Top 5 reasons I am exercising

5: My metabolism is finally slowing down but I still like eating :).

4: I want to have more strength than my Kobold Sorcerer (9 strength).

3: Three weeks ago I realized that my breasts were almost as big as my ex-girlfriends.

2: I like walking around without a shirt on!

1: I might want to get girls based on my looks as well as with my personality.

(20ish min of biking, 25 pushups, 40 situps)

CBS listened to me...

Okay, I should've written about this a while ago, but this happened during spring break, and my attention wasn't exactly focused on blogging.

Anyway, on March 6, 60 Minutes ran a story on Grand Theft Auto, and its relationship to a crime that occured, that was linked to the game by the moronic comment by the suspect upon arrest: "Life is like a video game. We all have to die sometime."

Not an exact quote, but the gist is there. And this resurrected the whole GTA bashing extravaganza, wherein concerned conservative groups (family based ones, of course) yelled at Rockstar and co. for releasing a game of moral decay.

Well, 60 Minutes did a story on this, and I watched it.

As with traditional news stories, it only reports, doesn't really interpret, which is fine by me. Of course, the people they talked to did more than enough interpreting.

The thing that irked me was that they said that the main draw of the game was that you can have sex hookers (to regain health), run them over, and get your money back. Tons of violence, in other words. And, to the outside observer, that seems to be the main draw.

Well, this is the message I sent them was this:

----

This is regarding the section on the evilness of GTA.

Just like the other fifty thousand emails you recieved today.

*cough*

Anyway, the main problem I have with the program is that you haven't asked any industry insiders on why the game is so popular.

There are a few dozen gaming mags that love press and would be perfectly happy to give you guys some information.

Should you ask one of them, they'll probably tell you that the beauty of the GTA series is not that you can kill cops with no consequences. That's just one of the elements that is created by the real greatness: Freeform gameplay.

Most games have a linear series of events, and you go from point a to point b, usually killing everything in between. GTA opens up an entire city, and state in the most recent version, to the player. Yeah, you can kill cops, or have sex with a hooker, run her over, and get your money back, but you don't have to.

Its more about freedom than vice. And because your avatar in the game is something of a god, due to his ability to take tons of bullets without falling, consequenses are lessened, which might be a problem, if teenagers are as impusive as you suggested.

But, in the end, you assumed something about the game that was wrong, that the draw is the violence, not the superb freeform gameplay. You guys should be better than this.

----

Later, I recieved this email from CBS:

----

Thank you for taking the time to write to CBS. Your comments have been shared with the 60 MINUTES staff.

Cordially,

Ray Faiola
Director,
Audience Services

----

Now, I know what everyone one reading this is thinking. Well, you four, I highly doubt that its a general response email.

This is because of two reasons:

1: The message says that what I said has been shared with the staff. If I were writing a form letter, I wouldn't put it exactly like that.

2: The email was sent on March 23.

The observant will understand.

For the unobservant, that's a 17 day time elapse. So either they had a massive email server malfunction, and I do mean massive, or they actually shared the email with the 60 Minutes Staff.

Probably because I didn't go out of my way to horribly flame the hell out of them.

*puts on sunglasses*

Rock on :).

100 Greatest Americans

A list of the top 100 Americans!

Well, according to the half-million voters online and the Discovery Channel.

Its an interesting list, to say the least. The big athletes (Lance Armstrong and MJ), most of the founding fathers, and some recent big innovaters and buisnessmen (Gates and Jobs, for example).

And then there's the... other ones.

The MJ accused of molestation is there, rubbing elbows with all three GW's. Hugh Hefner is standing erect alongside Einstien, Tesla, and both Wrights. Hillary and Condi, Limbaugh and Moore are there, and only god knows why. Oh, and Dr. Phil somehow deserves the same respect as the Kennedy brothers...

Oh, and then there's Arnold, the last three First Lady's, Obama and Nixon.

NIXON!

Its nice to see the nerds get the representation, from Lucas, Gates, and Jobs, and some really great Presidents are there (Lincoln and both Roosevelts), and all of the athletes really should be there (although I could do without Woods for now), so its not a horrible list.

But Jackson and Nixon?

What were the voters on?

Next Gen Madden

Oooh, ahhh...

Yes, there is a link to the pretty little trailer.

Now, I'm oohing and ahhing like nobody's buisness. I mean, that's freaking beautiful.

Of course, no gameplay footage. Its just the "artists concept" of what the game will be like.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm all for EA showing people what their next round of games is going to look like, but, come on, this is pointless! There's no mention of any new features or added functionality, or any current functionality for that matter. All we get is a nice, pretty little prerendered movie that might have no relation, what-so-ever, to the actual game.

And, ya know what? There probably won't be any new features. I highly doubt that any kind of improvement, other than fixing bugs and upgrading the graphics and rosters, will appear in the next-gen version. They're going to half-ass an online mode.

Why?

Because they can. Because there is absolutely no reason for them to do otherwise. Their only competition is Midway's Blitz series, an arcade series which can't even use the NFL license anymore! They just have to make it "Wowee", because that's all that most gamers are going to need to be convinced.

But there's another, less EA bashing reason: They're pretty much done. The Football sim is extraordinarily good. Sure, the AI could always been improved, but there just isn't a huge amount of things that could be improved with the series.

They've done a very good job over the last decade. Kudos to you, EA Sports.

SO STOP SELLING US THE SAME DAMN GAME!

Look, here's a suggustion. There will most likely be a version of the next Xbox with a harddrive. And regardless, memory sticks are getting pretty damn big now. Storage of downloadable information won't be a very huge issue soon.

So sell one version of Madden for, say, $60. Bit pricey, but there's a reason for this. At the beginning of the football season, release an update for the game for $5-10 online, $15-20 in stores. This update will contain any relevant bug fixes as well as updated rosters. And then, next year, release another update! And same the year after that! All of our game saves still work on the update, no control scheme changes, and all of your customers from the previous year will probably be willing to spend a small amount to stay up to date!

Oh, and should you guys actually make an actual gameplay change, then you can release a new, full version of it for full price, sure. Especially upon the creation of a new console generation, where you can boost the graphics even more.

And best of all, you won't get mocked, year after year, for not innovating!

Well, you still will.

But we both know that you don't care. So please use a upgrade model, and I might actually consider buying it!

Might.

Pope...

Okay, so the Catholics lost a conservative Pope and now we have an even MORE conservative Pope.

Whoopty do.

Fortunately, I'm not Catholic.

Hell, I'm really not sure what I am. Mildly-agnostic who celebrates Christian holidays for convenience, I suppose...

And, besides, what does the Pope actually do?

I mean, yes, he's the religious leader for only god and some highly paid statisticians knows how many people, but at the end of the day, what does that actually mean?

Eh, I just realized that I really don't care.

By the way, "The Cure" by The Servant is a very awesome song.

New Name and Design

Yes, I realize that I haven't been updating my blog in a while. Things have been... interesting, to say the least.

So I suppose that I should just try again, get back to updating.

However, it should be noted that my old design was, well, bad. So I've traded it in for a bare-bones style until I can remember how to do some web designing.

I'm a bit rusty.

Well, a lot rusty, actually.

This current design will probably stay up for a long, long time.

Nevertheless, I decided to change the name, based on my current attitude towards gaming.

Its not that I don't like prety graphics. I "ooh" and "ahh" at the trailers and commercials just as much as the next guy. I see the Splinter Cell commercials and I am amazed at how great the game looks. Of course, half the time in the game you have the night vision goggles on, so the pretty colors go away, but still, its beautiful. Gran Turismo has always had an amazing elegance to it, and the most recent version is no exception.

But so what?

Graphics don't make the game. People still play Counterstrike, despite its age and poor graphics, because its a first person shooter that, like few others, relies on lighting quick reflexes, twitch skills, and a good amount of strategy. There are other games like that, but prettier, but still Counterstrike remains.

And its not just Counterstrike. Starcraft is widely held to be the best Real Time Strategy game ever. Not because of the nostalgic feel of it, although that does help. People still love it and play it because its the most well balenced RTS out there. Diablo 2 has a strong cult following, and its one of the few games released in the last five years to still use sprites instead of collections of polygons.

Baldur's Gate 2, Final Fantasy 6 & 7, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six, Super Mario 64, Metroid Zero Mission, Pac-Man, Minesweeper, Sonic the Hedgehog, Bejeweled, Street Fighter 2. These games have been released throughout the years. Each one of them is an excellent game, and possibly the most perfect example of their genre as can be. And yet, few of these games are graphically awe-inspiring. They've become classics because of their gameplay, not their graphics.

True, some games are both visually amazing and also excellent games. Half-Life 2 is just freaking beautiful, and contains one of the best, and most fun, physics engines known to man. They give you a gun for the sole purpose of throwing your environment at your opponent! And its also magnificent from a graphical perspective. Just look at the faces.

However, for every Half-Life 2 out there, there are fifty Doom 3's. Doom 3 has an excellent lighting system and an overall sense of wonder and dread. But the gameplay isn't anything new. Bad stuff starts to shake around, and monsters come out of the closet to kill you. You kill all of them, move onto the next area, and then more monsters appear out of nowhere.

There are some redeeming aspects of Doom 3, true, but its still an average shooter coated in a sugary shell. Yeah, its great at first, but the core of it is still bitter.

That's the problem I'm seeing with gaming. We, the gaming culture, are far too focused on the graphics and not enough on the gameplay. When a game reviewer talks about the graphics of an RPG without mentioning the storyline, then we've got a problem. Presentation should not count more than Gameplay to a quality game.

Or is it just me?

Well, me and all of the good reviewers, the Counterstrike, Starcraft, Diablo 2 players, and all of the people that play games that weren't released last week.

Probably not just me.