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By now, I’m sure even those of you who aren’t wrestling fans have heard or seen the news of the Double Murder-Suicide in Fayette. WWE Superstar (god I hate that term) Chris Benoit no showed his wrestling obligations on the weekend and murdered (tied and strangled) his wife Nancy (professionally known as ‘woman’) and suffocated his son Daniel. At some point later, hours to a day later Benoit hung himself on some weight lifting equipment.

I’ve been in shock since about 4:30pm Monday Toronto time. I got home from work, and checked my IRC client to see what was happening in some channels. In passing, someone comments that Benoit was dead. I immediately started checking popular wrestling sites including the official WWE.com site for anything I could gather. At the time, real info wasn’t forthcoming, little more than “Benoit, Wife, and child found dead in home.”

Eventually, the shock wore off, and I then learned that the planned 3 hour LIVE raw (regularly only 2 hours) that was planned, (part of a story arc that would have continued the farce of Vince McMahon’s staged Death) was being revised to be a Benoit Tribute show. I had mixed feelings about this idea. Some of those feelings were realized today, the day after that 3 hour tribute show. The news that Benoit, for reasons we may never know took the lives of his family and then himself.

So, Vince McMahon, Brilliant Marketing Genius that he is goofed this one good. While Benoit’s work ethic and career are worthy of a 3 hour focus special, I’m sure they regret it now given that fact that it would appear he is a murderer. Vince cancelled the LIVE show on Monday, and lost the proceeds from the gate. I imagine Vince still paid everyone who didn’t work Monday as well. So, Vince loses a lot of Money. Nothing new right?

Sure. But, that time slot was expensive, and that’s LIVE, 3 hours of satellite time given to a guy that on Monday night was a beloved and respected wrestler, and on Tuesday has been condemned in the court of public opinion as a murderer. I have no Idea how Vince intends to spin this one. The show must go on, and he still has ECW and Smackdown this week to get on the Air (filmed tonight, Tuesday, for airing on Thursday and Friday respectively.)

I only just finished watching the “RAW” program tonight, opting to not watch it live so that I could “TIVO” through it tonight. For what it is, it wasn’t bad. A few good things came out of this untimely situation. The first being that Vince stepped out of character, and back onto the screen and dumped the summer long story arc he had planned to play out regarding his “staged death”. Thank God.

The second was seeing Stephanie McMahon Helmsley (Levesque) step out of character, and admit her marriage on RAW, (to HHH) and to comment on Benoit. Wrestling has gotten so “TV” and so over the top with the BS stories that it’s nice to see some reality give them a kick in the nuts.

When Eddie Guerrero died, it was a lot easier for me to feel emotional about the situation. I loved Eddie. Followed the careers of Eddie and Chris (as they had a lot of parallels) for a long time. Watched them travel the world, NJPW, ECW, WCW, WWF/WWE etc. I love Chris for different reasons. Chris was never the showman that Eddie was, but Chris was equally the professional and the entertainer. Watching Chris win and lose matches frankly made many an episode of WWE programming palatable.

Last night, when the news was limited, and things were still left mostly to our imaginations I was left with at least the slim hope that Chris or his wife weren’t’ responsible and that I could think of and remember the career fondly. Now that we’ve had 24hrs, and the revelations are coming forward it’s impossible to look at Chris Benoit and his career now with those same rose colored glasses.

Worse, it looks like the WWE feels the same way, and is regretting their decision to air the 3 hour Tribute. Last night, WWE.com was all about the tribute to Benoit, and about the comments from the other talent towards Benoit and his family. Today, virtually all of that has been removed, nary a comment exist on the site now. Just about all the merchandise has been removed from the Shopzone section of the site. Benoits’ name has even been removed from the Wrestlemania XX (20) DVD promotional text last I checked. The WWE is doing everything they can to hide, bury, and separate themselves as much as possible from this tragedy. (I’m sure some would say as they should..)

For the last year or so, half the time Benoit was on TV, the commentators would refer to him as a future WWE Hall of Famer. Anyone want to put any bets on whether that will ever happen now? Sure his career was awesome, and he did a lot for the biz and for people in the biz. However, the Hall of Fame is little more than a marketing gimmick for the company. I doubt we’ll ever see the Canadian Crippler (wow.. that title isn’t as cool as I used to think it was) in the WWE Hall of Fame now.

I enjoyed seeing the 3 hour show nevertheless. I will commit it to DVD for posterity, as I’m sure we’ll never see Benoit’s face on TV, or in a DVD collection ever again given the WWE’s current tactics. I got pretty emotional seeing the final match, which was the XX title match with Triple HHH and Shaun Michaels where Benoit took the World Title making HHH tap out. Wrestling is fake, but what we saw that night when he won that belt, and the joy in his eyes, and the camaraderie he shared with Eddie that was also evident that night wasn’t fake.

It was Real that night.

I still don’t know how I feel about this. All I really know is that Chris was one of the few reasons I have, er, had to watch any of this shit and now he’s gone. We’ll never know what was going on in his head on the weekend. I don’t believe in God, or at least I don’t think I do.. but I do hope that if something exists outside of this life, that Chris, his Wife, and child find some of the peace that must have escaped them here on Earth.

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I’m not sure if I’m just feeling nostalgic, or if something else is at play here, but I love the new Pac-Man game available on LIVE Marketplace. Grabbed it last week, and while I haven’t had much time to play it, what little time I have had I’ve enjoyed.

Over the years, we’ve seen dozen’s of official and unofficial clone, sequels etc to the classic coin-op Pac-Man. Few games were worth the time, short of Ms. Pac-Man. Most of the other lose something, or forget what it was that drew us to Pac-Man in the first place.

Pac-Man CE on the 360, bring a lot of that feeling back. The look is a bit modernized, but they didn’t really update the graphics much at all. This is a good thing. It really and honestly feels like a proper sequel to the classic.

The type of game play offered is perfect for Arcade. Short time based games. Get in, play, and get out. A perfect fit for Arcade. If you haven’t tried it yet, grab the trial. Personally, I think it’s worth the 800 points they are charging for it. The only thing I would have liked to see would have been some sort of LIVE co-op, but short of that it’s a keeper anyways.

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Good titles for this post, considering I have no one thing to focus on today.

I grabbed Shadowrun for the 360 last week. For those of you that haven’t seen it, I know there is a demo on Marketplace for it available now. Probably some trailers as well. For those of you who have had their heads in the sand, it’s the first title to cross both the PC and 360 game platforms. I can’t honestly tell you what it’s like on the PC side, but I suspect some there aren’t going to like it.

The first problem I see with this game, is the fact that it DOES cross both platforms. Doing so, the devs had to do some balancing, which in this case really means crippling on the PC side control wise. While I am the biggest 360 console fan you’ll meet.. I long ago conceded that the mouse/keyboard combo on a properly equipped PC is a superior method to control a FPS or similar shooter. It’s not as fun imo, but it is superior.

So, with that aside.. what do I think of the game form the 360 perspective? I have a lot of mixed feelings. First, while I’m not terribly familiar with a lot of the Shadowrun and related past RPG underpinnings, this games realy comes across as a bad mixture of elements. You have the option of being one of 3 or 4 races, and from there you can equip a variety of typical guns, then Magic, then tech skills, etc. It really seems like they tried to mix in gaming elements from Quake (run and shoot.. no thought process or strategy whatsoever other than don’t get killed) with Rainbow Six (tactical/strategy/planning an asset..) with Gear of War (cover) with some sort of Dungeons and Dragons type of Magic conjuring/war system.

The Maps can be quite large and interesting. But in my opinion they tried to squeeze in far too many elements. While I have no problem going on LIVE and find a game (actually.. I do.. as it seems to take 2-8 minutes) once in game, it’s pretty fun. I doubt I’ll ever spend the time to master all of the little elements they’ve tossed into this game for us.

I guess I just have a big problem, running around in teams, with pistols and other guns, teleporting through walls, casting Gust to push opponents back Jedi force style, then turning myself into Smoke, then hang gliding to a point so I can conjure up a tree and heal myself, while using it for cover as I plan my attack on the area that hold an artifact that everyone knows I’m coming for.

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Wow.. has the meaning of that changed for me over the years. It used to have a significant importance. Course, in those days, we had a lot less teams.. and each team was stronger and more entertaining back then. More personalities on each team too. Now it seems the talent ir drawn too thin, and worse, only a few teams do well money wise.

With the playoffs behind us, and the Duck as champs, I think back to the playoff and wonder why I didn’t watch them this year. As a Toronto fan, it’s been hard over the years to remain a fan of a team that continues to disappoint year after year. I remember when I was young, and Rick Vaive was a scoring ace for the team we were constantly told that the Leafs would go all the way to get Lord Stanley’s Cup.

The dream never happened. 25-30 whatever years later. Nadda. Nothing.

So.. The Leafs tossed up another lame duck this year. When all that was left for us to cheer for in Canada was the Ottawa Senators, I was left with NO ONE to cheer for. Toronto and Ottawa have long been rivals. But it goes beyond that. The city of Ottawa is the home to some of the most boring people in Canada. Our Federal Politicians work there.

Ottawa, for those that haven’t been there, has some ridiculous road signs and laws. It’s also got crap all to do if you are a tourist. I’ve always made every effort to get in and out of Ottawa as fast as possible.

Anyways, back to Hockey. I saw a clip of Jay Leno, with the champions, the Ducks. If I’m not mistaken, the 3 were all Canadians which gave me a chuckle. The Ducks, a team playing hockey, in a town that knows little about the sport, the legacy of the cup, or ice period.

Champs. A team for of Canadians, on a US team, in a place that sees no Ice or Snow naturally winning Lord Stanley’s Cup. If my dad was still alive I’d think he’d drink the purple Kool-Aid and await the mother ship.

It was no wonder that at least in Canada, this playoff turned out to be one of the least watched in history up here. The Country did not support the Senators. The country would have no problem supporting the Toronto Maple Leafs, or even the Montreal Canadians I suppose.. but the Ottawa Senators? It was highly publicized up here that we didn’t support the Senators. Worse, I know some will blame those who didn’t support them as the reason they got swept.

They got swept, cause they sucked. Ok.. that’s harsh. Clearly they didn’t suck. But, when faced with a good team like the Ducks, the senators folded.

The NHL is a money making machine, but given all of it’s competition I’m not sure what it will need to do to win back the hearts of it’s most faithful of fans, the Canadians.

Something is missing form Hockey. I miss it dearly.

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While the scene slowly recovers and licks it’s wounds from the LIVE banning of 1000’s of 360 consoles from the LIVE service, c4eva has been hard at work and has released 1.2 of his firmware goodness. I guess it’s game on MS. The scene clearly hasn’t given up in it’s attempts to run backups everywhere, including LIVE.

I wonder with the extra effort the firmware guys have taken to secure the method, (to make it pass as much like original as possible) how long it will be before MS fires back with another volley.

I’m personally all for backups. I got my feet wet in this scene with making and perfecting backups and getting them read universally across as much hardware as possible. (wrote a few guides along the way) In the last gen, one thing I wasn’t for was backups on LIVE. I’m still more or less not in favor of backups on LIVE. I like the LIVE service. Forget that.. I love the LIVE service. It’s probably the only MS product I can truly say I love.

I wasn’t victimless in the recent bannings. But, I really didn’t (well.. generally didn’t) take the backups into game rooms and compete. That’s not to say the bans weren’t justified regardless. They were, and I accept that. I knew that going onto LIVE with them. So, those boxes are gone now, and even that tags I had on them killed off and cancelled.

I know one thing is for sure, I won’t be buying ANY used console from anyone, anywhere. Local EB games are now testing used consoles brought in as trades to see if they are banned. Good call I‘d say, as no doubt they had a rush of consoles brought in from all the guys who got banned.

Course, this isn’t all bad news for everyone. MS gets to sell a lot of people new consoles, and some will no doubt pick up the Elite, so sales of the Elite should spike nicely for MS. People wanting modded consoles to play backups offline at home will now find a slew of boxes cheap for sales.

We can still have our backups, it’s just that MS is now saying we can no longer have them on LIVE.

So.. 1.2 is state of the art. Any bets on how long it’ll keep people unbanned?

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