Author Archives: Judd

Gel Blasters in WA

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I came in with love for the sport and passion for the community.

Straightaway saw Kiron being a cunt and Gilbert Grant being a crazy cunt.  I too, wondered what Nhat did.  It would be nearly a year before he told me the story, start to finish.  All up, he did nothing to GG, nothing at all.

Bounced along happily, banning the crazy cunts, but Zach was always hard to control.

Then it all blew up.  He’s crazy, and after all we did for him.  He’s an actual sociopath.  Just like Gilbert.

Now this ban.  The Ausgel Podcast was the last straw.  Putting some wankstain like Tyler Lynch on there like he’s important.  Dan, Peter, Chris, these Titans of Industry, all talking about how they’re going to initiate legalities against the ban.

We’ve never heard from ANY of them.  NONE of them have ever engaged me in conversation, social media or otherwise, though I’ve reached out to each and every one of them.

This industry, this community, deserves what it gets.

Me, Nhat… Dan.  My wife.  We’ve all put in WAY MORE than we’ve ever gotten out.  What we’ve gotten out instead is abused.  Slandered.  Shit on.  Dan’s gotten it less because he’s been around less, but he’s gotten way more abuse than he’s ever deserved.

I’m sick of it.  Sick of it all.  After all I’ve done, the good energy that I’ve brought and the good I tried to do.

This “community” can go fuck itself.

Maybe this’ll be different.

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I had sent word to my dad to let him know when I’d be coming home for a visit after one of my earlier years of college, and I hadn’t heard back from him for several days. While never one for prompt correspondence, it was slightly unusual. But unlike other times when he’d explain his absence with a two-part summation involving an activity and location like “ice climbing” and “Mount Rainier” or “kayaking” and “Bighorn River” this time he simply said that he was sorry he hadn’t gotten back to me because he’d been “out of town for Sibyl’s funeral.”

That was how he told me my grandmother, his mother, was dead.

The years showed that this was neither out of the norm of the level I was involved nor the worst way he could deliver news, so it’s actually a perfect example.

Now I’m actually reeling, completely unprepared emotionally for what I’m feeling, in reading actual messages from the former family. I’m so out of the loop I had to ask my son who this person was with the cool name only to find out it’s my wife’s youngest brother, my boy’s own uncle. It sounds for all the world, for the first time, that someone out there that shares her blood is willing to set aside any and all of the ridiculous bullshit that’s kept them apart, for the sake of coming together.

And I don’t know how to feel about that.

That’s not actually true. I know how I feel about that. I’m elated. Overjoyed. Buoyed. Hopeful.

But those are all incredibly dangerous emotions when you’re already weakened, beaten down. Vulnerable.

Her grandmother passed on Sunday. How we found out is too pitarded and inane to let only these words at, so I’m foregoing that part. We found out and it wasn’t directed towards us, ’nuff said.

Now Uncle CoolName tells my son that my wife’s auntie, long-estranged for reasons no doubt as stupid as ours, died the Thursday before. Cancer.

And I had one of those instant thoughts, the kind that make you anxious that they’re inappropriate or weird or wrong. My first thought was, “Did Nan know? Somehow, through her dementia, did it make it in that her youngest daughter was dead? Did that cause a ripple effect that eventually moved her on as well?”

Suffice to say that anytime in your late 90’s is a perfect acceptable, needs no explanation, time to pass on. But still. The thought was there.

And in this, the time afterward, where we’re floating and stuck and forgotten and neither she nor I nor our children have ANY FUCKING IDEA what it was that we did that was so awful, so despicable, so unforgivable, that we were simply excised from the entire family. In this time, I wonder to myself, what comes next?

Where do we go from here?

The truth is probably that people that have been shitty are still going to be shitty, and people that were neutral or ineffectual or fence-sitting are probably going to still be like that too. No one has really changed, nor will they. They were what they were and they are what they are, and maybe it’s our foolish egos that keep wondering what it is about US that makes these people be this way.

I mean, there’s nothing in any way to suggest in my life that I wouldn’t want to know about my Grammy passing on, yet my father simply didn’t think of that. Maybe it’s something similar with people that have never considered even the smallest of things, like the fact that everyone in the entire family knew who Nan’s miniatures were meant to go to rightfully.

Maybe all these things just never occur to them. And here we are wondering what it is about us that’s gotten us here. Maybe the truth is: Nothing. This is just who they are. This is just who we are.

Maybe if we’re all better at accepting that, moving forward into this, the time after The Great Nonsense, we’ll do better at doing it together.

Fear.

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The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
– Elbert Hubbard

This.

This is me.

When I was younger, a boy growing up in rural Montana, I had little to no real joy.  I simply existed, in fear, from one day to the next.  I had little to look forward to and little to enjoy, particularly with anyone else.

I still live in fear.  Fear of not just making a mistake (or many) but also fear of the unknown and unforeseen Bad Luck.  It’s hit before and there’s no reason to think it won’t hit again.  Despite my inner belief that fear and anxiety draw negativities towards them with the same prevalence that joy and positivity attract good things, I sometimes can’t shake the worry, the fear.

I’ve never played to win, really, only playing Not To Lose.  It’s a shitty way to do this Life thing.

The first time I ever actually played to win, throwing myself completely into something, was hockey.  Hell, for a long time that was the only thing.

Then I met her.  And I didn’t just throw myself, I cascaded headlong into the abyss.  I rocketed towards her with everything I had and I’ve never looked back.

No.  Not once.  Not ever.

And it’s been hard.  And it’s been miserable at times.  It’s been a constant barrage of shit at times.

And I’ve never looked back.

Sure, there’s been fear.  But it’s the same silly fear that is simply nameless, faceless anxiety that sits in the back of your brain and says ridiculous things.  Like the ghost of Elvis in the bathroom mirror, taunting you while you rinse your face, it’s back there.

But it’s not present, front and centre, and she is.

And THEY are.  Four of ’em.

The fear is there with them especially, but the joy is louder.  The joy is there and even though there are times that I have to dig it out with a pickaxe, I can find it.

I frequently tell them that I know I’ve made mistakes and I’ll make many more.  So will they.  Living in fear of them is, in and of itself, a mistake.  Let’s just live.  Find some joy.

Without fear.

Assassin’s Creed: Rogue

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ACRO_hero

Rating: 3 of 5 stars.  Don’t avoid it, but don’t kill your pets to get it.

3star

I’ll admit that I struggled to get through Assassin’s Creed III.  At first, that is.  Once the story really picked up and got rolling I was in love and I don’t give a shit what all the critics say, that was one brilliant game.

Because I never buy games new and will happily wait a few months to get them for 25% of the price pre-owned from EB Games I happened to get AC III and Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag at around the same time, making me labour through both.

Then, by the time it even occurred to me that yet another Assassin’s Creed game had come out (Rogue) we were already trying to save up for a PS4 so I knew I couldn’t swing it.  But, fortune smiled upon us and a huge tax return meant we could not only afford a PS4 but I could get Assassin’s Creed: Rogue too.  Well, taxes, and the fact that we traded nearly every other PS3 game we had.

Setting – Really?  Colonial America AGAIN?

I won’t bore you with details that you can get anywhere else.  You’re Shay Cormac and an assassin and nearly everything about the game is identical to AC III and Black Flag, with some of the best bits from the two included (and dropped) and some of the worst bits dropped too (thank dog).

I LOVED Shay the hotheaded Irish boy, running about killing people and having his little witty repartee with that bitch of a Frenchman, Chevalier.  Liam is brilliant as the older brother/best friend/role model guy and Hope is a sexy love interest.  Achilles is a proper assassin now, mentor of the Colonial Assassin’s and your boss.  Weird seeing him younger and wearing Connor’s robes (which, of course, he’ll give Connor in about 20-30 years) but cool I suppose.

But then they all turn into cunts.

The Assassin’s are so hell-bent on getting to these precursor sites and fucking with the artifacts there that they’ll happily level Haiti and Lisbon in the process.  Shay gets rightfully pissed when he nearly flattens Lisbon and nearly gets killed in the process and Achilles doesn’t give a rat’s ass.  So Shay steals the manuscript that helps them figure out where this shit is and makes a run for it.  The Assassin Brotherhood try to kill him (naturally, because talking to him would be too reasonable) and end up shooting him in the side and off a cliff.

Shay wakes up, gets healed up by some weirdly helpful folks.  Seriously, they’re like serious Christians or something in how much help they offer and how readily they accept the wounded Irishman.  He gets swept up in killing more bad guys (mutual to the Templars and Assassins, of course) and then starts running errands for the British Army and assorted Men of Power.

Betrayed by his mentor, who was probably reeling from the sudden deaths of his wife and son (the original Connor, if you’ve ever checked out the graves at the Homestead) and his role model/best friend Liam, Shay’s clearly got some Daddy Issues and is ready to lapdog for whomever is around.

Well first it’s a colonel or some shit from the army and such and then it’s… ta-dah!  Haytham Kenway.

"I am no a cunt!" "I'll think you'll find you are."

“I am not a cunt!”
“I’ll think you’ll find you are.”

Ah Haytham.  I loved him, then I hated him, then I loved him, then I hated him again.  It fluctuated.  But I always, ALWAYS, feared him.

He’s fearsome and awesome and lends that unique cuntiness brutality to the Templars that probably should have made Shay at least say SOMETHING about their methods.  He’s still riddled with Daddy Issues though and only says something in the final scene.

Which, [spoiler alert], fucking rocked.  Pure Haytham at his best.

Best Bits

A familiar control scheme, landscape, setting and gameplay.  It was good to pretty much know what was up and how to do it all from the get-go.  Shay’s a pretty good character and it’s a colourful and interesting cast of characters and their interactions that make this good from the outset.

Loved changing outfits easily and that cold water now damages you so you have to swim and be more strategic in how you do things.  Loved the fighting dynamics, again, and the weapon upgrades weren’t bad either.

They dropped the underwater thing from Black Flag, which didn’t really break my heart, and kept some of the best boating bits including blasting icebergs and North Atlantic shit.

They dropped the lameass hunting bullshit from AC III/Black Flag too, I think.  Maybe I just didn’t play that part at all because I hated it.

Worst Bits

The story was good with the betrayal and all and Shay is a compelling character but I didn’t fall in love with him the way I do other assassins.  YES, even Connor.  Shay was a hot-headed idealist that was trying to save the world.  Sure, he stayed that way, but I didn’t like how easily he became the Templar lapdog.

They got rid of horses?!?  Fark.  They also have fuck all for Side Missions and the story aside from the betrayal and all was only vaguely interesting.  A little more revenge thrown in would’ve rocked and a whole bunch more rebelliousness for the Templars too (not just Assassins) instead of “Oh, I guess I’ll have to kill Adewale because Haytham said so… SIGH”.  That shit was fucking lame as hell and I’m heaps pissed they killed Ade.

Haytham hates his father?!?

Worse still was the dialoge between Haytham and Ade where Haytham acts as if his father was a total fuck.  If Ubisoft had gone ahead and read their own fucking books, like Assassin’s Creed: Forsaken, which is written as a journal of Haytham Kenway, then they’d know Haytham worshipped his father and spent his life seeking revenge for his death.

Re-used gameplay maybe, re-using a game’s location and time period? Meh.

K, I’m happy enough that they kept many well-liked features from AC: III and AC: Black Flag and ditched some of the bleah that folks didn’t like in those games.  Ubisoft proved with Ezio that they could learn from shit they got wrong.

But I believe they were totally mailing it in by giving us the American Colonial Times as a setting again.  Particularly when that history had been done and dusted.  They really should’ve given us either another time period or location and this feels like a complete cop-out.

Badly-handled but good characters.

Anyway, Shay had HEAPS of potential but ended up lukewarm overall.  A poorly-done story for the team-switching Mick.  The Assassins too-easily try to kill him and he too-easily goes back and DOES kill them.  Nobody seems interested, at all, in trying to do anything right, including our hero.

Awesome Surprise of Awesome

[Actual Spoiler Alert]

Shay is the one that kills Arno’s father.  Holy.  Shit.

Conveniently enough, I had actually picked up AC: Unity (from trading more games, heh) and had just started it, so the entire setting and all that shit worked in nearly perfectly.

I still don’t know what to think about that though.  I mean, damn.

Also, Fuck Abstergo

Know how earlier I mentioned how good Ubisoft is at fixing their mistakes.  They’ve steadily decreased the whole Immersion-Exploding bullshit of getting your first-person self in and out of the Animus, but it’s still there and it still sucks sweaty bilge balls.

If you’re listening Ubisoft, never subject me to gather fucking iPads or rebooting servers or Desmond or any of the horrible and fucking lame shit that you’ve put in over the years.  We no longer need to be set up for how we’re being a pirate or ninja or whatever, we just want to play the fucking game.  Drop that animus crap, like now.

 

Customs – Night Fox

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A while back I got a screamin’ deal on a Ninja Combat Cruiser for $15.  I HATE the name and only call it that to be ironic.  It’s a truck and it’s cool and right now it’s the ride for my Slaughter’s Marauders (that I got on another screamin’ deal).

And for being all about ninjas and the Arashikage clan tattoos and all that other silly shit from G.I. Joe: Retaliation, it came with an all-black mistake called, “Night Fox”.

THIS. I mean, holy shit.

THIS. I mean, holy shit.

I don’t… I don’t even… He had a good vest (though it wouldn’t even let him fit in the fucking truck) and a passable head.

So just to be a cheeky bitch, and not because I have any great love of Night Fox, I decided to make a custom for him using leftover stuff I’ve had for ages and the original head.

Night Fox

Night Fox

Lookin' fo' a drive by foo'

Lookin’ fo’ a drive by foo’

Recipe:

Night Fox from back

Whu? Where’d he go?

Biggest Nail – I quite like how the drybrushing “desert camo” came out and I put a slight sheen across his goggles too.  Plus a touch-up on the grenades on his vest.  I’m totally happy with that stuff.

Night Fox - Front View

Night Fox from front

Biggest Fail – Some of his joints are pretty loose and one of his knees even scraped back to the basecoat when I was posing him.  As hard as it may sound, it really isn’t that easy to make a figure entirely black and have it stay.

Night Fox posed

Fully posable bitches!

As with all my customs these days, he’s fully playable and poseable too.  Because otherwise they’re not action figures, they’re statues, and I’ve never had much fun playing with statues.  Sure, I like lookin’ at ’em, but you can’t play with ’em.

Night Fox in Dune Buggy

Wait, there’s no “10” OR “2” dammit.

One of my first vehicle customs, this desert dune buggy was more of an accessorising kit-out instead of a proper custom, but my ASD 4-yo pulled it off the shelf and had a lot of fun with it.  The end result is actually kind of good in that now I have a good excuse to clean it up and redo it.

This time though, no sloppy enamels or mis-placed accessories.  I’m going to do it right with a good amount of gear and a proper BFG on the top.