The death of Call of Duty and how it benefits us all. . .

The Call of duty series has grown into this massive, obscene blob of shit that has been growing in size and popularity over the years. It has set bad trends, ruined any sort of mainstream competitive shooting, and has shunned creativity from the industry. Say what you will about Halo and the generic Space marine craze of the last generation, at least that sort of shooting title at least tries to promote creativity. Even the most generic space marine game had to be created by actual people, and not copied by watching our military in action.   But with the rising popularity of Modern Military games, we have been grounded into reality because of the setting. Its hard to have creative stories, characters and ideas when you are basing your game on reality and things that already exist. Along with the Brown/Grey color palette and the murder everyone who isn't white methodology this series has resorted to it has also set some bad trends in the market itself. Yearly sequels and over priced, pre planned DLC are now every where in the industry. And most the developers don't even do it right.

 I thought DLC and Map packs were supposed to be content that was not finished by the time the game had gone gold. Not this pre planned garbage set aside for sale after purchasing a brand new game. Its ridiculous. And yearly sequels are just a way to make a quick buck by shitting out title after title without hardly any game play improvements. The only series that actually can produce quality games year after year (arguably) is Assassins Creed. But fortunately, it seems as though the COD series and the Modern Combat craze seems to be slowly going away. At least one could hope.

The first sign was GTA V. Outselling everything else (including COD), innovating game play, and trying new things. Regardless of whether you love it or hate it, you cant deny that A LOT of work went into creating and refining this gaming series. Its a beautiful world with a very large story and set of characters, that actually deserves the success it has generated.

One other sign of this train slowing down, is the new console generation. A lot of gaming series don't last going from one generation to another. And with any new generation of gaming, comes new games. And two big shooters on the horizon are Titanfall and Destiny, made by companies who have been trend setters in the past. Titanfall being an interesting combination of military shooting (its not always a bad thing), parkour elements, and giant fucking robots. It may not be revolutionary but It certainly seems fun. And Destiny's idea of blending of an online persistent world and a single player campaign could be a new way to look at how a campaign is done. Along with a Battlefield 5, rumored to be a departure from the Modern Military genre and Halo 5 (if done correctly) could help bring back Arena style shooting back into vogue. Its an exciting time for gamers, especially for FPS fans. These enormous titles, and titles yet unannounced, could create a diverse and creative palette instead of one giant blob of blandness that rules the industry. Well one can hope. . .

Titanfall, The MW3 we never got

2009 was a big year for games. About half way through the previous generations of consoles. Everyone was happy. A lot of good games came out that year, Halo 3 ODST, Left 4 Dead, Assassins Creed 2 and a lot of other ones everyone was excited to play on different corners of the globe. But there was one game that took the entire gaming world by storm Modern Warfare 2. When Call of Duty 4 came out no one really expected it to change the industry the way it did. In between these two games Treyarch release their COD game, World at war, being pretty much a clone with a World War 2 skin. Pretty much filler content until the next Infinity Ward  game was finished. Then Modern Warfare 2 came out. It lit the world on fire, selling millions and breaking numerous records with a great campaign and fun (but unbalanced) multiplayer. It was good year. But in a lot of peoples opinions it was the last year the COD would be good. Shortly after the games release Activisions CEO Booby Kotik had fired the two leads on MW2, Jason West and Frank Zampella for supposedly talking about future plans with a competitor, being EA. Thats right, the two people who just made a little over a billion dollars in a few months were fired for simply talking to a competitor about the idea of a future, seperate project. Ever since then the COD franchise has gone down with quality while simultaneously appealing to a wider audience of casual gamers and weekenders, being dubbed as the cool game to play after MW2's release. Meanwhile the two ex Infinity ward members along with a significant portion of their old company were hard at work creating Titanfall for EA, supposedly the next big thing. People were excited beyond belief when the game was announced and being showed off. It was dubbed a revolutionary title going to change gaming. But recently with the Titanfall alpha being played and filmed people have been only saying one thing. It looks like Call of Duty with robots. And a lot of people are already disappointed by the fact it resembles COD. Im a little disappointed to by this fact, I was expecting something more and I dont know what. But then I thought, these guys aren't the ones who ruined and exploited this once good series. They didnt hinder the gaming industries by shitting out sequel after sequel or by grounding all shooters into the Modern Military controls and settings. But Im looking forward to this new game because it reminds of how the COD franchise could have gone. How the series could have gone if not exploited. And from what I've seen from the gameplay it looks good. The shooting looks better than ever, the guns and design look new and interesting, the parkour aspect is gonna add a lot to the gameplay, and the titans, Oh man the titans look fun. Im counting down the days I get to wreck shop with those babies. Its a formula that I once loved reborn in a new form, hopefully by a company that wont ruin it for the sake of more money. This post isn't for the ones excited for Respawns new game its for the ones that are doubtful.

Net neutrality and why it could be here to stay, for now

There's been some talk about net neutrality going away recently with talks of the FCC not recognizing net neutrality as an actual law, but more of an unspoken rule on the web. For anyone that doesn't know net neutrality means that all websites are given the same rights on the internet. If net neutrality goes away that means hypothetically a website like Twitter could pay shitty Time Warner Cable to throttle anyone on their ISP trying to access Facebook or any competing website. You see the problem here. Its big corporations controlling the internet just like on television. They could also throttle or outright block a site that is against what is good for the company providing your internet. Block a streaming service run by a competitor. They could even censor this blog post because I called Time Warner shitty.  News sites, political blog, torrenting sites whatever they don't like. That also includes streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Capping data usage for these sites and services, while offering unlimited data for lets say a TWC streaming service or On Demand shows. It could be bad news for the internet, but there is one saving grace that could save the internet. And its Google Fiber. Google Fiber is a new service being rolled out across the country giving users up to 100xs faster download speeds than TWC and ATT. But one would hope that a company that was formed and is largely based on internet services would look to keep net neutrality in check on their service. Not only does this Google Fiber service promise faster speeds but more important will most likely keep net neutrality up and running on their service and scare others into doing the same. If other companies don't abide by net neutrality, Google could be branded as company of the people, fighting for neutrality and quality service for all compared to Time Warner or ATT regardless of the amount of cash they keep under their mattresses. In all honesty even if net neutrality isn't part of any government law I think net neutrality is here to stay, at least for a while longer. Which is good because the way the entertainment industry is going, streaming movies and downloading games are becoming more and more popular. Plus I'm not ready to give up on the unlimited amount of porn available to stream. And lets be honest, its really the only thing that matters, is the porn.

So this is a blog

So, I have too much time to think. Like seriously the results aren't pretty, and wont be beneficial to anyone. But I don't have anything else better to do, and sometimes the results of having nothing else better to do can lead to something great. Maybe even the great thing we all seek to experience in our own ideological way. I've been thinking recently, about a number of things. Life decisions, why we are the way we are. I also like to think about cool things that aren't as pretentious as those other things as well, like video games, art and metal. You know the things I like. If you don't know well now you do, because that's the shit I love and strive for, and it takes up a large portion of my time. I'd like to make it apart of my future, but for now I'll just bitch about things on the internet like the rest of the world. I mean I might as well. As you know I have nothing else better to do. So I'll bitch and I'll moan, I might even have an interesting thought once in a while. I might even be funny. Lucky you. Never had a blog before, so we'll see what happens. In the mean time just bear with me here. . .