The Devil's Advocate

I recently discovered a blog titled JammieWearingFool. These guys usually have a lot of funny criticisms and articles about the state of the political world. However, today when I was perusing their latest posts I came across this:

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/12/oreilly-chugs-obama-kool-aid.html

This bullshit gets me so angry when people hate Obama so much that they instantly turn on anybody who has a positive thing to say about him. I posted a comment on that article which I've copied and published in this post. The thoughts that I expressed to them are the following:

I have to say I think you guys are being unfair to O'Reilly. He's not backtracking on anything. He has never slobbered over Obama. What people tend to forget is that O'Reilly is an Independent, not a standard bearer for militant Conservatism like Hannity or Mark Levin (both of whom I highly enjoy watching and listening to). As such he offers an Independent analysis of what's going on. Granted, he can be naive sometimes in his desire to be "fair and balanced", sometimes giving these people too much of the benefit of the doubt.

However, if you published the whole article and didn't selectively quote it to get your viewpoint across then people would see that what the article is really about is thanking Obama for being gracious enough, despite the White House's war on FNC, to invite O'Reilly. Being invited to the White House Christmas party is an honor no matter who the President is. Hell, even O'Reilly acknowledges in the article that he's surprised he was invited given the recent events.

I understand that to you guys Obama is the Antichrist. I don't like the fact that he's President anymore than you do. I think he and his hyper-Liberal cronies in Congress are destroying this country. But your eviscerating of O'Reilly for being a normal, rational person by accepting an invitation to a prestigious event is ridiculous. Saying a positive thing about Obama here or there does not a hypocrite make. Obama is a terrible President and extremely self-obsessed to be sure but he definitely comes off like one Hell of a charming, personable guy. Despite my intense ideological differences with him I sure as Hell wouldn't mind meeting him myself.

That doesn't make me a traitor to the Conservative cause and it doesn't mean all of a sudden I'm rooting for these people to be victorious. It means I have respect for the position of President of the United States no matter who it is.

By the by, anyone who wants to read O'Reilly's whole article and analyze it for themselves can find it here:

http://www.billoreilly.com/newslettercolumn;jsessionid=08CE4FF50FFA635391F3D9B17321046D?pid=28603

Double Take

A couple weeks ago I was perusing IGN for the latest video game news. I came across their list of the top 25 Xbox 360 games. Here it is if you want to check it out yourself:

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/104/1045042p1.html

Now as much as I enjoy reading IGN, I find myself disagreeing with a lot of their opinions and positions on certain things about games. Even so I was surprised at how many more than worthy games were excluded while there were several that, in my opinion, have no place anywhere near this list. So, combining some of IGN's top games and some of mine, I decided to come up with my own list of the top 25 Xbox 360 games...so far. I have to add "so far" because let us not forget that the 360 is still thriving and there's quite a large number of huge games that are coming out next year which could bump a lot of these games off this list in the future.

See what you think of my top 25 list compared to IGN's. Keep in mind that this is in no particular order:

• Mass Effect
• Gears of War
• Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 - Terrorist Hunts, combined with earning experience to rank up and unlock kickass guns and body armor for your character, give this game virtually infinite replayability.
  
• Dragon Age: Origins - Read about my obsession with this game in my previous post.
• Dead Space
• Resident Evil 5 - It's almost criminal that IGN omitted this game from their list. Not only is this one of the best Xbox 360 games available but it is also one of the best Resident Evil games ever made.
• The Darkness - One of the most emotionally affecting video games I've ever played. Rarely have I ever been so invested in a video game character's success and ultimate fate.
• Lost Planet
• Halo 3
• Gears of War 2 - Bigger set pieces and more variety in the campaign missions make this sequel bigger and badder than the original game. The only downside is that, in trying to improve the first game's horrendous story, the writers turned Dom into a whiny bitch and tried to force some awfully heavy handed emotional bullshit.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
• Lost Odyssey
• Prey - One of the most creative, mind boggling FPS's I've ever played.
  
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• Call of Duty 2 - The best World War II FPS that was ever made (I think).
• Halo 3: ODST - Firefight...'nuff said.
• Prince of Persia
• Batman: Arkham Asylum - Best superhero video game ever made.
• Fable 2 - Once again, how IGN left this game off their list is just baffling. It's one of the greatest action RPG's the gaming world has ever seen.
  
• Assassin's Creed - Honestly, I am not a fan of this game by any stretch of the imagination. I think it is a terrible game. However, there are a lot of people who lost their minds over how "amazing" they thought the game was and just because I personally don't like it doesn't mean that it's not an important game for the 360.
  
• Left 4 Dead - Yet another game that I'm not really a fan of. Still, the game pretty much revolutionized cooperative multiplayer. Plus you get to battle through the Zombie Apocalypse without being in any real danger and who in their right mind wouldn't want a piece of that?
  
• Bioshock - Played the demo but couldn't really get into it. The game does have a cool setting and the story is supposed to be pretty good. Critically acclaimed and loved by many means this game certainly earns it's place on the list.
• Borderlands - I haven't played this game yet but something tells me I'll be getting it for Christmas ::wink, wink:: Everything I hear about this game confirms my suspicions that it's basically an FPS version of Diablo 2 which means that it probably fucking rules.
  
• Fallout 3
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
  

The Game(s) of Life

Before the new year starts I am resolving to try and keep up with this blog a little bit more than I have in the past. As you can tell from reading there's looooong gaps of time between posts. It's probably Life's fault. Life just gets so damn busy and dominates my time.

Anyways, enough with excuses and onto what's what in my world.

One thing that Life has allowed time for is the discovery of mucho new music to listen to. My Pandora Internet Radio has introduce me to a lot of new bands I've never heard before and bands that I wrote off as major suckage but changed my mind once Pandora drilled them into my skull. Some examples that mayhaps will get you interested:

• Slayer (I was extremely anti-Slayer for years until Pandora showed me the error of my ways)
• Kent
• Gravenhurst
• Machine Head
• Nonpoint
• Primal Fear
• Karma to Burn
• Lyzanxia
• Nothingface
• Opeth
• Prong
• Placebo
• Queensryche
• The Fratellis
• The Kooks
• Thornley
• Hanzel und Gretyl
  

It's been a crazy fall/winter video game season this year. Four games in particular have been eating away at my free time since September.

It started with Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's certainly the best superhero video game ever made but I have serious doubts as to whether it beats out The Darkness as the best comic book video game. The Darkness, to me, was much more than just a video game. It was an action packed, emotional roller coaster ride that still sticks with me to this day. Still Arkham Asylum is certainly no slouch. Batman is a badass right off the bat. There's none of the usual watered down hero bullshit that most games would make you slog through before you finally grind away long enough to get the powers you should already have. Instead, Batman's skills are refined as you progress through the story. You earn new gadgets and combos to string onto your already impressive move set. Plus the Riddler's puzzles will keep you playing long after the story is actually over as you scour over every inch of the island trying to solve his devious mysteries.

Hours, maybe even days, of my life have been sunk into Halo 3: ODST's campaign and Firefight mode. Firefight's addictive gameplay grabs your virtual self by the throat and never lets go. After each match I'm always ready to go at the Covenant horde again, chomping at the bit to beat my score in the last battle. Firefight is fast paced, intense, and very nearly irresistible.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a game that I waited two years for. I have to admit that I was extremely underwhelmed by the game at first. Maybe it was the long incubation of my anticipation and the major expectations I had. It was not long before I was doing the mea culpa because this game is simply amazing. There is nothing more adequate that I could possibly say to get my point across. The online multiplayer is better implemented than the first Modern Warfare (who knew this was even possible) with tons more weapons, perks, and rewards as your online persona progresses. And the co-op Spec Ops missions are the best thing to ever happen to the Call of Duty franchise. Every mission is different and challenging, taking your FPS skills and reflexes to the limit.

Finally, the game that I'm currently frittering away my hours with, there's Dragon Age: Origins. This game may just be the definitive Western RPG. BioWare has made some of the best RPGs of our time with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect so it's really little wonder that Dragon Age is as fantastic as it is. I'm not even halfway through my first playthrough and I'm already thinking about what my next character is going to be. That is the beauty of having multiple origins for each of the different races. BioWare has given players the ultimate incentive to play their game over and over and over again. The world is expansive (to say the least). The lore and history of the world of Fereldan is fascinating. Your Codex is constantly being updated with the legends and historical backdrop behind your current quest to save the world.

Naturally Life steps in to make sure that I'm not playing games 24/7. There's spending 40+ hours a week at work trying to make as much money as I possibly can. There's the rigors of having a new puppy. And then there's keeping up with this blog. Most of the time (as you can see) the blog gets pushed to the back time and again.

I've been watching tons of movies since discovering the magic of Redbox. Renting movies for $1 a night is probably the greatest thing to happen to my movie watching life...ever. But this post has gone on for way too long and if you've made it this far I applaud you. I seriously doubt that by this point you're interested in the movies I've been watching and you probably just want the damn post to end. Honestly, I'm surprised Life has allowed me to go on for this long.

So that's that. Like I said all the way at the beginning: I'll try to keep the updates more consistent.

Not that you readers care because you don't exist!

Who the Hell am I talking to?!?!