I've missed you, Blogger.

We needed to spend some time apart, because I just didn't have anything nice to say. Don't worry, though... there is more coming. I need to center my chi and be able to bang it out on a keyboard without wanting to smash it into my monitor. I really love my monitor and don't want it to die.

Starcraft 2 is the devil. Activision-Blizzard is pushing gaming in the wrong direction.

Consoles are gaining more momentum and look to take over most of gaming's heavy lifting in the next few years. No doubt ramping up for the next generation of consoles (which might as well be a HTPC).

So much more that makes me want to hurt my dear, precious monitor. WOOOSAH!

It's not my router, Comcast.

Tonight, like many other nights I had to call Comcast. I have called Comcast hundreds of times since they took over for @Home internet and eventually became the default service provider for cable TV in the area where I live. I have called about cable TV, about digital TV, high def channels, the internet, the wires being down and hanging in the road, and who even knows what else. I've covered many, many, MANY bases of the "reason why I called" universe with these guys. Tonight, I almost snapped.

I had someone come out back in January, because my internet was in and our so sporadically that it just didn't make sense. The guy came out, looked around, checked some random levels and didn't find anything. He talked about the new conversion and the new system that they put in place for super fast tiered internet and the upcoming changes to digital. That all sounded cool, but I didn't give a fuck. My internet either worked right or didn't, that's all I care about. Period.

My problems cleared up a bit, but never really went away entirely. My brother moved in for a month back in March/April. We had another guy come out, he brought out a fancy new modem and hooked everything up. I explained my weird disconnects and he told me it was because I had an old modem and the guy from back in January should have given me a new modem. Okay, whatever. Will the internet work? Still wasn't sure. He did tell me that he wasn't allowed to touch my router or set up anything. I'd have to do all of the router work and plugging in to the PC. He had to set it up to run on this one particular laptop and that was it. Uhh, alright.

Time marches on and so do my disconnects. Let's move on to two weeks ago. I got so sick of these random disconnects, which have become more and more close together, that I finally called. I called up Comcast, got almost directly to a rep and told them that I was having problems. He said there was an outage and people were working on it, it just hadn't been updated so that I heard about it when I called in. He gave me a 20 dollar credit. I was kind of please. 20 bucks off AND maybe someone was fixing an issue. OMG, YES!

OMG, NO. The outages still come. The modem resets itself. It goes from online to restarted, instantly. I tried different plugs, I made sure it was plugged in well, I moved it, I unplugged it from the router. I went through it all since then. On the Linux PC beside me I get the same result, which is obvious BECAUSE THE FUCKING ROUTER IS RESTARTING, the computer has nothing to do with that.

So, I call them up tonight. I deal with the stupid fucking automated mess. I speak English, having issues with the internet, my phone number is blah, yes I have tried x, y, z, r, q, and w, then it tells me my balance. Then it asks me to pay my balance. WAIT! I don't have service, I'm calling to complain about poor service and you're still trying to suck money out of me. Are you fucking serious? I select the option to speak to a rep, after it tells me all about my balance. That takes me back to the first menu, I get to go through it all again. Hell yes I wanna do the callback survey. They still haven't called.

I get on the phone with a person and it's awful. I go slow, because most of the time they want to know a bunch of stupid shit before we can get started. Hi, yeah, my service is on for now but it has been going in and out for the past two weeks and I just wanted to call and report the issue. Yeah, I will give you the number again, even though I had to enter it twice before I talked to you and the automated system was able to tell me how much money I owed, but no... I'll say it to you, now. It's in my brother's name. Yeah, I got the last 4 of his social. I explain the issue. I explain that I had people out and I go on a fairly long-winded explanation, so hopefully she will understand what I want.

Nope. IT'S NOT MY ROUTER! That is basically what she comes up with. I tell her that my modem is losing connection and resetting and she tells me that I should check my router.... WHAT? Where do you find these retarded fucking monkeys that you hire to fill these jobs? Why can't I get one of these jobs, I'll act like a fucking idiot. GAH! I tell her that I don't want someone to come out. It isn't my problem, it has nothing to do with me, it is THEIR problem. Something is wrong with THEM. They need to check their lines. No credit this time, but at least I have a notation that I called. I plan to call everytime it does this from now on. I will eventually annoy them enough to fix it or to block my calls.

Fuck you, Comcast. It's not my router, fix your shit.

The Wii plays games but IS NOT for gamers.

When you think about the most fun that you can have with a current generation console you think about all of the interesting and console-specific titles that the Playstation 3 has: Blast Factor, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, SOCOM, Gran Turismo 5. But, at the end of the day it just isn't the console that everyone is scrambling to knock off the throne.

The Nintendo Wii is the reigning badass of the console world. This might lead people to believe that "gamers" invest in and play the games that come out for this system, but those people would be wrong. The games are fun and the system is quite intriguing, but very little legitimate gaming is done on this particular console and that has been a sticking point for many gamers and many game-enthusiasts for quite a while now. While the quality of Nintendo and it's consoles can't really be disputed, just how much of a gaming device this is can be.

For years the kids lived and breathed Mario. The original NES opened the hearts and minds of the youth in America to a fun-loving plumber and a scary dinosaur dragon walrus princess stealer. We had Metroid and Duck Hunt and other classic and great games. We loved the games and they loved us back, at least until they wouldn't load right and our bright idea as to... blow on them. The Super NES was a big jump forward and many people were very excited. We didn't really view games the same back then, but we all knew that something magical was happening. We got some more amazing classics like Final Fantasy 2 and 3, as well as Earthworm Jim, Turtles in Time, Super Mario All-Stars, Street Fight 2, Chrono Trigger and Mega Man X. The quality of the games was better. Both story, graphics and gameplay all became better and you could feel the gaming community begin pushing the boundaries and moving forward.

Then we got the abortion that has become known as the Virtual Boy. What a huge disappointment. One of the worst attempts at gaming that the world had ever seen. While the vision may have been there, the technology wasn't, yet Nintendo soldiered on and let it happen. This set gaming back and may set back the "virtual" community for a very long time. We are just now seeing 3-D television and movies move into the mainstream, 15 years later. The bad taste and overall sucktitude of the Virtual Boy wouldn't last long though. Nintendo had one of their neater tricks up their sleeve. The N64. While it was one of the last of it's generation of consoles out, it was also pretty solid in terms of performance. However, Nintendo refused to go with the CD for it's games and continued on with the cartridge. This made things terrible for developers and a lot of games on N64 suffered because of this. The console did offer some of the more fun FPS games in Golden Eye and Perfect Dark, it was severely limited and also managed to put out one of the worst games ever in Superman 64.

The N64 wouldn't quench the thirst for power for ve ry long. Again coming in later in the pack for the next generation of consoles the Game Cube came out and stunned people. Mostly because the games really didn't look any better than before. The Game Cube didn't look terrible, but the games were overly cartoony and you could tell a difference between it's power and the power of the other three main consoles. While the Game Cube was far from a failure, it did not have the sort of amazing success that the previous versions had become accustomed to. The PS2 and the XBox were able to convince gamers that they were superior consoles and offered and overall better experience. Nintendo would stay up to task and develop a console that would once again vault them back to the top of consoles gaming. They would do it by being the weakest in terms of tech specs and offer games that were entirely different than anything their competitors could. They would make you play the game... for real.

The Wii used motion, your own motion, to power your gaming experience and people were shocked. All of a sudden people were off the couch and moving. The bowling game was fun, tennis was a blast, golf was a skill game and everyone could be involved. Grandmothers and 5-year olds alike were now gaming.... WAIT A MINUTE! This isn't gaming. It's playing. Nintendo had tricked us. They sold us a toy and made us play with it and called it gaming. Dammit! We had been deceived!

Thankfully Nintendo opened a lot of eyes with the console and helped push it into many houses. It has changed the mind of people who thought that playing games would make you worship Satan and lick Marilyn Manson's asshole. It has been both good and bad for gamers. It might have set gaming back, due to it's simplicity and lack of advancement. Especially since the console sold so well that Sony and Microsoft just recently announced to add their very own Wii-like additions onto their existing current generation consoles.

Awesome! I can't wait to be hardcore and virtually pet seals in Norway!

Logitech mice suck and WoW isn't the best game ever.

Oh what I wouldn't give to have a Microsoft mouse. Just about a year ago I finally beat my old Microsoft wireless mouse to death and had to go and get a new one. I opted to give Logitech a try, because finding the mouse I wanted proved to be very difficult. After going to Best Buy, Staples, Office Max and Office Depot I wasn't any closer to getting something that I wanted. I went with a Logitech mouse that felt fairly comfortable in my hand. I have required a wireless mouse of years now and I have been fairly pleased, this mouse wasn't much different. Over time the mouse wore down very quickly, but it didn't suck down the batteries like my past Microsoft mice had. Now here I sit with a busted button just a short time later. I know they aren't made to last forever, but I've never seen quality this bad in a mouse. Not even in the 6 dollar ball mice of past years. I'm sorry Logitech, but your mice just don't seem to be for gaming.

I need something that can take a beating. I do a lot of clicking and a lot of moving. I need the mouse to be weighted well and easy to move. I require things that a normal user doesn't and I end up paying upwards of 60 dollars to get what I want, so I'd like to think that my thoughts matter. Since I am absolutely penniless I can't simply go out on a search for the perfect mouse, instead I've got to deal with this shitty and broken button until I can get something to replace it. My gaming has already begun to suffer with random double clicks. My normal desktop usage is infuriating, since the buttons don't want to click properly. Clicking and dragging is impossible now. Feh.

My next complaint is about World of warcraft. I hear it touted and heralded so highly, but for no reason. Most of the people that I hear talking about it haven't played as long as I did and didn't experience the game at the beginning. They never lived through the terrible unbalanced game that shipped. The horrible loot lag that followed. The months that we sat with our characters naked to take stress off the servers. All of these things I am quite fond of. They easily forget that at least one Tuesday a month they can't even play the game and it isn't even always WoW related. Blizzard broke something with another login service that isn't even fully active yet and now WoW users can't play. OHNOEZ!

I have been away from WoW since January and I did my fair share of playing, don't get me wrong, but it just isn't the best game ever. They offer up new rep grinds instead of giving actual content. They give daily quests for a new faction or new group of factions instead of offering something fun and interesting. They recycle old content like Onyxia and pretend like it's something new and shiny and worthy of our praise. Not since Karazhan has WoW made my jaw drop. What an amazing instance. Naxx was great, but not enough people had a chance to experience it, not to mention it was probably more challenging at 60 than it is at 80.

WoW hasn't moved forward. Small minor updates to graphics in an engine that is quite dated (we are talking 7 or 8 years now) just doesn't cut it. They haven't moved mechanics forward. Players aren't any better now, but Blizzard has streamlined the game and told people that by pressing the appropriate keys in the right configuration that they will be "good". What does that have to do with being good at a game? They did this back in the arcade days and while people were good at those games, when you only have 3 buttons it is a little different. I have a whole keyboard and plenty of skills and abilities, I'd like to be able to use them. WoW has further gone on to make gear the most valuable thing in the game. Someone who is terrible can sit in the back and make a very minor impact and rake in the loot. People assume that since this person has superior gear that they must be a superior player. That just doesn't work out at the end of the day.

The PvP aspect of the game used to be a selling point, but since everyone has a way of being an unkillable crushing machine now, the point is moot. Who has the most cooldowns and can not be snared the longest wins. It's not about being a good player anymore, it's about getting good gear and pressing the right buttons in sequence. That isn't how a game is supposed to be played. I wish other games would quit building their models around WoW, because we aren't going anywhere. When WoW came out it did a lot of things right and made a lot of people very happy. Almost 6 years later most of those things have been dumbed down and stripped away. Nothing will change the amount of joy that I had when I killed my first mob on my first character in the closed beta of WoW. Nothing. It was an amazing experience and it lasted a long time, but now it is time to move forward. Stop holding the industry back, please!

Team Fortress 2: Engineers EVERYWHERE!

I have enjoyed TF2 for quite some time now. The game is fairly balanced and allows a high level of coordination and teamplay to be successful. For shooter games, that is pretty hard to do. Just recently the guys over at Valve let us have a tasty new update, especially for the Engineer class. New weapons for the Engineer as well as some new maps AND it's free. If this were Activision I'd

be paying 15 to 25 dollars for this kind of thing, yet Valve provides it for free to a game that is almost 3 years old. The updates breathed some new life into the game, which still had plenty of life left in it.

The new update focuses around the Engineer. Every class in the game has had an update in which they had significant improvements to their class. Medics got neat new toys for phat healz, Scouts got some very interesting tools that help them stay alive or avoid pursuit, everyone basically got something. This time it is the Engineers turn and they don't bother wasting any

time. They add neat new gizmos, some of which have yet to prove their proper usage.

As with the release of any large new update, everyone has flocked to the new and cool stuff. I've been a long time fan of the Engineer and I have trouble finding a server where it is worth it to play an Engineer or where I can even play the class due to limitations. There is no reason to join an 8 on 8 game where 6 people on your team are Engineers. The game is long, boring and full of suck. However, I did manage to get the minimum achievements that allowed me to pick up the new weapons.

I was very excited to get my hand on the new shotgun, but then I wasn't so sure that it was something I want. It gets crits based on the number of "revenge points" that your turret builds up. You can't use these immediately. You have to either destroy your turret OR have your turret destroyed. Either way, unless you lose the turret then you aren't getting the points. It's kind of awkward. The points can build up and allow for some very potent crits, but sacrificing your turret is a pretty large drawback.

Luckily, the second weapon you receive is a mechanical hand that allows you to build mini turrets. The mini turrets can't be heal or upgraded, but they build 4 times faster. They only do have damage, but you're normally going to be right on top of them anyway, so it should be much of an issue. With a low-cost, fast-build turret available the new shotgun becomes more useful. The effectiveness of the new turret is rather low, but it makes an offensive Engineer much more viable.

The final new weapon takes the place of your pistol, which I hate to see go, but allows you to remotely control your turret. You can aim it and fire it, but when you "disconnect" it is unable to make any actions for 3 seconds. It makes the turret pretty vulnerable, not to mention that while you are firing the turret, you are spending through your ammo and you or another Engineer will need to refill it, if you want to continue your killing spree. You can choose to fire off bullets or rockets, both of which can be restocked in your turret, so long as you have it upgraded.

The last and most interesting/fun additions, aside from the maps which I haven't had much time to play, is the new ability to move your mechanical minions. You can now uproot your turrets, dispensers and teleporters and move them around. You can build and upgrade anything and simply pick it up and move it. In a bad spot and wanna give it another shot? Pick that bad boy up and just take it somewhere else? Forget having to destroy and rebuild items when you move forward, just pick it up and carry it with you to the next spot. What a welcome addition!

The ideas are all very solid, we will see how they evolve into the the gameplay. I am very glad to have this update, as I said I enjoy the Engineer quite a bit. I have always liked TF2 and have been waiting for this update for some time, now. With it's arrival comes a ton of people who are playing the class. In a few weeks things should quiet down and return back to mostly normal. I appreciate all of Valve's hard work and look forward to getting plenty of time with TF2 in the near future.

Borderlands makes Co-Op fun!

Oh boy, oh boy! I was lucky enough to have a friend gift me a copy of the the RPGFPS game Borderlands, while it was on sale last week on Steam. Steam has become a great place to get games and an even better place to keep them neatly packed away and accessible. I have had an account there since the service first opened up and they have really expanded their library. But, this isn't about Steam, it's about Borderlands.

The game is simple enough to grasp. It is a shooter with RPG elements. There will be levels and some of the cool stuff that you find throughout the game is going to require you to adhere to

these elements. It doesn't act like a normal shooter, though. Accuracy and the type of damage you are capable of is based on the weapon and modifications that are available to you. You also have skill trees for each character that allow the same "class" to play in different ways. This seems very cool, but most "classes" have an optimal tree or skill-set that allows them to min/max. There are four classes available and the playstyle of each is only really different based on the skills and, most importantly, the main action skill. You action skills is the innate ability that you MUST purchase before spending any other points in your skill trees. Every Soldier will have a Turret, but not all turrets will be the same. You can customize your action skill via other skills or with items that you pick up along the way that change the type of damage that it does.

What the game lacks in proper FPS form, it makes up with in style. The game looks gorgeous. The cell-shaded world is stunning when you turn on all of the lighting and shadow effects. It runs pretty well even on my low end system (which I'd rather not discuss, it just hurts my feelings). I don't have everything cranked up, but I still have my settings high enough that I can appreciate the detail and still maintain playability. Some of the landscapes, at least in the early game, seem like they are reused over and over. You get bored of some of the enemies and scenario very quickly, though you get to shuffle off into another area and you quickly forget about the game and focus

on the action. This game has plenty of action, too. By playing with other players in the co-op mode you really make the game shine. The difficulty is ramped up based on how many people you bring along and it helps facilitate the need for a challenge in the game. Impossible odds and near death experiences become commonplace and it just adds to the fun factor. Nothing like fragging away with your buddies in scary desert filled with sandworm-dogs.

The game does seem to have some connection issues. I spend about 90 minutes with a friend today just trying to play with them. We opened up ports, created static IPs for ourselves and even resorted to another third-party launcher application (Steam is a platform, but GameSpy does all of the connection for online play). We failed over and over again, luckily another friend showed up and saved the day by hosting the server and allowing us to all play together. I then spent another hour trying to get connected to the second friend after the first went on to bed. We eventually gave up. After the fight that my Comodo firewall put up with Left4Dead I had hoped to be over this. I guess not. We checked several forums and this seems to just be a common issue with the game.

It's fast, it's fun and it has diverted my attention away from Dragon Age, at the moment. Team Fortress 2 did come out with a new patch today, which may steal some time away from Borderlands. Though I may give it time to settle down. I am please so far with Borderlands and I look forward to playing it more with my buddies and having a good time. It has been a long time since I really wanted to stay up super late and game, and it feels good. I am exhausted and have a busy day ahead of me, but I'll probably make it through just because I know I'll get to blow more shit up tonight.