Category: Chris

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Goodbye Forever

Chris

Well, the week that I saw coming in an earlier blog post (my first one on the site, actually) has finally arrived. I just wanted to take this time to say goodbye to the majority of my friends and family, because gaming companies have once again conspired to put out pretty much all their good titles in the month of November.

(Disclaimer: Yes, I understand that it’s all an effort from retailers to get in on the big holiday sales season, rather than releasing the next big Zelda game in July when no one cares. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.)

Starting tonight with the midnight release of Saints Row the Third, I might not be going outside for a couple weeks. While that would be an awful strategy in the long run, I’m actually a little bit excited about the prospect for the time being. Continue reading “Goodbye Forever”

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No business like snow business

Chris

It snowed tonight! It’s the second time in three days! Everything is wonderf–

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m not a huge fan of snow.

Look, snow is pretty. It’s fun for stuff like sledding or snowball fights or whatever. And I don’t really mind the cold all that much. Plus, Christmas has started to feel even more like Christmas with holiday snow around to help set the mood.

But after living for more than eight years up in Flagstaff, I think snow is starting to wear on me a bit. Yes, it’s partially my fault for still living here, and no, I still don’t hate snow or anything. What I think I’ve realized is that the initial snow is great, but the aftermath is where things start to fall apart. Continue reading “No business like snow business”

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Going the Distance

Chris

We’ve been posting four days a week consistently for the better part of two months, and as I look through the stats and such for that period (being the webmaster and all), I can’t help but notice one thing: Nothing posts on Tuesdays.

We’ve got M-W-F covered with our blogs, and every other Thursday is a new episode of the show, but … Tuesday is a barren wasteland.

Not anymore.

Starting tomorrow, we’ll introduce a new feature to the At the Buzzer website called “Going the Distance.” GtD was a concept started a few years ago when our college paper was in need of a filler comic strip to replace someone who had abruptly left. At some point I had seen a similar idea on the interwebs, so a friend and I formatted it for strip purposes and a star was born. Continue reading “Going the Distance”

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Foresight

Chris

Once upon a time, I was a pretty avid golfer. I played at least a couple times a month, and I got to be pretty decent. You know, practice makes perfect and all that.

Then a funny thing happened: I started growing. For some reason, I doomed my professional career in each and every sport by quitting basketball before I grew and picking up golf after. When I tried out for the golf team my sophomore year of high school, I was still below 6 feet tall. Two years later, I was 6’6″ and none of my equipment worked anymore.

Since graduating from high school, I’ve kind of lost track of the game completely. But in the past couple years, I’ve been trying to claw my way back. Continue reading “Foresight”

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Sucker bet

Chris

Full Tilt Poker owes me $120.

That’s not a very exciting story, is it? In fact, it sounds more like a text message or a random conversation starter than an actual story.  Quick aside: Maybe it’s just the Twitter generation getting to me, but I feel like putting our life’s activities into 140 characters is slowly killing us for two reasons:

  • Nobody cares that you had a sandwich for lunch
  • Life’s experiences should take up more space than that

But we’ll save a digression on the demerits of Twitter for another time (or as we like to say on the show, stay tuned!). This story is about why you should never gamble through an unregulated system, kids. Continue reading “Sucker bet”

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Review: NBA 2K12

Chris

2K Sports had every reason to mail it in.

They won, after all. Not only was NBA 2K11 one of the most critically acclaimed sports titles in video game history, but it also managed to wipe EA Sports’ series from the face of the earth in the process. EA’s NBA Elite was a glitch-ridden, buggy mess, so bad that the company canceled development of last year’s title and didn’t even bother with one for 2011.

So no one could really fault 2K for resting on their laurels and giving us the standard roster update. After all, Madden’s been doing it for years.

Instead, they took the definitive basketball experience and made it even better. Continue reading “Review: NBA 2K12”

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Sunrise, sunset

Chris

As an esteemed and highly reputable journalist — or something thereabouts — I’ve had the luxury of working in this field for longer than most folks my age. Really, I started dabbling in the field about a decade ago in high school, although it wasn’t really serious until the start of my sophomore year in college.

Journalists are strange creatures. They flock to jobs in a dying industry (although it’s not dying as fast as most folks think), they make jokes few understand (about things like double trucks and dangling participles), and they are more often than not behind the times (one recently departed co-worker still has no home computer and furrowed his brow every time someone mentioned “the Twitter”).

For those stuck working at daily newspapers, they may also be stuck keeping very erratic sleep schedules. Continue reading “Sunrise, sunset”

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Review: Deux Ex Human Revolution

Chris

I know what you’re thinking. “But Chris … a few weeks ago you said you don’t like shooters!”

First of all, that’s not true. I said I don’t like most shooters. There are exceptions. Despite being unfamiliar with the series, I liked enough of what I saw from previews for Deus Ex: Human Revolution to give it a shot, especially since it was free for me to play it.

What followed was an experience in unstoppable roaming turrets, devastating punches, never asking for this, and a game that ultimately does a lot of things very well, but nothing truly great. Continue reading “Review: Deux Ex Human Revolution”

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Adventures between the foul lines

Chris

I’ll let you in on a little secret about me that I’m sure you’ve been dying to know: I never played baseball as a kid. Not T-ball, not Little League, not anything. Maybe that makes me something less than the ideal American (I can just imagine Shaun giving me crap as we speak), but it’s the way things worked out.

See, I’ve always played a lot of sports. I did organized basketball and soccer for eight years, and was pretty decent at both. I picked up Ultimate Frisbee in high school and won three intramural titles in college (and was pretty damn good). I tried out for the tennis team in high school despite not having played competitively. Even now, I still play most of those — as well as stuff like racquetball and volleyball. Hell, I was a lineman for football in eighth grade, and I hate/suck at football. I guess I’m kind of a sports junkie.

But baseball never happened. I’ve always liked the game. I can remember watching the Reds sweep the A’s in the 1990 World Series with my dad. I played wiffleball growing up and loved hitting home runs. But somehow I never had the chance to play.

So you can imagine my concern when I had the chance to play on a slow-pitch softball team for work. Continue reading “Adventures between the foul lines”

Blogs, Chris, Video Games1 Comment

Tales of Disappointment

Chris

My love-hate relationship with the “Tales of” video game series goes back almost a decade now. Don’t get me wrong — there’s a lot more love than hate. But sometimes those emotions are two sides of the same coin, after all.

I was introduced to the series through a ROM of the Super Nintendo’s Tales of Phantasia back in high school. At the time, I was impressed by the idea of a fighting-game-like battle system in an RPG — it seemed like a nice change of pace from turn-based, menu-heavy systems.

That game was decent, but I wasn’t really a huge fan until the summer of 2004, when Tales of Symphonia hit the GameCube and redefined my view of the series and RPGs forever. Continue reading “Tales of Disappointment”