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"Washington (CNN) -- The House of Representatives on Saturday night passed a sweeping health care bill by a vote of 220-215."

OH YEAAAAAH

I was one of the chosen few who preordered the game and got to play this wonderful game.
Here are some quick thoughts.

- I like the new survivors. At first I was worried that the attention of detail given to the original four would not have been given here, but thankfully I am dead wrong. Each character has their little quirks and such personality that it's hard not to like them. For example, Coach (the big guy) will read just about every sign he sees. Ellis is the new Francis, except he is kinda like nega-Francis (He likes stuff). Nick is the sarcastic bastard, which in itself isn't that original a concept, but he plays the part so fucking well. Rochelle isn't as dorky (and awesome) as Zoey, but she is probably just as lovable in her own fashion (she is wearing a depeche mode shirt).

- The weapons are considerably beefier, not just in function, but in feel. Every gun feels stronger, and in a lot of cases the guns are stronger.

- All of the weapons from L4D1 are back, alongside their newer counterparts. You can go from using the new metal shotgun, back to the old Remington one. Better yet, each have their own attributes. For example, the new shotgun has a tighter spread and is better for range, but the old one does so much more damage on bigger targets (like chargers). The Hunting rifle from l4d1 can now be used while moving go great effect. In l4d1 you could barely crotchwalk with it and expect any semblance of accuracy.

- Having stronger weapons doesn't necessarily make the game easier, because the infected are stronger. The uncommon commons such as the riot gear infected actually require special attention and in some cases a team effort to dispose of. You seriously cannot just shoot them to death, you have to flank them or spin them around somehow. It's fucking hilarious seeing all 4 teammates trying to get the fucker to turn around so you can end it, while his body flails against whatever wall he's getting slammed against, repeatedly.

- The new special infected make playing this a totally new experience. You can't corner camp through an expert campaign anymore. The spitter can down someone that doesn't move in moments (even on normal), but as long as you make an effort to move, it's not hard to take 0 damage. This is great. Leading into this topic...

- There is a melee timer on campaign now. No corner camping.

- Melee weapons feel so good. I'm not sure how practical they are though. I know that using the new adrenaline and then using a melee weapon is fucking awesome though.

- New Items: Adrenaline Shot (Speed boost, zombie attacks won't stun you) Defibrillator (revives dead players, yeah I'm serious), Boomer Bile (works similar to pipe bomb, as it will attract zombies where it's thrown, except, you can throw it on zombies causing whatever it's thrown on to get swarmed. Have fun using it on a witch.)

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Yeah, holy shit.

If you're like me, than you're pretty frusterated with the Democratic Party right now. After the party's utter victory in the 2008 election, in which it gained not just a president, but a 60% supermajority in congress, they are unable to pass over the imaginary hurdle that is the Republican party. Regardless of their wooing and flat out begging, the Republican party refuses to provide any input on any matter except an extended and thinly veiled "no". No one has called them out on this in a non apologetic fashion.

That is, no one except this suave motherfucker right here:
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Alan Grayson (D) is a Florida incumbent serving Florida's 8th congressional district. He graduated with a Ph.D in Government and Ass Kicking from Harvard. He did his term paper on gerontology, as an attempt to ensure that the only method in which death could coax his soul from his body was on the battlefield, and not from something as dull as old age. He was elected in the Grand Republican Oust-o-cuast of 2008 in which he managed to convince his opponent to apologize for every wrong he'd every committed in life and soon after commit suicide in effort to repent.

But seriously

He's the kind of democrat that we need right now. He doesn't pussy around what needs to get done, and he isn't afraid of scaring the poor little republicans with FACTS. It's surprising that I have to say this too. It's like the Republican party was a grade school bully to the Democrats for 8 years, and now that the Democrats are grown up and have a clique of hardcore looking pseudo-goth kids to back them up (because they are bros), they remain terrified of the Republicans.

Guys, you have a super majority. Use it. Get shit done.

"OH BUT THAT'S NOT BI-PARTISAN!!!"

Fair argument, except basically no legislation from the past 8 years was even remotely bi partisan. We are trying to be Bi-Partisan right now, and look where that is getting us (not far). The democrats should lay in on the line like this:

"Okay, here is what we are doing. You want to help? Sure, great, we value your input. You want to do nothing but slow the process down in an attempt to kill it entirely? Fuck you, go sit in the corner while the big kids get to work undoing the fucking mess you created in the first place. Here's a lolipop."

I just finished ODST's main story mode. It was actually pretty enjoyable, and far moreso than Halo 3's single player was, which in retrospect is pretty bland. The entire ordeal took me about four hours.

I'm going to assume that you're already familiar with this game and it's basic premise. If not, please see here.

You play as The Rookie for the majority of the game. During his adventure through the ruins of New Mombasa, Kenya. I don't think I've ever played a game set in Africa before, and I certainly haven't played one set in a futuristic Africa. The majority of the city is typical futuristic urban fare; tall skyscrapers, futuristic looking cars and panels. Withing the city there is a giant wildlife reservation, complete with safari trails and rest stops. The level design and art direction is all amazingly high quality. There is significant and interesting detail throughout the city, from the flashing panels displaying warnings and advertisements from the ruined cars and dead soldiers. It actually reminded me of playing Fallout 3, but in the Haloverse at times, due to the sense of being the only person left in a once populated but now destroyed environment. More so even, as I played most of Fallout 3 in sneak mode, trying not to get raped by deathclaws. Replace deathclaw with Brute and you have the ODST experience.

Not really, seeing as even though technically the Rookie and all of the other playable ODST's are human, they can take a lot of punishment. You honestly have very similar health to a Spartan, just now when you take damage, it becomes a lot harder to function as your screen with become more and more red. Lots of red. The health system is very much like Halo 1's. Where as, you have a shield that regenerates, but your health under that shield doesn't. In ODST, you can recover lost health using Opicans, which are just a fancy way of saying healthpack.

By the time you're done playing the pretty short campaign, you will have been pretty much everywhere over the city and the parts directly surrounding it as all of the ODST Squad (Rookie, Buck, Romeo, Dutch, Mickey). And I actually started to care about each character's fate nearing the end of the whole ordeal. When you first meet each of them, they are presented in a stupid, not well thought out way that tries to contrast THE WORLD ENDING HOLY SHIT with "lol this is a good time for slapstick". There is also a love story that plays out and actually leads up to a (SPOILERS) kiss around the end. It's weird because the halo series have been oddly lacking in real humanity, and this is the first time in a halo game where I actually cared about the characters.

Multiplayer.

ODST's campaign is fully playable with four people, but I haven't got around to playing it that much.

Most of my focus has been on the new multiplayer gametype: firefight. Firefight can be summed up as Gears Of War's Horde Mode meets L4D's survival mode plus Halo and minus pills with slightly different scary aliens that want to harm you and your body. It's considerably easier than Survival Mode, but that's not saying much (most survival mode games don't last more than 4 minutes before everyone is killed). This isn't to say it's not challenging, as it certainly gets very intense later on.

For the uninitiated, Horde, Survival, and Firefight are all endless wave gametypes. It's almost a throwback to a time when games didn't have any endings, and the only objective was to get a high score. Enemies will never stop coming, and you will only be permitted short breaks between waves. You will have to manage health and lives, but you will also have to deal with skulls that come into play at the start of every round. These skulls augment the game in different ways, such as making enemies more inclined to avoid danger or to cause all of the enemies to wildly throw grenades. The difficulty really picks up with skulls that augment your health come into play, such as the Black Eye skull, which will cause your shields not to regenerate normally; you can only get them back if you melee an enemy.

There are several different maps to play on, each very different from the next. Some are wide open and are very accessible to vehicles while some are very closed in and are filled with close quarters fighting.

With four people, it's just fun. Probably not as fun as L4D but I'm likely just biased and that's not a fair comparison at all. They are vastly different games. (Okay so Hunters from Halo are similar to Tanks from l4d, especially in survival/firefight, fuck you) Having four ODSTs fending off against hundreds of brutes and actually winning ( for a short time at least ) is extremely satisfying. Having team tactics actually result in a difficult wave ending sooner is a delicious feeling that rivals any similar co-op experience you can find online these days.

Also, along with the first disc of ODST, there is a second disc that functions as a complete Halo 3 multiplayer disc. By complete, I mean all of the maps from the map packs are already installed on the disc itself. You don't need Halo 3 for the disc to work, although if you do, all of your settings will carry over automatically. It includes 3 exclusive maps as well.