Icarus's blog: "Augurs, Martyrs, and Agnostics"

Over 20,000 views >> damn I keep underselling this blog.

So tonight I watched the debut trailer for Assassin's Creed III
and my immediate response was, after a brief pause
"You never go full retard."

Back up a step
you play some dumb ass in the foreseeable future hooked up to some magic machine that unlocks his genomes and lets him relive his ancestor's lives in order to reveal some arcane and terrifying secret
(aliens)

Shadow Organization A: Has kidnapped you and has been at odds with every single one of your significant forebears throughout history and has masterminded society as a whole.
Shadow Organization B: are supposedly the "good" kind of shadow organization and have been waging a secret war/artifact grab for generations against A.

Dumbass finds some stuff out, starts becoming an elite killer like his great great great great great grampa
and Shadow org B busts your ass out of there.

Episode 2:

See episode 1 introduce more convuluted unbelievably stupid deus ex machina Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull genre/lore breaking TURDS and finish the game unsatisfied (rushed) and even moreso deus ex machinaed out of the game since Ubisoft was behind schedule on release, dropped a major chapter of the story, rushed the climax with a dipshit sequence that was ... not consistent with the character or setting

Said dropped chapter was later released and
you have to pay $10.00 to play what was intended to be included with launch.

Thanks assholes.

Episode 3: Same uberninja kill shit... super imposed on "The Patriot" Featuring Mel Gibson
only you're some guy in a white hoody doing Indian ninjaflips.

...
*facepalm*

The Patriot was a pretty stupid movie
despite being Braveheart in revolution times.





In other news:

I've been playing this adorable $10.00 game called Terraria, its like an NES sidescrolling adventure game
/builder
/dungeon crawler
/HOLY SHIT THEY GAVE ME ROCKET BOOTS!!!

That's right
an 8-bit, no graphics, no bells, no whistles, no voice acting
video game
circa
2012.

This game
is all of game.

Charming.
Tough.
Fun.
Progressive.
AWESOME!
Affordable.

I'm usually lucky to get 20 hours of entertainment for $60.00 these days.
38+ hours of entertainment for $10.00 ?

What's the catch?
What's the trick?
What's the hook?

Random world spawn
and MATH

Holy
fucking Jeebus
Math.

I'd say there's millions of variables to this game.
You start out with a pickaxe, an axe, and a guy that gives you some advice

You can build with almost ANY material you digup/chop down.
You make upgraded equipment, and you can build a massive town/colony/tower to heaven (which I did)

Sand becomes glass
ores become metals
giant fucking monsters drop giant fucking monster stuff

etc

I decided to dig
straight down.

For two entire days.

I'm not DONE DIGGING

straight DOWN from the starting area!!!

First there was dirt, rock, and come copper and iron
then there was rare metals and minerals and stronger monsters and weird chambers of ... previous diggers?
and it just kept going and going and going

I eventually got a device to tell me how deep I was and it was over 3000 feet.

I stopped checking after that, and eventually got into chambers of molten lava and roving skeletons

after working that pit I cracked into the first layer of hell.

Seriously.
And then I decided (After being murdered by some atomic hellbeast) that I should play around the surface for a bit (and upgrade my gear for my invasion of hell)

I wandered east from home for hours, found snow covered plains, deserts, a jungle and the ocean (ocean's big)

Then I wandered east (said hi to my giant tower to space as I passed home)
went a comparable distance as I had west, and encountered desert
forest
more desert
and

some horrifying mutant land with horrifying mutant creatures trying to rip me apart. This place is referred to "the corruption" and according to advice guy, I'm supposed to cleanse it.

By this point I was fairly bad assed, had my suit of armor and tools made out of the corpses of giant 2800 hp monsters (my max is 400) and some sweet rocket boots, and a sweet grappling hook for my safety when dropping hundreds of feet into pits >>

What's the worst that could happen?

The corruption.
Oh wait...
it gets worse.

Apparently there's something called "the deep corruption" and "the dungeon"

Which I only recently gained access to.

Now you might be thinking for a minute


"wait, is the 3000+ foot cave only under his house?"
No

I can start another dig site just as huge and deep as my first one feet, or miles from my starting point
wherever I want so long as my pickaxe can break it down.

"but the game world is always the same right?"
Nope.
Randomly generated (with musthave parameters) for each new game.

I can take any of my characters to any of my worlds.
And
the game has multiplayer functionality.

That's right.

I can go to other people's worlds >>

Pretty fucking cool
And that is a TON of math.

I secretly love math.
I overtly love this game.

Now you might research this game (As my friends have) and say "that doesn't look fun at all"

That explains this post
and why I've played it, and nothing else
for days.

This is what games should be, in a word
Good.

But its a complete flip of the mainstream of this medium.
Graphics, big name voice actors, marketability, targeted audiences, graphs, charts, business, and realistic explosions are NOT as important as coding, content, accessibility, progression, pacing, and gameplay.

Terraria is my TOP contender for Game of The Year 2012.
And I am -fully- aware of what else is coming.
Fucking impress me.

This game cost probably under $200,000 to make.
estimated price of Old Republic, a 40 gig, buggy, subscription based, over voice acting, unplayable pavlov machine-
$500,000,000

That IS another set of three 0's.

Mass Effect 3
Diablo 3
Assassin's Creed 3
(seeing a trend here?)
Infinity Shock
Skyrim

... okay those are some HEAVY franchise hitters...

but my vote, and for all its worth goes to Terraria.