Joe's Weekly Video Game Rant's – 08

This week's rant is about the gaming life and all the bad money grubbing things targeting you.

The life of a true gamer. What does that really mean? The stereotype is someone who wears glasses, lives in their parents basement, has no girlfriend, and couldn't really care about the clothes he wears or the food he eats (wait, that kinda sounds a lot like me. Minus the Parents basement thing of course, I have my own house. Suck on that!). I guess the reason I bring this up is because I've been getting so many e-mails lately for gaming products. Things telling me that "true pro" gamers use this, or wear this, or even eat this. I just want to say that all that stuff is BS!! This week we will talk about the Food/Drink aspect of what gamers are supposedly supposed to be eating and drinking.

Lets start off with the food aspect of gaming. First off, when you are really into a game, food shouldn't even come into your head as a possibility. I've good an entire day not eating because of intense games or gears of war matches I've been in. When I mean the whole day, I mean from the time I woke (7 am) till I stopped (11pm) I didn't have one single thing to eat. Because I had to choose whether to go and take 5 minutes to go eat something, or just focusing on the game at hand and owning it up because I was in the zone. But when it comes down to it all eventually you will need food to survive. So I've been looking online at all the options and giving the pro's and con's.

BTW I just want to say that everything I am reviewing I've had before, so I'm not just guessing on this stuff. First up is Gamer Grub. I found out about this company is 2010. A local video game shop started to sell the stuff so I figured I'd give it a go. They have 4 different flavors, Pizza, PB & J, BBQ, and S'mores. Apparently there are more flavors like Wasabi, but I've never seen them. The taste isn't bad, S'mores is obviously the best tasting and from what the store said, best selling flavor of the 4. I would completely agree with this, in a close 2nd for me would actually be PB & J, the flavor isn't fully there but to be honest, they got close enough for me. The next thing to note is the packaging. They had the right idea about it, a easy to open and close pouch, easily grabbed with 1 hand, as to avoid all the crumbs and such on your hands. Therefore keeping them clean for your controller. You can usually find a single bag for about $3. Which while it isn't the ideal situation, it's got enough flavor and quantity of the stuff to make this worth the purchase. So I'll give this a thumbs up

The next one I've tried is Headshot energy bars. I've found these at a 7-11 once, and when I went back there were no more that day or any other day from then on. First off I want to say, that if you are a gamer and caffeine and all of the like still affects you, then you aren't truly a gamer and should stop reading this and immediately punch yourself in the face. These things have high levels of Guarana and I'm sure many other unsafe materials in this thing. The taste wasn't horrible. But i guess I can give it a little bit of a pass, because what energy bar really does taste all that great? As far as effectiveness, I wouldn't actually be able to say, because caffeine hasn't affected me since I was 16 (damn you Gloria Jeans). The picture was the only one I could find in my 10 seconds of research. But the one I had was definitely in a different looking package. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. It was like 3 years ago. As far as ease of eating this thing, it's an energy bar, can't get much simpler for gamers. So either ways, this was a big thumbs down.

Next up are the Mana and Health energy potions. When I first saw these I just wanted to play World of Warcraft. After picking up a few bottles of each I realized something. These things are freaking small as heck. I like the taste of the Health better, but for those people who still get the kick of caffeine, the Mana is definitely the way you want to go. For the amount given these things are pretty expensive. I've seen them at all different prices but usually they go for about $3 a bottle. Considering a Monster Energy drink costs a little over $2 for a 16oz and these things come in at about 1.7oz I would say to stick with Monster (or Venom, I like it more cause it has a more badass name). So for good taste, but the price for each bottle is way too high and won't do any gamer any good on those 48 hr gaming marathons. Thumbs down.

Last but not least, the Human Blood energy potions. When I first saw these I immediately thought of my friend and how much he liked these kind of weird things. So I bought the box full of them (it came out to about $4 a bag). Which when you actually see, the money was basically all put towards the design of the bag and the bag itself. The packaging is amazing. Very realistic feel, and the color that they got it was very realistic. I think out of all the food products I talked about today, this was the best tasting out of them all. That is where all the good stuff ends though. First off, charging $4 for about 3.4 fl oz is ridiculous. Second, because of the amount of care that you have to take while drinking this thing, it makes it very difficult to just pick up and down real quick before another game starts. They do provide a cap so you can drink the rest later, but that later may never come. Oh, and if you spill this on carpet, it's a pain to get out. Wine is easier to get out than this thing. This is a thumbs down because of the fact that it's not easy to pick up and drink on the fly, the price is too high, and finally it has very little amounts of caffeine in this thing. So you won't be getting a energy boost from this thing anytime soon.

In conclusion to all of this, just to make this clear. This is what I eat and drink while gaming. Gallon bottles of water, there are 2 uses for it. Drinking, and well if you don't know what the other use is, you probably aren't that hardcore of a gamer. As far as food goes I usually just pour a ton of cereal into a bowl (no milk) and then just take some whenever I get the chance. Let's just face it, as gamers we really don't need much. All that fancy stuff is really just for those rich kids who probably pay other people to beat games for them. Or the ones who just watch people doing runs of the game and then spitting out knowledge like they did it themselves. True gamers don't waste our money on novelty drinks or snacks. We just want to play video games. So for all those companies out there trying to take money away from gamers like that, just make something that isn't complete sh*t, and sell it cheap enough to justify it. Here's a hint, if it's over $2 you're going the wrong way. Next time I will be discussing gaming fashion.
Big apologies on my part for not keeping up with the rants. Sometimes there is nothing to yell about. A lot of it has just been all the home repairs we are doing around here and of course work.