I've had the PS3 for a year now, I finally got around to signing up on the website.

I removed the contents of this post because it had an old spore thing in it, and its html sucked, and messed up my new page... Sorry

GTA IV is all over the news because you can:

• Drive Drunk
• Shoot Cops
• Score with Women
• Go to strip clubs
• Cause complete chaos and have the cops forget about you a few minutes later
• Of course, steal cars
• And, hit monstrous jumps

There are a bunch of groups that are going after the game, like MADD, who has turned from an anti drunk-driving group into a prohibitionist group trying to get alcohol banned again. Good luck with that.

There's also other people addressing the violence.

Any of those things I mentioned above, you would not be able to survive in real life. It's what makes it a game. In other games I've also ran through burning buildings and lived to tell about it, or have taken thousands of bullets and all I have to do is find cover and I'm fine. One time in GTA IV I drove my car off of a 80 foot drop straight down. The car flipped numerous times and wound up hitting a pole straight on. I didn't even lose any health.

People need to lighten up, but damn that game's fun. And I wasn't driving like a maniac after I played for a few hours. I just drive the way I normally do. In fact, I have a difficult time "escaping" reality in that I don't just go running over pedestrians or shooting people. I try to find one car and stick with it as long as I can. I don't even like to get into accidents where all I do is side swipe someone. Sometimes you can't help it though and it will turn out to be some hilarious death of some poor sucker who just happened to be between your car and some pole or wall at the most inopportune of times.

It is soulless fun and it takes some really screwed up minds to come away affected by it, more than just dreaming about it. I've played Railroads! for hours, which is the least violent game ever, and I've dreamed about it. If you have no imagination, then you obviously can't think this kind of stuff up to keep your idle mind entertained. If you have video games, you don't need an imagination to have fun (unless they're the really old games that expected you to still use your imagination). However, if you look at games as *practice*, then you're screwed up.

AIM IM with Zatko Zatko: 25 hours
Zatko: won by space race
Zatko: it was total annilation though
Me: jesus
Me: year?
Zatko: like 2045
Me: my last big victory was a space race in 1957 on warlord
Zatko: nice
Me: 13000+ points, abraham lincoln
Zatko: how are points calculated
Me: no idea
Zatko: i annilated everyone but 2 countries
Zatko: i was at war most of the game
Zatko: which is why it took so long
Zatko: i found the option to turn off battle animations on hour 24
Me: but if you hover your mouse over your name, you can see how your points are broken down... population, technology, land, wonders
Me: yeah, i turned them off recently
Zatko: yea, big time saver
Zatko: every turn was taking like 15 minutes
Me: and it'll tell you what your score will be if you won on that turn
Zatko: i wonder if nuking people helps that score
Me: i don't think it hurts
Zatko: i nuked the shit out of the indians
Me: haha
Zatko: i was clearly winning, but my lead kept diminishing
Zatko: the indians were trending up on me
Zatko: apparently the nukes made them go broke
Zatko: what a game
Me: it's great huh
Zatko: that sins game is gonna be the same thing
Zatko: dude my whole 3 day weekend can be summararized by civ4
Me: haha
Me: addicted once again
Zatko: yea, majorly addicting
Zatko: i was dreaming about it at night
Me: yup, been there
Zatko: i'd wake up at 5 in the morning, clenching my fist and cursing the russians
Me: once i play Pain on the ps3 for a whole day, and i'd dream about throwing mimes into glass
Me: haha
Zatko: ha, the mime game
Zatko: well i'm out
Zatko: maybe for next weekend i'll get sins
Me: aight, i might start up a game
Me: k, i can get it
Me: i'll just get it like i did with gears of war and wait for you to get it 
Me: i bought that game months ago
Zatko: yea, that'll probably be some good coop action with that
Zatko: later
Me: later
Zatko: has gone offline.

So, some big weeks lately... This week:

Monday: Paid off my car on Friday and got the title on today!

Tuesday: Received second iPod Touch that I didn't order, and assumed I'm on some sort of iPod touch weekly subscription, for only $400 a week! I sent it back. (It was Amazon's fault, not Apple's :P )

The rest of the week... I will finally be buying my house! My parents sold their house and move on Halloween. They are hiring movers.

My keyboard's kinda screwed up because soda was spilled on it (not me!!). The keys were really sticky, so I pulled a bunch of them off and wiped behind them with a wet paper towel, but my "I" key will never be the same (although it works fine, it just sticks up a little more than the others), and my "0" (zero) key (and hence, my "close parentheses" key) makes some weird noise when pressed.

This month and next are big months for gamers:

Crysis Collector's Edition DVD-ROM with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/13/07 $59.99
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/20/07 $49.99
Sim City Societies with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/13/07 $49.99
Super Mario Galaxy Wii Pre-Release
Ships 11/12/07 $49.99
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune PS3 Pre-Release
Ships 11/20/07 $59.99
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure Wii Pre-Release
Ships 10/23/07 $39.99


That's my shopping cart at EB games.

This Friday will be the first time all of us from work head out to the bar since we hired a bunch of new people, including me! We're gonna get wasted.

I'm 3-3 in Fantasy Football this year, winning the last game by 2 points! Tony Gonzalez had a huge game, and Muhsin Muhammad has finally started scoring for me. My team stinks, though. It will be miraculous if I finish over .500. I only had 76 points, and really only got points from those two and the Eagles D. No one else contributes. This week I play my brother Scott. He'll be at the Eagles game so I'll have to call him and tell him I'm whooping his ass.

I joined Netflix finally. It's gonna be a great way to finally watch all those movies I haven't seen yet.

I'm also trying to quit smoking. It's rough, and I know drinking will make it really hard, but the trick would be to go back to quitting after a long night of drinking with a few smokes here or there. Drinking in Philly is a lot easier than in the suburbs.

This post has a little of everything.

BioShock GameStop Exclusive Limited Edition 1 Shipped

Outside of binge sessions of Company of Heroes (best game ever) I've been looking for something to relax and play. Something with a story, puzzles, where I can put my feet up and my heart rate doesn't go out of control. I'm not sure if I was looking for that or if I started playing some adventure games lately and have just been enjoying the experience to think that it's what I needed before. Either way, they're good times.

A few quick notable ones then I'm watching "The Good Shepherd" while I try to fall asleep. It all started when I looked at my Grim Fandango disk, and decided I didn't want to get into something really long right now. This was a few weeks ago. As some may know, I'm a subscriber to Gamespot.com, and they've been reviewing these games over the past year that have looked different but I thought they might be like Ratchet & Clank or whatever that game is called on the PS2. But then I watched a gameplay video and realized that "Sam And Max" is indeed an adventure game. So I bought the first season for $35. Six episodes in all. I played the first 4 over a weekend, and the next one a few days later, and the last one is now available for download. These are short games because they're just episodes. Each about 3-4 hours long if you don't cheat. Sometimes I have to though. The reason I'm not downloading the last episode right now is because I'm playing another game. The Longest Journey.

The Longest Journey is cool. It's a full adventure game as opposed to episodes like Sam and Max. You start out and there's truly nothing that you *have* to do right away. You are in the future, living in Venice as an art student. You have two weeks before you have to get your painting done for the show. It's an interesting story so far. I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I also got the sequel for when I beat it. Should be good times.

Adventure games are very hard though, for me. I sometimes don't examine every nook and cranny, and so sometimes they're harder than they should be, because some puzzle might be obvious if I just checked a drawer and found some item that would make it so. Some of the puzzles just seem downright impossible though. I have to open up a walkthrough to help out on some parts. It's brutal. A lot of the puzzles I figure out though. An example of one that I didn't figure out was in The Longest Journey, you talk to the land lady and she found a ring of yours. You go outside and there's this machine, and on it is a severed wire. Just saying that now, though, you'd be like "Use the ring to connect the two ends of the wire, dumbass!!" But it doesn't even enter my mind. Some people maybe, not me. I guess I'm not creative or imaginative. Who knows. It's a testament to the variety and creativity found in Adventure games though. You never see the same puzzle.