The Archdemon Has Fallen

A post on the very next day? With results? Madness!!!

Certainly does seem that way anyway.

I completed the main story of Dragon Age: Origins. I left a few side missions unresolved but I really don't care that much about them as I'm pretty sure it didn't hinder the ending of the game that much. (If it did, I don't want to hear about it, let me enjoy completing the god damned game in peace)

The final battle against the Archdemon left quite a bit to be desired. The entire final march against the Blight actually left me feeling rather let down. I was expecting a hard battle towards the Archdemon, filled with Hurlocks, Hurlock Vanguards, Ogres and Hurlock Emissaries. There were certainly a good number of those, but not enough to make me feel like this was the final battle. I'm also not sure whether this is something the game actually does or this is some strange bug, but when I faced them en-masse, most of them were one-hit kills. Although that was definitely satisfying, it struck me as if the game was simply trying to hurry me along and made the enemies that much weaker. As if to say, "Oh, dearie, I know you aren't strong enough yet for the whole onslaught so have a few lackeys instead." I felt insulted. By a game.

Don't misunderstand me, I was definitely happy to be going through the ending as quickly as I was so I could cross this game off my to-do list, but I felt like there wasn't much of a challenge to be had on my way to the Archdemon. When I finally reached the Archdemon, even that battle was terribly disappointing. Not because it was dreadfully easy, that bastard made me fight for his blood, but because there wasn't any impressive ending graphic of everyone attacking the Archdemon. I wanted my Grey Warden to hop onto the thing's back and have to stab it in the back numerous times before performing a flip over its head as the Archdemon aimed to grab her off its back with its massive jaw,  landing in front of the Archdemon and running underneath it while her daggers cut into the exposed neck of the creature, rolled out from beneath it as it bled out and then stabbed it square in the face.

That didn't happen. Though, now I am seriously considering animating it.

Anyway, the kingdom was saved, experienced peace for a time, political bullshit, blah blah blah. I was happy to be done with the game but felt the entire experience had been a bit lacking in substance. Then, I remembered I had all that DLC to go through.

Leliana's Song
Golems of Amgarrak
The Darkspawn Chronicles
Witch Hunt
Dragon Age: Awakening

I've already completed Leliana's Song, The Golems of Amgarrak and The Darkspawn Chronicles. I am currently in the process of completing Witch Hunt and then beginning Dragon Age: Awakening. I'll write up my experiences with each one later on in the week. Maybe if Dragon Age: Awakening is more satisfying than the whole of Dragon Age: Origins, I'll consider purchasing Dragon Age II. For now, I have no plans of doing so.

Cheers.

Archdemons and Reapers

Good. Fucking. Christ.

Do pardon the expletive, but then again, I never said this blog would be PG did I?

Anyway, I had been playing Dragon Age: Origins up until I realized Mass Effect 3 would be coming out soon. At which point, I abandoned my fight against the Blight, grabbed my M-98 Widow and plowed my way through the rest of Mass Effect 2.

I should explain, the first time I played Mass Effect was on Xbox360. I was young and impulsive and under the influence of painkillers as I had just had my wisdom teeth removed and needed a welcome distraction from the pain. I did not sleep until I had finished both games (okay, that's a downright lie, I slept for about four hours or so between game plays but I finished both games within a week of each other. Nyah).

I had fallen completely in love with the world of Mass Effect, the characters, the environments, hell, I'm one of those weirdos that actually LIKED the Mako. That was one hell of a tank, hardly ever flipped over on me and I loved being able to drive around dozens of alien worlds and appreciate the environments these developers had decided to create for us, the players, because why the fuck not? I will admit looking for minerals and Turian insignias and the Matriarch writings and Salarian ID tags was a bitch and a half to complete, but I did it because somewhere in the back of my mind I knew it would be all worth it just to kick Sovereign's miserable ass. (I also have a slight case of OCD when it comes to really good games.)

When I heard the third installment to the Mass Effect series was on its way, I fangirled like no fangirl had ever fangirled before. Then, I realized that my entire save was on Xbox360. Specifically, my brother's Xbox360. That he had taken with him to college. Needless to say, I was not in a happy mood at that realization and it is a wonder I did not destroy anything within a ten block radius of me.

Now, I have a Macbook Pro. As most people may know, it is possible to boot Windows on a Mac (*gags*). I did so in order to begin my quest to complete Mass Effect and ME2 before the release of ME3. I had a year, it was possible. I immediately bought PC copies of ME1 and ME2, and a copy of Dragon Age: Origins as it was part of a beautiful bundle pack Amazon was offering at the time, three games for the price of one. Unfortunately, I forgot that my Macbook Pro overheats like a motherfucker for no reason (Apple, I love you, but you gotta fix that problem.) so, playing Mass Effect proved a tad difficult when my poor Macbook would decide to heat itself up to the point of possibly melting the motherboard. Thankfully, that never happened. I bought a laptop cooling fan shortly after my first attempt at running Mass Effect on my Mac and though it did help, I found the experience terribly lacking.

Then, as if my silent prayers had been answered, I was provided a monster of a PC to look after and use to my heart's content by a friend of mine (She's doing just fine, btw. I treat her as if she were my own and she is certainly due for a cleaning soon.). This PC, dubbed La Beba, was a freaking god send. I could now play ME1 without suffering from the fear of overheating the machine and with graphics of such quality as to cause tears in my eyes. I was one happy camper. I took it upon myself to buy a 1TB HDD to install into the La Beba to store all of my files in so as to not fill up the 130GB SSD drive it has and so it wouldn't be too difficult to take my files when I would have to return La Beba and build my own monster of a PC (Friend, the time is coming, soon now I will require your assistance in order to build my Monster).

So, I now had ME1, ME2 and Dragon Age: Origins installed on one machine, and it wasn't exploding. My happiness cannot be described and will hardly ever be replicated.

Now, I began anew my ME1 file in order to complete the game. Of course, being the multitasking procrastinating moron I am, I decided to start up DAO as well, just to have it started up. This did not prove to be as detrimental as I may have thought as I didn't have a grand interest in the game at the beginning, my mind filled with space faring thoughts. Of course, my inner fantasy nerd caught whiff of a world filled with magic, demons and dragons and proceeded to lead a revolution against my sci-fi nerd. The battle raged as I found myself switching from ME1 to DAO, back to ME1 and so on and so forth. Eventually, I beat ME1 and then decided to actually take a crack at DAO seeing as I still had a good couple of months before ME3 came out.

Watch out people, here thar be spoilers!

On Saving the Universe...

Oh dear, it seems I've left this blog unattended.

Again.

...

Really, I'm sorry. I just have this perpetual procrastination problem that I've been trying to resolve with not much success.

I have yet to play any of the games on The List to completion yet and I suppose that is going to be a trend for a good while until I finally decide to take some charge in the matter. Maybe actually do vlogs (video blogs) about my experiences because, quite frankly, some of the noises I made while playing Mass Effect 3 were not of this world and my reactions were priceless.

Oh, I didn't mention I had acquired Mass Effect 3 on release day? And completed it this past weekend? Well, that's just silly of me. I suppose I should write something about my experiences with the game, what choices I made throughout and how terrible I thought the ending was. Except, that last bit is completely untrue. I actually genuinely enjoyed the ending I was presented with in the game and believe that people need to stop whining about it ever ten bloody seconds.

Im going to go ahead and give those of you who haven't beaten Mass Effect 3 yet to kindly navigate themselves away from this webpage and somewhere much more friendly. I'll even provide some nice links for you.

>I can has cheezburger?<

>Puppies<

>Wallet Alleviation Support Group<

Vanquished Foe

The Riddler has been dealt with.

I am at peace with the world and everyone in it.

Last night I slept the deep sleep of one who has accomplished a goal of seemingly the utmost importance and it was glorious.

Perhaps I shall write a review of my experiences with Arkham City as a whole later on in the week. Then see what game I should pick up from The List and attempt to beat. I'm thinking one I can beat in one day during the weekend. Suggestions?

Cheers.

Riddle Me This

Short post today, tonight, whatever. I'm keeping it short and simple because. That's right. Because.

I acquired Batman: Arkham City thanks to the generosity of a friend of mine who will remain nameless. You know who you are. And I blame you for everything.

I passed the main story of Batman: Arkham City in 17 hours between two days. It was amazing. I shall write up a much better review of my experience with Arkham City later. When it isn't 12:40am and I don't have work tomorrow at 8:30am.

It was either Saturday or Sunday that I passed it. Taking full advantage of the long weekend courtesy of Three Kings Day (Latin holidays rule, yo)on Friday and the celebration of the birthday of some Puerto Rican poet on Monday. Four Day Weekend. I stayed up until around 8am finishing Arkham City. I laughed joyously throughout the last ten minutes or so of the game. (Seriously, go get yourself a copy now. It's really better than the first one).

Since that time I have had one goal in mind. Just one driving thought. Find the Riddler and beat him to within an inch of his miserable simple riddled life.

For those of you who don't yet know: There are 440 Riddle items scattered across Arkham City (Only 400 are required in order to locate the Riddler). Riddles, Riddler Trophies,Catwoman Riddler Trophies (also, she is amazing to play as) and Riddler Action Achievements which include destroying all Tyger cameras, popping all Joker ballons, blowing up all of Harley's heads (I swear to you it makes sense once you've played the game) and a variety of other menial tasks. I am as of yet unsure on whether I need to acquire all 400 "achievements" to be able to unearth the Riddler's hiding place, but Gods be damned if that is what I have to do in order to taste sweet victory over the miserable cur so be it. I cannot remember the exact number of items which I have accomplished but I believe it is somewhere in the 300+ range.

I am losing precious hours of sleep over this. I close my eyes and I see in Batman's Detective Vision the thugs which I must proceed to beat to miserable pulps and the ones glowing a luminous green color that I must save for last in order to interrogate them with such wonderful phrases as "I just finished cleaning off the blood of the last Riddler informant from my face." If I don't find the Riddler soon I fear the worst for my already failing sanity. Let's hope I find the bugger soon.



On a completely unrelated note: I picked up Super Meat Boy. Its funny as hell.



Cheers.

An Update and a Broken Man

UPDATE:

Gabe received two e-mails from Paul Christoforo. One asking him to "make it stop" and another with an apology. Though, as Gabe put it, "there is a big difference between being sorry and being sorry you got caught."

Here's the link to the update: An update

Also, this was posted this morning:

Can I just say again how much I love these guys?

Dave, the Penny Arcade reader who brought all of this to Mike Krahulik's (Gabe) attention also received an apology e-mail. To be completely honest, it looks to be filled of excuses and possibly written by a completely different individual in order to spare the company any more bad press.


Here's a copy of it that I found on Gamerfront.net (click on the link to read their article on the situation):



Hey Dave,
I just wanted to apologize for the way our emails progressed from beginning to end , You caught me on an extremely bad day and I had been dealing with 100’s and hundreds of emails trying to explain the situation to everyone on where the product was and you just pushed me a little too much and I should have just apologized and tried to explain things better. Also I had a really bad day losing a friend to an overdose and the stress of my newborn baby and the Holiday ,missing my family and just stressing on getting product out to everyone and why it was held up in customs wore me out.
I am deeply sorry for any disrespect , aggravation or lack of information on the delivery date. We knew when product was leaving china and we were trying to adhere to a strict deadline but due to port issues and air freight issues. The units are domestic now and awaiting pick up at customs . So we missed the 17th deadline and I apologize for that but it was out of my control and besides me no one else was helping me handle the situation so imagine the weight on my shoulders.
I’m not asking for any sympathy just for some understanding and forgiveness , I’m human just like everyone else and made a mistake. I underestimated you and its cost me a lot of trouble thousands of spam emails , a lot of personal bashing , and internet spam and trouble and just overall stress with my wife and newborn. I ask that you please accept my apology as a peace offering I will refund your money and give you your 2 units/Avengers free of charge please help me to get some of this negativity removed or at least my personal name although its already all over the internet and the calls and emails will not stop but any help will be appreciated especially with penny arcade as Mike and edit his own website I owe him an apology too which I will write next.



Not asking for sympathy, Christoforo? Really, now?


The overall tone of the apology e-mail is completely different from everything we had seen from Christoforo up until yesterday evening which leads me to believe that someone else actually took the time to sit down and compose this apology in a last ditch effort to save face. 
Also, I'd just like to note that even if the mention of the loss of a friend is true, it certainly does not excuse Christoforo's behavior toward a customer of his. If you are unable to keep your professional and personal behaviors separate from one another, you have no right being the President of a company, or even an employee for that matter. 


It also looks like Paul Christoforo changed his Twitter username in order to escape the masses. 
I think the new OceanMarketting Twitter is an improvement on the old one. Have a look:


OceanMarketting Twitter

Paul Christoforo NEW Twitter

And then there's this gem:

Ocean Deep Sea

More news keeps surfacing on Paul Christoforo, mostly concerning just how long of a terrible track record he's had in dealing with customers in the past. It's honestly a wonder that he lasted this long. 


Another example of Christoforo's complete lack of professionalism was recorded on another blog back in June. The blog Nate's Network had made a post on June 11th of this year concerning a recent customer service issue he had had with Ocean Marketing concerning an Avenger controller he had ordered on February 5th of this year. After a series of e-mails to what I can only assume was an automated bot, Nate finally began receiving responses from Paul Christoforo. The situation did not improve. 
You can take a look at Nate's full blog post here: Poor Customer Service


There is also this Police Report which surfaced on Gameranx concerning a Domestic Violence charge made against Paul Christoforo by one Catherine P. Sherman back in 2008. 


And of course, what story would be complete without the ol' Roids Rage excuse? Am I right?
Kotaku reached out to Brandon Leidel, Director of Marketing for Avenger Controller, for a comment on the PR scandal that exploded yesterday. They received a prompt reply where it seemed that Brandon Leidl stated that " things are a bit blown out of proportion on this today." 


Closer examination of the e-mail revealed that the sender of the e-mail had not been Brandon Leidel (Brandon@AvengerController.com). The e-mail had been sent by a "cstrophic@hotmail.com." Some internet snooping on their part revealed that the e-mail was also registered as a contact address for a user named "TheAngryPimp" on Steroid.com, an internet message board for people who used anabolic steroids. A post on that site by that user was made concerning a drug named Tamox, "shorthand for Tamoxifen which is an estrogen receptor antagonist used as a "post-cycle recovery" compound for those coming off of a round of anabolic steroids." (Kotaku). 


Kotaku eventually received an e-mail from the REAL Brandon Leidel. 

Hi Joel,

I have been following this story since this morning when someone notified me about what was going on. I did not write that response to you.

Yes, in the past I received email at brandon@avengercontroller.com but even then we were an outsourced marketing agency for N-Control. I no longer receive email at that address because we fired N-Control as a client about 8 months ago due to constant shipping delays (which we had to deal with) and their association with Paul Cristoforo who is a street thug masquerading as a self proclaimed "Marketing Professional". This guy is a complete fool and somehow strong armed his way into working with the company so we walked away. I am not surprised in the slightest bit by what's going on right now. In fact, we told the owners of the company on many occasions that this would eventually happen.

I wasn't going to chime in but since he is replying as me, I can't resist. I personally can't stand him.

Brandon

Do pardon me while I do my spiteful happy dance. 


Cheers. 

Ocean Marketing's HUGE Mistake.

I am almost at a complete loss for words at the situation I just became aware of a few moments ago via GameTrailers.com through my Facebook news feed.

There I was, innocently perusing my Facebook news feed as I had some downtime at my job and I noticed the link posted by GameTrailers.com simply entitled: "EVERYONE is talking about this right now...and that's pretty much why you don't mess with gamers..." with a link to Penny Arcade below. Being the webcomic and gaming fan that I am, I was already familiar with Penny Arcade and am a fan of theirs. I was not prepared for what I was about to read.


When I attempted to click the link to Penny Arcade, I found that it wasn't working. That was hint number two that something major had just transpired on the Penny Arcade website. When a site as popular as theirs ends up not loading, the usual case is too much incoming traffic to the site. Hint number one was the title that GameTrailers.com had put for their link to Penny Arcade (hint one and a half was reading one of the comments that stated  "He even had the nerve to call IGN's Scott Lowe a douche bag").

Once I had finally gotten the site to load, I found that it was permalinked to an article written by Gabe, the artist of Penny Arcade. That alerted me that something must have been wrong. Gabe tends to not write articles on the Penny Arcade site too much unless it is of some value and importance to the community or his readers. Usually his portion of the news feed on the site pertains to his artwork. Boy, was I in for a fun ride into hilarity land.

It seems that a reader of Penny Arcade had gotten into a bit of a- I'm not even sure what the proper word for this is- for now let's call it a "discussion" with a PR representative from Ocean Marketting. For those who don't know (myself included) Ocean Marketting is "a company responsible for a range of third party peripherals" (Destructoid). Among those is the Avenger Controller.  Essentially, this controller is supposed to be able to enhance your reaction time in games where it is necessary (FPS, racing, etc) (which does not look the least bit aesthetically pleasing to me nor does it look like it would actually help your ability to respond faster. But I digress.)

The long and short of it is Dave, the Penny Arcade reader, e-mailed one Paul Christoforo with questions regarding his pre-order of 2 PS3 Avenger controllers, one of which was going to be a Christmas gift. Christoforo's response was simply: December 17th. Understandably, Dave was a bit confused by the cryptic response and sought to gain more information. The next series of e-mails exchanged turned from what should have been a polite and informative dialogue between a costumer and the provider into a small child attempting to belittle someone who was clearly more mature and knowledgeable about how a situation like this should have been handled.

Can you guess which one was the child?

If you thought that perhaps Christoforo was the bigger man in this situation, you guessed horribly wrong. Through a series of e-mails that resemble a disgruntled ten year old's attempts to psyche out his 25 year old opponent in Call of Duty (assuming the 25 year old is of a mature mental state, you just never know with CoD), Christoforo effectively displays just how incapable of handling his job title he is. Oh, but it gets BETTER.

Dave sent a copy of these e-mails to Penny Arcade's Gabe a.k.a Mike Krahulik, one of the founders of PAX and Child's Play. Now, Gabe was content to stay on the sidelines and monitor what was transpiring between him and Christoforo. That is, until Christoforo responded to Dave with: "LOL Thanks for the Free PR I know the Editor N Chief of Kotaku , IGN , Engadget I’ll be meeting them at CES" and "see you at CES , E3 , Pax East ….? Oh wait you have to ask mom and pa dukes your not an industry professional and you have no money on snap you just got told." It was the PAX East comment that caught Gabe's attention, causing him to engage in a conversation with Dave and Christoforo stating that "Holy shit this is unbelievable. Dave, if this guy has a booth at Pax east we will cancel it." To which Christoforo responded with one of the most grievous professional faux pas I have ever witnessed. First, he stated that they were not going to get a booth at PAX East because they had "bigger and better" shows to go to. Then, he went on to say that it doesn't matter what Mike Krahulik (THE MAN WHO RUNS PAX EAST) says, he'll have a booth there anyway because money and he has connections in Boston and evidently knows the Mayor.

Mike Krahulik handled the situation with all the poise expected from a professional in this situation, calmly repeating that he is the one who runs PAX, how he also runs (along with Tycho) Penny Arcade and how Christoforo will never have a table at PAX East. Or any other PAX event for that matter.


What has followed from this is nearly every gaming news website exploding with this story and spreading it further. I'm just waiting for that New York Times spread.

To the original e-mail exchange: Just, Wow!
Destructoid Article: Ocean Marketing: Most unpleasant PR rep in gaming -Destructoid
The Examiner: Ocean Marketing Makes Fatal PR Mistake

Also, in case you are feeling particularly impish after reading this (courtesy Penny Arcade):


info@avengercontroller.com 
Ocean Marketing Paul Christoforo on Twitter - @OceanMarketting 
***-***-****


Cheers.