Resistance 3 (PS3, 2011)

It's the 1950s. World War 2 is going down and everyone is watching to see what happens next. Then Aliens attack and start taking over the world with a deadly mutating virus that turns us into them. One brave British soldier, named Nathan Hale dared to fight his way through hoards of these monstrous beasts after being enhanced with a slight dose of the alien virus, causing him rapid healing. He fights and delivers a devastating blow to the Chimera (the aliens), before finally succumbing to the virus and turning into one of them. His final reward is to be put down like a rabid dog by one of his own friends. That is where we left off with Resistance 2.

Resistance 3 starts us off with Joseph Capelli. The man who killed the worlds greatest hero. He has been dishonourably discharged from the military and has gone into hiding with a small pocket of survivors. After Hale died, the Chimera won. Joseph and his family's situation just keeps getting worse as the Chimera are on a search and destroy mission to finish off the human race once and for all and Joseph no longer has the will to fight. There is an overwhelming feeling that they are just buying time until their final dirt nap. When a character from the first two games shows up and tells Joseph of a plan that he thinks could turn the tide of the war against the Chimera. Joseph's wife demands that he go and at least try to stop it and what follows is a journey across the ruins of the USA, from Oklahoma to New York.

This game is VERY good. The modern convention of the first person shooter is to have regenerating health and only to carry 2 different guns, but Resistance 3 feels like a throwback to the initial core values of shooters. My favorite thing about this game, aside from the feeling of dire importance in the journey, is that you get to carry every gun in the game and switch between them as you like. The guns are amazing. From the standard automatics to the lightening shooting alien weaponry. You can use them all. The Rossmore shotgun, when fully upgraded, is what I want in every shooter from now on. You also have to find health packs to keep yourself alive. After all, Capelli is not infected with a superhuman virus. He is just a man encountering overwhelming odds. The game also has great moments of unpredictability. Especially during a whole train sequence about halfway through the game. There is no way you'll see that one coming.

Another feature that I love very much about this game is that it has a split screen storyline coop. This is good, because I actually have friends that I like to hang out with. I believe it has online coop too, but I don't subscribe to the whole, "hey dude, go home so we can play video games together." There is also an online component which I hear is pretty good, however I don't care about that either. I wanted a storyline. I wanted an adventure. I wanted an epic journey. I did not want to be tea bagged every time some 12 year old camper decides to kill me.

This game was a pleasant surprise and a huge improvement over the first two Resistance games. I can't recommend it enough for fans of first person shooters. This is definitely not another Halo clone.

Hey, you got some flame thrower in my shotgun!

Folklore (PS3, 2007)

So, maybe I'm a little late to the party on this one. I purchased Folklore during the earliest of days of the PS3's life (I find out recently that I am one of 230,000 people in the world who actually did). It came at a time, when I was in denial as to how few games were on the big black monolith console, so I had to have it. After all, the demo was unique. Somehow, however, PS3 decided to play a serious game of catchup and had endless waves of great games coming since to keep me busy. Folklore was buried under the Uncharteds and Killzones that followed it. Alas, I looked up at the shelf a few weeks back and saw Folklore, just sitting, looking neglected. I have a large stack of games beside my TV that are labelled "to play", but something about Folklore got my attention and it jumped to the front of the pack. So, how does this nearly 5 year old game hold up?

The first thing to note is that the music is unbelievable. It has an ominous fantasy sound that I have yet to see executed better anywhere else. The graphics have also aged incredibly well. It's a beautiful game, that uses just the right amount of style to overcome obsolescence. Even my girlfriend, said it was beautiful, and she's always negative about any video game that isn't Pixeljunk Shooter or L.A. Noire.

The story is what I personally value the most in a game though and this one pulls it off well. While some may feel a little disconnected with the storybook style of cut-scenes, where you read word bubbles over nearly still pictures, I feel that it fit well with the fairytale feeling of the whole thing. Basically, the story deals with some very dark themes, involving childhood death and how people deal with painful memories. It genuinely keeps you guessing by never revealing its full hand until the end. It's clever and does very well to lead you to believe you are smarter than it is, before showing you that the twist you figured out wasn't the only twist to be seen.

I could complain about occasionally unnatural dialogue and frustrating motion controls with the sixaxis controller, but the atmosphere and imagination that this game puts forward, really does well to overshadow all negatives. Basically, you are travelling into the Netherworlds in search of lost memories to find out the past of a mysterious town, and solve some bizarre murders that have been occurring. The game does a great job of making you confused for most of it. All that is known is that the murders are somehow connected to a strange happening from 17 years before involving a young dying boy named Herve and a young girl named Cecilia who prayed to faeries to keep him alive.

The game is interestingly set up between two different characters named Ellen and Keats. Ellen is a girl who receives a letter from her mother whom she hasn't seen in many years, asking her to visit this place to find her. Keats is a writer for a writer for a magazine that deals with the paranormal. One day he gets a call from a mysterious woman who says she needs his help at that town. The game lets you choose which one to play as, however both characters uncover different pieces of the puzzle and thus eventually, you'll have to play through all chapters with both of them anyway. They have to fight their way through various realms, that are amazingly unique using the souls of monsters defeated along the way to attack other monsters (folks as they are called). This system never really gets old, as the monsters keep changing and thus you keep finding new attacks to use.

This game is really unique in many ways, and always leaves you with the feeling of confusion and curiosity as to what you will find next. Most importantly, to answer my initial question as to whether or not this game holds up, yes it does. It lasts, because it feels like it was made to last. It doesn't feel like it was made to be a graphical achievement, or a ground breaking RPG. It just feels like it was made to be a timelessly enjoyable game. If you find this around for $18 or less, which you likely can, buy it...set it on your shelf for a few years and savor it like a fine wine. It ages very well.

The Anti-Social Network

"Hey Jon! Use Facebook! It's so cool, it helps you keep in touch with your friends!"

Yeah, that's the false pretence in which I was introduced to Facebook. I always thought it would be neat to see how a friend that I hung out with a handful of times during high school would be doing ten years later. Not to mention watching to see who has had kids and who married who (and who still has their hair). I also enjoyed seeing pictures of fun things that friends and I did together. It is a constant reminder of where you have been and how you've dealt with certain times of your life. To me the initial idea was to be able to be a 70 year old and literally have your life flash before your eyes any time you want it to. The problem however, was that Facebook had different plans for itself.

First off, let it be said that I don't give a rats ass about your fictional farm. I don't care if you're in the middle of a fictional gang war, and most importantly I don't want to be automatically added to your bullshit group. Seriously, whatever happened to getting an invite and deciding for yourself. Facebook has seen dollar signs and if you notice, the layout keeps changing more and more to make the cool things about Facebook less cool less and to accommodate the things that make Facebook worse. It's bullshit!

At this point, if people would just start using Google +, I'd abandon Facebook completely. I like it's no nonsense approach. I like how I can make people I hardly know into just an acquaintance. I like that I can add semi celebrities onto my follow list, and I love how I can post for specific groups only to see it. Let's call a spade a spade here. If you have 200 people on your Facebook as your Facebook friends, chances are about 150 of them are acquaintances you never talk to.

Now, I need to point the finger elsewhere for a minute. Remember what I said that I liked about Facebook? That I could keep in touch with people and see what they are up to for years to come. The people using Facebook are as much idiots as the people controlling it. First off, so many religiously play Facebook's rinkydink games for 25% of their day (I'm looking at you Canadian government). Facebook has changed their focus because you people have showed them that it works! It's really your fault! Secondly it's called Facebook. Face....book. STOP POSTING PICTURES YOU THINK ARE FUNNY AS YOUR GODDAMN PROFILE PICTURE! I DON'T CARE WHAT YOUR KIDS LOOK LIKE...and so on and so on. Post pictures of yourself as your profile picture. I don't care what the picture looks like but it should at very least have you in it. Make an album for those other things. The site is set up for it, you know. Finally, stop changing your names. For you idiots who think you are being super original making your name Ivana Humpalot, I want you off my friends list immediately. The important point of being able to check in with people you know, is to know who these people you know are! Duh!

Anyway, Facebook and it's users are pretty terrible. I saw someone refer to Google plus users as hipsters the other day. To that I retort with the following...Go play Farmville you twat!

The bad guy.

This is what I look like as I write this....minus the cocain and alcohol.

As Tony Montana said, "say hello to the bad guy!"

As time goes by, I understand more and more what he meant. Sometimes life conspires to make you the villain. As the old saying goes, 'the path to hell is paved with good intent'.

It has been quite a few months since I posted on here, and there could be several reasons for that. On one hand, maybe I'm too busy these days, or perhaps I haven't cared enough about anything to write about it. Whatever the reason, I find myself having something to say and nothing else matters.

A few months ago, one of my all time best friends and I had a 'break up' of sorts. This has been one of the most painful things I've ever experienced in my life. To have a person who you can always count on and feel comfortable around absolutely start to hate you and tell everyone how bad you are is pretty overwhelming. I have always been one of those 'friend people', who values his friends about all else. Maybe that made me overbearing, but who knows. I always thought that best friends could talk about anything and should always be understanding, but like the idea of being sucked out of a hole in an airplane, that myth has been busted (by the way, I rarely watch Mythbusters, but it's a pretty fun show!).

So, what destroyed our friendship? Well, isn't it obvious? It's always a woman. My friend found himself a woman who was historically a big fan of deception on a scale of oddity. Now my friend has also been known to indulge in the deception from time to time, but he was still an unquestionably great guy. When he told me that he was with her, I told him that I had heard that she had grown a great deal since her less than wonderful days. I wanted to be happy for him, and tried to be, as all of my experiences with her had been general annoyances and lying about my other best friend (good thing I always had 2 best friends huh!?). I decided that she deserved the benefit of the doubt.

I don't think it's fair to go into detail on the events that happened next, but I will say that she was one of those people who thinks a little too much of drug use and in a matter of a two hour visit I had caught her in several lies. I didn't trust her and decided I didn't want her brought to my home any more. My friend was relatively accepting of that. Now that I think of it, it was almost surprisingly so.

Later on she did some really hurtful things to my friend. So hurtful in fact that I personally would never even talk to her again if I was in his shoes. Naturally he came to my place and we talked it out. He had a whole new resolve. He was ready to leave her, saying he never wanted anything to do with her again. Then she messaged him on facebook a few times with the most cheesy, unbelievable messages (seriously one was a long paragraph ending with "but I... I love you") and he left to be with her.

Gradually he stopped calling on me more and more. Sadly, I think it was because I wasn't there for him as much as he needed. It was a hard time in his life and I left him hanging. I found myself in a relationship and working ridiculous hours. He probably felt pretty alone and had no one to turn to but her and so he went back to her to stay.

Let me be honest. I'm an emotional guy. One day I went to send him a message just to talk about old times and see how he was when I noticed I wasn't on his friends list anymore. I messaged him saying I was hurt and I wanted to know how he was doing. He replied in a snarky way saying he was better than he has ever been "...so thanks for everything." I won't lie. This set me off and lead to a series of messages back and forth that probably lead to a point it shouldn't have. It ended with him calling me a snob who was making all sorts of stories up about her, which is odd because he acknowledged them earlier.

I decided it was lost and it honestly hurt in a strange way that I hadn't felt before. The next day someone messaged me with his new updated facebook post. He took my messages to him and edited them down into a villainous long post cutting out all of the parts about what he is doing and just having me saying the harshest comments. He showed it to what was left to his friends list (he deleted all but maybe 20) and sadly I know some people believed I threw him under a bus.

The worst of it is that his family would call me often to ask me to talk to him about how much trouble he was in with her. Now I think they hate me as much as he does thinking I abandoned him. I don't have the heart to call them and tell them I tried. I don't have the heart to show the accurate messages to the people who saw his post (although, I showed it to the ones who asked).

This is the story of how I became my best friend's arch enemy. It's my dirty laundry posted for the world to see. It's not fair to use names, so I'm not, but if you know me personally, you know who this person is. My birthday was last month, and many of my friends were there. Despite all that has happened, there was an empty seat, that I really wish wasn't.