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XBOX ONE: My Thoughts

:: I spent most of my day at work with IGN’s live broadcast in my ear, and while I type this I’ve got MS’s keynote going in the background…so I’ll try to share my opinions on things while they pop up while addressing questions a few of you left for me.

The Name: I like it. I get what they’re doing, it’s obvious. One device to run all your media just makes sense, and has for years now. The idea is great, but I’m not convinced they’ve hit the mark yet. Until companies can shake hands it seems that we’ll always need multiple consoles for different needs.

The Look: Half of it is air vents for a reason. They want to smash any thinking that they’ll need to eventually jump to a ‘slim’ model. But this is Microsoft, so, sooomething will be wrong with it. As for the sleek and “sexy” look, I like it. We don’t need all those game-skins, lights, and weird designs carved into it. Scott Lowe from IGN reported a few important details; it has all the crucial inputs in the back to plug in your cable box, hdmi, etc. And it has no external power brick opting for a built in setup.

The Architecture: When Yusif hit the stage to show off all the multimedia features that came with this console…I found myself snoring. Do people still even watch TV? If this had a built in DVR or satellite receiver it would make sense. This just makes it seem like a computer combined with an over-powered cable box. Snap is cool, if they had apps that I actually use (Bing and Skype…whatever man).

The Controller: The important thing I noticed was the lack of “select” and “start” buttons…replaced with logos for something I’m not familiar with yet. To me this is important; they just did away with generation-old features to implement something new, something that belongs to Xbox owners only (keep this in mind). Along with SmartGlass being able to control different features, I think this is one of the best combo’s for gaming I’ve seen (again…we don’t need Kinect haha)

The Kinect: MSUK is stating that the One won’t be usable without having your Kinect connected…friggin lame sauce! My 360Kinect is currently sitting in a drawer somewhere, as any hardcore gamer will tell you - they’re useless. That being said, for general features on the One I could see this being useful. Things like Snap, and the use of voice/gestures make piloting the system look fun. But I’m not into it for going through features…I have a computer for all those needs…I want to grab the new controller and pwn some dang n00bs!

The Cloud: They’re jumping from 15,000 to 300,000 servers………that’s huge. I still won’t use the “cloud” for major storage, I just don’t trust it on any device from any company. But the fact that they are upping their game by that much for our experience has me sold on Xbox being my console of choice. Bigger still is that your gamerscore and achievement points will be porting over from the 360. Thumbs up!

The Halo Show: yes Yes YES!!! Steven Spielberg making a live action show with Master Chief? Well Machinima already proved that it can be a good idea, so I’m behind this 1000000%

The Games: Or lack thereof! It’s sad that developers were in a panic after the presentation, and resorted to social networks to announce releases. Bungie announced Destiny on Facebook, I heard Ubisoft tweeted a whole list of games (like Assassins Creed 4).
ALSO and more importantly, IGN confirmed that when you buy a game you must install it to your account in order to play…that’s new. THE BIGGEST NEWS which is still being confirmed as far as I know - there will be no cross compatibility with your 360! This is one of the biggest turn offs for me. I just spent 8 years playing those games, I don’t want to give them up!

The Extra Fees: After months of speculation Major Nelsen confirmed that once you’ve installed a game to your account, you’ll be able to play it on any console - as long as you port your account over first! As far as allowing other accounts or consoles to play your game there will be additional fees! This is important to take note of, because for me, this is the news that will change gaming forever.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I think in the end, we were shown a console that is semi-good at multimedia. You can watch TV, interact with friends, and mess around with motion capture, all at the same time. This isn’t a complaint that we didn’t see games, it’s a note that gaming in general is changing. The shock that your game attaches to your account, the fact that the IGN panelists were generally bummed out, and that “bros” like EA Sports and CoD got the most stage time shows me something…geeks are losing their gaming culture. We have to revert back to Nintendo for that simple pleasure of picking up a controller and playing games with characters/stories that we know and love. Even Sony has shown that they don’t care about us enough to show us the actual console…they just push out a product to make a profit. And in the end that’s what I see the XboxOne as: a money making scheme. Think about it; consoles battled for years for the top spot, then all of a sudden we spent a decade under the shadow of the 360 and PS3. Not because we couldn’t find something better…but because we were shown a lineup of games so good we didn’t want to move. Now all of a sudden because there are great TV shows to watch we have to pack up and move to a new town? I’m not sold.

There’s still a lot of confusion attached to it, with more news popping up every minute. So post your replies and comments to this so we can share ideas.

STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS [movie] Review

*SPOILER ALERT*

:: It’s kind of surreal that the 2nd review I ever blogged was for JJ Abrams first attempt at a ST movie, and now here we are again. So then, shall we begin?

The first question I got from people was “is it better than IronMan3” and yes, it is. The second was “what’s a Tribble?” which right away should clue you in that THERE ARE THINGS IN THIS MOVIE THAT RELATE DIRECTLY BACK TO THE ORIGINAL MOVIES. Remember how they changed the timeline in #1, yup, that didn’t change everything in the universe. Tribbles are still a thing (though they only make a small appearance) and a familiar face pops up, with a twist. That being said, I urge you to first go back and at least watch the first two original ST movies…*ahem*…the second one being “Wrath of Khan”…..*cough*…..for no reason………..

I loved that they continued with the sequel-but-only-because-of-different-timeline thing. It makes twists that you THINK will happen that much juicer. And it makes the ending that much more white knuckling! 

I don’t really have that much more to say about it. It’s funny, Spock is the friggin man, lots of things to pew, Alive Eve is a babe, and that Sherlock dude…Slapperbotch…or…whatever it is…has the coolest voice in the world!

Hey internets, I got a new iPhone!

So the story goes that my amazing friend Ti’an broke her iPhone4S, she replaced the screen BUT not before cashing in on a new iPhone5. Now, I’ve had my iPhone4 for two years now, one of which has been spent with a horribly scratched up camera. She felt called to bless me by just giving me the 4S and walking away. This means two things; I can hand down my phone to my roommate who’s been operating with a smashed screen for about a year now. AND it means that I can take CLEAR photos/videos again! No more horribly muffled concert footage, or overly edited Instagram’s :)

SOUL’D 2013

:: Today was awesome! 3hrs of sleep, too many cups of coffee, a handful of awesome bands, numerous friendly encounters, and a bunch of incredible new friends! I feel so blessed to have spent time with the people I met today, even if it was just to take silly photos and have awkward conversations. Big things come from days like this, for me it’s all about making the connections.
Thanks Altona!

Tomm and I started going to The Bunker as young teens…14 years later we’re now the one’s spittin the gospel from the stage. Unreal. 
I can’t even put into words what tonight was like for me…big thanks to everyone who came out to share in it :) 

isntagram: hebb

via: bunkerministry

This is a little late, but I wanted to fill you all in on what it was like to clean the grody ditches of WinkCity…

To keep things interesting we like to keep track of what KIND of garbage we find the most of (for instance, last year was 4L jugs of milk…). This year we mostly found empty Tim Horton’s cups…like…LOTS of Timmy cups. We probably filled 4 garbage bags with JUST Tim’s cups!

To me that says a few things about our society…
1. We’re too lazy to put garbage where it belongs, and use that as an excuse to throw it on the ground rather than hold onto it until we find a garbage receptacle.   
2.Tim Horton’s customers are messy people.
3. Tim Horton’s coffee is either so nasty that people have to throw it out, or, it creates a chemical imbalance in the brain that causes it’s customers to hate our own planet. 
Sidenote:We only found a couple CoffeeCulture cups, and NO JonnysJava cups…hmmm…wonder what that means. 

To read the full article checkout The Bunker’s page!