Poll Results - How do you display your Xbox 360?

I'm sorry for the delay but sometimes life creeps up on you, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and just won't let go. I'm better now. Thank you! Here's the (belated) results of my last poll:

How do you display your Xbox 360?

Horizontal = 3 votes
Vertical = 0 votes
I don't have an Xbox 360 = 0 votes

I've displayed mine horizontal almost all of the time. There was an experimental period when I tried it vertical but it just didn't feel right. I wonder if Zenra's comment about it being a matter of age might have something to do with it. Or maybe it's all that advertising I see. They always have it vertical. It seems that younger people like it vertical and they're more susceptible to advertising than us jaded old folks.

I did have a sales clerk at Gamestop (a young one) tell me when I was buying a new Xbox 360 a while ago tell me to use it horizontal because standing it up on end was what was causing all the Red Rings of Death. Really? I got the RRoD on my first machine and I never stood it up. I guess that's the intelligence of today's youth for you.

The Wii on the other hand just doesn't look right when used horizontally. I don't know why, it just doesn't seem right that way. The PS2 could be done both ways and you could even swing the logo around on the front to match the way you had it set up. Maybe it's my history with the SNES and PS but I never considered playing the PS@ up on end either. It just never felt right. And there was not RRoD to worry about on that machine.

I guess it doesn't really matter how you display it, but how you play the games for the Xbox 360. As long as it works for you, you can be a backwards-stand-on-it's-end type of gamer . . . just remember to let me win.

New Poll - How do you display your Xbox 360?

So how do you like it? Horizontal? Vertical?

How do you display your Xbox 360?

Horizontal
Vertical
I don't have an Xbox 360

All right, now get your head out of the gutter and vote in my poll. sheesh.

Roll Results - Has Gears of War 3 been worth the wait?

So here's the results from my latest poll:

Has Gears of War 3 been worth the wait?

Absolutely YES! = 2 votes
I'm still thinking about it = 2 votes
I'm left disappointed = 0 votes
Hell no! = 2 votes

It actually took me a while to cast my own vote. At the time it came out I had had it with my friends. I couldn't listen to any more whining or bitching. About games or other gamers. I wanted the game but I didn't want to play it with my friends. I would have rather played with no headset and a bunch of strangers. But the call of my friends was too much and for the first week or so of the game's release I played with friends. Only every other night. One night to play. One night to take a break.

When I came to vote in my poll I knew it would be for one of two options, absolutely....or I'm still thinking. When I thought of the online play with friends I started to drift to the other two options. But then I had to stop myself and think. Am I rating playing with my friends or am I rating the game itself?

I voted based on the game itself (minus all the whining friends). And that vote was "Absolutely YES!". Even though I got off to a terrible start playing online that was more to do with getting irritated with players than with the mechanics of the game. If I looked only at the game, I was having fun. I guess that's why playing with strangers and no headset was nice.

I've played more often with my friends and for the most part it's been like how we use to play. Helping each other out. Calling out enemy positions. And working together as a team. That makes me feel so much better. We even worked together over several nights to beat Beast Mode on insane. It took planning and teamwork and we enjoyed every minute of it. (Except for two times when we got to the final round, had one guy left but ran out of time.) I now look forward to more matches with friends in this game.

As to those that voted "Hell no!" I want answers. Tell me why you don't like it.

I already heard from Evil Ric about it and he said it's just more of the same. When I pointed out that Call of Duty games are just more of the same too he said only Gears of War gets his blood pressure up. I actually thinks that's a compliment to the game. You have more invested with Gears so that little things make you angry. With Call of Duty it's ho hum.

No game is going to be perfect or appeal to everyone the same way. But, for me, there is something special about Gears of War. And now if I could just get through the campaign without dying all the time I might like the game even more (if that's possible). Of course I think I bumped up the difficulty thinking I was a Gears veteran so I can handle anything. Although it has been frustrating I'm glad that the third game in the series is still a tough fight and not a cake walk.

New Poll - Has Gears of War 3 been worth the wait?

I HAVE A NEW POLL!!!!

Has Gears of War 3 been worth the wait?

Absolutely YES!
I'm still thinking about it
I'm left disappointed
Hell no!

You have until October 1st to vote, so please do so!

When gamers get personal

There's no shortage of trash talking when you're playing a video game online. The gamer doesn't matter. The game doesn't matter. But I have noticed an interesting trend. And it has nothing to do with "yor momma".

I have friends that prefer one game over another. Some like Gears of War, other like Call of Duty. Some like both, but I think everyone has a preference of which one they would rather play. But sometimes you just want to play with friends no matter what game they're playing. So CoD fans will play GoW and vice versa.

Every now and then the trash talking against one game gets out of control. Everybody thinks their favorite game is much better than the other one. Gears has wall bouncers, glitchers, lag and what not. Call of Duty has care package glitches, host quitting, camping, lag and the like. Neither game is perfect but try telling that to my group of friends.

But here's the rub. With Gears the complaining gets personal.

Not with other gamers as much as with Cliff Bleszinski. Who's Cliffy B. you ask? He's the designer of Gears of War. It's his baby and he's not shy about that. If something funky goes wrong in the game my friends will gladly tell you how they feel about Cliffy B. If anything goes wrong it's his faulty . . . personally. If Cliffy B. took any of their comments seriously I don't think he would leave his house for fear of being butt rapped by a group of irate gamers.

But Call of Duty is no different to the whining and bitchfest that online gaming has become. You will still hear complaints from gamers about people camping around corners, lag switching (although in order for this to actually happen it will effect the whole team and not just one person) and spawn killing. But what you don't hear is gamers directing their complaints against one person at the companies who developed the games. Why is that?

Maybe it's because there are two different development houses that do the Call of Duty games. Infinity Ward and Treyarch. Gamers might know those company names and which ones developed which games in the series, but there really isn't anyone one person who stands out as the "face of Infinity Ward" or the "face of Treyarch". They're a no one big faceless company so complaining and bitching is done in the the general sense.

With Gears it's specific and direct. One man made Gears of War his personal vision of how a video game should be. And my friends are taking that literally. He's personally responsible for the games so he personally gets all the complaints directed at him (even if he never hears them).

It seems gamers take their games personally . . . whether they design them or play them.

Poll Resuls - Do you like secret achievements?

Why don't you come in really close and I'll tell you a secret . . .

BACK OFF YOU'RE TOO CLOSE!!!!!

Okay, so maybe that wasn't a secret. But if you want me to tell you mine, you've got to tell me yours first.

But onto the poll results. Here they are:

Do you like secret achievements in games?

Yes, I love the mystery of 'em = 0 votes
No, I hate not knowing what to play for = 4 votes
You know, I just don't really care = o votes
For me, nothing stays a secret for long = 1 vote

Well, I voted with the majority. I think orphan summed it up nicely in the comments when I released the poll. If you don't want to look that up he basically said that secret achievements for the story are okay. If you play through everything you'll eventually unlocked them and they won't be a secret anymore. I really like this idea.

As a developer wouldn't you want the people who play your games to discover the story as it unfolds as they play it? If you put in an achievement that states something like "sacrifice your dog to save your life" or "you just married your handsome prince" don't you think, that moment in the story would become less emotionally powerful if the gamer had already seen that "spoiler" on their achievement list?

I have friends who look at the list of achievements as soon as they put the game in, even before they've played any of it. They're looking for information to how the story is going to play out. Are most of the achievement towards the beginning? Towards the end? Are they story based or multiplayer based? If they're looking to get all achievements in a game it helps to know how you might want to play it.

One things Xbox Live does right (IMHO) is that if one of your friends have unlocked a secret achievement it will still show up as secret when you try to look at their achievement list. They earned that secret achievement, now it's time for you to earn it so you can know what it is.

But that's where the problem is. Not all developers put in story based secret achievements. They have secret achievements for doing very specific things that might not fall into the "regular" way someone would play the game. There might be a specific task that you need to perform in a specific area that is not related to elements of the story. If you don't know what those things are you're never going to get that achievement . . . unless you look it up and specifically play the game to do those things. While I can't speak for the developers about that, I don't think that's what they had in mind on how they wanted you to play the game.

And what if you wanted to know what those secret achievements were? You can't find out on Xbox Live so you've got to go to a computer and look them up. There are tons of sights that will tell you what all the achievements are and what you need to do to get them. But if you're playing the game and concentrating on doing a specific thing in a specific area are you really paying any attention to what's actually going on in the story? Is that how we should be playing games?

Now, I've played games trying to do specific things. Like finding all the Intel or cog tags or journals or what-nots that developers like to hide in their games. But those achievements aren't usually secret. The developers WANT you to explore their world and find things. By seeing an achievement that says "find all 50 purple bottle caps" then you know to be on the look out for them as you play. And you'll spend time exploring every nook and cranny in an area to make sure you haven't missed one. If the developers made that achievement secret and your character picked up a purple bottle cap in the game would you even know that it meant something? Probably not.

To sum things up, in general, I don't like secret achievements. But if used wisely, and to prevent gamers from finding spoilers in games, I think they can be very beneficial to playing games. I just don't like it when they make them so secret and selective about what you need to do that you spend almost as much time looking them up as you do playing the game. Because once you know you have to "defeat the Gorgon for killing the love of your life" are you really going to want to play the game when you know what happens?

Poll - Do you want to know a secret?

Psst. Do you want to know a secret? I do. But it's a secret, so I don't know it. Except that I can know it, if I want to take the effort to find out what it is.

Oh, don't look at me like that. I haven't lost my mind. This is my gaming blog so obviously I'm talking about secret achievements. Duh. So here's my latest poll:

Do you like secret achievements in games?

Yes, I love the mystery of 'em
No, I hate not knowing what to play for
You know, I just don't really care
For me, nothing stays a secret for long