It's difficult for me to accept my current status as far as gaming goes. This gen has a good deal of wonderful games. But I never seem to get to play any of them on time. The Orange Box (PC Version) is the first game in about 2 YEARS I've gotten (or will get) within a week of its release. I still don't have Halo 3 yet, because I'm content with Doom at the moment still. I'm pretty sure that many have gotten and are already enjoying Orange Box. Tell me what I'm in for.

My gaming library for the Wii was never that great, but a week ago or so I added Metroid Prime 3 to the bunch. I'm kind of mixed on my opinion of it so far. I forget where I am because I haven't played it in a while. I don't know why. The Wii-controls are superb, the graphics are great (and don't need Wii goggles to appreciate them, either), and the level design is pretty good too. But I don't know why I'm not compelled to play it. I'm sure the game gets a lot better from here on out, though (I'm not very far in the game so far). I'm going to remain optimistic on this.

Also, today I've noticed that Doom + voiceovers = awesome. See why in the greatest 12 second clip ever.

Eh? Well I thought it was funny.

As of 8 days ago, I was a member at Gamespot for 1 year. I was going to blog about that. Then I forget.

Well, that's one event I can't live again

/pointless

Uberdemon (me) scores a good win on E1M9 with a 30 fraglimit (second place had 20, and is a rocket abuser). The server said the map was E1M8, where it looked promising because there were no rocket launchers there. And unfortunately, E1M9 had it. Not only that, but unless you wanted to look "hardcore" with using only a pistol (really that's just suicide), and didn't want to do an annoying platforming sequence to get a shotgun or didn't spawn in the area with the chaingun, using it was encouraged.

It goes against every one of my beliefs as a Doomer, but in deathmatch I was forced to use a rocket launcher. Now that my lag wasn't so drastically awful, I zoomed to the lead (despite coming in about halfway through the match) with picture perfect rocket frags. Before I would lose to rocket launchers because lag would prevent me from dodging them and proper retaliation (from any weapon, really) had a big delay. I must say, using a Rocket Launcher is like scoring a perfect score on your SATs but you just so happened to have a quick glimpse at the answer book a week before. It's a good feeling, because you won, but you don't feel like you completely earned it. Surprisingly enough, it offers a strange sense of satisfaction, but I probably owe it to the fact that a player simply standing there took a headshot from it. The price that's paid for being careless. Standing still in a Doom deathmatch is a surefire way to zoom someone's frag count up by 1.

Luckily I got some nice spawns at the chaingun entrance and managed to pull off an 8+ killing spree (this is a 6 or 7 player match) before taking an unfortunate rocket to the face. I thought it was funny, yet admittedly cheap, when me and someone else spawned at the chaingun entrance, and I took the chaingun, standing on the sprite so the other player couldn't get it. Chaingun vs. pistol. Poor soul didn't stand a chance.

The match played out how you would expect in most online games. The one rocket launcher spawn was of course, camped. And I kid you not, I saw at one point somebody just repeatedly fire rockets into a corridor to get frags. Of course, the easiest way is to wait for him to run out of ammo and then rush him. Which, of course, I didn't have to do. I was behind him. Frags ensued. Skulltag is still way better. And unfortunately, Skulltag leader Carnevil left the project, so unless replacements are promptly performed, Skulltag won't have any updates. And that's sad, everyone I know who played both agrees Skulltag is superior.

So, as it seems, lag is my biggest Doom deathmatch problem. Not overpowered weapons.

I hate Doom deathmatch.

Actually, that's a huge overstatement. I love deathmatch in Doom--when the games are fair. The shotgun, pistol, chainsaw, chaingun, etc, are all fine and I have no problem with using them and having them used against me.

What I can't stand are the projectile based weapons. All of them are way too powerful.

Rocket launchers kill in pretty much one hit. Plasma rifles only require about five shots to down somebody. And I'm not even getting into the BFG. You all should know about that.

Sure, projectile weapons have one disadvantage compared to hitscan weapons...you can dodge the projectiles. But Doom levels have a lot of corridors in them, and guess how much of a chance you have of dodging them then, where there's little room to dodge them. This isn't a problem if the level is very wide open, like say, Mt. Erebus or something. Even the plasma rifles/BFGs aren't a terrible problem since they aren't on any of the E1 levels and are found sparingly in only a few of the later maps. But rocket launchers are found in nearly every map, and it's all I've seen people run to in deathmatch.

I've observed a wide number of deathmatch server matches going on, and the winner, most likely, is someone who (ab)used rockets. I remember getting into a server where I clearly dominated everyone in terms of level knowledge, reflexes, aim, and cover use, yet I still lose to rockets simply because there's very little you can do about them. If you go to a wide-open level, dodging is easy. But it isn't that I'm not able to dodge them, it's that I can't in most cases.

In one server with a rocket filled map, with a 30 frag limit, I lost (only having 24 frags, compared to Generic Rocket Abuser #1 with 30 frags, and Generic Rocket Abuser #2 with 28 frags, with a few people below me). Put them in a rocketless map and I dominate (me with 30 frags, everyone else with 10 or less). It isn't that I can't use rockets well, I can pull off a rocket massacre if I have to, but I'm sick of people abusing the noobish weapon and then acting like they are the best when in a map where it's nearly impossible to dodge them.

ZDaemon (the source port in which this took place) has a mixed community. There are polite people, people who take deathmatching well, and generally kind people. Then there are the idiots, the ones who invade every server that allows teamkilling and raise havoc (considering on most servers you lose keys and weapons when you die, this is a huge pain), the ones who endlessly cuss when they are killed, and the extremely immature. Problem is, most of the nice people are the ones who play co-op, which I've noticed I've started doing a lot more than deathmatch.

And for a comparison, Skulltag is better than ZDaemon in every way except for the fact that Skulltag rarely has servers up (there's a lot less people playing ST than ZDaemon). Skulltag adds new items, weapons, skins, stages, and gameplay modes for multiplayer.

Okay, at this point I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this, so...uh...

Dance, Cybie, Dance!

...And it's not Gyarados at the Lake of Rage!

Nope, the shiny happened to be a

Well, at first it was a , then a

If you couldn't already tell, I'm glad I was finally able to get a shiny (non-Lake of Rage Gyarados) pokemon, and I believe that's the last big thing I've yet to have done in Pokemon. I'm also relieved that when shiny pokemon evolve, they stay shiny.

(This is Leaf Green, by the way)