Perspective

Today is Airstrike's 27th birthday. I get a message today that he plans to play xbox tonight starting out with a game of Uno that we are all invited to play in. This immediately raises a few inquires, dim red lights are going off in my head in the form of hypothetical questions.

- We are definitely not his only friends, we don't even live in the same city. So why has he chosen to stay inside playing xbox with us? How would he feel if we didn't show up/get online. Sure, not being online sounds proposterous but I sure hope I don't let him down.

- I'm not saying Uno isn't a good time but one would think other activities besides sitting at home playing games, technically alone, isn't the norm on your birthday. He's only 27, what's next year, bingo night?

- In a broader sense, is this some sign of maturity where you don't need to go out to get wasted with your friends for your birthday?

- Has this become some kind of trend for our generation to "meet online" and hang out? With the 360's new xbox experience, we spent an hour one night just playing dress up with our avatars. We should probably keep that on the downlow...

I'm sure he has other things planned for the weekend but at his age, the artheritis could be slowing him down. I look forward to some Uno and possibly Castle Crashers tonight, happy birthday Airstrike!

Highlights of Today's Game Chat...

We're not funny... that's been proven over and over again as the 4 of us stand there, the only ones laughing. I don't think it's that we're not funny... it's that we have an almost constant dialogue throughout any given day. So, why would anybody find our obscure references to something that happened 3 weeks ago, funny? To those people I say... "shoulda been there." And now you can! Sorta... you'll find that you probably didn't want to be anyway...

Email Chat:

Tag: Sweet, word on Mass Effect 2 from this years GDC...

Fenris: Tag, Whatever you do don't freeze yourself until it comes out. It will end badly for you.

He used punctuation, we're so proud of him!

Airstrike: Yeah, nobody's even heard of Mass Effect 500 years from now.

Poops: Given the opportunity I bet Tag would replay both ME's until 2509 just to make sure that he played through with every possible permutation of dialogue choices.

Airstrike: God, could you imagine the storage he'd need for all those spreadsheets?

You know, now that I read this, it's funny, but I'm pretty sure people still don't get it. Nobody FULLY grasps Tag's love of both, Mass Effect and spreadsheets.

Text Message Chat:

Airstrike: Do you have Puzzle Quest on XBL?

Poops: No

Airstrike: Ah... there's a "Win an online match" achievement. I don't want to play some random d-bag.

Poops: What makes you think you'll win against me, douche-tard?

Airstrike: Because you're dumb

Poops: Your mom

HEY!... she's a nice lady.

Those are MY highlights from the day... gentlemen, care to add?

Recapturing My Youth

I spent several hours with NHL '09 yesterday, and I must say that I can see why it's being held in such high regard all over the web. I do of course, have my complaints. One of my favorite things about hockey games in the past was taking my player of choice and turning him into some kind of god-like super star... and I don't mean Wayne Gretzky good... that guy is an absolute pussy when it comes to the kind of stats you can rack up in a hockey video game. Hat Trick? Fuck that, I'll give you a hat trick of hat tricks. I would make sure every man on my starting line had a hat trick (I call that a hat stand). The Pittsburgh Penguins were an unstoppable juggernaut. I would play through entire undefeated season and with a Stanley Cup in 4 games outscoring my opponent 80-0 and injuring every player in their starting 5 (I couldn't ever hurt a damn goalie).

This is not the case with NHL '09... and it may be for a couple of reasons. 1) I'm not that far into it, and 2) I've been playing the "Be a Pro" mode. You see, traditionally in hockey games you play as a team... you control whoever has the puck. When on defence you can easily switch between players to take control of whoever is closest to the puck. This is certainly an option in NHL '09, but I get the impression that this isn't entirely the single player experience they want you to have. I say this because all of the achievements in the game are based around advancing your "be a pro" character (and uploading pictures/videos to EA... guess who already racked up THOSE little guys). This mode revolves around taking a single player from a 3rd string minor league player all the way to the pros. This means you only control 1 player in a game... which also means that to rack up your assists and goals, you have to rely on the computer to pass you the puck, OR worse yet, actually put the damn thing in the goal. I've set up an ungodly amount of nice 1-timers, only to have my teammate run right up to the goal and trip over the goalie. I win almost every face-off... only to see whoever the puck goes to immediately turn it over. I'm not faulting the game for this... I'm sure I just picked a shitty team... I just don't understand why I can only control 1 player in the Be A Pro mode. The game even goes as far as to give you a view from the bench when your player isn't in the game (easily fixed by turning off line changes... but COME ON).

As I stated before, I really haven't gotten all that far into the game yet. My player is still on the minor league team and thus surrounded by idiots. I have only played 1 game in the traditional way I mentioned earlier, where I control every player (which was a blast by the way). I've only played with the controls set up to use this "skill stick." That is fun, but I have a feeling I may be more successful with the old school controls.

I realize I've only put complaints here, and that's not at all fair. The game does look amazing, it's got a good learning curve and the game is certainly challenging. I just really need to spend more time with it. So, that's about all I've got.

Oh, and I played a little more Fallout 3 tonight... I can't believe how long that game is... wow.

A Little Change of Pace

It's been a few great months 'round these parts (and by these parts I mean video game happy fun land). I've busted through Fable 2, Gears of War 2, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 2, and last night I finished up Prince of Persia. Not to mention I've filled in gaps with Little Big Planet and Fallout 3... and I fully intend to finish up both of those. But, today I plan to venture into a genre I haven't touched in a while... sports games... and more specifically NHL '09. According to the box it's won 7 sports game of the year awards, and I'm not one to argue with a box ("this end up" anybody?). I used to play a lot of hockey games in my younger days. I believe it started with NHL '95... that was the kind of game that made me actually go watch hockey. I live in a place that had an 85 degree Christmas, so, that was kind of a big deal.

After NHL '95 the next game that I clearly remember standing out for me was Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey for the Nintendo 64. What I remember most about this was me and my buddies playing 4-player at my parents house in high school, and every time ol' Joe Buck would say "looking to score" somebody would inevitably respond with "I'm always looking to score..." Then we'd turn off the Nintendo and go play Magic: The Gathering. We were so awesome.

In early college I picked up a copy of NHL Hitz that my roommates and I had a pretty good time with. But, since then I haven't really played a hockey video game.

Tag insists that this "skill stick" feature in NHL '09 (Well the NHL series for consoles) is "teh suck"... but I'm not buying it. I'm looking to recapture the fun of my hockey game youth... and of course, I'll be looking to score (thanks Joe!)...

Hardcore Inquiry

Of note, Poops finished his second playthrough of Kung Fu Panda before joining us in the chat.

Stay Cool, Baby

Probably the coolest thing ever:

Game Night: A Year In Review

Game Night... it's a "tradition" were here at the Axis started several months ago. Well, now that I think about it, it probably started almost a year ago (correct me if I'm wrong here fellas). It's been a pretty good year for multiplayer games, and we've dove head first into a lot of them. However, we're "gamers" in the truest sense of the word... no one genre and no one game can really keep us tied down forever. We're not the guys you still see playing Halo 3 a year out... no, no, our appetite extends far beyond that. However, I do believe the seed was planted with Halo 3. It was a game we all picked up... say what you want about the Halo fanboys (definitely some of the loudest and most obnoxious out there... not to mention it includes these guys), but Halo is more than a solid multiplayer experience. So, off we went. We certainly had our share of late nights, rockets to the face, and the occasional team kill... usually with a rocket to the face on a late night. After several weeks of Halo 3 things died down on the multiplayer front.... I mean we do all have day jobs... which should be obvious by how often this thing is updated. But, we didn't want the party to end, so we instituted our own Game Night... every Wednesday night. Over the next few nights (or weeks?) I plan to lay out each game... tonight I start where we started:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Clearly one of the best games to come out in 2007... which almost kills the "year in review" portion of this... but we didn't start Game Night until early 2008... so shut it (I know this because Fenris and Tag opened my still cellophane encased copy when they came into town for a New Year's party at my house). It was a game I never really excelled at... and I'll be honest, it's a game I don't remember a lot of during most of our game nights because it was a while back. So, with that I'll leave it to the comments... Anybody out there in blog land who has a good COD4 memory feel free to comment (like anybody reads this)... and of course, those of us who are actually PART of game night should leave comments too. DO IT... or the COLE TRAIN WILL GIT YA, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Mirror's Reflection

Mirror’s Edge is a title that isn’t meant for everyone. Some people get motion sickness. Some think it’s not innovative. Come on, it’s a first person running game. I tried it out but decided not to finish it for reasons I’ll say later on. I’d like to say that I’m a fan of the whole free running/parkour thing. Assassin’s Creed put it out there and a little movie called District B13 was also fun to watch. Mirror’s Edge lets you do some very interesting stunts, borderline quite unbelievable. The controls fit but the game itself is pisspoor.



I thought this would be more of a puzzle game but there are at times at most two ways to get from A to B. At first, it was great just running and climbing around but you’re doing it illegally and therefore, police are involved. They shoot at you but you can take a few shots. The things I really disliked about gameplay is that in some areas, you are forced to fight guards with automatic weapons in order to progress. This can be done but I don’t see why I have to. Despite a large environment, the game is really linear. This isn’t what I expected for a running game. If you’ve tried the demo, the prologue level it gives you is a pretty good indication of what the rest of the game is like. I can’t say how it could have been better, I just know how good it is and isn’t. 7/10

Don't Worry, I'm Here To Help...

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. What the fuck are the Houston Texans trying to pull? Turnover after turnover after turnover. It's like Matt Schaub and Sage Rosenfels have some kind of bet going to see who will throw the most eye en tees this year. As I type this, Sage is really padding his stats in this contest. That's pick #4 for the game. But, worry not, dear Texans. Let ol' Aith here help you out. You see I think I've come to the root of the problem:





See that there... that's a Texans Jersey. It's what they've been calling "Liberty White" 'round these parts. Study it very closely... that's where you want to throw the ball. I've even done you the favor of making it an Andre Johnson jersey... turns out, this is where you should be going with the ball most of the time anyway. Now I know it's only your first day here... and I don't want to give you too much to digest right away. But, I think we might be able to go over a couple of variations of the jersey above.

These are Navy and "Battle Red" version of your jersey. Notice how they still display the "Texans" logo above the numbers on the front. That's a real key give away. That's what you want to look for at all times since it's consistent across all 3. Once again, these are Andre Johnson jerseys... seriously, throw him the fucking ball... Matt... up here asshole... this is important shit, pay attention.

Yes, I understand you're hurt... yes I know you didn't play at Navy, I said the Jersey was a "Navy" color... fuck

Now, if you find yourself in a situation where this knowledge has left you... I know a crumbling pocket is a tough place to keep your wits about you... simply look down at your own jersey. Match that up with the little bodies running around in front of you, and throw it to that guy... only make sure that number is "80" for fuck's sake.

Is There Something Important Going On Today?

Hey, it's me, Aith, and I have a few things to say about election day...

What’s really getting to me are all the people who are saying things like “I’m praying for our country” or “I’m worried about our country” or any number of things like this… as if we’ve suddenly become a dictatorship as of this election. There will be slightly minor, almost insignificant differences between an Obama victory and a McCain victory… and even if the differences are, relatively, drastic… it won’t be enough to doom us to the future that these people have seemed to envision. You’re still going to wake up tomorrow and be free to do as you like. You’re still going to have a roof over your head, a gun in your home (if you're into that sort of thing), stores will still be open, water will run, electricity will flow, and unless you murder or steal, no man in a uniform is going to drag you from your home. Oh, also if you're homeless... well then that little "roof over your head" thing might not apply. Get a job... loser.

Also, is it really necessary to update your facebook status to “get out the word on voting”? It’s mother fuckin’ election day… is there really anybody left out there with a facebook/email account who DOESN’T know there’s some kind of election going on, Obama is clearly a member of a Muslim terrorist cell, and John McCain eats fetuses to sustain his frail state of health? Hobos who can't read, write, hear, or speak, know that there's an election going on.

Oh, and then the worst type of person is the “I can’t believe you’re not voting!!!” person… who is all about how it’s your “patriotic duty to vote”… until they find out that you’re voting for the other guy. Then you're a goddamned idiot for even having an opinion. This brings me to the next guy... the “candidate x is a freakin’ moron!!!” guy… way to construct a convincing argument… jackass. Both, McCain and Obama got to where they are by being somewhat intelligent... even if they lied, cheated, and stole to get there... you still have to be pretty smart to pull that off while the nation is watching. I say "Bravo!" to each candidate for both their balls and their cunning.

In conclusion, I like "quotes". Carry on.