A Cappella Crossword

Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori

I love Call of Duty 4. In the ongoing battle between Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3, I would definitely pick Call of Duty. I own both and they're both great, but I simply prefer firing machine guns to firing laser beams. However, playing online has been a bit irksome lately, what with all the trash talking and screeching children infecting Xbox Live, so I haven't been playing online very much lately. My current rank is around 27 in COD 4 (whatever that equates to,) and I've been more than happy to let it fester while the online addicts get better and I forget how to aim my gun. Besides, Burnouthas taken up a lot of my gaming time lately.

Anyway, I needed to buy a cable the other day, so I went down to the local mega electronics store, and after finding said cable I decided to check out the Xbox 360 games on sale. Nothing since Burnout has interested me lately, but Call of Duty 2 was on sale, so I figured I'd pick it up. It's Infinity Ward, after all, and I remember playing the game at Blockbuster a few years ago when the 360 first came out and being pretty impressed with the presentation, so it seemed like a good purchase. Besides, it rounded out the collection.

I played through the first two levels (which were great, in typical fashion,) and then decided to try my hand at the multiplayer. The video I have attached is my first two rounds of a Deathmatch, wherein my death played a pretty prominent role. I have to give credit to the guys with whom I played. In spite of the slaughter, I was never called a "n00b" in spite of the fact that that's exactly what I was. I hope that anyone reading this site can find some joy in my humiliation.

Call of Duty 2 - Lamb to the Slaughter from Gene on Vimeo.

More Jack Thompson!

I'm working on grading and finals right now, so there's really nothing to write about at the moment. However, thanks to Google Alerts, I did find the following video that some wonderfully demented individuals put up on YouTube. PurePwnage can expect a lawsuit any day now, if Thompson's own legal troubles don't get in the way. Thanks to Geekpulp for the heads-up.

Your Demo Sucks - Introduction

Hear ye, hear ye! This is the announcement of a new category on A Cappella Crossword: "Your Demo Sucks." For the introductory post, I have picked a demo that definitely does not suck. Specifically, the original God of War demo which I snagged from the junk-mail pile at my old workplace three years ago. This is merely an example of how a game demo should be done. (Warning: the video is fifteen minutes long.)

Your Demo Sucks - Introduction - God of War from Gene on Vimeo.

That's on a Playstation 2, folks, and it's from 2005. Keep that in mind. When I played this demo I knew that my career as a Spartan warrior was just around the corner if the whole academia thing didn't pan out. The demo is amazing. The graphics are awesome, the sound is awesome, the gore is fantastic, and the action is frenetic. I can practically smell that Hydra's breath when it roars.

Since I don't really feel like shelling out dollars to be a product tester, I have been downloading video game demos from Xbox Live for the past few weeks. I sometimes wonder why companies even bother putting these things out on the market. I don't think it's too much to ask that a demo at least gives me the second or third best content that I will find in the full version, and I certainly do judge a book by it's cover. Even after all of the bad reviews of Kane & Lynch, I still gave the demo a try, which was at least interesting enough to make me want to rent the thing. Yeah, the game kind of sucks, but the point is that the demo was actually sort of fun.

This little demo was so good that I went out like a robot to Best Buy and grabbed a copy without checking any reviews. I just knew it would be amazing. The funny thing is, the game could have completely sucked. The demo could have been the best part of the whole experience. That's not the point, though. The point is that a demo is usually a pretty good indicator of whether or not a game will be awesome, playable or total crap. I'm doing everyone a favor here. Seriously. Gamers: If the demo sucks, you might just want to stay away. Developers: If your game sucks, as a rule of thumb so will the demo (the opposite is not always true, but it's usually a safe bet.) Think of this as my minor contribution to the gaming community. I play crappy demos so you don't buy crappy games.

In between Posts

If you find a permanent link from this site under the category "My Pond," it is because I am the blogger formerly known (or kind of known) as Philbrick. Most of the links are to old pals from FTTW, others are friends from the old blog. Whatever you do, don't panic.

If We Ignore Him Long Enough Will He Go Away?

Is there something about Counter-strike that makes ordinary people go insane? I've played scores, perhaps hundreds, of violent shooting games in my life and I have not once planned some sort of psychotic rampage. Years ago (probably almost twenty) at Chuck E. Cheese there was a game (the name escapes me) where the player fired a fake submachine gun at assorted baddies. I played that. I played NARC at the arcade. I played the NES version of The Punisher. I played multiple iterations of Doom and Quake. I own four of the Grand Theft Auto titles. I own the last two Halo games and the last two Call of Duty games. How many virtual people have I slaughtered by now? The number must be in the millions. Still, I hold a job, manage to be somewhat social and don't even own a gun. The answer to this seeming paradox? Counter-strike.

I am fully aware that after only three days this topic is so stale that even MSNBC has covered it, but somehow I just knew that if I did a search for Jack Thompson I would find a new story blaming video games for the school shooting in Indiana. You know what? I think he's right. Not about everything, mind you, but it seems that everyone who plays Counter-strike eventually goes insane and shoots up a school. I only hope that none of my students play this insidious game. Tomorrow, when I go into class, I shall insist that any student of mine who plays Counter-strike switch to Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 under threat of expulsion.

Christ, I wish I had gone to law school. I could be on TV right now making soundbites about the evils of shooting fake people on a television screen instead of teaching Shakespeare to bored undergrads. I could afford a good pair of sneakers for chasing ambulances. I could lose my sense of shame and dance on real corpses for fame and profit. Hell, I could even be a Senator or a presidential candidate (in a few years, anyway.) (It's not about Right and Left, folks, it's about right and stupid.)

Related: Thompson sends an ever-so-tasteful letter to Northern Illinois University.

Blu-ray...You Saw Me Standing Alone...

I love rumors, if only for the sheer misery of knowing that my originally overpriced toy will soon become even more obsolete. I can console myself (no pun intended) with the fact that I never bought the HD DVD player for the 360, but that doesn't make up for the fact that Microsoft decided to add an HDMI output to the system mere months after I put the thing on my credit card.

Now comes a rumor that they're going to release a Blu-ray player for the machine, which will officially make a good setup more expensive than a PS3. Well, folks, we still have the better games. At least for now.

Oh misery of miseries, to live with component cables and a standard DVD player...

Inaugural Post - Burnout Paradise

Welcome to A Cappella Crossword. The inaugural post is a combination of behind the scenes tomfoolery and frustration that eventually led me to TypePad.

Anyway, to set up the following carnage: if you are not familiar with Burnout Paradise, it is the latest in a series of racing games designed specifically to show just how psychotic you can be on a virtual road. This particular scene is one that I recorded in Showtime mode, where the job is to destroy as many innocent cars as possible. This is not my highest score in the game so far, but it gives a fairly accurate representation of the game's general psychosis.

The game features an incredibly annoying soundtrack and an equally annoying deejay, so I muted both and gave the video my own soundtrack. Also, I am not unaware of the irony that my first post on this weblog is almost nine minutes of a fiery, horrific catastrophe. Enjoy, and come back for more.

Burnout Paradise, Cabaret Edition from Gene on Vimeo.