Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Gaming Tuesday- Bad Blogger is Bad

Wow Guys, it's been a while. There's nothing exciting to tell you about either. I've just been lazy. I'm just hoping to make this post long enough/decent enough to warrant posting.

I've spent most of the fighting the urge to go get Homefront. I mean IGN only gave it a 7.0 rating. The campaign is super short, which is really the main reason I'd be buying the game. It's some sort of combination of CoD fatigue and an itch to have something new to play. And then there's the brilliant premise. Still it would be 60 dollars for something that I'm not really sure about. It would be worth it if I trusted that the multiplayer would be lasting fun, but I doubt it really is. It happens over and over again where a new game comes along and everyone plays for a few weeks and then it's back to Call of Duty.

I think I'll wait and buy Homefront and Medal of Honor together once they both get cheap and save the money for L.A. Noire and Mortal Kombat

L.A. Noire is a game that really intrigues me. I've never really got into games like that where your character is the good guy. It is a Rockstar game, so it'll be well done.

Gah... This is so short and not really worth posting, but

-Michael

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Today's Supreme Court Decision

The Rational mind is disgusted by what the Westboro Baptist Church does at the funeral's of U.S. soldiers. It seems rather obvious that they shouldn't be allowed to do that. It is really awful. Today's Supreme Court Decision may seem unfair and revolting. However it is absolutely necessary to protect our civil rights.

It may seem to be rational, in this one case, to prohibit the hateful demonstrations. It may seem that those demonstrators don't deserve the right to free speech. Government cannot act in the way normal people do. It cannot think. It cannot differentiate between types of unpopular speech. There is no room for nuance in the government.

Had the ruling today gone against the Westboro Baptist Church it may have felt nice to know that these bigoted morons would no longer be able to have these hateful protests. However, it would've created a major loop hole in our constitutional law that would eventually be exploited by a malevolent group in government to suppress all speech they deem 'unpopular.'

I believe the constitution's main aim is to prevent tyranny. There are things that are allowed or required by it that seem unfair. Hate speech is allowed. Tasteless demonstrations can take place. A criminal is allowed to face their accuser in court. It just seems unjust that these are the requirements of liberty. It may seem that there needs to be a 'sometimes' in these rules.

Our system of government cannot work if 'sometimes' rules are allowed. The rules have to absolute even if it causes some tragic cases, because the alternative is much more tragic.

Thanks for reading and please comment

-Michael

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Gaming Tuesday- Red Ring of Death Edition

My XBox 360 broke on Sunday. It wasn't the 3 light ring of death, but just a single light with the error E73. From what I can discern that is a hardware error that has something to do with the Ethernet port. Basically I have a broken XBox that's out of warranty. I suppose I should count myself lucky that it was only 360 number two and that it lasted 3 years given the horrendous failure rate.

My new XBox 360 is on the way though. I was really hesitant to go for a used or refurbished Arcade system though. Depending on the production date/whether or not Microsoft has fixed the soldering, there is a likelihood of failure. I decided instead to get the new XBox 360 "slim" with the 250 GB hard drive. It's supposed to be here between tomorrow and Friday.

I still not sure what to do with the old system though. If I were to sell it as is I can get about $30 for it. If I were to repair it I could sell it for about $70 or maybe $80 with the repair costing about $40. So, there's not much money to be made there.

I'm really thinking about getting it repaired and finding a charity to give it to. The problem is I don't know of a charity that would want a used console. If any of you know of a a place I could donate it to, please let me know in the comments.

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Homefront

It is really impossible to look at any FPS game, especially one that is in a modern setting and not compare it Call of Duty. Therefore basically every FPS I look at seems sluggish and, well, fake. The bits of gameplay I've seen from Homefront are no exception. The graphics aren't quite as good and it seems more choppy than Call of Duty.

It's probably not fair to use Call of Duty as a standard probably isn't fair, but it is inevitable. It really turns into more of question of whether or not a game can offer me something different enough from CoD to be worth it. For example, I didn't think Medal of Honor offered anything that I wouldn't get if I just waited for Black Ops, so I didn't get it.

Homefront is definitely offering something different. It offers a brilliant premise that certainly intrigues me. Still if I only bought games based on interesting premises, I wouldn't be worried about my XBox having the Red Ring of Death, because it would've been tossed out the window long ago, because this game exists.

It's also easy to fall into the trap of great story= shit game. The previews I have read for Homefront seem to indicate that there are some mechanical issues with the game, but they could be resolved. My decision about whether or not I will be getting this game will come down to the Demo. If plays well, not necessarily as well as Call of Duty, but avoids truly game breaking issues, I will be getting it.

As for multiplayer, meh. That looks like that may suck pretty hardcore. It does look very objective based which is a plus. However, 32 people in a game and abundance of vehicles could make it just awful. At least it will have dedicated servers for consoles.

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That's all for this week.

Thanks for reading and please comment.

-Michael