Mar 31, 2014

Too Late Now!

This new semester is starting to roll out, and one of my teachers made a youtube video for their preview of the class. As part of it she says something along the lines of, if this class is too hard for you, maybe you shouldn't be in acedemics.

TOO LATE NOW!!!

This is my last semester, NOTHING, quite litterally NOTHING is going to stop me from getting that degree and doing what I want. I don't care if I hate your class, I don't care if it takes 30 hours a week to finish, I'm going to pass it, and I'm going to get what I want. Save your 'get out now' speech for your Freshman students that don't know what they want to do with their lives, and stop insulting people that have put in this much time and effort to make it to where we are by your stupid scare tactics. If we were going to quit, we would have done it without your permission or prompting.

Cut it out, don't try to scare me, stop saying stupid things, I'm doing what I'm doing, and your silly little class no matter how hard, how rigourous, how fun, or how boring, it might be isn't going to stop me.

The blog won't let me link this video because it can't be found through search, but if you want her really 'great' oppening trying to scare away grad students, have a blast and watch it yourself.
SNHU: My Expectations for Deliverables

My favorite is when she says that we must go beyond what she asks. THEN IF YOU WANT US TO DO MORE, TELL US TO DO MORE! I don't get it, if you're asking us to do more, or if you're asking us to respond more, THEN TELL US TO DO MORE! It makes no sense to me when she says, "I don't want you to respond to the prompts" THEN WHY IN THE WORLD DO YOU WRITE THE PROMPTS!? If you want something more, then write something more!

I don't care if you get bored by our posts, or if you're uninspired by them, it's not our job to entertain you. It's YOUR job to get what you want out of us and to lead us there. It's not our job to magically create that. We're paying YOU to teach us. So teach. Don't make some crazy youtube video about how you want us to strive and do more, AND THEN NOT TELL US WHAT YOU'RE EXPECTING!

Get over yourself.

I don't get it. This is the most BS misguided youtube post that I have ever seen. I get what she's saying, that she would like more, but she can't say that she wants more without requiring it. You can't grade me for providing you exactly what you ask for.

Why aim for mediocre?  BECAUSE I HAVE A LIFE! Because your class is not everything. Because I want to get the grade, and move on. Because your topic isn't as great as you think it is. Because I want to move onto a topic that I actually care about, and not this BS that you're spouting. You tell me, look at the rubric, produce what is on the rubric so that you can get a good grade. . . but then tell me that I should stretch beyond what you're asking for and produce what I want, not what you're telling me. I'm sorry, I'm going to stick to being quiet, passing the class, and getting the grade.

What's even better than this 12 minute waste of my time of a person who rambled on by saying that they want me to be great, but can't actually grade me for doing exactly what they're asking for? THERE'S A SECOND VIDEO!

Holy Cow She Doesn't STOP

Borderlands - The Games I've Played


Where do I even start with this amazing game?



Let me just tell you it this way, upon the request of two of my friends, I got this game. The first time I played it, we went straight to online multiplayer, and they blew through the introduction in a whirl of crazy, and I was hooked ever since then.

This game is part of the reason that I get in trouble with a few other games that will appear on the list. The reason being, that it's so awesome, that I started to trust people to suggest games that I should get. My logic was that if they thought this was so awesome, then they must have the right idea about other games. Not really the truth which means I got some bad choices on my list, but at least they got it right with this one.

Although this is a first person shooter, Borderlands breaks all of the standards you'd expect out of a first person shooter. The game play is not linear, you can skill points into your character in one of the four classes that you can play as, and multi-player is possible, but not essential, and it only makes the game that much better.

Now typical games have single player story line, and multi-player story line. If you have online multi-player it's typically Call of Duty style where you're trying to murder each other. Borderlands does none of that. Multi-player is when a person joins your game (either in house or online) and they instantly start where you're at in the story, doing whatever it is that you're doing. The best part about this is that the more people you have playing with you (up to 4) the stronger the monsters get, and the better the loot gets. That means that even if you bring in three of your friends to fight the big bad Rakk Hive-
It's only going to get stronger and harder to kill.

Borderlands also breaks down a few of the typical gripes I have against FPS games. Regen health? It's not always there, and if you do get it, there's a reason that you have it because your shield that you just equipped heals your health. Regen shields? The game explains how it works, and depending on your shield that you find different things can happen. Respawn points? The game explains those, and death comes with a real life cost of having to pay to be put back together again. Linear story line? Don't you wish.

That's one of the biggest draws to me, the story line to Borderlands does have a typical start and end, but the path you take to get there and what you use to get there is anything but linear. The game randomly generates ALL of it's drops, and depending on your class, your skill build, and if you're playing with friends, it changes how the game plays and how you play it. Then there are all of the side quests. There are dozens upon dozens of side quests that each have their own interesting little story lines that add depth to the world that you're playing in. You don't have to play them, but if you do, you get levels, weapons, and some interesting side knowledge to what is happening around you.

The best part about the entire thing? It doesn't take itself too seriously. It's not over the top humor, and it's not 100% serious all the time, but Borderlands is willing to make pop culture references (I'm On A Boat!) and make quick little jabs within their writing and world to make you laugh, but you're laughing at the same time you're machine gunning down a swarm of psychos who are holding grenades in their hand and running towards you.

Everything 'bad' about this game is so miniscule compared to the big picture that you hardly notice them. Car controls are down right horrid, some places aren't designed that well, and monsters get recycled just with bigger names or different colors, but that's not why you play Borderlands. You're not looking for a deep monster list with unique skills and abilities, you're looking to get a better weapon, a better grenade set, so you can go back to story line and melt some faces.

Then there are the DLC's. Where the base game is awesome, the DLC's just keep that flavor of awesome and have fun with it. All of the DLC's are worth getting, and all of them are down right hilarious and difficult all at the same time.

This game is the start of me focusing only one one game, and playing that game out until there's nothing else to do. Before this I played a bit of one game, a bit of another, and had to balance between them, but then Borderlands happened and I didn't do anything but play Borderlands. The worst part, you have at least four playthroughs that you can play (one for each class) and then you have different builds that you can play for each character, different weapons that you can level up and become more more powerful in, and then on top of that, you have DLC's and New Game+ where everything is only harder to kill but you get even more awesome guns to deal with the monsters.

I know that this game says that I have 100% it, but I easily could go back into this game right now and play it through all over again, and have a completely different experience than I did the first time (because I only played the sniper 100%, I haven't touched anyone else).

This game ruined me. It showed me that not all of the games out there were like the first two that I ever played, but then it also set the bar very high for the rest of the games I played. I could rationalize getting a game that I could spend 80+ hours in and still have things I've never done, I can not rationalize getting a game where I spend 20 hours in it and see the ending credits and only have online multiplayer to do anything 'new' with.

XIII - The Games I've Played

Final Fantasy caries with it a whole crazy list of expectations. The thing is, to look at any of the games, you have to completly forget about anything else that has come out in the series up to that point because the game isn't going to match. Just like 7 is nothing like 8,



or 10 is nothing like 11



13 decided to go in it's own way, and it doesn't work to compare it to anything else that came before it, even if they share the same name.

Final Fantasy 13 is the first game that I put in my ps3 and really saw what everyone was talking about with HD quality graphics. This game is BEAUTIFUL. It is very easy to just start looking around where you're at and see the amazing surroundings that you're killing your way through. Then come the amazing cut scenes. Some of the cutscenes are just rediculous in how detailed and graphic heavy they are, but they never drop frames, and the game always manages to keep up with the detail that it's creating.

However beautiful the game might be, there's the problem of trying to keep up with the story. The names of everything start to blur together and you're not sure if you're a l'acie, fal'ice or anything else that shares a similar name.

Then there are the excessive use of cutscenes within the story line. Until you get into the end game, expect to run into cut scenes around every corner. I played about half of this game (and then ran into Borderlands and stopped playing it) when my playstation had a hard drive issue and I had to system reset the entire thing and wipe the memory. I had played a few dozen hours, and wasn't looking forward to playing through the same things all over again. The good news was that there was a movie skip button. In three hours I managed to do what it took me in almost 20 hours because I was able to skip past every single movie that I had watched. The movies are great, but to watch all of them, and to not get a bit tired of how often they interrupt the game is a bit obvious.

As a person who likes RPG's, this one starts to break the mold a bit. It's focused more on beauty and amazing graphics than it is on story and game play. It's still worth a play for the story line because it's still about 1,000 times better than the junk that gets thrown at you during a typical FPS game, but it just takes a bit of work to keep up with.

The one thing that I missed with this game was the freedom to move. Until the very end of the game, there is one direction that you can move. The line some time spirals, or waves, or draws other funny patterns, but until the end of the game there is a line that you need to follow and it's held together by a string of videos. If you break it down to the most basic elements, the majority of the game is hallway - video - hallway - video - hallway - video - hallway - video. The hallways might be different sizes, or may even be outside, but they always start at point A and only give the option to go to point B. Even the character skills follow this linear growth. They give the illusion that you're making decisions, but if you go down the sentinel path with your main character, you don't get any options, you just get to go down the path and do exactly what is expected of you. It makes you want to think of FFX's sphere grid, but the mobility and flexibility of the sphere grid isn't there.

FFXIII is a much more rigid and linear RPG than the typical final fantasy game. It's still better than other games out there, and you still have some freedom, but it's just less than what you're used to in a massive world covering story.



Little Big Planet 2 - The Games I've Played

Platformers have taken a back seat to three dimesional settings in this new gen of games, but Little Big Planet shows just how well you can take a traditional idea and make it work for this generation of games.

Little Big Planet 2 does a crazy, yet totally awesome thing. It gives you a story line. The story line isn't anything amazing, but it can take you a while. While you're in the story line you can play with people online, or some friends at home, and you can have some good fun. You pick up stickers, can decorate your character, and things are pretty much a full game. If it was only the story line and the fun things you can do with that, it'd be an A+ sort of game-

The developers decided to hand over EVERYTHING that they used to make the story line, and put them in your control, allowing the community to make WHATEVER they wanted. This could be something lame, because gamers are lazy, but there are a few people out there that took these tools, and went crazy with them. The user created content takes everything that you thought was Little Big Planet 2 and runs wild with it, making entire levels that are nothing more than something you should look at and can't play in because it's art, or altering the mechanics of the system so much that they create games that have nothing at all to do with Little Big Planet 2.

The story line and what you get with the game is interesting, and somewhat difficult, but it's not until you get your ps3 onto the internet and see just what other people are making that things get crazy.

These creations aren't just new levels, they're entirely new GAMES that use the same engine as Little Big Planet 2. People have made full length movies, full length games, things that you'd typically have to buy one at a time, and they're entirely free just because you bought this one, amazing game that decided to release all of it's tools out to the public to use. The interesting part about this amazing game, and everything that has been created from it, they do it all without violence, typical 3d settings, and keep it all at an E for Everyone rating.

If you were the kid that had a box of K'Nex and Legos when growing up and just liked making ridiculous buildings or being creative in any way shape or form, Little Big Planet 2 is right up your alley. Even if you weren't the creative kid when you were growing up, you can still get this game and use the creative kid's building to play around with without having to do any of the work yourself.

Mar 28, 2014

Got it for 'Free' - The Games I've Played

When you buy a console, it's traditional that you also get a free game or two with it. It's the way things work. Back in the day, you bought an N64, you'd get a Mario 64 with it.
Buy a wii, get a wii-resort game. Buy a ps3, get a free Uncharted 2.
Now, let's go back in time to March of 2011, before this I had NEVER owned my own console. I'd played other friend's games, but never one of my own. I didn't know any better of what I would like and what I didn't, or even what controls I would like, so this game. . . oh this game. . . it broke me and is part of the reason that I hate certain types of games and avoid them to this date. One of the funniest things that this game taught me was what type of controls I liked using. In a weird twist of me not knowing what I liked and what I could do, you can invert or not invert ALL of your controls, and then you can do it again when you're zoomed in when targeting with a gun. My controls were so backwards. In one form they were inverted, in a different one they weren't. I had such a hard time understanding the controls, because I was brand new to console gaming, but I don't blame the game for that, I blame more of me trying things out and making the controls much more complicated than they ever needed.

You see, it's a semi-decent triple A game. It has everything that the sterotypical gamer would want out of a game. It's got the stealthy stealth sections, shoot 'em up sections, puzzle sections, and of course the hot girl sections. The graphics are okay, the music is okay, and all of the things that you'd normally review with a game, this game does decently well. All of the things that game reviewers said that I should like were there, but I didn't like them.

Let's start with the story. There's an item! Go get it! Yeah, that's about as much as I can remember. The story didn't really grip me. I didn't care about any of the characters, it didn't grab me and make me want to find out about them more, and it didn't give me anything more to work with than that. This was also the start of my rule of, if it's got the number 2 or higher in the title, I need to do more research. I'm 99% sure that if I understood what in the world happened in the first game, I'd understand and love the characters in 2 a lot more, and actually care about the story.

Respawn points/ checkpoints. I didn't know that I hated them until I really played a game with checkpoints like this. The theory is simple, if you die, mess up, or otherwise don't play the game right, you start back at the last checkpoint. The problem? What in the world is going on? Why is this never explained? How in the world do I just keep popping back into reality with all of my limbs intact and having to talk to the exact same people yet again, just to have the people not realize that I'm going to kill them this time? I don't like checkpoints. They are there so that if you ever get off of the linear story line that is set up for you, that you hop back on and have to finish up what the developers want you to do. I quickly learned through this game that checkpoints are there for game producers to force you to do something the way that they want you to do it. I still remember the stealth section and how frustrated I was with the checkpoint system because I had to keep listening to the same things over and over again. We'll get into checkpoints with later games, don't worry, I'm not done with you.


Difficulty- This is where I don't understand some games, especially first person shooters or action games like this. Difficulty never came through anything more than a guy taking more bullets to take down than usual. That was the difficult part, something was tankier than others. The puzzles never got harder, the directions were always clear, and I always knew exactly what Drake could do and what he couldn't. For example, Drake is a climber. He can scale up and do jumps from ledge to ledge like a mountain goat. He's a nimble little guy that has crazy upper body strength that lets him climb all over things. . . but only ones that are slightly more yellow than others because those are the ones the developers want you to climb on, everything else is a no go.
You can see EXACTLY which bricks you're allowed to work off of, they're the ones that are shaded unlike anything else in the system. Now, this is okay to highlight them at earlier levels. Let me know that walls, pipes, and other things are climbable, but then to keep that same system there until the end of the game? It makes me feel like the game is just handing me things.


Superhuman human. Drake is supposed to be a normal guy. Normal guys don't get shot, shake it off by hiding behind a wall, and are just fine. This was the start of my hatred towards regen health that has no explanation. If you're going to do crazy things like have me be able to run around without taking damage long enough to heal all damage done to me, at least explain how normal Joe is able to do it. There are some great games that approach this and explain exactly how and why you're able to eat bullets, hide, and then feel okay. This, along with checkpoints, made it seem like there was no challenge in the game. It wasn't a game that would be fun, exciting, or test me on skill, it'd be a test of how many times I could run away and heal up or just respwan and start at the last checkpoint. Everyone is going to do pretty much the same thing, and you might as well just strap me on the choo-choo train of story telling so I know that nothing I do will ever alter the story no matter how many times I die, or how many bullets I catch with my body, the ending is always going to be the same.


I can't complain about much with this game. As a whole, it's a solid game, but the core mechanics of what people consider essential to a great game make me sort of sick to my stomach. If I wanted a linear story where I had no input on what is happening, I'd read a book or watch a show. I play a game so that I can interact with the story and make a difference in what is happening.


Mar 27, 2014

Sonic '06 - The Games I've Played

I'm going to start out with this. . . game?

Still not quite sure where to start when talking about Sonic '06 because it's a weird, weird, WEIRD game, and this is coming from a person who enjoys old school rhythm games like Frequency, but this one is just a solid chunk of junk that no one really knows what to do with.

Now, everyone that is anyone, when they hear sonic, do not think about a 3d character, but instead instantly get transported to good ol' platforming 2d sonic.
The story- simple.
The graphics- simple.
The game play- run and jump (and in later versions, run and spin).

For the time, the game was perfection. It didn't give you much, but we weren't looking for much back then. We were happy with jumping platformers, and chiptune sounds. We liked the 'minimalistic' view of everything back then, because minimalistic was high tech. The problem with this is when you take something that is historically minimalistic, and historically bare bones when dealing with much of what gaming has turned into, and then try to translate it into next gen gaming- only bad things are going to happen. Indeed, bad, horrible, laughably dreadful, things happened.

I'm going to be honest, this game was so horrible, I played the first level and didn't touch the game ever again.

I've sat through some bad games. I've put up with bad graphics, bad gameplay, bad story line, and a lot of other bad things, but this game (one of my first games for ps3) has been a game that I've never had any desire to ever return to, ever. This game is bad.

Sonic is a fast little hedgehog. He's notoriously fast. They somehow thought that putting him going stupid fast was essential, but then forgot to think about what that means in a 3d setting. Part of speed is that you need to know what you're headed into so that you know what you need to do. If you don't know what's around the corner or what's happening to you once you do go super fast, you're just going to wreck. And you're going to wreck, over, and over, and over, and over again. With a speed that is too fast, trying to control Sonic with any accuracy is pointless. You push left, and he's two miles away from where you want to be before you can straighten out. You accidentally run into one of the speed pads or jump pads, and you have to pray that you can see where you're headed by the time that the game arbitrarily wants you to input a button.

Then comes the camera. The camera is NEVER stable. It jumps around from different perspectives at the most random points. If you look at it like a television show, or a movie, the camera jumps are great and theatric, but if you're trying to control the blue streak of Sonic during those, you don't know if you're supposed to be pressing up to run straight, or right, or down, or whatever angle you're forced to look at him from.

People talk about ET or Superman 64 being some of the worst games that are in existance, I'd like to put Sonic '06 on this as well.

Gameplay and the funky speed/camera issue that I talked about before. Then there's the set up. Sonic is a platformer. You jump, you run, you get the coins and that's about it. Sonic '06 has a mission base system where you run quests for people, but then has upgrades and improvements that you can make to Sonic, and then makes you go Mario 64 style, and jump into different worlds/areas to do levels in them. It's core structure is a mess of games, trying to be a lot of different things and then not doing any of them well.

You know it's bad when one of your biggest fans, a person who is so obsessed with the game that he can easily say that he's played it dozens of times start to finish, and is not exaggerating, says"It's one of the most famous Sonic games. . . for all of the wrong reasons."

Source-


This game- along with most/all of the other 'starter' games that I had when I first got my ps3, are going to get some of the worst reviews. They are the reason that I read and research games for months before buying them. I thought that they were great games because of what friends or 'professionals'  said. . . and then I realized that I had extremely different tastes in games than those people. All I know is that this game never made the loop back around. It never got so bad that it got good, it just got worse and worse.

World Finals

It might be worth mentioning, but world finals for the e-sports that I follow is happening this weekend.

http://www.twitch.tv/honcast

Suggestion From Work

While bored at work, was talking to my group and we started talking about gaming and the sort. We started talking about some of the games that we've played and some of the pro's and con's of them, and I told them about my bookshelf and my quest to try to finish off my bookshelf and spend some quality time with some quality games (while skimming through those other games that don't have so much going for them besides a semi-interesting storyline).

With about 40 ps3 games already under my belt, a passion for writing, and some strong opinions about games- why don't I write reviews?

Now I know, I know, a strong majority of my games that I'd be writing these reviews for and doing stuff for would be completly useless and not really worth much considering their release dates were along the lines of first games ever released with the ps3, however, I think it's a fun idea to give me a break in my writing of Dream Analysis, so I might give it a shot.

Chances of anyone reading them? Super low. Fun for me? Of course. I'll start at the bottom of my play list and work my way up, not forgetting about the two games that don't have trophies when I tackle them (Sonic '06 (which actually released in '07 for ps3) and Resistance 1). I like the idea, and it's better than the Quantum Leap-esque story line that I was playing around in my head that I was thinking about writing a short intro for, so I just might get that started soon.

I'll be following a rough play order of this list- http://psnprofiles.com/Adrillf/log?order=date&dir=asc&p=1 I haven't always stuck to the one game at a time rule, so at times we'll see which one I plan to do next, but we'll start at the start and work through it as we run into things. 

Mar 26, 2014

Little Things

I don't know if I should be content, or sad that the little things make me ridiculously happy.





Today, a bunch of little things made my day, really, REALLY good. Silly things, that don't matter in the least bit, and all things considering are a bit sad on the grand scale of things.

For example, on the way home my shuffle decided to start playing some of my favorite songs that are just bouncy and happy and always make my day. My bar is set really low right now for an amazing day, and I don't know if I should raise it to better standards, or just keep it low and find myself singing on top of my lungs to a song that has no words to it, or trying to try to sing along to a song that starts out with some really wubby bass lines.
Meh, I need a good day more often. So thank you. Thank you for the good day. Thank you for somehow making a normal day into a day that I can't stop smiling.

They Found Me!

AHHHH!!!!! A person found me!

And I was hiding my rants/stupidity so well too! That's what I get for putting direct quotes from people in class so that when you google the crazies from class you'd pull them up and accidentally run into me, because let's be honest, out of all of the Adam Walters that exist out there the Australian journalist is going to get a lot more press than me.


Close runner up is Adam Walters the comic book artist.


Last Night Loading

Back in the day you could put in a game to your console, and it'd start playing. You didn't need to download updates, download patches, or install some of the information onto your HD. Yesterday I finished Resistance 2, so I popped in Resistance 3. . . and then the loading and downloading screens started.

I was faced with the loading and install screen for a LOOOONG time. . . and I'm not proud to say it but then I dozed off.

I fell asleep on the couch, waiting for the game to install until 3 in the morning. At three I woke up, realized that I had been on the start screen for who knows how long, and then headed to sleep. It's sort of funny, but also sort of sad, that I spent an entire night of gaming with a loading screen.

Mar 24, 2014

Late Night Gaming

I can not tell you how great it is that I've only got a little bit of work to do this week with school now that I have my finals out of the way. It's nothing more than a bit of clean up, and then we're done. It's a great, great thing.

Tonight I know exactly what is going to happen when everyone is asleep.

Gonna get my game on. Finish up Resistance 2, and put some serious damage on Resistance 3. While working on those papers I managed to get Tales of Symphonia in HD and FFX-HD. That's what I get for working on homework, my stack on my bookshelf only gets longer! Time to do some damage to the bookshelf and start knocking games off of it. Resistance trilogy! I'm coming for you!

Put These Here

Here's the finals for this term. Lovely times trying to get these done in time for the due date.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2wADUNjl47IUFIxYzNodWZQOFVHQl9vVHgzS0FGUEZ0V19n/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2wADUNjl47IRTRIdnpXd3Y1eG5aVGswc1V3a0hfSVRGbi00/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2wADUNjl47IeUJoRTF6ZDZtN1ZEZjNKMG5KLTZDNTJoR0RZ/edit?usp=sharing

Logic Fail

One person is a little sick at work today.Tony decided to open up the window in our room because, "The air will circulate and the sick will go out the window."

That's right, he thought that if he opened up the window that he wouldn't get sick from the person (who by the way isn't even that sick) who is ocasionally coughing.

I love how stupid people at my work are.

Mar 19, 2014

Research

Happy Days!

I spent all night typing up all of the quotes and references that I want to use ONLY FROM THE BOOK to prove my point. I didn't include an intro paragraph, formatting, or anything from my secondary sources, and I'm already at 10 pages.

This is going to be an easy paper to write. Every time I add something from here on out, I get to edit out some of the fluff that I don't think is 100% essential. It's a great place to be in, having TOO MUCH research.

Mar 17, 2014

Work!

Yay! Work might be changing!

Lenia (our daycare lady) just told us that she will be willing to take Addison for a full work week. It's great news and I like it because it means that I don't have to stay at home with Addison. Don't get me wrong, I love my daughter, I love that I could spend time with her, but right now, I really want the ability to work and not have to stay at home.

Honestly, one of the things that was keeping me from trying to find a new job, or even begin to think about a job that might be within my field, was that Addison wouldn't have anyone to stay with. It was very much a question of either forcing Alicia or myself to stay at home with her when daycare couldn't/wouldn't take her, and with the idea that I could work a solid 40 every week, my hopes went up a bit because I don't have to worry about it.

I still have to worry about school and making sure that I actually graduate, but it's a lot of stress off of my shoulders knowing that I don't have to stay home. I like it, I love my daughter, but sometimes I'd like to start to think about having a big kid job that involves salary.

Yeah. . .

Coming from a few games that took me months on months to even finish, Resistance 2 is going by in a heartbeat. Now, I'm not trying to 100% it (no thank you), but I realized tonight after polishing off two chapter bosses in under an hour and a half, that I was getting dangerously close to finishing the game.

It's funny to look back at the games that I've tackled. You can sort of tell that I play an RPG and suck away quite a few hours. . . and then I speed through other ones either cleaning up some old trophies that needed to get knocked off the list, or running through a game just to get to the end of it.

Tales of Graces lead to Grand Theft Auto.
Dynasty Warriors lead into my Devil May Cry trilogy.

I then did Dark Souls, and had to purge myself from that evil by doing a bunch of games that I wanted all back to back to back (Silent Hill 3, Borderlands 2 (expansion packs)) Those lead me to quickly wrapping up Bio Shock, and then came Skyrim

Skyrim was pretty awesome, so it let me tackle (and finish) 3d dot game hero, Sonic's Ulimate Genesis Collection, and even a bit of ModNation Racers. Which then catches us up to the time sink of Ni No Kuni and where I'm currently at.

I just think that it's funny that there are some games out there that take 80+ hours to finish story line, and then a stupid amount of time if you're ever going to think about 100% them, and then there are games that are just as expensive and just as renown for being 'great' games that take maybe 16 hours to finish the game. Maybe I'm just crazy, but if I'm going to pay full price for a game, it better be a game that can last me more than a month of casually playing it whenever I don't have homework.

Luckily that's why we have the discount shelf. The Resistance series is prime category for, 'it's on super sale, I guess I could give it a shot'. They're not games that I'd typically look at, but enough hype has been made about them, and people seem to love them a lot, so when they showed up in a triple pack for a lot cheaper than what one of them would cost on their own, I thought I'd give it a shot.

With the end in sight, I just wonder which one I'm going to do next. It would make sense to tackle Resistance 3 and just finish up the series before jumping into a big RPG again, but we'll see where we get there. Plus, the big week of school projects is upon us, there's about zero chance that I'll be playing much of anything this week, I've got projects that have sub projects that are beating up on even smaller projects all due this week. Yay for grad school!

Mar 15, 2014

Job Replacement

My job is one that I might not enjoy all of the time, and it has some weird hours that I might have to work, but it's one of those things that I've been happy to have the job and wouldn't give it up for much. The thing about this is that soon I'm going to have to get a replacement.

Now, I get that any dead end person that is awake for half an hour can get this job. I mean, come on, there are teenagers that have this job. But really, I don't want some of the applicants to get it. There's one in particular, they've been on the job on and off for a bit, and they hold some potential to take over, but I have to 'cover' for them more often than they're in the office. I don't care how many people you know that are in upper management, and who in your family knows someone that knows someone that gets you the job, but I'm not going to give away my job to a person who would rather be doing anything else than the work that I've been doing for this long. Let's just hope that the next person on the roster for taking my desk spot isn't as lackluster.

Mar 12, 2014

Shooters

So in between writing my final papers, and working on homework, I've been slowly putting in the minutes on Resistance 2.



I came to a simple conclusion. The only difference between a first person shooter and a rail shooter isn't much. In a rail shooter you hold on and let it run, where in a FPS you have to do the walking yourself. You're never allowed to look where they don't want you to be, you don't get to take any other path other than the one that they have, and the biggest decision you get to make is which gun you're going to shoot to kill the baddies.

The hallways are fun shapes, and sometimes they even look like buildings or cities, but in the long run in both rail shooters and fps's you walk down until you hit specific points, kill everything, then move on to the next point to get your kill on. There is an attempt to have some story line, but you don't actually tell the story, you're not a part of it, you just have to hit the right trigger points for the cut scenes to happen, and then the game takes control for the story to happen.

I get it, it's mindless, and there's not much you can really think about, and I see the appeal. I know that I'm missing out on a large chunk of the play as well because I avoid online competitive play. Sorry, but I don't want to deal with that.

Now, I will admit that there are some amazing graphics and sky boxes. I mean they are down right impressive at some points, but then you realize that as amazing as intricate as some of those sky boxes are, you'll see a cut scene where a guy's backpack isn't separate from their body, like they're welded together. Awe inspiring backgrounds, but what am I supposed to do with an amazing background when there's not a chance in the world that I'm going to ever actually go to it and see it, or have anything to do with changing it?


Can't wait until I get done with my FPS/rail shooters on my bookshelf. Only a few more to go (Resistance 2, 3, Bioshock 2, 3) and then I'll finally be done looking down a barrel of a gun with the main story line being- there's bad people- kill them.

PS- Much like the action game Devil May Cry and the fighter game Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, because this is out of my wheelhouse of gaming, do not expect me in any way shape or form going for 100% on them. I just want to get them out of the way, be happy that they're on my finished bookshelf, and then never see them ever again. Not a chance in the world that I would put the time and effort into one of these to try to 100% them. Doing the game on the easiest difficulty for story line is enough for me, I don't need to do it on the hardest setting, never save, or get the highest possible rank in online multiplayer to get the 100% trophy. No thank you. I'm here to get the story line, finish the game and walk away. 

Slow Driver

I found out a new pet peeve that annoys me a few days ago while at work, and I forgot to put it up here, but then I remembered while I was working on homework and typing.

As stated before (I think) I type fast when I want to. It's not like I'm breaking world records, but it's fast enough that people know that I'm typing and doing a dang good job at it, instead of just sitting by a keyboard and finding the letters that I'm looking for.

Anyways, yesterday at work, there was the problem of the new guy trying to type up his notes to a lead that he got. It took far too long. Everything about me wanted to steal the keyboard away from his hands and tell him that he wasn't allowed to type anything ever again until he got up to at least 50 words per minute. I mean it was PAINFUL to watch him hunt and peck around the keyboard trying to find the letters that he needed to write the most basic of sentences.

Just something that I remember, now back to homework.

Mar 10, 2014

Persona 4

The Persona series is a lengthy series to play through. We're talking Disgaea long.

It's a LOOOONG game, and I just don't have the time to play it, and with #5 comming out sometime around the time I should be putting a dent in my bookshelf list of games, I don't want to play #4 just to have #5 come out and have to play through all of that.

With that in mind, I've finally found something to catch me up to par, while bored at work, and to waste the next few days while staying awake making phone calls to random companies.

To be perfectly clear on how lengthy this game is, even on a Let's Play, it's 151 episodes long, with the average being 20 minutes or so long. Yeah, it's a big game, can't wait for #5 to come out!

Best Moment Ever

So, after a long-ish game session of D&D with friends online actually happening over the weekend, Alicia asked me how things went, "How did it go? Kill the dragon? Save the princess? Do all of that stuff?"

"Actually the zombie apocolypse happened and we're stuck in a city surrounded by mutant zombies."

"Wait, did you write that? That's different."

"Yeah, I made it."

"Why?"

I paused for a minute to try to explain in a logical way why I enjoy mapping, story line creation, world construction, and all things that are DM-ing. The best answer I had was, "Because it's fun." She just sort of nodded her head like that was enough information and it was a totally okay reason to do something so nerdy. I don't know which made me happier, that Alicia didn't poke any fun at it, or that it was a good enough answer for her.




Mar 6, 2014

Typing

When I have nothing to think about and I can write as much or as little as I want, I crank out the pages and it's shocking to me to see just how much work I can get done in an hour.

And then comes the time that I have like tonight where I have hours upon hours to get work done and really put in some damage to my thesis, and I spend most of my time looking at time wasting stuff online. However I would just like to remind you all of this amazing song.


Mar 5, 2014

Time To See If I Can Work This

Let's see if I can get this to work for Brenton.

B-Day

I love birthdays on facebook, it's the one time a year that I hear from people that I could care less about. Thank you random stranger that I haven't talked to in over 10 years, thank you for wishing me a happy birthday.

Good news though, Addison gets to steal all of the spotlight. Seriously, this is a good thing. Focus on the cute one that isn't jaded about birthdays. She'll laugh when you tell her happy birthday, I'll just look at you and go "seriously?"

Mar 4, 2014

Time To Do Some Work

Well, now that was fun.





Did it!

100% on yet another big game. You can 100% your pansy little games, but things like this are just fun to walk around and say that you did everything ever in it. The crazy part is that I could easily go back and put in a few hours trying to do a few useless things and grinding out even more levels, but I won't because it's late, I have to work on that paper, and I can finally move on to a different game! Happy days!

Mar 3, 2014

100

Yay!

100th post!

Yup, that's how bored I've gotten at work, I've managed to do 100 posts already. Sort of sad, but sort of amazing at the same time. 


Blank Stare

If you ever catch me giving you the blank stare
It means that you have bored me so much, that I'm doing something else in my mind instead of having to deal with you. I'm thinking about ANYTHING other than what it is that you're making me go through, and it's better than you.

Now, on first guess you're going to say that I'm nerding out and dealing with something fun, like D&D or games of some sort. Now this is true, sometimes, but not neccisarily the rule of thumb. If I give you this blank stare and then I start looking happy like I just solved a math problem in my head that's been bugging me for a long time, then yes, I'm most likely thinking about something like this.

For example, today in the flavor of boring that was hitting me I was trying to remember trigonometry so I could solve the question that if a ramp was sloped down at only one degree or even less than one degree for an entire mile, assuming that we're not taking into account the curvature of the world, how far down that would go. This mean that I started to draw a right triangle in my head with the hypontonuse being one mile, and then the angle being 1 degree and then working out what I would need to do to that to solve for the opposite and not the adjacent.

I can't remember exactly why I was thinking this, it might have had something to do with the sewer system in the D&D game and I wanted to make them run at a slight angle down to drain water, but I didn't want the sewage to get too out of hand so I was trying to figure out what the rise over run would be if the slope was only at a 1 degree slope.

The math for anyone wondering turned out to be


tan (1) = 1 mile (5280 feet) / opposite
1.557 = 5280 feet / opposite
opposite (1.557) = 5280 feet
opposite = 5280 / 1.557
opposite = 3,391.13 feet.

So at a slope of only one degree, a mile length of sewage pipe would drop roughly 3,391 feet which is almost two thirds of a mile drop (rounding up by a lot, it's actually 60% of a mile, but whatever). Needless to say, sewage pipes are going to now have a much smaller slope in D&D now. Yes, I'm a nerd, and yes I use trigonometry to answer basic questions about city planning in a fictional setting, and most importantly, yes finding the solution to that does make me smile just a bit.

Back to topic.

Blank stares, and me.

It's going to happen. And realize that when it does, I'm just trying to make myself not yell at you for things being so boring. Instead of yelling, I just remove myself from the situation. Now because I know that most situations don't work that great with me just walking out of the room during the middle of whatever is going on, I remove myself mentally. I'd much rather be vacationing in the sewage system of some not yet named city and doing city planing within it, than do what I'm stuck with you doing, so I blank stare. The best part about it, is that blank stares are where I get my best work done. It's in those boring moments that I come up with some of the best and most creative ideas. The more boring life is, the better I get at creativity, so thank you. Thank you for contributing to the fine art, and not so fine art, that comes out of my mind when I blank stare you.


EDIT- I just looked at my math and it seemed wrong, when it's not 3:30 in the morning, I'll give it a second look and work it out on pen and paper, I think I got my ratios wrong and did the trig wrong. Don't tell me the answer! I'll figure it out when I get bored at work!

Edit #2-
So I've come back to this problem, and the question is if we're focusing on 1 mile of distance above ground, (which would mean that we know the adjacent length, looking for opposite) or if we're talking about 1 mile of distance on the ramp (which would mean that we know the hypot length and looking for opposite).

With that in mind, we have two potential problems, both which deserve to be solved.

Problem #1- We know adjacent length, and are looking to solve for opposite.

This is where we would use tan(x) = opposite/ adjacent

You'll notice here that I did the math wrong the first time I did this and forgot the ratio of tangent functions. In the first post I had the ratio of tangents being adjacent/opposite, but now that I'm awake I can see the mistake and say that tan = opp/adj as we can remember from the little phrase, "SOHCAHTOA" so-ca-toe-ah.


The other problem that I ran into was that my calculations were in radians instead of degrees. This makes numbers look a LOT bigger, and considering that I'm starting off with one DEGREE I should be smart and make my calculator work in degrees.

With those changes done we get
tan(1) = opposite/ 5280 feet
5280*tan(1)= opp
92.16274 feet = opposite.

This means that assuming that the above ground distance of one mile, the sewage pipe at 1 degree only drops 92.16274 feet. This makes MUCH more sense than what I said before, and sewage pipes are resting a bit easier than the botched math that I was running before.

Problem #2, you have a mile of the pipe and want to know how far you drop in that mile (this should be less than problem #1 by knowing simple geometry, but we'll use trig to show you just how much of a difference.

For this one we're going to be using-
sin(1) = opposite/hypot
sin (1) = opp/ 5280 feet
5280* sin (1) = opp
92.1487 feet = opp

THERE WE GO! Finally, when I'm awake and know what I'm doing, I don't make as many mathematical mistakes.