I have always heard stories about San Francisco traffic. How it is significantly more difficult to navigate than the traffic in the suburbs in which I reside, and how easy it is to get into a car accident. I've always taken these stories with a moderate amount of skepticism, usually arguing that those who complain about city traffic are just bad drivers who don't know that they are bad drivers. Today however, I understand why people say that city traffic is terrible: because it is.
 
I learned this important lesson today while I was on the way home from an important job interview. Once the interview was over, I got in my car with high spirits and turned on my GPS. After a couple of seconds, it had calculated a route home and I left with the intention of arriving at my house within the hour. Sadly, this was not the case. I drove for about ten, maybe fifteen minutes before finding myself in San Francisco. (To clarify, I purposefully did not drive through San Francisco to get to the office where the job interview was being held, preferring to stay on highways in order to save time and gas.) I didn't mind going through San Francisco at that point since there wasn't anywhere I needed to be for the next couple of hours, so I went ahead and drove on through. That was when quickly found out how different it is to drive in a major city.
 
When driving in San Francisco, you have to really keep your eyes open. There is only one street light for each direction when at an intersection, and they are relatively tiny. This didn't help when I had tall trucks parked on the side of the road blocking the light so I couldn't tell whether or not it was red or green. Thankfully, the kind drivers of San Francisco were more than happy to honk and yell behind me, informing me that the light was green. I don't know what I would have done without them. Another useful tip is that San Francisco drivers for the most part don't want others to change lanes if it means that they themselves have to sacrifice a few seconds of time. I had to wait until I had just enough room to squeeze into a left lane and make it the other person's fault if they hit me.  
 
The GPS didn't help out much either. I missed so many turns that the GPS had to "recalculate" about 15 times. This was either due to me not able to change lanes so that I could turn, or me turning at the street that was going at a 45 degree deviation to the right when the GPS wanted me to go to the street that was going at a 55 degree deviation to the right. I know that some might call my driving ability into question at this point, but I must note that the "highlighted route" feature on this particular GPS is borderline broken when in an area with many different streets. The "highlighted route" was so highlighted, that it actually blocked other streets from view, making it unclear as to which street was the one I needed to turn onto. I got to a point where I was yelling at my GPS due to the fact that every time I missed a turn, it would say "recalculating" in a snobbish tone, which only fueled my anger.
 
After about 50 minutes of weaving through all of downtown SF, I miraculously found the freeway I was so desperately searching for. That freeway was like a tunnel out of prison, and renewed my faith that one could escape the clutches of San Francisco without having some sort of brain aneurysm. I arrived home 40 minutes later, tired, but grateful that I made it out of that labyrinth.
 
Now I will admit that I haven't had the most experience driving in a major city, and the quality of my experience would likely improve if I were to continue driving in SF. But overall, driving a vehicle in a major city sucks. My advice to those who think they may take a trip to SF or any other major city is to use public transportation. In the past, I used Bart to travel in and out of SF, and now will continue to do so whenever possible.  

Quests. The newest feature of GiantBomb that has caught many, (including me) in a feverish attempt to achieve every single achievement available. Here is my input on the latest addition to the site. First off, it is very, very addictive. I have been doing these quests for about 8 hours now and they are amazing. It's fun just to see that achievement pop up when you complete it. It's a nice touch that I think really makes the user try all the different features of giantbomb that they wouldn't normally use. However, this is where the negatives of the emerge. There is a lot of spam that has flooded the site with messages mostly consisting of "DOIN IT FO DAH POINTZ" This not only defeats the purpose the achievement system, floods forums with a bunch of spam that no one really wants. Now this isn't something that breaks the site or anything and the mods are more than capable of handling the flow of garbage, but the achievements didn't have to involve the forums. If someone has any interest whatsoever in the forums, then they would have already started posting and become somewhat active in the community. Achievements for the forums are simply not needed. It's not that they aren't fun, but the amount of spam that I've been seeing kind've defeats the purpose. Anyway, that's my two cents, and with this submission, I get more precious, precious points.

Well, it's officially the summer slump in which the only games one has to look foward are the souless movie and tv games like Transformers and Hannah Montana. So what is one to do video game wise? Well, one of the easier answers are openworld games, since they provide a longer gaming experience for the most part. However this can be both a pro and a con. Recently I've been playing Fallout 3 again as an evil character and it was great for the first... 20 or so hours, then for the next 10-15 hours it was fun, but in a more, "I'm almost done" kind've way. Then the last 5 hours I wasn't really having fun, but merely trying to get the achievements for Broken Steel. Of course today the game crashed on me twice at a certain point so I'm saying fuck it, I'm done. DONE. I feel good that I played through Fallout 3 again and finally blew up Megaton and finishing off Moira Brown (Who is perhaps the most annoying character in the entire game) but, it came at a cost. I feel that if a game gets to the point of boring then it's been going on for too long. It may very well be my fault for not taking a break, however normally i like playing a game until I beat it so I can have some sense of closure. (unless the game keeps crashing) Mainly what I'm getting at is that Open World games are all well and good, but when they are played to the extreme, it doesn't work that well. Proabably all the more reason for me not to play Red Faction: Gorrilla, but hey, it's summer. What else is there?

Well, 2008 has definitely  been a busy year, both in games, and in the world. The economy is on it's lowest decline since the Great Depression, and we now have a president who seems competent enough to get the country through this crisis. That's enough of the real world now to take a look at the games that game out this year. 2008 was a year that arguably topped 2007 with a plethora of magnificent games such as Burnout Paradise, GTA IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, Little Big Planet, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Fable II, Prince of Persia, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Left 4 Dead, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Dead Space to name a few. Some of these games I still need to start and I'm a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of games that are out.