shakin steak wrote :

Things are getting "healthed up" but not for real. It's the same reason HFCS is in everything now. Sugar got the reputation as bad for you, so it ...

Exactly. If we're not willing to pay the higher price for consumables, then we shouldn't be surprised when we get poisoned by that food with everything from overseas, or get sick from all the crap that's in our food. It's extremely difficult to stay away from it completely, but even a little bit is a good start.

The milk we buy, for example, is from a local producer. Their cows are grass fed, with no hormones, and the milk isn't even homogenized. You need to shake it a bit before you use it, but it tastes way better and is certainly much better for you.

Remember when there used to be excitement before and during a movie being in theaters? It's not like that anymore, is it? The last time I can remember when there was so much buzz and excitement surrounding a movie was when The Hunger Games hit theaters.

Heck yeah. I could go on and on about the local and raw food we get. About the backwardness of FDA regulations in 2013. Etc. But I'll just say that good, unprocessed food is really important.
"Once in your life you need a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, a police officer. Three times a day you need a farmer."

Nice quote Steaks.

I just get irritated at the social online world and everyone absorbed in it.

That little rat who's currently the mascot for Chuck E. Cheese's. I don't know who he is, but he ain't Chuck. That much I do know.

I once wrote a small article complaining about the way in which Trick-or-Treating is done these days. It wasn't well received on RJ (holding an unhealthy -8 ).

But it was more a rant than an article, so it's understandable.

Yeah, I can see the commenters' point about it being better for RJ had you worked in more of "the way things used to be." And Photog Smurf doesn't live there...I am surprised that nobody complained about the lack of pictures. From what I've seen, that will kill an RJ article faster than anything.

Now it's time for a rant of my own.
I don't remember which thread I was recently bitching about modern video games, but this fits equally well in this thread, so here goes.

I've never played any of the Lego video games before. While I was in Kmart the other day, I saw Lego Batman in the "impulse" (right next to the cash register) bin, and thought, what the hey. Batman is awesome. These Lego games are really popular, there must be a reason. I'll give it a go. So I pop it in the ol' Wii last night, and my goodness. The graphics are good; the Batman universe is well adapted; it's got a nice sense of humor; and even though I despise the current trend of drawing superheroes as babies, the Lego versions actually look pretty cool. But, I don't like it! I do not like it with a fox, I do not like it in a box. I do not like Lego Batman, I do not like it, Sam-I-Am!

Here's my complaints after playing this crappy game for 45 minutes, compared with old games.

• There's a lot of stuff that looks like you should be able to do something with, but you can't.
  In real Nintendo games, not being able to recognize whether something is usable or not is very rare. If you can't tell that it is usable, it's usually a secret. e.g., ducking on top of a white block in Super Mario 3 lets you go behind the scenery. This is absolutely not essential to playing the game, but if you know it, you get some cool stuff.


• You can't just throw a batarang whenever you want, so it's tricky to get your guy to throw one.
  Good control schemes can be complex, but they act in a simple manner. cf. Bionic Commando, in which you can grapple upwards. If you miss, you stay where you were, but when you press the arm extend button, your arm will always extend. Or, Street Fighter 2. If you mess up a button combo and don't execute the grab, your character still does SOMETHING.


• The text that appears to tell you how to do new stuff (when you encounter a special suit or something) is too long and too small. The TV is "only" 32 inches and I'm sitting six feet away. I don't need glasses, but my vision isn't completely perfect either. This also pisses me off on the TV's own text (like showing the time and what show is on). Just because this enormous screen is high resolution doesn't mean text should be as small as possible.
  Have you ever, ever had trouble reading the text in Ninja Gaiden? Not even on a 13" screen.


• Vehicles get destroyed after like one bullet, but they don't look much different than when they work. I spent a good five minutes trying to get into a broken car when I couldn't figure out any other way to proceed.
  For example: in Megaman X, when your mecha suit is no longer usable, it EXPLODES.


• Related to this last item, the wayfinding sucks. I wander around and have a lot of trouble figuring out where to go...could be me. As I wander around going back and forth between the same three places, the bad guy goons never stop coming, so eventually I die...
  ex. Legend of Zelda: Sometimes, you're not sure what to do next. But there is always somewhere else you can go, another area you can move to.


• good thing the game gives you infinite lives! That's a real indicator of a bad game for me. Why even bother having energy if you can just respawn, right where you were, as many times as you want. It makes more sense in a deathmatch, but in single player, that's stupid.
  Seriously. Let's look at every arcade game ever. Yeah, they're designed to take your quarters. But if you could just keep playing forever, no matter how much you die, you would never get good at a game. You could just crash into every lander in Defender and keep on going. For the third time: truly pointless.

Woah. That's a lot to chew on. But I have to say I agree on almost every point. I too have played the Lego Batman games (and more often watched it being played by my kids). All of these complaints are completely valid, and are in fact exaggerated when it is a child attempting to do the playing.

-Point 1: In the age of GTA games, where so much of what you see can be interacted with, games that go the easy way out by just chewing up scenery are more and more unappealing.

-Point 2: I HATE the controls for throwing the batarang and other "tossables" on the Wii. Never played this game for the XBox, but if it is like the Star Wars Lego controls, they are far superior.

-Point 3: Even with a 50" flat screen hanging on the wall, the text strains the eyes.

-Point 4: I don't often even see the point of having vehicle segments in the games. They are too underdeveloped and only meant to break away from the monotony of the rest of the action.

-Point 5: My poor kids often wander aimlessly for a long time, until I finally am able to come in and help them figure it out. At least SOME hints would be nice.

-Point 6: You know, this isn't necessarily a total bummer. Playing the old X-Men arcade game as downloaded on Xbox Live, so long as it's with friends or family, is still enjoyable (even with "infinite quarters").

Vaporman87 wrote :

the monotony of the rest of the action.

Yes! In TMNT Arcade, you can move, jump, attack, and jump attack. Two buttons and a joystick or D-pad. Never gets boring. Lego Batman gives three attacks (punch, grab, and batarang) and you can switch between Batman and Robin, yet I was still bored of beating up goons very shortly.