I have played through most of the big games of the year and have found myself in a perplexing situation as there are 3 major game releases this year that I have felt like have not lived up to the critical aclaim that the games have gotten so far. I have finished each of the games to about the full level that I am willing to go or have finished the games completely so I am coming at it from the most informed perspective that I feel like I can.

Am I wrong for finding these so called gems not quite up to par with the hype that they are receiving or am I possibly finding myself jaded by those games that I do find to be possibly superior in their perspective fields? Should I not enjoy these games that are supposedly redefining the next generation and have been a source of good times and cheer for most gamers?

Not only do I find myself wondering about those games that I do not attain that much pleasure from as do others, but I have started to doubt myself with those games that I do find myself enjoying that people seem to pass and those games that I am indefferent about. When I play games it all comes down to pleasure for me, did I find it a pleasure or pain to play this game through to the end.

Missing the Pleasure

Bioshock (x360)

I do find that this game does give a rather immersive atmosphere in which I am stuck there are certain parts of the game that I find disconcerting and actually detract from the potential enjoyment. I experienced a rather large amount of texture pop-ins in my play time. Constantly fallen big daddies and certain parts of environments would fail keep me entwined with the otherwise rich atmosphere. Another pet peeve of mine is the camera. While it provided a challenge in order to take pictures of enemies while they were attacking you and you did benefit from said pictures. If I was getting attacked by crazy people bent on killing me I for one would not be taking pictures but attempting to fight for my life, it just seemed too out of place. The plasmids, which were supposed to be a card up their sleeve for the game, seemed useless to me. I could complete practically any task, which I often did, without the use of plasmids. When I forced myself to incorporate my plasmids more into my regime I felt encumbered by them and always seemed to resort to using my shotgun or crossbow to deal out the damage. The combat aspect felt as generic as any other first person shooter and did little but detract from my overall experience.

Orange Box (x360)

While their are some redeeming qualities within the whole package, I feel a lack of the "wow" factor that everyone else seemed to experience. The two most redeeming qualities within this nice little myriad of gaming are the overall value of getting 5 games in 1 and Portal in and of itself. I enjoyed the small slice that Portal gave me, but should 1 of 5 parts be worthy of my overall adoration of a title? When looking at Half Life 2 as a whole package, including Episode 1 & 2, I felt that there were too many experiences that felt out of balance that kept me from finding my gaming bliss. The pacing of Half Life 2 felt totally broken as an overall experience. I had too many stretches where I felt like I was just grinding through and found too little moments that kept my pulse throbbing and got my heart beating faster. I can only point to 1 expereince that got my blood rushing and gave me that gaming "high". Team Fortress 2 tries to provide a certain balancing and squad experience that is second to none, but in the end it fails to provide me with that euphoria. Lag issues and team balancing constantly kept me frustrated with what could have been a great experience. I tried to look back at the game from an unbiased opinion and not comparing it to other games but the very nature of what there were doing kept me comparing Half Life 2, to other first person shooters and TF 2 to other multiplayer experiences.

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)

Where to begin with this one? While I acknowledge that Nintendo may be trying to appeal to a larger crowd with their console, I felt like they did a disservice to their audience. While applaud Nintendo for their liberal use of different atmospheres, their mind bending use of gravity in various experiences, and their appropriate use of motion capabilities I can't help but feel as though previous Mario titles have set the bar too high. I felt as though the game is far too easy for the overall aspect and the only challenging parts of the game are due to poor camera angles. Mario 64 set the precedent for finding multiple stars in a single cohesive playiing field, but with SMG they decided to give you that but hold your hand to get you those stars. You aren't given an open field to find the stars as a challenge, but instead they define that path for you and walk you through it step by step. The Mario capabilities of the past are back with a few new additions which fail to live up to those of the past. The new capabilites are either time based, or are just not fun to use and feel tacked on. The older hats have been reworked to either making them frustrating to use, ie Fire Flower Mario, or are barely used at all, ie Flying Mario.

While I did find all of these titles enjoyable to a certain degree, I did not feel a sense of astonishment and wonder that I was expecting from so many people telling me they have. While my complaints are few and far in between in the overall experience of what are vast titles, in my hierarchy of pleasure very little was found. These games could have been the Superb games that many people have found them, but instead found them to be Good. I am not completely writing off these games from my library but instead filing them under a different category but not the upper shelf.

Next time I will discuss those games I found great pleasure in that either found small amount of critical acclaim or those that were written up as lukewarm experiences.

Well, it has taken me about another 2 months, but this time I plan on coming back at least a little bit more regular. I will try and post about 1 a week at the least if not more often, and I will make sure to not limit it to video games. Movies will also start to play a big role in my posts.

So I pretty much have given up on Gears of War. I had a lot of fun while I was playing it, but at the end it seemed more like work to me than anything else. I may pop it back in from time to time in order to get my multiplayer mix, but I definitely want to branch out and play a lot more different games. There are a lot of games that I would like to try, but Blockbuster never really has them and Gamefly doesn't really seem economical considering it will take a long time for shipping. Wait, I thought I remember hearing something about an east coast depot opening up so I will have to do some more research.

I currently have Condemned and I am going to start playing that today. A lot of people really seemed to enjoy it, so I figured what the heck why not give it a try. I will try and start writing reviews again once this game is over, but I can't guarantee anything.

So, it has been a ridiculously long time since I did a blog post, but well nothing big has changed. Right now I am trying to kill time until I am able to go to my next class and get it over. I have only 3 more achievements to get in Gears of War and I will have all of them. The Hammer I will get eventually, but the Seriously... will take a long time, if I ever get it.

We have all become accustomed and familiar with Mr. Jack Thompson in our gaming lives. For most gamers, he has only come to their attention with Grand Theft Auto and the “Hot Coffee” mod that seemed to bring Rockstar to a halt. Yet, he has been around for far longer than that. To battle our enemy, we must know where they have been and what they have done.

The first notable experience of Mr. Thompson against gaming happened in 1997 with the Paducah, Kentucky School shooting. Doom, Quake, Castle Wolfenstein, Redneck Rampage, Nightmare Creatures, Mechwarrior, Resident Evil, and Final Fantasy were among some of the games that were played by the young man who went on the rampage. Additionally, the student had a copy of Basketball Diaries, a movie in which a basketball player dreams of killing fellow students and teachers. Jack targeted the movie and gaming industry in order to “hurt them”. The case that Thompson presented was thrown out for failing to present a legally recognizable claim. The following appeal was also upheld.

The next notable foray was in February 2003 with another murder that was supposedly linked to Grand Theft Auto III, and the murderer was supposedly obsessed with the game. After meeting with the plaintiff’s family and consulting with them, Thompson attempted to negotiate his way into becoming the lawyer for the defendant. Thompson later dropped his attempts due to the length of time it was taking to affirm him as the defendant’s lawyer.

The following October, Thompson poked his head out once again. Thompson went after the video game industry after two boys, who were charged with reckless homicide, said they were inspired by Grand Theft Auto III. Later that month, the suit against the Take Two and SCEA was dismissed and the case was closed.

In a more interesting turn of events against Jack Thompson was taken down a peg in 2005 in Alabama. During another case in which Thompson was trying to take down Grand Theft Auto, his privilege to practice law in Alabama was revoked. During the course of the case he had supposedly threatened and harassed the defense attorneys in letters and emails. Thompson tried to pull himself from the case, but the judge denied it, and in the process revoked his privilege to practice law in Alabama.

Most notably, has been his involvement in Bully. It all began in 2005 when he started to support a campaign against the release of the game. In what seems like the first actual breakthrough for Thompson, Microsoft decided to discontinue the release of the game on the Xbox. Microsoft has not decided to comment on the reason for the departure from releasing the game, but only one has to wonder. Another “victory” for Thompson came more recently. He was able to get convince a judge that he should be allowed to privately view the game before its release. Well Thompson got his wish, and the judge got to see what the game was about and said it was ok to go to release. Thompson was rather upset with the decision and berated the judge in a rather nasty letter.

Although Jack has seemed to see only failure over in the beginning of his campaign against gaming, but more recently he has seen some success. Now, it may have not been the success that he has wanted to see, but none the less it seems like he is making some progress, albeit a slow one. What that means for the gaming industry, who knows.

The questions comes down to, what do we do with old Mr. Thompson. There are only a few theories on the approach we should take with him. Some people say that we should fight him every second of the way. We put injunctions in every time that he raises a fit and we should put people outside of his office to let him know that we aren’t going to go anywhere. The other side is quite the opposite. We should ignore him every step of the way. If we ignore him, he won’t get any sort of publicity and he will eventually stop altogether. I personally prescribe to the ignoring theory.

What we do with him in the near future is up for discussion, but whether we like it or not: Thompson is going to be here for a while.

So I was browsing through the local news at Gamespot two days ago and I saw that the review for Battlefield 2142 was up. I had initially wanted to get the game, but then I had a flashback to my days with Battlefield 2.

In the beginning of Battlefield 2 I had great enjoyment playing against other people. I would run through all of the maps with the greatest of joy, hopping around and firing my weapon randomly. Everything was fine and dandy…until I saw the flying fortresses of doom. I would barely have enough time to get out:

“Oh no, not another bomber!”
“Or there is that guy in the chopper again!”

Needless to say, I myself had started to get frustrated with the fact, that I could barely get half way across the map without having some sort of death vehicle obliterating my position killing me once again.  I had gotten so frustrated myself, that I began making a “B” line to nearest jet or helicopter.  Soon I had started to bomb and strafe others with the endless mercy that I had been afflicted by.  I had to stop playing, because I had begun to become that which I hated.

One of the big points of Battlefield 2142 was the fact that they tried to fix the balancing issues with planes and helicopters.  Although I still felt like the odds of them totally fixing it were slim, I was still going to give it a try.

After my sudden and very quick flashback I continued to read through the review. As I was reading I got more and more pumped about the game, making it sound like it really could be a game for me. Then I came to the second to last paragraph in the review and something jumped out at me. In-game advertising, what???

Ok, so in game advertising is not new to me and quite frankly I could care less if they plug other games through little load up screens or little silly wallpapers on the sides of buildings. Hey, they designed the game and they can do with it what ever they want.  That is presuming that they are using static advertising. That is, they use ads that are already placed in the game, that come up with everyone regardless of what you do.

Then came this nice little snippet:
“Battlefield 2142 will analyze certain "advertising data" on your machine to determine what ads to display to you. Ironically, EA says that if you don't want your data shared with its advertising partner then "do not install or play the software on any platform that is used to connect to the Internet."”

Ok, the obvious person points out that you should just not connect it to the internet if you don’t want to have anything shared. Well, the AI is nice and all, but they will not give you the spontaneity that others Humans will give you, which will force you to work harder or even create new strategies.

My hope of all hope, is that the designers of the game, made the game for what they wanted it to be; just a game. Then EA went through and transformed it into another multimedia platform for them to throw some of their products at us. If the designers of the game truly had set out from the beginning to make sure that there would be ads in the game, then I feel like we have lost some of the pureness of gaming. Gone will be the days, of the scenery in the game being what would actually be in the scenario. Instead, posters will be plastered all throughout advertising the next “big hit” for the company.

While some news articles may call the data harvesting to be spyware, I would have to disagree.  My thought is that spyware is a program or tool that is used to secretly pull information off of your computer for someone else to use as they wish. EA has not tried to make it a secret at all, for they have even put on the retail packages that there is advertising technology that is used to collect information to provide in game advertising.  It collects your IP address and other anonymous information. Essentially, they are using what you are browsing at to target ads towards you the consumer.

I certainly have nothing to hide from anybody as to where I am going online or what blogs I am reading.  I have no problem with friends and family seeing that information because they are that; friends and family.  Why should strangers know what I am looking at, and what right do they have?  Well actually they do have the right, because I chose to put the software on my computer.

Could this be the advent and opportunity that other companies have been waiting for?  EA is a big enough company to make some pretty radical choices as to what they want to do. Now that EA is doing it, will other companies start to jump on the band wagon and bundle their PC games with software to harvest your browsing information?  Even though we have already gone down the long road leading to the end of privacy on the internet, because of hackers, spyware, and malware; one can only wonder if this is the final step before there is no such thing as privacy.

As I ventured out into the real world the other day in pursuit of my college education, I found myself in a situation that many a gamer has been in. I sat down in my Econ 200 class waiting for it to start and busted out my laptop to play the DEFCON demo that I severely stink at. Minutes later I found myself with a few pedestrians who began to watch me slowly but surely get destroyed by the AI.

Now although I usually find myself to be pretty proficient in games, there always seems to be a game that will come along every so often. The game will sneak up behind me, and begin to kick me in the rear. So, not only was it embarrassing to me that I was losing, but then the inevitable comments began to start.

“What a waste of time!”
“I can’t believe he’s playing a computer game.”
“Don’t you have anything else to do?”
“Get a life man!”
“Why do you even play games?”

Now I had all but ignored the snide comments that were coming, because I had heard all of them before. Yet, the last comment made that little light bulb go off in my head and I began to ask myself the same question: why do I play games?

There are plenty of forms of entertainment out there today that I could choose from. I could bring a book to class and read in my free time, and try to further my knowledge of ancient history or even engage my brain in an intensive murder-mystery. I could get an iPod and listen to classical styling of Mozart or bang my head to some Disturbed. I could watch one of the 50 movies that I have at home on my laptop and try to critique the director’s style and in-depth character development. I could even give in and actually do some of my homework when I am bored.

So with so many choices of entertainment, why do I play games?

Is it to escape the reality of the situation at hand? That is a logical reason that is adopted by so many players. Are books not also capable of taking you to a whole different universe? Many of today’s books provide enough of an in depth experience that will allow you to be taken to the setting of the book. Can a movie not do the same thing but with the story told out for you?

Is it to have some sort of mental stimulation? Most people do not like to sit at a desk and do absolutely nothing for several hours at a time. Music and homework will stimulate your brain in very different ways. Music will help to stimulate your creative side and memory to recall the lyrics to the song. Homework will make you think of a problem in a new way and will help to prepare you for your possible future career.

What a game is able to do, is to provide the player with two sided interaction. Movies, music, homework, and books all provide only one side of interaction. Can you control what is going to happen in the book next? No, the book has already a defined series of events that tell a story, but you can’t help the character along. If you play with the remote during a movie, are you able to tell the main character to go through the door on the right?

When I am playing a game, I am able to perform a certain interaction and amazingly enough the AI will interact back. If I take the right turn up ahead the AI will counteract by following me through that tunnel until I am able to shake him. Games will tell a story like that of a book or a movie, but I have a certain degree of control. I can choose which path the main character will take on the way to the ultimate and final goal.

This level of interaction is furthered even more through the use of online play. Through online play you are able to interact with people all throughout the country and even the world. You are not constrained to playing with only the AI with online play.

Now that I have justified why we play games, do we need to justify it to the rest of the world? No, I don’t. It is only important to us, the player, why we play games. The rest of the world will in all likelihood neither care about nor understand our explanation.

So, I will continue on with my constant defeat in DEFCON knowing why we play games and that is all I need to know.

On Wednesday I was shocked with the news that Bethesda is bringing Oblivion to the PS3 and the PSP. I was initially shocked that MS would allow for one of the big games for the 360 to be taken to their big rival. Now, I don't know if Microsoft could have even kept Bethesda from taking Oblivion to the PS3, but I imagine they would have stopped them if at all possible.

With this happening and the announcement of Assassin's Creed coming to the 360, I am not sure if we are starting to see the end of exclusivity between the systems. Now I am not saying that we will start to see Halo 3 on the PS3 or MS4 on the Wii. Some things will never happen because rivalries are that intense. Short of Master Chief, Solid Snake, and Mario games may start to see life on other consoles that they would not normally be found on.

It seems like more and more games are being released for both the 360 and the PS3.  Games such as Army of Two and Blazing Angels are finding life comfortable on both of the next-gen consoles. Again I am not saying that all games on each console will go to the other, but I think that we will start to find more of the bigger name games on both consoles. It seems like only the Wii is the exception to the rule. It shouldn't be much of a surprise though because Nintendo has always walked to the beat of a different drum. With their wiimote they have the option to distance themselves from the PS3 and 360 this next-gen.

Who knows what we will find next gen, but I definitely think that we will find more more games on all the systems.

Ahhh... I keep saying that I am going to do better with my blog posts, but then stuff always comes up. Dang school! Anyways I have finally written a review for Chromehounds and I thought it was pretty darn good. Although I didn't even come close to winning, I still feel like I did my best.

I have also been playing a lot of Chromehounds lately. I have about 45 hours of gameplay in and well I am getting pretty good at it. I have about half of the attainable achievements. By attainable I mean ones that I might actually achieve. There are like 10 or so that I will never be able to achieve because they would require me to join an extremely good squad and play all the time. I wish I could but I can't. Anyways I will have another one probably by the end of tonight. I will have finally destroyed 100 HQs. I have actually never destroyed an HQ during a mission against another person. I always just attack their Hound.

Gotta go school calls.

Well I really need to try and do blog posts more often because this is getting quite ridiculous. Well I have been playing a lot of Chromehounds lately. I have around 40 hours of gameplay now and it has been a fun ride. I am getting a little bit bored with it, mainly because no one in my squad is ever on. I mean there is 1 other guy who is sometimes on, but I have 40% contribution rate in a squad of 20 or so.

I think after I get all of the parts for Morskoj I will switch to another country and another squad. I hope to get the hound specialist medal eventually, but I am not going to rush to get it any time soon and I want to get all the parts myself.

I am also working on the secret Touring Service medal. I have to deploy to every single battlefield. Unless Morskoj can pull off the same thing that Tarakia and conquer the whole map I will need to go to Tarakia to get that medal anyways.

I don't think anyone has it yet, or atleast I have not met someone yet who has it.

Well, it has been another long time since I have done a post, but things always seem to come up. Well I have been playing a lot of Chromehounds lately. I have competed the entire storyline with S rank on all missions. I have about 280 achievement points total from Chromehounds, but they have been worked very hard for. I like having to work hard for the achievements, but I also like them to be possible to do not like some of the them, like the #1 in fame.

Oh well I will probably be doing some more blogging since I have school and there is nothign else to do and most of my classes are really easy. Well I am going home today and playing Chromehounds for another couple of hours. I am still trying to figure out all of the achievements things, if playing against the AI counts or not, I guess I will soon tell.