That's Like a Unicorn

So let's just say that the last week I haven't been doing much.  See there's this game that came out on Tuesday called Borderlands 2, I don't know If you've heard about it or anything, its not like it was humongous realease title or anything. :P Sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face while saying that.  But yeah, Borderlands 2 is out, and its awesome.  For those of you who haven't played the first one, get it! And beat it! And then get this one! And beat it! And do it again!  Borderlands is kind of a mesh between a dungeon-crawling role-playing game and a first person shooter.  I like to think of it as Diablo with guns.  Diablo obviously still won, at least over the first Borderlands anyway.  I loved Borderlands, it was super fun, tons of enemies to kill, tons of loot to loot, tons of Clap-Trap.  But it lacked a very good storyline, and that's something I always look for in a game.  I didn't actually beat the game, but I think I got to the last level, and thinking back to it I honestly cannot remember what the game was about.  I remember all of the areas, all of the bosses that took forever to kill, all of the fun I had playing Co-op with three of my friends, but I can't remember the story.  Well that is because it was pretty weak.  For Borderlands 2 Gearbox worked on fixing that.  They got a new writer to do the job, Anthony Burch.  And it shows.  I remember everything, granted that its only been about 8 hours since I turned off my Xbox last.  The story is so immersive, I've even learned a ton about the first games story.  But let's move past the story because I know some of you gamers are lame and only play these games to kill stuff, no pun intended.  Borderlands 2 is not lacking at all on the "killing stuff" scale.  There's actually a picture shows every single enemy that you will end up fighting in one huge panoramic sweep.  This thing is huge!  You can check it out here, www.lazygamer.net/xbox-360/every-single-borderlands-2-enemy-in-one-picture/.  There are a ton of other sites that have this picture as well, this was just the first one I found that loaded for me.  And yes, I agree, some of those enemies are pretty scary looking.  Next, you got all of the loot.  The loot!  I love loot!  There is so much loot you could spend days and not find everything.  The way gearbox has it set up is awesome, just like in Diablo there are set types of weapons, and then on a random factor different names and qualities are given to each weapon you'll find.  I haven't once needed to buy weapons from the store because everything I find is kist awesome, actually I don't even want to buy anything because nothing compares to what I already have.  But then the loot is also one of the only things I have to complain about this game.  It's not that they did anything wrong, its just something I wish more people would change.  When playing co-op you always have to fight or haggle over all of the loot you find.  It gets to the point that people rush into an area to find the chests before they even shoot at the enemies, me included.  I guess it does add a certain aspect to the gameplay, but I loved what Lord of the Rings: War in the North did.  Ever chest you find each person can loot.  Although I guess I can kind of see both ways.  Anyway, if you haven't noticed yet I think you should buy this game, and yeah, just do it!

Anyway for now I'm done talking, oh and very likely very soon I might be moving to a new site.  I had a second domain name available for free so I decided I'd make my own personal just fun page and I'll base this blog out of there.  I'll let you know when that happens.

And if you're still trying to figure out where the pun was, there wasn't one, just felt like saying it. :P

-- Josh

P.S.  Sorry that the picture website isn't linked, I'm writing this on my phone and apparently it doesn't like to link stuff. I'll try to fix it as soon as I have access to a computer, assuming I remember.

Hockey is a Psychoanalytical Battery

Ahh school.  I don't really like it, but at least this time I'm actually taking some classes I'm interested in.  This fall I'm taking both a Psychology and a Minnesota History class (or as my friend heard, "Psychology of Minnesota History).  I don't even know what that class would be like, but it could be interesting. :P  Well anyway, yeah classes started this monday, and it's kind of weird being back in school.  It's been over a year since I was last in an actual classroom, and now it just feels odd.  Especially being in a room filled with people just out of high school.  But anyway, yeah.  So far we've been just looking over the syllabus and whatnot.  But today I learned that Hockey is a very popular sport in Minnesota... who knew. :P  It's not like I live here or anything.  Wow... my brain is completely nonsensical at the moment.  Well hey at least I'm finally writing something again, so... I guess.... enjoy!

Oh and I finally took my key fob apart (for my car, it didn't like unlocking my car) and cleaned the sensors, and hey! It works now.  Awesome.

Well....  peace out.

-- Josh

My Face is an Ice Cream Sandwich

So recently I upgraded my phone to android 4.0 (also known as ice cream sandwich) and so far I'm very impressed. Right away it was a ton faster, and just a lot of the new features and whatnot are really cool. Litterally two seconds ago I set up the facial recognition unlock and I was play with that, which is pretty sweet. So yeah, I'm gonna go back to figuring out all this new stuff. :P

-- Josh

The Root of All Evil

Toolbars.... in browsers.... are...  evil!! I absolutely hate them.  And the problem is that whenever you install a new program they are always trying to install a new toolbar for you.  I am usually pretty good at declining all of the offers, but sometimes some slip by.  And when they do, gah! I hate them.  That's probably one of my biggest pet peeves about fixing other people's computers.  They always have toolbars installed in their browser.  Not only are they annoying to look at, but they slow down the computer so much, which in turn makes it almost impossible to do anything.  Like I said, I hate them.

Enough said. :P

-- Josh

14 Days

So I'm a huge gamer, but lately I've been falling behind with gaming news and everything.  Part of that is due to the fact that I was in Europe for a month, and didn't have as much access to computers as I do at home, and part of that is due to a ton of stuff changing in my life.  I'm starting school again this fall and I just got a new job.  Well anyway I'm trying to catch up again, and I'm finding so much stuff that I did not know.

First off I just heard about the whole Jason West and Vincent Zampella vs Activision Blizzard case going on.  I don't know why I'm just hearing about it because it's been going on for awhile, although I guess I was also pretty late about hearing the Halo 4 release date which is my absolute favorite game series.  Well anyway for anyone who hasn't heard about this trial, here's a little summary.  Activision fired West and Zampella (former co-founders of Infinity Ward) just before the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, also just before they would have had to pay West and Zampella huge bonuses for the game release.  Well obviously West and Zampella are pissed, as I would be too, so they are going to court suing Activision Blizzard.  Makes me think of a lot of reasons I left working at Target (screw you corporate).  It will be interesting to hear how all of this pans out, and I hope they win (West and Zampella).

Well now to the actual point of this post, aka the title.  Fortnite, a new game that Epic had anounced last year, is now only going to be a PC exclusive.  Again I'm a little late on this news, but I only just found out about this.  I'm a little disappointed in this as I am not a PC gamer.  I have nothing against PCs, I just don't have enough money to buy or build a good enough computer to play the games.  At the moment I am using a netbook that I bought for $180, and it really is not at all good enough to play anything.  It can play games like Diablo 2, and Age of Empires 2, but nothing newer than that pretty much, and even those games have a hard time sometimes.  Well anyway, I'm a huge fan of Epic Games.  I have all of the Gears of War games, and every one of their Unreal series.  I've been playing Unreal Tournament since I started gaming pretty much.  In my opinion they are one of the best developers out there, with Bungie (slash 343), and People Can Fly.  Well this news is a bummer...  We'll see when I'll be able to play it.

For those of you reading this that are PC gamers the game still does look pretty amazing.  It's going to be the first game that show off Epic's new Unreal 4 gaming engine.  The game itself is going to be a survival/construction style of game, a lot like Minecraft or Terraria, but different.  From screenshots and the announcement trailer the game looks somewhat like Borderlands in its cartoony style of art.  In the game you will be put out in the world to collect whatever supplies you can to build a fortification for yourself to guard yourself from enemies when the dark rises.  Not like in Minecraft where you are digging dirt and trees and whatnot, but finding boxes, signs, anything in the world that can be shoved together to make a wall.  As you encounter more enemies you will have to always be upgrading your fortification to survive.  The game pulls at your creativity for you to build whatever type of building you like, could be a tiny shack, or if you wanted you could try building something bigger that actually has rooms.  But beware once the night falls, you better be inside.  Check out the trailer here.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE2TTakfGjk

Well anyway.  Get out there everyone and play a video game.  And for all of you "CoD gamers", go try something new, there's a ton of awesome games out there. (Yeah I know if any one of them reads this they will be super pissed at me, but really that's just super awesome because then that means people are actually reading this.  Sweet!)

-- Josh

Elite

Here is another one of my drawings.  This one is an Elite from Halo.

The Best Worst Snipers Ever

I climb over the rubble up to the window to find the perfect shot.  I pull out my binoculars and scan the area.  I see two enemies walking their route.  I whisper to my partner; "Two enemies, I'll take the closer, you take the farther one.  Wait for the thunder to cover the shots."  But before I can pull out my rifle I hear a shot, and see both enemies fall to the ground.  Two-in-one shot.  Then the alarms sound and enemies swarm out of the surrounding buildings.     "Well.. that worked well."

So I bought Sniper Elite V2 this week and have been playing it a lot.  The game is awesome!  Well I also convinced my friend to buy it and we played through the missions in co-op.  The whole point of the game is to be stealthy and be careful about your shots.  Well... we never really did that. :P  The story above was just one of the situations we ran into our playthrough, but I was actually the one that made the sudden shot.  It was almost fun just running in guns blazing with a sniper rifle, maybe because that gun is not a short range weapon, so it made it interesting.  We still did take our time sometimes, but usually it was just a mad rush to see who could get the most kills.

As for the actual game, as I said it's awesome!!  This game has to be the best sniper game out there.  Granted there aren't really that many out there, but this one is just amazing.  It's realistic enough to make you feel like a real sniper, but it also has enough "fun" in it so that you don't get bored.  The game takes place in the end of WWII, during the fight for Berlin.  You play as the same character as the first Sniper Elite that was released for the PC in 2005, but Rebellion Developments said that the game isn't really a sequel but more of a reboot.  Just like in the original the game is about stealthily getting to objectives and picking off enemies with a number of different weapons from sniper rifles to land mines.  That being said if you get cornered it isn't impossible to survive, as you also carry a pistol and a machine gun.  The sniping mechanics in the game can be changed from having no ballistics, or by having fully realistic ballistics where your bullets are affected by both gravity and wind.  All in all, this is the perfect game for someone who just wants to play it for the storyline, or for sniper enthusiasts who want to have all of the challenges at your hand.

-- Josh

Umm.... What?

So one thing you should know about me is I love sniper games.  I love sniper movies, I love sniper books, I don't know why but I just love snipers.  Well there aren't very many sniper games out there, from what I can think of you have Sniper: Ghost Warrior, and Sniper Elite.  I have Ghost Warrior so I've been watching all of the news on Ghost Warrior 2, waiting for that to come out.  Super excited about that.  But that's not the point of this post.  Sniper Elite on the other hand is a little bit different story.  It was made in 2005, and its for the PC.  I was able to pick it up on Steam for super cheap so I've been trying to play it.  I have a problem when it comes to playing older games.  I can't seem to get past the graphics and nuances of the game to truly enjoy it.  So I was all bummed because everyone online was saying this was the best sniper game out there.  Well a couple months ago I stumbled on this trailer,  Sniper Elite V2.  It is a complete reboot of Sniper Elite, better graphics, better mechanics, and it's on console too! (which I completely prefer over PC)  So I've been watching gameplay videos, getting super excited about it.  And then 2 days ago I found out it comes out this week.  Even better!  The odd thing about it is nobody knows about this game.  I was going on and on about it at work yesterday and not one person had heard of this game.  I guess just somewhere the game got lost in advertisements.  I even looked if we were going to carry it when it comes out, and yes I found the label.  But it was never in the Ad, there isn't any record of it coming out at all.  That just confuses me a little.  Although at the same time I really don't care because the game is going to be so epic!  If you haven't you should download the demo and try it out.

-- Josh

Close down the world!!

So I just found out that the Halo 4 release date has been revealed!!!  November 6, 2012

Enough said.

-- Josh

Wake up John!

Cars

Cars suck.  I mean.. I like them, they just suck.  I like driving them, I like looking at them, I just don't like fixing them.  I'm super lazy, and though I know how to fix my car by myself, I just don't.  For example, a year and a half ago I was driving home from a camping trip with my dad, and we were in my car.  Well he mentioned that he thought my front bearings might be going out since he could hear them, so I should probably change them sometime.  Nine months later I finally did, and when I pulled the old bearings out they just fell apart.  I'm the procrastinator of procrastinators when it comes to fixing my car.  I drive a 1997 Saturn SL2, and I love it.  I also love the fact that they just don't die, ever.  Everyone is surprised that thing is still running.  I've run it almost completely dry on oil once, I've driven on shot bearing for more than a half a year (as I already mentioned) and currently I need to replace my CV half shaft, which I've known about for maybe about 5 months, I don't know when I'm going to do that.  We'll see when that becomes a priority, I like putting my money in just so many other things than my car.  I'm kind of laughing right now because if there are any mechanics or true car people reading this right now I'm sure you're all cringing from this post.  Yeah I know, I neglect my car.  Good thing I drive a Saturn. :P

-- Josh