ba hahaha!

an actual comment on in response to my most anticipated games on pcworld.ca. these just keep coming in, to my endless amusement:



oh i do hope this is not the last one of these i get.

the only real downside is that it exposes how stupid a lot of the gaming community is. or at least the digg trolls who are supposedly into gaming.

what they don't get is that i chose my list under no pressure whatsoever.

these were the games i felt held the most promise.

i know about spore and i know about starcraft ii and killzone 2. but i don't care. spore looks boring, to be honest. it almost doesn't look like a game. a great simlution maybe, but it seems to be the opposite of what i look for in games. it doesn't look fun to play.

starcraft is not the surest bet for 2008, much like re5. plus, they haven't released a ton of details, so it's hard to put on a list as anticipated. i'm not even anticipating details about starcraft 2 until march.

but i hope these comments keep coming, because they let me know that there really is no hope for fanboys and gamers online.

lol'ing,

JD

is it wrong to digg a dude?

i know this may make some uncomfortable. self promotion -- like self love -- is kind of frowned on in most areas.

it's the kind of thing you do in private. the kind of thing you don't do in front of others, well, that is, unless you've go something wrong with you.

well i do. or at least, once someone's started me, i've got to have some friends finish it off.

wow. that got way more dirty than i wanted, way more quickly...

either way, i just wanted to call attention to an article i wrote for pcworld.ca that is gathering steam on digg.com:

The Most Anticipated Games of 2008

the lovely gaming community on digg is belittling and arguing over my choices -- which, to the chagrin of some posters, are wholly my own and i made them under no advertising pressure at all -- and it is proving a windfall for traffic.

since i'm all about the attention -- as many of my friends will attest -- i'm calling out for a little hand in keeping this on the top page of the gaming section on digg.

if you don't have a digg account, please register. it's one of the most fascinating time-wasters on the web.

and in the meantime, you can help a dude out.

i'm just trying to launch a writing career, so every little bit of exposure -- and bad as well as good comments -- can help me.

plus i'm a little attention whore, so i wil be forever grateful.

in other news, i now have january 22nd 2008 booked solid in my calendar. why?

you know.

dugged'ed?

JD

gaming present count="0"

i know this little html joke will be lost on countless people, but i just thought i'd outline a growing trend.

it seems that while i get tons of delectable gifts for christmas, that most people shy away from gaming gifts for me.

now, part of this is the inherent cost, which admittedly stops me from asking for many of the things i desire, but part of it i think is the tech gap syndrome.

it's not that my parents and fiancee know nothing about gaming, it's just that they know less than me. they're not experts *he says smugly into the camera*.

i think the holidays can be an intimidating time of year for non-techies who are shopping for techies, and i don't know if there's a solution in site.

i guess one way would be to go the old-fashioned route of posting your christmas wish lists online (via ign, facebook, amazon, etc). this is the proverbial 'letter to santa claus' in the form of wants, but still lacks the surprise christmas polish.

but is there a workaround? can i subtley and pyschically send messages to all my friends about my want for cash (or purchases) of/for rock band, a 360 pro, some 360 controllers and assassin's creed?

is there no way to broadcast my wants without sending valuable demographic info to advertisers everywhere? not yet i presume.

well, i will content myself to make mental lists of the things i want and think of future years, when i can just put it all in a t-shirt and use my portable silk-screen to broadcast it to my peers and elders.

looking to the future,

JD

running out the clock

it's not that i dislike my job. far from it. i consider myself lucky to be in a job and career that i like 90% of the time. there's stuff that peeves me off every once in a while, but for the most part, it's a barrel of f-ing monkeys.

but there's always that time of the year, those last couple of weeks, or last couple of days before a real break, when you start counting every minute and trying to just last to the end of each day.

you get stuff done, sure, but you also goof off a little, and get distracted by virtually anything and everything. all i'm saying is that i will be more productive in 2008 than i will be this week.

in life news, my ticket is booked for macworld expo 08. this is great news, which has softened the blow of earlier news, that i wouldn't be attending ces 2008 in las vegas.

i'm trading in bill for steve, and las vegas for san francisco, but either way it'll be sunnier and 'not-t.o.' for a couple days in january.

hopefully steve jobs will unveil an apple entrance into the console race...but that's ridiculous...isn't it?

dreaming ludicicrous dreams,

JD

adendum

this also made me fantastically happy the other day:



so if anybody wants to be my bffevar that would be a good start.

you can get them here, but a working knowledge of japanese may help...

JD

gaming news/a little help understanding 'dudes'

so first things first, if you, unlike me, own an xbox 360 and a gold superior master race better than silver live account, go right now and download the burnout paradise demo. then report back and tell me how awesome it is. i'll cry, but feel better knowing that it has succeeded in being awesome.

with that out of the way, i'd like to go a little offbase and inform everyone of a fact that should help understand the guy mentality during the holidays.

all men, if they're over 6 and under...dead, think they are super spies.

really, all men think of themselves are extremely stealthy, bond-esque spies, and at no time is this more obvious than at christmas.

you see, we all believe that we are way more sly than we probably are, and i have a suspicion that our companions (females, if you're of that persuasion) probably know more about what we do than they let on.

we think we're oh-so-sneaky, and we love doing it.

but at christmas, it doesn't hurt anybody. you sneak around the mall, checking behind corners, hiding your receipts and bags. you make little hiding spots in your living space that you both share, and you do everything extremely on the DL.

i don't know the reasoning to this, but it's extremely satisfying to have a scheme succeed. and fooling women is no easy feat. which is why i suspect that we get away with less than we think we do.

at christmas especially, there is no advantage to them finding us out. so no matter how sloppy liars we are, no matter how bad our hiding spots, no matter how lame our excuses, these qualities are endearing, and not just deceptive and cruel.

it's a hilarious combination of one sexes fascination with deception and mystery and the other's probable amusement by the effort.

it's a great effort that is worth it on both sides, but suspect in it's honesty (if that isn't the most confusing way of putting it).

under cover,

JD

welcome back kotter

now that was a weekend kind of fun pure and unadulterated double heaping spoonful of hell.

if you can count the hours of sleep you got on the weekend on your fingers, is that good?

and why, might you ask, was i losing sleep and getting grumpy with anyone who would listen?

to bring you this -- only 4 days after the Christmas Tech Guide -- the 2007 Video Game Roundup.

i spent the better part of saturday, and all day and night sunday creating this monster. i did have help, however, from one key freelancer and one key editing fiend -- thank you ted and jen respectively -- but most of the writing, editing, and publishing was done by yours truly.

my portion -- aside from the unappreciated games story that is now coming out later this week -- was:

The Most Anticipated Games of 2008
A Review of SceneIt! for the 360
A Review of Halo 3
and a review of the Wii Zapper and Link's Crossbow Training

now, you may have some idea of why i'm so tired and cranky today. check them out, leave some feedback here, or there, and enjoy!

elsewhere, the world continued to move without me...

manhunt 2 won it's appeal -- or at least the first part of it -- against the British Board of Film Classification. don't know what this will really mean in the end, but it seems like a good step for less -- or at least more intelligent and informed -- censorship of games.

manhunt 2 was banned by the review board earlier this year by giving it an ao rating -- or adult's only -- which prevented any stores from stocking it.

also, i must insist that anyone with a 360, functioning hands and an internet connection download the burnout paradise demo -- featured in my most anticipated games -- that hits the Xbox Live! marketplace this thursday.

now, i guess i have to decide whether i'll continue to wait for the live gold membership to get in at the pr place that provided my console, or suffer the wait punishement that microsoft was kind enough to give silver subscribers for free content...

and that's about all i can stomach for today. sorry kids, it's just the way she goes.

drinking moonshine in the sunshine,

JD

a blustering cold

the above title i only used because i seem to recall this being a catch phrase too often used by weather people on network news. i always picturing blustering as being kind of like bumbling, and it's far colder than any weather could accidentally cause.

as for news, today hasn't been that eventful, or yesterday for that matter.

microsoft released the fall update for Xbox 360 consoles in North America. You can now see the friends of your friends, just like on Facebook. Neato!

but they are also harassing silver level Live! subscribers, not letting them get their hands on free content (like demos and such) until gold subscribers have gotten a week to play/download/talk snootily about them.

As always, resident Xbox representative, Major Nelson, says on his blog*:

This is not done to annoy our Silver members—limited time exclusive access to content is just one of the many benefits of having a Gold Xbox Live account.

yeah, that's it. we're just giving those gold subscribers a pat on the back for handing us shovels-full of money. it's not a punishment per se, we're just not rewarding the unwashed filth who only paid at least $400 for our console and at least $70 for Halo 3. it's a little off-putting.

elsewhere, capcom sent me an e-mail letting me know that the new street fighter was indeed a 2D fighting experience, with updated 3D graphics. sooooo, like soul calibur 2? Oh, it's exactly like street fighter 2, but with polygonal fighters. And about the same control scheme. forgive me if i'm not jazzed.

this week has not been my favorite gaming week really. i'm getting into mass effect, like really getting into it, but like a dumbass, i still can't seem to navigate swiftly through all the things i have to do. once i learn something, they through another new thing at me without full explanation on how to do it.

now, i seem to be stuck on the ship, not able to actually get aground. so we'll see how that pans out. either way, it's getting interesting enough that jen is looking up from her laptop glazed over news watching to watch cutscenes with me and is following the plot closely. i've got the suspicion that she knows more about what's going on than me...

everything else is going good, got some christmas shopping done, most of jen's stuff is in the bag-well, in hiding specifically, but really in the bag as our apartment is really quite small and without hiding spaces.

so i head into the weekend now, with another full feature due on monday-of which i'm writing 4 or 5 articles-and i've got to attend a pr party tonight. whee.

thinking of you all fondly-and with a bit of a dirty mind;),

JD

*link credit to kotaku, my bible

a telling sign

i'm almost feeling slightly bad for gamespot at this point, well...not too bad, but i had to share this screen cap of the story that gamespot posted on their website to control spin.

i think that their site tags stories using dynamically generated tags from both the comments and the stories. a picture tells a thousand words gamespot, and you had better watch how you proceed next...



this just in: Jeff speaks about the review and getting fired-but without any messy, and delicious details-courtesy jostiq.com.

a return to form

as promised, this post will actually be about games, i just had to get that story off my chest.

and what a time to weigh in opinions when the biggest gaming press related story of the last ten years is taking off as we speak...

it's obviously not the firing that is the story here, but the implications rumour facts, that Jeff Gerstmann, a controversial and brutally honest reviewer for gamespot, was let go just after he slammed Kane and Lynch: Deadmen, and gamespot lost an advertising campaign that had the entire site branded by the Edios IP.

everyone is chipping in on this, including my favorites, the dudes at the penny arcade, and it's becoming a riduculously hot topic. the lines between advertising and editorial in online have always been thin and maybe even blurred. if gamespot aren't telling the truth, and this was because of jeff's review, or even if they are, and it really is his 'tone' that got him fired, this may set a dangerous precedent and scare good reviewers into doing not-so-honest game reviewing.

it's a very slippery slope, and of course, edios are doing nothing to help themselves in the situation. absolutely nothing.

i don't know if there is a real cause for concern at this particular moment, but i do think that awareness should be raised. gerstmann wasn't the perfect reviewer, i mean hell, he gave tony hawk 4, a game that took the stupid score-orientated challenges of the first three games to a height that was un-fun and barely playable, 5 stars, but he was an honest reviewer. he took down xxx bmx for what it was, and his review of kane and lynch-if you can find the video on youtube-looks like he's trying to like the game but there were a few fundamental flaws that prevented this.

given, i've never played it, but from what i've heard elsewhere, he can't be far off.

this is a story i'll keep my eye on, so stay tuned. this is not the end of it.

looking shiftily at the advertising staff,

JD

i kinda hate people

the weekend on a whole was great. it was mellow, i got a copy of sceneit! and after some false starts, began my trivia domination.

but i'm first going to blog about the ridiculousness that is the ttc, specifically, the elder crowd on the ttc.

now, this is not an overarching, all the elderly should be banned from the ttc, or the incredibly popular facebook group's title 'i secretly want to punch slow moving people in the back of the head' type of rant. i have a legitimate complaint to make with a specific incident that happened last week on friday.

so i was coming home from work, via downtown since jen wanted to show me some new wedding related stuff before we trudged to the homestead.

i was more than overleaden with crap to carry, because i had graciously accepted a six pack of energy drinks (which i really never have anyways) from my boss before leaving. this was one more heavy thing to carry on top of my backpack (full of the ridiculously heavy 360 i lug between work and home these days) and my satchel (that carries my regular work stuff) and my brand new copy of sceneit! that managed to be courier'd to the office right at 5 o'clock. so i had the backpack and satchel on my shoulders, and both hands full on the subway. don't worry, there is a point to all this exposition.

what i'm bascially trying to say is that i had my hands full by the time i got downtown, and after we looked at the wedding stuff, we got back on the subway and headed for our station. a quick nip to pizza pizza for dinner, and we were back in the station waiting for the bus home.

we just managed to grab one before it left and tried (badly) to snake through the passengers to the middle of the bus and not get in anyone's way, but with backpack, satchel, pizza, sixpack, jen's purse and sceneit!, this was no easy feat. jen wanted us to move inwards (much to my complaints that we wouldnt' be able to get to the doors and we only had 3 stops to go) because there was an old lady that followed us onto the bus.

the old lady followed us to the middle of the bus, and i guess jen overheard her muttering and saw her glaring at us, though i was completely oblivious to this...that was until she pushed me.

yeah, no frigging way you say. that doesn't sound like old people i know, you say.

well, it's true, i couldn't believe it, and tried to convince myself it was an accident, that she didn't mean to shove my bag violently and twist my body, but then...WHAM, again, she pushes my bag.

so this time i turn to her and ask 'what's your problem!'.

she yells right back in my face, 'you're hitting me with your bag!' which was complete bs, and i was trying very hard to compact myself as much as possible and was nowhere near her.
'you should in the seats at the back of the bus with your big backpack'.

now here, i should refer to the reasoning that i wrote three paragraphs on all the stuff jen and i were carrying. there is me with a full backpack (that's really heavy!), a satchel (so double duty on right shoulder), the sixpack of tall-boy energy drinks (that i didn't even want, but carried out of guilt) and one arm barely free for holding a stability bar on the bus. jen is carrying the pizza, on which is stacked the sceneit! box, because she felt bad for me having to carry all of it.

back to the bus...i got pissed at the point that the lady had the audacity to shove me and yell at me in front of a bus full of people when i clearly couldn't move three feet let alone to the back of the frigging bus, so i yell back 'why don't you go the back of the bus!'

she just starts losing her shit talking about 'i have to deal with this all the time, you people should make room for me, i can't believe you, you should use the seats and get your backpack out of my way' though i can't tell you this is accurate because i was fuming by now, and i only had one stop to go.

so i asked her 'why don't you just get a car if you don't like the bus?' which i thought was a fair question. she retorts, cleverly 'maybe if you were nicer to your teachers, you'd be able to get one, i can't afford one' and then she kicks me in the shin!

well, she really barely grazed me, but in her backswing, kicked some defenseless woman behind her to which she told 'it's his fault'. not sorry, not didn't mean to, but 'it's his fault' and points to me.

at this point, some nice guy made some room for me to move a little further back, and it was my stop, so i gave up, muttered 'crazy bitch' under my breath and exited the bus. the entire population of the bus was so dumbfounded by her arrogance and insanity, that they didn't want to meet eye contact with this beast.

i have no idea if this is an average experience on the bus, to meet such f-ing rude, entitled, a-hole elderly people, but i'm going to think twice before stepping out of the way or holding open doors from now on.

it may just get you kicked.

losing my faith in humanity,

JD