fuck you microsoft, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

preach it.

Lighting strikes twice

Red Ring of Death. Again.

This time around, they have a fancy new wizard to order the repair online...Except they keep saying my email address is invalid...Except it seems perfectly valid every time they want to spam me, or send me point purchase receipts...

I get them on the phone and oh and I'm out of warrantee. Except how does the warrantee apply when it's the REPLACEMENT that broke?

And smooth jazz? seriously?

The Saboteur: un examen dans le haïku

no, seriously
you quitting nazi bitches
that explains Russia.



in your hearts and minds
I'm blowing up random things
go insurgency

Borderlands: my fortress of solitude

The vast and vacant steppes of Borderland were meant to be traversed in a team of merry misanthropes, but it’s a trek I opted to take alone.

I don’t play well with others, you see. Either they’re too worthless to waste time on, out of my league, or cheating.

...It was the first time in a half hour that they'd found the need for a sniper rifle, but Jack just didn't care...

And so I walked alone. Just me and my 14 firearms. Life was simple, uncomplicated, cool, without those niggling shades of gray. There were only two kinds of people in the world- those that wanted to kill me, and those that wanted me to do things for them. At times it could be exhausting, but I moved quite quickly through it, unencumbered as I was.

you know, that gun actually has an auto-lock feature, which I'd be happy to engage if you'd GET THE FUCK OUT!

I never got lonely, so much as bored. One can only accumulate so much wealth and power before realizing it amounts to just that: accumulation. The shiny green gun shoots acid instead of electricity, but on the whole it’s not dissimilar from the shiny blue gun. It doesn’t much matter whether your grenades bounce, stick, or bide their time, because in the end they all blow up.

Sigh...what does it all mean?

Such ennui causes one to speed instead of savor, to hearken to the end in hopes of a better book. But believe me, it does not come. The treasures we seek are real, oh yes, but worth not half as much whence finally held, their true value in the seeking. Traveling alone is better than traveling in bad company, but if the trip’s no fun, then the destination isn’t worth visiting.

Operation Darkness: Springtime for Hitler

Winston Churchill, during the last war worth fighting, said "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." He was speaking, of course, about werewolves.

I spent nearly 30 hours of my life on this ridiculous game. I would have spent more, but failed to check the pockets on enough corpses to qualify for the bonus levels. I wish I had, but can't really say why...

heil myself...heil to me...

Operation Darkness: work in progress

I recently went down a rabbit hole of sorts, eschewing the clarified butter satisfaction of Call of Duty 4's single player campaign for a full out assault on reason with Operation Darkness. I thought I was going to wrap it up this weekend and figure out a way to explain myself, but the gods laugh when we make plans. So does that prick Hitler. More to come. - Sir Cucumber


Doomeru: so yeah
indian place by us opens next week

Sir Cucumber: sw3333t

Doomeru: i won mass effect 2
playing bioshock 2 now
then metro 2033
got some psp games...

Sir Cucumber: i got to hitler
gang raped him with two werewolves.
but he cheated.
fucking hitler.

Doomeru: hitler, cheating? impossible
so, did he delete ur save games?

Sir Cucumber: he totally gave himself a second life, and summoned a bunch of fucking dragons
after making me trudge through 3 levels in berlin without a re-up
and also whining like a bitch.

Doomeru: was he talking about Eva?

Sir Cucumber: mostly just his leiben

Doomeru: did he have any doods with arms sticking out of their tummies with pistols?

Sir Cucumber: nah just a couple faggot ass officers
one of them would do his spell by saluting you
which really didn't make much sense to me.

Doomeru: nazis never make any sense

Sir Cucumber: hitler had a big fist spell. it was deep.

Doomeru: so he fisted u…

Sir Cucumber: he was unfazed by a bunch of werewolves punching him in the face.
that's what werewolves do most effectively, you know. punch people in the face.

Doomeru: that is true
Didja get Winterbottom yet?

Sir Cucumber: i have gotten nothing until i finish this fucking game

Doomeru: So what do you play when u poop?

Street Fighter IV: hate the player, not the game...

I feel profoundly old. Not because I just had a birthday and 30 is on to me like a Dahaka, but because Doomeru bought me a copy of Street Fighter IV, and I made the mistake of playing it.

I didn't play Street Fighter III. I didn't play Street Fighter Alpha, or Super Turbo Douchebag Fighter 20x6. I played Street Fighter fucking II at Lou's Mini Putt-Putt and drew the line at ice blue Ryu. I knew how run the cabinet back in my day. At least I thought I did, and there was no one around in Chester, NJ to tell me otherwise.

apparently i need to learn some new tricks...

Like back on the fencing team in 7th grade, Street Fighter II was about timing, and distance. It was about patience, and poise, and not flinching first.

And so is Street Fighter IV. But things are more complicated these days. Between the super combos and the ultra combos and the and super cancels and focus attacks and ex focuses and throw escapes and technical reversals, I can't seem to see where I stand until I'm lying on my back. It's like the world when and got itself in a big damn hurry.

okay, this isn't fun anymore.

I'm not saying that change is bad, or that we used to have it better. This just isn't what I signed up for. I'm tired of being frustrated all the time. I've decided not to stay. I doubt they'll kick up any fuss. Not for an old kook like me.

Tomorrow I'll go back to work, banging my head against a wall of newspaper salespeople who refuse to learn about this thing we call the Internet, and maybe, just maybe, I'll have a shred more empathy for them. I am getting old, after all.

Grand Theft Auto IV: for mature audiences only

I read a book in high school called “The Assistant,” which would have long since faded from memory if Mr. Sowder hadn’t answered my critique that it was interminably boring by blurting out “it’s supposed to be!” So I respect what Rockstar was trying to do in Grand Theft Auto IV by replacing sports cars with fishtailing clunkers and forcing me to drop everything at a moment’s notice not for a gang war, but a bowling match.

What's that? You care about me and want to spend supportive, quality time together? Gee, I can't wait.

Yes, it does piss me off that refusing to waste time and money at the strip club with one obnoxious prick or another prevents me from reaping the intangible benefits of “friendship,” and that if I should actually try to get into the spirit of chumminess by jumping on stage to dance or pointing my gun at someone we’ll get kicked out of the establishment, but the only emails I get these days are from Barack Obama, and no one's ever paid a dime to see my song and dance.

how about we quit this game and go shoot someone?

Yes, I hate how chicks comment on me wearing the same outfit for two dates in a row and then don’t say a word about me picking them up in an ice cream truck, but women are weird like that. I’m furious every time I have to stop and pay a toll, until I remember that I’ve been meaning to get an EZ-PASS for the last 428 commutes to Easton. And it really irks me how hard it is to find a gun in Hove Beach, but I’ve been trying to get my hands on one in Jersey City for years.

Yes. I'm your cousin. I care about you and your problems...

Better bloggers have already reviewed Rockstar’s choice for realism, as GTA IV compares with its predecessors and the Saints Row series. It was a choice, and in an industry on autopilot I’ll respect any. My beef is where the realism starts to unravel:

Like any currency-based video game, anyone remotely competent ends up with more money than they ought to. And knowing that the more one keeps people safe the more they need safekeeping, one soon moves on up to a deluxe East Side safehouse, closer to the job. Eventually one finds themselves too far removed and without time for family and friends; Eventually without interest. People express concern, but eventually read the writing on the wall and no longer call. The payoff keeps getting bigger; the apartments too, and you slowly stop taking pleasure in the simple things like street preachers and hot dogs, a good drunk, and driving. Your phone’s address book fills up with acquaintances. Each mission bleeds into the next and it’s hard to remember where this started and how it ended up here. You find yourself alone with nothing but the work, and a lot of meaningless achievement points.

…So much for realism, right?

Saints Row 2: Rabbi Gatstein, reformed

Incarceration unsettles even the best of men. Rabbi Gatstein was no exception. Gatstein's time in a locked-down coma following the burning boat-blast betrayal by his gang-banging brethren left him with nothing to do but ponder all the horrible things he'd done. And like a shark forced to stop swimming, with no choice but to face the bloody facts of his existence...well let's just say the guy who came out wasn't the same that went in.

I can't find the original link for this video's inspiration, so here's an embed:

Kane and Lynch Hate You.

In case you can't read that text it says:

"Click and hold RS and push LS DOWNWARDS twice
to give a secondary weapon to Lynch."

Is there anything else that needs to be said?

Fable II: A boy's first sandbox

RPtheOG is back again like Are You Randy, people, and if you don't like it you can write something your damn self or find my fucking brother. Now, OG is a linear thinker, and not much for expressing himself in a creative fashion- what you might call a "multiplayer FPS fan." So while I myself was grossly underwhelmed by the first Fable and think that if Peter Molyneux can't give me a new Theme Hospital he can go fuck himself, I hope OG's reaction to Fable II might make us all think back on our first kiss in the sandbox...

I didn’t think farting on small children to impress the locals seemed at all worthwhile as playing COD with my clan, but last night I was at it until 2:30. If I didn’t have to work today I would have kept it up longer – maybe even all night. I spent over 30 minutes alone chopping wood. I wandered into some tavern and found myself sucked in for another half hour gambling away the money I’d earned chopping wood. It could have only been more enjoyable if they’d let me get drunk. I still haven’t banged my first wench, but I did buy condoms already as I’d rather be safe than sorry.

For all its open-endedness, the game is actually very direct. Tasks are easy to follow and understand. As opposed to that train wreck of a game Two Worlds, where you’d have no clue where you are going or what to do, a trail of gold dust leads you through your missions.

I’m only 8 hours into it, but so far I’m excited to go home and continue farting and gambl- er, my quest.


That's it! Or at least that's all I could salvage of OG's post off the cutting room floor. Hopefully he'll keep us updated on his fantastical flatulent journey...

Vampire Rain: sneaking the thin line between profound and absurd

I seldom have anything nice to say about the games I play, and realize that to a casual observer it would seem I should find a new hobby. But all of you know better. A video game is like pizza- even when it's bad it's good. Or is that sex? Whatever. The point is that there are gems buried in all the shit we play; gems buried in all the shit we do. Sometimes it just takes some digging to find them. That, and a healthy appetite for shit.

Take Vampire Rain, for instance. No, seriously:

Special thanks to kn0thing for the Don LaFontaine impressions. Now there was a man with a healthy appetite for shit...

Happy Valentines Day!

Passion. Keep the passion alive, people.

Two Worlds - neither any fun

From the desk of RPtheOG...

I am a huge RPG adventure gamer fan. I love Oblivion, have played Zork, Diablo and my favorite growing up was the Ultima catalog of games. So, I was excited when Two Worlds came out. It really looked like a great game at first – regardless of the lackluster reviews. But with so many other titles on my shelf I never pulled the trigger. So, a more than a year later this game has now been sitting on my shelf for around six months and I finally got around to unwrapping it. So, lets get on to the game:

“The world changed when Aziraal, the god of war, was slain in the huge battle long ago…blahblahblah hordes of Orcs…blahblahblah location of Aziraal's tomb is still unknown…blahblahblah fragile peace between the races and the hordes…blahblahblah mining expedition discovered an ancient temple…blahblahblah real danger lies somewhere else…”

I only played Two Worlds for two days, but boy was it a chore. From the beginning all I can say is bad execution. This game was flawed in so many ways I don’t even know where to begin. I have customized the look of my character two or three times but once the game starts, the guy pretty much looks the same. When running, you don’t even need to continue pointing- the character will run for you, even if u put the controller down and leave the room. I am just used to having better control of characters in games and unsure why this functionality was there at all. I am glad to see that more developers are not using that functionality.

Fighting: Now, we are not even talking about hard fought battles against Ogres, we are starting with random animal. Man with sword and magical fire balls against wolves and the occasional bear. In a fight with three wolves I’d get killed 3-4 times without even killing one. The Black Bear, I was unable to slay, but now that my character is Level 5, I might do a little better. Why should slaughtering defenseless animals be so damn hard? It’s sort of like Sir Cucumber and I in a cage match- we all know the suit would get worked over like a slab of beef and I’d walk out with a big ass smile on my face, so why bother?

Eeek! Wolf! Get it away get it away!

Now, I have played many hours of Oblivion and they built the game right. You have free range of the map and endless tasks and adventures to get involved with. They are easy to follow but difficult to complete. You put in your time and work and the game and adventures continue. But Two Worlds I just could not fathom.

I admit that as my character built up his strength I was able to kill the wolves and some other midget adversaries, but the minute I stepped up to the big boys, I’d get swooned in one strike. This game just couldn’t keep me. Normally I am drawn into a good video game and story line. This game is kept playing with the hope that it would soon improve, but it never did. I know a few people who have played and enjoyed the game so, I am curious as to what kind of feedback I’ll get on this, but overall I would tell anyone when asked – DO NOT BUY. Rent first and see if this is your speed, maybe your experience will be better than mine. Now, its back to Call of Duty: World at War and Fable II (which I need to buy).

Yeah...right...

The State of the 360: Point, Counterpoint...

Editors note: RPtheOG from Accounting is back, baby, and the views expressed in his posts by do not necessarily reflect that of the Resigned Gamer Brothers. In fact, we think he's got magic ponies flying out his gawping (and we do mean with a W) asshole and remember when we couldn't buy a bad game if we tried compared with today having to crawl on our hands and knees upon GameStop's mildewy carpet in the most-often futile hope of finding a title we'd consider more than mediocre...That and you can't trust anyone who plays Madden. But talk amongst yourselves.


Back in the days of Pong and the Atari 2600, it was hit or miss with new titles. There was no Internet to get the down low on new releases, no IGN, no GameSpot, no GameFaq, and word of mouth only went so far. Buying a video game was a crapshoot and personally, I crapped out more often than not.

Things got better when Nintendo and Sega jumped into my world, but nothing compares to the choices and the quality of games that we have today.

When a game gets bad reviews these days it normally leads to being discounted where in the past all Atari games were a flat $50 and most blew. Now addicts like ourselves can sample games like The Club or Beowolf at a deep discount, or just download the demo. And don’t even get me started on the secondary markets created thanks to Ebay and GameStop and other places that give fair value for trades- this just frees up more cheddar for more games.

So, why am I spending time putting this together? Honestly, it’s to say thanks for that state of the gaming world. I have so many choices right now that I find myself drowning in titles. I have been playing Call of Duty: World at War since release date (Shout out to all my clan members (S1W)’s kid). But, there are so many great titles out there that I am torn and had to try some of them out. BIOSHOCK has been sitting on my shelf for the past six months (along with The Darkness, Call of Duty 2, Two Worlds, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and more), so I finally took a few weeks off from COD to play it, complete it and then Ebay it. I'm late to the party, I know, but what a hair-raising experience that was!

Now I am back to COD rotating in a little Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as much as I can.

I have a game shopping list that reads as follows:
1.) Fable II
2.) Fallout 3
3.) Dead or Alive 4
4.) Far Cry 2
5.) UFC Unleashed
6.) NCAA Football 2010
7.) Madden 2010

So I’m like WTF how am I going to do this? Alright, the UFC isn’t on sale for a few months, but I have 10 games still wrapped at home, I am playing two right now and have seven more MUST buys. Well, Far Cry 2 might be a rental, along with Madden and NCAA…But as you can see, this is a gaming nightmare and dream come true at the same time. There are more games that I want to play than I have time to dedicate to them.

Generally I play for 2-3 hours nightly, but like most of you I’ve been known to get lost in 360 World and be up until 5am. This is usually a bad thing since I am normally up and in the gym by 6:15. Can you say screwed day?

So, I have a pile of games that I won’t touch because the newer titles are greater. In addition, I really would be happy just playing 360 Hardcore Team Deathmatches with my fellow S1W’s every night.

Simple Solution: without getting fired, Ship my wife and son off to Florida for a week. Take a vacation from work and the gym. Unplug the phone- Wait, I’ll need to order pizza and Chinese, so the phone has to work, but can ONLY be used for outgoing calls. I’ll just turn the ringer off. Next I’ll pull the shades down like in the casinos so time seems to stand still. Showers are optional. Thoughts?

The Club: ur doin it wrong!

I work for a company that runs local newspaper sites around the country, and nearly half our visitors still use IE 6. We design accordingly. Seventy percent of our visitors come from search engines, almost most of which persist in going to Google and literally entering our URLs in the search box. We hate it, but know better than to try changing their bad behavior- only government is that dumb.




Going along to get along, and giving people what they want is a time-honored tradition amongst all forms of media, the video game industry not excluded. And it's not because we're a bunch of cowards- it's because it works.

Which is why titles like The Club don't come along every day. Albeit an unfinished product, The Club innovatively challenges gamers by forcing them to play the done-to-death 3rd person shooter in a completely non-intuitive, often frustrating manner. Like a Tolstoy or Kingsley Amis novel, The Club must be played for hours before it has any hope of being understood, much less enjoyed.




As each event in The Club's killing olympics is based on score, and, above all, score is based on a combo multiplier that decreases increasingly faster as it grows, you must continue fragging without hesitation, but also space out the kills just enough to buoy the multiplier across distances and time trials.

In gameplay terms, this means actively unlearning everything you know about the shooter genre: instead of taking cover, you should take the hit. Instead of searching for secrets, you should search for the exit. Don't walk, or sneak, or crawl or jump or lean. Run. If you're not running, you should be sprinting. Don't reload between firefights- if you have time for that you're not getting in enough firefights. Shoot everyone that moves, but remember not to shoot them all at once.




What often makes the difference between first and second place in an event is memorizing the location of combo-boost skulls hidden throughout the level, disciplining yourself not to blast them until the right moment, and recognizing when that moment is. You'll get a certain number of "attempts" in each event, and should expect to use most if not all of them, even if you can make it through on the first try. Believe me, the satisfaction of deriving and honing a routine, and then flawlessly executing it like some kind of dusted figure skater is worth the repetition.

In later stages you'll balance the use of attempts for practice against hedging your bets on the likelihood you'll be killed, which is especially fun five events into a tournament and struggling to claw your way past second place. Do you play it safe and go for the silver, or risk losing your last attempt and thus the entire tournament?




Sure they cut corners. The Club lacks sufficient difference between events and characters. It squanders the opportunity to create rewarding and succinct tournament storylines, like Tekken or Twisted Metal. Characters never interact or directly compete with each other, and you can't punch people. But this could all be rectified with a sequel, and The Club truly deserves one.

If you haven't expanded your horizons for mindless killing yet, I recommend you do so.

Saints Row: Rabbi Gatstein Reminisces

Doomeru took an obsessive liking to my Saints Row character, Rabbi Gatstein, so I prepared a retrospective slideshow from the 'hood for his personal amusement.

Me and the Rebbe went through a lot together before his dubious demise in a fiery boat explosion, and things just haven't been the same without him. I hope watching this explains why:

Thanks to "Two Live Jews" for the song.

Saints Row: Bless me father, for I have sinned

Back when Doomeru brought home his first 360 I swore the second it became my hand-me-down I'd play Saints Row end-to-end with our personalized BD Wong character...Right after I finished playing Condemned...

Oh hello there! Perhaps you'd like to join our multicultural drug-running judeo-christian street gang?

But what started as a joke has led to my confession: Chewing through this GTA-knockoff was actually as satisfying as movie-buttered popcorn, and I left it behind like an explosive evacuation of last night's comfort food washed down with liquid therapy; feeling lighter, with a spring in my step.

Sure, the radio stations suck and the city is only marginally more interesting than a deserted South American island, but the controls are so smooth! And in the unlikely event that you die mid-mission, or in the more likely event that the victory conditions of your mission don't, you know, load, then you can continue from the beginning without having to drive back to it. You don't even have to kill yourself to cue the restart!

Move over, Meyer Lansky. Rabbi Gatstein's in town.

If I've gone easy on this game it's surely a testament to lowered expectations. Not encountering the bugs documented so elegantly by others, I could only shrug at the conceit used to stretch out Saints Row's hours:

You can only take plot-related missions after earning enough respect, which is gained by repeatedly performing menial tasks such as babysitting drug dealers, chauffeuring hookers, and aimless killing sprees. Earned respect is then expended on accepting a real job, and upon it's successful completion, said respect is lost. What is this, Office Space?

Yo bitch, where my stapler at?

F.E.A.R.: Reading is fundamental. Also efficient.

I don't read poetry, biographies, or non-fiction essays. I skip forewards, and afterwords, and notes about the type. I'll reach for my DS before a New Yorker or Max's copy of Lucky Jim on any given commute, but that doesn't make me illiterate.

Reading may not be rumble or motion-compatible, multiplayer-enabled in any traditional sense of the word, and you don't even earn achievement points from it, but it remains the fastest way I know to assimilate and comprehend complex strings of data. Except Excel, of course.

Bottom line is I can read quicker than listen, and the quicker I hear what you have to say the quicker I get back to killing people. Bioshock understood this. Why don't you?

okay you get a point for the word "assfuck."
That brings your grand total to...one.

Perhaps listening to a constant string of answering machines in the dark sounded like a good idea on paper, but someone in that brainstorm should have remembered that usually, when video games expect you to put down the controller and, you know, watch, they give you something to look at. So until you've merged FDR's fireside chats with Seaman or made an FPS of Lake Wobegon, lets have some text, okay?

F.E.A.R.: I might be scared if I weren't so fucking confused

Okay, so it turns out that the other crazy dude was my crazy dude's brother and our crank ho mother was fifteen when she gave birth to us in some defense contractor's haunted genetics lab before getting locked up, naked, in an observation chamber to gnaw on chicken bones for the next twenty-odd years while her estranged sons pursued careers in civil service.

One guy within the company felt the aforementioned "project" could bring about unfavorable media coverage if made public, or perhaps cause one of the crazy dudes to take telepathic control of the company's highly-trained clone army in search of vengeance, so he called about 27 of his closest work associates to express his concerns. Unfortunately they'd all left work early to enjoy the long Labor Day weekend and didn't get the message. But, fortunately, this also caused the building to be deserted of innocent bystanders when crazy evil dude's clone army stormed it that Monday...all except for some frigid ladder-climbing-bitch-with-no-life-outside-her-career and a sys-ops coordinator who was taking advantage of the company's T3 connection to play World of Warcraft.

Tell me to read the fucking manual again. Go on. See what happens.

I was a little confused about F.E.A.R.'s storyline at first, but the game's final stages set me straight, thanks to a string of well-placed answering machines and non-password protected laptops with very impressive battery life. Taken all together, it actually made for an interesting premise. I just hesitate to say whether 15 minutes of story-related dialogue crammed into the end of a game can be called a "plot."