I haven't had the privelage to watch all those long trailers for it that have been surfacing since like 2006, but I owe that to computers that refuse to buffer video mostly. With its release on the horizon and me watching an interview with Hideo Kojima, I can't take it anymore! I want this game!

But, preferably on the 360, thanks.

Hahaha, by the way, I heard Kojima wouldn't let people release early reviews of the game unless they didn't talk about: Cut scene length, installation times, and storage space requirements. :lol: Do any of you know if the cutscenes, which can number into 90 minutes in length, can be paused/stopped/fast forwarded/rewound? I wanted that back when they were like ten minutes...but who knows when one of the 90 minute cutscenes is just around the corner! Make sure dinner's in two hours, your homework is done, and you have popcorn and a blanket, cuz you're watching an MGS movie multiple times throughout the length of the game. It's all good if we have control over it, so my question is: Do we? (I'm serious, if you know, answer in a comment)

I returned from Ocean City on Monday from my weekend trip. I filmed (when you count halves of games) 13 in two days. It was BRUTALLY hot outside, lemme tell you. It was great though, we ate good food, we stayed in a really nice hotel, and I made more or less 130 bucks. I could go into details, but why bother? (That one's rhetorical, don't answer it)

So have any of you seen/playe/heard about that new Battlefield game? I had seen an Alpha build of it a while ago, some guy taking out a helicopter on a mounted machine gun, tearing up dozens of trees in the process and finally sending him spiraling into the ground, smoking and ablaze, for a satisfying explosion. Now, the demo's out and the game soon, and I'm all over it. It's so beautiful looking, and even more impressive is actually the sound. The moment I first shot a gun I was like, "Did that actually realistic sounding gun shot really just come out of my surround sound? That's a first :P" No offense to Halo's awesome sounding guns, but things like the AR don't sound realistic, exactly. Now, Battlefield on the other hand sounds fabulous. In multiplayer, men let out noises and phrases similar to how AI does in a single player game mode, so it's unnerving to be sitting atop a house, sniper rifle in hand, and to hear the sound of far off gunshots echoing through the streets and then people yelling and screaming for their lives or for medics.

It's a great game. The cl@sses all feel evenly balanced and, shockingly, I don't have a favorite. The Assault cl@ss is your assault rifle toting, grenade launcher shooting, self healing cl@ss. Demolitions may have an almost worthless shotgun, but that rocket launcher is oh-too-valuable with tanks and jeeps relentlessly crawling around the battlefield. The Scout cl@ss is a ghillied up sniper, the only class with a pistol, and they have binoculars that can zero in on land vehicles and produce a player controlled missile to take them out in one fell swoop, if you can survive long enough to target and then control the missile. The Specialist cl@ss uses silenced submachine guns and have little tracer guns that are sort of difficult to use, but if you use it right, it serves as a homing beacon for friendly rockets, and even helicopters don't stand a chance. And last, you have the support cl@ss, who carry around Light Machine Guns and also repair vehicles and dole out healthpacks. Unless you're an Assault guy with the self healing plunger thing, support people are the only other chance you got for getting health back in the game, adding a layer of difficulty not found in shooters lately.

For example, it's not a big deal if sniper rifles aren't one hit kills, becuz the guy's life isn't going to magically come back if he hides behind a corner for a bit. Just hit him again when he pops out, or use a tank to blow the entire wall down and possibly take him with it.

Did I mention enviornments are destructible? Yeah. Enviornments are destructible.

It's insane. I've been waiting since Black came out for a game to truly nail destruction in the current generation, and Battlefield: Bad Company is looking like prime contender for that spot. Artillery strikes leave giant ditches in the dirt, underbarrel grenades blow away cement walls to reveal escaping enemies, tanks barrel over trees like they're twigs, and sniper posts mean nothing now, as tanks can level basically any cover a sniper can have in a building. However, in a wise developer's choice, buildings' structures remain intact, so while all the walls and such can be destroyed, the buildings cannot come entirely down. I appreciate that, I don't want the place being flat, you know?

Anyway, I could go on about how I feel like people take 20x more bullets to kill than I do, how lag can seriously affect every aspect of the game, how team killers run rampant and constantly run me over with tanks, how artillery and vehicles are annoying and severely unbalance gameplay even if they ARE BF's trademarks and even if there ARE countless ways to counter them, and how unrealistic reload animations make the process take longer and cost me lives or kills sometimes, but that isn't the point. Make bullet detection work better, make sure that the number of people permitted in a match will not sacrifice connection speeds, take off team damage (PLEASE) seeing as apparently I'm the only person alive capable of not running over or bombing my teammates, and at least make the volume of vehicles a lot less: spawn them less frequently or just cut back on the amount. It's not fun or fair, unless you're a serious noob who absolutely loves the fact that you can drive in ANYTHING and that just makes your day. I'm more mature than that, and I'm here for killing people, not pissing everyone off by spamming vehicles.

But I WON'T go on about that, becuz when you're in a lag free game with half decent teams, the game kicks the crap out of Call of Duty 4, and even the game's very, very wry sense of humor and wacky plot line have really intrigued me, and it's shaping up to compete will Call of Duty in that aspect as well.

I suppose that about covers it for now. Battlefield...why can't it come out in September? It's coming out June and I'm gonna have to buy it......:( When am I gonna make time for other games if Battlefield gets in the way? :lol:

Well, until next time, I've been a blowing everything in sight up irmeleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!

I refuse to tell you what that means. Look it up :P What? You that lazy? You're already on teh intarwebz. Jeez guys.

Anyway, at the end of my last blog, I promised my adieu until summer. And now it's here and so am I. In the flesh!!!!!

Well, I'm HERE in the flesh, but not THERE, on your computer screens, in the flesh. In fact, I'm not there at all, just my words. But enough philosophy. Listen to me, 9 hours on summer break and I'm still thinking :P

I'm on summer break now. It feels delightful. The past week was exam week, two exam periods a day Mon-Thur, half days all. Me, I only had one exam a day except Tuesday with two, but on the flip side, a lot of people I know who had multiple exams on multiple days got altogether done earlier than me, so it's a tradeoff :P Personally, I think having a whole night to study for one exam apiece, resulting in possibly increased exam grades, are worth the two more hours of school this morning :P

Speaking of which, I already know the results of two of my exam grades! Math, being in a class with 8 people (I still wonder how every class besides ours was full), our teacher simply graded our exams on the spot.

79!!

I was more or less happy. And a bit surprised too, cuz it was the same grade I got on last year's math final :? But being 1 point away from a B and 9 points up from my average quiz and test grade, I was satisfied. And, all the errors on the final were computation, which means I at least knew how to approach every problem. If I hadn't studied/reviewed, I would NOT have remembered how to even approach most of those problems. Makes me feel special in a way :lol:

The other was my history exam. The class is deceivingly hard, but I studied well for it. I retrieved something from my teacher's room today and he mentioned that I got either a 99 or a 100 on the exam, he couldn't remember. I looked around and went, "Me?!" It was funny :P

Also, for any of you who read my Arthurian legend on the Writers' Lounge, or for any of you who want to, I got a 96 on that. I got taken off for it being too long! I seriously laughed at that :P Better too long than too short:roll:

So normally I'd give you other school news, BUT IT'S OVER. Dude, I can't remember the last time I said that. Last summer you say? Psh :P

I have to say, being happy for the end of school is more than face value. Sure, I don't have to worry about early mornings, homework, and dumb teachers, but more than any other summer in memory, I need this one for the time. All week, I came home from school on a wonderful half day where I could be enjoying myself, only to need to study for exams until lightbulbs burned out :lol: All the other days since January was just cuz I was forbidden to game on weekdays :P

Today was marvelous becuz it was over. I was free to do whatever I wanted. So I mowed the lawn and then got right to work on Rainbow Six Vegas 2's campaign, which I have STILL not beaten, though I now draw very near :twisted: I have to say, I'm gonna have to play through it again, definitely for the Realistic difficulty achvmnt, but also cuz I've played it over the course of three months, so some story aspects were...shall we say...lost? :P But I'm loving the enviornments and the sometimes annoyingly intelligent enemies. It's a more satisfying experience than the first, I'd say. Although, it has thusfar lacked in casinos...

At any rate, after I beat Vegas I shall hope to snatch Assassin's Creed from a friend and do the last assassination to wrap up the game. After that, I'm thinkin' Bioshock...*whimpers* yes...for the first time ever...

Anyway, I've recently read two books. One was a Spider-Man novel called Drowned In Thunder. It had a GREAT plot with interesting twists and it kept me guessing, and it captured the feel of the comics, movies, and Spidey himself so utterly perfectly that it was at times eerie. The other was the third novel in the Dexter series called Dexter In the Dark. I had been told that it utterly destroyed everything loveable about the two books previous, and after stalling far too long, I picked it up from the library to see for myself. I finished it in like three days. It certainly had weird parts, with the main backdrop of the serial murders happening being very mysterious and kind of weird cult religions, but the plot development, writing, and characters were all argueably at their best yet. I audibly laughed more at this book more than I remembered laughing at the other two, which is saying a lot, and the characters were all as great and loveable as ever. Also, the plot itself developed in a way that was so spell binding and captivating that I don't think the other two, or any other book I've ever read, has kept me enthralled like that. Now, I can't decide if I liked it more than the other two, but in its defense, I can't decide on a solid favorite, so it's not automatically worse :P In fact, it was argueably the best one even if it wasn't necessarily my favorite one.

Let's see, the only other thing is work. I'm sure I mentioned it in the previous blogs, but those far off summer lacrosse tournaments that I would be filming for $$$ started last weekend. I filmed 11 games over the course of 3 days, for a total of 110 bucks. And last time, a bunch of the games ended up getting seriously rained out, and a bunch of the teams ended up packing it in and calling it quits. Kinda sucks actually, the playoffs and therefore championship were entirely cancelled! For 600 dollars a team and almost 7,000 people registered in the tourny, I'd have been upset if I was a player.

That said, this weekend we're going to Ocean City, MD, about 3 hours from where we live (we being me, my boss, my boss's son who goes to my school and is in my grade, and then this other guy who gradtuated from our school a few years back). We're staying overnight, and with a little help from God to keep rain away for a weekend, I can count on more $ over the same amount of time :D Also, unbeknownst to me until last weekend, the four tournaments I expected to do are more like six or seven, and then there's a few more off in the Fall!

That's very sweet, and plus, if the expensive airsoft gun plan falls through (I'm hoping to get a ~$400 airsoft gun with the money), the runner up is an iPod touch, so I'd end up waiting till Fall for the new line to be released, and then take a pick. That'd give me time to store a lot more money up to I wouldn't be breaking the bank on one big purchase as soon as I was able, which my dad does not often like me doing. The other thing I might do if I can't/don't get the airsoft gun is to upgrade the one I already have into a, say, 450 FPS gun instead of 350? That would make hitting long distance targets a bit easier, make the gun altogether more accurate, and of course, those soda cans would put up as much fight as warm butter to a knife.

Well, that's all I have to say on the matter. the matter being...summer. Which, if you still don't know, is the title of the eighth song on Sum 41's album All Killer No Filler. It's also one of my all time favorite songs ever, you should totally listen to it.

Until midweek next week, I've been irmeleeman5995 on SUMMER. BREAK. and that's a mouthful to say!

Yay for blogging. It's been a decent while, and not a whole lot has happened since my previous blog. Done some airsofting, passed 600 EXP in Halo 3, and just wrapping up school with 7 days of classes left before exams. That's a scary thought. I dunno about you guys, but I always feel like the year drags on forever, but when you look back on it, you can't help but feel like it was a fast ride.

Not that I'm complaining.

Over the summer, I have some plans. Pardon me now when I ramble.

GAMES: I have some games to get through. Some meaning a lot. Thank you, being grounded for the second semester on weekdays.

-Play through Bioshock. Easily the most disappointing of the ones I didn't get to play, chalk it up to coming out before Metroid Prime 3, then Halo, then I got grounded. I'll prolly play through it twice in a row, saving the Little Sisters once, not on the other.

-Finish Assassin's Creed. I got up to the last assassination before I returned it, and never got it back out to finish it. I know a bunch of people who own it, so when I finally get time, it won't take long.

-Finish Phantom Hourglass. Part of the reason I never did was cuz I got stuck, part was cuz of Halo (the day before I got it, I got PH) but then I got grounded. Sensing a pattern? I'll play it eagerly, I got unstuck and fell in love again.

-Play/get BWii and Advance Wars Days of Ruin

-Get No More Heroes

-Get the Orange Box

-Get or at least play Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

-Finish Tomb Raider: Anniversary

-Finish Rainbow Six Vegas 2's campaign (what can I say, I was always playing online with pals). Also, rank up to Elite.

-Play SSBB to DEATH

-Become readdicted to Halo 3

-Replay Twilight Princess. I wanna play through it for the first time in I guess more than a year, since the only time I ever played it, it was right as it came out, hype high. I wanna play it again now that the hype has settled. I also hope to do a LOT more in it than last time.

-Replay all three Metroid Prime games

Revisit a few other classics, and maybe pick up some games that I'm forgetting or haven't planned on yet. Oh hey, Super Mario Galaxy...there's one already...

MOVIES: Obviously there are movies to see in theatres, but there's also movies I need to buy and also movies that I'm ashamed for never seeing that I plan on.

-Saving Private Ryan (hides face in shame)

-Watch all Band of Brothers

-Watch Black Hawk Down. Read the book, never got around to watching the movie like I planned on.

-Watch about a million other things

Buy Transformers, PotC 2 and 3, and Spider-Man 3

See Hancock, Batman, prolly Iron Man again, Caspian, Indiana Jones, and Hulk (those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head)

BOOKS:

Ender's Game

Spider-Man books

Eragon and Eldest, to refresh my memory in time for the next book

New Alex Rider book

WRITING:

classified.

AIRSOFT:

-ammo, obviously

-work a bunch in June to earn enough for a Tokyo Marui PSG-1

-a seperate battery for my assault rifle

-a balaclava

Those are my main goals for summer. Feels good to write them all down somewhere, hopefully I'll accomplish all of them over the course of those lovely three months.

Until summer ( :D ) I've been irmeleeman5995 with 7 school days left, and that's a mouthful to say!

Well hello Gamespot. Or, shall I say, those of you who use Gamespot such as I, for I am not simply addressing the site. How's life for everyone? Good I hope? Neutral at worst?

Oh, by the way Gamespot, was my last blog not good enough for Soap Box? It was shorter and more concise than half the Soapboxes I read, and it was not mindless or fanboyish like most of the other GTA IV editorials you prolly read.

Life for me's good. I recently got the last chunk of airsoft stuff I'll be getting for a while. It's all quite awesome. I got:

A wonderful spring pistol, the MK23. It came with a spare clip and a *mock* silencer, and it's great. The clips are durable and weighted, which assists the rest of the gun in feeling dead real, and said clips also hold 25 BBs. Buy a two pack of mags like I did, and you've got four clips and 100 shots. It's great. The gun is also meticulously detailed, powerful, and accurrate for a 20 dollar gun. I'm severely impressed and I never wanted to be a Navy SEAL more in my life (it's...the pistol they use...).

I also FINALLY got my five pack of clips for my assault rifle. Having sold my original one to a friend, I went a good two and a half weeks without any way to shoot my gun. Now I have FIVE CLIPS. It's the coolest thing ever. It goes perfectly with my VEST!!

The vest is the last thing. And the vest is sweet. It was 45 bucks for a full sized, adjustable (and when I say adjustable, I mean..never mind I'll get to that later) HUGE vest. It has four main pockets for clips, three for pistol clips, two more on the belt for pistol clips, a holster on the left ribcage for a pistol with another pistol clip on THAT, an all purpose pouch, and a radio pouch. It's even got pouches inside it for holding maps. So I have my four assault rifle clips in a main pouch each, a walkie talkie in my radio pouch, two pistol clips in the big pistol mag ones, along with a speedloader in the other one, and then one clip in the pistol itself, and one on the pouch that's on the holster. The two on the belt are too small for my clips, so they don't have a use, yet...

Anyway, enough about that, before I go rambling on. At any rate, aside from ammo, I'm not buying anything for a while, until I get my +400 dollar sniper rifle in mid summer.

In terms of books lately, I'm just about to finish Endwar. Yup, Endwar. A novel based on the new Tom Clancy game. Did you all know there was one? My friend told me about it a little while back and let me borrow it, it's phenomenal. Read it if you care anything about TC games, modern war, or good action.

Movies? IRON MAN. Ah, what a fantastic movie. I was skeptical at first when I saw that teaser trailer way back. Skeptical becuz of the whole basis of the movie, captured and escaping by making that armor THING..well never fear, they pulled it off really well. I haven't been this surprised since Transformers. It was very similar in why I had been skeptical and the things the movie did to completely address potential dumb things. It's hard to explain...but yeah. ILM (Star Wars, Pirates, Narnia, Transformers, Harry Potter, etc...) did the CGI, some of their best work ever. The acting/casting was great, awesome characters, great plot, excellent fights, and of course the F-22 Raptor scene was awesome. On that note, I loved the stuff they threw in for the military junkie. (Iron Man)"What's the altitude record for the SR-71?" (most of crowd) "Huh?" (me) "DO IT, DO IT, DO IT!" (Iron Man) "Let's break it." (me) "YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!"

Ok, so maybe it didn't go quite like that, but that's paraphrasing. :P But yeah, things like that made the movie that much cooler. Oh, and Nick Fury? Sam Jackson? 'Nuff said, right? ;)

Gaming has been mixed up lately. Some Splinter Cell online here, some Vegas 2 online there, some Tomb Raider Anniversary this way, and even three Halo 3 matches that way. Three matches for the first time in forever, getting slaughtered, too, was all it took for me to be like, "DUDE I LOOOOOOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH!!" Over the summer I need to become readdicted to that game so I won't get killed every time I pick it up after a week or longer :P

That was it in a jiffy I suppose.

Oh right, I almost forgot. I need input.

I wanna write another story, and perhaps this should go on the Writers' Lounge but I'll throw it up here too. My options are:

A story about a deranged vigilante fed up with his Spam mail who tracks down the human being responsible for creating spam. Tone: Humorous

A story about my suburban neighborhood that suddenly becomes under attack by terrorists or some other enemy. I alone take up arms to fight them and see what happens. Tone: over the top

A story centered on the rising issues, conflicts, and debates about the "lines" to be crossed in the future of genetics. Don't be skeptical, I know a bit what I'd be talking about and it's very valid and at least interesting. Tone: Serious

A pseudo sequel to my "Africa Tale" that followed a team similar to the Rainbow teams in Tom Clancy's universe, only this one would be about a Splinter Cell type op. Tone: Serious

What do you think?

Until next time, I've been an irmeleeman5995 craving summertime, and that's a mouthful to say!

Here's GTA IV everyone. It's here, yes, I'm sure 99% of the video game playing world blew a blood vessel waiting in line for the game longer than they waited for the 360 or PS3 they're playing it on. And I'm sure that same population of gamers is pleased to see the game being the most critically acclaimed game to come about in years, possibly a generation of consoles. There's that small percentage though. That percentage that said to themselves "It's just GTA." It's just GTA. Guys. Guys. Please. You're just stealing cars.

Or are you? Throughout the years, GTA has been super popular among gamers. I remember how desperately I wanted to play the series after hearing about it from friends. Gory, violent, explicit, and you could do anything anywhere. But after playing Vice City for about a week, I realized something. For one, I hated the controls. When you go and compare them to games like Halo back then, where shooting is natural and precise, you wonder why you can't have the same feel on your city street with that shotgun of yours. Now, there's a difference between a clumsy controlling game and a game that feels unnecessarily clumsy. Said game also received high, high scores from everyone. That sort of thing bugs me.

Another thing I hated was the repetition. I've heard people knock games for being repetative, and GTA is just as bad. You're killing the same thugs, stealing the same cars from the same people, just on different streets with different buildings in the background. What I remember vividly about the experiences with Vice City and other GTA games since was that you had a basic objective, but it boiled down to, "Get a ride, go here, kill these guys, advance story through cutscene, repeat." Dunno about you, but I found myself wanting variety for a game so big. Why be big if the whole content is the same?

The third thing is linked to the second. The series lacks depth. Not to say that some mindless gaming isn't good or welcome now and then, but when websites consistently dole out high nines to a series faithfully, you should think there would be some profound, deep content found on the disc. When scores get that high, it stops becoming about fun and you need to look deeper into the quality of the game, which in my argument later I'll cover. GTA was never really quality for me. Metal Gear Solid with the excellent, superb stories is a prime example of profound, deep content. Yet what I find after popping in GTA games are poorly controlled crime simulators where you can do a lot but not get a lot out of doing it. Steal one car, you've stolen them all. The series loses novelty that way. Seeing things my way yet?

Other than that, the games just got cut and dry. Is it all wrapped up in a story? Yes. Is the story good? Hard to say. But the game, like any game, is all about how it's played, and GTA games just play the same thing over and over again. You're killing, stealing, buying, selling, driving, sprinting, blah blah blah.

So by now, you GTA fans are saying to yourselves, "Dude these games are awesome, and your repetition argument holds true for every game!" Sort of. I say sort of becuz in Metroid, you never solve the same puzzle twice, in Halo, no fire fights are alike, in Metal Gear Solid, nothing can reach you like the plot twists, and in Zelda, nothing's as rewarding as getting the last heart container in the entire game. But what does GTA have to offer? I hear the new one has helicopter rides, more sexuality, a cover system, and finally free aiming where it's five years overdue. So? Want cover? Play Vegas. Play Gears of War. Don't talk about this thing like it's brand new. And don't talk about free roaming, pretty graphics, big guns, explosions, hookers, and carjacking like they're brand new either, becuz they're as old as GTA III, and they just got prettier.

It comes back to depth again. If every game on it's own merit is repetative, it's about the approach, and GTA's approach is one that quickly gets old. Other games have strongsuits, and GTA's strongsuit is the part that never changes from series to series, which is the only thing to save it from becoming mediocrity. Don't change it, don't improve it, and the same thing looks worse and worse.

I'd like to close by saying this. I have no problem with the series. I know I like some pretty bad games that have bad reputations. I'm a sucker for Spiderman, ok? But the point here is that I'd be in the minority there. GTA people are in the majority. The vast, vast majority, and the fact that IV's getting tens around the board, even from the stingy Gamespot itself, leaves me a little confused. Assassin's Creed is new and fresh. Super Mario Galaxy was the rebirth of a venerable franchise and everyone loved it. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is possibly the best thing to happen to Nintendo in years with it's endless content and value, with new changes and additions to the series. Metroid Prime 3 was an innovative thrillride. Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 were both tightly controlled and addicting games with frantic gunfights and great level design that keeps the multiplayer always interesting. Call of Duty 4 was intense, looked great, and had a great sense of pace. Even Gears of War, of which I am not a huge fan, impresses me with some new gameplay mechanics and ridiculously advanced hardware. And, of course, Halo 3 was the best game I've ever played and a work of art in all meanings of the term. GTA IV?

Well, you all know what I think on the matter.

Alas, meleeman finally gets around to typing up a behemoth blog post that only gets longer the longer I put it off. So here it is in a very very condensed version...but either way it could easily end up as the single largest blog post ever...that I've typed or that you've read. Or I might get lazy and leave everything out. Or perhaps I'll just forget about EVERYTHING and resort to talking about very little. We'll find out...

First off, when I left off last time I was on my way to Guatemala. The trip was actually really really good, and I'll give you the skinny, although this could very well constitute it's own blog, and it would still be massive. However, here's the gist.

We went down (about 50 students and leaders from my school) to a school in Guatemala called Shalom school. It's a Christian school but they are very aware of the Jewish heritage of Christianity, as seen later on. But basically, we have sort of a thing going with the school there and send a missions team down every year. I'm the third and final kid in my family to go on the third trip, so there were people there who knew my other two brothers from last year or the year before that.

At any rate, we went down to help them build a plaza. The plaza will serve as a mingle area for before and after church and school services there. Before, two years ago, our team built a playground. Due to the gov't extending the highway though, it had to be moved to another location (which is a relief becuz we all had assumed it just got destroyed and trashed). Anyways, now they were left with all this dirt and free space and decided to build a two level structure. The bottom is a parking garage and also has a few rooms for who knows what, and the top level is the aforementioned plaza. The plaza at the start consisted of countless cells that were maybe 9 feet by 9 feet (so like 3 meters for you foreign guys). The cells were divided up by cement "walls" and all needed to be filled with dirt and later cement so begin making it a beautiful plaza. So we got the dirt from the bottom! We were shoveling dirt into buckets by the dozens and carrying them all up top to fill in these crazy holes. Most of the construction work centered around all that, with trucks filled with dirt coming later on to provide more dirt, along with cement and cinder block moving. There were other odd jobs like taking wooden support beams and removing the nails from them for reuse, for which me and four other worked for maybe 2 days of the construction. Lemme tell you guys...I am in love with crowbars after having to do that all day for two days. It was fantastic....hehehe. Anyways, the place was drastically, DRASTICALLY different when we left as it had been when we showed up...hundreds of wooden beams all ready for reuse, what could only be tons worth of dirt moved, and the equivalent of two weeks' work for the construction workers down there done in five days.

The trip was a week long, and the first five days were made up of constuction for a lot of the day, then serving the children lunch, and then splitting up to do vacation bible school, run a basketball clinic, or continue on doing construction. Only 8 of us did the latter, myself included. Oddly enough, working tirelessly for no rewards at all was the best part of the trip for me.

Saturday was a sight seeing day. One group went to Antigua to barter and buy things, (I got two more necklaces for my collection of necklaces from other places), but they were actually bought buy my dad and a friend. I went to a volcano, one which is active (a term not used loosely) and very arduous to climb. It's called Pacaya, and lemme tell you...that was an experience. For starters, the thing is active. That doesn't mean, "Zomg it erupted ten years ago and killed a TV crew" this is, "Holy crap every minute the thing rumbled and spat stuff out the top". It goes without saying that in prissy little America, they would never ever let you climb a volcano that erupted a month prior and killed 7 people. Pacaya had.

So let's do it.

The climb started with a hike of sorts up through a jungley forest thing. The soil had the consistency of sand, and I dunno if you know this, but hiking upwards for an hour through sand is not as easy as it sounds. The problem is, your feet slide down with every step up you take. This both makes it take longer than it would on solid ground and it also wears your feet out from moving more than you would think you have to. Ergo (hahaha I can't believe I just said ergo...someone smack me please), when you finally get to the climbing part, my feet already hurt and were not up to the task.

Too bad.

I'll try to describe what it's like for those of you who haven't already an idea. Imagine large, graspable chunks of black, porous rock. They essentially carpet the actual ground to the point where the 8 feet of volcanic rock is the ground. So you slap on some work gloves (handy, we were wearing them all week, fancy I should be needing them for a trek up a volcano) and begin using all fours to scale the biggest rock climbing wall you've ever born wittness to. This journey takes about two hours up, and it gets more difficult the farther up you go becuz rocks start getting smaller and no longer connected to the ground, or heavy enough to support you. Imagine climbing up a freaking wall of baseballs. Doable, but not necessarily easy. That...and the only other thing you can grab is sandy soil. If you fall, it's a long, painful tumble down thousands of rocks until you get a concussion as you build up speed and eventually hit a rock hard enough to knock you out or kill you.

Pleasant.

So you can imagine that by the two hour mark climbing this mountain, you're prolly scared out of your mind. I wasn't scared of the height or the view, but I was sure as hell scared of having nothing to grab onto when I inevitably slip. It almost happened to me in a few spots before I really got the hang of (no pun intended) climbing. I ended up looking like Spiderman, hunched down low, all fours. Worked like a charm.

Well anyways, once you get up top, it's basically what you'd expect. There were rocks flying out, but no lava. Our translater/guide for the week, Ivan, who has climbed it four times, got hit in the arm with a piping hot rock. He looks down and goes, "What bit me...OH!" Hilarious...But if you're wondering, no I didn't get to look into the crater, but it was too smokey to see any lava down below, although one guy said the lava that he caught a glimpse of was like 200 feet down, not anywhere near the top like you'd imagine. Or maybe you wouldn't imagine. Perhaps you're smarter than I. Oh well.

The climb down was even harder. Sure, you got to stare out at the most breathtaking view of anything I've ever seen first hand, but one slip and you're done for...and when you're going down, you fall head first.

Lemme tell you, there was nothing easy or comofrting about climbing down a volcano. I didn't cry, have an anxiety attack, or anything like that, but it's more or less nervewrecking. But as with the climb up, I developed a useful talent that could undoubtedly stem from any number of action movie/game sequences. Dig one heel in, bring the other heel up, and slide, slide, slide. I built up speed pretty high at points, actually, and it's exhileratingly fun. It makes no logical sense that it's how I eventually became comfortable climbing down, but all you gotta do is reach and and grab something on your side to slow you down or adjust course quickly and you're all set. Really cool.

Before I babble on and on, I'll wrap up the volcano by saying that I never got to see the lava. There were rivers of it, weaving in and out of the rock piles, and it's dangerous to go wandering over cuz all you do is step on a rock, flip it over, and bam, lava exposed. So initially Ivan didn't let us go, and when we finally gave up, he eventually sent a group of people to get a closer look without telling a few people, myself included. A shame, really.

GOODNESS so much about the volcano...I seriously could go on and on...my skit, talking in Spanish, really good food, quality time with awesome people, our freaking AMAZING bus driver whom I very much hope to see again, and of course all the nice guns we saw. Oh man, and the medical clinic the church has established...and the completed houses that the team last year worked on...ooh jeez I have NO room for all of this. I must move on.

In terms of current stuff, there's a few things worth mentioning. Report cards came in, and I did very well. All A's, save an 88 in math of which I personally was relieved. Dad...might not be as much, but I haven't asked him about getting games back for weekdays yet. That's becuz he went to NAB, an annual radio conference in Vegas of which he goes *almost* every year (cancer year with mom was the exception) and got back friday, and I can play games friday afternoon through sunday, so I haven't had a need to ask him about weekday gaming yet.

As far as weekend gaming goes, it's still all Vegas, I haven't Brawled in weeks. As I think about it though, I did Ace Combat 6 a little bit lately, just to kill some time (and fighter pilots). I've been reading Hellboy comics lately, and boy are those things good. I never finished Catch 22 and had to return it to the library, and I finally got around to starting the novel about Endwar which so far is delightfully good. Movies lately have been Lord of the Rings extended edition movies, The Departed, I caught Shoot 'Em Up a weekend or two ago...and that's about it. Airsoft has been especially awesome in recent time since my return from Guatemala.

I got a reflex sight, aka a red dot sight, for my gun, and anyone who's played CoD 4 or Rainbow Six prolly knows what I'm talking about. I finally got to test it the other night, and boy is is something.

See, what happened was, I took my gun to Matt's new house to show it to him and it died. So I came back home and realized I had left my charger at Ben's house a while back, and upon finally getting it to me, it had been destroyed in his backpack. So, no big deal, six bucks online, order it, shows up in time for another weekend get together...

...and it's the wrong size plug. Didn't work. SO I ordered another, making sure before we ordered it that it would work, and it finally shows up maybe a week later. All the while, I've been waiting another week AFTER returning from Guatemala, which was two weeks after I had ordered it, for the sight to show up in the first place. After all these crazy unfortunate events, I finally got the stars aligned so I could try out my shiny new toy, and boy is it. I haven't calibrated it yet, it was night time out the first time I used it, so I couldn't see how my shots were doing, and I still consistently hit a torso sized target from 150 feet away. It's amazing, even at the minimum hop up setting. Then there's also my sling I got, which is very useful, keeps the gun on my back or slung across my chest while freeing up my hands. Excellent.

For future purchases, I'm looking at a pack of five clips, a vest, a pistol, extra clips for that pistol, a speedloader, and a few other things. That'll all get bought prolly tomorrow, as my dad unfortunately got sick on his trip and still is. So he hasn't been up to doing anything, even ordering his son some stuff off teh intarwebz :( I AM paying you know, dad...:D

On that note, my job filming sports games has resurfaced this and last weekend as I filmed a basketball camp that my employer (ex-NBA player) runs. 20 and 25 bucks, respectively. Over the summer, he's also doing a lacrosse tournament every weekend in June, 12 games a tourny, 10 bucks a game, four tournies....lot's of cash for ol' meleeman. Which may or may not go towards that fancy sniper rifle I linked you to in the last blog :D

Jeez...I think I still have things to cover. Will this fit in the word limit for posts? Will I regret spending more than an hour writing this blog? Is it ALL FOR NOTHING?

Well...would I even know if it was?

....Right, that's what I thought too.

And oh yeah, same thing about typos/overall lack of proofreading that I mentioned from my last blog holds true of this as well...I am not. Reading. This. Of course, I'll read it later and edit it to fix three errors here and there and...well yeah.

Until next time, I've been a.......a......I've been irmeleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!

Hola los GS miembros, voy a Guatemala lunes! For those of you who don't speak Spanish, that means, hey GS members, I'm going to Guatemala this Monday! (you would leave out este, right? Just, voy a Guatemala lunes?)

Yup, it's a missions trip for school. I'm not dreading it anymore, and it'll prolly be an enriching and enlightening experience. I'm in a skit, I'm filming the trip (that's if we can produce a camera...), and doing other assorted activities. We leave dark and early monday morning and get back dark and late the next monday, so bye bye Spring break. No matter, this just means I'm not missing classes and making up work during the trip, so no complaints here.

However, if one were to have a complaint, it'd be cuz I got Rainbww Six Vegas 2. This game is unbeleivably awesome, and they addressed a plethora of VERY large and VERY small issues with the last game, and I was happily grateful for the improvements. Pardon me while I delve right into my impressions.

The gameplay is as solid as ever, with a few control changes (all for the better) and a few major gameplay tweaks. Most notable is the OMG THANK YOU FOR ADDING THIS UBISOFT sprint. Much like CoD 4's, you have a short burst where you lower your gun and haul off in a refreshingly fast speed. Even before CoD came out, I had wanted a sprint in the first Vegas, becuz in real life, when a grenade drops onto your foot, you aren't going to prance away at a trot while you are shredded to pieces by shrapnel. Instead, you would MOVE YOUR ***. In this game, you can 8) Much obliged, Ubisoft.

Another characteristic from CoD that I still had wanted before it had come out was shooting through wall capability. They took a much more realistic approach than CoD, with different guns having different penetration rates, as well as materials that weren't just "shoot throughable" or "not shoot throughable". However, the result turned out the slightest bit underwhelming, with some materials still posing the "I know you're there, I'm trying to shoot you through this wall, and it won't work" problem. It's better than nothing though, and with the new rewards system, it's especially satifying to shoot some guy through three layers of wood boxes and targets.

That last one is in fact the last major thing I was gonna bring up. The ranking system, borrowed from CoD as well, is in fact improved over it (so I'm told). But basically, you rank up midgame for killing, but you also get bonuses for doing certain things to kill them, which in turn increases one of three categories of stats. These categories will over time improve to unlock weapons or give drastic EXP boosts, which are the main way to accelerate through the straight up ranks. I like the system, it's more rewarding, as you don't have to finish a match to be rewarded, you don't have to win to still get a butt load of EXP, and you also can use the bonuses themselves as official bragging rights. The one beef I have is that the bonuses don't "stack". So say I killed an opponent through cover, at a far distance, with a headshot (all bonuses on their own merit, then I'd only get the +5 for the far distance, but the +2 for the headshot and +5 for through cover wouldn't count. That said, I still appreciate the new system a lot more, and it's most certainly for the better.

Ah, but I'm not even close to covering all I wanted to say about the gameplay and I must move on :P The graphics are as I had hoped--very nice. VERY nice. They used the same engine from the last time around, so they spent all their time fine tuning and tweaking everything to just look that much better, and it all does. The other big thing is that multiplayer matches graphics standards are up to par with single player, which is great. Other benefits of using the same engine have been improved AI, much MUCH less bugginess, faster loading times, and smoother framerate. And oh man, you should see those frag grenades go off...

As far as sound goes, it's quite good stuff, though not much has really changed, and most new guns recycle sounds from old guns. It's a paradox though, in a game, the guns can only sound that much different, but in real life, all guns sound the same. LOUD.

Anyway, that's my slim overview of Vegas 2 so far. Maps are fairly good, with none really standing out over others, though there are stars, there's no replacing good ol' Calypso. Ubi, you guys seemed to listen to me and my friends talk about your game online and address every little thing, can you PLEASE bring Calypso back?? You brought Streets back!

In other news, life's been good. Matt is moving from fourish hours away to one, so I'll see him a lot more in the VERY near future. I'm still reading Catch 22, but I haven't been able to read it at all in school cuz people yell at me for laughing at it, so I decided I'd read it on the flights for Guatemala and finish it up. As far as TV and movies go, I haven't watched much lately with Brawl and now Vegas, but I did watch a little bit of Bourne Ultimatum today, and I have to say, the cinematography in all of it's atrocity didn't bother me like it did the first time, in theatres. And of course, airsoft has come to a halt since I'm actually out of BBs and haven't bought more. Thats becuz I finally settled on the reflex sight and sling I want for my gun and ordered them. The five pack of clips is out of stock on the site, and I found the vest I want once I get said pack of mags, so I'll soon have five extra clips and a huge vest for airsofting like crazy. Soon. But no idea when.

But I think I may or may not end up getting those things, or at least not the vest, for a while. Becuz among three choices for a new gun I want, I've decided the one I want the most of the three is also the most expensive--+400 dollars, actually. I've seen the prices for it run the gammut, but I recently found it for 350 bucks! So I have 150 ish left over, so I'm hoping if I can get jobs filming lacrosse games like the football games earlier last year, I'd be squared away...in the near future. Who knows, is it a crazy dream? Maybe. But in complete honesty, I don't think so :D I mean really, there's a lot of games I want to play when I get some free time, say, summer, but most of them I can procure, be it borrowing, renting, buying cheap, or I already own it, so I really have no games coming up I need money saved for. So, PSG-1, here I come... (note, that link is not the cheap place, but has the best pics ever). Also, if you REALLY want to, you can look on Youtube for "Tanker Flanker"'s review of his PSG-1, in three parts.

Well, i guess that's my closing of the blog. Happy Easter everyone, I really like that Jesus guy for dying for me, and then he freaking came back to life? Winner!

*disclaimer* This blog was completed at 12:57 local time, and I am not going to proofread it. As such, it is subject to run ons, typos, other assorted errors, incomplete or unclear thoughts, and repeated statements.

Until next time, I've been a quite the long blog writing irmleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!

Hey all, here's my FC, register me ASAP and reply with yours

3995-6219-1145

:D

Ok, I'm back, this time with the intention on finishing the blog I started. :lol:

So like I was saying, I went to Ben's house along with Steve. The only gaming we did was a little bit towards the end of me doing CoD 4 campaign. Good times. The rest of the time, we did stuff with airsoft.

Indoors (in his basement) we shot half sized soda cans, two liter bottles, and a few assorted other bottles. They were a good forty feet away and we had fun calibrating their scopes and adjusting the hop ups at different ranges. We would set up the two dozen soda cans and the like all over the place and in stacks and stuff, and it was wicked fun. I even taped one down and let my automatic tear through it--literally. I'll have to show you guys the picture.

Outdoors, we had a brief battle, them vs. me. I had to use semi auto (pull trigger for each shot) on my gun though to even the odds. It was hard though, cuz it was raining so conditions weren't exactly favorable for accurracy. We ended up setting up the cans on his fence post while hiding out in a shed in his backyard. It had a table, windows, and chairs, so they set their rifles up on bipods and we all took turns shooting the cans. We also went out for various distances to test our rifles' hop ups at different ranges, as well as some fun sniping competitions where we lightly jogged back and forth while the sniper tried to hit the person. Very, very difficult in the rain.

Well, that was Ben's house in a nutshell (literally, I could have done a HUGE blog on just that visit) but I'm cutting it short for your guys' sakes.

Anywho, as if I needed to tell any of you, Brawl came out. It was almost harder to believe than when Halo 3 or the Wii came out. Here's the amusing anecdote behind my Brawl history before I give you all my impressions.

I was planning on doing the midnight release, as well as the Gamestop tournament, not with any hopes of winning, but just to see what happened. The plan was that my brother Kyle, after getting off his shift at work at midnight, would come home and take me out. That was before I learned that the tournies started at 10, not midnight. Well, whatever, no big loss. The tourny didn't mean much to me. But when Kyle came home, to make a long story short, he basically told me he wouldn't take me becuz we weren't allowed to go out without having cleared it with my parents. So, really, we hadn't, so I couldn't go. Bummer.

The next morning was church, so after church my other brother told me he'd take me to pick it up right after. Well he got a headache and wanted to go home, and then I had to go to skit practice (for my Guatemala trip), so the first brother agreed to take me once he picked me up after the practice. Well, luckily for me, the 2 hour practice lasted for a half hour, and he came, picked me up, and with a funny incident at the cash register, I had my copy of Brawl.

So, I'll go in chronological order:

Put disc in Wii. Thoughts: FINALLY.

Wii System Update. Thoughts: Sigh...whatever.

Game starts up. Thoughts: Loading time? Long loading time? I hope there aren't a lot of these...

Game video starts. Thoughts: Ah, I always love these. Ooh, this one's especially long. I like it.

At last, menu comes into view. Thoughts: Alright, what to do first?

Hehehe, enough of that. At any rate, I started out with classic, obviously. Character Samus. Difficulty normal. Three lives.

I started out. I was pleased. Not much had changed from what I could tell. The main and really only difference was something I had heard a LONG time ago is true. And that is that they slowed the game down. Drastically.

Well, not drastically. But to a hardened Melee player who's used to the frantic, reflex intensive matches of old, things were certainly paced differently in this one. I have to admit I was noticeably getting destroyed by the normal difficulty, and ended up needing to continue at Master Hand. After I continued though, I took him to town. It was pretty sweet. I still stumbled with the pace change for what seemed like another hour before really getting the feel for it.

Anyway, that and the frequent loading times are the only thing I found annoying. And I've gotten used to the pace now, though I still like Melee's frantic pace better. Maybe that's just cuz this is new. Also, while I knew replays could only be up to three minutes in length, I thought you could choose 3 minute segments of games that were too long. Nope. If the game is 3 minutes and 1 second long, tough luck. A minor inconvenience...it's not a deal breaker like it would have been in Halo 3, for example.

On the flip side, know what I LOVE? Snapshots in any mode (er, almost any mode), any given time, at a simple pause button. It's really a great tool, accessible, practical, so on and so forth. But it still suffers from Melee's issue, which is the pitiful zoom. I really wish you could zoom in farther than what they allow in Brawl, but oh well, better than nothing.

Onto the rest of the impressions. I'd first like to say I love the maps I've seen. I played pretty much all of them, and not a single one stuck out as one I'd like to avoid in the future. Melee's stages certainly did not have that view from this player. I think these stages are very mixed up, decently sized, greatly built and modeled, I love the backdrops, and the art design itself is just very impressive. Destructable enviornments are also finally here, and I approve.

I've played as Zero Suit Samus guys. Can I tell you something? My first game playing as her, I had no idea what I was doing, and I still destoryed the computer guys I was playing. She's a beast, and I can't wait to master her, as she seems very devastating. Other than that, I've played as most of the characters I currently have, which is the normal set and then C. Falcon, Marth, Olimar and maybe another that I'm forgetting. Wait, was Olimar an unlockable? Now I can't even remember...

The ones I found pleasantly surprisingly good are Pit and Meta Knight. Ike is also very good, and Link is my favorite Smash Bros. Link of them all. His moves seem more powerful, more deliberate, it's hard to describe but his sword moves at least outcl@ss the other two in my opinion.

Lastly, I played maybe an hour of Subspace Emmisary. I enjoy it a good amount, and while at times it might seem boring or repetative, my only real complaint is how broken up the game play is with constant cutscenes (however good they might be) and constant door opening. Anyway, I'm just waiting for my Samus to get involved...

Well, I think that's it for now. Call me dumb for not having my FC up for you guys, but there won't be much point seeing as how I can't play again till Friday after school. Just leave me yours in a comment and I'll add you all when I can.

Until next time, I've been irmeleeman5995. And Brawl is finally here.

Hello GS. I haven't had much to blog about in a while, so sorry for the absence. But I'm back with a large portion of meleeman blog.

Basically, the only stuff I'm gonna bother talking about will be what's happened in the last 24 hours, hehehe...

I went to Ben's house with Steve yesterday for another airsoft visit. It was even better than last time. More on that later though, because as a matter of fact:

I have chores to do

A math review sheet to do

A term paper rough draft to type :|

And a certain Smash Bros. sequel to pick up tonight :D x1,000,000

Thanks to the suddenly packed schedule, I am forced to cut this blog short as of now. I'll finish it tomorrow if I can pull myself away from Brawl.

Why did I even bother typing this blog?

See you all tomorrow.

Until tomorrow, I've been a BRAWL IS FINALLY COMING OUT meleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say (the best mouthful ever)