I am seriously dependent on the internet, and will make no attempt to deny that. If I’m on my computer (and if I’m home, the chance that my laptop is next to me is just about 100%), then at the very minimum I’ll have Internet Explorer and Live Messenger open. Yet, despite being online just about all of the time, I’ve always had an aversion to jumping on the bandwagon of the latest internet phenomena. Specifically, Facebook and myspace were two things that I resisted for years, always coming up with an excuse not to sign up even though it seemed like everyone else on the planet had succumbed to them. I don’t really know why I was so opposed to joining such sites; they just had zero appeal to me. I finally gave in and joined Facebook early last year and quickly realized that it wasn’t the evil entity that I had convinced myself that it was. I look back now and wonder why I didn’t sign up sooner; it’s become one of my staple sites and is open on a tab in IE more often than not (I signed up at myspace at about the same time, but still have no love for it. I probably check it once or twice a month, if that).

The Facebook success story has done nothing to alleviate my suspicion of new internet trends however, and I still find myself avoiding the newest fads (a word I’m reluctant to use, since more often than not they end up staying around). Twitter was one of the big ones that I stayed away from; I simply didn’t understand the appeal of it. Microblogging seemed pointless to me, since my blogs are usually about the size of term papers, and the conversations that people had over Twitter seemed like they could just as easily be done over IM, or txt, or any one of a number of other mediums. But despite its apparent pointlessness, I noticed more and more friends signing up for it and using it regularly. I eventually found myself checking my friends’ feeds several times a day, but still refused to actually sign up. Given Twitter’s undeniable popularity I figured someone out there had to be using the name Thesomeone already, so the other night for shits and giggles I went looking for such a feed. When I realized the name wasn’t taken I decided to grab it, but still told myself that I wouldn’t actually use it. My famous lack of willpower never fails though, and within hours I found myself adding friends to follow and posting updates, mostly about how I didn’t want to be posting updates. We’ll see if it becomes something that I use regularly, but so far I’ll admit it’s not as shitty as I had assumed it to be.

Given my surrender to Twitter, I found it absolutely hilarious that it was the subject of today’s Penny Arcade. Unlike Gabe, I promise not to tweet while carrying out any bodily functions.

I don’t normally post about new marketplace content (excluding Halo 3 DLC), but I think it would be nothing short of a crime if I didn’t do my duty to help spread the word of what could be the most awesome thing to hit the Video Marketplace yet. Oh yes, seasons one and two of Voltron: Defender of the Universe have hit the marketplace and are just waiting for you to absorb its awesomeness.

I’ll admit that I got into the show only relatively recently, back when it was aired on Adult Swim, but I’ve been in awe of its greatness since the first episode that I’ve seen. With its horrible dubbing, questionable voice acting, and repeated use of the same scenes over multiple episodes, the show’s enormous production values were apparent from the start. Voltron is more than just an achievement in animation and sound though; the show is an absolute blast to watch. It’s fucking hilarious (albeit often unintentionally), and rarely will I watch an episode without laughing out loud more than once. I doubt there is any other show out there that features ingenious space mice, fascist space monsters, and Swedish space explorers getting mauled by possibly rabid cats, just to name a few things that make Voltron great. Not to mention, any civilization that has giant robot lions, laser weapons, and space travel, but still seems to employ a feudal political system and widespread use of swords and horses is nothing short of incredible and deserves, no, needs to have a TV show. It’s also a great piece of nostalgia, and even though I didn’t start watching it until recently it still brings back memories of every childhood TV show that I ever watched. It truly is the quintessential 1980s cartoon.

Now, I haven’t downloaded any Voltron since I already have all of the available episodes on DVD (I have the coolest best friend ever), but there’s nothing stopping everyone else from grabbing the greatness. If you’ve never seen the show, go get the first episode for free. If you don’t enjoy it, then I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you don’t know good television.

Ah, the Legendary Map Pack. Halo DLC always has a lot of hype (Halo anything always has a lot of hype), but the content of this particular map pack put the expectations at an all-time high. And unlike the Heroic Map Pack, which really did absolutely nothing to catch my interest when it released, the Legendary pack had me just as intrigued as everyone else. Like thousands of other fans I waited for the pack to hit the marketplace, intending to download it as soon as it hit, and I would have too if I hadn’t fallen asleep with my laptop on my stomach (which, as it turns out, gets hot) as I was trying to control the seemingly endless number of countdown and anticipation threads on the forums. I woke up eventually though, played the maps, and can now give you my impressions of stuff you probably already know. So read on, or don’t, because this thing was really nothing more than excuse to take more screenshots...

When Blackout was announced, Halo 2 fans rejoiced. Despite Guardian being a spiritual successor to Lockout (and that was enough for me, but I’m not as fanatical about Lockout as many other fans) and having many common characteristics, the fanbase cried for a direct remake of Halo 2’s most popular map. Bungie, being the noble developer that they are, obliged, and as such got the fans to cease their constant whining polite requesting.  

Taking place at a remote polar outpost adjacent to an ice shelf, Blackout is the first multiplayer map in the franchise to take place at night (does that not surprise anyone else?). The setting is actually a very cool idea and a nice adaptation from Lockout, and the auroras in the sky are especially impressive. There was some confusion going in over whether or not Blackout took place on a drilling platform or a weather station, since Bungie seemed to refer to the two interchangeably. The presence of ice core samples on the map seem to indicate that the station is in fact both, so story nuts (including myself) can now put away the pitchforks that they get out every time a story discrepancy pops up.

Blackout has been advertised as a straight-up remake of Lockout with very few alterations, and that’s exactly what it is. So as expected, it feels extremely similar to its predecessor. The default weapon spawns are nearly identical to that of Lockout, and people seem to try and control the exact same places as before, using the exact same tactics. Almost immediately into my first game on the map I told my team “yeah, this is Halo 2,” and still hold to that statement. Blackout is pure nostalgia, plain and simple, and there is no other map out there that makes Halo 3 feel so much like Halo 2. Assault Rifle spawns change the dynamic slightly, but still not enough that there are any real changes in tactics or gameplay from that of Lockout. Those who long for the days of Halo 2 and the thousands of Lockout die-hards out there are never going to get bored of the map. 

You'll find yourself using the exact same tactics again in Blackout. Break out the Halo 2 guide...

Still, despite being a direct and faithful remake, there are still some subtle changes that have been throwing me off in the matches that I’ve played. Ramps are a bit wider than they were before, and the area on top of BR tower seems considerably larger. Some doorways have also been moved ever so slightly to the left or right, which has been causing me to back up into walls when I think I’m leaving the room and has cost me my life on more than one occasion. I’m sure I’ll adjust to it rather quickly, but for now it’s proving to be a slight irritation (perhaps the more amusing thing is I still instinctively know Lockout so well, despite not having touched it since Halo 3 came out). These very minor changes still pale in comparison to the number of things that are identical to Blackout’s previous incarnation though. For all intents and purposes, Blackout is Lockout.  

Sidewinder, the classic horseshoe-shaped map from Halo, is probably one of the only maps in the Halo series that could rival Lockout in terms of sheer popularity, demand, and nostalgic memories. Fans have been demanding a remake for years, and Bungie has heard their cries. However, rather than a straight-up remake like Blackout, Avalanche is a “reimagination” of Sidewinder. Avalanche is very clearly a descendent of Sidewinder, and rivals it in terms of fun and engaging gameplay, but fans who wanted an exact remake of their beloved classic are going to be disappointed, at least until they get used to the changes (and there are a lot of them).  

The first change many players will notice is that the bases are completely different than that of Sidewinder’s. Instead of being somewhat narrow but extending deep into the mountainside, Avalanche’s bases are shallow and run along the map’s edge. There is a safe zone inside where players can spawn, but the entire second floor is positioned along the base’s facade and leaves very little room for people to maneuver, exposing them to any hostiles that may be outside. The tunnel system that contained the overshield and active camouflage in Sidewinder has also been completely removed, denying players that shortcut between the bases. This is actually a good change though, since it forces players to put more emphasis on vehicular combat, which should be the focus of large maps such as Avalanche. The tunnel closer to the map’s bend is still there, and has been expanded to include mancannons, allowing players to get to the center of the map on foot quicker than before, which should lead to an interesting dynamic between vehicles and infantry. There are additional mancannons at the base, leading to the base, and along the map’s far walls, which probably creates the single-biggest gameplay change from Sidewinder. They allow both infantry to quickly reach the center, and are great for getting vehicles places quicker as well. I’ve noticed more and more people piling in Warthogs and Mongi and just clogging the enemy base full of vehicle wreckage after going through the mancannon positioned there.    

Perhaps the most disappointing change for me is the lack of slippery ice on Avalanche. Sidewinder’s ice was very slick, and a Warthog could very easily lose traction on it, making for some hilarious moments when playing otherwise serious matches. My friends and I would often just grab Warthogs and attempt to crash into each other or do tricks on the ice; it was a very simple aspect of the map that never ceased to amuse us. However, the ice patches in Avalanche feel no different than the snow, and are there purely as an aesthetic element, doing nothing to alter the gameplay. It’s not a huge deal, but having slippery ice would have been a nice touch and connection to Sidewinder.

The Scorpion makes it triumphant return to matchmaking, and now sport very cool camo (pun intended? I'll never tell)

Thankfully, most of these design changes do not hurt the flow of the map. On the contrary, Avalanche is nothing but fun to play. The horseshoe-shape gives each team enough protection at the start of the game and the size of the map helps put an emphasis on vehicles without making it overly difficult to traverse on foot. I’ll admit that I have not been too thrilled with Halo 3’s selection of large maps (with Valhalla being an exception), but Avalanche truly is well-designed, and I find myself actually going into DLC Objective voluntarily in order to play it. We’ll see what happens in the long run, but initial impressions leave me very pleased and for the first time in a very long time not shuddering at the thought of objective big team games.

Ghost Town probably had (and among the masses, still has) the least amount of hype surrounding it. While Blackout and Avalanche brought back some of the most beloved maps in the Halo series, Ghost Town came off as another generic new asymmetrical map, with nothing really distinguishing it from the rest of the crowd. However, after having the chance to play it, my impressions have changed considerably, and it may very well be my favorite Halo 3 DLC map thus far. In terms of the story, the map takes place in a remote water pump station in the jungles outside Voi, where meltwater from Kilimanjaro is purified and then distributed throughout Africa. Like most of the structures seen in campaign’s Sierra 117, the buildings of Ghost Town are run down and being reclaimed by nature. Simply put, this aesthetic is awesome, and looks even better than the stuff in the campaign. Exposed rebar, trees and vines growing out of shattered concrete, debris being consumed by vegetation and earth, all of it creates a great synthesis of artificiality and the natural.

Ghost Town's environment is one of the best in the game. Nature kicked our ass.

However, as cool as the environment is, that’s not what makes Ghost Town my favorite map in the pack. The map is just about perfect for slayer matches, with plenty of nooks and crannies to hide in for close combat and just as many areas for those who are mid-to-long range players. The screenshots make the map come off as mid-sized, but in actuality you can get from one end of Ghost Town to the other in a matter of seconds. It’s the map’s complexity, number of hiding spots, and multiple levels that make it feel so big. Because of these aspects, the map plays very much like Halo 2’s Turf, and being a huge fan of Turf, this feeling is very welcome to me. Also like Turf, Ghost Town lends itself well to certain objective gametypes, such as one-flag CTF and assault, despite coming off as mainly a slayer map. It’s versatility like this that many other maps lack, and having a new map that can work so well in different gametypes is always a good thing. The only bummer is the lack of a Warthog on the map. There are a couple of Mongi scattered around, but a Warthog could still work in the same capacity that it did on Turf (i.e.: crashing into everyone and everything, with hilarity ensuing). Still, I say there should be Warthogs on every map, so this might not be the most valid of complaints. There’s not much more to say; Ghost Town excels in just about every aspect, and is the sleeper hit of the map pack.

All in all, the Legendary Map Pack is superior to the Heroic Map Pack (which I never did write my impressions of, since the pack had already been out for a decent amount of time by the time I got around to downloading it) in just about every way. While the Heroic maps didn’t add too much that was new to matchmaking (Foundry was a very cool concept, but does not work well in regular games), the Legendary maps should please both fans that want a return to Halo and Halo 2’s classic maps, and those fans who want a taste of fresh content. It adds a phenomenal new slayer map, and supplies a very much needed large map that is actually fun to play (sorry Rat’s Nest, we still like you as a friend). There are also cool new forge options that I didn’t even get into here, but will please video and screenshot aficionados, and people who just want to be a little trippy when playing. If you’re a Halo fan and are getting tired of the same old maps, you should seriously give the Legendary Map Pack a try.

In order to ensure that only the best blog entries are posted here there is a rigorous approval process and extensive bureaucracy in place, which unfortunately results in many of the lesser-entries not making the cut and the blog not being updated all that frequently. Actually, that was a total lie, but it sounds cooler than the truth, which is that I’m just lazy and never get around to finishing or posting most of the entries that I start to write. You didn’t actually believe that whole thing about the approval process, did you? I mean, most of the stuff that gets posted here is barely readable. Anyway, like I was saying, most of the stuff that I start to write never gets posted, and a lot of it just ends up sitting on my computer until I come across it again and delete it. A lot of those entries are not really time-sensitive, so I don’t see any harm in posting them now, even though the two following blog thingies are a few weeks old at this point. Wait, there is harm in posting them? Well, I’m doing it anyway...

Want Citizenship? Buy me a Pint.

So, it may shock some of you to hear that I occasionally look up random stuff on the internet. I know, I know, the tubes are supposed to be used for serious purposes such as online banking or relentless advertising and I should really take my crazy escapades elsewhere, but sometimes when in a procrastination-induced state I can’t help myself. I had one of these random spurts the other night while I was talking to Chloe, and we somehow got on the subject of citizenship tests and over the course of the night took sample US, Canadian and British citizenship tests that can be found online. I thought that the US test was the most straightforward, with all of the questions focused on American political history or governmental structure. The Canadian test included a number of similar concept questions to the US test, but also had a few questions about indigenous people in Canada and even included one question about what should constitute a good environmental policy. It’s almost like Canada doesn’t want to pollute as much as other countries. I know, crazy right?

We did well on both the US and Canadian tests (and I’m sure that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that one of us is American and the other is Canadian), and then decided to take our chances and try out a British citizenship test, figuring that put together we could equal the brainpower of one barely competent individual. Now, the previous two tests were very politically and policy-oriented, but if I didn’t know better I would say the UK test was not to become a citizen but a bartender. Apparently, over there it is not important for potential citizens to know the basic functions of government, but it is absolutely essential to know what to do if you ever spill some poor guy’s drink and get in a bar fight. The origin of Santa Claus (or Father Christmas, as our British friends apparently call him) is also information that is indispensible if you live on the other side of the pond. Needless to say, it became apparent after taking the test that neither of us are ready to apply for British citizenship. Maybe someday in the future we’ll have the courage to brave the (apparent) land of bar fights and roaming holiday figures.

Tampons, Estrogen, and Halo

Some of you may know that I am slightly obsessive about Wikipedia. It’s not that it’s amazing; it’s that it’s so amazing that it makes almost every other site on the tubes obsolete. I spend an obscene amount of time looking up random stuff that has little to no relevance to anything (see Mermaid problem) but is nevertheless hilariously entertaining to read. Rarely do I actually look these kind of things up from the get-go, instead coming across them randomly during my Wikipedia vagabonding. Chloe keeps telling me that I need to keep a record of my surfing so we can see just how big of a tangent I can get on when looking up a topic on Wikipedia, but I’ve always been too lazy. Last night however during my nightly searching she came up with the related theory that Halo is always only six or less clicks away from any given topic on Wikipedia. To test out this six degrees of Halo separation we decided to look up some topics that had no relevance to Halo or video games, starting with fudge. Sure enough, the difference between fudge and Halo was only five articles. We tried other random articles and got equally-effective results. Most of the time the key was to find a link in the initial article to the United States or another geographical topic, since from there you can quickly get to the article for Kirkland, Washington, which in turn links to Halo (Kirkland being the location of Bungie). Is it a cheap way of doing it? Perhaps, but it works.

Eventually, we tried out estrogen’s connection to Halo, and were shocked to find that it could be connected in only four steps. Next up on the list were tampons, which was still only five steps. I won’t post the exact process of getting from those topics to Halo, but if you want to you can try it for yourself, and I guarantee it works. Chloe used these results to argue that girls are truer gamers than guys, since testosterone was six clicks away. She must be right, since this was a foolproof empirical study.  

I began to think of more disturbing or disgusting articles to continue to test the separation theory, but Chloe’s evil eye and the funny feeling that I was about to be smacked compelled me to move on. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experiment. 

You may have noticed that this blog is slowly drifting away from strictly gaming-related topics to a cornucopia of random crap that one could call ‘uninteresting’ at best, but that’s the way it goes. What can I say? I'm expanding my horizons.