My Reach Experience A Review(Spoilers)

So Halo Reach has been out for a while and I've been playing it since the release. This post is simply to note both the good and bad points of the game. Between campaign, multiplayer, and firefight, Reach has a lot to offer.

Let’s start with the campaign of Reach, you play Six. Six can be either male or female and has about double the lines Master Chief had, which isn't saying much. The campaign entails Team Noble's exploits during the fall of Reach and yes, everyone is either MIA or KIA by the end, including you; overall the campaign is a challenging and enjoyable experience; promoting both CO-OP and single player experience with an achievement for completing it solo.

Firefight which first debuted in ODST is back in Reach and better than ever. You have the choice of going into it through matchmaking, which gradually increases in difficulty the more rounds you play or you can make a custom game, fiddle with the settings(you can tweak just about everything) then invite your friends and have at it. Firefight is an amazing mode that gives a little extra flavor to the experience as a whole; although I lost interest myself after completing all the firefight related achievements.

Now finally the multiplayer experience, this is the meat of the game and what people are going to be playing years from now. There are essentially two modes here, Competitive and Arena. Essentially competitive is basically the social playlists from Halo 3 and Arena is the ranked matches. Arena in itself is an interesting prospect, your personal stats are tracked and you get a rating as a result, you play 3 games a day to be rated for that day, and after 10 days of being rated you earn a division rank. Many people, myself included miss the level system from Halo 3. Arena even without the current bugs (assists not awarded even when taking peoples shields down) promotes bad sportsmanship at times. Sometimes its better to blindly go for kills, ignoring your K/D because three deaths is equal to a kill. Now I won't go into all the logistics of arena but overall I find it lacking and would much rather have levels. The game itself though is plenty of fun.

Now most reviews assign a game a numerical value typically on a scale 1-10, I fucking hate that. Basically if you own a 360, like FPS games, buy this game. There’s really no reason to not play it unless you're terrible, like me but instead of blaming yourself you blame the game.

My Appologies and Redemption

My Reach launch video will not be aired as there is not one. Instead of attending the launch my friends and I went to a send off Halo 3 tournament. While one of my friends did take first and take home a free legendary edition, I failed rather hard. Guess that's what I get for never touching the game. Anywho after leaving the tourny we went to the gamestop we had preordered our Reach copies at and waited a whopping 10 minutes for our copies.

Without a video I realize I have failed my followers so I offter this.

If you have ever wondered what 100 chicken nuggets would look like in a bowl, you now know. The four of us tried but we were not able to overcome all the nuggets even after having some for breakfast at 6:00am before shortly calling it a night, morning, whatever.

So, followers, I must break this to you, my activity on here will be somewhat limited for the next few days. I will try to post a blog once a day and respond to most comments but I can't make any promises. I'll be playing a certain game if you need me.

Blam, 200

Thanks for all the support guys, glad to say I'm over 200 and have time to respond to comments, until tonight that is.

Your Reach Plan

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So let's say its Monday night 12:04 and you're just now returning home with Halo Reach securely in your hands. You walk, briskly into your house, apartment, dorm, whatever and you put that son of a bitch in your Xbox. The question here is, what are you going to do next?

Will you play the campaign? Along? With friends online? Or are you even throwing a Halo party?

Will you play matchmaking to get a head start on those doing the former? Again will you be alone or with friends?

Of course you could always go to bed after picking up the game. Even if that would defeat the purpose of going to the release but maybe you have a life and have work in the morn.

Pro Mall Tips, Episode 2

Typically when you're at the mall you're there to buy stuff. Sometimes, though, you end up buying stuff you don't even need or want. This episode is aimed at keeping you from doing such a thing.

1. Never ever stop at a stand in the mall. These people are almost like cons, they can and will trick you into buying the useless crap they have. They'll reel you in with free samples and make you feel good about yourself then all of a sudden you're paying for not one but two of the same item and wondering how it happened.
2. Go to the mall with a game plan. Unless you're going to hang out with friends and window shop you need to know what you're in there for. You don't want to walk around thinking to yourself "oh that's nice I could really use that" at every store in the building.
3. Shop clearance. You know why the shops always have 50% sales? Because no logical person is going to buy a 70 dollar pair of jeans. So in a few months they need to get rid of the excess items that no one bought and they usually end up going half off. This is when you swoop in, find your size, and walk out feeling good about your purchase for once.
4. Don't be impulsive. Impulsive buying can get you into a lot of trouble. You go into the mall with a 100 dollar spending limit and you walk out knowing you just charged your credit card to the max or drained your checking account. Again, know what you need, just because something looks amazing doesn't mean it always will be.

Hope this helps you from going into a financial crisis. Have fun shopping!

Pro Mall Tips, a series

When at the mall sometimes you can leave items laying around when browsing clothes. In this terrible ocassion there are several things you should do to ensure the best chances of finding your lost merchandise.

1. Don't panic, panicking will cause you to not think logically. This is the most important step and yet the hardest to do.
2. Retrace your steps. Think about the last time you remember having your lost items and go there, then repeat every movement you made from that moment, if your stuff is still where you left it, you'll find it eventually.
3. If retracing your steps doesn't work ask a store associate if anyone has seen it and maybe turned it into the lost and found. More often than not the person that finds your lost merchandise with either be A, an upstanding citizen and turn it in or B, a shady person but has no use for your items.
4. If all else fails become a detective, if you can remember anything particular about your bag or whatever keep that in mind and take a look at what the other people in the mall have, if you have your receipt on your person and get lucky enough to find the dick that picked up your stuff, you'll have no problem proving its indeed, yours. 

Hopefully these tips help you in your future mall escapades. Happy shopping!

One of the few tv show I watch

Lie to me is one of the few good shows left on television. All the actors are top notch and seem realistic which may just be a byproduct of the show's premise.

Essentially Lie to me follows the story of Dr. Lightmen and his company. Lightmen himself is an expert in being able to tell if someone is telling the truth, not in a bullshit lie detector way instead he picks up on subtle ques that everyone shows. Anger, guilt, fear Lightmen is able to decipher what a person is really feeling or trying not to feel. His team are all able to pick up on the ques as well, although they are not as experienced as him. They each have a different background and at times wind up being deeply involved with the story.

One of the things this show has going for it is how all the characters, even minor ones react and interact. Its like watching something in real life, people exhibit emotions true to what you would see in an everyday conversation. This is most likely because the shows selling point is that these people are trained to see these ques and if the actors didn't show them it would fail. None the less acting of this caliber on a tv show no less is refreshing to see.

With tv clogged with low production value shows, ridiculously bad reality shows, and actors that really shouldn't be televised its nice to see a program making strides to entertain with unique and believable characters. If you've never seen or heard of Lie to me before check it out on www.hulu.com