Ok, Christian Bale does a really good job at being Batman. But HOLY MOTHER OF GOD HEATH LEDGER. That man cast Joker in a light I never thought possible. I mean, I always loved the idea of the Joker, because he's not a man out with some plan to dominate the world or become the supreme evil or whatever. Screw all those wussies that ever wanted to become Dark Lord of the Sith or Supreme Ruler of the Galaxy or whatever. Screw Ganondorf, screw Sephiroth, screw Revolver Ocelot, screw Major Zero, screw all those losers with an agenda. The real cool bad guys are the ones who "just want to watch the world burn".

I mean I always loved the Joker's madness because while every other bad guy valued sanity, Joker reveled in madness. But Ledger totally cast madness in a completely new light I thought only belonged to militant anarchists.

I mean, an anarchist still has ideals. Yeah, total freedom, down with corporations, whatever. But the Joker?

"See, I'm an agent of Chaos. I exist to show all the schemers and planners just how pathetic their attempts to control things are."

"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I don't know what I'd do if I caught one, I'd just do...things...."

Seriously, the best villain in history. No better Joker has come before.

So yeah, looks like the new CEO of Virgin wants to shut down the free internet.

If you have no idea what a 'free internet' is, lemme give you a lowdown.

See, right now companies only make you pay for the internet connection you have. They advertise their companies by promising to give you faster connections. They cannot directly control what content is on the internet; they cannot block anything they don't like from human eyes on a web page.

BUT. They CAN control the speed of your internet connection.

And here is what Virgin is using to destroy freedom of information. See, they will allow faster speeds for ISPs who pay huge sums of cash while slowing down websites who don't pay. Thus, user base dwindles as sites become slower, ISPs lose money, and it becomes a self reinforcing loop into bankruptcy and shut down.

So, if your favorite website stops paying Virgin, their net connection gets slower. Slower means less functionality, less users, less ability to handle many users and eventual shutdown.

Now, let's look at a theoretical example. Corporation A is embezzling from its employees, and Person B finds out about it.

Person B posts documents showing the crime on the net, paying 5,000 bucks to do it.

Corporation A pays Virgin 10 million bucks to slow down the connection to that site hosting the documents until it is no longer viewable or a desirable source of info for viewers.

Game over, corporate totalitarianism wins.

Welcome to the age of total information control. Where all lanes of information transfer are controlled by megacorporations, and what you can read and think about is relegated to a handful of websites.

It's basically a worldwide dictatorship, because information transfer is a basic function of democracy. Taking that away means everyone in the world is subject only to what a corporation wants you to see.

We have to stop this trend. Tell everyone. Internet cannot be allowed to be controlled like Radio, TV, Newspapers and all other forms of media are controlled.

So I decided to fork over a chunk of cash for an 8800GTS with a 640MB processor core. Pretty sweet deal, in the end. It runs the Unreal Tournament 3 and Call of Duty 4 demos beautifully, World in Conflict's framerate doesn't drop with a nuke, everything looks fantastic.

The only game that still has framerate problems is the Crysis demo. That game is so incredibly demanding that when I get into combat with multiple NPCs or use my binoculars on large open areas the game has framerate stutters frequently. Hopefully it'll get a little more consistent as the demo might not represent total optimization, and hopefully there'll be patches that improve performance issues. Overall Crysis still plays really well.

I figure someday I'll upgrade to make Crysis run flawlessly but that will be a year or two down the road since this took a big chunk of cash out of me. Once the price of the 8800GTS falls to sub 200 dollars, I'll invest in an SLI upgrade- should keep my PC going for a while longer.

Having finished the entirety of the Orange Box and downloaded demos for Timeshift, Unreal Tournament 3 and Call of Duty 4, I think it's safe to say this coming winter is going to be so crammed with games that I will be absolutely out of my mind. To think this happens every year like some sort of time honored masochistic tradition, is simply beyond my comprehension. I don't think there's ever been another time I can remember where I found myself contemplating the coming releases with the kind of apprehensiveness of a mountain climber listening for the low rumble of an incoming avalanche.

Let's list off the titles coming out in the near future, shall we?

Call of Duty 4

Mass Effect

Unreal Tournament 3

Super Mario Galaxy

Rock Band

HellGate: London

Crysis

Timeshift (finally)

God only knows I'm missing so much.

Fortunately my mind is already made up on a couple of these: COD4 and Unreal Tournament 3 are must buys, while games like Rock Band, SSBM and Mass Effect are our since I can't afford those consoles.

But Dammit if I don't want them all.

Are these kinds of seasons blessings for our nervous systems, or are they curses for our wallets?

Probably both.

God, nothing brings more joy and more hatred than the multiplayer experience, and nothing other than the multiplayer experience makes me wish game developers would put more effort into making massively replayable single player experiences.

Cases in point: Team Fortress 2 and World in Conflict.

Let's start with TF2. This game is all multiplayer, and it's fun. God only knows I love it. The thrill of stabbing someone in the back with my spy's butterfly knife. The satisfaction of scoring a headshot with the sniper rifle that's also a critical hit. Mowing people down with 'Sasha', immolating people with the flame thrower, gunning people down with my sentry gun or even just running at the breakneck pace of the scout... even the medic manages to be enjoyable with the thrill of the Uber charge. Goddamn it's fun.

But it also causes me no short amount of anger. The countless times I attempted to hold a control point only to watch it get wrested from my grasp, losing the game and being forced to endure the humiliation of the loss as my helpless character is hunted down by the victors. Accruing one, two, even three Nemeses and finding it near to impossible to exact revenge. Dying 20 times in a row is nothing short of infuriating, and even worse, losing when it feels like we could be winning. The thing I hate the most about multiplayer is losing a team game and not knowing why we're losing. I mean, in HL2 Deathmatch at least I know it's because of my own personal failures, being too slow to avoid a grenade or accidently stepping off a high ledge. But in team games, it always ends up being more than that; it's the failure of every single one of us. Getting killed just near a point and watching someone overrun it, powerless to do anything but watch- it's maddening.

The same goes for World in Conflict. I simply cannot enjoy multiplayer, at least not very much. Why do I always end up on the losing team, I ask myself? I love playing when I win, but I just left a game where playing as an armor specific unit got me nowhere. Every time I tried to advance up a hill one of my enemies' choppers would crest the hill and annihilate my tank platoon, and I would be powerless to stop it because I can't use anti-airt units- and so I'm dependent on my allies for protection versus helicopters. But he's not helping. He gets a couple anti-air units but seldom moves them from his artillery, which is understandable- but goddammit, if we're going to take the hill, I NEED air cover.

So I watch helplessly as my tanks are obliterated by enemies I can't touch, lacking any way to communicate except to drop markers on the ground as a way of pointing and screaming to anyone who cares to pay attention, "I NEED HELP!"

Then I said, "f*** this" and logged out, too angry to care anymore.

I think that's the worst thing, is losing and not knowing why you're losing. What does the enemy do better? I see the markers pushing the enemy's progress bar further and further to victory, but why? What's everyone else suck at? Watching an entire armored group disappear in an artillery barrage is just as infuriating. No wonder Valve got rid of grenades in TF2- it's like watching someone call in a support power on your guys while yours miss every time.

Dammit. Dammit all. This is why developers have to make better single-player experiences, ones you can play over and over and get a different experience each time. Some people just don't want to put up with multiplayer. "Stop whining", you say. "F*** yourself", I say.

So yeah, just to let you know, Tool's song 'Right in Two' is awesome. Totally forgot about this song.

And Encyclopedia Dramatica's entry on Final Fantasy 7 is hilarious. But extremely NSFW so don't yell at me if you're shocked and terrified by what you see.

I wonder if I should just get the Orange Box preorder. But then if I played TF2 till my hands were bloody, then what would I do when it actually came out? What would be the point then?

Well, besides Portal and HL2 E2.

You get what I'm saying?

Just felt like being a douche and pretending to be cool by writing in German. Turned 20 today. Not a very eventful day, I just did math class, spent two hours cleaning an M16 and watching some freshmen get schooled on the basics of combat patrols so when Ranger Candidacy starts up these kids will know what to do.

Reminds me how infrequently I really study my stuff- I mean, I do know a lot of stuff off the top of my head but I still mess up some of my facts. So I definitely have to brush up, especially if I have to train these kids.

It's so weird to think that a year ago I was thinking, "Hmmm, do I want to do Norwich Rangers or not?" And now I have a pair of Cat Eyes.

Makes me wonder if I might have a shot at the real Ranger school. And then I remember, 'Oh crap, I've almost never been in a real leadership position. May want to level up that little attribute before that ever happens."

Hell, I don't even know if I want a scholarship yet.

It makes me think, you know, we've got guys at this school from the Marines and the Special Forces, and I've always viewed them as titans of sorts. What kind of people are these, do I have any of the qualities that would make me good for that?

And it's questions like these that take my self esteem and toss it in a dumpster. So, now I'll just go back to trying to figure out what to do for homework.

Oh Jesus, how can I not comment on this? Joystiq just pointed out a left wing poster on some site called Alternet.org who not only called RE5 'racist' but also claimed the entire series of Resident Evil games was racist. Mind you, he apparenly thinks the entire series consists of RE4 and 5, since he never goes into the first 3 zombie fests. 4 is lambasted for stereotypical Mexican accents (for the uninitiated, this game takes place in Spain) and 5, well, you know, black people. He goes on to say this little gem:

[RE5] "could be a training video for a white supremacist race war or another US Military adventure in one of the increasing numbers of deserts on this planet."

Wow, I don't think I've seen this much condensed liberlism in a while. Let's break the subtle messages down:

"could be a training video for a white supremacist race war"- HEY GUYS VIDEO GAMES TRAIN KIDS TO KILL! (I like how he called it a video and not a videogame.)

"or another US military adventure" - ZOMG THE AMERIKKKAN GOVT IS GOING TO INVADE IRAN LEAVE IRAQ NOW BLARGHBLARGH

"in one of the increasing numbers of deserts on this planet" - SAVE THE TREES! SAVE THE TREES!

Now mind you, rasicm's not something we in the biz would call 'morally good', the Iraq war was a pretty bad investment, hitting Iran probably isn't a good idea right now either and environmentalism really isn't a bad idea. But trying to inject it into commentary the way this guy does, it makes me wonder if this guy is one of those kinds of dudes that just likes to slip these kinds of memes into everyday conversation.

"Yeah, this veggie burger tastes pretty good. It'd be better if the bun wasn't concocted by imperialist corporations using the Muslim slaves they got from their oil war in Iraq. Hey, I'm gonna go to Blockbuster, wanna come?"

They say clever people see subtlety where there is none. This guy don't seem too durn clever.

Oh yeah, World in Conflict is totally awesome, I love it, it's the best and most innovative(in terms of control schemes) RTS I've played since Starcraft (yeah, okay, SC wasn't so much innovative as it was just refined. Shut up.) and the blister I got from burning my hand on an M16 shell apparently IS filled with pus because it broke open. Why a burn wound would have pus in it, I don't know. Have to talk to a biolologist about that one.

Do you ever wonder if maybe demos ruin the experience of a game? I mean, here I am wanting to buy World in Conflict, but considering the fact that I already played the demo to death and played each side, with every branch, I wonder if it's really worth it when all I'm really getting is more maps.

Same for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I won't buy that anyway since there's too many games coming out but it's also worth noting that the demo pretty much gave the the idea of what it was all about.

Sometimes you gotta wonder if pre-release exposure is a good thing.

So, I figure it's been a long, long time since I updated this, pretty much because I've been tired of the site.

Still, it's a place to get an audience. Terrible place, but a place nonetheless.

So I've decided to talk about something that has been bugging me for the last week or so: Final Fantasy 7. You see, Gametrailers had this thing called "The Final Fantasy Retrospective" where they discussed every single FF ever made. I've never been interested in it- the only one I played was Crystal Chronicles and it wasn't too interesting. But watching the whole 15 minute segment on FF7 made me intrigued in the game, because for years I've been hearing from all the corners of the internet about how fantastic the game is, and that it's the best, and Oh God I cried so hard when Aeris/Aerith/who gives a damn how you pronounce it gets stabbed to death.

So then I thought, "So how exactly did Square manage to make people cry over Aeris' death scene?" I mean, the only real time I ever saw this Aeris character was every now and then in some video game article on sites like this, old advertisements in old magazines, and the time my older sister borrowed Advent Children. Gotta say, for a CGI character she was pretty hot in that movie, though I make it a point not to be vocal on these kinds of things since it's kinda stupid to get infatuated with imaginary characters.

So despite never having played the game, watching the death scene actually did make me incredibly sad. It wasn't the graphics- I'm used to CGI that's a thousand times better. I think it was preobably when they started playing her theme that made me sad since the music is really well done. Really great orchestral music- some of it's pretty cool. So it became a situation where for some odd reason I found myself thinking about this chick's character and what made her so likeable that even despite knowing a little bit about her I was able to get really sad watching this death scene.

It's probably mostly the impressions made on me by the collective opinions of people who played the game. I think just timing the music had a lot to do with it and how that theme defines the character.

So even though I've never gone through the 50 hour grind it takes to really get attached to this character, just seeing that scene managed to emotionally staple me to that character and miss her. How screwed up is that?

Then I kinda went around reading more stuff around the Net about how people coped with this game- Escapist.coms' recent story about people who went crazy with the internet role-playing, the petitions to bring Aeris' character back (which made her death even more depressing because I've been in the situation where I was sad enough about a characters' death that it made me wish there was a way to bring them back, so I can relate). Oh yeah, and the psycho cult run by a lesbian couple whose members all believed they truly were videogame characters in past lives.

Even though I've never actually gotten to know this character outside of other people's feelings about her death scene and Advent Children, watching that stuff on Youtube still managed to make me sad, so I guess Square made a really good character- one I could care about without actually playing the game. Enough that I actually kind of empathize with the people who want the character resurrected in some future FF7 adaptation- though that would be completely inappropriate since her death is the most important scene in the game, and reviving her just destroys the significance. She still techincally exists, obviously, but I guess the fact that she can't exactly have a love affair with Cloud makes it an unsatisfactory ending for her.

So, my hats off to Square for that. Now that I've got that off my chest, it's back to Fortess Forever while listening to Futuristic Sex Robotz.

And waiting for Starcraft II.