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and incase you missed it, I uploaded that video of me playing the gweetar. (videos were down when I tried before)

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GameTrailers is a good site, with good content, and all. But migrating to there for the community aspects just feels foreign. I absolutely hate the UI, and frankly, after I've given it some thought, "leaving gamespot" is flat-out unfair.



There are many, MANY great editors who still work for the site (Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, Alex Navarro, Jason Ocampo, KVO, Aaron Thomas, Brian Ekburg among many others) and NONE of them deserve abandonment from the community simply because their employer made a bad decision. It's not their fault, and in-turn, they're getting the brute end of the, "revolt" simply because they work at the website.



Don't get me wrong, I love Jeff. He was by far my favorite staffer of probably any website in existence. The confirmation of his termination made me sick to the stomach, and I desperately wish it wasn't true. But **** happens.



Sure, gamespot may have lost their, "credibility" with reviews, but thats what sites like Gamerankings and Metacritic are for. Not to mention the vast majority of other great content on the site, aside from reviews.



Everyone is sad to see Jeff go, but what exactly is going to another site going to do? It's just over-complicating things. If you had a total access account and canceled it, why leave the site? You already did the most damage you can to, "the man". Leaving isn't changing anything else, and you're just going to continue doing exactly what you did here, but on another site.



It just doesn't really make any sense to me what leaving the community will accomplish.



So I guess I'm giving the site another chance. The editors who are still here deserve it, as they are all in the same boat we are.



We'll see if my decision sticks later next week. It's not going to be the same Gamespot without Jeff, that's for sure, but leaving to a site like gametrailers isn't going to make it any better.



I guess I'll post this on my GT account for all my old friends to see, in hopes that they too, change their minds.

I guess I have no choice but to conform if I ever want to stay in contact with the majority of the people leaving the site.

So uh, I guess I'll be here from now on.

If this turns out to be true... I'll make my own website! With blackjack! And hookers!

Playing Rock Band in the spirit of Rock band is madness!

Anyway, here is me playing the drums on Don't Fear the Reaper on hard. And by playing, I mean almost failing a couple times and getting really tired during the outro. I will make a note that this was the first time I had ever passed the song on hard... Because drums on hard are kinda hard for someone who's never really played the drums before.

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Or are you just happy to see me?

My GOTY?

Probably.

Without having my own copy of rockband, I can't virtually rock. So I made a video of actual rocking... You know, on a real guitar.

Unfortunately, since gamespot's user videos all screwed up I'll have to link to it on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDUueWgsYjI

Like it says in the description on youtube it was all improv, and mostly just me recording myself practicing.

It took me many many tries, but I finally beat The Devil Went Down to Georgia from the downloadable boss battle pack. For those who don't know, there's a free downloadable songpack that lets you play the boss battle songs from GH3 in single and multiplayer. The note charts are based on what the bosses play, but you play all the solo's you normally would in the battle, as well.

This song in particular is (imo) arguably just as difficult as TTFATF (intro excluded), so I'm rather pleased that I've passed it.

So yeah... That's it for now. Maybe one day I'll dedicate myself to learn how to pass the intro of TTFATF, but for now, I'm just sick of failing at 2-4%.

So, I gamefly'd Blacksite, and am so far not liking it much at all. Which sucks, because I really liked the first demo, and had high-hopes for the game. Seriously though, why have there only been like, 2 UE3 engine games that are actually good so far?

Anyway, there seems to be a lot of things not quite right with the game, so I'll just kinda hit it out as a list, then expand on them.

1. Unrealistic Gunplay
2. Driving
3. Unrealistic Physics
4. Rail Shooting
5. Difficulty is really off-balance
6. Pretty dumb AI in general
7. Turrets

1. So basically, the main weapon you start out with (Think it's a M16 or a M4 or something), has pretty much zero recoil at all. When shooting while aiming down the sight, the gun kinda shakes around withing a 1 inch circle, but as long as the reticle is red, you're hitting the enemy. This is supposed to be a tactical shooter in a sci-fi environment. I really don't like the fact that my, "tactics" can include holding down the right-trigger relentlessly until the enemy dies.

2. The second level of the game lets you drive a jeep. First and foremost, the level just feels really disjointed. I'll explain by comparing it to a (much much much better game) that came out earlier this year. In Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (This isn't much a spoiler, trust me), there is a section of the game where you're driving through the mountains and you stop every once in a while, be it at a little village along the road at certain spots to find supplies.



This is more-or-less the same premise of the 2nd level in blacksite... But the difference is that in HL2:Ep2 it made sense doing this. You either A. Needed the supplies, or B. Were just curious and wanted to get out. Did you have to get out? No. You could just plow right through the entire section of the level.



But see, in blacksite, they FORCE you to get out. They force you to get out so you can either A. Clear a path to keep moving along in your humvee, or B. Traverse some sort of rubble or debris (Usually killin' dudes on the way), only to continue progression onward down the road in another humvee (Which for reasons unknown are always behind giant train wrecks and other various forms of debris).



It just feels really disjointed. Like, I could see one of those sections making sense in the middle of a level, but you go through 2-3 sections in a row like that. "Drive down the road, stop and get out, kill dudes, traverse underivable terrain, continue down road in another hummer, repeat.".

Also, the driving physics are really really floaty, and unrealistic. There are a lot of jumps you have to hit, and you get a good 2-3 second hang-time off of all of them.



3. This ties into the driving, mostly. When you're driving down the road not only do you float for multiple seconds off of a lot of jumps, but if you happen to hit some sort abandoned vehicle, it will flat out go FLYING. I'm sure there are other examples I could find, but I really don't feel like it.



4. Rail shooting is boring. Thats pretty much all I have to say.



5. Now this is probably my worst gripe with the game so far. I'm playing on "hard" difficulty (which is in between "Casual" and "Extreme"), and the first 2 levels are a freaking cake-walk. While I died on the second level quite a few times, it was mostly due to trial-and-error. But then I get to the third level, and it's just insanely difficult, the weirdest part was that it got insanely difficult after a boss fight. A boss fight, mind you, that was very very easy, and not much of a boss fight at all.



This happened in the second level for me, too. The entire level is insanely easy to beat aside from 2 or 3 areas.



Theres also an abundance of ammo EVERYWHERE. Which I guess I can't complain about right now since I'm at a point in the game where there's only 3-4 weapons available.



6. One of the big focuses of the game was on, "Morale" of your squad mates. Which is kind of ironic since even if you have "high morale" they really don't do much of anything.



7. As if rail shooting wasn't boring enough, I think I've spent more time on a stationary turret, than I have walking. Turrets, like rail shooting, is boring.



There are quite a few other qualms I have with the game (Like how annoying destructible cover is when everything you stand behind instantly gets instantly destroyed) but these are just the main ones...



So yeah, rent it if you really like aliens or something, I guess... Otherwise, I'd stay away.

My dad splurged on our main family christmas present early this year...

It's a Vizio 42" LCD HDTV, and a new 5.1 Samsung home theater system. It sounds, and looks very nice. (I don't care if your TV is bigger and/or better)

One problem though. One of the main reasons we bought the home theater system was because the DVD player in it upscales to 720p (or 1080i)... Which would be great, but when you actually do that, these little red spots show up all over the screen in dark spots. If I siwtch it to 1080i they don't show up as bad as in 720p, but it's still noticeable and annoying.

Has anyone else expierenced this problem? If so, do you know of a remedy (I have it hooked up via HDMI, btw)? Thanks.