Though it's only a rumour but it appears to be true. Do you think it'll be another 'awesome for 5 minutes' thing (with the exception of a few games) or do you think they might concentrate a bit more on the hardcore gamers and actually try to compete with their competition?
If not, do you think they'll be able to last?

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So yeah, I wont say I'm back because technically, I never left. I occasionally float around, looking at reviews, news and the message board. Haven't read any blogs for about as long as I haven't been blogging. I'll get back to it one day and finish my Top 11 TV Shows list. It's actually good that I haven't finished it because there is a show that absolutely needs to be added in.
I'll of course be here to watch E3 and I'll almost certainly blog about it as I do every year since I've been able to watch it live. Though I'm hoping that this time, I'll be able to watch it every day, because there has always been at least one day where I haven't been able to.

Oh and if I ever do leave permenantly, I will make a blog about it.

Ok, maybe not...

Just something quick. I saw the movie Trick R Treat a few days ago. It wasn't scary but it was (mostly) unpredictable and rather weird :)
It had 2 people from the TV Series Dead Like Me. Deloris (sp?) was wearing a slutty cat costume *shudders* Youd understand the shuddering if you know who I'm talking about :P
It also had.. I forget her name... George's little sister.
The FBI Agent from Dollhouse was in it too, apparently, his character sleeps til noon and then just plays video games What a guy! :D

Also watched the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddie looks weird (in a bad way) in this movie. I havent seen the original but if the remake was this unimpressive, I don't really plan to. It wasnt a bad movie but I actually thought it might somewhat scary.

Games.. nothin. I've barely played anything since this time last week. Havent really felt lik it. Though I did play a bit of Donkey Kong Country Returns, not bad. But like New Super Mario Bros Wii, I dont like the motion controls. They're fine in a lot of games just not platformers, I guess. Although De Blob is a platformer, isnt it? I liked that one.
Tired Mega Man 9. I died.

I'm in a good mood :)

Futurama Seasons 1, 2 and 3

Well, after about 20 minutes my Tales of Symphonia game already sold! I've been feeling pretty disappointed in myself for blowing almost all my money in 2 days. But that made me smile :) Partly because it sold but also because it was so fast! I just put it up and BOOM

I'm going to put Prototype for the PS3 up for sale as well a bit later.

These prices are what I was originally selling them for, they may have changed, I just can't be bothered checking what other people are selling them for at the moment. But they'll probably still be around the same price.

Keep in mind that I may not be able to find Yugioh 2004 and Metroid

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3) $15
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock (PS3 - game only, new and sealed) $25
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GameCube) $20
The Orange Box (PS3) $15
Dragonball Z: Supersonic Warriors (GBA) $15
Alundra 2 (PS1) $10
Final Fantasy IV Advance (GBA) $10
Yugioh World Championship Tournament 2004 (GBA) $5
Yugioh - Day of the Duelist: World Championship Tournament 2005 (GBA $5
Stuart Little 2 (GBA) $5
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA) $10
Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt (DS) $5
Pokemon Red (GB) $5
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (Xbox 360 - Fan Pack) $20

I've also blown my internet for the mont, pretty much. I have about 5 Gigabytes to last me until the second of January... yeah, that'll happen...

Last Month I had about 5 Gigs left for the last 7 days and I only just managed to make it. Now I have 21 days, not counting today.

Now playing:

Black Ops - 1st Prestige, Level 20

Alan Wake: The Signal (DLC) - Finished!

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Recently played thoughts:

Alan Wake: The Signal - This was rather short but the gameplay was excellent. It was definitely harder than the main game. You are frequently surrounded by The Taken and have to either fight through them or attempt to run. Of course, running doesn't guarantee you will actually get to safety.
The episode also ends on a cliffhanger, absolutely nothing is answered in this episode.
There are more 'oh sh*t!' moments, as well. Like you will be walking down the street when all these cards and busses start flying at you. The focus is obviously more on the combat side of things, you will frequently get plenty of ammo and weapons. Sometimes there are things you DON'T want to shine the light on and some other differences in the gameplay, which make it even more exciting and unique.
I might download the next episode but I'll wait til tomorrow and see what my money story is (since I'll have more then) and go from there. Just need to keep Xmas and New Year spending in mind.

Black Ops - I am doubtful I will prestige again. Screw having to unlock everything and do challenges all over again, let alone another 14 times. I can't believe more people dont complain about this. It's the exact type of cheap way to make a game last longer that people usually can't stop complaining about.
I get my loadout exactly how I want it and then you take it all away from me and make me start from scratch? Hell no! I did it once but I highly doubt I'll do it again.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - This game has gone back to Blockbuster. I was just tierd of doing all the optional missions. They're so boring. I'll continue playing it later, I just wanted a break. I'm not sure if I'll bother with the optional missions anymore, though. Because it's actually fun when I don't have to do them.

Theif: Deadly Shadows - This game has also gone back to Blockbuster. I have given up on it, didnt even get passed the first level (not counting the tutorial), it just seemed so boring. I doubt it gets any better. I expected it would have you grapple onto rooftops, finding a way in through a window and.. i dunno, think Mission Impossible or James Bond. But instead you do things like, put out a torch so the enemies dont see you quite as easily and walk right in through the front door.
The AI is ridiculously stupid. They'll hear you but instead of realizing someone is there, it's more like 'what was that?' and you can stand right in front of them but as long as you aren't in direct light, they wont see you.
So Metal Gear Solid still remains the king of Stealth in my book. Yeah, I don't like Splinter Cell games either. I only tried one but it was pretty damn bad.
I realize MGS enemies will say things like 'what was that noise?' But they actually look for you properly, the ones in Thief make a very half-a$$ed attempt at looking for the source of the noise and can't see it when it's right in front of them.

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I watched Gamespot's Now Playing DC Universe Online and it looks alright. I checked out other videos on the official site and I think this might finally be an MMO that I will actually enjoy!

To save time, I will just use the word Achievements.

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The idea of Achievements is a good one, reward the player for doing something. However, somewhere along the line, this got confused with 'reward the player for doing anything'.

Games like Assassin's Creed 2 are a prime example of this. You will unlock your first achievement simply by watching a few cutscenes, walking Desmond from one room into the next and moving Ezio's limbs and head. Wow, I can see you worked really hard for that one!

Call of Duty: Black Ops has some fairly decent Achievements such as Light Foot, where the player must escape a ship with 2:15 left on the timer. That involves going out of your way to do something that isn't required to complete the level.

Gears of War 2's Pound of Flesh Achvievement has the player using an enemy as a meatshield to save your life 10 times. I went through the entire game never needing to use a meatshield and only doing it once because I could. But doing it again and again is not achieving anything, it just means you've done the same thing over and over again, something you never need to do in the first place.

Now you might be thinking 'what's the difference between that and the Black Ops Achievement?' Well, while they both make you go out of your way for something you don't need to do, the difference is that Light Foot challenges you. When you complete it, you have actually achieved something, not just repeated the same simple process 10 times.

Batman: Arkham Asylum has an achievement that requires you to complete a predator challenge by only using silent takedowns and without being detected at all. It's not required to complete the challenge but it does add more of a challenge to it, so it is Achievement worthy.

A lot of the Fallout 3 Achievements are completing main and side quests. Then there are the ones that are just about reaching certain levels and then doing it again with different Karma. So if you want to unlock all the Achievements, you have to play until you reach level 30 3 times.
Making you play the game twice for an achievement is pretty cheap way of trying to extend the games longevity and so 3 is much worse but a lot of people have done that more than 3 times with this game, so in some cases it may not be too big of a deal. If it's about a harder difficulty then sure, because it is an achievement to beat a game on the hardest difficulty setting. But if the game isn't harder or not really all that different, then maybe the developers need to think of something else to to reward gamers for doing. Because in Fallout 3, they're really only asking you to do the same thing another 2 times and it's not like you can do it in 5 minutes or anything.

Prototype's Web of Knowledge, asks you to acquire all nodes of the Web of Intrigue. This is not required to beat any part of the game but it does require to go out of your way so much that after finding all of these, it's nice to be rewarded. Another one requires you to 'Patsy 5 miltary personnel' which is another one that wants you to do something you don't have to do and really have no use for in the entire game. Although it is useful, there isn't much point in doing it. You aren't achieving anything at all, so it's just another 'do this a certain number of times'.

I can see that some achievements are fun to do and it's great to be rewarded when you go out of your way to do something that requires extra effort.

However, I often find these to be pointless. Some gamers even get so caught up in them that they judge everyones skills based on their Gamerscore or Trophy collection. The ones you get for beating the game are fine, of course. Though most Achievements say nothing about your true level of skill. Not beating a game on the highest difficulty setting might mean you couldn't do it, or it could just be you don't want to. Some meaningless points aren't going to make me play through a game any more than I would if there were no Achievements.

So yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of Achievements but some of them are ok. It's just a shame that most developers don't asking you to really achieve much in order to unlock them. Getting through required parts of the story shouldn't count, though I can forgive that if the other achievements are reasonable, because I dknow they have to get to that 1000 points mark somehow.

I've tried this before but I always forget about it after a few weeks. This time, I'm determined to keep doing it every possible week. I wont always mention every game I play, only if I something to say about it. It's also a place where I will keep track of the progress I've made in games I've played recently. I'm also hoping doing this will stop me from not playing a game for long periods of time.
That's the current plan anyway but of course the way I do this could change any time.

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Progress:

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Level 49

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - Act 2. Collectibles: 154/2000. 15 of 45 Achievements. 235G.

Gears of War 2 - Finished!

Theif: Deadly Shadows - Not much passed the tutorial level.

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Current and recent game thoughts:

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - I know I said there were 2000 collectibles but honestly, people say 2000, 2080, 2160.. I dont know what to believe, so I'm just going to stick with 2000 for this.
Anyway, I played this on the PS3 when it worked and I loved it. I got one of the Black Suit endings and thought I'd rent it out again for the 360. I'm making only Red Suit choices this time around then I'm going to go back again and do the Black Suit because this is the very first game that I have ever played where I want to get all the Achievements! I actually like the look of these ones. They're not all generic and boring like in other games I've played. Though they certainly aren't perfect, it's really just that I enjoy this game so much and know I can easily stand to play through the game multiple times. They shouldnt make you do that for achievements but at least in this case it doesnt bother me, personally.
Unfourtunately, the 360 version has a lot more glitches.
The game makes me keep listening to this song

Theif: Deadly Shadows - Haven't played much yet, it didn't seem overly exciting but I've just started so I'm going to keep playing it for a while and see how it goes.

Gears of War 2 - I may actually buy this game and play through again some time on a harder difficulty, especially considering this game was so much easier than the first. Especially the final boss, if you want to call it that... Even the Boomers were taken down really easily. Other than that, the game was excellent and better than the previous one, in most ways.
I didn't get to play the multiplayer because no one was online, which doesn't surprise me since I've heard only bad things about it.
It even had some decent achievements, though not enough for me to care about doing them.

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Recently Played:

Blacksite: Area 51 - I loved the PS2/Xbox game, Area 51, so I was really excited about this game. But when it was released, I kept hearing about how crap it was. So I only now got around to playing it.
There are so many things wrong with this game, I don't know where to begin, so I just wont bother. Even for hardcore fans of FPS games, there is no reason to play this. It's nothing but a waste of time, gameplay and story wise. It's not even great to look at.

It's been over a year since my 200th blog post and as always, I'm using the idea I got from ebbdrelict (as I mentioned in my hundredth blog) and taking a look back at the blogs between then and now.

Dante vs Fanboys

TV Themes from my Childhood

Most Attractive Women: #1

Transformers Movie Comparison

Think

Blur and Alan Wake

Zombie Rant

Short Film

Your blogging and Imma let you finish but this is one of the best blogs of the year!

It's ranting time

Possibly the most importent, yet not well known infomation you will ever read!

This blog has taught me one thing. I do less gaming related blogs than I used to and even when I do blog about games, they aren't as good as they used to be. I remember when I was getting to 15 comments on my blogs. Now I'm lucky to break 5.

I used to blog more often and if I didn't initially have anything to say, I would think of something. I stopped because it took too much time and was pretty much an ever day thing. Sometimes I wish I could be getting more comments but really... some people are reading my blog and that's enough. So thank you for sticking with me for so long, or just joining me recently.

I realize I don't blog about games as much as I probably should and sometimes I will seem like a fairly negavite person. I've notcied that if when I'm praising a game, I often talk more about it's flaws than anything positive. I guess it's because bad things stand out more and it annoys me so I wanna get it out, which helps me to move on without thinking about it so much. B

But if you're reading my blogs, they can't be that bad.

Thank you :)

Oh and do you think the chrimstas hat on my avatar looks stupid? Or more like silly in a non-bad way, or something else?

When I bought Call of Duty: Black Ops, the lady asked if I wanted to pre-order this controler. I figured I could use another controler and it would be Black Ops related with a few extra buttons, so I put a deposit on it and finally got it today.

Aside from the obvious difference in the look of the controler, the first thing I noticed was that it didn't feel the same. The buttons and analogue's are in slightly different postions. It shouldn't take too long to adjust but it shouldn't have to take any time at all.

A controler that isn't Wireless? What is this, 2002?

The digital pad is too stiff, the analogues are slightly stiffer as well but the latter is acceptable. Though they do seem to take longer to reach the edge, they don't look taller though, it seems that the... circle thingy, they're in, is a tad bigger. The triggers are one of the worst part of this controler.
They're too high up. Not placed at a higher position, I mean they're... bigger, I guess. Put it on it's side and you see more of the trigger's than you do with an official 360 controler.
So when you go to use them, not only do they not feel right but quite uncomfortable, too.

The supposed extra grip the controler offers is a flat-out lie. Everything about this controlers grip is worse. My fingers slide around more and sometimes completely off the analogues and even the grip added to the side where you palms sit has less grip than the standard controler. It also feels worse when you're sweating. Plus it seems to increase the amount of sweat.

But surely there must be something good about the controler, right? Well, as a matter fact, there is.
You can asign 2 buttons on the back of the controler to another button. So you can make the button on the back left into another X button, for example. Which I think is pretty good because it means quicker reloading and you can still have full control over your movement while doing so.
You can also set them so they will be the equivilent of pressing down the left or right analogue sticks. But there will probably never be any use for that in any game.
So basically you can set those 2 buttons to any other button, excluding the bumpers and triggers. There are switches so you can change from using the right back button from X to Y.
I should also mention that the right back button is actually called 'Combat 2'. Guess what what the left one is called? =P

This controler even makes you the master of time and space! Ok, maybe not but you can make it slow down the actions from when you move the analogue sticks. This is supposed to help with your aim. Which I guess might be useful if you have the sensitivity up really high and can't get a decent shot off on someone (particularly if that someone is far away), it's like slowing down time for yourself but considering you are the only one going slower, it can leave you at a disadvatange. Even if you are picking someone off that isn't aware of your presence, you probably wont need to use it anyway. Especially if you're used to sniping. But I have tested that out and I can see a usefulness to it, sniping isn't my thing though. However, if your interested in improving your sniping, then perhaps this is the way to go. But you'd be better off asking someone who is used to sniping. But when a sniper is really good, they don't seem to need any extra help whatsoever.

So is this controler worth the AU$70 price tag? No. Not really. If the trigger's weren't so appauling and there wasn't that slipperyness issue, I'd probably change my mind.

Maybe they'll fix these issues up in the future but that is doubtful since there have already been PrecisionAIM controlers before this one.

Rating: 3.5/10

I wanted to see this movie because it's such a classic. I didn't have high expectations because 1, it was made in 1980 and figured it would be tame by todays standards and 2, when I saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was completely unimpressed and just found the movie a total bore. The only scary part was at the DVD's main menu when it was totally silent except for one moment when you suddenly, without warning, hear the chainsaw. That actually made me jump a little :P

I know I said it's spoiler free but this is really what I meant by that. Just skip down to where the capital letters declare the end of the spoiler since the spoiler tag has decided to not work... again. I talk about the ending here.

***SPOILER***

What the hell was with that ending? I'll admit, when Jason jumped out of the water I did get a tiny bit of a fright. I was partly expecting something to happen but they still got me.

It makes absolutely no sense though. Jason looked about... 8 - 12, it was hard to tell. The murders started in 1958, the year after he 'drowned' right? The movie says that everything that happens after the first few minutes is set in the 'present day'. So the earliest year it can be considered to take place is 1980. Making Jason around 30 years old. Yet he still looks like a kid. What the...?

After Jason grabs that final girl, then she wakes up in the hospital bed and the Policeman says she was just dreaming and they found her in the lake and thought she was dead. If you're reading this without seeing the movie, they dont mean she was dreaming the entire movie, just that last bit with Jason.
Now, you saw her on a boat, she fell asleep, daylight came, the policemen called out to her, she wakes up, Jason jumps out of the water, pulls her down, she wakes up in the hospital.
The thing is, if that really happened I'd say she would have been killed but obviously not and perhaps thats why the Police found her floating in the water. But why would Jason leave her alive? And of course the cops would have seen it since they had already seen her and were calling out.
But if it was a dream, why would she have fallen asleep in the water?
I know Jason is still alive and comes back for the other movies but that ending just didn't make sense.

Why make him deformed? Why didn't the mother know he was still alive? How can he be surviving out there by himself for so long?

*END SPOILER***

What was meant to be a build up to make things scarier, was just boring. There is actually a minute or 2 where you just see a girl making Tea. Or Coffee Im not really sure. But the point is... WTF!? I didn't time it but it would have to be at least 1 full minute.

I can safely say that when someone gets their head cut off and THEN raises their hands, clenching their fists 2 or 3 times before falling over... that is the definition of bad. You get your head cut off, you cannot raises your hands and make them into fists. Nerves alone cannot do that much.

For some reason, I watched the Making of Documentary where they admited to watching other horror movies to not only get ideas but just put things from other movies into Friday the 13th. Obviously when creating something like that you will be influenced and have ideas taken from other movies. But they were saying they watched other movies so they could simply take things from them.
Whether you're making a Horror or a Romantic Comedy, there's a certain forumala that people usually follow. But this just sounded like it was lilke a 'best of' at the time. With bad acting thrown in. I want to make it clear, I fully understand and know it's ok that people will take ideas from other peoples creation but it really sounded like they were saying they just took things from other movies and put it in this one.

They also said the critics hated the movie. I completely agree with them. Will I see another Friday the 13th/Jason movie? Maybe. As the movies get more recent they should get better. Then again, I've seen more recentish Halloween movies, H20 and the one that takes place directly after it. They were just awful.

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