The game

This year there have been a plethora of new releases in the video game world that are must plays. The reviewers gave credit to some and not nearly enough to others. There are a lot of choices for your buck and I'm starting to think game magazines such as Game Informer are rating toward the highest bidder. I'm grateful sometimes and disgruntled others with the recent influx of gamers hitting the market today. I will cover - briefly - some titles I loved this past year and explain the pro's and con's that came with the title discussed.

First and foremost I have been overly impressed with the Mass Effect series. This year Bioware released the second installment of the trilogy that is Mass Effect and the release was beautiful. There was a great attention to detail in the mechanics of the game and they cleaned up the few bugs that lay in the previous combat system. Bioware has definitely fine tuned this style they've been working on since the release of the first Knights of the Old Republic. The media praised this game and I back the praise. I would give it a firm 9/10 and the SERIES will probably stand to receive a 10 out of 10 in my opinion, but as is my gripe with nearly every game releasing in this new generation of consoles YOU BASTARD VIDEO GAME CORPORATIONS ARE TAKING AWAY WHAT MADE VIDEO GAMES GREAT.

When was the last time you weren't able to pick up a game play it through an entire weekend - dodging friends phone calls and attempts to hang out - and NOT beat the thing by Sunday afternoon? Us gamers miss hitting 99 hours on a game and still having plenty to do - you know when the time-clock ran out? Now we get 10 to 20 hours of game play and if it exceeds 20 hours the game developers split it up into parts to make an extra buck. I.E. Fallout 3 was fantastic but it had 5 expansions - COULD YOU GUYS NOT PUT THIS IN THE FULL GAME? Or in another example - and possibly the first to cash in on us desperate gamers - Half Life: 2! What's with the 3 extra parts? You guys couldn't have made them available and maybe.. just maybe pushed the release date back a bit? WE KNOW YOU HAVE EPISODE 3 READY FOR US! RELEASE IT ALREADY - I'm buying.

And now for my big gripe - still related to cash I'd imagine - Game Informer I'm out to get your ass. What in the world was up with that review of Aliens Vs. Predator? 5.75? That's a garbage rating, when I see anything under a 6 my mind jogs me to avoid that thing like it's the bubonic plague. But luckily I'd played the free demo released on XBOX: Live the week before. Sure the game had its bugs and I definitely wouldn't say it was the best thing since Bush had that shoe flung at his head but there was a lot of fun gameplay there, and the multiplayer was pretty unique with the alien and all. The best thing that game did was stay true to the previous AVP games and improve on it's previous glitches. IGN was fair with their review critiquing the bugs but admiring the good qualities when they gave it a 7/10. I'd say it's worth the buy - it's at least more worth it than the Halo: ODST, the game you gave a 9.25 to.

Halo: ODST was a scam by Bungie to get some more of our hard earned cash. This game would have made a good expansion pack, the gameplay was lacking and they pulled out and changed things that made Halo 3 great. But my disappointment has been with the new maps that were supposed to come with it. I'm not saying they aren't there but on the occasions I pop in the ODST disc, I'm still being matched up with people on the same 4 or 5 maps I've been playing for two years. Where is the map filter bungie? Where is the new super sweet game ODST was supposed to be? I think I missed something. And Game Informer I know you guys sold out when you gave it a 9.25 I haven't met a gamer yet that was satisfied dropping the 60 bucks on that game. If you rate anything more than an 8 us gamers need something we can be happy to spend our dough on you dolts.

I could rant some more but I'll save it for another blog.. I need a beer now.

Universality

In thinking about life, the universe and our place in it all I stand perplexed without answer. I've gazed through my telescope at the specs of light surrounding our little planet. I've gazed at colors of red and blue - those other planets, Mars.. Venus. I've stared into the moons gaze and examined the sun through a camera on the viewfinder.

I can track the orbits, calculate sizes and imagine being on the surface, but no matter how far out I go into what I can see with my eyes it remains nothing too new or unusual. Even if life was somehow viewed it could only arouse more questions than it could answer.

The truth is that 97% of my universe is composed of something not one human can see, taste, smell, hear or touch. Some call it "dark matter" but they don't know it's "dark." A friend of mine recently told me he'd envisioned dark matter as maybe being a color or series of colors we can't see with our poorly developed eyesight.
This really got me thinking about dark matter as it could be anything; a color, a planet maybe.. a huge world? One that could never be understood with our small lenses and puny brains.

Trusting someone with a view that only pulls in 3% of what is out there in that great expanse of seemingly empty space - and mind you these people also claim to be absolutely sure what it is and out place in it all - is like trusting a blind man to guide you through oncoming interstate traffic while riding a bike.

For all we know we compose the molecular structure of a infinitely massive sexual organ. Yes! We are here for sex! Or, just maybe our universe is like a tree and what we know are the roots of this incredibly large extraterrestrial tree. The big bang could then have been the roots branching out into the dark ground. We would all then be a lifeblood to something much bigger than ourselves.. Not quite the geocentric view that was shared by us so long ago - oh wait.. people still believe all that jazz.

The truth is we don't know and can't. I won't attempt to fill in the gaps of knowledge with mindless assumptions and claim understanding because then true understanding can not be.. well.. understood. Einstein said it best "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."