I AM NO LONGER RELEVANT

i graduate in one month
i am going to college afterwards
i have been playing a lot of starcraft for the past year
supnice

who grossly misinterpreted the title of the GameFAQs list 'top 10 pantless protagonists'. because this seriously wasn't what i was expecting, or hoping for, or whatever.

maybe i'm just tired. math final tomorrow. hell yeah for being underprepared and without much sleep. lets do dis

for whatever reason, a while ago i got really into the idea of playing a bunch of quote-scary-unquote games over the summer. mostly while the starcraft ii beta is down, i guess. :P
although i'm probably going to (probably) wind up with a (most likely part-time) summer job this year, providing that i pass my driver's test in a couple weeks, i intend to play a hefty amount of video games into perilously early hours of the morning. and i'm sorta kinda into the idea of playing a bunch of seriously unsettling games and maybe (just maybe) broadcasting them over xfire, or recording my playthroughs and editing them until i'm left with a selection of amusing reactions and frightened conversations with myself in the dark. it's a tentative notion but maybe it'll pay off. or maybe it'll fail quite epically, as i'm pretty reliable in that field. or maybe i'll prove myself to be amongst the laziest human beings on the planet yet again, and neglect to touch any video game at all.

so, any suggestions for games that will force me to sleep with the light on out of sheer crippling terror? (preferably on pc, i don't care how antiquated the game is - but i also own a ps2 and an xbox 360. and a ds, but yeahhhhhh.) or perhaps you could help me prioritize a hasty list i compiled maybe a month ago to give me recommendations on which games i should play first? as really, i'm open for anything at this point!

here's a few i have my eyes on. again i'm not quite sure how conventionally 'scary' some of these games are, as my knowledge regarding some of the more obscure games is pretty scant, but yeah. would appreciate any help or pointers in the right direction.

condemned (both of em. i've spoiled a fair few scary moments via youtube, but i'm sure it'll still freak me out)
dead space (looks completely insane. i'll probably get this for 360, since my pc won't handle it very well)
silent hill 4 (i have never played any silent hill game. if there is one better than this, help me out)
doom 3: res of evil (doom 3 grew on me over the years. as of right now this'll probably be the first game i play. convince me otherwise!)
project origin (big fan of the original F.E.A.R., but have procrastinated this for so long)
call of cthulhu: dark corners of the earth
s.t.a.l.k.e.r./call of pripyat
system shock 2
aliens vs predator 2
penumbra: overture/penumbra: black plague (i know nothing about these, but they're apparently rather awesome survival horror)
clive barker's undying

aiiiight that's like all i got. school needs to be out already.

it's safe to say that i'll seriously be sort of empty when the starcraft ii beta ends.

so addictive.
tis a shame that the game doesn't come out till july 27th, since that puts two months between me and a copy of the game. the beta has been quite a ride - i've probably hit upwards of 100 games so far and i intend to play it to the fullest extent between now and its closure on june 7th. really impressive stuff. i'd rant on and on about what i like and what i don't like about the beta, but quite frankly i think that'd be tedious. whatevs. great stuff.

and if you have a spare five minutes, you could read the painkiller review i posted a while ago but forgot to mention. s'at the bottom of the page, and although it's not really that great, i figured i should just point it out. it's quite a historic occurrence considering i've been absent from the whole reviewing scene for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.

anyways, laters. hope to be round here a lot more soon

p.s. im a zerg player. just in case anyone was curious. i doubt it though

well, first things first: ap exams are DONE. for anyone who cares, i slogged through literature & composition, us history, and biology, and i think i stand a 50% chance of failing the latter two. i chalk that down to a massive neglect of all things studying, although i think my awesome performance on lit/comp sort of compensates. or maybe not. my gpa was struggling for a while there too - at one point i think i was way down at a D+ in ap biology and maybe a C+ in math, but i miraculously managed to solve both issues with my usual minimal display of effort.

which means it's time to forcibly shove studies to the back of my head again, and focus on some video games for a while.

one thing i've been spending increasing amounts of time on is the starcraft ii beta. despite the fact that my race of choice, zerg, has been undergoing some heavy nerfing lately, and are undoubtedly the weakest/blandest race at this point, i'm sticking with them through thick and thin. prior to the recent database wipe, i was sitting in the lower echelons of the 1v1 silver league and right now i'm top 10 in bronze. i may not be a very good player, but it's a fun game nonetheless. i'm really impressed with battle.net and it's just generally going to be an amazing game upon release, at least in the online realm.

i've also been playing rollercoaster tycoon 2, one of the most enduring games of my youth. i've been a fan of the series since i was about 10 and rct2 remains the most enjoyable, balanced game of the franchise. i'm still every bit the perfectionist as i was years ago, so it's a really fun time waster. that game requires a lot of hard work, but the payoffs are comparatively major so it's just a really absorbing game. i'm sure anyone else who is familiar with any tycoon game knows what i'm talking about.

lastly, i've installed the original kotor and i'm gearing up for a replay of it. me and my friend got to talking about that game at lunch about a week ago and he's been ditching school to play it. that really incited some fiery, inhuman desire for me to play the game sooo yeah that's on the list too.

i have other crap to talk about but the crap in question wouldn't really make sense in this particular blog so they can wait for a while. hope everyone's good and stuff.

i think ive been on level 43 for like a year. does anyone know the action replay codes for gamespot

here is a picture of justin bieber

i have another ap test tomorrow that i will probably fail so i'll elaborate later

eyyyyyyyy sup gamespot :/

here's the deal - i'm feeling puzzlingly sentimental and so i've been trudging through old pokemon ost's on youtube for the last little while, as is per usual for me on yet another predictably dull saturday night. obviously part of my incentive for immersing myself in ye video game tunes of old™ is that pokemon heart gold/soul silver, the remakes of my all-time favorite handheld games, are to be released in little more than a week, and at this point i'm hard pressed to think of an instance in which my excitement levels have been this staggeringly high. i'm well aware that several phenomenal games have been released recently, and that many more are yet to come - final fantasy xiii, most chiefly, but also heavy rain, bioshock 2, mass effect 2, god of war 3, portal 2, crysis 2, and many, many other games with senseless numbers attached to the ends of their names. yet quite frankly i don't particularly care for any of them at this point, and after a brief brainstorm i've found the only justification for my apathy is this: i've realized that pokemon heart gold and soul silver may be the last truly great pokemon game. or at least, MY last pokemon game. and so all other priorities are discarded, and all gives way to the almighty ash ketchum and his charismatic critter companions.

and it's a strange feeling, to say the least, and i'll start by explaining why i even reached this somewhat pessimistic conclusion in the first place. quite frankly, looking back over pokemon diamond and pearl, i'm left with an overwhelming sense of disappointment. the main quest itself was somewhat stale and unmemorable, the world in which it takes place was rather devoid of any real spark*, there was little to no challenge in any aspect of the gameplay, very few of the new pokemon were aesthetically appealing, and to top it all off, the traditional 'rival' character wasn't even a douchebag. the musical score didn't fill me with that old thirst for adventure**, the main character sprite looked like even more of a mongoloid than usual, and the majority of the touchscreen functionalities felt tacked-on and gimmicky.

* right now, given a large enough piece of paper, i could sketch out rather accurate world maps from pokemon red, blue, yellow, gold, silver, crystal, ruby, sapphire, and emerald, complete with town names, route numbers, and cave names. i could probably even draw little stick figures where the motionless in-game trainers stand. however, i can't even remember what the first village was called in pokemon diamond.

**quite frankly i can't recite any of the songs now even after hundreds of hours of gameplay (largely due to the endgame, where i spent long hours training pokemon to the point where they actually met my scrupulous competitive standards)

don't get me wrong, though. pokemon diamond is still pokemon. the battles, forever the core of any pokemon installment, remain fundamentally unchanged. you still aimlessly wander around caves and cities, interacting with people whose entire lives seem devoted to standing in one place. you still pick up the long-since-discarded items that better trainers deemed unworthy of their backpacks. you still have to collect 8 badges, you still have to dethrone a not-so-elite four, and there's still the overpowered legendary pokemon that everyone likes to train to level 100 and chalk their subsequent victories down to skill.

but i guess if pokemon diamond/pearl were as essentially conservative as they were, yet they still don't feel like pokemon, no wholly new chapters in this extraordinary series are going to be any different. the trio of starter pokemon will get progressively lamer, the male character will continue insisting on wearing the most ridiculously oversized hats of all time, the new species in the pokedex will all be named by pulling letters out of a top hat (drifblim? seriously?) and eventually the developers will run out of tree genuses to name the professors after. pokemon will be doomed to evolve (hehe), so to speak, as the gaming industry continues its own bafflingly swift advancements and leaves pokemon's ailing mechanics in the dust. and, at the risk of sounding like a delusional fanboy, i don't think it would be pokemon anymore.

and so my cynical soul is eager for a last hurrah, and there's no more jubilant a hurrah in the pokemon saga than pokemon gold and silver. in fact, it's less of a hurrah, and more of a passionately burning celebration of everything video games have ever meant to me. since pokemon fire red and leaf green were released, adding a more colorful palette and an updated framework to an already top-notch video game, i've harbored a hope that one day gold and silver would follow suit, embellished with lavish new hues and given more modern undertones. and here i am, days away from what could well end up as the destroyer of my grade point average and what little shreds of social life i still possess.

sure, if i were a more disparaging person than i already am, i'd simply dismiss this remake as the flailing last effort of a series that has been short on ideas for years, but i simply can't. and that's because the one word that most fittingly describes pokemon, and the one word that legitimizes the reasons that i'm still (despite everything) in love with this series, is 'nostalgia'. quite plainly, pokemon diamond and pearl don't compare to the pokemon games of old because they can't elicit the same degree of giddy, youthful affection from me. they don't remind me of the gloriously simplistic days of elementary school, where words like 'responsibility' weren't in my vocabulary and when the all-too-distant future didn't really matter as long as i had my morning tv shows and a skateboard. on the technical standpoint, i can't deny their status as very well made games, and they don't tamper with the pokemon formula too much, but they just don't have that fabled x factor. and since that x factor seems so inextricably entwined with wistful memories of a simpler time - as cheesy as that sounds - they'll never be the same as the ancient cIassics. sinnoh won't ever be johto or kanto in the same way as the umpteenth series of pokemon won't ever reach the heights of the first. there is no such thing as an adult ash ketchum.

and so i am delighted that i'm going to be able to revisit my childhood one last time. i've been listening to the heart gold/soul silver soundtrack, and although at first i thought the remade tunes would sound like mercilessly deconstructed versions of the originals, almost all of them remain faithful to the source material. consequently, i almost vomited out of sheer nostalgia. i also discovered that there's an item embedded somewhere in the game's depths that actually replaces these overhauled ds tunes with the bleep-bloop originals back from the game boy. i seriously want to shake hands with whoever proposed that idea over at game freak.

i'm sort of exhibiting my tendency to ramble (as usual) so i'm going to cut it short. if there's one thing i meant to say in this blog, it's that i'm honestly looking forward to delving back into arguably THE most defining video game of my childhood. i'm looking forward to simply standing in new bark town and revelling in a wave of fiery reminiscence. i'm looking forward to playing a game that strikes the perfect balance between whimsical familiarity and surprising new additions. i'm looking forward to a game that will provide me with much-needed escapism from a world that proves itself to be more and more bewilderingly complex with each passing week. i'm looking forward to a game that, in redelivering me to the dusty corners of my brain that i haven't occupied since i was about 11 years old, will aid me in my never-ending quest to defy the concept of growing up. and, when it comes down to it, that's what pokemon has always been about.

is annoying

word

just saying - i'm back on xbox live. for real this time. it's been like a year and a half. gamertag is still ok typewriter, add me if you like, whatevs. i'm lonelyyyy etc. plea for help attention whatever come play halo with me i'm a noob

later

so i'm online on gamespot, what a novelty.
momentous occasion right here, folks - forget e3, for i'm actually here for once. /modest

slowly becoming disconnected with the gaming world - in fact i didn't know of e3's existence until about 2 days ago. i saw a few new trailers on, ahem, gametrailers, however due to my evident lack of funds i will probably not be able to buy said games. and even if i had the money, i'd probably spend it on meaningless and trivial crap anyway.

my now playing list still says i'm playing final fantasy x. nope. i don't think so, man. i've finished that game about 4 times now. the only games i've played recently have been guild wars and a little bit of diablo ii again, and i figure the experiences associated with each game are self-explanatory enough for me to not spend a paragraph drooling over them. i figure this blog has seen more than enough vacuous praise bestowed upon both games

also, summer is coming. yessss. 4 DAYS

how's things
leave love
etc
expecting 3 comments or less plx