Updates,updates...forums!

Yep. Stranglehold and Medal of Honor: airborne came out. Strangleholds great but wicked short, and Medal of honor:airborne is just sort of... meh. It's longer though. I don't own either of these game's, so don't expect any reviews. Oh and you know what also came out? Bioshock. Commence drooling. Expect a review soon.

On a side note, I just got official the homeschooling gamer forums up and running! Now you can show the world just how much of a fanboy you are! Head on over their and check it out, will you? Please?
http://thgforums.20.forumer.com/
I wuold reccomend getting to it from here, it get's complicated if you don't. So go over to my forums, make an account, and make a couple of topics! The more the merrier!

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.

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.

Funny live stuff

I have been playing on x-box live for a while now, and I have had some funny stuff happen happen. I just thought I would post them. Enjoy!

Kid(in a high pitched voice): Mom!!! make me some chocolate milk!!! Now!!! And the hot kind!!! NO!!! You make it!!!

Me: Um... how old are you?

Kid: 21.

Another time, I joined a game. My dog started barking, and the sound came close to the mike. The end result was that everybody in the game slightly heard my dog barking. For some reason, at that precise moment, everybody(seven other people) began screaming at me to shut up as loud and hight-pitched(everbody in that game was 5) as possible. Then i got booted and everbody filed complaints against me. Go figure.

Perhaps the funniest moments happen right when you join. So I join a 5/8 game, and one guy starts telling everybody( The game was Gears of War) that they should play this round without any violence. He did it in the round after that, the one after that, and the one after that.

but the funniest one's are the insults:
I am coming through the internet and out your mike to slap you really really hard!!!
I will eat you if you take my sniper!!!
Im gonna fart through the mike!!!
Shut up!!! Wait, who am I angry at?
You stupid lancer noob!!!(next round) You stupid shotgun noob!!!(next round)!!!(talknig to the host) You stupid weapon noob!!!
You stupip oob!!!( Not a typo. Some kid actually said that)

If I think of somemore, I will edit this post.

Bargain Bin

Just looking in my game store recently, and I went by the bargain bin. A TON of good games there for around 10 bucks. Sometimes, you can find some GREAT unkown games there. I,on that particular trip, got Circus Maximus, Medal of Honor: Frontline and Slugfest 2004 for 10 bucks.
And while I would not say that any of these deserve 10 out of 10 scores, they are pretty good. Definetly worth the money. So the next time your in a game store(or any store) check the bargain bin. You never know what you might find.

Noobs

I, as many of you people know, play Gears of War pretty much daily. But I have as yet to collect many of the acheivements. Recnetly I picked a random ahceivment of the list and went for it. It happended to be the " kill 100 hundred enemies with the pistol in ranked matches. I wnet into my first match thinking" This is gonna be easy. It will take a while, but it will be easy." How wrong I was.

In that first, 1 quarter of the players quit in the first 3 rounds, another quarter would steal my kills, and EVERYBODY went for a certain weapon. We had an extremely good sniper on our team, and this one noob gonig for the sniper acheivement kept stealing it, eventually costing us the match.So I thought" Maybe this was just a match with more bad eggs then ussual." Once again, I was dead wrong.

The next match went a little better, with less weapon stealnig then the first. The match tied out because EVERYBODY on the other team quit. At this point, I was just getting pised off.I still had a shred of hope in me, so I joined another match. Everything seemd to be fine( No high pitched voices screaming for the torque bow) until one team member follows me around with the lancer. The weapon I was using at the time was the pistol, which is incapable of killnig someone outright. It could only down them, leaving them to be finished with a melee or three mroe shots.

It was rather hard getting kills with the pistol. The teamate that was following me around finished off my kills, maknig it impossible for me to do anything. I left him some negative feedback and continued playing. Since I hapen to be able to play nice, when ever my team outnumbers the opposition two to one, I quit to even it out. I left that match due to the fact that, yes, the other team was grossly outnumbered. Now I was about to throw my controller dwon in disgust. But instead of that, I ran over to this computer and wrote this.

Have you had any bad experiences with other people on live? This blog allows annoymous comments, so post em.

New features

You may have noticed some new features on Tgh (tgh=the homeschooling gamer). Particularly, some polls, a new greeting feature, a chatterbox, and some other stuff. This content was made using html, which I am learning. About the chatterbox. It has some adds, which I can't disable without killing the chatterbox. So don't click on them, I have no say on them, and they may lead to objectionable content. I am currently looking for an ad free version.

I have also added a hit counter. Once again, this has an ad.Nothing bad on the site it leads to, it's a link to get a free hit counter. I also added vid of the day. Now, I did not make those videos, and as such, have no control over them. I may post some videos that have rap songs on them, but I will try not. Just be ready to kill the volume if a video has qeustinable M games, be ready to exit the video.

There are also some newly added polls. These will change out nlow and then, but I can only make 20. So you may see the same polls if you read this site reguarly. That about covers it for now. Just remember, while I will try not post things that are innapropiate, they may work there way onto this blog. I will delete anything that I find overly obscene though.

the homeschoooing gamers

Starting today, I am inviting several more Homeschoolers to post on my blog. I have also changed the name of the blog to The Homeschoolnig gamers from The Homeschoolnig gamer. Also, this site is the number 1 hit on google if you search for the homeschooling gamers.

Murphys law

Anything that can go wrong will . This is Murphys law. And, as I just found out in a play, it is 100 percent true. Now, this play had been practiced and rehearsed again and again. Besides a couple of line fumbles, not much had gone wrong. But, come opening night, Murphys law came true. Now let me explain what this play is all about. It is a play about Nick and Tickle, and they are detectives. Someone is stealing vital objects from many fairy tales. I know this is a silly premise, but it's a comedic play, not something even remotely serious. so anyway, my parts in the play are as following:

Jack, from Jack and the beanstalk.
Woody, a depressed tree.
And Father Bear, from Goldilocks.

So anyway, Here is just a list of some of the stuff that went wrong:

Screw up 1: My cue to go on as Woody is for Nick to finish a big monologue he has. Someone told the baby birds to go on, and they stumbled through the curtain way before the monolugue even started.

Screw up 2: My Woody costume. it was extremely floppy, so the top part continusly fell down. That, plus It was immpossible to stand up once it was used.

Screw up 3: The birds. Now, as Woody, I had several baby birds ( the younger actors) at my feet throughout the performance. Now, the bird parts were miniscule. So miniscule, they could be learned in 10 minutes if needed. It was due to this that all the actors that were birds kept putting off learing the birds part until the opening night came around. In order to make up for this, I had to study the parts of the script they should have known while backstage. Then, to get them to remember their cues, I told them that I would prod one of them with my foot when they missed a cue. And while this sounded pretty cheesy, it turned out to be REALLy funny, seeing a foot fly out and kick a baby bird.

Now, while there are many more mess ups in the play, none of them were as major as those ones. I have had other experiences like these ones, in fact far too many to count. So, the next time you are doing soemthing critical, remember: Anything that can go wrong will.

Acheivments: Yay or nay?

When the 360 lanched, there were not many breaks from the norm. It had improved graphics, and better online play. But the one thing that Microsoft DID break away from the norm with is Acheivemts.

Previously, one gamer would lose a match of Halo or something like that. Then he would blame something broken like " You spammed grenades to much, noob!!!". When this failed, said gamer would throw out something like " I once beat the ENTIRE campaign on legendary using only melees." Of course, this is ridiculous. This claim would be denied by the winner, and could only be settled by a soda drinking contest. Well, Microsoft put aan end to that with acheivements.

Lets say you beat a game on super hard without any outside help. On the 360 this would net you an acheivement. This acheivement would boost your gamerscore. Your gamerscore had no value, exept bragging rights. And while this seems all nice, there are some pitfalls.

In Gears, you can get acheivments for killing 100 hundred people with the torque bow. Due to this, it is quite commonplace to come into a game only to hear three high pitched,sqeaky, and extremely annoying voices screaming " I will !@@#&*% EAT the !@@^)&# who teks my !@#$#%*%^&% torque !#!$#@!%$! bow". Then these voices will get into a shouting match witch sounds like this

Noob1: Stay away from my torque bow!
Noob2: Shut the !@#@ up!
Noob3: No you shut up!
Need I say more?

The other downside comes in the from powerbosters. These guys, much like powerlevers, will boost your gamerscore for a hefty fee. Hopefully anyone who does this enjoy their fake noob points.

Pokemon rant

Dammit! This was my initial Jack-Bauer like reaction when I learned that my pokemon deck had been banned. Not one or two cards in it. Like, half the deck. Even the energys. Luckily, my freind had a cell phone and called our ride to pick us up. Then we went to target for the notably cheaper decks and upgraded them.

Now let me give you the full story on this. My friend just got into a pokemon league and invited me to come with him. Soon we were beating everyone in sight. Well, until yesterday. The card shop had canceled the league this week, and both our decks were horribly dated and we could not participate in this official tournament. So we went to target ( cards are cheaper) and updated our decks. Now they're better then ever, and we are both ten bucks poorer.

Most trading card games will ban certain cards. This is fine, as it really only affects big tourneys. It usually happens when a certain card dominates every deck, and for the sake of keeping things fresh, they ban it. No one complains, but the rule is not enforced too much in casual games either.

Pokemon USA went the next step, and banned every card that had not been released within a year. This move comepletely alienated anyone even thinking of joining competitive play with a somewhat old deck. In order to get a really competitve deck, you may need to spend well over a hundred dollars. And this really sucks, not because of the price, but for old times sake, everybody wants to use an old card or two.

Now what would have been better is to graually increase the strength of new pokemon, making it harder to play an old deck in a tournament. This would have created the same effect. But no. They had to ban thousands of cards. And then remake them in the new sets. And while this makes a lot of money, it pisses off a hell of a lot of people. Including me. Lame.

Map advice: Gridlock.

Ah, Gridlock. By far the most popular map.

Plans:
Plan 1 send half of your team to the boomshot and the other half to the sniper. Boomshot team will flank any enemies at sniper nest and then elimanate all other enemies.

Plan 2 Get every one to rush sniper, and one half of your team will flank around and kill any enemies at the sniper spawn.

plan 3 rush the boomshot and send one member of your team team to flank and kill the enemies.

Advice Keep your head down and stay on your here as the oppopsition will usually have a boomshot or a sniper. Rushing is nto very effective. Pistol wipping and chainsawing is effective near the boomshot and sniper spawns. Lancer fire is also quite effecitve, but only when two people fire. Also remember the frags. These can come in quite handy.

gow tips and tricks part 3

Here are some good tips for Gow online mp.

1 Stick together. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Alone you aere weak. Together you are ownage. Stay together or die. I think I have stressed the importance of this enough.

2 Make a plan. You can not win on skill alone. You need a plan or you will be demolished. Stick with the plan once your team has agreed upon one. If you do not, you will be owned.

3 Dont take weapons your not good with. Let the sniper have the sniper rifle. It is OK to stick with the starting weapons for a round or two. They are more then good enough for helping your teamates out.

While these tips will help you through a ranked match or two, I am going to the next level and giving you map by map advice.
Note: it could take me a little to get these up, so bear with me as I post them.

Gow tips and tricks part 2

I said check back soon. And I meant soon. As one of my lessons today I have to write ALOT of stuff. So here is part 2 of Gow tips and tricks:

List 2 : some more n00by stuff I found.

1 using the same strategy over and over. Regardless of how good your strat is, there is a counter. Depending on how tacticly effecient your team is, it could take anywhere between 1 and 10 rounds to find a counter. It usually takes me about two rounds to find an effective counter. So keep it varied. Mix up your plans a little having two or 3 plans will usually screw up your opponent to the point were they can not play. Well that is assuming they are good plans.

2 Glitching. Now glitches can be very useful, but only use them with the permission of the host. If I host and you use glitchs, then your gone. Booted.

3 Kill stealing. There is nothing more annoying then have an epic shotgun duel with that guy who chainsawed you last round and having some sniper kill him while he is on the ground and you are in the process of curb stomping him.

That is all for now, but check back in about half an hour for some non-nooby tips and tricks

Gears of War tips and tricks

While playing GoW online I have noticed some various, for lack of a better word, n00by strategys. Here I will list some of things you can do to get better at GoW online.

List 1: nooby things

1: torque bow beatdowns. Too many too many times have I seen noobs take the torque bow and then charge fowards and beat someone down with it, thinking it has a better melee. It doesnt. In multiplayer all melees are the same thing.

2 Wannabe troikas. I have also seen people that take a couple of lancer shots, hurt a locust or two, then go away before downing anyone. Not only does this give away your position, but it also wastes ammo ( I know it is hard to run out of ammo in mp but if you are pinning enemies down then you will not be able to fire as long, and pinning is pretty effective). If you are going to start shooting, at least try to down someone, if not kill them.

3 Lone wolfing it. GoW is a team game. If you are playing a 3vs3 game or a 4vs4 then you do not want to ditch your team and go loner. If opposition is working in teams of two ( which they should be ) you are screwed when you encounter them. The exeption to this is if you are working with your team. If you decide to flank the fire base that has your team pinned down, then that is not n00by.

Check back soon for more lists and I will probaly have more guides up.

Phsyche outs

While I was playing 40k yesterday, I realized something very interesting. Now in this game, I had added to my army The Nightbringer. He is basicly the best unit in the game. He is definetly not un-killable, but my opponent seemed to think so. He gave him an exteremely wide birth, and he never enen tried to attack. I then occured to me that, maybe, I had phsyched him out to the point where he thought his only defense was to run away. This huge fear of The Nightbringer handed me an easy win, and I think this could apply to other games as well.

Lets say your up against some guy who is ranked number 3 in GoW. You might not even try to attack him, even if you have a heavy advantage. This gives him an even further advantage, and this can really criple. If this happens to you or your teamates, remember one thing: stick together. The best player probaly can't kil 3 average players. If this dosnt work, then you are pretty much screwed.

In conclusion, do NOT get phsyched out.

Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines day!!! With any luck you won't have as much trouble finding a date as this guy: