Oh Sonic, how the mighty have fallen. Once the mascot for one of the biggest game companies in the world, Sonic has become the laughing stock of a gaming company that is in some serious financial trouble. And you should hate this fictional character more because of that. What, not a good enough reason for you? Then let me count down the top 5 reasons you should hate Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic the Hedgehog is an anthropomorphic blue cartoon hedgehog, or in layman’s terms, a furry. This means that he and his other furry friends are often the subject of porn, ‘cuz furries are sex obsessed and stuff (A quick check at the Sonic the Hedgehog article on encyclopediadramatica would confirm this). Porn involving furries is what is known as “Yiff”, which is only below Jack Thompson in terms of vileness.

If you were to ask somebody what the worst fanbase in the world is, chances are they would mention the Sonic fanbase. Or the Fallout fanbase, but that’s another article. Why? Because the fanbase is notoriously unpleasable, divided, and filled with furries (see above).

So you see, you should hate all fanfiction. And did you know that there’s Sonic fanfiction? I blame the company that made the original characters, because if they hadn’t, there wouldn’t be any fanfiction about the original characters. And by extension, I blame the original character, who in this case is Sonic.

Fact: There hasn’t been a good Sonic game since Sonic & Knuckles, which was released in 1994. Even the supposedly good Sonic games since then suck. Sonic Adventure? It scored nearly 4 points lower on GameSpot when it was lazily ported to the Gamecube -a more powerful console- 4 years after it was originally released, with no significant improvements. For full price. Therefore, the original game sucked, and the 9 out of 10 was just launch goggles. GamesRadar said it, so it must be true!

If you’re a hipster, and since you go to Nova I know you are, you simply must hate Sonic the Hedgehog. If you don’t, you can just turn in your hipster badge right now, because liking Sonic is so out of style. That was the nineties, man, get over it!

If you’ve ever been on a mainstream gaming website before, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen ads on the site for their respective podcast. What’s a podcast, you may ask? Well, the answer varies from podcast to podcast. Some may have tutorials on specific things, others may be in a straight-up news show format, while others still may be more like a talk-radio show. You can usually find podcasts for almost any subject, interest, or hobby on iTunes. Gaming podcasts, the subject of this article, usually fit into the talk-radio category.

Podcasts aren’t for everyone, some may find them boring, or too long. Plus, gaming podcasts will obviously only appeal to a certain demographic, gamers. And, as the name would suggest, Podcasts are best listened to on an iPod or similar mp3 player. So if you have a short attention span, are not a gamer, or do not own an mp3 player, you probably wouldn’t like them. But if you have plenty of spare time, are a gamer, own an mp3 player, and like to listen to people talk, you might enjoy gaming podcasts.

Okay, ready? Let’s begin.

Profanity: Yes

User E-Mails: The community segments of the show is The Joystiq Podcast’s strongest aspect, with very funny “Tip of the Week”, “Professional Voice Actor Bob Ball Reads Your E-Mails”, and “Let’s Get Visceral” segments.

iTunes Pandering: Lots. They routinely remind viewers that their boss would love to shut down their little operation, and the only way to prevent that is to tell your friends about the show and leave (positive) reviews so that they get more viewers.

Last year, after portions of 1up Network were acquired by the Hearst Corporation, Electronic Gaming Monthly (a part of the 1up Network), or EGM for short, was discontinued. This was very upsetting for many fans of the 20-year old publication, myself included. Shortly after it’s discontinuation, however, the founder of the magazine, Steve Harris, acquired the publishing rights for a re-launch of the magazine. For nearly a year, many have waited for the re-launch to finally come into fruition, but as of April 29th, the wait is finally over. But was it worth it?

The first thing that any previous reader of EGM will notice is that the magazine has been completely redesigned. The look of the magazine is more clean, organized, and futuristic. The order in which the magazine’s stories are put in has changed slightly, with the “Review Crew” section coming before the cover story, instead of vice versa. The paper used in the magazine is slightly weightier, has more sheen, and overall feels more professional. The font size is no longer uniform throughout the entire magazine, with some pages having smaller text than others (particularly page 21). Oh, and the page number is now on the top of the page, among other things. Though it doesn’t have the same personality as it used to, I approve of the new look.

The big new feature of the new EGM is EGMi, the online magazine. EGMi uses ScreenPaper technology, though what that is, however, is beyond my understanding. They claim that it will make “stories come alive inside an immersive platform” (immersive platform referring to the internet). Guess that’s a fancy way of saying that they put videos in there. Anyway, there are two versions of EGMi, the free version, and the premium version that requires an iPASS to access. Four-issue iPASSes are included in every print issue of EGM, and if you subscribe you get one iPASS for the length of your subscription. They release one issue of EGMi on a weekly basis, giving gamers plenty of reading material.

To access EGMi, you must also create an account on egmnow.com, which is a simple enough process. I don’t particularly like the look of the website, it seems a bit unfinished, but they have plenty of time to improve on it. The digital magazine however, is very nice looking, and uses the internet “medium” to expand on what a magazine can do. For example, you can’t watch videos in the physical magazine, because it’s on paper, but in the online magazine, they can have video and audio embedded onto the page. The pages also have a good deal of interactivity to them, which I hope they continue to use in interesting ways. Loading appears to be an issue, albeit a minor one that could be improved.

The online magazine itself appears to contain a mixture of content from the magazine, and new, web-exclusive content. Although some of the content can be viewed for free with your egmnow account, a good portion of the content can only be viewed if you have an iPass. For example, the current issue of EGMi’s “Cover Story”, about the history and future of Final Fantasy, can only be viewed with an iPass.

Despite all of the new stuff, the magazine itself is still very much the same magazine it always was. Thankfully, some of the original staff has been brought over to the new magazine, including Dan “Shoe” Hsu, and Seanbaby, who are still just as great as ever. The writing is the same informative and occasionally funny style readers are used to, and the reviews are still very honest. The reviews themselves, however, have changed too. Instead of multi-man reviews, it’s just one reviewer, and is usually accompanied with a “second opinion” mini-review. But thankfully, they returned to the old scoring system, 1.0 – 10.0 in increments of .5, as apposed to the lettered scoring system. I’ve always hated those.

Whether or not you think that the new magazine was worth the wait is a matter of opinion, but at the very least it looks incredibly promising. The innovative online integration of the magazine is very well done, and is something that I hope to see more in magazines. And it smells good, too.

The game’s story is based on the Orson Scott Card (author sci-fi novels such as Ender’s Game) novel Empire, and bridges the gap between it and it’s sequel, Hidden Empire. Written by Peter David (author of works such as Star Trek: The Rift and The Amazing Spiderman #266, 278, 289, and 525), the game revolves around Jason Flemming and his new girlfriend Claire, who get separated by a secretive militia known as the “Progressive Restoration”, which Jason later finds out is trying to take over the United States. Over the course of the game, the player must rescue Claire, and stop their sinister scheme.

We’ve all been there. You’re looking for affordable instruments, when all of a sudden you see a beautiful electric guitar/bass/stringed instrument. It’s on sale. But it’s still more expensive than you’ll ever be able to afford. You just want to beat it up, but don’t know how to go about doing it? Well, look no further, because this is the definitive guide to beating up electric guitars.

First off, don’t smash it on the ground. Not only will you have to pay for it, the guitar’s life dream is to be smashed on the ground, on stage, by a rock star. While you’re probably not on a stage, or a rock star, it still counts. You also can’t set it on fire, even if you aren’t Jimi Hendrix. Because being on fire is cool, and all guitars strive to be cool. Don’t kill or beat up the guitar in a cool fashion, because you’ll only be doing it a favor.

Physically abusing the guitar doesn’t work either. It doesn’t feel pain, don’t even bother. It will just laugh at you and your feeble attempts to make it feel worse about itself. Instead, physically abuse the strings. How do you do that, you may ask? First put your non-dominant hand on the neck of the guitar, and depress the strings. Next, strum with your other hand. Now move your neck hand randomly up and down the neck of the guitar, while strumming as fast as you can. The guitar hates it when it’s being used to make bad music, making this one of the most effective ways of beating up a guitar.

Even more effective, however, is playing a song poorly. This is more difficult, however, because you must know how to play a song before you can play it poorly. To play the song poorly, use the whammy bar at inapropriate times, and put your fingers in between frets occasionally. This works because guitars really hate bad cover bands, and being in one is even worse.

The only known method in which you do not play the guitar badly to beat it up, but you still play it, is to play Stairway to Heaven. Or Free Bird. Or Green Grass and High Tides. Or some other song with a really famous guitar solo. Why? Because it’s already seen this done a million times while it’s been sitting around in the store. The repetition is unbearable for the guitar.

Finally, the only known method to beat up a guitar without playing it is to hide the guitar. The guitar wants to be the center of attention, to be in the spotlight. Hiding the guitar robs them of this opportunity, and it will hate life until it is found again. To be extra ironic, hide the guitar in the bass section (if you’re beating up a bass, hide the bass in the percussion room).

And that, my friends, is how it’s done. Beating up a guitar will fill you with a new sense of pride, the feeling of knowing that you have just taught that guitar a lesson it will never forget: don’t be an expensive guitar. Your friends will be so jealous of your guitar beating-up skills. But be warned, if the word spreads too far, you may find yourself forbidden from going to any concerts involving string instruments, for fear of the instruments getting a good pummeling.

The Modern Warfare 2 Controversy

As many of you are aware, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was recently released to much fanfare. It sold over 5 million copies worldwide in it’s first week alone, and hundreds of millions of online games have already been played. It’s arguably one of the biggest game releases of all time. With big games come big controversy, though, and Modern Warfare 2 has plenty. From the slaps in the faces of PC gamers and online retailers, to a certain gut-wrenching scene early on in the game, it has received a lot of attention from the media.
Steam. To many gamers, steam is the ultimate platform for online distribution. To others, it’s the gaming equivalent of the plague. But why the hate? Well, for starters, it’s DRM, or “digital rights management”, which is put in place by game developers or publishers to prevent piracy, the illegal downloading of their game. The problem is, pirates have, and always will, find a way around the DRM, and it treats the people who bought the game legally like criminals. Steam’s DRM isn’t as insidious as SecuRom, it doesn’t limit you to fixed number of installations, but it does require the player to validate the installation over steam, which people with no internet can’t do. So if you bought, any Valve game since Half-Life 2, and you don’t have any way to access the internet for some reason, you won’t be able to play it.
Modern Warfare 2 uses the Steamworks, which is a Steam-based software development and publishing suite. As such, playing the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 requires Steam (much like every Valve release since Half-Life 2), much to the dismay of many PC gamers, not to mention Steam’s competitors. Yes, soon after it was revealed that steam was required to play Modern Warfare 2, Direct2Drive, another major online game distribution service, boycotted the game, stating:
“At Direct2Drive, we believe strongly that when you buy a game from us, you shouldn’t be forced to install and run a 3rd party software client to be able to play the game you purchased. Because Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 requires you, the consumer, to do that, we aren’t able to offer the game via Direct2Drive at this moment.”
Following Direct2Drive’s announcement that they wouldn’t be carrying Modern Warfare 2, many other online game stores followed suit, including GamersGate and Impulse, who said:
“We share some of the same concerns as Direct2Drive over the bundling of the Steam client with the game. The most obvious issue is the forced inclusion of a competitor’s store that blocks us from carrying the game.”
But it’s not just online retailers that are boycotting the game. The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 is, for all intents and purposes, a straight up port of the 360 version of the game. Unlike previous Call of Duty games on the PC, you can’t lean from side to side, similar to the console versions of the games. Online, there can only be 16 players in a match, 1/4 the amount that could be playing at one time in Call of Duty 4.
There are also no dedicated servers, meaning you can’t start a game that other people you don’t know can join, or join a server started by someone you don’t know, you can’t choose the map or game type you want to play, you can’t use mods, and so one. Instead, the game has a matchmaking service similar to that of Halo 3, but worse.
The game automatically chooses the person with the fastest Internet connection to host the game, no matter how distant said person is from everyone else, or how much of his or her internet is being used by other programs. This means that it is more than likely to join a game with a ping of 100ms or more, which is practically unplayable. The lack of dedicated servers means that there is no host for the game, which means that there’s no one to boot players who are misbehaving, or even cheating.
There are also no console commands, or any modding tools of any sort. To top it all off, the game is incredibly buggy on the PC. Obviously, PC gamers didn’t appreciate getting the short end of the stick, and many have threatened to boycott the game, a threat which many failed to follow up on, several Internet petitions have gone up requesting fixes to the many problems of the game, and even an entire website dedicated to bashing the game.
Modern Warfare 2 is also the most recent game to become controversial for its content.   This is because of a certain mission that occurs near the beginning of the game. In this mission, “No Russian”, you play as a member of the CIA who is posing as a member of a Russian terrorist organization, who just so happens to be performing a mass shooting at an airport. And you have to witness it, and can even choose to participate in it. Though you can skip this mission, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s in there.