Flag vs the Media

You know Britain? Yeah, the place that's just had the riots. Well, the media have had an absolute field day with it, and guess what's to blame. Videogames - clearly, every single person who went out and destroyed stuff because  they felt like it and wanted to loot stuff plays video games like Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto and they all simultaneously went out to be violent at the same time. No, that's nonsense. Videogames have NOTHING to do with this at all - it's simply people being idiots because they're opportunists.

It would be brilliant if some of these newspapers actually read this, because it's discrimination against a certain group of people by saying that, or even suggesting that videogamers are violent people. Because of this, there's people that now avoid me if I wear a 'space invaders' shirt simply because I play videogames and will therefore take great pleasure in punching them square in the face, except I won't because that's just a preconception you're getting in people's heads.

But still, I could condemn the papers too much. I would leave it here for good, but it's inevitable The Daily Mail's going to go bash another group of people soon, so yeah...

I condemn a riot.

Alright, this has gone on far too long now. These riots are quite frankly ridiculous, but to be honest, I could see something like that happening with the most senior people in our Government on holiday at the SAME TIME.
David Cameron's come back home from his holiday and seems pretty annoyed that he's had to come back, and whilst I can understand why, he shouldn't have put himself forward to be prime minister if he wasn't prepared to do what he has had to do.
These rioters are terrorists. They're destroying homes, shops, cities, and so on - They deserve no sympathy whatsoever and need locking up for life - I've seen people on the news who've lost everything because of these idiots, and in all honesty, I think we need stronger security measures. Yes, get riot police to block them and try and get arrests made, but this is an attack, not a bit of an out-of-hand protest. If the rioters aren't taught a lesson, they'll try and get away with more and more, and eventually there'll be something close to a war going off, if they aren't stopped completely and swiftly.

To be honest, I hope the rioters grow the hell up and turn themselves in.

Back/rant.

So yeah, I took a bit of a break from updating this. There are many reasons why, but to be honest, I really wasn't motivated with anything and so this blog had to stop. For a bit. There was one reason why this all happened, but it quickly progressed into another, but later turned out I was overreacting about said thing (I think so, anyway...)

But yeah, I just felt like I needed to catch up on the rants, so here's a selection of 'tweet rants' that I've had ready to go for the last few days on twitter/wherever, but guess what? That went the way of the Blog too.

Duke Nukem Forever has been released, and it looks a good game. What I hate is the reception it's had - there's no way possible it could live up to the hype, but stop bashing it because it's retro, or it's not enough like Call of Duty. Of course it isn't - that's the whole point. It's designed to be fun, not realistic. And completely realistic games are awful anyway, like those 'realistic' sports games. WHY?! Just go and play the sport fo reals if you really want an authentic sports experience...

Lag switchers, Turtle Beach headset users and Modded controller users - go away.  Nobody likes you in the gaming world. Yes, Headsets as well. I'm sorry if I've just bought a £45 game on a £200 console with a £40 a year membership, I don't really want to pay another £150 to be able to do better at a game, and nobody else should have that privilege either.
Alright then, in the next Call of Duty, make Headsets still effective, but I want to buy constant radar and the best guns straight away. And all the people who don't buy them have to lose all the time. That's the same thing.

School. Enough said.

Exam boards, why are they so vague with questions? I've had History today, and a question went 'What does Source X say about the popularity of Jazz Music' and the Source literally only said it became more popular. Great, one mark. What about the other 3? Fail.
And don't even get me started on Religious Studies. "Christians should look after the world. Do you agree? Give an opposite view referring to Christianity."
Erm... What? I've got to suggest that Christians should leave the world alone for it to descend into ruin when nobody cares about pollution? HOW DO I ARGUE AGAINST THE STATEMENT?!?!

[/rant]

BRB

Stuff's going off, lost motivation to do this, etc. etc.
So I'll be back in a few days once it's all blown over - I get over things easy.

Why I support the CoD Elite Boycott to an extent.

PS3 gamers were devastated last november when Black Ops dropped and was damn near unplayable on the PS3, but Activision took ages to fix that. Why should we have to pay money for extra features that Activision is spending time and money on when they should be fixing the product they've already sold, but was insufficient!
Oh well, Battlefield 3 all the way across the sky.

Do you like free stuff? Course you do!

And this is why we <3 Sony. We lost our network for a few days, so we get boatloads of free stuff to say sorry. I'm personally looking forward to playing Infamous and Wipeout HD from the 2 free games we're being given. In fact, that's not it for the free stuff - we get PS+ as well, so there's free stuff to be had there too.
They might have been hacked, but Sony are doing a pretty damn good job of getting people back to their console. Microsoft on the other hand, are doing a great job of pushing me away from their console. First off, they banned me with no reason being given, and after 3 months I got the access to Xbox Live back, then I had to pay for new membership, as it was cancelled in the mean time. They refused to refund the money despite there being no reason for a ban, but I bought another £40 membership and lo and behold, it's been cancelled again. To be fair, it's illegal to steal money like that and they have to give a reason for the ban - it's in THEIR terms and conditions. If they didn't have Halo or Gears, and if my friends had bought the right console, I wouldn't have an Xbox.

Boycott Call of Duty: Elite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXlNLBLYSjg
Free features that cost. Activision, stop ripping us off and actually polish Call of Duty before it releases.

Cheryl Cole's not judging the X factor.

Now normally, I couldn't care less, but I've noticed that if I write about stuff that's pretty popular, then I get more views. I've doubled my all time views just by saying that Harold Camping is an idiot, so here goes.

Cheryl Cole is apparently at war with the X factor (according to the press) because she was taken off X factor USA or something like that because the Americans 'couldn't understand her accent'. Cool Story Bro.
In all fairness though, I'd be pretty gutted if people couldn't understand me talk. Which they often can't, which is why I have a blog, not a vlog. But the thing is, I'd also go back to said TV show if I was offered a large amount of money - Cheryl didn't according to newspapers and shizzle, so yeah. Make of that what you will.

And that's all I have to say on that....

GAME don't know anything about games.

"You don't usually associate great stories with first person shooters, but Call of Duty: Black Ops' single player campaign tells an excellent tale. You play as Alex Mason, who remains strapped to an interrogation chair for most of the game. Your captor wants you to reveal the meaning of a sequence of numbers, which are part of a puzzle you're also trying to solve in order to avert a global disaster."

Really?
Halo
Halo 2
Halo 3
Halo 3: ODST
Halo Reach
Modern Warfare (Cod4)
Modern Warfare 2
Battlefield bad company
Battlefield Bad company 2
Portal
Portal 2 (technically, you have a 'gun' and it's first person.)
Half life
Half life 2
^Episode 1
^Episode 2
Red Steel
Red Steel 2
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime 2
Metroid Prime 3
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Resistance: Fall of man
Resistance 2
Resistance 3 (probably, when it's released)
Killzone
Killzone 2
Killzone 3
Rainbow Six Vegas
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Crysis
Crysis: Warhead
Crysis 2
Borderlands
Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem Forever (Come on, you just know it will.)
Fallout 3
Fallout: New Vegas
Oblivion (?)
Perfect Dark 64

And that's just a short list. GAME, do your research please. Or at least hire people to write on your website that aren't completely videogame-illiterate.

Oh, and for the record, Black Ops' story was alright. Not great.

"Federal regulations require me to warn you that this next test chamber... is looking pretty good"

Bit of a visual revamp, and the Blog's looking half decent now, finally.
And I love how I get no views for like 3 days, and then as soon as I start refurbishing this, then I get a fair few views, presumably from people that saw my blog in it's half finished state, with a poor version of Windows XP's Bliss screensaver plastered in the background.
Also, 300k is nothing for a background - It's not helpful at all when you can only have a small but High res background or large but low res background.
Tl;dr 500GB background Image upload limit plz. Kthx.

Modern Warfare 3 - will it sink or float?

I have to admit, as much as I despise Black Ops, I really can't argue against the rest of the CoD series being anything less than good. Modern Warfare 2, despite it's shortcomings was actually a pretty fun game to play. I personally think that all the crap that made it annoying gave it character - the 'overpowered/long range' shotguns like the SPAS-12 were subject to a lot of criticism, but they were fun to use. Commando, despite being completely idiotic, was the focus of many many jokes, and there were times when it went horribly wrong as well. Pro Pipes were also claimed to be overused because you could use One Man Army to stock up on more - but that just made people vulnerable until they could restore their ammo. And the best ones - quickscoping and boosters. People hate both of them, it seems, but boosters were ridiculously fun to hunt down (Sandy Ravage: Booster Justice - go watch) and quickscopers were easy kills. And it looked impressive when they did tricks and actually got a kill, as well as snipers being pretty accurate unlike Black Ops.

And I'd love to see a return to that, and it'll be great that IW/Sledgehammer are using the IW4 engine, the same as was used in Modern Warfare 2, so it'll run smoother than Black Ops did. And it'll feel more up to date - Black Ops used an engine from 2007 and only slightly modified it.

The campaign looks decent as well, but we'll have to see about that. Multiplayer, hopefully, should be amazing.

An experiment

So, if I type all of this, then put 1. d c
2. bbt
3. iceland volcano eruption
4. indianapolis 500
5. photobucket
6. oscar de la hoya
7. keith richards
8. bernard hopkins
9. wolves
10. gawker
11. bernard hopkins vs jean pascal
12. back to the future
13. cannes film festival
14. tree of life
15. liger
16. westboro baptist church
17. anne hathaway
18. rosario dawson
19. roy jones jr
20. ryan gosling

After it, how many more views will I get? I shall see...

Harold Camping is an idiot, redux.

So, further going on from yesterday's post, I hope the idiot gets locked up. He TOLD people to leave the Church (lulwut?) And sell everything they owned - they wouldn't need it in heaven.

This man is a liability, and I really do hope that someone picks up on it, or he's stuck in that radio station place for all eternity when he locked himself in securely.

I'm not saying that if you were worried, you're an idiot, I'm saying that you were gullible. Same goes for all those who think we'll die in 2012, we will not. The end of the world is not nigh, and it's highly unlikely that God, if he can even do that, would just say "Ah, you know what, I'm going to end the world" and do so.

Just because the Bible supposedly gives hints, doesn't mean it'll happen. Halo 3 dropped hints as to a sequel. Does it have one? No. it's the end of the Halo trilogy. Don't believe everything that people tell you.

Just to clarify, I do believe in God, and Jesus and a fair few of the Christian principles, but I'm one of those people that believes in a slight variation to it - after all, a 2000 year old holy book isn't necessarily going to be as relevant today, in an age where everyone is a lot smarter than when it was originally written. Hence why they say that Jesus 'suddenly healed' people, as if by magic - The gift of knowledge means that most likely Jesus was the most intelligent person the world has ever known, and knew how to solve diseases and the like instantly. It's like if you took a phone back in time, people would call it 'witchcraft' or Magic. The world has changed, and we need to take this into consideration when following religions. This isn't an attack on people who stick to the 'traditional' Christian views, but that's just my personal view on it.

I'm pretty easy going when it comes to beliefs - if you believe in Godzilla, then I'm not one to go against that. If you believe Aliens created us, then fine - that's your view.

Unless you believe the end's coming on 21st May 2011, in which case you're an idiot.

RE: The apocalypse

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Aperture Science
We do what we must
because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.
But there's no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done.
And you make a neat gun.
For the people who are still alive.
I'm not even angry.
I'm being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart.
And killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data make a beautiful line.
And we're out of beta.
We're releasing on time.
So I'm GLaD. I got burned.
Think of all the things we learned
for the people who are still alive.
Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you'll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa
THAT WAS A JOKE.
HAHA. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, this cake is great.
It's so delicious and moist.
Look at me still talking
when there's Science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you.
I've experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.
And believe me I am still alive.
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
I feel FANTASTIC and I'm still alive.
While you're dying I'll be still alive.
And when you're dead I will be still alive.
Still alive.
Still alive.

Seemed like an appropriate song choice.

GCSE Music - seriously?

I'm not one to be angry at everything. It might seem like that, but there's just so many things wrong with the world that I have to poke fun at, but I am really angry at this though - GCSE Music.
If you're thinking of taking it next year, make sure your teacher actually teaches you stuff and doesnt rely on the fact that you're all musicians, therefore you should now exactly how to read music and play all of Beethoven's symphonies blindfolded with both hands behind your back.
Alas, I am a guitarist, and can do no such thing because I read guitar tabs, which are essentially the same as sheet music, but with numbers and string diagrams, essentially.

However, my teacher still cannot understand why I can't read sheet music. Possibly because I do not read sheet music to play my guitar. I do have a keyboard and piano, but I learn everything by sight,sound and memory, no sheet music involved.

And even better, I've been playing the thing for about 2 years now, and I'm about Grade 2 at best, which to be fair is pretty horrible, but I play it for enjoyment rather than to be good. So you can imagine how annoyed I felt when he said I was and I quote "Completely useless" because I can't play this -


I mean, I can do the rest of the song, but the solo? Get lost. And you don't have a right to tell me I'm crap at guitar. I know I am, but it's not your place to say that to my face.

The best thing is that he can't play the guitar himself. Talk about an epic fail of a teacher.
And that's why you should always check before you pick your GCSE's.


And I'm not even done yet - the test we did on tuesday was a complete and utter tragedy. The played Greenday as one of the songs, at which point I stopped writing and jammed the pen into my ear to remove my ear drums so that I didn't have to listen to it any longer. This may or may not be the reason I'm now partially deaf in my right ear.

Rise of the Valkyries made up for it, but it was mostly guesswork to be honest. When I get my individual results back from it, I'm betting I can spell 'FUDGE' with my grades.

GCSE Music. Do not want.

Harold Camping is an idiot.

I'm sorry, but he's predicted the end of the world twice and got it wrong. He told people to quit their jobs, sell everything and give all their money away. Some did, and now that the apocalypse hasn't happened at 6PM local time (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/) in a few places already, it's proven he's wrong. I'm not spiteful or anything, but him trying to cause panic should get him locked up. He could/may have ruined people's lives because of this, and having read a bit of this - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/end-of-the-world-is-very-nigh-indeed-2287185.html - I'm pretty sure that some people could be a lot worse off than others, if you look at the end.

I know this is usually a bit of a poke-fun-at-everything blog, but this is me being serious - people could have died after this. To quote the aforementioned site:

"1997: Believing an alien spacecraft was following the Hale-Bopp comet, San Diego-based cult Heaven's Gate declared the end of the world was nigh. Its leader, Marshall Applewhite, persuaded 39 cult members to enter into a pre-emptive suicide pact."
This could have happened in this case, and I really hope it doesn't - Camping could have caused this by generating panic.

And the idiot's been telling people to quit their jobs, sell their homes and all their belongings and give all the money away - what will these people do now?! They've just lost everything because of one moron trying to brainwash people into thinking the world would end on the 21st of May 2011.

And that, my friends, is why Harold Camping deserves to live behind bars. 

The amount of times I've resurrected this blog...

Yeah, I've not been able to post as often as I usually do, and that's because of these bloody exams. Seriously, Who decided that It'd be great to subject school pupils to 12 + stressful exams in the space of a month, even less for some people.
I could go on a huge rant, but the truth is, I'm actually quite happy at the minute. I've literally just got out of my Psychology exam now and despite being about as awake as a dead badger, it's a great feeling to know that it's done - No more psychology ever. For a few months.

And another thing, for some reason, I appear to have gone deaf in my right ear. Seriously, I have no idea why, but I have. I'll get back to you on that one...

Back, once again - Playstation Network wtf?

Sony: O hai noobs, we lost your personal info and all ur credit cards
Us: ZOMG!!!! [riot]
Sony: Its K tho, we gon giv u all free stuffz to DL on Ps store an free PS+ subs!
Us: woot!11!
Sony: Lolz, JK - Stor wun be back up till offa expires lol trolled.
Us: this sux, Imma go buy 360/glorified Gamecube.

Yeah, sony - you failed at upkeep of the situation - I just want to play Portal 2 online/ on my PC, but no I can't. Nice one. Also, can has unlimited free stuff on PSN as compensation? Thanks.

Long time, no read...

Yeah, life has been CHAOS these last few days, and I've not really had chance to update the blog. Stuff that's happened these last few weeks include: Exams, More Exams, Mock exams, Homework, Coursework, Asking someone to the prom, More homework, Revising for tests, Getting turned down after asking someone to the prom and endless Guitar playing. I'm in a band now.

So yeah, not the best of times, but on the bright side - birthday soon, which means almost certainly HDPVR soon. Gameplays and stuff will be uploaded and good times will be had by all.
Until then, I'm keeping this blog full of my life stories that nobody cares about. Probably.

In all honesty...

Halo Reach and Black Ops aren't that bad. I know I'm one of those people who gets all nostalgic, coming out with the "Halo 1/2/3 was better" or "Modern Warfare 1 is better than all the newer CoD games combined" but to be perfectly honest, there's nothing wrong with any of the games. They're just not quite as fun for me as their predecessors. Particularly Halo Reach - I loved bungie's approach to Halo 3 - 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' but they've fixed the thing that wasn't broken in Halo Reach, leading to Armour abilities (nice idea, but very flawed) Loadouts (ruined the rush for power weapons) and all the other ZOMG IZ REALISTIC features, i.e. reticule bloom and stuff.
Black Ops is a huge fail though. They tried to balance it, and they removed all CoD's character. It might technically be one of the best, but it's sure as hell not as fun to play as the others. I'm not taking it out on treyarch though - to be fair, they had an old engine to make the game with, and their Activision overlords probably rushed them to complete some things, hence why there were a few bugs when the game came out, and why there still are some.

Also, I've been playing Reach whilst writing this, and it's not that bad at all. Halo 3, no it isn't. But a fun game? I think so. It's just that DAMN ARMOUR LOCK. And the odd bit of lag, but that's it. 36-5 on my first game back in a game of standard Slayer (team deathmatch) and that was out of the 50 kills we needed to win. The icing on the cake? We were against try-hard 'Legends' (incredibly high rank) so go figure :P

Angry Birds dev - "Console games are dying"

And you know what? I think they're right.

There's very few good console game series-es at the moment - a lot of them are being overdone. The obvious ones being Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, FiFa (in fact, all the sports games) and the shovelware on each console. Sadly, these crappy games can put people off buying new ones, especially at 40-50 quid a go. Look at the other side of things, small games like Angry Birds that's addictive and is endlessly replayable (I think) is a fraction of that price, and those micro-transactions are what's making money at the moment.
And the new properties that aren't call of duty remain relatively small scale, so developers don't stick with them.

The moral of the story? Buy Homefront.

The recent tragedies in Japan and New Zealand

My thoughts go out to everyone affected by these tragic events in New Zealand and more recently Japan.

Just a quick update to show my support.

The calm before the storm...

Well, there's no storm, but I'm apologising for the distinct lack of posts this week. Sorry - School takes priority and it has essentially been the apocalypse.
All should be back to normal soon, and I have a Ratchet and Clank playthrough up on my channel (phantomarcade) on Youtube.

40th post!

Yes, arbitrary milestone achieved!
Sorry about missing a few updates. I'm having a lot of exams at school and it's getting difficult to update with large-ish posts every day, though I am running out of good stuff to say.

In other news, I played a 3DS. The console's great, though the 3D made me vomit. Do not like.
If you're getting one, I wouldn't advise prolonged use of the 3D function...

We've been Trolled, We've been trolled, though you've probably been told....

Well, FindMakarov.com was the Modern Warfare 3 reveal we've been waiting for! Lol, Just Kidding. It was a fan film, which has to be the biggest disappointment in videogame history. Well, aside from Black Ops, Halo Reach, Modern Warfare 2's poor multiplayer, Haze, Playstation Home, Super Mario Galaxy, Sonic Unleashed and the PSPgo.

Haters going to hate, though I did exaggerate that list quite a bit...
Anyways, I thought I'd talk to you about stuff today, but I've forgot said stuff.

...This is awkward.


Oh yes, I remember now - Battlefield 3 looks better than life. Seriously, it's like all super highly detailed graphically, and the Frostbite 2 engine looks sweet. In that you can destroy full building and also only take chips off things as well. Realism to the max.

Though I'm not saying realism is great in videogames, but Battlefield 3 looks like it really is going to be amazing because of the destruction engine. And the general epic scale of the wars that'll be going on.

In other news also, I'm doing a bit more writing over on the ONM forums, which I'll post here at some point...

100 views hit!

Okay, it's practically nothing, but thanks to everyone who reads the stuff I'm putting. I'm convincing myself it's worth it, and hopefully it'll be paying off soon :)

The funny thing is that most people couldn't give a damn about what I have to say in real life, so 100 views is good, considering that.

Please also try and get your friends to read this as well - I'm not good at getting views but it'd be really cool if people started viewing this more often and commenting on what I'm putting. I generally am quite rejected by most, and I hope that by doing this blog, people might listen to what I have to say...

Again, thanks for keeping up with this, if you're a regular viewer :)

Modern Warfare 3 countdown site (findmakarov.com)

So, people have found a MW3 countdown, they think. Activision denies all knowledge of this site being legitimate, but I'm actually thinking it is real.

It comes out on the exact same day as the PS3/PC launch of Map Pack 1 on Black Ops - I believe that, given Infinity Ward's past performance with undermining Treyarch (e.g. the trailer for MW2 coming out on the same day as W@W Map Pack 3's trailer or something) so it seems to be a bit plausible...

Oh well, we'll all find out on Wednesday. To be perfectly honest, I really hope it is a Modern Warfare 3 reveal - as good as the cold war may have been as a setting, Black Ops made it really quite boring, and built the entire game on an outdated engine, otherwise it would have been pretty good.

Under reconstruction...

Imma fixin' ma blog and shtuff.

Bear with me, it'll look cool when it's done...

2012 - The actual end of the world? Nope.

2012 - The metaphorical end of the world? Possibly.

Look, we're in a massive recession, and there's so much stuff going off at the moment in the world, that it's likely something drastic will happen. Like WW2 - that changed people's lives, and the entire world pretty much, in how it works and stuff.

Which leads me to wonder, the mayans have supposedly predicted a lot of things, and they've been true, in a fashion such as the "web covering the world"/internet prediction. It's not exact, but it's pretty accurate in terms of the representation - Prehaps the 2012 theory is that something world-changing will happen, AKA - the end of the world as we know it.

What this is, I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure it's not the actual end of the world, as in Earth, Kaboom, Oh noes - I think it'll be something like there'll be a massive shift in the economies, or at least that's what I hope - the only other thing that could be considered as a possibility is World War 3, which would be the end of the world...

Video rant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu-e929e2Rk
Black Ops sucks.

Alright, so I am posting today. Big deal.

The Government. What can't it do?

A lot of things, it seems. Cameron, and his sidekick Clegg have royally messed up the entire way the UK works, or will have by the end of their reign of terror.

Alright, so we're getting rid of our debts, by cutting education funding, Police funding, NHS funding. You know, that sort of stuff.
But let's look at that closer - Education doesn't have enough funding, people can't read or write. NHS doesn't have enough funding, people can't get treatment for potentially life threatening illnesses. Police funding is insufficent, well - that would potentially lead to understaffing, an increase of crime, all sorts.

Will the UK be a nice place to live if Cameron gets his way? Probably not. May I remind you that Thatcher was the last conservative to get control of the Government, and look what happened then. There's a million different reasons to not vote the Conservatives, and to be really honest, I'm pretty ashamed of the British public voting them in. Labour got a tough time over it, but did you really think that the Conservatives could do better?

I was actually pro Lib-dems before Clegg jumped ship and lost all credibility for his party. But now I support Labour. Yes, it looked like they messed up but to be quite honest, it's what we were left with. The conservatives would have failed in the same way, but if they were in then they'd have only made sure that the rich were richer and the poor had nothing.

Also, this was up yesterday. Meeting deadlines is easy.

If you want as well, just ask me to go on about this a bit more, there's inifinite crap I can say about the government behind their backs :P

Change of plan

I'm downgrading to one post every other day. I've not got that many page views (62 in two months is pretty poor, I think for a website I'm putting a lot into) and so I've decided it's not worth using all my material when I've got very few viewers.

That said, if I get that figure up to prehaps 100 a month, I might start with the once-a-day thing again. I'm finding it difficult to come up with stuff that's entertaining to read at the moment, so it's probably for the best...

Something a bit different

So yeah, guitar covers, yay or nay?
I've done a few anyways, but I'd just like to know what you'd all think to me doing a few of them.

Another short update again. Sorry about that, but the History dept. at my school were trolling - It was a day off today, but they brought me back for a session they said would run from 9 until 11. Try 9 until around half 2.

And so I went without lunch for a while which was not good. And to make matters worse, they sold out of Veggie patties at Subway.

[angry face]

Black Ops is a waste of money.

Seriously, if you're thinking about it - do not buy this piece of shit.

Treyarch have sucked all the fun out of the game, and the sniper rifles don't work at all. And there's hackers and spawn campers already.

Fix your shit, treyarch.

Playthroughs incoming!

So I've got a Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction playthrough coming up. I'll link when possible.

stay tuned :D

Holy invasion of privacy, BADMAN! What did I do to deserve this?!

Title is irrelevent. It's actually a PSP game, with a lulzy name.

Anyways, another short update because School has literally turned into a sweatshop, having only just applied for college and I've now got 40% of my music GCSE that I've barely started due in erm... Tomorrow.

Aw yeah, look at me being a badass.

But yeah, I've been playing some Racing games lately, like burnout and stuff because Call of Duty and FPSes in general are getting to be pretty damn boring...

But yeah, I might have some camera filmed live commentaries at some point - I'd rather use a capture card but I can't afford one... At least until I buy a HDPVR, that is.

Valentines day sucks for us.

Yeah, being single on Valentines day is a huge kick in the teeth. At least I didn't have to spend money buying anything, and so could put more money in my 3DS fund...

But anyways, I might do a bit more on that at a later date, because I have realised that some people do actually show some sort of affection through valentines day - and I'm not going to be bitter just because nobody's ever been like that with me, but shit happens, right?

What I'm going to say about today is the music business. Over industrialised to shit.

What I mean by that is if you keep track on current chart artists, you'll see that they churn out similar songs like there's no tommorrow, and so as a result, they earn a hell of a lot of money because of the gullible people that continuously buy this stuff in the form of a single, or itunes download. This means that for 20 songs at say 50p each, they'll get a tenner off you, for the same number of songs that might be on a £7 album.

Of course, all these numbers are arbitrary, but the point still stands - stop buying this crap! Support the proper artists, like Muse or Iron Maiden, who do one album like every 2-6 years, not months!
You'll notice you get more for your money, and you'll see that the songs are far better as well. It really does pain me to see that people don't support these bands as much, because they're so much better and more refined.

Anyways, I'm off for tonight, because I'm all sad that nobody sent me a valentines card.

In fact, I have no idea why I've never been anything other than single. That is something that really does baffle me... Still, on a lighter note, I'm off to play Pokemon cards and whatnot.

Updates

So, I'm doing gameplays and the odd machinima. Nothing really new here, I'm just trying to build tension for tomorrow's update on why Valentines day is such BS.
You'll have to visit tomorrow for that, but what I'd like to know is what sort of games you'd like to see some commentaries for.
I've got all but the PC, and mainly stuff like FPSes, but I'd like to do some games like Ratchet and Clank, or something along those lines...

Well, funny story...

I was going to surprise you all today with another video, but as it turns out, i'm having some problems with well, videoing the thing.
It was going to be a pokemon ruby gameplay (I.E. from the start to the end of the Elite 4) but i have no idea how to capture it without looking like a complete tool by filming my DS.
I've been encouraged by a few people to use Roms for it, but I'm a bit dubious because I don't know the legality of them, even though I own 2 copies of Pokemon Ruby...

Still, I'll have that up soon - sorry about that :S

New Video!

No text updates today (saving it for the 14th. Brace yourselves...) but here's a video, a couple of days early
Hitler hates Call of Duty
Enjoy :D

Why games are being run into the ground

Profits.

People like Microsoft and Activision who buy up all the best franchises, plug craploads of money into them and expect there to be a new one released every 3 months. And worst of all, we - the consumers - buy this shit. I'm sorry, yearly franchises such as Call of Duty are quite bad, since you only just get into the game and then suddenly there's a new one, but the real offenders are the Guitar Hero 'track packs' for full retail price.

If we didn't give Activision our money over poorly made games, we wouldn't get them - they'd be forced to actually take time and effort making these games, and we wouldn't have the half hearted efforts that we play day in and day out.

And as much as I'd hate to see it, Halo's likely going to end up this way as well, with Reach coming out last year, and another instalment due for this winter. But we'll still buy it because it has 'Halo' on the front, regardless of the game's actual quality.

Something needs to be done, or we'll have no more lasting franchises, just one off games coming out every other month that attempt to grab as much of our money as possible, and there'll be no decent games out, thus spelling the end for gaming as we know it.

The impossible... is easy.

One of my friends was talking today about the possibility of  Touch-Holographic Iphone (as in, you can touch the hologram) and this all pretty cool, but also pretty far off.

Or is it? Rewind 50 years ago, before colour was invented and you'd have been mad to think that by the early 2000's, we'd have High definition 3D TV's, mobile communication devices in the form of phones,  the internet and almost Photo-realistic games consoles, to name but a few. And that made me think - If they progressed from that to where we are now, where could we be in another 50 years' time?

We've gotten motion controlling and sensing videogames, 3D Tv's, even (Apparently) Honda have invented a hat that can drive your car through thought, and that's some pretty radical stuff there. Imagine this sort of technology matured over the next half a decade, and we could have some really crazy stuff. It wouldn't surprise me at all if everything became thought controlled, or something along those lines.

It'd certainly be pretty cool...

I miss the good old days...

You know, when all the good stuff was out. From when I was quite young, I remember Pokemon was all the rage. If you had a Level 75 Charizard, people bowed down to you and worshipped you because you were a fearless bastard. People took their gameboys and Link Cables (Thank God wireless was invented) to school and battled every spare minute they had.

Star wars was also huge - I remember especially the Lego kits that I still have, funnily enough. You could get some really crazy stuff, and I really wish I'd have gotten the Podracers (Lego, take a hint already) from Episode 1 because they were brilliant lego kits and they remind me of The Phantom Menace. Whilst it wasn't the best film ever, it had that 'something' that was present in a lot of things from when I was young that things today just don't have.

I think that's why everything seems so much better when you've got your sepia-tone glasses on, you remember things being so much better than they were. Beyblades, for example, were freaking amazing. They were simple spinning tops that you battled with, but if you had a good one you were a complete badass. You'd win matches, and walk around the playground as though you owned the place. And then there was the TV series, which you had to follow religiously in order to have any sort of respect. The same went for YuGiOh cards, as well.

Videogames were even a lot better in the late 90's/early 2k's - I remember stuff such as the Ratchet and Clank trilogy, Halo 1 and 2, Pokemon - All of these are among my favourite game series', but the one's I've said are my favourites, and are games I used to play a lot growing up. Is it a sign everything's becoming too profit driven and products are all 'me too' to try and push sales?

I definitely think so. Screw you, big businesses.

Rambo Granny pwns 4 robbers!

Alright, it wasn't exactly the most organised anti-crime operation, but that 70 year old woman had a lot of courage. I have no doubt at all that there are other cases in the world like this regularly, albeit not caught on camera or are just by 'normal' people. What I mean by 'normal' are sort of young/middle aged people who hekp in situations like this.

And I'm glad in a way that this has been brought to light - I doubt many people would look at 4 thugs, each with some form of weapon, attacking someone, or a shop and think to intervene because it'd be just too dangerous. We might all say that we could, but would we if that situation ever arose? Would be be able to make a snap decision to disregard our own safety for others?

I think the answer for most people is no, but for those people who say 'Yes' and have helped intervene in crimes such as this, I salute you. People like that make criminals feel unsafe - imagine if you were attempting a bank theft and every single person in the bank was an undercover police officer, ready to stop crime at an instant. You'd not do it if you knew, and people doing stuff like this might actually lower crime rates substantially.

It's an unusually serious post for me today, but it's something I think is a relatively important point to consider, especially in the big scheme of things...

Suddenly Zombies. Zombies Everywhere.

It's inevitable. Some point in the future, we will be overrun by hordes of cranium hungry corpses. This day, the zombie apocalypse (dubbed Z-Day by some) has already been predicted by the Mayans, Greek Mythology and Dolphins - it is therefore going to happen in the foreseeable future, and so should be prepared for.

And it's no secret that I already have a zombie plan. If you've seen Red vs Blue, you'll know they talk about their plans for when the zombie apocalypse happens, since it's an inevitable scenario. The zombies will appear seemingly out of nowhere, and before you know it, oh bother, they've eaten your brains.

To prevent this from ever happening, you need to devise your own Zombie plan. I'm not telling anyone mine quite yet, as anyone could hear it, turn into one of the undead, knowing about my plan and sabotage it. Let's just say it involves a jeep, a shotgun and an orbital ion cannon.

But anyways, the truth is that this is such a probable scenario, since there are so many accounts of it, and so preparation is in order. Hide your kids, hide your wife - that sort of stuff. It might also be as bad a time as when the world ended in the year 2000, because that was predicted to happen as well. Oh wait-

Yeah, the world's not going to end in 2012. Stop worrying yourselves over it.

Master plan phase 1 complete!

Ok, this isn't a plan to take over the world. I'm sorry guys, but I just don't have the spare time to do stuff like that.

Onto SRS BSNS, if you've been following me over the past few days, you'll know I've been having confidence problems and that I was getting it sorted. Well, I did today and for the first time in ages I feel great!It turns out that the root of it all was stress from school/people - once that was removed then I could actually feel myself becoming more positive. It's really weird, but it helped.

What I was going to use this post to do was give you all an update on what was going down in the next few months. I'm going to be doing a few machinima projects between now and the Summer, more likely towards the later ends of it because of exams and shizzle. It's only a short post today, for which I apologise but it's Sunday - I've got to have a break some day :P

If all has gone to plan...

It's Saturday now, right?

Greetings from last Thursday. Assuming this has worked - I have discovered the secret of time travel and am brining you information from the past...that you probably knew already. Because it happened like 2 days ago.

Anyhow, these last few days, I've been playing my guitar an awful lot. This is because it makes you look super awesome to girls and everyone will worship you as though you were a god.

Well, I exaggerated a bit - people just go "Nice" and then move on to showing off their pimped out HTC Desire phones (which is something else I don't understand, but I'll probably rant at that tomorrow) and worst of all they've all got (C)Rap on them and this makes me die a little inside.

Is it because the guitar is a dying instrument? I mean, Lemmy (Motorhead Bassist/Singer) once said that if you even held a guitar, you were automatically awesome, but nowadays it seems that everyone and their nan buys a guitar, learns a powerchord or two then claims they can play it. Which is why the Jonas Brothers think they're rock gods (They can play 3, which is 200% more than the average newbie guitarist)

I'm not claiming to be the worlds greatest guitarist - That honor is shared between Buckethead, Eddie Van Halen and Slash - but I'm not what you'd call bad at playing the thing. In about a Year and a Half I've gone from "H0W do3s Pl3h Sm0ak3 0N T3h W4T4r?" to Grade 5/6 ish so I'm half decent at it. One reason I can't play fast (I've always said) is because I have no strength in my hand because I am a walking skeleton. Seriously.

But I can play stuff like Muse songs, or Helicopter which are more fun to play than challenging. Supermassive Black Hole in particular - It's easy as heck to play, and it's more fun when you've got the drums going as well with it, or the bass or something. Which is one reason I'm pretty depressed about not having a band. Backing tracks are alright, but no match for a real band...

Anyways, I'd hate to end this on a downer, so Pandas.

Do you see what I did there?

If you're a regular viewer of my blog, you might have spotted a recurring theme. Mainly that I'm so pissed off with everything, and you would be correct. Mostly, anyways - I don't hate everything but the reason for this all of a sudden is that our school prom is coming up at the end of this year and to be quite fair, I'm really not looking forward to it.

And I'll tell you exactly why - I'm a loner. I'm uncool and the friends I do have either aren't going to the prom or are going with their other friends/ Girlfriends/Boyfriends/Pet Chimp and I'm not. What you're probably saying now is "What? But Matt, you're so awesome, you play guitar and are an awesome individual, why can't you find anyone to go with?!" (Well, you weren't - that's what I hoped you'd all say!) and the major reason for this is my lack of any sort of confidence.

It's this lack of confidence that means I actually can't ask the girl I like out to the prom, which is not fun at all. I know some people think they have confidence issues when they're in public, but mine's this horrible mix of no confidence and hideous paranoia. Every time someone looks at me, I think they're thinking how ugly I am, or how stupid I look, or something along those lines. I sit at the back of classrooms so that I'm not convinced people are watching me and judging me behind my back.

They most likely don't, but that's what I think. It's not fun, and I'm actively trying to get rid of all this, but now you know the reason I'm so negative about everything. Rest assured, if I do get 'cured' then I'll still be as critical as ever, just not confined to a computer - this is the only place I can speak my mind without getting really in-confident and shizzle.

Note: This is from yesterday, I'm starting to use the scheduling feature because I might not be able to update every single day...

[Rage]

Bad times, bad times.

So, I was going to have a rant about something but I decided to leave that until Valentines day. I don't hate St. Valentine (That's why it's (st.) valentine's day, right?) but I really think his day's really bad for many reasons, mostly because it's a huge kick in the teeth for all us single people - I might look like a troll with a disfigured face, but it doesn't mean I don't have feelings.

Anyways, I'm leaving that for now. What I wanted to rage at today is the sheer stupidity of people. I have Facebook, like the average person nowadays and I also have formspring and the amount of abuse I get from it, and the indirect attacks on other people is pretty ridiculous, really. Likewise on Youtube - I got the very first video of the Plasma Repeater glitch up, and there was a guy claiming his video was up first. Despite the fact that mine was clearly stated to be uploaded on the 14th, whereas his was on the 19th. He decided to spam an hack my account after this, hence the shift from CorruptedGaming to PhantomArcade.

But my real point is that it's pretty damn ridiculous, why are people this idiotic? There's many, many example of this, but I've experienced idiotic behaviour from others that many times that I could write a series of novels on it. One time was when this really idiotic woman in Gamestation decided that she wanted to buy DJ hero for her family, so she walked in front of me, purposely catching me with the box and telling her husband and son to stand in front of me also. I was having none of it, and walked to the counter and the amount of abuse I got was insane. She was swearing, threw the DJ hero box down a few time, threatened me once - I'm pretty sure she got thrown out afterwards but is it really that hard to queue up?! I can't understand why everyone always has to be first with everything.

That applies with loads of things, traffic is one of them, when people cut you up just to get one place ahead. They'll be, at best 5 seconds ahead of you, but oh no, it's really important that they push in. What annoys me even more are the bastards that drive down the wrong lane, and then stop and wait to turn into a congested lane to get to a certain place, like shopping centres, or football stadiums and shizzle. People like that should be left, and if you're reading this and ever find yourself in this situation, NEVER let them push in.

Arrogant bastards...

Also, whilst I've just thought of doing a video version of one of these rants, weekly or monthly or something - What do you all think? Let me know in the comments or something. Thanks :)

Music makes the world go round

Particularly in Games. Ascension came out this week, and with it the new Easter Egg song ("What, they're putting one into every map now?!") which I have to say kicks ass in every possible way.

It's not to everyone's taste, but why don't more games have this sort of music in there? There's a lot of people who like rock and metal, and they always seem to go well with games in montages, so why aren't they in the game usually?

There's games such as Halo that have somewhat orchestral music but with Halo that fits perfectly (and it also has one of my favourite scores of anything out there, at present).

All I don't want is for more games to go with the typical overrated pop tunes and rap shite that seems to be increasingly popular (To think this is all coming from the same race that created Metal, Rock and Pendulum*...)

Again, I'm keeping it short because my Physics teacher has decided to set us a shedload of work for tomorrow, and this is not fun. I'm dropping the subject ASAP...

*Pendulum kick so much ass that they deserve to have their own genre.

Youtube - Go watch some videos for great justice.

http://www.youtube.com/user/PhantomArcade
I know this is a really cheap way to fill my one post a day quota, but still - please go watch my videos on Youtube because I've got some Machinima on the way, and a few live commentaries.
Thanks :)

Black Ops: Ascension Map Pack is out [or should be]

Just testing the schedule feature. Also, nobody cares about the multiplayer maps - Zombies all the way.

Let me introduce myself.

Hi, I'm Matt. I'm a gamer, so I hate everything that moves, want to destroy everything, think I'm invincible, spend all my time playing Xbox, steal and am generally not a nice person. In my spare time, I also hang around in the dark, with a hoodie and a machete trying to scare off the locals.

Well, at least that's what the press will force you to think. I mean, videogames are huge at the moment, but do you really have to blame everything on them? If there's some sort of attack on a person, or insult or anything, The Daily Mail will just blame it on Gamers with no real thought. If there's a crime, Gamers were behind it. Gamers are the scurge of society, like shooting things and should be avoided at all costs. That's just not true, and it's about time the bastards realised the fact.

I play videogames to unwind, much like people watch soap operas (urgh) to escape from the real world for a few hours. It makes me no different a person for doing so. In fact, we did a study in Psychology the other day about Violent media and Aggression, and as it turns out, there's really no difference in Aggression levels and watching or playing violent stuff on your Xbox.

If anything, I reckon it makes you even less aggressive - people can exert their anger safely into the games, and relax much more than if they didn't, and had to keep the anger stored inside them. Even so, not all video games are violent, in fact very few are these days. Go look down the isles of any major game shop, and there'll be the usual violent games, and then there'll be shedloads of ones that aren't violent in the slightest. There's Call of Duty, and Halo, and Battlefield mainly, and these seem to clog up the headlines with how they're turning kids into murderers, and it's just not true. I've seen people be more violent after playing Mario Kart than a particularly tough round of Halo.

I could go on forever, but I'm going to end it there. Please, if you're anti-gamer and look down on us like the scum of the Earth - don't. And if you're from the Daily Mail - I wouldn't even use your newspaper to put out for my dog to relieve itself on.

KEEP TROLLIN TROLLIN TROLLIN TROLLING

Der Svine floo has subsided, and it's business as usual on here. [Disclaimer, I had slight depression, lack of sleep and a bad cold, not to mention a chest infection and stuff, not Swine Flu.]

I just saw a news report on Trolls on Youtube, courtesy of Fox News (Slow news day much) and It made me think about Trolling on The internets for a second, and then completely disregarded it. I mean, trolls are the equivalent of bullies, but unlike real life you can turn the computer off, or delete the comments. I know there are people who are affected by trolls, but it's often not as bad as IRL 'trolling'. I know this.

Besides, I think the hilarity of comments that the trolls say, and how the insults are thrown back can be quite funny, provided nobody takes it to heart, and besides - it's the internet, it's not SRSBSNS. I've been trolled before, and if you just ignore it and laugh at the trolls, you can have a bit of fun at the Troll's expense. It's a sort of good thing that it's turned into a meme of sorts, because you can apply TrollFace to most pictures for hilarity's sake and you'll get some pretty funny results.Speaking of which...

Aww yeh.

Also, shout out to Noodle Link for highlighting my Blogger/Thread on the ONM GAAW magazine, it's really appreciated and made my day :D

Why Muse are awesome

Well, other than the fact that they have some of the greatest songs known to mankind.

In particular, Matt Bellamy's guitar playing is something I've noticed - Songs like Plug in Baby or Feeling good are extremely catchy, but relatively easy to play for a moderately experienced guitarist, and like in my case, made me want to pick up a guitar and just learn the songs, and is much the same with the song's very catchy drum beats, courtesy of Dom, the band's Drummer. Same goes with Chris' Bass playing, but the Bass in most Muse songs is like OMGWTFDIFFICULTMUCH?!, Even if it does sound pretty amazing.

They've also got a great sense of humor as well, the most recent I remember being the 'protest' in which they all switched places when told they had to mime Uprising, in which they all basically took the piss, and was all very hilarious.

Also, If you're reading this, Muse (Lol, I bet - They've got much cooler things to do than look at obscure internet blogs) but I'm really looking forward to the next album you guys make.
Can has free tickets for live show now? ;)

Facebook is the root of all problems.

Just kidding, I love Facebook most of the time, except when everyone's liking each other statuses because they get the 'in jokes' then there's me posting extremely clever videogame references and theyre all "WTF is he on about?"

So yeah, aside from that, and the POS profiles (There's a reason I didn't apply the new profile when I was first asked, assholes) Facebook's alright. Just please stop cutting off half of the pages that people like, they're sometimes funny but you have to click on them to see the full thing, damn it.

The thing I do hate on the internet is Youtube. It's a video sharing website that does it's job, but does absolutely nothing to help up-and-coming channels, like mine. I've already posted a few reviews and gameplays, but non of them have been viewed over 10 times in the 3 months that they've been up (minus my Halo Wars Mega Bloks review that just hit 1k) and if you get flamed early on by trolls, it's unlikely you'll recover and so you have to make a new account (as I also had to do). It's also full of no good bastards who think they're better than you at everything. I got a kid saying "clip is shit" on all of my videos, one being a 20 second Search and Destroy round which is pretty good for me, so I went on his channel to return the favour, and he posts frigging 20 kills to 40 death games on Domination with no commentary - HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT I'M CRAP?!

But anyways, enough on that, Duke Nukem Forever got a release date this week, so whilst everyone's partying like it's 1999, I'm going to go and hide - I now owe a lot of people stuff.

Videogames are the root of all problems.

No, seriously.
Now, I am a gamer but I didn't intend to be. I started playing my Gameboy colour at a very young age, and it's sort of carried on since there. It reached a Peak (I think) when I got Halo 3 and I'd play for hours and hours on end. This, of course meant that whilst everyone else was out getting real life friends, I was boosting up my Xbox Live friends list, and killing the covenant.
This is one of many things which I blame for my lack of IRL skills and confidence and shizzle, but as you can tell, I'm not afraid to vent things onto the internet - such is the mind of a nerd.

I don't quite understand why I'm rejected by people in real life as much as I am, but I'm pretty sure it's something to do with the whole 'outsider groups' thing. My best friends are gamers, yet as I go into further years of Education, there's fewer and fewer gamers, since everyone's out getting drunk, or going to parties because they actually have friends.

My 'parties' are Xbox live ones, and as such I find all this really depressing, for one that I've probably got more Xbox friends than real ones. Another is that the majority of my somewhat friends have really close friends or even girlfriends (yeah, girls avoid me, no guesses why) and then there's me who just talks to people over the internet.

Even down to progress in other things like my guitar (I began learning in the hope that people would notice my existance more, they do slightly) or my exams, Videogames seem to have caused so much crap that they shouldn't be worth the hassle.

Damn you, videogames.

I have a blog.

Let the rants commence.