A debate has been raging inside my mind. A question of near constant vexation that has been lingering deep within my psyche for awhile now and it's finally bubbled to the surface in one brash conclusion. Gamepads ruin FPS video games! I know! I know! The vast legion of frat boy Halo douchebags are already queuing up to express their unyielding hatred for my brazen battle cry of 'anti-thumbing', but I stand by my decision. Maybe it's because I am old school and grew up with arcade games that placed bright plastic pistols in my hands, or the countless hours spent in front of Q3, CS, Tribes, and many other FPSs played with the keyboard and mouse, or maybe I am becoming crotchety in my mid twenties, but I refuse to bow down to the tyranny of game pads!

Every game I have ever played on every console that had any worthwhile shooter on it that forced me to use a game pad was a complete let down. I twiddle my thumbs when I am bored not when I am trying to mow down zombies or other players online. Who came up with the idea of playing intense, combat related video games with your thumbs? I don't go for a Sunday drive with my thumbs. I don't fire an actual weapon with my thumbs! Sure, thumbs are great and they have a grand purpose in the evolutionary scheme of things and are probably the only parts of human anatomy that dogs and cats envy, but to saunter into digital combat with a vibrating game pad and my thumbs sounds more like an experience reserved for the users of exotic Japanese sex toys than an immersive combat (though fake) experience.

And then there are the button mashing 'finishing moves' of the game pad and to paraphrase Peter Griffin, "that really grinds my gears.". I remember the good ol' days when I didn't have to try to mash buttons in a particular sequence to kill off the bosses. Granted, some games made you do something in sequence to add a bit more of a challenge to taking out the boss, but it was normally a little more thought provoking than mashing the B button as quickly as possible and then holding down A while standing on one foot and trying to open a twist off cap of cheap beer with only your tongue. In my day, when I needed to kill off some behemoth; I merely pumped his guys full of lead, rockets, or lasers and called it a job well done. I didn't prance about like a grass fairy dancing on my thumbs.. No sir, I actually used my hands and more than two fingers to get the job done.

There was a time and place for gamepads, but that time is over and the place is long gone. I'd like to take a moment to apologize for the generations growing up behind me and rising to the ranks of l33t speak and pseudo uberness. We have failed you.. Instead of investing more time and money into thinking of truly revolutionary ways for you to interact with games we simply took the gamepad from twenty plus years ago and added more buttons, an ergonomic twist, and patented sextoy vibration. Sure Nintendo made some head way with the Wii and Project Natal seems to be coming along nicely, but those should be a portion of the technology we are improving now, not projects slated for the future, near or otherwise.

Every so often you see stories in the news about how the elderly are wasting away in horrid and depressing conditions within 'retirement/assisted living communities' and that is wretched and I'm not trying to detract from gravity of those situations, but I at the same time I can't help, but wonder how things will be when my generation retires..

And you know what? Unless the world implodes and all the women on the planet are stricken with an insidious disease that makes them breast-less.. I think retirement is going to be kick **** ass. In fact they may have re-coin retirement community to geriatric gaming community because as long as I can move a mouse and operate w,a,s and, d my ass is going to be chewing up bandwidth and tea bagging fools that don't know what time it is until I keel over due to a massive heart attack just as I scream into the microphone during a session of Counter Strike 35.

Course by that time I may not even have to use a mouse and keyboard and I might be able to game with just my brain and electrodes, though it's not my intention to speculate on future gaming technologies. All I'm trying to say is that in the future.. It might not be the 12 year olds with no life that piss you off in WoW and other games, but instead an 80 year old who only has to break so he can get a sponge bath by a lovely Swedish nurse with huge tracts of lands.

Or not..

I'm beginning to feel like I am the only person around that has played this game. Does anyone else see what a giant hunk of flaming **** this thing is? The graphics are ok, but the game play is horrid. Firstly, I don't feel like my character is soldier, but instead a little old lady bumbling about in hover 'round with a bad battery. Perhaps there should be an option to drop any excess gear and make your character a bit more nimble before a firefight? Course that might add even more time to the continual pestering of the cut scenes that seem to pop up every five minutes and turn the game play into something akin to a stammering retard reciting War and Peace.

IT'S WW2!!! EVERY STORY YOU CAN POSSIBLY THINK OF HAS ALREADY BEEN TOLD! I DO NOT CARE! I ONLY WANT TO BLOW SH*T UP! LESS STORY! MORE ATTENTION TO GAMEPLAY!

But I /can't/ forget the sham that this game presents as combat.. All of the combat in this game has been stolen from good oldie called Whac-A-Mole.. The only difference between this game's so called combat and whac-a-mole is that the moles here are wearing tiny gray uniforms and tin helmets that ding when you pop them in the head and start ANOTHER WORTHLESS CUT SCENE JUST TO SHOW YOU THAT YOU ARE INDEED NOT AS INCOMPTIENT AS YOU ORGINALLY THOUGHT!

Then.. There are your teammates whom you are led to believe you are in control of. Sure there are times when they move correctly to cover and don't wrap around an object in the wrong direction thus exposing themselves to enemy fire which they seem quite content to remain standing in front of until they die.. But what really bugs me about them is how worthless they seem to be. I will confess that they can put down cover fire, but other than the five enemies they have put down, I am left to do the bulk of the dirty work and finish off the moles one by one as they pop up from their hidey holes. *yawn* Do I get any tickets that I can cash in for cheap prizes if I get them all? For $50 bucks I should.

And finally.. The illusion of tactics. If you think there are tactics in then game then your mind is extraordinary simple and you should be given a cookie along with a pat on the back. So, in the midst of this horribly restricted game, you are given the option the flank.. Which translates to, instead of taking the yellow brick road we like to call option A, you can run along the 2nd (THE ONLY OTHER OPTION!) we like to call option B. Can you say 'boring, funneled, worthless, game play'? I can..

From: GameSpot Sent: Jan 25, 2009 10:47 pm GMT Subject: Terms of Use Violation - Point Loss! You have been moderated with a Point Loss for a Terms of Use violation. Your Profile level has been reduced. If you repeat this offense in the future, you may receive a more severe penalty such as Suspension or Permanent Banning. Having a paid subscription does not exempt you from being suspended or banned.

Reason for moderation: Offensive content
Action Taken: Delete Msg - You lost points for this moderation.

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Oh no! They've taken away a few of my points! Though.. Considering I've never made it past level five and only got there by sheer unintentional accident I have to ask myself one very simple question..

Do I give a damn?

Not in the least..

But I suppose I shouldn't feel too poorly over the entire matter as they are a bit daft and won't even allow their own staff to write critical reviews without firing them.. If they treat their own staff so bitterly then why should a lowly user such as myself expect any other kind of treatment?

Just go to wikipedia and look up Jeff Gerstmann, his story says plenty about gamespot

.

From: GameSpot Sent: Jan 22, 2009 3:22 am GMT Subject: Terms of Use Violation - Warning! You have been moderated with a Warning for a Terms of Use violation. If you repeat this offense in the future, you may receive a more severe penalty such as Point Loss from your level, Suspension or Permanent Banning. Having a paid subscription does not exempt you from being suspended or banned.

Here is a link to our Terms of Use:
http://www.gamespot.com/misc/tos.html

Reason for moderation: Intending solely to annoy and/or offend other users
Action Taken: Delete Review - No points were lost for this moderation.

See your moderation history for details.

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Seriously? Are there individuals that get paid to bow down to the sensitivities of people with weak minds and hearts plastered to their sleeves? I wrote a review for Spore entitled 'Spore lowered my sperm' count in which I outlined just how utterly wretched the game is and that I regretted purchasing that worthless hunk of **** and now find myself in a position where I cannot even /GIVE/ the game away. It's like the blackspot of gaming, but instead of killing you out right it does something far more sinister.. It in fact, lowers your sperm count! I mean, just go after me with a pair of gardening sheers why don't you? But for god sakes don't make a game so horrid that it kills of the reservoir form my 'bo-jangles'.

I think one of the most amusing point of the moderation is that for the most part people seemed to really enjoy the review and while it didn't have a massive following or any semblance of a fan base it was the truth about a horrible, horrible, game. I'm just surprised that Gamespot is worried about dip-****s that can't handle their game receiving a stern tongue lashing on the Internet (ON THE INTERNET! MY GOD!), then what sort of worthless, over sensitive muppets are modern society creating? If you don't like a review then don't **** read it! If you like to be offended then just throw away your **** PC and /never/ get back online because I can assure you that you will continually annoyed and offended!

Tribes... I still think of Tribes. It still holds so many fond memories for me. Some people might relate to earlier games to recant their first love of the usually epic time wasters we have affectionately come to know as of Video games, but for me.. It's Tribes.

You have to realize that up until that point I had been playing games like Quake, MechWarrior, and even Wing Commander (Along with many others), but when I played Tribes for the first time it was like I was set free. Gone were the cold fetters of sadistic level designers that couldn't think outside the box and made it their goal in life to stuff you into a box of carnage. No more was I thrust into an endless trail of missions and campaigns, but for the first time in my little digital gaming life I was truly set free. I soon realized that just because someone could out snipe me, or even out shoot me with the disc launcher that Tribes gave you enough freedom to out think and out maneuver your opponents. Unlike the doldrums of WoW were a smart player at lvl 20 is hopelessly out matched by a 12 year old without a life, job, and three lvl 70 characters, in Tribes you were on at least on a semblance of equal footing that gave you a chance to beat even the best of players. Beyond the myriad of vehicles, weapons, and turrets that you had at your finger tips you had to truly work as a team. It was one of those games were you could take the best player in the world, put him on the worst team in the world and he suddenly became average.

And then there came the Mods..

On days when I wanted no thing but blatant carnage the Renegade Mod (Hope that's the name) was perfectly suited for it.. Where else could you find a fully automatic disc launcher, sniper rifle, and turrets that could shoot you across the map?

But..

The Shifter Mod is what sold me on Tribes. Invisible mines, det packs, plastique explosives with variable timers! It's one of those mods that I would gladly call, 'Extra awesome'. Flying across the map with a flight pack and moving with tremendous speed thanks to 'skiing' I would slip into enemy bases with my chameleon armor (The light armor set) and make their lives hell. I was loaded with explosives and my trusty boom stick that made me giggle like a school girl every time I ran into a hapless sniper that thought the female armor sets made them a smaller target (which it did at long range), but little did they realize at close range their heads were face level with the barrel of my boom stick.. Ahh the carnage. I remember setting my explosives with 15 second delays and scattering them around inventory stations and power sources, but just before everything would ignite into a near orgasmic symphony of destruction I would use one of their inventory stations (the beauty of Chameleon armor) and switch to a heavy armor set and bring the enemyinto a whole new circle of hell.

It was just so much fun.. I'm not even touching on the deployable laser turrets, rocket turrets, plasma turrets, blast walls, force fields, hovering bases, and cloaking devices, or all of the amazing traps you could setup with det packs and invisible mines. The Shifter Mod in conjunction with Tribes had so much to offer..

If I was emotional I even be coaxed into shedding a tear.

P.S

For all of you worthless **** that think Tribes sucks or your don't like what I have written here.. Go f*** yourselves. It's my blog and I can write whatever the hell I want.