I am saddened and angry at all this nonsense about how it's impossible to "hate LeBron James" anymore.
I want to be on the record as never criticizing him for leaving Cleveland during free agency to move to Miami. I have always liked him. However, to suggest LeBron is suddenly a likable person if you were on the hate train is utter ridiculousness.
I challenge anyone to find a person who is fundamentally changed as a person because they won something, or were at the top of their respective career fields. A person's personality might get changed a little bit as would anyone who's accomplished a life-long dream, but chances are it's in a marginal way. All the sudden, LeBron is the Dali Llama of basketball players? All the sudden, people who thought he was a coward for quitting on his home town to play with other stars in the league are expected to not find fault with him?
If the argument is based off people "hating" him because of his ability to play the game and his playstyle, then okay yeah. He answered the calls of the critics by being an unstoppable force all playoffs long, if not all season long. But to suggest you can't keep hating LeBron now that he's a championship is a highlight of a faulty thought process America seems to embrace.
Winning is not everything, not does it absolve mistakes on the path to success. It is just success. Nothing more, nothing less. There are really shitty people who "win" in life every day. Does that mean everyone needs to behave as those people, or forgive those people for being awful? Not in the least. It's something we need to stop, as a society. We need to stop empowering people who step on others get ahead in life.
I just feel like there is no incentive to be a nice guy. Whenever you say to someone, "Okay I will come fill in for you this weekend," they never return that favor. It's just you giving of yourself. It's wrong of our society to think that it's entirely up to a person if they give of themselves, and if they do it they should ask for nothing in return.
I am going off on tangents related to my personal life now so I will try to regroup: LeBron is the same guy he was a week ago. He still helped create a super team and a potential Eastern Conference dynasty for the first time since the Bulls. My opinion of him as a player has not changed in the least. I've always thought he was a great player, and this win doesn't validate HIM, but it validates the concept that an entire team has to win.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Yearly Reminder: Magic the Gathering is pretty awesome.
Picked up this year's iteration of Stainless Games' "Magic: the Gathering- Duels of the Planeswalkers" and it's reminded me something I've known for quite a long time. M:tG is the only worthwhile collectable card game ever made.
I've played a lot of them. Tried to get into Pokemon for awhile because that was the rage in my younger days, but it lacked real strategic depth. Tried Yu-Gi-Oh but it's a convoluted mess, and it was one of those games where a rare card totally trumped deck building. Tried the World of Warcraft CCG but it just felt like a cash-grab despite actually being fairly good.
But Magic. The allure of the franchise grabs me again every time. It's proof style matters a whole lot, though substance is still equally important. It's been around since 1993. It is the first, and because of it, the best. It's had the most amount of time to turn into a refined product, and is the only one that can truly claim it's not an imitator.
For those uninitiated, the concept is fairly simple. You are a Planeswalker, a.k.a. a really powerful magician. You tap into the powers of the elements, represented by the M:TG color wheel. Green represents growth, harmony, nature and is themed around big ass creatures and spells that make those creatures more powerful. Red represents chaos and fire, and is often themed around directly damaging opponent creatures and players via sorceries and instant spells. Blue represents intellect, the ocean, and strategy and tends to rely on cards that manipulate what your opponent can attempt to do, via counterspells and mind control. Black is evil, domination, and death and tends to employ minions of the undead along with direct creature destruction sorcery magic. White represents holiness, purity and defense. It usually has hordes of weak creatures that synergize well together, and employs powerful defensive spells.
Remember these are all themes. There are a lot of cards which basically overlap from one ideal to another, so aligning yourself with a color simply focuses your possible strategies rather than defining them. The video game version obviously lacks depth of the real card game because you are stuck with pre-fabricated decks rather than ones you assemble yourself, but it's still the actual game represented 100% faithfully.
New features to 2013:
The campaign is set up a little bit differently, and for the better I feel. You still fight against the 10 decks to unlock more cards, but they added in challenges where the enemy deck behaves in a set way, with set draws, and tends to spam a specific strategy at you to see if you can overcome it. It's a good way to highlight which strategies counter your deck, and lets you build accordingly to overcome it as best you can.
The challenge modes fans of the first two games remember, where you are presented with a specific situation and tasked to overcome the odds by playing your hand perfectly, is available immediately like it was in the first title rather than having to slog through the campaign to unlock them. It's over quick if you're good at the game, but it's still a lot of fun and was always the highlight for me as a fan. They also start off much more difficult than previous games. I'm stuck and I'm barely halfway through it!
There are a lot more variety between the initial 10 decks, and I am pretty sure we'll be seeing DLC deck packs coming soon themed around the notably absent famous characters from the M:TG world. So far, I feel it's a lot more balanced than 2012 was. The blue illusions deck in 2012 was so vastly superior to every other deck except maybe the direct damage red one that 80% of the time you went online, you'd play against it. Kind of annoying. I hope the deck balance lasts. We'll see how my opinions of that change once I unlock more cards and throw myself into the competitive scene.
The big new mode is "Planechase." It's a twist on the already chaotic 4 player free-for-all matches. A planes card is in effect which manipulates the battlefield in some way, and can be manipulated by use of a "Planes die." You can roll it for free once a round or tap mana for extra rolls, each roll taking another mana than the last cast. Listing each possible planes would take me forever, so we'll just leave it at it totally changes the dynamic of multiplayer matches in a much needed way, and is totally hectic. I'm all in favor of this mode, even though it can potentially make matches drag on for a very, very long time.
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Verdict: It costs $9.99 bucks to get a starter deck to begin with, so if you're new to Magic or enjoy the game, it's pretty hard to argue with the cost of entry. Pick it up! It's a very fun game for the price of entry and keeps players playing for a long while.
I've played a lot of them. Tried to get into Pokemon for awhile because that was the rage in my younger days, but it lacked real strategic depth. Tried Yu-Gi-Oh but it's a convoluted mess, and it was one of those games where a rare card totally trumped deck building. Tried the World of Warcraft CCG but it just felt like a cash-grab despite actually being fairly good.
But Magic. The allure of the franchise grabs me again every time. It's proof style matters a whole lot, though substance is still equally important. It's been around since 1993. It is the first, and because of it, the best. It's had the most amount of time to turn into a refined product, and is the only one that can truly claim it's not an imitator.
For those uninitiated, the concept is fairly simple. You are a Planeswalker, a.k.a. a really powerful magician. You tap into the powers of the elements, represented by the M:TG color wheel. Green represents growth, harmony, nature and is themed around big ass creatures and spells that make those creatures more powerful. Red represents chaos and fire, and is often themed around directly damaging opponent creatures and players via sorceries and instant spells. Blue represents intellect, the ocean, and strategy and tends to rely on cards that manipulate what your opponent can attempt to do, via counterspells and mind control. Black is evil, domination, and death and tends to employ minions of the undead along with direct creature destruction sorcery magic. White represents holiness, purity and defense. It usually has hordes of weak creatures that synergize well together, and employs powerful defensive spells.
Remember these are all themes. There are a lot of cards which basically overlap from one ideal to another, so aligning yourself with a color simply focuses your possible strategies rather than defining them. The video game version obviously lacks depth of the real card game because you are stuck with pre-fabricated decks rather than ones you assemble yourself, but it's still the actual game represented 100% faithfully.
New features to 2013:
The campaign is set up a little bit differently, and for the better I feel. You still fight against the 10 decks to unlock more cards, but they added in challenges where the enemy deck behaves in a set way, with set draws, and tends to spam a specific strategy at you to see if you can overcome it. It's a good way to highlight which strategies counter your deck, and lets you build accordingly to overcome it as best you can.
The challenge modes fans of the first two games remember, where you are presented with a specific situation and tasked to overcome the odds by playing your hand perfectly, is available immediately like it was in the first title rather than having to slog through the campaign to unlock them. It's over quick if you're good at the game, but it's still a lot of fun and was always the highlight for me as a fan. They also start off much more difficult than previous games. I'm stuck and I'm barely halfway through it!
There are a lot more variety between the initial 10 decks, and I am pretty sure we'll be seeing DLC deck packs coming soon themed around the notably absent famous characters from the M:TG world. So far, I feel it's a lot more balanced than 2012 was. The blue illusions deck in 2012 was so vastly superior to every other deck except maybe the direct damage red one that 80% of the time you went online, you'd play against it. Kind of annoying. I hope the deck balance lasts. We'll see how my opinions of that change once I unlock more cards and throw myself into the competitive scene.
The big new mode is "Planechase." It's a twist on the already chaotic 4 player free-for-all matches. A planes card is in effect which manipulates the battlefield in some way, and can be manipulated by use of a "Planes die." You can roll it for free once a round or tap mana for extra rolls, each roll taking another mana than the last cast. Listing each possible planes would take me forever, so we'll just leave it at it totally changes the dynamic of multiplayer matches in a much needed way, and is totally hectic. I'm all in favor of this mode, even though it can potentially make matches drag on for a very, very long time.
--------
Verdict: It costs $9.99 bucks to get a starter deck to begin with, so if you're new to Magic or enjoy the game, it's pretty hard to argue with the cost of entry. Pick it up! It's a very fun game for the price of entry and keeps players playing for a long while.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Can I just not like Diablo III, please?
I am a social gamer. I like playing games with other people. I like talking games with other people. I like sharing in that nerdy exchange of nerdy things.
Gaming is inherently social. What this results in is a hive mind mentality of "Like this or you are not a real gamer."
Diablo III is the latest game that has the kind of buzz around it all gamers are forced to have an opinion on it. I've played it and got a guy to max level. I hate the game. I genuinely do not like it. AND I'm sick of friends talking about it nonstop.
I got it. It's a loot grind. You found some new loot. You progressed your guy far enough you can "farm" some boss over and over to try and get new items. I don't care anymore. I've told my gamer friends I don't care any more. They launched a real money auction house? Go figure; I still don't care.
Normally it doesn't bother me when friends talk a game I have no interest in, but the fact I display no interest in this particular title any more somehow makes my gamer friends question my taste in everything. I do not understand. I have expressed the same levels of distaste as the other friends on what about the game bothers me, but somehow not willing to stick it out because the end result of the gameplay doesn't appeal to me means...?
Here's the facts, folks. It requires you to be online to play it, which means it's not at my leisure. That is a huge mark against it. If I want to play a game at 5 AM on Tuesday (or whenever maintenance is), I should have that ability. It's also at heart a loot grind. The plot is pretty shallow (I would argue makes the former games weaker for being associated with it) so once you beat it on Normal, all there is, is simply to go slaughter minions of hell to get better loot to more efficiently kill the minions of hell. That is all fine and dandy but when the difference between gear is pretty miniscule and there are only two viable classes on the hardest difficulty AND THE GAME PENALIZES YOU FOR PLAYING WITH FRIENDS, it's just not worth it.
So, friends, I do not give a single iota of care to the fact you got some new nifty sword. It's the same way I have felt about World of Warcraft for years, and yet my WoW friends know not to tell others not involved with the game about some new progression they've made in that game. Let Diablo III be the same way.
Gaming is inherently social. What this results in is a hive mind mentality of "Like this or you are not a real gamer."
Diablo III is the latest game that has the kind of buzz around it all gamers are forced to have an opinion on it. I've played it and got a guy to max level. I hate the game. I genuinely do not like it. AND I'm sick of friends talking about it nonstop.
I got it. It's a loot grind. You found some new loot. You progressed your guy far enough you can "farm" some boss over and over to try and get new items. I don't care anymore. I've told my gamer friends I don't care any more. They launched a real money auction house? Go figure; I still don't care.
Normally it doesn't bother me when friends talk a game I have no interest in, but the fact I display no interest in this particular title any more somehow makes my gamer friends question my taste in everything. I do not understand. I have expressed the same levels of distaste as the other friends on what about the game bothers me, but somehow not willing to stick it out because the end result of the gameplay doesn't appeal to me means...?
Here's the facts, folks. It requires you to be online to play it, which means it's not at my leisure. That is a huge mark against it. If I want to play a game at 5 AM on Tuesday (or whenever maintenance is), I should have that ability. It's also at heart a loot grind. The plot is pretty shallow (I would argue makes the former games weaker for being associated with it) so once you beat it on Normal, all there is, is simply to go slaughter minions of hell to get better loot to more efficiently kill the minions of hell. That is all fine and dandy but when the difference between gear is pretty miniscule and there are only two viable classes on the hardest difficulty AND THE GAME PENALIZES YOU FOR PLAYING WITH FRIENDS, it's just not worth it.
So, friends, I do not give a single iota of care to the fact you got some new nifty sword. It's the same way I have felt about World of Warcraft for years, and yet my WoW friends know not to tell others not involved with the game about some new progression they've made in that game. Let Diablo III be the same way.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Summer blag! NBA playoffs!
Sorry for the delay. I need to reorganize some things, especially how I hijacked my own blog in order to use as an assignment board for classes last semester. I plan on moving all those posts to a separate, class only blog and making this one again about video games and sports.
Because those are my two loves, and that's the kind of readership I want. <3
Today's topic: Sports.
The NBA playoffs, amirite? I find it funny how I absolutely abhor the regular season of the NBA (it's so boring!) but the Playoffs are just about the best TV event short of the NFL playoffs.
I missed most of the first rounds because school was finishing up and I was too busy writing papers to really follow sports.
Watching Oklahoma bounce the Lakers out of the playoffs was a beautiful thing. It's funny watching Kobe struggle as his team sits around and expects him to do it all. I know I take a lot of flack from sports fans for this, but I feel like Michael Jordan ruined basketball, or at least ruined all the people paid to talk about basketball who lived through that era.
I am so sick and tired of how "basketball experts" praise certain players as being the best in the league, then bash them for not having championship rings. LeBron James gets the brunt of this but it's applied to a lot of other guys. The problem is this type of talk seems to me like it arose during the post second 3peat of his Airness, and everyone who's come into the league since with great expectations has been told by the media and by everyone else around them they are the next Michael Jordan and they are expected to carry and lift their teams to victory single-handedly.
It just doesn't work that way. Basketball is a team game, and while having a super star certainly helps it does not guarantee you a damn thing. Look at how many epic great players were in the league during Michael's stay in the NBA. Are ALL of them failures because they weren't on the Bulls?
The thing time forgot is just how great that Bulls team was. They still had winning records the two years in between Michael's baseball career attempt. Scottie Pippin was a stud player and would have been the lead guy on any other team in the league. Dennis Rodman is one of the greatest defensive players and easily the greatest gatherer of rebounds the game had ever seen. The perimeter shooting of the team was amazing. It was a truly complete TEAM, and it just happened to have the best player in the NBA on that team.
I am going to give you a list of literally every team that won the championship since Jordan retired:
Spurs (x3)
Lakers (x5)
Pistons (x1)
Heat (x1)
Celtics (x1)
Mavericks (x1)
It's a really short list. And it's also proof TEAM MATTERS. Kobe Bryant is definitely one of the all time greatest NBA players to ever play the game, but remember how utterly trash the Lakers teams were post-Shaq before they got that miracle trade for Pau Gasol? He couldn't and still can't win it on his own.
All of those teams, name the start players. Lakers, you have Kobe. But you also had Shaq, Derek Fisher in his prime, Cedric Ceballos and Robert Horry. Lots of good, solid players surrounding him. It was a great TEAM that first three-peat and their recent two championships again had a really phenominal supporting cast. You have Timmy Duncan for the Spurs, and then Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli when those guys showed up. No one ever looked at that Spurs dynasty and said it was just because Duncan could take over a game on his own. He is just a phenomenal player surrounded by a cast that accentuates his skills (which is to say being really, really effing tall). It was always about how great a TEAM they were. The Heat? Again it wasn't just Dwayne Wade but you had Shaq and Alonzo Mourning and a bunch of great perimeter shooters and blah blah. Pistons? Great team, with a bunch of guys who might not even make it at least as first ballots into the hall of fame. Celtics? Bunch of guys past their prime no one expected to single-handedly carry their teams anymore. Mavericks? Just a great team with one of the greatest benches in the league.
But all those start players like Kobe and LeBron think they have to do it all, and when they fall short they get lambasted in the media. It's sickening and downright disturbing. The reason I am cheering for the Heat to win it all this year is so people can stop looking at LeBron, one of the greatest if not the greatest basketball player in the world today, as a failure and celebrate him for the greatness he does on the court.
Because those are my two loves, and that's the kind of readership I want. <3
Today's topic: Sports.
The NBA playoffs, amirite? I find it funny how I absolutely abhor the regular season of the NBA (it's so boring!) but the Playoffs are just about the best TV event short of the NFL playoffs.
I missed most of the first rounds because school was finishing up and I was too busy writing papers to really follow sports.
Watching Oklahoma bounce the Lakers out of the playoffs was a beautiful thing. It's funny watching Kobe struggle as his team sits around and expects him to do it all. I know I take a lot of flack from sports fans for this, but I feel like Michael Jordan ruined basketball, or at least ruined all the people paid to talk about basketball who lived through that era.
I am so sick and tired of how "basketball experts" praise certain players as being the best in the league, then bash them for not having championship rings. LeBron James gets the brunt of this but it's applied to a lot of other guys. The problem is this type of talk seems to me like it arose during the post second 3peat of his Airness, and everyone who's come into the league since with great expectations has been told by the media and by everyone else around them they are the next Michael Jordan and they are expected to carry and lift their teams to victory single-handedly.
It just doesn't work that way. Basketball is a team game, and while having a super star certainly helps it does not guarantee you a damn thing. Look at how many epic great players were in the league during Michael's stay in the NBA. Are ALL of them failures because they weren't on the Bulls?
The thing time forgot is just how great that Bulls team was. They still had winning records the two years in between Michael's baseball career attempt. Scottie Pippin was a stud player and would have been the lead guy on any other team in the league. Dennis Rodman is one of the greatest defensive players and easily the greatest gatherer of rebounds the game had ever seen. The perimeter shooting of the team was amazing. It was a truly complete TEAM, and it just happened to have the best player in the NBA on that team.
I am going to give you a list of literally every team that won the championship since Jordan retired:
Spurs (x3)
Lakers (x5)
Pistons (x1)
Heat (x1)
Celtics (x1)
Mavericks (x1)
It's a really short list. And it's also proof TEAM MATTERS. Kobe Bryant is definitely one of the all time greatest NBA players to ever play the game, but remember how utterly trash the Lakers teams were post-Shaq before they got that miracle trade for Pau Gasol? He couldn't and still can't win it on his own.
All of those teams, name the start players. Lakers, you have Kobe. But you also had Shaq, Derek Fisher in his prime, Cedric Ceballos and Robert Horry. Lots of good, solid players surrounding him. It was a great TEAM that first three-peat and their recent two championships again had a really phenominal supporting cast. You have Timmy Duncan for the Spurs, and then Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli when those guys showed up. No one ever looked at that Spurs dynasty and said it was just because Duncan could take over a game on his own. He is just a phenomenal player surrounded by a cast that accentuates his skills (which is to say being really, really effing tall). It was always about how great a TEAM they were. The Heat? Again it wasn't just Dwayne Wade but you had Shaq and Alonzo Mourning and a bunch of great perimeter shooters and blah blah. Pistons? Great team, with a bunch of guys who might not even make it at least as first ballots into the hall of fame. Celtics? Bunch of guys past their prime no one expected to single-handedly carry their teams anymore. Mavericks? Just a great team with one of the greatest benches in the league.
But all those start players like Kobe and LeBron think they have to do it all, and when they fall short they get lambasted in the media. It's sickening and downright disturbing. The reason I am cheering for the Heat to win it all this year is so people can stop looking at LeBron, one of the greatest if not the greatest basketball player in the world today, as a failure and celebrate him for the greatness he does on the court.
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