Shattered Truth

Outland

2006-11-04T18:03:00.000+01:00

You can't possibly have any idea how many times I attempted to write this post. You can't. It equals the numbers that follow 3.14 when you try to calculate pi. Infinity. Now then, the reason that I've never written this post before is, because the process wasn't completed. I wasn't convinced enough to write everything down here. But now I am, now I had that final conversation that put the pieces into place. And life's looking gorgeous as ever, smiling right in front of me.

It's over. The feeling that crept up my back, swum through my brains at night and refused to leave my body when I went out to take a piss first thing in the morning. No need to tell you that it was a bad feeling. I have never seen a good feeling creeping up somebody's back. The medium is the message. It's not only what we say that's important, it's how we say it. Intonation, connotation, media. They all fit together, never want to leave each other and they sure know how to ruin somebody's environment.

I felt really sad when PlayStage had disbanded. Deep down, I knew that particular day wouldn't be the end. BM and I were thinking a long time about what went wrong. We were convinced nothing went terribly wrong. We just didn't reach out to the folks enough. We never thought about being actually not good enough to merit a huge audience. We were the bomb, we were the best and above all, we were going to crush all competition. Shatter's more the word actually, we were to shatter the competition. So we decided we would put something new on the rails, something big, something grand, something überduperfantastimastic it would blow everyones socks off! And really, it would have blown everyone in a radius of 150 square kilometres away.

We were so enthusiastic. Our new ideas would sweep everyone away and we were sure by this and a year, we'd be walking over every single Belgian site that played only the tiniest role in this industry. It didn't happen. Luckily, we realised the project wasn't real. It was created in a swift euphoric and utopiatic (if that's a word, if it's not you know what I mean) moment. We put some
efforts in the project and we realised it couldn't work. First of all, we'd have to take another plunge, not knowing where we would end up. Maybe this was going to be just another PlayStage-story, or worse, maybe it would turn out even worse than PlayStage. Second of all, like some people had already pointed out, the maintenance of the new project would take a much greater effort than PlayStage had ever demanded. Voluntary crew is rather scarce (read: shattered over a bazillion sites) so the mission we were up against was impossible. Mission Impossible, but without Tom Cruise. Like the fourth one. Haha.

So we decided to do away with it all. Like somebody pointed out just before swallowing a shotgunbullet: It's better to burnout than to fade away. Since we're Belgian and we all know Belgium is the best soccerteam in the world, I have my personal take on that quote. It's better to go home losing one-nill than to try and score while the audience points you out and you are just making a fool of yourself because you know you are not able to score. You are to weak. That may sound harsh, but in the end, it's reality. The team was too weak to make a big break and nothing, not even a tremendous new coach, would ever change that.

Not that I'm saying it's all their faults. Nobody has ever made mistakes. Except for dt-mistakes, I have to kill that gamebelgium one day for that. Everyone did just as they thought was appropriate and sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't. Before, thinking about never reuniting the PlayStage-band where I had had so much fun during the past three years, would make me very sad. Now, everyone has chosen his own way and I'm pretty sure we will never be working on the same project again. Still, I don't feel sad. I have made some good and some very good friends in my PlayStage-era, friends who share the same passion with whom I can talk about that passion as much as I want.

I really think everyone has got quite a bright future in front of them, even though not everyone will end up on the same track. Niels is doing great with his studies and I really hope he can keep it up the way he does now. Simon has found a new site to write for. X-Power will be good to him, I guess and the boy can keep on writing, that's all I care for really. Wouter kicks ass with the camera in one hand and, luckily, the pen in the other. Tom and Stijn are probably the two persons struggling most with the path they want to choose in life. But then again, maybe they don't want to choose a very defined path. Perhaps they simply don't want to choose. It suits them, and I really hope they end up alright. As for me, after writing all of this, I feel a whole lot better and I can move on. I can definitely say I have left a period in my life and moved on to another. I'm going to abandon internetjournalism (and that includes blogging) for the time being and focus on what I like to call my 'PCGP-career', not to forget my studies. So long, may life treat you well.

Indy

PS: I never really found out whether blogging is a hype or not. It doesn't matter to me anymore anyway. I found out blogging can be dangerous as well as have a healing effect. It can provoke anger, hate, joy, happiness, sadness, and all the other emotions a human being can have. It must be one of the greatest inventions ever. A personal diary where you reach out to no-one, yet you feel comforted somebody is reading what you write. The medium really is the message.

Starless

2006-10-19T10:37:00.000+02:00

Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black

Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black

Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that OMENS to be
Starless and bible black

Role-Play Blues

2006-09-12T19:47:00.000+02:00

I got laughed at today. Not that it's a very striking fact: I get laughed at more. Usually, I sweep away the comments of other people because I know they are friends or because they look dull. Today I got laughed at by a girl. Now that's something new, girls that are laughing with me. Guys that grow red lawncarpets on their cheeks, I can live with that. But girls with the same red lawncarpets on their heads? I felt seriously insulted because I got laughed at by a girl.

She made a remark about my t-shirt. I was wearing my Pantera t-shirt. Trivia-time! Why do people wear t-shirts? First of all because they would look completely ridiculous walking around naked in the centre of the city. Question number two. Why do people wear t-shirts of their favourite band? Because they like the band, I guess. Question number three. Why do people get laughed at when they wear a t-shirt of their favourite band? Now, THAT'S a good question...

It was an insult that made me think about the question. Why do I get laughed at when I wear a Pantera t-shirt. I don't look metal, I can go with that. But do you have to fucking LOOK metal to like metal bands? Do you have to BE metal to wear t-shirts? According to the goth freak with the ghostshoes, I guess the answer's yes. It's so stupid. Why do people have to play roles all the time? Why can't they just be themselves? And why do people who try to be themselves get laughed at.

Ooh watch out, he's wearing a Pantera t-shirt! Oh but wait, he doesn't have long hair, doesn't drink tons and tons of beer and he doesn't bite heads of little animals, he's probably a faker. I thought liking a band was about the music, not the lifestyle. But anyway, anger was cooking in me so hard I would've decapitated her with a Flying V, spit on her headless body and hey, why not for the fuck of it, sing Cemetary Gates like only a Cowboy from Hell could do. If that isn't metal, doubt she'd like it though...

The last time I was at the grocery store somebody asked me what my allegiance was. 'Chaotic Neutral' I answered. The man grinned from beneath his white beard. I didn't pay attention to it until we were standing together again. This was the only shop you could get great onions. Unfortunately, everybody knew that this was the place for the layerveggie. So we were standing there, gazing at the one onion left. I was thinking about all the beautiful things I could cook with that delicious onion. Obviously, the man in white was thinking the same lucious things. 'Make that Chaotic Evil' I snarled when I stabbed the man in the back with my dagger. 'This onion is mine.'

Games are a great way to role-play as much as you want. Neverwinter Nights 2 is nearly upon us (I pre-ordered this lucious collector's edition) and I still have to finish the original plus, if I find the time, the two Baldur's Gate games and their expansions. According to the creature I was talking about before, I will be a nerd now, I guess. Well, I don't care. I wrote what I wanted to write. I'm fed up with real-life role-playing. And maybe it's time to say my opinion more often, not only through this piece of blog but out loud as well.

Paint.

2006-08-21T14:16:00.000+02:00

It's 3.40 AM and the bloody cell phone rings. I want to answer the phone but there seems to be nobody on the other side of the line. My girlfriend kisses me and whispers that it's time to go to work. A horrifying tune sounds when she pronounces the word work. I drop face down in my pillow and realise I signed up for that job the other day.

How time-out, what happened? Well, I kind of ran short on money lately and since my girlfriend is already working in the weekend for about a year I thought: why not earn me some money by working in the weekends as well? A brilliant plan when you consider that it's going to be one hell of an expensive fall this year. PS3 and Wii making their way to the mass and all the other great games that still have to come out on pc and PS2. So, I was pretty sure I would need the money pretty soon. A lot of it.

Jobs at an office are nice but they have two major disadvantages. First of all, they are very scarce and second of all they don't pay half as good as you want them to do. So a job at an office or in a grocery store (I think you say convenience store *shivers*, butcher, baker,... it was all out of the question. If I was going to work, I was going to work like a man! Yeah, I signed up with Randstad Industry and about two hours after I signed up, they got me a job. Yey! Industrial cleaning for the win.

Okay, it was going to get painful, I knew that from the start. I had to start at 5 AM and by 1 PM I would be home free. Painful indeed for a man that hardly can get out of bed before 8 AM. I went to sleep quite early for my standards and then the cell phone rang. I got up and I felt like whoow, zombie. The fun thing at 4 AM is that there's really nobody on the road. I had to drive half an hour before I arrived at the harbor area in Ghent and I think I must've passed only two or three cars. I found the place rather easily and then it was time to get things going. I went in and was accompanied by some fellow workers that guided me to the dressing rooms where I had to put on my worksuit. Obstacle nr. 1.

After putting the thing on (it was way too small by the way) the chief (the guy's name was Omer and he wasn't the only foreign guy around, if you know what I mean)brought us to some kind of room that had a sticky floor. It turned out to be paint. All of it. We were in some sort of area where car parts where sprayed. Looking at the 'walls'I was wondering if they actually weren't painting those instead of the car parts. Not a lot of time to think though, somebody threw me a bucket and a sponge and off we went. After some hours of cleaning, turned out that the 'walls' once had been windows. Go figure how dirty the place was.

Time crawled by and I was starving when the breaksign sounded. It must've been the first time I was getting payed to sit around and eat, which was quite comfortably. Alas, they must've sensed I was getting too comfortable because the second part of the day, we had to clean under the sprayroom. Yes, that's UNDER the sprayroom. There are some kind of grates that can be lifted and then you have to drop down and clean all the paint and dirt and I don't know what else was lying there! Seeing the havoc that the machines (the machines are digging!) had caused here, I wondered again how much paint was wasted here. If paint would be water, I'm sure they could reincarnate the Sahara into a tropical rain forest.

After the job was done, we got home (like duh) and I was rather satisfied with the work I had done. The sprayroom was completely fixed and when I thought that it would be used again on Monday(that's today), I didn't feel so good. It wasn't all that bad actually, I survived quite well, wasn't too tired. And my bank account would get some food again. And that, my friends, was really a long time ago. So I will go there again next week, if they are interested. The only thing that should be replaced is the slogan of the company, really. It says: Plastal - Colours your car (it's a lame imitation of VTM - Colours your day in my opinion). It should be: Plastal - Paint.

Cherry Pie

2006-08-12T00:19:00.000+02:00

It's twenty past twelve and I'm all alone. This could be the perfect beginning of some lame-ass teen horror movie. The phone rings, I pick up and some scary dude with a cold on the other side of the line asks me a question. I can't tell him the answer and the only thing I'm still able to hear is the last breath of my rubber ducky! He'll bloody pay for that, that lame-ass teen bastard. Come to think of it, I hate teen horror movies, so let's stop talking about it.

Let's talk coffee! Twentyfour hours ago, I was shaking in my couch. No, I didn't have a fever or something ugly that's caused by a parasite or something other gruesome, wormlike thing. Sorry I have to terrorise your night with those hideous tales but I have a serious addiction for parasites and the like of those. Enough crap, there will be plenty of time to contract malaria and guineaworms afterwards. I was shivering in front of the telly (god, what a wonderful word, it's almost as beautiful as shatter) because the season final of Twin Peaks, that's T-W-I-N P-E-A-K-S, according to one Albert Rosenfield, was drawing nigh.

Twin Peaks must have been one of the best things I've seen in my entire life. Om het met de woorden van Bart Brusseleers te zeggen: dat moet ongeveer het beste zijn dat ik al in Vilvoorde heb gezien. It has this mysterious atmosphere surrounding it, and it has the music, oh god the music. The music is composed by one Angelo Badalamenti and oh my god, it must have been one of the most simple yet gorgeous compositions I have ever heard. Each time Laura Palmer's (the gal that has been found dead, wrapped in plastic) theme is played, goosebumps arise everywhere on my body. Well, almost everywhere, pervs!

What's quite striking about the actors of the series, is they never managed to obtain a very glorious career in Hollywood. Maybe they didn't pursue that of course, Mr. Lynch isn't the most mainstream director around anyway. But the fact is even more striking because all of the actors are so damn good. Audrey for example is this bloody gorgeous sweet eighteen year old girl that balances on the edges of insanity. Yet, the actress (I don't know the name and I'm too lazy to look it up) manages to give the character some great background. Audrey is fairly important to the main storyline and sometimes, she obtains her goals through genious and clever moves. Sometimes, she is this dreamy kid that wants to stay at home and do nothing but enjoy her music (Audrey's Dance is a very moody piece of music that has this really mysterious swing to it), then again she's the überdetective who tries to win the hand of Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Dale Cooper. And that guy, well, he's genious. No really. Ge-ni-ous.

Cooper is played by Kyle MacLachlan. He'd better change his name to Kyle Cooper because MacLachlan isn't that easy to pronounce. Anyway, he's this FBI-agent that comes to investigate the murder of Laura Palmer. He is tired of the big cities and is trying to find some peace in his life. Cooper is quite impressed by the way of life in the quiet village of Twin Peaks and soon falls in love with the place. What he doesn't know is that the village has some nasty surprises for him. But let's not spoil anything here! Everybody that considers himself a lover of cinema should at least have seen this series once. And with that, I don't mean I consider myself a cinematic lover, I just like the series a lot, that's all. Even Cooper, that has to keep his head cool at all times, seems to be insane at times. He has a pretty weird way of communicating with the other villagers, especially with sheriff Truman, who's Dr. Watson next to Sherlock Cooper. And last but not least, he's got the metabolism of a bumblebee!!

Season 2 should be out in October, alongside a total collection box which includes Season 1 and 2. I'll probably pick up that one, since I don't own the series myself. Special thanks to somebody who lended me these great series and enrichened my life with some of the best tellyvision ever made. Thank you very much and may the birds sing a pretty song for you as well... when the gum you like is going to come back in style, that is.

The End of the Counter

2006-08-03T14:14:00.000+02:00

I made a very tough (not) decision today. Since the only review that ever appeared on The Review Counter dates more than two months back, I think it's better to pull the plog. I figured it makes no sense writing these things since there is almost nobody who's reading it. En plus (just wanted to add a little French here) it takes a lot of time creating those little pieces of text and the next few weeks and months, I will need more time than the time that's given to regular people. No more Review Counter was the inevitable outcome.

Now cry!

The Black Button

2006-07-23T15:46:00.000+02:00

How about that for a nap? I know, it's been a long time. Hell, it even has been a very long time in which a lot has happened. For one, I failed my exams but I didn't fail them big time. So, if all goes well (mind the importance of the word 'if'), I'll make it safely to the next year. You can all send me a postcard when that happens, but for now, put your inspiration somewhere cold, as it might evaporate elsewhere.

It's HOT! And with that sentence I don't mean to tell you that you have to pay six pounds for smokes and then get your ass smacked by a policemen who's running around a couple of hundred blocks away from the crime scene *catches breath*, no I mean to tell you it's HOT. It's even that hot that civil servants (or whatever you call the people that fake work behind a desk of bulletproof glass) can go home at three in the afternoon instead of five. And they get paid for it, as well. Now spank my ass and call me Riki, but I think civil servants are made to make fun off. I know they don't like it, but with an attitude like that, you are just asking to become the subject of any lazyjoke that has ever been invented.

I myself had a rather unsatisfying encounter with a civil servant a couple of weeks ago. I rang up the lady to confirm that my registration file had reached the office without any troubles. Guess what the fucking eggbags answer was. 'Oh, I'm sorry dear ass who just rang me out of my sleep but the bloody files aren't yet put in an alfabetical order so I can't help you. I'm sure your fucking file will be in the pile, but for now, I'm too lazy and busy eating a doughnut I won't look it up for you'. Before I could reply, 'and what if the file isn't in the pile (considering it was the last day registrations could reach the office), the bloody bitch had already smacked the phone back on the horn. How about that for some professional guidance by experts in the field...

What else has happened during my absence? Apart from the fact I'm building quite a relation with the word tentaclesoup (I have no idea why though), games of course! Loads of them. Good ones too. Bad ones as well but the most things I've played since the beginning of the holiday turned out te be quite good. There is, however, one striking fact that certainly has to be mentioned. I was at a friends place and that same friend had bought Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory for Xbox. It's simply a great game. Graphically, it can match with some of the earliest next-gen games (that aren't running on an HD-TV of course) and it has this superwicked co-op mode that can be either played via Xbox Live! or in split-screen mode on the same television. Since we were both in the same room with the same 360, there would've been no point at all to try the co-op mode via Live! Accidentally I happened to have my 360-controller with me so we got all excited (We aren't geeks, we are level 12 paladins!!) about kicking some terrorist ass together.

UbiSoft however wouldn't co-operate. We started the training mission and after exactly 15.8 seconds (I read it of the back of my teammate, that shiny thing is actually a cell phone with a chrono on it, yes), we realised how fucked we were. The first, so-called, team manoeuvre that had to be executed was fairly simple. Jump on the shoulders of your mate to reach higher platforms. In order to so do, you have to press THE BLACK BUTTON *insert evil laugh and horrifying tune here*. We turned the controller upside-down, inside-out, threw it out of a window, smashed it with a hammer, analysed it with a microscope, ran over it with a forklift (no idea where it came from but we DID) and even tried to cook bloody tentaclesoup with it but the damn thing was nowhere to be found! It hadn't evaporated either, it just wasn't there.

Realising we would never make it out of the room, I gave my friend a headshot. And it felt good.

Come out come out wherever you are!

People who would be wondering (who am I kidding, all the people that would be wondering about it are probably ordering spam and eggs right now) why it has been two months since I updated that other blog, I have no idea. I simply can't find the time writing interesting reviews about the games but I'll try to catch up a little in August. Stay tuned!

Lamer.nl

2006-06-05T16:08:00.000+02:00

All the people that hoped that gamer.nl would make an amazing comeback with their fourth version of the site: they didn't. They still have got the same bloody awful childish community and still deliver news that's not worth mentioning. Oh, and their writings are the suck. Apart from Hellfire and Erwin, there is absolutely no talent at all on that site. Iris still has to learn to make proper Dutch sentences and the only reason she's part of the crew is because of the fact she has either very big boobs or a licious ass. Or else she's just the crewwhore that can be used from time to time. But not between 1 am and 8 am. And not in the weekend and the holidays either.

Yes, my frustration concerning the 'best gaming site of the Benelux' is tremendously big. It awakes anger in me, I didn't even know it existed. It sometimes makes me want to kill myself as well. But not before I had another good laugh with the writings of Iris and Michael Wolf Visser (what's in a name). That guy is probably the limited gay edition of Iris, the follow-up that has to be used when Iris is, well, occupated. His writings top those of Iris by far, but are still hilarious. His last preview for example was about Table Tennis. He wrote very excitingly about how tremendous the game was and how he had beaten Onno Bos TWICE in a row. I don't know about you guys, but I don't go woohoo for a badly written preview of a game that had been released two days before.

As I recalled, their community is the most suckage I have ever seen in my entire life. It even beats those of gamed.nl. I think I have made my point clear by saying this. The first few days after the new release, gamers from all sorts gathered around the new lay-out, hoping the site would become the Dutch GameSpot. There were intelligent comments that really contributed to the general opinion but alas, only a month after the festivities had started, the original community recalled the URL of the site and it was doomed once again. Now, we've gone from bad to worse and consolebashing, spamming and having idiotic ideas about women and their legs (don't ask) have become common routine on gamer. So I decided to move out, and promised myself to never visit the site again.

The bad thing is the persons behind the site are really weak individuals. I don't know them of course but they don't seem to mind that their piece of work isn't greatly appreciated by most people. Of course, why should they care? They get their payroll at the end of the month and Bob's their uncle. Poor Bob. But do they really don't care what people think about their work? Even if I would be paid to do it, I would try to mangle and shut the motherfuckers that ruin the experience of gamers that are cruising to find some interesting news up. For good if necessary. Or maybe they like the dickheads that ruin the damn thing. Ah well, today they screwed up for good. Apparently, Tom's Hardware, some dicksite from the UK, posted ten (funny - they weren't funny at all in my opinion -) reasons why people shouldn't buy a PS3. Lamer.nl thought it would cheer some people up to post it on the site. That's the main site, not the forum, where such rubbish should be placed. They got 254 replies on that newstopic. Some butchered them, others (the dickheads) cheered them but they obviously lost it at the moment.

They also have such a rubbish piece of text, called the insider. It's plain hilarious. Like ANYONE is interested in the hurt feelings of a stupid writer when a kid asks him about the games he plays. For crying out loud, for a lot of youngsters they are idols. Superstars that live in a world of glimmer and glamour and yet, they neglect those kids. But I was on a holiday, then no-one may talk me about my super duper job that thousands of others would like to have. I don't understand these guys at all. It's like they are all doing it for the money, nothing more nothing less. I detest them and the little respect I had for Hellfire and Erwin has vanished into thin air as well. Gamer.nl was the best Dutch site there was left and now they go down the same slope like gamed.nl. It's a shame, there's nothing left. Nothing but GameSpot of course, I wonder when I'll start to dislike them. Probably never. Jeffersson is just too fucking funny and I'm still figuring out what nationality Greg Kasavin's ancestors had. Until that happens, peace out!!

Oh no, that's a finisher of some guy that stole it from Penny Arcade and now wants to start an own gameshop. Good luck Kevin, you'll bloody need it *giggle* !

Money Kills

2006-05-28T19:41:00.000+02:00

So, it's been over two weeks now the dust settled down around E3 and the industry is preparing for the upcoming "cucumbermonths", like we call them in Belgium. It's like there is nothing coming out, nothing left to play and the sun is burning hotter than hell. However the last part has lacked quite a bit the last few days, the first parts or so fucking true. It's a good thing I have to study for my final exams (if I don't fail them of course) this year, or I would be one bored fuck.

It's been quite a while since there was an update but I ain't dead. I just didn't find that much of spare time to write what was happening. The last few weeks were quite hectic indeed. The teachers at university rushed through them last 200 pages like they were as easy to understand as Mao's Red Booklet. Well for your record, they aren't and when I wasn't enjoying some leisure time before my consoles or pc (mainly listening to music since there isn't anything to play, apart from Commandos 2 which I miraculously rediscovered), I was (and still am) struggling with the huge amount of pages. I even cracked some teeth on them! How's that for a piece of dead paper?

In other news, I got my hands on a rusty dusty Nintendo 64 as well. And I didn't even have to pay for it. Who would've guessed that, in these cruel times where everyone gets greedy and cynical before they turn twenty, there are still Samaritans in the world. I gladly accepted the gift with a great smile but I couldn't supress the urge to say he could as well have sold the thing at eBay for 50 euros. And still, he didn't seem to be affected by my quote. Weird, if you consider he's in a position money comes in handy at times. It always does in my opinion and since I failed to get a job this summer, for the first time in my life, I will get really short on money. Pretty soon.

Before I turn the gun to myself, there still are some games I'm really eager to play. First one on my list is Hitman: Blood Money. Everyone is nagging about how stupid the demo is. But people, it's a fucking training mission!! And it explains the basic gameplay of the Hitman-series very well. I agree with the fact the mission is quite easy and you don't get a lot of freedom but hey, the things you can do in the demo are really frickin' cool (throwing a knife through a scientists head for example). The emphasis is more on the environment and in a lot of missions, you will have to take out your target while thousands of people are watching. Planning everything and executing the plan to perfection will be vital for the success of your missions. In the trailer that is shown when you complete the demo, you see a certain set-up where you have to snipe a famous politician during an election march, a bit like the hit on J.F. Kennedy.

The second game I'd like to get my hands on as soon as possible is Rockstar presents Table Tennis, Table Tennis for friends. I love the sport and it's really amazing to see what Rockstar has done with the game. No chainsaw, no flamethrower, no rapable (good going Paul Goossens xD) hookers, just table tennis. A ball and a table. And two players, casue if there was only a ball and a table, it wouldn't be much of a sport. It looks graphically stunning and a lot of early reviews reckon that the gameplay is quite complex as well. The word 'depth' is one that falls often and it isn't hard to believe when you see players of different levels competing to each other. Of course, the official trailers all show amazing rally's like it's nothing but when you attend to an actual ingame session, you'll notice that the game isn't that easy at all and that a lot of training will be required before you can reconstruct those top-notch rally's the official trailers are showing. It all looks very appealing and very fun, and since this is a game that can be played by, in fact, anyone, I think the onlineservices will keep Table Tennis alive and serving for a very very long time.

Since the price is lower than Blood Money, I'm going to buy this one and postpone the purchase of Blood Money. Usually that means I'll never get the chance to buy the game but with a slow summer ahead, maybe I'll pick it up anyway. Table Tennis really will be the last game I'm going to buy full-price before the next-gen consoles make their way to the grand public (I may purchase New Super Mario Bros. as well though). This summer I'll be playing a lot of great games that I haven't finished yet. God of War, Metal Gear Solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus, Perfect Dark: Zero, Kameo: Elements of Power, Tomb Raider: Legend and Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, they are all still standing in the closet, catching a little dust. In July I'll blow the dust away and have fun with these games like never before, not to forget to mention a little Table Tennis match now and then. Untill then, good luck to those who have exams and good luck to those who don't have exams as well! Good Luck!

Review Counter II

2006-05-15T21:29:00.000+02:00

There's (finally) an update in The Review Counter! Go check it out or die!
That's all for today.

The Hots for E3

2006-05-13T14:43:00.000+02:00

It's a wrap! The final words coming out of the mouth of Greg Kasavin, executive Editor at GameSpot made a stop to the 25 hours during live-coverage of the E3. In those hours, great stage demos had been shown and the viewer got te see what E3 was all about this year. Since, personally, it was the best E3 ever it was pretty hard to pick out some games that really stood out for me. I tried it anyway. I chose one title for every platform that I personally think is going to be da bomb. Please note that I only did next-gen consoles, handhelds and pc and that the choices are made out of the games I saw running thoroughly. So, of course I'm excited about Metal Gear Solid 4 but since we saw nothing playable, I haven't put it as the number one game on the PS3. Maybe next year.

PS3: Stranglehold
PS3 showed some pretty neat stuff and although I liked games like Eight Days and Assassin's Creed (that last one is said to be a PS3-exclusive) a lot, as well as the new Naughty Dog-project that yet has to be named but looks awesome, I choose Stranglehold as my favourite title for the PS3 at the moment. Stranglehold is a no-nonsense third person shooter where you take on the role of a Hong Kong-detective (played by Chow Yun-Fat) that mainly, well, has to shoot everything up. John Woo has dedicted his co-operation to this game and that's a great thing, because all the over-the-top actionelements from his movies are implemented in the game. Hang from the ceiling and shoot ten guys in crazy slow-motion action, it has to be incredibly fun. Or you can lie down on a rolling trolley and mow bullets in your opponents foreheads. It made me think a lot about Max Payne (without the deep storyline of course) and that's a good thing. Awesome!

Wii: Twilight Princess
The Wii surprised friend and foe with a lot of unannounced games and I think a lot of gamers are won for the Wii because of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I, however, won't take that one as my number one Wii-game since I haven't seen enough of it. Of course, I'm excited Snake (and Zero Suit Samus *yummie*) is in it but it won't overclass The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Hyrule is looking mature and grim, in my opinion it's everything the Zeldafans have been waiting for. I know this game is also coming out on GameCube but it looks so much better on the Wii that I'll go for that version instead. I think there's a good chance Twilight Princess will bring Ocarina of Time to its knees, at least I hope so. Using the Wii-controller is cool but it isn't necessary to make this game a winner. Wait, this game hasn't to be made a winner, it already is!

Xbox 360: Double Agent
Other than the Wii, Xbox played it safely. They didn't announce a lot of surprises (apart from GTA 4 then). Microsoft is sticking with its strong franchises Most of them will make their first appearances on the 360 very soon. Think about 47 in Hitman: Blood Money and Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell: Double Agent. I know I should pick Mass Effect as the number one game because it's so frickin' clear this game is going to be the Oblivion of the future but still I was taken aback more by the new Splinter Cell. I always liked Fisher but with Chaos Theory he was getting a bit rusty and stuff. Double Agent keeps the traditional gameplay but adds some very cool tweaks to it. First of all, you're a Double Agent so you have double objectives and you can choose what you want to do in certain situations.

There's this one situation where you encounter an NSA-agent and you have to choose whether to neutralise him or not. You might be watched by the terrorist you're working for so it's not a bad idea to take care of the guy. The decisions you make will eventually alternate the story and so the freeform gameplay gets a new dimension. The graphics look really stunning as well and I think the multiplayer will be nice as well. Apart from that, Fisher skydives, scuba-dives and has to complete missions in the middle of a civil war frontline. These innovations could make this Splinter Cell the best one up to date. I certainly hope so!

PC: Crysis
The pc is paying a huge price at the moment. Next-gen consoles are getting almost the same levels of graphical detail as a high-end pc nowadays and it's clear more and more developers are choosing the consoles as their first worktool. Take Rainbow Six: Vegas for example. It is developed only for next-gen consoles and after that, the team will take a pc-version into account. Three years ago, this wouldn't be thinkable at all, especially not when you know the Rainbow Six-franchise started on the pc. Luckily for pc-gamers, there are some guys who are still dedicated to pc-gaming. Crytek for example, who is working on Crysis at the moment. Crysis is looking a lot better than the current next-gen titles on the next-gen consoles and it gives pc-gamers a little extra push for their money. If you'll be able to play it, because I can imagine that Crysis is really going to be a systembuster. The standard gameplay of Far Cry is gone and is replaced by a much more enthrolling experience, a lot more like a movie as well. You always fight machinas of the enemy, not the enemy itself (at least not until the last hour when you infiltrate the mothership of the aliens). The freezing aspect and the fact that you can add points to specififc abilities at certain times (when you want to retreat quickly for example, just add some points to your speed and run away like hell)look like it's going to be real fun. Crysis hasn't got any competition on the pc-marktet at the moment. It rules bad.

Nintendo DS: Hotel Dusk Room 215
The general feeling about both DS and PSP was that they were neglected a bit. Sony and Ninty sure wanted to put the emphasis on respectively the PS3 and the Wii and the handhelds paid a price for that. However Nintendo announced some new games of old succesful franchises (Starfox, Diddy Kong Racing), my pick goes to Hotel Dusk: Room 215. It's from the makers of Another Code: Two Memories. Seems like they got something with titles that are made out of two parts. While nobody really knows what's the game going to be about (like Another Code, it's an adventure), according to the trailer it looks very cool. Apparently some kind of murder is committed (or will be committed) in Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and you are framed for it. You have to find the truth to clear your name. Your average sunday-evening filmstory but with the dual screen, it could make a very good game. The devs have upped their graphical engine and the film noir atmosphere is really remarkable. Let's hope it will be a bit longer than Another Code, otherwise it will be a mediocre title as well. Fingers crossed!

PSP: MGS Portable Ops
Even more than Nintendo, Sony didn't think about the PSP this year. The only mentionable game is Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, the successor of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PS2 (which I still have to finish, once). You take on the role of Big Boss again and you basically do some regular MGS-stuff. It's really the graphics that make this one so amazing. The PSP generates graphics that equal those of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty easily. On top of that, it presents a couple of online modes that will be playable over WiFi-internet. Playing Metal Gear Solid, anywhere over the internet against players from all over the world and that with beautiful consolegraphics. It must be a dream come true. Since this game didn't even have (like in, no other PSP-titles) competition, it's the winner of the number one PSP-game award!

Voilà, it has been done. E3 2006 is behind us and it seems like the end of the year and the beginning of 2007 will be great. It will be hard for publishers and developers to generate an even better E3 next year (wait, didn't we say that last year as well?) but hey, one can always try. See you next year in LA!

Tattoo Pwns Duck

2006-05-12T17:48:00.000+02:00

It's hot in here. Very hot. And the problem is I have to write my experiences of the MS pre-E3 conference in fifteen minutes because day three starts then. Thus, in short, Peter Moore did quite the one-man-show during the conference. Unfortunately, Bill Gates had to mangle in the end and it all got boring, however they showed some really cool features and games.

The conference took a start with an ingame demo of Gears of War. The frame-rate was awful but the graphics were wow! Xbox 360 is sure not to give Sony a comfortable time the next years, so much is clear. After that Peter Moore started talking about the 360 and how well they were coping with the concurrence. He added that they would reach 6 million (yep, that's six zeros) Xbox Live-users by next year, a pretty impressive number of suscribers indeed. Then they showed of some new Xbox Live Arcade games and it has to be said that they really know what to pick. Lumines, Ultimate Mortal Kombat, Contra (including THE CODE!!), Sonic (Moore's alltime favourite),... With those games available on Live, getting six million users won't be that hard, I suppose.

The climax of the conference came around the middle when Peter Moore announced a pretty popular game franchise making its way to the 360. While half the crowd went crazy and mentally started chanting Master Chief, Moore reveiled (another) fake tattoo of the GTA 4 logo. That's right, Grand Theft Auto is making its way to the 360 and although Microsoft would have liked to keep it exclusive, Sony ran of with it as well. Same goes for another title that looks really stunning. The new Alone in the Dark that had been already announced in the week before E3. But once again, Microsoft isn't getting the exclusive since Sony is putting the game in its release list as well.

After they showed a lot of trailers from upcoming games (Fable 2, Double Agent, Forza Motorsport 2,...) and having Crytek-guys showing of Crysis (which looks unbelievably stunning), Bill Gates made his way to the stage and started talking about how brilliant it was to be finally an E3-attendee (he probably didn't manage to get an invitation the last years), blablabla. He then talked a lot about a pretty cool feature that would permit gamers to connect both their mobile phone, their pc (with Windows Vista installed) and their Xbox 360. He gave the example of a car, used in Forza 2, that had been sent by mobile phone to someone. The guy then adapted the same car on his pc and played with it on his Xbox 360. Pretty impressive indeed and a very nice ace that Microsoft has been hiding for quite some time now.

The apocalyptic conclusion of the conference was one that everyone had seen coming: the trailer of Halo 3. First, we weren't sure that all of it was ingame because it looked so damn nice but during the show, Microsoft announced that all of it was made with the ingame engine so the people were getting pretty excited about Master Chief's new adventure. Although the trailer was all we got to see from the game (meaning the release won't be close-by) we have to admit it looks awesome and we can't wait to get our hands on Master Chief (on the controller to play him of course). Microsoft has kept up very well with the two companies who still had to show with their new supertoy and it seems like the competition yet has to begin... No doubt to be continued!

Wii Didn't Play But Wii Believe

2006-05-11T15:56:00.000+02:00

First of all, I would like to apologise that my thoughts on the pre-E3 Nintendo conference are posted three days after the conference itself took place. But you know, it's E3! And it's on and it's one of the most brilliant shows we have ever seen, so far. So I've been busy watching the GameSpot Live-shows like all day long and now, before the third day kicks of at 6 PM (European time) I figured I'd write something about both Nintendo and Microsft's conferences. Tomorrow, I'll try to add some general impressions about the show itself.

I have to admit, I wasn't a big fan of the Wii before E3. But Nintendo showed some really extraordinary stuff during the conference and the show, so I had to change my view on the console. Just yesterday, they announced Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which is looking absolutely great and features a whole bunch of new characters, alongside the old ones. This isn't going to be a launch title, but hell with that, I'll definitely have to buy a Wii now. At launch or not, we'll see.

But back to the conference. The whole thing started with Miyamoto directing an orchestra who played the Zelda theme song, just by using the Wii-controller. After that, Reggie kicked in and talked a lot of heavy stuff, like we are used to when Reggie is doing the talking. Unlike Sony, Ninty didn't show much statistics about last year's sales. That's smart, because they hand't that much to show anyway. GameCube got slaughtered by PS2 and Xbox last year and that's probably the reason there isn't a single Cube to be found on the showfloor this year.

Not even for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The game is on the show but only in a Wii-adapted version. They showed it thoroughly during the conference and it has to be said that the game looks very appealing. No more cell shaded 'kiddy' graphics, Twilight Princess looks as mature as ever. It has this flair of realism surrounding it, even though the game still takes place in the fantasy world of Hyrule. We didn't get a lot of ups-and-downs on the game, the presentation made me really look foward to the game in particular and to the Wii in general.

Another highly anticipated third party game, Red Steel, left a little less impressions. However the game showed very good what the controller is capable of, the graphical performance wasn't very good. And okay, graphics aren't of great importance for Nintendo, according to Reggie who like said it a thousand times. But when you keep saying that over and over again, that tagline pretty much starts to resemble the excuse. Like, don't buy our games, they look, well, bad! Red Steel certainly does, especially during the katanasequences. Yeah, that really sucked and I don't think the gameplay is going to save Red Steel's ass. Red Steel down the drain. Next!

Nintendo showed more footage of other Wii-games that would be playable on the showfloor. I name the ones that jump into mind immediately: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Super Mario Galaxy and WarioWare: Smooth Moves. They showed like twenty seconds of footage but in the meantime, there's so much more available on different sites. Same goes for their DS-strategy. They announced a whole bunch of new titles (Starfox DS / Diddy Kong Racing, Hotel Dusk: Room 215) which they showed like ten seconds. It was kind of short but because the games were fired at the audience at a machinegun-rate, it looked very compelling and very solid.

Major bummer, in the beginning of the conference. Reggie told the audience Nintendo saw it fit to keep details concerning the release and price of the Wii secret until further notice (probably 'till Tokyo Game Show 2006). I don't really care (I'm buying it anyway) but I don't see why they didn't announce anything. With Sony making a bad move with their, quite pricy, console, it would have been thé superb moment for Nintendo to strike hard and release info on the price (that probably will be around the 250 euro). Well, I didn't play it yet (I hope to do so ASAP, probably not untill Futuris next year) but I certainly am a believer. In Wii and in Nintendo.

Sony Didn't Spill The Beans

2006-05-09T20:50:00.000+02:00

7.30 AM. It feels like I'm hit in the stomach. And it isn't because the PS3 will be the most expensive next-gen console. Sure, by November, it'll cost roughly twice as much as the Xbox 360 but the overall performance will be undoubtedly better. The reason I feel rather sick and tired is because I followed the pre-E3 Sony conference live at GameSpot. And since they it began one hour late, I was in for a pretty long night.

Sony didn't overthrow the public, that's the least that can be said about the conference. Showing of bravely last year with flamboyant 'running demos' (that now obviously turn out to be pre-rendered) of Killzone 3, Motor Storm and Unreal Tournament 2007 (at least that one was live for real), everyone expected Sony to kick even bigger butt this year. After all, they had to stand their ground against the Wii. The latter, getting quite some media-attention the last few weeks because of its unpredictable namechange, makes its appearance at today's pre-E3 conference. Read more on that in the other post.

But it wasn't to be. As I said earlier, Sony made a particular weak impression with a conference that wasn't built up in the right way either. They started with an hour of delay, which made the attendees quite restless, not in the last place because of the suckage communication between the hosts and the guests. Finally, when everyone was seated, the conference could begin. Instead of throwing in something really fantastic as a starter, there's this Kaz-guy that goes bragging over how well Sony's doing at the moment. It's 2.30 AM and we already started yawning. Not a good sign.

The games that had been showed can be divided in a couple of categories. First of all, you had the useless category. In this category, we find techdemos of the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game, that makes the players battle against each other, using an EyeToy. Sometimes you would be wondering why people should ever want to play a card game that's so much fun, on a console. You don't. It would be cool if devs would implement this technology in their games one way or the other, but just using it to draw out your Blue-Eyed Fire Dragon, no thanks.

Another 'useless' game is Formula One for the PS3. It looks quite nice but apart from that, it's no different from any other F1-game. The only 'cool' (read: dumb half-ass pathetic attempt to show of but terribly not succeeding in it) thing about the game is, you can use your PSP as a mirror to monitor the stuff coming in your back. Pretty lame, pretty useless. We didn't like it and we guess nobody did. The second category of games were the rubbish category. There, Gran Turismo HD (working title) has won the award for fooling Sony in front of like 10,000 + people. The first couple of tracks were like nothing more but a (minor) visual update on Gran Turismo 3 (!!!). No damage, no dust, no nothing, no not even bloody nice. Next!

The other category is the respectable category and there we find a lot of new games. Eight Days, an unnamed project from the guys at Insomniac, the new Getaway, Fatal Inertia, Lair, Heavenly Sword,... They all looked good and they all seemed to play quite alright. Shame they didn't let anyone play it live on the machine. Finally some good news for Sony! And then they announced the controller. Thé controller. The Messiah for Nintendo seems to turn out to be the Nemesis for Sony.

Why? Because they copy-pasted some key-elements of other controllers and wrapped those in the traditional Dual Shock (without the shock nota bene) 2 package. The Triggers from 360, the center button from 360 and the motion sensors from the Wii. The total package. Ken Kutaragi walked the stage, behaving like 'hah, another job well done!' Well, I ain't taking this bullshit! This controller's as fake as the bananoomerang controller was. I mean, NO RUMBLE FEATURES and the Wii rip-off! It's all too accidentally to be healthy in my opninion. I think Sony will surprise gamers on the show with another controller and with a lot of great games that haven't been showed at the conference (Killzone 3, Motor Storm, UT2k7 maybe?).

Why didn't Sony spill the beans at once? Because they are sly and they knew they had to do their conference first. Hence, Ninty and MS could anticipate on the moves Sony made, so they decided not to show of everything they got at the show. I really hope Sony will strike true at the show because the conference wasn't that great (in addition, the Nintendo and MS conferences were a lot better). Guess, we have to keep our hopes up 'till tomorrow and see what Sony is going to do. I hope they respond fiercely. Like a stone to a scissor.

Half a Million

2006-05-06T23:19:00.000+02:00

Something pretty weird happened to me today. The 10th of May I have to complete my driver's exam in order to get my driver's license. I'm pretty sure I'll fail it the first time but yet there is still a small hope of passing it. I'll think I'll have a beer just before it, it will calm me down and as long as I don't go over the prohibitted alcoholvolume, there should be no problem at all. Theoretically. I don't think my instructor would like to smell a beerbreath when I'm doing my final manoeuvres for the exam. But hell with that, I'm legal you prick!

So why does one want to obtain a driver's license? To drive a car of course. Any car. Well, especially a very cool car that you really can show of with but since those things cost around 200,000 euros, buying those will be for much much later. When I run GameSpot or something. You don't need a driver's license in America anyway (well, you need one but you don't have to pass any tests, so in fact you don't need one) so I don't have to pass the test at all. Most people like it when they have got a driver's license, they can borrow their parents car from time to time. I would be pleased with that as well, but some people in my environment didn't think that was enough. You guessed it, soon I'll be the owner of my own car and I feel pretty much uncomfortable about it.

First of all, I didn't spend a penny on it. That's right, not one penny. My, quite wealthy, grandfather offered me to buy the car. It's not a new car but it still costs pretty much. It's a fucking car after all and cars just ain't that cheap, new or not. I was happy and embarassed at the same time. But can one decline an offer you can't refuse? I don't think so. And such an offer isn't to be refused, so I accepted it. He chose the car (well, he asked my opinion about it but I noticed he'd be quite unhappy with me when I told him I didn't like it), what's understandable, after all it was his wallet as well. Luckily, I really liked the car and he called it a day. Just like that, he spent 10,000 euros on a car.

10,000 euros. That's approximately a bit less than half a million franks. Half a million. It's an amount of money a 19-year old student shouldn't be able to dispose of. Now, when that would've been it (the events I'm talking about happened two weeks ago), I now shouldn't be writing about this. I felt bad about it he had given me all that money, just for a car I really didn't need that much. That money could've gone to much better expenses, but then again, if you know my grandfather, you know it wouldn't go anywhere but over the counter of a jewelry shop. So I didn't feel too bad about it. All that changed today, when he handed me the money. Cash.

I had never had so much money in my hands. Ever. I felt sick realising I was carressing more than an average man makes in a month of hard work. A month? Let's make that six months. My reaction was quite weird as well, I guess. I smiled but from the inside I was filled with disgust. There should be a limit to these kind of gifts. One shouldn't be spoiled like this, not at all. I know it sounds very weird to say so, but when you are confronted by the real amount of money in your hands, you suddenly don't want it anymore.

I'm also really scared of what my friends and mates are going to say about this. I think it will go a bit like this.'Wow, nice car' 'Thanks' 'Where did you get the money to buy that beauty?' 'Well, it isn't a new car...' 'Man, it looks like fucking brandnew! How much has it cost you?' 'Well, 10,000 euros...' 'Dude, that's so much money, where did you get it?' 'Well, I got it as a gift from my grandfather...' To be honnest, if someone would have told me this story, I'd freak out as well. Not only would I freak out but I'll be overwhelmed by this immense feeling of jealousy. Even my girlfriend told me she was jealous about me (well, about my money), go figure!

Second thing why I don't really feel like passing the test and buying that car ASAP is that I'm still a potential danger on the road. Maybe all young drivers are a danger on the road but I feel that I'm not ready to take on the road on myself. Partly, that's the fault of my parents that always gave me directions to what I had to pay attention while I was practising my drivingskills. So when I'll be out on my own, I won't be able to pay attention to anything and everyone and in the end I'll do something wrong. And when something goes wrong, I'll end up panicking and then we (that is my car and me) will be in big shit. Lack of confidence and touring with a brandnew car that you haven't even bought yourself. My day was shit and I certainly hope yours was better...

The Mental Breakdown of the Fire Wall

2006-05-04T23:52:00.000+02:00

I started posting this thing on The Review Counter but then I decided it wasn't appropriate. I promised the folks (folks? what folks?) there I would provide them with reviews about the latest games, not to nag about all the problems some games are causing me. So for the people who are still waiting on the FFIV review, it's coming. Once. The little bitch just keeps me busy, that's all. But I guess you will find the review soon.

Now that the commercials have passed, we can skip to the tasks of the day. My PSP has broken down. Literally. Well, it hasn't snapped into two pieces but some buttons were malfunctioning. Since it was the arrow buttons that declined cooperation, it was kind of hard to play games (I don't like using the joystick, it's too sensible)so I decided to bring the handheld in. I hadn't bought the thing at the Game Mania but yet they were willing to give me a new one. How about that for a service! I hope my new PSP won't have any dead pixels, since the broken one had six or so. Ain't I the lucky chap...

I have quite a history when it comes down to breaking consoles, handhelds and other gamestuff. When I was young, I smashed (accidentally of course, don't want you to get the wrong image of me) a very rare Game&Watch. It was completely wasted and we saw no other opportunity than to put the precious thing between the garbage. I could kill myself for it now, since those Game&Watches have become slightly rarer than they were in the late eighties or even early nineties. I'm also playing on my fourth PS2 in five years now. The first one was done for after about six months. The second one fell from the closet where I put my consoles on (untill that very moment, that is). I can't recall what happened with the third one (probably got eaten by the dog) but I'm certainly I'm playing my fourth PS2-console at the moment. Luckily, I only had to pay for it once.

It's a good thing I'm getting a new PSP because there are some games coming out for it that truly interest me. First of all there's the new Syphon Filter game, Dark Mirror which gets good ratings overall. I was a big fan of the first two games (hail Wouter for introducing me to it!) but after that 989 fucked up beyond recognition. Seems like they straightened the path because the new adventure of Gabe Logan and Xian Ling (boy, I still know those names) doesn't only look great, according to the pros in the biz, it plays pretty good as well. The second game that has attracted my attention is a compilation of the Metal Slug-games. I have always missed out on the series but when I was a video of someone playing it lately, it looked very cool. It's a very old skool shoot'em all and it just looks like a whole lot of fun. It also comes to the Wii, but since I'm not certain I'll buy one on launch, I'll go for the PSP-version instead.

Last but certainly not least (that's so cliché, isn't it?) is the emulator-UMD that is being developed as we speak (at least, I hope so, if not, get to work lazybones!). With the thing, it should be possible to play every PSone titel on your PSP. Not only would that be fucking great, it would be fucking fucking great. Cause it means the dream of playing Final Fantasy VII everywhere you like, is becoming reality. Same goes for all those games you always wished you could take with you. But since you didn't like carrying a TV everywhere you went, you didn't take them. No worries anymore. Did I already say it is really fucking great?

Something that's really fucking rubbish, is Command & Conquer: Generals. First, it's an RTS game and I kind of don't like (read: hate) RTS-games. Why I ever bought it, don't ask, I was young, blonde and naïve I guess. The singleplayer was like rubbish cause it featured RTS-gameplay. I liked the skirmishmode and the multiplayer though. So one of these days my pal buys this big chest they released because Command & Conquer existed for 10 years. The First Decade. You get a lot of rubbish games with it (the first C&C's that look like shit for example) but for thirty euros, one can't complain really. But one can certainly complain when he's playing the game behind a @#f²*pizza(Barret used to say this, can't wait to get my hands on that emulator!)@#**!?#@ router. Those things might prove useful when you want to surf the net wirelessly but when you try to fight out an online battle, the router is pretty much the peacekeeper.

The fucking thing just won't let you play against each other. At least not on a server you create yourself. The problem is, when I create a room where I would lay out my genius tactical masterplay, nobody is able to see it. Since BM is part of nobody, he can't see it either and so we're screwed. Same thing goes when he tries to create the room. Good thing there is such a thing like online support. Too bad EA shut the online support for Generals down a year ago... Hence, it's very difficult to find some information about which routergates that have to be opened. We, truly I ain't exagerating, have tried hundreds of different options, numbers, switches, pizzas, french fries with mayonnaise. Hell, we even tried to glue our IP-adresses together with Pattex superglue but the fucking thing wouldn't budge. Tss, fine, then we won't play it, we agreed. And ten minutes later we started crying. Rude EA.

The Review Counter

2006-04-29T22:50:00.000+02:00

Since PlayStage will be officially wiped within 25 hours, it's time to make sure I still can give my opinion on the latest games I've played. Since my English pretty much sucks (or so a Triple A-speaker told me), I won't do it in English. No, not in French or Portuguese either. Those damn chauvinists have already done enough mischief. It's because of their damn translation that Kingdom Hearts 2, in my opinion one of the last great weapons of the PS2, has been postponed to the end of the year.

But I was talking about The Review Counter here. Yep, The Review Counter is a new blog I made and where you will be able to read about the latest games I played, just as you were able to do that on PlayStage. I know only a handful of people will read them but I don't care. It's important that I don't let my writerskills down. Because, who knows, all of a sudden my Dutch would start to suck as well and omigosh, that would be one big disaster.

Anyway, since we have been learnt that an audience only remembers the things they were told at the end of a gig, speech or blogentry, I'm going to repeat myself one-more time. So the only thing you have to remember about this blogentry is that, if you're interested in games, go check out The Review Counter now and then. I'll hope to see you all there.

Wii truly made a big mistake

2006-04-27T21:37:00.000+02:00

Wii. While half the world hopes this is a publicitystunt of Nintendo, I'm rolling on my floor laughing. I couldn't believe it at first. Why would they possibly choose that name for there upcoming console, on the eve of E3 nota bene! I mocked Codename Revolution here a few times and I kicked some people in the nuts with my expressions. To that people I say, don't go here cause you shall be kicked again and maybe even harder than the first time. Cause Wii is ridiculous. Plain ridiculous.

Tears of laughter are flying through the air while a lot of people are asking themselves why Nintendo would even consider doing this. To themselves in the first place. Because, even though a name maybe isn't that important, they fucked up with this name. And I don't get it because Nintendo was really inventive with their names. GameCube, it made sense, it was a cube after all. N64 made sense as well. Even Revolution sounded cool (untill they came and started wiping around with the Codename). And now this. Ninty is dropping from "cool" into "setting Penny Arcade up for months". And I really mean months, because the introduction of Wii isn't something a gamer will lightly forget.

Perhaps that's the power of Nintendo. To create a big fuss about something stupid. To create a swoon of confusion and unbelief so the Wii would stay in everybody's minds. Well hello, we are almost at E3! Why uncover the big secret only two weeks before the expo starts? I'll tell you why. It's because, when this would be unveiled during the conference of Nintendo, Reggie will have to give the journalists a 15 minute laughterbreak. Imagine the following situation: Reggie is talking in his usual way about how the next-gen console (then still named Revolution) will change the world and, above all, will kick ass and take names. Then, he grins like only he can do and says the Revolution will be called the Wii. Apart from 20,000 + wtf's from the audience, Reggie is melting on the stage. Nobody listens anymore and everyone starts talking to themselves and in the end it ends in an incredibly loud laughterroar.

I mean, imagine Reggie saying: "Buy a Wii * people in room start to laugh extremely loud* or I'll break your *the roaring laughter in the room is now overcoming the voice of poor Reggie, who is trembling with anger* erm... security!! Kick those guys out!! Yeah, all of them! *people start rolling on floor laughing and some suffer from fatal heart-attacks, while others get pushed out of the room by security that carries Link-swords and Wii-hats*.

I may have put it a bit extreme, no I DID put a bit extreme but I'm pretty sure it's the main reason why Nintendo unveiled it before the conference. And it's not only me that's surprised by the name. The whole world is godsmack by the name and forum all around are whelming with jokes about the Wii. There are some others who keep their heads cool and believe it's all a stunt from Nintendo. Other point out a name isn't important, it's the gameplay that counts. Oh, that's right, the console hasn't got a chance to convice us of the possiblities of the Revol... I'm sorry the Wii. See how ridiculous it sounds! Wii, for the love of Christ. Underneath, you can find the very appropriate (= ridiculous) marketing strategy behind the name Wii and some of the better jokes found on the forums. Enjoy!!

Introducing Wii
As in 'we'.
While the codename 'Revolution' expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer.
Wii will take down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else.
Wii will put more people in touch with their games... and with each other. But you're probably asking: What does the name mean? (No, we aren't we're just laughing xD)
Wii sounds like 'we', which emphasizes this console is for everybody. (unless you sell it for a dollar, you're lying)
Wii can easily be remembered by people all over the world, no matter what language
they speak. No confusion (erm, to pee in English slang anyone?). No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.
Wii has a distinctive "ii" spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the
image of people gathering to play.
And Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd.
So that's Wii. But now Nintendo needs you (first, don't laugh with us because we chose such a silly name, second, please don't make blog entries where you mock the choice of this silly name, third, be kind and buy our console, no matter how crappy the name is, so we can feed our kids, don't worry, they have silly names too)
Because, it's really not about you or me (nope, like I said, it's about feeding my kids)
It's about Wii.
And together. Wii will change everything.

Nintendo Marketing Guy #1: "We desperately need to replicate the success of the iPod."
Nintendo Marketing Guy #2: "But, what makes the iPod such a successful product?"
Nintendo Marketing Guy #1: "I know!! It’s the ‘i’!! People love i’s!! Every person IS an ‘I’! Most people are BORN with an ‘eye’!!!"
Nintendo Marketing Guy #2: "Hell, most people are born with TWO of them!!"
Nintendo Marketing Guy #1: "THAT’S IT! Let’s put TWO i’s in the new console name!!!!"
Together: "WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"
[Cue two straight weeks of back-patting and cigar-smoking]

Perhaps it's a joke... it MUST be a joke, surely?

Guy 1: "Hey, what do you feel like playing, PS3, Xbox 360, or WII?"
Guy 2: "WTF is WII? Forget that. Let's go play the other systems."

Guy 1:"I'm totally stoked to grab a Wii on launch day!"
Guy 2:"A what?"
Guy 1:"A Wii!"
Guy 2:"What the f*** is a Wii?"
Guy 1:"You know, like a Playstation, but it's a Wii.

The End and The Beginning

2006-04-27T21:11:00.000+02:00

Today is the big day. I was taken completely by surprise because I suspected the mag not to be released 'till Monday. First of May probably has something to do with it. Anyways, I was pretty happy about finding the magazine in my mailbox this afternoon. I quickly unwrapped it and started turning the pages like crazy.

I already suffered from some weird dreams where my article had been published by Bas Paap ( a fellow PCGP-writer that I suspected snatching the Dreamfall review copy, a deed he didn't commit actually. Beware Bart Van Heymbeeck , you're on my list now!!). Well, no use in telling you I was rejoiceful as ever when I arrived at page 58. Panzer Elite Action by Christophe De bont. That's right, with a small b. I read the article (kind of dumb actually, I wrote the thing so I knew what was in it), only to find that not much had changed. Even the 'want' which I had doubted greatly had stood his ground. Yes, I am a happy man and yes, it's like a dream comes true. Partially at least because I'm still awaiting my payment. Ah, hell with that (easy now, that's just by means of speech, I want the damn money, you hoe!!), I got my fucking name in the mag. Hell Yeah!

In other news, PlayStage is finally done for. The initial plan was we would report from E3 for the very last time but we thought it would be wasted effort. So for the first time in four years, we're not going to cover the whole show. That will be quite relaxing because I'll be able to watch the press conferences without interruption to report about them. Why didn't we take a last great plunge in the fantastic world of gaming? Well, we aren't just that motivated anymore. Some members declared their input would be really really restricted to certain topics which carried their interest, they added with a flair of arrogance. It's a shame because the Last March of PlayStage could have been something great. Raising the fist with an attitude like: 'we'll show you one last time how it is fucking done' before turning the gun to yourself, it should have been a great finisher for a project that carried my love and interest a very long time. Five years to be precise. I could bitch along how this should've happened two months ago but hey, we gave it one last try and we drowned. Goodbye and farewell, thou areth to be missed...

Muffin Men

2006-04-15T12:52:00.000+02:00

People who'd like to stick their knives in my body because I've made a spelling mistake in the title, holster your guns! I haven't made a mistake! It's really Muffin Men. I think everybody knows the story about the Muffin Man. The Dutch word for Muffin Men is 'mosselman'. And when you translate that again into English, you get mussels. And that's exactly what I'd like to chat about today. Mussels.

You've got all kind of mussels. You've got the Mussels from Brussels. He's some kind of wimp that played in a lot of really bad action movies. With a name like Jean-Claude, what else could you expect? You also got Zeeuwse Mussels. I don't know how to translate Zeeuwse so I just wrote it in Dutch. I don't like them very much either. That's because, in fifth grade of the basic school, we dissected a little bastard like that and ewie, it was gross. That's actaully an understatement. I'd rather dissect Mussels from Brussels than ever dissect a Zeeuwse mossel again. Since I don't eat mussels, I don't see much use for them and so I don't like them. End of story?

Nope, there is one other kind of mussels. The kind that I dislike most of all and the kind that I, unfortunately enough, come into contact with the most. They are people who don't want to stand out for their opinion and who are getting pushed away all the time. I don't say they don't have an opninion, they just hide it. On the long term, they will lose their opninion and they will be nothing more than mere plants. Like the ones I bought from two little girls today. I only bought them because they had a hot chick with them, who was too old for me anyway. Damn you marketing!

Not only they don't shout out their opinion, they usually don't live up to promises. It's impossible to organise stuff when you've got a few 'taps' who do whatever they like, without asking for permission. There's this one guy that really hits the spot the last few weeks. He has become really inpopular with the PlayStage-crew and when you tell him to do something, he gets pissed and stuff and says nasty things. When somebody isn't able to commit a great deal of time to PlayStage, they have to go out in my opinion. But that's just my opinion of course, I don't know what other people think about it. In fact, I'd like their views on this fact. So reply ahead, show's over anyway!

Codename Despair

2006-04-09T01:07:00.000+02:00

Actually this post should be called 'Catching Up' since it's been three weeks or something like that since I posted something here. Out to all my fans: I'm sorry, I've been a busy boy but I ain't telling nothing about it. Sorry, I've got some privacy left and if that isn't okay with you, go fight it out with some kind of retarded judge. Filip Dewinter did and he's received a huge claim, so how hard can it be?

So what happened the last three weeks? As I referred to earlier, a lot. But yesterday hit the spot, exactly one month before E3 is going berserk in Los Angeles, some magazine released some shots of a Revolution game. Excuse me, codename Revolution. You know, to mystify it up a bit. Codename sounds pretty cool doesn't it? Just giving you the impression that the name will change but in the end everybody has gotten so familiar with the name they don't change it anyway. And if they change it, what name the console should be given? GameController instead of GameCube? Or what about Virtual Boy, that thing didn't live through the day either? If I had to name the console at the time being, I'd codename it Despair. Just to make sure I would be able to change it back to Virtual Boy when the audience wouldn't go woohoo for the name.

As you may notice, I'm not too happy with Nintendo at the time being. I've been a big fan of the Japanese developer a very long time. I grew up with Nintendo, hell, I even got a fire red shirt that spells Nintendo. Well, the shirt doesn't spell it of course, since shirts don't spell. It's written on it you dumbasses! In white. But the way they are doing things now seems so bizarre, odd and another synonymn for odd which I can't recall. It seems like Ninty is so scared to get in the draft of Microsoft and Sony, that they will do anything to keep their console out of the way from those two meanies. They would even codename their console for it.

My point being. Nintendo is scared as hell, no scared as shit, hell, even scared as codename for Sony and Microsoft. They got their arses kicked (just like Reggie predicted, although, he had hoped it would be the other way around) really bad the last year. GameCube sellings have gone down to an extreme minimum (even in Japan, go figure) and they had to admit they were the definite losers of the current generation consolewar. Nintendo has always been able to tip the balance in their advantage with their supreme handheld marketing. With like thousand different editions of handhelds, the company can easily cover up the losses they suffer on the consolefront.

But nobody likes to lose. Especially money. So Ninty won't wage their chances against Sony and Microsoft again. The once powerful Godzilla of Gaming has been transformed into a tiny treefrog that is easily squashed by the others. Or so Miyamoto and the rest of the Nintyheads must think about it. They are desperately searching to find a way not to confront the others in a head-on collision again, because they know they'll flip out in third position. Of course, that's the last position but I don't want to be rude or anything. After all, I like Nintendo.

The Revolution offers the most brilliant way out for Nintendo. By doing something completely different than the two Nemesisses, they hope to attract a whole new market. A market that isn't greatly impressed with the current way of gaming and a market that wants to do something else. Now I see a really huge contradiction here. I remember Reggie 'Buy a freaking DS or I'll break your fucking legs' Fills-Aime saying Nintendo was the only company that holds on to the tradition of gaming. Well, certainly, I can't remember the tradition of gaming being waving your arms at your tv, as if you were doing gymnastics.

Of course, Red Steel, the new Ubisoft-game that uses the Revo-controller in a very, I like to call it flashy, way, will rock the gameworld. Let me tell you something. I think even the first FIFA-game rocked the world back in '94. Now, it's considered as routine, as a standard product that you can rely on as much as you can rely on a toaster to toast your bread. My point being? Revolution will do great in the first couple of months but eventually everything will ease down and all will come down to the same as the current generation. Third party will choose for the easy way and will rely on their franchises. They won't put money on gambling with an original Revogame than to gain certain richness with a currently strong franchise. Nintendo will lose all the third party support after a year or two because of the sucky graphics compared to the other systems and the tale can start all over again. What's Reggie going to brag then? Buy a DS Lite 2 or I'll break your fucking legs? I don't think so.

The best bet for Nintendo in the next-next generation is to develop something that can equal the graphical power of the Sony en Microsoft machines AND add an original element to the project. History has proven that certainty is greatly appreciated in this industry and if there's one thing that the thing called codename Revolution does not have to offer it is certainty. It's a very huge gamble that can go terribly wrong like the GameCube went terribly wrong after the biggest developers played out their aces (frankly, what really good games came out after The Wind Waker apart from Resident Evil 4?). If Nintendo is still doing consoles after the next generation (which I will seriously doubt, remember Sega), they know what they have to do.

I'd rather see them focussing on the handheldbusiness and making excellent games though. It's what they are good at. Really good. Console business is out of their hands at the moment. It must be tough to see how you get stripped from your monopoly in less than 10 years but it is how it is I guess. It's time for Nintendo to accept that and to carry on, doing what they do best. And they need to do it fast. Like in four years fast. Desperately fast.

Materia Slut

2006-03-18T14:08:00.000+01:00

Since I stopped writing for PlayStage, things eased down a little. It is only now, two weeks after I said goobye, that I realise how much time I poured in that site. Sure, there are people who even did more than I ever will do but still, I think I spent too much time on the thing. On the other hand, I really miss writing about games. It was like a part of me. It was cool to really knock down bad games and discuss with other people about the textst I wrote and the arguments I put forward. And then there's the saviour of writing a good text and putting it in the Q. It's all over now, and I miss it.

Yet, I'm too stubborn to return and to admit that I acted very impulsive again when the TEN-storm came around. The struggle around TEN vanished as quickly as it appeared and things are turning back to normal at PlayStage. People get friendly again and the cushyness is flowing thorugh the veins as it used to be. Since Giel made his return, the forum is again alive and kicking. It even sparkles that much that long though dead members came back around. It's nice to see that something is working out. Since I miss writing about games so much, I figure that I will have to bug my blogreaders with a couple of thoughts about the latest games. So off we go.

Oblivion is coming this week! That's reason enough to quit blogging, buy an HDTV and food for, let's say, a couple of months and lock myself into my room. This game is gonna rock everybody's socks off. I hope it does, it looks really awesome and you can ride a horse for fuck sake. It must be since Barbie's Great Pony Adventure that you were able to ride a horse in a videogame. I think it's an essential part of a game that takes place in a fantasy setting. Everybody talks about the knights, the wizards and witches, the spells but I simply can't see why everybody always forgets the horse. I mean the horse, the car of the Medieval times. Well, I'll be looking forward to Wednseday when I can beat the shit out of an Imperial officer and then run away with his horse. Hell, I even may tie him to the back of it. Roman style!

Another game that is generally highly (evolved!! - The Vines) anticipated is the next part in the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy XII will desperately try to innovate the series and although that shouldn't be a really bad thing, I have strong doubts about it. Innovating isn't a bad idea but if your serie has one of the best gameplayformulas out there, I'd rather stick with never change a winning formula. FFXII doesn't look like FF anymore and that's a major bummer. Although the wicked Prelude manages to let shivers run over my back everytime I hear it, I think I'll need to adapt a lot if I'm going to enjoy this game. As somebody (the person wants to stay anonymous) mentioned this morning: I'm a Materia Slut and I don't think that's going to change very soon.

Felt like going to the toilet when the need is at it highest...

Headshot

2006-03-16T20:52:00.000+01:00

This night, something really odd happened to me. At least, I guess it happened to me. I'm not very sure about it. It could as well have a very scientific explanation. Some sort of twisted ear (it was hurting this morning so that could be the explanation) or some pheromones that took a hold of my brains. Yet, I believe in dreams and I don't want to take them lightly. I never did. So what the hell happened to me this night. Well, I got killed.

That's not the first time though, as a kid I often had nightmares about weird creatures that were chasing me down and in the end had me as lunch. But then that would be the end, I would wake up with a start, heavily breathing and sweating. I would look around quickly and I would realise it was only a dream and I would grasp my pillow, thank the world and fall asleep again. But this time, I experienced death (if living guy can do that) in very weird and odd way. I died, but it didn't stop there. I saw myself floating and I saw my killer (or killers, I don't remember) leaving the place. And then, all suddenly faded away and I woke up.

I'm in a dark place, the only light that shines through the room (is it a room, I can't remember, it might as well be an undefined space) comes from my PSP. I know it sounds very weird but it it's the one and only thing I've dreamt and I'm really determined to know what it signifies. I hear footsteps and I'm desperately finding a way too save my game. I can't find it and I'm starting to freak out a little. The door (so there must be a room) bursts open and I see a black man, well, he's wearing a black suit anyway. He carries a gun. A big one too, the kind of gun that you get thrown away by the impact of a shot. Without speaking, we agree that I can save my game first and after that he will kill me. I'm not scared anymore and I search for the savefunction with all the ease in the world.

I put my PSP down, switch it off and I lay down on the ground. Without hesitating the person puts the gun to the side of my head and pulls the trigger. Boom. Headshot. And that's when I normally wake up. But I didn't. I really could feel the bullet entering my brains and destroying everything inside. Seconds after the shot had been fired, I heard that zooming sound, like you put something in vacuüm. It was like my face was pulled into vacuüm. Very weird experience indeed, especially when I, after I virtually died, could see myself floating outside my body. Maybe there is a God after all, somebody tried to convince me. I'm still not too keen on religion and all the mikmak that surrounds it but I have to admit this was one of the most mystical experiences in my life. And I hope it never happens again...

Reinventing The Body

2006-03-07T21:31:00.000+01:00

My back hurts like hell. I cursed the damn benches at the Pi-Nuts (my tuesdaynoon cafe). And I quit PlayStage. Well, I didn't really quit it, I just won't write anything for the site anymore. I still don't know what drove me to the point of quitting. TEN obviously was the incent but I think there is more to it than just TEN. Maybe I'll figure out sooner or later, somewhere I can't get rid of the idea that the real reason is slumbering in my soul but that I'm too afraid to reveal it to the world. I'm scared for no apparent reason.

In any case, I called it a day as a PlayStage-writer. In my opinion, the site is doomed to crash sooner or later. Again, it's a strange thing for me to say because I have always been a great defender of the site. When Squall and Giel left the site, I was pretty pissed off. And now I'm doing the same thing. Could it be that they, sooner than me, saw that PlayStage wasn't going to work. Or is it once again just me?

Everyone does think I don't feel bad about leaving it because I left it without making a lot of noise. It's not because you get out gently, without disturbing most persons around you, that you don't feel bad about your decision. But I'm a man of the ratio, of the Illumination. And not the kind of Rousseau Illumination. Rousseau was, according to my teachers, the kind of man that went into things at the time being. When Voltaire, Locke and Montesquieu were certain a man could only be led to happiness by his mind (a thought that they shared with old Ancient philosophers, like Plato), Rousseau crashed the party by stating that emotions should be considered more seriously than ratio. Expelled by the other philosophers, Rousseau hung on to his ideas and he became very famous with it. The question stays though: did he become famous because of his own proper ideas or did he become famous because he disagreed with the men who introduced the Modern World and the valours like we know them nowadays? Rousseau was a fool in my opinion.

Believe me, if I had followed my emotions more than my mind in my life, I know I wouldn't be half as happy as I am know. People who understand this, clearly know me well, people who don't, don't. But it's nothing to be ashamed of. So I followed my brains and neurotransmitters and all the other bloody things that are swimming in my head like worms. Sometimes you wish you didn't have worms, you were just a puppet who is only able to take orders and execute them with excellent perfection. Sometimes, a man should be happy as he is given the opportunity to live in 1984. Sometimes, ignorance is really bliss.

I thought too much lately and it made me sick of thinking. You noticed that I didn't blog for a couple of weeks and that was because I was sure blogging was a dangerous thing. All the stuff you normally think about for a short period and at which you don't attach a lot of importance, you write them down. And you start to think about them and then you end up spoiling useless information about philosophers. It's kind of dangerous, a blog learns you to know yourself. In every aspect. You see the small edges that have been created by your character and you start to hate yourself about them. Yet, you can't do anything about it because that is simply the person that you are. And no matter how many people would want to see your personality changed, it all ain't that easy.

People who now still think I haven't thought about leaving PlayStage and I left it in an urge, or still think I'm a coward, I pity them. Not in the way Mr. T pities people, but real pity. Because that means they haven't understood a word from what I wrote and they probably didn't understand a word from all the blogposts I wrote so far. Pityful. God or Mr. T would add mortals to that. Good thing they don't exist. Everybody dies in the end. And when you die, your dreams die with you. But could it be that your dreams die faster than your body? It could very well be in my opinion. I experienced it about a month ago, when Giel left PlayStage for the first time. I was taken aback, frustrated and sure to kill him if he ever showed his face again. Well, he did and he's still alive so guess that makes me an arrogant, exagerating prick. I hope I'm not, although I'm not very sure. I find it difficult to deal with reality at times. Specially when reality isn't going the way I wanted it to go. I go into a Spanish fury and start to write all crazy stuff. A Better Bomb is an example of such a thing, and it probably should be removed but in a way I like it. It shows me the way I am, it shows one of those little edges I talked about before. Frightening, yes, but real, yes again.

When I came back to my senses, I was sure to do everything to keep PlayStage on track. I promised we'd do it for Giel, cause he deserved it after all the years of hard work. Stupidly enough, I made a stupid childish topic in which we all declared our foolishness that men know as courage. We thought we were Eomer's army as we shouted as one man: 'For Giel'. Foolish creatures we were, yes. We took the site to a higher level for about two weeks, mainly going on courage and adrenaline. Then people got tired, me as well but I still was enthusiasitic about it. Suddenly, everybody slipped away and when TEN came around, I know I had seen the last of it. I was fed up. I was broken and I needed to get out.

So I decided for once to not go into a fury and just quietly leave the band. Like a stranger in the night. Well, I first put up the idea of closing PlayStage as soon as possible, in se when iPoC, a guy who is trying out, had been evaluated. That would keep PlayStage going for at least another two weeks. But then I wanted it to be over. It had to be done, it was finished. We had reached the edge of heaven. Too bad I am the only one who wants to see that. I'm still the only one who wants to see it. Everybody went into a rage like I sometimes go in a rage. Nobody's perfect but I think it's very amusing and almost ironic that, for the one time I could keep my calm, they paniced, eventhough they didn't show it. I told them it was no use and they really killed me in a verbal way. It's time to let the thoughts come out of my soul and write down why I decided to do away with it all so suddenly.

At one point in the conversation, everybody was pretty angry with me. Giel in particular. I didn't got it at all, he like left the building a long time ago to focus on his studies and I had no idea why he was like he was. Suddenly, he said the words that made me crumble before my computer and that made me decide it was over. "De For Giel-periode is al lang voorbij precies" Dat zei hij. Ik weet niet of het precies die woorden zijn die hij heeft gebruikt maar daar kwam het op neer. Het duurde even lang als een geweerschot, als een ster die valt of als een MSN-venster dat openspringt. Maar daar stond het zwart op wit. Respectloze woorden. He had no idea what I had done for him or what I would have done for him. No idea at all. And that's how my story really came to and end. I wrote my newsposts yesterday and thanked the visitors for their visits and then decided to do away with it. The others are trying to reanimate the body but I came to the conclusion and I realised I knew it for quite a while. But now I was certain about it. PlayStage is dead. Long live PlayStage...

The Calm

2006-03-05T09:25:00.000+01:00

Guys (or girls, I don't want to be a discriminating asshole) who played FFX will surely remember The Calm. FFX is voted number one game ever in Famitsu by the way, with FFVII following in second place. Weird yellow people, FFX can't even touch the ankles of FFVII. The Calm was the period of peace that the world lived in after the Summoner beat Sin. Come to think of it, that's a major spoiler but since only three people read these messages, I'm pretty sure I haven't spoiled anyone's fun. Or it would be that Giel suddenly got FF-fever and wanted to play all of them. Bad luck then.

This post hasn't anything to do about FFX (apart from the title). It's going to be about TEN once more. I think the next few days and weeks, TEN will become a popular topic in my and other people's blogs. In the previous post, I wasn't too happy with the coming of TEN. I couldn't stand the idea of the BeGN-members fabricating something new again and I turned down the offer of working there without ever taking it into account. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do. I spoke about it a lot with Giel, who clearly misses the writing of articles and the talking about games a lot, and I think he's up for the challenge. He thinks a lot more people will read our articles and maybe we can become famous and fuck somebody! Or was that Stoopid...

Since I had that very refreshing conversation with him, I've though about reconsidering and let PlayStage drop. Well, we wouldn't let it drop just like that, we would just give it a painless death. The short pain, it's maybe for the best of us all. Of course, if we join TEN, our freedom will be reduced a lot because there are simply working more members on TEN and because the guys from PlayStage are the real strangers. But I talked (boy, I must've talked quite a lot yesterday eve) about it with Primey, and he assured me the people that work on TEN are really nice guys who want to start all over again. And that's a nice thing in my opinion.

I don't like the whole not-focus-on-gaming idea at all but it isn't certain TEN is going to walk that road. Primey told me the focus would be on gaming, especially because all the members are gamefreaks, not filmfreaks or cardboard games freaks for that matter. Only when other qualified people are found who are interested in other topics than gaming, the site will be expanded with new material about different subjects. Although all will be in the same site and on the same forums, he assured me it would be pretty much two different teams who worked on two different parts of the site.

I always wanted people to read what I wrote and at PlayStage, it's pretty much as this blog. The people I know read it but I don't have to convince them anymore of my talents. They know I'm a good writer and they know my articles are fun to read (I'm sounding posh here, I know), at least sometimes. It's the fucking world who doens't seem to understand that PlayStage is a qualitybomb and so merging with a site that can fall back onto a great (that's the number not the kind) community isn't maybe that bad. If they treat us ok that is. Again, Primey assured me everyone at PlayStage (that's probably everyone except the databasers) would be able to get a job at TEN.

Dreamers get slaughtered nowadays. The world isn't like it used to be in context of work. It's not that you get into a job and that you're sure to make promotion in the same company and work on the same job forever. No, everything is projectbased nowadays and I feel that we finished the project PlayStage.be. Don't get me wrong, I had a fucking great time there and I would be more than happy to keep the great forum alive to not disappoint our (tiny) community but I feel like we reached the edge of heaven. We have come to a point where we can no longer grow, because we lack the talent of organiszation and especially, we don't have any big connections. TEN would change that but in my heart I'll always be a PlayStage-man. Our baby has to be killed, but it's body will be invested into something new. It may be not our baby, I think we will just be parents for it like we were to PlayStage. That may sound cruel, like we didn't care for PlayStage or something, but it sure is damn satisfying.

Perhaps Wednesday will bring some answers... (don't kill me for stealing that sentence, I just thought it suited very well)

A Better Bomb

2006-03-04T20:40:00.000+01:00

TEN, that's the name of the new site that will be terrorising the Belgian landscape soon. It's the abbreviation of The Entertainment Network. A really pathetic name if you ask me, but that's maybe because I don't feel too good about the site and the way it will be set up. Instead, The Evil Named should suit it better at the moment. Why do I have a problem with them? Well, first of all, we at PlayStage.be don't like other sites at all. We capture the crew and lock them away for good. And no beer, that's the worst thing. But apart from that, they try to rip away our crewmembers. They do ask it politely, but still, it's ripping...

Another problem that arises when I think about the name TEN (god, I already hate this name more than I hated BeGN and that means something, I tell you) is that they offered all the PlayStage members to come over and work our asses of on their project. We kindly passed on that one and we are still friends with the members of TEN. TEN is the evil conspiracy that is called Seppuku. He was not only the mastermind (well, apart from the master) behind the website BeGN, he also destroyed it. Kind of funny. Somewhere I hope it happens again. I'll have a good laugh then, because finally PlayStage would get a well deserved victory.

I treat the members of TEN like concurrents now. And I'm kind of hard in these things so they are almost enemies to me. They're foreign and I have an urgent need to extinct them. Like bugs. They crawl where you don't want them to crawl and right now, they are crawling in my backyard. Time to spray some death. As you may have noticed, I'm pretty angry with them. That's because they are not only bugs, they are bugs who think they will rule the gamelandscape in no time. They rely on competence. At least they think they do. Actually, they don't and quite frankly, I don't think they ever will.

They rely on connections. Somebody told me BeGN got big because of the great community. It's true that they had a very bad image because they were nailing all the toptitles down (a little bit like Edge but in a more unfashionable way). They got expelled by Nintendo and Microsoft and they got cursed from all over the Belgian gamelandscape. And further than that. There is a saying that negative publicity is the best you can get and I have to think there is a lot of truth in that one. Take Paris Hilton for instance. Okay, she has got money, like a bazillion dollars, but nobody really cared for her until she fucked somebody's husband on tape and half the world could see her take cum on her tiny tits. Same thing goes for BeGN, they got negative publicity and WHAM (*Last Christmas*, George Michael is found unconscious with drugs in Hyde Park, Jack the Ripper anyone?), half the world was knocking on their forumdoor because they were different. They weren't different. They just plain sucked, that was all.

And secondly, they got a lot of connections. It wasn't the quality of the texts that made them big, not the excellent community (it was more like a dickhead-community) but the fucking connections with the likes of Ali and the sponsorship of SLO. Good thing they don't exist anymore. Now TEN will hope that they will be able to rely on the connections they built up with BeGN but there is like a gap of fucking four years in which a lot changed. For instance, thousands of little sites tried to jump on the gametrain, forcing editors to put up hard barriers if you wanted to get a review copy. Take Electronic Arts for example, you need a fucking 3000 uniques a day to get some lousy review copies. That way, they ban the small sites. Good luck then for a site that has to start from scratch again... TEN won't be able to rely on the contacts they made as BeGN and they will very soon be sorry they even started a project at the time being. The market is full.

The co-operation of a friend of ours, really a local on our site, is the thing that bothers me the most. The guy is an excellent writer and he passed on a job in a friggin' magazine. It's like a once in a lifetime chance and he let it just slip away, like that. Because he believes in his dreams and wants to make something grand with Seppuku. Well, he certainly will make something grand the next few months. A grand mistake. The start of TEN has been a real sweep of motivation for PlayStage and the bomb is in our camp. The better bomb. We'll give them hell!

Green Machine

2006-02-17T02:10:00.000+01:00

I don't feel like sleeping although I am kind of tired. So since Squall suggested that my blog wouldn't be updated since I got the Xbox 360 he's wrong. The titel 'Green Machine' has two meanings by the way. You should have guessed by now that the first signification is about the Xbox 360, who was like the intent to write this post. And you should've also guessed that all my blogposts carry the title of a song I really like. This time Green Machine by Kyuss is the winner. It's a kind of weird song about some guy who has smoked too much dope than possibly can be healthy for him. He philosophises about evil and good, war and peace,... about the good stuff life has to offer.

The man rushes to his friend's aid, although he knows it's already too late. The dead body of his friend doens't touch the soil in a soft way, like you can see that in movies and kind. It justs falls, an fall that seems endelessly that gets broken by a dry noise. The body collapses to the floor and the man knows nothing can be done to revert time and safe his friend. Dust grabs around in the air when the head of the killed soldier arrives at its final resting place. The man looks at the heaven and he cries bitter tears. His friend is dead and he now knows he will never come back. Never.

It's like being dead and alive at the same time. It's like the heart has stopped pounding, yet it goes at hundred miles an hour. While the tears that only will cure the man instead of the friend fall at the earth, he realises that this is over. It's over, done, finito. It would never be the same again, ever, and he would not know if he could surmount the situation like it is at this very moment. Without any further logicl thoughts spinning around his mind, he turns around and leaves his dead buddy lying on the ground, blood dripping from the scars the Savage had left him.

While the man was walking to god knows what place, he realised there wasn't a god and thus his friend wouldn't be in very good hands. He tried to realise what it felt like to be devoured by the Savage but even only thinking about it, made him crumble from existential pain. Once again, his thoughts dwelled to the dream about his friend being cut in half by the Savage and he doing nothing about it. Or wasn't it a dream? Had it really happened in reality but hadn't he just accepted it? Had he something to be sorry for, for not rescuing his friend like any friend should have done? A vast look at his clothes who were stained with bloody sand, put him once again with two feet on the ground. His friend would never return. Never.

While thinking about it, the man tried not to get too sad too often but he simply didn't manage. He went completely mad at the idea his friend would never again smile, would never again hear his voice and would never again hear the giggles he used to like that much. In the end, the man goes really kneeled under the death of his friend and he decides to try and cope with the problem better than he has done before the past couple of years. Years. The pain just didn't go away. Never.

Never is a cruel word that can't be banished out of our lives, not even when we have reached the stage of death. When we are dead, it is highly certain we will never live again, we will never come back to this planet when the Savage takes us out of the world, as gratitude or as punishment, I won't tell. Nobody will. Never. In the end, the man decides to write everything down, everything he remembers about his friend and all the adventures they experiences together. He plans to write everything down 'till the day the Savage takes had taken his friend brutally away but he won't manage to make it that far.

Halfway the story, the man realises he's got nothing left to live for and he comes to the insight the Savage is willing to grant him gratitude for the fault he has made in this life. He grabs a knife and slits his wrists. Blood dripples down the floor. Out of his house, to the place where his fallen friend had been burried by the wind for many years now. And together they float outside the simian flock, guided by the hand of the Savage, to eternity and what lies beyond. And the guy will never finish his story. Never. But he didn't mind, he had finally found ultimate happiness.

Please note that this story is pure fiction and the characters appearing in it are illusions of the twisted mind of the author. Any similarity with existing persons is nothing more but a mere coincidence.

So Here We Are

2006-02-07T13:07:00.000+01:00

Don't worry, I won't start crapping about the Apocalypse this time. In fact, it's been a while since I mentioned that topic so you don't have nothing to complain about! Whiners! Now then, I don't really have a lot to say but I was kind of bored of waiting to leave for my final exam so I decided to write something. Anything. Joy.

So here we are. That's not only the songtitle of a song performed by Bloc Party, it is a fact that I'm here. Torture's over and so are the exams, or maybe they are just synonyms for the same devilish things. I went through a rough period, especially the last few days, considering everybody in my environment had already done away with their exams. At times, I felt like I was the only person in the world that still had to study. I knew that wasn't the case, but still, the rational thoughts couldn't evaporate the feeling I carried along for a week now.

I think I'm going to have a blackout soon. I don't know why but I just know it. I never had one, I think it's scary. It's like they pneumatic your brain and take some memories out. If those memories turned out to be various communicationmodels and scientists when you have an exam about these awful bloody topics soon, you know you are going to be in some trouble. I don't know if I'm mentally preparing for a second shot this way but it looks like it very much, I must admit.

I really don't care anyway. Yesterday, I said that I wanted to reach third grade as soon as possible. I was probably under influence because now I know that isn't true. I think I said it because my parents want me to reach third grade. I know that isn't the best motivation in the world but who knows, things will brighten up after the first year. After all, it sounds like that year is awfully rubbish in any direction and at times, I'm quite enjoying myself during the lessons. No, not in that way. There are like sevenhundred people watching you. Pervs!

Any way I'll be taking, I will reach The End. Maybe The End signifies graduation and finding a good job, having a wonderful life, children and dying on a bed of roses. Actually, I wouldn't want to die on a bed of roses because I would sneeze my last breath out, instead of normally breathing it out. One can only hope to die peacefully and when he understands that the chances of that are slim, he has taken a next step in the acceptation of The End. But maybe dying isn't really The End? I will not speak about this topic because there's so much to put for and against it and I'm running out of time. Maybe some other time.

The Point of Agony

2006-02-05T21:02:00.000+01:00

For all you World of Warcraft-haters out there, don't come near this piece of text! Or maybe, you want to come and join me in my mental journey through Azeroth. Horde (that's WoW-ish for hell), I may say some nasty things about the game. How about that for a change of season?

I used to be fond of the game. I used to play it till my head dropped near dead on my keyboard. I made sure that I was logged out before I did of course. Otherwise things could be not so good, especially if you are in an enemy infested area. Now why is this game so brilliant? I won't describe everything in detail because mainly, the people who will read this are WoW-players (Horde, addicts) and I would bore them to eternity with my explanation. In sucky English for crying out loud. The main reason that made World of Warcraft the BOMB (Horde, that was gay) for me was the social contact you had with other players. Everybody seemed to be friendly and everybody smiled. Of course they smiled, they were playing a game so it should be only just that they were feeling good. In short, World of Warcraft made you a part of a enormous world where everyone could interact with everyone. Everyone had a purpose. Everyone was happy. There was sometimes a lot of lag, but Horde, it was perfect.

That was how I felt about World of Warcraft until recently. With the upcoming exams that are almost over (2 days of torture left) at the time of writing, I was kind of 'forced' to take an Azeroth-break. If I hadn't made that (painful) decision, my year at college would've certainly gone down the drain. And I'm looking forward to third grade, so the sooner we arrive there, the better. No World of Warcraft. It was kind of hard to overcome the lack of onlineplay, especially when a friend of mine that hadn't played in a long time, started playing again. Horde, he wasn't playing, he was spreeing all the way!! So the urge to buy a pre-paid card was certainly there, so was the urge to zip my dad's VISA card out of his wallet but luckily for both me and my dad, I'm a trustworthy person.

We have this guild in World of Warcraft. It consists of people who speak Dutch. We have quite a guildhistory already, one which I'll save for another time because it isn't really the point. Well, today or yesterday (Horde, it doens't really matter) we started writing on a blank page. Again. Hand of the Nazgûl (don't complain to me about the name, I certainly didn't pick it) is no more because of the impatience of two pathetic losers who couldn't resist the temptation of suiting their high-level egos. God, that felt good. Buff pls!!

The two (names are placed under a non-disclosure agreement, I wouldn't want anyone to commit suicide) quitted the guild because they were invited by the another guild (with an even more ridiculous name, I know now. I mean Limited Editions, that's the überlaugh isn't it?) to go raid some high-level instances. And because they couldn't loot anything when they waren't part of the capitalismguild, they decided to betray all of their friends and just quit. Just like that. Boom like that. With one buttonclick. Actually you type /gquit but Horde, I want to make this a bit dramatic so buttonclick will work fine. They have to click their way in the other guild anyway.

So the utopia of the smiling World of Warcraft has changed a lot since I started playing. A lot of players on the servers have reached the ceiling of 60 and it seems like they can do anything then. Problem is most of those mofo's don't see the difference between real-life and ingame world anymore. I don't care if they bully me in the game. I usulally don't pay attention or ignore the commands but when people start tackling me in real-life just because they are level 60, some things are horribly wrong. I discovered World of Warcraft (or any social MMORPG) for that matter walks a very dangerous and thin line there.

Why are level 60 characters agitated and do they feel superior than other characters who just started their adventure. The most logical reason is probably forty level 60's can slay Ragnaros. Forty level sixes, that would've been Ragnaros' aperitive. Just like in the advertisement for Sandeman Porto. You see the Lord of Fire sitting at a table and on his plate he has some rogues, warlocks and warriors, all dressed in trash armor. Lady Onyxia arrives late and after they have greeted each other (they don't shake hands, they just breathe fire), Onyxia apologies for being late. Ragnaros blows some bolts at the plate and disgests the characters on it. Fryed, that's the way he likes them. With an outrageous voice he would answer. Don't worry, I was having an aperitive. After that sentence instead of horrible Mr Sleepy music, he spits out some skeletons. Might make good money on AH, he added.

So obviously, slaying high-level bosses can't be the reason. Maybe the 60's are bored and then it's Blizzards fault. But I can't imagine that either, there is such an awful lot to do when you've become a 60 that doesn't involve instances. I think. I'm not a 60 myself but I guess Blizzard has played smart and didn't focus everything around the instances. If they did, well, then they are to blame and I would kick them. Litterally. Another charge where they are certainly guilty of that contribute to the end game sickness, is the unlimited amount of guilds. When there are 10000 players, there can be technically around 1000 guilds, which isn't a good thing. Cutting the number of guilds down would enhance the fun at later times in the game because in any guild you join, you will find some people of your level and the crappy sixties won't have to whine about going to ZG and getting some fucking Twin Blades. World of Warcraft gets sour near the end, it is time for the Burning Crusade to come around...

In total, we could say that our guild has perished by the lack of patience (and intelligence but don't tell them that) of the 60's. Or maybe they were stolen by some promising high-level instance guild, who hasn't proved anything to date. But still anybody goes there. And why? Because they underlined the teamplay and not the search for individual epics, even though that's the thing everybody's looking for. I give them a couple of weeks before they perish themselves...

Disparaging

2006-02-03T11:28:00.000+01:00

This morning, I had a rather interesting conversation with my girlfriend. No, don't freak out right now! We're still cool and we are not going to split up or it isn't that anything bad happened. It led me (again) to think about some problems that won't occur in the next few years but will certainly be present afterwards. The topic, on which we definitely had another opinion, was about work. You know, professional work. Earning money and stuff like that.

While the conversation passes on and on in my head, more and more questions that do not have a solution arise. You could start questioning about the fact you think about questions that don't have a solution. It's really nuts actually. But when you start thinking in that way, you will never know where it will end. You can continue endlessly, until the time has come that you have lost the count of how many times you questioned things that aren't to be questioned. When will we ever stop questioning?

I admit it, I stole that last sentence from a famous writer. Carrie Bradshaw. Perhaps most of you guys don't know her. She's the protagonist in the superb series Sex & The City and she is played by the marvellous Sarah-Jessica Parker. Yeah, I know this thingy is full of girly emotions and girlhumor and godforbid, gay people. But I really enjoyed watching it. It depicts people that are searching for true love so georgeously, in such a straight (well, except for the gays then) and honnest way, it should win the Nobel Prize for something. It is like a poem. I'm no fan of reading poetry. I think it's pointless to try and read the symbols of emotions of somebody you never knew. Trying to explain these symbols, is even more ridiculous.

Writing poetry on the other hand is one of the most wonderful arts mankind has ever acknowledged as art. The variety of wordcombinations to express the ultimate emotion you are feeling at the very moment of writing is so huge, it is almost unbelievable. And yet, some people don't manage to write down one single poem. How easy it may be, they just seem to freeze when they sit before a paper. It is simply unbelievable because no matter what you write, it is almost every time straight (except for gay people again) from the heart. And isn't that the most fabulous thing one can ever say?

Maybe it isn't and that's how we, in the end, live in a society where everything is based on merits. Some poets are estimated more highly than others. Same thing goes for, well, everything. Some brands are estimated more highly than others, some newspapers are estimated more highly than others... The weird thing that isn't totally right is that the more estimated things get some kind of qualitylabel, and with it, employees who work there earn hell a lot more of money. And there's the question whether you should choose a job that earns you a lot of money or just a job you like, even though it doens't pay that good.

The question that is lifted here is: "Do we even have a choice what job we are going to do?". The market is so overloaded with all kinds of people that you may be happy to have a job. Any job. Karen (yeah, that's the girlfriend I was talking about above) thinks that is certainly the fact. She doesn't care when she will be researching blood samples of retarded psychopaths instead of blood samples of a cancer patient all her life. I don't agree at all. When I will be starting my journalism career (hell, I may become a bank employee as well, I don't know), I'll be happy to write for a paper like Metro, although I think it's absolutely rubbish. But my careergoal would't just settle with that paper, I'd like to continue up the ladder and maybe, in the end, write for some big "quality" paper. Same thing goes for directors. I think they won't settle with their first jobs that'll probably involve directing commercials or popular TV-soaps. They'll be happy to do that at the very beginning of their career but I'm sure they also want to climb up higher. If that's disparaging, so be it, but where does it really stop?

Maybe Bradshaw had it right after all.

The Flood

2006-02-01T23:50:00.000+01:00

Something completely different now, a lot less important but then again more interesting to read I think. I think everybody knows the feeling of boredom. No, I don't think it, I'm fucking sure of it. Boredom. It makes you think and write crazy stuff like all the things I wrote down, starting last month. The time of exams are a very good example of a really boring time so that is why I started this blog. And even that's not true. For more details, I'd like to refer to my first post Hype. Bye.

Back to the present then. Boredom can be broken by all kinds of things but in my particular case new games and stuff surrounding that kind of entertainment always lighten up my day. Alas, God (good thing he doens't exist then) wasn't on my side (lousy mofo) and during the exams I received nothing although I tried desperately to get my hands on some of the newest stuff that was released. I bought Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time at eBay halfway through January. I calculated that it would be here by the time exams had started. Well, I knew the Force of Math wasn't strong with me so I miscalculated, resulting in the game arriving yesterday by airmail. That reminds me I should give some positive feedback to the seller, which was very understanding when payment couldn't be made by the regular means.

Another ace I was betting on to arrive during exams and that would've certainly nuked my year was the Xbox 360. Yes, the console that was sold out faster than Jessica Alba (voted most sexy woman of the year) only wearing a thong. Maybe I overdid it a little but hell, it was sold out pretty fast. After having runned the legs from my tired body, I pre-ordered the console at Microsoft's. Moeha, it would even get me two free games and one year Xbox Live! for free. They told me the thing would arrive in January. Roughly taken, one could say that 15th of January is a nice average for January. I hadn't started my exams then and I would be able to play it a bit and it would entertain me during blockbreaks. Alas, God must really hate me because at time of writing, the box hasn't arrived and I silently think captain Nemo has sunken the cargo that would ship the 360's from America to Europe.

Do you know Murphy? Squall certainly does. The guy (Murphy) even got his name eternified (if that's an actual verb) in the movie Squall made for school: Anima, which I really loved and which the critics in his school didn't love. Weird guys. They really teared the movie of another friend of mine apart. They wrecked it. Okay, it was a bit cliché but I had a good laugh with it anyway. Ah well, they'll improve their game, I'm sure of it. Back to Murphy, where all misery started. Well, Murphy has showed his little, not-so cute (read: evil) face in my life and he arranged it so that Mario & Luigi and the Xbox 360 would arrive around the fucking same time. In addition to that, Nadeo has announced that Trackmania Nations will be a Electronic Sport World Cup event and that anyone can participate in the preliminaries. I'm taking a shot at it and guess what, it consumes time like hell.

Speak about hell. When the exams are completely done, (three down, one to go at the moment) I should start playing World of Warcraft again. ZOMFG, the words have fallen. The world will perish and this blog will be doomed. And that's not enough, people are now cursing me and the next fifteen generations that still have to come. Sorry great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great *STOP IT* -grandchildren, I could not help it. Guys, come on it is only a game. Get over it, FREAKS!

The problem with all this is the fact I can't find time to play it all. I have a solution worked out for Mario & Luigi. Playing at night will become the only option and the results of that are not too good. I will look like the zombie you used to shoot in the arcade halls. House of the Dead one till thirtyseven. They don't make games like those anymore. Good thing, otherwise I should buy those as well and I still have to get my hands on Psychonauts, Shadow of the Colossus, ICO and oh my god Torino 2006: The Official Game of the Winter Olympics. I'm drowning.

We're Taking Over This Town

2006-02-01T23:34:00.000+01:00

Today my exam sociology asked the most of my poor brain but that same poor brain managed to keep up with the exam pretty easily. Probably it was an easy exam or maybe there is something wrong with my sense of judging things. Yeah, it could be very well be that my mind sometimes just loses it and that other things take control of me. I last experienced that while listening to Cowboys From Hell by Pantera. Without a warning, I suddenly got stuck in some kind of maniacal trance and I was shouting the aggressive text along with the leadsinger. I really felt like smashing something but I realised that, when I would've smashed my Strat (yes, I have one of those as well, now bow!), that would've been a very expensive trance. Apart from some bizarre looks from my family members a few minutes later, it let me to think about why a human being suddenly loses all control of his body and has to do something he just can't resist.

I haven't found an answer since so I decided to let drop the subject. I should, however, start thinking about it again, because it is very important. If one would be able to supress the urge of doing something he can't fully explain, I think life would be a lot more pleasurable. At least my life would be. I always have the urge to start arguing with people about subjects that cannot be argued about. Even when somebody tells me to just let it drop, I have to place a sharp reply that only will result in more arguing. I should stop doing that, but I can't. I don't know why, but I simply can't. So I should figure out soon how I can stop my trance-experiences, but at the time being, I simply don't know how and even if I want to make it stop. I feel very relieved after such an attack and I can't supress the feeling that I would miss them, once I banished them from my life...

Fear of the Dark

2006-01-28T18:00:00.000+01:00

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote. It's not that my life has taken a complete 180-degree turn but it has definitely changed a lot. And it didn't even happen because I wanted it to happen, it just happened because of the (wise) decisions of someone else. I'm happy I didn't wrote something about those events the same evening, because I would have pissed off some people pretty much and I would've taken decisions I didn't want to take. But I would've taken them anyway, out of anger, out of disrespect or maybe out of selfpity. I really don't know what feelings circulated in my body at that time and I'd rather not talk about it again.

What has happened then that made such a backspin on my life? Well, it was an event I never suspected to happen. I'd reckoned the Apocalypse would've come sooner than that guy leaving the band of jolly writers. But he did and he had good reasons for it as well. At least, that's what I'm saying now, a few moments after he told us he was quitting, I was in a temporary state of maniacism. I swear by God (good thing he doens't exist then) I would've ripped his eyeballs out. Just because of the anger and pain, I guess. Now I know that would've been the stupid thing to do and luckily he wasn't around so I didn't kill him. Nor wounded him badly. Humans must learn to put some events straight and be able to walk on, even if they suffer a hard blow to the back of the head. Or in the stomach, for that matter.

Now that The Nameless has left the building, there is an urgent need of motivation. Everyone, including myself, was thunderstruck by the news and suddenly, time jumped from one side of the continuüm to the other. The show had to go on. Again, that's what I think now, at the moment I was sure this was the not-so gorgeous end of a great time in my life. I actually had thought about quitting the writingparadise before but some people I greatly respect managed to keep me. And I know now, it is where I belong. When I and a guy I respect the most in the whole world started up this thing five years ago, it was really rubbish. Now, it's not so rubbish anymore. It's quite good in fact. Quite good, yeah.

The crew was walking a bit in circles the last few days and somebody had to do the work of The Nameless. That guy did so much behind-the-screens work we never fully realised how valuable he was. Like The Counting Crows once sang: "Oh, it always seems to go that you don't know what you got 'till it's gone". Although I never quite got the point of the big yellow taxi in the song, there is a lot of truth in that sentence. PR, organising deadlines for all of us, thinking about ways to make the writingparadise even more paradisiac, he was one of the best. Nah, he was the best actually, I jumped to that conclusion by now.

But as I said earlier, the show must go on. We don't really know where the show will take us in the end but we will make sure the writingparadise is going to live 'till the end of time. That may be never, that may be soon. We don't know. It's quite scary actually. It's like you are driving on a track over a bridge that has lost its greatest support recently. Passengers look through the windows, only to see a great edge of a cliff where they possibly could fall from... if the train hadn't had a good driver. Well, let's hope we are on that kind of track with those kind of drivers and we'll be just fine. And who knows, one day, somebody ough to repair the bridge so it's safe again. And when it's safe again, we will be able to ride through dark and unknown tunnels once more.

Spearhead

2006-01-23T13:20:00.000+01:00

I always have considered Sundays as a day of rest so that's the reason there wasn't a post yesterday. Not that I'm planning to update my blog every day, but on Sundays there is absolutely no way you will ever find something new. Or the Apocalypse should come that day, perhaps I'd write about it then. If it would give me enough time, at least. I ain't a very fast typer so perhaps I would be killed before I could even type the word in this little window. That would be one fucked up way to die, smashed under some kind of meteor with proportions the Great Sea can only dream of.

Because I don't write Sundays, that doens't have to mean there happens nothing interesting on Sunday. I usually eat croissants in the morning, not that it is interesting, it is just tasty, in particular when you put a big piece of chocolate between the two buttered halfs. And then I take my bath. I could make a whole blogpost about taking a bath. I think it is one of the most relaxing experiences a human being can have. A bath with some baby-oil for a soft skin and some herbs with wonderful aromas... ah don't get me started on it. In fact, I was going to make a blogpost about bathing yesterday but then I realised it was Sunday, so I shouldn't do any work at all. When I'm taking a bath I have the urge to think about all kinds of things. It's weird what things tumble into my mind when I'm lying in the water. Putting on some ambient music can even enhance the effect of relaxation. Maybe you think I'm one of those Neo-Buddha guys who love to do yoga and eat nothing but grass. I'm not. I just think when you have a problem you don't see a solution to immediately, just take a bath and wash everything away.

After bathing the real problems started to occur. I sat behind my desk and I was trying to learn all the political views by heart when sudden headache struck me... in the head. I had no idea at all what was going on, I never felt like that before in my entire life. At first, I thought I was suffering from some kind of brainbleeding but I remembered clearly as hell first thing you do then, is faint. And I didn't felt like fainting at all, I just had an amazing headache. Lying down on the bed made me feel much better but as soon as I even tried to get up the invisible fists where killing me again. Eventually, the headache stopped and I was able to continue my study.

I wondered what the hell happened and I am still wondering. There is probably a perfect scientifical explanation for it which I do not know because I don't study to become a doctor. Still, I refuse to believe this just happened by accident. Nothing happens accidentally in my opinion. If the trucker that killed my grandmother hadn't been searching for some kind of map, she would still be alive. Yet, it is stupid to think about it. It has no use, what has happened, happened and it happened with a meaning. It was just that the old lady's time had come, nothing more nothing less. That may sound harsh but when I die tomorrow because of somebody elses fault, I won't worry too much about it. Yes, I'm afraid to die but when it happens, it know that it was meant to be.

Same thing goes for love I think. When two people fall in love with each other that isn't because some bloody pheromons took control over their bodies and made them do things they didn't want to do, no, it just happened because it was meant to be. Something (I won't say God because there isn't such a thing like a God) has drawn the lines of life and when you aren't happy to walk those lines, there is no other solution but to leave. And at the end of the line, there isn't another solution but to leave as well. An interesting movie about this is Lola Rennt, an experimental German movie I should recommend to anyone. Maybe I'll write something about it once, but I'm not that good at writing about movies so maybe I won't. Time will tell, purpose will tell.

I was planning to write more about the Thugnotspear I received yesterday, but my thoughts have taken a different turn somewhere and we ended up with determinism. Maybe that was meant to be as well? I don't know (I don't know how many times I have said that in this post, it is just a fact humanity knows nothing and there isn't anything worth knowing). Just a little thing about the spear then. It is made of wood and it is supposed to be made by the Thugnottribe that lives in reserves in Brazil. It doens't look authentic though and I guess the label industrial is more appropriate than indian. But it is one of the first gifts from him since my grandmother died I really appreciate. I like the spear a lot and although I haven't got any space to nail it to the wall of my room, I know I will keep it for a long time. It makes me feel secure in a way. I don't like the idea of my brother having the same spear but his will probably be broken in a day or two. I dare bet on it.

A Link to the Past

2006-01-21T17:10:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been already a day since I started this thing up. Time goes much too fast for me, I guess it goes as fast for everyone but I in particular experience it as überfast. That's probably because I have a lot of things on my mind at the moment and I haven't enough time to cope with them all. And then there will be periods where boredom is going to be introduced in my life and then there'll be too much time. The world is a strange place and sometimes I think it's really evil, it hates you. It's just probably me.

Anyway, I didn't start this post because of the fact I'm already sure that this is a good way to cope with different feelings at the same time. I still am not convinced that this is really going to work but I must admit that I often checked if somebody had read my ideas and when they did, I asked them what they thought about it. Sometimes, curiosity is just getting the upper hand on me. While Chimaira are drumming and soloing their asses out of my speakers, I'm trying to tweak some things here. For instance, I added some very nice links (well, the maybe you think the links themselves are rubbish but the content is indeniably great) to some blogs I really love reading. So when you think I'm the top of the bill, go check out the skills of those guys, they kick my ass anytime. I also added a link to PlayStage, thé leading site when it come to laughing your ass of in combination with information about the latest games and to Last.fm, a site that keeps track of the music you are listening to. It also gives you recommends and it is highly recommended for any musicfan. If you want to read The Azerty Complot and PlayStage though, you may want to learn Dutch first, otherwise, you won't understand what the hell it's saying. Hey, maybe it even taunts you!

While I'm writing all of this, my fingers are slowly turning into frozen meatsticks. It's cold as hell. I used to like the cold in the past. In fact, I still love it, I just don't experience it anymore in a pleasurable way. I remember those cold winter days (cold summer days would sound kind of awkward) when I was at the seaside with my grandparents. They would take me for a stroll, but not before they made sure I was half choked by my (horrible orange!) scarf and ditto coat. I may have caught a cold! We would walk along the seaside and I loved to jump around the walls that divided the seaside from the big apartment blocks. When there was a huge gap, my grandfather would pick me up and place me on the other side of the wall so I could continue what I then called 'My Great Journey'. I don't walk walls anymore, mainly because they got too small for me to balance on and it also is kind of ridiculous to see an eighteen year old guy jump walls. But with the disparation of my strange love for wallstrolling, my love for the cold always stayed with me. I should go to the seaside soon, putting some things straight.

It's really irritating to sit inside the house while outside, the cold is present everywhere. I tried to study some politics today but it wasn't that much of a success. I shoud have completed three chapters and only got halfway through the second, which is unfortunately one of the hardest chapters ever. I can't even recall the final chapter of Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince being that hard, although the ending wasn't really soft either. Continuing here would result in a lot of spoilers but I just thought this was a nice way of defining how hard it is to study fucking politics. Studying how politics work and how other people think about it actually make you feel more like an anarch. At times, I just wanted to run through the streets, yelling "Fuck the System!" (and David Easton while you are at it) at every amazed pedestrian that passed by.

So instead of studying, I took my bike and went for a ride through the cold afternoon. The fresh air that greets you warmly when it floats via your nose through your brains is wonderful and when you have finally put your bike back in the garage, you feel like a new person. I won't say this gets as good as an orgasm (it is something that the so called icebears try to convince you of, and when they say that I really wonder if it's the extreme cold that twisted their brains or if it's just the fact their sexlife is horrific) but it definitely boosts you up when you have seen it all for a while...

Hype

2006-01-20T11:09:00.000+01:00

Yooo gamers! Then again, maybe you aren't a gamer at all. It actually doesn't really matter whether you are a gamer or not, all that you should remember is that I am one. And they are a weird breed indeed, those snuffed out guys with cruckled shirts and thick glasses and, godforbid, spiky hair! Anyway, if you haven't already left this page and are in fact still reading it carefully, I'll have lot's of things to offer you, even for a gamer. I think.

You see, I convinced myself to never, ever until the trumpets of eternal damnation would sound, write a blog. And still I did. Does that make me liar, then? It probably does. Or maybe I just don't believe that the trumpets of eternal damnation will ever sound. In any case, the fact is that I started a blog and the fact is that it has a lot of meanings. A blog with a meaning, you don't see those often these days anymore! And that's exactly my point of writing a blog. Actually, I will not write a blog, I will TRY to write a blog. There may be only only one word of difference in those sentences but one word of difference, CAN make a whole lot of difference. The most famous example of that is probably Shakespeare who once, way way back, wrote: "To be or not to be, that's the question." Apart from the "that's the question-part" there's only one word of difference in the sentence and it makes a whole lot of difference in the context. To live or not to live. To die or to be alive, hell yeah, it makes a lot of difference in my opinion. But this isn't going anywhere, I think. It's not my intention to philospohise about life or death, or the relation between the two. It's not the intention to philosophise at all.

*enters readersmode* Then what IS the intention you lousy cocksucker?! I mean, I'm reading this crap about Shakespeare, life, death, philosophising,... What's next? *exits readersmode* The real point of me trying (mind the word!) to write a blog is to become ruler of the world. No, that's wrong, that's somebody else's intention of writing a blog. Seriously, this writing or no less or no more than a simple social experiment I want to conduct. Being a wonderful student in Political & Social Sciences, it is nothing more but my duty to provide useful information to the kind of people who only trust information they gathered themselves (hence, scientists). But I don't do this because I feel like it's my duty! Fuck duties! I do this because I really want to know what goes around in writing a blog. And I betted with one of my friends as well, but that's not relevant here. Is this bloggy-thing really some kind of new way of communication with one another? Or is it nothing more but a hype (at last, the signification of the title, hurray!), a bunch of people who think they are gifted by God with excellent skills of writing and put on duty to bore mankind with texts nobody wants to read, but still reads them. I told them to fuck duties but I'm (trying) to write a blog, so they didn't listen to me.

What I am really trying to find out is if a blog can help you cope with problems you can't cope with. Does a blog have some kind of anger-management function or is it like some emotional kickback? So this means if blogging is nothing more than a simple hype, it may very well be that is the only post that ever has the honour to suit my template. I hope it isn't the case because this was really a big waste of time then, was it? No, it wasn't because I then could make sure we are talking hype bigtime here and then I could warn all of humanity not to put their time in it becasue it is only a hype. Perhaps, if it turns out that I was right, I will be seen like some kind of Messias and then I could tell people that Electronic Arts is a hype and they will be out of business in no time. I would look forward to it, no offense EA.

But I don't believe none of the clauses until I will have prooved them right or wrong. After all, I'm nothing more than a scientist. So, maybe I'll see you next time, maybe I won't see you next time. Time and hypishness (what a word) will tell the word of truth. A long forgotten, shattered truth. Cheers! To truth!

PS : I also try to be funny and stuff (which I know I will never succeed at, but hell, walk on, I rock!)