Call of Juarez review

I rented Call of Juarez a couple of days ago. I must say that I am not blown away by this western fps. It's mainly about two people: Billy and preacher. I forget preachers name, so I will call him preacher. Anyway, Early on, Billy murders his parents and preacher go's on the hunt for him. Both of them encounter many hardships(mostly bandits and Apaches). Typically, Billy will go through an area, then preacher will chase him through that area.

The main twist to the game is that you play as Billy and preacher. This gets interesting. You emotions really get toyed with. One second you want revenge as preacher, the next you want survival with Billy. And with these differences come differences in play styles and ability's.

With Billy, stealth is important. He dies's allot quicker the preacher, and thus relies more on stealth. So, while playing as Billy you get a formula like this:
Stealth,stealth-kikll,stealth-kill, big battle. Rinse and repeat. And,for the most part, this works. It gets tiresome eventually but then you get the preacher formula:
Concentration mode kill, big battle.big battle with concentration mode, big battle ,run around trying to figure out what to do next, big battle. Once again, this works on a basic level.

Now, to preacher. He plays exactly like a normal fps. You grab some guns, blast some people, and do some more fighting. The fighting as preacher is actually pretty fun. It;s normal fps with one twist: Concentration mode. Each gun gets one cursor, and they are moved around the screen with the analog sticks. Time go's into slow-mo, but you don't. Your bullets move at a normal rate, your guns move pretty slow though. When an enemy gets hit,he die's really slowly(because it's in slow motion).

Once you get past the setting, you have a pretty standard fps.
7/10.

Bioshock is coming!

Bioshock is coming august 21'st. And it will rock your world. To the groove of 50's music. You see, Bioshock takes place in the city of Rapture, which has been devoid of contact(probably because the entire city is underwater) and thus, fells like it's "trapped in time" as Ken Levine puts it. Anyway this game is going to unbelievable. You can find resources at gamespot.com, but the best site for Bioshock is cult of the rapture, which has so much info.

Or you can read this review. Thats right, Bioshock has a reveiw, and it's posted on thg first(or on the forums, but their hard to find):
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2258
The reveiw(in case you don't want to read it, read this: Bioshock got 10/10.) is from Official X-box Magazine, and was uploaded with a mobile phone by forum-member Flea 008, is completely positive.

And for those of you naysayers and bias screamers? Some pc gaming magazine has a reveiw, and it was a;lso uploaded to that very same forum. It's pretty easy to find.

Zen: An introduction.

I approach writing this cautiously. I am no Zen master, nor do I pretend to one. Anyway, hopefully this will wet your palette and inspire you to research more Zen. Simply put, Zen is. The common image of Zen is someone floating a few feet off the ground, in the lotus position and meditating. Let me dismiss this bile. First off, it's impossible to levitate. Secondly, people(including me) meditate in allot of positions.

Now, about Zen itself. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to put into writing. It's actually a form of mushin. Mushin is a state of no-thought. You just let go of all logic and thoughts, letting instinct take over. In short, you let instinct take over. One of the best examples of it is archery. The archer pulls back his bow, aims, and releases not on logic, nut on what feels right. Another example is skateboarding. When your on a half pipe, your mind screams not to do it. If you drop in while thinking about it, you will most certainly fall.

One of main things about Zen itself is meditating. Before I began meditating, I felt stressed. But when I began meditating and took the time to do it properly, I was able to single out every issue in my life and felt a good bit more laid back about things.

And one of the last issues I will tackle in this article is religion. Zen is usually associated with Zen-Buddhism, which is a sect of Buddhist Monks that do Zen. And let me tell you that, while there are Zen Monks out there, you do not have to be a Buddhist to do some Zen. I can also tell you that there are a alot of Christian Zen masters. It is not necessarily sacrilegious to do Zen, but can be. Now this is not the ramblings of a drowsy gamer, but an actual answer from a paster that I asked about this.

My dad,the gamer.

My dad is a gamer. Well, he is a pc gamer. He has never really done that much on a console. But that changed pretty recently. We were walking around around in best buy buy they had a ps3 on display. It was playing the Motorstorm demo, so he tryed it. From the second he touched the controller, he was hooked. For the most part, there were two things that really impressed him:

1: The controls. They were just so perfectly tweaked, he could handle them with ease. He also ended up getting pretty good at the game.

2: The physics. The fact that the track was 3 dimensional, and had rocks and stuff jutting up everywhere, was really cool. The cars really bounced around, and that just blew his socks off.

That was all good, but the first game he really liked was Half-Life. He loved the thiungs move,you shoot them formula. Since he played motorstorm, he has been searching for that game that hits the spot. I think we may have found it.

The game is is Ace Combat 6. Its an arcade style flight sim. You may be asking yourself "What the heck do's this have to with motorstorm' and the answer to that is: Absolutely nothing.
It's the fact that he could manuever the plane so easly(the controls are simple, while having depth) that made it fun for him.

I am back!

I would like to apologize for the serious drought of posts on this blog. I was unplugged(for three weeks) at camp. I had no access to the internet(save for a spew sparse moments when someone let me check my email on their laptop). I will also be unplugged (at camp) for another three weeks, but I am at home and typing for another three weeks. yes, my life is one of extremes. It's either ten times too much of something, or ten times too little.

I would also like to announce two more things:
1: I have taken my skateboarding to the next level. you may recall a post about this early on, but I am about 30 times better now.
2: This blog is now about more then gaming and skating. I have been reading some real deep zen stuff,and I will be sharing my thoughts on life,Zen,spirituality,42 and 6 times 9(kudos to anyone who gets this reference), meditation, and more.