There’s more fire than this one, but this is the only one that deserves special mention. Just to recap:
I picked Utah over Arizona. Despite their win, my opinion that Arizona should not have even been in the tournament remains unchanged. Results in the tournament can’t be allowed to validate a bad decision to allow a team to reach the tournament based on the past 10 years of success rather than the past year’s results.
I picked West Virginia over Dayton. What a complete failure by West Virginia. Maybe they should stick to having overrated football players instead of pretending to be a competent basketball school.
I had Temple beating Arizona State. What the hell was I thinking, other than, “The PAC-10 sucks ass.”
But Wake Forest. Oh, Wake Forest, you’ve broken my heart again.
Flash back to two or three years ago. Chris Paul’s Wake Forest team was rolling. They were athletic. They were fast. They shot the ball well from the outside and could generate pressure on the inside. They weren’t the overly popular pick to win the championship, but picking them wasn’t a horrific long shot. Then they decided to not show up a game, and got upset. Immediately following, I got a single line instant message from the guy in charge of our NCAA pool: “Well, you’re done.” He was right.
But I don’t hold grudges in the NCAA tournament. Wake Forest’s massive failure of the past was at the edges of my conciousness, but surely they could handle Cleveland State. I mean, really, what the hell is Cleveland State? How do you have a “State” college, but then name it after a city? Shouldn’t it be something like Northern The Ohio State? Shouldn’t they have The Northern The Ohio State Marching Band? Shouldn’t they chant “N-O-O-H-I-O” before every game?
Well, I’ll tell you what: Wake Forest, a school with a really strong basketball history, out of a power conference, didn’t know, either. And they decided to get rolled instead of competing on the court. I have a very catchy version of the Wake Forest fight song (developed for when Wake Forest visited Purdue one season) that I’ll be humming all day, instead.
I’m starting to wonder if this is the modus operandi of Wake Forest. Potential greatness mixed with crushing, crushing failure. Nah, that can’t be it. Next you’ll be telling me Gonzaga is overrated.
The pick was a coin flip anyway, so I’m not too broken up about Tennessee not getting the honor of losing to Pittsburgh.
I mean, really, which do you pick? An Oklahoma State team that was streaky and inconsistent in a fairly weak conference? Or a Tennessee team that was streaky and inconsistent in a fairly weak conference? Calling a Bruce Pearl-coached team streaky and inconsistent seems a little redundant, but them’s the fact.
Fans of the women’s tournament can now be happy that they can see this more often, since Pearl is now available.
Bruce Pearl loves women's basketball. And hates shirts.
I actually had a post rattling around about how sad Illinois is. How their basketball band plays the long, boring song at halftime that Chief NCAABannedMe would dance around to, despite the Chief’s NCAA-mandated vacation.
After last night’s basketball performance, what’s sad is how they play basketball. And if Chief NCAABannedMe watched the game, he’s probably happy he’s on a beach in Maui sipping rum instead of having to watch an Illinois team that had the talent and players to blow Western Kentucky clear out of the build spend the middle 20 minutes of the game dicking around and end up with a loss.
As a result, the best-spelling team in the Big Ten can now go home and practice their 3rd grade words.
Minnesota? Really? I thought that Minnesota was going to win a game in the NCAA tournament? Even if it was against a Texas team that I thought was coming into the tournament slightly overrated. I had the “pleasure” of watching Minnesota get rolled in the Big Ten Tournament, and somehow, I still decided to click on their name instead of Texas.
I mean, sure Texas was overrated, but Minnesota… ugh. I watched them do the same thing against Michigan State less than a week ago: Be competitive for a while, and then just get totally steamrolled. I wonder if Tubby Smith just decides to zone out fo ra while, and the team isn’t really individual players, but a collective group sharing Tubby’s mind. Maybe he got run out of Kentucky not because of repeated failure at the highest levels of competition, but because someone found out the horrible, horrible secret.
Nah, that’s not it. At the Big Ten Tournment, I figured it was Michigan State. Now, all my picks involving the Izzos are in doubt. If it was Minnesota that did the failure on their own, all the picks I made based on the supposed prowess of the Izzos could be nothing more than more failure lurking in the wings. Great. You didn’t just ruin tonight, Rodents.
What was even stupider, though, was my pick of Clemson. I gave them credit for not getting crushed in the heavyweight battle that is the ACC regular season. My line of thinking was that they would be a more phyiscal, more quick, and more competitive than a Michigan squad that, quite frankly, got in with a big dose of Big Ten help. Like Minnesota, I watched them get rolled in the Big Ten Tournament to a team that was more talented and fundamental than them.
I forgot one thing: Clemson’s players and coaches are complete morons. They were fine in the game, until Michigan went to this strange thing called a “zone defense.” Watching Clemson flounder against a simple zone defense like an Exxon oil tanker against a rock shoal was painful, if only because I had Clemson not only taking care of business against Michigan, but against an Oklahoma team that consists of a single dimension by the name of “Peter Griffon.”
Good work, Clemson. The only thing you can really take pride in (other than the fact that last year you were like 344-0 before you lost to everyone and missed the NCAA tournament, a fun trivia fact for the ages) is that you’re probably still more competent than your football team. Of course, anyone who as watched the horror that plagues the field of Clemson football — oh, sorry, “Death Valley” — knows that the only thing that’s died lately is a lot of brain cells in the crowd and a lot of respect from the nation. So, Clemson basketball team, you’ve at least got a minimum bar to clear: Be less of a total embarassment to your school than your football team.
Well, now I have the wrong team losing to Tyler Hansbrough.
Butler, apparently misinformed of the start time of their game, arrived at the arena at 11:22 to play their first round game. The only problem with that was that their game actually started at 11:20, and by then, the LSU Tigers had scored 9 points. One could argue that LSU should have scored more than 9 points against an empty floor.
The bigger problem was that the floor wasn’t empty. Actually, Butler might have been better off if they had just sat everyone on the bench sipping Geetorade instead of actually being out on the floor. A team that was characteristic for ball control and safety decided to mix things up for the unfamiliar crowd, nearly reaching their season average for turnovers by halftime. Not shockingly, they trailed most of the game.
Sure, it was close at times, but that’s more a testament to LSU’s offensive woes than Butler’s scrappy comeback. If they’d managed to pull it out, sure, we’d be talking about a “dramatic comeback” and a “epic win.” But that talk is for winners.
Assassin’s Creed is a prime example of why you shouldn’t go see a certain movie, play a certain game, or date your sister just because someone says you might not “like it” and you “shouldn’t do it.” Many of the reviews decried the gameplay as “repetitive” and “boring” (much like dating your sister), dropping the score down a few notches. But upon playing Eidos’ “Climbing to High Places” simulator, I didn’t find that at all.
There are varying ways to classify an activity as “repetitive.” If I take my sister out to dinner every Friday night, when does it qualify as repetitive? Always? Only if we go to the same place every time? Only if we order the same thing every time? Only if I get a Three-Cheese Nachos with chicken, extra black beans, hot salsa, cheese, no sour cream, and a topping of Cholula hot sauce every time? Be right back, now I need Qdoba.
Back. That’s the issue with Assassin’s Creed. Fundamentally, there are some repetitive tasks, but I found the execution of those tasks to be the draw. Sure, I was, again, tasked with the murder of several guys in order to get some information from an informer, but instead of being in dark alleyways these guys were in the middle of a busy market. The challenge comes not from the core task, but figuring out, on the fly, how to complete that task. Sure, it’d be incredibly boring if every instance of the task happened in a crowded market with the same configuration. But that’s not what happens.
Unfortunately, Assassin’s Creed really is like dating your sister. The core game is engaging, the story is a bit arcane but good enough to keep you rolling through cutscenes, and the visuals and controls are superb. There’s a sense of style and danger to the whole package that really gets you hooked and keeps you hooked.
Then I went and finished the game. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, this made me angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea. Like dating your sister, the end of the relationship is where all the bad stuff comes out. In your sister’s case, it’s probably disownment (because, let’s face it, your parents like your sister better) and public shame. In Assassin’s Creed, it’s what I refer to as the Ending Problem.
A fiction author spends a lot of time creating characters and worlds. If the author has any sort of talent, than these characters and worlds end up being multi-dimensional, with depth and the ability to react to any situation in a manner that’s either:
Logically derived from past events in the world created by the story.
Completely out of character, which will only be accepted by the audience as “valid” if it then leads to a major change in the character for future interactions. (Granted, this assumes a competent audience, which, given recent box-office successes, may not be a safe assumption.)
What does the author hope to attain at the end of a tale? A “big finish,” similar to ESPN’S PTI, but with less concern for NBA basketball. Yes, there’s always the possibility of a sequel, but you still want to give your audience a “payoff” for their hours of attention.
There’s the issue. If you logically derive a result, the changes of a proper big finish diminish rapidly. And if you, as an author, force scenario number 2, you have to damage the characters you’ve come to love so much.
This is exactly what happened in Assassin’s Creed. The “authors” wanted a big finish. But they couldn’t figure out how to make silently and stealthily sliding a blade into someone’s throat climactic, so they went with the old standby: Horde of guys to fight, straight up. No joking. The entire last 3 hours of the game is nothing but you, a character who spent the entire game relearning the “creed of the assassins” by silently murdering people instead of the full frontal assault that got you in trouble in the opening scene… performing a full frontal assault on King Richard’s army. Seriously. That’s worse than the ending of a Harry Potter book. Also, there are spoilers in this review.
So, how does the game rate? Without the ending war, ignoring the fact that it’d be a story without an ending, it’d be a solid 9, if you’re the type of person who desperately craves numeric game reviews. With the ending war, it’s probably a solid 7, saved and injured in equal parts due to the mind-bending ending to the story which both forces you to think a bit instead of drooling over a cutscene… and which practically screams “BUY THE SEQUEL.”
Assassin’s Creed is far from unique in the Ending Problem, however, and maybe I’ll get around to reviewing some of the other material that suffers a similar fate, and maybe provide some of my tips for getting around it. Both Slumdog Millionaire and Lakeview Terrace were movies that painted pictures in beautiful shades of gray, only to have an ending with a nice, shiny, “everything worked out, didn’t it” ending. And that’s only 0ne example.
The only Ending Problem left now is how to end this post. I was going to post a cool video, but since everything on YouTube is 12-year olds showing how “AWESOME!!!!” counter kills are (they really are, but we don’t need 1,000 videos about it), I’ll just post the Trailer. Crossbow aside, it’s really similar to what you actually do in the game, what with the running and jumping.
For those of you that were around for the first crack at this, it’s been roughly a year since I last posted anything. For those of you that weren’t, don’t worry, you’re not missing much. And either way, ti’s not that hard to find the old content. It’s around here somewhere. Be careful nosing around there; the person who wrote those lines isn’t the exact person that’s writing these, and that’s a good thing.
For anyone who knows me, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I had a list of “dos” and “don’ts” written up. Things that I wanted (or should) blog about, and things that I didn’t want to (or shouldn’t) blog about. That’s been tossed out. Whatever happens here, will happen, regardless if it’s on a list or not. What I’m passionate about will remain what I’m passionate about, regardless if it’s on a list or not. The interest generated has to be internal and unbounded, regardless if it’s on a list or not.
So what is new? Why the new look? Why the new title? Why the same old URL?
This Thread Sucks is an homage, if you will, to the life cycle I see in Internet forums. You start out with something small, personal, intense. It gathers momentum, growing both in scope and people. And eventually, it crosses a tipping point, where you’re full of no-longer-funny memes and shitposts, with every thread deserving of the eponymous name.
Nothing’s permanent on the Internet, nor in life. In the year I’ve been “gone,” I’ve:
Lost 50 pounds. Gained 70.
Went to China. And didn’t leave Waukesha County for a 2 week period.
Caused my brain to explode getting and MBA. And am still at the same job I had before I even started the degree.
Joined, posted in, and enjoyed many Internet and gaming forums. And watched every single one devolve into suckiness.
Joined and ignored Facebook. And then started using it.
Calculated the number of minutes in a year by hand. And by typing “1 year to minutes” into Google. And the answers don’t match.
Lamented about driving someone special away. And then getting off my dumb head and not letting that happen.
And so, with all of those changes behind me, here’s the new playpen. I’m not expecting anything… other than fame and fortune, that is.
There’s more fire than this one, but this is the only one that deserves special mention. Just to recap:
The pick was a coin flip anyway, so I’m not too broken up about Tennessee not getting the honor of losing to Pittsburgh.
I actually had a post rattling around about how sad Illinois is. How their basketball band plays the long, boring song at halftime that Chief NCAABannedMe would dance around to, despite the Chief’s NCAA-mandated vacation.
Minnesota? Really? I thought that Minnesota was going to win a game in the NCAA tournament? Even if it was against a Texas team that I thought was coming into the tournament slightly overrated. I had the “pleasure” of watching Minnesota get rolled in the Big Ten Tournament, and somehow, I still decided to click on their name instead of Texas.
What was even stupider, though, was my pick of Clemson. I gave them credit for not getting crushed in the heavyweight battle that is the ACC regular season. My line of thinking was that they would be a more phyiscal, more quick, and more competitive than a Michigan squad that, quite frankly, got in with a big dose of Big Ten help. Like Minnesota, I watched them get rolled in the Big Ten Tournament to a team that was more talented and fundamental than them.
