<p>Well it's the holiday season, I just finished watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and I am ready to enjoy the rest of my giant turkey. So, what should I say? Well, I've been here for about a month, and need to increase my number of blogs. So I guess I'd like to do something different, and say what I'm not thankful for. Let's begin. I'm not thankful for this: I saw this in CVS and I just couldn't... What's more is it had a separate game called the Xtreme Fit (...now I feel dirty). I'm all in support of Wii Fit, but not these kind of shameless rip-offs. The actual console itself looks kinda nice, though, but the graphics sure don't. If you are looking to prank a friend or just want to be a dick, you can gift wrap this son-of-a-bitch for $40 dollars at your local CVS pharmacy. I'm not thankful for: It could have been so awesome, but it fell flat on it's face. But millions of people will flock to it because it has GRAPHICS! And finally: My former fiend called me a bro yesterday. No wonder he was my former friend. Shameless Plug So anyway, I, like most other gamers, was hesitant to join the iPhone gaming revolution. When I did get an iPhone six months ago, I immediately surrounded myself with good games. Duke Nukem 3-D, Rolando, they were all great. I even got Archon. But nothing told me it could be more than just a quick game device until I saw the Plus+ network. Required by a free online shooter on the iPhone called Eliminate Pro, it's essentially Xbox Live for the iPhone. You get achievements for supported games and level-up accordingly. The main reason I'm interested in talking about it is that you can also put friends on the network and challenge them when they are on. If you are interested, my Plus+ handle is BlitzKraig. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming! But other than that, I'd like to say thank you to the whole Destructoid Community, to those of us in the Dtoid Steam group, where I am known as 1UpYours, to the Bar and all of it's crazy goodness. The forums, where we learned that Destructoid is going to become all-the-way indie. And most of all, thanks for taking me in as one of your own. None of us are perfect, but together we can be pretty damn good. Special thanks to those I know: WastelandTraveler ZombieLifeCoach Mkshiranui (Even though everybody on the forums hates you) Technophile Niero Phantomile Tactix (Every night is TACTIX NIGHT!) Detry (I'll beat you in RPS yet!) Jon Bloodspray And the millions of other Dtoid users out there! Thanks for everything!</p>

Everyone knows that no matter where you go, books, movies, games, the villains are complete evil. They need to be improved, because I said so. I took a nice little STFUAJPG break for a while, so now I get to complain about it today! I mean, most evil people either want money or power, and it's boring! Here's a few suggestions:

"Vigilante" type character:
There's no better way to fuck with a player's conscience than give the player a villain the character must defeat/kill/blow up even when the player agrees with his motifs. A antagonist that challenges the law or traditional values, and the player must pursue him, and then the villain tells you his motives, and you learn they are sane and maybe believable (Ignoring Grammar)? Why not just let the entire end of the game let the player choose where he wants to go? It would be cool. I think. I can't think straight today.

Betrayal character
Here's one that could definitely be improved. Other games have done the character that becomes the antagonist later on in the game, but they usually use too much foreshadowing or make it too much obvious. To keep a character that seems your friend through the entire game with absolutely nothing to give it away, then it is a real surprise.

Really good and epic conspiracy
What can I say, Everybody loves a good conspiracy.

Evil? To Whom?
The most realistic way to portray a villain is to attack the player with a villain who your side may think is evil but to another is quite the hero. Just take it like Robin Hood for example. If you have to be the one chasing after this thief whose only goal is to feed the chilluns, then who really feels like the bad guy, then?

That's all for now folks. My writing has started to degrade a little bit, so I'll make this one short, mainly because I don't have the time to make anything worth your while. Still, I think it's nice to have list of alternatives to our normal mustache-twirling power-hungry baddie. Whose head we get to blow up. Into little chunks. Very, very little chunks. You could probably eat them...

I was reading across the forums when I read this in the Meet & Greet section, on a thread by Psychomax:

"As a final note, when I was 9 I made a $100 bet with my dad that when I got my driver's license, Pokemon would still be popular. I won the bet and used the money to buy a DS lite... and the new Pokemon game. The entire affair is recorded in the September 2005 issue of Nintendo Power."



I just thought this was the coolest thing ever, because I just happen to still have that issue of Nintendo Power. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside! Anyway, I friended him, but I feel like I'm looking at this as sort of a "Long, lost cousin" situation. Either way, I always used to separate forms of media, but this is the first time I ever was able to connect two different forms of media. It also made me nostalgic for a time when Nintendo Power didn't suck.

So, for those Dtoiders hesitant on making an account, you never know who you will meet on the internet. Also, do any other Dtoiders have any interesting stories about people they met on Destructoid?

*Reposted to forums, for wider audience.*

So, apparently, everyone wants an intro post, so here it is.

To start off with, my very first video game was Madden '97 for the PSX, (Samit Sarkar, you are welcome). I was about 4-years old when I would play the game for a couple of quick matches with my Dad. Everything interested me. To the way I could press triangle when I made a touchdown (which happened rarely, thanks to my lacking gaming skills), to running towards my endzone just to see what would happen. Also, it was fun to play with someone and have that interaction. Other than that, I had a Super Demo disc, that contained different demos of about 100 different games, and watching my Dad play Duke Nukem and Unreal Tournament. I also got my first Game Boy, and my first game: Space Invaders.

Well, when I was five, I was sent to a foster home by Child Protection Services. At the foster home, my love for video games grew even stronger. It was there I was introduced to the NES, Super NES, and N64. Of course, being 5 years old, the part of Mario 64 where the Princess Peach picture turns into Bowser sacred the ever-living shit out of me, but I was fine with Turok and other "bloody" games.

I also was introduced to the platformer and the RPG there. Some girls that helped with the foster home would occasionally bring the SNES out and we would play Super Mario World or Final Fantasy with me. I also went to other houses with people and I would get even more exposure to the PC world of gaming.

At around 6 years-old, I started to live with my new parents, who I love and appreciate. However, coming here was a big shock for me. Though my new brother had an N64, and we played Goldeneye like nothing else, my parents weren't too convinced about video games.

Until very recently, I was the socially awkward kid who had trouble making friends at school and fitting in. As a result of this, I got a GameCube and played a lot of single-player games. Favorites include Super Mario Sunshine and OMG IT'S POKEMON! Because I didn't do very well in the social aspect of school, my parents grew even more apprehensive than ever. And then the final nail in the coffin was hammered:

I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

It doesn't seem like a big deal, but to my parents, they were rushing for answers and support groups. and of course, every therapist I talked to believed video games were the cause. I didn't believe it. I got my video games put away for a half year! But all that came to pass and many struggles later, I got everything back.

After that fiasco, I met my first friend, united by a shared love of video games. He let me borrow 2 games: Counter-Strike and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. The Twin Snakes was the best. So many great moments. Gameplay I've never even experienced before. And Psycho Mantis. He shook my conscious like a baby shakes a rattle.

Counter-Strike was by far my oddest experience. Here I was, not even in my teens yet, and I'm getting subjected to constant homophobic threats, racism, and cuss words, all placed upon a background of guns and blood. I think that was what ruined my innocence.

Yet, through the discovery of Counter-Strike, I also discovered the internet. How amazing it was! So many games! So much to learn! And all the time in the world to do it! It changed my life.

So, recently, I've been reconnecting with the games I knew from my childhood: Duke Nukem, Metal Gear Solid, Super Mario Bros. I just want to know what is was like when I was young and ignorant. I think I still have that old copy of Space Inavders.

__________________________________________________ ______________
SUMMARY: I am a varied and exploratory gamer. I'm a male high schooler. I was born with a controller in my hand. I actually know shit about games. Yes, I still love Pokemon.

Short and sweet: There aren't enough videogames based off of books

You could say that the movie of a book counts, but I'm talking about a real labor of love from the developer's part, not some cheap cash-in. And if any ambitious team of videogame wizards wants to make that game, here are a few ideas for them.

1. Make the plot an alternate plot
If we were to take the Inkworld series for example, wouldn't be so much more interesting to be a resident of Inkworld, than to just be Meggie and her friends fighting countless enemies from the book? It could even be a half prequel, where the first half you are living the events of the Inkworld as normal citizen, then by the next half, Meggie Is transported to the Inkworld, and the plot parallels from there. On that note...

2. Make the world seem living. Since books are half exposistion anyway, try not to make the world feel as though it was built for your story. Give everyone a purpose to be there, and a world that reacts to you appropiately. This also means not making the book's protaganist's story the only thing that seems important. Don't make every NPC talk about the evil lord or the hero and all that. I mean, that should be a general rule for all videogames.

3. Finally, don't screw with the world. Many developers always talk about how when they get licensed properties that they want to add their own touch to it. It almost always goes horribly wrong, like some freak experiment that caused some normal guy to have a big "kick me" on his head, and everybody, trying not to say something about it. If you need help, ask the author, but don't do anything stupid like try to turn the "annoying bitch" character into something good, which usually just turns into an even MORE annoying bitch than before.

Well, that's all for now. No pictures or heavy organization, because I'm typing on my iPod. I'm getting a headache just from trying to not fuck up the spelling.

Dammit! Not again! That's the second time this week!

When we want to play any game nowadays, you better believe that anything above an "Everyone" rating is going to have some kind of blood in it. It's incredibly common to have in a game these days, so much so that some people have gone to such lengths as to lower their opinion of the game because there isn't any at all. Look at any IGN review for any Medal of Honor up until Airborne. Almost every review mentions the "unfortunate lack of blood." How come we have come to a point where we have to empty every ounce of salty red juice from our enemies to fulfill our Vampire-esque bloodlust?

Even only mediocre games have started to lean on their fair share of goregasms to prop up what is only a marginally fun and easily forgettable experience. Though we can only begin to understand the psychological reasons behind this new phenomenon, we can still look back on what might have caused it. It could be caused by a satisfaction of seeing something happen as a result of our actions. It might be a way for the game to "add realism and immersion." But so far it seems to be the cause of just one game that started an entire new gaming clique.


BOOM HEADSHOT!

It seems only last year that games were perfectly fine with an enemy flashing red and doubling over. Anything that had more than one hint of blood got plastered with a nice fat "M" on the cover. But then Halo came along. Sure, it was rated Mature and not Teen, but it still caused a whole new concept of blood and gore. We know that the gamers that we hate now, the chavs who only play shooters with lots of blood and nothing else, are mostly hormonal teenage boys. There's nothing wrong with Halo itself, instead it should be celebrated because of the revolutions in shooter design and the popularity of multiplayer on consoles. But with it came a bunch of 13 - 18 year old boys who saw this testosterone-fueled and hormone-bathed frag fest and decided they would join in with "the nerds" and try it out.

Now to begin with, the ESRB was rating with the idea of teenage boys in mind already, but most of those from that demographic came from middle-class, most-likely white households that didn't approve of the slaughter-fests and epic raging battles that materialized on screen. But when the other group came in, ones from other demographics, lower-class, high-class, Latino, black, etc. etc., and the game designers playing ball with the FPS craze, they loosened it up a little more, allowing more Teen-rated games to put more blood in their games.

It wasn't just the ESRB, either. The game designers started making games with ridiculous amounts of blood and gore stuffed in the enemies. They knew that teenage-boys' hormones flared with this PowerRageSexGasm (Okay, now I'm making up words). They played on this, and started to make FPS after FPS, where you can place a bullet in the enemies skull and be the cause of C-sections gone wrong.


I just needed a little motivation from the Kool-Aid man!

The same goes for sex in video games, too. BioWare has stated before that they would like to include more sex in video games to portray love, because sex is something that is largely ignored. That would be great if that was the kind of thing that happened. But it won't. As soon as sex scenes get approved in video games, everyone is going to use it to appeal to the hormonal teenage boy crowd. Even in Mass Effect, it isn't like the girl you can have sex with suffers a huge loss, and you can choose to comfort her and that leads to sex. At least that's not the impression I got. She just decides to have sex with you right before the epic boss battle. In the sequel, they will even have a character that will dress like a whore and act like one too. Again, I love Mass Effect, I think it is a great game, but we all know that BioWare just wants to get the "horny teenage boy" demographic to play Mass Effect. Really, it's like a nice way of saying that they want to make a Hentai Dating Sim.


Everybody's a hypocrite. Even me.

Wow. I really did not mean to make such a rant out of that. I have no idea why I got so angry. But what do you think? Do you want to have the blood and brains of your enemies on the wall, or are you fine with a red flash?