I got a mention on the 10/21/11 epsiode of Start/Select for a comment I made earlier in the week about Uncharted 3. Sweet!!! 8) Looks like I'll be posting this episode to Facebook for all my friends who probably couldn't care less. :roll:

This has been one of those life kicking you weeks. I am so done with it and ready to have the weekend. Not that it will really resolve any of my underlying issues but I need some time away from work and some time to unwind. I'm tired of thinking, I'm tired of not making any headway. I just need some time to relax and just take up space.

Depression sucks. I need to sit down with my new copy of Batman: Arkham City and smash some random bad guys faces in for no reason. Unless I can manage a winning Lotto ticket this weekend that's probably the best I can hope for. Why is it that no one bothers to tell you while growing up that being an adult sucks? We spend our youth just trying so hard to be grown up only to realise that when we get there it's all about responsibility and obligations. If only we knew we would never want to finish high school. Can I get a perpetual Senior year? I think I could pull a life time of that.

Sorry to anyone reading this for being such a Debbie Downer but I felt the need to vent for a second. Hopefully I can immerse myself into some fantasy life enough in the next couple days to beat back some of this funk. Fingers crossed.

Picked up my copy of Batman: Arkham City last night. Haven't been able to spend a lot of time with it yet. So far I've only clocked about a little over an hour. But I've already gotten the bronze trophy: I'm Batman. Of course, it's a story trophy so all I had to do was basically get through the prologue... but who's checking those sorts of thing anyway really. :D

I'll definitely be posting a review sometime in the next week or so. I generally like to finish my first play through before commenting on a game. At the very least logging a good 10 to 20 hours before offering my opinion. So far though my initial thoughts would have to be Batman: Arkham Asylum 2.0. This game feels like you just picked up right where the last left off and it delivers more of the same, with a few tweaks and some new gadgets. Which in the case of this game is a good thing. Arkham Asylum had a good formula so why deviate too far from that. As Rocksteady has said in numerous interviews, fans have asked for more of the same. And it looks like they have delivered.

Much like the original this game doesn't take long to put you into the action. It doesn't really bother with tutorials either. It's going to take me a while to get re-accustomed to the controls. It's been several months since I last picked up Arkham Asylum and I've been playing Resistance 3 and a little too much Uncharted 3 early release multiplayer in the interim. From what I've played so far the controls are pretty much the same. You actually start out with access to several of the gadgets that you had to find as you progressed through the original, albeit in their non-upgraded forms. The Riddler trophies seem a bit more devious this time around. Often set out in plain site, it doesn't mean they are easy to get.

Thedetective vision seems tweaked to better encourage you to use it when you need to butgenerally leave it off so as to see the game as it was intended. Playing as Catwoman adds a bit of a pace change, which isn't a bad thing. The world seems spacious and well populated. And if you're paying attention you'll hear Nolan North doing some of the voice work. Too much Uncharted just has me attuned to that guy's voice so I can pick him up in a second when I hear it. But hey, I love his work so no complaints from me about that. Anyway... more on Batman: Arkham City to come.

So my buddy and I decided to use the clan tag LAG! when we play competitive multiplayer. The stuff people say about this ranges from hilarious to down right insulting. Just because I have a little prefix in front of my user name that reads LAG! doesn't mean you get to cry lag against me when I out skill you in a game. Now I'm one who cries LAG!frequently when online gamingbut generally because I'm actually battling LAG! If someone is actually providing real competition then I'll give them their props.

I chose this clan tag as a kind of in joke and mostly as a statement of fact about online gaming. It is not an admission of the state of my Internet connection or as some seem to think (based on their comments) that I have some hacking ability to make myself glitch so as to have an in game advantage. LAG! is the single most frustrating thing about online gaming. The two things I hate most about online gaming is getting owned because of shoddy gamemechanics and getting owned because of network LAG! When you absolutelycannot kill another player because they have upwards of several seconds of connection LAG! then it just makes a game NOT fun. Nothing is more frustrating than running into a completely empty room and having your character suddenly die for no apparent reason only to see the offending player coming running into the room and shooting at empty air several seconds after you died.

But just because I set my clan tag to LAG! doesn't mean that when I've pwned you for the 5th time this match because you never bother to look behind youdoesn't mean you get to gocry LAG! to everyone else with a headset. Also it helps if my teammates refer to me by my screen name and not my clan tag, especially when my buddy is also playing. I guess it's just easier to say LAG! than endorbr, but you could at least make the attempt.

This is basically more ranting after my last blog. What is up with developers and releasing video and screenshots of SPOILERS for their games? They know its a spoiler. So why would you release footage of it?

I got a notification earlier today from Naughty Dog to be aware that plenty of major spoiler filled images and videos were floating around. That stuff wouldn't be out there if they hadn't released it. I know they are trying to drum up interest for their game but seriously... You can do that without giving away the good stuff.

I'd like to get bang for my 60 bucks, not: "Well that's cool but I already saw it in a trailer."

I love finding out everything I can get my hands on abouta game that I'm excited about. I have poor impulse control when I see that their is a new trailer, developer diary, screenshot, gameplay video, interview, or tid bit about a game on my wish list. But sometimes in their effort to promote their latest offering game developers can give out too much information. I want to find out all I can but at the same time I want to be surprised when I actually get to play the game.

If you give me all the details and let me see too much before the game even hits store shelves then what is left for me to discover when I sit down with my copy? What surprises and twists to the story can I expect? Unless they've been lying to us all along about what we can expect... That big scare they want to throw out when you turn that corner... not so scary when I've seen it in every game trailer and gameplay video released. That plot twist that was supposed to be the big game changer... not so shocking when I already pieced it together from watching all the interviews and developer diaries.

It's like watching a movie trailer for a Jason Statham movie (nothing against him, I actually usually like his movies). By the end of the 3 minute trailer you've pretty much seen the highlights of the film. The other hour and thirty minutes is just the filler between all those big scenes they tossed around in the trailer. So developers: keep something in reserve. Don't overkill with information just to try and attract a new audience. I still want to actually play the game and feel like it's the first time I've seen it.

Found out today thanks to Gamespot that Subway and Naughty Dog have teamed up to have the Taste for Adventure sweepstakes to promote the release ofUncharted 3. So guess what I had for lunch today? One 30 oz. cup code later I've got my PSN code to get early access to the Uncharted 3 full multiplayer experience almost a month early. The contest has some really good prizes, not that I ever win anything good. Plus you automatically get access to the multiplayer of Uncharted 3. I'm not a huge Subway fan or anything, their food is okay. There are honestly better sub places that I frequent, but it was worth a trip to get the code.

Although the guy that rang me up at the register was an idiot. What part of ONE drink was he not getting? He honestly rang me up for a 30 oz and a regular drink. He wanted to charge me for two large drinks. Do I look like I need two drinks? In the end the idiot had to refund me after I told him three times I only wanted one drink. Yeesh.

So for the past several weeks I've been playing Resistance 3. It's a really good game as far as the single player and co-op play is concerned. And it's a fairly decent multiplayer FPS as well, even though it has quite a bit of LAG issues (feels the ulcers flaring up). But I'm ready for October 18th because that's theUS release date for Batman: Arkham City. I had loads of fun withBatman: Arkham Asylum and this game looks to be more of that and a half.Rocksteady has managed to create a truly great series of single player game and I'm ready for some more.

DC has a great universe to play around in, and the Dark Knight is the perfect persona for a gamer to portray. Half the fun of Arkham City was the portrayal of the villains and how Batman interacted with them. Arkaham City looks to not disappoint in this area. The combat looks to have been improved and flows seamlessly from one attack to the next. The visuals are impressive and the scale of the world looks vast. This one is sure to get a review from me by the end of the month. Justhave topick up my copy and get a little play time in first. It's just too bad that I won't be seeing any time off from work to sit down with it thoroughly for a while.

This whole Best Sidekick tournament became a joke some time back. I swear people are deliberately voting for stupid characters just to skew the voting because they think it's funny. What's the point of doing all this when people are just going to vote for some character they've never even heard of from a game they didn't play so that a character that actually is widely popular has no shot at a win? Just kinda makes the whole thing seem like a giant waste of time. Bet you money it comes down to Launchpad McQuack and Albert Einstein in the end. Pathetic.

Show of hands if you actually feel either of those characters is the Best Video Game Sidekick.Anybody, anybody. No. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Starting a new job has really cut down on the time I get to spend on Gamespot. I'm sure once I get the hang of things I'll be able to get back to a regular habit of trolling the site. 8) I don't think I've even had time to sit down and play anything at home since I've started this job... unless you count Bejeweled on my phone (which I don't). Man responsibility sucks. Oh well, if I didn't have the job I wouldn't make the money I need to buy the games. What a trade off. :P