Luchalma Lingo: Stick of Butter

Stick of Butter

A representation of one's life force.

"Oh man I only have one stick of butter left!"

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We continue my series of butter based vocabulary with probably the most used Luchalma Lingo word of them all.

Nowadays, it's chic to represent health in video games with unintrusive visual cues. Bloody screens, color fading, bruises and the like. But back in the day games did it right. And one game did it rightest of all.

Mega Man.

Look at that. No ambiguity there. A perfect column of sticks of butter to precisely convey just how close to fucked you are. It's so perfect, I refer to any form of health as sticks of butter.

Hearts?

Sticks of butter.

Pieces of chocolate?

Sticks of butter.

Honeycombs?

Sticks of butter.

Fucking numbers?

If I wanted an eyeful of digits I'd call one of the Three Stooges a knucklehead. Clearly there's a better way to do this.

Things might get a little complicated around level 50.

Nowadays it's a guessing game. Is my screen mostly red, or is it just kinda red? Not that it matters anyway. A few seconds behind that rock and it's back to factory fresh. 

That.......that's a whole other issue.

Retroulette #32: Mr. Chin's Gourmet Paradise

Does the fact that I knew this game was about a portly Asian man eating bowls of rice just by the title make me racist, or the developers?

REVIEW - Hitman: Absolution (360/PS3)

It's been a big year for assassins and hired killers. While the Corvos and Conners of the world flaunt their flashy newness to everybody who will pay attention, Hitman does what Hitman does best. It waits in the shadows for just the right time. Does Absolution sneak right on by never leaving a trace, or does it garrote its place into our hearts?

Mobile Gaming: What the hell is that?

Mobile gaming.

I'm not talking about handhelds, like the Nintendo DS, the Playstation Vita, or the NGage (Remember that?! Me neither).

Mobile gaming. Phones. Tablets.

I've had a Droid phone for about 6 months now, which means it's already outdated. I like it. All the fun little apps, the games, etc. Not bad. Certainly better than my Crunchberry that I had before it. But you get bored at work, maybe a long car ride, you look for stuff to pass the time. And there's some fun games on there good to waste a few minutes. Angry Birds _____ (Pick a noun, you'll likely find a game they made) seems to be the staple. But dig more, and you'll unearth a fountain of gaming you never thought possible... Allow me to explain.

REVIEW - Call of Duty: Black Ops II (360/PS3)

It's that time of year again. The leaves are changing colors, the weather is approaching ball-shriveling cold, and the ten ton behemoth that is Call of Duty is poised to grab the sales charts and climb the Empire State Building. The highly anticipated sequel to the highly anticipated sequel to the highly anticipated sequel to Call of Duty: Something or Other is now among us. Is this series becoming long in the tooth, or does Black Ops II take the formula to new heights.

Luchalma Lingo - Butter Pocket

Butter Pocket

A small bubble of smooth gameplay surrounded by choppiness.
An Oasis.

"I found a butter pocket. I never want to leave here."

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As a primarily console gamer, the idea of "60 frames per second" is largely a myth, spoken of only in hushed tones and written on arcane tablets. My experience with gaming is one in which a bit of jerky stuttering is not only expected, but customary. The spasming citizens of Crimetheft City 2000 are greeted like old friends.

On the rarest of occasions however, while playing my Powerpoint slideshow of a game, I will enter some ethereal void. One in which characters and objects move naturally, where birds don't twitch their way across the sky.

It's......it's beautiful.

This picture of an astonished baby is the best way to show how I feel at that moment.

At that point, I have two options. Stay in this beautifully smooth butter pocket for all eternity, or face life in the quivery world outside. Unfortunately, by its very definition, a butter pocket will be the point in the game with the least amount of interesting things onscreen.

So, as with life, you're forced to accept that you must move on instead of enjoying good things for even a little while.

This puts the butt in butter, am I right?
Hey...hey don't leave!

REVIEW - Halo 4 - Campaign (360)

Possibly no game in recent memory has had higher expectations placed upon it than Halo 4. Since its inception, the Halo franchise was the baby of Bungie Studios. Under that banner, the series defined first person shooters and console gaming as a whole. Now that Bungie has moved on to other things, it has been adopted by 343 Industries. Is there any way 343 can live up to that kind of lineage?

At the very least, these folks get Halo.

Don't Call it a Review - Assassins Creed III: Liberation (Vita)

The console version of Assassin's Creed III is great. For the Vita version, Ubisoft decided to do something a lil' different. It's separate from Desmond's story, and while the phrase "portable spin off" brings with it nightmarish implications, this game does Assassin's Creed on a handheld better than I imagined.

No Such Thing as a Good Videogame Movie: Mortal Kombat

Resident movie enjoyer and videogame movie hater Edward W. Unds dissects Mortal Kombat: the movie, and explains why everything you've ever loved is terrible and impure. So get your karate spirit fingers ready, because your soul certainly won't be.