In the End

Well, the years over, and unfortunately with my work ethic, that might mean this blog for a while...so have a Rush song! :D

A Small Message to You Trolls Out There...

I lied. It's a long message. But you may find some enjoyment in reading this.





How to Become the Most Hated Member of Your Halo Team


Although video games have existed for nearly thirty years now, it’s only been around a decade since the popularity of online gaming has grown to its current state. Online gaming, where masses of 12-year olds and 30-year olds alike go head to head against each other, has recently become a cultural phenomenon in society. Over 20 million people have subscribed to Xbox Live service alone, leaving out the even greater number of people on the PC, Wii, and PS3. The Halo series is one of the most prominent series in online gaming, with over 953 years of online playtime after Halo Reach’s first week released. The majority of player would most likely say that they’re playing for fun; however, we all know that they’re really playing to win. And what better way is there for you to have fun than becoming the most hated player on your team? The answer: there is no better way! In doing these methods, you can be sure that at least one player on your team will be satisfactorily annoyed, as long as you remember one thing: do not get booted from the match. If booted from the match, all your attempts to become most hated will be rendered vain as your name fades in both the scoreboard and the other player’s minds.


Disclaimer: some methods may end up getting you banned, but you really shouldn’t care because no one does anything as preposterous as following the rules.


There are numerous ways to achieve your goal of being hated, and if you want a quick and easy way to attain this, here are a few fast, simple tips to becoming despised. First: quit the game as soon as it starts; if you’re lucky, you’ll also be the host, leading to a quick victory in being hated. Unfortunately however, the hate only lasts as long as you’re in the game, which only tends to be around five seconds. Another easy strategy is to first take your Xbox Live headset, and then prepare your voice for major usage; after taking these steps, yell as loud as you can. This ensures that everyone who has a headset will promptly fall to the ground screaming in agony at your voice, leading to a further domino effect as their voices compile on each other. Similarly to the last suggestion, screaming into the headset only works if you’re not muted by other players. Furthermore, this is only a temporary effort as you will most likely be muted after around five seconds. If neither of the previous two methods are particularly effective in your pursuit to be most hated on the team, simply take the Xbox 360 Wireless Controller and set it down. After completing this step, proceed out of the room and to completely ignore the fact that you willingly entered a game and left it. To add extra effect, come back within the last two minutes of the game to check if anyone has team-killed you; if this happens to be so, press the “X” button and then “yes” to boot any player that has rightfully killed you in frustration. If no teammate has attempted murdering you, attempt to play the game like you know what you’re doing, but you really don’t. This will most likely assure you the hatred of your team without taking difficult action to make them absolutely despise you.


If the previous methods weren’t successful, don’t worry; the more effort that goes into annoying your teammates, the more hatred you’ll get out of them. The next proposals return on that incentive if “quick and easy” didn’t work out. Number one: shoot your teammates. Besides actually playing the game how it’s supposed to be played, there is absolutely no better way to show you skill by shooting the people on your team. Since they’re not highlighted by a reddened reticule, aim-assist is turned off, making it ultimately more difficult to hit your teammates. Some explanation may be required to help your teammates understand; tell them why this shows you’re better than them. If they proceed to call you nasty names, good for you. The more creative and obscure the names you receive, the better you’re doing.


Here’s another tip: if you have the ability to grab all of the most powerful weapons on the map, go for it, even if you’re no good with them. Everyone knows the guy with the sniper rifle is the best player on the team, even if they couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn. This strategy is somewhat difficult compared to the others, but with a bit of “luck” (what some players might call “skill”), it should posses no challenge.


If you’ve taken all these steps and your team still shows some measure of likening to you, proceed to these next steps. Gather some friends (those people you supposedly spend time with in real life) together in preparation for a match. After collecting, proceed into game, making sure there’s one space left on your team for someone outside party. Next, have every single team member in party terrorize the single outsider on team. If angry screaming voices and/or the outsider attempts implanting your or team with bullets, do not stop. It will only make him happy. If more hatred is desired, do not boot the outsider from the match when he tries to annihilate you and your party. He/she only wishes to rid himself of the misery of playing with you. Instead, continue being an absolutely horrible teammate until either the outsider quits, or the game ends. If satisfaction is not gained from ruining the outsider’s day, there exists few other extremities to achieve the goal of being most hated. The following method is nearly 100% guaranteed to make you absolutely loathed by your other teammates. Almost identical to the last suggestion, this method again requires the use of “friends”. Before the game starts, invite the enemy team’s players into an Xbox Live party chat session. Once communication is established, proceed to form an alliance with the enemy. Take a vehicle from your team that has seats for multiple occupants; this will allow the other team to ride along in the same vehicle. This method usually works best with a driver-gunner combination vehicle, such as the Warthog. After gaining possession of vehicle, drive to the enemy team to have member get into gunner seat. With all these steps accomplished, drive vehicle by team members to allow enemy to get an easy kill. This method has been proven to get most, if not all team members to subsequently “ragequit” from the match.


Congratulations! You have become the most hated member on your team! This may have meant losing the match, but it’s a well known fact that no one really plays to win. Winning would mean gaining more credits, having a better reflection on your personal record, plus obtaining the respect of other players. It might have also cost you your Xbox Live membership, a membership you pay over $60 a year for, but it’s totally worth it! We hope that by following our guide, you have become an entry on Microsoft’s “ban until the year 9999 list”, and will never know the enjoyment of playing a friendly match ever again.

Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition Going Strong

It's been nearly a week since its release, and already Minecraft Xbox 360 edition has surpassed all previous Xbox Live Arcade sales, within its first 24 hours. Quite a feat, don't you think so?

The approval rating, although overall positive, is taking some hits from the lack of four-player splitscreen support on SDTVs, however. Apparently, many buyers of the game bought Minecraft on Xbox solely for the splitscreen purpose, of which their motivation was the four-player option, not the two-player option.

There are mayn sources that directly state that Minecraft can only be played on an HDTV in order to utilize four-player splitscreen, being only a short internet search away. If people would do their research on the game before buying it (impluse buying much?), they wouldn't be up at Microsoft's doors demanding refunds on their poor buying habits.

As another point, I would think that most people would own an HDTV of sorts by now, why would you play such a high-end, graphically demanding gaming console on anything less than HD? Even so, a 20" 720p monitor will only cost you around $200 at most, and the majority of the time, it'll be less than that (go here- http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_size_browse-bin_mrr_0?rh=n%3A172282%2Cn%3A%21493964%2Cn%3A1266092011%2Cn%3A172659%2Cp_n_size_browse-bin%3A1232879011&bbn=172659&ie=UTF8&qid=1337007464&rnid=1232878011 if you want to challenge that claim)

If you have the money to buy the extra three controllers required ($120- ~$200), you really shouldn't have that much of a problem buying an HDTV, then.

Also, PLEASE do some research on your purchase before buying something...it goes without saying that if you spend money, you should enjoy your purchase.

Minecraft Out on Xbox

It's been nearly a year since its official announcement at E3, but Minecraft is finally available for download on Xbox Live. Costing 1600 Microsoft Points ($20), Minecraft won't make much of a dent in your pocket, being $40 cheaper than a full retail game. Being an Arcade title however, this is to be expected. Minecraft is the last Arcade game in Microsofts' new series of arcade games featuring 600 gamerscore as opposed to the old 200 gamerscore (it still doesn't do anything :'( ).

Minecraft is very similar to the PC version, but with a few minor differences from the Beta 1.6.6 version represented on Xbox. I don't really remember when shears were added, but they're not available in the current version on Xbox, returning wool-gathering to the ancient sheep-punch-fest of last year.

Worlds are also limited in that they don't generate forever like in the PC version; the Xbox's limitations in memory is unfortunately going to have to make me generate new worlds to access new materials in updates, such as when Lapis Lazuli was introduced; since my world already had the chunks generated, I had to travel far, far away in order to gain access to the shiny blue stuff. The process included a nether portal in order to cover the large distance. I'm not sure how the Xbox is going to handle this, but I'd rather not get thrown into the void while jumping out of my portal.

The graphics in the game are also slightly degraded from the PC version; fog doesn't have a presence, so you can see where the game is loading chunks in the distance; also, the shadows are particularly rigid, but I'm just assuming that since smooth lighting was introduced later in the Beta span.

Finally, I noticed that the grass/leaves are all the same shade of green, and I REALLY hope that they'll fix this later. Having the same color of leaves makes the game feel like it's still in the Alpha era, and the leaves are just...too green.

Exotic Guitars

Occasionally you might find a guitar with a particularly flashy paint scheme, but what might classify as "exotic"? Maybe a slightly different headstock with a few pointy juttings of wood? Maybe an axe that's actually is an axe. Here's a list of some particularly interesting 6-strings I found on the interwebz:

PLEASE stop Believing

My last post gave me some inspiration for this.

While I do believe that Don't Stop Believing by Journey is good song, it's extrememly overplayed. This song is incredibly popular, being one of the only songs from the 80's still being played on pop stations (besides Michael Jackson, of course).

What irks me the most is not the actual song itself, but some of the listeners themselves. The people that claim "Oh, I listen to classic rock!" and list this song as their only example are...well...superficial. Yes, you know one song that wasn't made in the past three months. Good for you. But that doesn't make you a listener of the classics. If that person really listened to classics (and I usually define the classic era as the 60's and 70's), they would know much more than one simple, overplayed song.

On the other hand, having the song on popular radio stations can be somewhat of a good thing. The song exposes the talent-starved pop population of actual skill, with actual instrumentals in place of that digital no-skill synthesized junk (and not the 80's synths either). I don't really know if someone would be truly inspired to pick up guitar from just this one song, but it'll at least show what an intrument does.

Don't Stop Believing (in the Radio)

I've known about the song "The Spirit of the Radio" by Rush for some time, even before my recent obsession with Rush, but I've never noticed this before. My drummer friend from church, also a Rush Fanatic, brought a video into my attention yesterday night, right before I was going to hit the hay.

The chord progressions in "Don't Stop Believing" and in "The Spirit of the Radio" are nearly identical; if one plays both songs side by side, the songs match up perfectly in both timing and key. Strange, isn't it?

A "coincidence" between the two:

The Spirit of the Radio was released in 1980 on Rush's album "Permanent Waves", one year before Journey's release of its album "Escape", which contained its flagship song Don't Stop Believing.

While I'm not directly accusing Journey of stealing Rush's song, it's INCREDIBLY strange considering the timing of the releases, although I highly doubt it. Just listen for yourself, it's eerily strange...