Skyrim is fighting with Gears of War 3 for my love

A little bit before Christmas I beat Gears of War 3. I loved the single player campaign and thought it an incredibly fitting end to what is probably the best pure action game series created thus far. Then I started playing Horde mode, which is like the infinite replaysbility version of the game, and was very satisfied to enjoy that as much as possible.

Christmas came and I got Skyrim. I put down the game I was playing at the time (Red Dead Redemption) and started my journey into this amazing new world. Skyrim might be the largest and most amazing single player sandbox game out there. There is such an incredible amount to do. Since Christmas I don't even want to know how many hours I've logged into my Orc warrior Chaos. (side note: the iPad auto corrects orc into Orc which just blew my mind.)

I've found myself jonesing for Gears of War again. Just Horde mode, mind you. I want to dive back into that world where combat means just about everything. No quests, nobody to talk to, just violence for the sake of getting to the next wave, and the next wave, and the next wave. On top of that there's some great new DLC available: RAAM's Shadow; which serves as a prequel to the entire series and gives you the first opportunity to play as the much revered Locust leader and final boss from the first Gears of War game. You might know how awesome I think RAAM is if you've ever played Heroclix with me.

So it's like a war going on in my brain. A war that Skyrim is winning, for now, but I'll be interested to see how long it's going to be able to hold out. I can't really compare the games, they're both the best of their breeds, but I know that they're fighting for a place in my XBox.

Which kind of leads me to wonder what might happen if Marcus Fenix picked a fight with my Orc warrior. Which is kind of making me want to play WH40K: Space Marine...

Skyrim: The Further Adventures of Rune and Chaos

I was lucky enough to get Skyrim for Christmas. It's only the biggest game of the year, and it's probably Bethesda's best work. I'm a pretty big fan of their Fallout series, and this being my first venture into the world of the Elder Scrolls I've got to say I'm very impressed.

You have the choice to be an orc, which is probably the most badass choice, so I chose that first. Continuing in that line of thought, I decided my badass orc would use nothing but two handed axes. A brilliant and inspired choice I think. I might have gone with a war hammer instead of the axe, to celebrate Robert Baratheon, but I had to go with my heart, especially when I decided who my character was going to be.

I decided my character was going to be Chaos, a character that I created as a child for a freestyle fantasy story that I wrote with my best friend Patrick: The Adventures of Rune and Chaos. Chaos was my character, a brazen, run into the thick of things warrior. Rune was his character, a thoughtful mage who, generally, used his power to get the two out of the trouble Chaos had put them in.

Pretty awesome right? I hadn't thought of Run and Chaos in years. It's pretty awesome to have the two of them back in my life.

Wrestling in MMA

Just a thought:

Tried and true wrestlers have a really interesting advantage in MMA that I'd never really thought about before this fight. When a wrestler gets rocked by a strike, their first instinct is to go for a takedown of some sort. Assuming they aren't fighting another, equally skilled wrestler, they will at the very least get some sort of positional advantage that keeps them out of danger, allowing them to recover from the strike that initially damaged them.

Nifty.

Get Angry!

Get Angry!

Do I have anything to say about Gears of War 3?

It’s fucking awesome, that’s for sure.

It delivers on everything that I wanted it too: non-stop action led by giant action hero caricatures who get angry instead of feeling real emotion.

Hell, I even got to experience pain and loss, which isn’t exactly something you expect to feel from a mess of bullets and blood in an action/entertainment setting. Dammit I was moved. It was cheap emotion too, but damn was it well done. Does that mean it’s still cheap? Maybe not. I think that term, cheap, is meant to describe something without subtlety, when, well, what the fuck is subtlety worth? I’m not playing Gears of War for subtlety. I’m not living my life to be subtle! I’m living my life to be all up in everywhere! I want to make impacts like nuclear bombs, lasting. I want to get real real with everything, stand up and take all kinds of stands.

Fuck yea! Stand up, get angry, get in the moment!

Boo Adventures

Some gym musings

What exactly am I trying to accomplish in the gym? Good question. I’m not entirely sure.

I want to be stronger. I want to be smaller. I want to have some bigger guns. I want to be able to sprint for distance. I want to be able to jump higher.

There are several sports that I admire greatly, which have helped fueled this desire. Combat sports, be they BJJ, wrestling, muay thai, boxing, or MMA; I’d like to have the physical capacity to perform in this area. More recently I’ve been interested in parkour, freerunning, and Ninja Warrior.

Shit, when you lay it out on paper like that, it looks like I’m really going to have to rock a lot of cardio and endurance based activities. Obviously I’ll have to keep up with my general strength training, but I’ll have to find some time to build up that endurance.

I’m curious as to whether or not I should add pure cardio days. I seem to be pretty worn out from either squatting or deadlifting, and that ends up with me doing some pretty shitty cardio, and that’s no good.