While certain game modes are more traditional, I miss my Assault Rifle/ Battle Rifle combo, and I don't want to sacrifice other perks to get them. This is not to say there isn't fun to be had in Halo 4 multiplayer. The modes are still great, although the maps have little variety. In my hours of matchmaking I have only played a small handfull of maps as the only the popular ones get voted. 

Ordinance drops also feel like they are out of place. They are essentially killstreak rewards for Halo. I'm not sure I'm a fan yet, especially since I never really like the rewards. In a sense I feel like they take away the even playing field that Halo always enjoyed in favor of rewarding good play. While this isn't necessarily bad, its just not something I expect in a Halo game. In fact, none of the things Halo does that I don't like are bad, it's just not Halo to me. To me Halo 4 multiplayer is just another sci-fi shooter with the same distinct protagonists, although with alien gameplay. 

The thing that bothered me most though is all the actions in Halo 4 multiplayer. Yes, the actions. Sprint, crouch, reload, special ability, switch grenade... there are too many actions to map comfortably to the controller. I find that either I can play bumper jumper and aim while im crouching or I can use default and look while I use my special ability although I can't do both (although I confess I haven't looked through all the controller setting yet). This really annoys me because I can't do what I'm used to. I can't jump and strafe and still use the shield equiptment thing. It's frustrating to see a game I love and grew up with change so much. When does Halo change so much that it's no longer Halo?

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This is the problem with betas. How do you keep players interested after resetting stats? How do you keep them coming back for more? The beta testers are sometimes the most devout fans of the title so they might not care, but others are casual gamers that just want to have a little fun, and if you reset the stats there has to be something to bring them back. With Settlers of Catan, the game just isn't that much fun to start from scratch, especially when new players get clobbered in games because they don't have the same bonus cards as experienced players. It's not that Settlers is a bad game, its just not worth leveling up again. Has anyone else had this experience in betas?

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The Xbox 720 requires a constant Internet connection and wont work if the connection drops for more than three minutes. We live in a connected world so this should be fine. Right? I type this in the midst of an Internet outage. Youre thinking, Surely there must have been a catastrophe that the Internet has gone out, right? One would assume that is the cause of my Internet outage, although there is no catastrophe. Surely I live in a rural area in which blackouts occur frequently, or where the Internet is routinely slow, right? I live in New York City, Manhattan to be specific, and have Comcast Internet, the only connection my building offers. The Internet routinely goes out for a few minutes here and there, and then once a month it goes out for a few hours at a time. The reason? There is none. Comcast says theres no problem on their end, the technician has checked our apartment, yet this still happens.

Even in the NYC the Internet is still unreliable. I can only imagine how spotty the Internet is in less developed regions of the country. While in theory we live in a connected society in which we are always online, but in reality that society only exists because of 3G, 4G, and LTE. We are always connected, not due to perfectly reliable Wi-Fi, but through our phones. When the Internet goes down, I use my iPhone 5 to check my mail.  Even my LTE isnt always reliable. Unless the 720 is going to have 3G capabilities, Im not buying it.

Theres no guarantee Ill be able to play it when I want, which is a big barrier to purchasing it. I think always on is the death of consoles. Until I have a perfectly reliable Internet connection, I wont spend a dime on a product that wont let me use what I want. This is why I have steered clear of games that utilize always on DRM and this is why I wont purchase the new Xbox. Its a shame because I have no doubt it will be great, but it looks like Ill be switching over to PS4. So long Microsoft, its been a nice run.

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As the game world loaded, I hunkered down for a long play session. Finally, I saw the game running in person. The updated visuals, the hexagon field, the new user interface - everything was different; yet, the game still felt like its predecessors. Standing in front of me was a settler and a warrior, just as I remembered it in Civilization IV. This was my childhood again. I breathed a sigh of relief, founded a city, and sent my warrior exploring around the map. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten how small the islands are on an archipelago map type, and my warrior was back at my city a turn later with nowhere to go. I was stranded and unable to see my enemies.

The next couple dozen turns went by in rapid succession with nothing to do but wait. This was going to be a race to the horizon. First one in the water wins, but where could I build transport ships? I needed to carefully plot my research path to the ships, but I could not find them. I was the first to build trireme ships, although those did not transport my units. Crap! Did I miss something? Should I have played the tutorial first? My mind raced from one thought to the next, and suddenly I realized what had happened; Fraxis got rid of those irritating transport ships. Instead I needed to research one more technology to catapult me into the Classical era. Phew.

A few turns later, my research was complete and I was granted a beautiful cutscene ushering in the new era. Then I saw the icon on the side of the screen. Another civilization had advanced with me. The fog of war prevented me from seeing which enemy it was. I had yet to make contact with anyone at all. I was left alone in my own island, wondering when an invading army would emerge from the fog of war.

Finally, armed with the ability to transport my warrior, I set off to discover distant lands. Along my way, I encountered the new city state game mechanics, and was not sure how to proceed. I thought they were similar to barbarian towns in previous games, so I took my warrior and attacked the city. I was wrong. My warrior was slaughtered in a hail of arrows, and I was left warrior-less. I realized Civilization V has definitely changed since the last game.

While I mourned the loss of a warrior I had loved, life went on as normal in my empire. Not a single citizen stopped working. My fishing boats did not dock. The flags flew at full mast. This was a cruel and bitter world I had to master or my capitol would be the next casualty of this war. I decided war was not for me and I would do something never done before in a Civilization game; win through peace. I built up my city's culture rating and settled new lands, all without warriors to protect my growing empire.

While this theory worked for a while, the situation soured quickly. As I explored the world, I met my two adversaries, Alexander the Great of Greece and Wu Zetian of China. I founded a city too close to Alexanders borders and all hell broke loose. Every turn, a message popped up from Alexander renouncing me, warning me not to build new cities, or threatening me with war. How would I survive the full might of the Greek army against my defenseless cities? Alexander was sitting on the word's reserve of iron while I was left with nothing. He not only outnumbered my army, but had better units than my measly warrior from the Stone Age.

So I did what any good leader would do; I pleaded for mercy. Every time he threatened me, I apologized and promised I would not touch his fabulous, yet strikingly small, empire. All the while, I built up cavalry and pikemen in the hopes of rivaling his army. My troops were amassing on the border, and suddenly everything went wrong.

In my haste to build an army, I had lost track of time, and I had only twenty minutes to my next class. Alexander and I have a battle to fight, but not today. Today it is time for Data Structures, and homework, but another day we will see how history plays out. I frantically searched the innards of the computer for my saved game file and emailed it to myself, just to make sure the moment would not be lost forever. Now I wait to fight an electric battle against my enemies encapsulated in bits on my hard-drive.

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This makes Revolution all the more believable. Without power the USA cannot function anymore. Imagine a solar flare that wipes out satalites and then a hurricane hits and causes blackouts? There would literally be no way to communicate. As we enter a period of increased solar flare activity, this is a scary thought. What would happen in such a scenario? How would the president issue orders? Would people even listen to orders?

After Katrina New Orleans became a lawless city. Looting and rape was widespread while police were unable to patrol the city. Fortunately the police were eventually able to restore order to the city, but what if police couldn't communicate? How would they patrol? Such doomsday scenarios appear morbid and unrealistic, but they are innevitable. Eventually something bad that we cannot predict will happen. Who ever predicted that terrorists would fly planes into the World Trade Center? That would've been a proposterous thought until 9/11. People cannot simply brush off the insane sounding because that is a slippery slope. Where do you stop and draw the line? What is plausible? What is probable?

Emergency services need to prepare for the worst, and through that the less severe emergencies will be easier to prepare for. By preparing for doomsday, anything shy of that is a walk in the park.

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After Reach it was time for some FIFA. In four games I scored 1 goal. Sports games were never my strong point. My only other experience with FIFA was the demo of FIFA '09 that I recieved in OXM, and I never really played it. It's a fun game, but too complicated for me, especially when I don't know the sport to begin with. I can't figure out how offsides work. But after a few games of that it was back to Reach for the rest of the night. I closed the night with 17 kills and plenty of medals.

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For most of the games I favored an archer to provide long ranged support to my soldiers instead of a warrior to block the path. The warrior required too much movement and would not engage enemies on his own so I let him go in favor of the heroine. The leveling system did not appear to have any noticeable effects on her, with the exception of an attack wolf. The wolf engaged and successfully blocked countless enemies, and had a mere second respawn time. Just what I needed.

Kingdom Rush is just a guilty pleasure to play. It's by far the best tower defense game I have laid hands on. There is a beautiful balance of four towers with fresh enemies introduced all along the campaign. It never gets to the point where I feel like it's more of the same because there is something new at every turn. This is simply a must play game.

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When asked if there will be single player, Bioware's Jon Van Caneghem replied, "Not at launch."He went on to say that it can be added later on from player feedback. So, if you want it, say so. If there is no story though, why is Bioware even developing it? Give it to an RTS veteran instead of a newly formed studio.

After they announced Generals was going free to play, my excitement for the game faded. I'm concnerned that they are going to take a game I hold dear and ruin it. I would rather pay $50 and have a complete game than shell out $5 here and there for better units and new maps. It's one thing if they make money off of new maps and such, but limiting units to players makes for an unbalanced game.

When AoE Online released I was excited to return to the series although the limitations were so severe that I could no longer progress in missions without purchasing a civilization. The enemies had epic loot and I was stuck to common loot which put me at a disadvantage. I'm concerned something similar will happen with Generals 2.

It's one thing if they make us pay for extra maps or something, but the core game should be free. You shouldn't have to pay to win. If you make a game that's good enough, people will want to buy the extras. It's the same thing as an expansion pack. If your game is good enough, people will want more of it. Free to play should mean, give us the game for free, and we'll buy an expansion pack for it, whereas studions commonly use is as pay to win.

Another thing is that they could allow players to use only one faction and charge for the other two. It's kind of annoying though, but that's acceptable as well because you have access to a full faction. You're not limited to certain units in a faction. That is where free to play games become unballanced and not fun to play.

I'm still concerned about the single player portion though. My favorite part of Generals was the campaigns and the General's Challenge in Zero Hour and I don't want to lose that. They gave it to Bioware for a reason. I thought maybe we'd finally see a Generals game with a good plot, but it seems I was wrong. We'll only see a multiplayer money grab.

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Over a thousand educational videos would be available to the public, and with achievements and trophies, people would want to learn. Learning itself would become a game. I would want to watch more videos so that I could brag to my everyone on my Friend's List. The gaming community would be giving back to the world. It would help gamers, who stereotypically are sitting on the couch all day and at the bottom of the class, learn and it will improve the "gamer image".

Such a move, however, would be difficult for Microsoft to do. Beyond an improved image, there is no real incentive for Microsoft and Sony to make such a move. Such an app would not make the companies any money, and to really create a favorable image, Microsoft would need to make it free for Silver members as well as Gold. Traditionally, Microsoft has barred all but a few internet apps from Silver members. Educational apps would need to be free to the masses.

It really boils down to whether the game companies can perform a truly selfless act or whether they need to earn a profit. While I'm not surprised if they pass on developing such an app, it really should be made. The companies have a way to truly impact gamers and broaden humanity's knowledge base. People of all ages would learn for fun and compete against one another to learn more, which has never happened before on such a large scale.

The only question is whether money will stop them. It costs money to create such an app, and that is time taken away from creating a money maker. The sad truth is that corporations revolve around money and nothing more, so I'm going to have to say that such an app would never see the light of day, but I pray I'm wrong.

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My first MMO.

The first thing that strikes me about the card is just the objectification of women. Beyond that, I remember playing the game for hours on end. It was my first true MMO after I played Rune Scape for a bit. I remember I played as a Ranger. My favorite aspect of the game though was the ability to play completely solo with mercenaries. It was my favorite thing to do. I had no other friends playing the game, but I was able to experience the entire game through mercenaries. It took an interesting approach to gameplay which appears to be what The Elder Scrolls Online is doing.

I never really got into PvP in Guild Wars, but I did fully level up my character. The game got a little boring however after I leveled up. There were only 20 levels or so, and after that I would just earn a skill point after reaching a certain amount of experience points. I wonder if anyone is still playing the game now, or if the servers are even up. I'm sort of curious now. I want to delve right back into it, but I know there are other MMOs which I might enjoy better. I want to give The Lord of the Rings Online a try, but I just don't want to screw up my computer loading it on. Besides, I have other games to play. I bought nine games from Indiegala and have only played two of them. My unplayed and unbeaten games are starting to pile up.

Let's see. I have Oblivion which I haven't beaten, Gothic 3, Dungeon Lords, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, Heroes of Might and Magic V and the expansions, Star Wars: Empire at War, Command and Conquer, Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun, The Movies,Making History: The Calm & The Storm,Razor 2: Hidden skies,Ironclads collection,Beat Hazard,Space Empires IV: Deluxe,Bad Rats: The Rat's Revenge,Disciples II: Rise of The Elves,Puzzle Kingdoms,NINJA BLADE,Battle Mages, andWord Rallycross 2010. I've got a lot of gaming to do...

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At the same time however I like impacting my character. I'm torn between having the same exact experiences as my friend and creating a character unique to me. In theory I want both. I want to be able to make the story mine, but have a quick replay mode where i can just make the decisions and see alternate endings. That way I would be able to play the game how I want, and still see how the game would end in different ways.

At the same time though I love games that have strong stories without creating my own character. I don't want a personal Master Chief, I want a scripted one. I guess I'm not really sure what I'm advocating for. I want to make my own character, but at the same time I want to see everything in a game. So in a way I feel at a loss with altering the story. I guess though it's just six of one and a half dozen of the other.

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Over the years gamers have cared less and less about their gamerscore. While it's still fun to get achievements, the physical number doesn't mean anything, it's the achievement itself. The achievements can spark innovation in gameplay by asking you to play the game differently than you would have, and give that sense of accomplishment. A lot of times it just keeps me coming back. I've never felt any shame though in having such a humble score. I'm good at the games I play, and I never had the time (or money) to shoot for a gamerscore in the ten thousands. Who can compete with the achievement gamers who have been playing since launch? It's impossible. What ever happened to playing for fun, to playing a game for the sake of playing and not for bragging rights?

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