With GPS records, computer stats and timestamps in hand, they will eventually strike. They’ll comb through the complaints and the cries until they find a mismatch, and then they’ll issue a statement.
The critic never drove to that point, they’ll say. He did not traverse the highway mentioned in the third paragraph.
And he most certainly did not toggle the hardest difficulty setting. (more…)
Clearly, I am a glutton for punishment.
Case in point: for the last 15 months or so, I have joined my co-workers for the occasional game of Call Of Duty, be it Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops. We sure have had fun playing. Well, *they* have had fun. I have spent most of that time resisting the urge to Hulk Smash my controller into tiny pieces, not counting that time that I actually did Hulk Smash my controller into tiny pieces (don’t worry, kids – I didn’t damage the electronics).
And it’s not them; it’s me. (more…)
Ever have one of those “I’m going to Hell” moments?
Wherein all social mores, beaten out from birth like a mantra on an ancestral timpani drum, can be so clearly delineated that any second grader can easily tell you, “Oh, that’s wrong, you don’t eat candy corn off a sidewalk. There’s germs there.”
Ask that kid what germs are, and they’ll spit right back at you, “Little invisible things that get in your stomach and make you sick.”
Now I’m not trying to debunk scientific method or repudiate the fact that the world is older than 5,000 years or event deny that there was once a man named Hammurabi (who was, in fact, the very first rule lawyer). Germs do exist, a method was employed to discover them and, although we cannot see them with the naked eye, they are truly there.
No, I wish to talk about our own self imposed and socially imposed mores that, though invisible, we all have. Although they vary from region to region – some heathens put mayonnaise on their fries, after all – the concept of right or wrong is so wholly integrated into our social contract that in order to exist productively in our civilization we must abide by it to some degree. (more…)
Microsoft announced yesterday that they would be raising the price of Xbox Live Gold.
Starting November 1st, the rates will increase from $50 to $60 for an annual subscription, from $20 to $25 for a quarterly subscription and from $8 to $10 for a monthly subscription. The news was immediately met with much wailing and rending of garments from Xbox Live Gold users.
To those users, I say: quit your whining. (more…)
I finished Limbo last night (more on that soon) and after the credits rolled I somehow wound up on the leader board. The game hadn’t officially been released yet, so the 675 people on the list were most likely fellow journalists or other videogaming professionals.
Naturally, I scrolled through to see who I knew and if I was ranked higher than them. Turns out, I couldn’t tell you who any of those people were. (more…)
There’s been word on the street for a while now that Hulu was coming to the Xbox 360. I actually thought it was going to be Microsoft’s centerpiece at E3 and it would be a major component in an ongoing plan to transition the Xbox 360 from a gaming platform to home multi-media center, that could change the way we think about content delivery.
Now that Hulu Plus has been revealed to the harsh light of day, we can all go back to not caring. (more…)
