Halo 4, my own review

First my relationship with HALO:
I love FPSs and RPGs with Halo being my all time favorite storyline and game to play. The Elder Scrolls comes in second for me. Btw it has been a yearlong fantasy of mine to combine the two universes along with combining their utterly different gameplay.

I have played all of the prior Halo games, beating each on legendary. I prefer any replay on legendary. Storming the beech on legendary, looking for the Silent Cartographer in Halo 1 with the music turned up loud enough to annoy my neighbors is still a huge thrill for me. I do not play any games co-op or online. I am more the specialist-solo Halo geek so I can not comment on co-op gameplay.

I purchased the game on the 6th at its release date and completed it 4 days later on normal difficulty with tons of hours spent watching and listening to all of the election and retarded amounts of post election coverage. Yeah, the game was that short!

My first impression is one of sadness for the trajectory the Halo storyline has taken. No spoilers here, Halo's twists and turns in it's story arc worked fine for me until now. This new trajectory feels too predictable, I sorta 'knew' what was about to happen at most stages of the game and found myself disappointed as my predictions came to pass. This was not the case for me in prior games.


Visually the game is much improved in some areas and remains the same in others. The gritty unpolished faces are now gone but all too often I felt like I was in areas designed by the designers of the movie 'Tron', a complaint I have had with two of the earlier games.

I thoroughly enjoyed learning the new weaponry and discovering how best to kill the new bad guys. I was forced into new tactics of combat if I wanted to go toe to toe with these new badguys, this I thoroughly enjoyed. Testing out the old weapons on them was equally cool.

I am a big fan of the revised Battlestar Gallactica. It's opening theme music poignant and fitting. The Halo themesong is definitely my favorite earworm for any game. I missed that themesong this time around but enjoyed the Battlestar Gallactica-esc new theme.

Unfortunately, unlike music from earlier games, this time around for me the chapter music got in the way of gameplay, ranging from tedious to outright annoying!

From best to worst my personal ranking of this game in the overall scheme of the Halo games:
Halo 1
Halo Reach
Halo 2
Halo ODST
Halo 3 and 4 tie for last place and truth be told, I am not too sure which of those two will be on the bottom of my list yet.

Unlike all of the Halo games of the past, after my first run through on normal difficulty I am in no great rush to dive back into it on Legendary difficulty.
(edited to add: a mere two weeks after release and with plenty of time off to watch the elections and aftermath, I beat Halo 4 on Legendary. No, I am not THAT good, the game is just THAT easy. Considering that it took over two months for me to beat Halo 2 on Legendary, I feel safe in saying that this game was too short and too easy).

Where gameplay for Halo 4 is as good as ever, (my thanks to 343 industries for that), the plot was so disturbing to me I have been left feeling this one is tied with Halo 3 as the weakest of the six. I suspect I will not be alone among Halo geeks with my review.

Sen. Patty Murray (D. Wa.) 2016?

You are welcome Mr. President. Now pardon Don Siegelman, release Bradly Manning.

You asked for our help Mr. President. We did right by you. Now it is your turn. Do what is right by us.

http://donsiegelman.org/

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

Greed vs Patriotism

Righties don't seem to understand that greed can in some cases be bad for America. They claim that in a free market system one should be allowed to maximize profits in any way the law allows, that this is good for America.

My counter to this: How many of our soldiers paid the ultimate price to support greed? When we got hit at Pearl Harbor, when we got hit on 9/11, American citizens gave up their livelihoods, signed on the dotted line, held up their right hand and swore an oath to defend our nation. They did this to defend mom and apple pie and democracy. They did NOT do this to defend some bastard's right to take away mom's apple pie or her democracy.

I thought a nominee's 'October Surprise' strategy was supposed to be....

....in October. Can anyone explain Gov. Romney's early strategy here?

Oh and another thing.....



I thought Republican candidate Romney was.....um .....Republican! When I went to bed yesterday he was a Republican! Didn't he speak at that RNC down in Tampa?

Now Gov. Romney is fighting for 'Four More Years'! Do we automatically get his Electoral Votes too or do we have to wait for him to sign them over to President Obama
or somesuch?

Geese Louise, just when I thought I had some understanding of the American election process everything gets all complicated.

If by sunrise tomorrow I awaken to a world where the Free Republic has an automatic 'Spell Check' feature MY head will explode!

I would have given them an apple.

Not long after 9/11 a request from NY asked for ideas for a memorial. Here is mine.

In the center of the area where the towers fell I would like to have seen made an apple, a ten to fifteen foot tall clear solid glass apple.

In the center of this apple I would liked to have seen a red heart, no not one of those stylized ones we see on cards on Valentine's day, instead a glass human heart, double sized with veins and arteries fading as they reached out into the glass of the apple.

On the outside of this apple in an etched band, a band between knee to head high, I would like to have seen the full names of each victim. I would like to have seen those names not etched but embossed, standing out from the glass, clear and strong, easy to see, easy to touch and easy to see through to that heart in the center of that apple.

Constructed around and enclosing it, a building only slightly taller than our Apple. It would be wide enough to allow three or four to walk around the apple shoulder to shoulder-not very wide at all because any larger diminishes the private personal experience I would see for this memorial.

On the inner wall of this building, shelves, cubby-holes and cork boarding for personal items and photos left behind. These items to be cleaned off monthly, whisked away to a second building used as a museum-a bridge of sorts from the past to the future.

This building would be lit only from the Apple itself and black on the outside, circular in shape. White noise added to drown out any sounds from outside NY.

A technology we currently possess would light this building from the inside. During the day, daylight would be brought in via fiber-optics, lighting the apple from the inside out.

Thousands of these fiber optic cables, one for each victim would be positioned on the new structures which replaced the Twin Towers.
These would catch the suns light.

These fibre optic cables would channel the sun's beams of light through to the heart of that apple then burst forth to illuminate many hundreds of the names on the outside of that Apple.

Those beams of light would brighten or fade as the sun moved guaranteeing that at some point each name was lit at least once per day if not much more oftener. At night and on severely cloudy days this would be done by electronic means, ideally imitating the natural light.

This then would be my apple. A tribute saying that these people are forever remembered and be forever in the heart of the big apple that is New York.

This memorial would be a place for those who visit to have an up close and quietly personal experience.

I would add this one touch: upon request a photo of a selected name, lit up by natural light given to any who should ask, free of charge and paid for by WE THE PEOPLE'S tax dollars. That's not such a big thing to ask of us I think.

That is the apple I would have given them.

Gotta love The Tea Party!

When I say: Three piece Canadian band, incredible vocals, incredible guitar, incredible bass, incredible drums, and non mainstream songs you would be right to think RUSH! Well not to take anything away from them, they are high on my list too but....

If you have never been exposed to this other Canadian three piece band and you need to rock out a bit...(or if you want to see a Jim Morrison ghost come to life) here is a live version of The River as performed by The Tea Party
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=fw2kNHlB1KM

Difference between Conservatives and Progressives?

This is just my take on this.

When presented with facts that conflict with ones ideology, progressives will look to their ideology as the place to make changes.

When presented with facts that conflict with their ideology, conservatives will look to the facts as the place to make changes.

Take any example you wish, we progressives are open minded,we are willing to change how we see things as fresh facts and data are presented to us.

Otoh we batter conservatives with fact after fact, chart and graph after chart and graph only to be frustrated as our efforts are dismissed out of hand.

My favorite example is to point out the massive election fraud that is going on. I couple my argument with the YouTube video of Paul Weyrich stating that Republican chances go up as voting goes down.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=VktGRDndLb4

There are tons of links proving that Republicans are preventing millions of legal voters, primarily Democrats from being able to vote. Imo, this proves that the Republican Party is destroying our very democracy!

Yet, when presented with all of this, instead of examining their ideology, my Republican friends choose to dismiss the data and in one case make the claim that Paul Weyrich is being taken out of context!

My point, at risk of broad brushing my fellow Americans, most conservatives are closed minded and will not willingly open up to change. We progressives share in this too because we can't seem to stop trying to make them change by using a tactic which simply has not worked!

A different tactic is therefore needed. I am open to suggestions.

Up next at DNC: Bill Clinton here is CSPAN link, watch live.

It is the REPUBLICAN economy, stupid.

When you hear someone try to blame our President for the economy please point out to them that it is not his economy, it is a Republican economy.The Republican's agenda from the start was to defeat President Obama by pinning him with a bad economy with little to no job growth.

As we know, the President proposes, the Congress disposes. The House of Representatives is currently under Republican hands, THEY control the purse strings. So what has this Republican House done when it comes to job creation? From what I can tell after reading Mike Stanhill's observations, NOTHING! http://republicanjobcreation.com/

Not only have they NOT created any jobs they have deliberately obstructed our economy from growing! Please read Mike Pridmire's take on this over at the Daily Kos.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/04/1127453/-Republican-Obstructionism-is-mostly-responsible-for-our-economy

So next time you hear someone try to tell you that it is the 'economy stupid', be sure to let them know that it is the REPUBLICAN economy, not the Obama economy.