dota 2 and dominion

Dota 2 is amazing.
And League of Legends Dominion appears to be right across the corner too!

It's a good time to be a MOBA player.
Capitalism and competition FTW.

aria di mezzo carattere

While skimming through random articles on Final Fantasy Wikia, I came across the entry for Aria di Mezzo Carattere and I was reminded of which I consider the best scene in a videogame, Final Fantasy VI's opera. Looking back, I'm impressed how such a simple scene can be so powerful. I would say that, even if it isn't the premiere cinematic/dramatic videogame scene, it's the greatest testament to the power of script in videogames.

In a nutshell, your party needs to cross the ocean in order to get to raid the Empire's capital city. It happens that the free-spirited rogue gambler who owns the world's only airship is an opera fanatic who has disclosed his intention of kidnapping and marrying the opera's main singer. Therefore, your party devise a plan of having the battle-hardened, former Empire general - who happens to look uncannily like the opera's main singer - take her place in the next performance, be kidnapped and convince the gambler to take your group across the ocean.

That's the unconventional background to the greatest scene in videogame history, the Aria di Mezzo Carattere. Mechanically, there's no challenge whatsoever: you play as Celes, the general, and just have to choose the right line three times among two available (which are conveniently presented to you right before you start the scene). Looking today, the mechanical constraints might even make it seem dated to some - to me, it makes it all the more charming. The song is intensely evocative and emotional, perfectly setting the appropriate mood. Without a doubt, it is one of my favourite pieces of videogame music, up there with masterpieces such as To Far Away Times from Chrono Trigger and Angel's Fear from Secret of Mana. I have a hard time listening to either of these without tearing up.

The opera's originality, lyricism, feeling and perfect composition are, in my opinion, still unparalleled to this day. That's why it's my favourite videogame scene.

doujin game by kojiman

Gay manga artist and personal god Shoutaroh Kojima said on Twitter he's thinking of making a doujin game.
Kojiman, one of my favourite things in the world, possibly making a game, ANOTHER of my favourite things in the world. Time to explode in joy already?

This post is now diamonds.

(he still doesn't know how to make a game, so it isn't properly an announcement, more of a request for suggestions on how to do it... still, diamonds!)

cataclysm

The third expansion pack to World of Warcraft, Cataclysm, was released this Tuesday. I tried not to jump into the bandwagon so soon, having been in WoW-remission since July, but in the end I bought it on release day. I’m Blizzard’s sheep as awful that might be, I can’t do much about it.

For very practical reasons, I decided to level my Dwarf Paladin as my main character this expansion instead of my perennial main, my Human Rogue. The paladin was my first healer, as soon as he reached 80 I respecced from Retribution (my leveling spec) to Holy (my instancing/raiding spec) and never went back to anything non-healy. Now that dual-spec is very cheap (a 99% drop, from 1000g to 10g), I ended up buying it. I’m going Retribution-Holy, Ret for easier questing, Holy for dungeons. My endgame plan is going Holy/Protection for complete utility, but I’m not sure yet. I’m actually enjoying the Ret playstyle, the remake made it rather rogue-ish. I haven’t abandoned my rogue, he is still my favourite character, but hybrids are just so more useful.

For no actual reason I’m questing at Vashj’ir. I had no idea where to start and followed the first quest I got, the one given telepathically by the Draenei, and ended up underwater. It’s RIDICULOUSLY linear but at least the scenery is pleasant I guess. As I get deeper into the zone it gets kinda scary, it gives me the feeling a gigantic abyssal monster will swallow me whole. The rogue will go to Hyjal for sure.

WoW seems to have fully embraced its "easymode pastime" image, because it keeps getting more and more brainless. You now level at an alarming rate and everything became user-friendly to the point of ridicule. Seriously, there was a quest I had to shoot spears at nagas and I didn’t even had to CLICK the nagas, just click the spears in my inventory (or rather, in the quest log conveniently placed below the minimap – I didn’t even have to search my bags for the quest item) and they would automatically hit the nagas that were passing by, who as a matter of fact didn’t aggro either. There was absolutely ZERO danger in doing this quest. After playing some League of Legends I can definitely notice the difference in a skill-based PvP game and WoW’s grindy leveling/instance playstyle. It’s still fun, but I’m not sure for how long.

good news and bad news

One of the few good news this week is that Tactics Ogre claimed the top spot in Japan's best selling games. If it's anywhere nearly as good as the original, I can't think of a more deserving position. It's a masterpiece.

On the other hand, two hate crimes against homosexuals recently happened around here, one of them in my city. As it seems, in Brazil if a gay guy comes on to you, beating him up and defacing him with shards of glass is a perfectly reasonable response. Isn't it lovely to live in a civilized country? I can only imagine how it must be.

By the way, I have not yet written an entry on the doujinshi Kojiman released back in AUGUST. I'm a terrible fanboy, I mean, I'm so late he even had a new release last month so I'm two dounjins behind. Sadly I don't have Photoshop after formatting this PC so it's kinda hard to make some preview pics! Anyway, December is coming closer and with it Winter Comiket and another brand new release to look forward to.

league of legends

Part of the reasons I've been neglecting this blog is that I just recently started playing a free-to-play DotA-clone called League of Legends. My sleep deprivation due to compulsive gaming also reached its peak in a while... going to bed routinely at 2:30 AM sucks, but I can't help it!

After cancelling my WoW account while waiting for Cataclysm (as much as I like Blizzard, paying them $15/month for ZERO content seemed too much like a waste) I decided I needed a new game, and, never having played Defense of the Ancients before, I was rather curious about how 5x5 real-time strategy PvP worked. My favourite games are turn-based strategy games, but I played a lot of single-player Warcraft 2 as a kid and I recall greatly enjoying it. I skipped Starcraft and Warcraft 3 due to my Final Fantasy fanboy phase (just like every RPG nerd), so my RTS experiences were really outdated. LoL's colourful design and free-to-playness lured me in.

LoL is like crack cocaine. Shit is addicting and hazardous to your health. Basically, there is a wide variety of Champions (characters you control) ingame, over 50 of them ranging from handsome greatsword-wielding soldiers to pyromaniac 10-year-old girls, including barbarians, demons, ninjas, a pirate, a female Articuno, a robot very reminiscent of Chrono Trigger and an adorable emo mummy kid! All of them are very distinct from each other, but only 10 of them are playable for free each week: the free-to-play roster rotates every Monday and if you want to have permanent access to a character, you must unlock them by paying either RL cash or "Influence Points" (which is earned as a reward at the end of each match). Otherwise you are forced to choose from among the 10 free champions, which isn't as bad as it might seem, since they usually choose a fair spread among tanks, melee DPS, mages and support characters.

LoL is also very competitive, as expected from a PvP game, so the community isn't that friendly once you gain levels and start playing against non-newbies. Nothing unbearable though; I've met a bunch of jerks, but most of the time it's fine. I compare "Normal" games to Battlegrounds (there are "Rated" games later on, comparable to WoW arenas, with an ELO rating and all that) - it's thrilling as PvP usually is but very laid-back and casual at the same time. Rated matches and their ELO rating surely must be very rage-inducing, I'm not certain I'll ever play ranked. The biggest complain seems to revolve around, as in every free-to-play online game, Brazilians. Everyone hates Brazilians in there. Thankfully they have no way to detect your nationality. Nobody I've played with or against knew I'm Brazilian, so thankfully I haven't been harassed due to my unfortunate place of birth.

I main Garen, the hunky soldier guy, but since lately people have been raping my newbie ass - especially casters like the fallen angel Morgana (personally I would prefer being raped by barbarian king Tryndamere, or spartan soldier Pantheon), I've moved on to Amumu, the cute-but-sad mummy kid (who's a frigging tank - awesome!), and I'm having a blast. Great game!

quests and the importance of narrative

In World of Warcraft, quests are mostly seen as a means to an end. You do them because they are an efficient leveling method, not because you particularly enjoy doing them (especially considering most of them are variations of the infamous "kill 10 rats" cliché). Almost all players check the "instant quest text" option and don't even read the role-play part of the quest text - we skip to the objectives. Quests that can be considered a mean in themselves are very few and far between.

I recently came across a particularly good quest from Vanilla WoW: Until Death Do Us Part. It's a grim, depressing quest from an Undead mother who asks you to place a pendant in the grave of her late husband. However, this isn't a tribute to honour his death or anything alike – she wants to get rid of the necklace that reminds her of him because he failed in protecting them from the Plague! He was a paladin whose only concern in life was "the Light", and he ended up neglecting his wife and children in order to fight the Plague. She was left all alone in raising the kids and when the Scourge won, they ended up infected by the very evil he fought so much against. Indeed, she has no reason to be grateful.

(BTW, this is one of the reason I cannot relate to the Forsaken. As a commenter said, the Plague changed them. They don't have human feelings. It's all very alien and unsettling)

There is no redeeming end. Since you turn in the quest at his grave, there is no dialogue, but rather gloomy, haunting narrative. I take the liberty of copypasting: "You place the worthless pendant on the grave, and the gemstone within the setting seems to dull noticeably. As you stand to leave, you look down at the pendant; it lies lifelessly over the hands of the relief sculpted into the top of the coffin. Your thoughts are interrupted by a stiff, cool breeze passing over the Sepulcher. For a moment everything around you is silent."

The peculiar pessimism of the quest made it a favorite. It's a major classic to me, in the veins of Pamela Redpath (the most heartwarming quest ever), Saving Sharpbeak, Tirion's quest chain in Plaguelands, Linken's odyssey and the sweet references to Zelda and Bridenbrad's attempted, but ultimately unsuccessful rescue.

MMOs aren't well known by their plots, they even have "lore" instead - a very malleable backstory that often seems to be all but an afterthought. It's remarkable that there are quests who, in spite of being contained in a media that by design is almost wholly deprived of depth, somehow manage to bring out emotions of the player. Good narrative being such an underutilized tool might be the genre's biggest shame.

no gay shepherd

So you cannot have a gay Shepherd in Mass Effect 2. A shame, really. I was looking forward to be gay in Mass Effect 2.

The biggest disappointment is that this came from Bioware, out of all developers. After Dragon Age Origins, a superb game, I trusted they could be relied on for arguably tasteful homosexuality in games. But I guess only elves are stereotyped enough to fill the unwelcome role of gay character.

a game investor

When I was young I wished I could be a videogame developer to create my own games. Those childish dreams soon faded with the coming of age, but now I realize that perhaps I should have wished for something different: to be an investor in the gaming industry. These days investors seem to have as power in actual gamemaking as the developer themselves . Possibly even more – just how often do we hear "this and that were changed/simplified/bastardized to make the game more appealing to the masses" That’s investor interference if I ever saw one. And it’s not strange at all: it might actually be the natural course, given how videogames have become such a major moneymaking industry.

Take Hideo Kojima. He might be married, but in my mind he’s as gay as a glittery butterfly. No straight man would provide us with so much gay fanservice – Vamp, Volgin, Snake’s incredibly well rendered butt, cloned Snakes doing naughty stuff inside a cardboard box, scenes of Snake masturbating... etc. But even being the renowned mastermind behind the Metal Gear Solid series, I don’t think he could go all the way on the gayness factor without it being vetoed by the big people behind the screens. Were I the one financing Metal Gear Solid XYZ, heavy homosexual undertones in MGS would be welcomed with arms wide open (for instance, cleavage needs not be restricted to EVA – Snake manboobs FTW).

If I wanted to take part in gamemaking, I don’t think I would study programming or art. I would major in business administration and fund games. Then I would definitely be able to finance gay developers and allow plenty of gay-friendliness in the gaming industry.

gays in games

Despite the traditional fanservice, sexual innuendo and lustful voluptuous women, I never considered videogames in general all that sexual. The oversexed imagery and female exploitation was mostly catering to the wide audience of sex-starved virgin nerds – actual sex has historically been a fairly rare occurrence on games not specifically created to have sex as a selling point. While there has always been the usual share of romantic relationships, references to sexuality were mostly indirect. Things might be changing this last decade, when storyline became a major part of most gaming genres and adult games seem to be well-received. Admittedly, those aren’t my favourite type of games, but they exist and are displays of a modern trend that brings videogames closer to other medias, movies in particular (and not only in the sense that you watch more than you play).

However, it bothers me how even with the "newfound adulthood" of videogames, references to homosexuality in mainstream gaming has to be shown either a deviant behaviour or as jokes, or ways to generate awkward moments for the straight dudes holding the controller. Not necessarily offensive (personally, I don’t recall being offended – maybe I’ve forgotten), but seldom usual. There are examples of gay-friendliness, usually in games with an open-ended bent. Funny how whenever I play one of those I do as a gay character... I wonder why. Fable II’s way of handling homosexuality is probably my favourite of the bunch: you can flirt with guys and even marry one. As a matter of fact, this fact about this game was one of the deciding factors that led me to buy an Xbox 360 instead of a PS3 (a shame I found out most of the gay guys are bald and ugly). I also heard in Bully you can be romantically involved with another kid, but I never played it. There’s always The Sims, which to me is more asexual than gay-friendly, but that might be too subtle a distinction. In Dragon Age Origins you can fuck an elf, but he’s a morally ambiguous bisexual elf, which by itself carries all sorts of connotations. There’s Volgin in MGS3 who fucks an effeminate dude, but he’s a nasty sadistic Russian villain, and so on. These might be welcome signs that things are changing, but I don’t think it would hurt if the homosexual characters didn’t have those negative undertones.

In the most social gaming genre ever, MMORPGs, homosexuality is a touchy issue. There has been major media backlash related to World of Warcraft when Blizzard threatened to ban people who were advertising a LGBT-only guild, a telling anecdote that shows how even major studios aren’t certain of the best way to deal with gays on MMOs. But honestly, I think most of the problems aren’t the developers’ fault: you have to blame the (mostly horrible) community. As long as the word "gay" is used as a swear word, things will stay that crummy way in MMOs, and I doubt developers could have any influence on that.

I wish there were more games of whatever genre that featured gay heroes – not necessarily "gay games" (although I would certainly love 100% gay games - gimme more Japanese gay dating sims!), Fable 2 isn’t a gay game and there’s a fair amount of gayness in there. The gay characters need not be main characters, but necessarily need not be oddities or psychos or whatever mental disturb people associate with homosexuals. You don’t need to show guys fucking other guys in order to have gay characters. Gays in games have already been done in a tasteful manner, and I see no firm reason other than prejudice for them not to be more widespread. We most certainly have more than enough straight heroes already.

alliance in disguise‏

My Troll Priest hit 68 this week and is already Northrendbound. I hadn't leveled a toon in a long while, since before Dual Spec was released, and, wow... it's REALLY a life-changing feature. Coupled with the Dungeon Finder, undoubtedly WotLK's greatest success (not like there are many), being Disc/Shadow is almost everything you could ask for levling a toon. Whenever I'm bored of quest grinding, which is far from a rare occurrence, I can just hit the "I" key, queue as a healer - which are usually in short supply - hit "N", respec Discipline and heal an instance. Dungeons give me tons of XP, usually more than I would get if I spent the same amount of time questing, plus a shot at nice blue gear. I think only Druids have it easier, if they go Feral/Resto they can queue as Healer, Tank AND DPS! That must be the most awesomest way to level a toon.

I love loveloveloveluuurrrve trolls. They are so damn awesome. The Priest is the third iteration of my first toon, who started as a Troll Shaman and later became a Troll Rogue. Both of those times they were abandoned because of my faithful Alliance heart, but Troll Priest is such a great combination (plus Dual Spec, plus Dungeon Finder, plus interfaction Bind-on-Account transfering, plus built-in Quest Helper...). I just fell in love. I'd put trolls in my "hardcore race" category, together with dwarves. Even though they aren't sexy, like the bearded daddy humans or Slavic bodybuilding draenei, they still have an almost irresistible appeal to them. Maybe because they are ugly. Regardless, when you see a troll player, you can tell he's either a griefer (although gnomes are still the premiere griefing race IMHO), or a hardcore player who doesn't care about his looks - beauty is overrated, "mojo" (or, for Dwarves, "true manliness") is what really counts!

The ugly side of leveling a Horde toon stems from my firmly rooted Alliance mentality. I feel extremely bad about killing Alliance people in quests. One of my first Howling Fjord quests had me fly a griffon a bat and drop poisonous bombs on Alliance ships... it was horrible. I also couldn't feel at home in Horde cities, they are so different. I'm fond of the fact that Northrend orc cities are more "steampunk" than "slum", and Undead towns give off a rather pleasant Victorian vibe, dare I say... so currently, it's not that bad (and Dalaran is as Ally as it gets).

Now, PvPing is truly painful. Thankfully, I can PvP as a healer, and I always do. This way I don't really have to KILL Ally - I let the cows and the orcs do the dirty work. But sometimes a Dwarf or Draenei Paladin or Hunter (it seems like it's always either a Pally or a Hunter) feels like stalking me. That really sucks, and I have no choice - its Ally-clobbering time, "for the Horde!" and all that jazz. So don't you Alliance dare to mess with us Horde healers - we might be fellow Allys in disguise who in truth don't feel like killing you! Don't leave us with no choice but to rape your sorry ass.

the voodoo shuffle‏

I've decided to finally level my Troll Priest now that you can send heirloom items through factions and the default WoW UI displays quest objectives. Dinged 26 yesterday, and I'm having a blast. He was originally Shadow-spec, not that it made much of a difference, still - but I quickly went Smite build with Glyph of Smite as soon as I learned Holy Fire at level 20. This way, with the same spec I can both grind mobs and heal random dungeons, which are by far the best source of XP these days (and if I queue as a healer I usually get a spot very fast). I gain like half a level worth of XP every run, plus a shot at getting blue gear. Healing is relatively easy at lower levels and healing is what I planned on doing anyway. In fact I'm consdering speccing Disc at 60 for Penance and just stick to healing instances to level.

The switch to Horde is... awkward. Trolls are completely awesome and Priests are an ideal fit IMHO (I would never pick another race), but I feel horrible on BGs. I'm an Alliance player at heart, I love the Alliance in spite of all its shortcomings. I feel particularly bad when I kill dwarves. I avoid doing that the best I can (except pesky Dwarf Hunters just LOVE to target me with their Aimed Shots... 50% healing reduction at level 26 is simply ridiculous).

I'm having lots of fun, maybe even more than I've had with raiding these days (farming ICC-10 already got old after three weeks). And with my crammed schedule this coming year, it might end up being my only WoW activity for a fairly long time.

holiday stress

I love and hate holidays. It's definitely fun slacking off at home, no questions asked. But when your coworkers go on vacations and leave you with twice as much work to do, it really sucks. These last two weeks I have barely had the time to breath at work. Luckily my boss left already, tomorrow's Christmas Eve after all, so I'm alone in my room and I can do whatever I want until I’m free to go home.

Since the new 3.3 patch, I've been playing WoW even more than I usually do. The new LookingForGroup feature is something else entirely, it's an important paradigm shift in a game that desperately needed it. I've done more Utgarde Keep and Nexus runs with my 72 Enhancement Shaman (my boyfriend's same level Elemental Shaman went Restoration and healed – thank god for dual specs!) than I ever did instances on my Paladin's whole entirely solo quest grind to level 80. My sexy burly Draenei Warrior alt, with which I hadn't played in like 6 months, has more Tier-9 items than my Rogue, who raided Trial of the Crusader on an almost weekly basis! Tanks have such an easy time right now, even inexperienced tanks like me are blazing through lots of successful heroic runs with ease and getting loads of Emblems of Triumph for our… “efforts”.

Due to technical issues on the last couple weeks, I finally got to run Icecrown Citadel 10-man for the first time yesterday. We one-shot Marrowgar and Deathwhisper and wiped some good four or five times on Gunship Battle and Saurfang , partially due to us taking several guildies who aren’t regulars of our 10-man group. Now… the cutscene after you kill Saurfang Jr. was one of the most emotional moments I've witnessed in WoW. I was all teary-eyed in the end (crybaby, I know)! King Varian is a major asshole (regardless, his strong rugged handsome manly looks do make up for his shitty personality in this horny gay nerd view), but his exchange with Saurfang Sr. showed a very noble side of his, heartwarming even – and, I’d say, very in character since Varian is a father himself. Overall, a superb addition to an already remarkable fight.

On the gay manga “bara” front, Comiket 77 is coming up very soon (god I wish I were in Japan) and I'm already craving for Shoutaroh Kojima's newest doujinshi. It seems slightly peculiar in comparison to his previous doujin work: I’d say because it isn't fanart as far as I can tell (the characters look original to me), and the oyaji bottom looks older (he even sports a moustache!) and even more muscular than usual (Kojiman is particularly fond of bodybuilding competitions, and that is showing – and I’m loving it). While some artists always take the safe, predictable path every time – Takeshi Matsu being the greatest offender, his stories are usually enjoyable, but I can't seem to shake off the triteness – this admittedly small but very noticeable twist on Kojiman’s usual oyaji-uke characters only makes it even more enjoyable to me, if that were even possible! Here's a crop of the preview he posted in his pixiv account:

dragon age: perfection

A few days ago, I managed to get my dirty hands on a copy of my long sought-after masterpiece Dragon Age: Origins. Coupled with the fact I've been having constant issues with my ISP lately (two whole days without internet at home sure made me feel like I've been isolated from the world for an eternity), I can say I've had the opportunity to play it a fair bit.

Without any hyperbole, I must say it's clearly, hands-down, without a doubt, surely, unmistakably, undeniably, undoubtedly, certainly, definitely the best game I've played this generation. It's briliant in every single aspect. The only issues I've had so far are a BSOD once, and noticeable slowdowns in cutscenes. Other than, that it's flawless, which means if you have an up-to-date gaming rig, unlike me, by purchasing DAO you will be acquiring a perfect game. Simple like that. And everyone knows how hard to find those are!

The gameplay is pure delight. I had never played any D&D game that preceded DAO such as Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights - heck, I had never played a BioWare game before, so I had no idea what to expect... and I sure feel stupid for not trying out one of those games before! I'm amazed how it's both tactical and fast-paced; pausing for queueing commands is like the best invention ever. The plot is your traditional epic quest, but it's told in a most compelling way. I actually cheered out loud a few times: it's that nerdgasmic, if not terribly original.

(and Alistair... oh, Alistair. He is the hottest bearish thing ever. Sharp-tongued and cuddly at the same time, what a combination! Best character so far. I love his exchanges with other party members, especially Morrigan. But it makes me sad that DAO is western, so Alistair porn will probably be harder to find. If he were in a Japanese game my HD would surely be overflowing with Alistair porn by now. I vow to find a way to get my male Human Noble Rogue to fuck him in the ass, because he's clearly a bottom)

dragon age: frustration

Dragon Age: Origins, the game I was anticipating the most this month (hell - this year), was released on November 13th here in Brazil. As of today, 11.17, trying to find a copy is a pointless endeavour, since absolutely no store has it in stock. Not because it was sold out or anything - everywhere I go I'm told it isn't out yet.

Videogaming is so neglected around here it's no surprise every-goddamn-body pirates. My Xbox360 isn't modded, I can't run pirates, but I'd be inclined to flash it if not for the massive Halloween ban wave. It's been ages since I've wanted to purchase Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 for some coop bonanza with my boyfriend (a major Marvel fan who loved X-Men Legends), but it's being sold for almost R$ 300. That's about 171 US Dollars. One-hundred seventy one dollars for the exact same game I would pay $60 in a decent civilized country. Modding your Box is like, one-fifth the price.

Admittedly, I could have bought DAO through Steam, but overall I find Steam slightly... uncomfortable., for no particular reason. Besides, I want the premium edition that comes in a nice box with some silly extras (that make all the difference, really). But it's no good, no place is selling it yet. Even though it's supposed to be out for days.

Alistair, I need you so goddamn much. Gimme the stupid game already!
(I'm so into Alistair I was almost willing to forsake all my moral beliefs and go female, just to romance him - why the hell do we gay guys have to fuck a fruity elf instead of a gorgeous, manly human? Down with gay elf stereotypes already! Anyway, human males turn me on to a degree I could never bother rolling a skank just for a dude. A sexy and cuddly dude nonetheless... ahh, I need a gay mod for Alistair :p)

console gaming

My recently bought Xbox 360 is providing me with short but pleasant gaming experiences. I don't play it much, as most of my time is still devoted to World of Warcraft (although things will change next week, once I finally get new shoulders for my Paladin), but those fleeting gaming hours have been surprisingly enjoyable.

Two years ago, I considered myself a JRPG fanboy. I played nothing but J-RPGs and the occasional Metal Gear Solid. My life post-WoW, though, is completely different. My MMO-exclusive years have given me a newfound appreciation for the Western RPG style, which, coupled with the utter lack of quality J-RPG releases that greatly dampened my enthusiasm for the genre, I reached a point where I haven’t a clear first choice when it comes to Western or Japanese. I'm looking equally forward to Final Fantasy XIII, Dragon Quest IX and Diablo III – back in the day, there wouldn't be even a competition, FFXIII would win. And not only because of Snow Villiers (although he’s surely a boner-inducing sight factor).

I have to say, console gaming feels awkward after spending so much time gaming on a desktop. I don't think I'm still used to controllers again, and that was the most natural thing ever. The games themselves are also so… different. Not only from WoW but also from the last generation I was so familiar with. One of the strangest things to me right now is not having people to talk to while I’m gaming. MMOs might have their several flaws, but their main quality – fostering sociability – is outstanding in more ways than one, and once you get used to chatting while you’re playing, it's hard to go back to solo gaming. I plan on joining Xbox Live ASAP.

So far, I've played mostly Fable II, The Last Remnant and Street Fighter IV, all very good games. Even though I'm hopeless in SF4, Abel is just so goddamn hot I feel the, let’s call it, "urge" to play. Even though I inevitably get spanked (...which is really hot, actually). Abel skyrocketed straight to the top of my list of favourite fighting game characters (formerly composed of Ramon from King of Fighters, Mitsurugi from Soul Calibur, Eddy Gordo from Tekken and Daigo from Rival Schools) in no time. Shame my personal god Shoutaroh Kojima isn’t a fellow fan!

lifebringer

Healing is widely regarded as a girly role. Admittedly, most women seem to play a healing spec, but it’s a silly stereotype, as stereotypes usually are, and I know several men who enjoy bringing those Health bars back up and they are definitely not gay or anything.

It happens that I'm starting to prefer healing with my Holy Paladin over DPSing with my eternally favourite character, my Rogue. My boyfriend is a healer first and foremost – his main character is a Priest, main spec Discipline, dual spec Holy. Healing is all he does. But me, I’m attracted to manly. I like masculinity: melee, Solid Snake, oyaji – manly is my thing. I even rolled my healer to be the least girly possible: he's a plate-wearing Paladin (no skirts for me, T8 and T2 can DIAF!) and a bearded burly stocky Dwarf of all things! But that supposedly "womanly" thing called healing is growing on me to the point of making me consider rolling a healer first on my next MMORPG (possibly Aion?), and a rogue-assassin type only later! Could it be that I'm unwillingly developing a fondness for the "passive", "caregiving" role, thanks to my "gay gene"?

I have to say I personally don't see healing as particularly "girly". Healing is undeniably more peculiar in being cooperative instead of competitive: healing meters mean nothing, unlike DPS meters, which can coldly display how useful you really are. While DPSing, you aren’t much more than a number in a list. And sitting at the top spots of the DPS chart grants you the prerogative to show off: you are "the man"! On the other hand, people hardly ever notice healers, unless they do something wrong and wipe the raid. If you want glory, healing can definitely be a rather unrewarding role, and boasting about prowess, competitiveness and that elusive term called “skill” are features usually more related to men.

However, a great deal of fun as a healer for me lies in PvP, and PvPing as a healer works almost like a PvE tank – you have to maximize your survivability, endurance and lasting power, since you are likely focus-fired all the time, and at the same time protect your allies with your supportive spells. It’s very intense, and I doubt people think of tanking as "womanly". To me, being incredibly tough to kill is also part of being a healer, even if that side of the role only comes into play in a whole different aspect of the game. So, while in the sense of "bragging rights", healing could possibly be considered less masculine than DPSing, PvP healing is every inch as "manly" as tanking is.

Also, even in PvE, the most captivating aspect of healing to me is how important you are. Healers are crucial to a party. They keep you alive, and if you are dead you might as well not even be there. Being a healer is being blessed (or burdened, in some people’s view) with great responsibility, which again makes them very closely related to tanks... who, as I said above, are usually regarded as "manly". Double standards, much?

I prefer to think those stereotypes are unfounded and healing isn’t as "girly" as some might say. Even though an astonishing amount of female players choose healers, healing can be manly, it can be girly, and it definitely can be gay. Come to think of it, every player who made my gaydar tingle (let’s just say Ventrilo can be very revealing) is a healer or has a healer alt... maybe it is in the gay gene after all. :)

the tactical advantage

Reading Tobold's remarkable post about Tactics RPGs (also known as Strategy or Simulation RPGs, S-RPGS for short) made me realise how long it has been since I last played a quality S-RPG, and how much I miss them. My favourite videogame ever is the timeless classic Final Fantasy Tactics. I could write an essay on how much I love it. Summing it up, it's got my favourite videogame storytelling and my favourite gameplay ever.

(funny how back when I first played FFT, a few months after it was released in 1998, I had no idea who Yasumi Matsuno was – only later I came to know he's the same director of my back-then favourite game, Ogre Battle, which as a matter a fact is also a Tactics RPG, but of a whole different sort. Matsuno has already become an idol of mine, joining the ranks of Shoutaroh Kojima and Keiji Fujiwara)

First of all, I dig bildungsroman-like stories. There’s nothing like being able to perceive the character’s growth; starting as a nobody and progressively become a great somebody, especially if needlessly corny or over-the-top intermissions are reduced to a few, or even none (honestly I can’t think of any unnecessary dramatic passages in FFT, everything comes together very well). I also prefer plots that deal with political conflicts, even if they are totally implausible or unlikely (give me a FFXII’s “Silly War over Stones” over the several "Save the World from the Evil Demon/Wizard/Evil God" clichés any day!), and FFT’s plot is an intricate tale filled with treachery and betrayal. Also, bittersweet endings just get me... FFT’s ending is a sad but uplifting masterpiece, plus it bestows us with the greatest, harshest piece of irony I’ve witnessed in a videogame: Delita’s last scene (after you watch everything he went through in the game).

I love the extensive micromanagement of my armies and the pre-combat planning it ensures. In S-RPGs, you are usually presented with several ways to customize and improve your units (such as gear, classes, skills etc) and, besides the tactical choices during the fights themselves, that micromanagement in itself is also a highly strategic part of the game. You have to carefully think which units you’ll bring to the fight, how to distribute your good pieces of gear among your units, which classes to level on your toons and so on.

Finally, S-RPGs have a quality that is long lost in the current style of games: you can afford to stop to think. The nod towards “action gaming” of most current RPGs seems widely published and regarded as some sort of selling point, but I don’t endorse this notion. Not completely. While I don’t mind action-oriented games (I actually enjoy like several of them), does everything have to be high-paced? There ought to be room for games in which not all decisions have to be made in fractions of a second.

I agree when Tobold says S-RPGs are a gaming style long lost. Admittedly, some S-RPGs have been developed and published lately but, truth be told, they don’t appear to include what I liked the most about my old S-RPGs – that is, all these features I tried my best to describe in the paragraphs above. I wonder if, on a sunny day, Yasumi Matsuno will descend from the Heavens and save the gaming world from the insidious action influence, rewarding us with slower-paced, more strategic gaming… or if I should just embrace the current action trend in videogames.

In the meanwhile, I guess I’ll just stick to playing Dragon Quest IX.

honey come bingo

A few days ago, I decided to play a BL game I had set my eyes on a long time ago, Honey Come Bingo. It isn't exactly a new game, but I didn't get the chance to play it before because of the whole "Me Turning Into a WoW Zombie" deal. Right now I feel the WoW-addiction has waned enough to allow me to play other games, and Honey Come Bingo was on the top of my list.

HCB is a gay porn doujin-game. I've been helplessly addicted to drawn gay porn for a long time, and over all those years I played a few BL games. The ones aimed at gay males are, sadly, very few and far between, so it's not like I ever had a broad variety to choose from. My favourite - or rather, the crowd's favourite - is Hunks Workshop, the little masterpiece by Massanori everyone loves, and for a good reason (namely, it's great). Go Fujimoto's Ore to Mahou no Koibito and the earlier games by Gai Mizuki (the man behind Honey Come Bingo), like G-Case and Loops, were highly entertaining too.

People don't usually look for inspired gameplay or mind-blowing complex plots in BL games. They usually want porn. And those games deliver (usually) high quality porn in a (usually) "funner" way than clicking thumbnails on pixiv. While playing Honey Come Bingo, I had no clue what was the story (BL games usually have an option for fast-forwarding dialogues, let's just say I made good use of it), and the gameplay is a rather simple board game: after the first two or three matches, I started to win almost every match.

However, "winning the board game" doesn't seem necessarily to be HCB's main goal - it's more about unlocking those wonderful CGs, and there seems to be a few more ways of doing that. During the matches you are up against three AI-controlled opponents, and each player has two or three sets of "gems" spread over the board. If you gain control of a tile with one of their gems, you get to keep the gem and start to "win their hearts" (or something like that, I got that off Anonib - my understanding of the game didn't get that far). What I quickly realized was that after they lose enough gems, you get CGs showing them taking their clothes off... and those are definitely some of the most gorgeous pieces Gai Mizuki has ever done (considering the guy's a freaking monster, they are obscenely good). And if you talk to them in between games, they can start to like you too - I even got to see superbly drawn flashbacks of two characters who loved me when they lost their last gems and were kicked off the game.

...now, let's move on to the highest point of the game. I have to bold this following part: Honey Come Bingo features the best cast in a gay themed game ever. I'm not exaggerating, the cast is that good. As usual, the character you control is the least attractive one (this seems to be a trend in BL games), but your opponents... Jesus Christ, those are godly specimen of steamy, manly, muscular, unshaven oyaji meat. There's seven of them, and fun fact: the family name of each of them has the kanji of a weekday (seven weekdays, seven opponents... get it?).


They are, in order (left to right - click for higher res pic!):

- Wakatsuki Toru (若月徹), 27 year-old baseball player.
- Hino Yutarou (火野勇太郎), 31 year-old actor.
- Mizushima Gou (水島剛), 29 year-old K-1 fighter.
- Kimura Tadanao (木村忠尚), 22 year-old university student and rugby player.
- Kaneda Masaru (金田優), 26 year-old employee of a delivery company.
- Hijikata Takeshi (土方武), 33 year-old gambler (and full-time hottie).
- Hibino Kingo (日比野欽吾), 46 year-old president of a company.

(my favourite is obviously the blond gambler oyaji, Hijikata. *swoons* He was always the last one to join the bingo for me, so I had to kick at least three other hunks for him to show up in all his mighty goateed glory)

Unfortunately I didn't get to play much so far, and I didn't even bother trying to decipher the nihongo to get a grasp of what's going on. A shame really, because when you actually understand what's going on those games become ten times more interesting (a friend once told me the outlines of Niikura's storyline in Hunks Workshop. suffice to say it made me like the guy even more than I already did), but there's tons of dialogue and if you don't understand Japanese enough, like me, it's probably an exercise in frustration even attempting to make sense of it. But for people looking for some majorly well done oyaji/gachi-muchi porn by the god named Gai Mizuki, Rainbow Shoppers still has copies for sale, or you can download the game illegally - this is the huge interwebz afterall. And you could always download solely the CG pack, but I honestly feel that working hard for your porn makes it all the more exciting. :)

angels and demons

Everyone can't stop talking about the new sensation in the MMO gaming world, the incoming Asian release currently in beta testing, Aion. Several people got beta keys and are sharing their first impressions.

I don't plan on leaving World of Warcraft anytime soon. While it's not as compelling as it was one year ago, I still enjoy it. I play with my boyfriend, so it's a way to get in touch with him on weekdays. The folks in my guild are a lot of fun. But raiding content of late (Ulduar) doesn't deliver - I'm up to Yogg-Saron, sorely missing TBC and Black Temple - and I'm above all a raider, so I'm slightly frustrated. I'm open to a new outlet to go along with my possibly waning WoW addiction. And Aion, from what is being said, is very reminiscent of WoW - albeit with several Asian touches.

I bear strong bias against Asian MMOs. My first Massively Multiplayer Online experience was Ragnarok Online, and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I hate how it's so goddamn cutesy. There's a limit to sugary and Ragnarok definitely crossed that line. Now, Aion. Thankfully it doesn't resemble RO in the slightest manner, but it still looks very, how shall I put it... "soft". I'm not looking for a hardcore, dark, gory setting: in fact I detest those as much as, or even more than I dislike overly cutesy. But does everything need to be bland, pale and slightly ethereal? WoW's hit a soft spot. It's very diverse; there is some colourful scenery here, but there's some darker or more earthly settings there. To a degree WAR did that too, but Aion graphic style, from the screenshots I've seen, steers far away from what I like. But I'm better off waiting for more screens and videos to pass proper judgment.

The world of Aion has two races. "Demons" and "angels", for short. Oh man. I despise anything resembling demons and angels. When they aren't in a slapstick-silly setting like Disgaea, they reek of angsty drama. And angels mean wings, which are up there with pointy ears as the biggest design turnoff for me (terrible memories of Angel Sanctuary, Sephiroth, "otaku-moe" coolness... ugh! *shudders*). If wings were something special only certain characters could end up getting, I wouldn't mind it, but it seems everyone gets wings. Ewww!

I must say like the classes. They don't stray from the traditional Fighter-Rogue-Mage-Priest sacred cow, which means they can't do much wrong. And there's an Assassin class, so they got me covered in case I eventually subscribe.

So, yeah... I bear lots of prejudice towards Aion already. But that's prejudice, not an opinion - I haven't had decent exposure to the game to properly judge it. Those dislikes might very well end up being completely unfounded. All in all, I'm not highly anticipating it. More like cautiously waiting for more information, especially regarding the actual gameplay. Depending on what I hear, I might as well give it a shot.