (you shouldn't ever be), a great backup weapon
Special: Barret .50 - doesn't matter how you customize it, a chestshot will kill cannon fodder


Rushdown / Low-Aggro
Primary: MP5 customized for low aggro, Eotech reflex sight - does blindfire well, and can plink.
Secondary: Type 77 customized for low aggro - seriously this gun gets no aggro at all.
Special: FSB Shotgun with a silencer - just press X and it'll equip to special slot.

If you've got a setup you like, post em in the comments.