I love what you guys do with music, always trying to do something different than what's saturating the airwaves. I respect that. However, you guys aren't perfect. I just want to list some of the general mistakes you guys make. Sure some mainstream bands and even some rock legends have made the same mistakes, but college bands are the biggest offenders.

Feedback is not a note. I know you think it's really cool when you hear that screeching sound coming from your instrument and it's forgivable at a live show, but when I sit down and listen to your songs it sticks out like a sore thumb, especially at the end. I've heard songs where feedback is treated like a solo, getting about 30 seconds worth of airtime in the middle of the song! It's annoying to listen to on speakers and it's almost unbearable on headphones.

Only use ambiance sparingly. Sure it's nice to hear some calming bird noises and what I call "space sounds", but when it takes over a minute to get to the song itself, that qualifies as abuse. This isn't that bad if I was planning to listen through the whole album, but these days we're more likely to throw songs together on an iPod and put it on random than go straight through your album without a few other artists between tracks.

Where do these lyrics come from? "You never were safe/incarcerate the talons/Albeit jello street." Does this come from any song in particular? No. Did you think it could be in a song by a college band? Yes. I'm a believer that a song should tell a story, show an emotion. Your lyrics usually do neither. It always seems like your just shredding up a dictionary and tossing the pieces into the air, copying the words down as you catch them. If you're so committed to making no sense at all, just leave the lyrics out of it and make an acoustic track.

Those are just a few suggestions I have, but I'm sure the fine people of Destructoid can help me out and post their own suggestions. Please take these to heart the next time you write your next ballad about the girl who left you for the big city.

Page of Concrete,
Lance Icarus

Do you remember when you could play a game like Turok for the N64 and unleash the Cerebral Bore on unsuspecting enemies, watching intently as brain matter comes gushing out of their doomed skulls? What about the first time you were sniped by The Farsight XR-20 in Perfect Dark? Even going back to the days of Doom and Quake you can find arsenals that were unique and exciting. The First Person Shooter (FPS) genre always felt like something new was right around the corner.

Then in 2001 Halo came out for the XBox and creativity came to a screeching halt. Even though the game itself was immensely fun to play and brought the FPS back to the forefront of consoles, the shockwave it had over the genre devastated the landscape. Things like regenerative health bars and space marines began overtaking the entire genre, being put into situations that made absolutely no sense in context of the game. Even World War II soldiers were magically patched up after ducking behind cover for a few seconds! The worst part of the post-Halo FPS, however, is the same arsenal being seen in 95% of all games. You all know the list, so sing it along with me:

Pistol, machine gun, shotgun, sniper rifle, rocket/grenade launcher, and one unique exotic weapon.

Ever since 2001 it seems that you can find these weapons in order, usually leaving the one unique weapon for the last level to beat the last boss. Usually it isn't even that unique, usually being some type of laser or an explosive that's slightly larger than the rocket launcher. It just seems that developers are playing things safe and are deathly afraid of rocking the boat. I can only think of three interesting and new weapons off the top of my head that can really be considered truly unique that have been out recently (Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun, Portal's Portal Gun, and Bioshock's Plasmids if you're wondering) . I think it's about time to turn the arsenal template upside down and throw some creativity back into the FPS. I've come up with a few ideas myself to help jumpstart the imagination train:

The Pink Pistol

You may think it’s weird to start with a pistol after ranting about the stagnation of the FPS genre, but this is no mere paint job. This baby shoots corrosive acid instead of bullets. It’s like a super soaker from hell. This weapon would be designed more for weakening enemy armor, but it can be used to melt some faces in a pinch. This is just the beginning, however. The next weapon you get is….

The Hole Gun

You remember those old Loony Tunes cartoons when Bugs Bunny would toss a small circular hole in the way of Elmer Fudd and he’d fall right in, then Bugs would pick up the hole and walk off-screen? That’s basically this gun in a nutshell. Just shoot this gun at the feet of your enemies and a small hole pops up. If the enemy doesn’t realize it in time, he’ll walk right into it. The hole shrinks and closes before the enemy can climb back out, leaving them in whatever black void they’ve fallen into. It’s meant for smaller enemies since big enemies wouldn’t drop into it, but it’s a good way to get rid of those stupid little grunts so you can concentrate on the bigger threats. That’s what this next weapon is for.

The Rain Maker

It’s a simple weapon that shoots a mortar shell into the clouds above. After a few seconds, blood will rain down from the sky, creating a surreal scene perfect for any epic battle. The blood will have no effect on your enemies, but the obscene amount of lightning shooting from the sky should get their attention. Every lightning hit causes a good amount of shock damage and stuns for a few seconds, allowing you to go to town on them using other weapons. This one’s definitely for the people who feel the desire to dance in puddles of blood as they destroy their foe. This won’t work inside, however, but we’ve got you covered on that front.

The Sonic Boomer

When you absolutely positively need to clear a hallway in the next five seconds, the Sonic Boomer is here to help. It takes a few seconds to charge, but get this baby at max force and get ready to unleash a sonic boom at your opponents. It’s especially effective in closed spaces, where the boom can’t disperse anywhere but forward. It’ll blow any enemy to the back wall if used correctly, allowing you the opportunity to toss a well placed grenade at the newly built pile of bodies. If the enemy has been weakened enough, however, they’ll simply get their skin and muscles blown away, leaving only a skeleton to crumble to the floor. While it’s an incredibly fun gun to use, it may not hold a candle to this next one.

The Rock You Rocket (aka the RYR)

Sometimes you just need to publicly humiliate your buddies in a death match and send the other team a message. This baby is sure to do the trick. Simply launch this rocket and control it remotely to the target. Once it makes contact, it will attach itself to the enemies back, allowing up to ten seconds to do whatever you want to them. Maybe you want to spell your initials in the air and show the other team who killed their member in style or maybe you want to send them chasing after their teammates. Whatever you chose to do, a smile is sure to follow. There’s even a secondary mode that allows you to attach it to your own back for an immense speed boost, just as long as you remember to jettison the pack before it explodes on its own. As humiliating as this weapon is, it doesn’t have anywhere near the “owned” factor as the ultimate weapon on this list.

The Omega Javelin

It’s just your regular, super-rare secret government project Olympic javelin. You only get a small amount during the course of the game, but that’s due to their overwhelming power. Take a few steps and hurl this thing at your target of choice and get the hell out of the way. The countdown goes for five seconds before everything in a certain radius of the javelin loses all color. If you find yourself in this grayscale nightmare, then I hope you made your peace before the next second.

That’s when a high pitched microwave emission annihilates everything in the grayscale radius, allowing you a split second to see everything simply break apart before the entire field goes white. When your vision returns, you’ll see nothing remaining in that radius, not even dust. All you’ll see is a radius of barren wasteland of unfertile soil. This weapon is most satisfying when you plant it in the stomach of some poor enemy and watch his futile attempts to pull it out before the countdown ends. Feel free to laugh menacingly as you observe this from the safety of your binoculars.

That’s just the list I came up with in a month. Development time for games these days lasts years, even a simple FPS. I’m sure developers do have ideas for weapons such as these, but they’re probably afraid publishers won’t accept wild out-of-the-box ideas and prefer they stick to the “safe” template of Halo. I humbly ask publishers to let the FPS genre off its leash and allow it to bring create the memorable weapons of today that we’ll still be talking about ten years down the road. For the sake of FPS fans everywhere, please put the machine gun away and give a fully automatic unicorn head that shoots horns a try.