Bioshock, now infamous amongst gamers of all seasoning, shook the industry by proving singleplayer gaming was NOT dead. It proved Co-op was not necessary to be interesting, that multiplayer modes were not mandatory in an FPS, and that stupid plot lines and outrageous characters would not feel out of place in a serious tone. For lots of reasons, Bioshock was a great game, but for one, it killed the experience for me. Right now, I’m going to warn you, if you have not played the game, I cannot assure you I won’t spoil it. I’m going to talk as if you have finished it, so spoilers potentially start HERE.====================== (continue reading…)

I’ve been playing MMORPGs for a long time. I started the year Everquest came out, and save for the occassional break between games, I’ve pretty much always been active on one or another.

In all of these years, I’ve never once hit the level cap.

Oh sure, I came close on World of Warcraft (67 priest I think) and I often wonder why I’ve never once accomplished this dubious honor. Well, after much meditation on this subject (minutes and minutes, in fact) I think I came to the conclusion. Instead of blaming my own resolve, I think I’ll do instead what comes instinctively to humans as a species: I’ll blame someone else. MMORPG developers, all of you, pull the old bait and switch on your consumers. At first you mask grinding with quests and other shit but by the time you’re painfully close to the level cap all pretext of distraction is removed. Fuck you, you’re grinding. I suspect the reason they do this is because they reason they already have you paying, and you’re already that close, so you’ll surely endure those last few levels of pain because the glory of a maxed character is forever.
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“Woah dude, where did you get that cool stuff?” “Oh this? Yeah I bought it from xxxxx.com”. This is a common conversation in MMOs nowadays, the amount of people purchasing online currancy is rising steadily. Often now more than ever, people just go out, spend a few hundred dollars on gold for let’s say World of Warcraft, and are content with themselves. I may be a bit harsh when I say this, but these people are immoral tools, and furthermore, assholes. Why? Let’s look at it from some different perspectives.
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“So I was playing some B-Ball with some of the boys and I was knocking their ass to the curve. I decided to show off by jumping off another guy’s back and do a twirling slam dunk but then my head grew three times in size and I caught on fire.”

Well that’s just absurd, yet sounds oddly familiar, so familiar in fact, it was in a lot game in the nineties, specifically as the “Big Head” cheat. Well, what’s the point of that? To add some humor and fun without distracting from the gameplay, it was a “cheat” that didn’t side with the player or help the game; it was there just for fun. Oh, there was numerous cheats that were available to play around with, things to just screw around with. Not like those other do nasty cheats that give you infinite lives or something, but even those are somewhat lost in time to grant something to the player.
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The Halo series has always been a frowned upon series for some, but for others has been a beacon of good times and all kinds of crazy stuff. That being said, what is it about Halo 3 that makes some dislike it, and what is it about Halo 3 that makes some people love it? Stay tuned as I explore the strong points and the weak points of this giant of a video game.

It all started with Halo: Combat Evolved, the game had introduced some new elements and had fixed up some older elements, and overall the game was extremely enjoyable. Halo had a unique storyline (at the time), a well orchestrated soundtrack, and an adventure that seemed to be pretty expansive and epic. The game was regarded as one of the best games released at that time, and most people who played it seemed to think so as well.
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I was once a young lad and when I was young I first started playing the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Among the plethora of games to choose from, the very first game I played was Super Mario Bros., which I enjoyed so much. I grew and played the Super Nintendo and the Genesis, grew some more and played the next generation, and the rest is history. Now as a full grown adult, I still play video games, I have friends who play video games, and my friends have kids who play video games – wee ones, at the age of eight.
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“Oops, this game has stopped working and now must close” is a frequent message for some of the games being released today. What we see now is companies in a rush to push out games that don’t work. Case 1: Fallout 3. Case 2: Dawn of War 2, there are many games that have been released with fatal game flaws at are later patched, my query to those companies releasing such games is: why? Why do you like to shit on your customers for getting one of your games? Why do you like to release games before they’re fucking finished? Why do release patches that don’t do shit? Let’s go into this topic for a bit.

When I first got Fallout 3, I was impressed with the graphics and in some ways the gameplay, but I wasn’t impressed with the staggering amount of crashes, glitches, and overall graphical tomfoolery in the game. The worst part is, that this problem still exists. I can understand you want to keep a schedule for the game being released, but you’re only going to hurt your future prospects by releasing an unfinished game.
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Halo Killer. WoW killer. If you have a First Person Shooter, you want to be a Halo Killer. If you have an MMORPG, you want to be a World of Warcraft Killer. Overtaking these games becomes an end unto itself, but not for the reasons of simple sales. Of course, the games that usually must be “killed” are often not the objectively best games, but are often games that have defined themselves as the standard that all games must measure up to.
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Back in preschool, I learned how to count, that there is a certain order to numbers and that one number will be bigger than the other number by simply adding to it. So therefore six was bigger than five but seven was bigger than six. Ten was also a high number so was the number next to it, nine, and then finally eight. What the hell am I talking about? The fact that these three numbers, eight, nine, and ten are high numbers, in fact, so high I don’t really care when one game gets a single point over another game, but then we bring in our friends the decimals and everything is fucked, because now we have ten more digits to comprehend in this wild world of numbers.

Review scores, using a ten point scale which has a scale within itself which adds ten more measly points within those already redundant ten points. A number like nine-point-two is obviously bigger than nine-point-one but what the shit is the difference between that whole tenth of a point? There are many reasons why the point system for rating games is so bad. If you have read any of my reviews, you would know I never actually use a point system which makes you, actually read the review – instead the point system makes people go into cock wars on which number is better.

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“HEY GUYS, YOU ALL SUCK AND I’M NUMBER ONE BITCHES” is something one will often hear while playing Halo 3. For instance, my friend and I were playing capture the flag, we’re losing because we’re up against 4 generals in a party and some random guy. So this person on our team had a real trouble keeping his temper in check, and was quick to burst out in “OH MY GOD GUYS, JESUS YOU ALL SUCK, HOW CAN PEOPLE BE SO NEW TO THIS GAME?!”. Let me say that I’m by no means an easily angered person, so I waited until the game ended, then my friend and I commenced the impersonations. I’d like to also say, this fine gentleman we were playing with was the worst on our team, so irony was there too.

Video games are a source of entertainment, not a job, and definitely not serious business. Despite what gaming enthusiasts what you to think, gaming exists for the sole reason of entertainment, and why people take games so seriously is beyond me, unless you enjoy popping a nerve vessel every time something doesn’t go your way. You’d think that it’d be only younger people doing this, sadly that isn’t true. I’ve also noticed when people act like this they tend to do worse within a game, sometimes a few points down, sometimes to the where they’re killing their own team, and I wish I was joking.

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