My mom called me earlier today. She invited me over for dinner. I went, and afterwards she said she had a surprise for me. I was thinking clothes, since it was coming from a mom. But, I may be, as I'm typing this, typing it on my brand new laptop. details after I scope it out.

After all the monumental glory that is E3, I (believe it or not) am in absolute awe. There was only one game that absolutely did not blow me out of the water.

Let's start with the press conferences.

I am not a Wii fanboy, I think they have a solid system and were definitely a leap ahead with their controller, but I didn't watch their press conference because it really didn't interest me.

Between the PS3 and Xbox 360, I have to say that PS3 had the better conference. They seemed to have keynote speakers that were more prepared and organized, and produced some good hype for their big budget hits for the next year. Xbox announced some new features for live that were just meh. Both conferences left me wanting, I started to think that maybe this year would kinda suck.

Then G4 moved on to the exclusive demos and interviews with game creators. There were of course the ones that have already had huge hype. Fallout 3, Mercenaries 2, Resistance 2, and so on. All of which look great and sound like immense fun. My eyes are glued to Infamous. Psi-ops on xbox introduced me to the use of lightning and telekinesis (sp?). which were immense fun. After I realized how cool that was in a game, I tried out a couple of star wars titles, all of which really left me wanting in the "mind powers" department. Half-Life 2 did an incredible job with the grav gun (the blue one at the end), but hell you only get to use it for less than about half an hour, so it was amazing but extremely short lived. But Infamous brings it back in full unadulterated glory. I really can't describe how awesome it looks so you have to go see the trailer or online demo or something.

I mentioned Mercenaries 2 also as one of the big budget titles, and it looks like it. The first one was a good solid game, but lacked overall visually, too dark and gritty. This time you're in the rich and vibrant Venezualan jungle, armed with over 30 different vehicles, including tanks, helicopters, APC's, boats, etc. And a very wide arsenal, including some kind of nuclear bomb, which is b-e-a-utiful.

The rest of the games exclusively covered all looked great except for two. Spore and Mortal Combat vs. DC comics

Spore didn't look great. It looked FUCKING AMAZING! Will Wright has definitely outdone himself. The only qualms I have about it are how the overall Spore community will interact seemlessly on an galactic scale. And the new Mortal combat game just made me sick to my stomach, I don't care too much for the series anymore, I kind of moved past that whole genre after 8th grade, but to combine those to worlds in one is to me just an excuse to make money hand over fist and ruins the whole damn thing. Especially having superheroes fight normal guys, because thats what for the most part mortal combat characters are, human beings, some demons, some mixed, not super in any way.

So these are some thoughts I have had recently:

1. WHY? why, I ask you, is it considered perfectly sanitary to wash your hands once done taking a dump... but ONLY after you have rubbed your hands all over your clothes to put them all on?

2. Why are there hate speech laws? What makes them constitutional? I was under the impression that given the first amendment I could say what I want. I realize the whole "don't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater" thing, but dammit if I want to yell fire in a crowded theater I should be able to.

Besides, who defines what 'hate' is? Some people have stated statistics about race and crime, but it's deemed 'hate speech'. I think if someone from the KKK goes "I hate black people" then yes, that's hate speech. If someone goes "50% of crimes are committed by young black males who constitute 15% of the population" (MADE UP NUMBERS) then that's definitely not hate speech, but there are examples where people say it is.

3. What ever happened to Smoove B?

4. The 'metro', a paper published and distributed for free along the subway in boston had a survey of 2 girls and a guy about what they thought the big summer blockbuster would be. The girls both said "sex and the city". The guy said "ironman". Wow.. they surveyed idiots. Sex and the city will blow. Ironman is already out. And why didn't the guy think of "Dark Knight"? I demand that his Y chromosome be removed forthwith.

5. I wish people would cite sources more. I'm tired of seeing articles (I'm picking on environmentalism right now, but this applies to everything) that tell me things but don't tell me where they got it. Example:

"If you don't eat a hamburger today you will save 3 tons of C02!"

Really? REALLY? Prove it! Prove to me that if I don't eat a hamburger the effect will be that direct. Show me that the shift in meat demand will have the direct affect of the cutting back of meat plants. Maybe it will lower price and then shift distribution other areas? I don't know that.. but neither do those people! Let's think holistically here!

Secondly, show me that if I cut meat demand such that meat packing plants get shut down that I can do something useful with the land. People don't think about that so much, but their is a reason feed lots are were they are. This is generally because the land isn't so good for crops. This is also the reason why you can't believe the statistics about the benefits of cutting meat production on the production of plants because the land isn't interchangeable. (I learned this during a talk with a friend who was affiliated with farming).

Also, laundry detergent! They are all like "performs better than the leading brand". Who are they to make such claims? Besides, if brand 'A' performs better than the leading brand 'B', wouldn't that make 'A' the leading brand? But an object cannot be better than itself, by definition. Therefore I win.

6. I saw organic, environmentally friendly yogurt in a non-recylable plastic tube in which the volume of material used in making the tube was a comparable percentage of volume of yogurt.

7. Apparently no matter how paranormal an adversary, doesn't matter if it came from hell, from another dimension, or is invulnerable; it can always be killed with a rocket launcher. This pleases me.

8. DARK KNIGHT THIS SUMMER AAAAAH SO AMPED!!

9. Saw a drunk hobo on a subway. It was 10 am. He was drunk on listerine. He also rambled about flyin F-16s in 'nam (hint, look up when F-16s were first made). Also, he wanted to fight me.

That's all for now. Hope your weeks are going well.

Hey all,

 Well, I successfully got GTA IV ready to go last night, and it's a pretty fun little game. I only had a chance to play it for about 2 hours or so, but just in those two hours I think I got a pretty good feel for at least the beginning of the game. (Don't worry, I wouldn't dream of spoiling anything for anyone who is planning on playing the game. Just some general thoughts follow.)

First off, the graphics are amazing. At one point, I was driving a car under a bridge, and the light was realistically reflecting, shadowed, off the car roof. It was pretty cool to see such great graphics in a GTA game. Secondly, the gameplay is pretty much the same ol', with some nice additions. There's a cover system now, which helps a lot, and the aiming has an auto-lock that is much-improved...in all, I'd say they've done a great job fixing a lot of the problems that were present in previous GTA games with the combat.  The detail in general, as I hinted at yesterday, is also greatly improved. I met a girl, called her up, and we went bowling (which is actually a decent little "mini-game" that you get to play). At one point, I had told her I would show up, but didn't...then, when I finally got around to picking her up the next day, I had to set up another date, and she asked me as we were driving to the bowling alley, "Why didn't you show up last night?", just like any girl would. Nagging? Yes. Realistic? Definitely.

Basically, if you liked the previous GTA games at all, you're gonna love it. Even if you didn't like the previous ones, you might just find you like this one...it's certainly the best in the series so far (or at least thus far it is). I'm only about 2 hours in (and about 4% of the way through the "game"), so I don't know it all, yet...but I'm pretty excited and having a great time. 

Well, some of you may still be at least semi-avid gamers (at least, that's the category I would put myself into). What does that mean? It means that, at some point, I realized playing video games 24/7 was bad for my health, and my free time could be put to better use (like developing web applications and animated series, for example). 

 Still, occassionally a game comes out that I am powerless to resist, and in fact get really, really psyched about. Bioshock was such a game. Halo 3 was (obviously) such a  game. Adam Wake, Spore, and Metal Gear Solid 4 will be such games. But the most recent game that fits into that category is Grand Theft Auto IV.

Again, I don't want to bore anyone who doesn't care with the details, but suffice it to say that this game is supposed to reinvent gaming the same way GTA III did on the PS2. We're talking about the most detail-oriented playing experience you've ever had. Sure, that means good graphics, but it also means the people who wander the streets have their own "motivations" and "agendas." It means you can get on the Internet (not the real one, the "GTA IV Internet" that's in the game), which has hundreds of websites, including a version of Craigslist that allows you to go on side missions and find women to go on dates with. Not kidding, you find them on Craigslist, call them on your cell phone, set up a date, then go there at the appropriate time. How's that for detail?

Drive through a fire, and your car tires will catch on fire, what you do and what missions you take will have a very real affect on who's trying to kill you that day (in addition, of course, to who you're trying to kill), and you can even hop in the back of a taxi cab and ride along while the city flows past your window...or, take the subway if you prefer. Or just steal a car. Your choice.

However, the point of this article is not to wax ridiculous about the merits of GTA IV (if you really haven't heard much about it, check it out on Metacritic), but rather to talk about hacking, and the fact that I am powerless to resist it.

Yesterday afternoon, the story broke that GTA IV had been leaked already online. "Hmmm..." I thought. I had never really seriously considered modding my 360, for fear of getting banned from Xbox Live. However, I don't really play on Live anymore, so that threat was not as imminent. And then, the next thing I knew, I was spending 4 hours at work researching what, exactly, I would need to do to play burned games on the 360. Turns out it's not too difficult, you just open up the case, plug the DVD drive into your own computer, and flash the firmware of the DVD drive. It's pretty undetectable by M$ these days, and relatively safe. "Screw it", I thought, "I've gotta do this." After all, hacking is in my blood. I know that the game comes out in like 5 days, and I should just wait...but it's not about getting the game in 5 days, 1 or 20...it's about beating the system. It's about saying to M$ "why the hell not just release the game when it's done?" It's about playing the game earlier than you're "allowed" to. Hell, I'll still buy it if it's good and I want to play it on Live, so it's not even about saving money.

Well, that being said, I went home last night and performed the (somewhat) risky procedure. The hardest part (by far) was getting the damned case off and back on. After about 2 hours of labor, I had successfully flashed the drive. I haven't had a chance to test it on a burned game yet (GTA IV PAL was released yesterday, not the NTSC/US version). But, it plays non-burned games just fine, still, so I'm pretty sure everything is working.

Fast forward to last night. There I was, at about midnight, sitting on IRC in #alt.binaries.games.xbox360 with about 1,400 other people, anxiously awaiting word that the game had been "pre'd" (meaning that it was being uploaded by the group that had cracked it). I had to hit the hay before that announcement came, but I happily awoke this morning to find that it had dropped at about 2:00 AM last night. So, I queued it up on my computer at home, came to work, and at a rate of 600 KB/sec, it will be done downloading and ready to burn by the time I go home for lunch.

I'll let you guys know if it's really as good as they say :).