I Will Not Apologize for Disliking Halo

NOT GEEK

I suck at video games. I used to be good-- when the NES was still a thing-- but then I got distracted for a few years by college and girls and learning to drive. Also beer. Suddenly I pick up a controller again and I'm supposed to know complex military tactics. Fuck you. THAT'S why I have Uno and Pac-Man on my XBox.

GEEK

The XBox has been in my apartment about two years, and the games I have enjoyed most, INITIALLY (I stress that point), are....

1) Wet
2) Borderlands
3) Left 4 Dead (both)

I am aware-- Anyone who knows anything about games, knows that "Wet" sucks. A hardcore gamer here in town told me it reminded him of John Woo's "Stranglehold," which I then checked out just to see if the comparison was apt. Strangehold came out when I was still working at Borders (so 2004-5 roughly), and by 2010 standards, it was pretty crap. Your character hit more targets only if you were jumping through the air in slow-motion. That got repetitive and boring after five minutes. I quit the game after ten and sent it back. "Wet" was exactly like this, except you could also run up walls and do flips. That only took about 10-15 hours to tire of, or maybe I kept expecting boobs.

Borderlands was spectacular, with a levelling system, and a crazy variety of guns that actually forced you to think about what you were going to keep vs. drop. I played it for like a month straight, then I went back to start again with a second character, since you're given four to choose from. The second time through, it felt boring and frustrating, because I'd already beaten all those levels, and it took so long to level up. So.... I went back to my original character. Soon after, I don't know if the game got too hard, or if it reached the upper limits of my skill, but I had to quit. Still, really, really fun up until that point.

I don't play Halo, because going online, it's even harder to find a good game than it would be on a PC. I've beaten 1 & 2, but Halo seems to be more about the culture than the individual gameplay. It's all about going online and playing versus other people in an arena mode, and I spent college doing that with Counterstrike (which had a superior vs-mode, because it contained actual objectives, not just 'kill or be killed'). Halo online is just point and blast. It reminds me of Quake. Which was also repetitive and dull.

Left 4 Dead is more co-op, which I appreciate. The game's AI decides whether or not you're getting a grenade here or more ammo there, so after over a year I haven't tired of it.

The gaming industry is more interested in safely making lots of money, than being innovative or creating something interesting, but ultimately they'll have to listen to the geeks-- not the accountants-- if they want to remain successful. For every big, stupid, shallow money-maker like the "Bayformers" movies, it's always something with actual thought put into it, that drives the genre forward and spawns new creative ideas for both the artists, and the consumers, to enjoy.

I'm not going to claim "Iron Man" or "Batman Begins" were great intellectual achievements, but in the case of the latter, literally no one previous had ever had the balls to take the comic book genre so dead seriously, and make a movie as dark as they could. It worked. Because it's all about taking risks.

"Call of Duty Five: Modern Warfare Seven: This Time With Grenades 3" is not taking a fucking risk.

There's a reason Pac-Man single-handedly spawned this industry in the first place. And to do so, it didn't need an online option to let your friends play as ghosts.

From the Files of WG Harding

I needed writing samples to apply for a job, and I don't have any of my journalism stuff in digital format. This is because I am very old and I wrote for newspapers in Houston, Denton, and Ft. Worth before the internet was invented.

So I slapped something together that met the journalism format. I hope someone finds this at least a little amusing.

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Witnesses at a local GameStop were shocked and horrified to be trampled in a near riot Tuesday, when apparently an influx of video game enthusiasts stormed the door just past 1 a.m., as the manager was about to close the doors.

"It was the worst stampede I ever seen,” said Mary Wilson, 29, of Issaquah. “I was just up here to get a copy of Halo Reach for my 8-year-old son, and all of a sudden there were all these dudes running up toward the store like they was being chased. Except they weren’t being chased.”

Witnesses at the scene were few, but those in attendance did use a variety of words to describe their predicament, in the range of “horrifying” and “pants-tightening.”

"There were three or four video games that came out that night, and of course we always stay open until after midnight on release days,” said local GameStop Manager Keith Adamthwaite.

But this particular evening, Adamthwaite saw something he says he’s never seen in 20 years in the business.

“They ran up just after one o’clock,” said Adamthwaite. “There must’ve been 40 or 50 of them… I thought maybe there was a fire or something had exploded, and they were running to use our phone or something.

“But as it turns out, they had just been in an hour before, and were all there to return copies of a really horrible game.”

There was no damage to the property, said Adamthwaite, but he also said he hadn’t stopped looking, and that he had “received reports on the B-button on the Xbox demo,” which he was currently investigating.

“I couldn’t tell you what game it was… this might get back to the developers,” said Adamthwaite. “And I have a business to run.”

Adamthwaite would only say the game was NOT Halo Reach, which has been released two weeks prior.

“I mean, sure, everyone LOVED that game,” said GameStop employee Susan B. Anthony, 19, of West Seattle. “But the summer is dying down and I guess people wanted something to play on the side, but this game… I mean, I HEARD, since I don’t really play games, but THIS game was apparently really bad.”

By 1:45 a.m., the entire crowd had dispersed, some with store credit and some with cash on hand.

“It was the single most horrifying night of my life,” said Adamthwaite. “They were a diverse bunch, don’t get me wrong… tall, short, skinny, fat, pasty, tan, even a couple parents with their kids… but when I saw the look of rabid hunger in their eyes… I felt genuine fear for my safety.”

None of the other customers could be reached for comment, but shortly before presstime, the Gazette did receive one anonymous email.

“It’s his own fault for selling crappy games,” the email read, in part. “He had a poster of this thing on the wall for a month, like somehow it was on par with Halo Reach in terms of interactivity, production design, budget, story, and really cool explosions."

“It was all a lie. I feel violated.”

Adamthwaite had no comment. Representatives of Microsoft were contacted, but all they could do was point and laugh.

Autumn Dilemma

NOT GEEK
DUDE. It's football season.

GEEK
Football sucks. Play some video games. Read a book.

NOT GEEK
FUCK YOU. This is the year North Texas goes 0-12. Plus you can go right down the street and watch the Huskies lose to real teams.

GEEK
TELEVISON. MOVIES. INTERNET. LATE NIGHT JAPANESE ANIMATION. COMIC BOOKS.

NOT GEEK
CAR CHASES. FOOTBALL. HIGH-SPEED-COLLISIONS. VIOLENCE. DEFEATING THE ENEMY. BEEEEEEEEEEER.

GEEK
I'll shoot zombies, that's good enough for me.

NOT GEEK
Football is made into multiple video games EVERY YEAR. It's a mainstay on every console. Geeks should embrace the F$#CK out of that.

GEEK
Those games are entirely too complicated. If I wanted to actually play football, I could just swing my arm instead of angling the perfect nanosecond timing on an XBY-cross-arm bootleg R-button combo.

NOT GEEK
OH HO, so you admit you'd play football in real life.

GEEK
My last date was the same day your last date was, pal.

NOT GEEK
Now we're getting personal.

GEEK
We do both enjoy beer.

NOT GEEK
And boobies!

GEEK
And winning.

NOT GEEK
Agree to disagree?

GEEK
Boise State

NOT GEEK
Any team from the Big 12 that's not OU.

GEEK
YOU'RE DEAD TO ME.

NOT GEEK
You go play video games. See that hottie at the end of the bar? I'm-a slap her ass and ask her if she has any Texan in her.

GEEK
Then we can both nurse the black eye.... together...... playing...

NOT GEEK
..... video games.

AND.... SCENE.



not geek
north texas!!