Well, today i was on a trip and decided to pass some of the driving time by playing Pokemon Platinum/Pearl with my friend(s). One of them agreed to my 'challenge' to go to the underground exploration area. He then proceeded to generally annoy me by getting me with traps, getting me stuck in his base, and stealing my flags. This guy has the gold flag, and for those of you who don't play Pokemon, that means hes a jerk. He has successfully stolen 15+ flags from other people during this minigame, probably through severe annoyance and lack of good judgement. There are several problems with the underground in this game:

Number 1: It doesn't exist in HeartGold/SoulSilver. Oh come on, i know the Underground is region specific, but couldn't they at the very least put a different version of it in the new johto remakes? I also dislike that the games are so incompatable, and the fact that they removed contests. It seems that Nintendo and GameFreak have little regard for making future versions of their game work with older games. Couldn't they at least program games to accept a kind of 'patch-code' so my character doesn't look like a character from the last game if i'm on platinum and someone i'm playing with is on Diamond/Pearl? It would be good if the games were designed to accept some input codes from future games. Bah.

Number 2: There is no such thing as stealth. Every person playing in the underground shows up as a little blip on the top screen, making it absolutely impossible to be stealthy. I haven't played with more than 1 person, but i'm sure that all that it would do with more players would be confusing everyone and making everybody paranoid. Also, if someone just so happens to 'screen peak' at your top screen, the location of your secret base isn't so secret anymore. Time to run to your base and block the entrance by standing in front of it!

Number 3: Player placed traps are too easy to find and disengage. Time and time again my friend has found a trap i laid for him and pulled it up for his own maniacal use. Although, the current system makes it easy to find free traps laying around. Then again, this has also helped me uproot his traps before. I guess i just need to rely on the elements of negligence and surprise.

Number 4: The sphere system sucks. Most of the spheres you find are too small, and it seems to take forever to grow spheres (although, i haven't done too much research with this. It just seems like i'm always low on decent spheres). Merchants ask for huge spheres in exchange for certain goods, but most of the time the trading system is pretty fair, which i'm glad of. And thank goodness that people can't steal other people's spheres. That would almost ruin the minigame entirely.

Number 5: Boulders are irritating. Making boulders in secret bases is just plain annoying. They are rarely in helpful places, and even with the highest level of flag you still can't remove very many of them. It's just downright irritating sometimes trying to design your secret base to accommodate the boulders. Although, they can be helpful if you're building a minefield of traps.

Overall, the underground spelunking is a cool edition to the Sinnoh Pokemon games. It adds an element of adventure with the ability to treasure hunt and use the treasure to make money, pay for move tutoring, or use to evolve and strengthen your Pokemon. This is a great minigame, and i hope to see something like it in the future, possibly in Pokemon Black and White...

Happy Spelunking,

Tee 3

It's been months. And seeing as that's the case, i've decided to actually post a blog. Oh my gosh.

For the first part of this blog, i figured i'd talk about Pokemon. A few minutes ago i caught a level 70 Magikarp. How is this possible you ask? Well, after picking up Platinum and braving my way to the Resort Area i talked to a guy in a pool. He gave me some skeptical opinion on how there was a hidden king of the resort area that i could catch with a fishing rod. So after fiddling around and having someone give me a mansion (more on that in a sec) i grabbed my super rod and headed to the pond in the center of the area. At first, nothing happened. But 2 or 3 casts later i ended up with an epic magic of the level 70 variety. The sad thing was, i caught it without even hurting it. Its called a dive ball, and it works well on aquatic pokemon. So, after catching my level 70 magikarp i used a rare candy on it and got a Gyarados. Shortly after i bought a TM and taught it hyper beam. Score!

On a side note, some freak gave me a villa for free. Complete with an unusable pool, berry patches, and ridiculously expensive furniture! After looking up what the villa does (lets various characters visit you) and looking at some of the furniture prices, i'd rather spend my hard earned "poke-dollars" on hyper potions and revives. Wonderful.

For the second part of the blog, i'd like to announce the sad truth that EA has nearly driven their free to play cartoon shooter, Battlefield Heroes, into the ground with greed. Players can spend real money on "Battlefunds" which can be used to buy funny outfits for their characters and guns. The bad thing is, the guns are suped-up and considered "uber" and "super". These guns shoot the living daylights out of those of us who don't have $15 to waste on pixels in an online game.

Cleverly disguising the new guns as a Bad Company tie in, EA and Dice have created a knife to be stabbed into the game. The guns are extremely overpowered and can kill players in a matter of seconds. They're even better than the typical overpowered gun. Imagine this: some dweeb with no life, no skills, and $15 decides hes bored. He goes online and buys the best guns possible. Bam! No skill-killer. It requires very little effort with these new guns to mass murder the enemy team.

And even worse, some people download "auto-aim" hacks that make every bullet they shoot automatically hit. Do you know what this means? An auto aim hacker with an M16 could create a massacre. EA's need to generate profit off of a "free" online game has lowered the enjoyability for those of us who don't spend our disposable income on virtual weapons. Sadly, this has really messed up the game.

I hope that this can be fixed in the future, and that the game can remain enjoyable for those of us who play it because its "free".

Title says it all :D Also, make sure you sit around all day enjoying your Christmas gifts. Thats what Christmas is for, right?

Hello, everyone. Once again i find myself posting around Gamespot when i'm trying to do something else. Anyway, i was looking at the Game of the Year award and then something mildly amazing... err irritating... happened. Two of my friends told me that ODST was one of the best games they've ever played, so i figured "hey, sounds good to me *shrug*" and voted for it. Then i posted a comment saying something along the lines of "ODST is good i'm voting for them". First off, it said i wasn't up to criteria, which i don't understand (i might've put something else, but i didn't think it was bad O_o) then it got 11 thumbs down. 11. Thumbs down. For expressing my honest gamer-who-really-doesn't-get-new-games-ever opinion. Bah. So, if you'd like, go ahead and yell at me now, or scream at me, or ridicule me for thinking ODST is a good game. But it doesn't matter, because people are touchy :P

Merry Christmas everyone and i hope you will get (or got) everything you want(ed)! If not, theres always birthdays or next Christmas right? Ah well... Anyway, i was wondering if anybody agreed with me that we should have a Section 8 game night? o_o

It's good to be back on Gamespot. Since i haven't posted anything in a while i figured i might as well post what i'm expecting to get video-game wise for Christmas.

Part 1 - 10 years of Commanding and Conquering

Ah, Command and Conquer. A gem in the RTS world. The first Command and Conquer game i ever played was probably Red Alert 2, which i have many fond memories of. Zombie Soviets and American GIs shooting each other is quite entertaining. So when i saw the First Decade value pack i decided that i needed to get my hands on it. So, my mom, my brother and me all went to Walmart one day for Christmas shopping and we walked by the computer games. I ran over, eager to find it and show it to my mom in case she was feeling generous. Just my luck; there was 1 copy left. I grabbed it and walked back to my mom, showing her the game and telling her that it was the last one. She told me to put it in the cart. Woo! I just scored 12 games!

The First Decade includes the following games:

-Command and Conquer (Tiberian Dawn)

-Command and Conquer: The Covert Operations

-Command and Conquer: Red Alert

-Command and Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike

-Command and Conquer: Red Alert - The Aftermath

-Command and Conquer 2 (Tiberian Sun)

-Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun - Firestorm

-Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 [i look forward to playing this]

-Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 - Yuri's Revenge

-Command and Conquer: Renegade

-Command and Conquer: Generals

-Command and Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour

So thats 12 games - 13 if you count the collection itself. I do plan on reviewing most, if not all, of them so if you like my reviews or want to know more about the game, look for those.

Part 2 - The Curse of the Playstation 2

My mom and my sister go out Christmas shopping, and when they come back they wrap some stuff and put it under the tree. I immediately recognize one of the gifts as a Playstation 2 game, judging by the shape and size. When i say "if it has the word fantasy, or final, or the number 10 in it; i'll be happy" my sister gets all nervous and my mom says "well don't ruin the surprise!" so, i get Final Fantasy X as well. And, my sister said she got my little brother some sort of Crash game, so thats 2 PS2 games.

Part 3 - January Mayhem

I'm expecting to get a new laptop in January, and with it Section 8. So, that's another thing.

Overall, about 15 games in the next 2 months. Not bad! If you have any Christmas stories, or know what you're getting feel free to post it!

-Tee 3.

Wow, that game night was fun. The turnout was small, but we still had enough people to go around. Between server overloads and Jody parking her truck in the wrong spot, things were a little confusing. But, we all still enjoyed it. And, i got the "He's no good to me dead" badge! Thanks Jody! I would like to thank everyone who was there at the game night, especially JodyR and Psycho-chan13. It was awesome, and i hope we can do it again sometime.

If you are looking to play Battlefield heroes go to www.battlefieldheroes.com but make sure you use internet explorer or firefox, because my first time i did it on chrome and it didn't work. Bah. Well, after you sign up go ahead to the character creation screen. Choose a team (personally i prefer the nationals) and a class (i also prefer commandos). Then click "play now". Once you do this your computer should download the client. Then just get into the game. Experiment with hitting people with vehicles, it's quite entertaining. If you're really good at it, (or just good at flying games) try to hit people with your wings. This game has something for everyone, and i plan to do a review on it when i get the time. Thanks for reading!

Good day all gamers! Lately Gamespot has hosted the greatest hero of all time contest. Sadly, instead of the actual greatest hero, or fighting between heroes, it has turned into a popularity contest. I thought they were a little unfair with the entries though, i mean really: Little mac? Jade? Don't know some of them. Personally, i thought Alex Mercer should've been in it, he seems like a deep and complex antihero, and everyone who has played Prototype has to agree with me. If you have any opinions/ideas on the entrants, leave a comment. Thanks, and happy gaming!

Well fellow gamers, BlizzCon 09 is officially over. We saw tidbits from Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and WOW Catalycysm. There were demos, models, collectibles, costumes. Heck, i even saw some guy dressed up in a cardboard marine outfit. Pretty cool eh? Although most of us couldn't make it there (or even think of going) Gamespot did a pretty good job of covering the action, minus the 60 pictures of painted marine plushes they took. Although some were fun, like one i saw painted to be Samus of Metroid. I also saw booths where attendees could play Starcraft, and i believe the original Warcraft. Either way, BlizzCon 09 was an epic convention, and enjoyed by many. I hope everyone checks out the Gamespot coverage, because it looked like tons of fun. In other news for you PC gamers, Majesty 2 and Battlefield 1943 for PC come out this month. Run to the store with $65 and grab them, they're going to be must buys. Majesty 2 has you controlling a kingdom, similar to the awesome Majesty, only now it has 3d graphics! Battlefield 1943 will pit you against enemy soldiers in grueling online WWII battles. Hopefully it will be just as good as the 360 and PS3 versions. So everyone, happy BlizzCon, and look out for those games!

Update (sort of): I belive Scribblenauts also comes out this September, so DEFINITELY get that. It's Drawn to Life only better on a much larger scale. Thousands of ways to solve the puzzles, and insanely fun!

Well, lately a lot of my friends have been coming to me and saying "join my union pl0x!". In most cases, i don't feel like joining any of them, for two reasons. First, when i made my own union no one showed me any compassion. Second, i just don't want to get committed to something i don't know if i like or not. I mean, i'm not saying i don't like anyone here. Everyone seems like a great person, and we have all similar interests and valued opinions. That's what makes gamespot great. However, if i respond to all the union invitations i get, i will most likely belong to about 20 unions by tomorrow. And i ask you, would like to belong to twenty unions you don't even know about? So, i apologize to all of you who have asked me to sponsor unions, but i don't really wan't to join. I started my own union and it failed, so i don't feel like playing the union game. Thanks and bye everyone. Sorry if i hurt anyone's feelings.