Review: Halo Comes Full Circle

9.0 out of 10.0

When I think of great games I think World of Warcraft, Halo, Gears of War, Killswitch (because it spawned games like Gears of War) and now I think Halo 3, which is by far, the best out of the series. The singleplayer has some of the best gameplay, writing, and physics with a vastly superior version of the rag-doll physics, which in the past would cause the corpse to flail double jointedly past what any human or humanoid/etc. should be able to, but now bend ONLY how our normal joints would bend. But thats not all, the game has a phenomenal multiplayer with minimum problems, and is kind of a mix of parts of the gameplay from gears of war in terms of expertly crafted pinchpointed combat, and the rank system of rainbow 6 Vegas. all in all i give it a 9.0 out of 10!!

Halo 3 arriving tuesday at midnight!!

I'm so excited about this game I find it hard to think about anything else, sure the second one was a sore dissapointment, sure the end was so horrible im sure 90% of you threw your controllers at the screen in anger and frustrations at the anticlimacticism (pretty sure thats not actually a word but whatever), but I, nonetheless am excited. Not only am I excited about the single player campeign and the rumors that a spoiler for the end can be found in the "Believe" trailer, shown below, (or on youtube, but of course, I, being a true fan, would never go in search of something such as that). The afforementioned trailer is basically beutifully panned shots of a scale model of a battle probably found in the game, the shots display great emotion even in such a short trailer (runs roughly a minute and a half) and through this emotion we can see the brutality of the battle, in the final shot, however it shows the Master-Chief holding something that looks like a grenade, or at least thats what the common consensus is, but fret not, I have reason to believe that Master-Chief may not die and that the orb object in his hand is not, in fact a plasma grenade as is suspected, but is a shield grenade, shown in the first Halo 3 Tv Spot. My Guess that they will not kill off the chief stems from the theory that he and the main character from Bungie's other title, Marathon (an older one that shares quite a few significant qualities with halo) which takes place a couple hundred years after the Halo trilogy ends. All that, plus I have heard word among many of my contacts that the chief's story is not over, that in fact the Halo movie being directed by Peter Jackson, the guy who did the LOTR trilogy will also be making a game to go with it, though whether it will go the way of all other movie to video game ports, or visa versa (ala the Resident Evil movies, which while moderately successful were pretty much just an hour and half's worth of shit, sometimes longer) or if it will be a genuinely good game dispite the bad history that all the other game-movie-game ports have brought with them, is yet to be seen, but as always I'm keeping my hopes high until someone smashes them down.

a call for aid!

over the past couple years I have written several short stories, all of which I will try my damdest to get on this page but for now I am merely asking for assistance. to the right I will, in the coming weeks list release dates for my completed projects starting with a story some of you may know as Murder by Death, which I will be renaming (the name will be released and be accompanied by its original name along with the release date of the story itself) and finishing with a noir muder mystery entitled the Coyote, whose release date will be announced apon its completion as it is still a work in progress. But this is not why I require assistance. I require assistance because of an upcoming project, one that I hope I will be able to complete with the aid of one of my proffessors and the moral support of you (my readers and friends) as I have previously tried and failed to complete an undertaking this epic in storyline. My next project, who's name shall remain a myster (partially because I havent figured it out yet, but mostly because I want the entire story to be shrouded in mystery until the release of the first book, of which there will be Eight). I require assistance so that if I start to faulter or waver I will have your support.

I may not be able to tell you what the title of this story will be but I can tell you that it will be an epic tragedy, and the fact that it is an epic tragedy is a slight separation from the original tale as it was told back in ancient greece.

Rant: Jack Thompson's comuppance!

yo, Fuck JACK THOMPSON, this guy does not have the right thing to do at heart, its because of people like jack FUCKing thompson that ny is trying to set up a law that sends clerks at stores like gamestop, bestbuy, pretty much anything that sells videogames, who sell M-rated games to underaged kids TO PRISON? i can understand if it were drugs, alcohol or if the guys were prostituting out underaged kids, but this guy is selling video games here, VIDEO GAMES! now for one thing i do agknowlege that video games can be quite influential on a young mind but if you are that young THEN YOUR PARENTS SHOULD BE GOING WITH YOU AND MAKING SURE THAT YOU ARE BUYING SOMETHING AGE APPORPRIATE (unless theyre bad ones, in which case congratulations, you have sentenced your kids, for the most part to a life akin sending the kid to prison, in fact why dont you just sit back and have another scotch while your kid's life goes down the Shitter because you dont care, i mean its not like you werent gonna do it anyway, oh and to those few of you who are strong enough to get out of a situation like that without going homicidal or continuing the cycle of bad parenting, good for you! its people like you that make me think twice about writing off the human race as another failure.) and if the kid IS actually effected by video games, its not the games fault, its printed with an M rating which means that this age kid should not be allowed to have it, now im not condoning the sale of M rated games to underaged kids, im just saying that a law like this would be unconstitutional, immoral, and just plain retarded, so ill tell you what jack thompson, and people like you (censors, morons, George W Bush and his supporters) continue down this road keeping forms of art down and most of what makes this country great at a stand still and in 20 years when hispanics will supposedly outnumber whites or whatever, AMERICA WILL NOT EXIST AS IT DOES TODAY! instead we will have something closer to THE UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA.

oh and a a footnote, why Kennedy got assasinated but DUBYA diddnt, i will never know

Review: Death Sentence is sentenced to die at the hands of its viewers!

Directing:A
Acting:C+
Action: B-
Writing: C-



Based on a novel I've never read, I couldnt speak to how close it was to the book, or even how bad or good the book was, but what I can speak to is how the movie was. This movie wasnt the worst I'd seen*, but it definetly wasnt even among the best. the first thing that hit me was the fact that the director decided to put a home movie in the beginning of the movie, which is a trick that directors sometimes use to make you really like the characters, and it worked. but then once the actual movie started I was Startled by how dated the camera must have been. It was like a camera used to film Tv shows from the late nineties, or bad Tv shows from 2000+. The way they did this brings to mind a movie that did the same thing with their cameras, except they went farther back, they used a cameras from around 1975. the movie I am, of course, referring to is the Zombie title "28 Days Later" in which the director did so to pay homage to the middle ages of moviemaking, in which emerged few classics, but those that did emerge truly earned the title. The director of "Death Sentence" can make no such clame as he merely did this to achieve a low budget, which is evident throughout the movie. While the camerawork, and the writing is a little bit dated, the same cannot be said about the directing and fight coreography. The director did a very good job of getting you to like all of the main characters, which is uncommon in present day film makers, who tend to just want to entertain you by throwing either a whole bunch of explosives, computer generated cinematics, or badly tailored jokes at you.


*a movie entitled "Black Horizon" starring Ice-T and some other people I couldnt give a shit less about, it was about some kind of space weapon that various people wanted to get a hold of, or something like that. Anyway that wasnt the reason why it was the worst movie I'd ever seen, the director did shit like stealing scenes from other movies such as Art of War, or using a ratchet connected to a garden hose as a space-welder. The whole thing was very surreal, the fact that the director hadnt gotten sued was one thing, but the fact that it was linked to a professional studio was a complete other.

Review: Bioshocked!

Aesthetics: 9.9

Immersiveness: 10

Cinematic:9

Bad-Ass: 9.5

Story-Telling: 9

Learning Curve: about 10 minutes

I gave it a 9.5 out of 10

Bioshock, a game released about a week ago for the xbox 360 and the PC, was probably one of the most cinematically, aesthetically, and immersively stunning games of the summer. Dubbed a "Genetically Enhanced Shooter" by its creaters, it certainly lives up to that title and then some. The game takes place some time in the 50's or early 60's and begins with you, a nameless passenger on a plane flying somewhere over the middle of the ocean, when suddenly the screen blacks out and all you hear are the screams of fellow passengers and noises telling you that the plane is crashing, then you find yourself under water debris flying everywhere, one of the plane's propellors flys past your face as you swim to the surface, only to find yourself caught within a circle of wreckage, your only saving grace, it seems, is a strange obelisk-like lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. Thus begins your journey into rapture, a seemingly distopian version of the lost city of Atlantis.

Yes the game is awesome, but it is not without its faults, however few they may be. one of these is that during the game, you will be presented with an arrow that keeps you, and the story moving towards the end, which while keeping the game fast paced makes it hard to veer away and check out the beutiful scenery, which unlike most other games, it seems, each square foot has had the attention to detail in full paid to it. The fact tha this game is completely devoid of a multiplayer section, while not being a major problem because the rest of the game is so enthralling, decreases the replay value a little bit. Another problem, one related to a feature in which you chose to either save the last living residents of Rapture, or to kill them and do whatever you want, which gave me a few misgivings about the game's creaters trustworthyness is the fact that while the creaters insisted that each choice you made would effect the storyline, that "No two people would have the exact same experience in Bioshock," which diddnt happen in the sence that they led us to believe which was that it would directly effect the story and how it plays out and which bosses you would fight, etc., instead all that happened was that you would unlock a different set of achievments (if you played it on the Xbox360) and a different end cinematic depending on whether or not you chose to be good or evil.

the

GIST

The Good: awesome, well written story line, very character driven, very cinematic, while maintaining the immersiveness that only a few other games have been able to do well (such as Half-Life2 and its subsequent add-ons) puzzles keep the mind from getting too overloaded, allowing the player to keep his mind right throughout the game. Awesome twist near the end. Great visually and environmentally stunning environments that really make you feel like a guy in a distopian city at the bottom of the ocean.

The Bad: no death penalty keeps the game fun, but it also makes the game a little bit too easy. the ability to make choices that affect the storyline is nonexistent, you play the same game no matter what you chose, despite the creater's claims to the contrary.

To Sum Up: AWESOME game, dispite its few flaws which are nowhere near fatal. Pick it up ASAP to enjoy the full scope of this game's cool features.