X-Box live gold accounts on sale on Amazon

mike: how much is xbox live for a year
mike: do you remember?
Dale: hahaha of course i do
Dale: and i'm only telling you if you say i'm awesome
mike: you're awesome
Dale: YOU DAMN RIGHT I AM
mike: dammit
mike: i should have said
mike: i'm awesome
Dale: but you didn't
mike: fail
Dale: yep
Dale: its $60 by the way
Dale: and thats for 13 months
mike: ok
mike: amazon.ca has them for $47
Dale: ooooooh really
mike: yeah
mike: i am going to buy one i think for next year
Dale: do it you'll save 13 dollars and the only thing you have to do is hold onto a card for 9 months without loosing it or forgetting where it is
mike: haha

Sacred 2 just blew my effin mind

I didn't hear about Sacred 2 until the day of its release. It's probably better that way I have been waiting for a good action RPG since I bought my 360. By far my favorite style of game I have had little to nothing to keep me satiated in this respect. Sure there had been games promising to hit my little pleasure nub.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle Of Doom was a nice attempt but the combat system was ultimately broken and trying to synth gear for hours got old fast.

Rise of the Argonauts just turned out to be terrible. I can't put my finger on it but it just hurt me deep inside to play that game. It might be the constant running back and forth to try find trigger points for the quests. Really if I wanted to run back and forth for quests I would have never quit WOW.

Tales of Vespiria wasn't actually what I would consider an action RPG like it was toted before release. Sure you could fight when you got into battles instead of turn based action but really thats more of a band aid fix for my wanton need.

The only action RPG game that was worth anything so far was Two Worlds which according to everyone besides me sucked but was actually pleasurable but not pleasurable enough.

So when Sacred 2 came out you could guess that I would be leery to sprint down to buy it with my gamer erection pushing against my pants. I needed to see if it was worth my love. A friend once told me that having a motel heart will just leave you upset and depressed if you love anything that comes along. So that's why I was mister hard to get.

So Mike bought it and I started playing it. This game is more than I could ever have hoped or dared to ask for. Sure the trading between two players doesn't work right now but thats good because who could resist duping and cheating the game - I know I never could. The graphics are wild the action is good and the game plays a lot like a mix between Champions of Norrath and the aforementioned Ultimate Alliance. The spells and skills are mapped to the controller like Marvel Ultimate Alliance which could only have been designed by a visionary who needs the video game equivalent of a Nobel Peace Prize.

I will admit I found the start of the game a little awkward because it was not clear which character is which class. Turns out they even made that more awesome. Instead of having the warrior, mage, archer and what have you. Instead You get characters like an undead warrior-necromancer who was brought back to life to kill shit (I might have skipped my characters motives).

I do have to warn you though if your going to play Sacred 2 go to the store and buy thousands of face diapers because your going to shit your fucking mind. Your going to just keep shitting it everywhere repeatedly and constantly its that awesome. I'm only about 11% done the game right now with one character one one of his campaigns.

So far I have already proved aliens as the culprits behind crop circles. I chased one down to its lair and cut off it's head to show the farmers.

I also ran into a gladiator fight organizer who was stereotypically gay and he chose my opponents by what color my skin would accent well against which happened to be a green lizard man. Sure theres no proof that any of the historical gladiators were homosexuals with the eye of an interior designer but theres no proof there wasn't either.

But the highlight of the game so far and the incident which just spurred me to write this post was the inclusion of Blind Guardian. Fantasy and power metal go together like nerds and shit nerds like so it was nice to hear some power metal in the opening CGI cut scene. Whats absolutely magnificent however is the fact that the actual band are characters in the game. Commence mind shitting.

You run into Hans on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and he asks if you like metal which is weird for a high fantasy game. He then goes on to explain that While his Band Blind Guardian was on tour they were attacked by the undead and had their instruments stolen. So you start out on a quest to get first Hans' mike which is actually a mage staff that shoots lightning. After you get this he joins you on your quest to get the bass, the guitar and the drumsticks. After you get everything your warped to a merch booth in the middle of the forest.

Commence even hard mind shitz because after you talk to Hans again it unlocks a CGI cut scene of the band playing a song live. Switch diapers because the shat is about to tsunami because the crowd is made up of monster werewolves and trolls.

AND IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH AFTER YOU WATCH THE SONG YOU GET THEIR INSTRUMENTS AS WEAPONS. My Shadow warrior now walks around with a flaming bass guitar.
THIS FLAMING BASS GUITAR

F-ZERO to F-HERO: Top 10 fighting game characters

With the heralded success of both Street Fighter 4 and Soul Caliber 4 and Tekken 6 on the horizon it would seem that fighting games are making some sort of resurgence. No problem with me I have always enjoyed fighting games throughout my long assorted gaming career. The feelings of nostalgia all bubbling to the surface I figured i would run down a list of my favorite characters from fighting games.

I kept my list to one character from each series so I could touch on more universes and not just a bunch of sequels from the same maker.

10. Ragnar Bloodaxe: Mace the Dark age N64 1997
Face it vikings are cool. Whether you agree or not with the morality of raping and pillaging villages and basically building a religion around war you have to admit they could probably kick some ass. And when your fighting demons, golemns, monks and hell knights you need all the ass kickery you can muster. VALHALLA!

9. Slash: Eternal Champions Genesis 1993
Sometimes you don't care about what type of martial art training your character has. Sometimes you just want to grab a fucking club and beat people about the face and shoulders with. In comes Slash a cave man of particular brutality. In his character write up it states "He did not train in any specific martial art, and instead fought in any way which could cause as much pain as possible."

8. Rasputin: World Heros SNK 1992
Whats more bad ass than a crazy evil wizard? How bout a crazy evil wizard with giant spectre fists and feet. Plus he's based on one of the most infamous characters in history. Now that my friend is badass.

7. Voldo: Soul Edge & Soul Calibur series
Back in the glorious days when fighting games where coming out seemingly everyweek in the 90's there was one character a little bit different from the others. He had a unique fighting style that blending a certain flow with scorpion stings and some good old sado maschism. The best part about Voldo is his "untouchable" fighting once you get in the groove.

6. Jax: Mortal Kombat series
Really theres no that much to say. You have giant metal arms and you can pop enemies heads like zits or rip their arms off. Among the many Mortal Kombat characters Jax was always the most satisfying to lay the beats with.

5. Bakuryu (the Mole): Bloody roar series
If you never played bloody roar, weep. Just start crying right now because you missed one of the fastest paced awesome fighting games. What made this game a standout was each character had a beast form that they could turn into which was more powerful and even had a super combo move that dealt major damage. There was one character who was equal part fast powerful and trickery and that was the ninja assasin who turned into a mole. He was my first character that I mastered and soon became my favorite guy to return to if I was having trouble with a particularily annoying apponent.

4. Sabrewulf: Killer Instinct 1&2 1995-96
If your a man of any Ilk then you respect the art of Lycanthropy. Werewolves are awesome. Utilizing this and letting me control on in a game is actually a very easy way to appeal to me. Now take that werewolf and give him cybernetic arms and well sir you just blew my fun muscle.

3. Ken: Street Fighter series
He's obnoxious he's cocky and half the fighting games out there use the same move set as he did. You master ken and you master about 85% of fighting games available. Besides who wants to be that moody fag ryu anyway sure his fireballs are bigger but look at kens dragon punch. You wanna fuck something up you dragon punch that shit. Look what it did to sagats chest. Ripped it in half my friend right in fucking half. Why would you do that kind of damage then focus on fireballs? Because your not ken and you don't drive a red porshe and bang sluts and look in the mirror and smile because you fucking rule all. Thats why.

2. Juggernaut: X-men vs Street Fighter
At first I didn't want to mention this character because I always thought of him in the street fighter lineage but this game should be considered a crossover and it also it lead to the best 2d fighter ever made which is Marvel vs. Capcom 2. The reason I love Juggernaut is not for his size, which is huge. Its not for his power, which is again huge. Its for his medium punches. The are straight they have lots of reach and he grunts ever punch. There is just something so addictive and maniacle about trapping an enemy in the corner and laying about 20 punches into them. Hunh hunh hunh hunh hunh hunh hunh hunh hunh.

1. King: Tekken series
Tekken is the best 3d fighting series ever made. EVER. The realistic fighting styles mixed with simplistic move parameters makes for a very pleasant experience. Your a wrestler who wears a tiger mask. I find it hard to really find the words to describe how rad this is. I would go into length about why I love king but it would just be me gushing about every move he has and his bio and such in length. He truly is the only character that could not have been made better in any way.