Yeah... it's been a while. Not really been gaming much, honestly. My computer is completely toast and I don't have the funds to buy a new one, especially with graphics cards costing what they do. That and I've just been a bit of a mess lately and not felt like talking to anyone. Which isn't great. We've been a bit hard up lately and moved in with two housemates. One is weirdly in denial about being a geek despite being super into Star Trek voyager and owning an Alienware laptop and a PS4 pro, and the other has a 2 year old kid.
Yesterday's journey into the virtual world called Kameo taught me two things: one, that persistence pays off; and two, that it can also be a painful experience. Here are my notes.
By the end of the day yesterday, I felt like a lumberjack luchadore. Here be the notes:
Something I've learned in the last few days is that sometimes a game seems bad when you haven't used all the tools given you in the game. I've discovered that games are actually very complex and difficult to master. It often is, after a first playthrough and into a second, that I really come to grips with everything a game can do. My failures the first time around are solved in subsequent plays. Case in point, Deadpool. Details in the following notes.
The library didn't have my God of War yet when I went there yesterday, so I picked out something else for the day. Since I'm seeing Deadpool 2 in a few weeks, I thought I finally play the game that came out with the first movie. This is the Xbox One version that got rereleased a few years later. I sat down to play it and stayed with it all the way, well almost all the way, to the end.
It has been a busy week and a half and I haven’t been playing a lot. Whatever free time I find I jump right into my NCAA Football Dynasty so I can finish the current season. I have a solid recruiting class I want to use but I still have the last game of the season, the conference championship and the bowl.
So this weekend I started my first Gunpla build. "Gunpla" is what they call Gundam Model kits. Dont ask me, I didnt name it that. My Bf got into it and bought me a BearGGuy I had been wanting to see if Id like building them as well. Well turns out I do! New Hobby!
Played a lot of Super Mega Baseball 2 today, tried out Mega Man Legacy Collection, and cooled down with some deBlob 2.
Game reviews are blooming over at the GamerDad site, so here’s a bouquet of ones I’ve recently written. Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d really appreciate it! OK let’s begin!
Played a lot of retro stuff on Xbox One today, and one new release. Kind of a lot so here's a list.
I got stuck in so many games today. At least they're off my list for now. Here's a list and how I got stuck, or not in a few cases.
I like to dabble in some retro every month. May will be the years '85-'89. These are still the arcade years but it's also about the NES.
As our world dies under the intense crushing pressure of capitalism, I remember Final Fantasy VII and say to myself, "Damn, Barret and AVALANCHE were right!"
Good morning and Happy Monday to you good people. It is a windy morning here in Southern California and the streets are full of RV’s leaving the area because the last music festival of the year is over and this is when everyone is headed back to reality, and I avoid the streets as much as possible. Of course I also have to run errands but I am holding back on those for later. So today I thought it would be fun to do a combo Gaming on the Cheap/Quick Hits because I didn’t get around to it last week because I got caught up in the NFL Draft. I watch the dang thing every single year, and this year is no different, except at times I played some NCAA Football and had the draft going on my phone. Anyways let’s get started!
I managed to get every achievement but one in the game. That last one is for beating the game on the hardest difficulty. I think you only have to beat the final level at that difficulty, but I had a hard enough time beating it on medium. I did try it anyway. Even with all the upgrades, I got stuck in a room just before the final battle where you get mobbed by a dozen giant rock trolls. Not enough room and too much damage taken. It felt impossible. Fun game though. I enjoyed it's Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance style gameplay. Merida must have a wagon train of arrows following her. I probably shot them in the 10s of thousands.
I started getting obsessed with this list of games I can play on XBO and PS4. Through various free giveaways and backward compatibility, I have a lot of choices. So I looked up all their play times and listed them from shortest to longest. Part of doing this is to compete on the achievement leaderboards, if possible; but it's also to knock a bunch of stuff off my immense backlog list.
So, allow me to get this uncomfortable news out of the way. I recently lost the job I had (working as a machine operator for a factory that makes specialized copper fittings for plumbing) due to one bit of tardiness that couldn't be excused by upper management. I was under a 90 probationary period where, among other things, if I was late for any time that couldn't be excused, I would be fired. I was late one day for 5 minutes due to a traffic jam near the workplace and because I called the company hotline (to notify them about the problem) too close to shift time, the tardiness wasn't excused. So the best job I've ever had (definitely in terms of pay and benefits) ended just like that. I feel so stupid. I know that it won't be long before I get another job but I worry that it won't be as good as this one in terms of pay. So I'm job hunting again. I'm not worried about my prospects but that I had to start all over again so soon felt like a gut punch. It hurts to tell anyone about it even though I'm sure most if not all of you have been in this situation.
So as I was breezing through Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game I noticed that I didn’t unlock one medal that I figured would have been unlocked by the point I was at (around 90% finished). I looked online and then I saw the dreaded “Lego glitch”. I read that if you replayed one of the last levels you may be able to fix this but when I played through it, nothing happened I knew it was time to stop playing the game because no matter what I did the game would always be 99% finished. What’s the point of grinding with races, and finding gold bricks if I’m rewarded with a 99 instead of 100% completed? After this fun it was time to take a break from the Switch and go back to the PC and good thing because I have a couple of games I bought that combined were under $8 so it’s time for another Gaming on the Cheap.
Yes, there's more. These are the Star Wars Rebels figures. All of them came out with wave 1. Here's my pic:
I'm still on Wave 1 releases of Disney Infinity 3.0, or you could call it Disney Infinity: Star Wars. I don't know why they didn't call it that. 2.0 was called Marvel Super Heroes. There are other franchises within 3.0, but it's mostly all about Star Wars in its various incarnations. What I have here are all the figures from the original trilogy that got released in wave 1. Of all the figures, these I had to have for sure. Here's a pic:
In an idle moment today, I started thinking of Phantasy Star 2, which I had as a child for my Sega Genesis. It's really an interesting game, with a unique story, but it's also so difficult to the point of being sort of non-fun. I struggled with it as a kid, but I kept on playing it, and eventually made it to the halfway point but that was about it. I had a friend in those years who did defeat it, and he would regal me with tales of the end moments.
I mopped up the remaining collectibles, tried to play it on Bring It On difficulty and attempted a few level specific achievements before deciding to give it a rest.
I did another time trial in Minecraft again. I took 90 minutes to build the enchantment table and apply magic to all my gear. I wanted to continue on, but I hadn't solved the distance issues. Since the Bedrock update on the XBO version of Minecraft, I've been very annoyed by how long it takes to find things like a village or woodland mansion in survival mode. The world has just gotten bigger and things are usually farther away. I don't want to hunt endlessly for these things. I'm thinking of a method to make it shorter. I may look up a seed. It feels like cheating, so I may not do it, but, I may.
Last Thursday or Friday I was browsing through the Nintendo Switch Store and found a couple of games that seemed like they would be entertaining and were a couple of bucks each. I think the most expensive game was $6. Well one I finished in one sitting, and the other well I’m stuck but we’ll get to more of that in a bit, let’s talk about the one I finished first.