Some Thoughts...

It has been a while since I've done any sort of ranting post on here.  While I won't completely rage like I did in some posts I made on here in the beginning; I needed a place where I can speak my mind in more than 140 characters.  This post won't be completely rage induced either, I'll talk about some stuff I have in mind to do in the future.

A couple weeks ago I went down to Peoria, IL to see The Pretty Reckless, Adelita's Way, Alter Bridge and Five Finger Death Punch in concert.  It was a really sick show to see, all of the groups that performed were amazing.  During the 5FDP set they introduced the next song they were going to play as "Burn MF" off of one of their newer albums.  When doing so Ivan Moody (the lead vocalist for 5FDP) mentioned that some of us may be familiar with the news going around about the band performing this song live.  At that time I didn't know what he was talking about, so I paid no attention to it; it wasn't until a few days later when I was listening to the radio and a radio DJ said what the whole deal was about.  When they perform the song, they bring several kids on stage to sing the chorus.  Apparently at one of the earlier tour dates some parent got all bent out of shape that they do that and started complaining.

I have this to say about it.  You knew exactly who you were going to see when you bought the tickets.  If you know anything about Death Punch you know they don't sing happy go lucky lyrics, so you cannot complain about your children being exposed to that.  You most likely bought the album for them when they asked for it and if you didn't stop and think "Hey, should I maybe be a parent and find out if my child should really be listening to this?" after seeing the albums title (Wrong Side of Heaven, Righteous Side of Hell) you should probably rethink of your definition of parenting.  I understand a parent not wanting their kids to swear up a storm every time they speak as my parents raised me to not do that.

This One Goes to 135

I'm getting creative with titles for these posts aren't I?  No?  I didn't think so, but it has only taken me three or four years to (eventually) publish 135 posts of random musings.  A lot of stuff has been happening with me lately; mainly in the terms of Grifball, but still.

The GGL season is over mostly (minus the championship game I think) but on the upside, the Aces made it into the playoffs again despite a very...weird season for us.  We got eliminated in our first game, which it was a sad way to end the season really.  Especially since a few days beforehand Joker announced that the Aces would not be returning next season.  It was a tough season for us this time around as we had to use subs in all of the games we played, and most of the games we ended up forfeiting to begin with because we could not field enough players.

After Joker told us what was going to happen to the Aces once this season had ended, I had no idea what I was going to do.  I knew I was going to play another season in the GGL at least, albeit on a new team if I could find one.  I thought of a couple captains of others team I could go to and see if they'd be looking for new players after this season was over, but I was going to wait until the season was officially over.  Before the playoffs had started though, one person took the initiative to ask me if I wanted to join their team for next season.  Perfect Demise had asked me over Twitter if I would like to join Sarge's Squad for the next GGL season as they would be looking for some more players.  Not exactly knowing if I'd play for a team next season I instantly said yes.  So next season I shall be the punching bag for Sarge's Squad.

Wait, I Can Explain!

Strange title, I know.  Lately I've been obsessed with Grifball (as always really) and that has been making me think as to why do I enjoy it so much?  Is it the fact that it is one of the few custom created gametypes in the Halo franchise I truly enjoy?  Is it the fact I'm good at it?  Perhaps the community that surrounds this largely popular game mode?

In part, it is a combination of all of this...well minus the part I mentioned that I'm good at it.  I'm still bad on my own.  When I first played Grifball back in 2008 (I think that's when it was) I was hooked almost instantly.  I had my reservations about it at first; the fact I was constantly getting betrayed by my teammates was rather annoying and I always wanted to score, so when I didn't score I got annoyed at that as well.  As the first few years of playing it went by I started to realize that scoring wasn't everything and betrayals were going to happen.  Betrayals still frustrated me, but only for the reason that they happened when we needed a carrier kill at our plant...and I easily would have had the kill.

Looking Back...

I don't know why I always start posts on this place with trying to reason away my absence.  Simply put, since my last post a lot of good (and an equal amount of bad) has happened to me in my life.  Last year I had decided to join the staff of Inside View Gaming, got a position on the review team and then became their community manager.  Almost one year later I'm still helping out around there and I have no plans on leaving any time soon.

Because...Grifball and Minecraft

Would you look at this, a post that isn't two months after my last one!  I do believe I am getting into the habit of posting on a regular basis.  As of lately I have been busy planning a bunch of cool stuff for Inside View and working a little bit behind the scenes on getting ideas up and running.  We have our second game night coming up on Minecraft; our first one was on Forza 4.  We also have our own clan that we started up recently, you can find out some info about that here.  There's the contact information for one of our clan leaders and my own in case you want that also.  Lastly, we have our own Grifball team we have started.  We plan on gathering people now and working on some basic team fundamentals; then once Halo 4 is released entering in all kinds of leagues and tournaments.

I've been working on on planning some details for a Halo 4 campaign challenge once the game is released for IVG as well.  I know that skulls are returning in the game thanks to the achievement list that was released a few weeks ago; but I do not know whether or not campaign scoring returning.  I hope it does otherwise I'm going to have to figure out a makeshift scoring system to tally results...and needless to say math never was one of my best subjects.  There's still plenty of time for me to find out if its returning...and work on one if it isn't.

I've also been playing a bunch of Minecraft when I have had the time to game.  It's interesting looking back at the first "shelter" I made.  I had no clue what I was doing so it was actually made out of a bunch of sand and the living space was very...cramped.

Small living space eh?

A Bunch of Stuff

Yes, just like the title says, a bunch of stuff has happened in the what two months since my last post?  Where to begin?  Ah, well we can start with this.  I finally reached 20,000 Gamerscore with an achievement from Forza 4...after all this time I don't remember what it was even...  I'm not sure if I want to continue my quest towards the amount of 30,000 or give achievement hunting a rest for a little while.  I am trying to get all the achievements from Halo Anniversary; however, some of the achievements are proving a little difficult.

I also completely missed making a post on here, which does sadden me to some extent, but life had taken over at that time.  On March 29th of this year, it marked my 5 year "anniversary" for joining Bungie.net.  I didn't follow the semi-tradition of creating a thread stating my opinion on the moderation in my time being there or anything else, besides I have to wait another two years before it becomes mandatory.  Honestly because I was so busy at that time I almost forgot about it, only remembering it halfway through the day.

My next piece of news is in regards to my last post where I mentioned I was joining a Grifball team with Storm.  Well we changed our minds on joining a team shortly after I posted that.  Instead we decided to start our own team.  Very long story short, neither Storm or I had people on our friends lists that enjoyed playing Grifball so in order to find teammates, I went to this place called GrifballHub and they had a thread for players looking for teams and teams looking for players.  The day after I had posted that I received a message from this person with the name of oObeX asking about our runner position.  I replied back with my Gamertag and the best day to catch us online to get some games in.  A couple days later I was browsing through the same thread and saw that UCCxZAKORE was looking for a team.  I sent him a message asking if he wanted to join the team and he was interested.  Farther into the future we came to an agreement on a name and thus The Light Redcoats were created.
So far we had our first experience with league teams in a Vanilla GRUNT...it didn't go too well for us.  Sadly our only win was by a default as one team dropped out.  Since there was an uneven amount of teams that signed up we got a first round bye, once the second round rolled about we got to play our first game; which was a really close game.  We jumped out to a 2-0 lead and were getting ready to score a third time to technically take the game, but we let that game slip out from underneath us.  Our last two games of the tournament were rather...embarrassing.  We got shut out 5-0 in each of them.  Granted they were against veteran teams and we're only a rookie team.  I still stand by what I have said before, with some time, patience and practice I know our team will be able to hold their own during actual league games.

The last thing I will quickly cover in this very short post has to do with my passion for both gaming and writing.  A couple months ago, I was sitting and browsing through the gaming news blog that a few of my friends and fellow Xbox Ambassadors had started and noticed they were looking for staff members.  So I sent a tweet away to the owner and founder asking if they were still accepting applications, he got back within a few minutes stating yes.  So I sent in an application and they gave me a two month trial period to see if I had what it took to become their lead review.  Nothing is official on that yet, but I have wrote a couple of reviews for them (one on Forza 4 and one on ODST) in that time and they were happy with them.  I'm pretty sure I'll at least be a reviewer for Inside View Gaming for a little while.  They are looking to expand greatly in the near future, it sounds like they are hammering out the details for some big stuff as well.

That does it for this short post, but it was at least something right?  Remember, always keep an eye on the ever so elusive Grif.  He's very sneaky if he takes over the right person.

Time for a Decision & An Announcement

Not to sound dramatic with the title of this post, especially since I hate Internet drama, this is more so about what direction that my Halo "career" could go.  Along with some other things as well.As I'm sure you all can tell (even if you just found this blog today) I am a huge Grifball nut.  The past few days I have been looking at GrifballHub's website and reading over the new stuff relating to the new season of the GGL (Good Games League); in that time I have also been thinking of how cool it would be to play in at least one season of the GGL.  I also discovered that they have a list that people can sign up to be what they call "Guest Players".  I've noticed that they mostly consist of current league players but they mention that since the GGL is a recreational league anyone can throw their name on that list so long as they can abide by league rules.  When I saw that list I thought about signing up for that list, but then I had a dose of reality that made me realize my schedule would not permit it right now.  Then a couple days later I was back to doing the same thing.  After doing some extra reading and finding a topic in their forum that was for people looking for a team and for teams looking for players, I came to the decision that next season I will throw my name in the hat and see if I can land a spot on a team.  I know I had said that my schedule will be busy, but by the time the next season of the GGL kicks off with sign-ups I will be finishing up what is tying me down now.
So there you have it, during the Spring or Summer (I don't remember exactly when the next GGL season is) I will at least try out for a team.  Whether or not I make it onto any team is a completely different story.

Speaking of Grifball, I have a few games that I recently played in Reach of it.
We lost a person from the start, but we had control of the game pretty much.

Dibs on Defender!  I totally called it!

Good game blue team....ouch.

Bomb meet face, face meet bomb.

And just for kicks, my very first game of Grifball in Reach.

I'll close out this short post (Hey!  It's late here) with some clips from Grifball that I have taken recently.  They are rendered so if you have Silverlight (I think that's what it is) installed and up-to-date you can watch it right on Bungie's site.  If you don't you can either download it to watch next time you boot up Reach or I am hoping to have them uploaded to YouTube in the near future.
I'll first start off with my most recent favorite.

"Be vewy quiet, I'm hunting Gwif."
Hehe, I love doing that.  I also kind of did it once before in Reach and once in Halo 3.

Nothing too special honestly, but I really don't think that I was supposed to get the bomb...
Yeah so that's what I believe (at least they used to call it that) a Grifumble (might be two "f's" not sure) recovered by the opposing team.  What I believe was supposed to happen was the guy I killed was actually the one supposed to get the bomb while the guy that dropped it was supposed to come after me and kill me.  It seems that something went wrong...somewhere.

"I got a clear path to plate, all I gotta do is kill this dude that spawned."
"No you don't."
Yeah, so that was me coming off the spawn.  Nothing too impressive again but I at least saved us from getting scored against.

Planting Fail!
Yep, I failed at planting the bomb.  I would have been fine if I didn't jump.  I always jump though, it's like a force of habit...or nature whichever.  Either way it didn't work too well.


Haha!  I lied!  A quick update on my quest for 20k Gamerscore.  I am currently sitting at 19,571 which if you do some simple math (20,000 - 19,571 = 429) well would you look at that!  Only 429 away from my personal goal.  I still need to finish the Gears 2 campaign and do some clean up on some easy achievements, plus finish both Dead Island and Bulletstorm (still...) which all should net me some extra points.  I am also still going to try to earn all the achievements for Halo Anniversary with Storm; though it looks like some of them might give us some troubles.
There you have it everyone, I will try to get a full fledged post out sometime soon.  No promises but I have been trying to keep this place updated on a regular basis.

Long Time No....Post...

Okay, first off I'd like to apologize for not making an actual post since the start of the month. Anyways, let's get down to business shall we?

First things first, some games from Action this past week with Storm. More importantly, we played 10 games of Grifball in it and went 10-0. I'll post most of the really goods ones in here and some of the clips from them later on.

Trash talking generals complaining about Pit of Joy. Yep, they were complaining about easy the game is and how much it sucks. Then once they got tired of that, they started bringing out the fact the me and Storm were grade 4's.
Shut-out number one. The other two teammates of ours were good, but they wanted to go for kills mostly and in Grifball, that's not always good.
Second shut-out. Yep, another shut-out. Even though I scored four of the five points that game, I played defense the most. Makes no sense I know, but it's what happened.
I am tank. The definition of being a tank is something like this: "These are the guys who keep the other team distracted while the runners normally score. Also known for spawn killing." So yeah, I scored twice for us, but Tanked most of the time.
This game was a little better. It was actually a really good game except the lag at the start of the game.
2 on 2 Grifball....sucks. Yeah, it does. We actually did better once the other two teammates of ours quit.
More Pit of Joy please. Yes please, it is probably my second favorite gametype in Action Sack next to...you guessed it, Grifball.


That is all for games the clips will come towards the end of this post as I have to finish uploading a few. An update on the campaign kills you want? Okay, well after checking the last night, I am down to 4th and Storm is down to 5th. I've given up on going up from 4th. It's near pointless since these people come out of nowhere and have 88,000 kills overnight.


Anyways, this is a little random here, but while I have it on my mind. I'm sitting here listening to my iPod and browsing through the community files, well actually the rendered videos tagged with the word grifball(or girfball as I saw one of them...) and to be even more specific, narrowed down by the assault gametype. Some of them are pretty cool, yet some of them are extremely pointless and stupid....very stupid.


Anyways, now moving onto...something. Ah yes! I got a new 360 as an early birthday gift. It is a 360 Elite Holiday bundle. I still kept the old though, it still works so why get rid of it? Got three new games with it also, Pure, Lego Batman(can't guarantee how often I'll play it, but it has achievements and I'm a sucker for them anymore) and Modern Warfare 2. Which I'm not as happy with as I thought I would be and everyone made it sound like. I'd go into details, but it would bore you all.

I still can't get over the fact of how quiet it runs even with a disc in and running. And yes, I know I can install the game to the hard-drive, but I could only do that with ODST as normal Halo 3 isn't optimized to run on using the HDD. Honestly though, it isn't that noisy with a disc in it to begin with anyways so it really doesn't bother me. I love the fact that is has the 120GB HDD on it though, with the old one it was only a 20GB and we pretty much used most of the space on it up.

Now about those clips I was talking about earlier, I finally got them all uploaded. However, there are too many to embed in here and all that. So I took the time and learned how to create a playlist on Youtube...well it took longer than anticipated, but here they are: all the Grifball clips I have taken and all at your viewing pleasure. Feel free to either comment on them there at Youtube or here...or not at all, it doesn't matter to me what you do.

I think that pretty much covers it for now. I may have another post later this week, but be warned, it may contain lots of Grifball things as I am strangely addicted to it right now...and always. What can I say? It's a fun gametype that I like. Anyways, that's all.

First! No...wait...Third!

Ah yes, I'm sure you will remember back on December 23rd I posted saying I was first in the state of Illinois for campaign kills and then later on someone posted this comment?

"Where are you at now? Did you make it?" Well, yes I had a 324 kill lead at the time of that posting. As for right now, well I'm some 18,000 kills out of 1st place. Currently sitting in 3rd with a 10,000 some kill lead on 4th. My 1st place seat only lasted for about a month, a lot longer than what I thought it would last. I really have no idea where the first person came from though, I look one day and have the lead still then come back the next and someone else has a 5,000 kill lead over me. Go back a week later and yet someone else has a 10,000 kill lead over me and the guy in now 2nd. I really don't care if I'm in first or not, I'm just surprised that it lasted a month. I thought for sure someone would have the lead the next day, but no.
Now my next goal is to get Storm into 4th. He's only 182...or 187 is it... I forget. Anyways, it's to get him into fourth and build a solid just in case someone decides to come along and wipe out an entire Covenant world. Ahem.... sorry, all Covenant must die in my book. Anyways, moving on.

I played some Grifball for the first time in I think two months maybe, not sure. We had some pretty good games, mostly dull ones however, played 18 games total and won 10 of them. Simple math indicates we lost 8 of them...I hope, not good with numbers, yes I said it.
First game up, down 2-0 and comeback to win 3-2.
Meh, not much can be said about that game. It was close, but awesome.
This next game was kind of like the one above this, typical 3-2 win for us. However, the other team would not shut up about me and Storm having gold bars. Yes, even the Brig on their team was trash talking us. Ha!
Last good game worth posting. 4-1 win for us, nothing too impressive.

I did get closer to my playlist Field Major though. I have 176 exp in the playlist and I need 185 I think to get it. I wouldn't mind getting a playlist general in it. I think that's like 500 or 600 exp in that playlist. So that's only about 200-300 more wins to get it...yeah, simple enough to do.

Right?

A little more reasonable goal I have right now is to surpass my current Social BTB exp at 273. That's only 97 more to go and 48.5 wins to get it...even though you can't get half a win. So we'll just say 49. That's possible and can be done. According to HaloCharts though I have a 99.44 percent effectiveness at earning exp in that playlist.
Some random(well maybe not so random...) stats from Grifball. It is my third worst playlist kill to death ratio at 0.75...which is negative. Ah heck, now anything below 2.5 is considered negative. After some looking, let's just say this, anything that involves K/D ratio and Grifball is negative. So...um, don't let me Tank for you then I'll defend or run. Mainly defend though, I love using the sword and making sweet stops, albeit close ones, but still awesome.
Have no idea what I'm talking about with these stupid terms such as tanking and ball running? Click this strange looking text and all will be clear...or at least that part will be.

Anyways, got two film clips for you to watch. Ha, and here you thought this was going to be a bunch of words thrown together. Well it is that, but not completely.
Anyways, first clip of two. Those are the kind of stops I was just talking about...only me doing them. Seriously though, that was an awesome stop by Storm. What happened was we launched our two other teammates up near the center(and I think maybe even over the center line) while those two are off wiping out the other team(except for one person) Storm and I make our way to the bomb. Well I get owned by the guy that gets past the rest of our team(badly owned, clip shows it I think) and grabs the bomb. With me being dead and the rest of our team gone spawn killing that only leaves Storm to defend, well this guy has a good lead on Storm already. No possible chance at stopping him, Storm rides a mini-wave(see Grifball glossary) and catches up to him and kills him. Stopped!

Next clip, No Mine! This was me, spying on the other teams ball runner. Heh. I really don't know how to describe this one, so you'll just have to watch it.

That's all I can think of to add in here. I'm sure I could throw the word playlist in here somewhere else. In a few days I'll try to get something with more random things in it. Don't ask how many days, because if you know me, it'll be the end of this year before I publish another post.














Playlist.






That is all now.
Oh and, playlist.

Grifball, Not Grufball

Ah yes, it's the time of month were Grifball roles around as the Double EXP weekend. In lieu of this, I have changed my gamer picture from the blue and white Seventh Column it used to the dual grav hammers and bomb. There might be a sword or two in there as well, not sure though.
So that means I will be playing a lot of it this weekend. I've also noticed that in a few of my older games both me and Storm(You might know him as my nameless Driver, well he now has a name) have played with or against people that are or have been at one point on a Grifball team. How I noticed this was, the other day I was watching the Summer '09 League highlights and noticed a person named Spud H3ad which is also the Team Captain for the team Separate Intelligence. Not to mention a couple people from Tied The Leader(TTL), we lost both games, but it was pretty cool.

Now moving onto a few film clips and screenshots I took over the past few days. This one is uploaded to my youtube account, hope you enjoy it.




And sorry if part of the video is cut off, it's probably the theme of my blog...even though it's from Blogger...
Anyways, more videos!





I'm sure you have seen this one, if not watch. If you have watch it again. This was a pretty sweet score put in by Storm during the game against Spud H3ad of SI. Again sorry if the video is cut off, blame youtube...or Blogger I don't care.
This next clip is rather interesting to say the least. I had a friend over who doesn't play Halo much at all, so he's not real good and doesn't know how to play Grifball either. So he gets the guts up and goes to grab the bomb(or ball whichever) and gets boosted up in the air after grabbing it, then proceeds to drop the bomb in front of Storm. Storm grabs it and gets betrayed, then after that is where the first clip comes in.




And finally here are the screenshots I promised.

I hope you enjoy these as that is all I have to post for now. Until then, see you out in the court!

Pfhor and More

Yes I know that "for" is spelled for, but if you have ever played Marathon or even heard about it, you know what I am talking about. I recently bought Marathon: Durandal off of Xbox Live Arcade and have been playing it. It's pretty fun to play and is of a challenge at parts. You have to use your head at certain parts(which I didn't once...) and it's just plain fun to play. I found myself several times back tracking through a level just to find the exit of it, only to find it where I started from. I would highly recommend getting this game off of Xbox Live Arcade for 800 points. Of course, you can try out the free demo to make sure you want to actually spend the points and not waste them on something you will regret later on.

I sat down last night and watched the Spike 2008 Video Game Awards and was actually disappointed in it. Not for the fact that none of the games that I thought would have won didn't, but it was just plain boring. It was basically watching two hours worth of commercials with all the "World Premiere's" every few minutes. Some of the things did look pretty cool, like the Gears of War 2 map pack. "Combustible" I think is what it was called, anyways the map "Flood" looks really sweet. It basically is always changing since there is water or something that is changing the map, it looks pretty cool. Other then that, I didn't find anything else that interesting.

I played Grifball with a friend yesterday and got into a game and it was the normal lag filled "Oh look, he's just skidding across the floor to us." kind of game and the other team was nothing but little kids. The game starts and it goes okay the first round, we score and all goes from there. Then later on about the end of the second round(we are up 2-0 at that time) it goes to set-up the next round like it always does and goes to the black screen, it takes about five minutes to get out of this and get the game going again. It finally came back and we started playing again only to realize that there was only two people playing. So we go on and play like normal, the games ends and we get to the Post-game lobby and the only person on the other team says in his little squeaky voice saying that we cheated and he was going to report us and we would get banned. Okay honestly, I have never cheated and don't see the point in it. I mean, why ruin the game for normal people playing the game? I see no point in doing so.

That's pretty much it, I hope I will be able to get another post out before Christmas. If not, then have a wonderful Christmas!

Betrayal 101

Well guess what, Girfball is back and people are complaining. Go figure huh? This isn't so much a post about me complaining about complainers as it is a post about what not to do in order to not get betrayed a lot.

Just in the past hour or so I've seen 5 or 6 threads saying that the betrayal booting system should be turned on or the betrayals should be turned off. Here's my opinion, no it should not be turned on. It would ruin the gameplay that we have all come to know of as Grifball. Now the team that gets the bomb would be able to launch the bomb carrier over to the other side without any problems. Now the point of betrayals being on is this control the so called "field".

Now for a few tips as to not make you fly into a tizzy and complain about this. Spacing from other teammates is key, duh. That way when you all swing your hammers at the start no one will get killed except for the person directly in the center. Don't always use your hammer, this one is a key role for the simple fact that the hammer can cause sort of a shock wave that will kill anything nearby; teammates or not. That's also another reason they give you a sword to use. The sword is great for chasing down the bomb carrier and getting him before he scores. I learned all this the hard way, mainly since I was playing it for my first time with a few friends that complained to me about it. One last thing, don't rush the middle all grouped together. For one, it looks stupid when an entire team is going for the ball and for two, it's an easy overkill for the other team or wiping out your entire team with one simple pull of the trigger.

So that's pretty much all I have to say. To all you people complaining about how the betrayal booting is off on Grifball, it's not going to change now just shut up about it.
I'll have some pictures here within the next couple of days as well.

The Wait is over

Well I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but I and one other person from Bungie started a group a couple months ago to get some people together and form some teams to play the so called Halo sports. Well after two months of us getting everything ready and not being able to get the group we wanted to do our first humpday against I finally revived the group. Our main focus of the group is to get the teams together(as I said above) and have them face off against other teams and have a season so to speak. Then the teams that had the best overall records and the end of the "season" would advance into playoffs and then we would go into finals for the team that would be champions for that season. We would deal in different sports such as Grifball, basketball, football and my own created version of assualt called Jumpball. I don't know where this will all go, but I hope it does well. We've already got some teams up last I looked. My team for Grifball, Flaming Death and other sports. For the other two sports that are up right now the other founder made these teams. They are Bomb Brawlers(football) and Flamin' Ballers(basketball). I am on these two teams since there wasn't that many people at the start. One thing I was planning on doing is a Founders Challenge, were me and the other founder find 3 or 4 other people to team up with and challenge some people in the group for the fun of it. Maybe like have it's own certain series during the off time or something like that. There are a couple other member from another group that want to create their own team and have, but have not decided what sports they want to sign up for.

That's all for now, I was really excited when I got this group up again and in the first two days we got 6 members. Anyways, if you're wanting to join the only things you will need Xbox Live gold account, Halo 3 and a Bungie.net account. I will link the group's homepage in my link list to the right. --->

Enjoy!

Finally!

Well I told you I would try to get a new post here soon. If you haven't noticed already I have changed a few things about the look of my blog. I missed out on this weeks double exp playlist and it was one of my favorites to. :( Oh well it's not like it was I couldn't go from Forge to Matchmaking and switch playlists. Next week is Team Snipers, which I will be sitting out. Why you might ask, well straight forward I don't like it. In other things I have been trying my luck at making a Tennis map for something I am working on. It turned out fine I think, but there are some things that could use some work. I still need to get a couple people together and test it out plus make a gametype for it. That'll be the hard part, getting everything right and all the settings changed to be fair...headache already. I'm looking over the forums and I see this thread about adding a Ghost or Mongoose to Grifball. How about no for an answer? I made a post saying how would you even drive it with the constant swinging of hammers and that. He comes back and says to check the poll and that majority rules. Well I looked and it's 23 votes no and 3 votes yes... Seriously check your own poll. I go back and say that yeah it would add variety to the game, but tell him to check the poll stats and that they answer with a big fat no. Then he comes back and makes a mom joke. I mean seriously is that all you can come up with? If it is you need to grow up since that joke is getting old quickly. Someone I know has made the comment of this, "Some people have the mentality and IQ of a gnat...oh no...the gnat is bigger."

One more thing I though I would add is another theory on StoredGrunt360. I was playing with a few friends over Xbox Live and one person on the other team asked were I got my gamertag and that it sucked majorly(insert comment here). My friend's response was this "It's a grunt that Bungie pulled out of storage for the release of Halo 3 and it's purpose was to reign terror over people." It does sound awesome and I like.
That's it for now since I can't think of anything to say

Well...it's been a little bit.

Yeah I know it's been over a month, but I have been busy. If I get the chance I'll get a better post out for you to read or just ignore. I've also changed something. See if you can find them.

Story of StoredGrunt360

Some people have been asking how did I get the name StoredGrunt360. Well you're about to find out. It all started when I went to sign up for the xbox.com forums. They don't use just a regular account like a forum does they use a gamertag. So I still decided to join anyhow. It gave me a free month of Xbox LIVE Gold. Well at that time I didn't have high speed internet let alone Live. I never used the account and it was linked to my Bungie.net profile. Well I figured since I didn't have Live I might as well not show my gamertag. It was cool to use all the features and that over xbox.com like track friends that were playing games online and that. Send them messages and that cool stuff. It sat there never got used except once in a while when I would log into it to use it. It downgraded to a Silver account since I had no way to keep it up and use it to play games. A couple of years ago I got a 360 and just last year I got Xbox Live so I was able to get my gamertag. Short I know, but this will answer some of your questions. For some other stuff now.
Girfball is back for this weeks Double EXP playlist and it's brought back the whiners. Someone has already found a way to sit on the wall of the map. Seriously people leave Grifball alone!!!! The new matchmaking updates that have been added are awesome. I played my first game of ShWATguns and SWATBall the other day with a few people from a group of mine and liked it actually. SWAT CTF looks interesting, haven't played though I did have a chance and vetoed it. Also another thing about SWAT is all the elites I see in it and all the people saying elites should not be allowed to play in it. Well if you have the "skill" you say you do, then you should be able to get around it. That's it for now since this is all I can think of.

Rantin' and Ravin'

Okay I am fed up with this. All you people that think Grifball sucks, that it doesn't take no skill and it's for people that don't know how to play Halo you must have no life. I mean yeah you are entitled to your opinion and I respect it, but you say it takes no skill and it's not competitive. The reason why the people at Rooster Teeth created Grifball is for fun. Video Games where created and are meant to be played for fun not to compete with other people. I mean yeah they have leagues for it, but even that's meant for fun. So what you can get some cheap multi kills and all? It's still meant for fun. So be it if it takes no skill to play it. It is still meant for fun! Like I said before you have your opinions and are entitled to them. I just get tired of all the people when I am playing it saying how much Grifball sucks. If you think it sucks then why are you playing it? Next time you find yourself playing it and say it sucks ask yourself that. I enjoy playing Grifball for fun so that is why I play it. I like to get multi-kills and such, but I don't try real hard for them. Again as I said before Grifball was created to bring the fun back in Halo 3. Anyways that's it for this rant.

It's a Blarg not a Blog

I actually don't know what Blarg means it just sounds cool I guess. Now a whole lot has gone on since the last time I posted. Bungie has changed the design of their site. It now has the background of one of the new maps "Blackout" from the new Legendary Map pack. All kinds of new avatars and a bunch of other stuff. If you want to see I would suggest checking it out for yourselves. Now Team SWAT has been around since Halo 2 I guess, but it just recently made a return in Halo 3. Now what is Team SWAT you might ask. Team SWAT is a highly tactical gametype that the player starts out with no shields and starts with a headshot weapon(like the Battle Rifle or Carbine) and has a Magnum as a secondary weapon. You do start with grenades only two though. There are no weapons or grenades on map. You have infinite ammo for your weapons. It's a good gametype to practice your skills with the BR(battle rifle). As in you can learn to lead a target better. To score a kill you normally have to aim for their heads. The games were more fast paced since there are no shields. If you ever get the chance to play SWAT give it a try.

Grifball is another gametype I would suggest checking out. You have no shields as a regular (normal) player. You start with the Gravity Hammer as primary and Sword as a secondary. The bomb is in the middle of the map. It's best played on the new map Foundry. When someone gets the bomb they turn orange. Why orange? Well the character from Red versus Blue is named Grif. How the game Grifball got it's start I don' know. You have 4 time the overshields, your speed is increased and your gravity is decreased. Which is really fun. You get into the correct postion and jump over the rest of the players and the shock wave of the Grav hammers will send you up in the air. You can do all sorts of things if you have enough momentum you can score while everyone is trying to get all kinds of kills. It's actually kind of funny.

I was playing Grifball in Bungie's Double EXP Weekend the other day. I got put up against a Brig. and two Generals. In that game I got the medal I thought I would never get. The highly loved Killionaire. What is this "Killionaire"? It's ten kills within four seconds of one another. Spawn killing rules!!!! My team didn't win, but still I got the Killionaire. For more proof I have the stats: http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=424100357&player=StoredGrunt360.

In my file share I have the film clip of it. Thus which is located here: http://www.bungie.net/stats/Halo3/FileShare.aspx?gamertag=StoredGrunt360. File share item slot 5. Enjoy!

This next game isn't so good cause we still lost, but on the up side these are people that play Grifball for fun. Which means they enjoy it and are in the official Grifball spring league: http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=426805399&player=StoredGrunt360. They (as in TTL. TTL = TiedTheLeader) also faced Bungie. Bungie as in people who work for them. That was awesome! Thanks guys for playing a good game we almost beat you almost...

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=426805399&player=StoredGrunt360

Now for some more serious stuff. There are people that are complaining about the younger kids playing over Xbox Live and how annoying they are. Well to some extent they are, but they can come up with some pretty crazy things like maps, gametypes and such. Now on the other hand some of the adults are pretty annoying as well. So believe what you might it's just my opinion.

I just saw a video of a campaign level in Halo 3 where the Arbiter was kicking stuff out of his way and killed the person playing the game. Very funny indeed.

One thing I'm trying to do is get my rank up in Halo 3. I want to try to become a Brig. All it means is in my highest playlist (which is Team Slayer) from a 33 to at least a 45. I asked someone that is a 48 in TS(Team Slayer) and he said "it doesn't get that hard to rank up until past 45" Which is fine and all. I wouldn't mind becoming a General (which has a higest skill of 50 and at least EXP of 600*which I have*) Brigadier needs a highest skill level of 45 with at least 500 EXP (which I have as well.)

That's pretty much it for now. Enjoy this look into some stuff and what I plan on doing.

If you see something Orange, hit it really hard.

Ha ha Orange font color if you see something that color hit it really hard. Hehe get it orange ah never mind bad joke. Ironic also isn't it? Anyways, that is the forum description for Grifball on the Rooster Teeth Forums. If you must know Grifball is an surprisingly addicting game type of Assault in Halo. http://www.grifball.com/home.php Click on that if you want to know more about it. Warning it is highly addicting!!! I recently joined the Rooster Teeth forums and they're pretty good. They have special forums for the people who are sponsors. Which I'm not cause I can't afford it and I don't have a Paypal account. :( They have forums for each of their mini cartoon things that I forgot the name of them. All kinds of of other boards and that. Including the wonderful series Red versus Blue or RvB for short. Love that series!!! On AgentMasterson's forum I got promoted to Moderator. Totally awesome. I didn't expect that I would get a promo over there. I mean not that I don't mind, but.... Anyways I'm celebrating my Birthday this week. No you will not know anything more then that. That's pretty much it for now. I will have some more pics and stuff up later this week maybe. Just remember this:



If you see something Orange, hit it really hard. Or...Stupid, stupid Grif. Or better yet, Grifball it's the best thing since its self!





Oh yeah forgot to include this:
http://files.redvsblue.com/grifball/assets/Grifball_League_Icon.jpg

This is also the Girfball background you can download.
http://files.redvsblue.com/grifball/assets/GB_Wallpaper_1024x768.jpg