Joe Gamer

By now most people have heard of the infamous World of Warcraft or WoW for short. The latest expansion pack to the game is called Cataclysm. If your husband has shown interest in playing this game, this is a very bad thing. Here is why, the game is incredibly addictive for many people. Specially if the person has problems with anxiety or depression, the game can provide a false sense of achievement by leveling. The game requires very little gaming skill other than being able to click buttons with a mouse which is the reason it is very easy to learn and pick up. Instead, the game does little to reward skill but rewards time that you have played instead. Granted, some skill might make things a bit faster.

The more time the player keep playing the game, your avatar starts gaining levels which makes you stronger against foes. However, there is no shortage of enemies as they endlessly re spawn or throw more difficult enemies that will probably require several players to beat. This starts escalating up to a point where you need dozens or more people to beat enemies. These players then need to arrange a time when players with enough time sunk into the game can play. This is where things start getting ugly. In WoW, these groups are called guilds, several of them meet 4 or more times a week for 2 or more hours. This could add up to the time you would spend in a part time job. The game can not be paused unless agreed by everybody in the group. Somebody hooked on the game will probably not leave the chair in a while.

I tried to explain what the game is in a nutshell avoiding lingo used by people that play it. If suddenly all your partner can talk about is WoW and all the words coming out of his mouth are raid, guild, crits, aoe, dkp, or aggro. This is a bad sign. When they start saying my druid, my mage, my paladin without giggling. You got a problem.

If he starts making up excuses to not go out or work out, he is sick etc but he feels well enough to play on the computer. That is also bad. Eventually, it is going to get to a point where no excuses are made and the person is not ashamed anymore to the point where he will flat out tell you that he has an online appointment to play with his “friends”, referring to people he has never met in person and which only connection is to advance in the game.

Unless the person playing is standing up or in a treadmill with a desk on top, all the time spent playing the game will increase the sedentary lifestyle which will show on the scale. It happens slowly so that it will probably not be noticeable but when people you have not seen in months such as relatives start saying stuff, pay attention.

If you do not believe me, google and you will find hundreds of stories over the Web. Ranging from people taking laptops to play at cruises to wearing diapers so as to not waste any time going to the bathroom. Even little disregard for children safety when they are left unattended. Several parodies have been made by popular TV Shows including The Big Bang Theory “Sword Master”, South Park “Make love, Not Warcraft”, and the online mini series The Guild. Some are exaggerated but they can happen to you.

I need not to tell you that a combination of these factors will probably lead to a decrease sex drive which does not make for a happy wife and eventually a WoW widow. I am not saying everybody who plays WoW is a complete fat loser with no life living on his mother’s basement but one way or another with that much time spent on the game it is bound to take a toll on your relationship and life. Make no mistake, World of Warcraft is to be considered an addiction. Some people can control their drinking or gambling but a lot of people do not. You should do whatever you judge to be the right thing.You have been warned.

Original @ http://bit.ly/gqKmZJ

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© 2011, Christian Rios. All rights reserved.

The wife is reading on her Kindle in the bedroom while I am playing Call of Duty: Blacks Ops on my PC with my headset on. Then, the apartment starts to shake, the ceiling fan is about to drop, and it sounds like a stampede is going by. My wife and I grew up in Central America surrounded by volcanoes. So thinking that it is a small earthquake, I start running to a door frame when I realized it is very easy to walk because the ground is not moving. Now I am a bit scared because I am thinking it might be a tornado since this is common in the Southern United States where we live. I go look out the window and there are clear skies when the shaking suddenly stops.

A minute has passed now when we realized, the sounds are coming from upstairs. I go up there thinking somebody went UFC on somebody else’s ass. I knock on the door, and this thin short white college kid opens the door. I asked him if he was okay because my apartment was about to come down on me. At that moment, he apologizes saying that he and his friend were playing a new Xbox 360 game where you play by moving around. Of course, he tells me this while he points to a Kinect for the Xbox 360. However, this still did not add up though, until his 300-pound friend came back from the fridge with another beer. I told them that they should play Call of Duty instead.

I guess the Moral of the story is that you should not invite your chubby friends to play Kinect in your upstairs apartment even though you might think they need the exercise. Rather, tell them to eat a salad every now and then! I know even McDonald’s sells them now.

© 2010, Christian Rios All rights reserved.

Original @ http://www.chrisrios.com/2010/11/15/a-kinetic-experience/

© 2010, Christian Rios. All rights reserved.

This game is a lot of fun. It is even more fun with 3 other players. You have the option to have a couple of local players and play online with extra players. If you loved alien hominic, this is even better. It is really cheap for what you get. I have played it through several times and leveled several characters, mostly because I choose a brand new character every time I start going through the game again with other friends. Customization of weapons is simple enough not to go to forums to understand but complex enough to keep it interesting and get that rpg feeling of upgrading and reward for your skill. Animation is pretty and the fart humor is funny.

Bottom line: No Xbox Live Arcade fan should be caught without this one!

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© 2010, Christian Rios. All rights reserved.

I have been playing Modern Warfare 2 since  release. I have been playing with my buddies from the clan and several other friends since pretty much everybody got the game by now. It is a fun game; however, I am still annoyed with several issues that need to be addressed with the game and IW.net.

First, this matchmaking does not seem to be working for the player to make the experience simpler. The purpose of getting rid of dedicated servers was supposed to make it easier and more approachable to the casual player restricting the interface to a console-like experience. However, it has been completely the opposite effect. Since we are lacking dedicated servers, a player is going to be designated to host. If you are behind a router, as most people are, make sure you forward all the ports that are needed otherwise your NAT is going to be set to “Strict”. If you are a casual gamer, I probably lost you already but you can see my point.

Second, the party system does not seem to work without problems. It is tedious, you have to invite everybody and for some reason some of your friends will not be able to connect to your party. It always takes a couple of tries until somebody can successfully be party leader and invite without issues.

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© 2010, Christian Rios. All rights reserved.