Well, whats new, there is nothing to do after work on Sunday, so today I decided to watch Star Wars: A New Hope because lets face it, I am a nerd.  As you all well know every nerd has to renew his/her Star Wars, or Star Trek knowledge every so often, so I dusted off the DVD and popped it into the HD DVD drive for my 360 and what do you know, not HD, but Damn Close.  Close enough in fact that my 360 can now vouch that it has seen the entire original Star Wars Trilogy, all in one night.  I just finished Return of the Jedi and I think I am going to head off to bed.  Oh yea, and I hadn't noticed that Hayden Christensen is in Return of the Jedi when Luke is looking back upon Obi-Wan, Yoda, and his father.  Honestly, I thought it was kind of gay, should have kept it original, everyone looks like they did when they died or at least close, and then Aniken is in his fricken twenties.  I suppose you could debate as to whether Aniken Skywalker truly died in his twenties though.  Anyways, I am about to do a project concerning my xbox that I am super excited about, so more on that soon, for any of you unfortunate enough to actually stumble across this blog, let alone read it.

Wow, as if I couldn't get anymore excited about the Halo 3 Beta.  I mean right as I am simmering down from the explosion of rumors that followed the Maintenance that Xbox Live recently went through Bungie has to go and ruin my perfectly in place study habits by forcing nearly half of brain to wonder how certain new elements in the Halo 3 universe will effect other new or old elements, not to mention overall gameplay.

Alright the first and biggest improvement, or modification shall we say to prevent this blog from becoming an argument is the feature fans are already calling "Deployments".  Now I have not done enough research to confirm that "Deployments" is the actual technical term designated by bungie for these new features, but for the purpose of this blog, thats what we will call them.  Anyways, Bungie has confirmed two "Deployment" types and all but promis more are in the works.  The current two are the Bubble Shield, which seemed to have an early birth when Master Chief deployed one in what was said to be strictly a cinematic trailer and nothing else.  And the second is the Trip Mine, which can used to blow up oncoming vehicles.  Both of these new "Deployments" sound amazing, and I personally can't wait to see what other "Deployments" Bungie has come up with to put in the final release of the game.  Who knows we may even see some new ones in the Beta.  Only time will tell.  I am personally very impressed with bubble shield idea and can't wait to explore the possibilities of having a virtual bubble of protection around you and possibly other teammates.

One of the other things that really struck me is the look of the levels and players.  While they were definately of next gen quality, I have to be a little critical and say that Bungie still has a lot of work to do, but for the most part I am sure its being taken care of.  I realized that all of the footage that was shown was from the Alpha build and I also realized that since the Alpha build, bungie has come out and said that an entire coat more of polish has been applied since, and it seems like every week in the weekly update they have more to say about what they added the previous week, so we will definately see about that.

Other than that the only other thing that really struck me as a good thing is that they are regressing the starting weapon lineup back to the rifle and maybe some grenades.  But either way, I was kind of getting sick of the SMG anyways.

• No Orb, Coin, Fruit, or Special Package Collection Achievments
  • There's nothing worse than having to collect a shit load of fricken hidden packages in a game.  I mean seriously I busted my ass in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City so that I could get the Apache and was so excited when I got it.  But after three minutes of flying the piece of shit around I couldn't believe that I had wasted all of that time finding all of those fricking packages for that, I still think that Rockstar owes me about three days of my life back.
• No "Climb To The Top Of The Leaderboard" Achievements
  • Alright, now I am sure that some people say these achievements prove that they are among the elite, but lets be honest for a second.  The only thing that this achievement says is that you either play way too much, that you found a pretty nifty glitch, or that the game you are playing is so out of date that only five people still play it.  So frankly, these achievements tend to be on the impossible side if you even have a hint of a life.
• No AI Dependent Achievements
  • Lets face it, we have all been their; Your nearly done protecting a VIP from terrorists on the Hardest difficulty setting when all of the sudden he turns into Rambo and runs one-hundred yards out into the open and takes one in the head.  AI is not smart enough to play a role in my gamerscore just yet, but its getting their developers, keep up the work and maybe, just maybe.
• No Hosting Achievements
  • These especially piss me off.  I mean lets face it, we do not all have insane connection speeds, so why the hell is there an achievement that is exclusively for those who have the capability to host sixteen people for a whole match.  Its bullshit, not to mention that no one can leave the room, which means that not only are you basically at the whim of your pocket book, but your also praying on the hope that no-one has to leave for any reason. So tell me again what the gamer who recieves this achievement did to deserve it, and more importantly what the hell does it have to do with Rainbow Six (Great game by the way, but stupid achievment)?
• No Achievements That Promote New Hardware
  • I hate to call upon such a fine game as "Rainbow Six: Vegas" again, but seriously guys, why is there an achievement for using the camera attachment.  Its a cool concept, but what about people who don't have a camera.  Once again we are touching on the accessability factor.  Achievements should be obtainable to anyone who purchases the game, not just to a select few who may happen to have a camera.

And finally on a last note to the developers, be smart, don't make an achievment that you know no-one is going to get, such as Final Fantasy XI's "Reach Level 75 With Each Character" Achievement that is only worth a measly 30 points.  I mean there are two things wrong with that; Its clearly impossible, and only 30 points, I mean what the hell, 30 fricken points, in the time it would take me to get that achievement I could have gotten my gamerscore up to at least 50,000 using other games.  G4 Media tested this, and came to the conclusion that after 700 hours of gameplay it was possible to get ONE character up to a level 62, not 75, but just up to 62.  Keep in mind that there are 18 character classes. I am going to have to bring out the internet lingo and I usually don't like to do that in my blogs, but seriuosly WTF Dude. I would say the Gears of War 10,000 kill achievement is as far as most gamers are willing to go as far as long term achievments are concerned, but thats almost pushing the envelope. Basically, if you think it may be impossible, maybe you should tone it down a little bit guys.

I would also like to mention one other thing that has recently impressed me.  In Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 the user is able to track his/her achievments all the way to their current percent of completion.  I would love to see this implemented in future games as it does come in handy when on an achievement hunt, although it does ruin the surprise sometimes because instead of knowing that it should come within the hour or so, you can practically count down the kills, but nevertheless, good thinking. 

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Blessing or Curse?

(The one game that can turn your life into Oblivion if your not careful.)

The Elder Scrolls series hasn't always been a favorite of mine, in fact I didn't even play Morrowind for the Xbox.  My Senior year of High-school one of my best friends, Drew (Over there in the friends List>>>), or Andrew as he is really called, got me convinced that this game was a must have when it came out.  So naturally, because one of the two of us thought it was worthy of a portion of the tiny amount of funds we had, we both ended up purchasing a copy.  I have to say at first it was fun, but like any RPG in the beginning, there was so much to do I honestly didn't know where to start and got bogged down by all of the tasks at hand.  Once he had taught me a few RPG techniques I was hooked, I mean, hooked.  I loved the game so much that I might as well have worn a T-Shirt that said "I am Martin Septim's Bitch", even though he is just a bunch of polygons and pixels.  At the time I had the same computer that I have now, a Dell XPS M170, my Baby, at least, until they came out with the Dual-Core a month later, but thats a different Rant.  Anyways the game ran, but it was definately no sprint by an means.  So I enjoyed the game but not to its full potential. 

Recently, I upgraded to Vista, which is cool, but it will be excellent once all my hardware has working drivers.  Anyways, I wanted to play Oblivion but I found that with my setup and the lack of fully functional drivers for my Hardware it just wasn't happening.  So whats a man to do when his Intel M processor isn't putting out anymore?  Thats an easy one ladies and gents; you hit the power button on the 360.  Oblivion for the 360 is pretty much the same as the computer version, only you can kill Daedra from the comfort of your couch instead of the desktop chair.  I didn't think it would be quite as fun this time around.  I was wrong though, there is something about this game that is either incredibly addictive, or incredibly illegal, because the way it sucks the gamer into its immersive plot is simply unreal.  In fact, I am going to shut up and start playing.  Maybe I'll see you on The Planes of Oblivion, if so, you can address me as Champion of Cyrodill, or Master, whichever you decide is more fitting.