OK guys if you haven't noticed, I haven't even logged onto the site in over a month and haven't blogged in about half a year. Looking at it now, I think that its time for me to give a farewell for good. Gamespot has simply lost its flavor for me and tbh I'd rather be playing games that gamespotting. Also everybody on my friends list besides vexx and bullet have seemed to have left GS.

Riceball, bulletsword, vexx, james, jesus knight: thanks for being on the site for my last months or so of my activity, GS was a great experience because of you guys.

Looking to the future, I'll just update you guys on what I'll be doing. I may drop by GS every once in a while but...yeah. Anyways I'm graduating from high school on the 23rd. I'm headed for the University of Texas at Austin on a bio major/premed route. If you guys didn't know by now my full name is Coby Tran. facebook me up if you want to keep in touch.

Well, this is goodbye. I enjoyed my time here and I wish you all the best of luck.:)

-Comthitnuong

P.S.

BTW before I go, I'll go on a final gaming rant. Epic games talks a lot of trash but doesn't back up what they say. I was one of those "cheaters" that glitched GoW 2 for the level 100 rank with my friends because we just felt like it. AChievement points were of no concern to me. According to Major Nelson's post and an Epic games dude, they will reset all of our scores to zero and mark our zones as "cheaters." To be honest I was looking forward to being one of the few that had the "cheater" zone but its been a week and it seems like they haven't done anything. So I just want to say to Epic, if you're going to make threats, follow up with them. Also to all of the self righteous fanboys who say that we deserv to be punished, let me say this: we may have expoited the system to get the level, but regardless, we don't get any kind of advantage in PVP so it would be better to stop trying to tell us that we are all dirtbags who ruin the gears experience.

Farewell everybody.

Bonjour those who still notice my existance on this site. It has been a fair amount of time since I've hit the New Blog Post button (at least that's what I think it said...I actually had trouble finding it after this new renovation).

So here's my excuse for not taking the time to blog, though it really comes down to the fact that I really didn't feel like it. A combination of schoolwork and applying for colleges has left me with literally no free time. I cannot remember the last time I touched a gaming console...so my life is pretty devoid of fun as of now...Not really what I imagined senior year to be but I figured I'll wade it out for now and wait until second semester where I won't have as many classes, no more colleges to apply to, and will have beaucoup free time.

So let me list a few interesting things that I have done during these 3 months. The lack of life only started about a month ago so I have been doing...stuff.

I took my final SAT on Oct. 4th YAAA!!!...but I have to take the subject tests on Nov. 1st so I'll unfortunately be studying for those...crap

I beat P3. I maxed out all my teamates and it was a breeze.

I finished a few anime stuff...I think one of them was Hayate no Gotoku...it was kinda bad...but since I was looking for a leave your brain at the door kind of deal, it didn't seem too bad. Oh and Clannad which was good. I also saw the ending of Code Geass R2. The ending was pretty pro but I didn't like how they left it up to us to decide if

[spoiler] Lelouch died or not [/spoiler]

There's also beacoup good shows airing right now like ef-a tale of melodies, clannad after story, gundam 00 s2, and Akane iro ni somara saka (dam I hate spelling that) which is hear is supposed to be pretty good...

I got my wisdom teeth out which wasn't fun at all

I'm sure there's more but I can't recall them as of now...

erm...so yeah...I'm gonna get back to draining my life in some books right now...hope everybody enjoys the rest of their weekend...and until next time...

I haven't really gotten to blog lately so I'll give you the update now. I have completed 100% of the achievements on Ikaruga. Yes, I know. I'm amazing. Using the wonders of prototype mode, I was able to get through both level 3's A ranking and complete the game without using a continue. Both were frustrating tasks but it's done now and my friend and I are contemplating taking over certain parts of the leaderboards. I believe we are already ranked 10 on the Hard Prototype All Chapters leaderboards (though in all honesty that wasn't a really hard thing to do because of the lack of people who play the game seriously).

Moving on. I finished GTA IV. I found the problem which was Bernie's mission set. Apparently the game found it amusing to screw with me and not even put up a map icon so I would know/be able to find the mission. Anyways I did it and took the revenge route. It was a satisfying end and I loved the length of the game. I'll be spending a lot more time with the multiplayer though.

I wasn't all too hyped about this E3. I watched a lot of the live show and nothing stood out too much, though I am keeping an eye on RE5 now that it has Co-op and Mercenaries 2. Of course FXIII coming to the 360 is wonderful news. The press conferences didn't seem as interesting as last year's. But maybe that's because last year I actually cared about what was going on in games and now...not so much. I didn't see Nintendo's but based on what I've heard, it wasn't anything special.

As for now I've started P3 again and am about to reinstall Windows to get rid of a virus as well as fix my 15 minute start up. Thanks for reading and until next time.

Hello everyone. Actually it has been 4 years since I made my first account here which was aishee or something like that…but officially it's 3 years…Anyways my experience and time on Gamespot has been a good one even though I'm at an all time low of activity. I thank those who come back each time I post something on here because if it weren't for you guys I'd be long gone.

I would like to give special thanks to Cameron (Vexx), Nina (Riceball), and Peng? (Bulletsword) for your continued support. I would love to write a lovely personal paragraph about each of you guys but that would be overly awkward for me so I'll save that as a parting gift whenever I or you leave the community for good. So just know that I really really appreciate you guys.(Calling you guys by your first name feels strange...)

I would also like to give thanks to those who drop by every once in a while for whatever reason. These guys are Jwallace, Jesus_Knight, Thorpe89, True_Blu3, Homes225, Master_M2K, Platyphyllum, Juradai, Proud722, Hyrule9009, and Fireemblems. Big thanks to you all as well.

FateStayNight is forced to post here so here's to him.

I'll give you guys some food and drink so enjoy before heading out :D.

Here's some Champagne

And of course, com thit nuong

Here's the normal blog now:

I got back from California a few days ago and I'm happy to resume normal summer life. While there I was able to take some spare time to visit Santa Clara University and UC Berkeley with a cousin who goes to UC Santa Cruz. I wasn't impressed with Santa Clara but Berkeley was very impressive and I will probably end up applying there even though I will have the out of state disadvantage. I noticed that there were quite a few Asians there….

Since I got back I've been playing a little bit of games. I was able to get the A ranking for level 3 in Ikaruga which leaves only one more achievement until I accomplish perhaps one of the greatest gaming achievements ever. However that achievement is to beat the game without using a continue which will be very hard to say the least.

I've also ran into some problems with GTA IV. I've completed every mission but I can't do anything else. Apparently the U.L Paper guys are supposed to call me but I have yet to receive a call and it has been quite a while since I finished the last mission mission.

Before I left for California I finished the anime ef-a Tale of Memories. This one easily became one of my favorites of all time. I don't normally comment on the artwork of an anime but this one had stunning artwork and was definitely a pleasure to look at. Story and plot wise I think this combined the best of both Air and Kanon 06 and got rid of the bad. Air had a beautiful story but failed because the story stopped making sense after awhile and Kanon 06's story made sense but it wasn't nearly as beautiful or epic as Air's. Ef successfully combined these two great qualities into a wonderful show.

I saw Wanted with some friends the other day and it wasn't good…..

So that's it for the most part. My game plan for the rest of the summer is to beat P3 and to beat Mass Effect (which I'm not looking forward to). I'll also start up my summerly volunteer work at a hospital on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays so I won't feel too worthless this summer.

PERSONA 4 ANNOUNCED BTW!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello everybody. I'm making a short blog right here to tell you that I'm in Sunnyvale, California right now. It's somewhere next to San Jose. I recently had a family reunion back Texas and then I left with one of my family to go to California on Sunday. I'll be going into some lab here for about a week(fun right?) and maybe tour around the state. Anyways after this I won't be traveling anymore for the summer and I can relax and get lazy back at home.

I'll have limited access to computers so I may not get to your blogs for awhile(as if I don't arive late enough already under normal circumstances). Thanks for reading and until next time.

So uh, it has been quite awhile hasn't it? I've been a little busy for the past few months so I might as well give you all the low down on what I've been doing. To put it short: School. I was finalizing a bunch of grades and getting ready for the finals which I took last week. I just checked the semester grades today and according to the ones online, I reached both my semester and year goals. So for now, everything is all good and looking a lot easier next year when I apply for college. I can finally relax a bit during the summer.

First thing's first. Remember that 5 facts thing waaay back? Well it's here. Thanks to riceball and also bulletsword a little bit after for tagging me and I'm sorry that I haven't posted this up until now. Anyways here it is:

1. I am addicted to Lipton Green Tea. Every single day, since the beginning of the school year, I have drunk a bottle of tea during one of my free periods. My locker is filled with empty bottles. It's good stuff.

2. I have horrible time management skills and I tend to procrastinate a lot. Lately I've been trying to fix this but a decline in homework due to impending finals hasn't really helped that…

3. I have an unhealthy fear of bugs. I just can't get near them. Any kind….Having a bug come next to me or land on me is one of the few times I ever cuss. It is comparable to Winston Smith's fear of rats…

4. The winter makes me happy. I love it when there the sun is covered by the clouds and it's chilly outside. It just makes me…happy. Also there are no bugs…

5. I take a heavy interest in politics and the current state of our nation. Politically I'm a conservative so it shouldn't be surprising that I think Barack Obama's policies are scary as hell. I'm for Ron Paul and I find it unfortunate that he wasn't able to get the nomination. I guess there's always Bob Barr for us conservatives…

Since my last blog I've been doing some gaming here and there:

Now. Mass Effect. I was able to borrow this from a friend and I've logged about 23 hours of gameplay so far. I was expecting a lot from this game because I had enjoyed Bioware's RPG's in the past like KOTOR and Jade Empire; however, I've found the game to be highly disappointing. The story so far is uninteresting, and probably only 8 hours of my total playtime were devoted towards the actual story arc. All the others were from mindless traveling on a stupid land rover and doing crappy sidequests. This game is also kind of confused as to whether it wants to be an RPG or an action shooter. It sacrifices the in depth RPG aspects for lackluster shooting and "powers". Because you have a gun and the game is based on shooting, you can basically go through the whole game without leveling up once. For the first 10 levels I didn't upgrade any of my stats because I didn't know you could do that and the game was still not that hard. I am doing it on casual right now but I don't expect it to be too much harder on the other difficulties (unless the developers made it so that the AI just get hacking abilities like CoD4's AI).

I also got Ikaruga. I've beaten the game and now I'm going for 200 achivement points on it. I have two achievements left. One is beat level 3 with an A ranking and the other is complete the game without using a continue. It's not easy.

I also picked up GTA IV about a week after its release. I have to say that the game does grow on you and does start becoming "fun" after a good 10-15 hours of playing, but I still can't really say that I really love the game.

So in all of this time anime for me has slowed down a good amount. Much of this is thanks to Romeo X Juliet's horribly boring story. This could have easily been a 6 episode OVA but no, they had to drag it out, defame the original Romeo and Juliet, and waste my life. Avoid this anime at all costs. Don't let the OP fool you, whether you are an action junkie or a romance junkie this will bore the hell out of you. *shudders* Oh, and on a side note, for the OP, the people jacked an American song and threw a Japanese translation over the lyrics. Hooray for Japanese creativity.

Uh, let's see, Gundam00 finished awhile ago. It was great. Not as good as Code Geass but still a standout. I'm watching R2 right now and for now it's good, but it is going to need to get a lot better for it to compare to the first season.

Against my better judgment, I started watching Bleach. As of now I've drilled through all available episodes that I could get my hands on. While this show is interesting, it definitely should not have been dragged out 175 episodes. In each episode there is a ton of pointless crap that just doesn't need to be in there. One thing I will give props to is the amount of diverse characters in the show. Though not necessarily deep, there is a lot of variety in the characters which makes it easy to pick and choose favorites. I'm a fan of Mayuri (that scientist captain ..not sure how you spell the name) and of course Yachiru among others.

Another thing, thanks to Jwallace for helping me with a troubling computer problem that infected my computer due to my own stupidity.

I will be heading on a trip in Florida for the next few days. I am not sure if I will be able to comment, respond, etc. on GS. Anyways, thanks for reading and until next time.

Hello everybody, today I got back from Boston. Sorry I wasn't able to make a post announcing my departure. I told myself that I was going to do one but then I just didn't..what's new right? This was the reason that my posts on blogs have been a little slow(as if they weren't slow enough). I was able to sneak a couple in through a laptop in the house I was staying at.

Anyways I left on Friday to Boston so that I could visit some family as well as get some medicine for a certain health problem that I have. I also toured the area a bit, visiting some universities like Harvard and MIT. Harvard looks pretty damn nice, and MIT does as well but I wouldn't consider going there because it seems more like an engineering school to me and I'll be going into medicine. Anyways it was a great trip, even though half of the time I spent inside the house was doing SAT prep because I only brought a DS with me. I really liked the chilly weather there BTW.

So I'm here at home now, and on the way back from the airport, I bought two games at Best Buy. Since the economy is tanking and certain banks and buisnesses are going down the drain, I decided that the best course of action was to use my gift cards while the American dollar was still at it's current value and Best Buy was still in a state that would allow it to honor it's gift cards.

I bought Cars: Mater-National for my brother and Sins of a Solar Empire for myself in order to quench the RTS thirst that I have been feeling with all of the new Starcraft 2 info releases. I haven't really dug into either of them very much so I can't really say how I feel about them yet, but I should be able to by the next blog.

I did notice that there's no Sally! I want Sally in the game!

Too bad that there is no single player campaign in this game...With all of the lore behind this game it could have rivaled SC or C&C

Yeah so that's about all I've been doing in my spring break weekend. Thanks for reading and until next time!

Hello everybody. If you haven't heard, earlier this week Persona 3 FES was announced by Atlus to be released in the states in April. I'm sure other fans of the game are as happy as I am. If you haven't done so yet, be sure to make time to play Gamespot's RPG of the year. I actually picked up and continued my game that I hadn't finished and I'm slowly inching to what is supposedly the "final" battle (9 more days I think). Hopefully I can get this done soon so that I can start the P3 anime and be ready for when FES comes out.

Apparently in FES, there is also another spin-off type deal in which you play as Aigis, who is arguably the most useless character in terms of combat. I've heard that this segment will be 30 hours in length. I'm not really sure how I would like to play as her the entire time though, but oh well. In addition to that there appears to be strange new costumes like those of a maid's... Other than that I don't know what is being added on. If anyone else knows any of the new features, be sure to tell me! Anyways it's all for 30 bucks so I'm sure my wallet can celebrate as well.

"Exclusive" art from Atlus promoting P3 FES

I've also resumed the CoD4 campaign and beat that damn "One Shot One Kill" level where you are at that Ferris wheel place and have to escape. So let's have another celebration for getting to waste more life on a ridiculously frustrating Veteran campaign.

"Surely you can't be serious…"

In other, lesser news to celebrate, it happens to be my birthday…hooray! I'm kind of thinking that I should get something for myself. I do have two Best Buy gift cards totaled at $150. I got one during Christmas and one from GS for uploading that GS Total Access Feedback video…I think I used that one though…Ah well, I still have the other one and I should use it before it depreciates in value. Maybe I'll just wait for FES.

In anime news, I haven't started a new series since I finished Green Green until yesterday. I started up ef-a tale of memories. I don't have any impressions on it yet though. So that's it for now. Hope everybody is doing fine. Thanks for reading up and until next time…

Hello everybody. It has been awhile hasn't it? Anyways I'll recap everything that has happened since I left.

But before that…Happy Tet/Chinese New Year/Lunar New Year! I wish everybody luck, strength, and prosperity for the coming year! With all the money I'm getting combined with some holiday cash, I think I may be able to afford going to another convention this summer! Here is some banh chung for all. Enjoy!

(image removed)

Now onto the matters at hand… (Please note that some of these topics were written a week or two ago…this post itself was supposed to be posted last Thursday)

The New Orleans trip was great. I surprisingly had a great time. We arrived on Thursday and got our hotels. The next day we worked at a homeless shelter and the next day we went and built a playground. The last two days we didn't really do anything in terms of service. In between all of these days we did eat a lot of good food. I enjoyed a good amount of oysters. We also went to a parade and some other stuff. As for the city itself, a lot of it still has a lot of work to do in terms of repair. It's kind of sad really…Sorry that this is the only picture I have. We weren't allowed to bring camera's because we would then look like "tourists." I'm the guy behind the freshman in the blue jacket on the very far right of the picture:

(image removed)

Shortly after getting back, I finished the final Harry Potter book. I found it a nice end to the series even though the school year thing wasn't implemented into this book. I always found the integration of the school environment one of the more appealing and well done parts of the book. Though this wasn't present, Rowling still made it a very interesting read.

As for the recent Super Bowl, I find it kind of sad that the Patriots couldn't make history with a perfect record, but I am kind of happy for the Giants that they won. Nobody expected them to get past the Cowboys, and for me myself, I was disheartened to see them beat my Packers in overtime. This was supposed to be the Packer's year too! I've been waiting since 1998 for this year! :cry: I guess I'll have to save wearing the cheese head for another year. Anyways, for defying all odds and winning the Super Bowl, the Giants get my applause.

Just for a personal reference: After the school grades got in for the first semester, all goals were met and I am seemingly on track for my year goal. (S96, C94.6, R33)

Gaming wise! Who would have thought that people talk about games on Gamespot? Ok then I've been slowly moving away from my 360 and gaming in general. CoD4 has gotten kind of boring. Maybe I should finish P3…or get Mass Effect.

In anime news, I've finished Kino no Tabi, and Full Metal Panic. As of now, I am currently watching Green Green. I have also resumed the Tsukihime visual novel.

I'll start with Tsukihime. After seeing bulletsword start the game I remembered that I still had to finish Arcruid's route in the game as well as Akiha's so FateStayNight would stop bugging me about it. As of now I've finished both Arcuid's endings and I should resume with Akiha soon…maybe…

On to Kino no Tabi. Kino no Tabi was a deep and rich anime. Philosophically, this anime was really well done. Though I did find each episode interesting and full of surprises, the fact that it is an episodic series made it hard to keep watching from episode to episode. Let me put a little more emphasis on the surprises part…ok.

Green Green…This show is obnoxious, annoying, not funny and rather stupid. There are a group of prominent characters that are overly perverted and it ruins what little redeeming factors that the show has. I'm still recovering from seeing a ten minute, three way man groping each other scene…

I started Full Metal Panic before finishing Green Green not only because Green Green was bad, but because FMP had a really attractive premise. The execution of this premise was really not that good. Characters' actions are unrealistic and laughable, making it really hard to take the story seriously, even when it tries to be serious. If it had done more of a Code Geass(I understand that Geass was released later than FMP) ****approach, this show would have found great success.

Ending this post, I would like to say that I have created a list of all the shows that I have seen, rated them, and but a brief statement regarding the lasting impressions the show had on me. The reason I used the Anime News Network site is because I don't like to give numerical ratings to shows. For some reason I can't get the link to work for the site...dammit.

I've also run out of space on my 250 gig external hard drive:cry:

Thanks for reading. This was much longer than I had expected it to be…

NOTE: Images removed as of 2/15/08

Bonjour everyone! This is just a small message to tell you that I will be gone until Monday of next week. I'll be going on a mission trip to New Orleans during the time, so yeah. I think we will be helping the city or something like that...I'm not looking forward to it that much. I will be spending the whole MLK weekend there and that will be the last break I have from school until Spring Break...SPRING BREAK! That being said, I'm not looking forward to February at all...

I'll bring some pics back I think...If I'm in a good mood I'll post them up within a week of coming back.

Other than that I would just like to say that I finished School Days a little while ago. It was distubing to say the least. Took me about 2 days to get that ending out of my head. I even saw the bad endings from the game and was expecting another bad ending from this, but I still got owned...not as bad as Makoto though(he freakin deserved it...that scene was also pretty great)...Besides that though, the anime as a whole was pretty damn frustrating to watch. But I can't really criticize it for that because I'm sure the makers of it intended it to be that way. If you're looking for a romance that breaks tradition, this one is for you.

So yeah. See you in a while. :)