I finally beat MW2, and it was awesome! It's a pretty hard game, but it's good as hell. I tried to play a few Spec Ops missions, but damn are they hard. And I thought I was getting pretty good. I'd probably get U.S. Marined on multiplayer, so I'm not going to play that for a while yet.

I still can't believe some of the plot twists they threw in the game though. It's insane...I never did play the first one though. I guess I'll have to buy it now. Oh well, it's an awesome game to boot. Just thought I'd share my mediocrity with everyone!

I'm bored, and I haven't written a blog in a while, so I'll do it now. I'm currently playing MW2...it is freakin awesome! I'm on the part where you storm the White House, so I think I'm almost done. After the campaign, I want to do the Spec Ops. so i think I'll be playing it for a while.

I finally found out that my laptop had a bad cmos battery, so I replaced that and I'm trying to get the thing going now. I had a bit of a problem with the wireless card, but it's all cool now. I should probably slipstream sp 2 and sp 3 into a disk, but I'm to lazy for that. It's fun enough this way anyway.

Other than that I've just been chillin. I did get a new monitor for my PC, it's an Acer x193wbd. I like it, and I liked the price. I only payed $119.99, plus a $20 rebate. Good deal if you ask me. Well, I hope everybody else is having fun...

The Christmas season is upon us, and I'm depressed as usual. Sure I'll get a few nice games and such for Christmas, but I'll also have to deal with my family who I see once a year. Don't get me wrong, I like them and all, but I don't have anything to talk to these people about. I usually just sit in a corner for two hours and then leave. What fun! I'd rather get a lobotomy! Well, I hope everybody elses Christmas is better than mine.

Merry Christmas to all, and may I die tonight!

Well, my adventure of yesterday warrants another blog...as it pissed me off to no end! Without further ado, I'll get to the point.

Here I am, trying to install an internal HDD via USB, so I turn off my computer. I hook it up, and boot up my computer. I pick the first partition, it goes through the rigors of starting up, and right after the black XP loading screen, when it goes to the blue welcome screen, it goes black. No blue welcome screen. Crap! So I try again...and again, and again, and finally I realize it aint going to work. Next thing I do is try the Media Center partition. Exact same thing! Crap. So here I am, crapping my pants, and not knowing what to do. Next I try to boot into safe mode. No luck there, it freezes on the giveio.sys driver. Next I try to fix the windows installation using the XP cd. It loads all of the drivers, but freezes when it goes to start windows. Holy crap, what on earth did I do to make my HDD uninstallable? I can't even re-install Windows! Oh my god! This is beyond me now. I booted up my laptop...and it was screwed up too. This is getting rediculous now. I started up my girlfriends PC and thankfully it actually worked. I would have been flain alive if that was messed up. So I look all around, and nothing on the NET helped. What a load of crap! So I'm at the end of my leash by now, so I pull out my partition manager cd as a last resort, and after freezing the first time, I was able to delete the two partitions. Ok, so now I took that out, put XP back in, and holy s**t, same thing as before! Ahhhhhhhhhh! What am I to do now? Well, my last course of action, after I all but decided that I had fried my HDD, was to pull out the CMOS header. I left it out for about half an hour, and put it back. I tried XP again, and at last I was able to re-format my HDD. After wasting an hour trying to install a copy of XP that my key code didn't work with, I went to bed. Finally, about three hours ago I got my computer going. What a butt load of poop! I can't believe this crap. What could I have done that screws up the CMOS? Well, aside from all of my lost information, I got some good experience out of this. I'm done. I cant think about this any more. It's pissing me off.

Hope your night was better than mine. Later.

I know, I know...I just wrote a blog yesterday. I don't usually blog so often, as, lets face it, nobody really reads these things; and I'd hate to waste anybodys valuable time, but I dont usually find the deals that warrant consecutive blogs. I've also stopped blogging about my findings, unless they are really, really blog worthy; and I've got a whopper on my hands today!

No, no...I'm not speaking of Burger King, although I could go for some onion rings right about now. I'm talking about a game. Let me paint a picture(with words) for you...

It all starts this morning when I woke up. I got out of bed, yawned, and said to myself; "I should go over to Goodwill today." And it was good. I got into my little car, and drove myself to the little store, and started looking at the assorted wares in my little fashion. First, I spied a note-worthy item; a boxed NES Cleaning Kit. Yes, not the greatest, but for $1.99, I couldn't go wrong. With this in tow, I looked some more, finally coming to the locked case. To my dismay, there were no NES games, but I did defecate in my pants when I happened to glance down and saw what was sitting on one of the lower shelves. I quickly made my intentions known to an associate, and was holding such a thing as I saw within minutes. It, however, was taped shut, so I asked if I could open it. The gentleman who had opened the case said that he would cut the tape and allow me to see if the game was indeed in the case. After he did his thing, I did my thing, informed him that I would be purchasing said game, and looked around for a few more minutes. Nothing else of note was found, so I hastily made my way to the counter and purchased Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2 for $9.99. I then made my leave, feces filled pants and games in tow.

What a glorious day!

Sorry you fell victim to another of my feindish blogs...there is a disclaimer, you know.

So I finally got around to installing Media Center Ed on my computer last night, and I am now sucessfully dual booting XP Pro and Media Center Ed. It's pretty cool, as I can now use 75 Gb as my main computer, and the other 75 Gb as my media Center...yes, it is the perfect name.

My only complaint stems from the only reason I installed Media Center at all...Ed 2002 isn't compatible with 360! What a load of crap! I wasted all that time yesterday just to figure out that I wasted all that time for nothing. What a complete waste! Now I need to find a copy of MC Ed 2005 if I want to do such a thing, and I'm not sure if I want to. Unless it's real cheap, I'm not going to have the money for that.What a flipping waste!

On another note, I found LoZ Ocarina of Time for $3 today. At least my whole day wasn't ruined.

It's been a while since I've posted about my latest acquisitions, but I'm pretty excited about todays finds.

I went to a few thrift stores, and today turned out to be my lucky day. I found four Dreamcast games at Goodwill. They are, Mortal Kombat Gold, Daytona USA, Blue Stinger, and Metropolis Street Racer. Nothing especially great, but a decent find.They were all $1.99 ea.

I then went to another thrift store and found an Atari 2600 with everything to play it, along with 6 extra controllers. This was $10. There were also some games, so I picked up Donkey Kong, Haunted House, Defender, and M*A*S*H*. These were all $2 a piece. That's a pretty damn good find if you ask me.

Meanwhile...I've been playing L4D2, and damn is it hard. I still can't get past the Roller Coaster part on the second Act. It's a great game, but hard as hell!

So I decided to go to GameStop and get a used copy of GTAIV, because I havn't played a GTA game in a while, and I've always loved them. I'm one of the few who can say I got hooked on GTA I and II. Most people don't even know those two exist...but I digress. I bought it to check it out, and I'm going to return it in a few days to get my money back, and get a new copy in a few weeks. Cheating GameStop...I love it.

On GTAIV though, it's a bit weird compared to the others. I'm not sure if I like the driving controlls, as I cant seem to get the car to turn how I want; without totalling it and three more I mean. I don't really like how you aim in this game. And I'm not very fond of how you walk/run/sprint in this game either. It just seems a lot more difficult to do anything in this game than in any of the last ones...but that could just be me. Other than that, I really enjoy it. Hopefully I can get used to it soon, and I'll love it.

Other than that, I'm pretty pissed because my NES emblem got replaced with an Atari joy stick. What bull! Gimme my NES emblem back, GlitchSpot!

I just got through reading "Black or White: Morality in Games" (henceforth referred to as "the article") and it really made me think. No, not about my own moral choices, but about how moral choices in video games could take gaming to a whole new level. Again no, I'm not trying to say that games should only contain morally acceptable situations and only reward gamers who choose the morally acceptable decision in a game. That would be dry as hell, like the aforementioned article said that morality issues in games has become.

I've never really played a game where morality has really mattered, and if I did, it couldn't have been done very well as I can't remember any game I've played ever changing because I stole someone's wallet, or shot them in the head…but then again I don't normally play any games on anything newer than the Super Nintendo. (Although the last "current" system I actually played with any regularity was the PlayStation 2) That said, I'm not very sure how morality has been treated in newer games, and can only comment on what I read in that article. I do however know all about morality in older games, as I play quite a few of them.

Morality in older games was non-existent. There were no morality issues, as most of the time you were the good guy fighting bad guys. Who is going to defend Bowser's right to kidnap princesses, or Robotnik's right to abduct and perform illegal experiments upon little forest creatures? Nobody in their right mind would say that either Mario or Sonic are doing amoral things. Would you? These are just two examples, but I'm not aware of any early games that don't follow the good vs. evil model. Hell, even Dungeon Keeper for the PC follows such a model, but inverted.

The article mentions BioShock, Mass Effect, infamous, and Fable II; none of which I have played. It goes on to say that while these games include moral choices, they seldom have an actual effect on actual game play. This, to me, is pretty boring. Why have gamers make moral choices, and then have little to nothing happen if you make poor moral choices? The article also states that most games nowadays are just your average FPS, shoot all the zombies; and it is starting to get a tad bit stale. While I agree with this, "shoot all the bad guys" isn't a bad formula, just a tried and true one. The market has been flooded with just these types of titles, and few of them actually stand out.

The article goes on the state that a complex moral system is probably not right for every game, but more moral choices that actually affect the progression of the game would be a good thing. I think this could turn into some pretty interesting games. Think about it this way.

Imagine if you were presented with a wallet on the ground in a hypothetical game, and had a few options.

Option one: You take the wallet and go along with the rest of the game.

Option two: You take the money and throw the wallet in the trash.

Option three: You take the wallet to a police station and turn it in.

Then, later in the game, events happen depending on what you did. If you took the wallet, you could be caught with it, and get in trouble; if you just took the money, later in the game you could meet the person whose wallet it was and a critical part of the game could be drastically changed by his not having his money; or if you turn it in, the aforementioned critical part could be a lot easier because the person has his money.

This is just a very general example, and should not be dissected, as this exact situation in a game is probably not going to happen; but it is effective in illustrating my point.

This could usher in a whole new type of game, as the end of a game could be quite different for you than it is for me. The game could branch off in a multitude of different directions, and arrive at vastly different conclusions. There is a practical limit to this however. This limit takes me back to my "On carts vs. disks" blog. To include a moral system that actually has an effect on the game requires more game to be developed. Where then are we to store all of this game, if DVD's are steadily becoming too small for games? Blu-ray disks will provide a solution, but only for a time. This type of game reinforces the idea that we need a new storage medium for games, and I think that storage medium will be flash memory, or a close derivative.

But I digress. Morality in video games is a great idea. I like the idea of having a different experience in a game from that of my friend, just because of the choices I make. I could see the next GTA (or GTA clone) having multiple different conclusions, such as becoming a cop, or becoming a drug lord. You could even be an undercover cop pretending to be a drug lord. It could be very interesting indeed. I look forward to seeing where game developers take the concept of morality in games.

This was originally posted in the union "Retro Vault".

I've seen a lot of debate lately about consoles reverting to carts or continuing with discs, and I'm going to state my opinions on this topic. Don't worry; there'll be enough retro references to keep it on topic.

Personally, I believe that the return to carts is inevitable. We went from carts to disks because carts couldn't hold much data. This was because of a basic design flaw. Carts used ROM chips to store data, usually with the game on one chip, and the music on another. That is why the NES carts are so big. All of those circuits connect both ROM chips and interface them so that the game and music can be played all at once. I'm not certain, but I believe this is the same for all, if not most carts. I took apart a GBC cart, and it was basically the same with a few location modifications.

Then, we went from discs to DVD's. Sure they are almost the same, but there is a massive difference. A regular CD can only hold anywhere from 650–870 MB of data, whilea common DVD can hold anywhere from 4.707 GB to 8.548 GB depending if it is single layer, double layer, +R, -R, or whatever. This is a significant improvement, and is what we are using with the Xbox 360. Early games didn't have to worry much about this limitation, as most were limited more so by the processor limitations of older computers and consoles.The Sega CD is a prime example of this. The processing capabilities of the console were the prime-limiting factor, and not the CD the game was stored on. The PlayStation demonstrates this effectively as it uses the same storage medium, but with vastly improved graphics and gaming capabilities.

Next comes Blu-ray. A typical Blu-ray can hold 25 GB per single layer, and 50 GB per duallayered disk. This is quite the improvement, as anyone can see. In fact, there are all sorts of debate as to how many discs the 360 version of FF XIII will comprise, as it will have to be on DVD, and not Blu-ray like the PS3 version.

All of this, and finally I get to the point. While Blu-ray can hold up to 50 GB of data, how long do you think that will be good enough? In a single generation, 700 MB (Typical CD) was taken over by 4.5 to 8 GB of storage space (Typical DVD). Then, games became so complex that one DVD wasn't enough to hold them. There are even some games that need three! Three DVD's at typical single layer runs 13.5 GB, while typical double layer runs 25.5 GB! That's one single layer Blu-ray already. If we have games on DVD that are big enough to require one Blu-ray already, running on a system that utilizes a tri-core cpu running at 3.2 GHz each, I think we'll out pace Blu-ray very quickly.

Today, right now, if Micro Center was open, I can go buy myself a 64 GB USB flash drive for $169.99, or a 32 GB USB flash drive for $59.99. That's just USB, I can buy a 16 GB micro SD card for $59.99. The micro SD is a trifle smaller than a penny, and slimmer than one to boot.

Sure those prices are outrageous, but think about this. I've seen estimates that put the next generation of consoles at 5 years from now. The 360 was using a tri-core in 2005, and now were up to the quad core I7. In five years, processors will blow you away, and those prices that I quoted on flash memory will have hit rock bottom. I can get a 250 GB 2.5 in solid state HDD for $699.99. That's 250 GB on a laptop drive. Just a few months ago they were in the thousands of dollars range. If I can get 16 GB on a card the size of a penny today, 5 years from now I'll be buying micro SD cards that put today's HDD's to shame. In just a few years we have gone from 32 GB SSD's to 250 GB SSD's and 32 GB SSD's were considered cutting edge! If that's what they can do in just a couple of years, imagine what they'll do in 5 more.

I believe that next generation will see the return of carts in the form of flash memory, or at the very latest, the 9th generation will for sure. Disks are getting old, and they also suffer from the problem of scratching. If they used flash, we wouldn't have to deal with scratches. Look at the Nintendo DS. It uses carts, and they are pretty reliable. The DS came out in 2004, and it was using carts, why not consoles?

I have also seen people cite the problem with saved game data on early carts. The early carts used volatile memory that needed a battery to make stable. One of the problems with current generation consoles is that all of your game data is saved on a HDD and you can't play your game on any other system than yours. This especially sucks if your HDD takes a puke. (That's a technical term, in case you were wondering) Flash memory however is non-volatile. That is a critical component of flash memory. You need to be able to take it with you. Games on flash memory would then be able to store save game data on the cart, and you could play it on any console, not just yours.You can, however, get a memory card for it. My idea seems a lot better than memory cards ever did.

In conclusion, I believe that flash memory, or some close derivative, will replace disc based games, as well as disc based media for that matter, in the near future. These are my thoughts, what are yours?

Addendum 1: It was theorized that games would never need more than two double-sided Blu-ray disks. This is what I have to say.

While I can't find info on earlier generation games, a standard CD can hold up to 870 MB of data, a standard DVD can hold up to 4.7 GB of data. If you don't allow for games utilizing double layer, multiple disks, or any other non-standard configuration, that is a size increase of approximately 5.4 times. That means that a single disk x-box 360 game can be a max of 5.4 times as big as a single disk PlayStation disk can be. Using such a formula, we can see that a single disk PlayStation 3 game can be a max of 5.32 times as big as a single disk 360 game. One of the biggest things that take up space on a game is the graphics. Resolution has gone from 8-bit, to Blu-ray quality. If you think that they are going to stop with Blu-ray quality graphics, you are very naive. The graphic resolution war has only just begun. Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors on a single die (cpu) roughly doubles every two years, can also be applied to screen resolution in a slightly different manner. Mr. Moore has said that miniaturization of transistors would eventually reach the limits of atomic levels, and I believe that the same is true for pixel resolution. Game companies, and everybody else for that matter, will definitely take advantage of this for the extra graphical capabilities, and this will drive the next storage medium for games to reach 125 GB if my calculation of 5 times increase in available storage space holds out. That's 2 and a half standard Blu-rays. When games reach that size, even history tells us that we are due for a new storage medium; as few, if any, games utilize more than three of any type of disk.

Addendum 2:

One other reason I could see this happening soon is that Microsoft will probably not want to pay Sony royalties on a Blu-ray player in the 360, and will no doubt try to figure out a new storage medium. All of the things that I have stated show that flash memory would be the next logical step for Microsoft. I could definitely see their next system utilizing flash memory via a USB port, or a modified USB port. Using USB would probably be more susceptible to piracy, but it doesn't seem to be an issue now, and there are multiple USB ports on the 360.