I kinda wish his name was Master Chef (was voiced by Raekwon)... My week with Halo 4.

I'll never forget that fateful evening when I set up my X-box live account those many years ago and embarked on the first of many Halo 2 benders.  It was a different time, a simpler one.  It was still a novel concept to lambast a 12 year old boy with an undeniably yokel sounding accent for his imagined sexual transgressions with his sister after he had called you a nigger or faggot for beating him.  And while I'm still occasionally called a nigger or faggot while playing video games on line, it just isn't the same.  Dare I say it the shock of the slurring and engaging in the head to head with grown men and tweens and accusing them of suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome has, sadly, abated.  My fond memories of hate speech in the frontier days of online console multiplayer may also be indicative though of my growing apathy towards the genre of online shooters.  Last year, I purchased Modern Warfare 3 as it was on sale right after Christmas, and as I have a big boy job I figured what the heck.  I played the campaign and enjoyed it's unabashed silliness as I do, but I rankled at the thought of getting into the time suck that is competitive multiplayer.  Then came Halo 4 last week. 

After braving yet another midnight release at my area Gamestop, where I have become famous for drunkenly photobombing their Resident Evil 6 release (I was at an open mic beforehand, drink a lot), I had it in my hands.  Anyway, yadda yadda played the game for a few hours the first night, was impressed by the graphics.  This continued throughout the week and into the weekend.  It was nothing new really, as Halo multiplayer had taken up a fair amount of my time, but then on Saturday it happened.  I stopped caring, far far faster than I thought possible.  Granted, I have not played the campaign yet as... it's a pointless anecdote.  Anyway, by and large it's a better looking Halo with some tweeks and balance things.  It does have the loadout and customization options that are demanded in this day and age, and I'm fine with that honestly.  I like to reload a little quicker and the like, and it's 2012, so it's a must.  It's just as I played it I noticed a few things. 

1) I'm sick of playing the same five maps on slayer.  So fucking sick of them.  Sure, I've tried to mix it up and play some objective based games, but the bulk of my play time is slayer, and it's incredibly repetitive.  Also, the new maps aren't really that memorable in comparison to some of my old favorites like say Lockout or Zealot/midship/etc.  Sure, I enjoy the simplicity/murder of Haven, but it's been 6 days, and I'm getting bored by the levels already.

2) Fuck you in the eyeballs for offering me new levels to buy on day one.  Usually I'm pretty cool about these unfettered cash grabs; this situation is merely exacerbated by how I'm already sick of the new levels.  I don't want to give you another 25 dollars to extend the playtime I'm not 100% sold on, but will continue to play indefinitely as, it's what you do.

3) It looks pretty.  It really does.

4) Still getting used to the balance.  Hope you like getting shot in the face from across the map with the DMR; it's going to happen, a lot. But yeah, still getting used to the balancing of it all.  Sword got nerfed which makes me sad; they brought back the BR, but it's kinda assy.  Needler is still above board.  Snipes feels off.  Some of the new guns are kinda neat.  I don't know my main issue is that I find myself falling in love with a new gun for a little while for a couple of rounds and then go back to stinking with it.  It's up and down really. 

5) THe customization options are pretty neat and I will say that the ordinance system is mercifully not a game breaker like in COD.  What? I mean attack dogs break the fucking game.  A lot of the higher level kill streak rewards in COD games kinda break the game.  At least with the ordinance it's like you get a Shotgun or Overshield; it's handy but not going to ridiculously sway a match. 

6) It's got a playlist for everything, so that's cool. 

7) Spartan Ops is thoroughly okay.  Yeah, it's all right.  Novel idea with the updates to the story.  It's like Spec Ops in COD. 

So, yeah.  Halo 4 is pretty nifty.  I don't know my languid praise may have to do with my waning fascination with competitive shooting people on the internet, or not.  If you like Halo, you've already bought it, and if you don't, well that's justified, and I mean Call of Duty comes out at midnight tonight, so you're good.

So Where are we Going NOW!... Wait did you get that? I don't know...may have been a little subtle... the other idea was Marvel MEOW!

So, as I did to mild fanfare back in the days of Myspace, in my salad days, I'm pretty much going to spoil semi obvious things or make wild speculations about unrevealed things about comic books that have yet to come out.  Now, you may be wondering where my skills of ratiocination come from, mainly Phoenix Wright games and tv mysteries of the 80's.  So without further ado, to spoil the unspoiled, which is difficult in our day and time.  So we'll start with the only one that nobody is going to call.

Avengers

So, who's that guy in the back you may ask?  Well, there's really just one logical choice for it.  First, look at the hair.  It's dreadlocks or something of that nature.  You know what, I don't feel like drawing this out with a bunch of cute little questions and shit of that ilk.  Really no sense in drawing it out.  They're coming our of a portal; he's got dreads; they're trying to add new blood to the line up (i/e Cannonball and Sunspot) and it's obviously Eden Fesi from Secret Warriors, which was written by Avengers author Johnathon Hickman, and also a pretty good read if you haven't picked it up.  IT can get a little dense with all of the insane plot twists, I mean as dense as a cape and tight espionage book gets, but it's a fun read with solid art and characterization that really plays with the universe well and has some pretty neat moments.  So yeah.  There's that.  

All New X-Men

So far it's looking like it's just some new characters in the background.  Probably with some tangential connection with the franchise.  As the girl with the obvious phoenix attire (yes, I'm speculating on a sash on a funny book cover, my former professors and employers are rolling in their respective chairs) is not Rachel Grey,  well who is it?

You've really only got two options then: Hope and also teenage Jean Grey.  First one makes some sense as with the whole summer event book and the phoenix thing, and the sash.  It's a logical-ish call as this is a place for kinda logic.  Teenage Jean Grey though is the more interesting choice as well the leads of the two x-men books are both fascinated with dead gingers, but our nation still mentions Lindsay Lohan, so it's understandable (I'm a time traveler from six months in the future). The other reason that it works, honestly, is based around the potential storyline aspects of it, and by that I mean teenage Jean Grey after learning about her many myriad deaths and being dressed as a dominatrix and marrying a herb who mind bangs a woman behind her back is like nertz to um living through this and jumps ship to probably Uncanny as it's more interesting what with the whole broken up Scott and Emma, so there you have it.  Also, there's really no correlation of thing sin the present of comics on some things (I'm talking about Damion Hellstrom who is a hero and a villain and dead all in the same month).  So the space time doesn't really matter and having them float around in the present indefinitely is kinda neat conceptually.

Update - I'm totally fucking wrong.  It's some girl with a sash and time powers.  Doesn't even have red hair in the thing.  

X-Men Legacy

I'm more excited than I thought I'd be for this one.  I've always liked Legion as much as you can as he only showed up every so often back in the day and would go coma, trying to kill Wolfsbane, unwriting history etc. every so often.  Anyway, the whole multiple personalities, powers, psych prison thing is kinda cool.  And for the new series it should also be cool as, obviously, the gimmick is now changed to be the well received, but cancelled Moon Knight reboot of a couple years ago. In that book, Marc Spector vacillated between the personalities of Wolverine, Spider-Man, and I want to say Cap instead of the given personalities he had established which is a novel twist on it and more compelling to the less well versed fan, as we weren't all in middle school freaking out over Stephen Platt's art on it and glancing at it.  Anyway, 

So, I mean this is pretty obviously going to be dude controlling the many farcical characters in his head by jumping from the personalities of Wolverine, Magneto, Cable, and Beast.  I mean it's kinda right there.  Or not.  I'm just trying to kill time until 5 at this point.


Superior Spider-Man

So the slip on that one is that it's Miguel O'Hara from Spider-Man 2099, which is actually the most palatable option really.    Unless it's 616 Miles Morales, who if you read Spider-Men (which was actually pretty good) does exist.  Although that might be a bit too much.

And on that note I'm done for right now.  Here are a couple of quick ones though.

Iron Man

A lot of people really don't care for Greg Land and are quite vocal about it.  Just saying.  Read issue #1 going to give it an arc before passing judgement.

Deadpool

It's Deadpool all right.  Now the question is to see if it stays fresh or gets grating.  So far though it's got Brian Posehn and Tony Moore, and that's awesome.  Even though the last series lost it's way after a while, Deadpool is either nifty or grating; it's one or the other; there is no middle ground.  So far we're at nifty.

Uncanny X-Force

It's a tall order to fill.  I'll give it a shot, but I don't know if it's going to live up to the last series.  Also, the only real question is if Cluster is a girl clone, as Fantomex does do the cloning, or EVA in a suit.

So there you go.  Comic Book fever.  Catch it.  I guess. It's better than Magic: The Herpening.  Yes, I just made that up.  But seriously, they make you buy new cards every year.  Glad that I've spent this many 0 dollars on it since the late 90's.  I'm a freeloader and will just borrow your deck.  I digress.  #NERDSHIT.