Catchy title, right? I thought so too. Anyway, this entry is about a serious issue that I just realized...where did the emotion go in gaming?

For all of those older gamers who remember the dawn of the Playstation, think back to those days. Remember how much emotion were packed into those games (well, mainly RPGs, but still)? The developers expertly crafted a game that had gameplay, story, and characters you could really connect to. These characters left an imprint on you that you wouldn't dare forget them.

Now fast forward to the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. Again, games packed with good stories and even better gameplay came with even better characters to relate to. Halo surprised everyone with it's excellent story, Legend of Zelda is always good, no matter what, and God of War really turned out to be more story-driven than I first expected.

Now we come to this generation, and character development seems to be tossed out the window. Even the RPG's have gotten stale. The Last Remnant, Fallout 3, and Star Ocean all have cliche characters. The only RPG today with good character development is Lost Odyssey.

Other games are just as guilty as RPG's. Gears of War was meant to have a great story, just watch the trailer. But when it actually came out, it was nothing but an action third-person shooter with no character development at all. Even in 2, Epic Games only dipped into the characters' minds, making them rough and tough COGS with a tiny bit of emotion. They do know what to do, though, because *SPOILERS* The scene with Dom and Maria was heart-wrenching, but it could have been so much more. *END SPOILERS*

All of these great games are coming out left and right. Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, InFamous, Fable II, Resistance II, Halo III, Prince of Persia, I could go on and on. All of these games are great in their own right, but the characters are only "meh." Who's really going to remember Altair in 5 years? Or Rush Sykes? Nobody, because they never had that human element that made them stick with us.

I remember games of yester-year that brought tears to my eyes, not only from the story, but because of the characters that made us feel like we were actually them, or at the very least, in their position. They did things that we would do, said things we would say, and showed courage when we would.

And before I forget, let's not forget the music. I still get shivers up my spine when I hear One-Winged Angel, and I can't help but feel courageous when I hear the Legend of Zelda's main theme. Final Fantasy X's opening theme still makes me well up. I may not care for music, but even I know the emotional impact it can have. Thankfully, music has stayed pretty intact through the years, let's hope it stays that way.

Let's also hope that the video game industry brings emotion back into video games soon.

There's a reason Shadow of the Colossus is my favorite game of all time.

Well, it's been a while since I posted, and I don't know why. I guess I kinda kept going to GameFAQs instead of GameSpot. However, I'm back, now, because I realized that Gamespot is an awesome gaming website.

That, and my girlfriend has gone to Wisconsin for college, and while I do miss her a lot, it's freed up my schedule for a lot of video games, Youtube videos, and this. :D

So, as you all know, it's a new age of gaming. New technologies, new systems, new video games, new everything. The biggest of the "New" is of course, the Internet.

Ah, the internet. Man's greatest invention. It helps us communicate with one other, keep long-distance relationships afloat, and let everyone game with everyone else. And the best part is, if multiplayer games are exploited somehow, the developers can say "CAN'T LET U DU TAT, HAXOR" and fix whatever glitch some loser is using to win.

However, like all good things, there is a bad side to it. It seems to me that game developers, while using the Internet for good, also use it to procrastinate (which I guess is evil). They release a game too early, with bugs and glitches everywhere, and then patch it later. Now, I'm not in the video game industry at all, but does this strike anyone else as a waste of time and money? If developers just waited an extra month to work out the kinks, they wouldn't have to go back and patch it.

Gears of War is a great example of this, both of them, though for the first one I'll give Epic the benefit of the doubt. However, the glitches were so numerous that they had to patch multiplayer many times, and there are still ways to do some glitches. Now, granted, you'll never have a glitch-free multiplayer, but it took them a while to minimize it. When Gears 2 came out, guess how long it took for glitchers to find their way around? Less than a day. Epic dropped the ball on that. Instead of making it as good as they could before, they released it too early, and decided to "just patch it" as it went on.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I do consider weapon sliding a glitch. It's not in the manual, and thus it's cheating to do it.

Another great example is Mercenaries 2. Oh, boy, that game was just all around a bad mess. It was so rushed that even some achievements were bugged and didn't unlock for some people. Why would someone do that? Pandemic spent a long time making this? Of course, they just thought "Oh, whatever, we'll just patch it," and they even did that wrong, because some patches brought on new glitches. It's still not completely fixed, to my knoweldge.

My last example is not patch related, it's just a lazy company. Valve is supposedly beloved by the gaming community by bringing us Left 4 Dead, Half Life, and Portal. However, Gabe bleeping Newell, the founder of Valve, is the laziest, biggest d-bag I've ever met.
At first, I thought he was a cool guy, making cool games and doesn't afraid of anything. Then I saw an interview on Youtube. When asked about the PS3, he said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that Valve couldn't figure out how to work the PS3 hardware, so he just said "screw it, we're not making PS3 anything."

Excuse me? Did he just bleeping say that? He basically said "I don't want to do half of what my job requires." He just gave up on working the PS3, and now he's sticking to the 360 and the PC just because he couldn't be bothered. What the heck? In any other job, if he said "I'm going to ignore this part of my job," he would be fired. On. The. Spot. You don't just alienate at least half of your fanbase, Gabe. I'm sorry if this is earth-shattering to you, but the PS3 hardware is manageable. Heck, if EA can do it with Dead Space, I'm sure you and your crack team of programmers can figure it out.

Rant over. If I ever see Gabe on the street, I'm giving him a swift punch in the face. It's not like he'll feel it, though; his double-chin will probably absorb the blow.

Okay, I'll say it right now. I have the most awesomest (hurray, English!) girlfriend in the entire world. Hands down.

I don't know about everyone else, but for my family (and hers, too, apparently), we give gifts instead of candy for Easter. It's nothing big, maybe some money and a cool book or two, but a gift is a gift. Well, this Easter, I had to drop off something at my girlfriend's house, and she was super excited because of an "awesome gift" I was going to get. I figured it was going to be something she baked (I LOVE her cupcakes), so I wasn't too excited.

So I arrive, walk in the door, and there in front of me is a little green basket with eggs and a plush bunny holding a baseball in my face. That was my Easter present. It is a pretty adorable rabbit, I will admit, and the basket was FULL of candy. But that wasn't the end, oh no. My girlfriend told me to dig for the super secret, and sure enough, at the bottom, underneath the candy and decorations, was a copy of Resident Evil 5 for the 360.

Holy. Crap. I was so excited, and definitely surprised, especially since I had only mentioned it once to her, and it hasn't been out tha tlong, so I figured it would still be sold out. But there it was, in my hands. And for the icing on the cake, she said that we would co-op it together. And we have been. It's been a blast. I've never had so much fun.

The only other co-op experience that compares was this one time in Fable II I was playing with this weird guy, and I zoomed in a torch. (Hey, it was an interesting torch, alright?)

Anyway, I've been reading news and blogs about Resident Evil 5, and I hear one major reocurring theme throughout most of them.

"Resident Evil 5 is racist."

Huh? What? That's one of the most ignorant things I've ever heard. Not only that, but the only reason this theory came about is because Chris is white, and he's shooting black people.

- Never mind the fact that the game takes places in Africa, where the majority of the population is black.

- Never mind the fact that the people are trying to kill Chris, so he's just killing them first.

- Never mind the fact that Sheva is doing the exact same thing (though I guess it's okay, becuase she's black too? That's another stupid reason).

-And, my biggest reason of all....IT'S ALREADY BEEN DONE BEFORE.

Resident Evil 4 is considered, by many, to be the greatest video game of all time. However, what they seem to miss is the fact that a white guy (Leon) is sent to Spain and kills hundreds of Spainards. How come no one mentioned this? As a Hispanic myself, I was greatly offended when I had to kill a small village of my own people. I don't care that they were infected, it was still very racist for Leon to kill them. Heck, we were even stereotyped. Not all of us live in tiny villages and farms, you know!

See what I did there? I just called the greatest game ever racist. I think I'm the only one to do it, too, because no one else sees it. However, once blacks start getting killed, all of a sudden it's a big deal? What the bleep, do we Spanish people not count as a race?

But seriously, I loved Resident Evil 4, and I love Resident Evil 5. The fact that I'm killing black people really doesn't matter. It wouldn't matter if they were white, black, red, purple, yellow, brown, or anything in between. If they're coming at me with an axe, you better bet I'm gonna shoot them in the knee and suplex/uppercut them.

As for everyone who was "offended" by Resident Evil 5's "racism," I say get over yourself. Resident Evil 5 is not racist by any means. The way I see it, Capcom is just making rounds. First Spanish, now Africans...Resident Evil 6 will probably involve Asians or Indians. Who knows?

Anyway, I hope you all had a great Easter, and if you remember one thing about this blog, please remember this: Don't whine and complain about something when you applauded the very same thing 6 years ago.

That is all.

Proud of his heritage and loves his girlfriend,

~Trebor

So, with Spring officially here, it's now time for all of the parents to start saying to their kids "It's a nice day today, why don't you go outside and play?" The response usually is "okay," unless you're me or any of my friends. Then the response changes to "Just one more level, just one more cutscene, just one more achievement.....*twitch*."

This past year, though, my parents have never bugged me about going outside. Why? Simple. Because I work outside. I cut lawns and rake leaves and pick up sticks.

Wait, before you say "So what?" let me clarify a bit. I am a 19-year old Hispanic guy with long hair, a mustache and beard (at times), with super tanning abilities, who wears a bandana when he works, and I cut grass. How much more stereotypical can I get? I'm not sure. I am, however, seriously considering taping something to my back that says "Honk if you think I'm illegal." Oh, the lulz that would ensue.

So, my boss called the other day and said "Guess what! We're gonna start work on Thursday or Friday!" Obviously, I was overjoyed and saddened at the same time. Overjoyed, because now I have a job and I can get paid. Getting paid means money for video games (you know, the ones on my ever growing wish list), and...I guess, to a lesser extent, my girlfriend as well. However, this also means I have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and work until 3 or 4, with little to no breaks in between, and those breaks (usually) don't have bathrooms.

And then there's the heat. I love the cold, just love it. I could stand outside in 20 degree weather with a short sleeve shirt and feel right at home. However, thanks to my super tanning abilities and (as the result) my dark skin, I absorb a ton of sunlight in the course of a day. Sunlight = heat, and heat I can't stand. It's miserable. Though it is pretty nice to jump into a pool after a hard day's work. But that's not the point. The point is is that my body is so used to keeping me at 99.3 (Yeah, that's my normal body temperature) that when hot weather hits, my body says to itself:

"ZOMG WAT IS TEH HEET DUING HEIR?!?!11?! LOL, O WELL ILL JUS TURN ALL TEH ENURGY I USE INTO THERMUL ENURGY!"

Seriously, that's what it does. Every year, and every year I have to hear it inside my head. It's not fun. Neither is supposedly running a fever when I'm not sick.

Oh, well, wish me luck anyways....

Never landscape for a job,

~Trebor

There's something that's been bothering me for a while now. Something that seems so obvious that I shouldn't have to point it out, but because of the lack of common sense in this generation, I must.

Gaming has no gender. Sure, it may be a male dominated world, but my point stands. If you call yourself a gamer, then you're a gamer. I don't know why girls always have to add a word at the end to let us know that they're a girl. "I'm a gamer girl!" They say, or "gaming chick," or more bullcrappery like that. Girls, do you honestly think us guys aren't smart enough to tell that you're a girl? I'm pretty sure that we can tell by the voice and/or appearance that you are clearly not the same gender as us.

What irks me the most, though, is when girls utter one of the stupidest phrases I have ever heard: "You just got beat BY A GIRL! LOLLOLOLOLOLOLLLOLL!" Once again, refer back to my main point. You are a gamer, not a girl gamer. Just. A. Gamer. If you're more skilled than me, then good for you! No need to point out that you have ovaries.

I'll probably just come back with a good ol' Mr. Garrison quote: "I just don't trust anything that bleeds for 5 days and doesn't die."

This brings up another interesting point. If women want to be equal to men, why do they always differentiate themselves whenever they can? But that digresses from this blog.

For all you women reading this and thinking I'm a sexist pig, just hold on. Guys are at fault as much as girls are. We're the reason that most girls don't play video games, because let's face it, sometimes we let our tempers get the best of us, and sometimes we start to yell profanities. Then, when we do find a girl online, we either A) insult her about being fat and a whore until she leaves, or 2) hit on her and try to ask her for a picture.

Come on, guys, are you all so pathetic that you have to do either of those things? Why can't you just treat them as you would anyone else on the other team? Even though you probably don't talk to the other team in a civilized manner, don't treat them like they're special. That just fuels the fire that is the "girl gamer" epidemic.

See what I did there? It's a vicious circle. Girls play video games against guys, guys insult and/or hit on said girls, so girls get angry and start insulting guys dignity with stuff like "U GHOT BEET BYE A GURL LOL."

*sigh* Okay, well...speaking of girls, KT (my girlfriend, who is also a gamer) has been stuck in the past too long (she's still playing Gamecube), so this summer I think I'll introduce her to some Gears of War. Or maybe something less challenging (let's face it, the most action packed game she's played is Wind Waker).

So, does anyone have suggestions on a good PS3/Xbox 360 co-op game that we can play together?

Think about it,

~Rasuto

Since the release of the 360, we've been exposed to (what I think) is the biggest and sharpest double edged sword of all gamers' lives.

I'm talking, of course, about Achievements (and trophies, but I'll stick to achievements since they came out first).

With the release of Achievements, gamers could finally back up their tales of accomplishments. Sure, some of the older games had something like that, such as a high score or unlocking everything would grant you a super weapon, but it was never quite like an Achievement today.

You say you beat Jenova Sephiroth at level 15! Pics or it didn't happen. Lies, it's not even possible!

All of this was probably heard at one point or another. When the 360 came out, you could beat Jenova Sephiroth at level 15 (hypothetically speaking) and prove it, because of the little icon that said "Achievement Unlocked - Get a Life (15G)"

But it wasn't just Achievements that we have to worry about, oh no. There's also a little point total associated with an Achievement. Obviously, the harder the task, the more points you're awarded. This introduced something else to us: Our "Gamer Score." Judging by the name, it seems as though our gaming manhood (our "g-peen" if you will) was represented by this number in our profile. The bigger the number, the bigger our g-peen.

The Achievement system seemed like a great idea. It added replayability to any and every game (including RPGs), and it sometimes forced you to play differently than you would, thus increasing your overall skill at a game as well. How could something so great be a double edged sword?

Well, with the Achievements, came the Great Gaming Schism, splitting gamers into 3 factions:

- The "Achievements are stupid" faction. Those that longed for the older days where they weren't bothered by playing a game over and over just so they could get 1000/1000.

- The "I don't care" faction. Those who honestly didn't care about getting 20 points for using a special move, nor did they care about getting 10,000 kills in ranked multiplayer.

- The "ZOMG ACHIEVEMENTS!" faction. Those that don't dare to put a game away until they see "1000/1000" on their profile. Downloadable content, you say? Time to pick it back up again!

And here we are today. Whatever faction you belong to, you must admit that achievements are a great idea, but unfortunately for me, I'm in the "ZOMG ACHIEVEMENTS" faction, hence the double-edged sword. Do I like Gears of War 1? Sure, but do I like it enough to play it enough for 10,000 kills, especially when there's Gears 2? I guess I'll have to...

Still, Achievements are pretty cool to get, you must admit (rhyme). It's nice doing something out of your way and getting recogntition for it, you know?

Because of this, I will continue to earn achievements, until the day I can achieve no more.

Talk about the purple elephant,

~Trebor

Okay, bear with me here, as I explain the title of my latest rave.

I think video game companies are (part) evil. Now, believe me, I'm not saying this without reason. And if you know me at all, you know that I would be the last person to trash video games (unless they betrayed us in some way, but I digress).

So do me a favor, and think back to about three months ago, December 14. All the stores were packed with Christmas shoppers, video game stores included. A month earlier up till then, video games came out. Big ones, too. Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, The Last Remnant, and a few other titles came out. Now, if you're one with a big friend list, and those friends liked video games, chances are, you had to buy one of those three for your friends.

Add on to that a present for your parents, siblings, other friends, significant other, etc. and so forth, and by the time Christmas comes, you're out of cash.

No big deal, right? You'll just get another job in the summer like you did last year. Oh, wait...the video game companies can't seem to wait for that, they have to release all of the big titles in January-March. Those three months are a trifecta of poverty (almost).

-January is when Christmas bills show up.

-February is when MORE Christmas bills show up.

-March is "spring cleaning" time, when it's time to buy some new shillings for the roof and/or fix that leak in the ceiling.

All the while taxes must be filled out and sent to the IRS. Now how can companies such as Square Enix and Capcom expect us to buy Star Ocean: A New Hope and Resident Evil 5 when other things (unfortunately) need our time and money?

The answer is simple: They're trying to torture us. It's the same as dangling a cooked steak in front of a starving dog. That dog's gonna do everything in his power to get it, but until it files it's taxes and gets a bath, it ain't getting that steak.

The question is...how long will that starving dog put up with the one dangling the steak in front of it's face....?

Never mind the bullocks,

~Rasuto

So I guess I'm back, after a long, long hiatus. I'll be frank, a friend of mine said "Hey! I have a Gamespot account," to which I replied "Hey! So do I, but I never use it."

And then I thought, well, what the heck? I may as well start using Gamespot, considering it's like GameFAQs, but with....more profile-ish stuff.

So here I am, and here's my (re)introduction. Ahem....

Hello, everyone! My name is Rasuto, but I'm also known as Trebor. I have been a gamer since I was 4 years old (seriously). Like any gamer to start out so young, my very first video game was Super Mario Bros. I loved it, but when Sonic came out on the Genesis and I had to choose, I chose Sonic. I still hold quite a bit of respect for Mario, though. And Miyamoto is basically my hero. Not just because of Mario, but because of the Legend of Zelda series. Not only are the games good, but Link was the first left-handed swordsman I was introduced to. Southpaws represent!

Anyway, ever since the age of 4, video games have become a huge part of my life. I see video games as more than just passing time. To me, they're an alternate reality I can escape to to get away from the drama of everyday life. They're also a big ego booster. Think about it, who doesn't feel good after single-handedly fighting off an alien race, or beating that secret optional boss after two hours of preparing for it?

Video games have helped me through some tough times, as well. If there was something going on in my life at the time, I would (almost coincidentally) find a video game where one part would completely mirror my real life situation. It really helped me, and they continue to nowadays.

If I ever dated a girl that said "It's either the video games or me," she'd be out faster Mario could jump on that first Goomba in Super Mario Bros. Luckily (as of now), I am dating an amazing girl who can live with the fact that I put video games above her. In fact, she wishes to become a gamer as well. Right now, she's using my Gamecube to get used to the whole video game thing, but I think another couple of months and I'll bump her up to Gears of War. :lol:

Okay, this has gone on long enough. That's my intro, so now you know a little bit about me. Cheers to you, Gamespot, and cheers to all the gamers in the world!

Never mind the bullocks,

~Trebor

So, the new Annex Mode was released in Gears of War yesterday as a free update.

The basic objective is King of the Hill-ish, where one team captures and defends a specific area (Usually where a power weapon is located). A new feature in this mode is the respawn feature, meaning kills are aplenty in this mode.

But is Annex Mode really that good? ...Eh, it's okay. Some maps were made for this kinda thing (Escalation, Fuel Depot), but others (Gridlock, Raven Down) are too chaotic for my tastes. Plus, Annex doesn't count for achievements, so I don't think I'll be playing Ranked any time soon.

Yes, I admit, I do care about Achievements. Blame the completionist in me.

I just realized I had a Gamespot account for signing up with GameFAQs (which is better), so now I guess I'll use this journal to keep track of my games or something.

 

Let the games begin....