The Day My Life Ended…

As most of you should know, Halo 3 is out, and has been for the past week or so. I got it the day it came out, and was giggling like a school girl most of the day. We brought it back, and finished our day of classes, and couldn’t wait to get back to the dorm room to play it. First night we played 4-player co-op and went through half the game. Than a bit of multiplayer, followed by more co-op. Needless to say, we beat the game that thursday night. It was a decent story. Not the best of endings, but still a solid game.

Of course, the multiplayer, xbox live is one of its best parts. After several more late nights of non-stop mutliplayer, we decided to start going back through the game, for the skulls and terminals. We started doing so, and my suitemate and roommate, got all the terminals and most skulls. The next night was my turn, or was supposed to be…

The next day I had a college Calc 2 test…Yea I know, holy shit right… tell me about it… Anyway, as you can image it didn’d great. And after a long test, I could atleast take satisfaction in the fact that my day was done, and I could go back and enjoy myself for a bit. Play Halo 3 and get the skulls and unlock the rest of the armor…, but NOOOO…

As I was walking back to my room, my roommate called and said, “Hey buddy, remember a little while ago when I told you about the red rings of death…” Enough said, I walked defeated back to my dormroom, to see the red ring of death for myself. After trying several tricks, and still failing to rid my xbox 360 of its red lights, we called microsoft help thingy, complaining about red lights of doom. The best they could do, is send a pre-paid box that I place my broken xbox in and send it to them. They keep it for 3-5 weeks and send it back. So basically I have to wait 2 months to be able to use my xbox 360 and play halo 3 again.

After reading many online stories, I was greatly dishearted, apparently this is a gigantic flaw in the xbox 360 and alot of people have not had good experiences when it does break down, so basically I have no 360 and no Halo 3 for 2 months, starting yesterday…

Fucking Red Ring of Death…

-The Former Latter

The Names Chief, Master Chief…

As the days past by, and we all get one step closer to September 25, a holiday for many gamers out there, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the good ole days of the previous two installments. If your at all like me you’ve been giggling like a schoolgirl ever since you held the pre-order box in your hands and could officially say, “Its mine.” If not since then, than at least since September came.

After completing my daily search through the web for any new Halo 3, trailers or news, I unfortunately had to go to my college classes, something that will probably go out the window on the 25th…, but anyway. When I returned I had a strong desire to play the original Halo. The game that started it all. After several multiplayer matches between my suitemates, and further giggling like schoolgirls, we had to play the campaign one last final time before the 25. So we booted up Co-op legendary (as if we’d play anything else). The next day my roommate drove home simply to grab the second Halo 2 once we realized that we didn’t have any of our copies at college. Once again, we felt the desire to play the campaign again. So we started up another Legendary Co-op for Halo 2. We are halfway, through both of them atm, and will hopefully beat them both once again before the 25th.

It was this desire to play the older versions of the game, that I realized what a huge impact the Halo trilogy has had on the video gaming world. This trilogy has no doubt defined a generation of gamers. It is currently one of the top X-box live games out there, and Halo 3 hopes to regain the top once again, which, come on, lets be honest, it will. After the total cliff-hanger of an ending from the second game, which left me angry and depressed for a good two weeks, I need closure, as Im sure you all do.

For those of you, who have just gotten the pre-order I suggest you look into some of the many other Halo products. For those of you who can afford it, enjoy the Legendary edition, as well as the Spartan armor X-box 360 and controller. The Halo book series is one of the better book series I have ever read. Eric Nylund is a man after my own heart with his style of writing.

Lastly, for those of you who do not know so much about Halo 3, I thought I’d fill you in on some of the stuff you can look forward to.

• 4 player Co-op (Yes your seeing that correctly, you can be Master Chief, Arbitor, and his 2 Elites.
• Of Course more Multiplayer
• Gravity Hammer – supposed to be the equivalent hype level of the energy sword in Halo 2, but don’t worry the sword is still there.
• Human version of the banshee
• Brute Crusher – Covenant mini-warthog thing
• Mini-warthog
• Elephant -basically a mobile base
• Other misc items – new weapons, grenades, bubble shields, etc…

Im sure i have missed many other cool new things about Halo 3, but I dont have my gaming magazine at hand its extremely late, but another thing to look forward to is Halo Wars, basically an Real Time Strategy game based on Halo, which for me will cause even more girlish giggles on top of the that from actually playing Halo 3. Also, they have declared that this game will be the final installment of Master Chief’s story, does this mean there could me more Halo games/books etc to look forward to? Lets hope so.

-The Former Latter

Mutants Vs. Humans

As my colleague and I were watching the 3rd installment of the X-men movies, I realized that when they first discovered the cure, Storm asks, “Who would be a coward and actually take the cure as a way out” or something like that. It was than that I simply declared. Hell I would love to be a fucking mutant, but my colleague had to destroy my moment of fun, by arguing that it would depend on the power.

After a few minutes later I realized that he was indeed correct. The desire to be a mutant would be based on the power that came along with it. After a rather lengthy discussion we came up with some powers that were totally sweet and we’d love to have and powers that would suck ass, and here they are…

Awesome Powers:

• Gambit – the ability to be able to blow shit up simply by touching it would be fucking sweet.
• Manipulating any of the elements (fire, water, ice, wind, metal, etc.) would freaking cool.
• Telekinesis – the ability to move and do shit with my mind, would doesn’t want that
• Colossus – Enough said
• Cyclops – Ability to shot beams of death out of my eyes, yes i want it.
• Nightcrawler – do i really need to explain why that would be cool…?
• Flight
• Ability to walk through walls
• Super agility and super-human strength
• Spikes, blades from the body (Spike, Wolverine)

Horrible Powers:

• Jubilee – just no
• Ability to know who else are mutants
• The blob

These are the main powers that we listed, we know theres more, and most of the other ones are simply ones that we think would be cool, but not overwhelming awesome like the ones listed above, but I would like people to give there input. If you could be a mutant, would you be one, and if so what power would you want. Or if you want feel free to add powers to either list.

-The Former Latter

Cheap in America? Gimme a Break, Stossel.

For those of you who were fortunate enough to have something to else to do on a Friday night other than watch the journalistic piece of garbage hosted by John Stossel on 20/20 last night, why didn’t you invite me to come along? I would have behaved…maybe.

Well, Stossel decided to take an hour of television scheduling to tell us about how a great person he is because he donates so much money to charity while the rest of squander it away on ourselves. He at least made up for that part by addressing that the American people give more money than any other population, or something like that. I was half paying attention at this point. I saw pretty maps with colors and 3D effects, though!

The other half consisted of upfront interviews asking billionaires why they didn’t give away more of their fortunes. As a member of the middle-class, I could only wonder why I would expect them to. I mean, if I worked hard and earned millions or billions, I wouldn’t let some snobbish little reporter tell me what to do with my money. Everyone would love to have millions of dollars to buy everything they ever dreamed of having. However, only a few of us reach that goal, and reap the benefits of it. How, we expect them not to act on their dreams? Hell, they even donate money anyway.

Why do they donate? Tax reasons of course! It’s the same reasons some big time CEOs take small salaries with large stock options, less money goes back to Uncle Sam. The good will of these wealthy members of society is at least well-rivaled if not out gunned by the tax minded reasoning mixed in with it. Nobody gives anything away for free and without benefit. Even the best person will volunteer because they love how it makes them feel. This is a great kind of selfishness, but imagine the proportionate selfishness of a large donation. Good feeling becomes saving a buck every tax season.

Give more or spend more, we all know it’s a hard question to hypothetically have a 100% answer to. Imagine when you have billions.

~Another Else

Blocked in Turkey, Now Officially By Fault Of Our Own

So, I officially have my first Web sites banned in a foreign country. If you need an explanation, read this.

My only problem is, I didn’t do anything to get myself banned.

So, here goes!

I have never read any of this Adnan Oktar’s work. However, it blows. That is my ultimate opinion on the matter and now I can fairly say I am blocked in Turkey.

Wooo!

~Another Else