The Escapist Expo!

   So Nathalie and I have booked our tickets to the Escapist Expo! Crazy excited about this one. Go to www.escapistmagazine.com to book yourself some tickets, takes place in North Carolina!

   Not much else to say today, this is my last night in Salerno, Afghanistan. Tomorrow begins my 5 day trip back to Fort Bragg North Carolina where I take some much needed R and R and prepare to leave the army.

   Lastly on the gaming front, I finished off Dark Souls. 1000GS in the bag, next up is the completion of my copy of SSX!

   Talk to you all you followers once I'm back stateside! PEACE OUT AFGHANISTAN! HELLO STATES!

-BP

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I have a idea, lets make the same game!

    So just going to make a quick post. What is with gaming companies lately and just rehashing the exact same game! We've seen it a lot folks, but allow me to bring to your attention our two culprits for the day. Dead Rising 2: Off The Record and Prototype 2, both of which are newer titles, both of which got a lot of hype and both of which are just attempts to cash in more money on the same game.

Now lets start with Dead Rising. The idea behind this title is that its a re imagining of the original Dead Rising 2. They wanted to tell the story of what if Frank West was at this scene instead of Chuck Green. Alright on paper that sounds like a good idea. I also wont try to hide the fact that I was pretty excited by this concept. I pictured scenes of Frank West going into areas Chuck never got to go and us as the audience getting to see that Frank was there the whole time working to help Chuck! This is not what we got, we got a game where they pretended Chuck went crazy and we play out a story that basically doesn't happen in the Dead Rising canon. to top all of this off Frank West is running around all of the same areas that Chuck went. The exact same areas, which only a couple of items moved around to keep you guessing. To warrant this as a new game they re scripted a few characters to talk to Frank, threw in two new bosses and a new area. I bought it and about a hour in realize I basically wasted my money. I had already spent so much time on the original that I didn't care to go through this game more then once, even finishing it that one time was painful. Just a shameless attempt to cash in on a successful game.

The next culprit is even worse then Dead Rising 2, and is my current game I'm trying to play through. Prototype 2 had a ton of hype behind it, it was supposed to build upon what the original gave us. We were promised a great story in which our new lead character was trying to kill our old lead character. New powers, new areas, new story and new graphics all of it promised at some point. What we actually got was a game with one new power, the exact same area(new york city) as the first game and basically a plot that is a excuse to rewrite everything they already created. The graphics are rehashed, even the cut scenes are ass. The game is just a attempt to make a quick buck off the original game.

So as my heading says, I have a idea, lets make the same game! I swear that must be how these corporate meetings go.

-BP

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Dependency...

   So this will be a short post, just wanted to let anyone who is reading my blog that currently I have broken my computer. Well the cord that plugs the computer into the wall and I will not be able to get a new one until I get home from Afghanistan in sic days. So what this means is that I wont be able to post again until I finally get home.

   But this did get my thinking of how dependant I have become of my laptop. Everything I do is on my laptop since I don't have use my smart phone or tablet while deployed. This means checking my e-mail, twitter, face book and even just checked what songs I want to put on my Ipod shuffle for the gym is a impossible tasking for me. Its shocking how dependant I have become to a simple laptop, but that's the case. In the end I actually borrowed a friends laptop just to do this post. I have no idea how I would survived centuries ago before all this technology.

   On the gaming front I have completed my second play through on Dark Souls officially bringing me up to 885 points for it. I also picked up a copy of Prototype 2 to get started on, honestly was kind of stupid of me to get it at this point since I'm going home in less then a week. But this is one I expect to play more once I'm home.

   On the military front, we're officially prepared to go home. Everything has been mailed off and now I just kill my time playing games waiting for a airplane to take me home. This "easier" deployment was definitely harder then my combat deployment. I didn't realize dealing with such complete idiots for a whole year would take such a heavy toll on me. It also has taken a severe toll on my decision to currently stay in or get out. We'll see how that pans out once I'm home finally and able to hold my wife again.

   Well planning on writing another Geek Culture history soon, cant decide on a game like mine craft, or chapter two on the Star Wars situation. We'll see once I'm home and able to post.

-BP

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Weekend, Packing for Home

   So currently I am a soldier located on deployment to Afghanistan. Its been a tough year over here being away from my wife, family, friends and my true love which is gaming. I have found a few people here to play some Xbox with and a group of guys who enjoyed Magic The Gathering cards. I have ordered about five hundred dollars worth of comic book back story to get caught up on and spent my days perusing all that YouTube has to offer while leveling a hunter in World of Warcraft to level 85. Oh I did some military based work at some point also in there. You see while I am proud of the work I do, unlike a good number of my co-workers I do not let the fact I am a soldier define me. I am a husband, a gamer, a geek and damn talented at everything I enjoy doing. So this blog will be my way of expressing my opinions on the gaming news at large. I may have to expand it to multiple blogs for multiple gaming topics in the future, especially once my TERA Online podcast kicks up, but for now I will just separate everything by breaks.

 TERA Online, A Good MMO Launch? Impossible...

   Does anyone else feel awkward with all the mostly naked woman in this game? Just saying.

   Anyway TERA appears to be off to a good start and this has me even more excited to get involved in this amazing looking MMO. I've been tracking this MMO for years, but didn't want to ruin the experience for myself by jumping in headstrong early on Korean TERA, or KTERA as its known by the community. Sadly my situation of being deployed has kept me from experiencing the betas and head start that have come with the American version though. Right now I spend my time reading their forums and from what Ive seen, they have a lot of the same issues most MMO's have at launch, but their moving quickly to fix them.
   The first issue I noticed is there is a major server queue to log into a PVP server. This is a very large problem when the queue is a 2 hour wait and some people only have 2 hours to spare in their evenings. But fear not, tracking Emass's twitter feed, they are tracking these issues and beginning free server transfers beginning on April 30th to allow people to move to less densely populated servers. A rather nice fix considering this is still a issue for some people on SWTOR and the transfers have yet to launch.
   The second major issue that seems to be cropping up yet being resolved quickly is server bugs. There have been multiple server restarts, but they have a handle on it keeping the downtime to a minimal.
   Overall so far the launch doesn't appear to be going too poorly, yet the rest of the world wont be joining the preorder people for a few more days, so we'll see how it handles.
   Not much else to say on the topic til I get some hands on time myself...
   Once I return home expect there to be a TERA Online Podcast hosted by my wife and myself within days of us getting the game up and running, along with recorded game play on the YouTube channel we intend to start soon.
   Current plan is to go to the Arachnea Server.

Xbox draught season has begun, luckily I've been out of the loop...

   Whats there to say about our favorite little console. There isn't much coming out or new on its way as is the normal situation presented every summer season for console gaming. Without any big holiday's there is no real incentive for the parents to buy the games for their children. Plus in the day and age of a video screen everywhere you turn, more and more parents want their children outside. So I might as well talk about the games I'm playing catch up since I was deployed and unable to enjoy when they launched.

   First off, I am insanely shocked that I'm enjoying Need For Speed the Run as much as I am. If you ever wanted to feel like Vin Deisel in a fast and furious movie, you need to play this game. The graphics are amazing and the story(yes the story in a racing game!) is right up there with plot behind Fast and the Furious. Now that means exactly how it sounds, don't expect anything insanely deep and meaningful from this game. Expect plenty of "I am amazing, look at my cars." Also the whole scene where you race down the mountain's in Colorado trying to stay ahead of the avalanche is simply stunning, yes something stunning in a racing game.

   Secondly there's Dark Souls, which is simply amazing, but I'll talk more about that in future post. The game has been out for close to half a year, a few more days before I say something wont matter. There will be YouTube videos of Dark Souls as soon as I get back home though.

In closing, I would like to thank Green Lantern

   In closing, I hope I can get more on track eventually and place a real goal to this blog, but as it stands I'll just rant about my adventures in gaming in general! Oh the new 52 is a awesome restart for most of the characters and yes there is milk in the fridge so I'm not picking some up on the way home from Afghanistan.

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Awkward Introductions

Hi I'm Ben and I'm a Gameaholic

      The first post of a new blog is always awkward, people come to your page through various means having no clue how they even go there. You try your hardest to accommodate them with explanations and guidelines, but it never gets the point across. So lets start at the beginning because I'm sure that no one reading this blog now has any idea who I am and in case you haven't read my title, I Game Therefore I Am.

     So the main reason I have created this is a place to rant and rave and go on about my many crazy ideas and projects my wife and I are creating and to rant about the gaming oriented news. I'm a very opinionated person and I like to speak my mind about pretty much all the gaming news I read up on while sitting at my desk in the US Military! If you enjoy reading a persons thoughts on random gaming news, or just want to see what t he latest podcast or video recording my wife and I do, check here!

     Now I typically intend to go on about some new news in the gaming world. Something that has been released recently, information or the such, but right now I'm just getting this blog kicking as I'm still in Afghanistan for a few more weeks and cant do much from here.

     First up on deck about mid may we will be launching a TERA Online Oriented Podcast, there seems to be a severe lack of Podcasts oriented to the newest MMO to hit the market and we both intend to hit this game at full force. We're also going to begin to record all our co-op sessions on Xbox games and post them on a Youtube channel! Someone should get a kick out of it, or at least enjoy the guides for what we're accomplishing. Either way we intend for this to be a fun ride for everyone!

As for right now I leave you with this screen I have been seeing a lot lately as I try and grind it for Xbox Achievements. Dark Souls....