Yeah, I'm a bit low on money lately, which means two things: I can't buy new games to make XBL worthwhile, and that $8 a month is a bit more painful than I'd expected. I don't have the funds to pay for a year in advance. (Hint Hint: I take donations)

Otherwise, I haven't really found many games on the XBox that catch my interest. They're mostly games that sacrifice gameplay for graphics and try to utilize those graphics to make games more realistic by sacrificing color. It just doesn't suit me. Besides, what happened to the days when games were actually difficult?

Think of Super Mario Bros. It's one of the most memorable games of all time. It had 8-bit graphics, plenty of color, and lots of challenge. And while new "gamers" (as in, those that disgrace the name) may have a problem with games they can't play through as easily as they could watch a movie, others find it rewarding to master that which tries to destroy us at every corner--or pitfall for 2D games. Luckily, Megaman 9 struck a pretty nice chord with me. I was pleased with my frustration, because at heart, all real gamers are masochists.

Probably the best example I can give for a modern game that needs to take its difficulty up a bit is Fable II. I know, it's a highly renowned game among XBox fanboys, but seriously, when you die, you should either lose a life or get a game over. But in Fable II, what do you get? Scars. Friggin' scars. You sacrifice a little bit of experience, and your perfect freaking beauty. And then what? You get back up and start button-mashing away at the enemies. Again. I also referenced this in a review on Fable II, but I'm really annoyed by it...

So there. I didn't mean to go on about my frustration with new games, but screw it. I'm keeping it. My account name is GuitarShank by the way. Add me if you like.

And now, I leave you with a link to a relevant comic:

www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=282

Learn to write, and people will respect your writing, even if they disagree.

Look at a review. Yes, any review. Okay, maybe not any review, but let's at least stick to Gamespot game reviews. I wrote a review on Final Fantasy XII right after my girlfriend finally completed it. It wasn't anywhere near the score GameSpot gave it (5 vs a 9), but it was written well, as most people expect of me now. Now, the reviews there were mostly good reviews for FFXII with the occasional few among my ranks, so I expected to get a lot of thumbs down from mere disagreement.

However, much to my surprise, after 8 ratings only one person gave a thumbs down to me. I then found a review that gave it a 2.5, and it was so difficult to read that I just left it alone and began writing this (seriously). I then looked at its ratings: 0 out of 5 users agree with this review.

So, moral of the story, learn to write. If you're writing a MySpace comment or an AIM message, go ahead and use all the ntspk you like. But if you're writing a review or article, people tend to take you more seriously if you sound like you know what you're talking about. I dunno, maybe it's a professional thing...