#Go play Steambot Chronicles though

[bonerhitler]

Moral Choices Are Lame

Been a while since I wrote anything on here – been a busy few weeks. So, lets see what I can grumble up about Moral Choices in games. They're not as popular as they were in previous years, especially during the PS3/360 era, but they still rear their heads every so often and developers continually make the same mistakes with them over and over again, and the choices always fall flat for the same reasons.

For a start, they're rarely presented as genuine or earned choices. Dating back to the classic JRPG Dragon Quest for the NES video games have had a history of giving the player false choices. Whether it's the option to “join” the villain's side leading to a game over or reject the princess' hand in marriage – an infamous feat you literally can not do leading to her repeating the same “But Thou Must!” line of dialogue over and over until you pick the right option. More modern moral choices are often very similar, and in some ways even simpler.

You see, with the Dragon Quest example, the choices exist to serve the narrative. The player character didn't speak but you didn't have any influence over their personality or development either. It was the only way they could allow the player – and the character – to respond to NPCs. Now take a game like Dragon Age, written and developed by Bioware for the 360, PS3 and PC. You're often given choices to do a mean thing, or to do a good thing. But outside of the big act-ending binary choices of which factions you want to side with the only morality involved comes down to “Be mean and get rewarded” or “Be nice and don't get rewarded”. So if you want that cool sword, you can bully a child and he'll hand it over. But no one will care and there's no long lasting, or even real consequences from it. At worst your party members disapprove but you can give them gifts and they'll never remember it happened. Let a demon posses a small child so you can learn blood magic? Never comes back to bite you in the ass. Absolutely nothing you do in the game affects you outside of the big plot choices because it is safe. It wants the player to be absolutely free to be as good or as bad as they want without ever suffering any consequences. In fact the only time you can ever really screw yourself over by taking a wrong moral choice is by bringing your religious party members along a trip to go defile some saints ashes.

The inversion of this are of course series like Fable, Infamous and Bioshock where the entire morality system is simply a binary choice. Are you The Good Guy or The Bad Guy? You get a Good Ending and reward or a Bad Ending and reward once you max out your good or evil points and finish the game. There rarely is ever a reward for maintaining a neutral state and the rewards in games like these are usually either equal, such as in infamous where at both max good and evil you gain almost identical powers except one is red and one is blue, meaning the difference is almost solely visual alone turning it into less of a moral choice and more of a aesthetic one. Or the rewards are entirely skewed to one choice over the other, like in Bioshock where the upside to not being evil is so overwhelmingly beneficial there's no reason to be evil other than for the sake of it. These aren't interesting choices, they aren't even well thought out or clever choices. They're choices shoved into a game because moral choices were the hot fad at the time and for a period telling someone to go one way or the other and giving it a few arbitrary visual distinctions was a great way to generate marketing buzz.

So, is it possible to do moral choices well, at all, in a game? Certainly! A lot of games do them in a variety of ways. Take my old dead horse Dark Souls for example. You can kill every NPC you meet, most of them drop items and equipment when they die. If you're a jerk or have zero intention of doing their quest lines you can murder them for immediate reward. Or you can do their quest lines and receive more rewards with a greater investment. But ultimately, finishing their quest line leads to their eventual hollowing. So you're given a second choice; Complete their quest and perform a mercy killing or leave a character you might have grown attached to, alive while forgoing the ultimate rewards of that quest line? Going even further there are NPCs who, independent of what you do, will kill other NPCs if you don't kill them. They don't harm you, some of them are even friendly and helpful towards you and if you're observant you can see the foreshadowing of what's to come and choose who gets to live or die. Without a single prompt, scripted sequence or forced choice Dark Souls manages to give you multiple choices more involved than those previous competitors that all hyped up their moral choices and “gray morality”

Even older games manage to execute morality with more interesting results and designs. One of my personal favorite PS2 games, Steambot Chronicles (AKA: Bumpy Trot) is a game where you pilot strange automobile mechs and fight them while working on the side as a musician in a band. By sheer accident you get embroiled in a war between a militaristic crime group and those fighting them and you're given the choice to join them. And you can. You lose your friends, and the game's plot largely changes if you do. There's even a secondary plotline of trying to usurp the crime syndicate and becoming its leader! The game has multiple variations on the core endings, your actions over the course of the game genuinely impacting what happens to your friends, enemies and even potentially leading to deaths in the main cast.

Lastly I want to talk about “Moral Grayness” for a moment since I mentioned it above. For a while it was a fun buzzword people used to describe games like Dragon Age Origins and The Witcher, it largely just meant that everyone was a jerk. The concept of Gray Morality is rather simple, it's that there is no black and white good and evil. That your main character can do some bad stuff because they have to, they're not paragons of virtue. Essentially, it's the video games equivalent of a 90's X-TREEM comic book era anti-hero. So this leads to people crowing about how cool and morally gray a game is when you pick the “stop him!” choice in a Dragon Age regarding a guy fleeing from you, and your main character – regardless of how good, evil or strictly anti-murder you have been up until now – will just pull out a knife and gut him. “Gray Morality” is a video game's moral choice what the color gray is to a castle's interior décor. Boring. A game where everyone is a jerk and no one has any determined, dedicated goals and ideals beyond being a self interested jerk is just hard to buy into.

#nerdshit #Sorry for the long break #Go play Steambot Chronicles though #I personally blame everyone who didn't for its cancelled sequel #Not seriously #That was a joke guys

[musicalherbalist]

Things I Like

Heeeey, I'm sorry this is so late. I wanted to post up some of the anime/manga/comics/games/other shows I'm into. :) Keep in mind, this is mainly the stuff I'm currently into, and not all of it.

Anime:

Tenchi Muyo - Ryoko, Ryo-Oki, and Sasami are three of my favorite characters.

Trigun - Vash is better than Knives.

Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler - One of my favorites. Saw "Book of Atlantic" in theater, and it was AWESOME! Even Cosplayed Grell Sutcliff a few times(her heels are hell to wear for long periods of time...)

Fullmetal Alchemist - Still watching Brotherhood and reading the manga, but I have all of the first anime and it's film, and Sacred Star of Milos was my favorite installment.

Brigadoon: Marin to Melan - A lesser known anime, but I love the characters and artstyle, and I own the whole series and it's two-volume pilot manga.

Spice and Wolf - no description needed

Neon Genesis Evangelion - Um... I just like it? Mainly the Rebuild films, though.

One Piece - I got started with a few chapters in an old Shounen Jump issue, and it just went from there. I even have one of the 3ds games.

One Punch Man - Need I say anything? I love the manga and anime equally.

Madoka Magica - Best Magical Girl anime EVER!

Hamtaro - Blast from the past. :)

Manga:

Trigun - Finished the manga before the anime. :)

Pokemon Adventures - The manga is so awesome, and honestly so much darker than the anime! It's honestly what I needed when it came to Pokemon.

Karakuri Douji Ultimo - The story has just the right amount of Stan Lee weirdness and giant robot battles to keep me enthralled in the series. Also, the designs of all of the Douji, good and evil, are so amazing!

Kingdom Hearts - I know that there aren't going to be any more manga issues after 358/2 days, but in some ways, I love the manga more than the games. It had so much more character development, and you could get to see the plot from the pov of characters other than Sora. Although, I still love the games with all my heart. :)

Video Games:

Steambot Chronicles - a little known game from Japan that has a steampunk, Studio Gibli feel to it.

Danganronpa - Started with the second game, and I'm ABSOLUTELY LOVING it so far! 8D Right now, I'm watching a play through for V3, and I just finished the fourth trial... ;-;

Kingdom Hearts - Already explained it.

Okami/Okami Den - Two of my favorite games from my childhood! I love the artstyle, graphics, characters, and ost. :)

Bayonetta - NEED I SAY ANYTHING?

Xenosaga - I used to watch my dad play it when I was little, and now I'm finally getting to play it for myself. It's one of my favorite games of all time, and it's the home of my first waifu. X3

ICO/Shadow of the Colossus - These games are absolutely stunning for their times! Yeah, the controls are a bit jankey, and Yorda's AI is weird, but the landscapes, character designs, and the Colossi are just stunning!

Transformers: Devastation - THIS GAME MAKES MY NERD HEART HAPPY! A G1 styled game with the graphics from Okami?! In all for that! 8D

Silent Hill: The Room - Okay, I actually like most of the Silent Hill games. I think almost all of them are quite nice, and I like the psychological horror aspect of the games. I just prefer "The Room" so far because of my personal experience with the first games, I like the story so far, and my dad(who is a silent Hill expert with nearly all of the games) suggested I try this one before playing the second, third, and the other games that come later in the series.

The Katamari Damacy series - I don't know what else to say besides that it's been around since my childhood, and it's been one of my favorite game series for a while now. :)

Other Shows/comics:

Gravity Falls - Need I say anything?

Criminal Minds - Not caught up with it, but I like watching it with my mom sometimes.

RWBY - MUST I SAY ANYTHING, THIS SHOW IS AMAZING SO FAR!!

Red v Blue - This is one of RoosterTeeth's older series, but it's one of their best. All of the characters are so wacky, weird, and diverse, it's amazing to watch. :)

Transformers - I've seen almost every series from G1 to the newest RID series(even the Japanese ones), and been loving it since childhood. :) I don't much care for Rescue Bots or the new RiD series though. It doesn't really live up to TFP's glory. Although, the IDW comics MORE than make up for that, ESPECIALLY the "More than Meets the Eye/Lost Light" series. :)

Sonic the hedgehog games/comics: I used to be really into the games and comics. I still play my copy of 06 for the glitches, and I still like reading through my Archie Comics issues sometimes. :)

[oldnintendonerd]

Pickup Post #5 - Sony Weeks II

Alright, I apologize to any hardcore Nintendo fans that are reading, if you follow me specifically for Nintendo content. However, this is ultimately a Game Hunting blog, and sometimes you do have to take the deals that come along. As you may have guessed from the title, this is another Sony find. Playstation 2 to be exact. Couldn’t pass it up. You’ll see why as we go through it. I’ll tell you how the deal transpired.

I peruse Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and LetGo regularly. I have been doing several searches every other day or so. Including but not limited to “GameCube”, “SNES”, “Super Nintendo”, “Wii”, and “Nintendo 64″. Of course just “Nintendo” as well. With the latest pickup of Gran Turismo and Hotshots Golf 3 I’ve thrown in “Playstation 2″ as well. I just wanted to get a feel for what they cost, and I have come to see that people, on average, want somewhere in the neighborhood of about $30 for the Fat model, and around $40 to $50 for the slims. This is generally with no games, and one controller. If you add games, memory cards or extra controllers, the prices go up from there.

A Yard Sale ad appeared in my search results for “Playstation 2″ on Facebook Marketplace the other day. I thought, that is odd, I didn’t search for yard sales, they must have a Playstation 2 listed in the listing for it to match. I read the description, and sure enough there it was. I was looking at this on a Tuesday, and the listing said “3 Days Ago”, which would have put it about the morning of the Sunday in the weekend before. So I figured the listing had to be for the upcoming weekend. Which means the swap meet reseller vultures hadn’t gotten a crack at it yet, I need to see what there is, let’s check pictures to see if they included any of the video games. You have no idea how many listings for Yard Sales will list video games, and then include 30 pictures of the stuff they are selling, but not even show the games. The one thing I want to see to gauge what they have, and they overlook it completely. This one though, had the pictures, so I could see a lot of what they had.

There’s the first one. Right off the bat my jaw hit the floor, TWO PS2 systems. The fat model, but still, two of them! The fact that they have two leads me to believe one of them might not work. Why else would they have two? What do you do when one breaks? You buy another one.

I see controllers sitting there too, three of them, and just from the pic I can tell it is two Dual Shock 2′s and one Dual Shock. They only want a buck a piece for the controllers too, which is a good sign. That is already a solid yard sale price for the controllers. At this point I laugh to myself for getting that Dual Shock from Goodwill last week for $4 by itself.

The pic is too small to read the price on the PS2s. I need to ask them how much those are to ascertain if I should try and get to this sale when they open.

Popped off a quick message asking what they were looking to get out of the PS2s. Half not expecting to even get a response. But, to my surprise, she replied pretty quickly. She said one PS2 had no power cord so they were looking for $8, and the other had the expansion on the back, and had all cords, so they had it at $10.

$18 for both?

That is less than most people are asking for just one, with no games and like, one controller. Throw in the controllers here and it’s $21. At this point I figure I might as well try to get both, to improve the odds of getting a working one. Just in case. Even the cost of both is less than most people are asking for even one. By almost half. So, no brainer.

Flipped back to the pictures to look at them further, maybe they have games for it too.

Looks like a stack of 10 or so on the back right hand side of that table. Just from this pic though I can’t really see titles, hmmm, let me zoom in, maybe...

Nope. Still just too grainy/blurry, I can’t see what they are. No matter, let me see if she would be willing to meet me before the sale and be willing to sell them before it starts this weekend. This is kind of a long shot, I’m sure she was not expecting to get a message about this, let alone be asked to sell something before the sale even starts.

I pop off another message: “Would you be opposed to selling them before the sale? Or at least one? I’m kind of starting a PS2 collection and this would be a perfect little jump start without breaking the bank. I will be too busy to come to the sale on Saturday.” She comes right back with “Well, our garage sale was last weekend so I have no problem selling them now.”

Wait. What?

Garage sale was last weekend?! They didn’t sell?! In this town where swap meet and flea market resellers are out in front of people’s houses an hour before the sale starts for video games? Even when the listing says no early birds?! Well, maybe that makes sense, if she only listed it on Facebook, and not on Craigslist, and listed it basically day of, since it was Sunday when she put it up...

No one saw it.

Good for me.

So she’s on board to sell them. I let her know I’m available to meet that same day around the lunch hour. She agrees, and asks if I want the games too. I said sure, depending on price and titles. Within 15 minutes she goes “Here are the games. We were looking for $1 each” and I had this on my screen:

Wow! a nice, high resolution picture where I can read all titles. I’m really liking this seller! So I start looking them up immediately on eBay to see what kind of value we have here. I am completely unfamiliar with the PS2 library of games. Not only is it HUGE, I know nothing about values. I start with the Kingdom Hearts games, since I recognize the title, and while not one I care to play, they go for about $20 as a pair shipped.

So about $15 in value there already. Good start. What else?

Dawn of Mana looked to be going anywhere from $13 shipped, to $20 shipped. So another solid $10 value there. Lets keep going...

Innocent Life, after looking this up it appears to be a Harvest Moon title, and is going for between $8 and $15 shipped. So another solid $10 value there. Already we are up to $35 in value and I still haven’t checked all the games. One more...

Steambot Chronicles. Never heard of this in my life.

Wait.

WHAT!?

FIFTY SIX DOLLARS?

Granted this is one of the highest ones, but this was a SHOCK. Some are $35 to $40 average. Pricecharting shows this one at $50 CIB. This auction was CIB and in great condition so it clearly went for more than the others, but at this point there was no way I wasn’t getting this deal. I immediately asked where I should be headed. Either an address, or a location if she would rather me not come to her house. She just gave me her address. I told her thank you and about when I would be there. I said I would take both systems, and all the games, $10 + $8 + $9 = $27, I asked if twenty five even would cover it. She said yes. I hit the road.

On the way she asks if I want the controllers too? No extra charge. I said sure.

This deal keeps getting better. I just bought a Dual Shock at Goodwill for $4 and thought it was a good deal and you want to give me THREE for free? Let me think about that one for about 0.0382 seconds. Yep, I’ll take them.

So I arrive, we exchange greetings, I give the stuff a quick once over, and check a couple of the more valuable games (Kingdom Hearts II, Steambot Chronicles and Innocent Life), yep all in there, complete and in good shape. I didn’t want to linger, she had everything stacked up neatly, and she said she was on maternity leave, so there was probably a sleeping baby somewhere. I gave her the $25 and she helped me out to the car with everything. I did inquire how it was they didn’t sell at the sale, and she said they only had two people show up. TWO. Ouch. As I guessed earlier, probably not advertised well. If she was on Craigslist I guarantee someone would have cleaned this out in four point two seconds.

So here it is now that I’ve picked it up and brought it home.

Now, after doing this for a couple three months, and getting a few finds, especially the one where Monkey ball 2 wouldn’t boot up, I’m used to there being bad news. I’ve come to expect something to be off with alost every deal, that’s why I look for prices this cheap. Buying like this gets you good deals, but you are also doing all the work, travelling to the seller, taking all the risk if something isn’t right. This one was only slightly disappointing, but probably because it was not unexpected. The PS2 on the left, the $10 one, doesn’t read discs. Not a single game would boot in it, even the absolutely flawless Gran Turismo 4 I got in the last post. It does turn on, controller works, I can manipulate the files on the memory card, just no disc action. This is not a huge surprise, I said that I suspected going in that there was a chance at least one didn’t work if they had two. The $8 one reads discs and plays fine, though I noticed a bit of a video issue, if I would wiggle or move the video cable, the picture would scramble and jump on the TV screen. I tried the second cable and it did the same thing. So I tried the other PS2. Same issue. I find it highly unlikely that both PS2s have the same issue, but it also seems just as unlikely that both cables have the same issue. I do hope it is just the cables.

I will probably order a component cable for one of them since I do intend to keep one, and try it again. It is only about $6 or $7. Hopefully the problem will go away with a new cable. I’ll update on that later when I have a chance to try it.

One of the Dual Shock 2 controllers has a little chunk of the rubber missing from the start button. Minor issue.

Finally, ATV Offroad Fury, is actually a Rugrats game instead. The funny thing is, Rugrats is worth more disc only, than ATV Offroad Fury complete. HA! Battlefront II and Dawn of Mana are also not complete, they are missing manuals. That devalues Dawn of Mana slightly, yes, but at least Steambot is complete, and boy is it ever complete. It is near mint condition. I’m hoping this one will fetch near $50 or more like the other very good condition one did.

In any case, I’m still very happy with the find, down to $25 from the asking price of $30, and there is a lot more value than that in this find. Especially with just one game at $40+ on eBay right now. I estimate this find at

$30 for PS2 Fat model with cables and one controller, another $10 each for the two additional controllers. Another $3 or so for the Memory Card. Add in a conservative $35 for Steambot, and another $25 total for Kingdom Hearts and Innocent Life. That comes to $103. I’ll throw $5 on the non working PS2 and maybe $10 total for the rest of the games as a lot. Grand total $118 for $25.

Winning. 

As I mentioned before, I do plan on keeping at least one of the PS2s. Probably with a component cable. I dug up an old PATA hard drive that’s 200GB, and will see if I can hack one of these things to load ISO files. Would be cool to have a permanent PS2 in the collection that can store my games without needing to keep swapping them out over and over.

I do plan on looking at the one that won’t read, it could be fixable, who knows.

Official business:

$54.36 - $25 = $29.36

$29.36 game hunting money remaining. I will be selling something soon, probably my old copy of PaRappa the Rapper.

I was never a big fan, and now that I have a PS2 and it tested good, I can sell it as working, instead of untested.

I will be posting the results of the tinkering on the non-working one as soon as I know whats up with it and if it can be resurrected.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. Talk to you all soon.

2017.06.18

#ps2 #playstation2 #sony #playstation #steambot #chronicles #steambotchronicles #steambot chronicles #kingdom hearts