"Let's go save some cheerleaders."

I recently finished playing the single player campaign for Dice's latest masterpiece, Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The game mirrors COD:MW in many ways, but improves upon most of the aspects of the gameplay in its overly self-absorbed cousin.

What, no smiley-faced grenades?

The game is a sequel to the very enjoyable Battlefield Bad Company. Once again, we join our squad of miscreants and follow them as they battle through a brand new story. Where the last game took place in a fictional eastern bloc nation, this one takes place in real places as the US battles against a global Russian offensive. The game centers around Bad Co.'s search for a "scalar device" - essentially a large-scale EMP device a la "Ocean's Eleven", taking you from icy tundra (in Alaska, I think - see my complaint about this below) to jungle to desert (in Chile - yay!) and then ultimately back to Texas (airspace, anyway). (I apologize for the number of parentheticals in that sentence, but I don't get the benefit of Colbert's overlay when he does "the Word".) Oh, and the game starts in WWII-era Japan, because screw you, that's why.

First, the gameplay is awesome. It's fast-paced, much more so than it's predecessor which felt like the enemies were too few and far between. It's also varied, giving you a lot of different things to do including your standard running and gunning, sniping, shooting from a tank, jeep, helicopter, and four-wheeler (or "quad bike", as Sweetwater gayly calls it). Some of these elements worked really well, like the time you have to provide sniper cover to your team as they insert into an enemy base, but with the catch that you time your shots with the thunder that's going on around you. Or the time you run down a snowy mountain but have to periodically stop and warm yourself up. However, some of the gameplay elements fell a little flat, like designating targets with a laser designator or flying a UAV helicopter, which felt an awful lot like the AC-130 level from COD:MW, but not as much fun. On the whole however, these things worked out really well and made the game different and entertaining, with each level giving some surprises. Oh, and the opening level in Japan - hugging awesome.

Not only is the action great, but the engine is awesome. Pretty much everything can be exploded (yes, exploded) and there are plenty of opportunities to do so. You can level entire houses, destroy every bit of cover and otherwise wreak havoc on the countryside. The game does a good job of incorporating opportunities to do this, including a couple of great levels using a helicopter-mounted mini gun.

Yup, exploded.

The story was also pretty good. Nothing earth-shattering, but entertaining in its own right. It moved along quickly enough to keep my attention, but seemed to miss some important stuff, like where the eff you were a lot of the time. (Seriously, where does that first level take place? Alaska? Russia? On top of some mountain?) Oh, and it was a little unclear why you were doing a lot of the stuff you were doing. But I have that same complaint about COD:MW, and just about every other video game I've ever played. I always have a hard time following the plot. Nevertheless, despite the fact that they left it on a cliffhanger, setting it up for a sequel, I still immediately restarted the campaign and played through it again. And again. And again.

Where the game really shined was in its characters, dialogue, direction and voice acting. A lot of people really didn't like the characters and their banter from Bad Company 1. Not me. I loved it. Sure, it was silly that your squadmates would be goofing off right after a firefight in hostile territory while facing court martial, but the entire premise of the game was silly, so it fit within the world they created. I really enjoyed them playing rock-paper-scissors and annoying each other. It was a nice touch. Well, they dropped that for Bad Company 2, but what they did still works. Each character has more personality which comes out both in the cutscenes and in the in-game dialogue, which is better than pretty much any game I've ever played. There's a particularly good moment when Haggard sees a huge explosion and solemnly declares, "That is the greatest thing I have seen in my entire life."

Which brings me to my next point, the voice acting was great. The lines were all very well-delivered and properly timed, there were no annoying accents (Halo:Reach, Rainbow Six Vegas, COD:MW, I'm looking in your direction), and they fit into the scheme of the game and the story perfectly. While I liked Marlowe in the first game, I grew to love him here. He was sympathetic, emotional, and vulnerable, but also funny and skilled.

He's about to mess somebody up. You know, like nice guys do.

The cutscene direction was also very good. While some of the cutscenes were a little dry and expository, they were interspersed with enough interesting and sometimes, very cool stuff to keep my interest. In fact, there were a few points were I actually yelled because I thought they were so cool. One in particular comes to mind, where the squad is riding in a helicopter and they're suddenly barraged with rockets. The pilot (who was a very cool side character and had the best line of the game which can't be republished here due to my moderate self-censorship) takes evasive maneuvers which causes the aforementioned scalar device to fall out the side of the chopper. Marlowe, without even thinking, just jumps out after it. It was very, very cool.

Additionally, I'm not sure how these guys did it, but they managed to make the CG characters look and feel real. So often I find that the more real the animation, the less human the characters seem (see: the uncanny valley). But here, they didn't. It might be a result of the stellar voice acting, but it felt like there was something more that made the characters real and believable and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. However, my praise for this realism ends at the core squad. The other characters, including the character you play in the first level, had that same sort of hollowness that you find in most video game animations.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the game's sound. The sound is just unbelievably cool. From changing sound effects (guns are louder indoors) to engine-linked particle effects (you can hear dust and debris falling around you depending on where you are), the sounds really complete the gaming experience. That, and the gun sounds are very realistic. Having fired a lot of guns in my day, I can say that the gun sound effects in this game are more realistic than they are in any game I have ever played.

That's not to say the game is without its faults.

My main complaint with the campaign is the lack of checkpoints. This isn't really a problem in the early sections of the game, but becomes worse as the game goes on, hitting its obnoxious climax on the level "Sangre Del Toro." Despite the fact that this level takes place in Chile - which is awesome as I used to live there - I found myself shouting at the screen several times during this level and won't play it any more. The level takes place over a very large map and you have to drive to various points, get out of your car, fight off the bad guys, and then perform certain tasks. The problem is that the game checkpoints you immediately after you've performed the tasks, but not in between. What ends up happening, is you drive for minutes at a time to get to the next action and then die, having to start over again, driving for minutes at a time. There's a particularly annoying part where not only do you have to drive a whole bunch, but you have to stop, sit through an annoying and useless cutscene (there isn't even any story-related dialogue), listen to Sweet tell you that the obnoxious thing you just did was "cool", and then drive some more, through the blinding dust into an ambush that you won't survive on your first, second or third try. I think I wasted 20 minutes on that part the first time I played it. Now, I just drive to the point where I know they're waiting and blindly throw grenades into their midst. Not a very fun way to play, Dice. Neither is driving in the dust. I'm glad that your engine can realistically simulate wind and dust. Congratulations. That doesn't mean I want to constantly drive blindly through snow drifts and dust storms at the expense of your otherwise beautiful backdrops.

You will come to hate this place.

Along with this, I was also frustrated by how often you sit through a cutscene, then drive a whole bunch without doing anything, only to get to another point that initiates another cutscene. Why make me drive? It's not fun or interesting, so why can't you just transition to the next scene like they do in movies?

Another big complaint I have is with the cutscene transitions. In COD and sometimes in Reach, the cutscene transitions pretty seamlessly into the gameplay. Here, at the beginning and end of each cutscene, they fade in and out of black, respectively. It's very annoying, especially at the end where there is a series of cutscenes in pretty rapid succession which take place over the course of a few minutes in the story. The fades took me out of the story a bit and were distracting from the gameplay.

Finally, it's only a minor concern, but give me better gunsights, for crying out loud. Only a handful of the guns have acceptable gunsights. More often, you find that you are looking through your scope trying to line up a stupid carat, or worse, series of carats against a backdrop that makes them invisible. Use an effing red dot. Or if you must insist on using the carat, at least light it up on all the guns and not just the one scoped machine gun. And definitely don't use it for the sniper rifle, you jackoffs.

Guess how much time you spend looking at the only white space on the map.

Despite my complaints, which are really not that significant compared to the many, many awesome aspects of the game, I was really happy with the campaign and look forward to replaying it a whole bunch. It's a great game and well worth your time.

P.S. I haven't played much of the multiplayer, which is why most people play this game, but I plan to. The reality is that I don't buy games for the multiplayer as playing online is often an impossibility for me due to the lack of a pause feature.

"I sit on the board of the Pediatric Restless Leg Syndrome Foundation."

Let me begin by advising you not to take my advice. I'm just some retarded a-hole writing anonymously on the internet. You should really ask a doctor or something about this crap.

Ever since 1999, I have been suffering from restless leg syndrome. It's one of those diseases that sounds made up and even stupid. The kind of disease you reference when talking about diagnoses run amok. I agree, it does sound stupid. "Creepy-crawling"? What kind of symptom is that?

In any event, I experienced it on my religiously-affiliated vacation in Chile, where it got much worse than it had ever been before. It subsided a bit while I was in college, but came back with a vengeance when I started law school and has (had) remained with me, at a pretty debilitating level ever since. There were days in a row where I would not get more than a few hours' sleep because of the jimmy legs.

I tried a number of treatments: neurontin and other anti-seizure drugs, sleeping pills, warming leggings, but to no avail. I even tried multi-vitamins, potassium, iron supplements, and got bupkus. Nothing seemed to help. The only way I could even get some sleep was to take sleeping pills. (By the way, Ambien CR is awesome.)

Well, due to the wonderful free-market healthcare system we currently enjoy, I ended up spending a month without insurance. During that month, I didn't refill my asthma medication, Singulair because it costs $180 to fill. That's $6.00 per pill. That's like three years of XBox live membership. And so what if I got sick every single time I had previously neglected to take my Singulair on a daily basis? Screw that.

Despite my experience, I did not get sick and my restless legs went away. I spent an entire month without the constant pain and lack of sleep they usually bring. Then, I got insurance again, refilled my Singulair and started up again. That same day, I had the worst restless legs I've had in months. Not wanting to make serious medical decisions on a fluke, I took it again the next day with the same result. It sucked balls. So, I stopped taking it. It took about five days to completely wear off, but my restless legs are for the most part gone again. Now, I can return to looking down on people who have crap illnesses. You have depression? There's no such thing, you're just being a pussy. What's that? You're saying I take Lexapro? I take that for my crippling emotional cancer. I see how you would confuse the two.

In summary, Singulair causes restless legs. And since I'm clearly a qualified physician and not just some anonymous idiot blogging on the internet, you can take that to the bank.*

*To repeat: I'm not really a doctor. In fact, I'm just some retarded a-hole writing from my own experience and not a bit of knowledge, education, training, research, or qualification. DO NOT TAKE MY ADVICE! I cannot emphasize this enough.

"I dropped a bomb, do you have it?"

Last Saturday, I met with my brothers to play Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 (Yuri's Revenge). We haven't played as a group in probably 5 or more years and we've all upgraded our computers since then. Well, when we sat down to play we ran into three problems: 1) Getting Vista to even install the program, 2) Getting Vista to run the program; and 3) networking. We were eventually able to get a workaround for all three problems, but it took some doing and none of the solutions were all in the same place. So, I'm going to try to consolidate the information I found in a one place so others may overcome the evil Windows Vista and successfully play Red Alert 2, one of the five best RTS games ever created.

1) Installation in Vista.

Windows Vista is all about security... and stupidity. Windows took the things that worked in XP, raped them, and stuck their evil spawn in Vista. This means that every time you try to do anything, you end up facing some absurd wall of security. Well, there is a way to overcome this. It doesn't matter if you are just going to play Red Alert 2, as that program should run just fine without any additional steps (at least, it did for me). The problem arises when you try to install Yuri's Revenge. When the installer runs Yuri's Revenge, it tries to update the existing version of Red Alert 2, but can't unless you take an extra step.

The only way to get it to work is to install the program as an administrator. This means you need to open the CD in Windows Explorer, find the install.exe program, right-click and select "Run as administrator". It's a stupid, stupid extra step, but is absolutely necessary.

2) Running Yuri's Revenge in Vista.

This one was the one that gave us the most trouble. My two brothers had no trouble getting it to run, but it wouldn't run for me. Every time I went to run it, I got this message:

"******Fatal****** String manager failed to initialized properly." (Yes, bad grammar and all.)

I tried running it as an administrator (see step 1, above), and still no luck. You can also change the program's properties to run in "compatibility mode" where Windows Vista will emulate an earlier version, all the way down to good ol' Windows 95. I read in a bunch of places that this would solve the problem, but alas, no luck for me. I even changed it on all the .exe files in the C&C directory (there are six) and still no luck. I tried every compatibility mode available, including the oft-recommended Windows 98 but still got the error. I was finally able to fix it by putting the program into Windows XP compatibility mode and disabling "User Account Control". Microsoft has these handy instructions.

I should mention that I only have one user account on the computer and it is an administrator account. Despite this, I still had to go through all these stupid steps to get the program to run. But, once I did, bingo - I was sniping dudes and sending nuke trucks into the bases of my enemies like nobody's business.

3) Setting up a network game.

This is also a problem. See, Windows Vista decided to abandon the network protocol that Red Alert 2 uses - IPX. So no version of Windows Vista natively comes with IPX, nor is it available from Microsoft. So, you have to use another protocol, which requires a patch. We used UDP and the patch that could be found here: http://www.wikihow.com/Play-Red-Alert-2-over-the-Internet. This worked for us, which means that it will almost certainly not work for you.

Good luck and happy hunting!

Welcome to the Real America

Congratulations, America, you just survived another election cycle. Take a moment to pat yourself on the back. Done? Good. Let's get down to business.

SARAH PALIN CANNOT BE PRESIDENT.

I just cannot emphasize this enough. Before this election I, along with what I assume is the majority of Americans, never thought that a Palin presidency could be a possibility once McCain lost. She seemed so obviously unqualified that the idea of her being president was laughable. I've talked to many of my Republican friends who seem to agree that Sarah Palin is sort of the Barney Frank of their party - loud, obnoxious and ineffectual, but not a serious contender for real power (and yes, I know that Frank is a Senator). However, the time has come that we can no longer wrap ourselves in that warm blanket of common sense safety.

See, Sarah Palin is all over the place. I had never heard of her before McCain chose her to be his running mate, but I don't think a day has gone by since that I haven't encountered at least one news story about her. I used to think that like all fads, America would grow weary of her banal stupidity and stop paying attention. Then, on election night it hit me: I've been thinking that same thing for more than two years. I've been assuming all along that Sarah Palin was so stupid, so terrible that she could not hold the Nation's attention long enough to matter. Oh, how wrong I was.

Palin has managed to stay politically relevant despite acting like a retarded badger for years. She has drawn a following of loyal activists who love her rhetoric and parrot it all over the place. In fact, her rhetoric, for better or worse, defined the issues during this election. The message moved from, "things are getting better, just let us keep doing what we're doing" to "all Democrats hate the Constitution and want to euthanize your grandparents and make your children into Socialists." Even though that position is so preposterous that only the craziest could believe it, it has gained popularity and now dominates political discourse in this country. It's amazing to me that a half-term governor of one of the nation's smallest states can be so important, but there it is. It's happened. And I am scared to death.

Even though it seems obvious that Palin cannot and should not be President, that is not enough. Candidates don't win elections on the, "Are you kidding me?" platform. No, Sarah Palin is out there talking out of her butt on the issues and her opponents - including Republicans - need to attack her head on. We can no longer rely on the axiom that a Palin Presidency (see, it even rhymes!) would be disaster for everyone. No, we must take the time to address her on the issues and point out to America that her world view is naive and misguided and that her total lack of experience will hurt America. She couldn't even be governor of Alaska for more than two years, how can we expect her to hold the hardest job in the world for four or, heaven forbid, eight years?

But, if you aren't willing to put forth that much effort, then please, follow this simple advice:

Just don't look.

We'll all be better for it.

An open letter to Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

Thank you so much for making me update by XBox 360 firmware. It wasn't difficult or glitchy at all. I also want to thank you for making the menus a blinding color of white, instead of the much easier on the eyes gray. Oh, and I'm certain that having less cartoony avatars will make the 360 more popular since introducing them has had such a profound effect on sales. I know I bought my XBox so I could spend time creating an idiotic character rather than playing the awesome games offered on your system.

Keep up the good work, you're clearly spending your time well.

Sincerely,

Everybody

"I want the people to know that they still have two out of three branches of the government working for them, and that ain't bad."

In my home state of Utah, we have been represented for a long time by Jim Matheson. He distinguishes himself from Utah's other representatives by not being crazy or stupid. He also has a pretty good record of supporting Utah and since he's been reelected like a million times, it's pretty clear that he's kept his constituents happy as well. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am a big fan but have never voted for him. Or against him. I don't live in his district.)

This year, he is once again facing reelection and his opponent is once again, an irrational moron. He's being opposed by a former state legislator whose name is also a euphemism for pooping: Morgan Philpot.

I can usually entertain myself pretty well during the election season by looking at the websites of the candidates opposing my preferred candidates and attacking their inconsistent and unworkable arguments, which they usually have in spades. But this year is different. I'm not that interested in attacking Rob Bishop because as long he keeps using campaign signs that only say "Bishop" in big letters, he's going to get elected. That, and he's seriously stupid. It wouldn't be sporting.

Another option is Jason Chaffetz, but even though I disagree with almost every word that comes out of his stupid, BYU-football, self-important, retarded, ugly, stupid, stupid mouth, I feel like I'm just yelling at a wall when I try to point out his stupidity. The people who like him do so not because of how effective he may be at representing their beliefs or the strength of his arguments, but rather because he spews the rhetoric they want to hear. They don't even care that he was completely owned by Stephen Colbert. That's why he'll remain an outsider and pariah in congress, at least until he unseats our resident closeted-homosexual, Orrin Hatch. Screw him, too.

I could talk about Mike Lee, but I just don't care. He's another Tea Party hack and they're all just crazy. It's like trying to debate a homeless person about the merits of cap and trade, but all you get back are conversations he has with the invisible person he hates. I'd rather just sit back and enjoy the show.

Which brings me back to Philpot. I would love to disagree with him and pick apart his beliefs because the doofus is just asking for it. (By the way, "doofus" was not in the dictionary, but "doodahs" was.) The problem is, I can't for the life of me figure out what he actually believes. He's got a bunch of generic "policy statements" on his website, but they don't really get into any substance. I could point out that his statements about immigration don't really meet the issue, or that his generic statement about gun ownership is the same claptrap every Republican uses, but where's the fun in that? It's just the same old rhetoric, from a new, somewhat empty-looking wannabe. (Seriously.)

So, rather than go through the same exercise again, I'll just post the results of my Google search when I went looking for something, anything to say:


That's right, when I searched for "morgan philpot idiot", the first result was that Sarah Palin endorsed him.

I rest my case.

[Editor's note: I changed the title of this post because I later realized that I had previously used it. Besides, I've been looking to use this one for quite some time.]

"Strategery."

I have spent much of the last month playing the latest in Bungie's panoply of great games, Halo: Reach. This post is not to review the game (although it is amazing), but rather, to point out the many completely idiotic tactical mistakes made by the Covenant.

1. Putting a bright light on your snipers. This makes them easy to spot and easy to kill with a headshot. While this isn't such an issue in Halo 3, it is in Halo 2 and ODST because much of those games are played indoor or at night, when the light makes the snipers very, very easy to spot, rather than insanely difficult. While this makes the game more fun, it's tactically retarded.

2. Trails behind banshees. Again, this makes them easy to follow and easy to kill. I'm sure Bungie did it for the same reason as the sniper thing, to make the game easier and thus more fun.

3. Bright, shiny swords on otherwise invisible dudes. While the invisibility makes them harder to see than without, the swords make them stand out more than a visible, non-sword wielding guy would. But I guess that subtlety is not the Covenant's M.O.