Quick Shots

Not in the frame of mind for a long-winded post (nor do I really have the time to do so), but here are a few quick thoughts from the last week or so since I last updated:

Dogs, Bells, and Brain Age
A lot of the age score in Brain Age seems to be tied to conditioned response; that is, the more you do what few Brain Test minigames there are (about six) the lower your "age" will go regardless of true "progress". There have been days where I know my brain is not exactly firing on all cylinders and I pull a low-20's or even a 20 (which is the best score in the game). Much of this seems to be tied to the fact that I (1) do the same brain test exercises every day and (2) avoid the one that involve speaking.

When I break from the norm and do the ones with speaking, my brain age drops by about 5 years on average. Is this really a representation of how well my brain functioned that day, or is it simply that I haven't been practicing the verbal games and am not as good at those as I am at the others? Based on the performance for my daily training on these days -- roughly on par with my 20year-old nonverbal test days -- I'd lean more towards the latter.

This is a bit disconcerting, as it really throws into question the validity of giving out a "Brain Age" at all. If all I need to do is practice the same thing over and over again in order to make my brain "younger", what am I really doing? Is this any different than working harder at a career, carving that intellectual rut by which you'll catapult into senility? Different in terms of what you're doing with your brain, most definitely, but not so different in terms of variety over time.

Harmony of Dissonance
Last week I finally got around to picking up the second Castlevania on the GBA: Harmony of Dissonance. While I've only beaten it with the "bad" ending thus far, I think it's fair to render judgement on it: it's not bad. It's really middle-of-the-road in terms of execution of the formula in place since Symphony of the Night -- nothing particularly new, but nothing really flawed about it either.

Two gripes: the music is awful to the point that I consider it only a slight step above Castlevania 3 on the NES, and the bosses are far too easy. While I can recall having to grind a few levels before a boss fight in other games in the series in HoD I didn't stop at all. The real shame of it is that the bosses themselves feel delightfully old-school in their execution and attack formulas, and could have been quite fun if they were more difficult.

Two raves: the dash system (forward and backward using the shoulder buttons) quickened the pace of combat nicely, and the fact that the slide skill deals damage was great for speeding through earlier sections.

One huh?: Apparently the Belmonts took on interior design as a profession somewhere along the way in their centuries of vampire hunting. Throughout the castle you find various items that do you no good at all: candlesticks, a cat statue, curtains... then you find an empty room and Juste Belmont exclaims that the room "needs some decoration" and places these items about the room. What? When did this turn into a reality TV show? Juste: "Oh my GAWD... Dracula what have you DONE in this room? Just LOOK at those drapes!"

Overall: B-

Guildwars 1, Idiots 0 -- Assassins lose out
A few weeks ago I posted what seemingly could have been a deep discussion about online worlds -- but ended up as a bitch session about how nobody'd take my poor Necro into their group because I didn't have the requisite skills to put together a build that most would find useful. Well, here we go again.

With the release of the Factions expansion, there has been a glut of Assassin-profession characters floating about -- too many of them, in fact. The group "economy" would have a tough time keeping track of so many of the same profession in and of itself, so one would expect a certain resistance towards an "Assassin Looking For Group" announcement. "Look, buddy, we don't want any more... we've already got three assassins!"

What is really going on here definitely exceeds this expectation and goes into full-fledged anti-Assassin prejudice -- it's virtually impossible to find groups as an Assassin later on in the campaign. This is not because Assassins aren't a useful build to have around -- as one would expect from my previous discussion on how my Necro build really isn't that useful -- on the contrary a skillfully utilized set of Assassin skills (even without any secondary professions in use) can be quite useful in keeping healers and spellcasters from getting snuck by enemies. The reason for the anti-Assassin movement lies instead with the players themselves: they suck. Plain and simple, most Assassins are played like a Warrior (i.e. run headlong into packs of enemies, try to duke it out toe-to-toe, etc) and as a result die faster than an erection at a Golden Girls reunion dildo party.

Due to this reasoning, I don't put down my Assassin with a chip on my shoulder; I completely understand why groups are avoiding Assassins like the kid with Tourets at Bible study camp. Eventually strategies will emerge that use Assassins in a way that works to their skillset and groups will start accepting them again. That, or the idiots will go back to their Warriors, thus cutting out the fat and leaving only the skilled Assassins. When this happens I'll return to my Assassin and pick up where I left off. Until then, it's a healer class for me.

No use picking a class that I'd have trouble finding groups with...