So, it's been awhile since I've been here. Things have been in flux for me lately. I have finally pulled up stakes in Baltimore and moved myself to Phoenix, so there hasn't been a lot of time for gaming or messing around on the intertubes. But today I took a lazy day to catch up on gaming.
Finished Halo 2 today. Boy does it seem to end abruptly before an actual climax. It's like Bungie did the story for Halo 2 and 3 together and then split it up. The true wrap up comes at the end of 3. I was surprised at the end of 2 and had to double check the story because I had in my mind the ending of 3. Anyway, it was a super fun campaign.
FF14 used to have a 14-day free trial, but now you can play unlimited until hitting level 35, subscription free and without purchase of the game. I played the game a lot when it first came out on PC, and on PS3, and the PS4 version looks and plays great with a controller. You can play it like a single player RPG, only requiring co-op in dungeons.
My last blog was about the treasure trove of anime on Hulu. My enthusiasm has been curbed a little bit with the realization of how they were able to get/afford so much stuff. Very few of the shows are dubbed, even when I know a good English dub exists. When I started watching Another (still two episodes left to go, btw) I discovered it was in Japanese with English subtitles. It's certainly not the first time I've watched something that's subbed and it doesn't bother me. It's a pretty niche show set in rural Japan. An English dub probably doesn't exist, I figured. Even though a little research revealed that one does, it hasn't affected my enjoyment of the show. But there are some series that I don't want to watch subbed. Two of the things I was excited for on Hulu were Cowboy Bebop and the original Dragon Ball, two fairly mainstream anime that have good English dubs, and that's how I'd like to watch them (especially with DB, which has over 150 episodes). So I'm going to need to cull my list of possibilities after some serious consideration. Kind of a bummer but not the end of the world.
So March has been quite a whirlwind month. I kind of went quiet for the last half of it, there was a lot of depression and stuff going on so I mostly would shadow lurk. Im doing better now which is nice because tomorrow starts a whole new month so going into it in a pretty good mind state is a bonus.
This comprises 1986-1992. These were my college years. My arcade gaming was minimal but the few arcade machines I played made a lasting impression.
I think the windstorm is over. Yesterday in the morning it was calm and then right when it hit 2 or 3pm the winds kicked up and soon the news was filled with various trees around the valley being toppled and the police telling people to not go outside if they don't have to. That was an interesting Thursday afternoon. Good morning Pixlpeeps! Friday is back and I am ready to hit the local mom & pop later on today in hopes of finding something “new” (not in new releases but in older CDs I don't have in the library) and take part in the weekly trip to the local casino buffet for seafood night. Before all of that let's get started with Quick Hits!
Part II is the peak and decline of arcades, years 1982-1985. I was in high school those years. Weekends I'd get on my bike, and with a friend, head down to the mall to play arcade games. 1982 was the absolute peak with just a ton of new games. After that the decline began as home consoles began offering more elaborate experiences to challenge the two and half minutes per quarter the arcade machines were giving. Here are my favorites.
Hey guys, if you follow me on Twitter, I apologise. You may have just been spammed by all of the screenshots I shared so i could make this pooooooooooooooooooo. Sorry, my cat wrote that last part and it amused me so much I decided to keep it in. Anyway, SCREENSHOTS!
Mark and I played about 2/3rds of it today on XBO via Master Chief Collection. It is clearly longer than Halo C.E.. We had some connection issues with it here and there. Mark eventually quit in frustration. I kept going. I found some new terminals and got a few achievements for various gunplay. I'd say this game might be Bungie's biggest effort as far as story goes. It seems the most epic of the series with long elaborate cut scenes and very dramatic dialog. I think, talk of a movie started about this time and I can see why.
I was a teenager when the video game arcades were big in the 80s. I rode my bike everywhere and arcades were all around me. I would go to a pizza shop, a hotel lobby, a department store or the mall and find them. It was fun to go to different places because they often had different machines. I got to play a lot of different games, so I'm breaking this blog up into three parts. This first one is the years 1978-1981.
Today is release day for MLB 17 The Show. I'm still on the fence if I should buy the game or just continue playing MLB 16. Last year I pre-ordered the game, and by pre-order I mean I walked into a Target bought one of those $1 cards that gets me the game and a $5 gift card to use on another trip. If you purchase your game at the Electronics section, you can use the gift card on something else like a $20 PSN card at the front of the store. Anyways I didn't play much of last year's game, only getting video game Chris to put up monster numbers in the minors just to be brought up by a struggling Mets squad that wasn't winning after the All Star Break. Anyways I never finished the game and maybe this might be the first year I play the game for more than two seasons.
I finished Halo Reach, number 2 on the chrono list, on Sunday in about 7 hours. First off, the opening minutes reminded me how much I love the O'Donnell/Salvatore music. It adds such majesty to the game. It has just the right amount of melodramatic emphasis. Music for Halo should be a little bit over-the-top. Then, I saw the environments in Reach and remembered how much I like the design of this game. It still looks amazing. Most of the game takes place in natural environments dotted with a few buildings. I just like the look of the game very much. There is a lot of variety of gameplay: you go to space, fight within a Covenant ship, fly a Falcon helicopter, and drive a tank. The story is a downer but it's still a heroic story. I love the way it dovetails into Halo: Combat Evolved. Your last task in Reach is to deliver Cortana to Captain Keyes' ship, The Pillar of Autumn. There is a spartan with green armor near the end, but I could have sworn the voice work for him wasn't Master Chief, but I could be wrong. Maybe that was him as you link up with the Pillar of Autumn's crew. It would make sense. Anyway, the next day Mark and I ran through Halo: C.E., co-op, via The Master Chief Collection.
So a couple weeks back on Spring Break my family and I went to a video game-themed bar. Here are some pictures with no context. I'm busy. Look at the fun I had. LOOK AT IT.
Hey folks, I’ve got another batch of game reviews I’ve written recently over at GamerDad.com! Please click on the links and read as many as you can and maybe even post a comment or two. I’d really appreciate it. And if you can guess the reference in my title, you win a gold star.
I'm into chapter 3 in Bravely Second right now and basically I'm playing through it just to see the story.
I am currently playing MLB 16 the Show. And why oh why did I digitally dowload the game.
I like anime. Let me say that up front. But I've watched very little of it. When I was a kid, one of the local tv stations would sporadically play episodes of Dragon Ball Z and later we got Cardcaptor Sakura and a season of Escaflowne (that's not counting the unusual cases of Pokémon and Digimon). Buying anime was super expensive and we never had cable, so Toonami didn't help me when they started regularly airing cool stuff. I was able to get Akira from the library once. That was an interesting experience. And I torrented everything about Ghost in the Shell in college, later buying legit copies because Stand Alone Complex was just that good. But those were certainly exceptions.
And it started with Halo Wars 1. I played it all today in about 8 hours. I got very excited during the first few cut scenes because the game begins on planet Harvest where first contact with the Covenant was made. It felt like the true beginning of the Halo story; the true beginning of the human/covenant war. So here it is.
Hadn't bought all the vehicles. Have lego marvel platinum. 45 hours of my life spent playing a children's game now feels less wasted.
Cocksucker mother fucker whore out your sister Rick Lego Marvel Superheroes won't let me get Platinum because of a glitch that have me 11/10 minikits in one level.
I've been listening to a lot of tunes lately, and thought you guys might enjoy some of them.