Call of Duty: Black Ops, I fart in your general direction.

Now that the release of call of duty black ops is just around the corner, I was getting totally excited for this upcoming Christmas period, The shelf life of AAA production is getting shorter and shorter and with modern warfare 2 servers already drying up and bad company 2 servers all but deserted, I thought it would be nice to get my gaming fix on those long nights of insomnia. With university work also piling up, time consuming games like MMORPG's are just not a viable option for me at the moment.

So what had got me so excited about Black ops? Two words: Dedicated servers. Infinity Ward massively screwed the consumers over with their matchmaking system, especially for Australians where the player pool is so small it can take upwards of 10 minutes to find enough people for a 15 minute game, I'm sorry but an almost 50/50 ratio of waiting to gameplay time is just unacceptable. So with the press release announcing dedicated servers it would have seemed Treyach had actually listened to the feedback of the gaming community and provided what was direly needed. So I let out a relieved sigh, everything was going to be OK right?

WRONG.

In a turn of events, Activision, the money hungry whores that they are decided that the way it's been done for the entire history of gaming is not good enough for them and that the deep pockets of their stockholders just aren't filled with enough cash from the raping and pillaging of the MW2 community. So although the game comes with dedicated server support, there will be a monthly fee to rent one from the exclusive vendor of gameservers.com. So ON TOP of the original $100 you shelled out for the game in the first place, you now have a monthly subscription fee to pay.

So is this it? the future of gaming? Buy the game, pay for downloadable content, pay a monthly fee, I'll be staying tuned for the announcement of the Extra high definition fee, or what we now call changing the resolution. Revolution is in the air, we have been pushed too far, and soon the gamers will revolt. We will march the streets, keyboards and controllers in hand, neck-beards swaying gently in the breeze. I just wonder where I can buy sunscreen wholesale.
Activision, I am naming you number two enemy to we, the gamers, second only to that of summer screen glare.

Heed my warning, head shots will roll.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

It’s nearing 3am and I’m in the battle of my life, My eyes are sore and my wrists are aching, but there’s no time for that. The English are moving in on me but I am still holding most of North America and its neighbouring islands. The skies are a blur with enemy jet fighters, pirouetting across the sky in a beautiful dance of destructive results. This is video gaming, this is civilization 5.

I won’t normally talk about the positives in gaming, it bores me. Why dwell on the good when there’s so much negative to talk about? However something about this game grabbed me by the cajones and just refused to let go, not only is the gameplay excellent, but it takes some level of intelligence to play well and 10 year olds won’t last here, the run and gun mentality used successfully in most games will not only not help you, they will destroy you. You need to think about your next steps, actions have consequences and make the wrong ones and you’ll find yourself curled up in the fetal position, crying as the Germans bomb your 9 hours of work in to the ground.

This game may well become one of those games I grow to hate, my World of Warcraft of the turn based genre so to speak. But as I sit here, sending my loaded aircraft carriers across the ocean to make that one last push for world domination, I think to myself, I’m going to have one hell of a good time hating it.

Modern Warfare 2: Console warriors.

So I finally decided to put down Modern warfare 2. Now don’t get me wrong it’s actually a pretty good game, however, the amount of rage this game in particular has extracted from my normally calm persona is beyond mind-boggling. There are problems with the game itself but the calibre of problems big enough to result in a sudden rage quit is more so community related. Just because there’s a setup made only for the exclusive purpose of being easy mode and god damn annoying, it doesn’t mean you have to run with it every time, I mean seriously, one man army with RPG and tubes?

I hear the excuse often that people pay for the game they should play it whatever way they most enjoy it. First off I don’t think anyone could seriously enjoy the pre mentioned setup, everyone I see rocking it amazingly has a microphone and a voice not too dissimilar to that of a prepubescent cross dresser, and the amount of shit talk that spew’s forth from their mouth is just ungodly. Within 2 minutes of playing with these people you can safely conclude two things
1. Their parents payed for the game as no one would pay such a person to be within a hearing vicinity of them.
2. They are idiots.
In a time when almost all games have some multiplayer aspect, gamers need to adopt a different game styling. I come from a pretty big MMORPG background and I’ve noticed that people who play these games have been doing it for years. When you’re playing with others you need to play a certain way to get the most out of it, whether that’s just the way you carry yourself in game or your actual play style, nobody enjoys a loud talking arrogant idiot who does nothing to help the team. The time of single player exclusive games are over, and maybe your TV didn’t talk back when you screamed at it for being absolutely vacant of spatial ability, but I will and when the community has finally had enough and there’s a mass exodus from the game you love, you’ll know who to blame.

Fuck it, see you in Black ops.

The New Karate Kid Blows

So I just got done watching the "new" Karate kid movie. Now the first thing I noticed while watching this movie, was "wow, this kid can't act". Granted, he's the son of Will Smith and I'm not even slightly a Will Smith fan, so the last thing I want to see when I go the movies is a younger, worse version of someone I already can't stand; However, after I accepted the fact that I was going to hate this movie no matter what, I noticed a few other things. One of these things being where on earth is Johnny Lawrence, you know? the complete bad ass from the 1984 original, he was made of so much utter awesomeness that on alternative watch through's I change who I root for and get mad when Daniel -son cheap shot's him in the face.

So as I sat there drifting off on random tangents, BANG my mind suddenly became clear," no remake is ever better than the original," I would put the feeling in between how Thomas Edison felt when he invented the long lasting light-bulb and the reaction of the first man to ever think of the wheel. So why are remakes never as good?
well it's for very good reason, the original is just exactly that, an original idea. But then 20 or so years later along comes some dick head screenplay writer and thinks "Hey, I see what you were trying to do there, but let me show you how I would have done it better," No dickhead, let go of the mouse and stop copy pasting. I've got an idea for you, it is as follows: sit down, brainstorm and come up with an original idea. I know it's a novel thought, but people have been doing it for thousands of years and then putting them in things called books.

But hey, you know what, why stop at movies, if people have run out of original ideas for screen plays, we must be nearing our originality cap for literature. I mean film remakes are utter plagiarism anyway, why stop with one industry. J.R.R Tolkien's wrote Lord of The Rings pretty good, but I'm sure there's somewhere out there who would like to add their own ideas in to it, maybe bling Gandalf up a bit to make it more accessible for todays urban youth.
I hate Hollywood.