Halo Whores

I hate to see a perfectly good killer app be turned into a cash mongering, greedy, spin off producing whore fest, which is why I was so upset by many of Microsoft's recent decisions about the Halo franchise. It seems that Microsoft will put the Halo name on just about anything and everything if it will bring in a few bucks. There have been plenty of Halo spin off products, some awesome and appropriate, others disappointing and disgusting, and now to continue that long line is...Halo 3 Laser Tag. Actually, it's not laser tag, it's Laser Command by Jasman Toys.

Now I don't mean any offense to Jasman Toys (since I've never played Laser Command), but how many Halo related products are going to be made before people realize how much it's starting to resemble a genetically enhanced, high class Bordello?

The books? Awesome, always good to get some more story from a good game.
The movie? Cool, as long as they don't ruin it like most in Hollywood do.
The action figures? Nice, I guess, for collectors and those who like to play with them (I'm guessing there are more of the earlier than the latter)
The spin off RTS not even made by Bungie? Sigh...
And now Laser Command.

I'm sure there are people who enjoy these products and are happy to buy them for either collectible reasons or for the purpose they were made, but Microsoft (and every other company out there, I know it's not just MS) needs to stop milking every last penny out of their franchises. It completely drains the integrity of the game and the series, for me at least, and makes it harder and harder to keep saying "Bungie is different from other developers."

I love Bungie. They're awesome. They've made so many great games they should win a Nobel Prize. But it's getting hard to defend them from those who accuse them of being sellouts. It is my honest belief that the guys at Bungie are good and honest men and women who care about their customers, and that Microsoft is solely responsible for the whorish activity that abounds, but when they announce Halo Flakes or blow up Cortana dolls, it's going to be near impossible for me to be proud of being a Halo fan.

Let me know what you think about this one. Is Microsoft whoring Halo to an extreme? Does Bungie have any responsibility? Has this whole world gone mad? Ok, not so much the last one.

Crackdown Released

Today, Crackdown came out in stores, and I picked up my copy. I know I complained about Microsoft packaging the Halo 3 beta with the game in my first post, but that was before I played the demo. After trying it out, I was hooked.

Some call it a GTA clone, but it's actually not. The story is pretty basic; you're a genetically altered super soldier who works for the sole crime fighting organization left, known only as the Agency. You use your skills to assist the cops (Peacekeepers) in fighting gang violence around Pacific City. There are 3 gangs in the game, Los Muertos, The Volk, and the Shai-Gen. By taking out low ranking gang bosses, you can weaken their forces, ultimately allowing you to take out the kingpin. However, you won't just be handed missions and told where to find your target, and then move on to the next. Instead, while exploring the city you will be updated with information on nearby gang bosses, who you can then choose to eliminate or not. It is possible to take on the kingpin before eliminating the underlings, but it will be considerably more difficult.

Another aspect that makes this game unlike Grand Theft Auto is that it allows the player to level up like an RPG. There are five skills you can level up: Driving, Firearms, Strength, Agility, and Explosives. Each can be leveled up by killing gang members in a particular way, except for agility, which is leveled up by collecting orbs on the rooftops. There are also vehicle races to increase driving ability, and rooftop races to increase your agility. These aspects alone have provided me with hours of entertainment so far, and it's only the first day. I can't explain how enjoyable it is to jump from rooftop to rooftop exploring Pacific City.

After playing the full version of Crackdown for a number of hours, and experiencing the normal rate of skill leveling, I'd give Crackdown a 4 out of 5, for a game with solid gameplay, great cell shaded graphics (it looks like a freshly inked comic book), and an expansive world to explore. This game is a definite buy.

Let's Go Outback Tonight

Every so often while driving, I'll hear radio commercials for Outback Steakhouse. Usually I can't stand radio commercials, but the song is just so catchy I find myself wanting to go Outback tonight and see if life really will be there tomorrow. I usually get this song stuck in my head for at least a day afterwords, and I couldn't figure out how a commercial for a theme restaurant had such a good song. Well, I finally figured it out. The song in the commercial is actually a song titled Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games by Of Montreal, an indie band from Georgia. They simply replaced the words "Let's pretend we don't exist" with "Let's go Outback tonight".

The song actually is quite good, as is the rest of the album, The Sunlandic Twins. As an extra treat, here's the music video, which reminds me of a calmer version of Happy Tree Friends. Enjoy. I'm having trouble embedding it from YouTube, so here's the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PoJv4N1Too

Let's pretend we don't exist, Let's pretend we're in Antarctica, indeed.

Go See 300

In 480BC, 300 Spartan hoplites were given the duty of holding the pass at Thermopylae to allow the rest of the Greeks to retreat and prepair for battle. Who were they holding it from? Between 200,000 to 2 million Persian soldiers, depending on which historian you believe. The result was the death of all 300 Spartans, including their king Leonidas, and the slaughter of 20,000 Persians.

On March 9th, this famous battle will be depicted on the big screen, as an adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel. Frank Miller is the artist responsible for many graphics novels, including the recently adapted Sin City. Now, I could go on and on about how cool the Spartan hoplites are, or about how awesome Frank Miller is, but instead I'll just let you watch this...



Upon returning to Leonidas, a scout told him "Their archers are so many, their arrows will blot out the sun." Leonidas, hearing this, simply smiles and said, "Good! Then we shall have battle in the shade."

Swords, Shields, and...Fairies?

The Legend of Zelda series has given us some of the greatest games of all time. With Ocarina of Time on the N64, Wind Waker on the Gamecube (Hey! I liked that game so back off!), and Twilight Princess on the Wii. Now, Link will get shrunken down to handheld proportions once again in his first adventure on the Nintendo DS, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

Phantom Hourglass is set to release in the fourth quarter of 2007 and is a direct sequel to Wind Waker, complete with cell shaded graphics. Now I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "Oh man, Wind Waker was too cartoonish. Not that again." Well, shut it. It's time people stopped looking at games with less "realistic" graphics (I've never seen anyone with the body proportions of Marcus Fenix in real life) as lower quality. But that's a whole other argument. The point is, Wind Waker turned out to be a great game, and that's how Phantom Hourglass is looking, too.

The game takes place a few months after the events of Wind Waker, but there are some changes this time around. Many of the areas that were either tedious or just not fun in Wind Waker are different or gone altogether. For example, the annoying task of sailing for hours from island to island, and then having to drop anchor everytime you had to fight an enemy, is luckily gone. There is still a boat in Link's newest romp through Hyrule, but it's now steam powered. W00t for technology. That means now you can plot out your course ahead of time, so you can pay more attention to fighting seaborn enemies.

Another new twist is that the gameplay in Phantom Hourglass is entirely controlled almost entirely by the touch screen and stylus. You can move Link around by tapping locations on the screen, swing your sword by sweeping the stylus in a circle, and even write notes and useful information on the in game maps, allowing you to easily recall a hint given earlier in a dungeon. An on-screen fairy will act as the point for your stylus, but unlike the Wii version of Twilight Princess, it will actually have a part in the story. This immersion in the DS software is something that we haven't really seen from other games quite yet, with most titles using the second screen for nothing more than a title screen, or often having no touch capabilities. Finally, a developer is using the DS for what it was made for.

My only fear is that fans will be turned away from the game because of its Gamecube-esque graphics, without even trying to enjoy the new gameplay elements that will likely be copied by multiple future DS titles.

The moral of the story: Solid, fun gameplay is more important than shiny graphics and a lot of explosions.

Ruckus Review

After spending the weekend browsing Ruckus' library and downloading over 1,000 songs, here's my review.

Ruckus is a decent digital music store, and the fact that it offers free and legal music is very nice. Downloading is also quite easy; you simply need to select the tracks you want, or the entire album, and hit download. However, there are some bad points to this service.

Selection: 2.5 million songs may sound like a lot, but there were multiple occassions where the band I was looking for wasn't included. However, most artists that I had trouble finding were of the "classic rock" genre, including The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, so for older tunes this might not be the best choice. I suppose the creators felt that college students were only interested in more contemporary music. Also, many of the bands that are available for download have only a few songs from a few albums, often excluding the most popular tracks.

Mp3 Players: Yeah...as for mp3 players, they're pretty much useless with these files. Because of the DRM Ruckus has to put on its files to make them available for download, their songs can't be burned to CDs or transferred to most mp3 players including the iPod. So if you want to build your computer's library go ahead, but don't get rid of iTunes just yet.

Searching: The Ruckus web site used for searching for songs isn't all that great. Sometimes when searching for a band or an album I got strange results, and had to instead search for a specific track and follow a few links to the right place.

Overall I would rate Ruckus a 3 out of 5, for a mediocre music store with a decent library of songs. Its only real saving point is that it's a legal alternative to other free services like Limewire.

Ruckus provides free music for students

If you're looking for a free and legal way to get music, check out Ruckus. It's a service that allows free music downloads for college students and alumni.

http://www.ruckusnetwork.com/

Games improve your eyesight?

Apparently there is a new study out from researchers at the University of Rochester that shows evidence of action video games can increase visual acuity by up to twenty percent. The researchers saw no anatomical or physiological change to the eye, but actually rewires neurons to allow the mind to recognize what it sees faster. It is believed that this improvement is caused by the way the eye and the brain recognize 3d environments in games. In the experiment, a group of students was asked to play Unreal Tournament (a 3d shooter) and another group, the control, was asked to play Tetris (a game which is "equally demanding in terms of motor control, but visually less complex" according to the school's article). The group whose mind had to imagine another world in 3 dimensions showed a significant increase in vision tests over students who only had to see in two dimensions.

Now, I know this may seem shocking to a lot of people, but the truth is video games have a lot of benefits that people just don't know about. It's been shown that video games can reduce stress, increase motor-skills and neural activity, and help prevent or even reverse memory loss. Some games have actually been used to help Alzheimer's patients to gain back some memory skills.

The biggest miconception about video games by non-gamers is that it requires no thought, because of the typical vacant expressions and lack of communication while playing. However, a complex game like Unreal Tournament requires players to consider their location, their teammates' and enemies' locations, what weapons everyone has, what weapon to get to have an advantage, where to find that weapon, and countless other things all within a split second. That kind of mental activity will obviously cause neural stimulation. I think as more of these studies are published, more people will realize that games aren't just for lazy, unemployed zombies.

I tried to tell my parents there was a reason I played Halo 2 before my SATs. True story.

The University of Rochester article: http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2764
USA Today article on games and Alzheimer's: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-04-18-brain-age_x.htm

Laptops Laptops are no fun

Today's post isn't going to be a discussion of anything that's of particular interest to anyone but me, but more of a rant. So...

Today after class I went to the University Center for a drink, and got a bottle of cactus juice. Oh so delicious, and oh so sticky. I get back to my room, put the drink town on the desk, and go to hook up my laptop's ethernet cable. All of a sudden, BOOM! The drink falls and I get agave cactus all over my laptop. So I turn it off, unplug it, take out the hard drive and battery and all, and start to worry that it won't work. After I while I turn it back on and it does work, but the touchpad isn't repsonsive. Great.

Now I decide to take it apart and clean out the sticky juice from the inside. So I take off the monitor, the keyboard, and finally, the touchpad apparatus. I clean out everything I can and let it dry while I go to class again. I get back and reassemble the pieces and boot it up and guess what. Now the touchpad responds, but its also going crazy. An improvement? Not really.

So I took it apart again and unplugged the touchpad since it can't be disabled (stupid DELL), and now I need to use the USB mouse for everything, my keys are gross and sticky, and I'm royally ticked.

The bright side? Today I learned how to disassemble and reassemble a laptop. =) Not bad for a beginner.

Are games getting easier?

Some people might look at the advances in video games over the years and think that games have gotten harder on average. But does more complexity equal more difficulty? Let's take a look.

In the 1980s and 90s, games began to take on the form resembling those of this next generation, but there are many differences between the NES, SNES, and Genesis games and those of the new millenium. First of all, 20 years ago there was no saving a game. If you wanted to beat Mario you would either do it in a single sitting, or pause it and leave the system on while you took a break. Now we can save our progress and come back to it whenever we want. Another huge difference that arose with games since the rise in saving progress is the death of the "game over". Sure you'll still see those words every once in a while, like after being killed without a fairy while fighting Ganondorf, but big deal.

Because your game was saved 15 minutes before the fight, you barely lose any progress. If you died fighting Dr. Robotnik in the 8th level of Sonic the Hedgehog, that was it. You were starting over at Green Hill Zone. This is a big part of the reason why most of these older games had such a longer life than newer games, often giving 50+ enjoyable hours of single player, where as a game like Fable offered maybe 20 hours if you were slow.

Another huge change in games is the loss of any kind of scoring, and with that, the loss of a high score. How proud were you the first time you got the high score on Pac-mania at the roller rink? With newer games like Halo 2 and Gears of War, and even not so new games like Ocarina of Time, the goal is to complete the game, but how fast or how well you complete it doesn't make a difference. How can one tell the difference between one player's completed file of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and another's. One thing I enjoyed as a kid was comparing my new high score with my friends and relishing the moment when I was the dominant player.

Does mean that games have gotten worse? I certainly don't think so. There are plenty of good things about newer games, such as their enhanced multiplayer capabilites, cinematic quality, and their use as a social tool. Are games easier now than they were? Who knows? But I'll keep playing my NES for years.

Girl Gamers: Breaking Barriers or Isolating Themselves?

For as long as video games have been around, they've mostly been associated with males. Guys have dominated the video game scene for the last 30 years. However, this doesn't mean that there aren't some girls out their who can kick your ass at Halo 2.

Girl gamers have begun to unite, and clans like PMS (Pandora's Mighty Soldiers) and the Frag Dolls have shown the world that girls can rock just as hard as any guys when it comes to gaming. Overall, this is a good thing. There's no reason for girls not to play video games. I'm sure it would lead to easier relationships with their game addicted boyfriends for one thing. And it would give all the same benefits that guys get from gaming; stress reduction, socializing, and just plain fun. These girls are role models to younger female button mashers who want to be recognized by their males counterparts, but are they sending the right message?

Having a team of four girls beat the tar out of some of the best male players in a tournament will certainly get people's attention, and will most definitely make the point that girls are a part of the gaming community, but doesn't it still separate those girls from the rest of the players? If women truly want to fit in in the gaming world, wouldn't it make more sense for them to play with the boys?

This is where it gets difficult. Many of these girls-only groups aren't there to put men down in a feminist manner, but they're there to offer support to other female gamers who feel out of place, and that is definitely something we need. I just think that to make a big splash, the guys and girls should team up more instead of separating themselves. But, maybe it's best for now if the girls work on making a name for themselves and making a statement. Then, once society is more accepting of girl gamers, maybe we'll see more mixed-gender teams.

So ladies, if a guy tells you that you can't do something because your a girl, proceed to whoop his ass and be proud. Just don't be afraid to get your ass whooped right back.

Jack-O's at it again

No, I'm not talking about Michael Jackson, although I can't deny that he is indeed at it again. I'm talking about Jack Thompson, the intolerant, closed-minded, homophobic, video game hating, Howard Stern fighting attorney from Florida. Now the very state that issued him his legal license is taking him to court for his antics in the court room.

This is the same guy who took Rockstar Games, the creators of Grand Theft Auto and Bully, to court for making violent games available to minors. He claimed violent video games trained kids to kill and desensitized them to brutality. He also tried to get defendants in murder trials to blame their violent crimes on video games like Grand Theft Auto.

Now, some people might not see a problem with this. Fair enough, kids probably shouldn't be playing these games. They are violent and inappropriate for kids. However, these games don't cause people to become murderers, and they certainly don't train kids to kill.

As a person who played Grand Theft Auto III at the young age of 13, I can honestly say that it made me no more prone to violence than when my bricks reached the top in Tetris. I can also say with absolute certainty that it didn't train me to kill. Anyone who has played a game like this knows that shooting a gun in a video game is nothing like shooting a gun in reality. As someone who has done both, I can say that I still had the same level of accuracy with a firearm before and after touching any shooting games.

As for his accusations that violent games desensitize kids to violence, I have played the most brutal games out there. From Grand Theft Auto III, to Condemned, to Resident Evil, I've bashed in more brains and shot off more heads than I can count, and I still can't even bring myself to step on a bug any larger than a centimeter.

Now that I've said my bit about how wrong Jack Thompson is about video games (and pretty much everything else), let's talk about his unacceptable methods in his cases. In 1992, Jack Thompson tried to get the Florida Bar, which he is a member of, deemed unconstitutional. He said this was because they were attacking him personally because of their "pro-gay, humanist, liberal agenda." In 2006, he tried to get Bully, a Rockstar game based in the schoolyard, banned from being released. Rockstar sent a representative to show the game to Thompson and the judge, and afterword the judge dismissed the case. Thompson then criticized the judge for not knowing what he was watching, and accusing Rockstar of avoiding the most violent parts of the game.

Following his failed attempt to ban the game because of its violence, he tried to work from a different angle. As the truly closed-minded man he is, he attacked the gay community when he "discovered" that in Bully, it is possible for the main character, a 15 year old boy, to kiss another boy. Thompson wrote a letter to the ESRB saying he had "found gay sexual content in Bully as Jimmy Hopkins makes out with another male student. Good luck with your 'Teen' rating now." The ESRB responded by telling him that they already knew about the content, and that it wasn't any reason to raise the rating to Mature.

How is it possible for someone with so little respect for justice could be one of the people appointed to uphold it. We can only hope that in the coming months, Thompson will do something so unforgiveable that he will have his legal license fully revoked...or be thrown in jail... or killed. Either way, we need to get this psycho out of the courts.

Why do you hate, Jack? Did Mommy not love you?

Must be the air in Boston...

Boston has been home to many great people in history; Benjamin Franklin, John F. Kennedy, and even Aerosmith. But it seems as though today's Bostonians are of a different breed. The kind of breed that can't take a joke.

Meet Err.

He's from the moon. He's also a character on a late night cartoon called Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Err and his feelow Mooninite Ignignot are known for rocking, drinking, and flippin' the bird. And this exactly what Err did earlier this week in Boston.

As a promotional campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, magnetic light boards similar to Light Brights were hung in multiple cities around the United States. Each on depicted the Mooninite giving the finger to passerbys. Apparently, most of Boston hasn't seen the show.

Upon seeing the light board (remember, this is a toy meant for toddlers) someone decided to call the authorities, who upon inspecting it, couldn't figure out what it was. So the authorities then called higher authorities, who called in a bomb squad to make sure terrorists hadn't infiltrated us with pink, foul mouthed aliens. There was a whole lot of traffic and a bunch of people got pissed, news stations freaked people out, and Turner Broadcasting (the company that owns Cartoon Network) eventually apologized.

Now that all that is out of the way, let's talk about what's really important. The people of Boston. Apparently, there is some confusion about what's a weapon of mass destruction, and what's a child's toy depicting a cartoon character. Anyone else see a problem with that? These light boards were hung in 10 major cities across the United States, and besides the few fans who actually got the joke, no one cared.

So I have to ask you Boston, what do you have against the moon? Just seems kinda unfair is all I'm saying.

Wikiwhat?

There's been a lot of controversy lately about whether or not Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is reliable. From Stephen Colbert challenging his viewers to vandalize Wikipedia articles, to Attack of the Show's Kevin Pereira having his biography altered, there are plenty of examples of the problems with Wikipedia. Those problems can be easily summed up: basically, Wikipedia trusts the public. Major no no.

But in Wikipedia's defense, you do get what you pay for...which is nothing...because it's free...so you don't pay. Do you see what I'm getting at here? You shouldn't be using Wikipedia for any important research or school papers. It's just not reliable enough. Does that mean they should disband the site and throw themselves into a volcano? Of course not. Their venture is a valid and noble one, allowing people to share information on the topics they really care about, and letting them do it for free.

So what did we learn today? If you have to write a paper on the economic downfall of the former Soviet Union after the end of the Cold War, avoid Wikipedia. But let's say you want to know how many hot dog eating championships Takeru Kobayashi has won, then feel free to go to the free, editable encyclopedia.

Why does Microsoft hate gamers?

I only created this blog an hour ago, and it's already time for my first rant. For any of you Halo fans out there looking forward to the Halo 3 beta, you know that the last way to get in for free is to register today. After that, anyone who wants in will have to buy the game Crackdown for sixty bucks. Microsoft has already told us this. They said play 3 hours of Halo 2, then sign up. Sounds simple enough right?

Well, in true Microsoft fashion they've pissed off plenty of people. They made sure they conveniently left out what time registration would start. So, there sit the loyal fans, eagerly clicking refresh on their browsers every few seconds starting at midnight EST. When will they be able to register? Only Microsoft knows. I'm sure plenty of people will wait up for hours, clicking away, trying to be one of the first 13,333 people to sign up. Plenty will miss work or school, or miss whatever else may happen outside of halo3.com because they are loyal enough to Bungie to do whatever it takes to play Halo 3 early.

Now I understand that Microsoft (and all other companies for that matter) need to do what's best for the company sometimes, even if it's not good for the customer, but I just don't see any business-related reason for this decision. How would thousands of angry fans constantly refreshing a website for hours possibly benefit anyone?

As for me? I'll be buying Crackdown. Thanks, MS.

Welcome to my world

I guess I'll start this off with an explanation of what I plan on putting here and why I started this. My posts will mostly consist of whatever is interesting/angering/confusing me that day. Maybe it will be a rant about a celebrity or politician, a review of a video game I just played, or just a random thought that I want to share. So, I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say, and maybe leave me some feedback and share your own thoughts. So remember kids, guns don't kill people, bad Hollywood movies featuring professional wrestlers do.