Honestly, I didn't think this day would come. I mean, I knew eventually a version of this day would happen, but not to the extent of how it went down today. I've held pretty firm to the notion of not ever becoming a PC gamer. Look, it's not that I hate PC gaming, it just was never my cup of tea. With currently five gaming systems at my disposal that I play regularly, my desire to even start thinking about getting into the realm of PC gaming has been at a total minimum. Yes, I know graphics could be amazingly better on PC, and yes, I know there are tons and tons of amazing deals to be had out there on the internet that help make gaming ridiculously affordable. But I resisted. Aside from wanting a sixth option to play games, my lack of having anything close to something able to run any sort of games on it wasn't anywhere close to being in my future. Then, today happened. Out of sheer necessity and partially because of my impulse buying gene that I claim to have, I jumped in and bought myself a new laptop that is more than capable of running games on it, and hopefully in fairly good quality as well. So after getting it all set up and what not, the first thing I did was set up - *gasp* - a Steam account. Yes, you heard that right. Josh, from The Noyse, signed up for a Steam account, with the sole intention of giving PC gaming a shot. Now, I didn't jump all the way in and start buying tons of games quite yet, because I can't really play games on this like I would want to. I don't even have a mouse yet for this beast of a machine, much less a controller to play anything. And yes, I plan on playing anything and everything possible with a controller, because well, I hate using a mouse for gaming. I did, however, download the demo for Bastion, just to give it a whirl to see how it would run, and to reaffirm my thinking about needing a controller of some sort before I go all in on this. And yes, it ran BEAUTIFULLY, and no, I refuse to play any games without a controller. Plain and simple. So, because I didn't have the opportunity to get lost in Steam, I decided to check out some of the games on Windows 8. I downloaded Cut The Rope, because well, I loved that game on my iPhone. And because my laptop is a touch screen, it was a no-brainer for checking this game out. I played the whole game just by using the touch screen, which was a lot of fun. Kind of makes me really want an iPad now, to be honest. Anyway, it's Cut The Rope. I'm sure we have all played it before, and it was still fun. I also checked out TapTiles, which was just a matching game, but surprisingly a lot more fun than I guessed it would be. Oh, and the best things about these games? Well, because I was signed in to Xbox Live while playing these, I actually got achievements for my Xbox profile. How do you like them apples? Today will forever be known as the day that I got into PC gaming. It will be baby steps for now, but I am at least warmed up to the idea of giving it a legitimate chance and filling whatever void in my gaming soul that I had left to fill. Also, with this new, fancy laptop, the door is slowly opening for me to take on more projects aside from just this blog - more writing, videos or even podcasts perhaps? Only time will tell, my friends. Don't ever say never, because I did before in regards to PC gaming, and look at me now!
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So tonight was a pretty epic night. Let's just get that out there in the open right now. I had the pleasure of meeting up with Denny (@LuceScrew) from The 40 Cast, and Ben (@sha_near) tonight and their wonderful wives for a night out on the town in downtown Portland. We hit up the Widmer Brewing Company pub for dinner, and while the service was horrible at best, the food and the beers were pretty good. But the company was easily the best part. After dinner, we slowly made our way to Ground Kontrol, a really cool bar and arcade. Before 5 pm, the arcade is open to everyone. But after 5 pm, they open up the full-service bar and kick out all the under 21 riff-raff. And when I say arcade, I mean legit, old school arcade with dozens and dozens of super old arcade games and pinball machines. It's an old school, arcade players nightmare. We got drinks there and then played some awesome games before they had to go. While my original plan was to make this blog post just a photo album of all the games I played, I forgot to take pictures after the first couple of ones. So here we are. One of the many games I played tonight, but easily my favorite pinball machine that I found tonight was The Simpsons Pinball Party. It's your typical pinball machine, but I found the bonuses you get really stuck out to me. Overall - any pinball is good fun, despite me being horrible at them. So thank Denny and Ben, and the wonderful ladies that joined us. It was a great and much needed night.. For a couple of months now, Nintendo has chosen one game at a time to rerelease on its Virtual Console service, utilizing the gamepad this time, by allowing off-screen play and all of that hoopla. To celebrate the exciting news each month, Nintendo has graciously made each new entrant into the Hall of Fame worth while and special, knocking down the price of each one to 30 cents each. And oh yeah, of course this means that every time a new game goes on the sale for the low, low price of 30 cents, that I'm going to pick it up. Well, Kirby's Adventure is the latest game to join the collection, thus being the latest game to join my collection. I've always loved Kirby's games, for some reason. The simplicity in nature that these games play has always been something that I both admired and grew jealous of at times. The notion of inhaling each bad guy, and either spitting them out as a projectile or swallowing and gaining the ability of what was swallowed is so basic, so creative and so original, it's hard to think of these games being published by anyone but Nintendo at this point. So I was playing a little bit of Kirby's Adventure tonight, after I downloaded it. It's still as fun as I remember it being, and using the Gamepad for off-screen play works phenomenal, and exactly as advertised, basically. This is the first VC game that I hadn't already owned at some point down the road, which is weird that I not only never had this before, but that it took the game being on sale for 30 cents the selling point for me. And there you have it, my dear readers. I have some resting up to do in order to go hit the town tomorrow night. This next blog post should be one for the ages! Ok, all you Nintendo haters out there. After today, you have exactly ZERO negative things you can say about the once-struggling 3DS, because Nintendo came out with another epic Nintendo direct conference, completely spotlighting the handheld system with never-before-announced games and news. Now, the Wii U on the other hand - you have free reign to badmouth it some more, as Pikmin 3 was pushed back AGAIN, this time to August 4. Yes, the once "release window" game will now come out 9 months after the release of the system. Yay... Anyway, because of all the 3DS hoopla today, I found it only fitting that I play a game on the system. Plus, there is a sequel coming out soon to the 3DS eShop that was talked more about in today's conference, so it's not a total random game. Now technically, this isn't a 3DS game, but rather just a DSiWare game that you can download to your 3DS. I think I got this game for free from a promotion or something from Club Nintendo ... but I'm not really sure, to be honest. We'll go with it for argument's sake, however. In Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! (and the whole series, really), the game plays like and clearly was inspired by Lemmings. You lead your wind-up group of Mini-Marios to the end of each level, with a lot of puzzle solving and quick-thinking required. The game features, of course, Mario, Donkey Kong, Toad, Princess Peach and the often forgotten Pauline, the original princess before there was a princess to look for in another castle. All in all, it's a fun little game. The creation mode is cool, and works good, but honestly, level creation has never been my cup of tea. For others though? Yeah, it could possibly be the selling point of the game. So, I'm excited for what this year will bring for the 3DS. It looks like an amazing year so far, and we still haven't even gotten to E3. Now, maybe they can start working on that Wii U? Please? Ahh, fighting games, my old nemesis. I always want to be good at fighting games, but for some reason, my brain doesn't work in the button-combo mode needed for being awesome at fighting games. But Injustice: Gods Among Us isn't your average fighting game, thankfully. You see, it was created by the same developers of Mortal Kombat, and that team knows how to make a fighting game that everyone can pick up, play, enjoy and have enough success with to want to keep playing. The last Mortal Kombat game had this style of game play, and now Injustice is lucky enough to share that benefit in hopes of capturing a different market than the normal fighting game genre usually corners. I picked up this game today, and brought it back over to my cousin's pad to help make tonight less-boring and stressful. He had to run out before we started playing, so I got to play around with it, play through the entire tutorial and start messing around with some of the characters and trying out their moves. When he got home and settled in for the night, he sat down to play some one vs. one with me. I gave him a quick run down of the buttons and particular things you can do as far as interacting with environments and using super moves and what not. I'm not sure how much he was even listening, but we jumped right in and started playing - and he dominated me. Now, it's not like I had been playing forever before he grabbed the controller, but I would like to think that I had picked up a few tips and tricks that should have helped me dominate him. But that wasn't the case. Maybe it was the characters we picked, but whatever it was, he destroyed me without hesitation. The game is fun, regardless of how good I am at it nor not. It's DC superheroes all fighting against each other with a very deep, well thought out storyline to explain how and why this royal rumble of superheroes happens in the first place. The combat system works well, the level designs are fantastic and the special moves are awesome. The only thing disappointing is that I feel we got to know a certain cast of characters from the Batman universe thanks to Arkham City and Asylum games, and sadly, all those characters are different in this game. No fault to the makers of this game, and while there are skins to make them look like the Arkham characters, the voice acting isn't the same, so it just feels... off. But I am enjoying the game thoroughly. Even if I suck tremendously at it. Also, on a side note, I had a couple mixed drinks tonight for the first time in years, and honestly, I could hardly tell the difference between the square button and start. At least that is my excuse tonight. I have time to secretly get better before my next showdown with the cousin. *Cue training montage* Today was one of those days where inspiration for the game I chose came from outside influences. Actually, it was the culmination of several days worth of influences, both in real life on the video game universe. Today, I chose to play the original Batman, on the NES of course. For starters, I have been emailing back and forth with my favorite pizza delivery guy in a point/counterpoint type of discussion thread, talking about what we thought about The Dark Knight Rises movie, and why it does or doesn't hold up to scrutiny. That was my first of many inspirations for Batman. This morning, on twitter, their was chatter about the new Arkham game announced for later this year, and the corresponding handheld (Vita and 3DS) game that is going to be a completely new and different Arkham experience in its own right. The handheld game is supposed to be a Metroidvania 2D style platformer, which sounds awesome, and immediately elicited memories of the original NES Batman from someone on twitter, going as far as to post a screen shot from the original game. Well played, sir. Then, this afternoon, while I was taking my seven year old to baseball practice, we had a discussion about superheroes, and he pointed out that Batman was the only one he could think of that didn't have any powers, and then asked if he could be real. This, of course, made me happy as all getup, as that is the exact reason I have always been fond of the caped crusader in comparison to his superhuman friends and counterparts. By then, I still hadn't decided what game to play, but that discussion cemented the notion that Batman was going to be lucky number 105. As I started playing it, however, I suddenly felt a different connection to Batman and why playing it was important today. In light of the Boston Marathon tragedy, it's times like these where I wish there was someone like Batman to help make rights all the wrongs in the world, especially this great country of ours. Someone who is willing to fight for what's right, fight for notion of safety and not feeling fear constantly, and fight for the greater good. Amidst the tragedy of the horrific events today, one thing was crystal clear and not nearly talked about enough. Despite the chaos, panic, confusion and horror of what took place, there were HUNDREDS of people responding at the scene, running towards the destruction despite the uncertainty of what was unfolding, and putting their own lives on the line to help and try to save as many people as possible. These were all normal people - workers, volunteers, police officers, fireman, EMTs and anyone else nearby that was brave enough to run towards the crime scene, not away from it. These people weren't superheroes with super powers, but average citizens doing what was right for the greater good. Each and every single person there helping in whatever way they could was essentially Batman. And essentially, Batman is in all of us. He is the good side, the caring side and the protective side of each one use. We are Batman, and Batman is us. I did play the game, however. It is still fun. It's a tough side-scrolling platformer, where you have the ability to wall jump like Ninja Gaiden, and you have a selection of projectiles in your arsenal at your disposal. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be based around the Batman movie, but it turned out to be very loosely based on it, for the sake of making an interesting and fun video game. It still remains one of my favorite NES games (top 10, perhaps?) and remains fun and frustrating to this day. Thank you, Batman, for keeping me entertained for all these years. And thank you to everyone in Boston today helping to make a horrible and terrible situation just a little easier to cope with. Thank you all for not only being what we needed, but what we deserved as a society, I'm tired. Mentally, emotionally and just physically tired. But alas, my pursuit to play a game every day must push on. So today, I played a little game called Stacking. I played this game when it first came out a few years ago, but never went past the demo, and that was on the Xbox. Thanks to my love for trophies and an awesome sale the PSN had a few weeks back, here I am, revisiting a game I only sort of liked in the first place. Oddly enough, I think I may like it more now, and I'm not sure why. It's not like I didn't like the game for any particular reason, it just didn't grab me as much as I thought it would when I first tried it. I loved the concept of it, and the quirky game play and the unique ideas within it, but I just got bored with it. Maybe the demo didn't allow me to dig further into the game than I needed to. I love the idea of jumping around within the game and taking over the body of each nesting doll that you come across, along with all the powers and unique abilities of each doll. It's mainly a puzzle game disguised as a 3D platformer/adventure game, where you need to find the correct dolls and have the correct interactions to advance the story. Yes, there is a story, and it's pretty clever and engaging, but it's no BioShock Infinite or anything like that. The characters are neat and I enjoy discovering each new doll. Because it's all mostly open world, you are encouraged to come back after and do clean up to find more dolls and of course, collect trophies. Trophies. That's what it's all about. I have pretty much became a full-fledged trophy hunter. At least I haven't started playing really bad games yet for the sake of trophies. Real talk Saturday, here. I am not a fan of soccer. I want to be, but never can seem to ever enjoy it more than whatever match I am watching. I have no problems watching a match, but finding the motivation to actually do it and then being able to invest in the "sport" past that is almost impossible. Oh, and yes, I did put the word sport in quotation marks again, in reference to a previous post where I talked about the late, great George Carlin's view on what actually constitutes a sport. What did he think about soccer, you might be wondering? Well... "Soccer. Soccer is not a sport because you can't use your arms. Anything where you can't use your arms can't be a sport. Tap dancing isn't a sport. I rest my case." - George Carlin Anyway, I will watch World Cup matches, especially if the USA is playing, and same goes for the Olympics, but I don't go out of my way to watch them. Occasionally I will turn on an MLS game, mainly to catch the local team, the Portland Timbers, playing. Mostly that happens when my cousin wants to watch with me, as I will happily oblige to hang out with him. I usually just watch out of sheer interest, not super fandom where I am invested on who wins. Speaking of my cousin, I was hanging out at his place today, and out of boredom, popped in FIFA Soccer 12. You see, he loves soccer, and is all about every aspect of it. He even invited me to go with him to the Timbers game tomorrow, which I am still mulling over, because of how rowdy and raucous the Timbers Army is. Anyway, back to the game. I didn't hate it. The game itself is fun, and the challenge to score a goal seems as difficult as it probably should be. I understand the rules of soccer and the basic overall strategy enough to not feel like I am just freestyling it while I play, but there is a true to art to setting up the perfect scoring plays, both in real soccer and in the game. Clearly that's best left to the soccer guys. My overall impression of the game, though, was what I normally feel about soccer. I didn't mind it, but I didn't actively make the effort to play this game before I stumbled upon it, and after I was done, I wasn't thinking about when the next time I will play will be. To some it up, really, is that soccer is quite boring. The goal scoring is incredibly exciting, but they are so few and far between that I feel like I'm wasting so much time watching a full match when I can just watch the highlights and get everything out of it that I need to know. It was a good game to combat my boredom and also clear my mind a little bit after the BioShock Infinite hurricane of insanity that I suffered from last night. Good old soccer. The most beautiful game in the world, as they say. See - not even they will call it a sport, but rather a game instead. Finally - and I mean, FINALLY - I get to write about BioShock Infinite. I bought it before my Disneyland trip, but didn't crack it open until after we got back. Then I started it, but because of Little League and everything else, I didn't get a good enough start of the game to write about it. This past weekend, I played a TON of it, but stopped a couple hours short of completing it. This week has been a firestorm and whirlwind of personal issues and again, Little League, so my ability to play any of the game and get it finished was completely put in check ... until tonight. I made it an absolute point all day to get this done tonight, so I can write about it. Because all I've wanted to do is write about it, talk about it, read about it, listen to others talk about it, etc. etc. etc. And I haven't been able to do any of that because I hadn't finished it, and didn't want anything ruined or spoiled for me. I had to get through it. I just had to. If I took any longer, I literally would have gone crazy thinking about it. Literally. No, seriously. Literally. First, can I point out that I used the alternate box art for this post, which is the B-side of the original box art in the box, and with the simple reversal of the paper, you can display the really awesome cover artwork. And no, I don't hate the original cover like I lot of people did online when it was revealed. I just think this one is cooler. Simple as that. Not everything has to be complicated and hard to figure out with this game. But close. OK, so I finished it, right? Well, my head is spinning. It has been spinning for most of the game, really, as every story point seemed to just create more questions without any of them ever being answered. Every time something happened, I sat there confused, wondering what I just saw or heard, and trying to put the pieces together myself of this impossible jigsaw puzzle. But I felt like I was doing the wrong puzzle with the pieces given to me. I wish I could say I was super astute and picked up on all the clues and had the "Ah ha!" moment all on my own, before the big reveal after big reveal after big reveal. But alas, it wasn't until the end credits rolled where everything made sense. Well, almost made sense. Started to make sense, I should say. I still am dumbstruck and somewhat confused by what I saw and what I was told, but the overall premise and major sticking points make sense. I think. Honestly, I don't know. Now I get the awesome chance to explore every nook and cranny of the internet to read and watch everything I can find about people talking about the game and especially, the ending. I simply can not wait to hear other people's opinions on this whole crazy mind-rape of a game. It's been a very long time before a game made me care 100% about the story, every line of dialogue, every hidden puzzle piece, every subtle clue and hint to the point where I spent more time thinking about what I was playing than I did actually playing it. Bravo, Irrational Games. But you guys already know that, I'm sure. Oh, and if you were wondering what I actually thought about the game play, well, I enjoyed it. It felt like a BioShock game, and that was the most important thing to me. The combat and skylines and all that worked and I didn't hate any of it, but honestly, I felt like I was just doing all that for the sole purpose of advancing the storyline - and that's not a bad thing. Now I only have one last thing to think about on my own involving this game. Do I even attempt to play through 1999 mode? I've never been into the musical games that were all the rage the last few years. Despite my unhealthy love for peripherals, I never fell victim to the Rock Band/Guitar Hero craze that swept the country. I thought DJ Hero might have been that game to finally drag me in to the depths of pretend instrument gaming, I never spent enough time playing it to give it a fair shake. You see, I'm not what you would consider to be musically gifted, which is problematic when trying to keep rhythm while pretending to play plastic musical instruments. I guess my fear of sheer failure and humiliation kept me from ever putting much stock into the genre. So when this little PSN exclusive came out, based around beats, rhythm and your ability to make all those things come together in video game form, it had me worried. Would I like this, despite my musical ineptitude? Well, I gave it shot back then, and I loved it. Half the game is comprised of platforming, where you collect notes throughout the level to complete the beat for that stage. No musical talent necessary, just uncanny and unflinching platforming skills, especially when it comes to the challenge levels. The other half of the game is the level editor, where you build your own levels with the beats you want. Within that mode, there is Beat School, where you have to recreate small samples of beats perfectly, figuring out where each note goes on the music sheet. It takes a keen musical ear to figure these out easily, but with enough struggling and guessing, even someone like me can figure them out. What a sense of accomplishment it is to. And that's why I played tonight, to go back and mop up a handful of silver trophies associated with Beat School DLC that I downloaded a while ago. Honestly, if it wasn't for all those awesome trophies, I probably would have quit on the Beat School levels a long, long time ago. But hey, for the musically gifted, they are probably the best part of the game. For the musically challenged though, like me, don't worry. There are PLENTY of guides available online to help you through the Beat School levels. You know, if you're in to that sort of thing. |
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February 2014
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