Halo, truly a modern classic.

Hello there fellow nerds, geeks and  various combinations of the two, what I'm here to talk about today may be met with a lot of how you say, dispute. But frankly my dears I don't give a damn, as in my opinion the Halo games(all of them) are no doubt some of the finest of this, or any generation. With the upcoming release of Halo 4, the first of the Reclaimer trilogy, some of my friends and I have been reliving the series, one even playing the series from start to finish in its entirety. In doing so I have had some of the greatest gaming moments of my gaming career and remembered others from the past. One of these moments which I'm sure you will all agree was "off the chiz-ain" so to speak towards the end of Halo 3, The Covenant to be exact. While the whole mission is a myriad of awesome battles and ass-kickings, four player co-op taking down two scarabs at once on legendary was, just amazing. The music, the fighting, all the possible strategies and those pretty blue lights make this an unforgettable fight. You truly feel the urgency of the fight and the desperation having been built up over all the previous missions and games. 

While Reach is often known as the underdog of the Halo series, there was a sort of shift with the spartan 3's, but it is not without its own brilliant campaign and some sweeeet moments. Once again it's in the co-op where Halo shines, each player playing as their own Spartan 3(some even creating backstories for them) creates a wholly different atmosphere to the other games, a far more personal one. Probably my favourite mission was New Alexandria, in co-op of course(and no i will not stop saying co-op). Watching the city crumbling and the planet being glassed around you and your team is pretty nifty for starters, without even mentioning the cwazy easter eggs and memorable firefights at shifting locations.

So this rambling doesn't go on too long I'll have to bundle the best of the rest together but this in NO WAY makes them less awesome or kewl. Halo CE is where it all began, the story of The Master Chief and Humanity's struggle against the Covenant began here and where the iconic ring  was first seen. CO-OP! Sorry but split screen co-op with a bro just...makes me so happy... Anyway, Halo 2 continues this trend of course but twists the norm a wee bit letting you play as le Arbitre(clever code to avoid spoilers). Last but definitely not least is Halo wars, without a doubt the most controversial of the bunch, but coming from a history of strategy games, I really appreciated it . Many, many, many, many, MANY Halo fans have trashed this game just because it's something different, even a certain Chief fanboy on this bl4rg, but through its intuitive controls, AWESOME cutscenes and nerdalicious technology, I felt it was a fitting addition to the series. And co-op, always co-op. Even as I write this I'm thinking more and more how amazing Halo is and if you haven't played it yet, do. And if you have a PS3 , SELL IT AND PLAY THIS SHIT! I always remain so professional... Hope this helped, buh bye! 

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I Now Despise Competitive Multiplayer Games For Good

Describes multiplayer in general on a number of different levels....

Multiplayer games are starting to grind my gears. Well that's a lie, multiplayer games have always grind my gears, why? Because I always had the nerve and the adrenaline to keep playing them and gain nothing from them. You see I don't find achievements in being the best in any game or having the highest level and always reaching top of the play list in a game of Team Deathmatch. It's always pursing more games to fill the need of telling myself 'I'm good at this game and I want to challenge people that are equally as good as me' and this is the essence of any multiplayer game. But of course you're lying to yourself because there are always going to be a ton of more people better than you unless your MLG. So I came to ask myself why am I truly wasting tons of hours playing this game if I am getting nothing out of it? I don't necessarily consider myself a competitive person but naturally I don't like to lose and due to this I usually get frustrated in a game and myself included. I get frustrated because when I lose a game that I certainly felt I should have won I tend to continue playing the game to get a win so I can justify investing all these hours I have put into these games. And all for what? Just to get a small satisfaction of telling myself 'I'm good at this game' when I don't really care to begin with. I know this is confusing but allow me to explain with an example. 

The memories! They're bad!

I just finished up a game of King of the Hill on Gears Of War 3. GoW3 is the most infuriating game to play multiplayer wise and gets the most biggest rages ever even from the best of us. It's a fact, I have played a huge amount of Gears games with my friends and most of them cant take it because its so frustrating, usually quitting after probably an average of 3-5 rounds of multiplayer games. I press on usually, that's because I love the game and the franchise. Why love the game if its so infuriating and don't have a competitive personality? Well, it's the only game I have ever had a challenge. Games like Call Of Duty, Halo and Battlefield all have pretty easy learning curves to their multiplayer, to me its just gun and run. Obviously those players would tell me differently but then again I don't care, because those games became boring and ultimately not entertaining for me because no amount of skill that some players achieved didn't entertain me. So why invest time into those games if the skill you get from them is ultimately worthless to me? So, naturally I don't play them. Let the record show that I feel all three of those franchises are mundane and ran into the ground and have shown no innovations in their franchises for a long time. Ok so back to the game. In the King of the Hill game things got tense naturally as the score became very even but my team withheld and we won the round, so one round to go. The second round got far more tense and we lost the round by one point and in overtime. Unlucky is to sum up that round, we should of won but when things got more tense and the the 'hill' kept changing I guess we couldn't keep up, so that leads us to the final round. So this round starts up really well but ends EXACTLY THE SAME as the last round. We got up to the final point and lost in overtime. I wanted to scream at my team but I kept to myself as always (I never rage, ever), and as a man I accepted the defeat. Lets face it shit happens and there is nothing you can do about it, sometimes you just have to shut the fuck up and take it. This doesn't happen quite a lot in Gears games especially in the manner of this one, I mean it was grade A ridiculous. And It wasn't fun. So what do you do with a game that isn't fun? Simple, you stop playing it. 

Moral of the story? I don't give a fuck....

Believe me at that moment the game was over I wanted nothing more than to play another round and prove to myself that 'I can do better' and that 'I am good at this game' but that was all bullshit. I am no longer going to justify my means to play multiplayer games any more. To me they're simply not fun and are ridiculously  addictive forms of entertainment that appeals to our inner competitive personality, and it has only came to this point that I have realized that I control whether or not I have a competitive personality or not and not these fucking games. So I choose not to have a competitive personality and I am going to stop chasing these phantom achievements for good now. Fuck you multiplayer, I never really liked you anyway! 

Give your thoughts on competitive multiplayer and tell me how you challenge yourself! 

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Halo:Combat Evolved - Is it actually being Remade or Remastered ?

This is the question I've been asking myself for the last few weeks. It's no secret that Halo:Combat Evolved is regarded as the crown jewel in the Halo series. It's the game that started it all, the game that made us fall in love with the series. By the wider gaming community it has been accepted as one of the games that has set the standard for what a First Person Shooter should be on a console, along with the likes of Doom and GoldenEye.

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Bullestorm Takes The Piss of Call Of Duty and Halo!

Its always exciting to see EA's marketing strategy for any game. They're always wacky and sometimes have nothing to do with the game but sometimes, like in Bulletstorms case, its quite funny. 

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