So, I finally did what Morley's been wanting me to do for ages...do a podcast! So I welcome you to the aptly named Library of Games podcast. It's a placeholder name to me until we come up with a catchier name, and this logo is also a placeholder as well, but here is my first shot at a barely organized podcast staring me and my friends Stanley and Henry! I know we should get better over time, but I hope we get better soon!

• Assassin's Creed 2 Impressions
• Zork 1 Impressions (yeah, we're totally current! :P)
• Dragon Age: Origins Impressions 
• Most Anticipated Games For 2010!

After playing a lot of DJ Hero and feeling pretty confident that I was an awesome pro at this game. I'm a pretty big fan of people on YouTube that play games like Rock Band, DDR, and Stepmania (and also lately, Pop'n Music). By the way, if you want to have your mind blown, watch the videos in the links. I have also watched a couple of videos playing DJ Hero, and people seemed to be very impressed by the person's skill. The only thing that kinda ticked me off is that the person's score is only about a little more than half the score I usually get! So I decided that, "Well, I can do better, and I haven't posted a video in a while, so why don't I....make a video of me playing?". Well, that's why I did! The video above is me displaying my pro skills! Sorry about the video quality, my camera can take pretty pictures, but it can't take pretty videos.
I don't think I've made it very clear that I'm very damn impressed with myself! My score is ranked 26th worldwide on XBL, and my score is higher than the impressive people that I watch (you know, that guy that has more than 85,000 subscribers?)! I might be posting more video like these, not just subject to rhythm games, but other games as well!

(Check out my other high scores here!)

Yea, it was my blog's 2nd birthday seven days ago, and just like last year, I was a over a week late! I'm sorry I never get time to post anymore. I have so many things I could write about, like my newfound love of South Park, and my experiences with Xbox Live, DJ Hero, The Beatles: Rock Band, and being pissed about the only person out of most of my friends to not own Modern Warfare 2. But my mom just doesn't let me on the computer as much anymore, so I have to spend my time on my computer doing the things I need to do first (like updating my iPod, and watching more South Park). Before I get on with anything else, I do remember promising myself some goals before the end of last year, some goals specifically relating to this blog. Let's see them again,

• GOAL ONE: FAILED (87/100 Posts (after that post was made), that's 104 posts less than the total amount of posts I made last year, about 2.1 times less! And only 13 posts away from actually reaching that goal (not including this one).
• GOAL TWO: DISPUTABLE (I don't really know whether or not I actually burned out. I definetly wasn't losing interest in the blog, it was just a problem of the amount of time I'm allowed on the computer (my mother time-locked me computer -.-) combined with the work I have to do for high school caused me to write very little.)

So Assassin’s Creed II has finally hit YouMedia, and here is my first hour-and-a-half so impression of the game…
The game starts out very slow, giving a short flashback explanation of what had occured in the first game. It was a nice way of bringing back important story details, but according to my friends who had not played the first game were not really sure as to what was happening.
The game seems to expect that you already know what you should do, but even I, who had played the first game, was still very unsure as to what to do, even before I had actually got into the real game. There were no hints as to where you were supposed to go, and the game wasn’t awfully good at explaining the new HUD. It never had explained most of what the markings on the mini-map had met, but thankfully most of the mechanics were the same as the first one.

Although I was not able to get his name, I do know this. This guy is freakin' cool. Some AT&T customer support dude came to my house to fix the cable, and I thought he was going to be either an asshole with a goatee, or some boring dude with a goatee. Well, I was pleasantly surprised (not about the goatee) when he walked into my game room. He asked me if my ION Drum Set was an electric drum set, and I told him that they work for Rock Band 2. He said that he also had Rock Band 2, but had a drum set that was nothing like the one I had. He then asked me what level of difficulty I play and stuff, if I had beaten the game, blah blah blah. When he got into my mother room (where apparently the problem was coming from), he started telling me about how he has PS3, Wii, 360, and apparently all these other consoles and how he's been a gamer for longer than I've been born. He ended up being a Sony fanboy, but he was cool. He also seemed to know a lot about the industry as well. (Oh, I remember! He said he was 29!) Although he told me that he had to go (because there was no one older than the age of 18 in the house), he asked me to prove that I am indeed awesome. While I was setting up Rock Band 2, he was also telling me that he has been in a couple of real bands as well (he plays the drums). I amazed him with my completion of Painkiller on Expert Guitar. Soon after, he was telling me how playing the real guitar was not that hard, that some of the notes you have to hit aren't really there (I knew that) and there aren't as much strums as it sounds (which I didn't know!), While I was switching for Guitar Hero III just because I wanted to, he told me how he plays the Rock Band Drums on Expert but only played Guitar on Hard. I then wondered for a while why he could be that good (the drums are HARD!) but not be as good on the Guitar. He answered my question pretty quickly after he showed me that his middle and ring finer are half gone (I didn't hear the story of how that happened, though. I think it would have offended him to ask), which really surprised me! Now I was even more impressed that he could play the Guitar at all! I then passed the TTFaF intro riff for him, we said bye and he left. I wish I could have caught his name, because that guy, is awesome.

It's true, it has been a while since I have actually purchased a new game. Watching this video has made me pretty jealous. I miss the 'going to the store to purchase the game', the 'asking my mom to use her nails to cut the shrink wrap open in the car', and the 'opening the box and pulling out the instruction manual and reading it during the car ride back home and super-hyping myself'...

God, school sucks.

I remember the first time I heard about Rock Band: The Beatles, and I thought, "Wait, are they taking the Guitar Hero route? They're just gonna make a bunch of games featuring a specific band with a bunch of songs by that band and sell it? Damn, Harmonix must need money bad!" Nope!

When I read Patunga13's newest post, I thought he was talking about the new iPod nano. That would have been WAYYYYY too coincidental...

Anyway, the blog actually seems to be taking life again! Maybe school has a slight good affect on my work ethic...

Although I still won't bother with the new map packs (even with the $15 value of the All Fronts map pack), I still kind of enjoy Gears of War 2. Either that, or leveling up and seeing all those EXP points rack up makes me feel good about myself. Either way, this game knows that I'm leet!

Ok, so what if I'm still a scrub?

[UPDATE] Coming to the website on my iPod, I come to the sad realization that the sidebar pics are very oversized. So you don't have to alert me. I will be on the case by tommorow.

To alert the people that read this, I am a freshman in high school now. That's huge news for my mother. So huge, that my mom doesn't want me to think about video games at all until school times end. Which means that I won't be able to play video games until the weekends of every week. For now, I'll have to watch TV and learn...

That's my sad 360 staring at me in the face. I'm so sorry.

To bring breath back to this lifeless blog, I've decided to bring back my old reviews back from Gamespot that I posted about 2-3 years ago. They were slightly amateurish, but hey, they are good filler as I decide what I could do to make this blog worth it again. UNLIKE MY OTHER REVIEWS, this one was never posted on Gamespot. Instead, this was posted a couple of months after this blog was made on a separate website. This was my final official review of a video game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.


I got COD:4 for Christmas and I’ve had high expectations for this game, and I wasn’t disappointed.
First, I’ll talk about the single player mode. The story is pretty much fighting a war and trying to end it. Now, I’ve had the game for about 4 days now, and I’d like to say the game is so hard, that even for a five-hour game, this will take a while to beat. The good thing is that there are 4 levels of challenge so it’s good for both pros and people that have never played a first person shooter before. And for a five-hour game, the campaign feels a lot different from other first person shooters. Most games try to make a place feel dirty by just adding lots of broken stuff everywhere you look, but it just feels like something has gone terribly wrong(don’t worry, you aren’t reading a BioShock review). I wouldn’t say that the characters are very deep or interesting, but they have great voice acting which really keeps you in the mood of what is going on in the game. The soundtrack doesn’t give the game an emotional feeling, but more of a dramatic mood. The enemy AI of the game is very smart, but you won’t see you allies helping you very much. I mean, they don’t shoot walls or anything, but they take cover most of the time and when they do pop out, they usually on shoot about 3 to 4 bullets and most usually don’t hit anything. Another thing that I don’t find bad, just very unrealistic, are scripted enemy pop-outs. I mean, you could sit in cover for about 4 to 5 minutes and then go out and more enemies will come out. But you could also take about 10 to 15 seconds in cover then come out for the same effect, so the game makes it feel like they only come out when you are open. Another thing that gives the same effect of unrealism is respawning infinites enemies that only stop respawning when you get from one place to another. Like in one level, I could spend the whole day killing enemies, and then get shot and die, or just run as fast as you possibly can from one place to another and not shoot ANY enemies and they will stop respawning. Sometimes I think of my allies as distractions more than actual allies. There is one level where there is a helicopter and there is a barn I have to get to. Once I waste almost all my bullets trying to kill the gunner, I desperately run towards the barn to get inside, only to find a scripted gunner come out and shoot me. I have been working on the same level for hours and hours and I still have not passed it.
One thing I would like to say though is that this game actually good use of special grenades(unlike most games), like a flash bang is very helpful at getting enemies to daze of while you start aiming at their heads. Or while enemies are coming you could throw a smoke grenade and place a claymore right next a door, then once the smoke goes out and they run through the door, BOOM. Sadly, weapons like C4s and Claymores are really only found useful in multiplayer games, whereas in single player mode they are usually only used for objectives like plant a C4 on something important and detonate it.
Now, even though the single player has different levels of difficulty to choose from, the multiplayer might not be the best place for beginners but something that someone will really get into. The reason I say that is this isn’t a game like Halo or Gears of War where there are weapons pickups and you will have to shoot a load of bullets to kill someone, Or if you have one weapon where even the inexperienced could get many kills. Nothing like that. This is a game where if you get shot by even a few bullets, you will die. It is a very fast paced game similar to Unreal Tournament but a little slower so that the sniper could be found useful XD. There is, however, the importance of having the right weapons at the right situations. Now that I think about it, it feels a lot like Team Fortress 2, except that you can mix them up to your play style. Something very rarely found in a first-person shooter is the integration of experience points. You get experience points for killing other players in multiplayer. The more experience points you get the closer you get to leveling up, like a role playing game. Once you level up, you unlock more weapons, attachments and perks. Perks are like bonuses to add onto your character. You can have three perks on your character at a time and you get to choose which ones you want. Like a perk called Stopping Power where your bullets have more damage, and a perk called Sleight of Hand where you can reload faster. There are also perks that let you hold more grenades. Attachments are like add-ons to your weapons to make them a little more useful, like a silence could be attached to make sure that you don’t appear on the mini-map when you shoot, or a red dot scope so you can aim better and not have to use the iron sights. The weapons in the game are very modern(hence the name Modern Warfare) and different from the weapons older Call of Duty’s had. They are split into 5 groups, Assault Rifles, Sub Machine Guns, Light Machine Guns, Shotguns, and Sniper Rifles. One game element which adds a whole lot of realism is being able to shoot through thin surfaces. So a bullet being shot through a very thick wall might not be able to penetrate a wall, or penetrate but it won’t be very damaging, and a bullet being shot through things like wood or sheet metal while lose a little bit of it’s damage but still be deadly. So now there is a difference between cover and concealment. There is also a system in the multiplayer called air support, where if you go on a 3 kill streak without dying, you can use UAV recon to have the mini-map scan for enemies for about 30 seconds, while if you go on a five kill streak you could call an air strike where a map of the level is shown and you could choose where you want to fire the air strike. So you could use an air strike in conjunction with a UAV to know where the enemies are and land a few bombs on them. If you get 2 kills from that or from your own fire without dying you go on a 7 kill streak where you can call a helicopter to come and support you(very useful too).
Just to include a little snippet about controls, you can hold down a button to look down the iron sights/scope/attachment, and fire. Or you could just press the fire button and fire directly from the hip, which is not as accurate(like Gears of War). You can also melee with you knife by clicking into the right thumb stick and switch weapons and reload. You can also crouch or go prone(lay on your stomach) by clicking the B button. And jump or climb over objects with the A button. Moving around is done by the left thumb stick and air support or perks(like RPGs, Claymores, and C4s. Don’t worry, other perks are passive) are used with the D-Pad. And the use the left and right bumpers to throw fragmentation grenades, flash grenades, stun grenades and smoke grenades(Sorry, but you can only have frags and one of the other three at a time).
Graphics are very cinematic and realistic(hehe, does that sound familiar to anyone?). The game also has a very cinematic feel. Just watch the intro and credits and it might remind you of a movie. And the final level(or the level after the final level) feels Soprano like. And the cut scenes give the game like an interactive movie, except deeper than that. When you get close up to sandbag walls though, it looks 2-d, but the environment looks very realistic, and the explosions are also very realistic. But there are some questionable rag doll physics, but they only popped up when I played split-screen games. You’ll see many people having their hands stuck inside a wall and hanging off of it in split-screen games. Though it destroys the feeling of darkness in Call Of Duty 4, it gives more of the feeling of hilariousness. Graphics look DirectX10 for computers but are still only DX9. Lighting also gives a great feel and realistic, though you will never see your own shadow. But these small mistakes are usually ignored because of the realistic graphics.
Sound design isn’t perfect, but is damn well close to it(also sound familiar for you G4 watchers?)! Bullets being fired, bouncing off of different surfaces and explosions being heard from afar are also very realistic. Music also gives this game a very dramatic mood, similar to the emotional mood in Halo 3. Voice acting is AWESWEEXCELENT! Even the intro of the game will make you say WOW! The voice acting gives you the feeling of being your allies but also makes you care about all of the characters in the game.
And now for the final verdict. One of the most anticipated games of the year did not let us down and then some.

Deep story, even for 5 hours(even more when you play on Hardened, a LOT for Veteran), fun and addicting multiplayer, not as much variety as a next gen game might truly have, but is still one of the greatest “interactive movies” of all time.

Gameplay: 9/10
Story: 9/10
Graphics/Design: 9/10
Extras/Variety: 8/10
Tilt: 9/10