http://www.tacticalgamer.com/blogs/gunmod/ Tactical Gamer is the PREMIERE mature online gaming community. We feature games such as PlanetSide 2, Battlefield 3, Armed Assault (ARMA2), Natural Selection 2, DayZ, and more. Our community is geared around teamwork, strategy and tactics in a mature environment. en Thu, 20 Jun 2013 12:43:40 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.tacticalgamer.com/images/styles/UndergroundStyle/misc/rss.jpg http://www.tacticalgamer.com/blogs/gunmod/ http://www.tacticalgamer.com/blogs/gunmod/978-its-time-year-again.html Tue, 04 Sep 2012 22:39:02 GMT also posted on my Game Informer Blog here: GunMods Game Informer Blog (http://www.gameinformer.com/blogs/members/b/jdwohlever_blog/archive/2012/09/04/it-39-s-that-time-of-year-again.aspx) That time of year is fast approaching again. Trees starting to show less green with more yellow and... also posted on my Game Informer Blog here: GunMods Game Informer Blog

That time of year is fast approaching again.
Trees starting to show less green with more yellow and oranges.
Noon time temps are not so high as to make you feel as if you
sucked a water balloon into your lungs. Night seems to come
just a little quicker (and I do love the night).

You see, as a gamer/PC nut, Autumn and Winter has always been my friend.
Well, expect for those rare moments when an ice storm knocks out the power for days,
only then is Winter the bane of my existence.

As a child (and adult), all my favorite times were in the Winter. I was born during the Winter.
Actually, I was born during one of the worst blizzards in Ohio's recorded history.

Thanksgiving and Halloween all take place in the winter. And even though I'm not much
of a sports fan, winter was also when the TV in our house was always turned to football games and
the sounds of the crowd whistles, tackles and the soothing droning of Pat Summerall and
John Madden would put me to satisfying sleep like a hibernating bear.

And Christmas, oh Christmas. I don't care what your religious beliefs are.
I'm talking about the commercialized, "American Christmas", where your religion didn't matter
nearly as much as your power to believe in Saint Nick (and how much your parents could afford).
I can remember laying under the Christmas tree, marveling at all the colorful twinkling lights.
Staring up into the tree from underneath brought me a peace then that I haven't felt since.

See Summer, Summer never changes. Summer is always stupidly hot.
Always annoying me with insistent insects who want nothing more than to drain me of my life blood or
inject my with some wild jungle sickness. Summer is for people who look good in muscle shirts and shorts.
Summer is for people who don't turn red when outside for 10 minutes.

All was right in my world in the Winter.
No stifling heat, no mean stinging bugs.
No having to wear clothes that showed-off my "husky" frame.
Sure school was a drag, but not until I reached puberty and besides,
school is worse in the summer, that's why they call it "Summer School".

For those few blessed winter months I didn't have to be good at P.E.
I didn't have to worry that Julie from school would see my jelly belly and
my glowing white arms and legs.

I was much more comfortable hidden in plain site with my winter coats, scarves,
and whatever extra clothing my Mother would pile on me as I headed out the door.
Winter was when I could hide the reality of my less than stellar physique.

Oh, and let's not forget, pockets!
During the Winter I would have a multitude of coat-pockets to store junk in.
Each Autumn would be a nostalgic treasure hunt where I would find things
I had put in my pockets and had forgotten over the summer.
Money, candy, even the odd school homework sheet I thought I had lost.

As you can probably tell by now, I was not an athletic kid, nor was I what most Fathers
envisioned their sons to be. I was... well, I was a geek. A happy, oblivious geek.

To me, anything with circuit-boards, speakers, diodes, lights and a screen was
considered among man's greatest achievements.

I was born at the dawn of the computer age. The term "PC/Personal Computer" wasn't heard
in my household until I was 8 years old, and then it was some obscure, scientific gadget that could do math really fast.

It was in the Winter that I saw my first video game.
My brother and I were walking around the electronics department of our local department store looking
at the new cassette tape players when we saw a group of kids standing around a TV on display.
As we edged closer, my brother, four years my senior, let out a gasp and said something to the effect of "Holy sh--"

As I was only 8 at the time, I was much shorter (and weaker) than my brother,
I had to wait for an opening. Once I was able to squeeze between a few other boys,
I looked over at the TV and... my.life.changed.forever

It was something called an "Atari 2600 Home Entertainment Console"

It was games you could play on a TV, in COLOR!
You could actually control what was happening on the screen, in real time.

I suddenly saw something that I could relate to and knew I would love the rest of my life.

This amazing device could give me all the electronic bliss I could handle.
I could fly, shoot, be in a tank, dive in the oceans, all while still looking at the TV while sitting
on the couch in my Superman Underoos while my hair was still sticking up from sleeping!

This was something I could do that didn't require that I be able to do 100 push-ups,
or run the track in under 5 minutes. Here was something that only required the things I was already good at.
I had a sense of adventure, an imagination, wonder, and two hands with ten fingers.
I could even be GREAT at this.

As I stared at the tank battle going on in front of me, (my eyes glazed over and most likely drool rolling off my lips)
I felt a new sense wonder and expectation of adventure that I have seldom experienced in my life since.
When I looked at the screen, I didn't see square pixels. I didn't hear bleeps and bloops.
I saw a enemy hill in front of me, my tank rolling toward the top to scan for enemies.
I heard the rolling creak of the 20 ton tank, the thudding boom from the cannon firing at my enemies.

I was lost, I was saved, I was doomed all at the same time.

Of course, my parents would make me wait 3 more years before I could call one my own.
My brother and I were only allowed to play the Atari on weekends for one hour on Saturday and an hour on Sunday.
And that was only IF our grades were good and IF we did all our chores that week.
I never told them, but I would have sold my brother to smelly green trolls for his hour of time.

I would fantasize all week about my "time" with her. Yes, she was a she, how could Atari be anything but a Goddess?
In class I would picture new areas I would find in games,
new tactics in Combat! to outwit the enemy AI. During my dreams I would figure out why that flashing head always
zoned in on my position in Berserk but when I'd awake, I would forget what the head was trying to tell me.

It was the best of times, it was the... heck, it was THE BEST of times.
There was nothing better. At least until I got my first computer,
a Tandy Radio Shack Color Computer (TRS-CoCo) for my 11th birthday.

...and it was Winter then too. ]]> GunMod http://www.tacticalgamer.com/blogs/gunmod/978-its-time-year-again.html http://www.tacticalgamer.com/blogs/gunmod/975-there-such-thing-game-addict.html Sat, 01 Sep 2012 03:32:07 GMT Hello fellow readers, it's been a strange day.
I was looking over at my email as I get several emails a day from
different digital distribution game sales sites along the lines of Green Man Gaming,
Good Old Games, Onlive, EA's Origin store and about 10 others.
Of course, I also check Steams news at least once a day.

I was foaming at the mouth about a sale over at Green Man Gaming because I was trying
to do the math of using a coupon that expires at midnight for 20% off and another
for DarkSiders II that gives me 30% off. Since I could use both coupons,
I was doing math to see what I would save more if I applied the coupons in different orders.
Like if I take 30% off of $40 then applied 20% off of that total. You get the idea.

Anyway, it suddenly hit me.
I have almost FOUR HUNDRED games (if I count all my Xbox, DVD games, and digital downloads).
That's a four with two zeros.
I looked sheepishly at my shopping cart that, to be honest, had more than Darksiders II.
I quickly hit the remove shopping cart and walked out of my room.

It got me thinking. I have more than likely spent more money on video games
than anything else in my existence except for my house and cars.
I am not a rich man, in fact, I'm permanently and totally disabled and the only
income I make is what the state pays me from my disability claims.

Trust me, after I pay my mortgage, electrical, water, phone, cable,
Internet and other small bills I do not have any money left.

So why the heck do I spend so much of my time and money browsing through
online game stores, as if I were going to clean them out?
Why, when I go past a GameStop do I feel a strange longing to go inside,
even though there hasn't been anything released on the Xbox 360 in the last year
that I couldn't get on the PC or that I didn't already have?

When I go to Wal-Mart, K-mart, or any "mart", where is the one place a person can usually find me?
That's right, the freaking Electronics Department. I stand there glassed-eye looking at gadgets,
gizmos, 50 inch widescreen 3D LCD TV's that I could never afford and try to think how I would fit the
TV near my computer desk. Then I notice I have begin to make the "undercover" in-store security
nervous because I have been walking around in the same department for the last 45 minutes.

I know I'm poor. My bank knows I'm poor. The creditors who insist on calling me know I'm poor.
So, why in the blue blazes do I look at things I know I can't afford, or do I,
as soon as I have a few bucks, spend them on games I rarely finish?

Is this a healthy outlet for a person to think about things they don't need?
Is this okay for me to not give a rat's ear about who won the Super Bowl last year,
but I could tell you about everything that was talked about at this years E3?
Or, is it an addiction?

But, wait a minute you hear me squeak,
"I don't even have a freaking cell phone!" (Don't faint)!
But there is a good reason I don't have a cell phone,
if I'm going to be completely honest with myself,
is not because I wouldn't just love to have an iPhone 4S, or an iPad 2, Nexus, Samsung....
(ah.. all these names spinning through my head and I don't even have one!)
Where was I? Oh, the only reason I don't own one of these gadgets-of-wonder is
because I know my mortgage is more important than something I wouldn't use as often as say,
being able to eat for the next 30 days. I mean, I rarely go out, and when I do, it's only to look
at junk I can't/don't have so, a cell phone is not a "need".

That doesn't stop me from drooling over the idea of having the latest smart phone or
thinking that having a Siri would be just totally kick-ass. (I hate you Apple!)

Am I alone, or is this our new society?
Are all of use closet-wanters-of-too-much-junk?

I think, it's time for me to look at what I do have, and stop spending money on new games
I can't afford and actually play and get bored of what I do have.
Well, here I go, into my new future of enjoying what I already have and not obsessing
over every game sale on Steam.
I'm going to get rid of the deep seated need to have too many games, using that full feeling
as a security blanket for any real world insecurities.

I mean really, will I, on my death bed, regret never having bought an iPad or never having all
the top achievements on Xbox.com?
According to mainstream society, I will regret not having spent enough time with my
children and other loved ones.
So, here I go...
...just one last thing as I'm signing off, just wanted you all to know,
I just saw on awesome deal on The Darkness II on Steam... 75% off this weekend.

I.need.serious.help. ]]> GunMod http://www.tacticalgamer.com/blogs/gunmod/975-there-such-thing-game-addict.html http://www.tacticalgamer.com/blogs/gunmod/974-thank-you-tg-pokerface-hello-all.html Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:43:49 GMT Hey there!
I'm the new guy. green, newbie, fresh-meat, bottom-of-the-totem-pole, tadpole, whipper-snapper, etc 'til you puke.
Being the new guy, I didn't expect much. I figured I would have to wait until I posted at least 10, deep, thought-
provoking posts before I could even do anything worth while here.
I was, to say the least, pleasantly surprised. I was given access to everything normal members have access to
without having to slay a chipmunk by the light of a voodoo priests torch!
Also, I have already met at least one great person. Pokerface, here on the forums was giving away a coupon
for some Steam stuff, and I thought with me being new and all that I wouldn't stand a chance in hell of getting it.
But, as TV sitcoms have always taught me, it's better to at least ask then to assume no one gives a rat's butt.
So, I asked, and here I sit, the new owner of some cool Steam DLC for Saints Row The Third
at half the cost thanks to my new friend Mr. (Or is it Mrs? Ms? Dr? um... crap) Pokerface!
So thanks for that, making me feel welcome, and all warm and fuzzy and other such stuff.

So, this was my first little post. Am I famous yet? 10,000 readers? Hello? Is this thing on...? ]]> GunMod http://www.tacticalgamer.com/blogs/gunmod/974-thank-you-tg-pokerface-hello-all.html