Logging into Live Messenger today I was greeted with a message informing me that a new version of Live Messenger is available.  Without hesitation I clicked the download link and waited for the download to finish.  I unchecked all the unnecessary addons like the gallery feature, mail, ect.  All I want to do is talk with a handful of people online.  That's it.  Even so it clocked in at 68 MB or so.

Once finished it signed me into Messenger.  I instantly noticed that the "signing-in icon" spun a bit faster, but it really didn't seem to log me in any faster.  After waiting a few seconds I was finally signed in and saw the new Live Messenger:

It's odd how it feels like I've gone days, almost weeks without writing a blog, when in reality only 3 days have passed.  But those 3 days have been quite important, to me at least.  For starters, I'm currently a news/content writer for the website 360evolved.com.  Overall it's nice to write again for an audience that actually cares about gaming.  I've had a GamesPress account since 2005(I think), so when I left Game-Spectrum it became rather useless.  Well, it now has a use.  I've also subscribed to a crapload of RSS feeds to keep me up to date on everything, mainly 360-related.  One thing that really bothers me is that the site is really slow, especially when trying to publish something.  I was told the site was a bit wacky from the get-go, but I was hoping it'd improve over time.  Unfortunately it hasn't. 

Also, I've got news on DamnStraight.net(which appears to be down) finally.  Well...I have some news, but I unfortunately can't disclose it.  Lets just say that if this thing actually goes through, it could be epic.  I can tell you that it'll be game/technology related.  More information should be on the way sometime soon, possibly this week.

I've also created a gamerDNA profile for the hell of it.

 

I have a Twitter account.  I don't know why, I just do.  It's sometimes useful for the latest news from a few websites, but other than that I don't use it much(despite having almost 500 updates for some reason).  I don't know anyone personally who uses one, just a few online friends, but even they rarely update their status.  I've had an account for sometime, thinking the fad would eventually pass and I could let it fade away into obscurity.  However, sometime late last year/early this year, something...happened.

I don't know what exactly happened, or how it did, but Twitter became mainstream(or pretty damn close to it).  I started hearing about it more and more on sites like Digg and Reddit(Top 10 Twitter tips! was a common story I'd see), then I started seeing it on the news.  While a bigger audience would be great(including actors and athletes, who have already jumped on board), I couldn't help but feel the inevitable getting closer and closer: greed.  What I mean is that I kept waiting for the day where my Twitter page would display my usual contact updates with an ad or two in between.  And that day just got one inch closer.

I saw a tweet from someone linking to a site called Magpie.  Basically, you get paid to post advertisements from certain companies at a given rate.  According to the website I can make 16 pounds/week(what is that, $22?).  I can shamefully say it seemed tempting.  $22 a week to do basically nothing but annoy my fellow followers?  Sure!  I projected myself into the future and figured I would lose any worth-while followers, and only be followed by people exactly like me.  Eventually my Twitter page would be filled with nothing but ads.  And thus Twitter is ruined.

Sorry Magpie, your evil temptations won't suck this costumer in.

Well, technically LAUNCHCast is still around.  However, my LAUNCHCast Radio is no more.  For more than 4 years I've listened to my LAUNCHCast radio station, tuning it to perfection.  It was a daily occasion.  Walk into CAD class, pretend I'm working, listen to LAUNCHCast.  When I heard that CBS was taking it over and that my personal radio was going away, I was pretty disappointed.  I wasn't devastated, just disappointed.  Why did CBS have to take it away?  Don't they know how much work is involved in creating your own radio?

I found a way to download all the ratings I've made over that past 4+ years.  I've apparently rated over 700 albums, more than 700 artists and just shy of 1000 songs(996).  On the main page it tells you that your radio is no longer available, but it does have a link to listen to your top rated songs.  Great, I thought.  At least I can listen to the songs I loved the most.  But actually you can't, since they only give you 30 second samples.  They've also taken a page from Pandora in limiting the amount of skips a user can make.  Back with LAUNCHCast, at some point, I was able to skip as many songs as I wanted.  It wasn't like this in the beginning.  I just noticed it happen at random sometime later.  It was a great feature, or possibly glitch in my case.  Anyways, limiting it to 5 is extremely lame and the main reason I don't use Pandora, even if it does have awesome music.

The only truly good thing is that I can listen to stations in Firefox finally.  And that's it.  I'm currently listening to a classic rock station which isn't bad, but just not the same.  I've got such a variety of other music sources that I doubt I'll keep listening to LAUNCHCast on a regular basis.  Last.fm, TheSixtyOne, VLC Radio and my own personal library offer plenty of great tunes.

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!

Well, I'm still a Rogue Angel in Tribes.  So far the fun factor has sort-of worn off a bit, but it's still fun.  Like I said before, swooping in on an unsuspecting enemy is quite the thrill.  One thing I'm running into is having my kills taken from me at the last second.  And I mean last second.  I'll be in striking distance when my guy completely explodes or collapses due to another teammate killing him.  But, I suppose I deserve this because I do the same exact thing.  I'll often see two guys going at it, and when the enemy's health gets low, I swoop on in for the kill.  It's certainly a dick thing to do, but hey, it's Tribes.

Anyways, 'The Big Three" is a reference to three websites that might be launching around the same time.  Though, it's more like "The Big 2 and a Half", because one of them is a website I'm not very active at(though I do visit it everyday).  First we have, as always, Xbox-Alternative v.2, though I guess I should start calling it TheXaxis.  I'm actually getting tired of writing about its launch, which I thought would be sometime earlier this month.  God knows when it'll be now.  Each update seems to say the launch could happen anytime now, but weeks go by before we hear about it.  I've given up asking for any updates, and my excitement for the whole site has dropped dramatically since I first heard about it all back in September.  Even though it's the wrong time to worry about such things, I'm not entirely sure how he'll mange to pull it off, finacially-wise. 

Then we have Damn Straight, which moved about a foot closer to...well...I'm not sure, today.  The site is up, and there's content, but I don't think it's what James has in mind for a final product.  All of his reviews, previews, editorials, ect. have finally been transfered over to the site.  It took a week, which is pretty long for just transfering articles.  But it's done.  We briefly talked today about the site, and he asked what I thought about making the site like Penny Arcade.  Now, believe it or not I've never been to Penny Arcade.  I've seen maybe 5 of their comics and that's it.  He mainly wants to have 3 or 4 posts on the main page, with links to everything else either on the top or sides(or both).  WHEN this will happen is up in the air.  Like XA, I've given up asking when things will get done. 

And finally and certainly least we have Zanative.  Zanative is a forum full of (ex?)DigitalPh33r fanboys.  You see, DP had a forum back in July of 2008 that was the main place to talk about his work, while at the same time obsess over DigitalPh33r himself.  Height, weight, moles, dimples, shoe size, sibblings, sexual orientation.  These were all very common-and creepy-thread topics on the forums.  Needless to say the forums were shut down, and the community made their own at Zanative.  It's a temporary place until the new site launces in Feburary(or so we've been told).  I'm not uber excited like everyone else is, but it's still nice to see them all sticking together.  It's actually quite humorous how almost everyone hates Jon(aka DigitalPh33r) now. 

And that's about it.  Time for some Trix.

I'm finding that listening to dance/techno/trance music really helps when playing games online, mainly first-person shooters.  In this case I'm speaking of Tribes while listening to Trance(via a link I found on Twitter).  I noticed a definite change in gameplay and performance from myself, specifically I'm more alert and active.  Of course, it also helps when you find a new way of playing the game altogether(different armor and weapons). 

Super Smash Bros. Brawl isn't a fun game.  To me, at least.  I remember the first Super Smash Bros. game on the Nintendo 64 and enjoyed it quite a bit.  Simple, fun, addictive.  Everything a game should be.  I never got the chance to play Melee, which wasn't all that disheartening.  I mean, SSB was a good game, but it wasn't one of those games I really looked forward to seeing sequels to.  The game is good on it's own merit. 

Then the Wii came out, SSBB was announced and everyone went ape-shit.  This was it!  THE game for Nintendo's online service.  Again, I wasn't excited to play the game like everyone else was.  Just how much further can you go with a game like this without drastically changing the gameplay?  So then comes tonight when I get the chance to play it.  After 5-10 rounds with 2 other friends, I wasn't have any fun.  "What the hell is going on?" was what I was thinking most of the time.  The main thing that bothered me were the levels.  They constantly moved or rearranged themselves, which I didn't like at all. 

I also had a hard time concentrating on controlling my player.  The controls alone were confusing enough, having the camera zoom in and out at random times is a whole other thing.  Just too many things going on at once for me to enjoy it.  Perhaps if I had a day to mess around with the characters I would've had a better time.  But tonight was just lame.   Oh, and whoever designed the Gamecube controller is an asshole.

Well, Damn Straight has apparently launched.  I didn't even see it till a few hours after, which should really say something about my involvement(not exactly sure what, though).  As of now it consists of 119 articles authored by James Pikover.  Spambots have already discovered the site, which sorta sucks but their comments have been taken care of for the time being.  Like I said earlier, and many times before, I'm still not sure what my role is on the site.  Not having a current-gen gaming console really makes me wonder why I was even brought over to the project.  Like always, time will tell(I'm getting sick of saying this).

Also, Xbox Alternative v2, or "TheXaxis" should be launching sometime...this year.  Perhaps even this month, but that'd surely be pushing things.  I've been looking forward to the next incarnation of XA since, well, around this time last year.  This isn't to say it'll be a revival.  I have pretty serious doubts of getting more members, and even if we do it won't be the same as what it used to be.  If we targeted our member recruitment towards Xbox.com veterans, then yeah, that'd be pretty awesome.  Fantastic, even.  But even if we did plan on doing this it'd be near impossible to pull it off.  For starters, 98% of the veterans we'd like to recruit no longer visit Xbox.com.  And even if they do they might be under a totally different username.  Thinking about it, I'd say the best thing to do would be to look at our Xbox Live friends list.  Obviously I can't do this, but our top posters could(all 3 of 'em).  Those who stay in contact with the long time members more than likely have them on their friends list. 

Update:  Well God dammit.  They haven't even finished the design.  So much work needs to be done.  I thought...God dammit.  I need chocolate now.

Well, more like survey I guess.  3 days ago on Reddit someone started a thread asking if a demo ever persuaded someone to actually buy the full game or not.  Fairly simple and straight forward question, though it applies to every gamer.  It has 243 replies so far, which is pretty damn good on Reddit.  I then decided to ask it at the gamespress forums, which mainly consists of of game journalists.  Right now it only has 11 replies, but the GP forums aren't really that active so 11 is pretty good in my eyes.  Then, for reasons unknown, I decided to continue asking the question throughout various game sites.

As of now I've asked this question at 11 different sites, all of which have gotten a good number of responses so far.  At Teamxbox.com it currently has 96 responses, and Xbox.com has 83.  GameSpot has 37, N4G has 30,  IMDb has 19, Zantive has 16, PS3Center has 6, GamerNode has 4, Xbox-Alternative has 3, and WiiChat has ?(page won't load).

What I'm going to do with these I have no idea.  Feel free to ask it at any other game sites you can think of.  I would've at IGN but I needed to be an Insider($), and I'm apparently not at a high enough level at 1UP to start a thread. 

And so the countdown continues to my 21st birthday.  Still have no clue as to whether or not we'll go down to the auto show.  I mean, on the one hand I'd love to go.  It's a once-a-year thing and my dad and I both love cars.  On the other hand, nothing exciting is going on as far as I know.  The public show begins today(17th) and ends on the 25th, so we've still got time to decide.  It's really up to my dad at this point, cause he's the driver.  It's a 2 1/2-3 hour drive from here to Detroit, depending on which site gives us directions.  MapQuest used to be our main source, but they've messed up too many times for us so we switched to Google Directions.

Anyways, if you're interested in seeing a few pictures I took of last year's event, here ya go.