So I'm thinkin of pickin up this game for my 360 in a couple days. looks really good, but i'd like anyone's advice. probably gonna get this game anyways.
"Life's not worth living, and that's the truth,"
Carelessly caroled the golden youth.
In manhood still he maintained that view
And held it more strongly the older he grew.
When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three,
"Go fetch me a surgeon at once!" cried he.
Han Soper
...goodbye.
Boy, that would have been awfully obtuse, wouldn't it?
I'm going to do my best to avoid turning this into a massive weep session. I've already started and scrapped writing this message more times than I can count, so instead of putting endless thought into this, I'm just going to say what I feel and leave it at that.
The five years I've spent at GameSpot are arguably the most important years I've spent in my life. Prior to this gig, I'd never had much of a real job. When Jeff and Greg and the rest of the crew back in 03 gave me--some skinny, 21 year old punkass who'd never done anything but freelance for a few scattered sites--a legitimate chance, I'd never envisioned that this would turn to be the job that defined me, that gave me a place and a career. I had no idea that I'd actually make some semblance of a name for myself here. That anyone would actually give a crap about what I did or what I wrote. I still find the notion kind of unbelievable, actually. Reading all the messages people have been sending me since the word got out has been utterly mind-blowing. It's one thing to enjoy what you do, but it's quite another to know that others enjoy what you do. It's gratifying, and I'm thankful for it.
I could probably spend the next several hours giving individual thanks to everyone who has helped me along the way, but most of them know who they are and have been thanked in more personal fashion, so I'll skip the acceptance speech from hell. Instead, a general thank you to the staff (both former and present) for letting me be a part of the dream that is/was GameSpot. Also, thanks to you, the reader. I'd be nothing if you folks didn't come back time and time again to read the junk I put out, and I can't tell you how thankful I am that you did.
Leaving completely sucks, and believe me when I say I'm in no way joyful about my departure. Well, OK, that's not entirely true. There is a certain sense of...freedom that I'm feeling now as I envision an endless string of pantsless weekdays. Still, if I'd had my druthers, I'd have probably rather stayed precisely where I was, doing what I was doing. But circumstances don't always work out the way you'd prefer, and things change, often not for the better. My time here was finished. I was conflicted about that notion going into the holiday break, and that notion turned into fact with startling clarity as soon as I came back from break. It was a frightening and painful experience to let it go, but I had to. If you love something, set it free, and all that junk. I don't think this one's ever coming back, though.
Of course, I'm not going to disappear into obscurity--at least, not without a fight. You'll probably start seeing my name start appearing on bylines relatively soon. I'm not doing anything full time just yet, but we'll see where the wind takes me. In the meantime, if you need to get in contact with me for any reason, my new e-mail address is alexiconofscars@hotmail.com, and if you want to read my assorted ramblings about whatever, I am keeping a personal blog at The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. Stop by sometime if you want to read about what I think of practically everything except games. I'll give you a hint: I hate all of it.
And lastly, let me just make one thing as crystal clear as possible. I hold no ill will, issue no blame, take no umbrage with any of my former co-workers on the edit team. These guys are some of the hardest working, upstanding, straight up cool mother****ers I've ever met in my life, and as long as they're around doing their thing, GS will continue to live and breathe--there will still be a soul there, underneath whatever ridiculousness might be on the surface these days. There is no GS without those guys. The GS content crew is a family, and no one can change that.
Before I duck out, a few stats to chew on from my time here:
Number of reviews written: 733
Number of video reviews produced: Somewhere around 100
Number of video features appeared in: Dozens
Controllers broken: 7
Debug consoles broken: At least two that I can remember (sorry Ricardo!)
Number of console launches experienced: 5 (not including N-Gage and Gizmondo, which absolutely, positively don't count)
Number of weekend birthdays spent at the office: 2 (thanks PlayStation 3, Wii and Rock Band launches!)
Number of E3s covered: 5
Number of hours of sleep lost while covering said E3s: 280
Number of delicious sandwiches consumed during work hours: Too many to count
Pounds gained over the last five years: 45
Favorite review ever written: It's sort of like choosing your children, but I'd have to say that Super Mario Galaxy was probably the piece of writing I was most proud of just for clarity and overall quality. For pure comedy, while Big Rigs is obviously the fan favorite, I think my Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green review was my favorite, mostly for the opening paragraph, but there are some good chuckles elsewhere, too. My only regret with that one was that it was published before I'd learned the skill of brevity.
Favorite video piece: Regarding Robocop. Tim Tracy took my hours of ridiculous footage and turned that thing into something magical.
Worst review ever written: Read any of the first five to ten reviews I did for the site. They're as boring as they are barely informative. I was still learning the craft at that point. I think I've gotten a touch better.
Review that caught me the most flack: Probably Advent Rising. I will still never understand what anyone saw in that game. It was like retarded Star Wars with a broken frame rate. Now there's a box quote for ya!
Biggest editorial regret: Never giving Burning Questions proper closure. What can I say? I snapped.
Biggest non-editorial regret: Lack of travelling, specifically to Japan. Would have loved to have gotten one TGS trip in.
Thing I'll miss least about GS: Apart from the current unpleasantness, I'll say the commute. Nothing sucks more than driving an hour through traffic to work every day, especially when you're accustomed to carpooling and then suddenly end up having to do it all by your lonesome. *cough*
Thing I'll miss most about GS: The dozens and dozens of awesome people who have come and fled over the years that helped make GS a terrific place to work during their time. You know who you are.
And with that, I bid you all a fond adieu. It's been real.
--A
"Do you have a sledgehammer or a brick handy?"
* "That's right, not even McGyver could fix it."
* "So -- what are you wearing?"
* "Duuuuuude! Bummer!"
* "Looks like you're gonna need some new dilithium crystals, Capt'n."
* "Press 1 for Support. Press 2 if you're with 60 Minutes. Press 3 if you're with the FTC."
* "We can fix this, but you're gonna need a butter knife, a roll of duct tape, and a car battery."
* "In layman's terms, we call that the Hindenburg Effect."
* "Hold on a second... Mom! Timmy's hitting me!"
* "Okay, turn to page 523 in your copy of Dianetics."
* "Please hold for Mr. Gates' attorney."
alpha_company 
It's been a great time here on Gamespot, I've been a member here since 2004; I've made alot of friends here and did several reviews for games and blog posts. I'm giving up the part of my life that enjoyed video games because, of school. It's getting tough this year and i can't stand the pressure and then there is the temptation to go back and play video games.
I'll be back every now and then but; no more blogs, reviews, forum posts, trying to get emblems (
) or any of that stuff. It might be a little bit different for sites like tv.com; but the days of carelessness and paying money for games is done. Again, it's been a wonderful time here and i certainly will miss it. Peace.
I've only seen World in Conflict running on a couple of occasions. The first was at Nvidia's launch party in San Jose for the 8800-series graphics boards last November, and the second was during January's Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. Both places weren't exactly conducive to the job of sitting down and really getting into a game. However, I had a chance recently to dive into the multiplayer alpha test of World in Conflict at the luxury of my desk (which isn't that luxurious), and all I can say is, "Wow." The best description for the game that I can think of is imagine if Battlefield 2 were a real-time strategy game, because with its fast-pace, modern combat, and intense combat, this is going to be a crazy multiplayer throw down. On first impression, World in Conflict seems like a very pretty-looking version of your standard real-time strategy game. Since the game is about World War III between the United States and the old Soviet Union, you've got a mix of modern tanks, artillery pieces, helicopters, infantry, and more that you can control around the battlefield. But then I started to toy with it and that's when its clutches grabbed me.
First of all, this isn't a simple one-on-one multiplayer RTS game. You can have up to 16 players on a server, divided into teams of two. That means up to eight players a side. And the beauty of World in Conflict's design is the division of labor in the game. There are four primary combat arms in World in Conflict, and when you join a multiplayer game you have to select one, and that determines the units that you can bring into battle. Armor gives you tanks, air gives you helicopters, support gives you artillery, and infantry gives you grunts. Once you've selected a combat arm, you can begin to requisition units. If you select armor, that means choosing between different types of tanks, with the cost increasing for the heavier, more advanced models, such as M1 Abrams tanks.
The main limiter to all of this is the number of reinforcements points that you have, and World in Conflict wisely limits it so you can only control three or four expensive units or a slightly larger number of cheaper units at any one time. Doing it this way means many things. First, players will need to take on different roles if they want to win. If your side goes overboard on nothing but attack helicopters, they'll get chewed up if one or two players on the other side simply choose the support arm and load up on antiaircraft platforms. So your team needs a good balance of combined arms. Second, this means that you'll really have to work together, because if you don't support one another on the battlefield, you'll be chewed up quickly. This aspect of the game is reinforced by the small numbers at each player's command. It's awfully difficult to overwhelm the enemy if you only have a platoon (four tanks) of M1s.
Once you've made your unit selections, you hit the deploy button and one of the cooler little aspects of the game kicks in. You'll see a huge, lumbering air transport swoop down out of the skies and airdrop cargo to the ground. Once the cargo lands, your new units instantly appear, ready for your command. Sure, it's not realistic, but it's cinematic and a neat way to quickly usher new units into battle. Plus, you can easily gauge that enemy reinforcements are on the way by seeing enemy transports swooping down in the distance.
Once you have units on the ground, you've got a lot more to worry about than just destroying the enemy. Each map has a number of key strategic points on it, and each point is defined by at least two different nodes. For example, in order to control a bridge you need to control both ends of it, so that's two nodes right there; seizing just one end of the bridge isn't good enough. Or taking control of a town square means seizing three nodes that border it. Unless you can put units in each node simultaneously, then you do not control the point. And controlling strategic points is important for a number of reasons, because it's how you basically win the game.
The longer you can park units into all of a strategic point's nodes and maintain control, the better, because you'll automatically dig in at that position. First, you'll construct machine gun positions that can take out enemy infantry. Once those are complete, next are antitank positions. And once those are complete, you'll construct antiaircraft positions. At that point, the strategic point is fully built up in terms of defenses, and you have a couple of choices. You can sit back and enjoy the defensive advantages at that position, or you can move on to the next strategic point and not have to worry about the enemy just waltzing up and seizing your point as soon as you leave. However, again this illustrates the risk/reward element of the strategy. Building up these defensive positions takes a long time, which means that as long as your units are parked in the nodes they're basically out of the larger battle. So what do you do? Sit back and wait to build up the defenses, or maintain momentum and initiative by moving out immediately and attacking the enemy?
I'm only scratching the surface of the game at this point, too. There's still plenty to talk about, such as how the reinforcement system works, the tactical aid system and how it can deliver everything from aerial recon all the way up to tactical nuclear weapons, the rock-scissors-paper nature between the units, and more. And then there's the game's wonderful graphics that brings all this destruction to life. Seeing a warm glow of a nuclear explosion or the smoke trails of a rocket attack arcing through the air is incredible. After participating in online battles all day, it's safe to say that World in Conflict has quickly rocketed up my chart of must-play games this year.
We got a call from Nintendo telling us that the Wii was only a block away from the office. Previews editor Brad Shoemaker and executive producer Ryan MacDonald ran downstairs to catch the Wii delivery on tape. We thought it would arrive in an armored truck, but then we heard the familar jingle of...
an ice cream truck!
And Brad takes delivery of the Wii!
Got any more Wii boxes in there?
Rich, Jeff, Alex, and Greg in the studio getting ready for the live On the Spot Wii marathon.
Brad heading to the studio with the Wii.
Rich reading a letter from Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime on air.
Let's get this box open and start playing! Check out GameSpot's "We Just Got A Wii Marathon" right now.
You guys miss me? I've been M.I.A. for a while as I worked out some of my issues. I had to work out that whole incarceration thing (I swear to God I never dropped my soap in the shower and you can't prove that I did). Then there was the whole straight jacket incident... yeah, let's not discuss that. But I'm back now. And you know what that means? It means you're going to have to live with my gaming pontification once more. Deal with it; you know you love it.
Someone out there has to tell me what is with the proliferation of co-dependent video games? I'm going to use two (arguably) excellent games to explain my point: Nintendogs and Animal Crossing: Wild World. I'm going to reserve my judgment on these games for the moment I've actually played them enough to give suitable judgment on them. However, the little I have played begs the question "why do I want to feel as if I have gaming obligations?"
I play video games because I want to, not because I have to. However, with these two games there are time-dependent obligations that must be fulfilled. If one of your neighbors in Animal Crossing tells you to come back tomorrow, they really mean come back tomorrow. If you leave your dog alone for a couple days in Nintendogs, it reacts with such utter sadness and despair that you literally feel guilty.
It's a video game, for pete's sake! It's not even an MMO where I can understand that kind of behavior given that there are real people behind the characters and real relationships are affected by your presence (or lack thereof). However, I do not want to get guilt trips from a polygon puppy who doesn't understand I have bills to pay and women to chase. Ok, so maybe I just have bills to pay. A man can dream can't he? (And if they told you I was stalking them, they're liars, I tell you. Liars!)
The concept of having real-world tangibles such as your voice or the time of day affect your in-game experience is certainly an interesting idea; but I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to jump on board with it. I don't want to feel obligated to play a video game. The beauty of World of Warcraft was that even with being in a guild I didn't feel obligated to play every day. In fact, there were whole months that went by when I didn't touch it because the real world demanded my attention.
I play video games for one reason alone: because I want to. And unless there's more to this new generation of guilt-tripping video games, I don't think a lot of them will be on any of my top ten lists.
I have changed the Portable Gaming Network to the Gaming and Design Network. I wanted to do this so the forum wouldn't be so limited as far as what conversations could go on within it. Also, I did this to help people get more involved in making games, weather they are interested or have been making them already. It's kind of like a link between designers and gamers. Poeple can even submit their games to be downloaded in the download database in the Union. Well, if you want, click the link below and tell me what you guys think of it so far.
So...yeah, E3 is going to rock this year!
Ok, It is time to put out some more words that you need to now about.
Remember the format is = XXXX.(extension)
AOL = This is a file extension for America-On-Line files.
APS = This file extension is used in the language called Visual Basic , and is the source file code for that language.
ATM = This file extension is used by Adobe Type Manager , it is designed to handle Postscript fonts on your computer.
BAS = This file extension is the source code used in a program language called BASIC.
CLASS = This is a file extension used in a programing language called JAVA .
COB = This is a source file extension used in a program language called COBOL ( COBOL ( Common Business-Oriented Language ) was designed to be used in a Business )
COM = This file extension is called a Command file or Program, it is used in MSDOS and it a binary (program) used to execute commands.
CXX = This is the source code for a Programing Language called C++
DBF = This file extension is a Data Based File in a programing language called dBASE and a language called FoxPro.
DLL = This is a Dynamic-link library file. This type of file is use by programmers to make improvements and modifications to your system and is made as a separate file , this way it does not effect the computer when it is modified , or improved , also this file can be use by other programs for the same purpose of what it was written for, this program is designed not to use any of the system resources until it is needed. (Note : This file has multiple commands in it)
EML = This is a file extension used in Microsoft Outlook ( A Mail program , designed to send and receive mail)
FOR = This file extension is used in a program language called Fortran
HLP = This is a Microsoft Help file for Windows
RTF ( Rich Text Format ) = This is a file extension used by Word, and the Microsoft Text Notepad and other text based program creators , to create text based files.
SYS = This file extension is a System Configuration file , It is used by the Windows Operating System to configure your Computer.
TTF = This is a file extension used in a TrueType font file (Note : TrueType fonts are used in programs like Word, Excel , ECT.)
TXT = This is a file extension used by ASCII for text files(Note : Word , Note Pad and other programs can save files in this format)
Tech Language (The words you have Heard)
Trojan Horse = This is a programming code that by nature is malicious and destructive, and it will take control of the computer and gain access to the computer by other means, Trojan Horses gain access by down loaded programs, down loaded utilities, ect. , or going to non safe sites or non commercial sites.
LAN = Local Area Network
WAN = This stands for Wide Area Network , these are usually in large Metropolitan City's, this can consist of a bunch of LAN ( Local Area Networks )
WMI ( Windows Management Instrumentation) = This is the designed to Monitor the Windows Operating System , it uses a common set of interfaces to control the system resources.
News for some one in the field : (Thank Kevin3824 for this tip folks)
Hoax viruses :
"Here is an interesting thing I read the other night. It was on an anti virus site it was a question that asked if Hoax viruses caused any damage to peoples computers? The answer was YES because people can be tricked into thinking they have a virus and format and reinstall their OS. Losing any data they may have collected. Not to mention the time they spent rebuilding their pc. "
Ok, That is it for now .
End LOG :
