Big News of the Week

Apparently a blog I posted last January is getting some press from Kotaku during their PC LOVE FEST Week. So traffic on that post has picked up, a LOT. Well, two additional posts probably don't constitute a lot, but still any traffic is good traffic.

I still feel that the general atmosphere of PC gaming is the same, basically on life support. Sure, Steam and Direct2Drive are currently driving an industry that depended heavily on the brick and mortar stores to provide the supply and demand. However, I don't think being able to digitally download your game isn't a generally good thing. I've had issues and I know of others out there who have as well with getting the codes from steam and the manufacture to match up. It also prevents a lot of the games you buy from being able to run if your, say, kicked off your Internet connection. What if there is an interruption in the original download and you end up with a corrupted file or two. I'm just not happy that we are reduced to back alley shadiness to get our PC fix. I go to any Gamestop or Best buy and they have tons, I mean tons of console games. We are reduced to sneaking on line in the middle of the night to download our digital copies. We don't get the benefit of a paper manual or a box to place our non existent disc in.

People praise the efforts of Steam and others to keep the industry alive. Others think it will be companies like Blizzard and EA who will strive to keep a small corner of the world safe for PC gaming. But what happens with those companies bail? Steam and keep on providing our fix forever. People say, I've purchase tons of PC games on Steam this year alone and I'm completely happy. Sure you are. I would buy 4 or 5 PC games a year at Best Buy or Gamestop, but if my only choice is Steam, then they will now get all my business. If your only source of water for miles is Steam, then your gonna end up drinking there a lot.

I just don't think PC gaming will be around 10 or 15 yrs from now. Too many devices out there to get your gaming fix and having to upgrade a PC every 2 yrs just so you can play a limited number of games, well, I just don't see the public as a whole buying into that plan. I mean, with Facebook and other sites providing web based games, whats the need to even digitally download? Maybe gaming on the PC won't go away completely, but it will change into something cute and you'll be able to plant your garden or raise your cattle, but it won't be anything as exciting as whats on a console.

Well, that's my follow up. I feel the same as I did last year and I don't suspect I'll change it anytime soon.

Apple

I recently bought an Ipod Touch 4G. Why a Touch instead of an Iphone or Droid? Because I can't afford the outrageous data plans, besides, there are tons of great free wifi areas near me, so if I need to hit the net for something, I can always run into a Starbucks. Hell, even my doctor's office has free wifi for patients.

I'd had my eye on one for a while now, but wanted to wait till they added a camera, which is now included in the 4th generation. They also put in a front facing camera, to use with their new Face Time app and a HD video camera. I've shot and posted a few videos already. I have to say, the Touch makes it soo easy to shoot video, edit and then post to your youtube channel or even facebook. Course I probably could do the same on an Iphone or Droid, if I had money.

Being a gamer as well, I picked up about a dozen games. Most are very quick time wasting games that don't have a lot of thought. Similar to your basic shockwave or other Java app games. It gets you into some quick fast fun, but also lets you drop out if you need to. They can be very addictive, but they do tend to drain the battery power pretty quickly. The apple sales person said that the device would last week on a charge, but that was if I only played music. If I did gaming or web browsing the charge would probably only last 24 hours. That is still better than my Ipod 32g classic that I've had for a few years. I've only had it run out of juice maybe once or twice since purchasing it, but I've always got a wall or car charger with me, so thats never an issue, and it doesn't take long to get it back to a full charge.

I will say that I have noticed that the back of the device gets pretty hot while charging, which is a bit unnerving, but as long as I can keep playing Angry Birds I'm good.

The only other issue is the short supply of decent cases for it. I currently have a case, but it doesn't protect the display, only the back and sides of it. I tried using Zagg's Invisible Shield, but discovered it was a waste of 20.00 since I couldn't get it to fit on the device without getting finger prints all over it. If you decide to purchase one of these screen protectors, take the time to watch a few youtube videos so you'll know what your getting into. Also remember, you only get one shot at it, because it only comes with one screen protector. I'm waiting for Otterbox to put out an updated case for it, but there is no telling how long that will be.

Lastly, I want to say how helpful the people at the Apple Store were. Originally, I wanted to purchase the Ipod Touch at Best Buy so I could use my reward card, but they didn't have the 32gig model in stock. I suggested to my lovely wife that we travel over to the Apple Store before trying another Best Buy. My thinking was that if anyone had what I wanted it would be the mothership.

Now, I had heard how creepy the sales people at those stores can be, because they are all so happy to be part of the evil Apple Empire, but I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. The smiling doe eyed lady greeted us at the door and after telling her what I wanted to purchase, she disappeared for a few minutes then returned with my purchase in hand. She then activated the device for me and even took the time to set up a few of my e-mail accounts. We talked a bit about the features and such, basically a tutorial of what was available and how I could go about setting things up. Of all the sales people I have encountered in my life, she is easily one of the top 5. It was kind of creepy but at the same time one of the most satisfying purchasing experiences to date. If only Steve Jobs could sell that sales person attitude to say McDonalds or even my local movie theater, he would own the world in a matter of days, not that he already doesn't.

Once I'm done playing with my new toy, I'll start blogging again full time. Maybe something about World of Warcraft and their recent patch update or even Civilization 5, possibly Halo Reach, both of which are consuming a bit of my time here and there. I will say that the real time killer for me these days is Minecraft. That game is just fantastic and very addictive. I've spent way too many nights up past 4am trying to dig a hole in some silly mountain while defending myself against exploding snakes and zombies.

Oak-

WHERE YOU BEEN OAK???

Well, I've been playing a bunch of games. A few months back, I decided to try and break my WoW habit. I had a nice 2 month break. Then I got lonely for my online friends and I decided that my poor little shadow priest needed some attention. I leveled her up to glorious 80 throught random dungeons and a few battlegrounds. Now with a gearscore just shy of 4.4k and itching to do some raiding I would have to say that my addiction is back in full swing, only now I have a killer DPS to play.

I've also been playing some Dragon Quest 9 when I get the chance. I've found a few of the Fyggs and gotten my party to level 20. I'll play for a few hours straight then take a 3 or 4 day break then be back at it. That is one of the nice things of owning a DS, you can play it just about anywhere, anytime. Usually if I'm on a show for work where there is a lot of downtime, I'll break out the DQ9.

I've also been enjoying the Summer of Arcade on my Xbox. For a few weeks straight I was logging in just to play a quick game of Monday Night Combat. The matches are fairly short and can be very intense at times. I won't say that I'm good or bad at it, only that I pretty much break even on winning and losing. They've promised some DLC and a few updates in the near future, so I'm hoping that will extend the life of the game past the first month or so.

Now, lets talk about Halo.

I'm not a huge fan of the series and to be completely honest I'm actually what some would call a Halo hater. Let me explain. I asked for and got Halo 3: ODST for Xmas last year. I asked for it because I've never really played a Halo game with the exception of maybe the PC port of the original Halo, which ran like a dog on my computer so I pretty much gave up on it. Now with Halo 3: ODST in hand, I had hoped that I would truly understand the love that so many people pour into this series. I started by trying the campaign, but I hated it. It was very boring and the parts that weren't boring, were so hard that I found that the game must have been designed for sadomasochistic gamers. I hate to admit this, but I'm a spray and pray kind of player. Meaning, I have terrible aim and that I have waste a lot of ammo to hit one silly target and this game wasn't designed for my style of play, because it was pretty chintzy on the doling out the ammo for weapons. I finally arrived at a section of the game that was, well to me, impossible to pass, especially with my limited ammo and current skill set and after beating my head against the controller for an hour I decided I'd had enough. So, the game went back into the drawer. I didn't trade it in, only because I had hopes of one day popping it in and trying co op with some friends. But, I was so turned off by the campaign that I just couldn't be bothered, at the time, with the online multiplayer aspect.

Since my failure with ODST, I decided to investing a bit of time with shooters like Borderlands, Bad Company 2, Modern Warfare 2 and Monday Night Combat, just to name a few. My ability to aim has been improving and I don't need to depend so much on my tactic of spray and pray. So when buzz started about the new Halo game, I was slightly interested. I started to get glowing reports from friends who had invested a bit of time looking at videos and came to the conclusion that this might be the game to own. So, with so many of my online friends picking it up, the only logical thing was to pick up Halo Reach, the latest and last Halo game to be published by Bungie, as well. This time, I decided I would take a different approach, I would try the online play first, specifically Firefight, and see how I did. I have to say this time the experience is completely different. I'm having a blast. Being able to play with a small group of friends and fight your way thru waves and waves of mobs is just, well a delightful blood bath of a time. lol I've actually ventured into the campaign just a bit and still find it pretty hard at times, the A.I controlled group you venture with in the game are pretty retarded and therefore useless. Still, being able to do that in a co op situation makes all the difference especially if you suck like me. lol

But just win I was really enjoying my romp through Halo Reach another game decided to drop on to the market.

Civilization 5 is probably the best game I've played in a very long time, that wasn't an MMO or shooter. A turn based strategy game that pretty much picks up where Civilization 4 left off. If your not familiar with the game, its basically a 4X game. You control an empire and explore, expand, exploit and exterminate your kingdom. The great thing is that every little improvement or research your purchase throughout the game effects the outcome so every game can be played differently with very different results. It is the time killer of games. You can get very involved with every aspect or minimize your involvement by letting the game make certain decisions for you based on a strict set of conditions. It is a lot of fun and it is taking up a lot of my free time, which I already have so little of. Good thing it was released the week of my vacation.

Well, I've done my best at proofing this little update. I know it won't be the best sentence structure nor will there be a lot of words spelled correctly, but hey, thats not my style. I just thought you guys who have me listed on your reader should know what I've been up to and where I've been.

I hope to have more soon.

Oh, btw, a little safety tip. If your going to paint your front porch and you decided to pick up the can of paint to shake it a few times before opening it, you need to do two things first. One, make sure you put down a tarp or plastic sheet in the area you plan to work and second, don't shake the paint anywhere on the porch. Because if you drop it and the lid happens to fly off when the can hits the porch, you'll have a mess and lose half your paint. Not to mention all the paint that will splash up onto the side of the house that you'll have to clean up afterwards.

Just thought I would share that bit of knowledge.

Questing for Dragons, Nine times.

Recently, I decided to pick up a new DS game in anticipation of having to spend a lot of down time during a long work weekend. To be honest, my job requires a lot of hurry up and wait. So, to keep my down time from being deliriously boring, I decided to pick up my first Dragon Quest game, Dragon Quest IX.

The game is a JRPG, not very different in style from any of the Final Fantasy or Zelda's series of games. Your main character starts off as an angel, who, because of circumstances beyond his or her control, gets cast out of the heavens only to find that they have landed on terra firma with no halo and no wings. From there you adventure out trying to understand what happened and how to get back to your home in the clouds. There is a lot of the starting story that I'm leaving out because I don't want to spoil the experience. I'm really impressed with the visuals and cut scenes in the game. They are just fantastic for a DS game. I've played a few JRPG's on the DS, but most of them, Chronos Trigger and Final Fantasy 3 are all ports of older games and can't produce the kind of quality I'm seeing in this title. It is just visually nice.

The game play is pretty simple. There is a main story line that pretty much pushes the main character forward, but there are lots of side quests that can be done for items and xp. After a certain period in the story the ability to recruit a party members will become unlocked. I, not being that smart, tried to venture out without a group and got spanked, so when you get to the part where you can form a party of adventurers, do it. lol Party members are very customizable. You can choose their sex, hair/eye color and choose their names or you can pick from any number of pre-generated classes.

There is a profession/job for each character, i.e healer, mage, warrior, thief, etc. As you level them up, you get points to advance their skills. There are 5 different skills to level up. When you place a certain number of points in a skill, it unlocks certain abilities for that class. The warriors can unlock different abilities with the sword, the healer can unlock spell protections, etc. You can change your profession when you reach a certain part in the story, but I've not gotten there yet, but I've heard that you can change your profession to some degree. You will lose some of the stuff you've learned but if a character has maxed out a skill, they get to keep it, so if you want your warrior who has maxed out his sword skill to now be a healer, with a different set of skills you can. Now I'm not a 100% sure about that, but that is what I've heard. lol

Another very cool aspect is tactics. If you want to run one of your party members on auto pilot, you can choose from a number of different presets and that preset dictates the actions of your party member. My cleric is on a setting called "Focus on Healing" which means that he'll attack until he notices a party member's health getting too low, then he will start with the heals. This way, I don't have to make those hard decisions and since I've had the healer in my party, I've not had any deaths. Lucky me. There are other tactics that prevent casters from running out of mana or to keep fighter's attacking relentlessly. My healers is the only one set to a tactic right now, which allows me to manually control the other three party members.

The fighting so far has been fun, but there is a lot of grinding. Why so much grinding? Because there is also crafting in the game and to craft you need certain items that either drop from specific mobs or you can pick them up off the ground. This crafting is where you get a majority of your cool magical items. You can craft armor, weapons, rings and potions. As you travel through the world you gather recipes by searching bookshelves in the houses. I've collected a few recipes so far. Some items need for crafting you'll have to buy from vendors. One recipe is an upgrade to a dagger, so you have to have a dagger of a certain quality in order to transform it into something greater.

I'm just scratching the surface of all you can do with this game. You can also set the game to TAG mode and if your near someone else that has their DS in TAG mode, they will visit your world and you can visit theirs. You can trade treasure maps that will help you find some of the more interesting magical items in the game. Apparently there are tons of these maps out there and not every game will be able to find them so being able to trade them is the key to unlocking all of the maps. It's a lot like Pokemon where if you want to capture all the pets in the game you need to do a lot of trading with people online. The game does have a multiplayer mode, but its only adhoc and not over internet, which is a shame. If you have a one to four friends with the game, you can play together, but the story will only advance for the person hosting the game. Everyone else will still be able to level up and get some of the loot, but they won't be able to go back to their game with the story updated.

Not only is the game fun to play, but it's very punny in its own right with monster cucumbers called Cruelcumbers and evil cat magician's called Meowgicians. I've put in over 10 hours so far and there is sooo much left to do. If your a fan of Japanese Role Playing Games, I'd recommend this game. Its a lot of fun, the animation is top notch and hey, there's crafting. Who doesn't want that? lol

Summer of Arcade

Every summer, Microsoft does a promotion for their Xbox Live Arcade series of games. It usually consists of 4 or more titles that can be purchased for download and if you get all of them, they'll kick you back a little bit of credit at the end of the summer. This years releases come with a higher cost than last years. Last years titles were $10.00 each, this year, the cost has gone up to $15.00. I'm not entirely sure every title deserves that price tag, but since it seems to be the new pricing model for all their arcade releases, I guess there won't be a choice. This summer I decided to splurge a little and I ended up picking up a few, which is what I've been playing lately.

Limbo, the first to be released, is a dark, mysterious puzzle platformer similar to last years summer hit, Braid. I've played roughly about an hour and my main reason for purchasing it was because of the art style. The game is dark with shades of grey. Everything is in shadow as your character a little boy in search of his missing sister must traverse this strange world by over coming monsters, traps and difficult puzzles. The game has no music only the sound of your character as he runs through the world encountering obstacles in his path. I was certain I had made the right decision when my poor little character was running through the dark world and met his untimely death by stepping on a bear trap. It was so sudden that I actually jumped off the couch. lol That was when I saw the only color in the game, a dark blood red that squirted as my characters head was lopped off when the trap closed. Pretty gruesome, but that is was so fantastic about this game. Its filled with moments of certain calm greeted by moments of sheer horror and death. The other great thing is that you death is pretty fast, gross and you start not far from where you die, so when you do die, and you will, you don't have to travel back through a large portion of the world to get to the spot of your previous death. Which is nice. Not sure it was worth the price of $15.00, but if it goes on sale, I would certainly pick it up.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane was my second purchase. It happens to be a remake of a classic arcade game that had been previous ported to the Dreamcast. I don't actually remember seeing it in the arcade back in the day, but I was busy playing Pinbot and Gauntlet II. This game is an arcade style racer, but instead of cars, karts or motorcycles, its speed boats. Each track, or water course, is different with it's own set of obstacles. The trick to posting the best time and winning is to capture boost along the course and to find the short cuts that will propel you ahead of your opponents.

This game has me hooked and not in a good way. Why? Because I love competition and one of the wonderful things about this arcade racer is that as you race you can see the completion times of people on your friend's list that have the game even if your not racing against them. Your not only competing to win the race, but in my case, I'm racing to beat my friend's times. I can't tell you how often I've restarted a race because I already knew 5 secs into the game that it wasn't going to be my best time and that to keep going would be a waste. The game is fun, addictive and looks fantastic. You really get the feel of being on the water in a speed boat. The music isn't the best, but it's not as annoying as it could be and that's a plus. In my opinion it's worth the cost of admission.

The last title I picked up was Monday Night Combat. This is the four summer arcade release. I will mention that the fourth release was Castlevania: Harmony of Despair which I didn't pick up because I'm not that big a fan of the series and I had been hearing reports that it wasn't worth $15.00, so I skipped it. Maybe if the price comes down, I'll grab it, but for now, lets talk about my third purchase.

Monday Night Combat is Team Fortress 2 created using the unreal engine with a twist. There are 6 different classes to play Support, Tank, Assassin, Sniper, Assault, and Gunner. Each one is different with different skills that are completely upgradeable by spending the cash acquired by killing your opponents and their bot army. The game play is pretty simple, defend your base. Currently there are a few issues like not being able to cue up for matches as a premade group. I could get into plenty of matches if I soloed but if I was in a Live Party that wanted to join as a group, getting people to pug in was an issue, so we ended up playing against each other in a private game. The maps are pretty limited. Not sure exactly how many maps there are because they pretty much all looked the same. I do hope this gets upgraded with some DLC in the future otherwise the community for this game will die a quick and horrible death. However, if your wanting to play Team Fortress 2 on the console and don't have it, this is an inexpensive alternative and although I'm not sure as of yet if its worth the price of admission, I do like the game a lot.

What I did on my vacation from WoW.

Since there apparently is an issue when I try to post my Star Trek Online screenshot pictures inside the body of my blog(... still not sure what the issue is...)I decided to upload them all to Google's Pisca.

Enjoy!

Please fill my raid spot.

Wednesday night is normally 10 man Raid night in WoW. Tonight, I'm not gonna do it. Instead, I'm going to log in, beam on board my ship, give the order to power the impulse engines and cruise around the galaxies of Star Trek Online. I want to test out my new Science vessel that I picked up after reaching Lieutenant Commander last night. I was wrong in my previous post when I said it was every 10 levels. In fact, its every 11 levels.

After reaching my new level, I was asked to see the Admiral on Space Station Earth so he could promote me to the proper rank. Afterwards, I was told to head to the space stations conference area where I was saluted by everyone in the room and given my new set of officer bars. It was very formal and very nice. In most other MMO's when you reach a milestone you don't get any pomp and circumstance, you just get a very loud "Ding" and shimmering colors. In STO they make it a proper celebration. I can't wait till my next promotion and my next ship, but for now, I'll cruise the star systems with pride and the fortitude to seek out new life and new civilizations, to kill Gorn, Klingons and marauders alike.

One thing I do want to say before I end this post. The animation, at times, might not be the smoothest, but the space battles and massive explosions are fantastic in my book. Along with the music it gives you the proper feel of being part of the Star Trek IP.