well, everyone’s dead. that’s number one. even the pastor, he killed himself, actually, before the massacre. blew his brains out. it’s just you and me now, sarah. alone in this fucked up city. you want to get out? we can get out. but the pastor told me something that i can’t reconcile, sarah. he said you shot lucy. he said you killed her. did you kill her? because if you did, that changes everything. i don’t want to be enemies with you but if you fucking killed my sister i will resign myself as the last human in san lucero, if you get my drift. so you talk, now, or you’re dead.
A Life Blog about My Life, Dawg
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243: (orlando)
this is your god’s fault. this is your belief manifested into action. the lives of innocent people enjoying a saturday night, people out to have fun, to dance, to feel comfortable with their sexuality in a club where they feel like they belong. where they do belong. this is their collective home, and you have destroyed it because your god believes it’s wrong. what kind of all-powerful, all-seeing god would want its creation killed senselessly? what kind of god fails at creating mankind, then asks man to destroy itself? how can anyone, anyone believe in such a creature? i tell you this: god cannot be a vengeful thing, because vengeance is not good, and vengeance is not smart. it is not logical. it is senseless and mindless, and a god should have perfections in both of those things. your god thinks homosexuality is a sin; why did he give mankind homosexuality then? and why in god’s name would you kill another man because of it? you think it’s disgusting? and yet your own sexual vices, which you practice in the darkened chambers of your own home, they are fine, they are good, they are exceptions. when a priest sodomizes a young altar boy, a boy conditioned to love the church, what does that teach him? if we are all sinners, why is one sin superior than another? what gives you the right to destroy the lives of innocent people? your god told you. it’s in the quran. it’s in the bible. you’ve been indoctrinated to hate. you’ve been told that your life is superior to another’s, or that their life is inferior. why? what makes you so god damned special? and what makes your imaginary man in the sky so fucking great, so great that it gives you the right to gun down a hundred people? i’ll tell you what: nothing. nothing makes anyone or anything that special. nothing.
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242: edgar (bad date)
sometimes you just gotta get out in your boat and drive off toward the sunset. or, i guess, the sunrise in this case because we’d have to go east. and i don’t know about you but i am not a morning person so i guess sometimes you just gotta get out in your boat and drive off during the, uh, late afternoon, yeah, with the sun kind of behind you. if i owned a boat that’s what i’d be thinking. i only have a moped right now and it’s basically broken so i’m not going anywhere at any time of the day! you know! but if i did have one, well, you know. i already told you. the point, i think, moreover, in a way, is that we gotta take break, and the best way to take a break is on a boat. right? unless you don’t like boats, but who doesn’t like boats? you don’t? ah. this … date is not going well. look, at least you got a free meal, right? i’ll even buy you another glass of wine. i didn’t know if this would be good are not and yes to answer the look on your face i do know that i’m talking too much and should leave some room for you to speak, but the problem is, i don’t do that. why? i don’t know. because if i stop speaking then your response will shatter me. that’s really lame i know but i am a fragile little manchild. we all are now. welcome to the 21st century.
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241: lily
my period. i want to talk about it. i want you all to know about it. it exists. it’s blood that flows out of my body. it’s important, it’s natural, it happens all the time. it hurts my insides, every month i am given at least two days, usually more like three or four, where my insides twist themselves into knots that hurt so bad i have to lie down. imagine, men, that once a month, for just a day, i’ll give you that–for just a day you were kicked in the balls for 24 hours. that’s what it’s like having your period. hell i’ll give you twelve hours, sometimes i’m asleep. and some women don’t have periods anymore. it’s like, instead of periods, they have anemia. i don’t get it. eat some meat! get some red flushed into those cheeks. get your birth control sorted. you gotta have that pain. this is the problem with guys, with guys now especially, guys who’ve never had a lick of trouble in their lives. they go around aimlessly bored because they’ve never felt anything, and because they’ve never felt anything, when they do feel something, it’s like the end of the world. so boys, i’m telling you, get a period. get something. feel something. feeling is the first step to empathy. science can give you a period, i know, i watched a youtube video about it. but don’t give me shit for having one. it’s my body, it’s one-half of the population’s bodies, alright? and yet you get all grossed out having to buy tampons at the store. give me a break.
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240: mickey "big thumbs" mckenzie
so, lemme just … you’s a crimefighuh, and y’name is “the chumb bumbler”? wha .. what is that exactly? how is that a thing i should be scared of? are you saying y … y’bumble chumbs? whatsa chumb? do i have a chumb? are you gonna bumble my chumb? what does that mean? what are y’gonna do to me? where is the chumb, can ya point it out? you can say anythin’ right now if ya wanna, really, go ahead. … nah? fine. i get it. youse the quiet type. calm. keepin’ silent onaccount of y’don’t even know what y’name means. people prob’ly ask ya all the time. “whatsa chumb bumblah?” they ask, and whaddya say to ’em? nothin’! cause you dunno what y’goddamn name means even! what kinda crimefightuh are ya?! jus’ some ol’ looney in a mask and a cape. that’s all. y’don’t even have any powuhs, do ya? i ain’t seen you do jack diddly squat since y’caught me. nah. y’know what you are? a fake. a phony! y’just a … a … a … a chumb bumbler! that’s it! a big fat chumb bumbler! aha! that’s where it comes from! i geddit now! that’s perfect! hahaaaaa, perfect! yous a chumb bumbler! always bumblin’ chumbs! haha! hahahaaa! [mickey keeps laughing maniacally]
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239: deanne faraji (commander, terran galactic alliance)
we were concerned that setting up the perpetual warfare zone in paltonok space would demoralize the military. the truth is, and we were up front about this from the start, is that it is simply a zone to keep men in the military, specifically to weed out the “bad ones” from those men we wanted to keep for intimacy purposes. of course, we also had to deal with the invasion but at this point, 20 years post-hive destruction, there wasn’t much of invasion to deal with, mostly stragglers which were easily dealt with. but if you check the logs, from the start we told anyone who asked that the paltonok guard was just to keep the dangerous men away from those who could promote peace within the district. this was at least 800 years in the making, thanks to president clinton, the bringer of the matriarchy to the american union. we thought that this would cause a rift, and it did, for a while. many wars ensued, and from those wars we established this perpetual sense of warfare, and the notion that men were largely drones within that warfare. and believe me, even 800 years later we are concerned that men will reject this notion and want to rise up and return to the patriarchy, but the opposite happened: they embraced the war culture, especially after the hive arrived. even more so after we established brothel bases in every cruiser in paltonok space. i’m telling you, once you get a drone’s rocks off, he will fight for anything, anytime. so these “bad apples,” the criminals, the murderers, etc, they’re just looking for a little shape to their lives, and we give to them. we put a gun in their hands and say, “kill the hive,” and they do it, with the promise of a warm bed, warm company, and free food in exchange. those who don’t qualify as drones are left on earth to propagate the species. and nobody complains! if a man in paltonok complains about his station we can always take him to a reevaluation zone, even ship him back to earth for reassignment if he is worthy. it’s very rare that that happens, though. i think, after all this time … men like to be drones, as long as they get their dicks wet. and that, ladies, is the power of the pussy.
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238: connor (the pilot)
landing was the easy part. even with a broken landing gear we still had to deal with the outbreak in the cabin. a funny thing happened: we lost cabin pressure while some of the people were in the process of becoming zombies. because of this, they suffered brain damage (because they weren’t near an oxygen mask) before they zombified. this made them … different kind of zombies. whatever the virus is, it tends to focus on the primitive brain, but these people’s brains were severely damaged and so they were, in a way, zombies before they suffered from the virus. made them different, a little more … intelligent? strangely enough. they coordinated the zombie attack as we were landing, we could hear people screaming and fighting, slamming into the cabin door. nobody got in, thank god, or we’d all be dead. all in all twelve survivors, the rest zombies or these low oxygen zombies. we tried fighting them off but there were too many and so we had to run. so now we’re here. six people left. the other six … well. we all know what happens to people in the long run these days, don’t we? but we thank you for your hospitality and i assure you we won’t stay any longer than we need to. just need a day or two to rest and get fed. we’ll repay you by leaving you the hell alone.
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237: brian (the slow drain)
i can feel it, the slow drain. pushing me down. the heat’s not helping. when it gets this hot i tend to not think very well, can’t get my thoughts straight, you know, and i start winding particular thoughts around anxieties. this is what the summer is like. it’s like i don’t belong–not that i’m unique, i don’t feel that way at all–but that i don’t belong here, that this isn’t my place, that these aren’t my people. now i know that’s all bullshit in a way, that’s me giving in, but i still feel it and it’s hard to get away from it. them’s the breaks. every year it happens, like a little reminder of my slow failure. and i roll with it because there’s nothing else i can do. or at least that’s how i feel. like the world’s passing me by.
no. i’m tired. that’s it, i’m just tired. people think i’m strange for sleeping for eight hours. can you believe that? i tell them, “when i’m tired i feel like killing myself,” and they laugh and i have to remind them that i’m serious. some people get grouchy. to each their own. [tearing up] see, now you got me here, at the end of the spiral. the bottom of the canyon. it happens. just let me get through it, i don’t need you to make me happy. i hate that shit. i don’t need your pity, i have enough of my own. all i need is understanding, and a place to sleep. just give me a good night’s rest and i’ll be better in the morning.
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236: (level)
i just want to not be depressed. that’s it. i don’t even care about being happy, or even content. i just want to be level, i just want to move through the world not thinking that i am a worthless bag of shit. that’s all. i want to look at a beautiful woman and think, “i should ask her out,” not think, “there’s no way she would ever love me.” that’s all. it’s so simple, brain. some dumb chemical reactions misfiring up here, or firing too much, i don’t know. lack of dopamine. how could these fucking chemicals ruin everything? i don’t know. but really all i need is to feel level again. to feel like my life has meaning, purpose, outside of what is directed of me. i want to feel like making music makes sense, that being honest about my situation won’t ruin my life. i don’t want to look like damaged goods, you know? when i was in my 20s that was fine because life was about getting knocked down and getting back up. but now that i’m in my 30s, like really in my 30s, the “knocked down” part is getting longer and longer, and the last thing i want is to force people to help me get back up. i gotta do it on my own. just don’t know how. working on it though. god damn.
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Game Review: DOOM 2016
TL;DR: A fun, fast-paced game that gets repetitive quick and leans a little too heavily into multiplayer for my tastes.
Hell, or as I like to call it, Detroit. Oh man I am so good with the jokes! FRIENDS, 2016 is a great year for stuff I liked when I was a teenager. (Everything else, not so much.) Two of my favorite bands from the 90s, Weezer and Radiohead, both released new albums that are pretty good, and now id Software, who created some of the best games of my young adulthood (shoutout to Commander Keen), has released a new DOOM game, fresh off the heels of their pretty amazing Wolfenstein: The New Order. DOOM is not a perfect game, but it is a damn fun game, once you realize that it’s not really trying to reinvent the wheel so much as see how fast it can spin.
The game is simple: you pick up a gun and shoot it, primarily at things that are trying to kill you. Much like Wolfenstein: The New Order, nobody makes a big deal about how many guns or ammo you can carry, though while TNO skirts realism through the use of a historical fiction narrative, DOOM throws realism out the window in absolute deference to gameplay. The DOOM Marine (as everyone knows him — more on that later) slides through terrain like an ice skating meth addict, he can carry over a dozen weapons, including an enormous chaingun and BFG no sweat, he swaps these weapons quickly, and there is no real reloading of said weapons, you just run out of bullets. And that’s awesome. DOOM knows exactly what kind of game it is, and it thrives on the speed and thrill of dealing with multiple enemies trying to kill you. It also thrives on the fact that this speed and thrill helps players potentially overlook some of its weak spots.
DOOM has a “storyline” in the sense that someone was hired to write things to flesh out the story of the DOOM Marine and the world he inhabits. He has reached demigod status in a way, feared by the demons of Hell and searched for by the humans on Mars. It’s flimsy and unnecessary; in the opening scene we see the Marine crawl out of a stone sarcophagus he seems to have been sleeping in for a while. He gets his bearings, finds a pistol, and starts wailing on enemies. Yes, we’re left to wonder, “How did he get in that sarcophagus?”, and the bits of information you get throughout the game answer this, but I think you don’t need them, and that the game itself answers the question fairly easily. The demons kept him there because he’s a threat. That’s it. Once you see how much carnage the Marine dishes out, your question gets answered — if you even had a question to begin with. But like I said, the story is doled out in text bits that you collect but never needs to be read. (I read it, and it’s fine, but it’s like inventing a world that didn’t need to be invented. Again, we’re spinning the wheel faster, not trying to make it a better wheel.)
The best thing about the DOOM storyline is that the Marine doesn’t give a shit about it. In a vaguely meta nod to the concept of the game itself, the Marine doesn’t give a shit about most things, opting to smash and break certain obstacles instead of manipulating or preserving them, as you might in a “fancier” type FPS. I appreciate this fresh take on what has essentially become a morality play within FPS games. Oftentimes when playing an FPS you’ll come across a choice where you can essentially do a Seemingly Good thing, or a Seemingly Bad thing. Either choice means nothing in terms of driving the story, ultimately, but it gives a sense of decision making that tries to keep you invested in the game. But DOOM. DOOM don’t care about that shit. At one point in the game (no spoilers) a character offers the Marine the option to use a computer to power down a thing rather than break it, blah blah blah, the Marine just breaks it. There’s no option, he just does it. I like that touch, because it solidifies the fact that id Software knows exactly what type of game DOOM is. So in this case, storyline is a weak spot, but the game knows it and pokes fun at it.
So what’s the drawback? Well, my biggest issue with the single player aspect of the game stems from the gameplay structure itself, which is essentially large arenas with spawning enemies, connected by hallways with few-to-no enemies. You don’t tend to notice it so much at the beginning, but the further along you get, especially when you start fighting the big bad guys, it really shows. My issue isn’t so much that this is bad — you kind of need this big open areas in this game, especially with the kind of moves you can do, and the types of enemies you face — my issue is that it’s incredibly repetitive, and never makes me feel like I’m immersed in the game. I see the puppet strings, so to speak, and it ruins the illusion. See, DOOM ’93 had enemies peppered throughout the level, and while yes, it was slow-paced compared to its 21st century counterpart, it also felt like these enemies had been there for a while, hunting, wandering, destroying, rather than just appearing, as they do very very often in DOOM ‘16. So the game becomes a “run and gun” type situation, rather than an “explore to find enemies” type situation.
I’ll use SOMA as a counterexample. If you strip out the psychological aspects of the game, SOMA works as a pretty good successor to DOOM ’93 in terms of atmosphere. It’s spooky, it’s dark, and there are enemies hidden around almost every corner. Yeah it takes place underwater but it could very well be on a station on Mars too — it’s basically the same in terms of stakes. In DOOM ‘16, it’s dark-ish, it’s not very spooky at all, and enemies pop out of thin air, often in droves. DOOM ’16 is more focused on what I would consider a multiplayer aspect of gameplay than a single player aspect. And that’s okay. I haven’t even touched on it yet, but the multiplayer section of DOOM is pretty dang fun. And it’s designed to be fun, designed to have you race, jump, outrun, and outgun your opponents. My issue is that the single player feels like multiplayer too. Once I realized that, I began playing the game differently — before, I was hiding behind cover and taking out enemies one by one. I even put points into the scope on the assault rifle because I tend to enjoy sniping from a distance. But, very quickly it becomes obvious that staying put is not a good option for this game. DOOM wants you to go all in, and so I did just that, running, jumping, and generally going apeshit amid tons and tons of demons that respawned ad infintum. And it was fun as hell. Some of my favorite memories of the game now are in the later sections, when I would fly around and shoot missiles at revenants and cacodemons, all willy-nilly, without regard to cover or iron sighting, or any of those tricks I’ve been learning since the first Call of Duty.
In a way it was very cathartic, not having to worry about advanced game aspects that have been growing like ivy around core FPS structure for the past 20 years. But it also made the single player feel like multiplayer, and I didn’t like that as much.
In the end, DOOM is a very solid game, once you learn to let go and just roll with it. Yes there are secrets like the old games and they are fun to search out, and more importantly, many secrets contain vital health and armor or powerups that you might need as you progress through Hell and Mars. But I do think id Software could have provided a more diverse type of single player gameplay, more than just hallways connecting large arenas.
I’d say, buy DOOM when it’s first on sale, so you don’t miss the initial throng of people playing multiplayer. I give it 3/5 cacodemons.
[Also, I didn’t review the “Snapmap” aspect of the game — the part where you can build your own levels. I’ve heard it’s really cool and I’d love to tinker around with it to try and build the type of game I’d like to play.]