How CarMax Escondido ruined my month.

I've been to three different CarMax dealerships this month alone, mind you it's only the 17th, and this is by far the worst one. I've never had so many issues buying a car. Ever. Nothing better than going in with a car and leaving without one. 

The first car I bought, the check engine light came on before even getting home. So I returned it within their 5 day policy agreement. Nothing too major there, except I had to find out how to get it to them since it wouldn't start the next day... So much for their 125 point inspection. 

Then I ended up going to Riverside to pick up my next car (I live in San Diego) because I couldn't wait 5+ days to get another car, especially when it would now be out of their 5 day return policy. So I go up there, get a new car. This one has problems on the way home, steering is messed up, broken electronics, just a mess. Again. So much for their 125 point inspection. Again. 

So after that I came to here to check out yet another car. Then I had some real problems. First the car was ok, needed some break fluid and coolant, nothing big there, though the cars back seat fell out as it wasn't attached and the side foot panels fell off when I closed the door. Again, what happened to that 125 point inspection? Are the inspectors blind? 

Next I get to processing for my financing and holy hell did this turn out bad. I got a cheaper car but I suddenly had to pay more of a downpayment and all these other checks AND my MANDATORY overtime at work cannot be calculated into my total pay?! That's nearly half my income!

So now, since I had to sign the car over before I turned it in, I'm out a car as they refuse to reverse the paperwork for my car, my credit now has three checks of which they told me they wanted to run my credit again knowing I wouldn't get the loan, for cars that were awful and had major engine problems. Then to top it all off, I CAN'T GET HOME AS THEY REFUSE TO TAKE ME BACK HOME! SERIOUSLY?! I live over an hours worth of driving away! Am I expected to spend a hundreds of dollars for a taxi?!

Never, ever come here. I've never had this kind of terrible experience before. Now I get to find out how I'll be getting to work tomorrow. 

My (positive) experience with PS+

One thing that's nice about Playstation Plus so far are the trials. There's about 100 games available for a 1hr trial. The trials are the full game so if you choose to buy the game you only have to download a 100kb download to unlock it. Any trophies gained and story you've completed you get to keep whether or not you buy the game either. Thanks to this, I know that some games I thought I'd want to get I've come to learn otherwise while finding out games I didn't think I'd be interested in are actually quite fun. 

Another awesome thing so far is also the fact that every game that's free on Playstation Plus I get to keep as long as I have PS+. So that means, so far since getting PS+ a few days ago that I have gained XCOM, Battlefield 3, Jet Set Radio, Saints Row The Third, LittleBigPlanet Karting, Labyrinth Legends, Pinball Arcade, Malicious, Machinarium, Knytt Underground and Oddworld: Munch's Odyssey to my PS3 collection. Also, If I ever get a vita I also will have Knytt, Metal Slug XX, Gravity Rush, Pinball Arcade and Zero Escape. Some of the games that are for both utilize cloud saving and allow me to use the same save file on vita and PS3 as well, which is awesome. 

For $50/yr and I got all this in the first 3 days, that's pretty epic. I didn't even download all the free games because I knew I wouldn't play them all because I wasn't interested in some of them. There's also new games each month available to download as well, apparently it's two new PS3 games a month and one or two vita games. 

And people wonder why I like my PS3 more than 360. 

Xbox One making another 180 and confirming self-publishing

While at first this sounds great, they've already burned so many bridges with nearly every indie developer that's worked with them at this point that no one really wants to go anywhere near them. One indie developer (specifically the man behind Retro City Rampage) said, and I quote:

"After my experience working with them to release on Xbox 360, I have no interest in even buying an Xbox One, let alone developing for it. The policy changes are great, but they don't undo the experience I had. I'm not ready to forget what I went through. Working with Microsoft was the unhappiest point of my career. Policies are one thing, but developer relations are another."

That's pretty heavy and was the resounding remark from indie developers that have worked with them. Phil Fish was quoted from an interview, which he was asked: "Interviewer: Is there a chance to see your next game be ported onto next gen consoles?   Phil: Not Xbox." 

Then there's the fact that Microsoft has shown that they don't even know what they're doing with their own console, yet it's supposed to come out in less than 4 months?! What are you doing! Do you even know? This is news to every indie developer, excluding maybe Notch, but that's it.

They haven't even talked about how it'll work in the marketplace. What they've said so far is that it's all going to be in the same place, but what does that mean? It's now a Windows 8 console, which developers already don't like the Windows 8 platform as it is with major players like Gabe Newell, who happens to be the owner and creator of Valve and Steam, saying that Windows 8 was basically trash for gaming developers. If it's going to be anything like the current Microsoft store, which it most likely will as the majority of the UI looks incredibly similar/the same as Xbox 360, then that's just another reason to not develop games for it. Sony has a very distinct section for Indie titles to make them easy to find. Sony also holds a huge number of exclusive indie games that will be big seller indie titles, such as the next game from Supergiant Games, those guys that made a little game that no one's heard of named Bastion. The game in question is named Transistor by the way.

At this point, all Xbox One really has going for it would be Halo, and that's not saying much as Bungie isn't even making Halo, they're making Destiny, which is available to PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. You'll also notice that more games this year were demo'd on a PS4 and not the usual Xbox, including Bungie's new title Destiny. That wasn't a coincidence. The PS4 is easier to tap into its full power as they don't have esRAM like the Xbox One while also having GDDR5 RAM instead of DDR3. 

This has turned into the Xbox One-Eighty at this point. Here's to expecting the console to have a defective rate due to increasing changes during the final stretch as well as being rushed to retail at the same time as the PS4. I wonder what will change next. 

Worst hotel for the price? We think so.

So my girlfriend, younger brother and myself are going to anime expo this weekend. So in order to avoid sleeping in a car or something we decided to get a hotel. You know, something that shouldn't be all that bad, especially if you're staying at a hotel for a few days and you spend $100+ a night, right? Well, we've all been fooled! This... This is the story of our first night at the Radisson hotel in L.A.  

So we get there after a decent drive to L.A. And it's pretty late since we had to go to work before driving, so we're all a little tired and hoping to just get into the room, eat some food and hit the sack. Normal, right? Well the check in process was just fine. It was nice and painless and we went up to our room, got in there and from that point on it was downhill. 

The first magical room we got was pretty bad. The fridge was broken, the thermostat was diagonal on the wall, the hair dryer in the bathroom was hanging off the wall, the faucet was leaking and to top or all off there was blood on the sheets of one of the beds as well as some dirt. We were all pretty blown away by the level of quality when the room is $100+ a night and they only have $30 valet parking to boot. We called and asked them to bring in some new sheets, which we waited about 30 more minutes before calling again and asking where our sheets were and where the coffee pot was that we asked for before we realized the damages; so they gave us a new room just as they should have in the first place. 

Next room was better in the sense that the sheets didn't have blood stains and dirt all over them. The fridge wasn't broken as well... Because there wasn't one in the room at all. The sleep number mattresses controllers were broken, and the tv didn't work (we did check to make sure it was plugged in). Then we decided to go down to the front desk to talk to them in person to see if we could get these fixed, but the elevator never stopped at our floor after 17 minutes of waiting. So lucky us, we got to hike down 8 flights of stairs to get to the front desk. 

So after taking to the front desk again, they offered us a different room with normal beds and no tv at all... Wait what? So we are supposed to accept a downgrade and supposedly there's no monetary difference between the two rooms so we won't get any kind of money back on this downgraded room?! Hell. No. We were sent to another room at this point as they're acidly trying to get us the hell away from the front desk, and rightly so. 

So, room number three. This room is a floor above the second one so we grab our stuff and hit the stairs. Again. We get into this room and it's finally decent. Yeah sure the beds are broken, the walls are paper thin and the air conditioner must be ancient as it barely pumps any cold air out of it at all, but it's 11:43 at this point and we're all exhausted at this point from the workday, driving and then the stair trips so we finally just say $@#% it and stay in this one. It was obvious at this point that we weren't going to get a room where everything works and we all just wanted to go to sleep and get ready for anime expo tomorrow. 

What we learned from this experience? Never, ever stay at the Radisson hotel. Ever. Oh, and to top it all off, they have no self parking and the valet parking is $30/night. Fuck. 

Surgery... On my face! And child trauma abound.

So I just had my surgery today. Since I can remember I haven't been able to breath out of my nose. My mom thinks that it's because of an accident I had as a child that was pretty awful. I'll go into more detail on what that is later but I have to say that she's probably right. Even if she were to be wrong it wouldn't change the fact that I haven't been able to use my nose for breathing for many, many years. If it has been messed up since the accident then it would be around 20 years or so back when I was about 4 years old. 

Well, as for what happened that was a fairly awful accident when I was a kid, that's an interesting one. I was being a kid and doing something that I'm sure most kids have done at some point. I was spinning in circles to get dizzy and see the different lights and what not when I was outside with my friend, like most kids do, but not everything went according to plan this time around. My mom came out and said that I should stop but of course, being a kid and feeling like you're invincible and all knowing, I shouted back "No!" and kept on spinning. My mom comes over to grab me and stop me before I get too dizzy and fall, but it was too late. 

I spun enough that when I did stop, my eyes rolled into the back of my head and I dropped face first into gravel. You can guess how this went, except you'd be wrong in how much damage this fall did. 

When my mom picked me up, the impact did more than anyone had expected. Since I fell unconscious, I wasn't able to put my hands out in front of me, and my face was the only thing available to break the fall. As she lifted me up, there was already blood everywhere. I had broken one of my front teeth in half and the other one decided it was a great idea to aid my jaw in biting completely through my tongue. Then, even better of my other front tooth, the one that went through my tongue, it ended up falling/breaking out and getting stuck in the newfound hole in my tongue. I also smashed my nose pretty well, and it's been very slightly crooked ever since. 

So it was just a tad worse than the usual fall a kid has, but only a little. I was really good at getting hurt, just ask my parents. Thankfully I have an amazing mom who did everything she could to make sure I was ok and took me to the doctor more times than most kids and always found great doctors. If I didn't have such an amazing mother, I wouldn't have made it this far in life before getting myself killed or handicapped. 

Anyways, I've finally had the opportunity to fix my nose and be able to breathe from it. I don't even know what it's like to breathe with my nose. I'm really nervous as it's a lifestyle change. I'll be able to run without getting winded nearly as easily; my favorite foods may taste different as I may gain a sense of smell (I currently can't smell nearly anything); I'll sleep much better than I ever have; it may even fix my very consistent, as in 3 times or more a week headaches. 

I'm really excited and exceedingly nervous. I'm nervous for things like my favorite foods tasting different. I live to eat and would be exceeding sad if my favorite foods were now disgusting. They again, all the perks that will be so exceedingly beneficial to my every day life from this surgery make it all worth it. 

You only get to live once and this will make my life much better than ever before! 

Diablo 3 and what should have been

Well I have to applaud Blizzard in all reality. From a business stand point it would seem like you're on the perfect track to make the shareholders at Activision very, very pleased.

You've taken a game with so much hype built around it, a game with a rabid and wildly large fan base, a game vaulting off of the massive success of the previous generation - and you've turned it into your sacrificial lamb.

I understand that WoW is dying. The cash cow that you have been able to depend on to fill your coffers is finally drying up. It had a great run. MoP is not likely to defibrillate the failing heart of what was once the WoW empire, and you know this. Starcraft 2, while an amazing game, cannot replace this cash cow - then again it wasn't meant to. How could it? Your business foresight is very, very attuned. Because of this you carefully planned your next chess move: Diablo 3.

What better way to birth another golden goose than to bank an entire game off of the most addictive part of what Diablo 2 was: the item grind. Pure brilliance. And so, from the ground up, you formed this game to be solely about item exchange - this would be the titan built to replace WoW's subscription based bankroll in the form of micro transactions.

Except one thing: you're boring.

On May 15th 2012, after nearly a decade of anticipation, we were given Diablo 3! Except, it's not quite Diablo 3. It's a slimmed down, cut up version of the Diablo 3 everyone was taught to expect. Except, it wasn't given to us, we still had to pay you full price for it: $60.

My how the mighty hath fallen. Why is it not Diablo 3, you say? Well let's see. Anyone remember all those teaser videos spoon fed to the community over the past 3 years? Videos slowly leaking to us glimpses of the content we could expect to experience? I do.

From nearly FOUR years ago:

@2:10 "These current weapons just won't do!":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K0YkUH6r6c&list=UUCGf0PicJgNp6yb7xsdZAwA&index=1&feature=plcp

I guess scrapping this idea all together was more developmentally cost effective.

@6:30 "Let's see what a real fight looks like."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT4K6e2q10g&list=UUCGf0PicJgNp6yb7xsdZAwA&index=10&feature=plcp

Indeed, lets. I'm still waiting, actually. Is it just me or does that environment look entirely more engaging than the atmosphere we've purchased at release?

@2:00 Did he say randomized, dungeons, quests and encounters?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAyxY7mjzI&list=UUCGf0PicJgNp6yb7xsdZAwA&index=7&feature=plcp

If their idea of newly generated fights, quests and environments is a continuous cycle of the same things from a pre-conceived list, he's spot on!

So where's the beef? - some might say. The beef is that this is not Diablo 3, this is an imposter. A hologram. An artificial replacement. A lame duck substitute for what hype built it up to be. A cut up and slimmed down version of what should have been. In essence: a slaughtered, sacrificial lamb.

That leaves myself and thousands of others saying indeed, where is the beef? Blizzard's answer: there is no cow level. But hey, we got rainbows and unicorns!

Is anyone still in complete denial about how truly boring this game is or have people started to shake off the honey moon dust?

You eliminated enchanting, PvP, pet companions and other things from the release version so that you could market it as part of a later expansion for more money. (This is a trend in gaming that several developers have been following; withhold content you've been advertising for the past two years and charge a premium for it at a later date. I shouldn't have expected Activision-Blizzard to be any different, and that is my fault. I wrongly assumed this group was made of trend setters and leaders, not followers - so shame on me.)

You didn't include a single player mode because you can't make money off of people if they aren't using the AH in a multiplayer format. Less work for you in the development stages, and forces people to engage in the micro-economy that your bankroll is based on. Again, brilliance. Which leads me to my final point:

There is so LITTLE dynamic to this game I cannot believe it took this many years to create it. In fact, I don't. So why the long wait? I'll tell you: economic law.

More specifically, the legality and complications that stemmed from the idea of a multinational game built around a Real Money Auction House. This process, I imagine, took years to iron out - while the game itself probably took no more than a few actual working years to complete (and it truly shows).

It doesn't take an overly intelligent mind to figure WHY they would want to use a RMAH and get a cut of (a lot of) the transactions. That's fine. Here's the problem: you built the entire game around a pure gear grind, and then force that gear grind to revolve around the AH, specifically the RMAH. There is literally no other dynamic. When you build a game from a purely business stand point, you're not building a great game - and a great game this is not.

In conclusion, gamers, do you really want to spend your time on yet another slave-like gear grind? If so, eat your heart out. You'll find no better place to do it! If not, there are a plethora of other games out there much more deserving of your $60, I promise.

Diablo 3 was built around Activision's greed. Participate at your own will.

Gamers hold grudges and people aren't going to forget this disaster. If you obliterate your true fan base, the pillars of your success come falling soon after.

I give this post less than a few hours before it is deleted by Blizzard moderators. Can't have that bad flavor out there, can we? Truth hurts.

Regards, a long time fan.

"Bastion" Game Review.

First game I've beat this year is a good one, thankfully. I finally beat Bastion. I bought it last year during a Steam sale and played for the first 2-3 hours of it then quit. I did this type of thing A LOT in '11. Too often, honestly. I beat a small handful of games in 2011 and that's going to change, so here's my thoughts on the first game I've beaten this year: Bastion. 

Bastion was one of the games I looked at all the time whenever there was someone talking about it. They always said how awesome the game was, how amazing the narrator was and the phenomenal soundtrack tied into the game. I thought they were exaggerating. I was wrong. From the get go, you already feel like something big has happened. The simple fact that you start the game lying in bed and there's little to no ground around you. There's a piece of a wall, some floor, your bed, you and nothing else. From the get go you know something has happened and it's something big. 

So the first thing you do, of course, is get out of bed. This is immediately recognized by the narrator, who in my humble opinion has a fantastic voice, with the best part being that the gameplay continues. The simple fact that the game is narrated as you progress without it interrupting the game makes it feel fantastic. The whole game is told through the perspective of the narrator as he recounts your tales of dread, angst and woe as you venture through the completely decimated world and it makes the game feel fantastic. It makes it feel as though you're playing a story that's being told to you as it happens while also making you feel as though you are the story teller. It's a quite awesome experience and the story becomes so engrossing and in-depth the further you go, which keeps you playing.

As the kid wakes up and you move, the world rebuilds itself around you. This game is an extremely gorgeous game to watch as you're playing it. The walkway, ledges, barricades and whatnot rebuild as you move with possible holes in them that allow you to fall into nothingness. You don't die, though, which is great. You fall back onto the walkway, take a bit of damage, and the narrator makes a small quip about it and the game continues. The artistic touch on this game really shows with how the world reacts to your movements and actions as well. 

Then there's the score. The score for this game is one of the best I've heard in a very long time. I loved listening to the music in this game. Enough that I bought the soundtrack for it. I haven't bought a soundtrack for a video game in who knows how long, but I did for this one. It's a fantastic score with memorable songs. A masterpiece you could say. It's very well integrated into the gameplay also as you move from world to world to world as well as event to event. Then there's the "Grammaphone" as it's called in game which lets you listen to the majority of the soundtrack. 

Then, of course, there's the gameplay. The most important part of the game. The gameplay and flow are very smooth with a leveling system and a variety of awesome weapons. The leveling system is easy to understand with the ability to customize what your levels do. You gain a flat amount of health with each level followed by choosing a "Spirit" at the Bastion. You choose the spirit at the distillery which gives you some kind of perk with an example being the "Squirt Cider" which gives you a flat +10 health or the "Mender Mead" which gives you the ability to gain some health back with each successful counter-block. 

They did an amazing job with the weapons also. My personal favorite combo was the Breaker Bow and the Brusher's Pike while swapping the Bow for the Dueling Pistols depending on the situation. There's a huge variety of weapons with 55 different combinations total while also giving you the ability to upgrade and customize your weapons allowing for very personalized load-outs. For instance, the first tier of upgrades for the Pike you can choose from either +15% crit chance or +50% reload speed for throws. 

Overall for this game, it's a wonderful experience with a deep, rich story and a very polished experience. I would recommend this game to nearly anyone and everyone to play. Games like this really don't come around too often. When they do, though, they're games that shouldn't be missed and this is easily one of those great sought after games that doesn't come around too often. With the addition of a very low price point ($15) it's a must have. 

I've got to finish my games!

So I’ve had this awful habit of not finishing any of my video games as of late. Awful habit. So I’m going to be posting the games I finish here on Tumblr as well as my blogspot account (oogzi.blogspot.com) with a, maybe, short review of the game and what I thought of it. 


I have been buying games and not finishing them, for a good while now, for stupid reasons so now’s the time to start. I’ll be trying to hit the shorter games first then go to the longer ones. I’ll probably finish Skyrim last simply because there’s so many damn things I want to do in that game! 


Well, here’s to a fresh(ish) start.

Video Game Awards 2012

So the VGA's are over, which I heard was absolutely awful and came to no surprise. So here's the winners:

Gamer God: Blizzard (Nicely done Blizz)

Video Game Hall of Fame: Legend of Zelda

Game of the Year: Skyrim (No surprise)

Studio of the Year: Bethesda Game Studios

Best PS3 Game: Uncharted 3

Best Xbox 360 Game: Batman: Arkham City (lol multiconsole)

Best Wii Game: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (What a shocker... hah)

Best PC Game: Portal 2

Best Handheld/Mobile: Super Mario 3D Land

Best Shooter: CoD: MW3 (The crowd and reviewers raged)

Best Action Adventure: Batman: Arkham City

Best RPG: Skyrim

Best Multi-Player: Portal 2 (Was kind of surprised)

Best Individual Sports Game: Fight Night Champion

Best Team Sports Game: NBA2K12 

Best Driving Game: Forza Motorsport 4

Best Fighting Game: Mortal Kombat 

Best Motion Game: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword 

Best Indie Game: Minecraft

Best Adapted Video Game: Batman: Arkham City

Best Song In A Game: Bastion: "Build that Wall (Zia’s Theme)” by Darren Korb (Was hoping on "Setting Sail, Coming Home" but whatever)

Best Original Score: Bastion (Very happy about this one)

Best Graphics: Uncharted 3

Best Performance By A Human Male: Portal 2: J.K. Simmons as Cave Johnson (Was awesome)

Best Performance By A Human Female: Portal 2: Ellen McLain as GLaDOS (You monster...)

Best Downloadable Game: Bastion

Best DLC: Portal 2 Peer Review

Most Anticipated Game: Mass Effect 3

Character of the Year: The Joker

So that's it. Overall glad I didn't watch it since I heard it was awful though I did hear that some people ended up getting teabagged on stage. Seriously? So damn stupid. 

Avatar - The Legend of Korra

Last year, at Comic Con 2010, Nickelodeon announced the development of a new series in the "Avatar" universe, as a bit of a sequel to "Avatar: The Last Airbender" (hereinafter referred to as "The Legend of Aang", the international subtitle), dubbed "The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra". Yes, the title sucks, and they should've gone simply with "Avatar: The Legend of Korra", but it's too late and they're not going to change it.

Point being, at this year's Comic Con 2011, Nickelodeon gave a 2 hour panel of the new series, showcasing a lot of concept art, development, and shared some insight on the development of the new series' story and how it relates to The Legend of Aang. Also, they showed off a trailer of the new series that was originally only green lit for 12 episodes, but was given the green light for an additional 14 after those 12 (in the same season, not a second season).

What do we know about the new series?

• "The Legend of Korra" takes place 70 years after the events of the original Avatar series.
• Korra is the waterbending Avatar after Aang, a passionate, rebellious and fearless teenage girl from the Southern Water Tribe, who has already learned three elements and needs to master Air.
• Aang and Katara's son, Tenzin, will be Korra's airbending master (sifu).
• The epicenter of the modern Avatar world is Republic City, a metropolis fueled by steampunk technology. It is a virtual melting pot where benders and non-benders from all nations live and thrive.
• Korra discovers that Republic City is plagued by crime as well as a growing anti-bending revolution that threatens to rip it apart.
• Mike and Bryan said there's going to be a "definite link" between ATLA and TLOK.
• "The Legend of Korra" will be more mature than the original show, but will still have the same sense of fun and adventure.
• The Track Team, who did the music and sound for the original series, will also be working on the new series.
• Dante Basco, the voice actor for Zuko in The Legend of Aang, will return to The Legend of Korra to voice someone related to Zuko.
• Dee Bradley Baker, the voice actor for Appa & Momo, will return to voice the numerous animals throughout the series.

Comic Con Day 2

Comic Con day two was pretty good overall. Started off far different than most of my usual days and by this I mean I woke up before noon. 

The beginning of the day we woke up far earlier than we had thought we were going to since the night before we had been running off of 3 hours of sleep. Went to the trolley, got to the con and got in the first line of the day: the line to get into the convention since we were there that early. 

When Mike and I finally got in, we then traveled the floor of the con and browsed more in-depth than the first day getting a far better idea of what was actually being shown down stairs as well as what was going on. I took tons of pictures (a couple hundred) and finally got ahold of Keenen to meet up with him. After we met up with Keenen I called Austin then headed to where he was at. 

So after getting calling him a few times I found out he was in line for Hall 20... which was outside the convention wrapping around the outer building, down stairs and at the bay. So for whatever reason, we got in line. Randomly when talking, Austin asked if the person coming up was Judi of which it was so I grabbed her and pulled her into the line where we were at. which was now a hundred or so people further. We wanted to see "The Walking Dead" panel and the "Big Bang Theory" panel but that was not going to happen sadly, even though they were both hours away. 

So about 4 hours later, maybe longer, we finally got into the hall thanks to the show "Bones" being canceled. Since it was canceled, the cast didn't show up and the hall was actually cleared out. So instead we waited through two other panels to see the "True Blood" panel. 

After that we went down and got some really good burgers from this new franchise place called "Smashburger." The burgers were actually pretty good. A little more expensive than most fast food burgers but they were pretty damn good. Also had some pretty good garlic fries as well as some awesome looking shakes (BUTTERFINGER MILKSHAKE!) which I didn't get to have sadly. 

Ended randomly catastrophic but was resolved. All in all, god day, two more to go. 

Some random highlights include: Some new awesome cosplayers, random hobo harassing Mike since he thought he was some actual pokemon when he's a breeder and a really creepy rabbit dude.  

Comic Con - Day 1 (Thursday)

Well the first day of the ComicCon was awesome. Went to three panels.

 

First one was Street Fighter x Tekken. Looked alright with the fighting style being based off of SFIV. The new tag team gimmick looks super OP though.

 

The second one we went to was SW:TOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic) which was awesome. Announced a few new things, showed some gameplay, gave us a lot of info about it and really put some confidence in me about the game. One thing that really peaked my interest was how if you choose another class "you'll never see the same quest twice" as was told to us and each of the class' story will take "several hundred hours" which is very awesome. Was really reassuring.

 

Third and final one we saw today was the Voltron one, only because we missed the one before it (Batman Arkham City) and that one was a snooze fest. Even the panel hosts were bored out of their mind.

 

Overall, was very fun. Looking forward to day 2.

MORE PUBLISHERS TACKING ON AN EXTRA $10 TO PLAY USED GAMES ONLINE.

Some people may have noticed how more video game publishers have been throwing on this additional fee of 10 dollars to used games in order to play them online. Some of the publishers that are doing this so far are: Electronic Arts, Sony, THQ, Ubisoft and Warner Bros. My favorite part about this is that people are getting extremely angry about it. Now why is that my favorite part? 

Well, for starters, the only reason that this is happening is due to companies such as Gamestop who have basically been raping developers by selling and heavily pushing used games. Every time you buy a used game, it hurts the developers. The reason is that developers don’t get the profit from a used game, the company or person you bought the game from does. Companies like Gamestop sell far, far more used copies of games than new copies. 

Now people are crying foul for it. They don’t want to buy a used game and buy a $10 “online pass” because it’s “not fair.” I’m sorry but I don’t see the “not fair” part of this. If it wasn’t for us, the customer, this wouldn’t be happening. That’s all there is to it.We are the reason this is happening. Hell, you can’t even share the vast majority of PC games at all so this isn’t an issue in my book. You want to play with your friend on a PC? He has to buy his own copy and that’s how it’s been for years. Most of the time you don’t even own the game, you just own a license of the game of which the developer can take from you if they so choose. 

In my opinion I believe it’s about time we started helping out the developers that make the games we so enjoy instead of screwing them over. If you don’t like it, vote with your wallet. 

Holy Mother of Whales

Why is everyone becoming some giant fatass nowadays? I keep looking at people that I knew in middle and high school and I have to say, how the hell did they become so huge? Is it seriously that hard to not get fat? If I had a harpoon gun for every whale that's come out of school I'd never be jobless.

Go lose some weight fatty's.

Final Fantasy XIV Review

Just going to say this straight: If you're a fanboy of everything about Final Fantasy XI, you will like this game. If you are the other millions of players that didn't like it for the multitude of reasons not to, you will not like this game. Here is my first statement of this game: This game is junk and is not worth any kind of subscription fee. That being said, lets talk about it.

The game is in shambles in so many areas, but we'll talk about one of the most important features of any game: It's User Interface. The UI is utter crap and severely outdated. If you played FFXI through and through, then you're used to this old and broken UI for the most part. If you played almost any other MMO, free or otherwise, you will understand how terrible and clunky it is. Adding a friend to your friends list as well as just trying to get them into your party is tiresome and overly complicated to extremes. They don't tell you the commands to add friends to your friends list, let alone help you figure out how to do 90% of what's required of you in the game. Have fun guessing your way through it.

Exploration, where do I start? It's slow, tedious, overly long, boring. Do I need to use more adjectives to describe it? When the average MMO lets you use some type of mount type system to travel around, and for good reason mind you, this one doesn't. It baffles me as to why when the world is as large as it is, because it's huge. It would also help if the maps were a bit more intuitive as they can be cumbersome to try to navigate if you can navigate them at all for that matter. For instance, Kotaku.com found 90 some odd exact copy and paste areas of the map in a single area. Holy shit that's a ton of laziness and that was just one map! Don't worry, the environments suffer the same copy/paste problem as well.

Then there's the quests. Oh questing, how terrible you were. Here's a good example: QG(Quest Giver) "Go north and talk to <bob the fake npc>" Me: Oh ok, where north kind sir? QG: "North." Me: "Any general direction? How far north?" QG: "North. Do you not understand what direction North is?" Yes it's truly that open ended. They honestly just want you to wander and find it yourself. This isn't all that fun when you're level one and are having trouble just navigating the large town you start in. Yes, this is truly the quest you're given at level 1. Good luck and have fun.

The one thing I can say that's a positive is the graphics are astoundingly gorgeous for an MMO. They just look utterly fantastic, if your rig can run it (which mine could). I can say I haven't played a better looking MMO out there to date.

I don't think I need to say much more about this game, so I'm not going to. It's unfinished, unpolished and extremely rushed. Unless they just wanted to copy FFXI and make it prettier, which is probably what they were doing, except removing the Auction House in the process (Seriously, WTF were you thinking Square-Enix?). You will ONLY like this game if you played a LOT of FFXI or are completely new to the MMO genre and don't know better. Otherwise, go elsewhere. F2P MMO's are better designed and more polished than this. Steer clear and don't waste your money on this one.

Ever played Diablo? You like it? Then you should try Torchlight.

SO. I've been pretty bored on my days off of work as I've gotten used to being there all the damn time, so I was going through and looking for games to play. I was going through my games library on Steam and saw that I had Torchlight installed but couldn't remember what the hell it was, so of course I start playing. About 5 hours later I realize that I haven't eaten yet... Oops.

Anyways, for people that don't know about the game, it's basically a Diablo clone but with some updated features and one really lacking feature. You can play as three different classes that can essentially be three classes each (more on this later). They're the Destroyer (think Warrior type hero), the Alchemist (Mage) and the Vanquisher (Archer/Amazon from Diablo). Of course one of the great selling points is, of course, the updated features such as the UI, graphics, a talent-point-esque system and a few other random things. Some of the random things being you have a pet dog or cat that can hold items for you and bring them back to town and sell them for you. There's also an item enchanter that will either buff your item... or wipe every stat off it (starts off as 2% and goes up the more you enchant it). There's also a transfusion guy that just takes your stuff and makes it into better stuff (if you give him the right items) as well as a "Gambler" where you can buy a piece of gear and you get a random green, blue, yellow or purple quality item, hence his title. Lastly, you can fish in the game. It's really boring and tends to suck, but it allows you to catch fish that will change your pet dog or cat into other creatures with special abilities (not at all necessary to go through the game btw).

There's two dungeons in the game (seems small, just wait) that both contain quests that you can do that are given from town. The first dungeon is of course the story based one and is about 40 levels deep, give or take (sorry I don't remember). The 2nd one is an endless dungeon that just gets harder and harder the deeper you go and has more challenging enemy waves and better drops (makes sense, right?). The story dungeon tends to take about 7 hours for your first play through, give or take. Another feature of the game that is similar to Diablo is, of course, the random drops, sockets and point-and-click gameplay. There's also a hardcore mode for those that want the extra challenge. In hardcore mode, when you die, you're gone and that character is now unplayable. There's also two cache's for you to use in-game. A shared cache that is accessible to all your characters (there's separate ones for Hardcore and Non-Hardcore) and a personal cache. The only thing you can't share is money. Also, max level is 100.

Lastly, there's a good sized fanbase for the game and the developers are very fan friendly, so they've allowed the fans access to the game's editor. So you can find all kinds of fun fan-made mods that do everything from change the UI or skin of your character to new monsters for dungeons or extra vendors that sell random potions (or anything really). The mods can be really game changing for both the good and the bad, so USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

What really sells this game is that it's only 20 dollars. Pretty cheap considering it's an EXTREMELY fun game.

Now, the only lacking feature, and it's a very lacking feature, is there's no multiplayer. None. The only drawback, but it's a huge one. Thankfully they are making Torchlight II at the moment, which will indeed have multiplayer, and will also be very cheap. Quoted from developers of the game: "The price of the game will be comparable to the original game and will most likely 'start with a two."'

Well, my opinion is that you should indeed play it if you want something that's not Diablo but plays like it (or just really sick of the extremely outdated features). It's great fun and, as I said, it's only 20 dollars.

Sweet new Monster Hunter 3 PSP

I was looking through my usual websites and happened to stumble upon an awesome Monster Hunter 3 PSP. It wasn't because it had a Monster Hunter theme that I thought it was awesome though. It was due to the actual hardware improvements that the PSP could really use.

The first, and in my opinion the biggest improvement, is the new concave analog stick. It's heavily updated and looks much more comfortable with extended usage as well as better overall control. Anyone that's used the original PSP can account for the terrible analog stick it currently uses, so this could be a great improvement. The buttons also look to be concaved as well, which should be an improvement.

The second physical improvement is, what looks like handgrips that jut out from the back. I'm wondering if they're bigger for a second reason which is the extended battery life as I have no idea how large the new battery is physically. I know that the first generation battery tends to be a bit larger physically than the 2nd and 3rd generation, so who knows.

Well these are great additions that I'm looking forward to for the PSP. Hell, even cosmetically I think it looks good.

How to shutdown your computer... on a timer!

So I was done with my computer for the night, but wanted to use it to listen to some music while I pass out. So me being me, I decided that I'd look up how to shut it down on a timer. So here's how it's done (this is for PC's by the way, I'm pretty sure this won't work on a MAC OS):

Right click on your desktop (anywhere)
Go to New > Shortcut
In the text field for "What item would you like to create a shortcut for?" type in this: "shutdown -s -t 1800" without the " ". (The number is in seconds. 1800 seconds = 30 minutes)
Click next. Now, name it!
If you want to change the time at some point, you can right click the shortcut and click "Properties" and change the number to whatever time you want.
Now when you double click it, you'll now have an awesome new shutdown timer!

Now lets say you click it and now you're sitting there going "Shit! I don't want it to shut down in 30 minutes?!" Well, we have a fix for this.
First, right click your desktop and go to New > Shortcut
In the text field for "What item would you like to create a shortcut for?" type in this: "shutdown -a"
Click next and name it!
This will make it so you can stop the countdown whenever you want.

Well, have fun guys!

So you found my blog...

So you somehow stumbled upon my blog. Nice. A good start for me since it's brand new. As it's a brand new blog, you probably have no idea what you can expect from me on here, so I'll share it. The first and foremost things you can expect on here are things about video games, movies, gadgets, music and computers. This is named Entertainment For The Masses, isn't it? As far as I'm aware, those are the types of things that are indeed entertainment for the vast majority of people, and that's what you can expect on here.