JonCole

This month's as good as any to sign up for PS+, Sony announced the US IGC games being added in June and they are Deus Ex: HR, Saints Row 3, Machinarium, Orc Attack (PSV), and Virtue's Last Reward (PSV). Easily the best monthly lineup in the US in recent memory. Also, they're about to phase out a lot of games, so if you swoop in today you can also pick-up Sleeping Dogs, Infamous 2, LBP2, and more (all of which are going out in in next two weeks).

I guess it might be helpful to list the advantages of rooting, since it's a little obscure why you would do it: 1. You can delete any stock apps (as Twig mentioned). I don't know how different Canadian carriers are than State-side carriers, but here Verizon and Sprint drop a lot of proprietary garbage apps on the phone that you'll never use. 2. Root-only apps. Sure, there are fewer of these every day but there are some functions that simply wouldn't be allowed without root access. For instance, there are apps that allow you to use gestures to trigger specific functions in the OS. You can enable your device to allow system level management from your PC wirelessly. 3. Full backup of the device. With a custom recovery, you'll be able to completely backup your system with a system image. Mess with anything you shouldn't have? Enjoy performing clean installs on your Windows machine every now and then because it just seems snappier? Full backups via root let you do that. Not only that, but you can use an app like Titanium Backup to completely backup the data of various apps, which is useful if you ever upgrade your phone and want to transfer save data from games or make sure that all your texts and contacts transfer over. 4. Overclocking/underclocking of CPU and/or GPU for performance/power consumption/heat preferences. 5. Completely getting rid of manufacturer tweaks to the UI. 6. Updates potentially forever. There are developers who put the latest version of Android on the HTC HD2, which released in 2009 running Windows Mobile 6.5. It took Verizon and HTC 6 months longer than the developer community to install Android 4.0 on my Rezound. The Nexus One (released in Jan 2010) was highly acclaimed for getting all the latest updates from Google, until Android 4.0 which wasn't supported by the device thanks to being below minimum spec. Fortunately, developers in the ROM community ported it in a usable state. Sure, it's not ideal, but the ROM community will support any flagship phone for months if not years longer than the manufacturer/carrier.

Rooting with ClockworkMod Recovery and CyanogenMod is a breeze. Clockwork will notify you of updates and flashing the updated version of the ROM is no more complicated than an OTA carrier update.

My Android advice: 1. If you're at all interested in rooting/installing new ROMs, get a Nexus, Samsung, or LG phone. HTC and Motorola have notoriously difficult to unlock bootloaders. 2. Get the most flagship-y, recent phone you can afford (in that order). In almost any instance, I'd recommend getting the top of the line phone of the last generation (3-6 months old) over a second, budget-targeted phone of the current generation. Flagship means installed base, which means there'll be the greatest support from the manufacturer, carrier, developer community, accessory makers etc. You'd be surprised how ridiculously difficult it is to get a dock or decent selection of cases for a second-string phone. 3. Battery life is almost universally disappointing coming from your previous phone. With regular use, almost every Android phone will last you a day (8-10 hours). If you plan on gaming or using the device for high power consumption needs (streaming, GPS, video processing), look for a device with a relatively small, AMOLED screen, with removable battery. You can get a lot more out of your phone if you can replace the battery after a year or buy an extended battery. 4. If you care about the camera a fair amount, buy a HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4 full-stop. The standard fare 8MP cameras in most phones are absolute garbage in low light and have slow shutter. Regarding the gaming scene, it's mediocre. Most of the games I've played at any length are very much of the newspaper puzzle or Bejeweled sub-genres. I'd probably recommend a Samsung Galaxy S4. While I'm absolutely smitten with the industrial design of the One, I've been burned one too many times on HTC's locked bootloaders and poor accessory availability. If you're going to own an Android phone, you might as well own the most popular, biggest one out there.

330 games owned, 69 played for more than 30 minutes. Our ratios are pretty close, but you're beating me. Add in the rest of my games on console and handheld, and it'd probably be right about in line with that.

I thought it was fairly mediocre, there was hints of good stuff but I don't know what could really be expected of IGN's mainstream-targeted video content. Nice to see Jordan Morris in there, he seems to be played pretty straight and not wildly over the top. Honestly, he's just playing the same exact nerd persona he dons now and then on the various podcasts he's on.

Yeah, you need to mod your Wii. It's a bit of a tedious process, but I'd say it pales in comparison to something like jailbreaking an iPhone or rooting/installing a custom ROM for Android. I stumbled through a handful of guides since there's fairly limited resources out there and a lot of it is out of date, but I managed to find this toward the end of my quest - https://sites.google.com/site/completesg/ Follow that site's process and you'll be good to go. All told, it took my about an hour or so to go through the whole process. After installing the homebrew channel on your Wii, you can use a USB flash drive or portable HDD as a WBFS drive to store the Wii ROMs. I actually got all my ROMs directly ripped from games I own, so you needn't deal with piracy to enjoy the benefits of this. The program that is in the video, USB Loader GX, has a built in ripping program as well as simple automated art downloading that makes creating a snazzy library quite easy. That said, I did once pirate ROMs of all the NES and SNES games I own and it's also good for emulating those systems since all of the controllers are obviously quite analogous to older Nintendo consoles (as evidenced by Virtual Console). I did all of it a few months ago to a Wii that I bought really late in the lifespan of the system, so it's been quite a good way to make me excited about playing games on it. Plus, I don't have much shelf space in my house so I've neatly packed away all my Wii games in a closet.

Since owning my Wii, I've ripped all the games I bought and I'm actually fond of the USB loader's aesthetics. Here's a video of somebody else's collection (I obviously don't have as many games) but it gives you an idea of what a digital game collection might look like. You can download full 3D box art from various sites and it looks quite pleasing -

Isn't that the truth? I thought it was magic when I put Mass Effect 3's disc in my PC, registered the code into Origin, and it installed from the disc. I'm used to having to wait a half-hour before I can play a game that I buy. Of course, I had to wait for the disc to be delivered but I didn't feel like I "owned it" until it came to my door. With digital, the download progress bar is a little more oppressive in my opinion, especially if I'm trying to download it at peak time in my neighborhood when bandwidth narrows by half at times.

Thank goodness the rumor mill is still cranking post-reveal: The Xbox One can talk to you, will feature remote play Polygon is reporting that the One will have a feature where a friend can connect to your game remotely via Skype and "help one another get through sections of the game when they're stuck". If that's true, it seems kind of like nothing we've ever seen before. Sure, we've all couch co-op-ed a single player game before, but in this scenario you could both be playing separate instances of the same single-player game across the country from one another and help each other in a "oh man, I remember how to do that part" way. Kinda neat, if true.

Fair enough, I seem to have been belligerently agreeing with you. More or less my point is that retail vs digital is practically meaningless when the evidence is growing more and more unavoidable that game ownership is actually game licensing. Who cares if the license exists physically or digitally unless you really just care so much about the aesthetics of a physical box? I get the argument in books, since the aesthetics of the delivery system are directly tied to the mechanics of reading. In games, it's far more meaningless especially now that publishers are making the boxes with much cheaper plastic and without manuals. On a side note, I'd hold off on calling your own blogs "fantastic". It may be so, but the tooting of your own horn makes me not want to click the link in a million years even though I know you meant it with no particular arrogance.

I feel like this is a massive exaggeration. Even with digital and the prominence of Steamworks, Steam doesn't mean the end of competitive PC pricing. I'd guess that I've gotten half of my PC games on a combination of Origin, Amazon, Green Man Gaming, GOG, Humble Bundle, or the like. The rise of Steamworks/Steam DRM might have narrowed the field, but there's still plenty of competition and I don't have to bother mucking around with peasants in Gamestop this way.

All I can hope for is that with Microsoft measurably reducing the position of used game retailers in the space, they'll much more aggressively pursue promotional sale windows on their digital content. I feel like in the latter years of the Xbox 360's life, Microsoft really began to get aggressive with GoD and XBLA sales to the point where they were actually competitive with retail. I know that their sale on El Shaddai at something like $4, Metal Gear HD collection for almost $15, and Rayman Origins for $10 was ridiculously compelling. It's a pipedream to hope Xbox One's store will be as good to me as Steam is, but I'm still willing to have a little hope. Yeah, and I believe a major retailer in the US has reduced the price of the Basic version to $230 for a couple weeks, can't remember which.

Seems fair to me, I just imagine that under this model there really won't be any room for the deep cuts that I'm accustomed to from browsing Cheapassgamer all day. No big worry this generation, though, as I'm sure I can get my budget gaming on the PS4/Vita/Wii U/3DS without too much trouble and paying for Xbox One games at retail every few months won't be so bad.

Yeah, as I'm reading through it all I'm seeing that the sentiment from Twitter and the like isn't crossing over so much here. I'm just getting a little tired of "there's no games". The internet connection stuff and used games arguments against the box seem a lot more relevant, though I feel like a lot of this "controversy" is mostly attributed to the fact that Microsoft hasn't been very specific about things. If anything, I'm dissatisfied with the fact that different Microsoft reps are saying totally different things about these features that aren't insignificant.

I know I'm 11 pages into this thread, but I'm just going to pontificate a little on my impressions of the reveal announcement. Forgive me, but I've been thinking about this way too much and have only spent Twitter time spouting out stupid 140 character quips to feel clever. I get it. There were only a few games and you feel betrayed. You insist you're not going to buy the Xbox One until Microsoft makes it up to you. I'm so goddamn tired of hearing this sentiment. Microsoft is a business - they're not betraying you, they're only looking after their own interests. I feel like companies like Microsoft have these events for the mass-media and that's why this conference didn't have games. You'll get the games. Just hold on for a little while. You waited years for Grand Theft Auto IV, or Halo 3, or whatever other thing you waited for and really wanted. No need to get upset about it. I think about it like this - Microsoft wants to sell as many Xbox Ones as possible. This first reveal is their first opportunity to sell people on the One, so they have the make their pitch to the widest audience possible - anyone who plays games (a given) and anyone who watches TV as part of their entertainment center experience (a much bigger slice than gamers exclusively). They can fail with gamers at this venue because when it comes down to it, every single game is another chance to sell someone on a console. This is obvious from the mentality I hear every time a new console generation rolls around. "I'm just waiting for X or Y to buy the Nintendo [Whatever]!", whether that's a Halo game, a Zelda game, or a Gran Turismo game. All it takes is that tipping point for that console to sell, because essentially all gamers want to have every box so they'll have every opportunity to play what might be the best game around. It's just a matter of time. For the bigger, TV/media-driven crowd, there are only so many opportunities. What kind of traction does Microsoft get when they slap a sticker on the Xbox 360 that says "yo, we have Netflix now!"? Practically nothing. So if they want to cash in on the media potential of this new Xbox One, they have to bring it hard and fast. Take the hype for a new shiny black box and convert that to juice for potential hype in media. That hunger for games isn't going to go away, but people's willingness to hook up another device that capitalizes another HDMI port on their TV receiver is a different animal entirely. Of course, this doesn't sell you or me on the console, but we're going to get it. All it'll take is one day where I feel like I don't have enough new technology in my life (shit, I just bought a new cell phone the other day because I got bored with my current one) and I'll get it. Or one day where I feel like I failed as a gamer for not playing a particular game (hello, Wii purchase at End of Life). The Xbox One (and PS4 and Wii U, for that matter) are built for games. They just do this other stuff that's also marketable. Deal with it.

Wrapped up Uncharted: Golden Abyss this morning. I actually had a really great time with that game, despite all the Vita controls. The story was thread-bare, sure, but ultimately is the story what makes Uncharted enjoyable? I always thought that people that liked the "story" of Uncharted actually enjoyed the relationships between the characters and the banter between them as you go through the world. While Dante, Chase, and part-time Sully aren't nearly as good as Elena (!), Chloe, and full-time Sully, I still had a good time listening to them as I traversed the environment. Plus, minor spoiler: But man, those Vita controls. Anything motion controlled was pretty awful. Why Drake would suddenly lose balance on a narrow walking surface and have to catch his balance for a good 30 seconds is a total mystery to me. The motion-controlled aiming was also horrible; nothing like slight, unavoidable deviations in your aiming as you're using a spray-happy assault rifle at medium to long range. Backtouch wasn't so bad, but this game made it really clear to me why the Vita is death to hand ergonomics. Like I said, though, those were ultimately niggling things that were fairly easy to get over in what was ultimately a shorter entry into the series, though they'd be completely unforgivable if Sony decides to throw mandatory Vita controls in a potential sequel. Anyways, the game doesn't nearly knock it out of the park but I did have a pretty good time with it. Can't complain at all considering I got it at no additional cost other than my yearly PlayStation Plus subscription.

Can anyone enlighten me on what to do if a person has no documents at all? The game said something about inspection mode and checking the second page of my bulletin, but the second page had no relevant information and I couldn't figure out what inspection mode actually was. Is that the mode where you check for discrepancies?

I can't wait for Wii U exclusive Alpha Protocol 2.

I like how Miiverse is basically Demon's Souls hint system taken to its logical conclusion.

Saw this pop on Slickdeals, $185 for a 3g/Wi-Fi model w/8 GB memory card. Comes from a site called PayDeals, in new/like new condition in a white box. SD and CAG say it's a reputable seller, I wouldn't doubt them - https://paydeals.com/deals/playstation-vita-3g-wifi.html I like the IGC stuff for Vita, but it's a bit disappointing that the Vita part of PS+ is just as unexciting as the PS3 part. The initial stuff gets you excited, Gravity Rush, Uncharted, Wipeout, yeeeeah! Then all the new stuff that hits IGC is 5+ year old PSP fighting games that have no community. Meh. Edit: $142 Good Condition Vita on Amazon, grab it while it lasts.

Amazon just stocked Good condition AC Liberation bundles for $225, not too bad at all - http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B002I0JZOC/ref=dp_olp_used?tag=cheapassgam08-20&ie=UTF8&condition=used That said, much better deals can be found. Also might be worth looking at Cowboom now and again, they have good console deals but their quality is a bit more random than Amazon Warehouse.

Got a new AMD video card a couple months ago, which bagged me Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite at the time. Looks like AMD has added Blood Dragon to the promotion and honored the addition to early buyers, so I was surprised with a nice free copy of the game. Unfortunately, it uses Ubisoft's UPlay client but I guess I'll do what it takes to get a free game. I'll give it some good time tomorrow night and report my thoughts!

What the hell is this thing.

Well, in the 30 minutes I've played, it seemed exactly the same. They may have added a new difficulty or some weird Vita-based controls or something, but honestly that kind of stuff doesn't interest me when I honestly think that kind of game isn't very pleasant to play on the platform.