Rules of the Internets

Rules of the Internets

1. Anybody can make a website and put whatever they want on its pages, so at first glance of an article remember the “Assassin’s Creed”. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.”

2. News wise, it’s not to be taken seriously unless backed up by three sources with something to lose. Otherwise it's just someone trying to sell a book.

3. Argument wise, there’s no medal for winning an argument, no ribbon no plague, so like running in the “Special Olympics” even if you win you’re still retarded.

4. Sarcasm comes off poorly in text format. Unless the person can hear you’re tone then assume they will take you seriously if you try, also don’t assume people will get satire.

5. The stupid outnumber the smart. Just because you spend a good amount time writing out a smart/witty response doesn’t mean it will be taken as such, it will be read by primarily by people who think they know more than they actually do.

6. Don’t take anything personally. The person calling you name’s and insulting you’re “work” is just somebody hiding behind a user name an avatar. You don’t know them and they don’t know you. (See 7.)

7. People are assholes; when people are given anonymity most will use it to annoy other people and just say racist/sexist/stupid stupid stuff to get a reaction. These people are called Trolls.

8. Don’t feed the Trolls. It’s the same as an asshole yelling at run in the city from a 5th floor window and you are the street. It’s all just words and chances are you’ll never meet, but that won’t stop him from yelling, and if you yell back you will just end up looking like a crazy person or worse the same as the one in the 5th floor.

9. Hitler is not a use all term, , just because a person did/maybe did something that Hitler did/maybe did it doesn't mean the person is Hitler. Yes Hitler was a good speaker like Obama but remember that Hitler wore a hat, and Obama didn't, thus no Hitler

10. Just because you can post something doesn't mean you should, just because you hate Islam/Gays/Women/Etc, doesn't mean you have to share. While you have the right to voice an opinion, I have the right to call an asshole.

11. Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean it’s your right, know what you're talking about and think it through before you post your reaction.

12. You will get something wrong at some point, so accept you messed up and move on, acting defensive and accusing the accuser will only make you look like an asshole.

13. Your opinion is not better or worse than the next person; an opinion cannot be wrong rather ill thought out.

14. Don’t assume that all your ideas are good ones; just because you spent time thinking out the best way to solve the world’s problem doesn’t mean it makes any damn sense to the rest of the people.

15. When it comes to different Forums, there is no poster bill of rights. A forum is a private intuition is a way a such the owner can control who posts and what can be said, granted it can be abused but if a moderator is being a ass and the owner either is in on it or ignoring you then leave, you gain nothing from starting a personal crusade against them.

16. Don’t start a person crusade against anyone, it’ll end poorly with you usually looking crazy, just because someone disagrees with you/is something you don’t like doesn’t mean there out to get you, and even if they are, there still some asshole behind an username, don’t be that asshole.

17. Don’t be a grammar Nazi, unless the person has made a GLARING war crime on English, then leave them alone, or for the love of god don’t be dick and crucify them. We get it, you were an English Major in College, how’s that working for you?

18. For Facts the same applies as (17) don’t be a fact Nazi, unless the person has missed the entire point or his facts are clearly wrong then correct them like calmly. No one like an asshole, especially when the say they know more then you

19. Avatars are not “free speech”, just because you find it funny/cool doesn’t mean that other will. If you post a Swastika to be “ironic” then don’t be surprised when you’re called a Nazi.

20. People are assholes, learn to deal with them

Darkest of Days

As a history buff I was somewhat looking forward to this game, the idea of a time travel game that had you using the weapons of that time period and participating in some of the greatest battles of that time. But like most ideas it comes out poorly, and this game has it in spades. This game suffers from problems involving the poor execution of the game-play, numerous plot holes, even glaring historical inaccuracy.

This game starts off in 1876 at the Battle of Little Big Horn as a soldier in General George A. Custer’s army. As most of us know, it goes poorly and as your fellow soldiers take arrows to the face you are rescued at the last second by a guy in some sort of exoskeleton who puts you into a sort of time bubble that sends you to the future (no date given) where you meet your new “boss” who goes by the name of “Mother” she gives a lecture about a company called Kronotek and gives an exposition that the founder of this company (named Dr.Koell) solved time travel and used it to research history. She goes on to say she is a co-founder and that the company they created has a strict policy of not messing with history. She states that Dr.Koell has gone missing; and not only that but she has noticed that there have been disruptions in the time stream (no idea how she knows) and that you have to fix it by saving a person who is not where they’re supposed to be, Cpl. Welsh from the Union Army in the American Civil War at the Battle of Antietam and a Russian Army Officer named Petrovich in World War I at the Battle of Tannenberg. You’re then introduced to an Agent Dexter and sent through boot camp. After boot camp you begin your time travel adventures.

You are given two choices/time periods to begin your mission to find Dr.Koell and save history. The two time periods you can choose are the Battle of Antietam in 1862 during the American Civil War and the Battle of Tanneberg in 1914 on the Eastern Front of the First World War. Unfortunately these two periods are really it, you do go to a POW camp in World War II but that‘s only for three missions, and to Pompeii in 79 A.D but that’s only at the end. These two periods are stretched out through the entire game sending you into portions of the battles. This is sad because it seems that you could easily have thrown in other areas and/or sections of the Wars.

Game play is a basic shooter, the only difference being the weapons you use. You can use historically “accurate” weapons of those areas. Such as muskets in the Civil War and bolt-action rifles and machine guns in the WWI sections. The weapons even reload “historically” with muskets only having one shot and reloading it via barrel, the reloading has a meter which at the right time if you press reload again you can reload instantly (ala Gears of War) or if you miss your game jams for a few seconds. As a history buff the attention to detail is nice as they even name them and use both sides’ weapons. The missions are pretty basic, you need to hunt down you’re targets and you have to kill your way to them, but you always miss them for whatever reason until the last missions.

The plots of the missions are weird as any time “Mother” talks she goes on and on about keeping history the way it was and pretty much sounds like Doc Brown from Back to the Future. But, once you’re in the battle you are sometimes given access to future weapons such as tactical shotguns, assault rifles, and such. The reason for this is that you’re outnumbered so you need to make sure you can even out the odds, this seems weird cause if you left well enough alone the battle would be the same. Also you have to fight through the entire battle to get to your target, but it would seem easier/ less risky to just pop in grab the target and pop out, but you need to kill thousands of Germans/ Confederates. At one point you even have your target but a Union Commander orders you to go to Bloody Lane, even though you have your target and you’re essentiality just a guy in a Union uniform your partner (Agent Dexter) says we have to go there because those are our our orders (even though you just grabbed the target, plus Dexter had said how shitty Bloody Lane ends at the beginning of the level.)


NITPICKS:
Some problems I had with the game involve my historical buffness, such as the historical inaccuracies. I really only want to say two inaccuracies as not to sound like a history snob, both are in the World War 1 section as those two got me the most annoyed. First, in the beginning couple of WWI levels where you’re fighting in the first months of the war, during one of the levels you come across a section of the level that you have to run away from, and what is keeping you running is a never ending onslaught of Germans and a German’s tank machine gun. The problems are with that are simple. The Battle of Tannberg took place in August of 1914, Tanks didn’t enter combat until The Battle of the Somme which was in September 1916, two years after the game has them fighting. The next nitpick is in another WWI mission in which after you protect the side of a hill from a German attack, you come under Mustard Gas attack which quickly covers the hillside and you have to put on a gasmask and quickly run away, I have several problems with this. A. Mustard Gas was not used effectively till 1917 at the Battle of Ypres against the British, B. Mustard Gas does not rise that fast, nor does it move the fast. C. Gas Masks at the time were no more than simple pieces of cotton as the only gas used during that time (1914) was tear gas.

In conclusion the game is not horrible, but it’s not great either. To someone who can’t stand firing a weapon that doesn’t fire dozens of bullets at once, it’ll get stressful and frustrating fast, but if can but that past you it’s a good rental and a good weekend.

The Good

· Good Ideas

· Interesting Story

The Bad

· Poor Execution

· Plot Holes

The Ugly

· Glaring Historical Inaccuracies

I'm back

After a long hiatus I'm officially starting again, I will but up a new review soon within the week :), sorry for the long wait for my fans (if any).

Change of Plans

Due to a variety of reasons I'm gonna have to cut back on reviews. I'm still gonna do the summer reading list but I've decided to expand that into a full time thing. Though I'm gonna cut down on my game reviews, due to money and time they have become stressful. Though I still will do some (few times a month) but they will not be on any schedule. I also an redoing the reading list so a summer schedule will be up soon.

Dante's Inferno

Dante’s Inferno is one hell of an interesting game. Based on the first part of a fourteenth century of a set of poems by Dante Alighieri called The Divine Comedy, the poem follows Dante’s journey through the afterlife from hell (Inferno) purgatory (Purgatorio) and finally heaven (Paradiso). During the Inferno he visits the 9 levels of hell guided by the Greek poet Virgil. Besides the visual descriptions in the poem the similarities between the poem and game end there, the Dante in the poem is a week willed man who is in hell simply because, while the Dante in the game is a strong Crusader who enters hell in pursuit of his love Beatrice who is stolen by the devil. The game starts with Dante in a prison riot in Acre. As he cuts through the dozens of enemy’s he is stabbed in the back by an assassin where Death then appears to bring Dante to the underworld. Dante fights back and kills death (why not) and steals his scythe. Realizing his sins he goes back to Florence to his love Beatrice (in the poem she is an old love from childhood not his wife) and live a life of peace. But it is not to be as he finds his father and her murdered and Beatrice’s soul belonging to the devil due to Dante’s sins.

This leads him to start a quest to get back his love by going through hell itself. Dante begins his quest in the first level of hell (Limbo) where he meets his guide Virgil who begins to explain about hell and does so till the end. This provides a great way to give exposition. He explains Limbo is where all of the virtuous pagans like Socrates, Homer, and himself are. Also people who are to be judged go through Limbo and are judged by King Minos. After the fight through Limbo Dante heads down to the second level (Lust) where he must fight the demons led by Cleopatra and her love Marc Antony. Next is the third (Gluttony), a land of pulsating flesh, oozing with puss and bile where you fight the giant worm Cerberus. Next Dante descends to the fourth level (Greed) a place where people are dipped in boiling gold. Dante must fight his father, a greedy, lustful, and corrupt man who greatly influenced Dante into the man that he is.


With the sixth level (Anger) Dante rides the river Styx as he nears the city of Dis which leads to the final and even worse levels of hell. He breaches the walls by riding the demon Phlegyas, this leads him into the seventh level (Hersey) where Dante fights dark priests and practitioners of dark magic. He drops into the eighth level (Violence) where he must transverse 3 levels of violence. Violence against others which is punished by a river of boiling blood, violence against oneself a dark dense forest, where Dante meets his mother who killed herself when she realized her husband was cruel man and couldn’t take it anymore, and lastly violence against god, a barren desert where Dante meets his fellow Crusaders who went against god. There he fights his friend and lovers brother Francesco who died because he took the blame for one of Dante’s acts. After this he comes to the eighth level (Fraud) where Beatrice (who has been turned by Lucifer) sends Dante through a series of trials testing his skill and strength. At the end though Dante is able to free Beatrice who is then brought to heaven by the Archangel Gabriel who tells Dante that he will see Beatrice one day, and that his redemption will soon be at hand. Dante finally comes upon the ninth and final level of hell (Betrayal) where he fights the Devil. Once he wins he is able to seal Lucifer back away and escapes into Purgatory where upon To Be Continued… appears, and likely a sequel due to there being three poems and the second one being Dante’s journey through Purgatory.


All across the nine levels you encounter a variety of enemies, from standard demons, to flying demons, gold monsters, glutton worms, succubus, and etc. When you kill these enemies you get souls. Souls can be used to upgrade your defense, weapons, or magic. There are three kinds of souls, holy, unholy and neutral. To combat these enemies you have three weapons at your disposable, Death Scythe a melee weapon, Beatrice’s Cross as a ranged weapon, and magic which can be both ranged and melee. Combat is simple involving simple hack and slash with your scythe with ranged attack with your cross. Magic adds more attacks as there are radial, passive, and straight attacks. Magic involves Mana which you can get from Mana fountains you find. Health is also recharged this way as well as you can find souls and relics which provide benefits to you and weapons. Along your path you come upon multiple souls (27), historical people who have been sent to hell for one of the 9 sins. You have a choice when you come upon them to both absolve them of their sins and gain holy souls, or you can punish them and gain unholy souls. Also challenging you throughout the game is a wide variety of puzzles. Most involve moving blocks from point A to point B, while others are considerably more difficult.


This is a very interesting game. Set in hell, this game manages to get the medieval view of hell to a T. Dark, foreboding, and very unpleasant, the game shows a very disturbing view that some people might not like. The combat is very brutal, with blood and gore to spare and it’s even more in boss fights. An example is with King
Minos where you essentially split his face in two with a spiked wheel. The setting is as well disturbing as Gluttony is a land of flesh, oozing with bile and pus. The enemy’s are of a standard variety with each land having their own special kind. But for some reason they appear in other levels even though they have no part in them. This is kind of weird such as seeing a succubus in Gluttony and so on. There are problems with this game; this game has a way of screwing you over with the uneven difficulty. In some place’s puzzles are extremely simple while other’s you use moves that you have never used before or again, or a solution that you would never think of or use again, this is quite frustrating and a huge turn off the only way I beat them is by consulting the internet which you should never have to do in a game. But these puzzles are few and far between so it’s not a huge bother. All in all I would say it’s a good rental.




The Good
• Great voice acting
• Good Story
• Visually interesting

The Bad
• Uneven level of difficulty
• A bit cheap

The Ugly
• A bit disturbing

Written by Historiagamer
Edited by Josh
Images from www.giantbomb.com

Splinter Cell: Conviction

The Splinter Cell series has been around for almost a decade. Beginning 2002 with what was simply called Splinter Cell, the game spawned several sequels the fifth of which is Splinter Cell: Conviction the most current as well as today’s topic.
Till the third game in the series (Double Agent) the game’s story was more background focused, sticking with exotic local and setting while keeping character stories to a minimum. This changed with Double Agent as Sam Fisher’s (main character) personal life becomes the focus as his daughter was killed by a drunk driver, and he was sent on a deep cover mission to take his mind off it. Conviction continues this with not only having Sam leaving Third Echelon (Spy Agency) but having Sam learning that his daughter’s death was not an accident. He is going on quest to uncover who did it, but soon he is roped into Third Echelon business as a former friend now asks him to help as the agency has fallen under a new Director who is up too not too good things. The game takes Sam to a very local place, Washington D.C, where he needs to find out what’s going on and stop whatever evil is afoot. While fighting evil he goes to many famous landmarks including the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial.



While sticking to main idea of stealth this time around there have been many changes to the Splinter Cell formula, rather than sticking to the old method of have Sam Fisher relying on Third Echelon for Intel and equipment, this time he’s on his own. The game has also switched from the old ways of stealth of crouching in the shadow and waiting it, Conviction has turned to a more action orientation stealth approach, similar to what you would see in a Bourne movie with fast action and gunplay. That’s not to say it doesn’t do stealth well, it cover stealth quite well with a couple of new features. When you’re completely in the dark you’re screen turns black and with enemies and targets in color. You also have a feature called “Last know Position”, where if you’re fast enough when an enemy see’s you all that remains is an outline of where you where and that is where your enemy’s will search in that area leaving you to fool them and flank them. Another new edition is the “Mark and execute” feature. To do this simply take an enemy via hand to hand and he can now mark multiple targets and automatically kill shot them all with devastating headshots. To prevent this being a game breaker you can only store one round of kills. Also certain weapons have a certain number of marks you can make to limit easy kills.

Sam gains a wide variety of weapons along your path. Unlike past Splinter Cell game where you only had access to a silenced pistol and rifle along with gadgets like flash bangs and remote cams, you now have access to shotguns, assault rifles, as well as a number of gadgets like EMP, flash, and frag grenades as well as a remote camera, and an EMP backpack. Over the course of the game you gain XP for kills and completing challenges like kill X amount of people in the dark. You can use this XP to upgrade weapons and gadgets, giving an added edge like extra power or reload speed. Also during the single player you come across some interrogation scenes where to get information from a person, you can use the environment to bash them around to talk. Unfortunately what you can smash them into is limited and some scenes it’s not clear what you can interact with, If there’s nothing, then a standard and generic scene with Sam punching them in the face happens.

In addition to the single player campaign, there are two other modes in this game. A single/co-op mode called denied ops, a challenge mode were one or two agents from Third Echelon or its Russian counterpart called Kestrel. Denied Ops has four modes which you can play alone or against a human opponent as you clear out enemies, defend a bomb, infiltration without being seen or a simple death match. There is also co-op campaign where you play as one of said agents working together to take down a rouge Russian general.



Splinter Cell: Conviction is quite a good game, it manages to change game play but still keep the Splinter Cell feel. Stealth is done quite well and while a little dumbed down from previous games, it still does its job. Jumping from uncovered to cover is easy with a push of a button. To make things easier when you’re in the light or someone is seeing you’re screens in color, but when you’re completely in the dark you’re screen is black and white, a difference from the old games as you had a light on your back that went from green to red depending on your stealth. This provides a new level of visual experience that is rather immersive. All in all it’s a step up from the last games, where stealth was usually a step of trial and error as you had to watch out for guard patterns, as being seen could mean mission failure. Now being seen, while discouraged can be rectified without starting over. Also the mechanics of the game have changed focusing more on action than stealth, feeling more like the Bourne than the old Sam Fisher. Hand to hand is better as you can now take down enemies with brutal moves and efficiency. Adding to the fun is the co-op which is done quite well and is equally entertaining.

The Good
• Nice looking
• Excellent Story
• Deniable Ops
• Co-op
• Game play

The Bad
• N/A

The Ugly
• A.I could use some lesson’s

Written by Historiagamer
Edited by Josh
Images from www.giantbomb.com

May schedule plus new additions

Two new things for the blog plus what's in May

1. Nostliagaming- A look back a games of yesteryear

2. -Summer Reading list- A summer only event, a bi-monthly look at some of the worst, and best of graphic novels

May Schedule

Dead to Rights:- Retribution

Summer Reading list Wanted-5/7/10

Iron Man 2

Nostaliagaming: Stubbs the Zombie

Summer Reading list Kingdom Come- 5/21/10

Red Dead Redemption-