I feel better now. I know what you're probably thinking, "free from what?". Everyone, I have literally stopped updating my consoles. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have owned my consoles for long enough. I've paid too much money into them and I want to feel like they are mine. I paid $600 for my PS3. Even though I get free online play and some nice features from Sony, I feel like they still have some control over what I do on my console. Same with Microsoft and Nintendo. I paid $400 for my Xbox 360 Elite and $200 for my Wii. 
 
I appreciate what updates they give me, but I feel a lot better. I feel like I went back to what gaming used to be. PC being the dominate online platform and consoles being the better platform for the single player experience. Every piece of equipment I own has it's own unique talent. There's no more competition. If I want to play something online, I will get the game for PC. If I want to play something by myself, I will get it for the consoles.  
 
I urge everyone to do the same. Take your consoles off the internet. Do it for a week, 2 weeks, or a month. You will see what I'm talking about.

I'm starting to see this trend that's been going on now and days. The fact that if the MMO's are starting to become F2P (free to play) or already becoming F2P. Jeff Gerstmann has done an article on if we care about the F2P model. In the US case it's F2P, but to an extent. With the upcoming Everquest II Extended, they adopt the fact that they want more players to "try" their game. I put "try" in quotes because they still use that word for the people that are unsure about their game. The model they are using for the unsure is you get to play up to the maximum level and you download the entire game, but there's a catch. You don't get the latest expansion pack, you're only allowed certain classes, certain races, limited amount of character slots, limited amount of money, etc. It seems like a lot they're taking out of the game, but that is still pretty damn good. Then you have to wonder how they are still keeping the servers up. Of course they have different tiers of services. 4 tiers leading from bronze to platinum. 
 
Warhammer Online also adopted something close to this service as well. Try out the game with limited parts of the game or pay their monthly subscription and get the entire game. We all also know that Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online also went F2P with an optional subscription for additional stuff. These games have been out for 4-5 years and so far them being F2P is sounding pretty good. Especially since they've had that much time to get most of the bugs and glitches out.  
 
However, do these new F2P games compete with the always-have-been F2P games? Well, it all depends on what you find fun. It goes back to the battle of Western RPG's and Japanese RPG's. We have all tried Flyff and Shaiya. Very popular MMO's in other countries. Both having the F2P service as well, but very different. Meaning, you receive the entire game. You have the option to pay for additional items to speed up the process in the game. That's where these games succeed. Most people are impatient. They rather spend money on items to make the leveling go a lot faster in the game. Unfortunately, the only down side to these games is the minor text bugs that extends the wording outside the frame or no word at all and repetitiveness. 
 
So, where will we see MMO's go since we have more US games heading to F2P? Since we have more MMO's failing? Where is that World of Warcraft killer that everyone is promising? Everything changes eventually and at some point everything gets old.

This is not a rant about how we waste our lives on this. My girlfriend claims that I can't live a day without them. I say otherwise. She has brought up points where every 2 weeks I'll go to Gamestop and always buy some used PS2 game (what can I say, I like collecting). So now I'm showing her what's up. So far I've downloaded a collection of comics and books. So I can occupy my time otherwise.

I wake up one morning finding my body drift towards my DVD collection and my eyes floating to my copy of Episode III. Why? Exactly like every douches answer to their penis. It has a mind of it's own. The last time I remember watching a Star Wars movie was back in 2005. I watched this movie to it's entirety. I wondered to myself, where does the Universe go from here? At this point I've caught the fever. I went down to my local book store and browsed their book collection. Until I stumbled upon a kid that has a comic. A Star Wars comic. Do they really go this far? Movies, TV shows, books, comics, and video games. At this point I've seen them all. So to intrigue my curiosity, I bought a few. Knights of the Old Republic.
 
Zayne Carrick is the protagonist in this story. Or is he the antagonist? Either way he is a main character. He's a Padawan or a student if no one has heard of Star Wars before. Not just any student though, a special one. He's not the kind of special you see in the movies or books on the other hand. He's special as in clumsy. They use that word clumsy a lot for Zayne. Though the way he keeps getting away from the order and the republic. I would think he's more of a "smart" clumsy. At the end of one of the comics, he swears revenge on his master. He has that serious look, like he will go into training, get to know the force, and kill him. Apparently not. He goes back into his "smart" clumsy scheme again. Then again, I'm only so many comics in. Maybe I won't be disappointed. Hopefully these writers won't take my feelings and squeeze them into a grinder and make "blue milk" for Luke Skywalker to drink with his Aunt and Uncle.

Due to nothing ever being on during the weekend (thanks for looking out for the weekend customers Time Warner) I find myself scrounging around the app store. I know I won't find anything in the store. Especially anything that's free. For some reason something flows through my mind and forces my fingers to open up the app store. Is this some sort of disease? Or maybe this is an excuse I want to give. As I go through the store I keep thinking about how all my money goes to Apple and AT&T and how I don't receive much of a great product. I find myself choosing an app. Textnow is an app that, in a way, likes to "stick it to the man". In real terms you text people. Anyone you can think of. They give you a choice between download for free and receive ads and pay a dollar and it's ad free. So like everyone else I chose to endure the ads. Instead of a phone number, you receive an email address. Well, not an email address, but one that likes to think it's an email address. That's if what the "@" symbol is portraying. It's a useful app, but I don't think I can catch myself using this. As much as I like "sticking it to the man", I refuse to have another email address.

 I have to let this out. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. First off my 360 red rings again, no matter how many times I fix it, it will always red ring. How the fuck does everyone I know get so lucky? What the fuck do I have to do? I keep it in a ventilated spot, I play it maybe 2 hours a day, and I never move it. So many ways I've tried fixing it. Tightening the screws, using towels, etc. All to be met by a fuckin red ring the day after. All after 24 hours after fixing it. Now, I might need a re-balling. Basically new solder balls for the CPU and GPU or something like that. Are you fuckin serious Microsoft? Your hardware is the same exact shit as PC's. You can't just do the same shit? Have a lever hold down the CPU. I don't know how much money I've spent repairing this. I mentioned it before in a previous post. With that money, I could've bought another 360. But right now, I can't. I won't be able to buy one for a long time. So FUCK YOU MICROSOFT. And if any fanboys wanna backfire then you can kiss my white hairy ass.     
 
That's not the end of it. Microsoft seems to think that I'm not running a legit copy of Windows 7. So they decided to throw messages at me like crazy and disable my desktop background. Yeah the background is the least of my worries, but the messages are. I can't play any games because of that. Every 5 minutes a message comes up and it kicks me out of a game. I have a legit version of Windows 7. I can't prove it to them because it's somewhere in my storage closet. So there goes two of Microsoft's products that I can't play games on. So once again, FUCK YOU MICROSOFT. 
 
So the best way to take out my anger is to go to the gym. Practice some boxing. I'm gonna get the fuck out of here. So fuck you guys, I'll see you when Microsoft stops fucking me over.

So my eyes have been wandering towards comics, the movies based off of comics, and games inspired by comics. When I was younger, I didn't care too much about comics. I only read a few Batman comics and I only cared about the action in the movies. When I was younger I found that there was a better story in Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing than anything out there. I assumed that the reason for that was because as long as there was some major action and big ass mechs then I would be a happy kid. 
 
Well now that I'm older, thing's have changed. It all started with Infamous. I thought that the game would be a lot like Sucker Punch's other games, Sly Cooper. Not much to the story, wack a few guys around, and complete the quest. Apparently I thought wrong. The story completely captivated me. The world around Cole MacGrath, the side characters that are a big part of the story, the enemies, all these things is what makes Cole MacGrath. The twist at the end is what really hits you hard. It's like it snags a big chunk of your spine and makes you wonder what the fuck happened? 
 
So, I began to notice the comic book cutscenes during my second playthrough. It made me wonder if all comics are like this? I popped in a couple of Marvel movies I have, X-Men, Spiderman, and Ghost Rider. I'm watching these movies, really paying attention to the story that they have. I do have to say, wow, the background, stories, and characters are incredible. Plot twists, government conspiracies, the science, and of course romance. Then I began to think to myself about how movies like to make the story a tad different than whats in a game or book. So I downloaded a couple of apps on my phone. Comixology and the Marvel app. Downloaded a couple of comic books and dove right in. The first one I took a look at was Hulk. I'm lost for words on that comic. What I mean to say is that it's a really good comic. That would be one I would suggest to anyone. But whatever you do, don't watch the movie that came out in 03. I tried watching that after reading the comic and damn did that movie suck. 
 
Anyways, I don't want this blog to go on forever. I've been through a few comics so far. One comic I'm reading now is Prototype. I've played the game ad beaten it. I found that the story is very well said in a comic than in a game. Alex Mercer plays a very good part in this. As far as the bad guy, but not the bad guy. Well, anyone that's interested in comics, I suggest checking out Prototype. You will not be disappointed. 

I'm looking at my game catalog and it's getting to the point where I'm wondering "why am I buying all of these?" It's so hard to explain. Co-workers and friends tell me "pick this up" or " buy this game, it's bad ass". The sad part is that this is the only thing that peer pressure easily takes over me. I have over 100 titles on PC, over 50 titles on PS2, over 20 on PS3, over 40 on Xbox 360, and so on. Most of them I get used at Gamestop, swap meets, or friends. Some of these games I haven't even popped in to my system. 
 
Now I can go the way of over weight people or alcoholics and blame the companies for the temptation, but I'm not that kind of person. My actions are my responsibilities. Almost everyday I think about or I do walk into Gamestop and browse their used section. Half the time leaving empty handed. Everyday I browse through the App store just to look for a game that can occupy my time just for a few minutes. At this point I have 6 pages on my iPhone full of games either purchased or free.  
 
What am I trying to accomplish? What kind of road am I following? That's just the thing. I...don't...know. I'm not a game journalist, there's no reason for me to have a pile of shame. Am I trying to beat a world record. I don't think that's possible for me. Some of the games I want I can't find. Is it the trophy's or achievements? Nope, I only have 2 platinum trophies and 1 S-rank. Is it the popularity in the leaderboards? Yeah right. I've reached rank 40 on MW2 and haven't played since. 
 
Maybe it's the fact that I want to enjoy the same experience as everyone else. Maybe I want something to talk about to everyone instead of being the loner in the corner. It gets to me sometimes that I can never find out what problem I'm running into now. So many things run into my head. On top of other situations. I'm kicking a family member out of my house and I have a child on the way. If this is an addiction I need to get it under control. Or else I'm gonna be like some other fathers, giving my entire pay check to child support while living in a shack. And then definitely I won't have any video games to play.

I have to say that and not the iPhone because the G1 still has physical buttons. And there's plenty of demos on the G1 for me to check out before I buy. Oh yeah and google doesn't have as much as Apple about putting stuff in their market.