Nier PS3 Review (also a review of the reviews)

Since it's the weekend and for me the weekend means "Like weekdays, but with boredom," I decided to write another review.

Suare Enix: Because Namco Bandai won't port Tales of Vesperia

!

Gamespot gave this game 5/10, because they're idiots; IGN gave it 7/10 because they're idiots that live in some fantasy world where "Low budget, high concept" means "Should look like Modern Warfare 2."

Square Enix certainly didn't help matters by releasing this directly in the shadow of it's Final Fantasy XIII gargantuasaur, in effect begging reviewers for direct comparisons to arguably the most overrated franchise in video gamery (the other half of the argument being every Nintendo character.)

I'll start right now by saying that, even with it's shortcomings, this is one of the best action RPGs this generation. Of course, there are only like four action RPGs on the market right now, but I stand by it.

Graphics: 7/10
As I said in my Sacred 2 review: FPS games are a blight on console gaming that have turned America into a nation of entitled whingy bitches. Role-playing games aren't about graphics. Or shouldn't be. Pretty pictures are a bonus, not mandatory. That being said, there's nothing wrong with the graphics. The bad guys (snicker,) get somewhat repetitive, as do the dungeons, but this is very obviously a budget issue, not a lazy developer looking for a quick cash-in issue. The village, named The Village, looks like a village, the seaport, named The Seaport, looks like a seaport. There isn't a whole lot of world to explore, but what world there is is well developed and believable. The boss monsters are epic, the cut-scenes engaging. The only complaint from me, graphically, is the characters getting fuzzy in extreme closeups.

Alleged shitty graphics

I may have just realized that the negative reviews were written by a bunch of pervs trying to look down (lingerie-clad party member and other,) Kaine's top. Ha!

Story/dialogue: 10/10
If any game needed spoiler alerts it's this one. I'll openly admit I cried repeatedly during this game. Then after the first ending I, look, just play the game.

Short story is this: unyielding protagonist and old guy Nier fights to find a cure for his daughter's fatal illness in a dying world. He is aided in his struggles by Grimoire Weiss, a sentient book and *SPOILER*, as well as potty mouthed *SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER* Kaine and *SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER* Emil.

I'm not clear on the details, but I think the Japanese version came with a companion book called Grimoire Nier that adds a lot of details to the already detailed story. In true internet awesomeness there is already a fan translation online here:
https://docs.google.com/View?id=dgvmkf89_228fxgghgg3#Introduction_873823421104661_5_07030576661278776
Do NOT click on that link if you haven't played through ending D and also don't click on it if you aren't comfortable with your own sexuality. Especially if you were one of the suckers trying to look down Kaine's top.

Pretty sexy, right?

Replay/fun/addictiveness: 7/10
The main story is split into two halves, and after finishing the game, returns to the start of the second half with new content unlocked and the difficulty hiked considerably. It does this through 4 endings, the fourth of which can only be unlocked by completing a certain requirement. After the fourth ending I had no desire to play through it again. This is not a complaint, as the game will take 15-30 hours to play through once depending on side quests and how much grinding you enjoy.

The gameplay is diverse enough to stay interesting throughout, although I will admit that by the third playthrough I was just spamming the jump slam attack and Dark Hand (one of the spells,) for most of the mobs. For the obsessive types (Hi! We're alike!) there are a lot of words to collect which act as modifiers, increasing damage, defense, experience gain, etc. as well as 30 or so weapons to be collected and modified. There are a LOT of side quests. Unfortunately, given the size of the world these stop being interesting fairly quickly as they almost all revolve around running between the same 5 or 6 areas to fetch things. It does do something I think should be against the law in video games like this, which is making the mini-games mandatory. The fishing mini-game isn't bad once you realize that the in-game tutorial is full of shit. Which is odd given the stellar quality of writing everywhere else, and the farming mini-game is great for coming up with quick money once you realize that the harvest cycle is tied directly to the Playstation's system clock.

Most of the bad guys are this. BUT FOR A REASON!

Gameplay/execution: 8/10
As I said before, the combat system is fun and diverse. Initially I wondered about the lack of auto-target, but after playing for a while realized that this added to the challenge and kept me from just sitting back and mashing the attack buttons until bad guys weren't.

One of the interesting gameplay mechanics was the decision to pay homage (rip off,) other game styles. The camera would occasionally switch to overhead hack n' slash, then side scrolling platformer, then bullet hell, then over the shoulder, then text-based adventure. Most of the people I know don't even know what that last one is, but some of the last games I enjoyed playing on a computer were the Zork games for DOS.
The game works. Which is more than I can say for a lot of the recent RPGs that seem to treat customers as unpaid beta testers. Nier does a lot of things well, but nothing exceptionally well gameplay-wise.

Serious motherfucker right there.

Sound/voice acting: 10/10
The soundtrack is superb. I say that as a semi-professional music nerd. This is what the game says music will be a thousand years after the end of the world and I believe it. I've never bought a video game soundtrack, because I don't want to be That Guy, but if I did it would be this one.

The voice acting, like everything else in this game, is great, but not what you'd expect. Every actor delivered. Whether it be an experience like watching a child waste away from illness, or a loved one consumed by madness, or light-hearted banter between traveling companions, everything sold. Also: Kaine cusses better than I do.

Overall this game is worth it. It doesn't suffer from most of the things that make some RPGs suck, whether it's Oblivion's lack of direction, or Eternal Sonata's linearity, or Valkyria Chronicles ENDLESS GODDAMN CHEERY FUCKING RPG KIDS! It doesn't hold your hand and explain everything like Fallout 3, but it doesn't throw you to the wolves like Demon's Souls. Everything about this game is different without being alien. Everything seems slightly surreal and washed out, yet there is a reason for it and I can't tell you why because *SPOILER*

Bottom line is this: if this game had come out on Playstation 2 it would have been one of the defining games of the generation. If a bunch of spoiled, chickenshit reviewers can't appreciate innovation, characterization and storytelling in a genre that thrives off of innovation, characterization and storytelling they should go back to their hi-res shooty games and stay safe until a soulless, one-eyed, lunatic demon screaming about his daughter kicks in the door and cuts their man-tits off. (spoiler alert.)

Sacred 2:Fallen Angel for PS3 Game Review

The problem I've always had with religious people is that, to a man, they seem to have a problem with everything else. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not what anyone would call an 'agreeable' person. There are a lot of things I don't like. However, I never use "Because God..." to win an argument.

Having said that, Sacred 2 is a (sorta,) religiously themed (sorta,) hack n' slash rpg developed by Ascaron for PC, X-Box 360 and Playstation 3. I think it would be more accurate to say that it's what happens when poorly translated instruction manuals and Microsoft Excel recreate the battle of Minas Tirith using nothing but paint fumes and algebra calculators.

Graphics: 7/10
I tend to give non-linear RPGs a pass on graphics due to the gigantic-ass nature of the fiction. If this were a FPS or fighting game that could be completed in a day the score would be significantly lower. As it is, the deserts look deserty, the jungles look jungley and the monsters look monstery. Good enough.

Misleading screenshot

Story/dialogue: 2/10
As near as I can tell the story is this: The established church of EVIL polytheists and their army of inquistors are evil. The GOOD believers in the one true creator god and his army of seraphim are GOOD. Also: magic reactors are leaking and monsters happen. That's it. No big plot points or surprise twists or memorable characters. The player has the option of playing either the light or dark campaign, but mostly this only means making a slight left on occasion and which sub-Super Friends cornball dialogue your character recites every thirty seconds.

Replay/fun/addictiveness: 9/10
For those willing to commit to the harsh learning curve and forgive the games many technical faults, a very enjoyable hack n' slash game is to be found. It probably also helps if you have some sort of socially debilitating disease and enjoy memorizing books on accounting. Everything that worked in Diablo still works here, and with the current dearth of console hack n' slash RPGs it's not like this is the retarded cousin option.
Beyond the main quest, there is also a character specific quest, along with 600+ sidequests, optional bosses, hidden areas, weapon farming, armor farming, experience farming, a rune system (customization,) class-unique mounts (sabre-tooth tigers, giant spiders,) five difficulty settings, six character classes, online multiplayer, blacksmithing (more customization,) trophies/achievements; basically lots and lots of ways to sink 100's of hours into a not-very-well-made game. Best of all, there isn't a fucking mandatory fishing mini-game or surprise quick time events. The game loses a point for escort quests. The NPC AI is exceptionally retarded, with the panty-waste character you're charged with defending from foes running away from the single kobold you're attacking into a hoard of overpowered wild boars just off-screen and promptly being gored to death before you can catch up.

Gameplay/Execution: 3/10
The console version that I played had been very obviously and very poorly ported from the PC version. My guess would be by people that had never owned a joystick growing up. Or know what a Donkey Kong is. Or really understood how people that aren't floating brains in pickle jars hooked up to machines find enjoyment.
The menu system is clunky, obtuse, fickle and disorganized. To check a certain stat the player is required to open the radial menu, select character overview, select the more information option, then scroll through two to three screens of 8-point font stat information. On top of this the menu tends to come unpinned and default to the first page, forcing one to give up and hope that the stat boost is sufficient because you're being attacked and THERE'S NO FUCKING PAUSE BUTTON!

Navigating the huge world is aided (sorta,) by both a mini-map and a world map. Neither of which is useful for much information beyond "What country am I in?" and "Is something punching me?" The mini-map only really displays information that's already on screen, although possibly covered up by the mini-map, as well as indicating north and the location of the next quest flag. This can be less than helpful given that the developers saw fit to make most of the terrain as unnavigable as possible, with no information given to differentiate between walk-throughable trees and un-walk-throughable trees or elevation differences, or every explorers' ancient nemesis: knee high fences in the middle of the goddamned field I'm trying to shortcut through. Another personal complaint is that the R3 button north-centers the camera, as opposed to the direction the player is facing, which may be great for cyber-cartographers but isn't very helpful in a video game.

Somewhere out there a goddamn fence is hiding

The game's auto-target seems custom made for gamers that like a challenge. It accomplishes this by locking on the single spider enemy half a mile away that hasn't noticed you, as opposed to the hoard of zombies currently beserkering towards you from 20 feet away. Speaking of undeads: when an undead enemy dies in this game it sometimes resurrects after a few seconds. This is a neat idea in theory. Unfortunately while the zombie/ghoul/whatever is temporarily incapacitated it receives attack priority. This means that someone somewhere decided I wanted to role play as the type of hero that thinks "harmless" means "most dangerous to me," and programmed accordingly. Thanks currently unemployed Ascaron programmer!

The in-game tutorial prepares you for the game the same way Candy Land prepares you for Trivial Pursuit. After reaching my first level up the game helpfully informed that that I could now improve my stats and attributes. Unfortunately it didn't explain regeneration time, armor penalty, buff penalty, weapon/armor bonus, mount penalty, what in the name of fuck a survival bonus did, what percentage of what was affected by the many +/-% modifiers in the game. Does Damage Mitigation +1.7% mean before or after armor? What the hell is a Deathblow Level and what does +8% mean? Why in the name of Satan is my attack value 1483 but my weapon damage only 798? Is that normal or did I miss something? Fortunately there is a thriving internet community of hyper-intelligent disembodied brains that are so helpful and polite I almost wondered if I had stumbled across a separate internet from the one that gave us Youtube comments and Yahoo Answers. Thanks DarkMatters.org! You make playing this game possible even without robot enhanced intelligence!

The game has frequent technical bugs ranging from harmless (an enemy spawning inside of a wall,) to irritating (quest marker disappearing,) to frustrating (Player getting stuck in the scenery, forcing restart,) to potentially catastrophic (total system freeze during in-game loading forcing a hard power supply yank on my dvd/Blu-ray playing, supercomputing, internet ready, very expensive and very hi-tech Playstation 3.) Most of these probably won't be addressed beyond the initial patch that was installed the first time I logged in, as Ascaron went bankrupt shortly before the launch of the Ice and Blood expansion, which never made it to consoles. The IP has been taken over by Deep Silver, who announced development of Sacred 3 but seem somewhat vague with regards to continued support of Sacred 2.

The camera angle is ALMOST awesome, but manages to stop just short. What I mean is that the camera can sweep from overhead, Gauntlet style to ALMOST over the shoulder Ocarina of Time style. Instead it stops just short with the camera aiming at the ground eight feet in front of the player. I assume this was a cost saving measure as they couldn't have afforded more than a flat blue or gray for a sky on the horizon, but unfortunately it means playing the game in helicopter mode where all of the well-rendered and diverse monsters and NPCs become different colored blobs. I'm not a game developer, but I think I would have cut the rain and thunderstorm effects in favor of a working camera.

Less misleading screenshot

Sound/unintentional humor: 7/10
The ambient noise in the game is very well done. The battle music is different for each character, although they all seem to be variations on swaggering butt-rock, so nothing special. The voice acting, on the other hand, is the best damn thing I've ever heard in a video game in history. Where most games attempt to use professional voice actors with well-scripted dialogue to elicit emotion and empathy from the player, Sacred 2 opted to use the 80's action cartoon guide to heroism and villainy. Captain Planet villains are more subdued than the inquisitors when it comes to "I'm evil because I'm evil" logic. My personal favorite had to be the Seraphim's battle quotes. In this kind of game I realize it's okay to yell shit like "May the Creator have mercy on your dead ass!" while face rampaging a giant tentacle monster. The factor that sets Sacred 2 above and apart is it's lack of filter. During one pointless side quest I found myself screaming "Into the dark maws of the abyss!" while shooting bunny rabbits with an overpowered magic cannon. Another time as a shadow warrior an irritating RPG kid kept following me around spewing irritating RPG kid shit. The conversation went something like
"You look strong. Are you gonna be a warrior some day?"
"You keep running around in circles! That seems silly!"
"Are you gonna..."
"THE TORTURE AND SUFFERING OF THESE VILLAGERS SHALL FILL ME WITH DELIGHT!!"

Evil needs no motivation!!!

Overall I can't really give this game a score because it's such a niche game. Diablo fans will like it. Unless they play on a PC, in which case there are probably better options. Button mashers won't like it. People with short attention spans won't like it. People that like a challenge will like it. Obsessive-completionist types will love it. Pen and Paper RPG fans will like it. FPS players will hate it. People that rent bad movies on purpose just to heckle them will like it.

I wouldn't recommend renting it first, as your first impression will inevitably be bad. This is a game that takes a large initial commitment and a few dozen hours before it begins to be enjoyable. If you're the type of gamer that values play time and quantity over stunning graphics and concise storytelling I'd say pick it up. Especially if, like me, you've already ODed on Fallout 3 and Oblivion and consider a keyboard and mouse strange and alien things to play a video game with.

How To Unsafely Dye Your Hair With Fabric Dye For $10 (part The End)

Part Three: Day Two: Part 3B: The Day After Tomorrow A Year Later


Waking with a gleam in my eye and my preparations almost complete I realized that I didn't have any gloves. Gloves would be important in case what we scientists call a "worst case scenario" happened. Having no idea what a worst case scenario would look like I decided more research was in order. A Google search of "Hair terrible accident boobs" returned, I swear to God, a picture of that twinkly vampire that looks like a gay albino caveman, 80's hard rock somethings Motley Crue, a baseball bat and several suicidal naked women. After puzzling over this for a minute I realized that it could only mean one thing: Tentacle Monster has struck! Tentacle Monster is always the worst case scenario! By merely searching for the worst case scenario he (or possibly she,) had revealed himself (or herself, depending on which backwater mental sewer your insane Japanese porn fetish leads you to.)

She hungers

Realizing that even in a non-monster-rape situation latex gloves would be useful in keeping the dye off of my hands I set out to procure some from the nearest place I didn't have to pay for them. This proved to be impossible, even for science. The nearest fast food employee either didn't understand human or wanted me to believe he didn't. The convenience store clerk understood my request but was a simpering and cowardly minion of some ominous boss monster he referred to ominously only as The Boss. I then set out for the tavern and walked quite a long way before I realized I had somehow mistaken the real world for the Dragon Quest game I had fallen asleep playing the night before.

Terrible Hair Accident

Returning home, gloveless, the burning obsession that had gripped me the day before quickly faded. In it's place I found only the gnawing hunger of unfulfilled dreams as well as the gnawing hunger of regular hunger.

My foray into the mysterious world of the sciences had been futile with regards to hair, but had not been without valuable lessons:

• Never trust foreigners in tights.
• Clothes usually aren't on fire.
• Rit is a front for fire demons from beyond the stars.
• No one likes progress.
• Tentacle Monster now has control of Google.
• McDonald's employees don't know what gloves are.
• There is a boss fight in every gas station if you're willing to look hard enough.
• Your roommate will eventually pass out drunk with the oven on and burn your house down.

How To Unsafely Dye Your Hair With Fabric Dye For $10 (part 1 of F)

    At some point in the last five years both Punky’s and Manic Panic discontinued their dark green line of hair color. Upon discovery of this I realized that if I had dark green hair I could succeed in not conforming to the other non-conformists and their pussy pink and purple hairstyles.

After six months and fives of dollars expended I had merely succeeded in turning my hair turquoise, teal,  healthy seaweed, unhealthy seaweed, and eventually, straw.  My path lay clear: I must use my Dr. Seuss endorsed imagination and follow the advice I seem to remember getting from what was possibly a public school teacher and think outside of the box. I would embark on a quest to figure out how to make science, and then make the hell out of some science!
 
Armed with ten dollars and all of the DIY tutorials Google searches provided in almost an hour, I would invent my own dark green hair dye.
   
Part One: Preparation

I’m writing this article for the future of freelance hair science, since every search I entered that didn’t return links to Manic Panic or Hot Topic were full of NO and NEVER and DON’T. If I’ve learned anything from hours spent in Fallout 2 and Marvel Comic forums it’s that anyone that types IN ALL CAPS is an idiot with no evidence attempting to pass opinion off as fact. Therefore my hair experiment (or exhairiment,) will now adhere to strict empirical method. I don’t know what ‘empirical’ means but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Medieval Europe and I’m pretty certain that Medieval Europe is where they invented aspirin by making peasants eat poison and discovered exorcisms by drilling holes in crazy people's heads.
 
After scanning Google’s so-called ‘results,’ I discovered that punk rockers originally used fabric dye to dye their hair, and that it was readily available at the local craft store. They also stated that this was shockingly primitive and dangerous and stupid, but people are required by law to say that before doing something kickass so that they don’t get sued when people that don’t kick ass attempt to kick ass.

After exhausting my resources ($10,) I had a large bottle of RIT Dark Green Fabric Dye, a tub of bargain hair bleach, and a dye applicator. Experimental shaking of the bottle of the dye suggested that it was in liquid form, and more research would be required to discover how to make it stick to hair.

I briefly surveyed the NO, NEVER, DON’T sections of the search results for possible solutions and also for any nouns or verbs that sounded like they might kill me. One post stated that there were many, many reasons not to dye hair with Rit, but only named one: Salt, which is an ingredient in Rit. I’m almost certain that the only time salt is ever dangerous is when it’s thrown into the eyes of the good-guy wrestler by the bad-guy wrestler’s manager, and also only when the bad-guy wrestler is from China or Japan and also also when it was 1987 and that kind of racism was still okay and sorta expected from wrestling fans. I also remember that when this happens, the good-guy wrestler still manages to rally the fans' support and channel it into Hulkamania and kick the karate guy’s ass with an Atomic Elbow Drop. And I’ll trust steroid-induced face rampages over some superstitious, hand-wringing saltaphobe in a cosmetology forum any day.   

Before: in trouble.

    Further examination turned up the words BURNS, STAIN and SPEND THE EXTRA 6 BUCKS. I know from rumor that Vaseline is often used to protect the skin from errant hair dye, and the word BURNS doesn’t concern me because a search of my brain revealed that fabric dye is used on clothing and clothing is used on humans and all out of 100 humans wear clothing regularly and hardly ever burst into flames because of it. The SPEND THE EXTRA 6 BUCKS comment was obviously planted by a Hot Topic operative with ties to the shadow banking system that secretly runs the world and won’t allow me to have big bags of free money, no matter how much I say I want them. I disregarded that comment in keeping with my strict “Screw The Machine That I Depend Upon For My Survival” ethos.

After: Chemical Burns

One poster suggested adding a small amount of color to conditioner to keep the dye ‘vibrant.’ After asking a girl if that meant ‘periodically vibrating’ and being laughed at, I realized that I might be onto something. If I were to add a LOT of color to a LITTLE bit of conditioner I could force the dye to stick to my hair and not damage my eyes with crafty ninja-salt attacks.

  My search of the International Brain Vomit And Commercial Returning System (Google,) hadn’t proven as educational as I had hoped. It would appear that only 17 people in the entire world know anything about intentionally dangerous home made hair color. With my new-found knowledge of conditioner and Vaseline I embarked on a quest for Direction.

Part 2: Owner’s Manuals

The instructions on the back of the Rit bottle were confusing at best. There were two recommended methods: Washing Machine and Stove Top. Both of those things would appear to have nothing to do with making things different colored, let alone something attached to a living human head, itself attached to a living human body.

 

Further inspection implies that Rit Fabric Dye requires a temperature of simmering* to function. I’m fairly certain that washing my entire Vaseline covered body in the washer on the “hottest WATER safe for fabric setting,” would probably kill me, so I set out to answer several questions. A) how can I put boiling water on my head for an hour without causing brain injuries? B) is there a way to make Rit Liquid Dye function at Earth temperatures? And C) Could Phoenix Brands, makers of Rit Liquid Dye, be a front for some sort of not-human life form living among us?

After taking a half hour break to contemplate and test my hand for heat endurance I found my answers: A) I can’t, B) maybe, and C) Holy Shit Yes It Is!

I also decided that, since I would be using a goop made out of leave-in conditioner and Rit Meat Salting And Human Cooking Dye instead of almost boiling water, I would have to rely on my old friend: the blow drier. I have one of the old kinds that can make beef jerky and dim the lights at the corner store a block away, so it gets plenty hot. Also, since it’s handheld I can simply move it if I notice any adverse side effects like the appearance of smoke or expectant space-cannibals. After the allotted hour I would then rinse what’s left of my head in hot water from out of our not-made-in-space water heater.

The bleach I at least am familiar with. Mix the powder and the goo in the tub, glop onto hair, cook for half an hour agitating occasionally, put the container in the trash can, rinse hair, attempt to find Sharpies in the colors of everything in the trash can’s blast radius before roommates return home, make mental note to dispose of unused bleach more safely next time, forget mental note. Simple.

At the end of day one I felt confident in my ability to not kill myself accidentally. And, thanks to a XXL white dress shirt I wrote ‘lab coat’ on, in my abilities as a scientist as well.

Part Three: Day Two: Part 3A

After sleeping almost three hours, I spent most of the morning answering increasingly exasperated emails from my so-called ‘friends,’ and their backwards, un-American attitudes of “Ok. That’s cool. Are you sure you don’t want the store-bought stuff, I’ll lend you the money,” and “You sure about this? Have you smelled that dye yet? It smells like something they’d use to turn a horse into glue.”
 
Following many very loud minutes of adult language I finally convinced my obviously superstitious friends that this kind of fear, this kind of hostility in the face of progress that shackles humanity to it’s ignorant and culturally intolerant past. I realize now that by being attacked for ‘thinking outside of the box,’ I’m really no different than Native Americans being racially assaulted by smallpox blankets, or Chinese wrestlers when they get a size 13 boot to the face for using underhanded tactics, or being brown in Texas and not holding a lawnmower. I think that this proves that not only am I a Doctor of Science with a major in Rad, I’m also kind of a hero, like Gandhi or Dr. King. Or Spider-Man if Spider-Man was black and nothing like Spider-Man. Back to the experiment.

*The asterisk led only to questions and terror.

Part Next: The Conclusion!

My warm up routine (Part two of infinity)

Moving right along, this is the exercise I use for focusing on my right hand. Same deal as before, alternate picking and be sure to start slowly and watch for mistakes. And also pretend it goes all the way up and down the neck because typing out a lot of dashes is ass.

---7---9---10---12---7----9----10-----12
-0---0---0----0-----8---8----8------8-----

Followed by

------7-7------9-9------10-10--------12-12------7-7--------9-9-
-0-0------0-0------0-0----------0-0----------8-8------8-8-------  And so on

Followed by
---------7-7-7---------9-9-9----------10-10-10-
-0-0-0----------0-0-0---------0-0-0------------- You get the idea.

Then groups of four
----------7-7-7-7------------9-9-9-9----------
-0-0-0-0----------0-0-0-0------------0-0-0-0- And on and on and on.


Left hand fingering is entirely optional. This is just a generic thrash-metally progression since I'm a generic thrash metally guitarist. The important thing about picking is economy of motion. I know the Green Day, sawing at the guitar from the elbow or shoulder may look cool in a juvenile, pop-punk attention whore kind of way, but it's retarded for anything other than juvenile pop-punk. Pick from the wrist. Something I had to teach myself, just to get the right idea, was anchoring my right forearm to the guitar and holding it with my left hand while I picked palm muted open strings, just to see how much it was wiggling. Turns out all the extra movement was slowing me down.

Once again, gradually speed this up until your right hand gets warm, but not hot.

My warm up routine (Part one of infinity)

During my many, many hours of downtime I quite frequently practice guitar. I do this so that I can fool myself into thinking I'm being productive and not just waiting for the clock to progress enough to justify going to sleep and being one day closer to death. Also: METAL!

So I'm going to be printing up some of my warm up routines. You're welcome.


Left hand warm up 1, I use index, ring and pinky throughout. Also: up, down, up, down picking. Also also: I'm lazy and didn't feel like typing ten million dashes, so just pretend this pattern covers all of the strings.
------------------------------------------------------------------------1------1-3----1-3-4-4-3-1---3-1--
---------------------------------------1------1-3-----1-3-4-1-3-4----3-4-----4----------------4------4-3
--------1-----1-3----1-3-4-1-3-4----3-4------4------------------------------------------------------
1-3-4---3-4-------4----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's basically this up and down the board. Once I get back to the first fret on the B string (I play a 7-string. Nu metal fag or Jazz virtuoso? You be the judge,) I move the pattern up to 3, 4 and 6 using index, middle and pinky. Then 4, 6, and 8 using index, middle, pinky. Then the pattern repeats with 6, 8 and 9. I take it up the neck til I can't reach the low string comfortably (around 15 or so,) or my forearm gets warm (but not tight and cramped, unless I'm in a particularly foul mood, this can cause pulled muscles and injury.)

This exercise is in no way musically correct as far as scales and theory. It's just the patterns I use the most often when playing. Purely mechanical. I always try to start off slow and watch for mistakes, particularly with my picking pattern. I found myself hitting a wall about a year ago due to sloppy picking and just using downs and ups more or less randomly. When I practice now I try to focus on down, up, down, up; even when skipping strings, even when it seems counter-intuitive (it pays off in the long run, trust me.)

Bandwagoner

I would like it if I could say that I started this because I thought to myself "Finally! A place where my radical and world-changing thoughts, beliefs and insights can be posted for the entire world to marvel at! Much like Martin Luther, this will truly revolutionize everything!" But really, Google just made it retardedly easy. Five minutes ago I didn't have a blog, now I do.

Anyway, here's my deep and revolutionary insight for the day: Fuck you, Neil Gaiman. When I read American Gods I thought "Damn! I can't wait for this to get a Carnivale-esque, long-ass miniseries on HBO." But since then I've seen him put his name on Stardust, featuring Robert Di Nero as a horrifying homosexual stereotype from the 80's, and Beowulf, the third crap adaptation in less than ten years and possibly the first movie filmed entirely in the Uncanny Valley.

What was doubly uncanny about Beowulf was pointlessness of it. All of the actors were rendered as CGI parodies of themselves at great expense, and for what? So they could engage in the physically impossible acts of getting drunk on mead, taking their clothes off and bellowing clunky, awkwardly re-written lines from 300 and the The 13th Warrior? Fuck you, Neil Gaiman. The SyFy channel produces that movie five times a day for a fraction of the budget, with the added benefit of me not begging a cold and uncaring God to burn the image of naked Sir Anthony Hopkins from my mind every night for a month.

Kids These Days

I started wondering about the different subcultures of kids these days. To the outsider they may appear as one large hive of insane fashion, contradictory rules, malformed opinions and incomprehensible everything. As it turns out, there are actually many different 'tribes' within the subculture, each with it's distinctive set of rules for fashion, behavior and music. Some of the core rules for several of these sub-subcultures are:

Death Metal

1. There’s no such thing as too greasy or oily or sweaty.
2. Chicks dig scratchy voices. Chicks dig stuffed animals. Therefore, attempt to sound like the Cookie Monster at all times for maximum chick dig-ability.
3. Melodies are for queers.
4. Stop sleeping. Dark circles under the eyes are brutal.
5. Pantera=pussy metal
6. Own every Pantera album.
7. Learn every synonym for anger, death, gore, violence and pain.
8. As a rule of thumb: the worse the sound quality, the better the band.
9. Build your vocabulary around outdated medical journals.
10. Meat is the only food group. everything else is considered a condiment.

Emo

1. Is your hair in your eyes?
2. Be random. It’s hilarious.
3. Rehearse things to insert randomly into conversation.
4. Tacos!
5. There, see how funny that was?
6. Learn to take a punch, as guys in their mid-twenties will be delivering many, many punches when they find out you’re a queer disguised as a metal head.
7. “Too small” is a phrase applicable to body jewelry, but never clothing.
8. There's never a wrong reason to threaten suicide. It will help others to understand you better and love you more.
9. Affect an air of fragility and sickliness, even if you are naturally plump and healthy.
10. Jam poetic-sounding words together when making screen names. They don't have to make sense (see rule 2.) Then everyone will see how deep you are Mr. Forgotten Eyes In An Abandoned Heart.

Scene

1. Find a crazy homeless person.
2. Dress exactly like him.
3. Never, ever, ever admit ignorance on any subject.
4. You were into them before they were famous.
5. In fact, you were in a band with their guitarist in middle school.
6. They even stole a song you wrote.
7. You wouldn’t have heard it though.
8. You're inherently better than everyone else. Make sure they're aware of this.
9. Politically, belligerently oppose whatever Jon Stewart made fun of last week.
10. A confrontationally unkempt appearance lends weight to any argument (see rules two, three and eight.)

Goth

1. Victorian-era English nobility was the epitome of fashion and comfort. Dress accordingly.
2. Anne Rice vampires are acceptable. Stephanie Meyer vampires are not.
3. Replace “I” with “Y” in all polysyllabic words: Magyck, Vampyre, dystynctyve, etc.
4. Education is sexy. Learn lots of big words.
5. Don't bother learning their meaning, just insert them into sentences haphazardly. No one will notice, they're not educated like you.
6. Act tough if anyone makes fun of your stage makeup. Be surprised later when this has the opposite of the intended effect.
7. There's no such thing as overly-dramatic.
8. Women love terrible British accents.
9. Cigarettes, particularly Cloves, qualify as a fashion accessory.
10. Only drink red wine in public, even though it makes you nauseous and giggly (leading to further nausea.)

Punk

1. Your impulses are never, ever wrong.
2. If it has more than 3 chords, it's not punk.
3. If anyone ever points out that many Sex Pistols and Misfits songs have more than 3 chords, the appropriate response is PUNCH.
4. In all things, in all ways, seek attention.
5. Claim to hate attention.
6. Use so many different drugs so frequently that it's impossible to become 'addicted' to any one of them.
7. Rule six will become flawless, unassailable logic after several months of practicing rule six.
8. Unassailable means "unable to be disproven."
9. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever let anyone ever find out about your happy, well-adjusted middle class upbringing. Ever.
10. The appropriate response to any situation is PUNCH.

Head

1. Hip-hop is the only music genre you listen to.
2. Define every artist in your library as a different genre.
3. Discussing hip-hop takes precedence over listening to hip-hop. Especially at hip-hop shows.
4. "Street" is important. Always be Street.
5. Dress like an extra from a circa-1987 rap video, that's Street.
6. If an artist attempts something new or innovative condemn them. How dare they disrespect the roots!
7. If they later become famous condemn them. You liked them when they were new and innovative!
8. You are a rapper. Even if you aren't.
9. The true measure of a Head is how wrongly he puts on a baseball cap.
10. English skills should be at college level when speaking, and second grade when writing.

Juggalo

1. Most words can be replaced with fuck, dick, pussy, bitch or shit.
2. Most other words can be replaced with words Violent J made up to finish a rhyme.
3. All words can be yelled.
4. Endeavor to be as skinny, ignorant and trailer-trashy as possible (males.)
5. Endeavor to be as fat, ignorant and trailer-trashy as possible (females.)
6. Psychopathic is the ONLY record label.
7. Well, Sub-urban Noize is acceptable.
8. You've been down with the clown since Ringmaster, even if that would make you negative two at the time.
9. It's more than terrible music! It's a terrible lifestyle, philosophy and religion!
10. Be proud of yourself: most rebellious teenagers feel like the world hates them, but for Juggalos, the world really does hate you!