Anaris82's Blog

Final Fantasy VIII, a look back.

2012-02-15T20:04:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting down and replaying Final Fantasy VIII, and for each disc I get through, I'll post my thoughts on the game now that it's been 14 years since it's release and since and I played it originally. This'll be a retrospective of sorts.

A bit of backstory.. I bought FFVIII with birthday money back in 2000 right after I got my brand new Dual Shock PS-One. I had never bought or played a Final Fantasy game before that because I thought they were all connected and I would've been hopelessly lost on what's going on. At the time there was FFVII, VIII, and FF: Anthology (FFV and VI) in the stores and after looking at all of them, I realized that none of them were at all connected. Well, aside from the series regulars (Chocobos, airships, and a character named Cid). So anyway, I bought it on the spot and loved it.

Next time, I'll cover up to the Sorceress Edea parade fight. I finished Disc 1 a little while ago and will have the first of four posts up in about a day or so. Until then, peace out.

Gaming and I, how it began.

2012-02-13T15:33:00.000-08:00

[This is reposted from my Community blog at Destructoid. Seen here.]

I should really title it "how my brothers got me into an expensive ass hobby", but shorter is sweeter I suppose. My fascination with games started sometime in the mid Eighties, before we moved to where we are now back in 1987. My earliest memory about videogames was wanting to play Atari with my two older brothers and being shuffled off to bed by my mother. Then with my parent's divorce in 87 and us moving and me starting school in a harsh neighborhood, I needed something to help take my mind off things.

For my 5th Birthday in August that year, my brother Scott gave me his NES, the very one I had been drooling over a year prior. He didn't play it much and had only 4 games (Mario/Duck Hunt,OG Zelda, Metroid, and Marble Madness). He gave me the NES and Mario/Duck Hunt but kept the others, it was enough, I was hooked.

I only managed to get about 11 games during my stint with the NES (including all three Mario games, TMNT, Ikari Warriors and some others), but my new hobby was set in stone. In the following years my dad got a SNES before I did, mom got me one for Christmas in 91, I started reading copies of EGM at the grocery store (starting with the May 1993 issue), and I started paying attention to the gaming press.

My first EGM

Since then I've gotten all of the Nintendo consoles (excluding the GBA Micro), all of the Sony consoles, an Xbox 360, and almost 400 games across all platforms. My hobby started off as a means to help deal with being bullied and the stress of erroneously thinking that my parent's divorce was my fault, but in trying to block all that out, I found myself engrossed in a new type of exciting media that was only getting bigger from there, and I was loving it.

Because Videogames.

A console gamer's love of and history with Valve Software.

2012-02-11T16:45:00.000-08:00

As a strictly console based gamer, I'll admit I've missed out on some cool ass games on PC. However PCs were expensive and even more expensive to game on, so I stuck to consoles. At the turn of the millennium. I was still gaming on my PS1, N-64, and salivating over rumors of a new, more powerful PlayStation. I wasn't even remotely interested in PC games, until one day I skipped school (in early 2000). I had gone over to my friend Daniel's house and hung out, he had a bad ass computer filled with kick ass music and several games. One of which made my jaw drop when I saw it. I was all...

Are you bashing crates and little crab things with a crowbar?! That's fucking AWESOME!

The game of course was Half-Life. I watched him trounce through a science facility with his crowbar and guns and destroy shit, then it was time to go home, and was kinda depressed/bored, I wanted to play it. I thought I'd never get the chance to play the game, and didn't have a clue that I'd get a chance so soon.

The following year (late 2001), I was out helping round up crap at some store (K-Mart I think) and I saw two games that caught my eye.. Final Fantasy X and Half-Life for PS2. I was in partial shock, I grabbed it and threw it in the cart and thought, "yep, I'm getting this". Since I was with my mom at the time, I told her that she could give it to me for Christmas of she wanted or I could buy it. She let me get it, but it felt like Christmas anyway. I was playing a game where I played as a theoretical physicist kicking alien and military ass with guns and a crowbar, I was hooked, Valve had me.

For 10, well 11 years now I've bought every Valve console game that came out, except for Counter Strike on the original Xbox, since ya know, I hate VS multiplayer games (and I hate trash talking little shits). Even though a couple of the games were not as good as the original PC versions (aside from the PS2 vers of HL1 and obviously later games) they at least came out and were damn faithful. There's a brief history of me and Valve games, now have some pics, because it's my blog.

Spines, these games have them.

Covers.. obviously.

The rare early PS2 Blue CD ROM format, Half Life 1 used it.

So that's it, Valve games are awesome. I'm out for now, laters.

It is done.

2012-02-02T00:58:00.000-08:00

I have finally gotten all of the PS3 Trophies in Skyrim.

From Left to Right.. Platinum Trophy (for getting all other trophies), Thu'um Master (learn 20 shouts), Oblivion Walker (collect 15 Daedric artifacts), Master (reach level 50),.

The ones I had left that I needed were the one for reaching level 50, the one for collecting all of the Daedric Artifacts (which was a pain in the ass), and the one for learning ALL of the dragon shouts (which requires you to finish the main story cause 3 are locked away for the end), and. Then it gave me the Platinum for getting all the others. So it is done, Skyrim is finished, for now. :) More laters.

Est parum est serius.

2012-01-29T06:33:00.000-08:00

So Nintendo has put out the news in a quarterly financial report that they are creating a unified Network to work with the Wii U and the 3DS called the Nintendo Network. It includes infrastructures for online gaming, DLC, downloads of full retail games, and server side accounts.

Basically Everything that Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network has been doing for half of a decade. Anyone who grew up with the current environment of online connectivity would say, "well it's about time" or call them copycats. As someone who grew up with Nintendo, It would seem that they're just now figuring this "tricky" online thing out. As a Japanese company that doesn't look at other companies for inspiration or to straight up steal ideas, they're like the dumb kid in class who looked at a cheat sheet to see what the answer is after a test. But I'd wager there's more to it than that.

Surely they peeked at Xbox Live and PSN to see what they're competitors have been doing, but no, they will say they're not competing with the 360 and PS3. If you offer a gaming console with similar services, you are in the same retail space, competing with the other two systems whether you admit it or not. I'm not buying that excuse, they're doing this because the sheen of the Wii is wearing off and they're scared of tanking financially. For core gamers, the ones that pretty much made Nintendo a household name in the 80s have been turned away by the Wii and it's target demographic of non-gamers. As for the non-gamers, Nintendo knows the parents and grandparents won't buy another version of the Wii because they already have their "Wii Sports machine", I've heard this first hand. Nintendo is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and are looking back at the hard place to see if it's softer than the rock by pandering to the core gamers once again. They pulled this tactic as recently as when they announced 3DS games that core gamers want back at E3, but failed to bring the goods. Those core games are just now starting to trickle in by the way, 10 months after the system launched. Now, they're doing it again by announcing a bundle of online features that the rest of the gaming world is using and is familiar with.

From what I've seen in the past 6 years, it seems Nintendo is solely profiting on those who don't know games (from their asshole), and the kids who were born in the mid 90's to the early 2000's ("Millennials") that think Nintendo has been this way forever and is either inadvertently or reactively being an apologist for the dumb shit the company has been doing. Clearly when the Wii U comes out, I'm not getting one. I was already burned by the Wii. It's the only game system in my 25 years of gaming history where I've bought just 5 retail disc games for it. All first party games too (Mario Galaxy, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Parer Mario, Metroid Prime Trilogy, and Metroid: Other M). I'll keep my Wii, just for those 5 games and my 20 or so Virtual Console games, after that if they keep this up, I'm done with them. I don't have time or money to waste on a company that doesn't even appear to value me as a consumer and a life long supporter of their wares. Too little too late, Nintendo. I'm out for now. Laters.

Too much media in my media.

2012-01-17T21:39:00.000-08:00

Back in the golden days of gaming (SNES era) we turned on our gaming consoles to do one thing, play games. In this day and age we turn our gaming consoles to do everything BUT play games. I can turn on my Xbox 360 at any time and see applications for movies and music and advertisments for things not related to the xbox (beef jerky ads, World of Warcraft, etc). If the Nintendo Wii had an infrastructure overlaid User Interface "Home menu" like the xbox, I'd expect to see things related to sports and fitness "games" and everything that includes motion controls. Even the PlayStation 3 has it's fair share of extraneous media apps and even has it's own version of the Wii motion remote and "nunchuk".

What happened? I mean it seems that some have lost sight of the basics that's made gaming as a medium what it was. For a prime example, look at the 360's new "dashboard" menu that's based off the Windows Phone and the upcoming Windows 8 "Metro" design. You have to scroll past other media to get to the games section, and then on the home page, the window that boots up what's in the disc drive is smaller than the advertisements that's on that page, and I'm paying for this? If I'd told myself all of this years ago my response would be.. "You're fucking kidding me?" Don't get me wrong, social connections to friends and to the Game's Marketplace is fantastic, but everything else is not needed and is clogging up what would otherwise be a great service.

Games are the 5th one down, they should be first and foremost

The Wii and PlayStation 3 are lesser examples of the media congestion of this generation. The saving grace are that Nintendo doesn't get what internet based interconnectivity is and confines itself and it's users to just a game marketplace and the game trailers "Nintendo Channel". The PS3.. While it has the Netflix and MLB features, it doesn't clutter the "XMB" ("Xross Media Bar" or home menu) with ads and other needless crap that keep people from getting what they want from their console. If anything, the PS3 is the one doing it right, It's there, yeah, but it's out of the way and let's you use your system the way you want to.

On another, but related note.. after lengthy consideration I've made up my mind on whether or not I'm going to renew my Xbox Live Gold subscription this year. I'm not. I don't use the "premium" features like Twitter and Facebook (which I can do better on my iPod Touch for free), nor do I use the content streaming features like Netflix, Hulu, or Last FM (I have Crackle and Pandora Radio at my disposal, that's also free). I only use my 360 for chatting with friends and playing an occasional co-op game, which I can get for free using Private Chat and taking advantage of the Free Xbox Live Gold Weekends that pop up all the time. I'm paying $60 a year for nothing, no longer.

That's nice isn't is?

With all that hoopla and the fact I've been playing my PS3 a LOT since.. well since Skyrim came out I'm falling back into my love for Sony products despite all the dumb and fanboyish rage at Sony lately. As I've mentioned before in a blog post, my love for PlayStation wavered back in 2006 which prompted me to get an Xbox 360, which was the cheapest alternative for gaming at the time. BUT, It seems that team PlayStation has their stuff together once again with the PS3 and the upcoming PS-Vita, but I'll save that and my history with the PlayStation brand for another time. I've rambled on long enough, I'll post more in the coming days. See you guys on the flip side of the anti SOPA blackout.

Quicky, post Christmas blog.

2011-12-29T04:58:00.000-08:00

Christmas has come and gone and we never got any snow, nor has it dropped below freezing unless it was during the night.. sometimes. BUT despite that and concerns of dwindling money, we said fuck it we need to have some distracting things and/or holiday cheer, or something to make it feel like Christmas. The currency of past Christmases has been gift cards. Either the "Vanila Visa" universal (use anywhere) debit gift cards or gift cards from Best Buy. This Year, I got a mix of Best Buy gift cards and stuff I picked out that mom threw in the cart and told me I couldn't get it until Christmas.

After my aunt Lora died last year, the bottom fell out of Christmas, and this year was a bit better, still hard to be "cheery", but it was better. She'd want us all to live big and all that, that's the way she lived, so we pressed on getting each other stuff and enjoying what we had and not what we've lost. We would've made her proud this year. we got stuff.

Here's a run down of what I got. I picked out all of it and/or bought it using gift cards.

Star Wars Complete Saga Blu-Ray set (all 6 movies)
Star Wars: Clone Wars season 3 Blu-Ray
Heavy Rain (PS3)
Batman: Year One Blu-Ray
Batman: Arkham City (PS3)
Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition Blu-Ray trilogy (for 50 fucking bucks, yeah! $50!!)
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (PS3) - As of now, still hasn't been delivered.
Goldeneye 007: Reloaded (PS3) As of now, still hasn't been delivered.
$15 iTunes Store credit.

On top of that, I still have almost $60 in Best Buy gift card. I may save it for a PlayStation Vita for when it comes out in February and my birthday rolls around next August. I don't know, is 6 months enough time for them to work out bugs in the handheld's launch? I hope so. I'm getting one in August.

So yeah, I got a good amount of stuff. Stuff that'll keep me occupied for a bit, until my birthday, where I can splurge on stuff with gift cards again. Okay, gotta go, it's 7AM, and I haven't been to bed yet. Laters people.

Coming up for air

2011-11-21T06:31:00.001-08:00

So, I'm 60+ hours into Skyrim. This is definitely GAME OF THE YEAR. At one point I went from watching a chicken laying an egg to fighting a dragon the next second. :D Also, yay for 3 hours of sleep. -_-

Fucking DRAGONS!!

2011-11-12T15:17:00.001-08:00

It dawns in fire!

2011-11-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

On the Mythic Eve

2011-11-10T14:37:00.001-08:00

2006 was a wild game filled year, full of the big three companies (Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft) trying to one up each other, or so I thought. Nintendo was bringing babies and old people into their demographical mix and forgetting it's core user base that helped them become the successful company they are today. Sony, while keeping it about games, was catering more to the rich people with the $600 PlayStation 3. With despicable things like Nintendo's Wii Sports and quotes from Sony's Ken Kutaragi like "You'll get a second job to afford this", things were looking pretty dark for the game companies that I liked. I didn't think about Microsoft at the time because had a stigmatic hatred for them because Windows (at the time) was a fuckup (98 and XP) and it wasn't Mac OS. Also I had just lost my Apple iBook, so I was overall bitter about everything, but that changed..

One thing that did look good from the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2006 was the Xbox 360, even though I had a mad hate-on for "Micro$oft" at the time, I had to have one of the new consoles and the 360 was the cheapest. As E3 passed us and my birthday in early August drew closer, I had come up with a guideline for getting a new console. It had to be at or under $300 and there had to be at least two games I wanted for it when I got the console. As it turned out the cheapest 360 was $299 and there were two games I was interested in. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The latter would become one of my favorite games ever and ultimately lead me to typing this right now.

I've never played any of the PC Elder Scrolls games back in the day, cause well, I didn't have a computer until 2000 and then it was a sucky Compaq with Windows 98 and a billion other bloatware programs on it. I was busy playing Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1 games and having a hell of a time doing so. When ESIV: Oblivion was announced for xbox 360 I thought it was a crappy online game, but when I learned more about it, I was instantly interested. At the end of August that year I had my xbox 360, The Ghost Recon game and Oblivion, which I've played more than any game in my collection. 5 Years later and I've poured more than 250 hours into Oblivion spanning about a dozen different characters, both good and bad, and I'm STILL not tired of the game.

Although, come tomorrow, 11/11/11, the highly pined for next installment in the series comes out. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Since Oblivion came out, I've bought Fallout 3 (which was heavily modeled after the gameplay style of Oblivion) and Fallout: New Vegas. I absolutely love the gameplay style of these games. The fact that you can charge headlong into Oblivion gates, or just go and dick around in the forests and pick Flax and Peonies is a breath of fresh air. The level of escapism was insane. I attribute the death of my first 360 to playing Oblivion and fallout 3 nonstop, which is why I'm getting ESV: Skyrim on PS3. Besides the PS3 box looks better. :)

Sexy

So with this post, this will be the last you hear from me on here in a long while. I'm going to go all Howard Hughes and seclude myself away with Skyrim. You'll see me on twitter no doubt yelling in all caps about how awesome something I'm not going to tell you about cause it'd be a spoiler for the game, but I don't think I'll have time for blogs and possibly even the Halo remake/shined up port coming out the 15th.. or family, eating, going outside, etc. So, catch you on the flip side peoples, I'll be back with a dragon head necklace and a few more years and pounds packed on. Laters. :)

2 Days until Skyrim, have a comic from Penny-Arcade.

2011-11-09T04:05:00.000-08:00

Well that was weird..

2011-11-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

Halloween this year wasn't the dumb movie, zombie game, and candy filled experience I was expecting like past Halloweens, it was more odd. Since I'm still battling a chest cold, I was popping more cherry cough drops than candy and was starting up Silent Hill for a serious first time playthrough. I've been watching a series of videos on YouTube called "Let's Play", where someone makes a video of themselves playing a game and provides some sort of commentary, either funny, opinionated, informative, or some mix of the three. The Let's Plays I've been watching were for Silent Hill 1 (on PSone) and Silent Hill 2 (on PS2). Since I ~~was too chickenshit~~ wasn't familiar with the series aside from seeing the movie (which was not bad for a game movie), and I didn't have the first one, I decided to watch the videos (from Agentjr). Since I was familiarized with the game I sat down to play 2. I got to Brookhaven Hospital (about 1/3rd the way through) in the game and quit because it was around 3 in the morning and I was getting to tired to withstand the game's shenanigans, which are a plenty, cause that game fucks with your head. Weird ass industrial horror music for no reason, sounds that don't lead to anything, and general paranoia and dread. So I popped another cough drop and went to bed.

I don't know when I'll pick the game back up, hopefully soon, cause I'd have to start over if I take too long to get back to it. I'm not in the Halloween mood anymore, so I may not pick it back up for a while, but I'm not worried about it cause I'm never getting rid of it. The game has too much psychological fuckery to ever get rid of it. Sigmund Freud would've loved this game it's so crazy with hidden meanings, reoccurring themes and such.

All that being said, it was a weird Halloween, we didn't see any trick-or-treaters, nor did we get an assload of candy from the store, or do anything special really. Mom watched sitcom-y stuff on TV and I played SH2 and went on a binge of Halls cough drops (halfway hoping it would make the game MORE fucked up). So that was what I did this year, wasn't too bad really, ate some candy, played a good horror-y game that I've been meaning to play for a long time, and generally had peace and quiet (which is always good). I hope you guys out there had a good one too and I'll post more next week before The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim comes out, cause once it's out (Friday the 11th), I'm not stopping to do anything else for a while. :) Laters.

It's almost Halloween.

2011-10-28T23:34:00.000-07:00

I have had a love/hate relationship with scary movies and anything that goes bump in the night since I was a little kid. I first started getting spooked with Friday Fright Night bumpers for a local CBS scary movie night, which would come on very late, well, very late to a 5 year old. Sometimes it'd be sponsored by a local car dealership called Ray Adam's Toyota, which is still in business apparently. Anyway the bumper, or intro/outro segment's from commercials had a caricature of Ray Adams' face with his big rimmed glasses (but no eyes) and was B/W inverted. Shit scarred me so much I was running in place and screaming, and I didn't stop until my dad jumped up and turned it off. Before we moved to where we live now (when I was around 4), mom let me watch whatever I wanted at night cause she was busy doing mom things and dad didn't care cause he was dog ass tired when he got home. So I was subjected to whatever the TV censors in the 80's allowed on TV, which was a hell of a lot compared to today's standards.

Even after my brothers, my mom, and I moved here (when I was 5), the frights didn't stop. My brothers, being brothers, would scare me for their amusement. One time, my brother Gary (my oldest bro) put his clay skull (that he made in school) on an old turntable, turned his strobe light on it and told me there was something cool in his room. Long story short, I bolted out of there and had nightmares for a week. This went on until I was old enough not to annoy them, as it does with brothers. Since I was little I've had an almost stockholm syndrome fascination with scary stuffs. In school, I had the Scary Stories books and was turned on to old folklore stories, urban legends, stories about historical bogeyman (like Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory) and such a horror nut was born. :)

Because of all this, Halloween is favorite holiday... Eh.. I don't like calling it a holiday, since the word holiday comes from Holy Day, which Halloween certainly is not. It started in Scotland in the 16th century as a pagan celebration of the start of the harvest season (to which Thanksgiving is the end in the Christian mythos). Halloween has been Christianized/westernized, like elements of Christmas (trees inside and "St. Nicholas").

Anyway, religion aside, as it should be, Halloween rocks, as I get candy (bought, not acquired from trick or treating) and get in the mood to watch scary movies and play scary games. Namely the older stuff from the 70 through the 90s and games from the PSone to PS2 days. New stuff isn't scary, it's lost it's edge after actually showing viewers what to be afraid of. The scariest shit I've seen in games and movies let me imagine what the antagonist looks like and run with it from there. Jump scares work to startle and things that set atmosphere, like music (or lack thereof) work to instill a sense of dread, but showing the bad evil thing before it's explained at the end just ruins the experience.

Until Halloween night, I plan on watching most of the scary movies My brother Scott and I have and playing some Silent Hill 2 (a good example of fucking with your mind and not showing enemies), Resident Evil, and probably some Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 online with some friends (if they're not busy themselves). If this blog reads like it's a bit thrown together, it's cause I'm tired, half of it was typed out while watching the Silent Hill movie, and I think it shows just how passionate I am about Halloween.

With that in mind, I'm getting out of here for tonight, I'll leave this wallpaper here for those who like the 78 classic, Halloween. have a happy and scary Halloween people. Oh, and if you see a black cat, adopt it. I'm out!!

And so yet another great slips through our fingers.

2011-10-06T02:19:00.000-07:00

Today, well yesterday evening, the news broke that Steve Jobs, former CEO and founder of Apple Computers finally succumbed to the pancreatic cancer that he had been battling since around 2005. Sad day indeed. I thought I'd go through my history with Apple products since I didn't know the man personally.

So, back in the day, in 3rd grade (in 1990) our teacher took us to the newly built computer room for a "computer class", which was nothing but an hour of playing Number Munchers and Oregon Trail (and not teaching us anything about computers). However, I learned something, the couple of Apple IIe computers they had never broke down or had problems like the IBM computers in the "lab" did.

The setting looks right, but replace that with Oregon Trail.

All of the kids (myself included) wanted to play on the IIe, and it was a fight for the cool computer. Because of this, Apple was cemented in my mind as one of the few things in elementary school that wasn't a nightmare (one of the very few). Fast forward 12 years..

In early 2004, I wanted an iPod (the 3rd Gen touch buttons version).

This specific one right here.

So I got my brother's hardly used green clamshell iBook G3 to set up iTunes and manage the iPod.

Not it, but the same model and color.

Apple was in my life once more. Things were going pretty awesomely, until November, when my first cat died. Still tears me up. The iBook kept me occupied enough to keep me from getting really depressed. Around the first half of 2005, my brother, who lent me the green iBook, wanted it back. BUT, he gave me his newer white iBook G3 in return.

Not mine, but better than stock photos. I didn't have the mouse either.

It was a great computer, however, that model had a ticking time bomb in it, as it was a 2001 model that had a faulty Power Management Unit chip, which is responsible for directing power to where it needs to go in a computer (to the battery, screen, ports, etc, etc), but before the PMU chip could manifest it's evilness, I fried the Hard Drive during the summer of 2005, when it got up to 99+ degrees inside (when our AC was on the fritz). $400 and a few months later, I started having problems turning it on. A trip to the Apple store finally sealed it's fate. It would've cost nearly as much as a new computer to fix it *around $900).

So I went without a computer for 7 years, using my PSP, Nintendo DS, and Wii for my internet fix, until I got my current computer. It's not a Mac, but it's the best I could get. I did manage to get an iPod Touch last year.. almost mirroring what I did in 2004, but with a crappy netbook that my mother got from a co-worker for $150.

So I'm not back up to full Mac speed like I was, but my iPod Touch works for my Apple fix. for now. Apple products have been the best computer experience I've had in my life, and I have Steve jobs to thank for that, and for making computing what it is today. You will be missed Steve.

HA, BUSTED!

2011-09-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

SO I just got an email from our local rock station here in Kansas City, 98.9 The Rock announcing their annual Freaker's Ball Halloween concert. I looked at the graphic and did a double take. I recognized the zombies in the picture. Now one would think that the site designer just google image searched "Zombies" and ran with what they got. HOWEVER those art assets do not show up (I just checked). Scope out the screen grab from the email...

Click ^^^^^

I saw that and said "Oh cool, wha.. wait a minute!!". The foreground zombie and his cohort to the left (our left, not his) are from Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, the DS game, and the cop zombie is from Resident Evil 2. Proof? Here...

Busted? Yeah, but I'm cool with it, cause old school Resident Evil OWNS the newer games in the series. Rock on site designer guy, rock on.

Hmm

2011-09-08T14:07:00.001-07:00

Just posting on here to try out the Blogger iOS app. Pretty neat, no landscape mode though. Also, just mowed the front lawn. It didn't need mowed, but I got $20 for the trouble, so yay. Alright, more later.

Oh yeah..

2011-08-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

So my birthday was last week. I've been too preoccupied to post. When I wasn't engaged in different conversations across Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, I was looking at stuff online and planning out what I was gonna buy in a text doc on the computer. I fell like I must get myself excited in order to enjoy my birthday (and Christmas for that matter) anymore, I'm not a kid and it's hard to not treat them as ordinary days. So, because of this, over the last two or three years during my birthday and a day or so after, I walk around like I'm the most important bastard (VIB if you will) in the area, I feel like if I ever win the lotto, I'm gonna be a stuck up piece of shit, and I'm okay with that, cause that's our society, the more you have, the more important you are.. kinda like that slogan during the 80's "He who dies with the most toys, wins!".

Anyway since I got some money for my birthday, I managed to get some money and buy stuff myself, hell I still have $100 coming to me from my one brother. So far I managed to get...

A preorder (and all the money) down on the Halo 1 remake coming out in November
Dead Space 2: Limited Edition (came with DS: Extraction) -PS3
Killzone 3 -PS3
A xbox360 wired headset
A kickass pair of Motorola wireless Bluetooth headphones (for the iPod), that also double as a Bluetooth mic for the PS3, which saves me $40.

Since I have money coming on from my one brother (the aforementioned $100), this weekend I'm gonna get online and order..

High School of the Dead (completeBlu-Ray anime series)
Samurai Champloo (complete Blu-Ray anime series)
Skullcandy 3rd Gen iPod Touch case
A preorder (and all the money) down on Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -PS3

Getting all that on Amazon, I'll have about $0.03 left out of $100, which I did that with a gift card last year for Christmas, much to my amusement. Also, I got taken out to a kickass Mexican food then the next day I got taken out to a kickass pizza place by my oldest bro, it was belated, but I don't give a flying rats ass, it was damn good pizza. So that's a rundown of my birthday this year and the loot I got from the quest (I'm itching to play ESIV: Oblivion again, can ya tell?). I'm out for now, I gots some podcasts to catch up on and then, I'm going the fuck to sleep. BIRTHDAY BITCHES!

Made my own Google+ thingy.

2011-07-25T03:15:00.000-07:00

Cause my Steam thingy isn't displaying and I can't remember where I got it, so I'm replacing it with this..

Pretty straightforward, but it should look nice sittin on the side, and it'll be clickable and will take you to my page there.

EDIT: Alright, yeah, that looks nice. Works and all that, easy peasy.

It. Has. Been. Hot.. Still is.

2011-07-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

That's why I haven't posted in a while, it's been unbearably hot. Half the nation is under a damn heat advisory and what little thunderstorm we had this morning just left it like a sauna outside. Summer can fuck right off right now, I don't care if my birthday is coming up, to hell with it, just give me some cool weather, I'll take that as my present.

I was out yesterday at our local Borders bookstore getting some books before they sell everything off and close for good and holy hell, between the heat and wandering around a barely cool overcrowded bookstore, I was either about to pass out or throw up. In retrospect I was close to having a heat stroke, just by getting out in this shit for a few minutes going from house to car, from car to store, store to car, and finally back to house from the car.

What did I get while at Borders? I got a couple of the Halo books, Contact Harvest and Cole Protocol and I got Bioshock: Rapture (the prequel book that just came out). I WAS going to get the hardback of Halo: Cryptum, but they still stuck to their guns with the "fuck everybody else we're gonna charge MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price)" tactic then stuck on a paltry 10% discount on all the Fiction books. ooh $0.10 on the Dollar, greedy fucks. For a store going out of business, you'd think they would have their books marked down by at least, AT LEAST 50% off. BUT, I guess that's why they're going out of business, they charge MSRP for everything, where every other retailer doesn't. Case in point, Halo: Cryptum was $25 MSRP, Borders was selling it for that much. Their little discount brought it down to $22.50, ooh.. savings! So I took my paperback Halo books and sat in the closed down cafe part (by the magazines) and checked to see if their online still worked (it did, they hadn't sold it off yet) and I got online with my iPod Touch and ordered Cryptum off of Amazon for $10. I should've gone up there and just sat there and downloaded PC game demos and bought more books off of Amazon, just to spite their greed. In hindsight, I'm kinda glad they're going out of business, I mean, they were close and had a good selection of books and okay coffee (Seattle's Best.. Missouri's Worst), but they overcharged for everything compared to other stores (especially their movies, that was deplorable).

Anyway, it's hot, I'm tired, and I'm tired of bitching about something that makes me tired. So I'm off of here until next time, and I'll leave ya with this, laters.

So I got in to Google+.

2011-07-07T14:54:00.000-07:00

It's quite nice, it's very Facebook-y, and that's not a bad thing. Even though it's in a closed public beta, I didn't sign or agree to a Non Disclosure Agreement, so I'm gonna post about it.

This is what the main Stream looks like...

it's not cluttered (at this point). Also, yes, that is a Hipster Puppy saying "I was on Google+ before it was open to everyone", I thought it was funny that someone had already made that up and posted it on Google+, so I "shared" it.

Here's the Photos section...

The people in Circles can share photos, here's some photos from the peeps in my circles. You can also display your own photo Picasa photo album, if you can't remember what you got in there, or if it's public or not. Faces have been blurred out for my amusement.

Here's the Profile section...

The Profile is just that, you can see you big ass picture, what you've contributed, and who's in your circles. You also have the option here to change stuff in your Google profile. Most sites have a page like this, it's pretty standard, but important nonetheless.

And, here's the Circle section...

This is the main hub (excuse the pun) of Google+. Circles let you drop people into groups so (for example) you can tell dirty jokes to your friends without letting your boss, coworkers, nosy people, or your family in on it. You can also sort your Stream by Circles, which is nice if you just want to see what certain groups of people are up to.

There's also the Sparks (aggregated news) and Hangouts (Video chat) sections, but I get my aggregated news from Google News and Video Chat isn't my thing, so I haven't checked those out. I may in the future, but not now. Here's the Google+ playlist page on YouTube for the official video rundown on every part. It's pretty crazy how busy it is now, even though it's not open to everyone yet. Come July 31st, when the gates open to everyone, shit is gonna get BUSY. For now, I'm kinda enjoying the quiet.

I don't know if Google+ is gonna kill off Facebook or what, though Facebook seems to be choking to death on the stupid apps and games that's the cause of a lot of ID theft and nonsense. This seems like the next "thing", cause we went from MySpace, to Facebook, and now people are flocking to Google+ in the same way. Though, back when Facebook showed up, people were skeptical (like a lot of people are now about this). People were skeptical of Twitter (waste of time) and Gmail (Google's stealing our info), but they've become integrated into our digital society. Whether or not Google+ can stand up against the giant that's Facebook is a question for a later time, but Google as a whole IS bigger than Facebook, so they have that edge going for them. For now though, I'm gonna sit back and see how this plays out, More later.

My biggest gripe with Nintendo.

2011-07-05T18:14:00.000-07:00

I'll come straight out and say it, it's their business practices here in North America. I know some other regions and countries get shafted more than N.A. but we all share something that Nintendo is all too aware of, we're not Japan. The company is still stuck in their Japanese ways. Back in the days of the NES and SNES, they thought some games wouldn't be understood by people in America, like Final Fantasy. Hence why FF2, 3 (on NES), and FF5 (SNES) were never release here and why we got Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest instead, which was the most special bus, hand holding piece of crap I've ever played. Even though it was better than Quest 64, but that's a whole other can of cancerous crap, that I had the unfortunate opportunity to rent (I want my $5 back Blockbuster!). Seriously, they thought Americans (who had already played the hard ass original Final Fantasy, would not understand FF2, 3, and 5, they looked down on us, and to this day, Nintendo still compares regions outside of Japan with third world countries.

Between the 80s and now they've refused to import/localize the more "hard to understand" games for U.S. release, needlessly censored the shit out games that saw a release here, and up until a few years ago refused to bring the Japanese and European Club Nintendo rewards program here (now it's here, it's not as good as the Japanese one). While I have a beef with all these flaws of Nintendo of America, the one I got on here to bitch about is the recent blatant refusal to import games, despite mass outcries for the game and the fact that one of them is already translated into English for a Euro release, ridiculousness. Towards the end of last month, a group of people got together to create Project Rainfall, a collaborative effort to get three Wii games localized and imported, by means of letter writing, online petitions (good luck with that one guys), and making the biggest damn noise on the Internet (via twitter, facebook, etc).

They caused so much of a ruckus that NOA actually responded to them on Twitter, this is what they said..

Yeah, I know, "dickish" doesn't quite describe that. At lease in the past they tried to make it look like they cared about their N.A. fans. I read that as this..

So, if you love games, good games not those crap games, go over and do some supporting of Operation Rainfall, retweet, like on facebook, do some letter writing to NOA, or just spread the word of what they're doing (like I am). Fuck, go sign the petition, it doesn't hurt anything, even if that front falls on it's ass. I'm done bitching about Nintendo for now, shit's depressing, but I refuse to give up bitching about them. More later.

Trying something different.

2011-06-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do a write-up for the two available download add-ons for for Fallout: New Vegas. What? Not right now, I just started downloading them, that's slightly over a gig for both. It'll be in a few days, I have to play them through to completion. I'm just giving out a heads up. I got out earlier and bought a $20 PSN card. I was at the Walmart sifting through the $20 games bin for over an hour. At one point I had Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Wii), Rock Band 3 (xb360), and a $10 Blu Ray copy of The Dark Knight in my hands. Pissed off that I probably wasn't going to get all that, I threw it all down and got a PSN card. The Fallout DLC was on my to buy list, not the other stuff in the $20 bin. As I type this, the downloads have just finished, so I have no more reasons to stay up. I'm going to bed, Fallout New Vegas is on the menu for tomorrow. More later.

I must be desperate..

2011-06-10T15:43:00.000-07:00

I say that because I went next door to our "special" (IE: retarded) neighbor's garage sale to see what their son (also "special") was selling. Ok let me back up here. 2 hours ago.. or what felt like 2 hours ago, I was sitting here fucking about on the internet and playing some Wipeout HD on my PS3; when mom comes in from outdoors. She told me our neighbors saw a cat that was hit on the four lane boulevard next to our house. Being the compassionate old woman she is she was wanting to take it and have it put to sleep, trouble is, it was already gone. The neighbors neglected to mention that. So the net of social entrapment was cast and my talkative mother was caught up in talking to them, on top of that, they don't know when to shut up and let people leave.

It was kind of a good thing so got caught up in the limbo of talking with "special" people, cause it took her mind off the cat for a while. So anyway; several grueling minutes later, their son asked me about games, which despite my dislike for him; it piqued my interest. *sigh* I'm my mother's son. After a few minutes he asked me if I had a Game Boy, I told him "yeah", he asked "which one", to which I replied "all of them" (cocky, I know, but true. not counting the GBA Micro). He then asked me if I wanted to buy some of his games. At this point a HUGE conflict of interest formed in my mind. On one hand, I remembered a lesson I learned about not getting something I wanted when I had the chance, only to go back later and see it gone (Star Wars toys), BUT I didn't have much money on me, I didn't like him, and I doubted he had anything but tore up Madden NFL games. So I went back inside, talked it over on Twitter (mostly to myself, but my bud Corey was asking about it), It was bugging me that I didn't know what games he had. So I posted this on Twitter...

Angry face.

So I went over, in "business mode" (no fucking about, I'm here to buy, what do you have. blinders on, eye on the prize. Soup Nazi style") and I asked him about his Game Boy games, he put his 12 pack of pop down (good boy, put shit aside to make a sale) and he busted out a black GBA SP (the fold up one), a couple original Game Boy games (Donkey Kong Land II and Super Mario Land) and one GBA game which caught my eye. He had a copy of Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World. I immediately asked him how much, then had to ask him again (cause he's "slow"), he said $5. I was taken back a bit, surprised that he wasn't asking like 50 Cents or $1, but I saw the back of the cart and it had a Gamestop sticker on it. He was charging what he paid for it. Mom told me when I was 10 years old that garage sales are for getting rid of stuff, not making money. I was tempted to parrot this to him, but I feared it would be lost on him, and I wanted to keep my interaction with him to a minimum, so I gave him $5 for it, came back to the house, and came inside.

I gently scraped the sticker on the back off, cleaned the contacts with a soft cloth (clean sock), and popped it in and BOOM, Super Mario World. Pleased with the condition, I got online to price the damn thing on ebay, turns out, the game is selling for $8 to $12 for a cartridge only copy. Hm, I ended up getting a good deal.

It's a me!

It's funny, my old game hunting instincts haven't dulled. Several years ago, I woke up and something was telling to go across the street to the pawn shop. I didn't know why, but I had an inkling, cause I woke up thinking about the pawn shop having games. So I got dressed and ran over there, and lo and behold, they had a near mint-condition copy of Parasite Eve for the original PlayStation, it even had the instruction book and the 1998 Squaresoft game sampler disc that came with new copies. $12, sold. a year later, same thing, I woke up thinking about the pawn shop, I go over there, they had a good condition (missing the instruction book) copy of Final Fantasy VII. $12, sold. What's weird though is, I haven't had the urge to go over there in a few years. Anyway, that's my recent find. I need to keep hunting down old games this summer, it's fun, they're (semi) cheap, and.. well... they retro games, I can't resist them. :) Right, enough blabbering, this post is already long in the tooth, I'm getting off here. As always, more later.

E3 2011 Day 1 The Nintendo Press Conference

2011-06-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

So the Day kicked off with Nintendo's turn on stage. The conference started with a rousing performance of multiple Legend of Zelda themes by a live orchestra while a montage video of past Zelda games were shown on the big screen. All of this of course is because this is the 25th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda (which debuted on the NES back in 1986). After the killer intro was over they brought out Senior Managing Director of Nintendo and creator of Super Mario and Zelda Shigeru Miyamoto, who is always fun to watch as he's a ham, total manchild, it's funny.

He (with his translator's help) announced some Zelda stuff for each system, except the regular DS Lite, technically he only announced The old Game Boy title Link's Awakining for the 3DS eShop, Four Swords for the DSi-Ware for free (Nothing for regular DS owners? Dicks), and the "Holiday Season" launch window for LoZ: Skyward Sword. Oh and some BS about a 25th Anniversary Zelda themed concert in the major regions of the world this fall. A million bucks say it wont come to Kansas City, no Nintendo even ever comes here, most of the Midwest is jousted by Nintendo (marketing) events, it's like they see nothing but a void in between the San Fran area and New York.

Dicks.

Anyway.. They also announced a soundtrack CD of the LoZ: Ocarina of Time 3DS game for people who register the game, and a CD that'll be from one of the concerts. Both of which I'm going to pirate when they comes out, out of spite. After the obligatory Zelda part, they trotted out the President of Nintendo; Satoru Iwata; who proceded to talk about the 3DS' future. Two games that were teased last year; "StarFox 64 3DS"and a new Mario 3DS game were shown along with a new Mario Kart AND Luigi's Mansion 2. Motherfuckers.. I have to buy a 3DS now. They also showed off the new Kid Icarus, which I'm befuddled as to why they even brought that back from obscurity. It was an old NES and original Game Boy game that bore no sequels for.. what.. 24 years.. holy fuck! I've met kids who at the time (around 2004) were like 15 or 16 that was all "OMG, I need a new Kid Icarus game LEIK NAO!" I had to point out that they weren't even a twinkle in their daddy's eye yet, and probably never played the original. I seriously don't see where the hype came from, it'd be like 10 year olds wanting a Gyomite sequel.

After the 3DS part, they brought out the President of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Amie, who started talking about the Wii name and how it should be tailor made for you the player, then he announced the name of the rumored new console codenamed "Project Cafe".. "Wii U". MmHmm, it sounds like a onomatopoeia for a police siren doesn't it? They can't come up with a decent name for anything. Hell the Gamecube was going to named the "Starcube", neither name or even the project name "dolphin" was good for a game console. Naming fails aside, the hardware DOES look pretty good.

The console itself down't look much different from the first Wii. You have a Power button, eject button, wireless controller sync button, and behind the panel is what I'm guessing to be either SD card slots and/or Gamecube game controller ports (like the first Wii had). Now onto the controller, the more impressive part of the system..

The screen touch screen can used for item management as seen in this mock-up for a Legend of Zelda game. Sweetness.

If the TV is occupied, you can stream the video straight to the screen on the controller. Pretty much like the PlayStation 3's Remote Play ability.

The controller features a front facing camera so you can use the controller as an augmented reality device. The picture shows a player using the controller to play the pitcher at a a baseball game.

The controller features two cameras (one front facing and one rear facing) so you can use it to "scan" the TV screen for hidden objects, video chat with people and other neat stuff. The screen on the controller can be used to take the game from the TV and take it to the couch if the TV is taken up, or to the shitter. That is..if the range is adequate; as it doesn't transfer the game to the controller, but rather streams it via the built in Wi-Fi in the system, like the Remote play feature on the PS3.

They didn't announce the price, they'll probably leave the finer details like that and system colors and accessories for the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) later this year. However, with the 6.2 touchscreen the controllers by themselves (if they're sold separately that is) will cost out the ass. The system is in full 1080p HD and there's a myriad of third party game support. Battlefield, Ghost Recon, Batman: Arkham City, Assassin's Creed, and some others are among the games to come to the system. So the first Wii's problem of not having enough third party support seems to have been (temporarily?) taken care of. Not surprisingly, there was nothing out of Square-Enix (the guys behind the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games), but the company logo showed up on one screen at the end when they were talking about companies lined up to put games out for the system.

With that, the presser was over. No big reveal at the end, no Zelda 25 Anniversary Collection (which was something I was predicting), not a lot of fat to be trimmed. They were all "sup bitches, Zelda's 25th anniversary, 3DS, some 3DS games, Wii U, some Wii U games, we're out." They learned from two years ago the flailing tards on stage act isn't fun to watch, serious business is appreciated. Apparently it's something both Sony and Microsoft have yet to learn, as their conferences were full of spastic arm flailing tards and children who desperately need acting lessons. then again it's not surprising to see Nintendo innovate and sit back and watch others imitate them and see how the tech does out in the market, they're sneaky fuckers like that. That's why they're rich as hell and they can afford to do goofy shit.

So, anyway, that was the majority of Day 1 of E3, from the online perspective. I'm still catching up on trailers and videos of exclusive demos posted on various websites. For someone that's not there in person, I'm pretty much done with E3, the majority of the awesomeness is in the big three (Sony Nintendo, and Microsoft) press conferences. I'm now down to picking crumbs (aforementioned demo vids and trailers) out of the E3 chip bag. With that said, I'm out of here for a bit, I may post a Day 2 and 3 recap of things I found, if I find enough to warrant a post. Alright, more later.

E3 2011 Day 0

2011-06-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

Or as I like to call it.. E3 Day 0. Yeah, nothing special, just the first day of the big gaming press conferences. Today saw the Microsoft and Sony press confs and some random stuff in between including the Apple WorldWide Developers Conference (or WWDC for short) and some of the smaller press E3 press conferences. So, let me get into what I saw today (online) and what I thought.

I got up early, got everything I needed, and even ate breakfast. I was set, and the Xbox presser began. The press conf started off with a trailer and gameplay vid of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which you see New York turn into a war zone, at least in the beginning. The gameplay started off with "Operators" in Delta Force (The US Army's Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta) with personal underwater propeller based swimming things helping them through a flooded Metro subway system. They then find a breach in the tunnel and find them selves in the New York harbor where a submarine nearly hits them. They turn their equipment off and let it pass long enough to swim up in the wake and plant a demo charge on the hull. They blow the charge, forcing the sub to surface so they can get inside. In Call of Duty fashion they show the "in the interest of time..." text on a black screen and continue after they do whatever they were sent to do, scuttle it I suppose. They emerge out of the top hatch to see American jets scream by. They get into a inflatable boat (used for special ops insertion missions) and haul ass away from the sub, in between naval cruisers firing at shit, helicopters firing at shit, shit firing at shit, and they finally ramp the boat into the back of a Chinook and the demo ends as they lift off and show New York getting fucked up the ass with a big one.

In fact, hell, here's the vid of that..now that I explained it...

If the Modern Warfare games do anything right it's the kickass Story Mode/Campaign/Single Player. It's realistic enough to not bother anyone but the discerning gun and military buff, and it's the equivalent to a good summer action movie. Which is something I can get behind. The Multiplayer part.. well that can go die in a fire. The Battlefield series has that beat.. like a redheaded stepchild in K-Mart.

Next they showed off the new reboot (what is it, 2 reboots now) of the Tomb Raider game. Lara Croft crashed in some remote island and she was taken prisoner by some piratey looking dudes, she escaped, barely, the visuals were lookin good.

Then they had EA show some sports stuff for a brief while, and then suddenly changed topics over to Mass Effect 3, and the evil alien machine things (Reapers) taking over Earth ("Earf" for you astute readers out there). Twas badass looking.

They quickly went on tho Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, which is using more Fringe science tech (cloaking, advanced drones, etc) than the others in the series. It was just a trailer,b ut they showed more at the Electronic Arts press conf (which I MISSED!). I giggled like a girl watching the weapon customization, down to the gas pressure system for the automatic guns.. Oh yeah, I'm buying it.

Then they moved on to the great crapfest, know as Kinect. Fucked up claims about "not being able to that with a controller", Kinect based menu navigation using voice recognition, YouTube and Bing search for XBL, and a UFC channel. All put in to help sell it as an entertainment system. More bloatware, if you ask me.

Then back to games, with Gears 3. I didn't pay much attention since I have only ever played the first Gears of War, but they got Ice-T out to pimp the game, since he's a voice in it and that made me laugh. Ice-T's awesome.

They showed off some Kinect spartan fighting game.. but what's this? Chanting monks, space, it, it is!! They showed a video announcement of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, a remake of the first Halo game for Xbox 360. new visuals using the Halo: Reach engine, ONLINE co-op (where the original only had split screen), and some online multiplayer shit, I don't care for that. All that for $40, damn good price.

Then, the Gamespot video stream went dead.. for me at least. I swore up and down and scrambled my way to the official stream that was on xbox.com. Once I got back on the video stream, they were showing Kinect stuff, including poorly acting children, pretending to have fun. Infanticide has never crossed my mind, but these kids were asking for it.

When I thought all hope was lost, a new trailer came up, it was coming up on the last few minutes of the conference and I knew that there was a leaked rumor that Halo 4 was going to get announced, so I was optimistic that this was it. IT WAS.

It's what's left of the human ship Forward Unto Dawn from the end of Halo 3. The planet is first shown in the Legendary difficulty ending, where the ass end of the ship is floating by a planet with some.. fuck, here's the video..

.

With that The xbox press conf was over. I didn't see enough of the PlayStation Press conf to blog about it due to constant interruptions and trouble with my damn internet connection (getting DNS errors, which means it's on the provider's end, thus wait it out). all I know is that head dude, Jack Tretton was respectful regarding the PSN outtage, and their new PSP killer named NGP, was renamed Vita (Latin for "Life") and shown off in detail. PS Vita or PSV. Other stuff was shown off in smaller shows on various other websites, but I've yet to see most of it. So I'm out of here for tonight and I'll be back online tomorrow night with a a recap of the first official day of E3 and maybe a retro recap of the PlayStation conference given I find a video of it (which is likely). Alright, more tomorrow.

You've been warned..

2011-06-04T04:53:00.000-07:00

For whoever actually reads this.. Also I've been on here one year.. yay.

Also, fuck yeah; James "Milkman" Mielke.

Not a good start to the day..

2011-05-25T18:07:00.000-07:00

I went to bed early this morning; like around 6AM, only to be woken up around 11:00AM told we had tornadoes directly SW of us. BALLS. They were spotting tornadoes on the ground SW of here in Louisburg, KS around 10:40 this morning. That same cell moved up and hit south KC/Grandview, MO right where I live around 11:00 - 11:30am. Heavy fucking rain with some hail mixed in, the sirens were going off, and it was still as fuck outside. A funnel dropped down within the KC city limits, but petered out and went back up. The weather people were saying the tornadic activity wasn't as bad as what hit Joplin, but they're useless pieces of shit, and one of them on our local CBS station flips her shit every time it thunderstorms. Because of that, I relied on our weather scanner and NOAA maps and kept the TV people muted. This was the closest one has gotten to us in a long time, since the 1957 F5 tornado that tore this neighborhood up. From what I'm reading at least 10 funnel clouds either touched down or tried to all over the area. Fuck spring weather right now, in the ass, with a wooden dildo, from the 1800s. I forgot what I was gonna get on here and post about, but meh, whatever. Fucking springtime weather in Tornado Alley.

What's really funny is that right after that shit nearly dropped a handful of tornadoes right on top of us, there was sunny blue skies. Like nature said "oops, my bad". Not gonna cut it nature, I want a cool summer and a mild winter out you now. As for Joplin, you own those people indefinitely. Lifetime passes to good weather, wherever they live, free wild animal rides for the little ones, etc. I'm blabbering now, I'm getting off of here, there's beasties in Fallout: New Vegas to kill.

Still here, no surprise.

2011-05-23T23:57:00.000-07:00

Now the old butt-pirate is talking about October. I wonder how many of his followers are going to drink that Kool-Aid, wait that was Jim Jones cult. This was failed prediction numero 11, he keeps guessing he might nail it, but using that logic I might turn into a 4 armed whale and fly off to Sagittarius A with a newly created army of sentient lawn ornaments.

I'm sure all of you, if you've been watching the news, has heard about the big fucking tornado that tore through south Missouri Sunday evening. I t was a small town south of Kansas City called Joplin (Jawp-lin). I had family that grew up in and around Joplin and I have a friend down there (who is alright) so I feel a connection to the place. Fucking horrible what happened. I'm not gonna parrot the news to you and I don't have much to say except fucking hang in there people.

Taken by my friend Brandon, who lives in Joplin. That's St John's hospital, the top two floors are gone. The med chopper was blown off the roof and is in the parking lot (not seen here).

I was linked this on Twitter just now.

I know I didn't talk about it much, there's not much for me to say. I was down there as a kid and a few years ago when hurricane Katrina tore up my cousin's house and she moved up to Joplin to live in a temp house for a couple of weeks. I just thought I'd post about it, cause aside from ripping the music from music videos, it's what has my attention today. BTW, this song has been in my head all day. I'll leave you guys with it. Catch you later.

Everything Changes by Staind.

What I think of this whole 5/21 doomsday thing, in pictures.

2011-05-21T00:49:00.000-07:00

Some of these I added captions to, The facepalm one and cat one I found online, but yeah.. lets start shall we.

Shit happens.....

The dick responsible for the 5/21 doomsday BS. Not surprising that he's a gay basher too.

My reaction....

Also...

This too...

Finally....

So the CDC is acknowledging Zombies.

2011-05-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

It's more of a tongue in cheek thing, but they are recognizing the possibilities of an infectious outbreak of the that kind. That's basically what they do on a daily basis, disease control, it's in their name. Things that can mimic a zombie infection have been recorded in medical journals. everything including necrotic flesh diseases, inattentiveness, brain damage, the inability to fulfill hunger. It's all there, but we haven't had the misfortune of running into a super strain that combines all these things. Hell, the non zombie "infected" movies Like 28 Days Later and The Crazies were based on Rabies and biological weapons, real shit!

Like I posted on Twitter a little while ago "Right now it's a fringe science, but 100 years ago a lot of medical related things were considered fringe science". So keep this in mind people, it CAN and (if we as a species live long enough) will happen. So yeah, at least go buy a gun, if you're American, you need one of those anyway. More later peeps.

Childhood in the 80s, according to me.

2011-05-17T14:04:00.000-07:00

So there I was, born in 1982. My earliest memory was from when I was 3 years old (1985) following my mother around while she did house stuff, playing with leftover Lego and Star Wars toys from both of my older brother's childhoods, and bouncing on dad after he'd come home and crash on the couch in the dark with the TV on. I remember the neighborhood well, it was set behind a K-Mart in Grandview, here in Missouri, which I always thought was cool cause it was OUR K-Mart.

Ye Olde Neighborhood.

Thanks to Google maps, I found my first home. I'm THINKING that the house on the right was ours, I don't remember a deck, but we moved from that neighborhood to our current shithole when I was 5 (23 years ago), and a lot has changed. A lot of houses in the 70s and 80s looked like that in this area. It was kinda hard to pinpoint it down to a few houses. We had a little old lady that lived down the street that would offer me asylum when I was being bad and mom was after me. This is how I recognized the street, cause her house never changed, and we were a few houses down.

Since I was the last of 3 boys, I got nothing but hand-me-downs and discounted clothes and toys as a child. I didn't care, I got toys, that was all. I was jealous of my friend next door who had ALL of the Ghostbusters toys (of the Real and movie varieties) as well as having won a Kenner contest and received ALL of the Masters of the Universe (aka He-Man) toys to date. Yeah, he was a dick too cause he also had a Power Wheels. Kid had everything, which even at an early age put my humble "I don't care, at least I have some toys" attitude into the grinder.

Then, the unexpected happened. At age 5 my parents got a divorce, which I thought it was my fault, but really I don't know why they did. So I was saddled with adult responsibilities and had to pack my stuff, which wasn't much, but fuck you I was 5. I'm skimming over this part, cause aside from emotional shit, I really don't remember much. So anyway Mom, my two brothers and I moved in with my two Aunts and my Grandmother in the house I still live in. That was 1987, and shit was hectic for several years, but a month after we moved, my Brother Scott gave me his NES for my birthday. Continuing the tradition of me getting hand me downs and not giving a fuck cause it was in good shape and also FREE, I started in on the hobby that would carry me through my formative years to where I am now.

The rest of the 80s for me was filled with bad experiences in school which usually followed me home, toys, Back to the Future, the Batman movie, and more trouble at school. Chalk this part up to repressed memories turning all the good moments into a stew of obfuscation. At this point in life, I'm not sure if I could unravel the good from the bad from back then. I say, it's in the past, family, toys, and video games aside, fuck it; it can stay in the past.

I can hear it now.. "Patrick.." You ask, "you talked about the 80s but didn't talk about the arcades?" They were around in mall form, but I was too young. By the time I got to a proper arcade, it was in the 90's, and they were drying up. The best arcade memory for me was the arcade cabinets at Pizza Hut where I'd waste quarters while waiting for for my personal pan pizza from the school/Pizza Hut Book It program. The genesis of my gaming habit was really with the NES. Arcades were fun, but I didn't have enough time with them.

With that, I'm out of here for now, reminiscing about the past too much is bad for ya. Especially for me since I have so much to do nowadays. More later.

Hey people..

2011-04-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

BTW, I never figured out what that weird countdown issue was about involving the GLaDOS@Home page. I beat Portal Portal 2, it's an AWESOME game, great writing, great gameplay, and the end is fucking CRAAAAAAAAZY! GAME OF THE YEAR. Anyway have a great holiday religious people and have fun trying to tie the tall tale of resurrected Jesus in with rabbits and chicken eggs. Seriously though, have a good one and I'll post more later.

So..

2011-04-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

Starting tomorrow, I'll be shooting ad-hoc quantum tunnels through space. If that made you scratch you head, you clearly haven't played the first Portal. In layman's terms I'll be playing Portal 2. My dear old mother agreed to go halfsies with me on the game if I step up in my taking care of shit around the house. DEAL. Honestly I think she agreed to give me the $30 if I shut up about it, since I've been following the ARG involving potatoes (POTATO, or PORTALTWO without the R, L, and W) and I've been hyped up for it.

It was crazy, first a set of independent games were released under the "Potato Sack Action Pack" label, then attentive player noticed an update to several of the game within the pack. Unbeknown-est to them, Valve, the makers of the Half-Life series and Portal pushed an update to all the games in the indie pack to start the ARG. It went from users noticing small glyphs in games that correlated to the other 13 games to full blown hints that something was afoot. a few days after it started, users were finding Aperture Science login pages within the 13 games.

It didn't take long at all for users who decided to get involved to organize, create a website, and eventually find the login details for all 13 pages. The pages, once accessed, only gave out Portal 2 concept art, but suspicious users tried looking at the image in photo editing software (like GIMP) and they found the real purpose of the images. Within the image files were secondary images that showed black and white images of signs, statues, buildings, and other real life things. Once found, people hit the streets and found all these images were from around the Seattle area where once there, you guessed it, they found more glyphs and potatoes. Most of the street beating led to other clues and glyphs, some leading nowhere, but while people were out getting away from their computer in search of clues, things were going on back at ARG central. Shortly after, several users on Steam that were involved in the ARG began acting erratically and posting cryptic messages about not trusting anyone and posting computer code. It turns out within the story of the ARG, GLaDOS (the AI from Portal 1) had taken over several users accounts and some of the companies that made the indie games within the Potato Pack.

After a few days of users trying to glean information from the "infected" users on Steam, a countdown timer appeared on Aperture Science's website that was counting down from 15 hours. Earlier in the ARG, GLaDOS had mentioned that she "emancipated" the 13 games and that she was planning on "emancipating" something early. This was, of course a thinly veiled reference to Portal 2 releasing early, but what was the release conditions? Potatoes. In the 15 hours, users toiled away at the games of the Potato Pack trying to find all 35 hidden potatoes within as well as trying to crack the mystery of the countdown timer. Some thought that it was a countdown to the early release of the game. It wasn't, it was the start of "the final test" as GLaDOS put it.

The next day, as the countdown reached it's final moments, the excitement was palpable. When the timer reached zero, everyone who was watching the countdown page (myself included) was met with this page, a small message from GLaDOS, that congratulated users and went directly into a page showing a big progress bar and smaller progress bars for all 13 indie games, along with a potato counter down at the bottom. It turned out that users had to boot up the games and either play them or let it idle as they did something else to generate CPU power to reboot GLaDOS so she could release Portal 2 early for PC players. It turned out that it took players until the day of release (at 1:00AM central) to finish.

So it wasn't released early, but players got to take part in an epic ass ARG. Also, those that obtained all 35 potatoes as well as those users that had their account taken over so they appeared "infected" got a free early copy of Portal 2 as well as the Valve Complete Pack (a compilation of ALL Valve games to date) for free. Fucking Bravo!! That is how you promote a game right there folks. BOOM. However, it seems like it's not over. The potato counter slowly started counting down today, and at time of typing this it's at.. WTF is this?

X -10-7-5?

I don't know what this is, now it's at X -2-9-8. What the hell?! Now it's X -4-3-8. Now it's back to around 62,000. Huh?! That was fucking weird. Shenanigans are afoot still. Since the ARG isn't over and Portal is involved in the Half-life universe, it's rumored that once the ARG is truly over, there'll be some announcement for the next installment of Half-Life 2, or one for Half-Life 3. Time will tell. Anyway, I'm getting the PS3 version of Portal 2 tomorrow, so I might not be back online until later in the evening. If I find out what that number spasm was about I'll get back on here, if not, tomorrow evening.

As Promised.. some time ago.

2011-04-12T03:06:00.000-07:00

Well I finally got my digital camera charged up and took some pics of my new computer. This first pic here is an untouched picture, I had to use the light setting that makes stuff look like it wasn't taken under a heat lamp, but consequently it makes any backlit sources (like screens, lightbulbs, etc) look like a Blue Giant.

Because of this color bugaboo, I took a couple more pics..

One of the keyboard, note the "chiclet" (flat) style keys and butthole of a touchpad (wireless mouse FTW). It also has a fingerprint scanner to the right of the Intel Core metallic sticker on the right (also not used)

Here's one of the screen, which doesn't show off the border around the screen much (which is 3/4th of an inch), but does show the correct color of the screen (thanks to one of the other light settings on my camera). Now, remember the first photo in all it's blue glory?

I added the screen photo from above to it using GIMP and made it look as best as I could get it. but it's still off a bit, so it's more of a artist's rendition of what it actually looks like. So yeah, HP Pavilion dv6. It doesn't play new games so well, I had to tweak settings and even had to download the new video card driver for it to play Portal without stuttering freezing and ultimately quitting on it's own. It plays now, and it doesn't look like this...

Science bitches!

Alright, I've blogged long enough, plus it's late, or early depening on if you've been up or just got up. To me though, it's bedtime. More later.

Small list of site upgrades.

2011-04-07T20:17:00.000-07:00

Changed the background template
Changed the link not visited/visited colors
Post headline font size upped
Changed the Blog Header image, to reflect new formatting and design.

I still need to rework the Blog Header font within GIMP instead of letting Blogger handle it, cause the font needs a drop shadow because of the background. Anyway, off to, I dunno, do stuff, rip CDs, play Sims 2, I dunno, more later.

Addendum. (a genuine Quicky Blog)

2011-04-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, that was the quickest turnaround for blog posting ever (by me). I got a new template up and tinkered with the link color scheme, so my blog doesn't look like it crawled it's way out of the 90's, even though I've been gradually crawling my way out of the 80s. Anyway, I got some more tinkering to do, (like getting a new header image) but I'm keeping this layout until I get a better one. More Later.

Quicky blog, a trial run.

2011-04-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

The first in many quick blog posts. First order of "blogness".. is the shit that's brewing over Sony's battle with the so called "hacktivists". Little kids brought down Sony's PlayStation site yesterday because of some misperceived injustice because some cracker (a hacker who hacks to harm or hinder) is being being sought by the authorities, while another one, this time in Germany had his shit taken away by the police (rightfully). It's these assholes that ruined the PSP, and because of this, Sony is going after these malicious little fucks with a vengeance, and for once, I'm on the side of the big corporation. People are saying it's "Anonymous", a group of hacktivists, who also went after the Westboro Bastard Church (the funeral protesting heathens) and before that sided with Julian Astrange of Wikileaks fame (both to no avail). I call BS on this, a group that has more political and people serving oriented goals are breaking websites, spurting out death threats, organizing personal attacks on employees, and trying to wreck the PlayStation Network (thus fucking over the people they claim they're helping). This isn't the same people, it's just a bunch of butthurt (def #1) little kids who are sympathizing with the people who are trying to crack gaming consoles just to pirate games. Go get em Sony.

With that off my chest, I can get on with what I originally got on here to post. I was messing around in GIMP (like Photoshop, but better/free) and I made this. After seeing a trailer for The Third Birthday I grabbed four pics off the internet and started to see if I still have my photo manipulation skills that I had several years ago.

Clearly, my skills, they are rusty, but it looks nice, AND it just so happens it fits nicely on iDevices (seriously, I wasn't gunning for that, it was the pic size of Aya with the red BG). It's free to use, as I have no claim to it's content, but since I did put it together, I'd like a link-back here or a mention. Okay, so it wasn't as quick as I wanted it, but compared to the 2+ hours it takes me to casually post on here, it took an hour of interrupted time to post this. Oh well. I'll be making some graphical changes here and there within the month, now that I have a proper set-up to do so. When I do, I may post about it, or not, depends on how much I change. Anyway, I got stuff to do (cleaning, posting elsewhere online, playing The Sims 2, etc). More later.

It's Funny..

2011-04-03T20:04:00.000-07:00

How so much of your life can go into computers. Back in 2004 before my Apple iBook died from a faulty PMU chip, I had 2 years of my life dumped into it. When the chip that kept it from starting up finally wheezed it's last 1s and 0s in 2005 I felt like the house burned down, cold, empty, and dumped out on the street. Over the last.. 6 years I've adapted, going from using my PSP for internet, to my Nintendo DS, Wii, a crappy netbook, onward to my 32GB iPod Touch, and finally landing back on a real computer with my new HP. Not having a lot of money at one time sucks, cause if I had, I would've gotten a replacement Mac then and there instead of smaller gaming related purchases.

I was sitting here earlier, eating a Heath Bar "Cyclone" (crushed candy bar in vanilla soft serve) from our local "Dairy Queen-like" place called Paul's Drive In, while I was ripping CDs (some burned, some bought) into iTunes, just thinking about all the stuff I was into when I had the old iBook in late 2004. we had had the internet for almost a year and had just upgraded (at my behest) to DSL from the stone age of Dial Up. I was cutting my internet teeth at the now defunct Nintendo.com forums and meeting some cool people along the way, a couple of which I'm still friends with. I was dabbling in Photoshop making graphic stuff for people (I even had an art club over at 1up.com for a while), I was a Moderator then graphics team member on a Nintendo centric website (which is also no more). It seems that the internet is a mirror real life, in that it's a fickle bitch and will change at a moment's notice. Damn, while I've been typing this I've been staring at that picture of Paul's Drive in.. now I want a couple of corn dogs and onion rings.. shit.

I guess I should wrap this up. If you spend too much time reminiscing , you'll miss out on what's going on in your life right now. I know I didn't get my camera charged up, I'll do that tomorrow.. right now. I guess I'll leave this little gem from my Photoshop CS8 (Mac) days right here, cause it's relevant, and I've been playing though Final Fantasy VII Lately. Oh, and keep an eye out for changes to my page here, they'll be little improvements here and there, but nothing big. Till next time.

Finally.

2011-04-01T01:38:00.000-07:00

Late last year, mom decided to pull her 401k money out after the small stroke she had kept her from returning to work. She told me around January that she'd help me get a new computer, since the last REAL computer I had was back in 2004, and if I was going to start helping her take care of finances and other important stuff, I needed something to help me get into a position to help her.. thus the computer idea popped into her head. SO, for the past few months I've been keeping a watchful eye on the new hotness in computers and heeding the advice and recommendations of my brother and friends online.

I knew that computers are usurped by the newer model within a month of buying one, but I didn't expect to not find the older model. Because of this I've eyeballed, then moved onto watching 3 different computers since January. Ultimately, after the money came in, I couldn't find ANY of the computers I was looking at, which was a ridiculous idea, but I've never been computer shopping (my previous computers were hand me downs). This takes us to this past Wednesday, I was looking online (like the neurotic I am) to see if the ones I was watching were in stock yet, when i saw it.

What did I find? Atlantis? Bigfoot? The lost treasure of El Dorado? Nope.. better.. My new computer. It's an HP Pavilion with Win 7 Home Premium (64bit), a 15" screen, 500GB hard drive, 4GB DDR2 memory, and a DVD/R/RW combo drive. All for $549. Not only did it have everything I was looking for, but the god damn thing was in stock, AND was on SALE. While there, I grabbed a Logitech wireless mouse (like the one we have for the netbook) and a 4GB flash drive for $10 (which was also on SALE). I'll charge up my digital camera tomorrow and post some pictures of this sexy new beast. If you can't wait until tomorrow, here's an uninspired picture from Best Buy's page.

Things stop, things start, things change, yet I'm still here.

2011-01-18T23:08:00.000-08:00

Well, 2010 is over and 2011 is here, hopefully for the better. The last half of 2010 was a disaster to say the least. I lost one of my Aunts in June, a month later my mother had a mild stroke that's keeping her from going back to work, and everything I got used to these past few years is being turned upside down. It's tough to see any positive things about my current predicament, but I do see something.. change. Since I've been taking care of my grandmother who had a debilitating stroke in Nov of 2001, I haven't had the chance to do anything I needed to (like get my GED, a job, a car, etc). Now that mom is going out on Long Term Disability and is able to take care of G-Ma, my life is being pulled back like a Penny Racer and is being let go. Where will it go? Dunno, a straight line, a little bit before it needs restarted, a crazy left turn and off the table in a twisted spiral into who knows where, again I dunno.

As much as like to have plans for stuff, I have no plans for what I'm going to do. Why? Shit can happen so fast that'll turn everything sideways and foul up any plan. So for now, short term plans are king, small goals that won't sour before they're completed. Like right now, I'm planning on (as one last hurrah) buying a laptop (an 14" HP with a 350GB HDD). This way I can start researching the things I need to move forward. Sorry for the sad post, typing this all out is cathartic, and I need this from time to time.

Despite all the shitty things that's happened this past year, X-Mas wasn't as desolate as I thought it was going to be, it was the most downtrodden X-Mas, however I got some stuff, which helped.. more than I probably realized. I used some gift cards to get 4 games (Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2, Enslaved, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood) and a replacement headset/chatpad for my Xbox 360. After all that's happened in 2010, I felt like I needed the overindulgence of games. Alright, enough waxing lyrical, I need to get (as Ice-T says on Twitter all the time) Mooovin. Laters.

It's Been Awhile.

2010-07-10T21:49:00.000-07:00

I've been away from here for nearly a month, but I've been under a bit of stress lately. Around the middle of last month my aunt Lora passed away, she had all sorts of stuff wrong with her and has given us a bunch of scares before, but Saturday June 12th she finally went in her sleep. It was hard for me to post about it last time I posted, so I stuck to E3 stuff, but now (while it's still hard) I can manage to post about it. Her funeral was up in Iowa, where she lived with my other aunt for a number of years. Because of that, I chose to stay home and take complete care of G-Ma while mom went up there with my oldest brother and his wife. So between doing everything for G-Ma, taking care of of everything else here at the house, and moping about, I'm surprised I don't have an ulcer or hair falling out right now.

So here it is a month later and things are starting to finally get back on course, granted not without the usual bullshit shenanigans that pop up from time to time, but things are looking up. We have a new cat, it was an outdoor cat that is about 4 months old. It had some type of worm in it's neck that was eating it's food, kinda like a tapeworm, but the parasite had made a small hole in it's neck and laid eggs, horrifying, I know. We took it to the vet first thing this morning and they took out the grub (yes, grub), the eggs, cleaned out the small hole, gave it shots and antibiotics for us to give it. It's doing well, it's warming up to us and eating and pissing and pooping, so it's on the up and up (for good hopefully). This will probably be an early present for mom, since her birthday is in 3 days (the 14th), she is after all a crazy cat lady.

Speaking of birthday, my birthday is coming up real soon (Aug 4th), and I've devised a plan to get a 32GB iPod Touch by then. I'm going halfsies with B-Day money and saved up money to get it. I already have $100 (in various forms) of the $175 needed for half. Yeah I know, the 32GB is only $299, but add tax and you have almost $330. I'm talking that into consideration so I'm not (pardon the pun) shortchanged when I go to get it. Besides, if I have extra $$$$$, I'm getting an iTunes card or a hard case or whatever the hell I want.

Hopefully things start to quiet down around here, cause we all need a some form of relaxation. All right, it's been cathartic, I have to get to bed I got stuff to take care of tomorrow, then I'm off to do a late father's day with dad and my oldest bro. Will post later.

My E3 recap.

2010-06-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

Well E3 has come and gone, and what better way to fill the time between now and when the games come out than to obsess over them? This is the first time I'm going to utilize Twitter in a blog posting. Lemmie explain, all during E3 I was a twittering fool, so much in fact that one of my friends from high school took me off her mobile updates (sorry Kelli). Now I'm going to fall back on my cliff notes style ramblings to see if I can put together a coherent blog post or create a Frankenstein (I'll refrain from quoting Young Frankenstein).

Day Zero: It begins

The day started off pretty crappy, I was preoccupied and scatterbrained, so I forgot about E3 completely until about 10 minutes before the MS Press Conf. I was dead set on watching the live conferences on Gamespot cause of the Emblems (I refuse to call them achievements). So after getting the netbook up and running and getting The video page loaded, I found the video wouldn't load. I almost started panicking but Corey (Known around the interwebs as Gamecamiller) threw me a link to the redirect, so I was set, almost. I had to download Tweetdeck so I could watch the video and tweet at the same time (it's all about the multitasking for E3).

So after all that scrambling I was good to go, and the only thing I missed was the MGS: Rising vid, which I caught later and was worth tracking it down. The MS Conf was pretty good, despite all the arm flailing Kinect minigame crap they showed off, the Forza thing and the announcement of the Lucasarts deal (along with the SW tech demo) was pretty badass though. The fable III and Reach trailers were mouth watering, then there was the official reveal of the redesigned 360. It looks like a miniature Alienware tower, but it's smaller, black, and has a 250GB HDD so I'm willing to overlook the ugliness of it. Then I watched the EA and Ubisoft press conferences. EA was alright, an expansion to BFBC2, Medal of Honor (which looks amazing), and Sims 3 for consoles (also amazing). Ubisoft was "teh suckage", the only good things were Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and GR: Future Soldier (this too is amazing). So aside from being tired and then enraged that I put off a nap to watch the Ubi presser, Day Zero = pretty damn good.

Day One

E3 officially kicked off Tuesday, and I was up early.. real early.. too god damn early. The Nintendo press conf was at 11AM CT and I was up at 6AM. I would've gone back to sleep, but I feared that I wouldn't have gotten up in time to watch Nintendo embarrass the hell out of themselves, so I stayed up. I watched O Brother Where Art Thou and played Rock Band until it was time. this time I had the page loaded, Tweetdeck up, AND the liveblog from 1up behind the shrunken vid window, just in case the video stream cut out..I was ready for the day. So the Nintendo presser started, I realized that I had a frown on my face in preparation for the coming onslaught of vitality sensor BS, party games, and Cammie Dunaway talking about things she knows nothing of. However, the unthinkable happened.. the presser was actually good, not just good, but really fucking good! I believe Penny Arcade paraphrased it best in the middle panel of this comic.. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/16/. Everything except for Mii Party was pretty epic. Hardcore games, Miyamoto being a ham on stage (trying to play Zelda: Skyward Sword), and finishing it out with the new glasses free 3D DS hardware.. BOOOOOOMMM, epic show. It was totally worth getting up early to watch it.

Up next was Sony's presser, which I thought was later in the day, I was planning a nap, but then I found out the presser was at 2PM CT, so I stayed up to see if Sony could even come close to Nintendo's epic throwdown. Oh that's where Nintendo's waggle fest went to, it jumped ship to the Sony Conf. After Sony ripped off Nintendo, then tried to persuade people into buying PS Move with Kevin Butler's funny speech, they got down to brass tacks and dug into the games. They showed off more Medal of Honor on PS3 (which is getting a remastered MoH: Frontline as a bonus.. yaaayyy). Then they shocked the community with the bring out of Gabe "I hate the PS3, but money hats are sweet" Newell to announce Portal 2 on PS3, pretty epic. They also talked about Final Fantasy XIV (yaaaaaawwwn) and Gran Turismo 5 (yay), which now has a release date AND a collectors edition coming out (double yay),. Oh, and they talked about a Twisted Metal reboot, which I called (check Twitter, I called it), ANNND with that the Sony presser was over. Pretty good showing, but following the Bruckheimer-esque expoldium filled Nintendo Conf, it felt short.

Day Two and Three: the wind down

I'm putting Day two and three into one section, cause aside from the Konami press conf and a few random videos, there wasn't much going on, unless you were there in person, running around like a kid off of his Ritalin. The day started off lazily since the Konami presser didn't start until 3PM CT and I had gotten MGS: Peace walker in the mail from Amazon. Once the press conf started there wasn't much of anything shown that was worth a damn. According to the 1up liveblog, they showed the same MGS: Rising video that was shown at the MS conf, some Castlevania vids (not a big fan, didn't pay attention), and the rest of it was filled with rap battles, Glee karaoke and, (I shit you not) Mexican wrestling. An hour into the presser, I said to hell with it and took a nap (the week's been a bit stressful). I'm glad I did cause there wasn't anything else worth ditching a nap for.

Day three started off more or less the same as day two, minus the half assed press conf, which as Corey said.. it could've been handled better as a roundtable. I saw a few new vids, one for GT5 (yay), one for Enslaved: Odyssey to the west (same people that did Heavenly Sword, looks amazing), and one for Fear 3 (looks ok). Day three was pretty much filled with dicking about, watching tweetdeck, and playing Peace Walker. So yeah, that's what I saw and thought of E3 this year, definitely better than the past two years (especially for Nintendo). Now if you'll excuse me, I do believe a bit of Peace Walker is in order before my hands fall off.. or bed.. whichever comes first. Laters.

Been a while.

2010-05-20T06:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while, don't worry, I do it a lot. I got out of the PokeFantasyDark storm alive only to hit another wall, this time it's not only games but tight budgets, Wonderful. The shit has taught me though that my hobby is just that, and at the drop of a hat I need to contribute to household finances when we're down to eating mac and cheese and hot dogs. Because of the forced frugal-ness I'm also beginning to rethink my stance on buying used games, with the exception of certain games that are forcing otherwise free extras to be sold at a premium, which is.. I don't know what I think about that yet, it's a double edged sword.

Another thing that's making me consider used games over new games is the fact that some publishers are being outright dicks to not only the developers under them, but to the consumers. I'm talking of course about the way Activision has fucked over the Main Call of Duty dev team and the current trend of locking away content that's on the game disc and selling it as Download Content (2K games is the latest offender in that respect I'm aware of). If publishers are going to start being like this, I for one am not going to give them my money. It's sad for the developers to slave away at the games and not get what they deserve, but I'm voting with my wallet. This is why Bioshock 2, and Blur (when it comes out) is on my To Buy Used list, amongst others put out by unscrupulous publishers. Let's just hope the gaming industry has legs sturdy enough for another crash.. like the one in 1983 , because between that and the Wii's catalog of shovelware, that's looking real possible within the next few years.

Alright.. I think I'm out of steam.. I'll post more later, in a week, a month, whenever. I'm out for now, Laters.

Echoes of the past.

2010-03-14T03:56:00.000-07:00

This week is going to make for an unusual romp into retro gaming. Today, March 14th is the release date for Pokemon Soul Silver and Heart Gold, remakes of the classic Game Boy Color Gold and Silver games. Gold and Silver were the coolest games on the GBC, they offered day/night cycles, 250 different Pokemon, AND the original areas from Red and Blue (the original Pokemon games). I'm excited as hell for Soul Silver as I had Silver when it came out. It's funny, I'm 27 years old and excited for a Pokemon game, but I started playing the games when I was 16 (in 1998 when they came out), and have never stopped playing the major titles (minor ones being spinoffs).

The other major thing coming out this week (for me at least) is a high def version of the original Perfect Dark for the Xbox Live Arcade. The original PD came out in 2000 for the Nintendo 64 as a pseudo-sequel to the hit N64 game Goldeneye 007. Everything from the original is included as well as 1080p resolution and online support.. which means kicking ass in the multiplayer over XBL! Woot!! It's strange, both games (Pokemon and PD) were released around the same time, and ten years later, they're both remade around the same time... waaaacky!

In other news, I got Final Fantasy XIII. I'm close to halfway through it (about 11 or 12 hours), and it is epically beautiful and fun. Even the battle system, which in prior FF games was boring and repetitive was overhauled and is streamlined but engaging, and most importantly fun. They took out the towns so the game is basically run through areas, fight non random fights (you see them in field), watch a cutscene, save, rinse, and repeat. They also took out most of the level grinding which sorta eliminates the need for towns, as you don't need extra supplies for grinding. I say "sorta" because it also eliminates the breaks in between all the fighting and takes away the chance to talk to people, explore, and chill out. But as I said on Twitter, it's an even trade I guess, less battles = less of a need to take a break. Aside from it's streamlined linearity, it's a gorgeous game that has waaaaaay more pros than cons. I implore anyone slightly interested to buy it, that's right, not rent, borrow, or steal, BUY IT.

Oh man, it's almost 7:00AM here, OK, I'm off for now, I'll post more later, probably after I get perfect Dark, and I'll post my impressions on it. Laters.

Blank canvas.. sort of.

2010-02-25T06:45:00.000-08:00

The trouble with being bored then listening to or finding new chiptunes is that I want to make my own. Since I was little I've always been interested in making music. when I was 5-ish I had one of those (horrible sounding) little keyboards, the one's that were the size of a deck of cards. In 5th grade I was band class (I played trombone). In middle school I had a Casio keyboard, the one that had drum pads and sample beats in system memory. In High School I had (and I still have) a Squire electric guitar (Man I'm namedropping today aren't I?). I grew up with music just as much as I grew up with gaming, which I've also been doing since I was 5-ish.

It was only a matter of time before both of my interests ran into each other head on.. hence my interest in chiptunes, or music made with the sound cards of old gaming systems (NES, SNES, Genesis, etc) or software that can emulate the sounds. This is where my Korg DS-10 comes into play. The DS-10 is actually an emulation of the old Korg MS-10 from the late seventies, which is famous in the synthesized music business. The likes of John Carpenter (of horror movie fame), and other prolific composers and musicians have used the MS-10 for years and a lot still do, including modern techno/house/chiptune artists.

They crammed this...

Into this...

Plus they added 2 KAOSS pads per synth channel (there are 2), a drum pad, a six channel mixer, and three effects (delay, chorus, and flanger). There's a lot there for a cartridge that's the size of a postage stamp.

Currently I'm in the process of downloading the demo of FL Studios (I think it's done now..) and I need to either find or buy an audio patch cable to really get the ball rolling. NOW, I'm using a netbook, which are known not to be as beefy performance wise as a full sized laptop or a desktop computer, but this is just a test run. If FL Studios can't run, I'll scrap the idea (for now) and use the patch cable to hook my HDTV up to my 2.1 (2 speakers and a sub) speaker system I use as a poor mans surround sound setup in my room.

Ok, peoples, I'm off to try this experiment, and hopefully it works. Laters.

EDIT: my Plans have been thwarted by the computer itself. The netbook has an 8GB SSHD and most of it is taken up by Windows and there's only around 600 or 700MB left at best.. FL Studios takes about 456MB, which would leave me hurting for space. I guess I'll have to wait until I can get a MacBook (IE: a long time from now) to fully get my music creation off the ground.

Now I'm getting excited..

2010-02-23T07:47:00.000-08:00

1up.com has a Final Fantasy XIII Cover Story on their site that's getting new content as the week goes on. So far there's only one thing; a big ass three page preview, that's enough to get me riled up, however there's going to be stuff like their RPG podcast Active Time Babble dedicating a whole episode to the game (including selections from the soundtrack), as well as a Final Fantasy retrospective, and ending the week with exclusive video of the U.S. localized version. Daaaaaaamn, March 9th cannot get here fast enough.

My wallet is going to be a black hole by the time the Final Fantasy/Perfect Dark XBLA/Pokemon Gold and Silver hurricane blows over, I won't have to buy another new game for a while, but that's just as good as I have a replacement Rock Band guitar to buy as well as the Blu-Ray of Halo Legends. Oh shit; then there's the PS3 game Heavy Rain.. wow, I may post my sad empty wallet pic again by the time this is all over with. :)

Grabbin Peels

2010-02-20T21:32:00.000-08:00

PILLS HERE!!!

Speaking of Left 4 Dead, Destructoid found this, these two people on Etsy are making the first aid packs from L4D and L4D2, they're made from scratch and cost $45. When my gaming budget clears up, I'm going to have to get one, if they're still making them.

I have you now!!

2010-02-18T01:28:00.000-08:00

Tuesday I went out and picked up L4D2 at Target for it's advertised sale price ($35).

L4Dzorzz!!!

It's funny, the game takes place in Georgia and later New Orleans, I picked it up on Fat Tuesday, and thinking of fat Tuesday I picked up some red beans and rice. I didn't put it all together until I was eating the red beans and rice yesterday (wed) afternoon. The game is crazier than the first one, what with the nutty Hoard music, the locations, and weather effects in the Hard Rain campaign. It's also a bit harder than the first one, as I don't think I could casually stroll through it while listening to podcasts, like I do the first game. Some of the Achievements are cool though, one for bonking ten clown infected with a melee weapon (during the Dark carnival level) which honks their nose, one for beheading 200 infected with melee weapons (katana and machete), and another for carrying a garden gnome (it acts as a melee weapon) through the entire Dark Carnival campaign, which the only thing it nets you is a shitty Depeche Mode shirt...

It's ugly, but dammit, I carried that dumbass gnome through 4 1/2 levels (got it halfway through the first level)

and dammit, I'm wearing that shirt... for awhile anyway.

Right, I just wanted to get on and blab about my new game. Now I have that, and money for Final Fantasy XIII and Perfect Dark XBLA set in place, everything is going according to plan. (YES, two Star Wars References in one post!. Until later, I'm off.

Not much going on.

2010-02-15T15:58:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to get on here and post a bit more. I'm kinda at a loss with what to play right now.. I can stick in God of war Collection into my new PS3 slim that I got just after Christmas (pic at right), or I can stay logged onto my 360 and play Left 4 Dead and listen to podcasts, but if I do the latter, I wouldn't be able to hear Grandma (who I take care of during the day) if she needs something. I would've stuck in GoW Collection already, but the first game is driving me up the wall a bit.

Speaking of Left 4 Dead, I've been wanting to get left 4 dead 2 since November, and now I'm able to but since it's been a few months I'm not wanting to pay the full $60 retail price for it; it never seemed like a full price game anyway. Well here comes Target to the damn rescue, they have a week long sale going on and L4D2 is only $35! Woot!! This is going to let me get L4D2 AND the Xbox Live Arcade port of Perfect Dark when it comes out early next month. I'm having to watch how much money I have because Final Fantasy XIII is coming out March 9th; which I'm buying day one; which may or may not interfere with Perfect Dark. With all these new games coming out and old games I couldn't get towards the end of last year (due to the rule of not buying anything around Christmastime) I 'm up to my ears in games I need (read: want) to get. Alright now, I'm off to eat some wendy's, but before I go, here's a pic of my sad empty wallet..

New banner..

2010-01-31T04:08:00.000-08:00

I'm not too thrilled with it, but it's alright and geeky, plus it fits within the border. I used GIMP 2.6 to make it. Not to shabby since I hadn't touched a program that complex since mid 2005. Getting this blog thing around. :)

New blog smell.

2010-01-30T22:59:00.000-08:00

Well, this is my first post on my new blog. I pretty much made this Blogger account so I'll know what I'm doing when I eventually get my mother into the "Blogosphere". Like the welcome thing says, I'll be posting about gaming, gaming related stuff and occasionally I'll post other stuff. From time to time, but I'll stick to gaming stuff.