If you didn't read my previous blog, I talked about using the Necromancer armor in Tribes.  I used it again today without any major hiccups(it crashed only once, but I think that was cause by the flag glitch).  Once the map started I immediately realized that the Necro armor would be very helpful, because we were essentially in one big globe.  Once out of it, you can enter the enemy base where they least expect it.  However, I ran into something I wasn't expecting: another necro.

As I was about to leave my base I ran into an enemy Necromancer carrying a teleport pad.  Not good.  I'm still not sure how they managed to get an inventory station out of their base.  Necros can't carry anything, so he must've placed an inventory station outside, then change into an armor that can carry a tele.  Once I saw this I knew we lost the upper hand, if we ever had it.  Not to sound like an egotistical maniac, but I don't think my team realized just how important I was in this particular game.  Being the only necro armor, only I could go through walls and see if they were teleporting into our base.  And they were.

I ran into the same necro carrying a tele quite a few times.  If I stopped searching for just a few minutes it was plenty of time for them to set one in our base.  I destroyed about 3 teleport pads throughout the game, saving our base and teammates from utter destruction.  I thought about doing something similar, or at least entering their base from the back, but it proved near impossible.  Once I launched myself over the "globe", I noticed they somehow set a few turrets up there.  While I may have been able to avoid them, it certainly wasn't worth the trouble.  Simply guarding our base from any incoming necros was enough of a challenge. 

While playing a game of Tribes, as usual, I ran into an annoying little glitch.  I'm starting to branch out into the other armors, one of which is mighty interesting to use.  I've used it before but just recently gave it another go.  It's called "Necromancer", and gives you the ability to walk through walls.  There are of course downsides to using this armor, such as the weapons you get.  They aren't really weapons per se, but more like "spells".  There's a death spell which takes away the life of an enemy, another spell freezes him on the spot.  There's a flame spell which...well...is rather self explanatory.  However, there's one weapon that I've grown a liking to.

It's called the "shocking grasp", and it's a lot like the soul grabber for Rogue Armor's.  Except this one is a constant stream that sucks the life from someone, instead of a short bolt like the soul grabber does.  I can drain the life of a Heavy within seconds, which has gotta be embarrassing.  It can drain the energy from stations and generators as well.  Practically anything that has some form a power in it.  Unfortunately it causes my entire game to crash, at least tonight it did.  It was fine earlier today, but just a few moments ago, whenever I whipped out that particular gun, it crashed on me.  Which resulted in a rather odd situation:

You know, this might just be the first ever "re-blog" ever written.  By re-blog I mean reposting an older blog I've previous written, much like a re-tweet.  Anyways, I thought I'd update you all on this old post:






Alright, first thing's first: We haven't gotten far.  We're still at the Inivison(Free) board, which really isn't all that bad to be honest.  As far as I know, the domain will be thexaxis.com.  Creating the layout/design of the website is proving to be unpossible(yes, unpossible).  What does Exo want exactly?  That's the million dollar question I guess.  He didn't agree with the first layout, and I really have no idea on what he thinks of the newest one(or if he's even seen it yet).  I might send a PM to every old school Xbox.com forum member I can think of, telling them about the site and who it's members mainly consist of.  Even if just 2 people join it'd be nice.

Excitement grew to desperation, which then grew to anger and loss of interest.  This is how I stand as of now.  We need a miracle to make this happen.

I am by no means an RTS expert.  I've never been able to get into them, other than Team Melee in Starcraft(which I found to be extremely entertaining).  I've tried getting into them with Age of Empires years ago, but usually found myself creating my own little battles in edit mode(or whatever it was called).  The process of collecting minerals, building your base and units for the first 10 or so minutes of the game is extremely boring and tedious to me.  So when Halo Wars was announced I had no real interest in buying the game(even though I don't even have a 360).  The concept of an RTS on a console seemed confusing as well.

So when I watched GameSpot's review of the game today, I was actually surprised at the low score.  They gave it a 6.5/10.  While 6.5 isn't a terrible score, it's surprising for a Halo game to get anything lower than an 9.  One criticism the reviewer gave is that games can be slow in the beginning.  I must say I laughed at this part.  Again, I'm not an expert on these types of games, but RTS' usually consist of builing up your base and units in the beginning, which is always slow.  How this could be considered a criticism is a mystery to me, but I won't get too worked up.

The rest of the review was decent.  I could nitpick on various other parts of it, but I won't.  It'll be really interesting once they hand out their Killzone 2 review though.  It's ridiculous how insane each console's fanboys are.  There has always been a battle between the Halo and Killzone fanboys(or, more appropriately Microsoft and Sony fanboys), which is completely understandable.  But when it comes to an RTS vs. an FPS, it just doesn't make sense.  Even if it is a Halo game, it doesn't make much sense to compare it to Killzone 2.  Apples to orange.

 1.  When typing a title for this blog, the cursor automatically jumped down to the text box in the middle of typing.  I don't want that.  I want to type the title, then click in the text box to type my blog.

2.  After hitting delete, I want GMail to display the next message in my inbox, NOT go back to my inbox.  Every other email client goes to the next message.  GMail fails hard here.

3.  On Twitter, I want a button next to each users tweet giving me the ability to re-tweet it.  I also want a quick edit button.  Having to delete an entire tweet because of one minor spelling mistake is very annoying.  While I know proper grammar isn't required, it's annoying to read spelling mistakes.

4.  More privacy.  I'm seriously considering becoming an internet shut-in.  Deleting my Facebook, YouTube account, making Twitter private, no longer commenting on news stories, ect.  The easiest thing to do to make sure your information isn't made public is to simply not upload it.

5.  Stop opening IE, Live Messenger.  I already have Firefox open, use that to direct me to Spaces or Hotmail(which I don't even use anymore).

6.  Age verifcation has gotta go.  If it stays, it needs some tweaking.  Such as getting rid of the month and date boxes.  A simple drop-down menu consisting of years will do.

7.  Email verification has gotta go.  Make better captcha systems or something.  I'm sick of having to wait for a damn email verifcation from a website I signed up to use, sometimes for just a one-time thing.

8.  "Faster.  Must go faster."

Me!

Ok, I've technically had a GMail account since the beginning.  I remember signing up for the beta before it was even released.  However, I couldn't grasp the concept of not using Hotmail anymore.  For starters, I couldn't forward any messages from my Hotmail inbox to GMail.  Secondly, and more importantly, it didn't have folders.  Folders are very useful to me, because I have about 25 or so messages from years ago that I'd like to keep, but not clutter my inbox.  Some are merely for nostalgic purposes, such as leaked Halo 2 screens from 2004, while others are actual conversations I've had with people who have worked on movies(The Shining). 

You'd think such a useful feature would be implemented in all email services, especially one from Google.  However, you have to label them.  People seem to think labels are the same thing as folders, but they couldn't be more wrong.  Sure they organize them by whatever category you want, but there's just one tiny difference between the two: labeling messages does NOT remove them from your inbox.  Instead you then have to "Archive" them.  It's nice that they're not in the inbox anymore, but c'mon.  Just give us folders already, Google.

However, despite these minor setbacks, yours truely is now using GMail as his default email account?  Why now, you ask?  Because Microsoft has just enabled free POP3 for everyone, not just premium users.  I can now forward any incoming emails to my GMail inbox.  At first I had some difficulties, but they were my mistake.  See, I sent a test email to myself earlier.  I waited and waited for it to appear in either my Hotmail or GMail inbox.  After a few minutes it popped up in Hotmail.  I then waited for GMail to pick it up.  I waited, and waited...and waited.  I manually had it check for any new messages, and it found 2.  But they weren't appearing in my inbox.  Hmm...

Then, I remembered.  I had it set to forward any mail I got in my GMail inbox to my Hotmail inbox.  So I essentially created a loop.  Hotmail to GMail, GMail to Hotmail.  Thus making me recieve 2 of the same "test" messages I sent to myself.  I disabled forwarding, sent another test, and I'm set.

I decided to play a few levels of Halo that I rarely do, most of which consist of the Flood(whom I hate).  The first was The Maw.  I didn't finish the level, but from what I played it was somewhat enjoyable.  Like I said, I hate the Flood.  So an entire level consisting of them isn't ideal in my eyes, but I gave it a go anyways.  My main gripe is that it's so confined.  I much prefer the more open levels like Halo, AotCR and Silent Cartographer.  So many more options when trying to complete and area.  Then, just earlier today, I gave Two Betrayals another go.  This is a whole other story...

I think I can safely take back anything negative I've said about TB.  This level is beautiful in its darker setting.  The part after you go through the broken blast door and walk up that snowy hill(where the 2 hunters are on AotCR) was amazing.  Looking up into the dark sky and then having the checkpoint arrive turning it into letterbox....Glorious.  I was surprised to see that they slightly tweaked this area, though.  I thought it'd be identical to AotCR, but alas, it wasn't.

Again, this is my first full run through of TB since I first beat the game over 7 years ago, so I really didn't know what to expect(enemy-wise).  I knew the layout by heart.  When I got to the big battle where you need to get the Banshee(under the first bridge in AotCR), I really didn't know what to do.  The Covies and Flood are going at it, so I decided to sit back a while and see if they'd finish each other off eventually.  Of course they didn't.  Then the Hunters came out, and the Covenant aimed their fire at me.

I decided to take a walk back a ways and grab a Ghost.  I made a mad-dash for the Banshee and just made it.  Overall this is a spectacular level, possibly beating out Halo for second spot.  Oh, and when you have to deactivate that 2nd chasm...yeah.  I just about shat my pants there.  Was NOT expecting that at all.

Hooray for poor memory!