Henroid

iD Meier's Wolfenstein 3D.

The hunt isn't anywhere NEAR as bad as Wind Waker. Really, it's not. And if you have 5, you already have a good amount. In other news, I've been tapping away at hard mode of Advance Wars DS, which isn't really an exercise in game strategy so much as puzzle solving / abusing mechanics to beat stages. But now I'm back on the stage that held me back for so many years. And as it would go, I failed it because of the stupid unique condition it has.

No love for the upcoming Etrian Odyssey 4?

After having to use my mouse left-handed for three weeks now, I'm pretty sure I can become that guy Sean was talking about in regard to DotA 2 when my wrist recovers. Now if only computers recognized two different mouse inputs. ... OR DO THEY?

I must be old people then, because I bought a DSi XL. I made the jump from the first DS model to it, and the screen size is something I appreciate for the same reason why I appreciate a larger monitor for my computer; it adds a little something to the immersion, it fills my field of vision better so I can tune out things around me. Also, I don't have to strain my arms lifting something up to my face; I can casually hold it away from me and not have to wonder at the smaller details on the screen (my eyes, with glasses at least, are fine, it's just the 'closer look' thing I'm talking about here). The screen size of the first DS seems horrendous to me, and the 3DS' screen size REALLY turned me off. I knew they'd be putting out a newer iteration eventually. I don't play mobile game devices when I'm on the go. Never have. I've tried, but usually if I'm leaving the house I'm going to be busy doing something or another, and I'm not going to be that tool who goes to hang out with friends but is busy with his stupid fucking mobile when present with humans. So the portability lost in the 3DS XL doesn't bother me. Longer battery life is longer battery life; I'm not gonna bitch about what it could or should be. It didn't go down, that's the important part. Still, I'm not going to jump on buying a 3DS. The library is on the cusp of having things I feel I MUST play, so it's close, but I feel like waiting on a price drop. I don't object to the $200 mark necessarily, but there's a lot of things I can distract myself with until a price drop hits. The charger being a separate purchase sure is weird.

That hat legitimately frightens me.

This was a hilarious experience. Background info: I am the son of immigrants from two different countries. My mother is from the Portuguese islands, lived there 'til she was 13 or so. They had like no electricity just about. Very, VERY old timey way of life even for those decades. World War 2 ravaged Europe had better infrastructure. So when it comes to technology and critical thinking (she lived with nuns a few years; Roman Catholic church was strong back then) my mother is... slow on the uptake. That said. Tonight, she watched Inception. And understood nothing.

What, no love for the Fighter's Guild?!

It's refreshing to read someone playing a game dedicatedly being aligned to good. So many people want to be shadowy ninja badasses.

That's one of the best reasons to buy a game. So neat. As for the Chozo artifacts, after you complete the game once, if you have an acute Metroid-vision, you can get most of those as you normally progress.

Well, you should play all those, but priority wise you should play Metroid Prime. When it comes to setting atmosphere in video games, it's a... prime example of doing it right! (ha ha, ahhh kill me) Also, is that the original A Boy and His Blob, or the Wii one? And what did you think of Oblivion? Did you do a lot of the secondary / tertiary content or just the main story?

Yeah don't get me wrong, landline caps are a totally different issue.

I had missed some EC episodes lately and wow, that one was really important. And now I know. I am also powerless against it. So fml.

I really couldn't believe that happened. I thought we were past FC2.

I got Days of Ruin (the NA title of gritty Advance Wars) for Christmas from a secret Santa a couple years ago. The tone doesn't bother me. The change in how COs work is a little odd; they aren't universally applying benefits to all units. Plus, there's fewer of them and they all seem to fit the straight-forward categories of "strong air units, strong ground," etc. Dual Strike is great because of all the different angles COs had, though like three of them are literally the same in what they do. Also the balance in Days of Ruin is really, REALLY different, I was having a hard time grasping it.

Bandwidth cap shenanigans are a major problem, and if it escalates any further to being heavy-handed, I would go as far as to say it's time for government intervention. At the moment, my only beef with it is mobile broadband caps being shockingly low (unlimited data plans were removed a couple years ago in favor of 5GB caps) (the math comes out to like 170 MBs of data use a day which is very easy to hit). Few companies on that front offer throttled speed vs. charging you for data beyond that. But it's my only internet solution out where I live that isn't dialup or satellite.

In probably the longest time coming for any game I've owned, I finally beat Advance Wars DS. I bought it when I first arrived in Texas six years ago, despite being awful at strategy games. But hey, it looked light-hearted and I figured it would be great. Then I ended up getting my ass kicked in the mid-game a lot, and got stuck on a mission toward the end. When I broke my wrist three weeks ago I was out of options for games but this was definitely playable. And over these past three weeks I've gotten far better at the game. So I decided to muscle my way through that mission I was stuck on and it turned out to be one of those awful difficulty mishaps because the rest of the game was simple beyond it. Of course, looking at the post game content, I'm disappointed to see there's a LOT of grinding involved to unlock features and COs to play as. Now I'm less excited about my accomplishment. Edit - Oh, apparently I racked up enough points to buy up most of the unlockables in one shot. Excited again.

Slumber parties at the office oh boy!

Well, some friends of mine who follow the industry news (business side) pointed out to me that Sony has 19 billion dollars in reserve. But what I'm more of getting at is earnings from latest pereformance from the last few years. Sony recently issued a demand to retail partners to no longer put 3D TVs up on discounted sale prices, just full retail now. And the PS3 was selling at a loss (even the PS2 sold at a loss for a while), and they've invested in Home, the PSP Go, which are each not the hottest things ever... So with the video game division not doing much performance wise and just now climbing up with the PS3, how would such a purchase even be considered? Somewhat related, Sony shareholders recently put out their demand for the board of directors at Sony to change up, with Kaz Hirai heading it up. Also to bring this back to MS, they have 54 billion in reserve apparently. So they could make this buy.

You've chosen to represent yourself with a Diggle. You and I can get along just fine.

That Civ 2 story is incredible. What's funny about it is that people who have the game mechanics known to a T have come out of the woodwork to dismissively provide game-finishing answers. I wonder if they see the story as an awesome event or if their inner-rage-nerd is treating it as a tragic 'noob' thing. You guys being able to stream games from the office sounds fun. Though I'm not sure if Sean's routine (wake up, bowl of cereal, game) will work with the office.

Even if OnLive isn't a huge moneymaker, how the hell would Sony afford to buy it out? There's no way.

And that only goes to serve my argument presented here. I understand the need to deck out a PC as much as possible (I'm a nervous asshole like that; my new PC I've been slowly building has 16 GB of RAM), and people make the false arguments about spending over a thousand dollars if you want a good PC, but really... you don't have to go top-drawer at the moment. And I know I don't NEED all that RAM;I originally had 8 in it thinking "This is great!" but figured since my capacity is higher on the motherboard and RAM is relatively cheap, sure, why not. But it was not, by far, needed by a long shot. 4GB in a console is, as I said, colossal. I will stand by that statement.

And 8GB is considered good for PCs; 4GB considered okay. So really, it's not a spec worth getting worked up over like this.

RAM in a console is way different than RAM in your PC. 4GB is colossal for consoles.