Game Journalism: Scores for Dollars

   

OK, I haven’t had time write up a proper blog, and technically I don’t have time now, but dammit this has been bugging me for months.

     So, gaming magazines. It used to be getting the latest Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) was something to look forward to. Every month, when it came in the mail, it took all I had to not exclaiming like a little schoolgirl on Christmas. EGM used to be (please notice the “used to be”) a gaming magazine with journalists like no other. They were brutally honest about video games, not just giving a bad game a low score, but explaining in meticulous detail about WHY a game deserved such a low score. There definition of a low score wasn’t a “5” or a “6”, either, as is the norm nowadays (more on that in a bit). EGM wasn’t too proud to give games “0.0” or “1” and explain in technical detail why (“the bump mapping is terrible, the clipping is off, the hit detection is horrid). This was a gaming magazine companies fear/loved to give advance copies to, because if it sucked, they would rip it to shreds AND make calls backs in repeated issues as to how bad it was. For instance, in Turok Evolution, the main antagonist is an 1800’s military officer designed like General Custer. He is the end boss named Tobias Bruckner, and he rides a T-Rex with rocket launchers and shotguns strapped to its back.

                                Please take a solid minute to imagine this.
                                Can’t? Then here, look below. It’s that funny.

       EGM made an entire award called the “Tobias Bruckner Award”, given to games with incredibly bad design choices. GENIUS! EGM has even had industry changing jokes that became reality. Their April Fools jokes involved things like “Unlocking Sonic in Smash Bros. Melee” or “Unlock Ryu and Ken’s trainer Gouken in Street Fighter II”. Years later, these jokes became reality, because gamers truly wanted these jokes to be real. No other gaming magazine has had this kind of impact in the community. Then, as if by some kind of reverse karma, all the beautiful honesty in journalism that the game industry needed stopped, and something terrible happened. EGM closed its doors. That’s right, as if by some malevolent curse, the economy hit their publisher Ziff Davis Media and EGM was on the chopping block. February 2008…. a sad month indeed.

        Now EGM is back…..and everything is changed. The 20-30 plus pages dedicated to reviews? GONE! The snarky reviews of games that don’ live up to their expectations? GONE! How about multiple reviewers for a nice control as to how multiple people thought of the game? GONE! Fantastic, industry changing April’s Fool’s Jokes? Nothing yet so, GONE! This month, they reviewed eight games. Eight. To EGM’s credit though, they still have an extensive regular departments section in their magazine with interviews, previewed titles, and the ilk.

       Is it reliable anymore for game reviews? Shamefully, no. No game, but no game, got below a 6.5 this month. That should mean that everything they played was either great or at least above passable. What about in the last two months? Well Dissidia 012:FF got a 5.0. Why? No, seriously, WHY? According to Metacritic, this game sits pretty with a 78. EGM’s reasoning was “The game is all fan service and it’s a bit of a complex fighting system”. (Sigh). When someone says that a fighting game is complex and it placates to the audience that wants to play it, I really have a hard time understanding the issue. What, would it have been better if it were a mainstream fighting game that just HAPPENED to have Final Fantasy characters? Better yet, should it have been more of a Smash Bros. clone, because an original fighting engine is too scary and hard to learn? I seriously have no patience for ignorance of this magnitude. Of course it’s a fan game! Only the die-hard fans are playing Final Fantasy games anymore anyways, since Square doesn’t know what the hell a good combat system has looked like since FFX (and yes, I realize that last comment is up for debate, but I stand behind it). So of course the fighting system has a learning curve. This is the same magazine that praised Pokémon Black/White with a 9.5, which is the same game that came out 13 years ago except now the box art is different, and yet they thrash a game because “it really only appeases to it’s fans with it’s aethstetic levels of older FF games and semi-complex fighting system.” Seriously, a reviewer who says a game was bad because it does exactly what its core audience wants is just insulting, not only to the audience, but to even potential fans of the series.

Rage subsiding.

         How about Game Informer? Is Game Informer a better magazine to throw down for $15 a year? Pfft. They can’t even get their Game of the Month award right. This month, L.A. Noire got game of the month with an 8.75, but The Witcher 2 scored higher with a 9.25, probably because they thought it was a better game. So, they divided the categories and put The Witcher 2 in a PC slot, giving it PC game of the month. My problem with that is it was THE ONLY PC GAME THEY FU**ING REVIEWED! That not withstanding, Infamous 2 and Dirt 3 scored just as high (8.75), and The Legend of Zelda for the 3DS scored even higher (9.25), so why give GotM to L.A. Noire? I will tell you why, and this is what I have been leading to.

Gaming magazines scores are based on the highest bidder.

         I’m sorry, but you are a damn fool if you believe otherwise. Unless the gaming community as a whole hates it, or unless it has more negative word of mouth than the Hot Coffee mod, than the game will score unnecessarily high. L.A. Noire could have been a buggy and broken mess, but it had a ton a press and Rockstar probably greased some palms, so it was destined to get at least a 7.0 on a 10-point scale. Fair enough, but now this game doesn’t get an honest review. But HEY! At least it got game of the month even though according to Game Informer’s grading scale Zelda should have kicked it’s ass. Oh wait? Did you decide to give L.A. Noire GotM because it’s “fresh, and new” and totally isn’t Grand Theft Auto with detectives? To this, I say bull. If Zelda scored higher, give it the award. It should be a testament to how good one game can be if, 13 years later, it’s repackaged with some minor changes here and there and it can still be a more fun game to play than L.A. Noire.

        My only reason for being so flippantly caustic about this is because I freaking hate what has become of gaming magazines as a whole. It used to be that a 10 point scale was reliable, in that a “0” meant avoid at all cost and hope the developer goes belly-up for not really trying, a “5” meant the game was playable, but only rentable, and a “10” meant add it to your collection today. Now, a “5” is the new “0” and a “10” goes to either an earnestly good game or whoever paid the most to the magazine/publisher. We are now at the point in game journalism were a five point scale (1 -5) is now more trustworthy because 7 has become the new mediocre score.

      Now, I’m not an idiot (so far as I have been told) and I know game reviews are a matter of pure subjective opinion as opposed to fact. This is the end point for EGM though, their reviews were full of such technical analysis and supporting justification it almost seemed like fact. That didn’t just say a game was good because of the “graphics were good”, but instead go into the lighting detail or the polygon detail and/or the attention to texturing.

      Is it unfair of me to have such an acidic tone, accusing the game journalism industry of trying to warp us out of our money towards games that truly may not deserve it? Probably. Having never worked in the game industry myself, my comments would be considered of a layman, taking only my knowledge of over 20 years as a gamer and 3 years in game design and development schools.

     Allow me to close and venture you this thought. What’s the difference between a game player and a modern day game journalist? Answer: An associate’s degree in journalism and/or creative writing. That’s not a purposefully scathing remark, either. Next time you fold open a gaming magazine, and you want a review for a game, ask you self a couple questions before you take that review for its face value:

-Have any of the journalists ever helped CREATE a video game or worked in the game industry?

-Is it a requirement for this magazine to have technical understanding of video games before you start writing reviews for them?

-Magazines companies need money, and does this company need to do what it takes to make sure they stay on the PR good side (padding reviews, giving false awards) to score more dough?

-Finally, when all that is considered, what honestly makes a professional game reviewer more reliable than anyone on this or really any other blog?

The final one has an answer: I have nothing to gain by saying how I feel about games and media on this site, whether it is good or bad. I say again, nothing.

Music while I game.

Whatever happened to the ability to play Last.FM while playing a game on Xbox? It used to exist! Sure you can still play music from a flashdrive or music installed on your system while you game, but getting to that point is nothing short of a hassle.

I got 100% of Oblivion completed, and probably only listened to about 1/8th of the game. I also managed to watch the first 3 seasons of Deadliest Catch while playing Oblivion. How you ask? Well, I had Oblivion on one screen, and Deadliest Catch coming through the headphones from my computer. Made time fly. I got to the errands and collection quests of Oblivion and knew I didn't need to hear anything, so I listened to something else.

Even today I listen to podcasts while playing games that lack strong audio like Borderlands and Brink. Both are fine games, but the in-game music, and occasional dialogue cues often make me wonder why I'm even listening to anything in-game. It's partially killing two birds with one stone (I have thousands of podcasts still to listen to) and it makes the errands and boring travel in the game seem less.... boring. Nothing against any of the games, and most of them have excellent audio... they're just missing something.

Fallout 3 spoiled me. Three-Dog and his interruptions to the radio to announce things that my character was or was not influencing were brilliant. Assassin's Creed did the same thing, sort of. You could hear people talk about my recent exploits and adventures. Maybe it's come from years of playing games in a silent apartment or room, but hearing just the music is sometimes unsettling.

If this were 15 years ago, I'd probably be going insane. Games back then rarely had in-game voiced dialogue, and even if it did it was usually just during cut-scenes.

More to the point though, games like Fallout and Oblivion have excellent in-game music. Games like L.A. Noire have amazing in-game dialogue and meaningless conversations. It's sad to see games like Borderlands where it completely lacks any strong musical cues. Gearbox knows in-game music. Black Mesa had awesome musical cues. But this isn't to bash Borderlands, they're just the first example I could think of where the lack of any sort of audio seemed prominent.

I get their artistic choice to have little music. They're trying to create a desolate and deserted atmosphere. I can totally dig that. Your first few hours in the vast stretches make you think you're the only one around. Problem is ,Borderlands, after a while you're forcing me to run errands. I don't mind it, I know it'll pay off in the end. I just would like to hear some music while I work. So instead I silence the in-game audio and listen to podcasts, or Pandora or what have you.

The Xbox still has the feature to play music off of a flash-drive, but I'm surprised to see they haven't really changed/improved it since that. Of course if I had a Zune I could link my music. But how many people do you know have Zunes? I know of 3. GameStop used to sell them. If I had a Windows PC I could stream my music to my Xbox. But if I had a Windows PC I would be complaining about a lot more than lack of in-game music. (Zing).

Dungeon Siege is coming out soon. Dungeon crawling at it's best. The demos out too. You'll see what I mean. From years of playing D2, Baldurs Gate, and Torchlight I know how boring it can get without some interesting musical cues. I might just have to make a dungeon crawling playlist. I made one for UT2K4. Of course UT2K4 had an in-game music player that would search your computer for all of your music. Now that was a music player you could hang your hat on.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to/yell at this weeks "This American Life" while I search for more badges and film reels in 1940's LA.

Hold X for Hilarity.

I still strongly dislike COD:Black Ops.

Probably always will. Sadly you won't be able to change my mind about it. It's not the game itself, it's the following.

Twilight isn't a horrible book by literature standards (there are hundreds of worse books, trust me), but it's the following that bothers people. Nickleback isn't a horrible band, it's just their fans that are of questionable nature.

My problem with COD, and I've said it before, is the following it's created. COD players are less gamer and more.... hobbyist? If you don't believe me, simply look at their playercards, ratios, and time spent playing. It's a hobby.


However, this blog isn't to bash COD, but rather to tell you of my more recent experiences with it, and the laughter it created. I love Brink, and I love Team Fortress, but it's hard to get COD players to try any other multiplay game without a little encouragement. Had some friends over, so I made both of them an even deal. There's a way in COD to use a player who isn't too concerned about their score as a whipping boy of sorts. I would play the whipping boy, and in turn bumping up their scores, if they tried Brink.

Now mind you, I was approaching going back into the Black Ops multiplay, or simply Duty as the cool kids call it, not too concerned about my score, so I wanted to see how I'd enjoy the game.

If they have a kill ratio for each match, they should have a killed ratio for each match, I'd win. I probably died 10 times each team deathmatch match. Impressive to say the least. Each death was more hilarious than the next. Attempting melee kills from yards away, pistol whipping a dead body only to be headshotted (??) by someone right behind me. The entire time I'm simply boosting my friends score and laughing hysterically at the killcam.

Then it happened.
I was voted and kicked out because I died too many times. I was asked to leave because I wasn't any good. So I looked at the playercard of the guy who initiated the vote. He has a custom emblem, custom gamertag for his clan on Duty, and about 20 days of gameplay time. Days. That's some 500 hours into the game. I've never put 500 hours into a game. These guys take it way too serious.

So in turn, my friends decided to get back into the game, I log into a different gamertag (yes I have 3, don't you judge), and we all decided to gang up on this guy. Suddenly his mic sign comes on, and begins to talk. The kid couldn't have been more than 12 or 13, screaming at us all sorts of words I don't think I even knew or could spell at that age. Hilarious.

It was decided that we should leave the poor bastard alone, and try some of the rarely played game modes. Finally I was able to play something else other than the solider, I got to play a medic, and surprisingly, I got a ton of XP from it. I might not be an excellent shooter, but put me in a DD role, or a support role where I'm away from the main fracas and I tend to hold my own.

I think I instantly bashed Duty because of how serious it was taken, I still think it's way too serious. But there's something about having a bunch of people you're friends with on a headset, all on a team, and just running around not worried about the score, but rather about having fun.

At the end of it all, I think I gained 3 levels and did horribly as far as scores were concerned, but I had fun. Which, like I always say, is the point. I knew when to quit when I started to get frustrated. That's more than a lot of people online could say. They tried Brink, and for the most part liked it.

Will I play Duty again? Maybe. It's fun when you aren't concerned about winning, but that enjoyment can be short lived when people pick you out to hunt down. Still, it has it's place in the gaming world.

Do you want to get the strategy guide with that?

Honestly, I hate the question. I hate asking it, and I hate the way it makes me feel when I do have to ask it. Simply put, the kind of people who want to use the guide know they want it, and either pre-order it, or take the steps to making sure they get in early to get one with the game. I'm not asking in an attempt to promote sales, I'm simply letting you know that they are available if you'd like one.

So L.A. Noire came out, and all other games have ceased to be played (in my case). It's that good. But when I was picking up my copy, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I'd also be getting the guide with it. Not just because you stand to save a good $4 when you get the game and guide together (too much work, not enough theatre obviously), but because LA is also about collectibles and side-quests.

A regular who often gets the guides came in on Tuesday, and asked "Do I really need the guide for this game". Well, in the case of LA, you should. In the guide they package-
- All main storyline questions and answers and evidence lists.
- Side mission guides
- Collectibles maps
- An online PDF you can download for free for all future DLC

Not a bad deal. Except he was asking more philosophically. "Do I need the guide for this game?, Is it something I'll use and benefit from, or will it just remain on my shelf for good?"

Tough call. I know for myself, I've used the guide every step of the way. I'll explain when and if I review LA, but suffice it to say, it's made advancing in the game easier in a way different from most games on the market.

A strong opposition to the guide is "I'll simply go onto the internet and find the answer". Sure, but at the same time, the book would be right there, easier than the internet if you could believe it. Furthermore, looking on the internet isn't always easy. You can usually find an answer like "where is the red key" pretty quickly, but for more specific or more vague questions, the guide can let you go back a few steps if needed. Sure, there are online guides, but these are usually written by gamers after the game comes out, so it's their testament to how they played the game, not necessarily correct.

"Is it cheating?" Well. I suppose it is. Although cheat codes have since left us years ago, and back then guides were seen as help more than anything. I'd say it's just as much cheating as setting the game to easy. It really matters as to the game itself if it's cheating or not.

"I'd rather figure it out for myself, otherwise it ruins the fun". Eh. This was true years ago when you only had one or two games to play, and that game was the only game you'd have for months, and 100% completion was a necessity less than a desire. Get your moneys worth. There have been quite a few games in my day I've simply stopped playing because I got stuck and wasn't sure what the problem was, a strange glitch, poor foresight or just dumb luck. Whatever the case, the game stopped me. Games are meant to be enjoyed, so being stuck and frustrated is much different than being stuck and puzzled. Frustrated gamers are less likely to continue to play if it seems there's no easy path.

Portal 2 and Uncharted are a perfect example. You know in both games there will always be an answer. Portal 2 you usually just need a hint if you get stuck, or take some time away and go back to it and you're almost certain to figure it out. Uncharted is the same way, but in Uncharted's case, if you do manage to get stuck, the game realizes it and shows you where to go, only after a long time in a single spot. Both are puzzle games, and both know they can become frustrating, so it's never too difficult.

Fighting games have guides that are usually required for any hardcore gamer, it'll show the combo setups, the special moves, and the basic controls of every character. Even though it's also usually in a menu of the game, they simply prefer to have the book. No harm there.

Most shooters have guides, but the multiplay aspects are the obvious benefit. Know the map, win the battle. Racing and sports games have guides mostly for stats, and rpgs have guides for drops and mob ratings. The games that almost always have a guide, and almost always benefit from those guides are the action/adventure and puzzle games. Your Uncharted, MGS, Assassin's Creed, Portal, LA Noires.

If I'm stuck, I want to try to figure it out. If I start to get frustrated I know I need to be told the answer sooner rather than later when it comes to video games. I'm also a completist whore. So I have to get everything possible in some games. Every bobblehead and badge I possibly can, the guide helps me with that. In this fast-paced day and age, it shouldn't be a surprise when people need strategy guides. I personally use them sparingly if I can help it, unless I know I'm going to play through the game a second time (like L.A. Noire), or if I want to become better at the game (like Borderlands).

As far as those of you who say it's cheating or makes the game easier. Well... lot's of things in gaming today are made to make the game easier. In my mind, I'd rather the game be fun regardless of if I'm cheating or how difficult it is. Games are meant to be fun. Sure beating Goldeneye on 007 mode was a great success, but doing it with dual paintball gun moonraker lasers with bighead mode on and the enemy accuracy at 0% is fun too. That's the point, ain't it?

Brink and you miss a sprint.

I don't think Sebastain Coe had the game Brink in mind when he said his quote. I also don't think he'd do a cheesy Asian accent while saying it either.

What does a first person shooter have to do with an Olympic gold medal runner?
Oddly enough tons.

BRINK.

I'd been excited about this game for some time now, and when they announced that it would be arriving a week ahead of schedule, that could only mean one thing- Bethesda had a treat for us.

And sure enough they did. Now let me preface this with "Brink is not for most people". It's a combination of the less popular shooters. Sorry, it's true. I personally love the games that inspired Brink, however the sales prove I'm one of the few people.

Take one part Unreal Tournament, one part Mirror's Edge, and mix that with equal parts of Team Fortress. Add a dash of the modern COD xp ranking/upgrade system and you have Brink.

Basic story- There's an island, there are security forces on it, there is a rebellious group on it. The security wants everyone to stay on the island, the rebels want to search for better lands.

Honestly they could have scaled back on the story a bit, and it wouldn't have changed much. It's nice that there are in-game cut scenes. Killzone had the same elements. Honestly I think I just enjoy it because it lets the entire match take a break for a few seconds. That's my segway into how fast paced the action is, did you like it? Good.

The action is fast-paced. Moving on.


Jokes. Here's the deal. Your team is fighting another team. You both have a list of objectives. One might have to defend a door, and the other destroy the door. If the door is destroyed you might have to escort something through it, unless you let the door be destroyed, then you might have to start building up a secondary barricade. As the match progresses you find yourself either backpedaling to save your bacon as the defense gets cut more lean, or adding more fat to the fire and boaring your way through the defense. Pig jokes aside, this concept isn't new necessarily. Team Fortress and Unreal Tournament both had these, just not in the same scale that Brink pulls it off.

who am I, and what am I doing here? Well, you can pick from 4 classes. Solider, Medic, Operative, Engineer, and have 3 size modifiers (light, med, and heavy).

So if you're annoyed they left out the heavy and medic combo from TF2, simply get a heavy solider, and a light medic and ta-da.

The different sizes are a nice change to the standard plan. You can be a successful light fast-moving operative, but change your character to a heavy operative and the game takes a more sneaky swing.

Soliders use guns, and can pass out ammo to their friends. The medics heal and can revive, the engineers set up turrets, and the operatives dress up like enemy agents. A well-known and well-enjoyed format. Snipers and Pyros wouldn't fare well in the environments, so they aren't too missed.

Now for the twist. You can climb, sprint, slide, and jump to your hearts content. Why's this useful? Let's say you respawn on the other side of the map? You have dozens of ways to take. Sprint over a walkway, only to jump down two levels and slide down a staircase, or do the opposite. Whatever. The new controls allow you to escape danger quickly, or pull off a "last second save" to your objective once you start using the parkour elements of the game to your ability.

The characters? They look weird right? Quadrillions of combinations. Seriously. With each level you complete you unlock more and more apparel and swag for your guy. I've played about 10 hours so far, and have yet to see anyone who even looks remotely like me. It's a nice change to the cookie-cutter looks of the COD/MOD/BBC games out there. Your character (which you play as in the single player, the challenge modes and the online mode) becomes a personal thing. You select your favorite weapon load-outs, you select your special skills, and you choose how he looks. It's a small detail, but makes for a more dedicated play. You can instantly recognize the teammates you work well with, and the ones who are good for a health boost or some extra ammo.

One of the best reviews I've heard about this game so far "It's like if someone was willing to re-create Team Fortress, and that someone was Bethesda, and they just wanted you to have fun".

Excellent game. I'll be playing it for quite a long time. Might not be for all, but if you're looking for some online fighting that isn't deathmatch based, or if you want to get into online gaming but aren't the best at KTD ratios, come on over to Brink.

Shoot, reload, Shoot, reload

Rapid Fire Time!

I have a lot of blog ideas that have been on my mind, so I’m just going to hit you with several at once, since none of them are especially important long enough to be full blogs.

1. A large amount of tech journalists are claiming that the 3DS will be a failure because the older PSP is currently outselling it and some people hate the concept of a 3D screen. Here, literally Game Design 101 (as in, this was a topic in my first Game Design class): Consoles don’t win console wars, games do. The 3DO, though powerful as can be, failed because of a lack of games and developer support. The Dreamcast was years ahead of it’s time with features we take for granted today: Online play, DLC, freaking’ voice chat in game! But, alas, Sega fu**ed over their third party developers by almost secretly releasing the Dreamcast only two years after the Sega Saturn, making third party developers sick of Sega’s constantly changing console BS and moving on to other places, like Sony and their PS2. As I said a couple months ago, the regular DS has been outselling the PSP year after year by almost double because it has a good library. This is taking into account that the PSP is twice as powerful as the DS.

Point made simple, the 3DS is a good console, but it was rushed to market (for what reason, I still don’t know) and it is a half-baked system. As of me writing this, the 3DS is still missing the following: An internet browser, Virtual Console support, and DSiWare support. Also, the launch line-up was, umm, lackluster. Street Fighter IV and Ghost Recon may be the only games right now worth playing on it. Nintendo should have released this console on the same day the Ocarina of Time remake was done, or packaged in Pilot Wings Resort as a free game, like Wii Sports, and then this console would have sold like gangbusters. Give it until this fall, and the 3DS will be in a lot more hands once decent games for it come out.

2. Speaking of consoles, the Kinect seems to me as a waste of time and money, right now. This thing was released on November 4th, and as of May only 25 games exist for this add-on, and 17 of them are sports, dance/fitness related. So far, it seems like that is all we have to look forward to from this item, Dance games and workout simulators. At my local Gamestop, I counted 10 used Kinects just hanging from the sales wall, waiting to be bought. My only guess why there wasn’t more is because the wall didn’t have any more space on it, but I am sure there was more in the back. Listen, I am all for game innovation, but motion control gaming is becoming a slight fad, like 3D TVs. The best games I have played in the last 4 months (Dragon Age 2, Dead Space 2, Dissidia 2) have all used standard controllers. The worst thing is the Microsoft has yet to announce any new games for this system. It’s like they are personally giving up on it. I realize it was the fastest selling console ever, but I wonder how many people kept the damn thing or were still using it after two months. Dear Microsoft: support games, not peripherals.

3. The Playstation Move is a failure in my view. First off, the cost of entry is expensive as hell.It costs $210 for a two-player set with one game, barring that one already has a $300 PS3 in their home. You know what you can get for $210? A New Wii, two-players worth of controls, and an extra game. Hey, and the Wii has a MUCH larger library of games with motion-control specific games, where as most of the Move games are Motion control OPTIONAL. This means their perfectly fine games without motion controls (MAG, Killzone 3, Sly Cooper Collection), but Sony wants you to feel justified for spending an inordinate amount of money on this add-on. Fair enough, since the entire collection of Move-specific games are Wii copies anyways. Dear Sony: Support games, not over-priced peripherals. Hell, just get the PSN system to NOT FAIL at every step of he way.

4. I love American Football (been a Steeler’s fan since I was 8), but nothing pisses me off more than a sports strike. I used to love the NHL, but when they struck for what seemed like years, I lost ALL interest. I haven’t watched an NHL game in going on a decade and I have no regrets. I may just do the same if the NFL teams don’t play this year. You know what the league minimum of the NFL is? $300,000! Since a football season is up to, and including the start of training day, about 7 months, that means that even a rookie player makes about $42,000 A MONTH for one season. The average American makes that a YEAR, according to the 2006 GDP. Here’s something else to boggle the calculator, the average NFL player makes 1.2-1.5 million dollars a season. Michael Vick, before he became an animal abusing douchebag, made 25 million a season, making him one of the highest paid athletes in the world. So, I think we can all agree, that when the players want to strike because they “aren’t getting paid enough to play two more games”, it screams ludicrous greed to me.

Don’t get me wrong; I think players deserve to be compensated for their time, but a strike? Gimme a break! At what pay ratio is it no longer the “love of the game” and it becomes “I am already making money hand-over-fist for throwing and catching a ball or blocking/tackling pretty well, I deserve thousands more!” It’s ridiculous to me. Sports athletes are overpaid, they know it, I know it, the whole damn world knows it, and yet we allow these strikes to happen.

SPOILERS OF THE HARRY POTTER SERIES

5. My wife forced me to watch every Harry Potter movie made thus far so I can take her to the premiere of Deathly Hallows, Part Two and appreciate it. After watching every single one in secession, I have only one thought: I still don’t care. What the hell is the big deal with these movies/books? Yes, I am all for character development and I can appreciate it, but why is it every one of these 2 ½ hour movies dedicates 2 of those hours JUST TOWARDS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. All of the “good” parts of Harry Potter can be described in five words: first and last fifteen minutes. The rest in-between is tween middle-high school drama about “who likes who” and how unfair is this teacher!” and “even though he has killed people,is Voldermort real?” Am I the only one that saw Dumbledore being killed from, like, the first book on? These books follow the bare-bones basic archetypal models established years ago be Carl Jung almost to a fault. As a matter of fact, almost every archetype and every step of Jung’s “The Hero’s journey” is followed here, and maybe that’s why the books did so well, because they are formulaic and in plain enough English even kids can understand them. It’s not that I don’t think the movies are terrible, I just think they are woefully predictable. Heck, I enjoyed the first Deathly Hallows, for whatever that is worth. I actually want to see the second. As for reading the books, no thank you, sir.


SPOILERS END HERE

And so does my ammo count.

Nook Color is pretty nice for exactly what I want from it.

So you probably know about the Barnes and Noble Nook Color.  It's an E-reader with an LCD screen instead of e-ink.  You may be saying to yourself, "that just sounds like a small tablet," and you'd be pretty correct!  It's OS is (as of this April) 2.2 Android "Froyo" that has what is essentially a skin layered over it that makes it more distinctly an E-reader.  The latest update to 2.2 also included the addition of a Nook Apps store, as well as the addition of Flash support for the browser.  All around, it's a functional tablet that is specifically catered for people who are going to use it to read.

I'm finding that I'm enjoying reading on it, but I do have a few gripes.  When reading a book on the NC, you have many formatting options with regard to text size, background color, line spacing and so on.  I'm finding that I prefer the publishers default settings on these things, and so I try to keep it set on those.  However, occasionally the settings will actually reset back to the customizable option, which throws off my page number where I left off.  Thankfully, there is a bookmarking function, because otherwise I'd keep losing my page.  This reset typically occurs when I turn the device FULLY off, as it spends most of it's time in a sort of sleep mode, this doesn't cause the problem to happen.  I get the feeling that turning it FULLY off is something B&N doesn't intend for you to do very often, as the sleep mode is essentially off/hibernating, but still it's annoying.

I found this out because I learned that in order to get photos that I download to be available to use as a wallpaper image, I need to power it down completely, which is also a big hassle.  I don't know why it's so buggy like this, it seems like a simple error to fix.

The Nook Apps store isn't my favorite.  Mostly because B&N is doing their own app store just because they don't want anyone to think of the NC as a tablet.  They want to keep it an E-reader, and so the apps that they have chosen to release to their store are specifically picked to make sure that they don't overshadow the "main function" of the NC.  This seems strange to me that they don't embrace the full Android market, just because they want to keep the NC as a reader.  Not to mention that Angry Birds (one of the only games in the 140 or so Nook Apps they've released) costs 3 bucks whereas it's free in the standard Android Market.  The three dollars couldn't possibly be the cost of porting the game to the NC's specific 2.2 skin, right?

All that griping said, I still really love the damn thing!  Reading is very pleasant on it.  Not to mention that because it is a back-lit LCD, I don't need to have a lamp on to read in the dark!  This is perfect for laying in bed whilst my lady is asleep.  And now that the browser has flash, it's very functional for reading blogs and news that have embedded videos (not to mention all the porn sites that it's just opened up for viewing.)  And because of the size of the screen, the soft keyboard is REALLY COMFORTABLE to type on when holding the NC in the upright position.  Your two thumbs can go to town just like on a full keyboard Blackberry.  I also shelled out the 3 bucks for Angry Birds, just to see how good it runs, and it's nice and smooth.  No jitters, no stutters.  The Pulse news app is really nice too, very easy to read, and that one is free!

The thing is great.  Go play with a demo model in the store and you'll see what I mean.  And if you don't like it, still get one, as you can just root it and boot Android 3.0 Honeycomb on it!