And I got stalked.

I came home from a tiring nearly 12 hour school day to be greeted by a delicious surprise. As I entered the house, my brother sat with a white bag next to him. Addressed to �Travis The Pirate� (which is awesome), I automatically knew who it was from. Destructoid, of course!

Yes indeed, today I received my copy of Fallout 3 I won in the WePC contest. So now, I present to you �The Unbaggening� of Fallout 3, presented in still-image format.

Enough with these silly words, onto the images. Awaaaaay!


This is the all important "opening of package" picture. Look at that hand. That is a nice hand!





Fallout 3, in all its nuclear deliciousness.





Wait a moment...what is this?





It is good to see that Destructoid is committed to AIDS awareness and prevention! I lol'd preeeeetty hard when I saw this. Now, time to play Fallout! OH, WAIT.





GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATES!




If only my Xbawks hadn't Red Ringed, I'd be enjoying Christmas just a tad early. Oh well, at least I have something to look forward to.

Lastly, I would like to thank you Niero, for the hilarious AIDS prevention device, the awesome "Travis The Pirate" address, Fallout 3, and creating the best vidja game community on the internet.

Third time�s a charm. Somehow, that phrase doesn�t seem appropriate here.

Yes, my third Xbawks 360 has succumb to the fatal Red Ring of Death� (all right reserved by Microsoft). However, this red ring is unique. It is a Red Ring of Once In A While Death, in that it appears about every fifth of the time I power up my console. Of course, my Wii, which I have not used in months, is still fine. It sits lonely and cold, yearning for attention that it doesn�t deserve while I sigh and look away in shame.

Soon I will get the shipping label to plaster onto my previous box that I received for my second RRoD. But for now, I shall enjoy the last few sputtering breaths my 360 has to offer, whilst listening to the metallic grinding of two chainsaws colliding in a conflict for life or temporary 5-to-10 second death.

Also, welcome to the club Mxyzptlk.

When Mercenaries 2 launched on August 18th it garnered mixed reviews, at best. The majority of them called it anywhere from average to a massive disappointment. In fact, many of you in the community bemoaned the game. I can still recall the many blogs I read that ripped the game apart and warned people to stay far, far away from it. All this talk of how horrible the game turned out to be and the sheer malcontent for it concerned me. What happened to the series that I had learned to love after playing the first game? How could the developers be so careless with the sequel to one of the better games of the previous generation? I rented the game to see whether everything I heard was correct and if it would make me, too, want to post an all-caps rant on how horrible it is.

A couple weeks back, I went to the local Blockbuster (I know, I know, I hate it too.) looking for a copy of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. There wasn�t a copy in stock and after going through a number of other games that weren�t in stock, despite being displayed as such, I settled on Mercenaries 2. I got home and casually popped it into the disk tray of my 360. I wasn�t expecting much as it booted up. The all-caps rants and bad reviews flashed once more before my eyes, lowering my expectations further. However, I was met by something a far cry from the things I had heard about the game. I was met by a highly entertaining and enjoyable game.

I had played the demo, which wasn�t much fun at all, yet I was now having a blast. What had changed? For starters, my overall knowledge of the game had expanded. I wasn�t simply dropped into a mission and given a new interface to figure out how to use, a massive fault in the demo. However, the biggest change was that there was a motive behind my actions. My motive was to get bigger and better explosives and vehicles as I progressed through faction jobs. This is where Pandemic really got it right. There is always something leading you just a tiny step further into the game. I really felt like I was working towards something that was not only integral to the gameplay, but also something that offered me a new experience. Not to mention that the graphics were nice, I enjoyed the action-oriented gameplay and, most importantly, it was just plain fun.

The fun I was having overshadowed the gripes I had with the inability to call in airstrikes whilst in a vehicle and the often repetitive enemy dialogue. Issues that cropped up always became an afterthought as I dropped more bombs and caused more beautiful havoc. I also felt there was something to consistently look forward to, be it blowing up one of the oil rigs spread throughout the map, or the acquisition of the nuclear bunker buster, which creates one of the coolest explosions in a video game to date. This technique of giving the player a constant goal to not only work for, but look forward to, kept me coming back for more.
However, the game is not without its issues that had a hand in turning many players away. Pandemic seems to have missed the forest for the trees in many cases, as they focused more on the small, less apparent aspects of the game and missed the larger aspects that make up the game like AI and ridding the glitches that occur all too often. I love it when developers put small, seldom noticed, touches with a game, but not at the expense of the game as a whole.

However, when it comes down to it, I found Mercenaries 2 to be highly entertaining, despite its quarks and the issues that so many had with it. The mixture of good ol� fashioned fun and making sure the player always has something to look forward to, take it far and beyond what I had heard about the game before I picked it up by chance. I urge you to give Mercenaries 2 a rental and try it for yourself. Look past some of the issues while focusing on just having fun, and you may just find yourself enjoying the game more for what it is, instead of what it isn�t.

The mass public has an incorrect consensus about many things and people. Be it a certain race, religion, culture or anything else that one may hold dear, the majority views and stereotypes always seem to take a big dump right on top of it, in the name of what is popular.

And you know what? I hate it. Yes, I hate it. I hate it so much. So very, very much. Specifically, I hate society's views on what a gamer is. A gamer is not an antisocial, basement-dwelling, hot pocket-eating, social cripple with nothing on the mind but gaming-- as "the cool kids"� would have you believe. I recently had an encounter with these ignorant views.

So the story starts with me, a senior in high school, who designs graphics and whatnot for the school newspaper. I had, about three weeks ago, been given the job of designing the shirts for our staff this year. You see, every year we design a new shirt for the staff to wear to promote the newspaper. I procrastinate (as I tend to) and suddenly, the advisor springs up saying I am to have the shirts done by the end of the week. I set to work.

This is where trouble begins to set in. I am sitting down, at the computer, whilst more than 10 staff members are huddling around me, all horribly eager to tell me what I am doing wrong and what it should look like. They don't care that I have designed shirts before and have a grasp on the situation, they still rabble on, make it black, I hate gray, yeah make sure to have no gray�, that font doesn't work�, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. This is not a productive environment, and I get little done, but do crank out an interesting looking use of fonts to work with as a foundation. However, the deadline is the following day. Meh, I can handle it.

The next day I am absent, due to forces beyond my control, but I call in asking to have the design emailed to me so I can finish it up and get it in by the end of the day. That task has been given to someone else.

Wut.

Fine, I suppose if they feel confident, they can handle it from this point. No biggie. Now, we fast forward to three days ago when the shirts arrive, sporting a completely separate logo, in gray, no less.

Wut.

My base design and idea was fully scrapped. The reason (here is the kicker): "It looked too much like a video game case thing". That is the exact quote of what I was told. To clarify, I am an outward gamer, and am known as the more tech savvy member of the staff. So when I hear this, I take offense. The design had nothing to do with video games. Nothing. It has a somewhat techie looking feel to it, and people used that as an outlet for their ignorance and misunderstanding. They used the fact that I have a hobby of playing video games as a scapegoat to consider my ideas less than, and just another stupid "gamer thing"�.



But as a gamer, I don't want to be seen as "that gamer kid"�, or to have my ideas seen as less valuable because I play video games. I don't go around judging others on what their hobby is. I don't think of the football players as automatically unintelligent or incapable of higher level thinking because they excel in athletics. I want to be seen as another member of society, another mind with which to interact instead of a mind to shun on the basis of ignorant, mass opinion. Opinion that says I am a loser because I am a gamer.

And here I thought that society was beginning to understand that gamers are not just the minority. Here I thought that we were getting past the uneducated views that seem so prevalent on videos games. Here I foolishly thought that we were more intelligent than that.

Silly me.

Games have evolved so far beyond what the public sees them as. A video game plot can be socially relevant and truly moving. The graphics can be artistic and beautiful, just like the people who make them can be. But as long as we have popular figures that make a mockery of games (see: Souja Boy, Jack Thompson, any given British publication) and sheep that will cling onto these fools opinions with their dying (or disbarred, amirite?) breath, stupidity will prevail.



No community makes the fact that we have evolved beyond the simple, less united, and more secluded days of gaming more evident than us, the Destructoid community. We get together and socialize at completely random parties, we lift each other up and help each other out when we are in distress or are just having a rough day, and we have intelligent discussions on video games and beyond. We are the anti-stereotype, and as such, we have to stand up for our hobby and prove that gamers are not what the ignorant public thinks of us.

I do not wear a pocket protector. I do not get stuffed in lockers. I do not feel awkward in every social situation. I do not only want to talk about games all the time.

I do have a life. I do have friends. I do think about socially relevant issues. I am a gamer, and I do not fit the mass public portrayal of me.

(Video unrelated. Besides, it's Mega 64, do I really need a reason to post a video of their's? And why haven't I met these guys yet? >.<)

Hey, hey, hey everybody. After a massive delay, and much procrastination, I have finally decided to post the widescreen versions of my previous wallpaper for your viewing and desktop-background-setting enjoyment.

The 1680x1050 version was requested by none other than the fabulous -PL-, who I thank for the request and apologize to for the delay. Also included are the 1440x900 versions.

As before, it comes in "Gripping Green" and "Ravishing Red", so take your pick widescreen folks!

UPDATE: I have now added 1280x1024 versions as requested by FrozenSpaceMonkey. Thanks for the request!

UPDATE DEUCE: I've added a 1024x768 version, as it was mentioned in the comments by none other than Samit Sarkar! I don't fully understand the difference between just taking it as 1600x1200 if you have a 1024x768 screen, seeing as how they have the same aspect ratio (I think) but a different res. Then again, that is what Samit kinda said, so maybe I should have read more carefully, lulz. Either way, I enjoyed making it and if someone wants it, thar she blows!