It happens all the time, what made you think that Gamespot was different? It doesn't take much for someone to say something that another person with a lot of money doesn't like, and than, in turn, the opinionated person gets shat on. In today's world, free speech is only free if there is no money behind it, and it's a real shame. A glowing example of this is Don Imus and his firing months ago because of a joke he made, that's right folks, a joke got someone fired from something they've been doing for longer than any of us have even been alive.

So now on Gamespot we have Jeff being fired for handing Kane and Lynch a review that it deserved. An honest, informative, and pretty much dead on review got the "big man" fired.

If you listen to Gameslaves Radio, you'd know I'm all about making money and corporations doing what needs to be done to make the money, however, I do not agree with the first amendment being violated in order to do so. Jeff got fired for what he said or, how he said it depending on who you ask, regardless. Freedom of Speech says you can go f uck yourself and he can say whatever he wants and not get in trouble for it. Granted, there is some **** who try and manipulate our first amendment rights and say not everything is protected speech, but that isn't the issue here. We're talking about video games, we're not talking about hate speech, treason, or the assassination of any public figure. We're talking about the biggest form of entertainment in America right now, which is scrutiny from the Left and the Right every chance they get, trying to take away it's freedom of expression.

We fight and fight for games to be able to have whatever content the designers wish, but will we fight for a man who simply gives his opinions on the games? Will we sit here and just let Jeff be fired and do nothing more than write blogs about it? Some of us have vowed Gamespot off, some of us don't really care, some of us don't even like Jeff and you think it's a blessing. I don't care if you like him or not, honestly. This isn't about you and what you think of people, this is about the right to say whatever you want about anything you want. If you can't get behind that cause, I wish bad things upon you and your family.

I can't justifiably just sit here and rant at Gamespot, it's not even Gamespot or cNet we should be most mad at, it's Eidos. These bastards used their money and their sway to have Jeff fired for putting up an honest review just because they dumped a lot of money into Gamespot. It's quite obvious now that they didn't pay gamespot for advertising, they paid Gamespot for good reviews, which Jeff did not give them.

CNet and Eidos should both be ashamed of themselves for going down this road. You should be ashamed of yourself if you're going to continue to use Gamespot. How can you trust any of the content on Gamespot anymore after something like this happens? The communities? Sure, I guess. I'll be chilling over at destructoid.com thoug, ya know, where they don't get paid off to write good reviews.

Bye Gamespot, thanks for being morons.

Maybe I'll be back if they hire Jeff back and issue a public statement saying that they were wrong. Until than, f uck cNet.

Oh, and don't forget to f uck Eidos too for being babies about making a bad game and having someone be honest about it.

Recently I've noticed that more than a few games have left me feeling emotionally detached from the characters, not in a sense where I cry or get angry or anything like that, but in a way where I just don't care about what happens to them. I feel like I've recently taken a turn and just don't care about the characters anymore and maybe I care more about the game play and being entertained. It's not a bad thing that I'm starting to focus on the game play more, but at the same time, a good story and having some sort of feelings for the characters I'm portraying would definitely enhance the experience.

As I thought more about it, I relized that it maybe the game play that is pulling me out of the game more than the actual story. Three games came to mind immediately: Saint's Row, BioShock, and Assassin's Creed.

BioShock and Assassin's Creed are one in the same for the reasons I felt pulled out of the game, but Saint's Row is a different story which I will elaborate on in a bit.

If you're a reader of my blog, you already know my feelings about BioShock. I was really into the story but the game play is what pulled me out of it and made me hate the game. Spending most of my time searching around for audio tapes is what did me in. That aspect totally pulled me out of the game and just annoyed me to the point where I didn't even care about what was happening anymore, I just wanted to find the tapes so I could say I completed everything. Ultimately it lead to me not even finishing the game and just not caring about it anymore, because I didn't care. Searching for these tapes brought me out of the game to the point of feeling detached from the character and how the story progressed.

To me, in a struggle like in BioShock, finding all these audio tapes would be the last of my concern with everything else going on. I understand that the audio tapes brought forth a lot of the back story and all of that, but if I was the main character, I really wouldn't spend my time looking for all these, I'd be more worried about not dying, because living is better than dying. Dying sucks.

If the tapes were in more easy to find spots, than sure, I could imagine this dude picking it up and gaining a better understanding of what the hell was going on around him. But having to literally search every square foot of every room, was a bit much considering the circumstances. Maybe I'm wrong and just not as curious as some people and in a life of death situation, finding tapes is obviously top priority.

I get it's a game, and I get they needed to do something other than the main story you're following, but it was obnoxious to place these tapes randomly on levels. If you disagree with me, that's fine, but you're wrong. If you like wondering looking at the ground, while everything around you is falling apart, I'd hate to have you leading me out of a life or death situation.

Assassin's Creed is in the same boat with me. When it comes to their little side missions (Vigilantes, pick pocketing, view points, etc) they threw in there to waste an hour or so of your time before every assassination, it just makes me want to stop playing. In every level, they are exactly the same with no difference whatsoever. They aren't hard to do, they aren't fun to do, they just aren't anything. It's all just filler to make the game feel longer, and it does just that, as well as pulling you right out of the game.

They could have made these side missions a lot more fun and different, the game itself isn't very long when it comes to the main plot. But instead of giving a variety of things to do, they gave you more of the same over and over again. Rather than thinking "Oh my god, what's next?!" I thought "Oh my god when does this end?" With that feeling of repetitiveness and just not caring about all this crap that needs to be done, I got pulled right out of the game and just didn't care anymore. I still haven't finished the game, but I will grind out the last couple kills later this weekend, but I really don't want to because I have no interest anymore in what's going on. ANOTHER SEMI INTERACTIVE CUT SCENE THAT I'VE SEEN SIX TIMES BEFORE? I CANNOT WAIT!

Saint's Row is a different situation for me, rather than the game play making me not care about the game, it's actually the story. The story was terrible and I think everyone can agree on that, the game itself though, is really fun to play single and multi player. I love the game play and I love playing the game, however I didn't care about the story because I don't care about thugs. I didn't feel anything for the story or the characters, I just wanted to play the game and enjoy all the different things to do. Oh, a main character died? I didn't even notice because I was too busy dressing my guy up as a pimp.

Maybe it's a little contradictory, but I did enjoy doing the thug things, but the thug story did nothing for me and I didn't care about it. I just wanted the game to end so I could sand box around and enjoy the game play aspects.

I could talk about the contrary and talk about games that really brought me in and kept me wanting more, but I'm not going to because no one cares. Well, maybe someone does, but I'm more interested in what games pulled you out and made you not care about the characters and why.

So you should tell me, so I can avoid the games if I haven't already.

ninja edit - i proof read good.

After having a little more time with Rock Band, I can say I've calmed down a bit and can say I no longer feel like I've wasted money on the bundle. Thanksgiving Eve into Thanksgiving, I spent about eight hours over at Pete's crib playing the hell out of Rock Band, with him, his Girlfriend, than later on in the night another friend of ours, I'll call him Dan.

The night started slow with just me and Pete (Ryvvn on gamespot, if you didn't know) just rocking out and getting Wonderbutton exposed to the fans. After playing a bunch of songs and owning up the charts and getting managers all over the place, Pete's woman jumped in and rocked out with the drums, making our band almost complete.

So for a bunch of hours, Pete sang, I rocked the guitar, and she rocked the drums. Pete's singing did prohibit me from passing a bunch of songs at first, but once I accepted that he sings like a transexual I was able to move on and continue our quest to eFame.

I don't have much to say about the game play, because well, it is what it is. It uses a formula that has always been fun and will probably always be fun.

So moving on to when Dan showed up.

He sang, and much better than Pete, mind you. The guy was totally owning most the songs and getting into it hardcore. Which definitely brought up the excitement level of playing and we all started rocking out and having a great time. We all were getting really into it and it was just an awesome experience to have with a bunch of friends.

I'm not feeling very articulate, but what I'm trying to tell you is: If you have 4 friends who like video games, get Rock Band and play with them. I promise you will have an amazing time. You will laugh, and probably cry.. From laughter. You will not want to stop playing, and you will end up playing until four in the morning and having no signs of letting up.

So get Rock Band, make some friends, and get noticed in the eWorld.

NINJA EDIT! I'm not saying the game wasn't fun when Pete was singing, I was implying that having 4 people playing at a time was just pure awesomeness at the highest level.

I just found out that there is no online Band World Tour in Rock Band. And I've been under the impression there was since word of the game came out. I sort of feel like I just wasted 170 bones. I'm really trying to keep my composure.

Excuse me for the lack of updates, but what can I say. Call of Duty 4 multiplayer has taken over my life. With a little bit of Assassin's Creed on the side. I got Kane and Lynch aswell and haven't had a chance to play it yet.

But I know you're dying to know what I have to say about Assassin's Creed and here it is.

Listen to episode 31 of the podcast, which should be up sometime early next week, and you'll know what I think about it.

PLUGZ ON MY OWN BLOGZ

And god damnit, listen and write in so we can talk to you, while we record, and you can talk to us, while you listen.

Gamespot is being stupid, as usual, and I tried making a nice little post about Gears of War PC and how you should play with me and Justin.

Since I don't feel like writing it all out again and fix whatever HTML I didn't use, that isn't working. I'll just summerize.

Get the game. It's amazing. You should play it with us. I want to play this game competitively.

That's the jist of what I had to say. Thanks.

Ninja Edit - Episode 29 of Gameslaves Radio is up, and it's one of our best shows in my opinion, you should probably shoot over to gameslaves.net and check it out.

(You will find that near the end of this entry, I had an enlightenment mid thought. I found it pretty amusing to read, so I decided to post it as it was written, rather than editing it to make sense.. Well, it makes sense.. BAH JUST READ IT AND YOU'LL SEE!)

It seems like most people don't know exactly what cynicism and overall exaggerated humor really is, so things need to be explained out to them or things get turned into a more serious topic and need some sort of backing. Which is fine. I don't mind because even though I tend to be extreme and over the top in most of my opinions, I can usually find a way to back them up because I'm smart and usually prepared for people to just not get it.

Mass appeal runs the market in this day in age. No matter what we do or how we try and go about it, whatever we are force fed by big corporations is what we consume and enjoy it. We've lost our sense of free thought to marketing and being told what to believe. Some of us realize this yet still believe the hype. In gaming, Halo is the perfect example. Millions upon millions of people love this game and why? What does it do that is so innovative and amazing? Nothing. The story is mediocre, the gameplay is slow and generic, the AI is pretty annoying and not all that intelligent at all. Yet copies of Halo 3 flew off the shelf just like the other two games in the series.

I cannot think of a game that has ever been as hyped as the Halo series (maybe with the exception of the GTA series, but I'm going to stick to FPS' for this entries sake), and where it has led competitive gaming today.

For where I want to go with this, you need to start from the very beginning, so if lots of words and an opinion that will probably make you angry isn't your thing, you should probably just stop reading now. If you think Halo is god's gift to gaming and that I'm stupid for thinking this way, you're wrong and probably a communist anyway. Chances are Halo was probably the first FPS you ever played and you couldn't stop creaming yourself every time you got a Pistol headshot on another crappy player in multiplayer. I've played more FPS and got more headshots in games of real skill than you could ever dream of playing, Halo is not good by any means and I am right, you are wrong.

Okay, enough with my obligatory Halo bashing, moving on.

So, when Halo first came out on the original Xbox, it was something else. I remember countless days and nights at the local LAN center watching people crowd around this game and tournaments being run. Just child after child lining up to go head to head against their friends. At the time, it was a welcomed sight. I enjoyed the company of fellow gamers, even though they were playing a console, and I enjoyed watching the competition between everyone. I embraced it, I really thought that Halo would sort of be a gateway to other games for these kids finally finding that video gaming can be fun, competitive, and just an overall awesome experience to play on an organized level.

Then after some time went by, I noticed these gamers weren't moving on to other games. They were still playing Halo. They were getting better at it, finding more tricks, finding the best choke points to take, they were taking the game to the level that other games (such as Counter Strike) have been at for years. Disappointment came over me, my dreams of getting more kids into PC gaming at the LAN center (and just helping the PC competitive community grow as a whole) were crushed.

These kids were getting into a console game on the same level as gamers in the "PC scene" have been on for years. Halo tournaments started popping up left and right, normally maxing the LAN center out, and I even found myself playing in them. For someone who thought Halo was an okay casual game, I didn't do too bad compared to these kids who played hours every day. This personal experience, is what leads me to believe that anyone can be good at a console game. Maybe it's just my super human ability to be amazing at video games, but I literally, barely ever played Halo but I could jump on and frag with kids who played all day. And even when I would play against some of the more advanced players, I didn't do terrible. I lost, and I lost hard, but it was nowhere near the kind of lose as in a game like Counter Strike. It wasn't as crushing, it wasn't as dominant. It just wasn't as bad.

For someone to play a game casually against kids who play every day, and be able to hold their own. It says something, does it not? I mean, do you really think I'm super human? Probably not, and if you do, thanks. I'm a gamer who has always been just okay at consoles. I normally keep my consoles around just for those exclusive titles and RPGs, since I don't like playing most games on the PC, other than FPS' and the occasional RTS. Back on point, so, I could hang in there with hardcore Halo kids, but could they hang in there with me on the PC?

In short, no.

When the time arrived for PC tournaments, the Halo kids would form their own little teams and play in them for whatever reason. There would normally be at least three or four teams at the tournaments that would play Counter Strike consistently and those three or four teams would always be the ones facing eachother in the later rounds. There was no instance of any of these console kiddies even standing a chance against the PC teams. Every PC tournament would be the same teams facing off, while the console kids would be eliminated in nearly record breaking times.

Case and point? PC gamers can pick up a controller with minimal experience and hold their own. A console gamer cannot sit with a keyboard and mouse and hold their own.

Is this true for everyone? Of course not.

I've come across more people than I can count who think they are good on both platforms. I've crushed most of them. There seems to be a huge divide between the two platforms, because the keyboard and mouse "way of life" is more hardcore in my opinion. Accuracy, precision, mastering movement, mastering physics. Having more control over pretty much every aspect is a huge leap between PC and consoles. I just don't feel as into it when I sit down with a controller. I feel restricted, like I'm not able to do as much, I'm not able to use all of my abilities to dominate my opponents.

With a controller, things like reflex time and hand eye coordination just go out the window. I mean, you can set your look sensitivity and all that nonsense with a controller, but does it really matter? No. No matter how fast you jerk the analog stick one way or another, it is not going to stop on the dime, or it won't get to the enemy as quickly as it could with a mouse. Some might say, that than it takes more skill to use a controller cause it isn't as easy.

I say to you, play more PC games in a multiplayer setting. See how easy it is for you to just jump in and be amazing. Chances are, it isn't going to happen. You will get completely toasted and not stand a chance. Over shooting, under estimating, making sure the cross hair is on the head of usually much smaller hitboxes, playing against models that actually move at a decent pace, rather than the feeling of moving through oil. There is much more to the dynamics of PC gaming, than "HAY I HAVE A MOUSE, I CAN BE MORE ACCURATE AND KILL PEOPLE EASIER!"

Think again, hot shot.

Do some people have the ability to be good on both platforms? I'm sure they do, I mean, I am and I know theres people better than me on PC and on console. Probably more on console than PC, but thats besides the point.

The epic battle will rage on forever, I'm sure, but it is quite obvious that PC gaming has a much higher learning curve than console. Denying it is silly and you're just wrong. If you believe that having a mouse makes things easier, I challenge you to try and play on a competitive level on both platforms and see where you do better. 90% of the time, I'm sure it will be on the console. It's taken me years of practice to get where I am on the PC, while I still just randomly pick up and play a console game and do fine.

When I say, console gaming will be the death of PC gaming. It's called an exaggeration. No, I do not think PC gaming will ever go away, no I do not think that PC gaming tournaments will ever go away. Jesus, people. PCs are the original platform! It's kinda like Will Smith, he may have his ups and downs, but you can't get rid of the guy.

What I honestly think will happen is that Competitive Console Gaming will take the main stage at big tournaments events and stay that way for a long time. I thought I stated quite clearly in my last entry that mass appeal would be the obvious reason for this. Mass appeal drives marketing, marketing targets mass audiences, everyone likes something they can get at a cheaper cost (NINJA EDIT: this is my way of saying, consoles are cheaper than PCs so more people like them, which was stated in my last entry). Consoles and games like Halo have that mass appeal to make money. People who run these tournaments like money, so they will go where the money is.

The money right now is in Halo 3, so CPL has the One Million Dollar Halo 3 Tournament. I've been out of the CPL/WCG loop for awhile, but every now and again I check back in to see where things are going. Right now, it's going to World in Conflict, FEAR and Halo 3. CPL Dallas will be having two Counter Strike tournaments, I cannot find a prize amount for these tournaments (I also only looked for about 8 minutes before getting bored), but I know WIC and FEAR both have $40,000 prize pools. Both PC games, but not Counter Strike.

The stream of conscience sets in right now. Maybe it isn't the death of PC gaming, but maybe the slow demise of the Counter Strike games?

If this is the case, it's a sad thing because both Counter Strike and Counter Strike:Source hold a special place in my heart. Really thinking about it, these two games are what got me into competitive gaming and make me strive to be the best. It's been close to a year since I played either one on a competitive level, and oddly I don't miss it. As much as I love the team based play and the skill it takes to go far in both of these games, I just want something new.

As a whole, PC gamers probably want something new and are looking for new games to take to the next level. FEAR and WIC are both great games and I have no doubt that this is what is happening in the PC community. My own closed mindedness kept me thinking that the CS series were the end all of real PC competitive gaming, but even now, looking at myself and where I want to go with my competitive "career" it isn't Counter Strike. Team Fortress, Gears of War PC, either of these two games I would love to play on a competitive level.

PC gaming isn't dying, it may take the back seat to consoles for a little while, but it isn't going to die. It is just going to find new games to take to a new level and not alienate people who don't play a certain niche of games.

I suddenly forgot what else I want to write, because it all seems like nonsense now.

I still believe PC gaming takes more skill FPS wise, mind you. You won't change my mind on that, but I think I talked about that enough earlier, so yeah. I'm done.