So Cash Industries

Webcomics exist on the Internet in all kinds. Their art ranges from stick figures to wildly-varying styles, and their messages range from a simple laugh to thought-provoking concepts. Some are funny, some are dramatic, some just plain suck, and some are just awesome. These two webcomics are the very latter.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

Yes, that IS a ninja riding a dinosaur.

Born into a family of deadly ninja assassins, but filled with the desire to practice medicine, Dr. McNinja routinely deals with various crises in his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland, ranging from the illegal to the supernatural. Dr. McNinja constantly has to endure the ire of his parents, who believe that the art of killing people is far more important than the art of healing them. With a mustachioed Latino gunslinger kid named Gordito and his pet velociraptor Yoshi by the Doc’s side, he’s an unstoppable omnidisciplinary assassin with many issues to deal with, both in the past and the present. Numerous escapades include, but are not limited to: stopping the distribution of a drug that endows the user with ninja powers, exacting revenge on a crime boss, and meeting Count Dracula himself. One story arc connects to the next, resulting in an ever-growing saga for the practitioner of both life and death. Make sure to start at the very beginning. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Axe Cop

Best battle cry ever.

One day, at the scene of a fire, a normal police cop found a fire axe. It was that day he decided to become Axe Cop, and dedicated his life to fight evil. Of course, he couldn’t do it alone, and so recruits a myriad of unique (and most likely insane) characters, including a fellow cop, a T-rex with rocket boosters and miniguns for arms, a genius, and a superhero whose arms are socks that he can throw like boomerangs. Axe Cop’s story is written by a five-year-old boy, and then illustrated by his 29-year-old brother. With a hook like that, you can already tell this comic’s going some crazy places. Axe Cop takes you into the mind of a kid, excited by action movies, horror movies, video games, and video game action horror movie graphic novels. In a typical Rule of Cool fashion, Axe Cop throws reality to the wind for the sake of pure entertainment. The comic’s schedule is somewhat irregular, but there are usually a few updates every week.

Corki. I know him. I love him. I main as him. But how many other people do? How many other people can legitimately say they play a large portion of their matches as him? How many people have encountered a skilled Corki that either carried their team, or completely wrecked them? How many subpar Corki players have people encountered?

I can comfortably say that people encounter subpar Corkis more than skilled ones.

Why?

Corki is not Ashe, or Ryze, or Alistar. He’s not easy to pick up, practice with, and master. People tend to gravitate towards easy champions just because they’re easy to do okay with, as opposed to a champion like Corki, who is hard to do extremely well with. As a result, people who see others try Corki and fall short are quick to say that he’s a bad champion, and that anyone who plays him would be better off playing a simpler carry, like Ashe. Another issue is that Ezreal, another ranged carry with a playing style similar to Corki’s, outclasses him in nearly every aspect, particularly his difficulty.

Missile Barrage vs. Mystic Shot

Mystic Shot can out damage Missile Barrage, it scales with his attack damage, has a similar cooldown, and is a faster moving skillshot (easier to aim). In addition, Ezreal has access to this ability right from the start, while Corki has to wait until level 6 for his. The Missile Barrage has a very poor AP ratio, and is not viable to build off of. Even though every fourth missile is a Big One that deals double damage, it can be predicted by viewing Corki’s current buffs (it will say it’s ready to fire), and can be blocked completely by running behind minions. Mystic Shot wins.

Essence Flux vs. Gatling Gun

Essence Flux hits every target in a line, be it friend or foe. This means Ezreal can simultaneously buff his team’s attack speed and deal damage to enemies. A buffed team is much easier to push turrets with. However, Corki’s Gatling Gun provides both AoE damage and AoE armor reduction, thus allowing both himself and other physical DPS characters to be much more effective in team fights. Gatling Gun wins.

Arcane Shift vs. Valkyrie

Corki’s Valkyrie is extremely mana-hungry early on, and is on a long cooldown. Ezreal’s Arcane Shift is on a much shorter cooldown, can catch enemies off guard with an unexpected cast, and also shoots a homing shot at the nearest enemy. Arcane Shift, due to being a blink, is much easier to go through walls with, where a poorly-aimed Valkyrie can crash headfirst into a wall. Due to Arcane Shift’s effectiveness, Ezreal can level it up in lieu of his other abilities, where as a Corki that levels up Valkyrie past level 1 early on ends up gimping his effectiveness with Phosphorous Bomb and Gatling Gun. Arcane Shift wins.

Trueshot Barrage vs. Phosphorous Bomb

Ezreal’s ultimate can hit multiple targets at once, and can keep going to hit targets further behind the first set, at the expense of some damage. However, on a physical DPS build (one of the most common), Trueshot Barrage’s damage becomes lackluster quickly. Corki’s Phosphorous Bomb gives relatively cheap AoE nuke and blind, and is vital to early game harassing. Phosphorous Bomb wins.

Hextech Shrapnel Shells vs. Rising Spell Force

Rising Spell Force rewards Ezreal’s good aim with an stackable increase in his attack speed, up to 60%. This, combined with a team buffed by Essence Flux, can cripple turrets quickly. Alone, it gives Ezreal an boost in damage while his skillshots are on cooldown. Hextech Shrapnel Shells allow Corki’s basic attacks to deal an additional 10% true damage that can’t be resisted. This, combined with Gatling Gun and an armor penetration item such as Last Whisper, allows damage to add up even on tanked enemies. Despite this, Rising Spell Force wins due to a greater endgame effect on turrets.

Overall: Ezreal vs. Corki

Corki has the potential for extremely high burst damage, but this will fail if even one of his skillshots are missed. Ezreal ends up being more effective at sustaining his damage output, can be much more mobile with Arcane Shift than Valkyrie, and is far more effective at pushing turrets, and buffing his team to help push alongside him. Ezreal should win.

So why play Corki at all?

I picked up Corki before Ezreal was released, and I’ve never felt the desire to switch to Ezreal. If I play as Corki, do well as him, and enjoy myself as I play him, why should I bother switching to Ezreal just because he does Corki’s job better? People who pick up Ezreal see him as the only one that fills that particular niche, and are usually completely unfamiliar with Corki. If you wanted to pick him up now, be aware of the fact that an easier alternative exists, and it’ll take much less time to reach the same level of effectiveness as it would with Corki. It ends up being a matter of preference. I could start playing Ezreal, but in doing so, I would be moving to a champion that fulfills the same purpose, except he’s slightly easier to master, and my skills would probably end up atrophying for it. In a sense, I don’t play Ezreal because he’s easy. I play Corki because he’s hard. Also, it’s not beyond the bounds of reason to play a champion just because you enjoy him. Also note that Corki is by no means a subpar champion. If you’re in Draft Mode, and Ezreal ends up being banned or chosen by the enemy team, Corki can be a nice alternative.

Corki is extremely difficult to master, yes, but think about what you can do once you’ve mastered him. Those that know his true potential will oppose the naysayers, claiming that Corki, in the right hands, can dish out some of the highest damage in the game. This can be true, but it’s not as easy as pressing R to win. It actually takes commitment, time, and will probably initially result in horrible losses and the questioning of your intelligence, your sexual orientation, your mother’s sexual intelligence, and whether or not abbreviations count in Scrabble (they don’t).

Corki is unique in that he can assist the team beyond doing damage. His Phosphorous Bomb provides stealth detection, his Gatling Gun provides AoE armor reduction towards anything he’s aimed at, and his missiles can harass and keep an enemy at range while Corki’s teammates maneuver into a more advantageous position. Valkyrie lets him surge forward, suddenly adding an unexpected boost to a gank’s damage output, and it allows him to quickly flee from a fight gone bad, even allowing him to fly over walls, forcing enemies to go around. Thanks to a set of generic, yet effective abilities, Corki can find his spot in any team setup, with a preference to crowd-control heavy compositions.

I’ll be posting a guide to Corki soon (see: whenever I can bother to sit down and write it), but I figured I would throw this out now just so people can recognize him and understand that the bad Corkis they play against are not representative of the champion’s quality at all. Stay tuned!

I just had a very bad case of gas.

It’s been a long time since my last post, which I think had something to do with Kamelot, or EVE Online. I forget which, and that’s not a cue for Rockman to go digging through the archives to find it.

So, yeah. A lot’s changed! I’ve moved out of my house and taken up residence in an apartment with some very good friends of mine. It’s much closer to the college that I go to, so that means I can save time and money by walking to campus. But enough about the boring stuff, let’s get to the real perk of living in a place like this:

HIGH SPEED INTERNET.

About 14 megabits down and two megabits up means it’s going to be leaps and bounds easier to create and upload content for So Cash. …Great, I just committed myself to actually contributing to this site. DAMN IT. Oh well, a How To Play Corki guide will be coming soon. Probably.

So, in official news that no one cares about, Riot Games has launched Season One of Draft Mode for League of Legends! This means LoL is OMG SRS BZNS NAO. EVEN MORE SO THAN INTERNET SPACESHIPS.

Okay, maybe not THAT serious business.

At any rate, it’ll be fun! I’ll be adding posts about my impressions of Draft Mode, as well as a much-needed Corki guide, and a bunch of posts about the latest games that I’ve been playing. First on the list: Singularity. Stay tuned!

Date: September 29, YC 111
Location: Piekura VIII, Moon 11, State War Academy School, Lonetrek Region
ID: Captain Gladis Neelsen

So it’s finally happened. I’m officially a capsuleer. After years of arduous work in the Royal Institute, the first step towards realizing a lifelong dream is complete. As soon as I had graduated, I immediately received a message from a very dear friend of mine. It was a man I had known since childhood, and we had gone our own ways when he began his studies at the School of Applied Knowledge in Todaki. Before he and I parted company for the better part of two decades, I made one promise to him. I promised that I would eventually join him and roam among the stars with him. Following my departure from the Institute, this dream felt so close, yet so far. I still had to find him.

Many people reading this would simply label this another drama in which two lovers are separated for ages, only to reunite after trial by fire, and live happily ever after. I wouldn’t exactly call him a lover; in fact, what love I do have for him is strictly platonic (and non-reproductive intercourse is an extreme taboo in Amarr culture). Instead, he was a man who had standards.  He was a man of the world, and had no qualms in stating things how they were. He was a realist, a type of person every society could do with having more of.

He never roamed far from Caldari space, as too many of the amenities vital to a capsuleer were within arm’s reach. He had no roots in Amarr space. Constant work for the Caldari State had warranted a kill-on-sight order in Gallente space. Minmatar space was simply too remote for him. Caldari space had it all. As such, it’s the most densely-populated area in all of New Eden. He told me he operated out of some fringe system in the Lonetrek region. It was adjacent to low-security space, had plenty of industrial and mining opportunities, and it wasn’t far from the massive trading hub of Jita. It seemed like the perfect haven.

In his mails to me following my graduation, he recounted the events he and his corporation (known as “So Cash Industries”) had experienced during their time in Piekura. From harmless antics to intense wartime action, it seems like he and his bunch of chums know how to have fun, a stark comparison to most corporations whose sole interest lies in wringing as much ISK as they can out of the markets of New Eden. One particular story he recollected in great detail was that of their first war with another corporation. The war notification had appeared without so much as a single word spoken between his CEO and the enemy’s. The corporation in question, called “Inglorious Basterds,” touted themselves as an honorable group who never fled from a fight, and took every loss in stride, calling it a learning experience. He continued by saying that nothing could be further from the truth. This group insisted on fighting dirty, fleeing from a fight whenever possible, and defaming him and his group with slanderous talk. Eventually, a friend with some connections pulled some strings, and gave the Basterds a new force to worry about. Needless to say, the war was retraced, and the corporation disbanded within a month. However, they did not withdraw without enduring some losses, including the loss of a Fleet Issue Tempest when the pilot, in desperation, docked the severely-damaged vessel into a station lacking repair facilities. Since safety regulations forbid the deployment of structurally-damaged ships, the pilot had no choice but to dispose of the half-billion ISK vessel. Truly, it was a red letter day for So Cash.

Blogging this from my phone, I’m sitting outside the Scout Bar in San Antonio in anticipation of the Kamelot concert. The air is filled with epic awesomeness.

As usual, you can expect my thoughts and some pictures within the next few days.

That NEVER happens. EVER. Not with his wicked bandwidth.

Anyway, on to the REAL topic of this blog post.

For a long time, I was really looking forward to Dead Space, and after playing it all the way through, I was by and large very impressed.

Here’s the premise: It’s several hundred years in the future. Earth has expended most of its natural resources, so the humans have built massive starships, called “planetcrackers,” which essentially break planets open and pull huge chunks of rock out, harvesting the minerals within.

Anyway, boring part over. You take the role of Isaac Clarke, an engineer who has been tasked to board the USG Ishimura (one of the aforementioned planetcrackers). The Ishimura has, for whatever reason, suffered a communications blackout. Clarke’s team of engineers is to board and perform the necessary maintenance. However, once you board the Ishimura, it’s evident that something has gone horribly wrong. There are no living crew members to be found, and there is a substantial amount of gore everywhere. Something killed the crew.

Turns out, some crazy alien creatures have boarded the ship, called “necromorphs.” Once they kill the crew, they mutate them into more of their own. Killing them isn’t as easy as shooting at them until they die. Presumably, their body functions are decentralized, and the game puts a lot of emphasis on a tactic called “strategic dismemberment.” Most of your weapons will help you enact this tactic to the fullest. The interesting thing is the aliens will adapt to changes in their physique (being dismembered). If you cut off their legs, they’ll start crawling after you. Sometimes if you slice them clean in half, you’ll have not one, but TWO enemies to worry about.

Unlike most shooters, where you take the role of some big buff soldier or something, Isaac is an engineer. Therefore, most of his weapons are improvised from repair or mining tools, like welders, saws, and torches.

The game has no real HUD. Every bit of vital information you’ll need is projected via hologram on Isaac’s suit. Your health is shown by a glowing vertical stripe running down the back of your suit, and your current weapon’s ammo is only displayed via hologram when you’re actually aiming it. The lack of a HUD helps keep the player immersed into the game.

The game also allows you to collect items called “power nodes,” which can be used to upgrade your weapons and RIG (your armor suit) to hold more ammo, do more damage, withstand more hits, etc. The game also makes use of a store system used to buy and sell supplies and resources (as to why you have to do this on an abandoned ship with no security to thwart you is beyond me, but it taught me a thing or two about rationing medkits).

Aside from the expected horror-driven atmosphere, which is best enjoyed late at night in the dark alone, the game makes use of some interesting physics puzzles. The game has several zero-gravity environments where Isaac can leap around and walk on walls, ceilings, and such. Isaac also makes use of two things called “stasis” and “kinesis.” Stasis allows you to slow down pretty much anything that moves. This can range from enemies, which you can slow down to help you line up your shots, to fast-moving OSHA-violating machinery that would slice you to bits just from standing near it. Kinesis lets you pick up and move/punt objects (sort of like the Gravity Gun…well, exactly like the Gravity Gun). Combine this with some zero-gee rooms and you’ve some some really interesting puzzles you have to think about for a few minutes before trying to solve.

The inventory and map screen are displayed in-game in real-time, meaning the game doesn’t pause as you’re looking through your inventory or your map. As a result, make sure you’ve completely cleared out a room before consulting your map. Thankfully, you can just press X to administer a medkit from your inventory.

On another note, since your RIG suit only has a limited supply of air in a vacuum (you can upgrade this capacity as you progress), sometimes it’s important to use an air tank in your inventory to refill and not die. However, you can’t just press a button to use it. You have to open your inventory, go through your items to find your air can, and use it. Add this to the panic you’ll feel once you get down to under 15 seconds of air and you’ll feel that much more relief when you see your air timer refill.

However, for the all of the hype surrounding the horror and scare-you-shitless elements of this game, I felt a little bit disappointed. The game didn’t have as many heart-stopping scares as I thought it would, but it still had enough to make me feel uneasy. Don’t get me wrong, it had a few “OH SHIT” moments, but I felt like I was promised more. It really works best when you have surround sound set up in your home theater. Sometimes, you’ll hear a pipe burst or something clatter behind you, and it’s enough to make you turn around and wonder what made the noise. Once you see nothing malicing you, you’ll cautiously continue about your mission.

The sound design for this game is top-shelf. The sound of the weapons slicing through flesh, circular saws grinding against bone and steel, the horrified screams of the victims, and the actually IN CHARACTER voice work makes this game worth picking up just for the sound.

If sound and gameplay aren’t enough for you, add visual icing to the cake that is Dead Space. This game is GORGEOUS.

Get it? GORE-geous? I’m such a comedian.

Plus, any time you get to look out into space, you’ll be taken by the sheer beauty of it. Just don’t be taken too long, or you’ll run out of air.

So, would I recommend it? Absolutely. Get this game. You’ll love it.

Apparently Obama’s campaigning in Burnout Paradise. What the fuck.

Driving around Paradise City, you’ll see a big billboard with his face on it. VOTE FOR CHANGE!

Why isn’t this one of the billboards you can get an Achievement for smashing through?

Try this: Load up Call of Duty 4 and see if there are any “Vote McCain” ads anywhere.
Also try: Load up GTA IV, go to a strip club with Roman, and look for Palin ads.

You didn’t hear this from me. Who are you people?

So I’m sitting in the lounge at the student center at the University, pondering what to do with this massive four-and-a-half-hour gap I have between classes (don’t ask). Then, it dawned on me. I could write a blog post. And so this blog post was born.

I’ve really been indulging in a lot of Rock Band 2 in the last month, and I’m really enjoying it. Now’s the part where I rave about all of the things that should’ve been in the first game.

Single player and online World Tour! Now I can make tons of money all by myself and I’m not stuck playing the same setlists over again. Plus, I can just drop right into my friend’s band and rock out with him.

Bands don’t require a leader anymore! That concept was just dumb. One character that always had to be there when you did the World Tour? I have several characters I play as.

No more crazy randomly-generated bandmates when yours are absent! Just assign your characters to stand in, and they’ll always be rocking out with you, whether you’re alone or rocking as a group.

Characters aren’t limited to one instrument anymore! Again, also a dumb concept.

All DLC is compatible with all Rock Band games! You can even transfer the disc tracks from Rock Band 1 to Rock Band 2, for 400 Microsoft Points. That’s 55 songs out of the original 58. The songs you can’t transfer are:

- Enter Sandman – Metallica
- Run to the Hills – Iron Maiden
- Paranoid – Black Sabbath

One thing I noticed in RB2 was the guitar and bass difficulty seem more realistic (and so therefore, a lot more intuitive) than Rock Band 1. It looks harder at first, but you get used to it. Still, fuck Visions and I hope it dies in a fire. Even on Hard it’s diabolical. I get to about 11% and then I fail. At least the Expert notechart has hammer-ons. Fuck that song. If you can beat Visions on Expert in any way, shape or form, you’re a fucking freak.

To correspond with the launch of RB2, Harmonix launched their new website for Rock Band last Monday. You can take high-res pictures of your band members, get it printed on T-shirts, posters, make figurines, etc. It’s all really cool. Here’s a nice, juicy high res shot of my band, Blue Team.

Give you ten seconds to figure out which one is me.

It seems Harmonix is right on par with Valve when it comes to meeting expected release dates that they announced weeks in advance. The website was three weeks late. Now, I’m sure developing a system that can look at a player’s gamesave, see all of their characters and be able to render them in any pose is a massive undertaking, and I’ll give them credit for that. But, they KNEW that as soon as the site went live, there would be a TIDAL WAVE of players trying out the new features, and, as expected, the system was taking upwards of up to nine hours to render one picture. Of course, coming to the site, you see the massive “BETA” label at the top of the page. Why are people allowed to write off slipshod performance by calling it a beta? If it’s a beta, don’t release it yet! I’d rather have something that works perfectly later than something that only works half of the time now. I’m looking at you, Valve, and your Team Fortress 2 beta. Yeah, that’s right.

But I digress.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Castle Crashers. If you’ve ever played Alien Hominid, it’s done by the same guys, who are also the big head honchos over at Newgrounds. If you don’t have Castle Crashers, it’s $15 on the XBL marketplace, and it’s pretty much a two-and-a-half-dimensional side-scroller beat-em-up. It’s a lot of fun. The music in that game is fucking awesome.

Finally, Dead Space comes out next Tuesday. Who’s gonna be up till 4 AM in the dark, being scared shitless by that game. Me, that’s who.

So now I have about THREE hours to go until my next class. Anyone seen any good movies recently? Get any good Spy kills? Beat Visions on Expert 100%? Ha, I kid, because that’s fucking impossible.

So yeah, I promised the post-show post would be on Friday, but some things came up that I was busy with, plus Jake was still uploading pictures. However, now I’m ready. Here goes.

The show went down at La Zona Rosa in Austin, on 4th Street just past Guadalupe Street. There’s some good parking there, $5 for eight hours.

The VIP tickets let you in early so you could meet the band before they got ready to perform. They were handing out free posters, signing stuff. Emppu and Marco were clearly drunk already, and Anette told me that Austin’s steak is some of the best she’s ever had. Go figure!

Nightwish had one band open for them, Sonata Arctica. If you’ve not heard of them, they’re another metal band coming out of Finland. They’ve been opening for Nightwish during their North American tour.

Note: This picture is NOT from the Zona Rosa show. Thanks, Wikipedia!

They were really good. I might consider looking into some of their stuff.

They played about a 45-minute set. Not very long, but still very good.

Then the roadies readied the stage for the real performance. Jake got a shot of the setlist:

They were incredible. Every time I see them Anette’s live singing gets better and better.  More pictures!

Jake took some of these pictures with a grayscale filter on his camera, and they came out really good, in my opinion.

This is one of the most awesome poses I’ve ever seen.

The beard is the source of his power.

And then there’s this awesome shot.

That light is clearly coming from Emppu’s head. He’s just that incredible. Seriously. He makes those fucking hammer-ons look easy.

More shots from the Nightwish 2008 show can be found over here.

Sadly, no Nightwish-brand condoms this year, either. All they had were T-shirts and CDs. Oh well, better luck next time.

Once again, these guys never fail to put on a spectacular show. The next show will be Kamelot in San Antonio, October 31st. Maybe they’ll have band-brand condoms.

This blog post comes to you from my iPhone in front of La Zona Rosa’s stage waiting for tonight’s Nightwish show. It will no doubt be too epic for this Spartan to withstand.

Post-show post (lol) will be up on Friday. L8rz.