you ranted 19 times without using the word 'squeegee.'

You know something? I hate achievements. I hate trophies. I hate them because they reward me for doing or finding little buried things inside a game, they push me to do things that I might not have thought of on my own, or even better, getting them while I'm just messing around in a game and unlock something on accident, then I scream a high pitched "EEEE!" in delight, and I can't wait to get the next one.

"EEEEEEEE!"

I hate them because I love them, some of you may understand what I mean, and might even know where I am going with this – and hats off to you, because I'm not entirely sure myself yet, but let's just see where this train takes us.

I see nothing wrong with this picture being taken out of contex.... oh.

On the minor points, as I said before, it's great that you can see this list of goals and things to do outside of the normal play, but I have a problem with them being listed out for me, games have a tendency to give out achievements/trophies for completing the game over the course of the story, which is fine. Some of them have clever titles that are silly, but still somehow sum it up in a few words. Whoever decided it would be a good idea to have these listed out BEFORE you've achieved them, and why everyone around them agreed is beyond me. You get a cliff notes version of the game and you risk spoiling plot points for yourself if you decide to check it out to see what you get if you collect the 8 billion shiny pebbles scattered throughout the game. I hate that, and it IS getting better, but still, this seems like a no-brainer, or maybe a little bit of brainer.

Pictured: Very little brain.

This one is more game specific and requires a bit of background first: I've let a good friend of mine move into my spare bedroom while he saves up some money and gets himself back on his feet… being a primarily (read: ONLY) single player gamer, I don't have much in the way of two or more player games, on top of that, he himself is the absolute definition of casual gamer as far as I'm concerned. He doesn't himself own any consoles, and to my recollection he has only had a PS2 in his possession once for about a month like 6 years ago. IF he games, it will be a current gen Madden game. Personally, I hate sports games, as I've no interest in them. The only sport I can even follow is Baseball, and even then I'm not thrilled with it. I just don't care and I doubt that I ever will. In any case, in an effort to cheer him up a bit as well as give us something to do, I went and bought Madden 2010 and an extra controller for my PS3. This was the second game I had ever purchased for my PS3, the first being Infamous, which I managed to get ALL the trophies for (something I'm quite proud of for inexplicable reasons beyond me being easily pleased and sating my need to see that 100%) I had decided at that point that I would not buy any more games for my ps3 until the current games were beaten, the idea being to not have a shameful backlog like on my 360. And PS2. And Gamecube. And Xbox. And PC.

I didn't think about this when I put the game in, I SHOULD have created a new gamer account, I SHOULD have just not bought the stupid thing in the first place. I SHOULD have stopped after that tequila s—wait what was I talking about? Oh yeah – so my friend is a very skilled Madden player, his knowledge of the sport AND the game is frighteningly encyclopedic, I tried but it was just too much for me. (To me, all those lines and squiggles mean zilch, usually when I state this, I'm accused of being gay… remember, I live in Texas, and there is a whole different breed of stupid down here. Fortunately they tend to stay out of the cities for the most part. However, I find it immensely amusing to point out to these angry redneck homophobes out there that they are themselves getting a little too excited about a sport where large men in tights jump on top of each other as much and as often as they can manage. This also gets me into a lot of trouble&hellip

No comment.... orgy.

Anyways, he gets plenty of use out of the game. However, not.one.bloody.trophy has been earned. We've had this game for over 3 months and the big fat goose egg is an eyesore to me. It's not like he hasn't tried either - I looked at the list, not only is a large portion of them online only, a lot of them are RIDICULOUSLY specific. Things like a certain player intercepting a pass to another certain player. WHILE it's SNOWING. There's several like that – and that annoys me, and the rest are earned online. I will never play the game myself, I know I won't – and he'll be moving out soon. Bah.

Now, let's get to the nitty gritty. The whole reason for this nonsense and what I believe to be my initial gripe, although there's no telling with me. This is kind of a dual blog, single player games and their online modes and the trophies and achievements that can only be gained through online… *groan*… 'multiplayer'.

I've said this many times, I hate, hate multiplayer. Specifically the online variety… I don't mind a co-op every now and then, and I've done my share of death matches. However, once again, something in Kelly's blog pushes me into a seething rage – not at her, mind you… just call it angry enlightenment, like "Yeah. …. YEAH. DAMNIT. EXACTLY! #*&$*$!!!1!"

If Kelly got me started, it was our own soapboxed JohnSteed (congrats by the way, it's a good read and glad it got out there) that knocked me over the cliff with his take on Dragon Age, and his theory on the split of MMOs and RPGs vs. say the FPS games which more and more rely on a multiplayer element as a primary game play function and tack a SP mode on incase Xbox live is down that day.

No indeed.

Lengthy, meaningful and VALUABLE single player experiences are hard to come by. Value is key, in Johns blog, he talks about paying full price for Dragon Age, and getting more value out of it than games he waits for the price drop. I'm paraphrasing, but that speaks volumes to me. This is not a cheap hobby we all share, I don't want to think about the thousands I've spent on it over the years. It's a money pit, and we all know it. If you didn't, well – now you do…also, PM me your bank account information. So getting value for my dollar means a lot. Multiplayer means nothing to me, I detest it and it's disheartening to me to see the online modes starting to take up so much of the spotlight. I'm looking at Dragon Age myself. It is SINGLE PLAYER ONLY. How often do we get to say that anymore? Sure there are always some in the pipeline, the next few months are actually starting to look really good to me, which contradicts everything I've just said, but this is an oddity rather than the norm and the majority are sequels – so let's talk numbers. The ratio given to me by the highly paid research team that I just pictured in my head is 34 to 1. (citation needed)

"Okay, but let's go ahead and make the velociraptor way more dangerous. We're kind of stupid that way anyhow."

Okay so I don't have "real numbers" per se to back that up, but its "common knowledge." You can't argue with me on the grounds that putting things in quotes makes them "vague enough to mean several things."

Not Pictured: Sharks with frikken laser beams attached to their frikken heads.

More often than not, I buy a game because it looks to be entertaining, (except Madden) I'm not one to pick up a crappy game on the cheap in a bargain bin for easy points a la 'Barbie's Super High Fashion Adventure on a Pony II'. (Part I was better anyway) For example I picked up Brutal Legend, played through it, beat it, and like many games, it has this BS multiplayer element tacked on. I'm fine with ignoring that, nothing says I HAVE to play it, and god knows I don't want to - unless of course I want those %&*$# Trophies! This, friends, irritates me to no end. Place 1st in a ranked game, Compete in 100 matches, Beat Opponent in some specific and frustratingly difficult manner 10 times. I get that this is a pointless gripe – I'm not holding my breath for a change, but am I alone here? Why must I allow a 10 year old (boy?) to scream into my ear how awesome his mommy tells him he is so I can have 100% completion on one of my games? I would submit the solution is to keep multiplayer trophies separate. Playing within the SP mode will allow for 100% completion and the multiplayer can have its own set beyond that. That makes sense right? Play the game to completion and its reflected on your card, and multiplayer is separate, as it's not part of the main game anyhow, so it stands on its own. If you don't play it, then you just never see it. Makes sense to me anyways. Right, that will happen.

Achievement Unlocked : Went online for an ultimately meaningless trophy, now your girlfriend hates you.

Cursed chastity belts.

oh yeah. I went there.

The hot topic in the industry lately seems to be 'Digital Downloads' – This is partly spawned from Kelly's post on the topic, but it's something I've wanted to sound off on myself for awhile.

The short answer is simply this: I can't get behind DD.

The not short answer is :

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer having a physical copy of my media, be it game, movie, music or otherwise. EBooks? HA. My inner gamer is not threatened by this idea, I don't see the industry switching entirely to DD anytime soon - they would cut their own business down by a huge amount - I'm clearly not the only one who prefers a physical product, but also most people with anything less than a high speed connection are not going to try to download a massive game over a period of what could be days or even weeks depending.

Not only that, but what about the ever looming presence of next gen? When we all invariably upgrade to the PS9, Xbox9000 or whatever phallic joke Nintendo comes up with, are we supposed to just forget about all the money we've sunk into our old DDs? Surely they won't maintain those servers for all time, and we will eventually run out of room on whatever console we have, and fairly quickly too if current hd space is any indication. "But V, you amazingly handsome manbeast!" I hear you exclaim, "Surely you don't care about games that you've already played through and beaten (or not beaten) enough to play them again when you have a shiny new Nintenboxstation with TURBO GRAFIX!!"

Here's the thing, I am a gamer, and like most gamers, my nature is to horde the **** out of my favorite games. The majority of us I'd wager are collectors to one extent or another. The developers know this – How many of you went and found all those damn stars in Mario 64? Or every blast shard in Infamous? I did. I can't help myself. I love that feeling of 100% completion, and I love having a good library to run my fingers across when I'm trying to decide what to play, sooo sexy… but I digress. The point is that I still fire up my NES or my Genesis from time to time - I love those old games, Somewhere in my collection of junk there is a box with an Atari 2600 in it with a modest collection of games. It's where I started, and I enjoy going back there every now and then just to remind myself what it's all about. Particularly when I find myself losing interest in games, it's good for me to go retro for awhile and get a little taste of the old school. There's a huge nostalgic factor with gamers and their games. I still have an old 36" tube in my guest room that's main function is retro gaming. Whether you are reliving the first time you picked up a NES controller and squished a goomba, or arguing with an unsettling amount of passion about spelling her name Aeris or Aerith, we all have games that we think back to and say "yeah that's the good stuff". That said, there is a very high chance that I will feel the same about some of the games I've played through in the last few months. Maybe I'll break out my PS3 to play some Arkham Asylum, just to show some young upstart what games were like before you just downloaded them into your brain. Okay, that's pushing it – but DDs would take all this away from me eventually – As I said in the beginning I'm old fashioned, and I have the preferences to match. I'm sure that 20 years from now none of that will matter to the modern day gamer, but as for me, I'll be the creepy old man with a huge stash of the old school and I'll love every bit of it.

In the meantime, if they want to offer the OPTION of a DD alongside the pressed disc, then that is perfectly reasonable, it's a great way to distribute independent games, and budget titles… little gems that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day… it just opens up the market that much more, and those that want to deal with it, great. Those that prefer the box have their cake too, or a combination. Everyone wins.

Blog is posting... come back in 3 hours.

My already infrequent post schedule will become even more sparse and random, the reason for this is that I have told Comcast to kindly go **** themselves. I was paying over 120 bucks a month for digital cable and internet. I had no movie channels at all, and internet by itself with no tv package is about 60 a month. So, I once again find myself without television or internet that would keep my otherwise deviant mind pre-occupied with Family Guy and youtube videos of idiots setting their pants on fire.

I may chance a foray into the world of Satellite TV when next I decide I can't go another day without channel surfing, I can get ALL their movie and sports packages for like 80 bucks a month. I just have to stick an ugly dish to the side of my condo. However I will *NOT* get DSL. I'm using a DSL connection right now... and I seriously want to strangle a kitten. Sure, it's broadband, (more like dialup2.0)but it's aggravating since I'm so used to cable, the difference is just shocking. This must be how the Jetson's felt when they traveled back in time from the distant year of 2002 to visit the Flintstones. Damn you Hana-Barbera. Who decided that every move a character makes, from blinking to peeking around a corner requires a crappy sound effect? WHO?

Anyways, I've just about beaten InFamous, I'm holding off on the last mission to get all the damn shards. Suffice to say the game is extremely fun, and I've really enjoyed it for my first PS3 game. When I've finished, I may post something a bit more in depth for no other reason than to take up space on your list for a brief time.

As an aside, I had been really looking forward to Prototype, and most of the reviews I've read have been positive, except they all come with a 'BUT' and proceed to make a laundry list of technical problems. This makes me hesitant to purchase it, since I've no access to XBL right now, and getting any forthcoming patches, etc. would be impossible.

I miss my internet. She loved me like no one else could.

*heart*