Memoirs of an Achievement Whore

The mission is to stay alive. Who the hell cares what the objectives are in this campaign as long as I stay alive the entire time. I’m by myself right now and there are tanks roaming around trying to make me their bitch. What do I do? Is that a helicopter? Holy crap, hiding behind this building has become useless as the chopper rains bullets into my face. I crawl inside the building where three guys open fire on me.  I die. The “f” word makes it way out of my mouth in rapid succession causing my wife to shake her head, obviously vexed by my tirade. Maybe if she was a deranged, achievement obsessed junkie, like me, she would understand how important this fifteen point achievement is. If I want those fifteen points deposited into my gamer score I have to complete a mission without dying once. So I back out of the game and restart the mission from scratch. Twenty minutes later I find myself in the same exact situation. Two tanks roam around a small village in search for me while ground troops search the buildings. I don’t have heavy duty weapons that are powerful enough to quickly dispatch two heavily armored tanks that are surrounded by cannon fodder. Then, as I realized I forgot, a helicopter comes into view.  I have a precious few moments to dive inside a building before its chain gun peppers my characters body with lead. Inside the building, the same building as last time, I get attacked by three dudes. I was better prepared for them this time though and managed to swiftly take all of them down with controlled bursts from my weapon. From there I creep out the other side of the building where a tank welcomes me with a giant shell to my face. I instantly die. More “f” bombs, more eye rolling from the wife. I rinse and repeat this method many more times and each time I get a little farther just before meeting my demise. I quit playing the game, put it back into the Gamefly case, and send it on its way.

You might be reading this thinking that I hated the game, Battlefield Bad Company. But the truth is, I actually loved it.  The quirky dialogue and action packed gun fights were really fun. I blamed the achievements for why I never finished the game and why thinking about playing it again makes me cringe. But as the years have passed, I realized that it was my stupid obsession with achievements that ruined this game for me. It was because of this game and the way I reacted to it that I ended my subscription to Gamefly, which in turn ended my endless quest for the largest gamer score on the planet. I’m not too sure why I wanted that. Perhaps I was over compensating for a small penis by making my proverbial cock much larger than everyone’s, but my penis is very large so that wasn’t it. No matter what my reasons were, I am glad I’ve had the opportunity to experience a breaking point in my quest for achievements. This whole experience made me realize that I have allowed achievements to ruin gaming for me.  It made me think of Halo 3 and how I wanted to get every achievement out of the way so I could FINALLY enjoy the game.  I didn’t think about it at the time, but it was a horrible way to perceive the games I was playing. Achievements were controlling the way I played and the way I felt about games.  Fortunately, I’ve changed my view on the situation and came to the conclusion that I could still be an achievement hunter as well as a video game enthusiast. I play video games so I can experience fantastic stories and fun game play sequences. Achievements arrived on the scene much, much later and overall I think they’ve helped fuel the gaming economy. On that same note, I feel that they have harmed the gaming community despite its harmless intentions.

First you have to ask yourself why achievements are important or helpful to video games (other consoles have their own versions, such as PlayStation’s trophies). The answer is opinion based. In my opinion, achievements have given completionists something more to work towards.  Have you ever found yourself playing a game like Grand Theft Auto and even though you’ve completed the campaign, you were only 60% finished with the game? Some people may have played their asses off to finish that last 40 percent and others just moved on. With the addition of achievements, developers can offer a reward for completing 100% of their game, like Rockstar did with Grand Theft Auto IV. I was one of those people who wouldn’t have completed the entire game, but with incentive to add points to my overall gamer score, hell yes I’m in! I’ve explored parts of that game that I never would have if it weren’t for that one achievement. I met all of the random characters in the game which were just ghosts to me on my first play through. I drove vehicles off of ramps that I never knew existed and I climbed rooftops that I didn’t know where climbable. I explored everything that Rockstar poured their hearts and souls into and it gave me a much larger appreciation for their hard work and dedication. I’ve found that a lot of games use achievements to get gamers to explore their fantasy worlds deeper than just the campaign and to me that is a very useful tool.

I also think achievements are important because they provide a status bar, or a completion bar for people to keep track of their history.  Some people don’t consider the game to be finished until they’ve completed all of the achievements (I’m guilty of this). It’s a tool they can use to compare to their friends for bragging rights.  For me, I like to boast about my accomplishments with video game achievements. I’m currently nearing one hundred thousand as an overall score and to date, I’ve gotten every single Assassin’s Creed achievement and over 90% of all Halo achievements. Not many people can say that, so booyah. But being able to look back on your accomplishments provides a better feeling than just saying, “Yeah, I’ve played that game.” Now, you can show people, or they can look for themselves.

As achievements in video games have grown over the years, so have the negatives impacts they have on gaming. Take downloadable content for example. Back in the day (can a 27 year old man say that phrase yet?) I remember DLC being a little bit of love served from the developer to the gamer to keep the fun rolling. They were like smaller versions of expansion packs that PC gamers would see with their games. Halo 2 is a huge game that was continually supported by Bungie and they didn’t have the plague of achievements to assist in their sales. If the game did very well and a lot of people were playing it, then it was easier for a company to add on more content. I only saw this practice in great games (although I’m sure other companies dipped their feet into the water a little bit), but once achievements were added into the mix, the rise of DLC amongst any game has risen! Especially since Microsoft forces companies to charge for DLC if they want to add achievements into it. Hence you see free DLC such as the survival add on from the original Left 4 Dead come out with zero achievements, but you see crappy DLC released from Bulletstorm selling for ten dollars only because they have achievements. Die hard achievement hunters like myself have been purchasing this stuff for the wrong reasons. In order to keep a game 100%, you have to purchase new achievements, no matter how crappy the content may be, and that is exactly what it has become. A lot of gamers will purchase DLC if it has achievements and only for that reason. Fortunately, companies that are making good games are also making good content later. Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto come to mind when I think about downloadable content that was worth my money and that I purchased (not Skyrim, yet) so I could play it for fun, not for achievements.

So what is this whole rant about? Well it's a story to share with you how I overcame bad gaming habits. I no longer play games just for achievements. I don’t use Gamefly anymore because it was aiding my addiction. Now, I play games because I want to get a great story and great game play while revealing that story. I still hunt down those achievements that I want, but I have boundaries now. I will play new games all the way through without worrying about the achievements. This strategy has worked out very well for me because I am able to appreciate the game for what it is and what it is meant to be. Achievements have become an afterthought rather than a forethought.  I no longer purchase full priced DLC unless I really want to play it for story purposes or because I really like the multiplayer (Gears of War and Halo). I wait for all other DLC to go on sale because I am most likely only buying them for achievements (Bulletstorm and Assassin’s Creed). Finally, I’ve learned that hunting for achievements is a good hobby to have, as long as I don’t forget about why I play games in the first place. Appreciate the art first, then go screw around. I am really hoping that one day I can find the courage to play Bad Company again, heck I’d enjoy not cringing every time I think about playing it.  Stay tuned for my next chat on achievements because I’ll be talking about good achievements that are fun to hunt, and bad achievements that spawn suicidal thoughts while hunting them.

My Heart Is Heavy

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Yesterday and today have been very hard on me emotionally.  I know they’ve been hard on people all across this country including those who were directly affected by the terrible tragedy in Newtown Connecticut.  I keep asking myself why any person would consciously walk into an elementary school with the intent on killing helpless, innocent children.  I never have an answer.  I see evil in this world and cannot help myself from thinking that this sick individual got some sort of sick joy out of seeing the terror in those little faces.  As a parent I cannot help but to put my little babies in this situation.  We think about what we would have done or how we would react if it were us, but most of us will never truly understand. Thankfully it wasn’t us, but twenty-seven families are feeling insurmountable pain right now as I type this and it is very heavy on my heart.

The fact that the majority of the victims in this tragedy were ages six and seven is what truly tears me up.  Adults have established lives and are more capable of protecting themselves, but children are weaker and smaller and rely on us adults to keep them safe.  Thoughts of these kids thinking about where their moms and dads were and wondering if they were going to keep them safe invades my head and it brings me to tears.  These lives were so young and innocent and it just isn’t fair that their journeys were cut so short.  I would gladly give my life if it meant that these kids could return home to the safety of their homes where their parents will boldly protect them.

This morning I woke up and wondered how awful it must have been to wake up and prep your kids for school, make their lunch, give them a kiss, and send them off on their way.  Never once knowing that it would be the last time you would see them alive.  Then I wondered what the fear felt like to have received a phone call with a notification that a shooting has occurred and that it was at your child’s school.  Rushing over to the school to see if they’re okay, being ushered to the fire station to pick your child up.  Waiting and waiting as other parents come and collect their kids and watching them leave together.  Wondering.  Worrying.  Then finally receiving the bad news that no more children were available to collect, and although they have yet to identify the deceased, the fact that you have not yet been reunited is proof enough.  That feeling of shock probably takes over and maybe as a parent you blame yourself for not being there.  But it wasn’t your fault; there was nothing you could do.  A school is a safe place where young minds are molded into artists and thinkers, and future educators.  Why shouldn’t they be safe there?

There isn’t much about this that I have been able to find comfort in, but one thing really seeps into my brain is the fact that these people are walking in heaven and looking down on us.  They are not in pain, they are not in fear, and they are in peace.  They are not suffering, but we are.  We are stuck here, and as a nation we must endure.  It’s not fair that this happened and I will never pretend to understand how the families are feeling and all I can hope is that they find peace.  They may never be able to get over this, but I pray to God that they can get through it.  Hug your kids, hug your spouse, hug the people you care about, because we live in a very ugly world and it never hurts to show the people you love, how much you love them.  I know I will.

Sequel This

I was just sitting around today thinking about the recent video games I have been playing and which ones I have sitting on the shelf waiting to be played and I couldn’t help but realize that almost everything is a sequel.  I recently played Borderlands 2, Assassin’s Creed III, and Halo 4.  Some of the games that I have waiting are Forza Horizon, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and Fallout 3.  Dishonored is the only game sitting on my shelf that is the first of its kind.  What happened to all of the brand new IP’s?  They are so rare now a day.  Why is it that we are continually playing the same titles over and over while fresh new ideas aren’t even put into the market?  I mean look at the upcoming releases that are making news.  Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Tomb Raider, Gears of War: Judgment, Sim City, and Bioshock: Infinite.  All these games are sequels or are being remade.  These were some of the titles that had the biggest headlines at this year’s E3.  Sure we did get to see some new stuff with games like Watchdogs and ZombieU, but it’s nothing compared to what it use t be.  I remember how excited I was to play Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, and Bioshock when their first installments were announced.  They all released around the same time too!  A few nights ago a buddy of mine and I were talking about this and I think I may have the answer as to why we see the same games being made over and over.

It all starts with the price of video games. Sixty dollars is actually a whole lot to ask consumers to pay for a brand new game and with an economy in bad shape like ours, many people don’t have the money to pay for them.  It took me about a year to save up enough money to buy Halo 4, Assassin’s Creed III, and Borderlands 2 on their release days, but not everyone has that luxury.  With that in mind it’s easy to see how developers of very popular franchises, such as Call of Duty, continually put out games with the same title because they know that fans will buy them.  Likewise, fans of the series will already know what they’re getting into.  Wouldn’t that make things a little scary for unestablished developers, who don’t have popular franchises, to put a fresh new idea into the market?  They probably shy away at the idea of making AAA titles because of how much money they could potentially lose. And if they do try to release a fresh new IP, they have to compete in a market dominated by titles that have already established great names.  This has to be the answer because I refuse to believe that people have run out of good ideas for games. 

Take a look at 38 Studios as a prime example of what I just said.  As a brand new company founded by baseball great, Curt Schilling, they only released one game, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.  The game didn’t really fare too well, getting very mixed reviews and not selling as well as it should have.  They did see moderate success, but not the kind a well-known AAA title would have.  In the end, the company was shut down due to the inability to pay on its 75 million dollar loan from the state of Rhode Island while also not being to pay its employees.  Some people may think that the company was in over their head, but the truth is that they were trying to put a huge RPG on the map while dozens of well-known RPG’s controlled the market.  I think that if 38 Studios started small and made a name for themselves, they would have survived a lot longer in the industry, but the fact of the matter is that they shouldn’t have to.  A lot of pretty good developers and designers worked on the company’s only game while being comfortably funded. Yet Kingdoms of Amalur still failed.

So what do we get now?  Will all new IP’s just wither away and die over the course of the next few years?  No, but that’s because the fresh new ideas are being developed for Arcade releases. Why?  It’s because they cost much less than a full packaged game and they can easily be downloaded onto consoles and computers.  The only problem is that they lack the length and depth of a AAA game.  That’s not to say that arcade games are weak, many of them just lack the ingredient that can formulate a great story with extremely fun game play.  They are catching up though.  I’ve seen more creative ideas spawn in this realm in the past few years and it’s even better in the indie game realm where passionate new developers can create super low budget games without the fear of going bankrupt.  I feel that if the developers have less worry about having a job and more concern for their work, we will see a rise in new companies and new ideas. But as long as brand new games are being sold for sixty dollars, it will be extremely rare to find great new IP’s.  As gamers we look at these new ideas that have never been played by the public before and we are cautious. We don’t necessarily want to spend our hard earned money on a game that may or may not be good.  We take the risk of purchasing something that could potentially be a total flop and if it is, we cannot get our money back.  Heck all we can really do is hope some idiot on eBay will pay full price for it, otherwise you’ll get half back what you paid for the game with in store credit at your local Gamestop.  So what do we do instead?  We wait until the game is stupid cheap and we buy it.  Or we rent it from the Redbox or Gamefly.  If we rent the game and like it enough we will potentially fork over the cash for it, but if we don’t like it, we’ll forget about forever.  By the time we come around to buying it, the developer has already lost money.

So what do we need to do?  Well first off, we need to get rid of the fear on both fronts. Gamers should not be worried about purchasing a game with fear that it might suck, which leaves them feeling that their money could have been better used as toilet paper to wipe their asses with.  Developers should not have to be fearful of creating a new idea and going bankrupt because it didn’t work out. Failing is a part of succeeding.  Plain and simple, games need to be cheaper.  If not, we may never see another rise in new ideas and that is shameful.  It’s not like it’s an impossible endeavor to lower the price of games.  With new technology we are seeing improved game engines, such as the Unreal Engine 4, that will make it so games can be produced faster.  Games can go to strictly download only.   I love owning a copy of my game on disc because I love the cover art and stuff, but if games went to download only, I would be okay with it if it meant having a less expensive hobby.  I’m already accustom to purchasing my books on an ereader rather than buying a hardcopy at the store so I am sure I can adapt.  The developers could maybe spend less money on marketing their games?  I know that sounds crazy, but companies spend boat loads of money marketing their games and that sixty bucks that millions of people fork over are helping pay for it. 

I’m not recommending that games drop down to the price of DVD’s, but helping make it so people aren’t afraid to create and aren’t afraid to purchase would be nice.  Hell, if it doesn’t happen, I don’t mind using all my video game spending to be on arcade and indie titles, at least with that option I’ll have new ideas to explore while still having the option to participate in Halo 47.

Damn This Violence

I’m not really understanding the violence that is going on in Denver lately.  Just last week some jackass walked into Target and shot into the ceiling because he apparently wanted to score some drugs from the pharmacy. Fortunately no one was hurt but it could have been bad.  It happened on Black Friday from what I’ve read.  But this is just the latest act of crime in the past year that has been making me want to leave Denver.  I love this city and I honestly feel like it’s the best place to be in the whole world.  But I have to ask myself if it’s the right place to raise my kids and I really don’t think it is.  I’m not saying that smaller cities are any safer, okay I am saying that but it’s because they have smaller populations.  Smaller populations mean less crazies which means less chance of random violence. Some of the big ones that scare me are the kidnappings.  Just recently that moron kidnapped and murdered a ten year old girl.  The psycho dismembered her and it turns out that this freak is only 17 years old!  He was taking CSI courses and was acknowledged for being pretty good at it.  This happened close to where my sister lives.  Sure, this freak is off the streets, but there are more out there like him and that’s what scares me.

The biggest one that scares me is the movie theater shooting down the street from my house.  It scares me on multiple levels. At one point I’m feeling blessed that I wasn’t at that movie theater that night.  Just two days before it happened I was online looking up tickets to go.  I was supposed to go with my buddy Tom.  After I brought the tickets up and was ready to pay for them through Flixster, I decided to text Tom and ask him if he was still going.  I’d get the tickets and he could get the popcorn and soda.  Turns out he was stuck out of town and couldn’t make it.  Which was actually fine with me because that theater is the shittiest place ever and we both would have preferred going to the Movie Tavern.  That place is cool because it’s a restaurant and movie theater at the same time.  Instead of popcorn, Tom could pay back his ticket in beer.  The biggest thing that scares me about it, though, is the fact that all of these people went to a movie as dedicated Batman fans and were unjustly injured or killed.  How unfair is that?  The movies aren’t even a safe place anymore.

We did wind up going to see the movie the following night, but it was strange.  There were cops all over the place and the entire atmosphere felt wrong.  That was the last movie I saw in the theater until just recently my wife and I went and saw Lincoln.  I’m not saying I won’t go to a theater to watch a movie, I’m just scared of being in crowded places where I’m vulnerable. These crazies will take advantage of that and it’s what make them so powerful. It sucks that we have to feel like that in such a great country.  I don’t remember life being so scary when I was a kid and now I’m practically terrified.  I’m not afraid of dying, but I’m afraid of leaving my family behind to grow up without their father or her husband.  Life is so valuable and I want to be around for it.  Even more so, I’m afraid for my kids.  I don’t want my daughter going to the movies with this type of threat out there.  I won’t let them walk to school, ever.  I will be that parent who watches his kids like a hawk in order to protect them.  That’s just the way society has made me feel. I just want my kids to grow up with a normal life away from drugs and away from violence. Seriously, let’s just all get a long and love each other, you bunch of fuck tards. 

Random Stuff

So I know that it has been a little while since I’ve actually taken the time to sit down and write out a blog, other than my short story that is.  I’ve been really tied up with school and other busy stuff that makes up my life. My wife and I had some house guests and they took up a lot of our time…and space haha.  Having them live here wasn’t too bad I guess, but after a while I found myself getting terribly vexed at the sight of them. It was mostly her brother I suppose.  He’s a great guy and I won’t bash him, but I was mostly annoyed because he doesn’t have any real aspirations in life and never really made a valiant effort to find himself a job so that he could get his family back on track. However, the situation is over and they are happily living on their own.

I wanted to take the time to write out a lot of stuff that has been on my mind since I last jotted down my thoughts.  The first is my schooling. I’m so glad that I decided to pursue writing as a career because I have come to realize that I’m actually pretty good at it.  My teachers have pushed me to succeed and I have really been enjoying the results thus far.  If you haven’t already, please check out the flash story I wrote.  It’s called a flash story because it’s only a thousand words or so.  It’s basically a short, short story.  The one I wrote is called, “The Day I Died.”  It’s about the life of a lowly hospital janitor who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I won’t tell you the whole story here because it would really mean a lot if you read it for yourself.  It should take you about five or ten minutes to read it. I’m currently in the process of trying to find a place that would possibly publish it for me.  I think the real hard part about that is going to be the rejection I’m going to face.  I’m betting a lot of people will turn it down, but the thing I have to do is overcome rejection and keep pushing forward.  In the end I’m hoping to write novels and video game scripts. Although, as of late, I’ve decided that I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at screenplays as well.  People close to me know how much I love the TV show Scrubs. Well I just recently read a script for one of the episodes and then watched that very episode. It’s amazing how what the writer puts down on paper gets acted out on screen.  The actors do a great job making the story pop, but that story wouldn’t be there without the writer. I had to write a very short screenplay for one of my assignments and was actually pretty impressed with my work.  My writing style has been coming off as rather dark, but I think that will be okay.  Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare are a couple of people who inspire me and they are both experts in tragic storytelling.  Anyway, my school has a film department that preps people to be film directors and one of the perks of being a writer is that I can submit screenplays to them.  The film students will get to choose what scripts they like and then turn them into short films.  I’m really hoping to have a short film that I wrote on my profile because it’s proof of what I can do as a writer and it may land me a job in the future.

Another thing I wanted to chat about is the Epic Rap Battles of History series I have been watching on Youtube.  These guys are hilarious!  They take historical characters from history and fiction and put them into rap battles against each other.  For example, you can watch Adolf Hitler square off against Darth Vader, or Master Chief go toe to toe with King Leonidas.  It’s really great stuff and I’m sure my entire family is annoyed with me watching them all the time. Here are a couple of my favorites if you care to watch.

Also on Youtube, I’ve been keeping up with a game reviewer named Angry Joe.  I found out about this guy because of his videos on the Mass Effect 3 ending.  His style of reviewing is extremely unconventional and that is what makes it so great.  Sure he’s a bit extreme and can be overly opinionated at times, but what I’ve realized is that his reviews are what I’m really looking for. He gives fair reviews while at the same time showing off some pretty hilarious parodies of the game he’s reviewing.  They’re long and fun to watch and I enjoy hearing his thoughts because he has a no bullshit attitude towards the games in question.  If the game sucks, he is going to tell that it sucks and then he is going to show you why, all while making you laugh your freaking ass off.  He’s not for everyone though.  My wife can’t stand him, but such is life.

Finally I wanted to talk a little bit about G4tv’s Video Game Deathmatch.  I love that they pit games against each other but I honestly hate the fans that vote. You could pit two really great games next to each other and even if a person likes them both, they tend to bash one of them because they like the other one better. For example, the most recent deathmatch is asking gamers to vote for the best game of 2012 and it has become heated.  Guild Wars 2 is facing off against The Walking Dead in round three and people are verbally destroying both games.  One jackass even had the nerve to say that the only reason people are voting for The Walking Dead is because they like crappy games or they’ve never played Guild Wars 2 and don’t know what they’re talking about. I haven’t played either of them but I proceeded to tell him what a fucking idiot he was for saying that. First, the poll is OPINION based meaning that fans are going to stick to what they like. Fanboys of a series will fight to the death for their game and if you’ve ever gone to a video game forum you would agree.  Second, a crappy game is based on opinion. I may think Call of Duty sucks but the millions of fans who play it constantly will disagree without question.  It goes for all games. A guy in the Halo 4 vs Dishonored poll stated that he was going to kill everyone who posted a comment if Halo 4 doesn’t win. It honestly made me want to take back my vote for Halo and give it to Dishonored.  The results don’t matter! The poll is not legit at all, especially since it allows people to vote more than once. What’s keeping a crazed fan from voting ten thousand times?

Okay so that is all I have!  If you want me to rant or talk about anything just let me know.  Until next time, gang. 

The Day I Died (Final Draft)

    My small one bedroom apartment smells like dirty gym clothes that have been sitting in a locker room for weeks. The sink in the kitchen is overflowing with dirty dishes and the trash is so full that it’s contents have spilled over the edge. I’ve been meaning to clean this place but I’ve just been too lazy. I’m sitting on the couch watching my best friend, Nathan, play some type of zombie video game while I nurse my fifth glass of rum and coke. I suppose I could ask him to clean the place up since he’s unemployed and has been living here for over a year, but I doubt he’d do it.

     “I really think this shit could happen bro.” Nathan startled me for a second because we had been sitting in silence for so long. The only sound has been the gargled and mushy sounds of the flesh hungry zombies and the shotgun Nathan is using to put them to sleep.

     “What?” I asked.

     “Zombies dude. It could totally happen. It all starts out in a hospital. Some dude is going to eat a plate of year old meatloaf that was injected with rabies and will wind up at the doctor to figure out what made him sick. Next thing you know, everyone’s dead!” Nathan cried. I stared blankly at him as I swallowed what was left in my glass.

     “Did you hear me Xavier?” Asked Nathan.

     “I did.” I replied. Even though I heard him, I wasn’t really listening. Nathan is an alarmist and a conspiracy theorist. Needless to say his cheese slid off of his cracker a long time ago. He converted his parent’s basement into a survival shelter with stashes of dried food and water that could last him five years.

     “I’m off to bed.” I say to Nathan as I stand up and head towards my room. He’s too busy performing zombie genocide to even notice.   

Despite my body aching from my hangover, I get out of bed and prepare myself for another day. My head is throbbing so bad that I can feel it radiating throughout my body. My heartbeat is keeping cadence with the throbbing as if it were performing some sort of weird hangover ritual. I’m a janitor at the local hospital downtown in the most beautiful part of the city, Shadow Falls. I also work part time at a gas station in order to help pay for my school. I often wonder where my life went so wrong because I’m a thirty-eight year old man who scrubs toilets and sells cheap cigarettes for a living rather than chasing the American dream.

After taking a nice hot shower I put on the green monkey suit the hospital forces me to wear and tie my black boots before sitting down at my desk to finish up on some homework. After I am finished I walk out into the kitchen to grab a cup of warm piss that Nathan refers to as coffee. It tastes like he made it with his tears, regret, and broken dreams. Perhaps that’s why I don’t mind guzzling it down every morning because my coffee would taste exactly the same.

     The fresh crisp air and the smell of the morning dew give my body something fresh to soak in as I step out the front door. My stomach takes it as a compliment and slowly starts to settle. I sip on Nathan’s caffeinated sorrow as I stumble towards my 1985 Chevy Camaro and drive off to work. I’ve owned this car for twenty years and it unfortunately represents the monotony that is my life. I drive the same car I use to take my high school girlfriends on dates in. I’ve worked at the same two jobs for the past ten years before coming back to my place every night to get drunk and watch Nathan live his life through fictional characters. My life sucks. 

     The park across the street from the hospital catches my eye as I pull into the parking lot. This park epitomizes the beauty of this peaceful community. The beautiful flowers sprouting up everywhere, the golden colored leaves hanging from the trees, and the plush green grass makes this place feel like heaven on earth. Some of the best times of my life were spent walking over to this park and just sitting on the bench doing nothing. It was the most relaxed I’ve ever been in my life.

     My thoughts wander elsewhere as I enter the emergency room to see four doctors pinning a patient down into his bed. The man is snarling at everyone while he tries to break free from the grasp of the doctors. His skin tone is gray and his eyes are bloodshot with rage. His yellowish brown teeth protrude from his mouth as he lashes out and bites Dr. Stevens in the neck.

     I stand frozen for a few moments as other doctors and nurses rush to the aid of Dr. Stevens. I then watch in horror as the patient breaks free and sprints right towards me. The thudding in my heart is beating faster to the cadence of my throbbing headache, which is speeding up from all of this chaos. I only manage to get ten feet away from the rabid looking man before being tackled onto my face. I feel the flesh on my shoulder being torn into through my uniform and the warm trickle of blood flowing from the wound. I scream in agony until someone finally pushes this freak off me. I try to pick myself up but my body can’t move. Instead, darkness fills my vision.

     My eyes flutter open to the faint glow of the emergency exit lights. I’m still in the emergency room and it seems no one bothered to help me. I feel weak and the pulse of my heart radiating through my body has vanished. The sights around me are horrific. The dark emergency room is slathered in blood and pieces of what I can only assume are human flesh and guts. There are bodies lying all over the floor; the bodies of the doctors who tried to hold the rabid patient down as well as many others. It looks like a scene out one of Nathan’s games. I have to leave and find help, but as I step outside I realize that I have been unconscious for quite a while. The power is out in the city and the only available light is coming from the fire that is burning half of the park down. Melancholy drapes over the night sky and I notice that there are other injured people sulking along the streets and through the park. My vision isn’t so great in the dark but I am able to make out that these people look like the rabid man who bit me. I look at the burning park and see that it is littered with bodies. Ironically, the pond in the center is reflecting a beautiful orange glow from the same fire that is making this park look like hell on earth.

     My breath begins to get shallow and my body feels weaker. My legs feel like rubber as I limp over to the nearest bench in the park to sit down. Suddenly, despite the aching pain in my back, I feel relaxed. All my worries are fleeing my body like rats fleeing a sinking ship. It doesn’t matter that I am a thirty-eight-year-old janitor dying on a park bench or that I never accomplished the life that I wanted. It doesn’t matter that my apartment is a wreck or that my breath is getting shallow. It doesn’t matter that the dirty rabid people slowly creep towards me or that Nathan’s ludicrous prediction was insanely correct. The only thing that matters is how relaxed I am at last.

The Day I Died (Rough Draft)

     I woke up this morning with my heart pounding through my chest to the cadence of the throbbing in my head.  My stomach slowly tossed and turned, as if it weren’t entirely sure whether or not it was going to send back the alcohol it received the night before.  My symptoms, no doubt, are from a night full of drinking and listening to my roommate, Nathan, explain to me how and when the zombie apocalypse was going to happen.

     “Dude, it all starts out in a hospital because the infected guy tries to figure out why he’s sick.  And before you know it, everyone’s dead.  Did you hear me Xavier?”
     I did hear him, but I wasn’t listening.  Nathan’s cheese slid off his cracker a long time ago and he’s become somewhat of a conspiracy theorist as well as many other silly quirks.  I didn’t buy into any of that zombie hype nor did I believe it could ever be possible.  That stuff only happens in movies and books.

     Despite my body aching from my hangover, I got out of bed and prepared myself for another day at work.  I’m a janitor at the local hospital located downtown in what I consider to be the most beautiful part of this great city, Shadow Falls.  I also work part time at a gas station along with being a full time student.  At the age of thirty eight I decided to head back to school.  I just couldn’t figure out where my life went so wrong or why a grown man was scrubbing toilets and selling cheap cigarettes for a career instead of living his dream.

     The fresh crisp air and the smell of the morning dew gave my body something fresh to soak in as I stepped out the front door.  My stomach took it as a compliment and slowly started to settle.  I sipped my morning coffee as I stumbled towards my 1985 Chevy Camaro and got in for my daily routine.  My life has been so busy the past ten years that my routine never really changed.  Wake up at seven in the morning, skip breakfast, drink the warm piss Nathan calls coffee, get into the car I have owned for the last twenty years, work twelve hours cleaning up vomit and shit in the emergency room, head over to the gas station to sell cancer and gas to everyone, go home to get drunk and pass out.  I never have time for the little things anymore.

     The park across the street from the hospital caught my eye as I pulled into the parking lot.  This park epitomizes the beauty of this peaceful community.  The beautiful flowers sprouting up everywhere, the golden colored leaves hanging from the trees, and the plush green grass made this place feel like heaven on earth.  Some of the best times of my life were spent walking over to this park and just sitting on the bench doing nothing.  It was the most relaxed I’ve ever been in my life.

     My thoughts wandered off elsewhere as I entered the emergency room to see four doctors pinning a patient down into his bed.  The man was snarling at everyone while he tried to break free from the grasp of the doctors.  His skin tone was gray and his eyes were bloodshot with rage.  His yellowish brown teeth protruded from his mouth as he lashed out and bit Dr. Stevens in the neck.

     I stood frozen for a few moments as other doctors and nurses rushed to the aid of Dr. Stevens. I then watched in horror, as the patient broke free and sprinted right towards me.  The thudding in my heart was beating faster to the cadence in my head, which sped up, from all of this chaos.  I only managed to get ten feet away from the rabid looking man before I was tackled onto my face.  I felt the flesh on my shoulder being torn into through my uniform and the warm trickle of blood that flowed from the wound.  I wasn’t sure what was going on, but someone had finally removed this bastard off me.  Darkness filled my vision.

     My eyes fluttered open to the light glow of the emergency exit lights.  I was still in the emergency room and it seemed no one bothered to help me.  My body felt weak and I could no longer feel the pulse of my heart radiating through my body.  The sights around me were horrific.  The emergency room was slathered in blood and pieces of what I could only assume were human flesh and guts.  There were bodies lying all over the floor; the bodies of the doctors who tried to hold the rabid patient down as well as many others.  I stumbled back towards the door.  I had to leave and find help, but as I stepped outside I realized that I had been unconscious for quite awhile.  The power was out in the city and the only light was that from the fire that was burning half of the park down.  Melancholy was draped over the night sky and I witnessed other injured people sulking along the streets and through the park, but they looked rabid like the man who bit me.  The park literally looked like hell on earth. 

     My breath began to get shallow and my body felt weaker.  I marched over to the nearest bench in the park and sat down.  Suddenly, despite the aching pain in my back, I felt relaxed.  I didn’t care that I was a thirty-eight-year-old janitor dying on a park bench.  I didn’t care that my breath was getting shallow and that the dirty rabid people had started creeping towards me.  I didn’t care that Nathan’s ludicrous prediction was insanely correct.  The only thing I cared about was how relaxed I felt at last.

Depression

I feel lonely.  I have an amazing wife and together we have two beautiful children, yet I still feel lonely.  It’s because after I separated from the military I became a hermit who indulges in the lives of fictional characters in movies, video games, and books.  Their lives are so much more interesting and they actually have stuff going on.  What do I do?  I wake up and do jack shit all day. I take care of my kids and get them to wherever they need to be on any given day, but other than that, I really don’t do anything but school and video games. That, or I veg out and get fat.  What the hell is wrong with me?  Where has my motivation gone?  I’d love to wake up and go for a jog every morning.  Even better, I’d love to wake up and actually want to go for a jog.  I don’t like having to force myself to go workout because more often than not, I’ll just skip it because I’m being a lazy fat ass.  I don’t want to be a lazy fat ass. I want to be in shape and I want to have motivations.  I want to feel like my life has purpose.

I have started a new degree and I do have quite a bit of time left to finish it, but when I look at the faces of my friends on Facebook, I can see that most of them are accomplished.  They’ve completed their degrees and are pursuing their life dreams. But when they look at me I’m sure they see nothing but a guy who likes to use the “f” word excessively and act like a pompous asshole who feels the need to correct everyone’s spelling and grammar.  Looking at these faces gets me reminiscing about a simpler time in my life where I didn’t have all of the responsibilities that I do now.  I just wish I had the drive to be as outgoing as I was then because I miss human interaction.  Not with my wife and kids because they kind of have to interact with me, but a social life that I can escape to other than playing video games.  Fuck me.  I feel like such loser sometimes.

What Happened to the Officials?

Broncos Vs Falcons game:  My thoughts

The Falcons played flawless football.  They dominated the Bronco offense and managed to move the ball against a great Bronco defense.  In the end, I don't think they're a better team than the Broncos.  Although that doesn't' matter because they played that way tonight and that's what really counts.  They're 2-0 and they earned it.  Ultimately, the Broncos played very poorly and dug themselves into a deep hole with four first quarter turnovers.  End of freaking story.  My complaint is with the officials.

I don't want to say that it is because of the officials that the Falcons won.  The game would have most likely had the same outcome considering how well they were playing versus how terrible the Broncos were playing.  The best team won today.  But anyone watching football these past two weeks can easily tell that these replacement referees are destroying professional football.  Every game I've watched these past couple of weeks has been overrun with yellow flags and piss poor calls.  Here are a few you may recall from tonights game.

-The pass interference call against the Broncos defense when the player was clearly three feet away from the receiver.

-The fumble recovery that was awarded to the Falcons when it was a Bronco player who emerged from the pile, ball in hand.  

-The part where the Falcons where called for defensive holding and the refs moved the ball six yards closer to the end zone when it shouldn't have been.

A couple of those are game changing calls.  I think it was a third down incompletion when pass interference was called.  The Falcons went on to score a touchdown.  They wouldn't have had that opportunity if it weren't for that botched call.  The Broncos were in field goal position after that fumble and yet the ball was given to the Falcons.  Would the Broncos have scored that touchdown at the end of the half if the ball was placed where it was supposed to be?  We will never know.  The game is over and the end result is what it is.  But as football fans, we cannot excuse this type of officiating.  The NFL is a professional league and I feel that the refs need to match that standard.  Now we've all been in that position where we blame the refs for a loss, and most of the time we know deep down that it really wouldn't have mattered.  Now, however, fans can probably makes those claims with some validity behind them.  

I'm not entirely sure I can put up with the entire season so as long as these referees are managing the games.  It has been an awful first two weeks in the NFL and I'm sure fans from every team can agree.  My wife is a Steelers fan and she has pointed out all the terrible calls against the Steelers when they faced off against the Broncos.  I think the NFL needs to give in to the real refs and punt these terrible replacements back to wherever they came from so we can get some nice, clean football.  This way, when a team like the Falcons makes my Broncos look like a little league team, I'll have only the donkeys to bitch about.

Leave Me Alone

What's the deal with die hard Apple fans?  I don't understand why every time I have a negative thing to say about an Apple product I get shit thrown in my face yet it's okay for them to tell me what low life piece of shit I am for using a PC.  For anyone to think any less of me as a person because I've chosen to use a specific product that rivals what they like is ludicrous.  I don't go around telling people what morons they are because they play the Playstation 3 rather than the Xbox.  Can't we all get along?  I don't think so.  I have yet to see anyone act superior to other people because they've surrounded themselves with PC stuff.  That's why when I see someone boasting about their Macs I can't help but wonder if that person thinks he or she is better than everyone else who doesn't use one.  I've experienced this type of behavior many times before so it's become a natural thought to me.  I actually had a friend on Facebook tell the world how elitist she was because she uses a Mac Book, iPad, iPhone, and iPod.  She got mad when I told her that I owned an idontfuckingcare.  

So my Facebook friends and my close family members know that I have recently switched schools so that I may pursue a new degree.  I've come to the realization that computer programming is not for me, but writing just might be.  I'm not a perfect writer but I certainly do my best so that I can hone in on a skill set that I believe I possess.  I'm switching from Liberty University Online to Full Sail University Online.  One of the neat little perks about Full Sail, other than caring about their students more than Liberty (long story), is that they send you a Mac Book Pro as a tool to assist with your learning.  The cost of my computer is being added into my tuition.  I've never been a fan of Mac.  I use my mom's Mac all the time and it really just hasn't appealed to me.  Well I just recently received my Mac Book Pro and I have to say that I'm a little impressed and unimpressed at the same time.

This machine is powerful and I totally love that.  2.6 gigahertz compared to my much slower PC running upstairs is a huge plus.  On top of the speed, this machine is drop dead gorgeous.  I love the slim design and how light it is.  I love the silky gray color with the black lining.  I even enjoy looking at the lit up apple on the backside of the lid and on top of that, the keyboard lights up!  I love that.  The computer itself runs very smoothly and its very graceful about the way it takes me from window to window.  I also enjoy the little dashboard area that has all of my applications laid out for my picking.

Here's the thing though, those are the only things that really impressed me about this computer.  I've already had a good share of time spent on my mom's Mac and I've known for a good time that they're not really for me.  I've been able to navigate and learn about using this machine fairly quickly due to some amazing support from my school's website, which is full of very useful tutorials.  I know that I will enjoy going to school on a Mac because Full Sail seems to have a great support system I can fall back on if I hit any road bumps.  But the fact of the matter is, this computer really hasn't offered me anything to do that my PC hasn't.  Hell, I'm typing this blog up on a cruddy word processor titled TextEdit on the Mac which feels like a crappier version of the very first version of Microsoft Word.  It's terrible and it reminds me of the notepad on my desktop.  Fortunately, Full Sail is sending me a copy of Microsoft Office.  Thank, God.

Things I don't like: *Ahem*

I do not like the fact that there isn't a right click.  Don't jump down my throat you psychotic fanboys, I know that I need to press down on the mouse pad with two fingers rather than one to get the "right click" option.  Useless.  I spend more time trying to get this to function properly than I would on the PC where they have a designated button for right click.  I know the Mac likes to "simplify things, but this is just silly.  Is it really that hard to add two separate buttons?  I suppose people could say the same about pressing down on the single clicker with two fingers.  Whatever, this is a personal preference issue.

I do not like how some things are ass backwards.  I suppose it's no big deal, but things like the exit button on a window is in the upper left hand corner rather than the upper right.  Personal preference issue really.  Also, the favorites bar is located on the left hand side and I don't really care being taken to a different page in order to select one.  Why can't it just drop a menu?  To me, it feels so much easier this way.  I'm just set in my ways baby.  

I do not like that Apple wants me to sign up for an Apple ID for EVERYTHING!  Today my computer was telling me that there was a software update that I needed to download.  I said okay, do it Mr. Machine.  So it starts to download and then it tells me that in order to download, it needs me to sign in with my Apple ID or register for an Apple ID if I didn't have one.  Okay, why not.  So I try signing up for an Apple ID and it told me that in order to sign up I had to provide a credit card and billing information.  WHAT!!!!  I don't want to purchase anything from the Apple store, so why would I want to provide that kind of information?  If I'm handing out my credit card info, it's going to be to purchase something.  Not once, ever, has the PC required me to give them my credit information in order to download a software update.  This is just ludicrous, absolutely uncalled for.

So no wonder Apple fans are so dedicated to their company of choice.  It's because they are required to be.  So much time and money is forced out of people that abandoning Apple would result in a loss of all those things.  Being a fan and avid user results into a serious commitment.  The same can be said for other companies though.  People are going to flock to what they like and they will be faithful to it.  I don't have a problem with people enjoying Mac as much as they do, but please don't try to make me feel like a piece of shit because I prefer the rival.  I worked with this girl in Mississippi that was so excited about being a Mac user that she told me that only fat gamer nerds use PC's while smart, sophisticated, upper class people use Macs.  Total.  Crock.  Of.  Shit.  I get this type of reaction out of a lot of Mac fans and I'm rather tired of it.

Overall I have to say that I do not agree with the practices of Apple, but they really do make decent machines.  Other than personal preference issues, i don't think the Mac and PC are all that different.  They both accomplish the exact same things and that's okay.  It all comes down to what a person prefers to use.  I will use the Mac Book Pro, a lot, I can promise you that.  But I will also use my PC just as much if not more.  It's just what I prefer to use.  So please, for the love of God, leave me alone about the products I choose to use.  I'm a consumer and I'm allowed to make my own decisions just like you.  Sheesh.

EA Is the Devil

The online gaming world can be extremely frustrating, especially when you’re getting whooped up by a twelve year old girl who t-bags you every time she puts you to sleep.  It boils my skin so much when this happens to me that I’ve slowly drifted away from competitive online gaming to cooperative and single player gaming.  This is a nice comfy realm where I can play games for fun, hunt down achievements, and get along with my friends in a place that isn’t bursting at the seams with adrenaline.  There’s no way a person can get angry in that kind of place, right?  Wrong.  Madden 2012 opened my eyes today and revealed to me that a small few games can be irritating without even having to play them.  Oh, and it also helped me figure out why I hate EA. 

During a game of Madden Ultimate Team mode, where I was in the process of making the Buccaneers look as talented as my 4 year old daughter’s flag football team, an error message popped up.  Apparently my connection to the EA server had been lost and all the coins and stats I was racking up wound up being obsolete.  What?  I was playing offline against the computer.  Why the hell do I need to be connected to the EA server in order to enjoy some offline gaming against a noobified AI that won’t t-bag me every time they score a touchdown?  Is this the direction gaming headed?  If so you can count me the fuck out.  I don’t want to be forced to be connected to the internet in order to enjoy a SINGLE PLAYER GAME!  I suppose it makes sense to be connected to the internet if I want to play against other people online, but in this particular case I wanted to play alone.  Can you imagine a world where you have to have an online pass to play Skyrim? 

On top of Madden 12 being the product of half assed effort, I have to put up with this type of garbage?  I’m lucky Best Buy was selling it for ten bucks brand new or else I would’ve had to pay an extra ten dollars for an online pass that I would use to play OFFLINE!  I don’t understand why I have to pay extra for something that COMES ON THE DISK I ALREADY FUCKING PAID FOR!  I understand why they have the online pass and I still think it’s a total crock of shit.  Here’s a thought for you EA.  You know that used game that Joe Schmoe purchased from the used game section at GameStop and is playing online still constitutes as ONE FUCKING PERSON playing on your servers.  The original person who bought it didn’t like it enough to keep it in their library of games, so they let someone else have the fun.  You still received payment for the original copy that was sold, what does it matter who is playing it?  That disc is only occupying one slot in your online community, and that’s if the person is even attempting to play it online.  This business practice is absurd and it would be no better than Nissan charging people extra money to drive on the road if they purchased their vehicle used rather than brand new.  Nope, you can purchase used vehicles without having to pay the manufacturer anything extra because they’re smart enough to not rip their customers off.  They sold a vehicle and that’s all that matters, who gives a shit what is done with it after the fact? 

This whole situation got me thinking about how EA was awarded The Consumerist’s 2012 Golden Poo Award for being the worst company in America.  The decision was based on the consumers who voted and at the time I figured it had something to do with the Mass Effect 3 ending over at Bioware.  Perhaps EA got their money hungry hands on that freaking beautiful franchise and defiled it in the name of douche baggery.  I did a little research on this subject because I couldn’t understand how a company that has published so many great titles could even make an appearance on this kind of poll.  Then again I don’t really purchase many games published by EA, and if I have, they’re probably sitting on my shelf or I played them before EA started shitting on their fans.  So after doing a bit of research I found out that EA is disliked because of their business practices, not because of the Mass Effect 3 ending.  You might recognize some of these useless freaking things such as DAY 1 DLC!  Holy shit, what a load of crap is it to work on DLC before the game is released?  Downloadable content should never be unlocked from the game disc let alone on day one because if I pay sixty dollars for that disc, I’m entitled to EVERYTHING that is on it.  On top of that, DLC is supposed to be an afterthought.  Hey, this game is doing really well; let’s support our fans by making more content for them and in return they can pay us for the extra effort and support we’ve put into this game.  EXTRA effort!  I’m more inclined to pay for DLC if the company took the time to continually support a game AFTER it was released.  I won’t pay for DLC if it was premeditated content that was most likely stripped from the original game and is patiently waiting on the disk I purchased to be unlocked as the developer rapes my wallet.    

I remember a time in gaming where DLC was a special treat that not every game company took the time to produce.  Halo 2 was the first time I’ve seen a company support their game after the fact because they had such a great following that more content was a necessity to keep the growing horde at bay.  Today’s gaming world is much different because DLC has become a tool for developers to half ass their games so that they can milk you for more than sixty dollars in order to get the complete game.  Then they taunt the achievement addicts by offering more lame ass achievements for ten dollars.  Before you know it, you spent over a hundred dollars on a game that really isn’t worth it.  However bad DLC has gotten, nothing comes close to being true evil like day one DLC and DLC that has been included on the games disc.  They write the DLC onto the same disc that the original game comes with.  So then tell me where the downloadable part of DLC is?  Wallet rape, we consumers are being fucking raped and we don’t even care.  We go out and purchase this SHIT because we are freaking mindless zombies that pay insurmountable amounts of money on a game just because the word “Halo” is in the title (I’m guilty of that).  But I digress.

Now there are other reasons that people hate EA, but I have never had any experiences with them.  Reading about them is enough to piss me off though.  Things like early server closings or expired online passes that come with new copies of a game are just a couple of many small things EA is doing to rip their fans off.  I don’t really need to get into those issues though because I’ve never experienced them first hand.  Other people took the time to write about it though, so go check it out.  Here, here, and here.  EA pissed me off for the last time.  First they took away NFL 2K, rubbed day one DLC in my face, and now this needing to be connected to the internet shit?  I wish I could say that I started this blog just  being pissed off about needing to be connected to the internet to play one stupid mode on the crappiest Madden game I’ve ever played, but now I’m realizing that EA has done a massive disservice to its fans with their unethical business practices.  But with everything that I have to bitch about I cannot help but wonder if it’s not partially my fault and every other gamers fault for allowing this to happen to us.  If we don’t stop it now, EA won’t be the only company we’re complaining about. 

My Best Man Speech

On Friday, August 3rd, my brother got married.  I had the special honor of being his best man and with that responsibility, I wrote him a speech.  Since I've had the speech saved on my computer, I decided to post it here.  The real speech was a little different, but this was the guideline that I followed.  The following is dedicated to my brother Kyle and his new wife, Mattie.

I would like to thank everyone for coming out to celebrate the marriage of Kyle and Mattie Brightman.  For those of you who don’t know, I’m Kyle’s brother Cody and I would like to share a few thoughts.  I’ve known Kyle my entire life.  That’s twenty three years of memories that have.  I wanted to share some of the embarrassing ones, but then I figured telling people that he slept with the bathroom light on until he was ten would be a little tasteless.  Then I’d figure that I’d tell the story about how I borrowed our parent’s car without permission and it was Kyle who pointed out to my mom that someone stole the Camero.  But thinking of that got me reminiscing about the Cody and Kyle crime fighting team.

One day, before the rise of cell phones, Kyle and I were being nosey and listening in on a phone conversation that my sister was having.  Apparently Paige and a friend that was staying over were concocting a super secret plan to “borrow” the car, which ironically Kyle now drives.  So Kyle and I decided to join forces to bring down a common enemy who has thrown us under the bus many a time.  It was nearing 1130 at night when my sister and her friend came down to make sure we weren’t going to interrupt their plans, but we knew it was a ploy.   Almost immediately after they went back upstairs, Kyle and I left through his window and landed ourselves underneath our dad’s camper.  We waited until our bandit sister and her sidekick escaped the house, marked the car’s wheels with rocks, and pushed it twenty yards down the street.  We patiently waited our move as the girls realized that they didn’t know how to operate a stick shift.  They’d get ten feet before doo doo doo the car stalled.  Once they reached the corner I looked at Kyle and said, “go get mom and dad, stat!”  I rushed to my vehicle for a chase while Kyle burst into my parent’s room, flipping the lights on, and screaming “MOM!  DAD!  WAKE UP!  PAIGE TOOK THE CAR!  THEY LEFT!”  Kyle had later told me that waking dad up like that was a bad idea because his first reaction to the unnecessary chaos was to try and punch Kyle in the face.  It’s too bad our crime fighting team ended the same night it started Kyle, I’m sure we could have changed the world brother. 

I’ve watched Kyle grow up alongside me over the years and I’m very proud of his accomplishments.  I’m proud to see that he’s all growd up with a great college education and a great job.  I’m also very happy for him to have found a person as great as Mattie.  You guys now get to experience the greatest thing about marriage.  Each other.  Tomorrow when you wake up, the world will feel complete, everything will sounds better, everything will taste better, and even the air will smell better, assuming you brush your teeth.  Everything becomes better when you have someone to share it with.  Cherish these moments because before you know it you’ll have kids of your own and time will begin to fly.  But just remember through all the chaos that you love each other and that no matter what obstacles may face you, together you can get through them. 

Extended Cut DLC: My thoughts

OF COURSE THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS ARTICLE!

The relationship between video game developers and fans has entered a new realm.  Never before in the history of gaming can I remember fans having such an impact on a game that is already on the market.  For a few months fans like me have been crying for a new ending, or at least an expansion to the ending we got, and Bioware delivered.  Now despite what you may think about their “fixed” ending knows this, they cared enough to at least try to satisfy their fans.  Hell, maybe they did it for themselves as well.  They saw the potential to right a wrong and labored for months to release a FREE expansion to an ending they had already “completed”.  It should have been what was included with the original release, but the fact that they had the integrity to right this wrong solidifies my place as a Bioware fan.

I stated in my last article that the last five minutes of the game destroys the credibility of the writers.  It took away everything that defined Mass Effect and forced an unwanted ending no matter what we chose.  But maybe I’m wrong to assume that it is the fault of the writers.  Perhaps they were rushed or overruled with the plot decisions.  No matter how it went down, the ending was terrible and literally tore apart everything that made me love the franchise.  Choices were stolen from me and new plot holes were opened rather than the old ones closing.  Then entire thing was a disaster.  I’m happy to say though, that Bioware has delivered and satisfied my need for closure with this story.  In my last article titled, “Mass Effect 3 Broke My Heart,” I listed off my top ten reasons for disliking that piss poor excuse of an ending.  In this article I will revisit my statements and tell you what has been fixed.  Keep in mind that the ending is the same, but many of the unanswered questions and loop holes have been tended to.

1.       My first complaint was about the sixteen “wildly” different endings that were promised, yet undelivered.  Each ending was practically the same thing minus the color of the explosion.  For my last review I only watched the separate endings on Youtube to verify that they were the same.  I didn’t really want to go through and witness the same ending three times in a row, especially because I was very upset at the time.  That has all changed though because the Extended Cut DLC offers different endings, all unique in their own way.  Each ending, (Syntesis, Renegade, Paragon, and Rejection) all have their OWN unique endings.  They are similar here and there due to their origins, but the end result was a lot better than different colored explosions followed by the EXACT same sequences.  At least this time around it feels as if my decisions made a difference for the outcome rather than being forced into the same exact outcome no matter how I played the trilogy.     

2.       Why did the Normandy crew just bail on their Commander?  This was probably one of the biggest piss offs for me because I’ve grown to love these characters and this heinous act just tarnished their credibility.  I just couldn’t accept the fact that they would flee like a bunch of wimps after everything that they had been through.  These are the same people that walked into a suicide mission with me during the events of the last game.  They knew full well then what the consequences could be, what changed their minds about now?  On top of that cowardice, it made me feel that they were never really loyal.  The entire game made me feel like I was surrounded by loyal people who would die for me, and that was destroyed in a matter of seconds.  Fortunately this was something else that was fixed.  After Sheppard activates his/her option, Admiral Hackett orders the fleets to retreat.  Joker is shown going on about his badassery when Garrus tells him that it’s time.  To me it’s a logical reason.  We created this weapon that is supposed to wipe out all the reapers in the galaxy, I’d back away from the blast zone too.  This brings back the credibility that was lost because instead of fleeing from battle, they were fleeing from an explosion that could take out more than just the bad guys.  It makes sense and I accept it.

3.       How did the crew that was on the ground with me wind up on the Normandy as it was fleeing?  The last time I saw Liara and Ashley was when we were all running towards the conduit.  Yet at the end of the game I see them step off of the ship with Joker after the Normandy’s crash landing.  Even other characters that were back at the rendezvous on Earth wound up on the ship.  But when and how did they manage that?  Fixed.  During the run, your squad almost gets crushed by a Mako and one of them actually winds up hurt.  Sheppard calls Joker in for an evacuation and we get to see whoever is in our squad safely leave the battlefield.  In my case, it was more emotional because Sheppard said his last goodbye to his love interest.  The story flows much better with these types of holes sealed up. 

4.       The Star Child was a massive complaint from me because he was full of shit.  He was introduced in the last five minutes of the game which I felt was rather tacky.  He stated that he created synthetics to destroy organics to prevent those organics from creating synthetics that might in turn destroy the organics.  Sounds crazy right?  Well that’s not exactly fixed, but it also kind of is.  I never liked how my Sheppard just kept taking this bullshit by hanging onto the kids every word.  Not once did he argue with him or give him a valid counterpoint to think about.  Nope.  This time around, instead of sitting there and taking all of this kids crap, Sheppard can actually interact and give him some lip.  We get more information about the reapers and a little bit about their creators.  We learn that the original reaper was the first civilization to be harvested (which I believe was also the creators).  I still think the kid is full of crap for the most part, but the gratifying thing about this confrontation is that it gives Sheppard a lot more leeway in his reactions rather than having him sit back and accept this crappy fate that this no named piece of shit is feeding him.  Synthetics will destroy organics who created synthetics that could potentially destroy turn on them and wipe them out.  Good thing, it could have been a massacre.  

5.       Complaints five and six can actually be answered at the same time here.  The Mass Relays were completely destroyed in the original ending, which as we have seen in the Arrival DLC, wipes out an entire system.  So if every relay is destroyed, wouldn’t that mean every system that houses one would be destroyed too?  That would mean that both the reapers and ALL advanced organic life would be non-existent.  Even if the relays didn’t destroy the systems they were in, the entire galaxy is in the Sol system because that’s where the final battle took place.  The final battle was on a planet that probably can’t even feed its own people anymore, let alone a bunch of aliens, most of whom can’t eat human food.  Starvation seems like the only plausible outcome, at least until they FIXED IT!  The relays don’t get completely destroyed in the Extended Cut DLC.  Sure they take some hefty damage and stop working, but from the looks of it, they seem like they can be repaired rather easily.

6.       The fact that I reach the end of the game and my choices meant nothing was a major downer.  As I stated in response to my first complaint, each choice renders its own unique ending, and this time a fourth option is available.  I know a lot of people could care less about it, but to me it exposed a very real possibility, which is why I love this game.  The rejection option allows Sheppard to do exactly what I wanted to do, say fuck off to the Star Child and decide my own fate.  Unfortunately if you choose that option you get wiped out, completely.  Bioware took into consideration every possible outcome and getting decimated was a great one.  And even though it feels like a huge failure, it’s not.  The sequence to this ending showed the time capsule that Liara put together to help save the civilizations in the next cycle from defeat.  It’s bittersweet, we didn’t get to accomplish this, but we’ve made it so you can, go nuts.  I was just in awe when I saw that because I spent three games trying to prevent that very thing from happening and in reality, not everything has a happy ending.  It was also great because that decision was based on CHOICE!  This ending along with three other tastefully rendered endings brought about closure and made me happy. 

7.       Here come the downers.  The minor things that bugged me about the original ending still don’t make sense to me.  Like why was Citadel brought to Earth and why was there a single point of entry that led directly to the control room?  Why did Harbinger leave the conduit unprotected while there was still activity on the ground, knowing full well that if the arms of the Citadel are opened, his race could be destroyed?  How does Anderson beat Sheppard to the top?  How is it that Anderson tells Sheppard they came up in different areas, yet he beats Sheppard to the control panel, despite the fact that when Sheppard walks out of the room he’s in there is only ONE walkway to the control panel from Sheppards EXACT location?  How does the Illusive man get there, why isn’t Anderson blown to hell like Sheppard, how is it that Anderson was shot in his left side yet it’s Sheppard who is clutching a fresh wound in that exact spot?  Why the hell are the trees from Sheppard’s dreams still behind him after he is knocked down?  Not one fucking answer, but that’s okay because I can live with it considering they’re minor imperfections that I’m being anal about.

8.     How does the Illusive control both Anderson and Sheppard?  I mean, he himself is indoctrinated, not Sheppard and Anderson.  Throughout the entire series that capability has been non-existent, so why now?  The Illusive man had recently found out how to control other people, sure, but his methods were the same as the Reapers which turned his subjects into monsters.  Sheppard and Anderson aren’t husks, so what gives?  We may never know how this came to be because they didn’t address it.

9.       I just didn’t like the ending scene where the Stargazer was talking to the child about “The Sheppard”.  I found it to be corny and useless, but that honestly would have been my opinion regardless.  This wasn’t a matter that was fixed, not that it really needed to be.

Oh yes, the Indoctrination Theory has been disproved.  How awesome would that have been though to see our hero have this inner battle at the end of the game?  I was half hoping my Sheppard would be successful in his endeavors, only to wake up to a final boss battle against Harbinger.  Nope, the endings are what they are, but you have to admit that it was a very clever idea considering all of the strange things that seemed to line up.  The trees from Sheppard’s dreams are still behind you during the last sequence.  The little boy that no one seems to notice wasn’t addressed.  Sheppard clutches a fresh bullet wound in the exact same spot that Anderson was shot.  It may have been a coincidence, but it would have been an awesome alternative.  I’m actually okay with it either way though because Bioware delivered on what they promised.  Closure.  A three minute slideshow/cut scene plays after the events of the original ending and gives us a glimpse of the people that fought beside us and that we have grown connections with.  Jack is shown talking to her students, Zaeed is shown lounging in a lawn chair, and Samara is shown with her daughter (to name a few).  I saved Samara from suicide and it was nice to see that she kept her promise about going back to see her last child.  It was nice to see the Reapers vacate the other worlds in the galaxy so that we could see the scale of what we accomplished.  It was nice to see a tribute made to the fallen squad mates as well.  The most touching was when Sheppard’s love interest put his name on the memorial wall on the Normandy.  I’ve walked by that wall so many times during my play through and even read all of the names of the people who died serving on the Normandy.  Seeing Admiral Anderson’s name alongside Sheppard’s was surreal, and melancholic.  But it gave me the closure that I didn’t have before and I’m happy to have an end.  I kind of wish I didn’t play Mass Effect 3 until this Extended Cut was released because it’s exactly what should have been there in the first place.  But regardless I give this DLC a 9/10 and I highly recommend trying it out.