*EDIT*
Well I didn't make it into Civil War, but that might be for the best since a HUGE workload was just dumped on me within the past few days.

I'd like to thank the OCT once again for helping me change Vars from going-to-be-forever-forgotten to an OC I actually like.

Congradulations to everyone who got into CW.

OK, now I'm going back to Assassin's Creed 2 (this game is slowly destroying me... but I love it!).

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Yeah, you've been hearing about this for the last few weeks.
There's been a rather ineffective boycott where most of the boycotters decided to buy it.
There's been the media going on about how evil a videogame is when it puts you in control of a doomed terrorist attack at the skippable intro, disregarding the fact that Counter Strike has been around for years and that the slaughter of these people is probably going to be poetic if the last game told us anything (this scene was also probably meant to make players look closely at themselves to see if they really were just following the instructions of a game blindly as so many gamers do and witness that they themselves might not always be the force of ultimate good that every other war game depicts them as).
There's been a threat from the developers that they will make CoD subscription based in the future, for two reasons in my book. One being that they have proven from the boycott that they have enough mindless slaves who will buy whatever that they could release anything and people would buy it so now they're competing with Nintendo and Sonic Team. The other reason is that Activision and Blizzard's merger (World of Warcraft was mentioned in the interview) is finally showing its true colors. Better go check up on Disney and Marvel again, you paranoid fanboys reading this.
However, my favorite one goes to the robbery of a hundred copies of the game using invisible guns, so 4Kids has official been right about this. [link] Article's here and so is Gamestop hate if you check the comments (never mind that normal people do work at Gamestop and survival instincts have kept them alive long enough to get a job).

You may be wondering, "Well, what the hell took you so long to talk about this, Ace?" or "Why haven't you updated in forever?" or "When the hell are you going to point out your journal has caught the Zombie virus?" or "Are you actually working?" or "Do you ever really take off your fedora?" or even "Why is he asking all these questions that I am definitely not wondering?"

Well first of all I'd like to point out that that's a lot of questions there, most of them I will refuse to acknowledge in this journal.

The first question is simple: I didn't get it. Laugh/mock/gasp/scratchhead/don'tcare all you want, but I have my reasons. First of all, I liked Call of Duty 4. It was new, interesting, and for once didn't take place fighting f*cking Nazis in the Call of Duty world where WW2 exists forever. That being said, I could never really get into. Maybe it was the cheap deaths (I no longer love every dog I see), which are bad no matter how "hard" you're trying to make your games, or maybe it was the fact that I got it on the 360 and I never played online because I hate Live. In fact, I split the cost for a used copy off eBay with my brother and that's about the cost I'd pay for it. The story was short, though very well done, and it ended in such an awkward way the I could never really get over it. I heard that that's about the same with this one here. I'm sorry but I'm not going to spend $60 on a game with 3 hours of story and half an hour of cheap deaths (here's the thing: making a game hard is making sure that I feel I can get through a level if I go again now that I know my current strategy doesn't work. Making me die for no other reason than I didn't see a grenade because the marker showed up a second before it went off or their is no real visual cue for when I should press a button to avoid a dog walking off with my jugular doesn't achieve that).
The other reason is that it cost $60, you know, like Assassin's Creed 2 does tonight. I really liked the first (being a rarity nowdays apparently). It was fun, engaging, and easy to get into. That being said, there were flaws. It was repetative, the combat sometime felt a little off and too much especially around the end (this is a game about sneaking and assassinations, you should not have the final level be full of endless waves of enemies you must kill), and sometimes you'd get stuck on climbing. However, the envirnoments were fun and easy to get around in and when you got to the assassination parts, you really felt some immersion. I also enjoy that they kept the whole "You're actually in the future" part a secret. Now, it did commit the sin of not having a real ending, but it had some very strongly implied "You should be able to figure this part out" half to it. And then the true ending after that sequence just seemed to be tacked on for no reason. But atleast your up until now immortal teammates didn't die (I shot Gaz in the head with a shotgun twice and he just smiled and went about his business! What the hell do you mean a wimpy pistol killed him, Cod?!).

As for not updating, I've had a very busy week with no sleep to help. Thank you very much. I also haven't seemed to be able to work on much of the stuff I promised (though the new Out of Time page is almost completely done art-wise). Gold, your birthday gift will be very late, but hopefully I'll have it up soon.

Here's the meme. As a reminder, anyone can participate in this scavenger hunt and you don't need to put in your journal.

I've participated in 2 of those comment and get a feature/sketch request memes, so I need to do the same here. However, I'm going to put a bit of a spin on it here. I'm going to have a scavenger hunt instead of having the first to comment get them. I'm going to ask 10 questions, all of them with answers somewhere in my gallery (they might be in the author's comments or just dealing with the pictures themselves). Answer any one correct and you get a feature and a sketch request (I don't want to have you put up on of these since it's past its prime as a meme). Anyone is eligible (you don't have to be a watcher). To answer, post the number of the question you want to answer before the answer itself (simple, right?). My comments alongside your icon as well as the sketches will be put up later.

Questions (11th added to allow everyone who gets an answer right a feature and a sketch)
1. Who is the deviant who owns the character in my first fanart (I'm not talking about Rorschach, he's gone)?
2. What is the name of that character?
3. What is the name of my longest running written story? Zero Blood (roberttheminstrel)
4. How much older is Dante after a time skip?
5. Seth is crazy, and every part of him reflects that. What part of his clothing has surprised even him by performing the unexpected? His hat (dorkinabubble)
6. The OC interviews were actually a meme that I ruined. Who was in the first one (you need to name only 2)?
7. Who was my 2000 pageviews kiriban of? Cerberus [Red Flag Recolored] (Pumpkinetics)
8. Chronos was a member of a group of supernatural assassins before he became the Watcher of Time. How many assassins were in that group?
9. Vars is deathly afraid of what?
10. Under no circumstances what-so-ever should you make Vars drink what?
11. I write a horror story called Silent Scream which originated from a conversation with Belazuur about Silent Hill in space. One Leader in it is not out to kill everyone and is probably the most neutral in the battle of monsters vs humans. What is this Leader's name (can be his emotion name or his nickname)?


Featured so far (The first two are the people I got the meme from)
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The Sketches
1. dib's OC Moselle (original [link] )
2. pk's OC LF (orginal [link] )
3. Meeting between Dante and Lucifer from New Inferno (as seen here [link] )
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