I got Red Dead over the weekend. I haven't gotten to play it a great deal, but I loved what I did get to play. It seems really fun.

I'm also picking up Crackdown 2 tonight. During the demo, I was out of town and unfortunately couldn't play it. I've heard it wasn't that great, but it's not enough to convince me to not buy it.

Crackdown 1 is one of my favorite games, so this is pretty big for me. I took a glance to see if any reviews had been written for it so far, and two user reviews were written. They were around 8.5-ish, which is good. I was worrying I'd see incredibly low scores.

I wouldn't really trust those reviews too much, since they were written a few hours after the game's launch, but GameSpot gave it a 7.5, which is still good.

Once I get my hands on it for a bit I'll try to let you all know what I think.

*Crosses fingers that it's good*

I'm one of the few people who haven't gotten Red Dead Redemption yet, but that is soon to change! I'm planning to get it in a few weeks!

I'm also planning to get another game... Any suggestions, maybe?

In the meantime I've been writing script drafts for Machinima, and playing some Team Fortress 2. :D

The new Engineer Update is supposedly going to go live soon. I can't wait.

NEW ENGINEER SHOTGUN FTW!!!

For Team Fortress 2 players, we're at the edge of our seats waiting. And for non-Team Fortress 2 players.... Well, they're playing Modern Warfare 2... :P

Anyway, that's about it.

Thanks for reading.

So I've been messing around a bit lately with Halo: CE on the PC. I got console commands and mods and stuff to work. It's epic fun.

I've also been working on some ideas for an upcoming Machinima series.

Originally, I was going to do this:

(Click here for the "trailer" I made for it)

However, lately, I have been looking for an alternative to Guild Wars Machinima, which is why I got into Halo: CE.

I've been going over plot ideas that I could pull off in Halo, and I think I found one that just might work. I'm going to probably end up consulting a few of my friends from Machinima forums and ask them for a second opinion or maybe some constructive criticism before I make it final.

If nothing else, I will continue and make this series as planned. :P

Also, I can't remember if I mentioned this in my last blog or not... I don't think so..

Anyway, I edited a montage. I usually hate montages and gameplay and all that, but I found someone with some intelligence (sense i dun liek ppl hoo teyp3 lkie dis al teh timze) and he offered me to edit for him. After a few weeks of him sending me clips, we're done!

You can watch the final product by clicking here.

Meanwhile, I've stumbled upon two free games which both caught my fancy.

One would be Sumotori Dreams. It's a basic sumo wrestling game, but you play as ragdoll-like block people. It's quite random and funny.

Here's my video of some fun I had with it.

Download link

Another free game I found would be Facade. Basically, it's a one-act interactive drama.

The game is about a couple named Tripp and Grace. Supposedly you are the person who set them up ten years ago, and now they're married. They invite you over for the evening for drinks and entertainment.

However, they begin bickering while you're there.

You choose what happens though.

You can type in what you want to tell them and they respond. It's not the most responsive thing, but I was surprised for it being a free game.

As in, if you say "Screw you Tripp" (or anything offensive like that), you get kicked out of the house and it's over. You can also decide to choose sides when they bicker, saying who's opinion you agree with.

Definitely worth a check out.

I'm yet to make a video for it as of now, but plan to sometime.

Download link

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'm tired. lol

Thanks for reading.

-Darren

I haven't watched a lot of E3, but I watched what interested me.

The Halo Reach demo videos look amazing, and I'm highly anticipating the game.

I'm sure you all heard that Microsoft gave out free Xbox360 Slims to the people in the audience. They look pretty nice, but I wouldn't buy one for myself. I already have a 120GB HDD and a Wi-Fi Adapter (that I had to buy separately) for my Xbox.

I don't see myself buying a Slim unless my current Xbox breaks.

Oh well.

I hope that Microsoft sells the Kinect (AKA Natal) separately as well so people running old Xboxes like myself can still play it. I'm sure they will, since they'll probably make a lot of people mad if they don't. Not sure how it would work, but I sure hope that Kinect will be compatible with my Xbox. I really don't feel like buying a Slim.

I've also been playing a good bit of Team Fortress 2 lately - helluva game it is.

And today I downloaded Halo Custom Edition for my PC. I was hoping to get to make some Machinima in it, but the free camera on it isn't working out very well. It's the most important mod as well. I got a bunch of other mods like the Trainer to work but for some reason I'm having trouble with the camera mods. :(

Oh well.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

I'm gonna keep this post short n' sweet!

I just got Shadow Complex yesterday, and I gotta say that I'm loving it. It's pretty amazing. I'm 47% through the map (according to the game) already, and I can see myself re-playing it once I'm done.

I'm also highly anticipating the release of Crackdown 2 next month. Anyone else picking it up?

How long has it been? Like three or four months since I posted something?

Oh well. I just thought I might post a little something. Though I doubt I'll keep posting regularly.

Kind of an update post..

In my last post I was talking about my Machinima.com contract getting terminated and how I was taking a break from Machinima. Looking back at that, I think I was a bit melodramatic. I posted that the night it happened and I had many thoughts going through my head, and within the next day, they were all gone and I was back to normal.

I've actually been making more Machinima than usual.

I'm working on an upcoming Guild Wars Machinima series called Hate the Player.

I've released a good number of miscellaneous videos as well, which can all be found on my YouTube Channel.

I now also have 160 subscribers.. I think when I took my leap of absence from GS I had like 40 or so. So, that's always nice.

That's all I really feel like typing right now.. I might make posts every now and then, and might comment on your guys' every now and then, but I'm busier than ever, so I'm not making any promises.

Well, that's about it.

Thanks for reading.

-Darren

So I'm not sure what to think today. Honestly, this could be my last blog for a while. A lot happened in this little day..

Let me start off with the good stuff. For those of you who read my previous blog, you know that I was modded for spamming.. Well you also know I was none-too-happy about it and I had many arguments to follow up.

Well, I decided to do something about it!! Instead of sitting around doing nothing, I went to the Ask the Mods forum, made a big thing stating why I think I was wrongfully modded, and.. Well, it worked! The modding was reversed, my thread re-opened!

THE THREAD IS BACK, BABEH!!!!!

If you wanna see exactly how I did it, along with my huge argument about why I thought it was wrong to mod me, you can go here.

Now... For the bad news.. The very bad news.

Well, after school today, I decided to get on my Yahoo, to see if Luke and/or Micah (people from Machinima.com staff) had sent me anything regarding The Big Story (that I submitted over the weekend).

Well, I opened an e-mail from Luke titled "Machinima Consultant". The opening statement was Luke telling me that he was in the process of terminating my Machinima.com Contract..

I would type my large response, but I'm tired, and it's late.. To see it all, go to Page 8 of this thread. In gist, I was terminated because Luke didn't follow protocol when signing me up. He never reviewed my content with the manager, and apparently, the manager didn't like the work I made enough, and told Luke to terminate me. So, Luke liked my work; not the manager. Honesty, I didn't think I deserved a contract, since I barely made any videos, none of which were outstanding. But, it was what happened, and I wasn't going to argue.

The link should automatically take you there, but if not, that's where you should go.

Essentially, that whole thread was CK from Euphorian Filmers (another Partnered group) addressing Mr. Debavoise, CEO of Machinima.com. He, and all the directors were outraged and fed up with the amount of excessive movie trailers, Inside Gaming Episodes, and Machinima Respawn videos going on the Machinima Youtube Channel (Machinima Respawn is another of their Channels devoted to gameplay videos). Well, a rule of thumbs for Machinimators is that we hate gameplay commentators.

No offense if any of you do them. We just don't like it when they get payed to make them.

Why?

They work for an hour at tops on their videos, and their videos get put on Machinima Respawn. There on the Respawn Channel, there are no movie trailers, and no Machinima videos put on there. Plus, they get payed as much, sometimes more than we do. And we work for, at times, months on our videos, which take time to make, while our work is unappreciated by the company, usually only reaching around 10k views ever, whereas Respawn videos usually get around 30k a day, due to know spam on their Channel.

CK finally decided to do something about it. It was actually a bit of an eye-opener for me, which made my termination easier. I think it was a sign.

Now that I'm out, my videos will get no spam, all the rights go directly to me, bringing more views to my Channel, and also I have more freedom in my videos. I think it was a blessing in disguise. Very well disguised, but I think it's for the best.

The other day, I was considering dropping out anyway, honestly. Since that thread was such an eye-opener and got me thinking so much, I thought of all the benefits I'd get in my own Channel. Really, the only upside to contracting with them is the money, which wasn't much to begin with, then saying how they never get many views due to spam, I'd be lucky to make a dime. Of course, now, I'm not making any money, but I really wouldn't have bee now. Overall, the downsided outweighed the upsides.

And another thing that wasn't mentioned a great deal in the thread, but also was convincing me..

They NEVER respond to e-mails. NEVER. You're lucky to get a reply from them within three months, even if you're asking a question protaining to one of your videos.

Also, they have so many restrictions on your videos. One, in paticular that makes me mad is the fact that we cannot display our URLs to our site, Youtube Channel, etc. for longer than three seconds.

THREE SECONDS???!!!

We work for MONTHS on the video! We work 100% of it on it! We send it to them! We wait three months to hear from them! We spend five hours on their crappy uploader on the site! We make the video fit all of the specs they want it to! We accept the fact that it probably won't pass 10k views..

And we can't display a little URL for more than three seconds?

We should be able to put a whole dang watermark on our video if we please! We make the video! They pay us chump change while they're profiting much off of our work!

So, in gist, I got out of this whole thing.

The system turned corrupt, some people got money-hungry, and well.. The whole company is going down the tube!

If I ever get offered my job back, I'm doubting I'll accept.. At least if the system is still in the same state it is now.

But, thank you for listening to my rage rant.

Also, for anyone wondering, here is a link to watch The Big Story Part One.

I know it's not perfect, but.... Well, I'm not going to say. I'm glad it's not going on the Machinima Youtube.. I think it'd get torn apart on there. Well, here it is.

As I said at the beginning, this may be my last blog here for a while.

It really has nothing to do with me getting terminated, I just have a lot to do right now.

And for anyone wondering, I'm going to probably be slower on my Machinimating. I'm not quitting, but I'm taking a slight slow down break. I'm just not very enthused or inspired right now... Any of you other film makers out there should understand that when you're in a certain mood you just can't do anything film-wise.

I'm not really upset about this. I got over it pretty quickly and immediately spotted the upsides.

It's just a bit to absorb in an afternoon after school.

Well, thanks for reading.

Wow! I was just modded like last week! I used to have a clean record of like six months and not one mod, but now I'm slipping up pretty often. This one is more bull then the last!

See, I got modded for spam, apparently...

This is what happened..

I got on Xbox this morning, and noticed people were switching to CoD4 from MW2.. Actually, I'd been noticing it more and more over the past several weeks.

So, me, being a Youtuber, I make a little rant/vlog video about it (found here).

Then, I go to the General Games Discussion forum and make a topic about it. I type a nice several statements in text with my opinion. Then, I just say "I make Youtube videos also and I made one about this, in case anyone's interested." And I threw in the link.

The topic got like six or seven replies of people talking on topic, none of which were complaining saying I was spamming. One of the people even told me that the production was good, (I used Chroma Key, a soft layer of background music, etc.). Then, a minute later I get a PM saying that the topic has been purged (fancy talk for locked, though you can't (or at least I can't) view it anymore) and I've been given a spam warning.

Usually, I would accept something like this, but I have a rebuttal.

I had a nice topic with statements. I wasn't just posting the link and saying "WACH MAI VID & RAET 5 ST4RZ PLZZZ!!111". I had written a nice bit to go with it, and just casually threw it in at the end, since I felt it would add onto the conversation, and express my personal thoughts better then words could.

And no one was complaining, either. As I said, about six/seven responses of normal discussion. I say no harm no foul.

And they didn't even mark any points against me! Now it's absolutely pointless! They just purged my topic and didn't even bring anything on my account. I guess that's good, since that's wasn't getting me near to ban, but it just makes this mod more pointless. They obviously didn't think my offense was bad enough to put points against me on my account, so why would it be grounds for purging my topic?

I didn't mind it so much when I got modded the first time, since if I'd read the rules, I could have avoided getting modded. Though this was not against the rules. I did not spam. I started a discussion, with my own statement in text, and just posting my statement in video form as well.

By this logic, Gamespot is spamming everytime they have one of their articles and also link to a video on their Channel, which they do often. Yes, Gamespot has a Youtube Channel and they often embed their videos from their channel on this site.

If anyone knows a mod or anyone at all I could give my case to, let me know.. I know I won't even gain anything from this, since it didn't count against my account, but it's just a principle now that it was wrongfully purged.

Well, sorry for my rage.

You all have been modded for bull too. Just annoys me when sites do stuff that they ban/punish others' for. I used to use a site called GaiaOnline, and they would constantly spam Announcements all over your browser that were from the site (they weren't pop-ups, but just things from the site all over the screen) that were always either advertising for their own products or advertising for other companies' products (Gaia had been payed to do so, of course). And the third-party items they were advertising were completely irrellivant ads, like for Skittles and razors (as in shaving razors.. Not even the phone "Razor") (And those were true examples).

So, that's just where I get kind of the same vibe from Gamespot that I did from Gaia. I quit Gaia.. The spam thing was just one of the many things of crap that site gave, but Gamespot isn't to that same point yet..

If you've actually read through this entire entry, thanks. And for that, I reward you with this picture of a leaf blower.

And also, I completely owned someone on the Machinima.com forums.

Yes. Demotivational Poster worthy, indeed.

OOOOH!!!! I COMPLETELY SPACED THIS FROM MY MIND!!

I finished rendering The Big Story Part 1. It was a very long story of how I got it fixed, and I'd rather not go into a lot of detail. I'm tired, and I've been typing a lot. I uploaded it to Machinima.com, though they don't upload things on the weekends, so hopefully you all will be able to see The Big Story sometime upcoming this week/early next.

So, this is the end of this entry. Thank you for reading.

So yesterday I downloaded the AvP demo on Steam.. Gotta say it's "meh". It was different, I'll at least give it that. The controls were a bit clunkish and the camera as an alien felt funny, especially when scaling walls. Overall, though, I gotta say it seems like it might turn out to be a nice game, it's just got a few flaws.

I downloaded Crash 1 and Crash 2 from the PSN. Wow! Such a blast from the past, taking me back to the days of incredibly challenging games. It got me to thinking about Crash Bash, AKA, my favorite game when I was six years old-ish. Oh, I remember playing that game on my old PS1. I loved it! It was so great! I couldn't find it on the PSN store, though... If anyone knows how to (legally, of course) get it on a PS3, please let me know. That'd be awesome.

Also, I wrote a review for Team Fortress 2 finally. It's such a big game that I just now felt comfortable writing a review for it.

Team Fortress 2 Review

Now, onto the technical difficulties. I just yesterday finished editing Part One of The Big Story, my upcoming Machinima. I tried to render it in Sony Vegas, and it failed... It just keeps freezing. I've restarted my computer several times, and I've tried to render it over twenty times, at least.

I've been finding things on Youtube that are being of slight assistance, but nothing's fixing it. This isn't even the first bug I've found in Vegas. This is just the most annoying one. Honestly, my Sony Vegas Platinum is just turning into a $130 paperweight.

I really hope I can fix this, since I've been working on this thing, overall, for about a month now, and all I want to do is get it rendered and uploaded. I don't think that's too much to ask.

I'll keep you guys posted on that.

Well, thanks for reading.

OPTIONAL BACKGROUND MUSIC!

So, yesterday I just beat the Modern Warfare 2 campaign.. I hadn't been playing the campaign much at all, and I was a little bit stuck on the mission with all the crashed planes and you have a sniper rifle. I kept going Rambo and just trying to randomly shoot everyone... Didn't work. I took my time and sniped down all the people. The big boat level was epic! Loved the ending, leaving it open for a MW3..

I also made it to level 30 in the multiplayer.

I've been playing TF2 a bit lately as well. Occasionally, some GMod madness!

And I've been experimenting with green screening in IRL. Works nicely..

Why am I doing all of this?

I'M WAITING ON TYSON!!!!

... Don't worry. I know that makes no sense. But Tyson is my last voice actor for The Big Story. He voice acted in my first Machinima, Constructive Criticism as the narrator (the smallest role) and he was the last to get me in his lines. Though, his voice is great. I signed him up as the officer in this Machinima, which is also a small role. He's still the last!!

No big deal, though. He sent them last night, but there was a problem with them. I'm just waiting for him to send me the fixed file which should be soon.

But other than that, editing on The Big Story is going well.

In other [Machinima] news, I'm working on another Guild Wars Music video while I'm waiting for lines as well. The song is from my aunt's band, "Shaded". I asked her if I could use it, and she was happy to get her music out there for everyone to hear. I wanted to use her music since it has words as well, which is better for Music videos. It's going nicely, since I figured out how to do Green Screen in Guild Wars, which extremely enhances the video.

I'm out of school for President's Day right now, and there's a possibility of being out for snow tomorrow. I hope to get a work on the video a lot today, and especially if I'm out tomorrow, work on it a lot then. I think that if I get a work on it a lot, I can get it done by this weekend, or on this weekend.

I'll link it when it's uploaded!

Thanks for reading!