|
Gaming, Drinking, and Shit |
So let me tell you a little about myself, I’m Joe Monso, also known as Brandon and well… I’ve been into the gaming industry for quite a few years. Some may know me from my time I was working for Stratics.com and some may know me from EVE-Online and if you are reading this… you are probably bored. My idea behind the Midshift came about while I was sitting at work, yes I work the Midshift, and I was pretty damn bored reading over different Gaming News sites and all sorts of different funny video sites. I don’t do much at work besides sit on my ass and my current laptop doesn’t even let me play EVE, so yeah I get bored pretty damn easily. The idea for The Midshift is pretty much me writing about cool news, demos I’ve played, betas I’m a part of, and anything else that I would think you the readers would find interesting… So let me start off with a bit about my trip that I made to Dragon*Con recently with CCP|White Wolf as a volunteer for them.
I got asked to go to Dragon*Con a few months back to take part of a the Con as a volunteer, to be honest, I hadn’t a clue what I was going to be doing for it and I come to find later on, a lot of work. The Con was pretty interesting as we setup in the Grand Ball Room of the Hilton and we had a good sized booth and I met up with a few folks for CCP and White Wolf that day while we setup. I won’t be mentioning many names in this, but just go with me; you may just find it interesting. The few volunteers arrived on Tuesday and setup the booth and later went to the new CCP|White Wolf Office for a BBQ with a bunch of the staff. Tell you what, the place was rather large and the chef they hired made some damn good burgers, plus the keggerator they had up made it even better. Would you believe these guys have a Racket Ball court in their office too?
Now onto the Con itself… We were helping demo the EVE The Second Genesis Collectable Card Game to anyone that wanted to try it out. I wasn’t the most experienced at the game, but I learned rather quickly and found that I really did enjoy the game. It can be pretty fast paced depending on the deck you are playing or pretty damn slow if you are going up against someone with a massive defense, but we just had some Demo decks and the majority of the people that played it, loved it. While I was there I did get the chance to pick up a few books from Margaret Weis’ booth and then get them signed, it was pretty neat to finally meet an author that I have been reading her books for years now. Sadly I didn’t get the greatest amount of time to see the Con but I did get to see a few friends that I haven’t seen in years. All in all the Con was pretty neat and if I go next year, I’m going to try harder to see if I can see more of the Con itself.
Next I think you guys would love to hear about the partying, well you already heard about the Office BBQ, but what about all the other nights that I was there? Let me tell you what, CCP and White Wolf guys sure know how to party. We went out to dinner about every night, but let me bring up Sunday Night. See, these guys enjoy partying so much they have a guy that they hire just to run their parties. Did you hear about the Party they had a GDC at all? Well, this guy ran it… and since this wasn’t a huge event for them he took a group of us out to a bunch of Room Parties and VIP Parties all over the different hotels. Now, I got to meet and get to know three major folks within CCP and White Wolf, Hilmar, Reyner, and Mike Tinney. These three guys are amazing and probably some of the best people to hang out with, Mike also makes a good backup bartender too. It was really cool to just hang out with these guys, drink our asses off and then just talk shop. I learned a lot while I was with these guys about what make a business run with the size they have and well, big respect for them now. All in all it was a fun time, and I’m leaving out details, but we’d be here forever if I wrote about everything I did. I just wanted to fill you all in on some small things.
I think now I’ll talk about some gaming. Have any of you seen anything about Call of Duty 4 yet? Wow, the game is just amazing. I happened to get a chance to mess around with it recently and well, I’m thinking Halo 4 killer in the making. Yes, just that good… There are so many different Perks and Enhancements you can unlock as you play on and while they do give you a boost in power and ability, it’s not as overpowering as say Battlefield 2 upgrades as you gain rank. It really makes a nice balance, and while you may not have one perk up that another player is using, it’s knowing when to use the right one or not that makes the most difference. You may just sacrifice some extra health to aim better or maybe use an ability called Last Stand which lets you shoot your enemy with your pistol even after you’ve been killed, giving you that second chance to kill your enemy. I just haven’t got enough of it yet and I’ve been playing it pretty much every day I get off of work.
Ok, I just got done watching this video , you all should really check it out. I have been following Team Fortress 2 since it was in it’s infant stages. I just can’t wait for this game; they really have taken the game somewhere much better than anything else they could have done. The first concept was more war accurate, well now it’s all comical. I just love watching the class videos they have out right now, so far my favorite is the Engineer. I just happened to be slightly impartial since it’s also my favorite class in the game.
Enough banter from me guys… I would love to hear some feedback on this Editorial as it’s just meant to be fun and interesting to read. If you want to let me know I suck, please do… I will probably not answer you e-mail cause you can go screw yourself. Otherwise, thanks for reading and I will be posting these every so often when I’m bored on The Midshift.
Joe Monso
Joe_Monso AT coldfront DOT net
|
|
News 