The Bro Chat

DMR:

The single shot scoping rifle is by far my favorite and if used well is a capable killer in any game type.  To really gain mastery level quickly with this weapons SWAT is going to give it you the best and will be ideal for any and all maps it played on.

BR:

The three shot burst scoping rifle is a familiar favorite of many players and still holds much of the same wallop as before (though the B+X+R combo no longer works).  If your very comfortable with this weapon use it on small or medium maps, on large maps the scope isn't very powerful and the three shot burst losses accuracy at range.  Again SWAT is gonna be your best friend for quick mastery.

Pistol:

It's very similar to the Halo 1 and 3 models.  With a quick firing ability (just about as fast as your finger can pull the trigger) and decent accuracy at long range makes it ideal for SWAT on maps with blood bath areas.  Note: try to work on the this mastery in tandem with the BR or DMR.

Assault Rifle:

The classic Halo gun that has had an iteration in every halo game without much change from one to the next is needs a full clip to kill any one opponent.  This gun may be one of the hardest guns to get mastery on.  I suggest playing either King of the Hill or regicide allowing you to get quick kills on those who already have low shields and being able to easily find them.  Your loadout should have extra ammo or dexterity perks to allow you to have more ammo initially and to reload faster.

Frags:

The same old grenade known and loved and hated throughout the FPS world are gonna be something that the non-grenade happy player me find troubling.  Just like with the Assault Rifle King of the Hill and Regicide will be the easiest to get kills with grenades on, but be careful they can kill you just as easily as your opponent if not thrown with care.

Additional Tips and Tricks:

-Sniper mastery will be hard now that the game type snipers is no longer up, if and when they bring it back play it for two to three days with an average of 10+ kills a match should get you your mastery fastest.

-Play with friends you know and trust, they will help you locate enemies and will be more likely to save your ass than a random.  Plus its more fun and way more hilarious.

-In SWAT use spring sparingly, you will die more in mid sprint than fire fights, trust me I know this as fact.

-In Regicide killing the king gets you extra points, but pass the slaughter around.  You can still win if you stay close to the leader with normal kills, and kill the king when the opportunity arises.

-When the Mantis is involved protect it and keep it alive, the longer you have your Mantis the better.  Have one person that's either a good shot or has a power weapon keep it alive and you can control the battlefield easier.

-Know your weapons and how to use them.  Yes it's common sense, but if you know what your enemy has it will be easier to kill him.

Today is the birthday of the great one, Bruce Lee.  If he were still alive today he'd be celebrating his 72nd birthday.  For those of you have just crawled out from under rocks, Bruce Lee made kung fu films what they are today.  His influence can be felt in every movie that involves hand to hand fighting in some way, be it moves or how they're shot, everyone takes pages from his book.  He defied the Chinese elders and council and taught westerners the ways of martial arts and angered them even further by breaking away from tradition and creating his own martial art without stances taking influences from all styles.  He called it Jeet Kun Do, or 'style without style' or 'fighting without fighting', revolutionizing training techniques and ideas the world over.

It's that time once again to set your DVRs or go searching through Netflix.  This week it's some of the most classic of horror films.  If you haven't seen them you then you should.

The Exorcist

It's time for another set of Halloween movies that you should see this season.  This week there are a few films that don't follow the normal rules, they are the exceptions to them.  By no means does this make them bad, but in fact makes them that much more enjoyable.

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Thing (the original from 1982)

This great film stars Kurt Russel and takes place at an Antarctic research station.  A shape changing alien killer, kills and takes the place of its victims to kill even more.  Even today the special effects will make you cringe and want to lose your lunch.  This film plays on your fears of being unable to flee from danger and the fear of the unknown things about people your around.  Great if you need an excuse to be antisocial.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

This film from 1984 with a large cast of talented actors, including Johnny Depp, features the vengeful child murderer Fred Krueger.  He doesn't kill his victims in the normal way, but he kills them in their dreams with images from the children's own subconsciousness.  It has some very graphic and disturbing deaths that will make you just plain squeamish,  This film just makes you plain afraid of falling asleep, not to mention what you might see in your dreams when you finally do fall asleep.  If you want to develop a case of insomnia so that you can watch more films start here.

Alfred Hitchcock Films

Here's our first franchise, films done by Alfred Hitchcock.  You simply can't go wrong with any Hitchcock film you select, but we suggest you see at least one of three.  They are Psycho, The Birds, and Vertigo are films that will make you afraid to go anywhere.  Psycho puts the fear of staying at strange hotels, The Birds makes you afraid of the birds in the sky around you, and Vertigo just reinforces ones fears of heights.  So if your looking to have agoraphobia for a few days watch anything with Alfred Hitchcock Presents before the film.

In the coming weeks we'll have more films that you need to watch this Halloween season.  So come back.....or we will come find you.

-Rob

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the greatest movies of all time.  The Princess Bride was a film directed by Rob Reiner during the eighties.  The cast includes Billy Crystal, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Chris Sarandon, Mandy Patinkin, and Andre the Giant just to name a few.  This movie has something for the whole family of all ages; action, adventure, love, great storyline, one liners, memorable characters, quite literally everything that makes a movie great.  If you haven't seen it yet, then go out now, get the 25th anniversary edition, make some popcorn, sit down and enjoy the next hour and a half of your life.  I promise you won't be sorry.

Over the weekend (for Americans at least) the mid season finale of Doctor Who aired and another set of companions have fallen.  After two and half season the characters of Amy Pond and Rory Williams have been killed.  Amy has been part of Doctor Who as long as Matt Smith has been the eleventh Doctor.  We saw her as a little girl, a young adult, and a mature(ish) mother.  Rory has been there just a few episodes less than them.  Amy was one of the only, if not the only, female companion of the Doctor to truly fall in love with someone that was not the Doctor.  Amy and Rory have both been instrumental in the success of many of the Doctors adventures as well as his survival.  They were (SPOILER) the parents of River Song aka Melody Pond, who is both the equal of the Doctor and his wife.  Thanks to them the Doctor has become a better man and has one more piece of head accessory, brainy specs.  Whovians both here and across the sea will miss the girl who waited and the Centurion, but are excited to see who the new companion will be and the adventures she'll have with him.  Goodbye Ponds we will not forget you.

To clarify when I say everyone else, I mean heroes and characters from previous installments that survived their game.  Characters that haven't really had any mention or story time since their games.  So here's a list of past characters in a timeline-esq order.

Rebecca Chambers

Rebecca Chambers was in RE0 as the rookie medic of the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team.  She started out as an unsure and bashful medical prodigy, but by the end was a courageous and confident prodigy.  We know from other games that she survived the destruction of Raccoon City, so what the hell happened to her?  Is she B.S.A.A. now or what?

Billy Coen

Billy Coen was a wrongfully accused ex-Special Forces Marine that accompanied Rebecca in her adventures.  He started out as a hard ass and untrustworthy guy, but as the game came to a close he softened a little and showed that he was a true Marine.  All we really know is that he headed off somewhere to start a new life.  Why couldn't he have joined B.S.A.A or be working as a do gooder mercinary?

Barry Burton

Then there's Barry Burton from the original RE, notorious for his mastery of the English.  He popped in and out of Jill's and Chris's story lines in RE.  We end the game knowing one thing, that he survived the Mansion and the blowing up of Raccoon city.  He's a career policeman and he likes adventure to much, he wouldn't have just dropped off the face of the earth, what the hell happened to him?

HUNK

HUNK was a Umbrella black ops guy who was a minigame in RE2 and an extra level in RE: Umbrela Chronicles.  He's become some sort of antihero to RE fans (me included).  The last we heard of him was he got of Raccoon City with a sample of the G-Virus.  Did he survive, became a test subject, or went rouge?

Claire Redfield

Then there is Chris's little sister Claire, where in the hell is she?  The last we see of her was a semi-cannon digital film that was released within the last few years in which she is loosely affiliated with the B.S.A.A., and helping control a t-virus terrorist attack. She survives a semi-botched investigation of an Umbrella front company's complex blows up.  She's alive and well, so where is she?

Shiva Alomar and Josh Stone

Now Shiva will be left at the wayside along with Josh Stone (both from RE5).  They both survived the final encounter with Wesker and his death throws, and flew off with Chris and Jill.  So what are they doing now during this zombie Armageddon?

So that, if you couldn't tell, was the rant of a semi-disgruntled fanboy wanting to know what the hell happened to some of his favorite characters.  With the knew game coming out and the past two games having Mercenary mode, many of the aforementioned characters having made an appearance in them.  We can assume we will see a few, if not all of them, along with the newbies in the RE6 Mercinaries.  What I really hope, and I would love to smack this into the heads of Capcom executives, is DLC of extra missions for each or these characters.  Be it together or solo, I don't care (though a HUNK and Billy Coen mercenaries for hire company going ape shit on zombies would be really really enjoyable...wait...where was I before my imagination got the better of me?) just something to give those of us who play the games for story just as much as for the game play a bit of piece of mind.

This is one fanboy who will be incredibly happy to put thumb to controller on  October 2nd, when Resident Evil 6 comes out.

-Rob

P.S. Capcom please give us DLC that isn't just new costumes, we want more game play even if it is just a few levels.

I don't know about you guys, but when I saw the teaser trailer for Wreck-It Ralph, I jumped out of my chair. Why is this? Because it's a Disney movie and it has Bowser from the Mario franchise, Dr. Robotnik from Sonic, AND Zangief from Street Fighter in it.

Are you kidding me?

I think the last time I saw Bowser in a feature-length film was when the god-awful Super Mario Bros film saw the light of day, and, needless to say, that was thoroughly disappointing... Now here he is sitting beside two other famous video-game villians in a DISNEY movie.

The movie is called Wreck-It Ralph and it's about an arcade villian named... well... Wreck-It Ralph... who decides it's high-time to hang up the bad-guy coat and start doing some good. He is voiced by John C. Reilly and finds a way to escape the game he has been tied to his whole life and jump into other ones.

The movie looks entertaining enough, but the real reason I want to see it is for all of the cameos from other existing video game characters. First of all, just the realization that Disney actually found a way to get the rights for all of these characters to appear in a movie together is fascinating enough to me, and second, I get the feeling it's going to be pretty funny. This is, of course, coming from a gamer; I mean, I would imagine the movie is going to be fun for all ages whether or not you are familiar with the cameos, but for those of us who have actually played games like Paperboy, Pac-Man, and Q*Bert (all games that have promised cameos), it will be that much more exciting. Those of us will be the ones silently searching the backgrounds to see how many characters we can recognize. I was already pausing the video on YouTube a thousand times just to see who I could pick out in every scene.

I can't really tell the whole underlying plot, but the main storyline revolves around Wreck-It Ralph. The scene that the picture up there was from involves a bunch of villians sitting together in a support-group type setting talking about what it's like to be the bad guy. It goes without saying that we'll get to see the point of view from all the baddies as opposed to the heroes of the video games we know and love, which will be a nice change of pace. I mean, Wreck-It Ralph winds up becoming a good guy from what it looks like, but just to see a story told from a bad guy's perspective is always a nice change of pace; Disney movie or not.

My hopes for this movie: the guy voicing Bowser has a really deep raspy voice and has funny dialogue. Think Super Paper Mario-type dialogue. I also want to see a crazy amount of recognizable faces for my own amusement. Either way, I will be seeing this movie when it comes out, and I think other gamers will have fun experiencing it.

Want to see what it's like to be a bad guy? You need to check out this video!

Over the weekend one of the best shows of all time returned to the American airwaves with new episodes.  That's right believers, Dr. Who is back with Matt Smith as the Doctor who is once again joined by Amy Pond and Rory Williams.  Before I get to the readers digest version of the first episode let me just say what a way to come back.  Action, adventure, drama, and more that you would expect from Dr. Who are here, with one of the greatest and most genius twists to come out of a premier episode in a long time.  If you haven't seen it yet, netflix it or something, don't even read the rest of this do it now.