Alright, haven't made a post in a long time so lets get this started. Been crazy busy recently. Why is that? Well I currently play in three bands and go to school full time, so life is hectic. I'll post some links anyone who happens to still swing by my blog can take a looksie. Other than that nothing new or exciting on my end of things, but I do have some opinions on some recent happenings int he game industry I felt I had to talk about.

First on the agenda

Borderlands

I have been cheering this game on since I first heard about it. I said this over and over again but it finally looked like the game that would truly deliver on blending the action and feel of an FPS with the elements and skill building of n RPG, something that hasn't been done successfully dues Ex and System Shock 2. Although both of those games are fantastic in their own right and innovative for their time they still have aged good deal and aren't perfect (on a side note if you havne't played these games they should run on any hunk of junk for a computer you have so go give em a try, classics). So what do i think of this game? Well lets break this down in an old timey fashion int he spirit of the blog title.

The Good- Borderlands did it! Gearbox achieved what developers have tried and failed to do. Fallout 3 didn't quit nail it. Hellgate london fumbled the ball (still really fun in my opinion despite the hate) and Huxley got really really really damn close but still fell just short of a touchdown. Borderlands IS and FPS. No doubt about it. You crouch you jump you run you aim you shoot, just like any other FPS. Howevever, you find diablo style loot. You level your character. You equip and manage skills and items. they nailed that fine line that blends the two together so beautifully. I feel like I am playing a Diablo style mod for some crazy sci fi shooter. However, it is a mod created by one of the best development teams in the land. We are talking the guys behind Half Life opposing force, the awesome Brothers in Arms series, and more.I absolutely love this game. However, all is not perfect in borderland... town.. er... moving on

The Bad- It has a few issues. The most obvious being the fact that this game is very much a console port, which is kind of a surprise and a disapointment seeing as gearbox has sort of always been a PC developer. at least that is how i thought of them. Youcan't scroll menus with mouse wheels or arrow keys. The equiping of guns felt wierd as it wasn't a drag and drop or clikc and drop so much as a sort of click and select a slot. Which works fine but usually it pans out different graphically. I even have to use my pgup and pgdwn keys to scroll through quest text! (whos stupid idea was that?) Most of these things aren't too major but the wierd sensativity issues with the mouse (super high in game despite being normal in menus) and all the little UI issues do hamper the experience and the Co-op can't be beat. However, the game is still fun.... except for one little detail.

The Ugly- Multiplayer doesn't work. End of story. It didn't work. There ha been no patch. No real official answer. Jsut a list of fixes recognized by the developers. These are the same guys that rediculed Valve for ignoring the PS3 (which i kind of agree with their statement but thats another issue and story all together) and they seem to be doing the same to the PC version of Borderlands. 360 and PS3 are getting a patch to fix the bugs and multiplayer issues... WHERE THE HELL IS OURS! Basically the issue is you can't host games. You have to go in and forward a bunch of ports which is a huge hassle and not a lot of people have any idea how to do that and even though i tried and did a tutorial it kept knocking out my internet connection and I gave up. Using Gamespy for your matchmaking is a big mistake. Gamespy kind of sucks, just sayin'. On top of that we have desktop crashes and oh so many other little glaring issues. Luckily LAN works like a dreama nd most my friends game on laptops but that doesn't mean they have an excuse for basically handing out a broken game when their was such a heavy emphasis on it. It is kind of old news and isn't too hard to fix (as more fixes were found it became easier and easier) but the fact that we feel neglected still stands and they should have made sure their system worked before handing it over to the public. Regardless it still gets a reccomendation from me.

Second

Call Of duty Modern Warfare 2- The dedicated server that couldn't

I don't know if you heard or even care but MW2 is basically getting completely boned on the PC. Dedicated servers and server browsers letting you pick and chose your where you play, the ability to host your own server ruinning your chosen set of admin tools for policing hackers and griefers that can ruin other peoples fun, the ability to mods that can raise player counts and change the nature of the game, custom map hosting, everything that makes PC gaming my chosen platform and in my humlbe opinion a superior gaming paltform, GONE!

Instead IW has chosen to give us IW.net. A shoting service aking to exactly what you have on the consoles. You limit max player counts, you force us to have player hosted matches (which is a f'ing TERRIBLE system) You force us to play within your system and you take away the experience that makes PC gamers choose their platform. I didn't plan on buying MW2, it looks like a great game but I rather get Bad Company 2 (cacuse one was great and 2 looks amazingly more awesome!) Now, with this whole mess not only will i refuse to buy the game on my PS3. I definitely wont go for what should have been the cheaper PC alternative (ya, they hiked the price on that too from what i understand) and i encourage those who were thinking of buying the PC version not too. The only good thing that really comes out of this is less work on infinity wards end (they just basically port the console system to the pc rather than making a whole new system for dedicated servers) and they can control custom content. WE wont get custom maps we will only be force fed DC. Not that I'm against DC and maps i can't stand for someone basically pissing all over how PC gamers do things without any care for how we would feel about the situation, it will still sell millions.....

Also, what about LAN play. Will we have to login to your little network if we want to play over a lan? What if there is no internet, which is a common thing at LAN parties, especially ones of considerable size. Infinity WArd and activision, you have officially pissed off a majority of the PC gaming community and honestly I hope it comes back to bite you. If this is a success we could see much mroe of it and the way I and other PC gamers choose to play our games could begint o slowly change, and i wouldn't say it is for the better.

Finally the third item ont he list.

Demons' Souls

This game is hard. No no no, really. It is really really hard. However, fun! Crazy amounts of fun, but still really frustrating. With that said. Go rent it because its amazing...ly difficult... and fun! But still really really hard....

On a final note here are two of the bands I am currently a part of. Check em out if you got some spare time. Hoepfulyl it wont be months between posts

Gates of Eternity- Power Metal

AHTCK! (All Hail The Crimson King)- Modern.. um.. rock and metalish stuff.. just give ti a listen

WOW! It has been a LOOOOOONG time, even by my standards. So whats up internet. School started so everything has been very busy. Plus, I have been getting my hands into some new projects/hobbies the past couple of weeks. Let us kick this all off with some game related stuff.

First, I bought Fat Princess. I haven't played too much of it. It is quiet a lot of fun and I plan to get together with my buddies from the Syndicate. These are a great bunch of guys i teamed up with about the time Killzone 2 launched. On an additional note i have been playing through Ninja Gaiden Sigma from my gamefly list and i forgot how fun this game was. Last time i rented it i never got very far because a big release came out i just had to get but now that I have returned I am loving it. I miss games with grueling difficulties. What I love about it is that although its hard, it doesn't quiet seem unfair to me. It always feels like i can do better and eventually, I do. I find the experience extremely satisfying.

I also beat Quake 2 for like the 6th or 7th time, go me. If you don't know Quake 2 is pretty much my favorite shooter of all time. Why? I just think its damn fun. It is not terribly story heavy, yet still feals like you are progressing through a unvierse. Sort of like the original half life (but not quiet as amazing and deep) yout ake int he story and the universe simply by being there. Very little is told to you. You crash on the strogg planet during a massive assault and now as one of the few surviving Marines you must forge a bloody path to open up the planet to the main assault and eventually destroy the Strogg leader. I love it.

Champions Online has launched, and I have purchased the game. I loved City of Heroes, and for me, Champions is just a more advanced and sophisticated CoH like experience. I think the game is fantastic. Sadly I probably wont be able to renew my subscription since i am in between jobs at the moment but i have a new job lined up in the near future so here is to hoping i get hired and can continue to bring the beat down with my gunslinger bounty hunting bad ass of a super hero.

Last bullet point on gaming here. Direct2Drive is having a celebration for its 5th birthday. For the next 5 weeks they will be selling select games for only 5 dollars. if you have a computer that can run stuff you should go check it out. Some of the games are kinda old (X-Com pack of all the old X-com games) and some are more recent (Bioshock and Saints Row 2) but regardless there are some good deals in there. I personally picked up Saints Row because I only rented it and never got to finish it. To me Saints Row 2 was a fantastic little break from GTA IV and its... overly realistic atmosphere. Saints Row is over the top and just fun. However I need to get my ps3 controller hooked up because driving with the keyboard is not happening, at all.

Now, on to other important matters. As you guys probably remember I was talking abut a new guitar....

well hereis my new Schecter C-1 cla$$ic

I'm happy with it. Plays great, sounds great, feels great, looks great, how can I complain. I don't have much to say ont he gutiar itself but i can say this. I currently play in a band called Jigawatt. I play guitar and sing and thats all fine and dandy. Very ****c rock inspired metal. Now, I wanted something a little mroe modern. Let me introduce all of you to...... ALL HAIL THE CRIMSON KING! (AHTCK! for short) Now my real name is Darren but i am credited as Orlandun on there. It was a misunderstanding that is now a running joke I guess, haha. Regardless I think the songs on there are awesome. i am not playing on thsoe recordings but I will be on future recordings. WE plan to start doing shows in the LA area soon. Check us out and if you like us spread the word around. THE AHTCK HAS BEGUN!

Finaly, one last thing to add to the list. In a moment of weakness and good deals I bought the Black Reach starter set with my cousin (we weant half ad half) and for 25 bucks I got a starting army of Orks for Warhammer 40k. The past couple of weeks I have been painting nd for not really have painted before I'm quiet proud. I original primed them black but form what I am hearing i am gonna try priming in white and hopefully that will make things look a bit brighter and better where i want it too. Here is a couple shots of my handy work.

I am particularly proud of this Nobs head. The eyepiece and the highlights look awesome. I wanna try and see if i can get a more glass like effect on that targeter but other than that i think its going fairly well. I did add a teal color on his arms that i am using on my higher ranking Boyz to signify how bad ass they think they are, it actually looks really good but i haven't taken pics yet. If you guys want i can post more.

Well that's a nice update on what's going on with me. Also, I am going to start doing a blog on word press that should be updated more often. I plan to sort of link it up with AHTCK! but it will be about the same thing you see here. Me talking about random music and games but I won't feel as obligated to talk about just gaming related stuff. Thanks for reading guys. This blog isn't going away I will try and update both at the same time. You can see the new blog here.

Until next time, stay frosty!

Hellow all from the unforgiving desert heat of Vegas. I'm up here celbrating my 21st birthday and having a blast so far. My birthday isn't untill wed but we have a condo for a week through a timeshare so we are taking our time doing stuff. Speaking of birthday news I finally narrowed my guitar search down if you guys remember me showing you some of those. First is the les paul, and then there is a C-1 cla$$ic. Right now im mleaning towards the C-1.

Anyways, on to what you guys reall care about, GAMES!

So, on occasion i like to talk about some of the games i used to play when i was younger and this is, in my opinion, the king of nostalgic genres. The Adventure game. You have racing games, platformers, shooters, which people have nostalgic memories for but all those genres are still going strong. However ,the adventure games of old have nearly died out, only recently have they seen a revival with the new release of the monkey island games and the sequels of Same and Max. However to many people i know the king (hehe) of the genres has always been the Kings Quest series. I played the crap out of these games as a kid. As a kid, I found the games to be frustratingly hard. I have fairly vivid memories of Kings Quest 6 of me getting absolutely NOWHERE! However the one that rang the most for me the only one i actually ever got very far in and that was Kings Quest VII (gotta love that lucky number) and Space Quest VI. KQ VII was a bit different than other games in the series. The main difference was the art ****change. The game went from a more traditional ****to looking like something that came right out of Disney's animation studio. The game i think is a bit easier than kings quests of old in that things actually make a little more sense and your actually given hints about what the hell to doat every corner. However, you still hit frustrating walls of stupid. I can't use a stick to get he cheese out of the damn fountain, noooooo, i have to use a schepards crook..... The other one would be space quest. The misadventures of Roger Wilco, space janitor extroidinare. These games i always thought were hialrious. Particularly 4 and 6 being favorites. I think its 4, id have to look it up. Regardless these games were not just fun giatn puzzles but legit hilarious. You can get these games in multiple collections online and suggest all of you go out and give em a try. Now if youll excuse I must go get a mask to get into Arch Duke Yip Yap's birthday party.