The Assassin's Manifesto to Monday Night Combat

I once read a player class' manifesto somewhere on a Team Fortress 2 forum. I distinctly remember a more popular one than the one I googled. But nevertheless, I think there's a need for assassins everywhere on America's most popular death sport of the future that does not exist yet except in game form, to understand key principles and ideologies in order to truly be considered an assassin.

I present to you the assassin's manifesto.

Diary of a Video Noob Part Two: Recording, Editing, and Doing it Live

After about two days I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was one of those new-fangled HD channels uploading some quality content. I had all sorts of ideas I wanted to try so I could get noticed but of course it would not happen all at once.

Diary of a Video Noob Part One: Opening the Box and Settling In

After months of watching some great YouTube directors upload great video game plays and commentaries, I finally have my chance to try my hand at breaking into the video game play commentary racket thanks to the miracle of Christmas.

 Terrific. Terrific.

Black Ops War Journal: No, Ghost Doesn't Beat Motion Sensor

So it's been awhile since I last checked in on my blog. I need to come back more often I guess, so I'll come back with more casual updates such as what I'm playing recent games, and maybe an experiment in Indie Gaming Tonight!

Oh yeah, speaking of Indie Gaming Tonight! Christmas is coming up and I'm very interesting in investing in a HD PVR for myself. Then I can really make my YouTube account shine! Like real good commentaries, a revisit of my Street Fighter IV stuff but in HD and maybe commentaries as well. And to really make something special and regular, the concept of Indie Gaming Tonight! is to download a different indie game demo every week and go through the demo blind for as long as I can. Thinking about the set up, it'd probably benefit from a live commentary format.

Not Gonna Use That Ammo Box? I'll Take It.

If you're playing Black Ops as much as me, you've probably used the perk, Hardline. Hardline reduces the kill requirement for your killstreak reward by one. However, complete three perk specific challenges and you can use you CoD points to purchase the pro version, which adds the benefit of giving you the option to shuffle care package contents once.

Needless to say, it's always hilarious for me when I turn a mediocre spy plane or ammo box into an attack chopper, rolling thunder, or sometimes as you can see, the hefty 11 killstreak gunship.

From 4chan: Big Bombshell or Big Joke?

Straight up copypasta from the poster.

Casual Games Vs. Hardcore Games, Brought To You By 4chan

Leave it /v/ to figure things out in such a way that it's both informative and funny.

Serebii.net and They're Amazing Dream World Pokemon List.

Here. Go here.

It seems no matter how old I get, I'll always like Pokemon. Not like my sporadic interest in Halo or my wavering personality on SSFIV. There's always something I want to train, level, and create to be my next great contender, in theory anyways.

I thrive on theory craft and meta-game rules. I love seeing how the game-before-the-game pans out and seeing how it works in actual gameplay. Not everything has been translated since Black and White released in Japan, but Serebii amazingly has a seemingly fully compiled list of all the Dream World abilities the previous Pokemon of generation IV can get, and boy are there some interesting things that'll shake up the tiers. Here are my favorites.

Hitler Creates a Time-Paradox

Click for the original unless you want to be ironic or something.

My new favorite web comic: if Hitler were one of those goddamn hipsters. The Allies never stood a chance and neither did the Axis powers!

Hitler is totally into Pac-man and breaking the space-time continuum. Though somehow everyone knows what Pac-man is even though it's not supposed to exist for another 40 years. Who cares? It's vintage.

7 Awesome Things You Can Build in Minecraft

There is nothing quite like the satisfaction of building something. This object, which you have constructed, stands for all the effort, planning, and careful dexterity you mustered. There's nothing the wild creatures of Minecraft can do to destroy your precious architecture (except for maybe those goddamn exploding creepers).

Welcome to Minecraft: 6 Great Things About Getting Started

So you've seen people rave about this mysterious indie game and decided to take the $12 plunge. What is there to do and enjoy? Here are six things you'll eventually encounter that'll really get you to stick with the Minecraft experience.

I'm Missing Out on the Xbox Summer of Arcade

By itself, $15 doesn't  bother me too much. One Xbox arcade game is fine and dandy. But three games?

I know Limbo is good. The trial already told me that the atmosphere accomplished so much with only two shades and a lack of BGM. But I have to make economic decisions. I'm not interested at all in Tomb Raider and the last three seem to offer me a lot of bang for my buck. Hydro Thunder Hurricane, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, and Monday Night Combat.

Ok, so Hydro Thunder and Harmony of Despair have received sketchy reviews, but I am the target demographic those games cater to. I loved Hydro Thunder when it was a sit down arcade cabinet, complete with wheel and throttle with light up red button. I was proud of the fact that I knew how to select the secret boat, Tinytanic. I've loved pretty much every Castlevania since Symphony of the Night. Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia, all Castlevnia games I loved that weren't exactly very different from one another. And Monday Night Combat? Please, I've been following that since it's announcement. What was that? Two years ago? Finally, Team Fortress 2 but on a console and supported for by the developer post-launch (those guys on the Orange Box still don't have the Backburner I hear).

But $45? I'm struggling with this price tag. Even after receiving a solution, promised credit to Gamestop and Amazon, this credit has yet to appear before me to actually use (they're still enroute from shipping).

Until then, I'm either going to keep going back again and again to their trial demos or will stick with Blazblue: Continuum Shift.

Why I play who: Rufus

Anyone playing a fighting game to win comes to the point where they decide to stick with on particular character. Learning the intricacies of their main allows them the fun of one play style while also learning how to deal with unfavorable match ups. Instead of spreading your focus across several, hoping to counter pick, you focus on one to be proficient with and readily know how to play bad match ups.

Right now, I'm going to describe the reason for my choice in playing Rufus, one of the newer characters introduced in the Street Fighter IV saga, but has been around for a few years since arcade launch.

King Of Fighters XII embarrassingly marked down to $11 in Japan

Reported over at Kotaku, the game touted as a revival to classic fighting franchise, King of Fighters XII, has been marked down to ¥980 yen or $11 in US dollars. Even games a year old don't go down that harshly and KOFXII is barely three months out.

Blazblue: Continuum Shift intro revealed

The new intro to Blazblue: Continuum Shift has been unveiled--courtesy of intrepid arcade goers at nicovideo and someone who of course transferred it to YouTube. The high quality version is here but you need to have an account at the nicovideo.jp website (and it's in Japanese).

A number of things you get to see besides the attention to detail Arc System Works put into highlighting in the video:

• At 00:20 you see how Noel's drive, Chain Revolver has changed. Not only is it darker, but apparently the rumors that you can jump-cancel it are true.
• At 00:26 you see a new move from Litchi.
• At 00:47 you see one of Tsubaki's distortion drives (or super moves).
• At 00:58 you see an ominous glimpse of Hazama's astral heat (do want).

As you can tell, I'm dedicated fan and am glad to bring you this latest bit of news about the sequel. Hopefully the wait for the console release isn't too long.

How do they game in North Korea?

As both a citizen of the United States and a student journalist, I see North Korea as a mysterious black hole. Because of (the beloved) Kim Jong-Il and his authoritarian state, we know next to nothing about what goes on in there except: 1) they have nukes 2) the media is suppressed and 3) Kim Jong-Il starred in Team America.

Facebook's fun new disease, social gaming

Lately, a string of Facebook apps or flash games have been assaulting our friend feeds, taking up legitimate news of what our friends are doing with news like, "Katie has bought a tractor on Farm Ville," or "Michael just leveled up in Castle Age," or "Jonathan is playing some game, join too to do all sorts of crap."

I swore to myself I'd never join one of these "social" games, but when my girlfriend asked me to join Farm Ville, it was the first step to starting a new reason why I should open my laptop even if I was in the middle of class, because dammit, my blueberries are going to wither if I don't pick them on time!

Wasteland Profile: Naomi

Name: Naomi
Alignment: Evil
Wasteland Occupation: Enclave Double Agent

Lots of things influenced Naomi to become the way she was when she left the vault. Her friends were jerks, the adults seemed like hypocrite, and she slowly grew to hate the way how the vault felt so constrictive.
But when she left the vault for the first time and killed her first raider with the pistol she stole on her way out, she would change forever. She loved the sound of gun fire, the clang of profiting caps, and the lovely streak of red her enemies left on the asphalt. She wasn't necessarily evil though. She was just a bitch. A selfish, slightly psychopathic, bitch.
But then she got a plasma rifle from her new android friend (a former assassin as well) she found a new sensation: the smell of her enemies melting into goo.
She became obsessed with old technology. If it shot rays of light in the most dangerous spectrum, she was pullng the trigger. As she reveled more and more in the death and destruction she sewed for her enjoyment, she realized she'd grown accustomed to the taste of power.
And so she decided that if she had all the technology, all the power, all the infamy, she could single handedly judge the Capital Wasteland. The Enclave was a nuisance, and the Brotherhood of Steel was a do gooding boy scout, but she had earned their trust, and that would be her stepping stone to power. She'd wipe out the Enclave with their help, then quietly rise through the ranks of the Brotherhood in order to facilitate the spread of purified water which she infected with the forced evolution virus. It would not be President Eden or the Enclave who would inherit the would, but Naomi, the Devil incarnate.

A Transition from Console Gaming to Pc Gaming

In the past, PC gaming intimidated me. I have all these numbers and specs to keep track of and I need enough of these numbers in order for my game to run properly on my pc. These questions just didn't exist on console gaming.

But this semester, I took a computer engineering class that familiarized me with everything that a good employee working at Fry's Electronics would be familiar with. So a month ago or so, I finaly took the plunge and bought myself a 512MB AGP video card for my pc. Its pretty old, so yeah, I had to get AGP. But where am I now?

Well, I've finally gotten rid of that stupid fear of messing up my pc after opening it up. An open pc isn't like an open flesh wound. Besides from dust building up and overexerting yourself on things like slots, I've learned in class that there's usually nothing to worry about when your pc is opened up.

I've thouroughly enjoyed Team Fortress 2 as I've had it for year but couldn't play it before. Now, I have new found confidence in opening up my pc again someday to upgrade more compenents to play Left 4 Dead and so forth.

Current specs

• 2.7 Ghz Intel Pentium Processor
• 1.5GB RAM
• 512MB Nvidia 6300 AGP Card

Future goal

• 3 Ghz Processor, most likely Intel
• 2GB RAM
• A New motherboard to support...
  
• 1GB Video Card PCI-E Card
  

Norwegian King Refuses Name Change to Washed Up Video Game Mascot

via joystiq, among others

Norway; when I think of Norway, I think of vikings, not blue hedgehogs that seem uninterested in being in good games.

King Harold V refused to allow 6-year-old Christer to change his name to Sonic X. Certainly any sane figure of power would've refused such a naive 6-year-old request. Actually, the request to become a nerdy punching bag change his name never came to fruition because he wasn't considered an 18-year-old adult yet.

At least that gives him time to consider a new name when he grows up, like Nico Bellic or Chris Redfield.