It took a little under 2 years in the making but today, I finally crossed 100K gamerscore on Xbox Live. The game and the achievement that pushed me over was Left 4 Dead 2's "CLOWND" achievement.
The breakdown as usual:
- 100K - Left 4 Dead 2
- 90K - NBA 2K10
- 80K - Comix Zone (XBLA)
- 70K - Madden NFL 10
- 60K - Monopoly
- 50K - X-Men Origins: Wolverine
- 40K - Sega Genesis Collection
- 30K - Dead Space
- 20K - Soul Calibur IV
- 10K - Elder Scrolls Oblivion
It's kind of strange, even though I've been aiming for 100K since I first got the system in late 2007, I'm not feeling any different. I at least thought I would have felt some relieve, sense of accomplishment or get hyper or something, but nothing 
Well at least I'm now in the 6 figure bracket. One MILLION gamerscore, HERE I COME!
This blog is kind of hard to type since I'm holding an ice pack up to my face. In case you're wondering why, I got 4 wisdom teeth removed yesterday so my face kind of hurts... a bit 
The surgery wasn't too bad though. I have no idea what was in the IV they hooked me up to, but I have never been that relaxed before in my life (even when I heard the ripping noise my teeth made)! It only took 10 mins. too 
I just really miss being able to chew solid food. It was also nothing compared to the surgery I had in Sept.
Luckily this is a great time to relax, play games, eat ice cream (which feels awesome after you've had teeth removed!), and catch up on GameSpot stuff!
-Gaming Stuff-
Now Playing: I've dug out my DS (which is still the old "fat one" by the way ) and I've started playing Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga and The World Ends With You. These are two titles from my pile of games I need to beat from last blog. I'm not far enough into The World Ends With You to offer any opinions on it, but Superstar Saga is really fun! I love the sense of humor in it 
Christmas Wish List: It's Dec. 1st which means it's Christmas in 25 days (oh and my birthday in 24 )! I can't afford any new games, but my parents said they'll get me some for Christmas! I've asked for 7 games but told them they only have to get me my top 4. Here's my list:
- Banjo Tooie (N64)- Yes, the old Nintendo 64 version of it! I owned it a while ago but sold it. I loved the music and atmosphere in the game and would love to own it once again.
- Assassin's Creed II (Xbox 360) - I enjoyed the first one despite it's major flaw: repetitiveness. Based on the reviews, it seems Ubisoft got the sequel right! They need to work on the commercials though
- InFamous (PS3)- I've Heard nothing but good things about it!
- Uncharted 2 - Haven't played the first one but oh well.
- Batman Arkham Asylum (PS3)- Again, I've heard nothing but good things.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360)- I'm not a huge fan of shooting games but I've decided to give this one a try.
- Dragon Age: Origins (PS3) - It's been a while since I've played a new RPG and this one looks awesome!
You'll notice that there are more PS3 versions of games on my list than Xbox 360 games. That's only because I want to try and have an even number of games for both Also, notice there's not a single Wii game on my list. That's mostly because I can't think of any Wii games worth getting this year... 2010 should be a great year for the Wii though (new Zelda, Mario, and Metroid! 
).
-Life Stuff-
I'm taking a slight break from my project this week due to the pain where my wisdom teeth use to be I thought I'd explain how my project is going so far though. I won't bore anyone with details, but if you're considering a career in Electronics, here's some of the cool stuff you get to do!
Right now my partner and I have our first circuit board made (well I did this board but my partner has to do the next one ). It started out with a schematic, and then I had to make a board layout design with a computer program. After 2 days (and lots of frustration) here's what the finished layout design looked like:
Way harder to make than it looks like
I used this to create files for the machine that actually etches, drills, and cuts out the board from a special piece of cooper. Thankfully, the instructor made an easy to use guide on how to get all the files right (otherwise I would have been totally lost). Here's my board being created by the machine:
It took the machine about 6 hours to make my board. That means I had to sit there and stare at itmake the board for 6 hours. I took the pictures above mainly out of boredom. The machine also costs about $30,000 so I'm glad I didn't break it! Once the board was finished, my instructor told me to put it in liquid tin which will help me solder components to it:
My circuit board's nice relaxing "Tin Bath"
There were about a dozen warnings on the Liquid Tin bottle so I was a little scared using it. My instructor gave me gloves though. After I was done, he did one of his boards and took it out with his bare hands! All that's left is to solder the parts on to the board, then I can start testing it. It better work after all that!
So yeah, my project is slowly coming along. I still need to worry about that 40 page report once all the hands on stuff is done though.
***
My head hurts, my jaw hurts, and I really want to eat something solid! Other than that, I'm happy since it's my favourite month of the year!
Have an awesome week everyone!! 
Quote of the Week: "Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself." - Tom Wilson
Now, since curiosity killed the cat, and I'm not a cat, I decided to play the game instead. After 18+ hours of messing with the good people of Italy, I decided to give into the curiosity. However, since I been living under a rock the past few weeks, I had no idea what I was getting into. To my surprise, I had stumbled into the beta stage of a system of in-game rewards. I had no idea how it worked, but there had to be a catch. There's always a catch right? Well after finding out a little more of information, this looked like a reward system in exchange for completing various achievement/trophies. Each reward is tied to an achievement/trophy. All I had to do was complete the achievement/trophy in order to get 'units' which can then be used to unlock the reward. Up to this point, I still was convinced that there had to be a catch somewhere. So I decided to register.
During the easy registration process, I was never asked billing information. I was only asked to make an account by providing an e-mail address and making a password. All of this was done through the console. Once my registration was completed, I was taken into a UI (User Interface) were I could see my account information, as well as see which rewards I could unlock using the 'units' earned. (Note that just for registering, you get 10 units)
This is a shot of the "Win" tab were you see how many 'units' you have, which rewards you have unlocked and which achievements/trophies (labeled as 'Actions') you need to complete in order to receive 'units'.
After the registration process, and a little bit of exploration of this new system, I decided to put this system to the test and try out on Assassins Creed 2. So far, each achievement gave me enough 'units' to unlock all the rewards. Rewards for Assassins Creed 2 included extra throwing knifes, an Exclusive map (aka a new Dungeon to explore), a dashboard theme, and Altair's outfit to use while in game. Everything unlocked and worked perfectly in game (except the dashboard theme which does not work in game)
Finally a system which gives achievement/trophy obsessed players a purpose for their...unique capabilities. However, even I like this new system which in simple terms can be described as a "thank you for playing, here are some rewards" type of system. This is a good move by Ubisoft to try an encourage gamers to buy their games and gives us more reasons to get those achievements/trophies. So far, Assassins Creed 2 is the only game with this system, however, Ubisoft has confirmed that R.U.S.E and Splinter Cell Conviction will have it. Also do take note that this system is on a beta stage, and problems are bound to happen, like your save corrupting. Thankfully, I wanted to do a second run of Assassins Creed 2 anyway.
However, a question rises as to why content already in the game disc is not accessible from the start? I ask this because the in-game rewards were already in the game disc, you just couldn't see them until unlocking. My point, whats stopping producers from making us pay to access content already in the disc? I'm not a fan of non accessible content, but lets hope this new system brings a twist to our video gaming and remains free of charge. It still remains to see whether other big companies like Activision or EA adopt their own version of UPLAY.If you want to find out more, please see UPLAY's website
G
Wow. No blog posts for over a year. I still suppose that wasn't as bad as when I stopped posting almost completely back in December 2006. Either way, I'm not going to be back completely with this for awhile, but I suppose I've got to pay my dues. Without further ado, here is the blog post:
1. You can call me Nowhere. Other people call me John Lennon, although that name has been obsolete for a few years now.
2. Don't mention anything too leftish to me.
3. Look at the following things: Pink Floyd, Star Wars, Half-life, YTMND, Grim Fandango, Zelda, Queen, Advanced Wars. What do these things have in common?
4. What was Black Wednesday? I don't think you will find this on Wikipedia. At least the one I'm talking about.
5. I like top of the line PCs. Unfortunately, I'm also cheap.
6. I am a vegan.
7. I live somewhere on the North American eastern seaboard.
8. They are the eggmen.
9. You are error.
10. Don't worry Bill is dead.
Any questions?
Some students at Full Sail were doing some sort of Survival Horror game, and wanted me to do some music for it. SOoooo, without any further ado:
Feel free to leave comments folks. If you'd rather want to be a stalker while commenting, you could always use my Facebook. Enjoy!
It's E3 time, so I figgered I would come around and see what's upcoming in the game world. I'm liking what I'm seeing
My sisters just picked up Sims 3 today - looks good from what I've seen so far.
Despite the fact that this is indisputably old news, I wanted to post the link to this story regarding the history of 360 RROD's to share it with the people who didn't get to read it, and to get it the **** out of my Favorites list:
Xbox 360 Defects: An Inside History of MS's Video Game Console Woes
As a person who is on their 3rd Xbox 360 (YEAH, I'm still pissed!), this naturally hits close to home for me. But you don't have to own Microsoft's console, or even be a gamer at all, to find the complete dearth of ethics in MS's gaming division reprehensible. Perhaps what I find most troubling about all of this is that despite a ridiculous failure rate, these consoles continue to sell, and sell relatively well for that matter, with almost no effort by MS to fix the problem in the first place.
Take care and enjoy your weekend.
Sometimes, in my travels of the internet, I come across something that I must share with the world.
This is one of those times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UChQ5QPTYXo
...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
.Seriously, this is how my first day started when I came to work and introduced myself.
Me: "...Nice to meet you. So, what do you want me work on?"
Mentor: "Your homework!"
Me: "...Heh? What?"
Mentor: "Well, we hardly have much work so do what you want."
Me: "YES SIR!"
So I walk back to my desk, and I figure I might aswell do my homework since I got nothing better to do. That's when a girl walks in who also works there like me. She walks in pretty quickly, doesn't even notices me, and goes straight to her desk. She then takes out her computer. It seemed like she was about to get busy doing some work. So I walk up to her to introduce myself.
Me: "Hi, I am new here. My name is Vahid."
Girl: "Hey, didn't even notice you, my name is Judy."
Me: "Nice to meet you. What work are you doing here?"
Judy: "Work? Oh, I am just starting up a movie to watch."
Me: "Well move over and let me watch too will ya...." (BTW, we were watching Bourne Ultimatum which is an awsome movie)
Yeah, I love my job
But don't get me wrong. We still have to do work. Every now and then we have to install equipment in classrooms, go and obtain hardware from a place, or deliver hardware somewhere, help teachers who are having trouble with equipment in classrooms, and repair stuff. But like I said, there is so little work, that we just chill and do what ever we feel like it most of the time. And no one bothers us.You know. I could get used to this really easily...
Part of the reason I have not writen much for sometime is because I was busy playing Disciples: Sacred Lands. This is going to be a big posts to cover as much of my period playing the game as possible. I will start witht eh manual for the game. It is short and sweet. It explains adequately most basic information needed to play the game. However inclusiion of spells classifications would have been very helpful. Also inclusiioon of technical trees for the purpose of predicting enemy's developement path would have been useful. The spell classification would have been helpful in proper use of wards to protect units from the spells.
Now to the game istelf. While I know a lot of people did not like the 800X600 resoltion of the game, I found it to be cozy as with the graphics it creates a certain atmosphere for the game that is required. The beatuifully drawn portraits fo the units are great and add aditional feeling of immersion in the atmosphere of the game. Due to my experience with Heroes of Might and Magic, I did not need to really go into too much pain in order to start off in this game. I decided to play on the very hard difficulty and as the Warriori Lord. This gives the advantage of self healing units every turn by 15% of their hp. However, it also makes level 5 spells unavailable. Th emain difference here from the Heroes is the fact that the spells are allowed to be cast outside of the battle and frankly there is no way to cast them in battle unless you have the magi unit. The spells could be cast anywhere on the map where you have no fog of war. Additional difference is the experience points system that allows to level the units. They after each level except heroes change according to the buildings that are built in the capital. There are few technical trees available but each mission limits the developement and so only certain steps could be taken. Overall theere are two trees most often, the shorter one gives a pay of with better unit that its analogies in the longer one, but the longer one in the end will produce much stronger unit. The buildings that determine the units developement are onyl built in the capital and the rest of the cities only need to be upgraded to improve their defenses and the rate at which they change the land. The resurces are captured here through change of the land by the cities, if the resource falls on the land controlled by certain race than it gathers the resources.
I need to mention the fact that the casting of spells outside the battle becomes a problem but I will talk about that later on.
In the first mission I started out with a one ready hero and with the legions of the damned as the enemies."Spoilers, apparently teh attack by thelegiosn of the damned was terrible and so there was a rumor that the king died and some noble men decided to separate from the Empire, the problem that he chosen as a stronghold a city that is a key to defenses agaisnt the legiosn f the damned so now I have to go and recover it Spoiler end". The mission starts with the ready made hero and the units that gueard the capital are the perfect ones for the creation of the rest of the party. Also since the main guardina of the capital that can wipe out any unit with one hit never can leave it I dn't see anything to worry about. Next I gather enough money to create the second hero which is a mage unlike the first one which is kinght on a flying horse (gives him advantage in mvement over forests and water). The mage is the best hero as his ability to hit all units at once in battle is invaluable. Finalyl a rod placing unit is alos needed. That uit places rod so that way the land control could be accomplished faster and in palces where there are no cities in reach but there are resources. It is possible to lose this mission if the enemy gets lucky enought o level up one of his parties into a super party. This is one fo the problems I see with the game is that once a super part is created it is hard to destroy it. However that is quiete common in man games with super units so, nothing too much to complain over. Fast expasnion is what helps to comabat the enemy here. The fast expansion is accomplished by having many parties and the fact that having a healer that heals all untis at once rather than the one that helas more hP but only one unit at the time helps as well. Also empire is givefted with different enchancing spells which makes taking strongholds much easier. Here there are 3 more cities that can be taken that are already been taken over by legions of the damned on this difficulty. Each time a new city is taken it gives you message, which either useful to story line, mission or useless. Sitting inside the cities is suggested as they allow greater defense from attacks, faster rejevenation and protection from attack spells and curse spells, as spells can't be cast on units in the city.
It'll take a while before all the ideas in my subconcience to come up to the surface, let alone shape themselves into good ideas, but I thought I would start a post about essential hardware you may need as a gamer, or just a PC user.
I don't know how long this will take, but I might as well start off now
1. External Hard Drive
This is in my opinion probably the most useful and essential piece of hardware you can get for your PC - partly because its a life saver if you have essential data and partly and partly it encourages good PC housekeeping.
Its important to choose a drive that is the right size for your PC, as if your just a digital writer it does not make any sense to to buy a large drive if you plan just to create word documents (or blogentries for that).
However, getting some type of drive is a must, as its portable, usually easy to set up and will save you a headache when you need to recover that file you feel that was really important.
Well it's been quite a while since my last post. I have been very busy over the past 18 months. I won't bore you with all the details but if you're curious I invite you to take a look at this site:
http://starwars.yahoo.com
Let me know what you think!
vb
Finally bought a 360, along with a copy of Dead Rising.
The games addictive as hell, and I'm digging all the live features, demos, and arcade games. Really glad I made the buy.
Need to figure out what I should buy next though, hmm.
It's kind of the same way how one tells themself "I don't fear anything", only to cower in the sight of a vacuum cleaner, or a dolphin, or some other unexpected fear they never knew they possessed ... You know, "you don't know how you would feel or think until it actually happens"? Stupid analogy, example, or otherwise, but I've been up for over 24 hours and I'm out of thinking material.
So, yeah, first real kiss (despite how quick and somewhat random it was). It kinda tasted warm, and grape-like. That was weird. It's 2007, now, so ... yay. I guess. Now, it's off to celebrate January 1st-3rd. Practically four days of celebration. Yippee. -_-;
Wow. Gamespot keeps updating stuff that I miss. Came over to the site today because Gamespot gave Sin Episodes another good preview based on their GDC impressions. That's cool. SinEp has been getting a lot of good press to date - it's been awesome to work on a title that's generating good press for a change.
My first game (America's Army) got good reviews after we shipped, but with the nature of the project we got really mixed press before the game came out. My next game (Men of Valor) just got terrible press (with sales to match).
The cool thing about the first episode of SinEp is that even after working on it hardcore for a year, I still love playing the game. Normally by the time a game has gone through all the testing associated with alpha, beta, and the push for gold you get sick of seeing it. Not with Sin. I can't wait to see what people's reactions to it are.
