Under Construction...

I found some awesome blog templates and I'm currently playing with them.  So if you visit my blog and it has some weird stuff or a strange design don't worry all will be right with the world soon.

Peace out,

Joel

Confessions of an Achievement Whore

"This time baby I'll be...bulletproof." - La Roux

If you play the Xbox 360 chances are you know what achievements are, and chances are you are an achievement whore like I am.  For the uninitiated, achievements are points you get for completing certain actions in an Xbox game.  These can come from just playing the game normally and passing the levels.  They can also come by doing challenging or strange actions like the "Dastardly" achievement in Red Dead Redemption.  This achievement involved playing the role of a dastardly villain from the old timey shows.  You have to hogtie a woman, place her on the train tracks, and watch her get run over by the train.  If that's not awesome I don't know what is.  You gain nothing from these achievements, purely bragging rights.  Unlocking achievements adds a ton of replay value to certain games, it can also subtract some replay value as well (I'll delve into this later).  I have played a 10 hour game over 4 different times to try to get all of the achievements.

I think achievements are such an ingenious way to get gamers invested in the games, and I think, at least for me, that it is a way for me to keep purchasing Xbox 360 games over Playstation 3 games.  Sony does have their own "Trophy" system but they started it, I believe, due to the popularity of achievements.  It works in a completely different way, and I heard that it is pretty rewarding, but I think its too little too late.  Honestly, unless I read reviews and they are completely skewed toward the Playstation 3 (hasn't happened yet) for a multi-platform game I will ALWAYS purchase this game for the Xbox 360.  Why?  Achievements.  I've already invested so much of my time building a high Gamerscore (the score that tallies all of the achievement points you've unlocked) and I just want to keep improving on it.

Another thing achievements do is add a sense of old school competitive nature.  Nowadays people are bragging about how many kills they have, what they're K/D spread is, and so on and so forth.  But gamerscore showcases a few things: 1) how dedicated you are at playing your games 2) how skilled you are at playing games and 3) how much of a nerd you are.  It's a way of quantifying exactly how much better you are at games than they are.  So when I get shot in the head playing Modern Warfare 2, and I end the match in last place with a record of 2 - 20, I just say, "shut up, I have a higher gamerscore than you."  Then they continue to own me.  These points are reminiscent of old school arcade machines that people toiled over trying to beat the high score.  It's just another way to earn bragging rights...of which I just recently lost.  My jobless friend has surpassed my gamerscore and I vow to regain my dominance.

I mentioned earlier that achievements can subtract for a game's overall replay value.  How this happens is when all of a game's achievements are easily unlocked.  For example, one of my favorite games last year was Batman Arkham Asylum.  The best Batman game ever made.  I had so much fun playing it.  However after I completed the story there were only a few other achievements I had to unlock, they were challenging, but when they were done I didn't feel the need to pick the game up again.  There was still another difficulty level I could have tried and a few more challenge maps I never attempted.  The same thing goes for Mass Effect 2.  One of my absolute favorite games.  I got most of the achievements on my first playthrough, and then the rest starting my second.  I did finish the game even though there were no achievements to be had, but the story is just so awesome, plus I want a bunch of different save states for when I play Mass Effect 3.  Then after that I put the game down for a good while, having gotten 1000 gamerpoints from this game I didn't need to pick it up again until some new DLC came out that added more achievements.

I think achievements and gamerpoints definitely change the way you play games, and for some like me, the way you buy them.  Thanks for reading.  You earned this.

- Joel

My TV schedule

I think I finally figured out my weekly TV schedule.  Check it out:


Monday
- Chuck
- How I Met Your Mother
- Castle
- The Event
- Hawaii 5-0
Tuesday
- No Ordinary Family
- Running Wilde
Wednesday
- Modern Family
- Undercovers
Thursday
- Community
- The Big Bang Theory
- 30 Rock
- Fringe
- The Office
Friday
- Supernatural
Sunday
- The Simpsons
- Family Guy
- The Cleveland Show
- Dexter
- Boardwalk Empire


What do you guys watch?  What should be on my list?


Fade to black,
-Joel

Love: An Outsider's Perspective

It's been a long time since I've been in love.  But most of my closest friends and family are well entrenched.  From observation alone I think I've deciphered the meaning of love.  Here are my findings.

Love means:

- never having to plan your own birthday

- never being alone on a Friday night

- holding hands while driving

- sharing bank accounts

- sharing debts

- forgiving each other for being stupid

- taking vacations together

- sharing lazy Sundays together

- giving up videogame time

- having ridiculous arguments

- waiting to watch a television show together, even if it means you are many episodes behind

- it doesn't matter who pays for dinner

- you have a lot of family parties to attend

- you go to visit in-laws in remote locations with nothing to do

- you slowly start to take up each others hobbies

- more home cooked meals

- taking care of your in-laws when they need help

- not having to buy each other birthday presents

- still buying each other birthday presents

- holding hands

- having complete trust in each other even during ladies or guys night out
- you travel miles to a different city and just sit in a hotel room while the person you love works for the weekend
- you have traditional food nights like "taco night"
- getting fat together
- getting fit together
- you get to dress each other
- you never worry about growing old alone.


This is just a portion of what my research has yielded.  I one day hope to find the love of my life where I can discover my own definitions of the coolest four letter word in the world.  Are my findings incorrect?  Which of these do you find true?  What does love mean to you?  And to my family and friends can you spot which of these is about you?


Much Love (really),
- Joel

If you don't know, now you know...

"I got this money baby, I want to spend it on you...I got this Sunday baby, I want to spend it with you.  We can do what you like, I promise that I'll be true..." - Childish Gambino

Do you ever listen to something or watch a movie, or play a video game, and just love it to death?  Love it so much that you're so excited to talk to someone about it?  And then when you go to school or work you find out that nobody has even heard of it?  I hate that.  For that reason I am going to list some of the shows, music artists, movies and videogames I wish more people knew about.

Music:

Childish Gambino - Culdesac

Download here: http://www.culdesac-album.com/

Best known for playing Troy on my favorite show on television right now, Community, and writing for 30 Rock, Donald Glover is legit.  Despite being able to find him doing stand up comedy, and on classic Youtube videos his rhymes are no joke.  Sure some of them will make you laugh, but he isn't trying to make a comedy album like Weird Al or Lonely Island.  In his mixtapes he often raps over Indy groups such as Discovery and Vampire Weekend.  His album Culdesac has hints of Indy but with Kanye/Lil Wayne caliber rhymes.  Go download his album, it's free!

Television:

Community - NBC Thursdays 8:00pm

I'll be honest.  Before this show aired last year I had no interest in watching it.  A show about Community college with that douche-bag from The Soup?  No thanks.  Unfortunately nothing was on at 8:00pm on Thursday so I decided to check it out.  The first episode was okay, had a few laughs, I enjoyed the way it was shot and the humor...but I wasn't overly impressed.  Still, I liked it enough to tune in for the second episode.  Ridiculousness ensued with Chevy Chase and Joel McHale, giving the worst presentation ever...pretty funny episode.  And then the end credits rolled and Donald Glover and Danni Pudi did the Spanish Rap.  I was instantly hooked.  The great part about this show is that it knows no bounds.  It has reality based episodes like Episode 3 - Introduction to Film where it ends on an extremely touching moment with Abed and his father.  And then it has off the wall episodes like Episode 23 - Modern Warfare where the entire school is engulfed in a paintball war full of classic action movie references and awesome gun fights.  If the episodes aren't awesome enough, the end credits are usually just some delicious icing on top.  Watch this show.

Other mentions: 

Parks & Recreation (Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari, Rashida Jones)

Lie to Me (Tim Roth)

Movies:

25th Hour - Edward Norton, Rosario Dawson, Philip Seymour-Hoffman, Anna Paquin, and Barry Pepper.

One of my all time favorite movies.  A Spike Lee joint, this movie revolves around the last night of a man before he goes off to prison.  Edward Norton is awesome...always.  Just a great story, the best part being a rant that Norton goes on in front of a bathroom mirror.  If you get a chance, put this flick on your queue.

Other mentions:

Confidence (Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz)

Way of the Gun (Ryan Phillippe, Benicio Del Toro)

Jackie Brown (Samuel L. Jackson, Pam Grier)

Heat (Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro)

Video Games:

Mass Effect Series

Despite being the greatest game of all time (IMO and in a lot of game reviewers O) not a lot of people around me have played the series.  Maybe they were turned off by the RPG elements from the first game...or the massive amount of dialog.  Maybe it was the wonky shooter mechanics...boy I'm not really selling this game well am I?  This is definitely a game where the end product is greater than the sum of its parts.  When this title was announced, it was announced as a trilogy.  The first one was ground breaking, the second one just improved vastly on the shooter mechanics, inventory system, and dialog system.  Unfortunately it improved on the first one so much I can't bring myself to go back and play it again.  As I sit here eagerly awaiting the 3rd and final installment to this trilogy I have only a few people to talk to about this wonderful feat of gaming ingenuity.

Other mentions:

Ico

Shadow of the Collosus

Well that's what I have for now.  There are a ton more that I could have added but I can't think of them all.  If you haven't heard of any of these, or thought to yourself, yeah it looks cool but I don't have the time to check it out..give it a shot.  If anything you'll know you'll have someone passionate about any one of these things to talk about it later.

- Joel