Tag Archives: Xbox - Page 2

What I am playing

Posted by on April 4, 2011 No comments

Wanted to toss up a quick “What I am playing” Since I haven’t done one in a long while.  My gaming has been a lot sporadic and varied over the last few months.  With the new job I, of course, lost a little bit of free time with the commute and new taskings so I have had to modify the gaming schedule to fit.  Because of this, my iPad has become very valuable to me as a gaming platform.  So I will break it down via platform….

iPad:

  • Angry Birds Seasons – Who doesn’t play this, really.
  • Carcassone – This is a great little board style game that we love playing while waiting for food at a restaurant or wherever.  The scoring being done by the system is a huge plus.
  • Catan HD – Same as above, we recently wanted to try playing Settlers of Catan and I found the iPad version.  It’s a great translation, but could use some updates.
  • Zombie Dice – It’s an iPad Version of Steve Jackson’s dice game about Zombies!  what’s not to like!  If you enjoy dice games, and playing with statistics, you should check it out.
  • Words With Friends – It’s Scrabble.  Sarah loves playing and keeps getting mad at me because I am beating her.
  • Galactic Empires – GE is a iOS port of the classing O-Game which is a Space Based conquest game.  It’s kind of addicting and fun in a weird project management kind of way.  You get a planet and you mine for resources, but the tasks can take hours to complete.  The draw is the investment that you put into it and climbing the ladders to research the best ships and build a great fleet.  The downside is that it’s kind of an MMO.  All of the other planets in the game are other players and they all can either help you…..or attack you.  As with John Gabriel’s “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory”, there are internet assholes everywhere.  If you can get past that, it’s a fun game.


Next up, XBOX 360!

  • Dead Space 2 – This is currently in the Tray and being played.  It’s creepy as heck and I am still just starting.  So far…. Love it!
  • Rock Band 3 – Picked this up at launch (of course) and managed to get teh MIDI adapter for the drum kit with it.  No more swapping of cables, my drum brain is wired into the 360 now for real feel of rocking!
  • Kinect, Your Shape Fitness – So when my schedule got re-arranged, I kind of lost my workout time as well.  I get down to use the Your Shape every now and then, When I do, I feel great, but I need to do it more.


Android Phone

  • CyanogenMod – ok, so it’s not a game so much as ROM replacement on my phone.  I recently upgraded my rooted Droid to the latest CyanogenMod running Android’s Gingerbread.  At first I was having all sorts of sluggish problems, then realized that I had some redundancy with SetCPU running.  It was bogging my phone down a lot.  After un-installing it, the phone runs amazingly now.


Lastly, PC.

  • StarCraft II – Working my way slowly through the campaign.  I love the SC games, but only the Single player side of it.  As a friend proved when we teamed up in a match, I suck at Multiplayer.  
  • Civilization V – I haven’t really played many of the Civ games but I picked this one up as a fun game to start on my new laptop.  I was so sucked into the first match that I think I lost a full weekend.
  • World Of Warcraft – Yeah yeah, I guess a lot of people could have seen this one coming.  I have re-joined the collective and re-activated my WoW account.  A number of my friends went back for Cataclysm and I caved to the peer pressure.  I have been impressed in many of the changes.  I like the phasing that happens on some of the quests too.  It really makes you feel like you are doing something in the game and not just grinding out an area.


So there ya go.  Now….what are you playing?

Obsessions

Posted by on December 3, 2010 No comments

I have a bazillion hobbies. I have always found myself wanting to try out something, and if I like it I will get really into it. Because of this I have started to become quite the jack of all trades when it comes to hobbies. The other day, an idea popped into my head to take artistic photos of my various hobbies. It’s kind of along the lines of “Do what you know”. I am not even going to attempt to list all of them, you will just have to wait and see.

I have a gallery posted for my Obsessions and all of the pictures will be loaded there. You can also find them on Flickr. Here are a few that I have doe so far:

One month later…

Posted by on October 16, 2010 1 comment

Click to Embiggen

Yeah, it’s been about a month since my last post and the reason that it’s been forever since a post is because I had some major changes in my life.  Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad.  I found my self looking for some new experiences on the job front and a few friends of mine that work downtown had the best opportunity for me.  As of the end of September I am now a Senior Functional Analyst working for, yet another, agency in lovely downtown DC. I am in charge of designing, building, and maintaining a lab environment for a number of different applications.  It’s a huge responsibility and a big advancement for my career.  It’s also an ass load of more work and because of it my free time has started to dwindle.  I am really hoping to continue posting, but it may not be once a week like I had been trying to do before.

So to catch you up on some of the various gadgets and games in the life of Steve, a number of games have hit my shelves in the last month. Shortly after DragonCon an eagerly anticipated game was released.  Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions!  I am a huge Spidey fan so this was a must for me.  I hope to write up a full review on it soon (even though I know it’s kind of late for it).  I also picked up Halo Reach.  Believe it or not, I have not yet finished the campaign!  I have been playing co-op with my friend Lee and haven’t wanted to spoil it.  Lastly, just today I downloaded Comic Jumper from the XBLA.

Click to Embiggen

For gadgets I have only one real big toy purchase but it’s something that has been a long time coming.  I picked up a Nikon D3000 DSLR camera.  Many many years ago I used to be rally into photography.  I was the primary photographer for my school newspaper and yearbook, and that was back before digital!  I have always loved photography and have been yearning to get a decent SLR.  The D3000 is purely an entry level DSLR camera and that works fine for me.  Since it’s been a good 20 years since I did any work with F-stops and aperture I am just fine with having the camera hold my hand a little.  I am very very pleased with it and have been having a blast taking pictures of damn near everything.  It even got me to update my gallery linked here on the site (over there in the right hand side of the screen).

So until next time….

What are you Playing? (When you aren’t getting ready for a CON)

Posted by on August 19, 2010 3 comments

Hey all, it’s time for another rousing round of What are you Playing!  The last few weeks have been mostly occupied by me procrastinating getting things ready for DragonCon.  In just 2 small weeks I will be living it up in Atlanta rubbing elbows with some of the best costumers and sci-fi geeks on the planet.  I am also really excited about the Guest list this year.  So excited that I have been trying to think up questions that would be game related that I could ask some of our favorite celebrities.  Info that I would bring back and post here on the site.  So I put it to you, there is a huge guest list over on the website Http://www.dragoncon.org. If there is anyone in particular that you would like to know what their gaming habits are, or any questions you think I should toss out there.  I plan on using my phones voice recorder to grab some sound bites from the folks there.  Please feel free to drop questions you want asked into the comments.  (P.S. Apparently, Paul Dini, the writer for the Batman Arkham games will be there, you KNOW I am going to be talking to him!)

As for what I am actually playing…. I finished up Crackdown 2, I bought another new Xbox 360S to replace the E-73 Error-ed out one downstairs so the Rock Band setup is back to normal.  I am hoping to knock out Alan Wakes “The Signal” here soon, but mostly just getting stuff ready for vacation.  What are YOU playing?

Risk Factions, where Zombies rule the earth.

Posted by on August 11, 2010 No comments

I know it’s been a while since I picked up this game but there has bee a ton going on.  It does help that I keep playing it and thinking “Man, I really need to write up the review”.  As a kid we always liked to play various board game.  I always kind of feared the nights where we would play RISK though because of the massive involvement of the game.  A good RISK game could last for hours of hours, and when it’s done there is so much clean up.  Not to mention the RISK of stepping on one of those like roman numerals in the middle of the night.  Once again, the Xbox steps in to simplify the board game genre and add a little spice to it at the same time.

RISK Factions brings all the fun of territorial control and conquering that the original game had but with no clean up, simplified scoring and much faster game play.  The “Factions” portion of the game come in assigning different cartoon characters to the colors of Risk.  Black becomes Zombies, Red for Robots, Yellow for Cats, Green for Humans, and Blue for Yeti’s.  The Single player campaign takes you through the story about how these characters interact, but mostly it’s there to provide a little more eye candy for the grueling dice rolling game play.  They have also added a form of “Fast attack” where the rolls are all done in the back ground and you keep attacking until someone wins.

For those purists who don’t want any taint on their precious game, they preserved the original game play in a “Classic” mode that includes the original cards and structure.  Honestly, I tried to play this way once, and it seemed slow.  I much enjoyed the newer style better.  The turns are faster, the scoring is much easier, and when you are done, no clean up.  This is one of the best family board game ports on the arcade and I highly recommend it!  I give it an VIII out of X

Belkin can suck my butt.

Posted by on August 5, 2010 4 comments

Well, last night the rest of the family was out doing what they do on a Wed. Night which left me to putz around the house and do my own thing. Since they were all out I figured it was a good time to work on the network issue I had been having. To recap, I recently bought a Belkin Play dual band wireless N router for the house. It was much more powerful than my netgear wireless G router so it would cover the whole house. Now I do a lot of odd things on my network. I love to stream movies and music to the xbox or ps3 from my pc, I also picked up the software package PlayOn from Media Mall to stream Hulu and YouTube to the consoles as well. Ever since hooking up the Belkin, all that stopped. So last night poured over the settings inside and out, tested every scenario and flipped every switch. Nothing worked.

I googled the heck out of my situation and found a few posts about how the Belkin routers block the DLNA media streaming protocol. But nothing on how to fix that. So, off I went to the Belkin support site. Still no mention of blocking the DLNA protocol, except that the router itself will stream using DLNA, but only directly from the router. I tried to “Chat with a support representative” only to learn that they had no clue what DLNA was and was fixated on the ports of the xbox and the ip of my PC, even though I explained what the issue was. I gave the person (assuming it was even a human) 10 min to explain before I scrap the router and buy something else, she couldn’t even explain what DLNA was.

Needless to say, I then set out to Best Buy and purchased a new Netgear Wireless N Rangemax router. 10 minutes later my whole network was up and I was streaming again with no issues. Because of this, I will never buy another Belkin product again. Be Warned!

p.s. I am in training all this week (if you hadn’t seen the twitters) so reviews for Limbo and Risk will be put next week.

What are you playing? or….The Risk of Cracking Down on your Limbo Skills

Posted by on July 28, 2010 2 comments

It’s that time again to run down what you are playing!  I am slowly but surely working up a review of the XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) game Risk Factions, which I managed to finish the campaign on.  The nice thing about it is that it’s such a great Family game that we find ourselves playing it as a group all the time.  Also mixed in lately has been Crackdown 2.  Initial impressions of CD 2 are not that great.  I just get the feeling like it’s too much all at once and it’s REALLY hard to focus on the ga…oooo  Agility orb!

The latest add in to the library has been the XBLA game Limbo.  This came out for the Summer of Arcade promo that Xbox does every year.  The game is a hell of a lot like Braid, and if you haven’t played Braid you need to go check it out.  Both are side scrolling puzzle platformers that will twist your brain in loops.  I love it!  Review for Limbo will be after Risk and Crackdown 2 will probably be a while still.  Don’t forget that the first DLC for Alan Wake is out now, The Signal.  My copy of Alan Wake is out on loan right now so I will be getting to that as soon as it comes back.

Outside of that, the workouts are going great, I can already feel a difference and only 36 days left before DragonCon!  I am hoping to maybe squeeze out an interview with one or two celeb’s to see their take on gaming.  And with that I leave you with the amazing Music video from the Guild:  GAME ON!

What are you playing?

Posted by on July 20, 2010 7 comments

I have been thinking of trying to get a weekly post up of what I am playing and maybe put it out to see what you guys are playing as well. I have seen a lot of sites do this to get a good discussion going and maybe get some ideas about a game I wouldn’t normally pick up.  So, seeing as how I am the only one here, I’ll go first.

The past week or two I have been working on some house type stuff and reconfiguring things on my network.  After picking up the new Xbox 360S (I traded in my old 20gb Xbox) I decided to upgrade my router to a Wireless N to use the new Xbox’s N device.  I bought the Belkin Play Dual Band Wireless N router and replaced my crappy Netgear G.  Long story made short, I can’t stream media from my PC to the xbox anymore and have no idea why.  While I am not a hard core network guy, I still know my way around a subnet and have spent the past 2 weeks tweaking and such to figure this out.  It’s kind of a pain.

Outside of that I have been playing some Lego Harry Potter with Sarah.  It’s one of those games where we pretty much only play together.  I believe we are towards the end of Book 3 right now.  the Quick review on it, it’s a Lego game.  Same basic premise and humor.  That’s not a bad thing, because I love the Lego games.  Aside from that I have picked up Risk: Factions from the Xbox Live Arcade.  They found a way to really make a Risk game fun for everyone!  We have played as a family, as well as through the solo campaign.  Enjoyable all around.  May have more of a full review on it up soon.

In the life department, I also picked up an Elliptical machine and am using it to get back into some sort of shape that’s not “round”.  My hope is to turn some of this belly fat into muscle in time for DragonCon at the beginning of September.  We’ll See, as of this morning I was at 192lb.  My target is Around 175lb but I would be happy with a strong 180-185lbs.  The goal is not so much loss but re-distribution.  Wish me luck!

Naughty Bear…or….20 minutes of game play I’ll never get back

Posted by on June 30, 2010 No comments

Tuesday is new game release day, and Wednesday is new comic day.  Now I don’t typically buy as many new games as I buy comics, but I tend to keep an eye on what’s getting released in the same way.  This last Tuesday saw two releases that I have been watching for a while now.  Lego Harry Potter, and Naughty Bear.  I knew what to expect with any Lego game, while they may tell different stories, the game play is similar across the board.  The Sleeper was Naughty Bear.  I had seen a number of preview videos and some of the trailers, and to be honest, they did their job well and I was enticed.  It looked funny/cute in a “Happy Tree Friends” sort of way.

Sadly, I was wrong.  I bought Naughty Bear at 7:30pm on Tuesday night, got home and played through the first “episode” and instantly knew that I had made a mistake.  I toughed it out and finished the episode, then packed it up and headed back to Gamestop.  Thankfully the gracious personnel there were nice enough to let me swap it out for Lego Harry Potter.

Side note here.  I was warned, by Erin when I bought Naughty Bear, that it was going to be bad.  I decided to make my own judgment.

So what made it so bad?  Well, The idea was good and funny.  Unfortunately that was the extent of the good.  The Premise was that you played Naughty Bear, the bastard step child of this “Care Bear” style island where everything is puppies and kittens.  Some of the other bears on the island have treated you unfairly and you decide to get back at them by being naughty.  Being Naughty can range from scaring them, sabotaging their stuff, or even bashing their stuffed heads in with a baseball bat.  Who wouldn’t think that could be fun?!

What it ended up being was a series of “Challenges” where you had to sneak around and scare/kill your fellow bears while disrupting their activities.  I guess that you could play the game more Sam Fisher style and sneak in the bushes then pop out and scare them, but after the first time you do that they all know you are there, so no more sneaking will help you.  From there is just becomes “I’m going to run around and hit you with a bat”.  When you finish with the bears, you can gain a few extra points by smashing stuff.  And that was it!  After a while, even the narration is grating.

Now, I think the game may be not as bad as I am making it out to be if it weren’t for one more glaringly bad problem, it was release at the price point of $49.99.  For the same price as something like Lego Harry Potter, you get a game that may have done well as an Xbox Arcade title, for maybe $10-$12 bucks

The Graphics were just ok, the actual game mechanics were horrible.  I had to maneuver myself around and fumble with the view to get into a position where I could actually scare another bear.  Just Awful, one of the worst games I have tried.  This may, and I emphasize MAY, be worth it when the price drops down to like $5, which I have no doubt that it will fall to that.

Alan Wake

Posted by on June 24, 2010 1 comment

Abut a month ago I made this post to Twitter:

Me: Alan wake is a “psychological action thriller”. Sarah: That’s code for “scary as shit!”

Thus began my decent into the darkness that claimed Alan Wake, the latest story driven thriller on the Xbox 360.  I had decided to hold off on playing Alan Wake due to my obsession with Red Dead Redemption.  Since RDR took quite a while to get through the story, it delayed my run of AW.  Of course once I finished AW I had planned to write up my review but my house was set upon by a plague of darkness on it’s own with everyone catching some sort of head cold.  This leaves me behind on quite a few posts, but I will do my best to catch up.

So, Alan Wake lives up to it’s tag line (and thusly, Sarah’s translation).  The main story gets played out as a kind of a Television episodic story that is broken up into 6 parts.  Even though I spread it out over the course of the month, the actual game play was exactly 6 days.  I did this because I really didn’t want to cut off an episode mid way.  Each episode was approximately 2-3 hours of game play, so in hind sight, the whole game was just about 15ish hours of play time.  Some of you would think that is short but trust me, the story is more than worth it.

The story is where Alan Wake really shines.  Most games that come out these days have amazing graphics, outstanding music, etc, etc.  The story is really one part where many games loose it just a little.  Case in point, I loved the story in Red Dead Redemption, but there were enough holes, and missing elements that, as a player, I missed out on.   With Alan Wake, the whole game was very linear so that the string the player follows is the story the developers want to tell.  When the story is done, you may want for more, but it’s not from holes in the story, it’s from the story being so compelling that you want more of it.

Ok, Spoiler time, if you don’t want to know, don’t read any further.

Alan Wake is a troubled writer who, with his wife, vacations to a lake side town of Bright Falls.  Unfortunately, the town has it’s own dramatic flare.  A haunted lake claims Alan’s wife as it’s hostage and forces Alan to write infusing his story with it’s own powers of darkness to gain strength.  Alan escapes the story by writing himself into it (I know, it’s weird but it does make sense, kinda) so that he can rescue his wife.  You spend the bulk of the game racing through town trying to learn about the whereabouts of your wife and following a trail of dropped manuscript pages that “you” wrote for the story.  The really mind blowing meta comes from the last two episodes where you learn that Alan’s Father was trapped by the same lake and forced to write a story that leads to Alan coming to the lake, to get trapped, and forced to write a story where he encounters his father’s story…. I’m going to stop there before my head explodes.

Now, as for the likes and dislikes:

Bright Falls (Likes)

Story – The story was so well written that you really felt like you were playing out a good novel or enjoying a really well written TV show.

Ambiance – In order to set the mood for the story, the ambiance in the town flows with the story both for daytime and night time.

Narration – I loved that Alan was Narrating the whole story as I played it out.  It added more of that “I am in a novel” feeling.

Barry – Your agent comes to “rescue” you in Bright Falls and ends up tagging along on most of the ride through the story.  His comedy relief is a great add to the whole experience.

Night Falls (Dislikes)

Lip Sync – This was the BIGGEST distraction of the game.  The voicing is good by the sync with the character models became such a distraction that I had to force myself to not watch the character faces during cut scenes because it was detracting from the game.

Scavenger Hunt – One of the things you have to do in the story is to hunt around and find various scraps of the manuscript.  Hidden along the way there are also a number of Coffee Thermoses, weapon stashes, and radio/TV shows you can tune into.  The problem I had with this is that I would walk into an area and start searching the areas that were more off the path of the story in order to try and find these things.  In some respect it’s cool, but in many it’s just a distraction.

Over all I felt Alan Wake was an amazing game.  I can’t wait for the next two episodes that are due out as DLC soon.  Hopefully the game won’t suffer in numbers due to being released opposite Red Dead Redemption.  Go Buy It!!