I like dumb pop-punk songs, mostly from the early 2000s. Addicted? Hell yes. Fat lip? Definitely one of my favorite songs. I can still enjoy All The Small Things even through all of it's overplay. Music like this was like the chicken nuggets of music to me. They didn't take much skill to make, but I feel like I would enjoy a diet of just that for days on end. I still can. But now that I'm older, I can see things with a different lens. So why Girl All The Bad Guys Want? Well, I can't tell if it's being ironic or not.

Hear me out. What's it about? It's fairly straightforward. It's about a kid who is not cool who's attracted to a girl who is cool. We'll dive more into that later, but that's the premise. It's simple enough, something relateable. Well, I related to it, whenever I heard it. Yeah, I was like that. Nerdy weird kid that was certainly attracted to girls who seemed cool.

Okay, well, maybe not quite as much as this kid. Jumping into the chorus, it seems like he's obsessed with this girl. So much that he feels suicidal that she's not into him. Or at least maybe, it seems like he's going to talk with her, right? At 8 o'clock? That's a commitment. She's obviously interested or he would have never scheduled this phone call. But no, he's just that much in love with her. Why?

--she's a rocker with a nose ring--

Okay, I mean, I guess if that's your thing, but I don't think that's enough to warrant love. What else?

-- she where's a two-way but i'm not quite sure--

Uhhh, if someone wears something that you don't know what it is, why does that attract you? If I told you I wear a anorak, does that excite you? Well it shouldn't cause it's just a jacket. Anything else? Anything that would actually cause excitement or reason to be in love?

-- and when she walks... --

Okay, that's pretty legitimate. This girl might just actually be Jesus Christ. But it does remind me of another song...

-- Trumpets (is it weird that i hear angels everytime you moan) --

So basically you just like her cause she's hot. You like her so much, you want to shoot yourself. But okay, that's obviously being hyperbolic. What else do you have to say? Do you have anything in common?

-- godsmack vs agent orange --
Okay, so probably not going to any concerts together.

-- her cd changes full of singers --
The way you say it makes her sound very lame. It almost sounds like you think your music is more credible than hers. It's like

-- listenin to rap metal--
All right, I'm pretty sure people are gonna give you credit for music tastes. I think the general census, or at least people on the internet will give you more credit for being a fan of early surf-punk than being a fan of Linkin Park. But that's just some people.

I think the song gets weird when he proclaims what she likes.

-- She likes em with a mustache, race track season pass... --
Is this the same girl? I mean, people can have wide interests, but I feel like the kind of person that listens to this -- chop suey -- is not gonna be the kind of person that looks like this. And what's even weirder is when he drops this line:

-- She'll never know that I'm the best that she'll never have --
Okay, why? What do you have that's so great that she'll never get? Is it cause you're such a nice guy? And all the guys that want her are bad guys? What, are you jealous you can't grow a moustache?

-- I can't grow a mustache --
Uhhh, okay, so you are. Listen, man, I can't grow a mustache either. It's not so bad. You know who else can't? Keanu Reeves. And he's a badass! C'mon, man! It's not so bad! I'm sure you have things that people would really enjoy!

 --All I got's a moped--
Uhhhh have you heard Macklemore's latest big hit? Having a moped officially makes you cooler than everyone else in this entire song. The girl, the bad guys, Godsmack, you are officially better than all of them.

Your biggest problem isn't that you can't grow a mustache or that you don't like rap metal. You wanna know what your biggest problem is?

-- Now I'm watching wrestling --
You're trying to be something you're not. And that's not even so bad. Everyone should try new things, at least to discover that they don't like them. What makes it worse is proclaiming that you're the best that she'll never have. Somehow, having only one redeeming quality that's not even related to who you are as a person makes you more deserving than all the bad guys.

Ohhh, I see. I get it now. You can't grow a mustache, can you? Cause all you can grow is a neckbeard?

This song reminds me of "Kristina Doesn't Know I Exist" by Catch-22, a song about a guy that's too shy to talk or even look at a girl in the eyes, and when he sees she has a boyfriend he acts all high and mighty.

The difference is that I'm fairly sure that song was ironic. This one? I'm not so sure. This is a song written by the same people who made "Shut Up and Smile," which parrots this line many times over:

--All we need is some ice cream and a hug--
And I really enjoy that song! It's upbeat, it's poppy. I mean, yeah, it's pretty dumb, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. But this one? Is it a song condemning people trying to be something you're not to get a partner that has no reason to like you? And past that feeling superior to them? Or is it just an experience that the songwriter had. Or just something he saw, who knows.

Bottom line, the biggest problem is that in making something that can relate this kind of person, it further perpetuates this ideology. The sort of person who brags about how they don't watch sports kind of person. The kind of person who would be too afraid to volunteer to help someone and then would find satisfaction knowing that the person is worse off having not called on you for help. And I would know cause I used to be this asshole.

Who knows if this is what Mr. Soup was going for. Something tells me it's not. But if it was, hey, good on you for making a very simple song with a surprisingly intelligent theme. And if not, well, I hope you've grown up some in the past 14 years.

mirror's edge 2 notes

Mirror's Edge was released in 2007 by EA and Dice to.. mostly positive reviews. It was a decent enough hit that grew sort of a cult following likely due to it being unique in the genre. After a few years, no one really expected a sequel. And then it was announced 8 years later, and Mirror's Edge Catalyst was to be the open world followup.

If you haven't seen our top games lists, I'm a big fan of the first Mirror's Edge. The single player was kinda odd, and the combat sucked, and the story was a bit uninspired, but the running was great! It had a wonderful aesthetic, and some of the best time trials I've ever played in a game. The mechanics and level design built for this wonderful competition between me and a good friend.

Mirror's Edge 2 is a big open world with a lot of side missions and small trials and collectibles and is also kind of a mess. Some things are improved. Some things are not. I think a lot of it is centered around its open world-ness. Collectibles, side missions, and random encounters now litter the rooftops as you ignore important pressing story missions to instead hack billboards.

All right, let's play the- Oh.

To this day, I'm still not sure if making it open world is a good idea or not. Unlike most open world games, you're stuck on rooftops, cutting through hallways, walking on tight ropes, or jumping from building to building. It's very free and fun at first, traversing these rooftops of jungle gym equipment, but with how it's set up, there are some frustrations that never go away. With always being on top of a large building, there is the constant concern of falling off that large building. And enjoying a loading screen. You will spend a lot of time looking at loading screens, something I'll touch more on later. The game doesn't give you a heads up display, which I kind of like as a way to force you to enjoy the skyline and environments and possibly create familiar routes which you'll use to run from point to point of interest, but the map is not built intuitive enough to avoid running into dead ends, or just going in the wrong direction. Runner's vision is a helpful way to avoid constantly checking the map, but then you're always following the same route. The freedom is taken away, and you're just following a line.

Admittedly, the collectibles do wonders for justifying it's open world change. They remind me of Crackdown or Saints Row IV where you're constantly distracted by trying to figure out how to get to a collectible. There are a bunch of different types, but I think the grid leaks are the best ones. I mean, none of them really make sense, but in a "game sense", it's nice to have collectibles you can see from a distance and don't slow you down. The electronic parts are fine, but if you see one in the distance, you don't know if it's already been collected, and every single time you get another one, you see the same animation. Pull of the panel, pull out the chip, look at it, shove it up your butt. Every time, it looks the same. Okay, yeah, I get it. You're pulling it off, yep, okay pick it up, spin it, oh you're getting shot, no matters, look at it, spin it, pull it off, spin it, pick it up, pull it off... It really stops the flow of things in a game about maintaining flow. Again, that's more of a minor thing, cause it's still fun to just collect shit, but still. If some collectibles are glowing, floating balls of "data," I don't need the framing for every single electronic chip. Why am I even taking these? Whatever.

The time trials are back, now termed "dashes." They're a worse implementation of the time trials in the first game. Like, I enjoy that there are a lot of them, but they're just not as good for a few reasons. Firstly, the time between mistake and retry is too long. Like I said before, there is a lot of loading. If you're close enough to the spawn, it'll load without cutting to a loading screen, but that's a rarity. And if you fall off a high enough ledge or fall off the building, it loads to put you back at the ledge you fell off. And if you want to retry and didn't hold retry early enough, you have to wait to load from the death, and then you have to wait to load for the retry. Secondly, you don't know where you're going. Yeah, you have some runner's vision to tell you where you're going, but in the first one, where you had massive beacons of light at multiple checkpoints, now there's one flat circle where you have to end up. You don't know where it is from the beginning, and if you're trying to find the fastest route, it's difficult to tell where you're losing the most time. And yes, I appreciate that it's not obvious what the fastest route is, as finding the best route and optimizing it was the best part of the first one's trials,
but now it's such a pain because all the buildings look kind of samey and unless the run is incredibly straightforward, it's easy to get lost with where you started and where you're going. And because it is just one checkpoint, the dashes themselves aren't as interesting. You're not looping around through the same area, you're just getting to this one point as fast as possible, but it's difficult to do that as you're just re-evaluating the entire race every time.

The movement feels more streamlined than in the first one, which is good and bad. They took out the small tricks for picking up and maintaining speed like side stepping to instantly get to max speed, or the constant jumping and crouching, and they added stuff like vaulting over small ledges which always felt like it slowed me down. But they also took away core mechanics of moving in the first one to add this false sense of progression in the form of an "upgrade tree."

The upgrade tree in this game is the most unnecessary annoying "addition." There are arguably no new upgrades. The movement ones are all either simple tricks or contextual tools. All the tricks are things you could do from the beginning of the first one, like quick turning from a wall, coiling your feet when you jump, or freaking rolling when you hit the ground. All the tools are so contextual that it's not an upgrade, just a key that unlocks a faster door. The hook shot in this game is lame because you can only do it in specific spots. Like, I get that it'd kind of break the game if it could be used anywhere at any time, but Titanfall 2 has a waaaay better hookshot. It just feels like an afterthought. And the idea that you have to arbitrarily unlock things that make it possible to make the game flow better is stupid. It just feels cheap when the only way to three star a dash is through something you unlock later in the game. Upgrades in just simply don't belong and discourage even trying the dashes until you have everything.

Another flavor of side content is one off dashes, either from a machine that yells at you, or from people that are just standing waiting for someone to come along and make their lives better. I hate these missions. Like the dashes, you have one place to get to, that's just one small circle on the ground. Unlike the dashes though, they are on the strictest time limit possible. And since it's a count down instead of a count up, you run out of time and don't get that opportunity to optimize your path. It's just trial and error with a fun loading screen between every attempt. Like, I don't think I'm bad at the game, but I've completed many of these with 0 seconds left on the timer. And there's no reason the time limit is so short, like these people are just standing around, and they've been standing for days. What do two extra seconds really mean? And there are some that are fragile, or some where you can't be seen, but to my knowledge, that add on is essentially non existent. I'm already going as fast as I can on the only telegraphed route, it's not like I can change up how I make this run to avoid being spotted.

There are other types of these smaller side missions, and also side missions where you actually do things, but they didn't particularly peak my interest either.

As a short side note, the people in this game make this whole world seem dead. There are just people... Standing around doing nothing. It honestly reminds me of Tony Hawk Underground when there are people just standing waiting to give you a task to do. And for some reason, they always look like they're out of focus. Graphics look great within cutscenes, the people look amazing. But outside... It's so out of place, and they don't do anything. Some don't even have anything to say to you, they're just... Standing. And the ones that want you to do something are just so ungrateful. Like asshole, I'm trying to stop corruption in the city, you can deliver this thing yourself.

Also, the layout of everything just seems so weird. Like yeah, I get it, it's a futuristic city, but no buildings should ever look like this. Why is this what this room looks like? One time, a big server room is described to be built not for humans but for machines to use which is kiiind of an explanation, but there are still rooms that are just... What? What is this room for, why does it look like this.

Combat is bad. It was pretty bad in the first one, but you could use the guns and I kinda liked how awkward the gunplay was because it would be awkward for a runner to use a gun. But now you can't use a gun and sometimes combat is unavoidable. It's like they heard that combat was bad in the first game and were like "it's those pesky guns that are the problem." They even justify why Faith can't pick up a gun and shoot in loading screens, but that doesn't make combat any less of a chore.


As for the story missions... I said before, I don't much care for them, but when I actually paid attention to it, it was a series of details that just add up to me not caring. There are so many decisions that just seem off, small things that don't add up. It seems like every mission was thought out in a game sense but not in a realistic or consistent world sense. And yeah, you can try to make a compelling story, but what doesn't make me invested is leaving out details or set up. Telling me I can get the backstory by reading a comic outside of the game makes me feel like the story in the game is incomplete.

But here, let me give you a bunch of examples of design choices I found weird. And I'm gonna be throwing out a bunch of spoilers, so if you're at all interested in the story this game has to offer, just skip to the end. The game is called Mirror's Edge Catalyst, and not Mirror's Edge 2. This game is a reboot. Not a sequel or a prequel. See, I was confused cause the plot of the first one involves you saving your framed sister, and the plot of this one ends with you discovering that this daughter of one of the big evil corporations, Kruger Sec, is your sister. With a similar name too, in 1 it's Kate, and in Catalyst, it's Caitlyn, or Cat. But there's no way they're the same person. Catalyst ends with Cat being the CEO of Kruger Sec. In 1, Kate's a police officer. If they're the same person, Cat's making a wild decision to get out of the corrupt business lifestyle and live a more tame life as an officer. I just don't see it.

There's a mission where you're in this underground base and there are drones to be set up and infiltrate or destroy the resistance group in there. When you go in and destroy them, they're all in boxes conveniently resting right next to endless pits where they are pushed into and destroyed. Why are they there? Who decided that was a good spot to leave them and not set them up? How did they even get all the way down there?

Your mentor buddy, Noah, is thought to be dead, then it's revealed he's in this place called the greylands. And then you're told that it's not the greylands, but he's in a different place called the kingdom. And the kingdom is literally down under the underground base the resistance is in, there's just one door that needed to be opened. What? How did they not notice that? You think the resistance would want to make sure their base is super secretive, but they're neighbors to this evil corporate lair of torture and prisoners and neither of them knew.

When you figure out where the location of the kingdom is, you break into some area of KrugerSec and have your hacker buddy, Plastic, get the information for you. She says that if you make it in and out of here, you're a legend. Which you do with no problems, of course. And then when you need to invade the personal apartment of the CEO of KrugerSec, Faith loses all hope and sulks about how it's impossible.

A lot of the characters are very flat and uninteresting. Your sidekick runner buddy, Icarus, is the stereotypical hotshot that thinks he's the best and you're old news, but by the end learns to appreciate your skill and determination. The CEO of KrugerSec himself could have had some interesting points to make about his product, one he does make: maybe some people want to have their thoughts and emotions manipulated to make them happier, even if it forces them to pay into the power of big businesses. And then Faith punches him in the head. You keep telling these two people that you're definitely gonna give them this blueprint of that product and they keep saying "Okay I'll do this for you but you better give it to me!" and then you never give it to either of them and they're like okay with it or something. Not all characters are bad, I liked Plastic, but most didn't strike me as interesting at all.

The big climax of this game where you run and jump and move quickly, is all vertical movement. I get that it's visually stunning, you climbing up the tallest building, careful not to fall down as stuff is falling from above and glass is breaking from beneath, but it's sooo slow and directed. There's no sense of freedom or even skill. And when the entire game is on top of buildings where at any point you can fall and die, you're not really raising the stakes by just bringing me higher up.


There are a ton of other small details that just confuse me. How come you can disrupt some fans but not others?

Is pulling down walls really an upgrade if you can only do it in story missions? Why even have the walls there in the first place?

You think after Faith stole a priceless blueprint from this company she'd be high priority and that all the KrugerSec police would know who she is and what she looks like, but they're just like "hey, it's a runner, stop her!"

Why is the direct path through later parts of the levels hidden jumps onto tiny ledges on the sides of buildings?

Why does it look like I'm running through peoples houses, even though there's never anyone here doing anything. Why are the doors and windows wide open? On top of a building, you'd think it'd get pretty chilly.

You've killed so many people to get to the final room, why does the big evil baddie think two people are enough to stop you? Why doesn't he just pull out a gun and shoot you right there?



It probably sounds like I hated this game with all these minor nit picks. I don't, but they really add up to a frustrating experience. I think this game could have been great if they put more thought into why they were setting stuff up the way they did. It just seems like a lot of it wasn't thought out enough. I mean, I still like running around getting collectibles, and as far as I know, it's the only game that really focuses on free running and flow at this scale, but the numerous long loading screens, the bad dashes, the stupid skill tree, the uninspired story, and the many small annoyances build this game up to be more frustrating than anything. It coulda been great, and I could have really loved it, but instead, I just feel conflicted.