Gearheads of War

I beat Gears 2 on hardcore today. It was an awesome ride. I loved every minute. That is until my Xbox died.

After beating the campaign, the console was chugging along perfectly fine. I shut it down to take a breather and came back a couple hours later to hop on for some multiplayer, and low and behold the 'box won't boot. System Error E-73, with the lower-right quadrant flashing red.

This is pretty much heartbreaking, although I must say I'm thankful I was at least able to finish the campaign before my box crapped out. And I thought I'd throw a desperate cry for a miracle out to the masses: has anyone had an xbox that's recovered from this on it's own? The hundred-dollar repair fee is not sounding very pleasant right now...

Hope to be able to see you online again soon.

Amidst all the GTA IV hubub, I'm going to throw a shout out to an all-but-forgotten golden oldie. Ah yes, Halo 3. After watching the coverage from the MLG tournament in Meadowlands, I have decided to rededicate myself to what once was my greatest obsession. I'd like to form a GameBattles team and start climbing the ladder. If any of you can remember playing Halo 3 and think you may want to meet on a regular basis, lemme know. I'm really just looking for a group of cool people to play with, who I can actually communicate with, unlike the majority of the population on XBL.

Don't know how much anyone is interested in this game, but I just watched the tech demo over at Gamernode (http://gamernode.com/news/5967-alone-in-the-dark-tech-trailer/index.html) and I was pleasantly surprised. Even though it's just a "tech demo," the gameplay seems to be coming along nicely and it looks like they're throwing in a few welcome novelties to the horror genre. Check it out and post your opinions!

Hey folks. I'm back. Sort of. Life has been less than great lately, but I have been working on a couple projects. One of them is a video for G4's Attack of the Show user-created commercial contest. (Ok, this was my friend's project, but I helped out by playing a zombie). You guys should check it out (along with the other videos) at http://www.ziddio.com/contestGallery.zd?dispatch=paginate&reportType=3001&contest=63

My group's vid (Zombie Love) is currently rated #1, but we could still use support. Please feel free to register and rate our video well if you feel it deserves it!

Also, hopefully by next paycheck I'll be able to acquire the means to play XBL again. I've missed you guys. (Oh, and if you were wondering, I'm the zombie who runs into the window).

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been around much in the community. There's a lot of shit that's come up in my life recently, most notably that I found out my girlfriend was cheating on me with one of my roommates... and then she broke up with me when I confronter her about it. So, I'm not exactly going to get back in the gaming groove for a while, methinks. I just can't bring myself to turn the xbox on; it's weird how when you lose something you really cared about, all the things you thought you cared about cease to entertain you.

I hope everyone else is enjoying their new year so far, and hopefully I'll be able to see you all on XBL in the not too distant future.

Ranger out.

Man, I have been without Internet for the better part of the last two weeks. It was almost unbearable, but... I bought a house and I'm all moved in! It is so nice to be out of my old, small-ass apartment. I love it here. I'm living with a few roommates, and between us we have two 360's and a Wii and plenty of geeky banter to go about. As soon as I get a wireless adapter for the 360, I'll be back in for some FFF action.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas if you celebrate it, and happy New Year!

First off, as this is my diary, I feel I have the right to lay down a ground rule: please don't turn this into a political debate. I don't know if it would lead to that or not, but I just feel like I should put that warning there. By all means, state your opinions and feelings, just try not to jump on each other. Oh, also, there are a couple CoD4 spoilers in here, and while the story isn't all that important to the game, I am going to talk about some moments that will have a much greater impact on you if you don't know about them ahead of time.

Alright, here goes. I consider myself to be a very antiwar person, yet my favorite genre of video game is the FPS. I LOVE tactical/realistic shooters (GRAW, R6, CoD). Generally, I've found that these games generate a sort of heroic and honorable aura around the concept of "war." While I totally disagree with that, I still love the games for being fun to play. Call of Duty 4, however, triggered a much different response in me. Firstly: there are a couple antiwar quotes that display when you die. They're not all cliché things like "Freedom isn't free, but the Marine Corps will pay 94% of your tab," or whatever (although those are in there, too). More importantly, (and here are the spoilers) there are events that happen in the campaign that simply don't happen in other shooters. Firstly, the Marine character you play as DIES by the time you're half-way through the game. For the first time, I felt myself actually thinking about the cost of war while playing a video game. My character died and I wouldn't get to play as that character for the rest of the game. Secondly: the C130 gunship level. This is the most realistic portrayal of combat I have ever seen in a game. From the way everything looks in the black and white thermal scan to the chatter of the flight crew, it is spot-on mind-blowing. If you go to YouTube right now and search for actual videos of this, they will look just like the game. This level blew me away, but it also scared me. It made me realize how sick war is, that I can be sitting up in an airplane a mile away, blasting human beings into bits on the ground who can't even see me. This while the entire time my flight crew is calmly conversing and saying things like "Nail that guy by the building. Got him. Shoot those guys over there." I mean, nobody's even excited. They're completely desensitized to the violence.

The Jack Thompsons of the world can go on claiming that violent video games breed violent people, but at least in the case of CoD4, the opposite happened for me. I would go so far as to describe the experience as "harrowing," but then again, it's just a video game.

It was great to get in on the CoD4 action tonight for a few games. I really had a blast, especially with the 18 player game that was really just loosely-organized mayhem, as well as the "hardcore" mode. I've been pretty impressed with the game overall, although the single-player still disappointed me with way too much scripted action and way to little actual AI. (Don't get me wrong, the campaign was still a blast, but I can tell multiplayer is where it's at). Also, I had absolutely no lag during the 18 player game (I know many of you were cursing about the lag, but it didn't affect me!)

Anyway, I'm sorry I couldn't stay on for longer to get to play some other games. I had a great time tonight, so thanks to everyone who came out to play!

Check out this article in Gamernode (they link to the full article somewhere else, but I didn't have time to read that one): http://gamernode.com/News/4554-Gears-of-War-movie-to-be-entirely-green-screen/index.html

Seems one way to solve the budgeting woes for the Gears of War movie is to employ the same tactic used to create 300: shoot entirely on green screen. I don't think this is a bad idea, given the stylized look of Gears. In fact, 300 actually reminded me of Gears in some ways (blood splatters, etc). Not that comparing the two really matters that much, but after seeing what a talented crew can do with a green screen in 300, I have no fears if they take that path with Gears. I just wonder where they're gonna find four huge guys to play the leads. ;-)

Well, I just bought a new HDTV and the Halo 3 edition 360. Needless to say, I'm stoked. Halo looks beautiful, and I can't wait to try out Gears. I am playing using the component cables right now, and was curious if HDMI makes a noticeable difference at 720p? (My set doesn't support 1080p). Also, I heard that with some versions of the 360, you NEED the special Microsoft HDMI cable. Is this true with the Halo 3 edition, or will any standard HDMI cable work?

Thanks for your help guys, and I look forward to fragging you in hi-def, widescreen glory in the future!

Does Halo 3 support clans like Halo 2? I haven't really heard anybody talk about this feature so I'm not sure if it's still there. If so, would there be significant interest in starting a Gearheads clan? Just a thought. I mainly am just interested in playing for fun, but banding together to earn some bragging rights (maybe even get into a Bungie Hump Day Challenge?) would be pretty cool. Post your thoughts.

Before purchasing my copy of Halo 3, I actually took the time to read several reviews. Sure, the scores were, for the most part, very exciting, but the reviews themselves were more often than not very boring and uninspired. It seemed like the reviewers found nothing to really love about Halo 3, nothing that would cause them to break out of their shell and yell "awesome!" Many reviewers said things about how, when looked at separately, the different components of Halo were nothing new, but when added altogether, it certainly offered the best value (campaign, multiplayer, forge, saved films, all the online stuff). Even 1Up's Dan Hsu, who gave it a 10, wrote a review worth one word: "blah."

But after playing through just the first two missions of Halo 3's campaign, before even touching multiplayer, I was completely blown away. So what was wrong with the reviewers? Well, maybe they were playing the game WITH THEIR EYES CLOSED? One reviewer (I don't remember who, sorry) said "Not all weapons are used in the campaign. I never found the flame thrower, for example." Uh... bullshit. It's in there at least three times. And, on that topic, why has the flame thrower been described as "useless?" It kills even the larger flood forms in like 2 seconds and has a decent range and ammo supply.

I guess my point is, for me Halo 3 really took me back. It instilled the same feelings of awe in me that the original did. It made me go "wow" time and time again. And I haven't even finished the campaign or played a single multiplayer match yet. I know it's not perfect, and that for the most part the gameplay is "tried and true," but why are reviewers so afraid to let their emotions show? Are they all bent on being the "critic?" Do they think that makes them better writers, or gives them increased credibility? Or did they honestly not find anything to really love about Halo 3?

/rant