I had an interesting mission in Red Dead the other night. I was supposed to steal an oil wagon from the local refinery to use in stopping a train to rob. But when I went to the refinery, it was quite heavily guarded. I tried to get in, but was killed, and I suddenly realized - "I'm gonna have to kill every damn fool in there!" So I rode back to town, bought a long scope and high velocity bullets for my rifle, rode back, found a good sniping place, and proceeded to kill every damn fool in there.
Good morning Pixlpeeps! I had a blog all ready to go on Friday but I scrapped it because I didn’t like it. I was going to do another on Saturday but didn’t so here we are. Instead of what I was playing, I will just do my Quick Hits because you don’t want to read about my exploits on NCAA Football 14 (Season 4 of the Duke Blue Devils and they are ranked #12 with a 4-0 record, and beating #8 Miami on a last second two point conversion), or how I got some PC games running including GTA V (I was running around with zero wanted level causing mayhem), so this QH will be all about voting! I’m kidding, and let’s be real we have all had enough of the constant ads, unwanted texts, and Chris trolling calls so instead let’s check out what Chris has been doing non gaming wise this week.
In 1998, Final Fantasy Tactics got me into strategy RPGs. For years, FFT was the basic template for most console SRPGs. Ten years later, Sega brought the genre into the contemporary generation of consoles in grand style by releasing Valkyria Chronicles in the US.
I’ve noticed that many of my most recent reviews lately at GamerDad.com have been games for little kids. And I’m OK with that! Kids deserve good games, too, and it’s great when companies make games just for them. And I love reviewing them, too, for some reason. Anyway, please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it.
I've been playing A LOT of Red Dead 2. I haven't binged a game like this for a while. I'm really enjoying a lot of aspects of the game, but what I most like - similar to the first game - is just riding around on my horse. There's something just so calming and soothing about it. The horse-riding is very well done, better than the last Zelda by far. I love Zelda, don't get me wrong, but I think the horse mechanics are better here.
Xbox One was offline for some unknown reason. That turned out to be a good thing because I got some serious time with Red Dead Redemption II on PS4. I did so many different things in such a short time in this game, I don't know where to start, but I'll try.
It's difficult to think I took a month to complete it, considering I captured pretty much everything I played and, at most, it took me 8 hours of actual game time to finish. In fact, it's probably closer to 6, if you take out the one puzzle I couldn't get past and even messaged Nick about when it turned out I simply forgot about how a certain game mechanic worked. That's my issue with doing puzzle-heavy games piecemeal: I forget the rules and end up taking way longer to figure things out because of it. Unfortunatley, getting a new part-time gig and being sick in the middle of the month delayed my ability to review the game faster and I wasn't always able to focus on it easily.
Well I've been missing in action on here. My last blog was months ago now. I went through a rough patch with my depression. I felt like Id be nothing but a burden or complain constantly about the bullshit in my life that Id become annoying. So I decided to take time away. I tried writing this up several times and each time Id delete it. Id just feel like, Im not ready, this isnt over. Im feeling better now though so I wanted to come back and post stuff. Ill be around hopefully for quite awhile. I got several blogs to write and post before the end of 2018.
I surprised myself by sticking to Forza Horizon 4 today. Seems there was more to do. I got in on some Team Adventure matches and raised my rank. I've got to get to rank 10 to qualify for a League. I'm not sure how far down that road I will go though because the races, capture the flag and Infected matches aren't all that interesting to me. I'll see what the League prizes are though. Mark is going to create a team tomorrow, so I'll join and see what that's all about.
Somehow I got to all of these today. I had Luigi's Mansion ready to go too, but didn't get to that.
I just got off the phone with a scam caller and apparently when you ask them “Who Hurt You” they get really angry. It was met with an F You, and a hang up, but at least I got a laugh out of it. Good morning Pixlpeeps! Does trolling scam callers count as playing a game?
I found the Banner Saga soundrack in my copy of the Trilogy Bonus Edition. It was under the game disc where I didn't expect it. I'm so happy about finding it. I listened to it all day today and it's great. It's mornfull and sounds, at times, like a dirge or funeral music, but that's sort of the situation in the game. The characters are facing an apocalypse and many die fighting it. I imagine the music is sourced from old Norse folk music. There are men's chorus', blowing of horns, the clatter of percusion, it has a martial tone at times but there are softer moments too. I keep hearing echoes of the theme to the 1982 film Conan The Barbarian too. Also Shostakovich.
Yesterday I had a Quick Hits blog all typed up and ready to go, and I was in the middle of editing my photos when Photoshop was starting to act funny. It was starting to act up over the past couple of weeks but nothing too terrible but all of a sudden it was becoming almost impossible to use because of long load times. I then tried Illustrator and the same thing. I spent the next hour or so trying to figure out what was going on and then the major issue happened: Bridge refused to close. It was frustrating and this point I was ready to just call it a day and buy a new laptop. I was so frustrated and ready to go that I was basically almost out the door until I figured why not, and then I went back to the computer to try one more thing: re-install Windows. The last ditch effort.
...but I bought Red Dead Redemption 2 anyway. I bought it digitally - I figured I might as well use that new hard drive I bought. It unlocked about 9PM last night, midnight on the east coast. I had expected it would unlock later, so I played some. I finished the first mission. I'm not far enough to judge much about it, but I will say the snow is REALLY done well, and the lighting affects and color is great. I loved the first game, so I'm expecting to enjoy this a lot.
I can't resist starting my media searches a little bit early. I love seeing what's coming out and making a list of things I'd like to experience. As for retro, it's not really retro for me in November because I'm reviewing the years 2015-2019, which is recent past, present, and future. Here's some new game releases I'd like to get day-one, if I could.
I stumbled across this game the other day and got all excited. Then I couldn't find a physical release anywhere. You can download it on the game's web site but no physical release yet. I checked Gamestop and got a big not yet. Then I saw on Major Nelson's blog that he said it was here and so I checked the Xbox web site. It was not there. So I'm guessing it'll just pop up next month in time for the holidays and I'll pick it up at Gamestop the second it does. It's a $20 game and I have volume 1 and 2 already. I can't miss it. I don't know why they wait to the last minute like this.
Good morning Pixlpeeps! I am back outside typing away and I have to admit that I do like this setup especially in the morning. I have tunes, fresh air, my little loud iPad keyboard and the iPad. Can’t go wrong. Yesterday I had plans to play and continue to go through NFS Payback but things got in the way and well we’ll go over that in a bit. Let’s get started.
I've been playing a lot of Castlevania lately and considering I've now played all of the 2D games (the former is unavailable period and the latter frankly is too expensive for me to spend on an original Gameboy game), I thought I'd make a list ranking these games. I'm going to keep it limited to the 2D games and exclude the aformentioned games. Before I begin, I'll be leaving these games out:
Well OK there’s not really anything spooky about these reviews. It’s just close to Halloween so…yeah. Anyway, here’s the latest batch of reviews I’ve written recently at GamerDad.com. Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or a comment or two. I’d appreciate it. Thanks!
I've decided to put aside this retro plan of mine and stick to my most recent essentials. These are games I'd buy day-one if I had the cash, but instead I'll wait until they hit near the $20 mark. Three of my essentials for this year got to that level, so I picked them up today: Ni No Kuni II, Banner Saga Trilogy, and Dragon's Crown Pro. Here's a pic:
Well good morning Pixlpeeps! I thought for today I would try a different setup and instead of using the travel laptop I would go with the good old iPad and Bluetooth keyboard.
Well good morning Pixlpeeps! This is currently the third version of this entry because each of the previous two times I’ve tried to write this, I get to the end and I either lose interest or I didn’t like it, so here we are. It is a really nice 64° degrees outside so I took the travel laptop outside
I have a funny story. My sister is ten years older than me, so when I was eight or nine, she went away to college. During this time, she dated lame guys. Around when I was ten or eleven or so, I'm not sure, she was dating this one dude, and the two of them must have been babysitting me and my younger brother, cause they took us off to the mall to hang out. I guess the guy was trying to impress my sister, as he bought me and my younger brother a copy of the Sega Genesis game, Golden Axe. My brother and I were like, "Whoa!" We played the hell out of that game. Eventually, my sister broke up with this boyfriend, and my father told me eventually some woman called him complaining the guy stole all her credit cards. Well - he may have been an asshole, but my brother and I made out like bandits. Ha ha.