#1 "Thought Wrap-Up"

"It really only takes one person to change your mind about a game. To be honest, I've always loved Lost Planet for its Single Player campaign, despite negative reviews. That doesn't mean I hated the Multiplayer modes. It's just that with many online games that have a strong competitive nature to them, it really put me off for awhile. People can be cruel, and I think most of what I feel when joining matches these days is embarrassment. Not only am I nervous about how I'll react to other players' moves and perform during the game, but it's also very hard for me to hear someone yelling at me because of my mistakes. The thing that gets me is, I almost never reply to negative comments anymore, but I still always feel this way; still feel nervous of what people might say.

What amazes me is how all of this changes once I meet someone polite for a change. I joined a lobby in Lost Planet recently and heard a voice that I could umute my mic for. That really changed my perspective once I realized how often I was leaving that game in my disc tray. After joining more games I found that that person was sort of a rare thing, at least from what I've come across. That didn't stop me from loving the Multiplayer, however. And because of that one person, I have once again gained a little confidence in playing matches with more people, thus enjoying Lost Planet even more than I had before. Want to know something interesting? I've been playing games for most of my life, but I've yet to learn to take these experiences with me. Instead, I'll start over again from game to game, once more becoming that embarrassed and nervous rookie."

"The Office was really good tonight. I could've sworn 30 Rock was going to be on. Oh well. Yeah, I commented on a television show before the Superbowl. As much as I'm not that interested in Football anymore, my heart was doing all sorts of crazy things during the 4th quarter. Well, whatever...congrats Steelers, I guess. Just stop being jerks all the time, okay?"

"Resident Evil 5. Let me be clear here: I don't play Resident Evil games. They look amazing, and by watching my brother play through Code Veronica years ago, it makes me a little jealous that people are actually up to date on the RE storyline. That game was crazy, and so was the part when the two dogs jumped out of the window on RE2. Nightmares forever! I played through the Demo of RE5 about 5 times, actually. I'm considering picking it up, but not because it was a superb demo, which it wasn't. I want to actually give a Resident Evil a try, and from what I've seen, it could at least be a respectable game to own. Also, let's be honest, any game that has its title spoken on the title screen is the newest best game of all time."

"Street Fighter IV is nearly here. Exciting. Am I a CAPCOM fanboy? It sure sounds like it. Complete coincidence, I swear. As much as I hate the idea of paying for alternate costumes in SFIV, isn't that what people in Japan arcades are doing? They're gaining credits to their fighter cards from winning matches, right? They have to put money in to play those matches in the first place. I guess someone could do the math on the value of wins versus DLC cost, but it wouldn't add up. Someone could win a lot of matches and have only dropped 100 Yen. Yeah, I guess I still hate the idea of paying for alternate costumes. I'll save my thoughts on arcades and game prices for another day."

That's all I have on my mind. :\ 

Goodnight!