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?

Community Content

Ah yes, the usual "it's been a while" rambling.  Well, it has been a while hasn't it?  Anyways, I've been busy a lot lately with the Inside View.  Why?  I've been trying to help brainstorm ideas to get our community off the ground.  From simply giving ideas of articles to post, things for the other staff members to look into and getting a Halo themed team off the ground.  About a week later I was just talking with the owner about an idea we had floating around and after giving him my input, I get another email back.  This time, this email is offering me a spot on the management team as their Community Manager.  Knowing I would be able to do this, I gladly accepted the offer.

We have some pretty neat stuff planned for the near future, so keep an eye on our main page.  Plus, why don't you sign up for our forum; we have a few game nights coming up that I'm sure you would enjoy.  And I would love to play with some of my blog readers from here.

I am going to wrap up this short post with a video I took from Minecraft.  Yes, I broke down and bought Minecraft; I remember the time when I used to say "I'm never going to buy that game as it looks pointless."  Well it's good if you have a few minutes or a few hours to waste.  My world I thought sucked at first, but going back to it a few days ago I found some pretty good stuff.  Also, I hate cobblestone...


Yeah, it's not supposed to be snowing on one half of the house and raining on the other...  Oh, and my house (which is the one shown in the video) has a second story to it now.  It's not so bland anymore.  I'm also thinking of doing a bunch more to it, but the massive amount of dirt around it needs to go away.  There's also a river (not seen in the video as it wasn't there until this past Friday) on the side where I am standing at the start of the video.  No idea what I'm going to do with that as of now, but I'll figure something out.

News and Reviews

Hi everyone, I come to you today with some exciting news and thoughts.  In my last post I made reference to Inside View Gaming and how I applied for a reviewer position.  I am officially announcing that I have joined the staff over at IVG permanently as their Lead Reviewer.  I am very excited to bring all of my followers of Twitter, here and those that come across IVG reviews for games and the latest gaming news!  You can keep an eye on the IVG front page for all the latest news and a bunch of reviews for games.
They also are looking for content writers.  So if you enjoy playing games and writing about them in your free time then hit this link to send in an application to join.

My other news I have to tell you, is I finally got a capture card.  What's a capture card?  You know, those things that people use to record footage from their gaming consoles that help them make those awesome montages and walk throughs for levels?  I haven't had a lot of time to play around with editing videos (Lord knows I need to...) but I have had the time to simply upload three short clips from both Sniper Elite V2 and Halo Anniversary.  I'll post them in the order that I uploaded them in...starting with the first clip from Sniper Elite V2.



Now, I know the audio is actually ahead of the video.  I'm not sure exactly why that happened but I did figure out a way around that.  It simply involved me exporting the raw file (MP4) into a WMV file and then uploading it to YouTube that way.  See, I was so excited to use the capture card and that I could upload videos directly to YT from the capturing software that I had to wait four hours for this video to completely upload.  So yeah, not making that mistake again anytime soon.  The next two videos tested my theory, which was to export the files out of the capturing software and then upload them.  It drastically cut down on the upload time (a half hour compared to four hours, I'll take that), my only concern was when exporting the file if the video quality would degrade.  See for yourself if it did or not.

I personally don't think so that much, especially if you watch it in 480p.  Next subject!

More Sniper Elite V2 gameplay, showcasing my terrible sniping skills.  It's odd because I used to be decent at this game when I first got it...hmm.  Anyways, if you can I suggest watching it in 720p HD as that will provide the best results...obviously.  I need to tinker around with the settings yet and figure out what caused the delay in video from the very first film I took.  I love the quality of the video from that film, but I don't want the delay between audio and video all the time.  It will be a learning experience from here on out for a while.

I hope to get the editing down so I can create montages and walk throughs for certain games at some point in the near future.  Editing for montages will be simple enough all it will basically be is capturing the clip, use the software that came with the capture card to trim the clip down then import it into the full fledged editing software to add titles and transitions.  Walk throughs will be a little bit more difficult but follow the same premise as a montage.  Only with those I might have to add some form of commentary, which won't be a problem as I believe the HD PVR will be able to capture my own voice if I simply plug in my Xbox LIVE headset.  That is something I will have to toy around with and get the hang of.

With that said, I hope you have enjoyed this little (and short) post containing some exciting news from me.  I hope to see anyone who reads this over at IVG now and then!

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.

Oh Internet, You Amaze Me

This first paragraph is most certainly a rant so you can probably skip to the second paragraph if you don't want to read my ramblings.  I cannot bring myself to the understanding of how someone can think a game that has a bug or glitch that erases your story progress completely game of the year material.  Recently there was a thread in a group I am in on Bungie.net that was in regards to I believe IGN's GOTY article, which they deemed Portal 2 as theirs.  One person in that thread seems intent on trying to convince me that I am wrong in my ways of agreeing with their decision and not jumping on the "Skyrim is teh best gaem evar!!1!" bandwagon.  Okay, so that may not be their main goal but it sounds like it based on the way their posts read.  I guess I just can't grasp my mind around the fact that someone can think a game is GOTY material when it has a serious bug that erases your story progress.I know in the past I have said the no game is perfect, and I still stand behind that.  I can understand it, if it is something on a little smaller scale such as a character disappearing randomly.  But take and ask this question to yourself:
Do you really want to spend 100+ hours playing a game only to save and quit one night then come back the following day to find everything, all your leveled up skills, weapons etc. gone?  While you ponder that, I shall move onto the next topic.

A couple days ago I finished my first season in the Dynasty I had started.  I finished the season at 14-0 and took the team I always use to the National title game.  I bet you can take one guess as to who it is.  Can't guess?  It's the Fighting Illini.  I found out that I evidently have the game on the lowest difficulty...which explains why I can go undefeated through the season.  That does not explain however why I have troubles with Purdue, Penn State and Michigan each time I play them.  At first it was only Penn State that would give me fits (you know, the magic player that would come out of nowhere and sack you or come up with an interception) but now it seems that Purdue and Michigan can be added to that list.  I played Purdue at home in the (with "e" being stressed) Memorial Stadium and they managed to pick me off three times and score on twice of said three times.
I faced Michigan twice.  Once in the regular season and they gave me probably the worst trouble.  I thought this game was going to be whose kicker would be the best.  In the first three quarters it was each team trading a field goal.  It was only until the fourth quarter where we picked them off and returned it for a touchdown.
Since I did rely heavily on my running game throughout the first season I ended up getting my starting running back in the race for the Heisman Trophy.  Unfortunately he kept getting injured in our last few games so his average yards per game went down plus we had a bye week.  In the end the quarterback of Houston won.  I'm not disappointed really, except for the fact that I lost out on a 15 point achievement.

Speaking of achievements, I'm only 599 points away from breaking into the 20K Gamerscore club.  I'm hoping that with finishing up Bulletstorm and Dead Island I'll be able to snag at least another 100-150 more points.  I need to go back and check to see which ones I can get easily.  Plus this weekend I am going to pick up Gears of War 2 (hey, it's only ten bucks!) and from asking someone I know on Twitter what it's like they said it has easy achievements.  As I told them, I'll take easy achievements any day.  I've also thought about picking up CoD4 (aka the first Modern Warfare) however I'm still on the fence about that one.  The only thing I would be playing would be the campaign for it as I am hearing the multiplayer is chock full of modders and hackers.  I'm just not sure honestly.

I leave you with this short post, but at this time I don't have much more to add to this post.  Hopefully I can finish Bulletstorm up this weekend and grab some more achievements in one of three games.

Island of Paradise

My first post since I finished the "Bowl Bound" series, granted it is a tad later than the few days afterwards.  But hey, why should it be any different from before right?  During the time I was doing the Bowl Bound series I got a couple new games.  One of which I already used for the previously mentioned series, NCAA Football 12.  I haven't played a lot of it to form a solid opinion of it, from what I have played of it though I like it much better than NCAA Football 10.  I like the stadium introductions for home teams, it actually feels like a Saturday morning college football game.  I started the usually dynasty on it as well, so far I like how you have to be more involved in recruiting and the like.  Needless to say though, I still kind of suck at doing that.
The other game I got was Dead Island.  Picture Left 4 Dead meeting Fallout in terms of RPG/Shooter combo.  I've played Fallout so I know how the RPG elements work in that game and it is rather....slow with how quickly you rank up.  I'll admit I was expecting the same thing with Dead Island when I first found out that it was going to have that element. When I started playing it I was proved wrong in my assumption (see, they're not always that great) and was leveling up rather quickly.  I love how huge the game world is, I am about halfway through the game and still have yet to fully explore the island itself.  And (Spoiler Alert!) since that is the case I made into the city, which might be larger than the island itself, but I still have yet to explore it completely either.  Needless to say, if you enjoy exploring large maps and hunting for hidden items this game will certainly cure that itch for a while.  I never really used to explore the maps until I was watching Storm do it in Bioshock and saw that he was finding all these cool things hiding away in dark little corners.  I went and played later on and did the same and found all this cool stuff that Storm had previously ran across.  Not that I would ever commit some of those spots to memory and go back to them when I played...nope, never.

The other game I have been playing recently is Bulletstorm.  It's a fun game I like it from what I have played of it.  If a sequel is ever released there is some work that should be done to the basic gameplay and I'm sure the developers would do that.  They do know how games work after all.  There are times where you are fighting an enemy and all of sudden you glitch through the floor and can't do anything.  Or there's the time where the "sidekick" walks over a bridge and starts to float towards the sky only to get caught in a tree.  Yeah so the game isn't perfectly polished, but it's still fun to play nonetheless.  The leash is really sweet, I like how you can yank enemies towards you and kill them that way.  Or if you want you could leash them your way and then kick them into the nearest cactus...or over the closest ledge.  Or even back in the direction he came from and back into the group of enemies he was around.

On a quick closing note, I am currently sitting at 19,091 Gamerscore.  If you remember a while ago I started a quest for 10,000 Gamerscore, currently my new goal is for 20,000.  It might take a while, but I'm sure I'll eventually make it.  There you have it, a somewhat short post but I am hoping to have posts out on a regular basis.  So until next time!

Learn 2 Fly

While I am sitting here watching the Ghost Hunters Live event on the SyFy channel, I decided to try my hand at this wonderful thing called multi-tasking.  I hear it does wonders for people.  Anyways, a few days ago I already announced that I became an Xbox Community Ambassador.  Since you already know about that I will completely skip over that and head for the flight deck.

About a week before Kinect Sports Season Two was released everyone was going to get Battlefield 3 and I wasn't.  Well, technically I didn't get it, a family member did and I ended up playing it.  The campaign was good, I liked it; you really have to play it tactically...if that makes sense.  You can't go in all Halo like thinking the enemy can't kill you and you can just nail them with a shotgun...although at times it does work.  It is hands down the most realistic game I have played, the weapons actually sound like their real life counterpart.  Which makes me very happy.  I did feel though that the campaign could have been a little longer, but it does get the story through.  I also wish you would have been able to use more vehicles during the campaign.  The level Going Hunting is a very fun level as you get to partially fly a jet, but it needs more of that I think.  After I had completed the campaign I decided to hit the multiplayer and give it a shot.  Well...that was after EA's servers had decided it woud let me.  After they did decide to let me join a server and play some games I got stuck playing this gametype called Conquest.  In my first two or three games of it I had no idea what to do so I just ran around the map following my teammates.  Yeah that probably wasn't the best idea either as they seemed to have a magnetic attraction to RPG's.  Once I found out what I was doing and that each team had a set amount of "tickets" that were depleted with each death on one team.  Oh yeah, you could also deplete said tickets by capturing certain points on the map.  Think of a cross between a modified slayer variant and Territories from Halo.  Plus if one team controls over half the points on the map the opposing team starts loosing tickets automatically.  It's an interesting gametype and I find it fun at points.

I also had an interesting time flying a helicopter in a game of Conquest.  I know how to fly a helicopter in most games and it's pretty straight forward.  You sometimes use the left and right triggers to ascend or descend and use the left stick to move around and the right one to look.  Well in BF3 it's a little different story.  The triggers are still used to control your altitude, but the right stick controls your pitch, yaw and roll.  Wait...what?  That's exactly what I was saying when I hopped into the pilot seat.  About twenty seconds into the game I was about 50 feet above the ground so that's a plus...wait is that a hill coming up on my right?  Dear God it is!  Once I start hovering over said hill I gently set it down ontop of it.  Okay, not bad I think I'm getting the hang of this.  Let's try taking off and actually go help my teammates.  I end up taking off and then landing really hard on the side of the hill I just took off of.  Yep, so count that as my first suicide of Battlefield 3.  After that experience of flying the helicopter I cannot wait to fly a jet now.

Speaking of jets, I have been wanting to play one of the "run around and blow everything up" games I have.  I haven't though as I'm not sure exactly which one to play.  There is Just Cause 2 with its large game world and all the possibilites it can hold.  Plus you can fly jets and in this game I know how to fly them somewhat properly.  I jut have to remember that the nearest body of water acts as the Bermuda Triangle.
On the other hand though, I have been thinking on popping in Mercenaries 2 since it is almost the same thing.  It has attack helicopters (that I can actually fly) and the equivalent of each vehicle in JC2...minus the jets and Bermuda Triangle.  However to make up for this lack of aircraft and mysterious bodies of water, it has airstrikes.  Which I love to use whenever I get the chance to, because you know causing a huge explosion is always fun in a video game.  I really don't know, the sound of airstrikes is winning me over slowly.  That and I haven't played Mercenaries 2 in a while and I do enjoy it.

Again not much of a post, but I at least got two posts within a weeks time frame.  Anyways, until next time!  Hopefully I'll have more stories of an endeavour in flight and perhaps even a failed airstrike or two.  Danger close!

Some News...

Going to give out a short little post here, but I really want to share this with...someone.  Anyways, on Monday I read a tweet from both the Xbox and XboxSupport Twitter account directing us to the new Xbox Community Ambassador website.  After seeing that and checking out the new website I contemplate about clicking on that shiny "Apply Now!" button.  After clicking on it and then reading the extra notes that were on that page, I decided to think about my decision and put it off for a few minutes.  Ten minutes to be exact, after that time had passed I went back and applied for it.  I knew I would hear back with three business days as to whether I was accepted into the program or denied.  Sometime this afternoon I receieved an email stating that I was officially accepted into the Xbox Community Ambassador program.  What is an XCA you ask?  I have a simple answer for that.  We are fellow gamers and Xbox LIVE community members that have volunteered to help fellow community members with questions they might have.

Also since the other day was Tuesday the 25th, that means I was able to pick up a new game.  That game was Kinect Sports Season Two, from what little of it I have played it is fun.  I have only played darts, skiing and tennis so far.  The only one of those games I've played in real life has been darts...and that was an....interesting game to say the least.  Since I've played it before, I'll start off with it.  From the whole two and a half games (don't ask about the half a game...) I have played of it, it is kind of hard to get the hang of.  You have a reticule if you hold your arm out a little bit and you can move it around by moving your arm around as well.  I guess if you move your arm back slowly to "throw" the virtual dart it "locks" the reticule in place and you'll hit the part of the board that is within the circumference of that reticule.  However, if you move it too fast or move your arm from the way you were holding it, your reticule will disappear.  It's kind of finicky really, I'll have to play around with it some more and find a way to compensate for it.
Tennis is much like table tennis was in the first game, only on a larger scale.  You don't have to worry about moving around the court yourself, the game does that automatically based on where the ball is going to be.  It's actually a pretty clever system, they had it back in volleyball in the first game as well.
I didn't play much of skiing either, but this is certainly a sport you'll want to have plent of room if you play it with another person.  I couldn't get through a lot of the gates as when I would go to turn, I would end up standing behind the person I was playing with...yeah not good.  It's not the games fault, no far from it actually.  It's just the fact that we didn't have the correct amount of width space at that time.

Anwyas, that's all for now as that is all I have.  I will hopefully have another post out next week as I'll have played a bit more of Kinect Sports: S2 and perhaps another game as well.  Then I should have more to talk about.