Mostly news about myself

I usually write these things with some updates regarding the clan, but honestly I am being a bit selfish with it today. I have some interesting and fun news to share about some things I have coming up.

First thing I would like to share is actually pretty cool, around the time that E3 starts this year I will be posting the first teaser trailer to Hellhammer and my upcoming Xbox Live indie game. I hope people didn't forget because it's looking pretty boss right now.

We are hoping to launch this game by the end of the year and so far that is right on schedule. As I said it's not exactly clan news but it's fun and important news nonetheless. Hopefully some people are excited at least a little bit, I know I am.

The other thing I am excited about is the new direction I am taking with video game reviews. I always kind of did those off the cuff and hardly ever used actual gameplay because it was a pain in the ass to record in standard definition. Also my computer lacked the power to render videos quickly enough. Now that I have a high def capture device and my computer is upgraded I can do a much, much better job. Everything I want to cover will be generally scripted and I am hoping to get some sort of sponsorship out of it.

Keep your fingers crossed for me at any rate. Unlike most other Youtube based reviews I wont go out of my way to get subscribers, I want them to sub on my merit alone. Though I am thankful for the support I have gotten from the clan members who subscribed ahead of time.

I hope to have a constant stream of content, at least a couple done a week, I will be taking requests as well. www.youtube.com/user/CrapgamerReviews

The last little bit of news is clan related, June 1st, 2011 starts our clan promotions, so we will be keeping tabs of everything everyone does. At the end of the month the person with the most points wins MS points card and some other goodies. So make sure to spread the word.

It's definitely an interesting time if your in the clan right now, hopefully some of these things pan out and can bring more members and goods to all of us, were coming up on the 4 year anniversary of the clan and we've got some nice surprises lined up.

Thanks for your time everyone!

E3 2011

E3 is the biggest and most important event if you are a gamer or gaming fan. It's when we see new games, new consoles, new technology and new ideas. This is my first time covering it for a couple of different sites, at least the Microsoft aspect of E3 2011.

I think we all have some games we would like to see, each E3 brings us a chance to hope and dream of what we want most from the gaming industry. Sometimes we guess or hope right and sometimes not. Since I already expressed in two separate articles what I expect from Microsoft, I figure I can point out some other things I would like to see.

We all know Nintendo will unveil their new console that is currently code named "Project Cafe". I am sure we will get the official name and see some games played on it, I am more interested in the actual specs of the console, rumors suggest it uses Blu Ray or a completely new disk format. It's also said to lack a hard disk drive altogether and instead only offer 8 gigs of flash memory.

We wont know any of these things until E3 of course, which is what makes it so exciting in the first place. I personally feel that Nintendo is making a mistake releasing a console this early, I think in a couple of years when Microsoft and Sony release new consoles it will make Nintendo's Project Cafe as obsolete as the Wii is now.

I am interested to see how they integrate the touchscreen controllers in this new console and I am fairly interested to see the games and what it can do overall. If Nintendo is smart they will release the new console with a Mario, Zelda and Metroid game. Nintendo also needs to drastically review their online gaming strategy. I know they fear for the safety of kids, but that is a risk all the companies take, and if Nintendo truly wants to compete I believe they need a paid online service like Xbox Live.

So we all know we will see things like Gears Of War 3 and possibly the rumored Gears Of War Exile on Kinect. We also know it's all but been announced that we will see a Halo CE remake by Saber Interactive. I also highly suspect we might see something on Halo 4 which will be released next year. Some kind of play along the lines of "Where it all started and where it ends" or something along those lines.

I like to make some out of the box guesses and this is a solid list of some of those.

1.Star Wars Battlefront 3

2.Killer Instinct 3

3.Lost Odyssey 2

4.Grand Theft Auto 5

5.Jade Empire 2

6.God Of War 4

7.Kinect Sports 2

8.Dance Central 2

9.New Mario game for Project Cafe

10.New Smash Bro's game for Cafe

11.New Pikmen game for Cafe

12.Metal Gear Solid 5

13.Too Human 2

14.Fable 4

15.New Kingdom Hearts

I know now days people don't like to look foolish by guessing but I figure it cant really hurt much in the end.

Games are for entertainment and for fun, it's anticipation that makes E3 so much fun in the first place.

What are you excited to see?

Like What I See So Far

Whenever you rebuild something you tend to think it will take a while before you find the right fit. I was a little worried that I was replacing old trouble makers with possibly new ones, I am very glad that this is not the case.

While I still hold firm to the fact that MOH isn't for everyone, I am happy to see so many enjoying the new atmosphere and friendly comradery. It was hard at first to get older members to accept how things were going to be from now on, but I am proud to say everyone has really stepped up and produced both in matches and just as clan representatives.

Simple changes like having everyone in the clan add a new recruits Gamertag so they feel welcomed, also actually inviting these people to play with us is a huge step in the right direction. Now when we game, even if we have fourteen people on, we can easily split up into two or three groups and assign a team leader

Honestly I have been about as active as always, more active on certain day's but I certainly haven't changed up my schedule to accommodate anyone. I have continued to run the clan the same, steady way I always have. Nothing has changed. Really in all honesty it's proof of what a solid job the leaders (old and New) are doing. I am sure it irks some people that we continue on as if nothing happened, do our same schedules, practices, matches that we've done since the beginning. I take a (SSDD) type of attitude with it and it helps keep things in perspective.

People as a whole seem to have a better appreciation for each other and for the first time since COD4 and SWBF2 before that, clan members are actually proud of what they are doing and rededicating themselves to helping our wherever it's needed. It has freed me up to be able to do other things in life where needed, while I can still be confident that everything wont fall apart.

So in closing I like what I see thus far from the clan, glad we are expanding instead of standing still, it's always important to grow and move forward instead of linger and eventually die out. I've seen so many teams and clans come and go that it really makes me appreciate the stability of MOH. I think others are feeling that way too. I mean four years with a majority of the same people and the same leader is a milestone to be certain.

Method To Madness

I bet to some people I come across as cocky or even quite mad sometimes. I know it has to be frustrating for people that are constantly looking for a bad spot in the armor. To the outside it must have looked like my clan along with myself was headed into a downward spiral into mediocrity.

You forgot one thing though..... I'm motherfucking Crapgamer!

It's nothing new to me, I've been proving people wrong since I started {MOH}, but the bottom line is there is always a way to inspire those around you. So while it looked like we were stinking it up on a practice team, if you were in the know and on the inside you were excited by what was shaping up to be a great team.

Once the guys got a chemistry and once I got a good look at who could do what, I knew who to use where and what the strengths and weaknesses were for the teams. Nobody can ever say I failed to recognize talent or failed to utilize it. Even if you hate me or loathe me, you have to admit I've always managed to get the best out of my players.

The last few weeks have been filled with practices almost every day, new recruits, old members returns, solid loyal veterans all mixing into a magnificent group of Regulators. For the first time since Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Call Of Duty 4 gaming and practices are fun again, every actually get's along well, E.L.E. isn't just a buzz word it's a reality. There has been absolutely no rage, no pissed off members complaining. Everyone does there part, communicates and we are actually having fun!

It excites me to see the guys have faith and believe in what I am saying as well as believe in each other. I know it's not all me and I usually don't like to take credit, but I feel vindicated even though I felt like we as a clan and I as a clan leader had nothing left to prove. I mean four years of winning, fun and gaming speaks for itself.

I admit there was a bit of pressure this first game out, the fact that we drew a pretty good team, one ranked higher and one that sported some serious try hards and GB warriors didn't help my anxiety. Dropping the first map (Domination on Nuketown) did nothing to quell it either, I knew the second map, Demolition would be all us however, and it was. Not even close when it came right down to it. CTF on Array would be the deciding map. We shut them out.

Never before have I been around a happier bunch of people, they were celebrating and invited me to the Black Ops theater to watch the victory where we all agreed to give Tacoscrub the MVP. Though everybody played splendidly he was chosen for clutching in CTF.

Everyone played there part, even though I was not in the match, I gave a nice little speech to the guys before it and I hope it inspired them at least a little to remember to stay true to the MOH way. I am not in any way taking credit away from the guys who actually played, not now nor ever. They are the ones with the skill, I just try to find ways to make them mesh as a team and inspire.

Last night was the start if a rebirth for the Regulators, a step in the right direction. Are we perfect? I doubt it. Are we a good team? You better believe it! We believe in each other, we have fun and we now know we can overcome adversity.

When I say MOH 4 years strong it isn't something that has ever been broken, 4 straight, solid, winning, amazing years. Never has there been a break for us. We have had busy times certainly, but we have never stopped moving forward.

I know some teams or clans can put a Est. date by their names, but none can mean it more then us. {MOH} Est.2007

I want to thank everyone over the last few weeks for helping out, my leaders have all really stepped up. Hellhammer, Grave, Shotty, Striker, Saint, Hate. I appreciate everything you've done.

Not so bad for a noob team huh haters?

STFD!

Unsung hero's

I like to sometimes go out of my way to thank people who have helped me out in the past. My clan has a lot of unsung hero's and while I may even miss a couple here, I figure this will at least be a start in my thanking them and a step in the right direction. I know I've never been one to thank or fully appreciate the people around me and it's a flaw that I am working on.

First off I'd like to say Hateinaboxx is the one person in the clan who isn't selfish in the least. He always works his butt off for everyone around him, he jokes around and doesn't ever complain. Here is a guy who's soul purpose on COD4 was to run around with an RPG so as to take out any enemy choppers. Did he ever once complain? No sir! In fact he has steadily gotten better on every COD game and only recently this year made it into his first GameBattle match, which we won.

Anyone looking for a perfect example in how to behave in MOH need look no farther then Hateinaboxx. I mean with a nickname like "The Storming Mormon" you know he has got to be a cool guy. When I think back to the times he had a chance to leave the clan and yet chose to stay and work on getting better, I cant help but to smile. Everyone loves Hate and I cant blame them, he is just a good guy and fun to be around.

Another unsung hero is Shotty, he is one of the loyalist people I have ever met. I am I think proudest of the fact that he is a home grown MOH product, not to take anything away from his talent, but I believe he at least on some level has learned some leadership from me as well as his amazing team player capabilities.

Shotty never complains, will always offer advice if you need it. I look to him to be a main advisor when it comes to the clan. Recently, before I kicked out some members I made sure I had his loyalty and once I had his and a handful of others I pulled the trigger on a controversial move. In the end I knew everything would work out fine.

Yet again Shotty came through when he actually gave up Runescape to help with the clan, he has been more active now then at any time since Star Wars Battlefront 2, selfless, honest and a true leader I feel shotty never gets the respect or attention he rightfully deserves.

Lastly for this edition of unsung hero's is Futstriker. He is another one of those people who often get's overlooked and I am not sure why. He has been a part of MOH since our playoff COD4 run years ago. While he might not have been in a ton of matches for us, he was instrumental nonetheless. I can remember him leading the secondary team against the starters for our practices. In fact a lot of MOH members did this and have gone unsung in my opinion.

People like to make fun of Striker because he is a team player, like myself, Hate and Shotty. Sometimes your overall Kill/Death ratio will suffer because of this, but you have to be able to see beyond that. It's the intangibles that people like Striker bring to the table that make him such a great asset to the clan.

I plan on making this a regular series, so people in the clan, never feel like your deeds go unnoticed. I might not always comment, but your appreciated!

Things have an interesting way of working out

Isn't it funny how things can work out sometimes? I am sure by now rumors of MOH's death have been greatly exaggerated and those types of rumors happen when you have to kick people out of the clan on a larger then normal scale.

These types of rumors also happen when you have as many haters as we tend to draw. People I am sure would line up to put flowers on our grave.

I was a little hesitant with installing new leaders after the trouble I had in the past, but the past couple of weeks has proven to me that I haven't lost the mission when it comes to my clan. While not every decision I make is perfect, I am glad to see the new leaders picked have really stepped up to the plate. They are eager to prove themselves and even though I was forced to miss a practice this past week, to my surprise there were almost fifteen people there. To top it off we get a GB and win that as well.

I am happy to see everyone make a few sacrifices and come together as a team, I make no qualms about the fact that I wont be as available for Black Ops in the near future as I was on other games, the new leaders instead of looking at this as a handicap look at it as an opportunity. Which is how it should be.

Even veteran leaders have stepped up and shown their grit, Grave, Hellhammer and Shotty are all active and Shotty even gave up Runescape to help with the clan.

Hopefully we continue to get a solid influx of new members, as a clan leader I feel like it isn't my job to babysit, but I do feel responsible if one of my members lacks a headset or XBL or something that I actually can help them out with. So hopefully in the future the clan comes to me if they have those types of issues and I will see what can be done to help out.

Admittedly I was feeling bored and stagnant with competitive gaming up until I kicked those four or five guys. Something about the excitement of a new team and new direction really has me jacked up. I think the excitement has spread and the others are picking up on it, so it's a really good time to be in the clan. I am back to having fun in public rooms and GB's. There has been ZERO rage at practice or public rooms and everyone seems to be really getting along well.

So I think the new arrangement is working out well for all parties involved. I get the help I want, no more rage or annoying people bickering back and forth and the ones I kicked get to have their independence and have the pressure all on them. Which is what they wanted. So I believe think this is a rare case where kicking out people actually helped the people I kicked as well as my own clan and cause.

Who could possibly complain about that?

New Leaders

Out with the old and in with the new, such is life. Though it's always sad to see some old friends go, with it comes opportunity and the promise of something new and exciting.

I think some congratulations are in order for Striker who is the newest full MOH council member and even though he is leaving in September to join the Marines he wont be gone forever. Striker has been a loyal member for years and was even a part of our COD4 playoff run a couple of years ago. Never one to shy away from speaking his mind he brings an excellent voice and opinion to the council.

Some more congratulations are in order for Saint, he has been promoted to Junior Council. Saint is a long time member who has done a really good job recruiting and playing for us. We like to give him a hard time, but that just means he is one of the guys. Though he is away two weeks out of the month I am more then confident that he will put in twice the work while he is around.

Lastly is someone who has been deserving of a promotion for a long, long time. Hateinaboxx started out as our chopper boy on COD4, though we actually played Star Wars Battlefront 2 with him a bit as well. He is the consummate professional and never takes things we say too seriously.Hate is one of the most loyal members this clan has ever seen, refusing to leave even with numerous chances and opportunities to do so. Congratulations Hate on being promoted to Junior Council.

We will have a couple of Captain promotions to announce soon, we are currently in the midst of evaluation talent and peoples leadership abilities.

As for my personal opinion I only want positive people in leadership roles, you have to be able to take things seriously when the time comes, but you also need to be able to get along with people as well as joke. I don't like indecisive people in my clan. I want people excited to be in the clan as well as excited for the future of the clan.

Congratulations to those guys and I know you'll continue to make MOH successful.

Gaming with Celebrities

A couple of months ago I was checking my Twitter feed and I notice Fred Durst, the front man for Limp Bizkit had tweeted that he was getting on Quake 4 and that if anyone has the game to pop it in and hop on Xbox Live.

Well I didn't have Quake 4 but my brother Hellhammer did, so I mentioned it to him and he put the game in and he and Fred Durst were the only two people on the whole game! They played a couple of rounds and talked a bit and he is pretty laid back. They talked about gaming in general and he talked about how he has like ten Xbox 360's, like one in every room of his house and even on his tour bus.

Well after I Hellhammer won a game on Quake 4 he added him to his friends list but asked that he not give out him Gamertag to anyone, as he said he has to change it like every week as it is already. I can say he runs with (LBGC) tags in his name. Of course this means "Limp Bizkit Gaming Clan".

So he asked if Hellhammer had Black Ops and of course he does, so they switched over to that. He invited some band members into the party and Hellhammer invited me as well. I believe it was his DJ, Guitarist and son in the party with myself and my brother.

All of the people he invited sported the (LBGC) tags actually in their names and their names all were similar with a common theme. Which was Star Wars actually. I can safely say that now because they have gone on to change it to a different theme.
We got to talking and he was telling me how he always is playing on Xbox live and usually plays with other celebrities like James Hetfield (Singer for Metallica)apparently they play Gears Of War a lot, same with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth and Brent Smith from Shinedown.

He actually added me to his friends list and said he would get me in a party with Hetfield, since I told him what a huge Metallica fan I Was. One thing I thought was particularly funny was unprovoked Fred Durst totally trashed the PS3. He said he didn't really like to play it because he couldn't appear offline and would get slammed with invites, nobody had a mic and the voice chat sounded like the McDonald's drive through guy. He also went on to say if you ever see a celebrity endorsing the PS3 that you can bet they were paid to do so, as he didn't know a single celebrity that actually liked the PS3. Now I'm sure there are some out there, just not the ones he chills with.

So we played some rounds of Black Ops and I'll say Fred Durst got game, we played Hard Core CTF and won every match. I did get TKed by him twice though....good times.

Anyway you could hear him talk to his son and tell him that he needed to take his medicine so he could feel better, so I assume his son was ill and they were playing Xbox together.

All in all it was super cool to play with famous people, they all were super nice and talked like regular people and joked around with my brother and I. We ended the night around 1:00 a.m. est. and he said he'd hit me up for some Quake 4 and Black Ops in the future as him and his band like to play Quake 4 and do 4v4 and they are usually a man short to do this.

Now when we were actually in a lobby on XBL they said nothing, they didn't talk till we got in the game.


Nice to see my habits aren't too different from famous peoples....

Well there's my story, thought I'd share as I was super excited to actually play and meet with some celebrities over XBL. It's odd, sometimes you never know who you are going to end up meeting over XBL.