The Coop

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 I enjoyed this one.

Hope it's sold in stores. I don't feel like trying to DL what will likely be well over 2GB... or dealing with Steam.

O is for...

Well hopefully the DQ project will get filled. It's been going on for so long, and floating in limbo for an unfortunate chunk of that time. I'd hate to see a franchise I like wind up with only a handful of its many tracks covered.

M is for...

I is for...

That is some beautiful artwork. Nice style and depth to everything. Makes me wish I had $20 to spare.

So um... what happens if you lose? Does a big screen with "YOU'RE GOING TO HELL HEATHEN!" pop up or something? "Pray hard to continue" with a countdown?

You know, it was featured in that movie... "Midnight in the Olive Garden of Good and Evil"? It's a place where the food is decent, and the fake Italian atmosphere makes you feel at home. It's a wonderful place ... ... Oh who am I kidding. It's a pit. A shit hole that overcharges for food that likely came in the same Lipton bags you can buy at any grocery store... yet costs three times as much. The utensils still have food from someone elses' meal encrusted on them, the "family" and "Italian" atmosphere are so fake and painted on that I'm surprised the faces of the employees don't chip off when they talk, the food is half cold by the time it arrives, and the gas and shits you get three hours later just cap off the festivities by letting you know the food likely wasn't cooked properly (or it had freezer burn... back in 2004). BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID!

Dude. To paraphrase the great Freddy Krueger... "Every town... has an Olive Garden."

I know you from someplace. I can't... quite... Did you used to work at the Olive Garden on the corner of 35th St. and Puxyville Road?

Fighting games are an entirely different beast from other games to me. I pick whichever character I find I do best with. For example, in the Soul Calibur series, I play as Mitsurugi a lot, as I find his fighting style to work well for me. Ivy (my favorite female character in the series), isn't bad, but her fighting style doesn't gel too well with how I play (I do a little better using Sophitia). It's the same with the Street Fighter games. I can kick some righteous ass with Ryu and Blanka, but Chun-Li and Cammy lead to many losses. So the whole male/female choice thing goes out the window. But when we're talking games like 3D RPGs, sand box games, and so forth, where you have the choice, then it goes back to what I said in my previous post on the subject.

Dragon Age: Origins

Because you find insanity and horrific mental images cute?

Actually, in my opinion of course, video games aren't as fair as you're making them sound... or at least, not all of them are. Ask around about how many times people have lost a life because of hit detection that's not 100 percent perfect, or because of regenerating enemies that suddenly pop up and gun you down because you made the screen scroll back a little (piss off Ninja Gaiden). There are variables in games, especially "sand box" ones, that can result in any number of things happening... many of which mirror what would happen in life if you were to do them (like say... firing a rocket at a police car after gunning down five hookers and stealing a firetruck). Life, similar to a game, is about meeting the challenges thrown at you. Some you'll make for yourself, while others will be forced upon you. Meet them, and you'll move forward. Fail at them, and you're going to have some problems. The main difference is, you can always reload a savestate if it's needed in a game. But in life, you have to go through the slow and sometimes painful process of getting back what was lost because of your mistakes and failures (respect, trust, love, friendship, money, etc.). ... And now that I think about it, life is really more fair than games in a way. In a game, you can always simply do over what you fucked up. You can't do that in life nearly as readily, making the idea of "reaping what you sew" (what many would consider fair) more in play. If you screw up, you pay the consequences. There's no reset button to hit, and no "do over". You deal with what happened, and move forward as best you can. But games let you break that rather well known saying with a simple button press, making things less fair, as it instantly gets you out of the trouble you caused, and the mistakes you made. Keep in mind, this is just one small area. There are a metric fuckton of areas that can be discussed regarding what's more fair in a game and life, and the scores of variables that surround them. The "reap what you sew" concept was just one thing that came to me as I was typing after reading your post.

H is for...

A flashback Bagel wanging

I just want to point this post out again for anyone interested in Sega Genesis music. Kudos for doing it atmuh.

F is for...

Perhaps you should both check the end of the previous page... you know, just in case something's there

The game Xevious is pronounced zeh-vee-us, so my guess is zeh-zeks.