I believe a small bit in Pulp Fictionsums up my thoughts about crap like this:

"Whoever did it they should be effinkilled. No judge, no jury, just straight to execution"

"I mean what's more chicken sh!t than effing with a man's automobile? You justdon't do it."

If you can't respect your own vehicle that's totally fine with me. If you want to back your car into guard rails, light posts, walls, and other assorted stuff that's fine. But if you want to back into my car and driveoff, whack it and dent the snot out of it with your door, key it, or other assorted nincompooperey then it's personal. You can justify that with whatever "logic" you want to use. You can plead jealousy or ignorance, or whatever. It doesn't change the simple fact that you (at least in the case of keying) INTENTIONALLY damaged someone else's personal porperty, and that's just WRONG. It's not something you do. If you're doing it to get back at the driver because they wronged you on the road then confront the DRIVER.

Now, there are certain things that people with nicer or newer cars can do to lessen the chances of accidental damage from things like carelessly opened car doors. The best is that if it's a bigger lot they can park in the back, away from the bulk of the cars. Now it won't protect from @$$hats who would key your car. But, they shouldn't be doing that anyway.

Screwing with someone's car is a pet peeve of mine. I drive what's left of a 1996 Dodge Avenger ES (4 cyl, stick). But my wife drives what a brand new Scion X d. It's an '09 because she bought it very early that same year. It's been keyed a couple of times and dented, BADLY, with car doors. It's because these @$$holes have no respect for people's property. And for some reason it seems that people just get jealous when anyone has anything that looks better than their stuff. Seriously, it's a Scion, a $16,000 car, and the lower budget model at that. What's to be jealous of? Apparently enough to key it. To me, that's just BS.

Yesterday afternoon I beat No More Heroes. I've been sitting on it for far too long without playing it. I chose the "real last battle" ending. That guy was a PITA! He caught me with his damn quick kill 6 times.

For all I know, everyone on XBL is a little kid. Some of them are pretty good and/or they'requiet. As another older gamer, 27, it's not a big deal to just hear them. I remember back in the SOCOM days on PS2 I jumped into a game with some kid that really sounded like he was maybe 5. He was a terrible player and annoying as hell and it was 5am eastern time. As long as it's only one of them, it isn't too bad because if your squad was decent enough you could compensate for the inevitable loss of the one bad player.

The ones I hate are the ones who have a 7 word vocabularyand I use the word"vocabulary" loosely. It'sjust a combination of racial epithets and obscenities and all they do is spam on the mic and just non-stop spew profanity. Yes there is a mute option but apparently a lot of other players don't realize that.

When I still had my XBL Gold account I was playing skate one night and I ended up playing with one of the aforementioned kids. It wasaround 3 or 4am eastern time. I found the mute feature eventually(and the option to avoid and report said player) butI was apparently the only one who went into that game who found it. I don't know how a lot of other online games work on XBL but skate didn't let you pick your specific game to jump into. You chose your game type and then it connected you of its own volition. Especially in the wee hours you could sign out of a game to get away from a player and sign right back into the same game. Since I had him muted, it didn't bother me to be in there because his vocabulary was roughly on par with his ability to play the game (incerdibly weak). I was working on the achievement for winning25 ranked online matches in a row. Sadly, anytime someone else worth having in the game popped in this kid offended them and/or p!ssed them off to the point they signed out. I don't know if they signed back in again after waiting a minute or two and found another game or not but eventually the kid got tired of getting his arse kicked and logged off. Then it returned to normal. Eventually a couple of people signed in to play. I'm not very chatty when I play but the optionto have a casual conversation with another players is always nice.

Games where you play a hero or anti hero. I just want to play a villian damn it!!

brittoss

The cliches I have a problem with:

-The aforementioned cliche where the player has to do everything solo when there's a group of powerful/well-armed individuals with him who decide to stand around and wait

-When your character is sent in pursuit of something and then you findthe person whohas it and they wantsomething before they will give you what you're after and this leads you to another character who wantssomething and by the time you get everything completed you have to re-visit a veritable clown car of characters before you complete the quest

-Subtle variant of previous: to lengthen a quest the item your looking for was taken from the people who have it and then it was taken from those people and so on and again, chain of possession is ridiculously long

-When you are the only character who can actually use a firearm. As a fine example, the original release of Sin Episodes: Emergence. The woman tried NOT to shoot anyone

-Aforementioned entering a battle armed with a .22 caliber revolver and 3 bullets

-The fact that you don't learn to swim until the sequel and then the AI characters don't learn for a few mor installments (Assassin's Creed and GTA series as case in point. Though you could swim in the first saint's row)

-The pitfall...Chuck Jones callled, he wants Wile E. Coyote's undoing back

At this very moment: Nothing because I'm a little OCD and I always take the game out when I'm done playing for the day.

Last game in it and game that will probably be back in there in about an hour: GTA IV I like using it as a "bad day game", take a leisurely drive through Middle Park and hit so many pedestrians the car eventually breaks down. It's healthy stress relief.

99 Nights...I wish I did drugs or drank or something. Then I'd have an excuse.

Depending, some of those "Wow, you suck" achievements are kind of funny. Now in more serious games with a zero gamerscore achievement itis, as previously stated, a record of how you've been playing the game. It's not likethere's an achievement worth some absurd number of points for entering any cheat codes into GTA IV so many times.

I'm reminded of the achievments in the Simpson's Game. Things like "Press Start to play" which you achieve when you press start to begin the game from the title screen for the first time. I do believe you get onefor dying so many times in a level and I want to say it's worth 5 points or something. Plus, theSimpson'sGame has a collection elementin each level.These include the video game cliches. Some cliches include thepitfalland drowning. And,if I recall this correctly, there is an achievement forcollecting all cliches. What about the "oddball" funny achievements that aren't about skill at all but about doing something strange or out of sorts with the normin the game? What aboutachievments like "Friend of the People" (throw 1000 florins on the ground), "Red Light Addict" (spend 3000 florinson courteseans), or"PerfectHarmony" (Dye your clothesWetlands Ebony and Wetlands Ivory)in Assassin's Creed 2 or the achievement in GTA IV for rolling a car 5 times in a single crash? Therolling one actually does take a little butof work.Howver,obviously, dying your clothes inAssassin's Creed 2 or throwing money aroundhave nothingto do with skill. Yes, the courteseansact asa controllable blend spot butrelying too heavily on them for cover would be a sign of weakness.

Then there are games like Avatar: The Last Airbender. I noticed in an older issue of Xbox Magazine it was given an award for literally handing out achievements hand over fist. The article mentioned that it grants achievements any time you do anything. So does it rouse your ire that someone could acquire that game and use it to pad their gamerscore?

Then there's Gamefly. The more games you play, the more achievements you can get and, conversly,the higher your gamerscore. Does it irk you that some people have Gamefly memberships and are able to use that toplay more games without them actually having to pay a retailer the full pricefor the games?

The question I'm trying to lead you to is this: Are you unhappy with the fact that there is an achievement for something like dying 100 times? Or are you unhappy with the fact that yougot iton your record?

The numbered GTA games always take place in Liberty City. Vice City and San Andreas were considered add-ons or expansions. They used the same engine and just built a new game around it. When rockstar gets around to spitting out the next incremental GTA it will feature truly new and improved architecture and will take place in Liberty City. I want to say that I've seen a statement from someone responsible for the GTA games that said all numbered GTA's will take place in Liberty City.

As for the next GTA expansion I would prefer to see a return to the great state of San Andreas. With 3 seperate cities, all with their own unique flavors and all the open country in between to play in, it would be even better when backed with the power of the PS3 and the XBox 360 and built on the stunning GTA IV engine. And now, with the addiction of things like climbing ladders and theability to take coversince the first SA was released, it should be even more impressive.

So my vote for the next GTA title (which I feel certain is going to be an expansion type, like VC) I would like to see a return to San Andreas.

I wouldn't mind firing up the Flux Capacitor and driving the ol' DeLorean back to the 1980's to take another spin through the neon homage to Miami Vice and Scarfacethat is Vice City in its element.But I'm a little tired of the 80's stuff so I would prefer to see a return to Los Santos, San Fiero, and Las Venturas, along with the open countryside, the desert, and that secret military installation that they deny is really there at all which we can find in San Andreas. If it ends up going back to Vice City I would like to see the Miami-esque town now, rather than in its prime.