I am going to start focusing pretty much all my time on Giantbomb.com

The site is getting better each day and I am tired of getting spammed and ad-attacked by gamespot. If you want to add me username is Kaylila or you can leave your username here and I will add you. Thanks, talk to ya later...

Topic Title has nothing to do with this blog...

This past week has been a busy time for gaming. Lots has happened that changed what I thought I was going to be doing. To start off the week, on Monday I purchased Fallout 3. It is my first time to every really play an RPG. I have never been the type of gamer to get into this type of game. Having to have long conversations, open-worldness, stat points, good karma/bad karma, etc. However at least three of my friends have this game and have told me how great it is and I decided if I am going to play an RPG it might as well be the one that almost won GotY. I have moved slowly on the game thus far, mainly because I cannot decided what kind of person I want to be. Good, bad, neutral and so on.

The other thing that has delayed me playing of Fallout is that Tuesday the highly anticipated Gears of War 2 update/patch was released. Not only did it reduce the number of glitches in the game immensely (though my friends and I have still came across a few) the update corrected the aiming ability of both the Gnasher Shotgun and Boomshot. Prior to the update both weapons were fairly hit or miss, even with a steady aim. Not to mention if you blind fired either weapon you had better be trying to kill those ants that were on your shoelaces, because the was a more than 70% chance that your bullet was hitting your toes. With these main weapons fixed you would not believe the way the game has changed, especially multiplayer. Along with the update came new achievements.

The new achievements are based around the two map packs, flashback and combustible. The flashback maps came with the purchase of GoW2 if you bought the game new and the Combustible came for 800 Microsoft pts in the marketplace. Despite what EPIC claimed, the flashback maps are now available in to Marketplace for 500 ms pts. I have both map packs, and I have already gotten all the new achievements excepts one: Annex, Now with Execution Rules. You have to win an annex match at every map in both packs, in public matches. This leaves a lot of it up to chance. There is no way to "only" play annex and so you are forced to play other game types if at any time you are out voted. As of now I have won an Annex match at 2 of the Combustible Maps and 2 of the Flashback Maps. This leaves me with 4 more maps that I must win at. Flood, Tyro Station, Subway, Canals. Those are the maps I need.

I will be playing GoW2 every day until I get that achievement, and everyday after. I need to get back to Fallout 3 but I have a hard time leaving Gears. Not to mention, skate 2 is out now. I really want that game. I loved the first skate game, even though I wasn't the greatest. But I was able to beat the career mode without any help. That's always fun. Plus I get to see Rob & Big in the game. In skate the original, you only saw them for one challenge. I think I saw somewhere that you get to see them a lot more in skate 2.

So yea, busy week in games, plus I have school this week. *Sigh* Why do they make me go to school? They get paid a lot of money, they don't need me there... they are lucky I need to get an education so that one day I can make the big bucks.

The other day I had a conversation with a friend of mine about a topic that probably isn't talked about enough by people my age. It was about a question of faith. At first I was hesitant to continue with the subject because most know the adage that there are two things you never talk about with a person that you want to keep as a friend: Politics and Religion. The conversation ensued because my friend made an off-hand remark that God had his back. On any other day I would have chuckled and continued with whatever I was doing but instead I laughingly asked, "When was the last time you went to church?" I was met with the standard remark that you don't have to go to church to believe and that's when the conversation took a more serious turn.

As some may know, I am on a collegiate debate team here at UofL. Debate has taught me to predict answers and see every situation clearly from both sides. Sadly I think sometimes that my quest for knowledge and always being on the "winning" side of an argument has corrupted me. That sounds horrible, but I am going to explain: For one to believe and have faith in God there are certain patented statements that then become part of the vocabulary. For instance, in the conversation with my friend I asked if God cares and loves us then why are some peoples life filled with pain, tragedy, and handicaps? I was met with the same answer that my mother told me one day after church when I was young; The Lord works in mysterious ways. As a debater, or even a person who relies on logic how can that be the most persuasive argument that the big Bible could come up with. Then again, the debater in me looks past that and tries to come up with a better answer and I then think about how the bible says that life is going to be rough, especially for those who believe and that God himself brought hardships upon his disciples so that they could overcome and by doing so they showed their love to him.

While it wasn't said in our conversation it did occur in my head and so I continued the questioning, my immediate follow up that I have heard from many non-believers: How can you believe in a God that will not let a good person into heaven if they were not saved? Soon after saying the question I attempted to mitigate the conversation. I didn't want to force my friend into answer, I think it's a great thing that they believe. I wish I had that. I heard once that the difference in believing and having faith is more than people realize. Belief mean that to you it is true based on some sort of evidence that you are aware of while faith implies that one has been presented with the evidence that does not support their faith but they choose to stay true.

A few years ago I was at a Christian retreat and I heard a speaker bring up this passage. I felt then as I do now that it really applies to me...Romans 7:14-21

"For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin."

While some may say that Gamespot isn't exactly the forum to post blogs of this nature I will explain why I did. The main reason was that as I said that more people need to talk about this and here on Gamespot there is a certain level of anonymity that each user is able to uphold. I know I do not directly as a question in the blog but if you think you have anything to comment on feel free to do so.

ps: Bonus points to whoever looks up the passage mentioned in the title.