A-Type

Off The Clock

2011-06-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

I like to imagine that outside of their jobs as spokesman for their respective brands these guys are actually friends.

The Wii U is actually pretty interesting. I just wish they had made this the first time around so I could have had a fully HD Nintendo console to take advantage of my tv. If they can seriously pull off the stuff they were showing off in the trailers, I could see myself getting one. Put a new Earthbound and Mario Paint on there and I'd be set.

2011-05-30T18:09:00.000-07:00

Somewhat faster, hmm?

LA Noire is great. It's a great change of pace to be on the side of the law in these types of games. After this and Heavy Rain, I'm ready for even more narrative-heavy adventure games (Snatcher sequel please).

For no good reason at all I've gotten back into Magic: The Gathering, heavily. I was really into it from about 96 onward, then I lost all my cards in a natural disaster. For a while I just messed around with online variants like Apprentice and such, but never really enjoyed them as much with the fact that you could have any card you wanted.

After buying Duels of the Planeswalkers, I was immediately hooked back in, and drove straight to the card shop and bought the current sets and started making deck after deck after deck. To my surprise and delight, my wife caught the bug after playing co-op on DotP, and now she and I have regular card games after the kids go to bed. I have to say she's been exceedingly tolerant of my incessant purchases of booster packs.

I know I'm late to the game, but I recently bought Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and the online is insanely addictive. Even though I'm constantly in a "What the FUCK!?" mood while I'm being slaughtered mercilessly by other insanely more talented opponents, I keep coming back for more. I wasn't exactly ecstatic over it when I played it at PAX in front of a crowd of people (I kept dying), but after getting to play it at home for a few days, I'm sold.

Helghaghan

2011-05-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

Gee that didn't take long did it?

Cheese and Cake

2011-03-25T19:09:00.000-07:00

Yikes, really late with this one. Been pretty sick this past month, and still am. But that's no excuse.

I have to say that I'm not as disappointed with MVC3 as I was expecting to be, but I still prefer MVC2. I just feel that they simplified it too much. Oh well, it's still fun to see some of my favorite characters in 3D now.

The past few weeks have been pretty good. Bulletstorm, Killzone 3, MVC3, Crysis 2, Pokemon Black/White, Dragon Age 2, and Hard Corps: Uprising have been getting a lot of playtime, almost too much. I'm looking forward to a break in the game releases so I can sit back and actually enjoy them without getting caught up in another one.

Stacked

2011-02-17T23:00:00.000-08:00

Late again, as usual. I am just really terrible at this. But I must keep practicing.

Stacking was a great game that pretty much snuck up on me. I knew Double Fine were making a game with that name and what the idea was, but I had no idea how they would execute it. I was quite surprised with the results, although I shouldn't have been considering Costume Quest.

Been playing Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. I don't really want to say that it was a complete failure, but it wasn't at all what I was hoping for. I understand that there are people who aren't necessarily skilled enough to pull off alot of the stuff from the previous 2 games, but that really shouldn't have been their focus, in my opinion. Having an option to simplify the controls for them would've been great, but instead they simplified it all by default and you can choose an even easier option which pretty much gives you turnkey access to everything. MVC has always been a pretty "hardcore" type of fighting game, it wasn't easy to pull off everything in the games, but it wasn't really all that difficult if you actually wanted to learn it.

Colorful

2011-01-30T19:06:00.000-08:00

So late with this one. I really should've gotten this out sooner, but I bit off more than I could chew. I never made any promises to have this stuff out on time, but I still feel bad.

Played the Bulletstorm demo recently. It was enjoyable, and it certainly doesn't look bad. I can't help but cringe a little when the dialogue starts though, but I know that they're going for an over the top feel. Although the idea of torturing and toying with your enemies is not all that new.

My wife needed a new heatsink and fan the other day. Went down to Fry's to pick one up and when I get home and open the box I find that I need to assemble it before I can put it on. Now I may just not have ever noticed this in the past or something, but I'm pretty sure that they used to come prebuilt. Maybe I'm just blind.

Definitely looking forward to more news on the PSP2. From what I've read so far and the pictures I've seen, I'm definitely wanting one. The price is what will probably determine whether or not I get one at launch. Yet another handheld device to bleed my wallet dry. I'm still anxiously waiting for the 3DS to hit, but not for what will be available at launch. The game I most want on it is still being made, by thousands of people all over the globe.

The Other Side

2011-01-07T23:49:00.001-08:00

Nothing quite like sticking it to the man.

My personal setup here is 3 computers. Two of them have windows, 1 is my main computer for everything from games to drawing the comic, and the other is my backup in case my main one fails. The 3rd is a linux box that I have as another backup since I can always count on it to run.

I've always liked linux and I've tried a few different distributions but what I stick with now is Ubuntu. I really love that I can plug any of the hardware I have into it and it'll work right off the bat without any tinkering. Windows isn't the hardest OS to customize a PC with by any means, but it can be quite maddening when you're trying to run a triple card setup and it just doesn't want to recognize a card no matter how many times you restart, re-install the drivers, replace the bridge, etc. In the end I get it working, but I'd hate to see someone with only a casual knowledge of PC's and their internal hardware try to customize a powerful rig themselves. I'm sure there's more gamers who just want to play and couldn't care less about the hardware then there are ones who care that they can run a game more efficiently and squeeze more fps out of it just because they can.

I'm enjoying the back and forth between Sony and the teams of hackers breaking their system over whether or not they'll be able to patch up the holes and keep this from happening again. My thoughts are that they've done it once, and they'll surely do it again no matter how many times they fix the leaks.

Not sure how many more times I'm gonna post on a weekly schedule before I start speeding up, but it will be as soon as humanly possible.

Risqué Business

2011-01-01T03:08:00.000-08:00

I'd been looking forward to the game since PAX a few months ago. All I had seen at the time were the banners hanging up, but going on the fact that it was a game based on my favorite time travel movie series and being made by Telltale Games, I was sold immediately. I have yet to play anything made by them that I haven't liked.

Just like in the comic, my internet connection had gone out about a week ago. Rather than missing out on huge caches of illicit materials, I had instead been forced to wait for over a week to be able to play that game. Of course that wasn't the only thing I had missed out on. Needless to say, I wanted my internet back immediately.

I'm not sure how often I will update this. I'd like it to be multiple times a week (3 hopefully). But I do also have a day job, so I don't know how much time I'd have to work on it.

Nathan