The Category Chronicles

Modern Warfare 2: Those Minor Irritants (Part 1: Knife Classes)

2010-02-23T19:25:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been feeling the sting of those minor irritating things you deal with in Modern Warfare 2. I decided today would be a decent day for me to start a series of blog entries discussing some of those things So let us start shall we? Let's start with one I know gets the panties of the community in a bunch.

Knife Classes: I debated for a few moments if I should keep knifing classes and commando separate, but with the removal of the Care Package marker's speed boost I decided its better to just combine the two. So here we go. Commando: Its deadly, its everywhere, and its really fucking irritating to get killed by someone who appears to be teleporting a good ten feet forward. Before I get too far into this let me clear up a little rumor about Commando. This teleport isn't really teleportation. Your target is still there, he can be shot, and he can be killed.

Now the only thing worse than people who seem to warp forward to use a magical one-shot kill knife are people who seem to teleport around after running up to you what seems to be 25 miles an hour. If you've ever been to a forum like GameFAQs where most people leave their manners at the door, you've probably seen a topic with someone complaining about knife classes and another person running into the thread telling them something along the lines of "STFU you noob knifing takes skill youre just mad because you cant look behind you".

Anyone else's eyes hurt after reading that sentence? Mine too. Now I spent some time with a knife class on my first road to level 70 for the sake of leveling up marathon and so I can make an argument on knife classes having been on both sides of the knife and this is what I came up with. Knife classes are beaten pretty easily so long as you can watch your back. A well aimed SPAS-12 shell or M16 Holo w/Stopping Power burst will drop them like rocks before they can get in range for their lunge. So really knife classes do need to stay out of wide open areas to prosper. When in close range combat, knife classes are not only absurd, but massively over powered. With no other class can I run into the bunker on Wasteland, stab three guys, escape, loop back around, and return fifteen seconds to stab the other two guys before they know what the hell just happened.

Conclusion: You may not want to believe it, but to a degree knife classes do take at least a little bit of skill and the ability to notice what's going on around you. However no matter what the knife class users say, its still ridiculously easy if you're on a map like Quarry or Invasion where close quarters combat is rather common. If you want to counter them, just watch your back, and keep a good shotgun ready. I recommend the SPAS-12. Just remember that shotguns have a tighter spread and longer range when you're firing from the hip.

Be sure to join me next time for part 2 of my minor irritants discussions: The Thermal Scope and Heartbeat Sensors.

Repossessed by the Twitter Overlords

2010-02-16T18:48:00.001-08:00

So recently against my better judgment I submitted myself to the Twitter overlords. A choice I'm not exactly regretting, but at the same time I'm not completely crazy about it. I did find one particular thing I disliked about Twitter right out of the gate: The character limit for tweets.

That being said I've decided I needed to do something about that. Sometimes I just gotta rant about shit, be it Modern Warfare 2 related or World of Warcraft related, and god knows I have plenty to be angry about on both of those playing fields lately. So I'm thinking from now on I'll be using this more of a rant space so I can put tinyurl links to my twitter when I really need to vent. Its seriously comforting knowing that people I don't even know are willing to comment about whatever irritants I might have, share information the same things and such.

Holy Stagnation, Batman! (Chaos' Sister Review to Strawberry Panic)

2009-02-15T15:04:00.000-08:00

See, its reasons like these I don't blog. I forget about the damn thing and then it sits around for almost a year and does nothing, and while this leaves me wide open to jokes about my blogging in comparison to my RPing habits from the people of Iwaku, it frustrates me about my own personal standards seeing as the best place for me to meet my own personal standards is when I'm goofing off in Northrend or raiding Naxxramas. But even then paranoia sets in that I'm somehow fucking everything up.

Anyway, since Rory was kind(?) enough to give his standpoint on Strawberry Panic for the umpteenth time, I thought I might provide my own views since I'm fairly certain no one wants to hear about my World of Warcraft habits, my Level 77 Paladin, my Level 80 Rogue, or anything of the sort.

I can't remember exactly which of us watched Strawberry Panic first (Rory says it was him so I'll just do us all a favor and take his word for it), but between the two of us I'm easily the bigger anime fan and I'm by no means against senseless lesbianism in anime. Once I learned of Strawberry Panic I jumped aboard the USS Fanboy and set sail for Otaku Isle with hopes of an entertaining yuri extravaganza to satisfy the fanboy in me and maybe a mildly interesting story for the part of me that's still grasping onto my morals and self esteem.

My fanboy half was very pleased and landed on Otaku Isle without much in regards to problems. My moral clinging self esteem seeking at least a midly serious (sub-)plot got caught in a shit storm about 5 minutes in before being robbed, raped, and murdered by the local pirates. Opening scene features the main character Nagisa arriving at her new all girls Catholic school and getting lost in the local forest. Is that the sound of you slapping your head with your palm? No? Well, let's just wait. Anyway, Nagisa gets lost in the forest and soon stumbles upon another student (later revealed to the most popular girls on the island, Shizuma). After a brief talk, Nagisa locks eyes with her and, so help me god, find herself paralyzed as Shizuma rather forwardly flirts with her going so far as to hold her against a tree...now at this point even the fanboy in me was kinda freaked. This kinda sets the scene for quite a few other scenes of the anime.

Alright, give me a moment here because I find myself having a hard time remembering any details beyond that.

I think the reason for that is that Strawberry Panic tries, god bless it, but it was just...poorly written most of the time. It wasn't uncommon for the main plot to be as follows.

-Girl A is watching Girl B do whatever the fuck it is she does and quietly obsesses.

-Girl B glances over at Girl A. Girl A freaks out and runs off.

-Plot Devices fall from the sky to put Girl A in a bad situation that Girl B is forced to intervene on.

-Girl A and B both start talking and start getting closer and--Jesus Christ I can't take it anymore typing this stuff out is actually agonizing.

Okay, for all the crap I put up with in the totally horrible scenes, when the girls are just talking, its isn't so bad. The obsessing thing gets a little much, and actually the subplot behind Shizuma is actually mildly entertaining if not a little predictable. It sure as hell more tasteful then the rest of the anime. The yuri fan in me was certainly pleased with some of the scenes being borderline softcore, but that still doesn't seem to get rid of that feeling you get from poorly written story otherwise.

The girls tend to feel copy/pasted to a degree (something Rory would agree with me in an instant), but I suppose it was something I'd overlook. Pairing in the anime can upset a few people because there are a few pairs that play out the way the way you thought they would as well as not playing out the way you wanted them to, sometime making the two one and the same.

Overall, Strawberry Panic is mediocre. The story could have used a lot, and I mean a LOT of work, but this is a flagship yuri anime, and when that's the selling point, you're just about out of luck there. The fanservice is present and active, but it might start to wear you down after awhile. If you're an anime and yuri fan, you might wanna give it a shot. Otherwise this will seem like a badly written softcore anime hentai.

This just got WAAAAY bigger.

2008-05-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought it couldn't. Just when I thought that Inverted Fairy Tale couldn't get any bigger, when I thought it was ready for release and would be the biggest thing Iwaku has ever seen...

It happened.

See, for the longest time, one of the site Administrators on Iwaku--Asmodeus--had been planning a Fantasy based RPG of his own called FateGuard. After thinking about this for awhile, Rory and I began to wonder, "Just what the hell are we gonna do?"

Well, we got our answer.

When we started talking to Asmodeus about this, things began to click. ideas brewed and florished. And finally we came up with the idea that would blow Iwaku's mind: We merge the RPGs together into one.

Here's the general idea. This Mass RP is actually two different RPs. They both play independently of each other but have common elements. They are in the same world at the same time, with one or two characters being present in both stories. Eventually, these two RPs will merge into one. FateGuard is one of them, and Inverted Fairy Tale (Or as its known in its Mass RP form "Sisters of Archon") is the other. The RP has recieved a generally good reaction and people seem very excited for it. Now its only been a matter of clicking the two plots together and planning out how IFT will changed based off of this (since IFT is something like Part 2 of the RP). Needless to say, Rory, Asmodeus, and myself are gonna be busy.

At this time I'd also like to shout out to Orochi, who's laptop is currently suffering from a virus and he's having trouble fighting it off. I hope you beat that thing Orochi.

The Category Mastermind

2008-05-10T00:54:00.001-07:00

I've been contemplating if I should do this or not for awhile, but I finally decided, "Why the hell not?"

...Okay, who the hell am I kidding? I just decided to make a blog. I imagine its better talking to myself out loud, but I digress.

So who am I? Well, if you found your way here from the blog of Westy the Traveller, better known to me as Rory, then chances are you know who I am. I am the one. I am Chaos. I am the one. I am the mastermind behind the creation of several aspects of many RPs Rory's worked on for quite sometime.

I am Scryox 'Sky' Videlin, the man in the destiny bound Seat of Embera of Unit Zero in the RPG still in development, Inverted Fairy Tale: Tale of Embera and the Sea.

I am Zachary Rayfall, Geneva's old bodyguard who has desended to Wonderland from the home of the Winged Ones to protect the new queen and perhaps discover what he had with Geneva all over again.

I have to say, I never expected to get to know Rory the way I have. Believe it or not, the only reason we actually began interacting was because he was bored one day and decided to chat up someone on Iwaku (for those of you who don't know, that is the online forum we go to), and he just happened to pick me. In fact, I had to guess several times who he was before he told me who it was with an exasperated (or so I would assume it was) "FINALLY!"

The rest, is history. I've now begun to work on RPs, and we've essentially become the person you come to if you have an idea and need to bounce it off someone. Since becoming part of the staff at Iwaku, we commonly discuss the board and its fate.

So the real reason I made this blog is like a reference to my own thoughts, and to perhaps shed my own personal light and view on the worlds of Wonderland and Inverted Fairy Tale. I'm not one to analyze things to the extent Rory likes to sometimes (if you ever see an anime review on my blog, they'll be few, far between, and more than likely soul stealing), but I guess I can give it a shot. Besides, this blogging thing might actually be fun.

.....Um.....moving on.....