Halo

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption="(Courtesy csullens)"] [/caption] Hey guys, Gears of War 3 is really good. I’ve only played the first act in Arcade mode and ~20 waves of the new Horde mode, but it’s awesome. Arcade Mode I really like the addition of the score/kill tracking in arcade mode. It makes things extra interesting and adds that nice competitive edge to the cooperative proceedings. I fixed my NAT this morning to allow me to host so that I could pick Mutators too. These are modifiers, like the skulls in Halo, that allows you to change the game subtly. There are two ones available right away: one that forces ammo scavenging instead of allowing ammo drops, and one that makes enemies fire like headless chickens when they die. ...

So bro, I played this sick game Call of Duty this past weekend and it was totally awesome. There was, like, a free weekend, so I played the multiplayer and I told all my bros, “Hey brahs, put away the beer pong, quit taking bong hits, pop your collar, and let’s get our Call of Duty on!” Oh man, that’s real tough to shake. I keep lapsing into bro-speak ever since I played the free trial weekend of BLOPS, as I like to call it. Frattiness aside, CoD actually wasn’t that bad. In fact, I’d rather play CoD than Halo and I’d say it’s almost as good or better than Counterstrike. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“424” caption=“False Advertising”] [/caption] While running errands the other day I saw a girl wearing a blue pair of sweatpants that had the word “Pink” in large white print on the back. It got me thinking about the discrepancies between who we are and who we tell people we are. I can honestly say that I’ve never met a girl in a bar and opened by saying that I play approximately 20 hours of video games a week or that I run this blog. Instead I’d be far more likely to mention the movies that I like, the music I listen to, or the fact that I love baseball. It’s not really a lie, I’m not proclaiming to be pink when I’m clearly blue, but it’s not being totally honest with myself or the things that I spend most of my days doing. ...

This was a piece I wrote for Gamers With Jobs to try and score a writing gig. They ended up going with two other writers, so I figured I’d post what I wrote here. Enjoy. It was last month when I realized that something had gone terribly wrong . There were fifteen people in my apartment, maybe a tenth of them lifelong gamers, and they were all here to play video games. Most strange of all: there I was, microphone in hand, belting out “Don’t Stop Believing” in front of my friends. As my voice cracked on the high notes I wondered how I reached this point. Wasn’t I the same guy who refused to go to karaoke bars to avoid singing in public? Weren’t these people the same ones who scoffed at Final Fantasy and Halo? ...

I’ve always harbored this delusion belief that I would be pretty good at music if I ever picked up an instrument. I have no evidence to back this up. Back in the fifth grade when I played the recorder I wasn’t an instant pro and I didn’t pick up the drums in Rock Band without some struggles (I still can’t play expert). I just know two things that give me this notion: 1. I can keep a beat down fairly well and 2. Other people don’t seem to be able to. ...

There was a day, back in my youth, when I abhorred first-person shooters. Sure, I played some Goldeneye here and there with my friends, but I was never a Doom, Unreal, or Halo fan. Then something spectacular happened: a company that I’d heard of, but avoided their games because of my fps ambivalence released one of the greatest games I’d ever played: Half-Life 2. It revolutionized my understanding of FPS games and instilled in me blind trust in Valve. I loved Counterstrike: Source, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. Due to some poor life decisions, I find myself stranded for five weeks without any video games. What’s a guy to do, right? Well, rather than just giving you some of the headlines from the week’s video game news in lieu of what I was planning to be gameplay impressions, reviews, and the like, I’ve instead started a five week “All-Stars” feature. Each week we’re going to look at a video game era and spotlight my top three games from that era. Each of these games will also receive a place setting at the prestigious “Table of Honor” feature that I’m working on. Here’s the weekly plan: ...