I have been absent from GS for quite a long time, not because I hate the site or disagree with current events, but due to life issues. Granted I never was truely gone but for the most part I would simply read new articles but would never log in. In my absence I came to a life changing epiphany that many of you are familiar with and now I can include myself in your ranks. I accept all types of gaming platforms and don't judge if you like PS better than Xbox or even if you like the Wii thats your personal preference and you are more than welcome to have it. I was mostly (95%) an Xbox player and thats pretty much where it stood, if you wanted to game with me you needed Live.

About 8 months ago I tried to play Slender on my PC and to my horror it wasn't the game that was scary it was the fact that my PC was so sluggish that two steps forward seemed to take 3 seconds to complete (even on low settings). This irritated me enough that I decided then and there that I needed a new pc. I looked around and saw Alienware had a base pc for $600. My head was flooded with so many of your previous comments about how much cheaper it was to build your own rig vs buying a pre-made one. With that I made Newwegg.com my friend and encharted on my first gaming rig build. After about 2 months I finally built my pc (I had one minor hiccup with a wrong power supply) and immediately went to CanIrunit and looked at all the new games coming out to see how well I did. I can proudly say (at the moment) nothing even closly strains my build even at ultra settings. I am certain I paid about $650 for everything, which is more than Alienwares, but I have a pc that is about 10x better than theirs.

With my graphics card I got 3 free games, Bioshock Infinite, Tombraider, and Farcry Blood Dragon. In redeeming the codes it reintroduced me to another old friend....Steam. After playing and beating the first two mentioned games I found myself frequenting Steams site and picking up great games ,such as Boarderlands 2, for $5. At first I fighted admitting it, but now I can proudly state that what started as an annoyance led to this Xbox only user to becoming officially a 95% PC gamer. I still play Xbox but i am mostly on Steam anymore. When the huge debate of Xbox One vs PS4 started I juat sat there and thought, "Huh, I don't want either. My PC can do way more than either of them."

I know i'm late to the party on this but I recently got the time to play the game I Am Alive the whole way through. All in all I thought the game was really good and from my point of view have no complaints about the game play at all. My problem was, and as I see others agree, that the story really didn't have an ending. After spending 9 hours scouring the city for every thing I could find I was greeted with an abrupt jolt of an ending that harkened back to a bad experience in my past. I got Marvel's Ultimate Alliance the day it was released and played it for days on end. When I finally got to the Dr Doom boss fight I laid that final blow on his metal dome only to have the game revert back to the main menu screen. Apparently my disk (or version of the disk) came with a permanent glitch that when you beat the final boss it didn't show the cut scene ending it just kicked you back to the title screen.

When I finished I Am Alive my thoughts rushed back to that day and I kinda was left there stunned (and not for a good reason IE Red Deads ending). I immediately thought did I do something wrong?, is my version of the game broken?, did my ending depend on how many survivors I helped? (I helped 15 out of what was it 25?) So immediatly I jumped on google and found none of my questions were founded. Everyone had the same crappy no-ending that I had just experienced. I got into the rumor mills of people saying what the ending meant. Ranging from It's his wife watching the video and he's dead (my knee jerk reaction), it's his daughter watching his video reliving the past after he lived his life, it's a stranger who found his stuff, and the most absurd he is shacking up with the chick and he is out and about (mind you without his life saving gear). I only see 3 plausible answers to the ending and im racking up the others as peoples wild imaginations (especially the him hooking up with that woman idea).

First the obvious answer would be in fact that he is dead and a survivor found him and his stuff. Some claim they saw his stuff and a corpse in that cut scene but I did not see the corpse; why would she drag a corpse back to her house/tent? This theory may fit just for the fact that the developers would want to prove that just how hard it is to survive in this survival game in that Adam wasn't superman and even he can fall to the woes of the current world. I just don't see his wife being the one watching the camera at the end especially since some sluthes have pointed out his wife had brown/black hair in the photo but the woman at the end has blonde hair. His daughter is no where to be seen so either it isn't his wife or we are to infer that his child didn't make it.

The next theory is it's his daughter watching the film. This could be the case but I highly doubt that in a world where everything sucks that after your dad risks life an limb to successfully find you and your mother that you would want to watch a video that is more depressing. I guess some people do that kind of thing but I just don't see it fitting in with the story or adding anything to it. This game isn't Limbo and I don't think the developers would beg their audience to just pick apart the different caveats of the game to get to this realization. While the ending did definately open itself up to the possiblity of a sequal I don't foresee it going down the road of us following Adams daughter and her journeys.

The final theory is my own mixed with one that is seemingly widespread, it is his stuff but he isn't dead. Many have the idea that he is in a refugee/survivor camp and he is abscent but not dead (notice I keep shying away from saying anything but "not dead" since this is important. If my point isn't clear it will be shortly). While many games have no problem with killing off the hero at the end this game just felt different. I assume that Henry (wheel chair guy) is dead (none of the gangs that found me had any intent of just keeping me hanging around, and in this world its not to easy to deliver randsom notes to people) but they don't tell you that. I think there is (or was supposed to be) more to the ending it just never got developed since the title was on shaky ground of ever getting developed in the first place.

My epiphany came to me when all I did was think about what game I was playing. You get the mother and daughter on the boat, you record your message to your wife that you are going to find her and then the game cuts to a woman crying watching your camera and has all your stuff there making you beleive that Adam is dead but in fact (here it come the important fact I mentioned earlier) you are playing the game.......I AM ALIVE! Never is there a question in the game if your are alive or dead (your wife beleives your alive) so why call the game I Am Alive when it isn't really needed. Who the woman is that is watching your video, I am not sure. Where is the ending location or Adams whereabouts, I am not sure. What I am 99% confindentially sure about is the fact that Adam is alive. The game answers the ending scene with giving you the title.

What are your thoughts? Is there something I missed or am I way off? I played the game on survivor mode (hardest) so I don't think I missed anything (other than the secret shot gun :P ). Maybe since you get the achievement/trophy saying you played the game through once maybe you get more on a second play through, but i'm sure this has been tried with no results.Thanks for those who read this and let me know what you think (I appologise for the length of this but I couldn't really cut it down in size).

For those of you who read my blogs I appologise for being silent for so long. My wife and I used to complain how we never had anything to do and our lives were pretty boring. Well now our lives have become so busy we wish we could go back to the boring days. We seriously haven't had even 2 days back to back that we could just relax for at least the past 4 months. Just so it's said everyone is fine we just have been super busy.

A sad reality hit me the other day that I have seriously become backed up on games I own and want to play. I bought Keflings halloween DLC (if you haven't tried Keflings I highly recommend you do so), I have the Walking Dead Episode 1 &2, Darksiders 2 (hasn't even been out of the case yet), Assassins Creed 3, three hidden object games I downloaded from Big Fish Games, Assassins Creed Brotherhood: Divinci's Dissapperance DLC, and minecraft (I played it but iv'e been ignoring it). All of the games I listed I own and sadly have yet to really have the time to play any of them. I did get to play AC3 for about 3 hours on launch and the Walking Dead ep 1 for about 2 hrs but other than that nothing. Oh and I forgot to mention we have Halo 4 preordered and paid off and that comes out in 4 days!! I have never in my life been so backed up on games as I currently am. True I remember buying Splinter Cell Pandora Tommorow (I think that was the name) and it set on my shelf for a while just cause I had other things (that and SC is one of those games if you don't play it religiously you soon forget all the controls) but that instance is nothing compared to what i'm facing now. You know its bad when I walk into Gamestop and after relaying all the games I have asks me why im in the store since I don't need anything there.

Just wanted to update you guys with whats going on with me and sorry if it was rambling or a bit pointless.

Hello everyone. First off as most of you know I am not a huge fan of military shooters but being as how my brother wanted us to play a game so we could "reconnect" as brothers ( since we live far from each other and are both married) I got CoD since that was his type of game.I've been trying to get him to buy any of the Gears series ( I have all 3) but yet no luck on that.

Moving on with the purpose of my blog today. We frequently get into private free for all matches so we can still talk as well as using it as a way to show each other hiding spots we found. We set it up so no other players can randomly join our games. So last night we were on the WMD map and my brother was showing me hiding spots he found around the pipes I think it was at the corner of D2. While I was climbing a latter to get up to where my brother was he suddenly said, "Uh, we're not alone." I quickly pulled up my list of people in the lobby and it was just us but when I looked at the doorway he was looking at there was another player (no name above his head) just standing there. Just as soon as we saw him he dissappeared. I went into the doorway and searched an no one was there.

Just so it's said ,especially when it comes to CoD games, my brother and I do not use mods, hacks, or any other unsrupulous means while playing the game. We both fully beleive that using those cheats just ruin the game (in fact MW4 is unplayable due to it and sadly MW2 is quickly becoming that way as well). I've searched on-line about ghosts in mp maps and can't really find anything. It almost made me think of the minecraft Herobrine myth (of which I don't beleive but truely wish it was real). This is a serious post and not done as a joke, I just wanted to share what happened last night and was curious if any one else has seen anything strange. My wife suggested maybe it was a GM (game moderator) but as far as I know they have names and show up in the lobby. Maybe it is a known ghost in the map? Thats why I come to you guys. Can you help me solve this mystery? I'm open to all suggestions.

As of late there has been a lot of debate about dlc and it has a person such as myself confused as to how dlc is considered inherently bad. I have always seen dlc as a good thing and something to look forward to rather than in the pessimistic eyes of a developer trying to drag more money out of a consumer. When I think how we now live in a world were it isn't uncommon to be paying $60 for a game; anything that extends the playing time of said purchase has to be a good thing. Good case in point, Bethesda announced that dlc was coming for Skyrim soon. How many of us are still religiously playing Skyrim currently? I, for one, played the hell out of it for about 3 months and then moved on to something else.

Now rather than the game being shelved and forgotten about the new dlc will give me a reason to get back into the game and in turn extend my original $60 purchase. While some may agree with my view some still say we shouldn't have to pay for dlc that is on disk. As stated dlc extends my game play so think of it as the old cliche'...a car..it comes with gas in it so to extend your driving you have to buy more you don't just get gas for free just because you paid for the car already. Big difference is you don't HAVE to buy dlc and your game will still play fine...you don't HAVE to buy gas for your car but it won't run without it.

Now a big issue came up recently involving day one release dlc. Again call me old fashioned but I have not a problem with dlc being released as soon as the game is...even if it is incentive based. A perfect example is with the Mass Effect series. My wife is a huge Mass Effect fan but sadly missed the initial buzz on ME1 when it came out. Once she played ME1 she immediately bought ME2 (as stated we were late to the party) and when ME3 was announced the collectors edition was preordered. I personally feel that if you are a big enough fan of something why shouldn't a developer reward their hardcore fans with something extra as a way to give us consumers the ever elusive "thank you". I never understood why people complain about not getting something when they didn't make the effort to ensure they got it early in the first place. Not to beat a dead horse but again it is like a car, if you want this super sports car but only 5,000 are going to be made, guess what you have to preorder and if you wait until the day of release your hopes of having that car will be gone.

Again I feel that many gamers weren't born in my era and, while they complain about dlc, never knew a world where dlc wasn't an option. There weren't such things as preorders in the 80's and there certainly wasn't ever any incentives given out even if you were the first person to buy your copy. Heck back in the 80's you were even lucky if most stores (since Gamestops and EB's weren't around) even had the games you wanted on release day. Growing up in the 80's (born 1980) after you bought Super Mario Brothers if you wanted to extend your game play you had to wait until Super Mario Brothers 2 came out. I don't know if some of society is spoiled or if it is a matter of not realising that even though these games are made for fun it is still a business that requires money to run. While in a perfect world we wouldn't pay for anything, we sadly live in the real world. To me if I love a game I'm more than willing to pay to continue my adventure.

Here a top 10 list of great video games that didn't make quite a glorious jump to the cinema. (As with all top 10 lists this is just my opinon and yours may be different).

10. Silent Hill

I put this low on the list since it was still a great movie but it really didn't seem to translate well since to me it felt too removed from the actual games.

9. House of the Dead

It featured a lot of zombies but again didn't seem to differentiate itself from all the other zombie movies ever made. Honestly if you didn't know there was a game by the same name you wouldn't guess it was based on one.

8. Doom

Again the movie was ok but pretty much you sat through 90% of the movie waiting for the one awsome scene where the main character enters the first person hack n slash mode. If that one scene wouldn't have been in the movie I would have put this one higher on the list.

7. BloodRayne

This movie seemed to bring the game to the movie fairly well but the problem was that even the voice actress for the BloodRayne video game stated how bad this movie was, I agree as well. We bought the blu-ray of the Third Reich and still have yet to watch it.

6. Dead or Alive

All I have to say is after watching this movie the only thing that even stands out is the fight scene after she gets out of the shower.

5. Tekken

As it was stated here on Gamepot basically the only thing that is Tekken about this movie is the names. To me it is like taking the idea for a movie based on Herman Melville's Moby Dick but then making it happen in Montana where a ranch hand is hunting a gold mine but yet still calling the movie Moby Dick. (this idea will carry on with #1 and 2).

4. Street Fighter

What they did get right in this movie palled in comaprison as to what they did wrong. They got the charcters to look good (excluding Guile) but the acting and graphics were horrid. Let's just forget every movie Jean Claude Van Damme was in (excluing Blood sport) and the movie industry will be better for it.

3. Alone In The Dark

What part of this movie was even close to being part of the video game? Other than the semi-creepy environment nothing else fit.

2. Super Mario Brothers

At this point I bet I know what you're thinking, "It's number 2 and not number 1??" yes there is indeed one worse...but not by much. I give the movie credit for at least trying to come close to the ideas of the game but that isn't enough to save it. The movie was so bad the actors did most of their lines drunk, the writers kept leaving, and the director admits to just slapping it together since from the word go no one had a clue how to start. My dreams of seeing a movie version of bowser were dashed to pieces after seeing this trash.

1. Double Dragon

The movie pretty much no one even remembers being made. Everything about this movie makes it #1 on a top 10 worst movie list. It currently stands in the movie realm as the lowest rated video game movie to date. With a budget of 16 million dollars they managed to make only 2 million in the box office and it stand with a 0% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatos.com

I posted this on fuse but in case anyone didn't catch it here it is again and this time with a link to see it. I was listening to my playlist on youtube last night and suddenly an ad came up for twisted metal where David Jaffe is driving sweet tooth and at the end says you can win a contest to shoot sweet tooth's ice cream truck. While is controversial in everything amazingly his contest isn't what confused me (actually the contest fits). What confuses me is why David doesn't seem to know his own product? He states you can shoot "sweet tooth's ice cream truck" from everything I know the vehicle has always been named sweet tooth and the driver has been Needles Kane. I know this is nit picking but if it was a random guy saying it i'd let it go but David Jaffe saying it? The link to watch it follows:

http://www.ripten.com/2012/02/09/david-jaffe-sweet-tooths-truck-100000-full-metal-jacket-bullets-you-twisted-fun/

I mentioned about posting pics of what I made but they show up on my page but not when I link them in my blog and now it won't let me edit out the "myfort another one" off my post. If you want to see the photo of it they appear to be in my images. Sorry for the hastle guys.

After a ton of procrastination I finally broke down and downloaded the pc gamer version demo of minecraft. I have to say that I am hooked but sadly the demo is only 90 mins (which might seem long but if you play minecraft you know it's not). Sadder yet is I came late to the party and now see the price is $26 up from $15 ,which don't get me wrong is totally worth it and cheap, but i'm going to have to wait probably a month til finances allow me to buy it :cry:

I did have time to make something i'm proud of and would like to show you guys (granted its nothing compared to what most people do but hey im new and im proud of it). Kinda taken from Super Mario Bros castles. Maybe you veteran minecrafters can tell me why even if I shut my doors somehow I always walk in my forts to find like 3 pigs, 2 cows, 5 chickens, and 2 black sheep.

I just recently read an article about Ubisoft games being unplayable due to transfering servers /drm conflict and it has me riled. While it pains me to say this but game companies seem to forget that their service is an unnessary expense these days. It seems more and more game companies are treating their product as if it is something we can't live without in return it seems to make them seem like they has some power over their consumers. Notably game companies like Mojang and Epic impressed me with their decision to blackout in protest of SOPA it still upsets me you find drm with them as well. I could devote a whole blog to my hate of drm but im sure many other users before me have done that to death.

My problem is with us gamers getting shafted by something the companies insist on using and then rather than getting some kind of "thankyou for staying with us" gift after the dust clears we just get a "We're sorry for the inconvenience this will cause (but we really don't care)" answer. I'm sorry but when most people are trying to figure out which important bill needs paid this month, using that tight money to support a game company should be more appreciated. Anymore how game companies are acting it seems like they see us as a druggie who needs to get their fix from them rather than how it actually is that we gamers pay their bills. Some where along the line we let the businesses take control and now need to remind them who actually has the control..us gamers. If they quit making games we will be ok and survive...if we quit buying their games with they be ok and survive?