Halo 2...what gives?

I love first person shooters. I always have and I probably always will. To name some of my all time favorites... Any Doom, Wolfenstein original or return, Unreal Tournament, Tribes 2, Half life, and yes I do enjoy a good game of Halo. I just do not get what everybody LOVES about it. So I am gonna try and rationalize publicly and maybe you can help me figure it out.

FPS Point #1 - Graphics
Halo does have very breathtaking and immense landscapes that are excellently weathered and interactive. Flat out though there are more graphicly pleasing games. Doom 3 and in my opinon Tribes Vengeance have as good if not better landscapes and artistry. While the Xbox is a powerful machine it cannot compete with a well built gaming PC. Period.

FPS Point #2 - Gameplay
This might be one of three big strong points I give Halo. I personally prefer a faster movement game but the types of play and the available control setups allow very welcoming Gameplay advantages. The contorls are solid and intuitiv. Meaning that I oftn find non gamers willing to try it out and they can quickly pick it up. It is important to point out that just because it is easier by no means makes it better. IMHO the merefact that it is a consol and not a PC game prevents a large degree of control from being attained without delving into annoying menu (that is not the case in Halo...but just of consoles in general)

FPS Point #3 - Weapons
The only gun in the entire game that really piqued my curiosity was the needler, and it had semingly limited usefulness. The cliche sniper, pistol and machine gun (and the covenent counterparts) just didnt really get me interested in th advantages and disadvantages of using the different guns. In most cases on was as good as any other although I did build a preference towards the green pistol whatever it is called. Other games beat it hands down in weapon selection. I mean comeon you can use a chainsaw to kill satan spawn in Doom. Now that's fun. :-D There were just very few sections in the game that I was like..that type of enemy would really be better countered with such and such weapon. It was just shoot everything that moves with whatever gun you might have at the moment most of the time.

FPS POint #4 - Multiplayer
Okay this one is a two fold situation. Relative to other CONSOLE fps games this gam was the ONLY real choice. In the overall realm of FPS Halo just did not amaze me with its multiplayer features. Sure XBOX liv will make it better but that costs money..on top of the console and the game itself. Unreal Tournament and Counter Strik would definetly beat it as far as overall lan arrangments. And my personal Fav Tribes 2 and now Tribes Vengenace easily are on par with the online multiplayer.

FPS Point #5 - Plot and Soundtrack
I tied these two together ncause they often go hand in hand. I will give this area of Halo credit for providing an intriguing story line and amazing music. It may have gotten a little tired at the end with the flood, the covenent, and the drones but it was still good nvertheless. I am not sayign it has a Blizzard quality plot but it had a certain appeal.

So those are my opinons and it could be that I am the only one that thinks that. I enjoyed the game but I just do not see how it developed such a cult following. My advice to the average Halo player... buy a nice gaming PC and play yourself some Doom, UT, Half life, or Tribes. Then tell me if the little vehicles in Halo really do it for ya as much or if the multiplayer is as cool. Relative Deprivation is an all to uncommon situation. It is easy to be satisfied with ramen if you havent ever had some nice homemade soup. You shoudl be upset at some of the things that Halo lacks and maybe us PC gamers shoudl take a hint and stop making our games so hard to learn to play.

BTW this whole topic was because I read an article today saying that sales for Halo 2 are expected to exceed the opening day yields of Spider-Man 2 which holds the current record for opening day sales. Albeit the average price of XBOX games would only require 1 million people to buy the game while obtaining the same numbrs through average movie ticket prices would need 6.8 million consumers. Video Games are awesome!!

I am out

Republicans have the ball....What now?

The general concensus from the elections seems to be that most people made their decisions based on moral basis than the traditional economic and security based platforms of past. To me, this means that people cared a lot about whether or not gays have the right to obtain government approved unions, what the right thing to do about stem cell research, and abortion. But, the public wasn't too concerned about Economic policies, Social Security Reform, and Tax reform.

I have been advised to keep these posts short. In light of that I will try and discuss in small sections.

So let's look at Gays having the right to join in civil unions. I often here about the religious factor. That is fine and I will not even include my opinon on the religious views. Partly because I do not want to come under fire from either side of the topic, but mostly because it has noting to do with the GOVERNMENT involvement in the matter. I have a solution...

The basic problem is that heterosexuals do not want homosexuals to be able to engage in the same unions as them. So here is what we do. First, we will say that there are now to unions recognized by the government: Marriage and Hilarriage. Marriage will be solely for us straight folks and will not be allowed to get Hilarried. But the gay community will have Hilarriage and will not be able to get Married. Both unions woul dhave equivolent tax, adoption, insurance, and any other type of benefit that is realized from marriage. I personally think gays should be able to so whatever the heck they want to. But if we want to try and satisfy the more conservatives, this might be a step towards a solution. If nothing else they might see how ridiculous of an idea it is and realize they too are being ridiculous and drop the whole conflict.

SO there you have it....Marriage and Hilarriage. It is a new era people.

More to come... (ots. I just had a thought about marginal product of fat in measuring intelligence of scientists...I am thinking a quadratic correlation exists)

I am out

Confused Celebrities Part I: Destiny's Child

I think Destiny's Child was born retarded...ya know with one eyeball looking at the doctor the other just kind a roling aimlessly around...drooling obscenely...etc. While that might not be entirely true I have just gotten frustrated with how cookie cutter things have become in the Hip-Hop industry. It used to be that only Pop was labeled as the watered down mass-produced genre but now I think there is a special section in the aisle of crappy music just for certain rap artists.

Today I was driving to do some work and being that I was in Newport News now and not Farmville (home of the soul and conutry radio stations), I figured I would partake in some of the different radio stations we have in "Bad Newz." Well I started listening to a song I could only assume was entitled soldier and as I listened to the lyrics I could swear that it sounded like Beyonce....but it couldn't possibly be her with her sidekicks. They were singing about needing a "soldier" that "would stand up for them." This certainly didn't sound like the "Independent Women" or "Survivors" that I remembered from High school.

I got online and looked for the lyrics. Apparently becoming super rich as in the case of Beyonce and to a lesser degree her counterparts these people have somehow become more dependent. As an economics major...I take that back.....as an averagely intelligent human being I could fairly easily decide that didn't make any sense. I compared further...

Some obvious errors in logic are as follows:

1. While the girls of Destiny's child supply their own "rocks" which I assume to be jewels or diamonds they apparently need a man that knows how to get "dough."

2. "Depend on noone else to give you what you want" unless you can find a "soldier" who "wanna take care of you"

3. Basically it is good indpendent unless the market data says gangsta loving girls boosts sales.

One could argue that by portraying thug dependent women they are actually becoming more independent. Still it bothers me that bands change images or ideals especially a band that seemed to be so universally goodie goodie took the red pill and is tumbling down the rabbit hole of fake gangsta mediocrity.

Maybe I have too high of expectations for pop artists or rap artists. My friend would tell me that this is probably just the first of many posts where i continue to "excel" at pointing outothers faults. Oh well that is what a blog is for right? BTW if you love Beyonce or Destiny's Child please feel free to love it so much that you get married to it. (Stupid elementary joke)

I am out...

First Post

This is just a test post. But I will tell you all that I am a student of Economics at Longwood University. I am 21 and I have lived in Virginia my whole life. Hopefully this will become an interesting place to visit. Or it could become a boring place that I never use. Who knows?