It's difficult for me to accept my current status as far as gaming goes. This gen has a good deal of wonderful games. But I never seem to get to play any of them on time. The Orange Box (PC Version) is the first game in about 2 YEARS I've gotten (or will get) within a week of its release. I still don't have Halo 3 yet, because I'm content with Doom at the moment still. I'm pretty sure that many have gotten and are already enjoying Orange Box. Tell me what I'm in for.

My gaming library for the Wii was never that great, but a week ago or so I added Metroid Prime 3 to the bunch. I'm kind of mixed on my opinion of it so far. I forget where I am because I haven't played it in a while. I don't know why. The Wii-controls are superb, the graphics are great (and don't need Wii goggles to appreciate them, either), and the level design is pretty good too. But I don't know why I'm not compelled to play it. I'm sure the game gets a lot better from here on out, though (I'm not very far in the game so far). I'm going to remain optimistic on this.

Also, today I've noticed that Doom + voiceovers = awesome. See why in the greatest 12 second clip ever.

Eh? Well I thought it was funny.

As of 8 days ago, I was a member at Gamespot for 1 year. I was going to blog about that. Then I forget.

Well, that's one event I can't live again :(

/pointless

Uberdemon (me) scores a good win on E1M9 with a 30 fraglimit (second place had 20, and is a rocket abuser). The server said the map was E1M8, where it looked promising because there were no rocket launchers there. And unfortunately, E1M9 had it. Not only that, but unless you wanted to look "hardcore" with using only a pistol (really that's just suicide), and didn't want to do an annoying platforming sequence to get a shotgun or didn't spawn in the area with the chaingun, using it was encouraged.

It goes against every one of my beliefs as a Doomer, but in deathmatch I was forced to use a rocket launcher. Now that my lag wasn't so drastically awful, I zoomed to the lead (despite coming in about halfway through the match) with picture perfect rocket frags. Before I would lose to rocket launchers because lag would prevent me from dodging them and proper retaliation (from any weapon, really) had a big delay. I must say, using a Rocket Launcher is like scoring a perfect score on your SATs but you just so happened to have a quick glimpse at the answer book a week before. It's a good feeling, because you won, but you don't feel like you completely earned it. Surprisingly enough, it offers a strange sense of satisfaction, but I probably owe it to the fact that a player simply standing there took a headshot from it. The price that's paid for being careless. Standing still in a Doom deathmatch is a surefire way to zoom someone's frag count up by 1.

Luckily I got some nice spawns at the chaingun entrance and managed to pull off an 8+ killing spree (this is a 6 or 7 player match) before taking an unfortunate rocket to the face. I thought it was funny, yet admittedly cheap, when me and someone else spawned at the chaingun entrance, and I took the chaingun, standing on the sprite so the other player couldn't get it. Chaingun vs. pistol. Poor soul didn't stand a chance.

The match played out how you would expect in most online games. The one rocket launcher spawn was of course, camped. And I kid you not, I saw at one point somebody just repeatedly fire rockets into a corridor to get frags. Of course, the easiest way is to wait for him to run out of ammo and then rush him. Which, of course, I didn't have to do. I was behind him. Frags ensued. Skulltag is still way better. And unfortunately, Skulltag leader Carnevil left the project, so unless replacements are promptly performed, Skulltag won't have any updates. And that's sad, everyone I know who played both agrees Skulltag is superior.

So, as it seems, lag is my biggest Doom deathmatch problem. Not overpowered weapons.

I hate Doom deathmatch.

Actually, that's a huge overstatement. I love deathmatch in Doom--when the games are fair. The shotgun, pistol, chainsaw, chaingun, etc, are all fine and I have no problem with using them and having them used against me.

What I can't stand are the projectile based weapons. All of them are way too powerful.

Rocket launchers kill in pretty much one hit. Plasma rifles only require about five shots to down somebody. And I'm not even getting into the BFG. You all should know about that.

Sure, projectile weapons have one disadvantage compared to hitscan weapons...you can dodge the projectiles. But Doom levels have a lot of corridors in them, and guess how much of a chance you have of dodging them then, where there's little room to dodge them. This isn't a problem if the level is very wide open, like say, Mt. Erebus or something. Even the plasma rifles/BFGs aren't a terrible problem since they aren't on any of the E1 levels and are found sparingly in only a few of the later maps. But rocket launchers are found in nearly every map, and it's all I've seen people run to in deathmatch.

I've observed a wide number of deathmatch server matches going on, and the winner, most likely, is someone who (ab)used rockets. I remember getting into a server where I clearly dominated everyone in terms of level knowledge, reflexes, aim, and cover use, yet I still lose to rockets simply because there's very little you can do about them. If you go to a wide-open level, dodging is easy. But it isn't that I'm not able to dodge them, it's that I can't in most cases.

In one server with a rocket filled map, with a 30 frag limit, I lost (only having 24 frags, compared to Generic Rocket Abuser #1 with 30 frags, and Generic Rocket Abuser #2 with 28 frags, with a few people below me). Put them in a rocketless map and I dominate (me with 30 frags, everyone else with 10 or less). It isn't that I can't use rockets well, I can pull off a rocket massacre if I have to, but I'm sick of people abusing the noobish weapon and then acting like they are the best when in a map where it's nearly impossible to dodge them.

ZDaemon (the source port in which this took place) has a mixed community. There are polite people, people who take deathmatching well, and generally kind people. Then there are the idiots, the ones who invade every server that allows teamkilling and raise havoc (considering on most servers you lose keys and weapons when you die, this is a huge pain), the ones who endlessly cuss when they are killed, and the extremely immature. Problem is, most of the nice people are the ones who play co-op, which I've noticed I've started doing a lot more than deathmatch.

And for a comparison, Skulltag is better than ZDaemon in every way except for the fact that Skulltag rarely has servers up (there's a lot less people playing ST than ZDaemon). Skulltag adds new items, weapons, skins, stages, and gameplay modes for multiplayer.

Okay, at this point I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this, so...uh...

Dance, Cybie, Dance!

...And it's not Gyarados at the Lake of Rage!

Nope, the shiny happened to be a

Well, at first it was a , then a

If you couldn't already tell, I'm glad I was finally able to get a shiny (non-Lake of Rage Gyarados) pokemon, and I believe that's the last big thing I've yet to have done in Pokemon. I'm also relieved that when shiny pokemon evolve, they stay shiny.

(This is Leaf Green, by the way)

Pokerus is a virus that happens in Pokemon very, very rarely. It doubles the EVs you get (Effort Values) from Pokemon until it wears off. This is the first time I got the virus, on my first playthrough of Pokemon Emerald. I bet I'm wrong, but I heard it's even rarer than a shiny pokemon. I'm not too interested in taking advantage of it since I don't plan to use the team competitively, but I think it's pretty cool that I lucked out like this.

Speaking of lucking out, I had a final exam last Friday. Before our class took it, though, results from the same subject (but different class) were posted on the door. And of about 20 people, only 3 passed, and the highest was a 79. So I was pretty worried about how I would do, considering I never did very well on tests in that class. Well I was the last one done in my class (by about half an hour, no less), and pretty worried about how I did (I had to guess on about half of them). Turns out I got an 85 on it, and that's the highest grade of the class (besides some guy I don't know who got a 93), which is at least 20 points higher than I was expecting (this was out of 100 questions, by the way).

Then in gym (on the same day as the exam), I managed to shoot a basket from over halfway across the gym with one hand, which was complete luck. There was absolutely no way I could have done that a second time, and I was 104% sure thatI'd miss it in the first place.

A lot of things have gone my way these past few days. That's worth reviving a blog for if you ask me.

In case you've yet to realize it or not, all but 1 of my reviews are gone from the Gamespot database (not sure why I kept the extra one, either). They've all gone down for rewrites and stuff. Even if I was satisfied with them, I felt I could do a lot better, and rather than edit them all one-by-one I'd just take them all down. It erases their crappy recommendation ratio, at any rate. Problem is, now I'm not sure where to start again. I want to spread out the high scores a lot more than before. It'll be fixed with time, though.

That's all I guess.

Here.

It's called Concerned, and its a humor comic based off of Garry's Mod (for those who don't know, Garry's Mod is a special mod for Half Life 2 that allows you to set anything anywhere ingame, take photos, and basically do anything). Very long comic (about 200 comics in total), but definitely worth the read.

How many times has it been said? Something completely questionable, very suspicious, or just flat-out wrong, and when you prove them otherwise, guess what?

"It's my opinion."

I'll use one I saw a while ago as an example. On the topic of Ocarina of Time's Wii Virtual Console score, this comment was made:

User: "Ocarina of Time > X360 library > PS3 library"

User2 [quoting User]: "Uh, no."

I'd be opted to agree with User2, and I still would even if I thought OoT was an unbeatable, perfect game. For one, a game simply can't be greater than an entire system's library, much less the 360's, and definitely not with a game as dated-feeling as OoT. A few more comments.

User3 [quoting User2]: "Uh, yes."

User2 [quoting User3]: "How does a game beat out an entire library, much less the 360s?" *insert more logical reasons proving otherwise*

You can predict the next comment, right down the period at the end of the sentence.

User3 [quoting User2]: "My opinion."

My point here? Opinions aren't equal. As someone said, "All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated, and well-supported in logic and argument than others." My sentiments exactly. Opinions should not be your copout nor your get-out-of-jail card. I understand the want to not have to type out small essays with every answer to a question. But it's this lack of discussion that ruins all hope of intelligent conversation within the forums.

I simply can't tell you how sick I am of people thinking they hold just as much validity as a reasonable, discussion-happy user just because they can type an opinion. It's not the lack of intelligence that harms our discussions, it's the lack of reason and logic that backs those opinions. Fix this problem, and the rest will fall into place. Ignore it, and the intelligence of our forums will be kept at a flawed minimum.