Wow, I haven't posted a blog in a long while. In fact, i've been very caught up in schoolwork...and recently, Modern Warfare 2, which I'll be having a review up soon. Obviousley im am little late to the MW:2 blog hype bandwagon. The huge burst of game releases has passed, and heres my review for ODST:

8.0

This game was great, except for the fact that none of my friends played it. I bought it, thought i was awesome at first, beat the campaign, then looked online to my buddies to play Firefight. Apparantly to everyone else, ODST is a waste of money, and I had no one else to play with. So I sold it to fund Assassin's Creed 2, which I will also be writing a review on.

In other news, there has been a game that has recently just piqued my interest. Its called Alan Wake. It talks about a writer who goes on a vacation with his wife, only to find that she has disappeared. Then, a thriller he never even remembers writing comes true before his own eyes. This game has been in development for a long time, and was announced several years before. I remember seeing it in an old xbox magazine, and was amazed at the graphics. They are still amazing now, and the game plays out as an action-horror game. While i've never been a fan of horror games, theres something about this, the intensity, the suspense, that caught my interest. I'll be looking forward to this, as i'm sure it will be a truly unique experience.

Heres a trailer for Alan Wake.It plays out like one for a movie.

Finally, E3 is back...its been a while. I remember back, in the clamoring mess of E3, when it used to be the biggest gaming event of the year. But until recently, things have died down thanks to the the number of cuts to size. But 2009 marked the year of the announcement of a bunch of new releases, many of which I am looking forward to. The interesting thing is, they all seem to be coming out in November. The game I was set most onto ever since its announcement has been Modern Warfare 2. I swear, no game has been able to surpass the fun and gameplay of COD4's online mode...me and my friends have been playing it for the last two years. Gears of War 2 was also great, but I hated a lot of the changes they've made to the game since I got my Xbox back from RROD.

Aside from Modern Warfare 2, there have been a number of huge games i'm looking forward to, like Assasins Creed 2, Bioshock 2, and Left 4 Dead 2 (the box art is kinda sad, instead of a hand holding up 4 its 2? What is this a downgrade?) . And they all come out in November of this year. Four #2 sequals that I would like to have, but unfortunatley, i'm probobaly going to pick up MW2, then see how the other ones turnout. MW2 is a must...What saddens me is how these game are all coming out during the beginning the start of the school year. Summer would've been much better. I have absolutley nothing to do in these coming months.

Besides that, another announcement that surely made me happy was Halo: Reach. I used to be a big time Halo fanboy and still kinda am, but the excitement for Halo 3 has died down for now. I'm not sure if any of you have read the Halo books, but I touched up on the Fall of Reach a loong time ago. Thats when a Halo game about Reach dawned on me. I'm sure it will be a great game, something that i'm very much looking forward too. Now, they just have to make an HD Halo 1 with online.

I've also just picked up Sims 3 AND just moved. Its a pretty great game, and i've written a review here if you want to see it.

Recently, I posted about how I had a horrible incident and went to the hospital, but before that, my xbox also red ringed. As you may have noticed, this has not been a good few weeks for me. Because of my seizure, my parents have decided to blame it on video games, and are doing their best to limit my playing times, which has been horrible for me. They nurture me as if I am a baby or an injured boy, even though I really am doing fine. The docter has given me a pill because, well, I had a second seizure 2 weeks after my first one. It's getting serious now, so I really need to be careful. Thats right, two seizures in 3 weeks...but, recently, I had my EEG test, which scans my head to see what the problem is. The results are coming monday, and I also get a excuse to skip school

As many of you may have thought of, exactly what are my parents me limiting me of, when I dont even have my xbox? Its that game again: World of Warcraft. The thing is, I used to play last summer, but I only played to make sure it wouldn't get in the way of my schoolwork. Now, i'm just bored on the weekends and decided to play a little wow to entertain myself. Really, its not that addicting, I play as much as I would play another other one of my xbox games.

Another thing is, I still havent ordered to fix my xbox because my parents refuse to allow me. Even though it takes about 2 weeks+ to fix, they want to wait until my tests results come back, so I hope that its ok. My red ring is not the usual three rings error, its comething called "E74" which xbox has been evil enough to not extend the warranty, making you pay $100 to fix it. Seeing the price tag a couple of weeks ago, I even thought of breaking open my xbox to try and fix it (I saw some videos online, pretty complicated), but breaking it open also ends ur warranty, and microsoft will refuse to fix it altogether. They are pretty tricky; I remember going to their website, picking the "E74" error and seeing that the amount was still "$0", I continued to fill out my personal information, only to find the final amount to be a hundred bucks. Sad.

Well, as you guys may have heard, the E74 error has been now covered! In fact, even if I did it months before, they would still refund my money. But, this has still not helped to persuade my parents to give me their credit card, so I am still stuck playing world of warcraft...which hey, is still pretty fun

This happened maybe, a few days ago sunday morning, and I had a "seizure". A seizure is when your brain kinda shuts down and you start jerking and stuff...not good at all. There is also a sickness called epilepsy associated to patients with common seizures, but luckily, its something that I have not been diagnosed with. This is a kinda step by step recount on what happened that day...

6:00--> I wake up to go to the bathroom. Everything seems fine, and I simply take a bathroom break. I feel perectly fine, and don't expect anything bad to happen.

7:00--> My seizure occurs. I have no memory of this event; I was completely unconcious. I did not "wake up", so you can kinda say I had my seizure either seconds after I awoke or during my sleep. Either way, it was completely terrifying to my parents who saw me jerking...I was luckily they had already awoken. For the first few minutes, they thought I was maybe jerking in my sleep, so they tried to wake me up. When I started making stranging noises and the whites of my eyes were showing, they started to get scared. After many failed attempts to wake me up, my family was in a state of shock. Scared out of their minds, they called the Police, and 10 minutes later, an ambulence arrives.

7:15--> I am still unconscious. The paramedics and policemen try to wake me up, and soon put me on a stretcher. Already they are giving me various medicines to try and calm me down, and my mom even told me that because I was jerking so much, there was lots of blood. I was put on a stretcher and carried into an ambulence, which my dad went on. My mom and sister stayed at home. I am quickly pulled into the nearby hospital.

8:00--> I wake up. You might imagine how scared and confused I was; I had wires connected to every part of my body, surrounded by docters and nurses. A tube is stuck into my right arm, and my dad watches me from above. Confused, I begin to ask a ton of questions..."where am i? what happened? etc..." I was completely lost. Taken over by nausea (common after seizures), I decide to lie down in patience. At this time, I seem to have a vague recount of my time in the ambulence, and I almost seem to remember lying down with people surrounding me.

8:30--> While I am in the hospital I throw up twice, and they give me some more medicine to tend my nausea. My docter has explained to me of what has happened. I am still extremely sick, and I soon take some cat scans and brain tests to see what is wrong. Apparantly from an early blood test (probobaly on the ambulence), I have low levels of Pottasium. Low levels of pottasium is called "Hypokalemia", and can be dangerous if not treated. I am not sure if this caused the seizure, I am still getting check-ups and tests to find out even today.

9:00--> After my low pottasium discovery, the docters now need to treat my problem. That tube in my right arm is now feeding me pottasium. For some reason, pottasium burns, and I am in constant pain. I then sit around and wait. The docters around me are laughing and talking about many other things. There is a patient next to me whos feet are comepletely covered in blood. I'm not sure what he did, but he arrived later than me to the hospital. The pain from the pottasium continues for the next hour or two, during which I plan to sleep, hoping to ease the pain.

10-11:00--> Around this time, I wake up. The pottasium is still being fed into me, and I wince with pain. I look around, and I see my mom and sister, looking at me. With my great relief, the nurse is finishing up the pottasium feed. What I remember most about her is that she is extremely impatient, and did not seem like she belonged in the hospital . I asked her TONS of questions (imagine how confused I was) and she was impatient and quick to answer each one. The end of the pottasium feed eased my pain a lot, and she then proceeded to RIP off all of the wires monitering me (which hurt haha), and I slowly crawled out of bed. The nasuea is soothing down, and then I begin my walk home.

The next day, I did not go to school to go to the docters to see what was wrong. Apparantly there are still some blood tests that they need to look at.

Today, I feel fine. If you guys don't know what pottasium is, it like regulates ur blood flow or something, and is commonly found in fruits like bananas and tomates. This really scared my parents and me, and i REALLY hope this doesn't happen again...

I watched this new broadcast from Gamespot yesterday, where a new console was being unveiled at the Game Developers Conference. This new system, called "OnLive", has the potential of completely ruining the game market. Sure, it might be good news for publishers, but for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, this might be some trouble.

So what is this amazing new console anyway? Today, downloading games off the internet is already a standard, and with services like Steam, lazy kids are using their mom's credit cards to buy all their games online instead of going all the way to the store to purchase the retail version. This is much more convenient, but it also makes for a seemingly longer download time. What if you could play the game within seconds of purchase, without downloading, and with virtually no lag at all? This is the kind of services that Onlive has promised.

The main menu, where many of the features can be accessed.

What other great features does this new service promise? OnLive has the capability of playing any game, thats right any game with any kind of graphical requirements, and play it on some low end PC that was bought for maybe $300. That's playing Crysis on 720p on a cheap integrated chipset laptop, with no lag at all, using a technology called video compression. The example they showed us was simply stunning...Crysis ran fluently without lag, and it started up quickly and smoothly. Whats interesting is, when you play your games, its streaming directly from the center, which is why theres no download times, and the video compression to ensure that any game can play on whatever small, low-end PC or MAC out there, lag free. What i'm wondering about is, what if your internet is experiencing problems, does that mean that the entire service shuts down?

The OnLive console is a small, powerful machine that is no bigger than a deck of cards. You can bring it wherever you go, and plug it into any PC, or TV, and make it work anywhere an internet connecion is avaliable. A 1.5 mbps connection is required for standard definition, while a 5 mbps is required for HD definition. The endless list of features doesn't end here. Onlive has an xbox-live community way of gaming, and, whats cool is, whether or not you own the game, you can actually "spectate" people who are playing these games online as sort of a free demo before deciding to play the game (default demos will also be able on the onlive marketplace). You can have a friend list, and spectate games that they are playing as well, even if you don't own their games. You can communicate and play with each other, just like any online gaming service.

The OnLive console and gaming controller, no larger than a deck of cards.

The reason why this might endanger the traditional gaming world is because, well, the Onlive service never needs to be upgraded, because as games advance, so are the technology and services that they are working with at Onlive. Game publishers will also earn more profit from partnering with Onlive, becuase they don't need to pay the traditional retail distribution fee that most retail games need. The downside, however, is the fact that there wont be any 1st party publishers, so don't expect Mario Kart or Halo ODST to be available. Sure, this means that some people will still maintain their normal console systems, but it may cause many publishers to instead work with Onlive instead of Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo. Onlive comes with its own controller that looks similar to the ps3's, so don't expect to start playing Wii sports with your wii-mote. It also requires an online monthly fee, as well as a purchase price for each game, so it might be more expensive in the long-run.

This seems like something that could be too good to be true, so for me, like many others, I am still extremely skeptical about this service. How could they promise such amazing features like no lag and no graphical requirements? It seems like they're trying to do the impossible, and only time will tell. If this works, it could be the start of a new digital era, and consoles will become obsolete. This also seems like it has the potential for many small bugs and issues. Even though this idea seems impossible and revolutionary, its happening right now, and has a target release date of Winter, 2009. I don't want Microsoft and Sony to die, but if this is really as good as they say it is, that's something that just might be a possibility.