As a preemptive strike I’ll say this now; I’ll delete any comment on the debate of right or wrong. This post will have a review of the game itself and nothing more.

Story: I’ll admit: I’ve been trying to play this since the 9th, and I can’t get into it. I can tell that the girls have substance, there’s more lurking beneath the surface, but right now, all I can think about is doing something else. I can’t play it. Part of it is I’ve taken a break from playing these games, the other part is that it’s just not particularly interesting to me.

Interface: Seems pretty intuitive. It is intuitive. moving around is easy enough. Saving, loading, autoread, etc are all one-click functions, easy to get to. there’s even a “Boss Button” (though why you’d play it at work where a boss could see you is something else entirely)

Patch/ Patching: Even though this was a standalone install, you need to install a font that comes prepackaged with the download. It also takes time to install. Mine took @ seven minutes or so.

Installation: Installation is a breeze in XP, provided you know what you’re doing. Indeed, if you know what you’re doing, you simply pop in the Fate Stay Night DVD (or CDs), run the installation, and then run the translation patch. if you don’t know what you’re doing, go to the Mirror Moon forums and ask. I’m sure they’ll help you out, because I won’t.

Patching: Patching is also easy. Download the patch from Mirror Moon, run the installer. That easy. If you’re feeling frisky, you can buy a copy of the Realta Nua version of the game, slap that into the computer and run the voice option when you patch to english. Your Fate Stay Night installation now has voices. Cool, huh? One small note: adding voice element dramatically increases the length of your patching process. I’ve seen it go for as long as four hours!

Game Interface: Man, I love this interface. you can get anywhere in the game within a few mouse clicks. It intuitively moves the cursor for you too, how awesome is that?

Extras: This game comes packed with extras. Music Player is pretty standard fare for these games, so there’s nothing new there. Again with the intuitive menus, you can browse through each arc’s CGs with a few mouse clicks. There’s also some RPG-style Character Sheets on the servants, as well as a weapon screen so you can take a look at all the weapons used in the game. You get a couple of little teaser movies, too. The only thing it doesn’t have is say, character themes for your Windows installation, or wallpapers, or whatnot, but you don’t need those, and if you did, you already know how to make them.

Story: (to come later)

What I’ve seen so far: Well, It installed easily on XP SP3 on a high end system with a 1920×1200 monitor. the menus are easy to pick from. I started with (of course) Three Sister’s Story. I had a copy of the game some years ago but couldn’t get it to run (my technical expertise being substantially less than it is now) and now with this reissue, the game of course runs fine. I found the menus to be annoyingly complex, but unrewarding- it’s hard to get immersed in (what sounds to be) a good story when you’re brought back to the menus, over and over again, forced to make the same asinine choices over and over and over… I haven’t uninstalled it yet, but at the same time I haven’t been inclined to play, those menus are daunting. We’ll see how it goes.

Review incoming:

the fuckbake said,
If you havn’t figured it out already, I am Wiccan. Legaly. Isis is one of our gods. A few others are Astarte, Cali, Hecetae, Demeter, and Inana. The Wicca I practice is very new though, dating back only to the early 60s, and is comprised of different interpretations of multiple religions.

to which I replied,
Do you just… I dunno, throw darts at a dartboard or something when picking out your gods? Or is there some specific ritual you have to perform? Seriously, not only are you crossing theologies, but also pantheons. I’d take Wicca a little more seriously if it wasn’t a mishmash of “let’s borrow this deity” and “what sort of things can I think of while bombed off my gourd?”. Just a little.

My son, ever-verbose and ultimately fundamentally fucking awesome, then brought the smackdown on the fuckbake:
Dude, you’re a fucking twit. People who say shit about Wicca being an old faith, or that their branch is old, or new, or whatever–that’s bullshit. This is why:

1. Wicca was spread in the mid-1950s by a man named Gerald Gardner as a nature-based “revival” of supposed suppressed European pagan beliefs centering around so-called “witchcraft.” Really what this appears to mean is the kind of shit you find in a New Age self-help leaflet.
2. There is absolutely no evidence that Wicca goes further back than the 1920s. That’s right, you’re grandparents and great grandparents were probably alive when Gardner was just putting this shit together in his head.
3. Wicca is supposedly matriarchal in nature. Gardner claims that he pretty much reconstructed the religion from the rites of the “New Forest Coven.” However, their rites were incredibly fragmented and he substantially rewrote most, if not all of them. What does that mean? It means that the fucking Untouchable in their little system rewrote what documents remained of the framework for their view on a dualistic spiritual reality. That does no lend credence to any sort of fate. Imagine if Hinduism was rewritten so that the lowest members of the cast were up top and the Brahmins were in the shit.
4. In the mid-1970s Dianic Wicca arise in the US, splintering off from Gardnerian Wicca. By this time the religion had been about twenty years old. It couldn’t even legally fucking drink yet. Dianic Wicca was a feminist form of the nascent “religion,” still just a growing cult by the standards of anyone with half a fucking frontal lobe left. Back in the UK shit was going down and Alexandrian Wicca arise, which pretty much came from a schism over power struggles when Gardner wouldn’t initiate certain members. From that a bunch of his old disciples split and said they found a new, more traditional source to fucking draw their faith from. This was still an intiatory, mystery religion, but fuck it–new assholes had power. At the same time in the US, certain Wiccans hearing about this started opening their own fucking franchises, this time calling it British Traditional Wicca. Check out Adherents.Com for numbers and shit.
5. The deities you worship now are not the deities worshipped by Wicca, that is, by Gardnerian Wicca. It’s as if I said “I’m a Roman Catholic who worships Pele, the Volcano Goddess.” Gardnerian Wicca worshipped a Supreme Goddess and a Horned God. Tell me–where the fuck is your Horned God? Where is your female fucking pseudo-monotheist Goddess? Please, enlighten me as to how you claim to be Wiccan, even though you fail the litmus test of worshipping those deities or concepts that define your religion. Anyways, back to the original point, which I had admittedly wondered off from: Wicca as a whole is a new religion. There is no “very new.” There are people still alive, many of them, who remember when Wicca first started popping up. That means it’s new.

The point being is that we’ve come ’round again and we now discuss Christianity.

I said,
Personally, I believe that we as a race should be old enough and mature enough to set aside beliefs in fairy tales. I also believe that organized religion has been more responsible (both indirectly and directly) for hate crimes, prejudice, ethnic cleansings, ignorance and intolerance than any other reason (i.e. economics, agriculture, territory, etc). I believe (and have stated before) that paganism is a literal joke that can’t be taken seriously, I believe that the people that practice paganism are a literal joke and can’t be taken seriously..

I got a reply, then, that sort of… kickstarted the engine, I guess.
You will see much more intolerance and hatred spewed against religion than from it.
to which I replied,
Well, look at the source: thousands of years of witch hunts, Inquisitions, the branding of any non-christian (in this example, Catholicism) religion as pagan and heretical, the Crusades. heck, without religion, Hypatia of Alexandria would not have been pulled out of her chariot one day, stripped nude, dragged to the foot of the church and burned alive by a mob of Christians. Surely, in the face of this track record you can understand a handful of angry words.

My closing words I think are appropriate:
Oh, don’t get me wrong; religion (from a sociological standpoint) has had its uses. One could say that religion functions as sort of a moral compass for a given society and aside from all the different flavors of religion, we’ve discovered a few universal truths: Killing each other is wrong. Stealing from each other is wrong. lying to each other is wrong. So on and so forth. Going forward, a majority of our laws are derived from the basic moral codes we’ve established through theology.

The point is that we’ve moved beyond the time when we had rabbit brains and associated the inexplicable with the Divine. We’ve outgrown it. no longer do we have to be beholden to superstitions, hallucinations and antiquated black and white ideologies.

tl;dr: You outgrew the Easter Bunny, it’s high time you outgrew “god”.

There’s more I want to argue; there’s more that I want to call the ‘perfect’ christians to account for. The problem with debating Christianity is that you can’t and shouldn’t bring old injustices up for accountability. How can you properly call a cotton-belt bible thumping Baptist to account for the ethnic cleansings ordered by the Catholic Church? You can’t, there’s no basis for context. Oh, sure, they’re both branches of christianity, but the fact remains that while all christians should be held accountable for acts perpetrated in their god’s name, you can’t bring something up that is hundreds of years old. it makes for bad debate. You can use it to set up a context, but not as actual ammunition, fuel for the fire. Use proper, modern events.

A buddy of mine said this about religion in general:

“Without religion, you would have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things. But only with religion, do you have good people doing bad things.

There’s always that rationalization from religious apologists, those who seek to cleanse the good name of religious beliefs by picking all the bad seeds out of the pot. Somebody commits murder in the name of God? Not a true christian. Terrorist? Not a true muslim. It wasn’t for religious reasons, it was for political reasons, sociological reasons, it was mere psychosis… etc., etc., etc. [...]

Go ahead. Argue. Split hairs. Piss and moan. Rationalize. Do whatever you want, but this can go on and on and on for hours and hours, pages and pages of horrors and cruelties for which the blame can be squarely placed on ignorant dogma and the breeding ground for it that is religion. Charity exists without religion. Peace and love exists without religion. School shootings and gang warfare would exist without religion. But absolutely none of these hideous crimes and cruelties listed would occur if it weren’t for the contemptible and repulsive belief in myth and superstition that is religion.

It’s time to stop defending something that holds back intellectual advancement, that perpetuates hate and violence. Its influence gives us the origin for most of the bigotry in the world, and serves mainly to control the masses and keep them complacent and dulled to a world of killers and tyrants. That moderates exist is absolutely no justification for the crimes of the extremists. The moderates only provide safe haven for the extremists to get closer and closer to pushing forward their glorious vision of armageddon. It’s time to put a stop to it.

It doesn’t require violence or bloodshed to get rid of religious dogma. No coup is required to save the world from this monstrosity. All that is required is for you to stop believing fairy tales are real. To embrace the wonderful, logical intellect you have hidden away in your skull and see the universe as it really is rather than how you want it to be. That you refrain from teaching your children myths, mysticism, and dogma as irrefutable truth. You can still have spirituality. You can still have great wonder for the mysteries of the universe. But let go of the rulebooks. Let go of the nonsense and the answers that are not to be questioned. Let go of it already.

Soapboxing is done, go back to blowing your cat.

Also, I’ve got some older works I’m going to be importing. Look forward to it?

It’s also come to my attention that I’ve been getting hits about games. dunno if that’s good or not- but I’ll postpone a post about the latest game i’ve been playing and we’ll take it from there.

This is what disturbs me. Rather than establishing an empowerment of the female psyche, an embodiment of what it’s like to truly exist within ones’ own gender, they instead lash out destructively at the other gender… to accomplish what? To further increase the division between the two sexes? What, exactly can come from these enforced divisive tactics?

So extremist feminism is really a bunch of hopped up cunts with no sense in their heads. That’s really all there is to it.

I’d been thinking about El Jeffe’s post today, and finally brought it up during a guild run today. Yes, we can talk about such things. One girl said, “Well, we truly don’t own our bodies, we’re simply receptacles for your penises.” And on a superficial level, that’s true, but grossly inaccurate on a majority.

God, Nature, Old Man Habeeb, whatever it is you believe in, made you with a passage, and made us with a tool to enter said passage. I don’t see the problem. you’re fighting against your very genetic makeup if you don’t like that, an ultimately futile and worthless gesture. As for “not owning your body” what the fuck is that shit? You have a vagina, yes? Do you control who/what/when/where/why goes in there? I’d certainly hope so! So in fact you are in posession of your vagina. Otherwise you really are simply a sperm receptacle for anyone with a penis, and are incapable of doing anything else other than accepting semen. Paints a crude picture of you being an unconcious and unwilling participant, doesn’t it?

For you to refute that image implies you have a sense of reason, an ability to utilize free will and make descisions. Certainly sounds like you’re not only in posession of your body, but also the concious ability to make choices that affect and impact you.

I also pose you the question of which, exactly, is more vulnerable? The one who is getting penetrated, or the one doing the penetrating? Decide for yourself.

Oh, god, how else did I take her statement apart? Ah yes. Having children, as relating to the whole ‘body ownership’ statement above. Yes, you carry children. Again, a genetic fucking imperative. But you’re pretty ignorant if you think that you’re carrying our children. You’re carrying around a child that is the contribution of two people. takes two to tango.

So what we have, then, is an absolution of free will, of responsibility, and an empty ideology supported with hollow words that really only define an insecurity from within. Perhaps you didn’t feel appreciated? Bah, who am I to analyze?

Anyway.

Why this fixation on the vagina? Let’s focus our attentions someplace else. Domestication, glass ceilings in the workplace, etc etc. These things can be fixed. Fuck, these things are getting fixed.

Hmmm.

Where, exactly is the problem?

Will I myself deny a woman an opportunity to feel empowered? certainly not. A woman who is in full command of her faculties, is comfortable in her sex and sexuality, who is flexible in both mind and body, these things I will not only lust after, but encourage. But at the same time, I will chastise and discourage any woman who feels the need to destroy men to elevate her own ideology regarding women.

Are men superior to women, or vice versa? Hahaha, now you’re asking questions.

You can’t say that one is superior or inferior to the other. each has complemetary characteristics that the other half lacks. This is what makes us whole. I will advance the opinion that men are quicker to react physically in situations while women on the other hand, will examine the situation intellectually before acting. Genetic imperative? Not sure. Maybe thousands of years of genetic memory where men smashed things and other people with clubs, rocks, spears, bows, guns, bombs and warheads gives us that defining characteristic. Men lead, women follow, or stay and raise kids, or whatever.

Anyway, the arguement concluded when I suggested that the woman was blowing hot air with unsubstantiated claims based off irrationality and an abdication of reason.

Bitch, get back in the kitchen and make me some fucking pancakes, ‘fore I give it to you up the other side of yo stupid head.

(:P)

How did it start? Well, with most things, it usually starts small. Like a snowball. Or a nuclear warhead. I don’t think it was small and insignificant. As an example, for me, it started as a job.
It was the year that the Surgeon found the Church. Well, don’t get me wrong, I too, became a believer. We were pinned down in a filty, shattered alley when the Surgeon made the choice. One prayer shouted over the din of submachinegun fire, and two minutes later the Holy Fathers of Our Lady Death showed up with blessed Kalishnikov A-80 Assault rifles and made short work of the heathens. He became a True Believer, and was well on his way to becomming a Holy Father.

The Surgeon and I grew up together in the Combat Zone. you learned to keep a good friend at your back and kill every one of the other fuckers that messes with you. Militech took an interest in the both of us. Steady pay, good benefits, and ammo reimbursement for sanctioned jobs. One day, I got whisked into a passionate fling with a beautiful Nomad girl, and spent five years of my life as part of the Dayrunner pack. My heart is in the city, though, and we went our seperate ways. I think she knew that, too, because she never questioned, fought, or argued. But, she never came with me, either. “Loki, you told me your heart is in the city, with the other Statics.” She said to me that last night. When I woke up, the pack was gone, and I was alone. I made it back to Night City, the city I grew up in, and hooked back up with the Surgeon. things went well, until he found his calling. I still didn’t have any idea what mine was, so i ended up in the Archon, a dive for mercs, brooding over my chili, and idly surfing the feedsites. This is where the call came in on my palmtop.

“Good afternoon, may i speak with Loki?” The girl on my palmtop asked. I recognized her at once. Morgan Johansen, the anchorlady of IBS News. Very attractive in that carefully cutured, well-preened and maintained sort of way. brown hair, violet eyes, an open and gentle face that also bespoke maturity and dignity. Very popular. She had a polite and cordial tone, with a mellifluous, well-educated voice. the kind of voice that was practical and sultry at the same time. “Yeah, you’re speaking with him.” I replied, moving over to a booth for privacy. “Can we switch to a secured line, please?” she asked. I nodded, made the adjustments, and the screen shimmered for a moment. “Satisfactory. I will cut directly to the point, Mister Loki. I need you to help me.” I smirked a little. “What could a woman like you need with me, Miss johansen?” I asked. I glanced around. No one was nearby. “I’ve been recieving emails of a… disturbing nature. Typically, in situations like this, of course, we would handle it, but the usual methods don’t seem to deter this individual.”
“Not to be rude or anything, but how do I know you’re, you know, you?” I asked, reaching for a pack of smokes. Her arm moved, and data streamed across the bottom edge of the screen. “My verification and authenticity codes.” she stated. I ran the check; she was legit. “Surely the IBS can-” i started, and she cut me off. “Our corporate charter prevents us from taking… a hands-on… approach. This is where you come in.”

“You want a bodyguard, then.” i stated. She shook her head. “I have more than i need. What I really need, Mister Loki, is for you to find this person and take whatever actions you think would be effective.”
“So, an assasin.” I replied, lighting up. She didn’t say anything at that, just continued to look at me expectantly.

“So, let’s discuss terms.” I said, and she nodded. “I’m currently off the Militech payroll right now, ‘in between jobs’ is the appropriate parlance.” I had started picking up her articulate and refined way of speech. “I want double my fee, plus ammo and medical expenses.” her smile warmed my heart. “Absolutely. Half up front?” She asked. I nodded. She moved her hand again, and asked me for the routing number. I rattled it off, and watched as 30,000 euro streamed into my account. Three times my fee. i nodded. “Forward me everything you’ve recieved, and anything your boys have put together, and I’ll start as soon as the call ends.” She nodded, and her hand danced across the controls, the data was now on my palmtop. I bowed my head to her. “A pleasure, Miss johansen.” and she signed off.
I stowed my palmtop, finished my chili, and reviewed the emails. scary stuff. “I will come and break you free of your gilded cage.” kind of shit. I didn’t know the ins and outs of the net as a Netrunner would, so i decided to do a little information gathering.

The best place to pick up a netrunner would be their unofficial hangout, the cybercafe ‘In the Wired’, so I hopped the mono and took a trip over to see them.

Riding the mono is alot like visiting the doctor. everything is too clean and sterile, and everyone avoids looking at each other. There’s even a bored and angry-looking security guard who likes to keep his hand on the grip of his move-along.

A few hours of haggling, and i hired a netrunner by the name of Watchdog to do some sniffing. eanwhile, I hit the bricks. I picked up a nanoaug pack for my gun, the little bastards would crawl all over the inside of my gun for the next six months; cleaning, repairing, and maintaining. Sooner or later you always had to use one. I worked it over in my mind. They could have traced the emails back to the sender, right? sent the police over. Unless the guy wasa hacker, could cover his tracks. No physical clues, no real-time data, just electronics. I eyed the bulge of the palmtop in my pocket. the guy could be anywhere. He’d given his alias, though. Metatron. i started asking questions again. Metatron was a very low key hacker. No noteworthy hacks, just information espionage and data manipulation. there were rumors he had manipulated stocks as well, but there was no confirmation in the circles of runners that spent entire days jacked into the net.

Finally, i got a call from Watchdog. “Whoa man. Metatron came out of the woodwork in a big way.” He stressed ‘big’. “What’s ‘big’, Watch?” I asked. He grinned, the ivory of his teeth a bright flash in his coal-dark skin. “big as in he data-mined the Atlas fullborg factory on the east side of town. If you can get there in less than ten minutes, you might be able to catch him on-site.”
I started heading for the Street. a couple of candykids blitzed by on their Argas boards. “What makes you think he’s on site there?” “The security is so tight he’d have to be on site to get in.”

i hailed a cab, and paid him a substantial amount to blast on through. This was going to be a quick job.

The Atlas company made a simple but unique fullborg body. composite plastics and lightweight metals, all shrouded in a RealSkinn covering. it looked and felt real. The only meat in those bodies was the pod, a small container that kept the user’s brains and a few important organs intact and alive. This was for the people that used different fullborg bodies in their line of work; like the welder frame, or the Dragoon tank frame.

The factory was well lit. I made it to the front gate, and started talking. the main security officer was a bit nonplussed, but i pressed the issue, and he agreed to walk me around the place. I had about two minutes before Metatron went offline. Then the alarms went off, and all hell started breaking loose. The automated assembly area had suddenly gone into the red. The sec chief carded his way in, his FN-RAL sweeping the way in front of him. My Colt 2000 seemed small and wimpy compared to his heavy assault rifle, bt it’d saved my ass many a time, so I slammed a clip home and dropped the safety. The chief looked relieved that he had backup.

They started coming out of the woodwork: half-finished bodies leaping about in no decernable pattern. Fuck. I sighted, led the target and squeezed. The plastic chest caved in, and the half-formed woman’s face gaped at me hideously. Her arm stretched back, grabbed a heavy Pallet, and slung it at us with the same ease we’d throw a wad of paper. I ducked behind a vat of musculature, the Chief ducked behind a larger piece of machinery, and began firing in short, controlled bursts. A skeletal body dropped from the ceiling in front of me, slapped me so hard I thought my head twisted all the way off. i flew to the right, i twisted in midair and pulled the trigger three times. the reports were loud, deafening alomost. one found it’s mark, shattering the hip joint. The thing fell over, pinkish grey musculature flexing and spurting a creamy blood. nauseating. It pulled itself over and scrabbled towards where I’d hid the floor, moving with a ghastly, eerie speed, it’s pseudo-enamel teeth clicking and chattering. I steadied my right hand with my left, took a precious second to aim, and pulled the trigger. The head shattered, the body collapsed. I ejected the half-empty clip and slammed a fresh home, jerked the slide and got up. blood ran from my ear where the thing had clocked me. I got up, shaking my head. the chief was handling himself well, and didn’t seem to need my help, so I moved further into the facility. the Chief was right beside me. “this area’s TS. I’d get fired if I let you go on alone.” he huffed. I nodded. We grinned at each other. Decent guy, shitty moustache. I told him so.

“You won’t stop me.” The voice was flat and monotone, seeming to come from everywhere at once. I looked everywhere, trying to pin the source down. “give it up, ‘Metatron’.” I said, emphasising the name, adding sarcasm. “You can’t get out of here. the exits are covered. give it up, and I’ll make it clean. a dignified death.” his response was to laugh. the chief tapped my arm. “speakers. He’s not in the room.” More smoke and mirrors. we moved through the factory, he wasn’t there. a full security sweep revealed he’d made his escape. quick and clean. The Sec Chief wa a man named Nellis. A decent guy, well rounded. had a wife and daughter. We got along great. When i went to leave the building, the police were there, waiting for me. With an arrest warrant. Nellis actually stood up for me, but they still took me downtown. I made a mental note to return the favor as i sat in the police car on the trip back. I was wanted in connection with the stalking of Morgan Johansen. real slick.

I was disarmed, and an inhibitor was placed on my reflex boost, placed in a holding tank. It took a while but the place filled with lawyers from IBS. Morgan had sprung me? They got me out, and took me to the studio, where I had the biggest goddamn shock of my life.

Well, up to that point, anyway.

Holy shit. I thought it was going to be small. You know, a Short Story. This one’s gonna be big. I know how it begins, the whole opener, the beginning, part of the middle, but i have no idea how it’ll turn out. I only know bits and pieces. Hopefully we’ll learn more about Loki and his past. this guy is kinda… likable. The secrets behind Morgan will be revealed next episode, so be certain to tune in. Can you figure out who Metatron is? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen next?

I’m sorry if this is dry. I had so much in my head, and I had to pack it all down before it leaked out! Sometime in the near future, i’ll flesh it out. But not before Chapter Two: The Gilded Cage.

I want your opinions!

Just thought you’d like to know. ^_^

Got a game today, Pariah. Gonna try it out tonight. vehicular combat, upgradeable weapons, all the good stuff.

Nothing else to report, except that I’m raveously hungry.