In the few moments I’ve had in the past two days that haven’t been spent playing Grand Theft Auto IV, I’ve done my best to 1) Watch the Red Wings suffocate the Avalanche, keep my colonies up and running, and get psyched about the super awesome, deep and challenging tracklist for Guitar Hero: On Tour for the Nintendo DS. And that’s a complete lie.

Smashmouth…Rick Springfield…Maroon 5?!!?!?!?!?!? OMGWTFBBQLOL! I’m just…I’m honestly out of words for this one; I’m not sure how the ball could’ve been dropped so badly on this title. It’s gone from its usually rock-oriented to pure pop-rock guilty pleasures. Not to mention there’s only 15 songs in this little beast of a game — can we say rip-off?!

How many days will it take for Jack Thompson to find a way to legally attack our beloved video game industry once again, now that GTAIV is out.

I’m putting the line at 10 business days.  Are you taking the over or the under?

“Drought” would probably be the best way to describe the flow of games onto the retail shelves, but this week that changes.

The latest installment of the Grand Theft Auto franchise will makes it’s way into retailers this week.

For nostalgia, I dialed in the “Way Back” machine and threw GTA2 onto my computer.  I remember as a kid all of the drama surrounding it and violent it was.  Looking at the lastest installment, it makes me smile and want to give a giant middle finger to Jackie T.

I know it’s a childish reaction on my part, but I’m growing increasingly tired of games being the scapegoat for societies troubles.  News on the inevitable ‘Thompson Tirade’ to come.

Everyone pretty much knows that I’m a huge advocate of Call of Duty 4.  Usually video games go one of three ways:

1. I’ll play it, think it’s crap, and never let it see the light of day again. (Superman Returns, just couldn’t get into it)
2. I’ll play it, become obsessed with pwning the shit out of it, and beat it in less than one business week. (BioShock)
3. I’ll start to play the single player, say “Screw that Noise”, start to play the multiplayer, and never take it out of the console tray again. (Halo 2 & 3, CoD4)

What games have dominated your console?

Situations like this happen a little more than ’sometimes’ — where a AAA title is just, at this point, days away from release, and the only games that are coming out are, well, nothing to really write about (I will like them, however. But that’s purely for your reading pleasure).

In fact, the only decent console release came out in the middle of March. Sure, some releases have dropped on portables (Crisis Core and The World Ends With You) since then, but largely, the biggest console title recently out was…Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Sure, the PC has seen its fair share of ports, Assassin’s Creed, Turok and Vegas 2, but those aren’t originals.

So, what’s a gamer to do in, what I like to call ‘the calm before the storm?’ I do my best to drudge up games I unfortunately passed when they came out and give them the time they deserve. Since I’ve lost my copies of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, I decided to dust off Beyond Good & Evil and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. Granted, there’s going to be little chance in hell of actually finishing these games before Midnight on Tuesday AM, but there’s enough there to occupy my time. At some point, I’m going to play Psychonauts and beat that…I’ve been telling myself that for a few years now since I got it.

Some day it’ll come true.

What do you, my faithful readers, do to occupy your time before a big-name release? Sometimes this phenomenon happens with movies as well as games…any advice you can pass on to others? Myself? What about some low-key titles that I should look into when I get bored? I’m always looking for a great game to play.

So it’s become very apparent what readers care about.  This page, this attempt at entertaining literature, has and always will be an experiment of constant refinement.  Th!nkEmpire and I have always loved to write: It’s the writing that entertains us, not the topic.  Judging by traffic trends, feedback, user comments, and our ability to generate topics, this space here has become more of a Gaming and Technology related blog than the general purpose blog that it started out to be.  So as a result, we’ve decided to tailor this space to you, the reader.  Moving forward, a large amount of the space will be focused on that.  As part of our “re-launch” we’ll be arranging things for gaming related posts.  The occasional blurb about something we want to write about shall be vanquished to the “Grab Bag” section of our site.  Politics, Information/Status Posts (much like this one), and anything outside of the tech world.

At your disposal

Gr00veMerchant

The most recent news of Wrath of the Lich King has assuaged some of my fears, answered some lingering questions and even provided some points to ponder. And while the news that WotLK hit the coveted “alpha build” is great for sure, as it means the release date approaches closer and closer to the typical Blizzard “It’ll release when it’s ready,” there remains little to be heard about any gameplay changes WotLK will bring to the board.

The latest, and probably last, patch released for The Burning Crusade brought the following: lots of daily quests, lots of gold, phased quest lines which require server-wide cooperation to complete, and, my favorite thing, the concept of being rewarded with a semi-unique namesake in the fourth Phase of the Sunwell quests.

If this patch is a preview of future things to come in Wrath, I think the collective Warcraft community is in for good things. Continue reading to see what improvements/releases could make Wrath that much more excellent.

(more…)

I’ll work on getting out a post about what I think Blizzard should throw in to the “sometime” upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I promise it’ll be good, as it’ll be tackling things I don’t think many are thinking of.

Since it’s 2 am friday morning, Happy Friday!

I’m all about equal opportunity. But have we gone too far in the pursuit?

MHSAA provided me with an opportunity to be involved in something that kept me out of trouble, in school, and part of a team. Now, it seems, that might be in jeopardy.

After losing a case involving the scheduling of seasons for women’s sports, the organization that oversees high school athletics in Michigan owes 7.5 million in attorney’s fees and interest.

The part that bothers me the most is that the entire premise behind this discrimination suit is scholarships. essentially the schedules in place weren’t offering fair opportunity to girls for scholarships as the were for boys. The problem I have with the whole thing is that the ratio of scholarship opportunities for girls is higher than for boys. Essentially it’s easier for a female athlete to get a scholarship than a male.
explain to me again why we’re suing the MHSAA?

Not only does Grand Theft Auto IV come out, but so does Windows XP Service Pack 3!

This may surprise some of our more intrepid readers, as I have garnered myself a reputation for being a Vista supporter one of the few who enjoys Vista. And, thus far, I’ve had no gripes, issues or complaints about anything Vista does. I’ve got myself a decent rig (Core2Quad, 4gb ram, 1tb hard drive space, 7950gtoc video card [I know, it's old, forgive me]) and can deal with the chunk Vista takes to run it.

But, for some reason, whenever an OS Service Pack comes out, I get giddy. I’m not sure why, but I just do. In fact, I think I’m going to reformat on April 29thish, if not earlier, and see how XP SP3 is. Why?

The answer comes in two parts, really. During college, at semester’s end, I would reformat my computer. First, it prevented me from getting 18 million programs installed on my computer and hardly ever deleting them (i.e., my parents). Secondly, I did it for pure pleasure. There’s something about completely wiping a hard drive clean that soothes my soul.

And the more I think about it, doing a little boot-drive Spring Cleaning usually entices me to clean up the rest of my computer. Having a rabbit and dog in a studio apartment means I usually air-can my computer once a week, but I can go through, tag some of my non-or-mis-tagged mp3’s, delete some artists/albums I don’t listen to, knock off some television shows I dont need anymore (I’m looking at you, seasons 5-7 of the Gilmore Girls [my wife got me into that show and I ate it up] and the UK version of the Office) and some games I don’t plan on ever installing and playing again.

Do any of you, my lovely readers, have reformatting rituals? Are you looking forward to SP3? Leave me a note in the comments. I read them all - it just takes some time for them to get posted is all!

Mental Note: The only thing I need to do this time around, however, is set my Outlook archive/file to save to my non-boot hard drives, so I don’t have to re-load all my POP3′d emails and whatnot.

P.S.: I’m working on my column, which is the post I thought I’d have out the other day. It’s a slow process, as there’s a lot more reading to pour over before I commit myself to it. Besides, I’ve been feeling rather in the doldrums as far as writing is concerned as of late.