Just About Another Week Or Two

Hey everyone, and by everyone I mean myself, and the few people that stumble upon this blog from time to time. As it stands, it's January 27th, 2008, and I am in Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic. In terms of a quick recap (this whole thing will likely be a quick recap, as you all know how long-winded I tend to be) Liz, Derek, and I left on the 25th for London. A few hours later, we hopped a flight to Prague, and as it stands, well, we're there.

There's not much to say about getting here, especially considering that my sole experience in England for the length of my stay in Europe involved a COSTA coffee shop and playing House of the Dead 3 in the airport arcade. I'm pretty sure the wonderful people of England would not want their country evaluated on such minimalist terms. I certainly wouldn't want someone doing the same with mine. Other than that, I just want to remark that when on flies EasyJet or Semi-Scrapped-Together Airlines, or anything else of this sort, be aware that NOTHING is free. Not the itty-bitty cans of soda, nor the cheap coffee that they spill on you, or the minature alcohol bottles. I'm pretty sure that you can fly on a propeller-less plane, if you don't check the correct boxes when reserving one's ticket.

As for Prague, the first night went...decently. Both Liz and Derek were impressed with my preparations in terms of researching the mass transportation system to get downtown via buses and the metro. From there, finding the first hostel on my list wasn't difficult either. Well, finding it wasn't the problem. Getting in was. Here we are at about 7:10 PM, almost a full HOUR before reception is to be closed, and the door is locked, no lights in the windows to be found. We buzzed the according floor, only to have a man answer that claimed that he didn't have any control over the operation. But yet, somehow, he was there.

In attempting to find the backup, Hostel Atlas, we accidentally saw a sign for Atlas. Except...this was for Atlas Cabaret. Instead of walking in to find bunk beds and friendly reception, we ended up walking into a swanky disco place with scantily clad women and massively overpriced drinks. Derek and I didn't consider it a total loss, though. We did find Atlas though...and it was supposed to be open. It wasn't. We ended up, much to my unhappiness, in a lodging place down the street for about 15 dollars more a night. It was bearable, but had some disturbing quirks, which I'll go into later.

The Shooter That Changed My Mind: Half Life 2.

As I promised in my last posts, it's time to actually get some writing done. It's been far too long since I've done any sort of 'real' writing, and so combining my two favorite things: writing and video games should make for a wonderful amalgamation.

That being said, I've set a few goals for myself:

1. To not reach some sort of a video game saturation point, not all of the following posts will be about video games. Expect updates about personal life and supposedly humorous anecdotes as par usual.

2. Despite how much I enjoy satire, and sarcasm and have an undeniable aptitude for such, I'm going to try to keep my essays/anecdotes/ideas positive. There might be a few subtle sarcastic barbs in each piece, but they aren't going to be profanity-laden, or filled with pseudo-anger. This are the cheap tricks to embracing a level of low-culture humor. Anybody can swear. Anybody can get mad. Especially Bruce Banner (that's the guy that turns into the Hulk, for those of you that don't live in your parent's basement). Humor can still be injected into the topic of video games without becoming a low-brow cuss-fest. Expect things to be more upbeat, about the amazing things I've encountered in video games instead. Though, often this awesomeness will be a result of being compared to something that is...well...not so awesome.

3. As a personal challenge, I'm going to try to learn how to "tinker around" with this blog. I've never had any problem with the writing, but I've never done much in the way of posting screenshots, videos, tweaking layout and format. As my current "dime a dozen" format indicates, creativity in such an arena is not my forte. I'm going to try to work on improving such. My implementation of a screenshot at the beginning of this article is my first step.

Well, that's about it...onto this first article:

Back during Christmas break during my sophomore year of college, I was having to face the fact that everyone was slowly starting to make the move to next-gen. Microsoft had opted to have one of the quickest console turn-around times, a mere four years between the original XBOX and it's concave, pale next-gen counterpart's arrival in 2005. Both the Wii and Playstation 3 had hit the market only a little more than a month before, and thankfully only the sale of the latter resulted in a 'friendly' exchange of firearms in the queue lines. At this point, I was a loyal Nintendoite, having spent the last four years scrounging to every 1st-party exclusive. While this meant that I got to show off gems like Resident Evil 4 and Eternal Darkness, I was also burdened with explaining exactly how I thought a puffy pink anthropomorphic cotton ball was "badass."

"See, look at that, you just aim him at the enemy, and he sucks them in, just swallows them whole, their sword and all."

"That actually sounds kinda gay."

"Huh...I never thought Kirby could be viewed with a homoerotic lens, but...so be it."

That being said, with the XBOX360 bundles dropping to pull sales away from the other two looking to capitalize on holiday sales, I resolved to give the proclaimed "shooterbox" a chance. After all, acquiring a Wii was being declared an official miracle by the Catholic Church at this point, and people had already been shot for PS3s, so, perhaps in retrospect, by default, I began an extensive research project, on a scale unlike anything I'd done before. I scoured "game forecast" charts, graphical comparisons, exclusivity claims by 3rd party developers, etc...In the end, I was hooked by the recent commercials for Lost Planet...and the claims of Mass Effect somewhere down the line.

But I couldn't shake the idea that I'd "jumped ship" on a developer of cherished characters and their respective, though frequently milked to the bone, franchises, in exchange for a non stop adrenaline junkie's wet dream, where I'd never see anything more of my protagonist than the barrel of the gun he's holding, and never embrace a story-line deeper than the fact that certain men wanted to kill me in *insert location* and I had to kill them first. I'd once put on my friend's xbox live headset in a HALO lobby, and I couldn't help but think back to the angry apes during the intro to 2001: A Space Odyssey, guttural shouting, chest-beating and all.

Was this a universe I was ready to endorse with the labors of my hard-earned dollar? I mean, as cheesily melodramatic as this sounds, I'm not one to dabble with multiple consoles. It just makes things even more costly than before. And I'm the sort to keep my allegiances. I bought Lost Planet: billion snowflakes, hokey voice-acting, flashy explosions, and all.
From there I got Fable, KOTOR 1 &2, all the original XBOX games I felt I had been deprived of because of my monogamous relationship with my Gamecube. But I would not buy a shooter. I was not anxious to make a headset a permanent accessory to my wardrobe, and l33t speak my second language. Yet, the local Blockbuster was attempting to purge their local outlet of 'last-gen' games. And this included a factory-sealed four-dollar copy of Half Life 2. My friend Adam fended off the possible purchase, with the quite reasonable excuse that "You have too many other games to play as it stands." That phrase pretty much works regardless of the occasion. I had stood on the proverbial fence of first person shooters, and Adam had coaxed me down. That, and he was my ride home, it was dreadfully cold outside, and I didn't want to be attacked by Kalamazoo's natural export: bums.

Two weeks later, I unwrapped that very copy of Half-Life 2 along with a rare Xbox edition of Sid Meier's PIRATES! and, under the unrelenting eyes of my friends, was forced to face my fear of trigger-fingers and LAN parties. And yet, as the game began, and the credits were scrolling, in a truly cinematic fashion, I merely navigated my oddly silent protagonist on a subway car. I didn't have a weapon, and there was no sign that I was about to be thrust into something of a war-like nature. Needless to say, I was horribly confused...

(more to come in a bit...sleep beckons.)

Shaking Things Up A Bit...

Well, to be honest, I've been throwing around this idea for a while. If I should implement it, how I should implement it, and a bunch of other questions. I've even tried to implement it more than a couple times, but well...it would sound pompous if I said that it had 'varying degrees of success'. Because, it didn't last very long, and I really didn't tell anyone about it. What I am talking about of course, *and from this point on you can merely go to whatever web page you deem eternally entertaining* is discussions about video games.

I know, I know, it sounds kiddy, or something that anybody that with...wait...thinking about it, I don't have a very high sense of maturity, but that's beyond the point. The bottom line is that I've at least been giving it more and more thought. As I read about how large the video game industry is becoming, and the size pay-checks they're cutting, the possibility of turning an activity usually regulated to 'down-time' into a 'full-time' one seems more possible. I think I read that the average higher-up writer at a decent video game magazine (PLAY, EGM, and so on) can easily make 80 to 90 thousand in a year. More or less, off the bat. Now granted, I'm going to have to double check on such things, but I've already developed a startling philosophy that makes it all the more encouraging. When you consider that I'd be getting most of the games that usually burn holes the size of the Hale-Bopp comet in my wallet for free, and thinking that I wouldn't fall for one of those insatiable money pits called a wife, children, or a high-maintenance pet, I'd basically live like a king.

That being said, I'm going to actually attempt to post some reviews in here, maybe some personal essays on the topic. I'd start one right now, but I'm a bit buzzed, and I'm not really sure where such would go. But, that aside, look for something soon.

Starting to Wrap Things Up

Well, it's Thursday January 17th. It's been exactly two weeks since I returned from Norway. And...well...it's been odd, as par usual. The two weeks have been filled with everything from South Park marathons with Derek, to stressing over travel plans with Liz, to late night exam studying, to a whole week and a half with no more than seven hours of sleep on any given night. The whole examination thing here is quite odd. Nobody is expected to attend the lectures. And nobody, by the fifth or sixth week is. Except for the Kalamazoo students and the foreign students. No matter how much you want to resist waking up at 8:30 to go listen to a lecturer who sounds almost as motivated delivering his presentation as you are to hear it, you still force yourself to do it. K just puts that kind of guilt inside you. That being said, Derek says I'd make a wonderful convert to the Catholic faith with my amazing ability to feel guilty for no other reason than that I currently don't, and that in itself must indicate a sinning on some part.

Separate from lectures are tutorial, think class discussion in smaller groups. Because you are graded upon your attendance of tutorial, everybody shows up. And that's about it. They decide that fitting their plodding earthly frame into a chair for an hour is doing the University of Aberdeen a service, and beyond that, expecting anything more of them, would be the equivalent of asking them to get "Peace in the Middle East" sorted out over their next lunch break. Dombos and I were chatting about this last night. We're so glad not to be around an atmosphere of cut-throat academics, to really be able to go down to the pub on most nights, meet new people, have a good time, and come back to our rooms without slitting our wrists over the workload remaining. But, as I've shown above, this really does come with a cost. At K, the expectations are so uniform and understood by all students, in terms of academics. You study, study, study, binge drink, study, study, study, pass out at the soccer house, and pray that androgynous geeky kid in the back row of Latin III doesn't try to take advantage of you.

At Aberdeen, if you're even minutely motivated at all to do well, that's it. More or less, that attitude right there ensures you a diploma. In the end, the Scottish people, hell, the Europeans in general *prepare for a sweeping generalization* are just very slow when it comes to progress. If you want to go places and do things...I can see how Europe might not be the most ideal location. It's hard enough to get a good coffee here. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of cultures (US, perhaps) that have taken the polar opposite stance, and don't have much time, if any, to appreciate anything. College is free in many of these countries. But, over here, a college degree is like a high school diploma back home: it usually costs nothing, requires very little work, and in the end, nobody is really able to put those skills into application in something else.

We're different, I guess. Not that I should be surprised or something.

I just finished up my finals about 3 and a half hours ago, and have been starting to clean up my room. There's still a lot to do: the room to finish cleaning, trinkets and whatnot to buy for the people back home, there are still a few things around here that I need to take pictures of, people I need to say goodbye to, a few financial office issues, and managerial issues to handle. Needless to say, I've got more than enough time to do it in. As for those of you who want to know how things are going down from here, here's the rough plan, if I don't get around to telling you: I leave next Friday for London, and then go from London to Prague, then to Austria, and finally to Germany. I will be back in America on February 9th, though this may change if the ticket prices are really awful, I had to delay booking for two days to make sure my credit card company didn't go apeshit protective again.

From there? I take a few days off to try to get back on American time, and then I start work at the Grand Haven Tribune for a couple weeks. I can easily make a half grand in two-three weeks there, I think, so that'll help compensate for the traveling. Take a few days off to visit friends, plan for housing in the spring, etc. And then its back to K. Back to my homies. Honest to God, I miss all of you. Sophomore year was easily one of the best years ever.

Well, I'm going to clean up a bit more, who knows what else. Take Care everyone