It’s Been A Hards Day Night

12Jul11

Been busy recently with work and school, haven’t had too much time for blogin’. My rock n roll history class has me addicted to the Beach Boys recently. Pet Sounds is a pretty fucking great album. I’ve been pretty active doing a lot of different projects for GamerGaia, more of what I’ve been up to after the break.

Filed under: Game Reviews, Gaming, Music   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Beach Boys, Gamer Gaia, Pixel Power, Resident Evil

My First Published Review – Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

26Jun11

Yesterday, I got my first full video game review published. The review, which can be found here at Gamer Gaia, is a detailed review of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D. It’s a long read with a lot of pictures, so I’m not going to repost it over here in full, since I wanted to keep this update brief.

That said, this is a pretty big milestone for me in my still short time in the video game journalism field. This might be a bad picture of it, but my name is up there, awww yeah.

Filed under: Game Reviews, Gaming   |  3 Comments
Tags: Gamer Gaia, legend of zelda ocarina of time 3d, ocarina of time 3d review, reviews, Video game, video game journalism

Video Game Revolution – Spicing Up Gaming Cliches

17Jun11

I just finished up my latest article, it’s about gaming cliches and a few interesting ways in which we could change the industry. You can check it out via gamergaia.com, or you can just click read more and read it here, it’s cool, just as long as people read it I’m happy.

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Wut I’ve been watching – X-men First Class and Pirates 4

14Jun11

Over the past week I’ve took a couple trips to the movies to check out some new releases. I wasn’t hugely excited about either flick heading in, I thought the Pirates franchise lost most of it’s charm after the first movie, and the X-Men franchise never had too much going for it to begin with. Anyways here are my thoughts.

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Tags: Pirates of the Carribean, X-men, X-men First Class

Musical Listeninings – Biebster

08Jun11

Well, it’s time to start schooling again, and one of my new classes I’m pretty fond of, Rock and Roll History. Whats the best way for me to show that fondness? Well I’m mostly just going to put anything I write in that class up here if I feel it’s interesting enough. For our first foray into music, we had to comment on a band we hated, listen to one of their songs three times, and then comment on it. Well, here gores.

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Tags: Justin Bieber, Ludacris, Music

Post E3 Thoughts

07Jun11

With E3 all but over in terms of big news, I figured I would go ahead and talk about a few of my thoughts on the whole spiel.

Microsoft -

I thought Microsoft was the ‘winner’ if E3, if that is a thing, I don’t think it really matters. Microsoft was laughed off the stage with the Kinect last year, 10 million units sold later, I think they are pretty happy. Microsoft decided to go with a Kinect heavy lineup. Mass Effect 3 with Kinect integration? That sounds fucking awesome. I never even dreamed that I would bother getting Kinect before, but I guess’ Mass Effect 3′ has become the magical words that might open up the doorway for me getting it… If I ever.  I really don’t care about the new Halo games, I haven’t even played through an entire one since Halo 3. Star Wars Kinect has potential, of course so did Force unleashed on Wii, and we all know how that ended (badly).

Sony -

Uncharted 3? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Playstation Vita? Pretty cool I spose, I just feel like I would never use it, I mean my PSP with access to every game ever sits and collects dust, so I’m not sure there is anything on the Vita that would change that. Dust 514 looks pretty cool, with the EVE Online connection I could see myself being interested in that. I’ll grab inFamous 2 eventually, I liked the first one, so I’m hopeful for that.

Nintendo -

Congratulations Nintendo, you’ve reached 2006. I am not particularly impressed with the WiiU lineup, and I just feel like 2-3 years down the road when the new Playstation and Xbox are hitting the shelves, this thing is going to be as valuable as a paperweight. The WiiU might have better technical capabilities than anything on the console market right now, but, uh, those all came out years ago, sorry Nintendo, you haven’t reached Next Gen, you reached this Gen. As completely expected, a new Zelda and Mario game was announced, that’s cool, I guess, but it’s not anything I’m going to write home about (Much like Halo 4-6, after a certain point in a IPs lifetime, I really don’t care much anymore).

 

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Tags: E3, Playstation 3, Playstation Vita, Wii, WiiU, Xbox 360

E3 Coming Tomorow

05Jun11

So this will be my first E3 from the press side of things. I’m excited, but man, it is going to be a ton of work. Tomorrow I start covering the Microsoft conference, head to my first day of summer school (Evolutionary Psychology, super fun) and then I come home and work for 5+ hours on the Sony Conference. Hopefully I don’t get too swamped and can get some good real, tough work experience in.

For everyone interested in reading my stuff, check out Gamer Gaia, there should be a handful of news blurbs from me up on there throughout the course of the day. It’s not going to be anything spectacular, but it will be news, and it will be published, so I’m happy.

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Tags: E3, Microsoft, Sony

First Annual Gamer Gaia Zombie Celebration Awards

31May11

My first real article went up over on Gamer Gaia today, check it out. As the title of this post might tell you, the article is the First Annual Gamer Gaia Zombie Celebration Awards, in which I channeled my nerdy love of both zombies and video games into one article. Since I don’t want to ruin the article without anyone reading it, I’ll just go ahead and list the awards that were won here, and force you to go over to Gamer Gaia to actually see who won them.

• Most Persistent Zombie
• Best Catchphrase
• Scariest Zombie
• Cutest Zombie
• Most Retro Zombie
• Most Personable Zombie
• Most Successful Zombie
• Most Memorable Zombie
• Most Iconic Zombie
•  Most Piratey Zombie

Now get over to my article and read about some zombies.

Filed under: Gaming   |  1 Comment
Tags: Gamer Gaia, zombies

Hey, I’m published now!

24May11

I finally got myself published on a website that isn’t my own personal blog! I’m writing for Gamer Gaia, and there will hopefully be a lot more to come from me over there.

For those interested, my first piece is here. It’s a small news piece on some new Tribes Ascend artwork, but it’s something, and it’s a start.

I’m happy. I’ll probably get some more news posted later today. It feels good to be published though!

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Fallout 2 and the moments that make it the best game ever

22May11

The year was 1998, the world was excitedly looking forward to partying like it was 1999, Monty Python wasn’t over quoted to the point of insanity, and Bill Clinton was having a sexy romp in the White House. I was a young 8 year old lad who liked computer games way above my age bracket. My older cousin introduced me to an interesting isometric post-apocalyptic RPG known as Fallout 2. While I was too young to understand many of the references at the time, I quickly fell in love with the Fallout series, and I’ve been going back to Fallout 2 like a lost puppy for many years. Now days I look back at Fallout 2 as my all time favorite game, and these are some of the greatest moments in the game.

- Are you ready to become a porn star?

In the greatest little city in the Fallout universe, New Reno, you are presented with a lot of interesting opportunities.  One of those opportunities comes at the aptly named Golden Globes studio, where if you have the right skills on the mattress, you can live the post-apocalyptic American dream and spread those legs for cash. Not talented enough? You can always become a fluffer for some extra cash. Bonus Points for some of the great porn titles you can produce including…

• Great Balls for Hire
• Good Will Humping
• Vault Sexteen
• Pokeahotass
• Pullout: Post-Nuclear Boogalo (my personal favorite)

- High Stakes Arm Wrestling

Ever arm wrestle a super mutant? Fallout 2 gives you the opportunity to, but only if you’re willing to put something on the table. In Broken Hills you can meet an arm-wrestling super mutant named Francis. If you accept Francis’ arm-wrestling challenge, he is willing to bet a power fist if you win, you have to bet something a little closer to home. When I said put something on the table, I really should have said you’ll have to bend over the table. If you lose the fight, you wake up with a ball gag in your mouth and the kind of unclean feeling that can never be cured. I hope you like to be the gimp.

- Boxing

Ever get sick of Mike Tyson kicking your ass at punch out? Well now’s your chance to kick his ass right back. Fallout 2 has the unique oppurtunity to start a boxing career for your character at the Jungle Gym (I see what they did there). You first need to talk to Stuart Little, the dwarf that runs the gym and say you want in. Get far enough in your boxing career and your character gets to go up against a few fun names, like Evan Holyfeld and Mike “The Masticator”. Mike even has the fun move of biting your characters ear off, which permanently damages your charisma, just like real life! Not strong enough to beat these guys? You can always find a pair of metal plated boxing gloves and cheat your way to victory.

-Frank Horrigan, everything about him

This guy is a fucking pro at being an antagonist. He is by far the most frightening being in any of the Fallout games. Imagine if the Nazi’s actually succeeded in creating super-soldiers, now give that raging super soldier a suit of power armor and the good old american can-do attitude, and you might have someone half as bad-ass as Mr. Horrigan.  Through out Fallout 2 you’ll have various run-ins with Frank, the first time he simply slaughters a family of farmers, wife and kids included. Later you see him punch a hole in a man’s chest, a man who was wearing metal armor. When (if) you finally beat him, he also has probably the coolest and most climatic deaths in the game. I also want to take a moment that when you finally kill Frank is the moment you beat the game, Frank isn’t even the leader of the Enclave, he is just the top of their secret service. Killing the President of the Enclave isn’t the end, it’s when you take out Frank, that is pretty impressive.

- Pop culture, everywhere.

If you’ve ever played Fallout 2, you might have noticed pretty much everything in that game is a pop culture reference to something else. In front of the Cat’s Paw we see someone doing their best Cheech impression from ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’. There are countless Monty Python references, you can run into King Arthur and his men searching for the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, or you can find the Bridge Keeper who will ask you questions 3, fail and you die. There are more references than I could possibly list and make entertaining, so I’ll lead you to this list here.

There is of course a lot more to Fallout 2 than I could ever talk about in a single blog post, if you want to know more, I can’t recommend playing Fallout 2 enough. The fact that you can still find it in a lot of stores for $10 bucks is a testament to it’s ability to stand the test of time. Best game ever in my book.

Filed under: Game Reviews, Gaming   |  2 Comments
Tags: Fallout, fallout 2, Gaming, Interplay