New Shoes

Alright, I've been playing a lot of the Matrix Online.

Which makes it hard to wanna come here and blab, 'cause I'd rather be running around playing it than challenging Entropy to a Battle of Wits and stuff heh.

Oh, I also had the whole birthday party thing with the family, starting last weekend and all the way up 'till halfway through May, its Birthday Season in our family, we got one guy born after another, y'know, so every week is The Next Guys Birthday Week, its super annoying, even though it'd normally be fun to hang out with everybody, when yer stuck hanging out with 'em weekend after weekend it gets goddam old, plus shopping for birthday presents every week really bites some serious ass when yer a guy like me ahaha.

On the bright side, I probably won't catch scurvy from all the good food I'll be eating.

Anyways, back to the Matrix.

I think when the game first came out, you just wore whatever clothes you wanted, or the bonuses on clothes were really weak, so you could basically wear whatever you wanted.

And then they had a Combat Upgrade type thingie, and now the clothes have Killer Awesome Armor Bonuses.

Well, there's a big difference between those two kinds of games.

One where you can wear anything based on how it looks, and one where your character's appearance ends up being basically randomly assigned by virtue of the bonuses on the best gear you can find.

In a game where everybody can wear anything 'cause everything is the same, everybody picks a way they wanna look, and then they probably stick with that almost all their lives, so that can actually be kinda boring, I mean, if I wasn't forced to wear something else, I'd just wear the same stuff all the time, and I'd probably get bored of watching my little cartoon guy after a while, y'know.

Well, maybe, I think it depends on the game, actually, in Dundee's UO Emu thing, he made all armor and weapons basically the same (well, at different tiers), so you could do whatever you wanted with that, there was no Make Believe Secondary Penalty Attached for wanting to use a Fencing Sword instead of a Gladius or something, you weren't forced into doing anything different with your stats or anything stupid like that, it was all just for looks, and it was pretty damn cool in my humble O.

While at the same time, in a game where I'm forced to wear an orange-and-green jacket and pink shoes, 'cause the bonuses on 'em are awesome, I'm always hoping I'll find better loot that doesn't look as horrible, so the Pink Shoes Effect sorta drives you on to keep playing in order to find some Shoes That Aren't So Pink and Horrible or at least to Level Up Enough that you can use something else (hopefully at least as much as it makes you wanna quit heh).

'Cause you want your cartoon to look cool, y'know?

Or at least funny like southpark or something.

Not like Billy Joel From the 80s with White Gym Shoes and a Trenchcoat.

Which is exactly how I look in the Matrix.

Yah, I dunno what the fuck is up with the game, but I think its unpopular because everybody has to wear white gym shoes with their black vixen latex catsuits and ninja face masks.

I don't remember anybody in the movie wearing white gym shoes.

Heck, I haven't owned a pair of white gym shoes since I was in Junior High School in the 80s.

So I been playing my ass off, trying to find a good pair of shoes, some nice hiking boots or something, they got 'em in the game, the npcs wear 'em, all the npcs I fight look way cooler than my poor Billy Joel Facemask Loser, but goddam, all I loot are white gym shoes, and all there ever is for sale on the auction house are more white gym shoes.

Yah, dude, its just seriously fucked up!

What the fuck is up with this white gym shoes shit?

Oh, and then when you DO loot something cool, it might have worthless bonuses (you might as well eat a pair of shoes if they ain't got Ballistic and Melee bonuses, which is like two-thirds of 'em), or IT MIGHT BE FOR A WOMAN hah.

I wish there was some kinda craftable consumeable upgrade kit tool thingie that'd allow me to apply armor to clothes or something.

Anyway, aside from being forced to look like a total fruitcake for twenty levels (which is good and bad in different ways, I'll admit, and I don't really mind the comedy), the game really is Nintendo Wrestling Online (with Super Jump) combined with Scifi Urban Quest Stuff that reminds me of Half Life and Vampire Bloodlines or something (the quests are goddam cool, like right out of a comic book, which makes sense 'cause I heard they had that guy who did the Dark Horse Concrete comic books working on the team, back before Sony bought it up).

If you are reading this and you just started playing the Matrix and I dunno who you are, you need to get this link and print out the Mission Contacts part (and basically everything else in the Resources section, you need to know where all the hardlines are and who to get all the access node keys and Red Frags from and all that stuff), and then go around visiting all those dudes (every area has one), that's mostly how I level up when I ain't LOOKING FOR SHOES.

Seriously, if it wasn't for the cheat sheets on that website, the game would serously suck ass for me, finding all those guys the hard way is WAY the hell too much Chaos Theory even for me, there's nothing in the game that'd lead you to 'em, you'd just have to SEARCH EVERY FLOOR OF EVERY BUILDING IN THE WHOLE GAME to find 'em, I mean, HOLY SHIT ahaha.

Once you get to around tenth level, there's a whole map called "International" that you can visit that's fricking China Town (its awesome, I think that's why it reminds me of vampire bloodlines, besides the junk they got like working telephones that start sidequests and newpapers you can read and stuff), complete with Kungfu Schools and everything, but it ain't obvious that you should go there, you need to figure out how to use the blasted Subway system and cross Dangerous Terrain (just like the Elf Run to the Human Lands in WoW) to get there.

And then around 15 or 20th level that Westview place starts being good (even though you can level all the way to 20th level in that first area you start in, whatever its called, Richland), and Westview is like Mad Max, y'know, with vampires and crumbled overpasses and bombed out ruins and stuff.

Its all good, too, it ain't cheesy, there's gotta be hundreds of different kinds of buildings with their own mission areas (mission areas are sorta dependent on the shape of the building, 'cause they match up so you can look out the windows and stuff, unless they're underground, so if yer bored of getting the same junk all the time, move to a different area, y'know?), so its way better than Anarchy Online was (at least back when I played).

I dunno if I woulda ever played the game long enough to figure out some of that crap if Ex-bouncer wasn't playing it though, I probably woulda quit without ever even knowing about that China Town place.

And I dunno how much I like about it is the New Stuff, I think most of the reason I like it is probably because of the New Stuff, I mean, I really like the combat a lot, and I'm a lewtwhore so I love the lewt, y'know, even though I gotta wear these stupid ass white gym shoes all the time.

Man, they need to tweak that goddam White Gym Shoe generator or some shit ahaha.

Anyways, its another one of those Autoassault ones, y'know, where it was actually really fun and awesome and well-done and humongous, but ain't nobody playing it for whatever reason (gotta be some buggy shit from earlier, or mebbe it didn't have cool loot in the beginning, or the way there ain't no replay value, or the way there ain't any reason to stick around besides having Latex Fetish Cybersex once you get to Max Level or something).

I spend a lot of what little brain energy I'm willing to spend trying to figure out how the game could be as unpopular as it is heh.

It's gotta be the White Gym Shoes.

Well, whatever, that's what I'm doing, y'know, kungfu fighting with hordes of enemies that are dressed much cooler than me in the Matrix, on a Quest for New Shoes.

Here's a Fashion Tip from the King of Purple Hobo Fashions, though.

Nobody dresses in White except Mr. Rourke and Tattoo from Fantasy Island, and the dudes on the Loveboat.

Make everything black.

Yah, duh.

Plus it all matches.

Gloves, boots, hats, coats, shirts, pants, and goggles (all of which you sorta have to wear now for the armor bonuses, so don't forget your hat, Neo, or you'll feel the difference heh), make it all black.

Problem solved haha.

Or at least make all the accesories black so they won't be too horrible with my Divine Fluffy Pink Pimp Coat of Ballistic Resistance heh.

Well, whatever, fix the goddam white gym shoe thing already ahaha.

"Uptown girrrrrl, always living in her right way world..."