So, I mentioned that I had played Plants vs Zombies. Lo and behold it was a fracking EA game. Popcap was bought up by EA in 2011 and still publishes under 'Popcap' instead of 'EA' - go figure. I looked at the App store and sure enough no reference to EA anywhere on there. Out of principle I feel ashamed, but figured I would write a small blog for repentance. Luckily I got it on a free weekend so no money was added to EA's coffers, but I do feel ashamed that I just gave EA that many more statistics that say I want what they produce. I started off thinking, everyone talks about it, I should probably try it out.... oh the regret! Anyhow, looks like I'm going to have to do a detailed Google search these days to validate my publisher information from here on out.

February has come and gone and so have a bunch more games. What did I play though? Here is a breakdown by platform: PC - 5 iPad - 4 DS - 3 GBA - 2 X360 - 1 Wii - 1 Atari 2600 - Yeah you heard me. A lot lighter on the games this month, but the whole month I felt like I was trying to find something to play instead of really having something to dive into. Here's was the breakdown.

PC

I played some more Minecraft that is a given, but I did play some other games.

Legend of Grimrock - So I picked this up at the same time I pre-ordered Ys I / II off steam. I really like the game. The food situation can be problematic at times, but I find it a good game to play. I wish someone would take the concept and make Wizardry again, or games like it. I really enjoyed Wizardry on the iOS store, until I got so deep in the dungeons every fight was a bout of 'are you lucky?' That is one of the reasons this game excels. You can usually run away and such. Monster spawners turn the game annoying though.

Ys I - Somehow I became a fan of the Ys games. It happened on the SNES when I borrowed a game from a friend. Having finished up Ys Origin recently I wanted to play the sequels. I was almost to the point of trying to find this game on the DS when it got announced it was coming to Steam and the PC. Preordered it same day I heard about it. Got it and already finished through it. Has a very action based 2D feel like a top down Zelda. The attacking mechanic is lame though so I'm glad they went away from it in newer titles. You bump into enemies at an off angle to hit them and not take damage yourself. The story leaves you hanging and is very simplistic but that is what Ys II is for. Ys II - Basically the same game as Ys I but now actually on the Ys Island. This game is a lot weaker IMO. It seems like every area is a maze with no real reason for it being a maze other than to mess with your mind and force you to map it out. I'm almost done with the story so I'm sure I'll talk more about it in a March update. To the Moon - I love this game. It doesn't play much like a game, more like an interactive story but that didn't stop me from replaying it with my wife this month. We went on a weekend getaway and this is one of the games I took with us. She didn't want to stop playing it and I didn't want to either. I still rank it among the best games I think I have played in the last few years. The music is great, the story is good. It is very lite on the 'gaming' but that is okay. With its FF VI like graphics and intriguing and touching story line, twists and all. This game was well worth the $6 I paid for it. Can't wait for a sequel

iPad

The Room - This is a great puzzle game. It has really nice graphics and the puzzles are never too hard. It is a story about you being in a room with a box and you have to open the box. Of course in the box is another box... If you don't care too much about the spacial impossibilities the game is great and actually has an interesting hint of a story. It was definitely setup for lots of sequels. If you are puzzle gamer though, you should play this game. It is free so just play it. Will take a few hours and that is it so it is nice to pick-up and finish. Puzzle Quest 2 - I didn't actually buy the iPad edition of the game, I got the 'freemium' edition. I played through the first town and such and then it cuts you off and begs for money. That's alright, it is the modern day equivalent of shareware. I enjoyed it, but I don't know. I liked the original one, more or less, until I found items that healed me every turn. Then it was too easy. That and 'match 3' games don't hold my interest very much. It was enough for me to get a break and such with. I realized I had it on the DS as well and tried it out there. the DS edition just doesn't have the production values of the iPad edition. It is pretty sad really. Who knows if I'll play this more. It sure didn't catch my fancy even on the DS. The Walking Dead - I played Episode 1, to start off March I bought the rest. I like the idea of the game, but there definitely are some characters in the game I can't stand. I also dislike the fact the game swears all the time. As the world goes to pot I sure hope all the people with no standards aren't all that are left. Of course that is probably why the world would go to pot in the first place though. Somehow they made a whole TV show series (which I also started watching) without F* bombing the whole time. It is still amazing. Thus, proof you don't need to swear to make a point and add drama. I think people just like to swear because they think it sounds 'real' - actually it makes you sound like an angry person without intelligence. Every chance I get to watch someone die off it is usually the people that swear the most that I let go. Swearing aside, I just wrapped up episode 2 and will move on to three tonight. Games like this, To the Moon, and others are games I want to see more of. I'm sick of TV - I'll take games like this to fill the TV void in an instant. Plants and Zombies - This game is basically a tower defense game without much of the fun to it. It is super basic, simple and mostly outright boring. I have played 20 or so levels and I still do about the same thing every round. If this is the only tower defense game anyone ever plays I feel sorry for them because it isn't very good and really shows how boring tower defense can be if done wrong. It was free though... which is why I played it. I felt responsible to play it as it was so popular. Once again, what is popular on the iPad usually sucks - you have to find the good stuff. This isn't the good stuff. Card Games - I didn't count this in my totals, but felt like I should be honest. Tichu and Pinochle get played very frequently on the iPad. Just about every day... depending on how "regular" I am.

DS

Puzzle Quest 2 - already talked about this in the iPad section. Puzzle Quest 1 was better. They tried to give it a more 'real' feel and it failed. The overworld map of the first game was much better. Advance Wars: Dual Strike - I didn't play this much. I have sunk about 80 hours into the game already before I picked it up again. I really like Advance Wars games, but this just didn't hold my attention for very long. Guess I'm just not ready for TBS at the moment. Nintendogs - Yeah, you heard me. So, while I was looking through old DS games, I noticed this. Now, don't hate me because I played it but I remember thinking it was a cool edition of those 'electronic pet' games of my youth that I never had. I know why I never had them. These games are work. It is just like having a real pet except without the fun of having a real pet. On top of that, this is why I don't like Nintendo to make games to 'test the waters'. The game is amazingly shallow. Doesn't have enough cues to know if you are doing something right or wrong. It is just a horrible game that wasn't developed well.

The Stragglers

Mirrors Edge - X360 - It has been a long time since I put this one in, but I felt like it. Got through the first level really quick. Watched the E-ssurance cut scene and went on to the next level. It is a fun game and all, though quite a bit of trial and error to get through even on later replays. It also has really poor dialog with lots of "B" level swear words... Again, it just makes the game appear worse than it should. Donkey Kong Country Returns - Wii - Platformers that have you play two players or more at the same time just aren't that much fun unless you are paired with someone as good as you. My wife likes this series of games as platformers more than me though so it was my attempt and making a bridge game to play with her. It is a lot more fun though to just put Diddy on your back and play single player 10 times over. We are only on area 5... someday we will finish it.

Atari 2600 - I didn't want to show each of the games I played on this separately. Suffice it to say that for Valentines day my wife got me one of those Atari consoles that has 75+ games on it and the joysticks / paddles and I have played it a little bit. After playing my staple games, Adventure, Front line, Jungle Hunt, Combat, Haunted House, Missile Command, Breakout... more Adventure. Sometimes it makes me wonder if someday I'll be able to buy a 'Nintendo' system that has a bazzilion of their games all on one console with a nice controller for $50. That would also be a nice gift in the future. But I know Nintendo will keep milking reselling that stuff at $5 of years to come.

Wrap-up

So 10 of the 16 games get a "Yes I enjoyed it ranking. 4 Got a 'sorta enjoyed it'. One Meh, and one hated it. That is still pretty good odds and if I focus on the stuff I liked it reminds me gaming can be fun despite the few lemons you play every so often. I also want to give a shout out to Nate for gifting me a copy of Oblivion on Steam. I really love that game. I ended up losing all my data from my last play through when I blew away my hard drive on accident. But I will get back to this game at some point and now I know Steam will make it easy so I don't have to dig out the discs... wherever they ended up. Now I think I owe you two games...

Speaking of Steam... Mark of the Ninja was only $5 this weekend. I purchased it up as it was on my wishlist and I'm looking for more controller games for my Steam account. I hear it is great a platforming and stealth. Two genres that I think might be as awesome as they say when combined.

Lastly, as I have mentioned I'm a big Ys fan. Well Ys is published by XSeed and when I bought Ys Origin or something like that I signed up for their newsletter. I figure if I'm going to get some spam it should be about games that I might like. Well this last week they had an interesting offer of buying games direct from them and getting bonus items from their store. I took them up on it because I'm feeling a little RPG and got "The Last Story" - it also came as a collectors edition with art book and the like similar to those "only at release" packages. I haven't played it yet, but I looked into the game mechanics and such and it seemed interesting. Anyone else every played it? Here's hoping I get to it this month. Thanks for reading and hope you have fun gaming.

So browsing around GS's "News" section today and I found the post about EA: Consumers "enjoying and embracing" microtransations. This had to be the best post I have seen in some time - it is lost on page 3 by now, never to be read again so I hear-by make it available to me and anyone that reads my blog: Gamers are "enjoying and embracing" getting kicked in the nuts, according to Electronic Arts chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen. Speaking today during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, the executive said swift kicks to the junk will be performed more and more by publisher's moving forward. "We are building into all of our games the ability to project our feet from the gamers screen, and landing them right in their groinal area as many times as we see fit; to get to a higher level, to buy a new characters; to buy a truck or gun or whatever it might be," Jorgensen said. "And consumers are enjoying and embracing how our feet now occupy the area between their legs, bruising their testicles ever so slightly." In order for EA's nut crunching platform to flourish, the correct foot-to-crotch technology must be in place, Jorgensen said. Not only has this been achieved through efforts from chief testicular officer Rajat Taneja, but EA has made this painful process more amusing by bringing it in-house. "You've got to have a very strong backend to make sureif you're repeatedly getting nutslammed, and you're falling to your knees, you won't get eaten alive. And so Rajat's team has built an amazing backend support system to manage those nutshots in a much more sustainable fashion. We've outsourced a lot of that stuff historically; we're bringing that all in-house now... so we can personally kick you in the nuts."

I know there are still two days left in January, but I think I'm done playing for the rest of the month right now and I found some time to write. Some stats I found interesting before I go into details: From January 1st to today, I played 22 games. 9 / 15 games were completed. Platform breakdown: 9 - PC 7 - iPad 2 - X360 1 - SNES 1 - Wii 1 - NES 1 - GBA I enjoyed 19 / 22 and completed 12 / 22 of them. So what games were they? I mentioned quite a few of them in my previous blog, so I won't repeat those here until I kept playing them and my thoughts changed. So on to the details: Minecraft / Minecraft (PC and 360): So, I realized my kids have played a lot more minecraft now and playing 4 player splitscreen might be fun with them again - that and I never did finish these achievements. So I played a few days with them and cleaned up the achievements - only one to go now... pig flying. I will have to say, if anyone is still playing this edition it better be because you don't own a computer in your home that can run Minecraft. The X360 edition is still really bad compared to the PC. Really bad. On the PC side of things - I ended up making a skyscrapper over 200 blocks long and 100 blocks high. I should post a picture as it is hard to describe. It has an elevator in it (what skyscrapper wouldn't?) lots of windows, 11 floors, it is big... but empty. On the top I want to put a tower of lava, but I want it to be cool, so it is taking some time to finish. Super Mario Bros (NES): Yep, the NES edition. I usually make through every 2D core mario game platformer every year. So I plopped down and played this one. It is so dated it is ridiculous. Well, no big deal, not the longest 10 minutes of my life after-all. It is a good thing these old games don't take 4 hours to play like a modern shooter or anything like that. Trauma Center (Wii): As of now I have finished up the game again. I know I'm not good enough to do the X-levels, so I'll call it good with this. I looked at my original save of my first playthrough. XS's on every level... wow. Yeah, I'm not going to invest that much into the game this time around. Metro 2033 (PC): For some reason I get lost a lot in the game... and keep forgetting the controls. Every time I need to turn off my light I have to remember what key does it. I can't keep the bullets straight (which goes to which gun) and the game doesn't let you keep out your gun in towns, so I always forget what I'm packing until it is too late. I'm quite a few chapters in though and I had my first turn around "holy sh*t!" monster moment that comes from these sorts of games. I should be expecting this sort of thing by now... I'm clearly not really in the mindset to play FPS's anymore. I looked up how far I am in the game and I'm only half way... I don't know if I'm going to make it because I'm tiring of the shoot/sneak blend that there is to the game. I also think the story is very disjointed. I mean there are a lot of levels that end in one spot and start with you somewhere else - you can clearly see this is a break where two different groups were working on the development. I'm also really tired of the weapons - they all feel like I'm shooting a nerf gun. And yes I get life is dire for everyone in these times, but the story is going nowhere. I'm still just treking across the metro and above ground to get to the same place I sent out for 4-5 hours ago... when does it get better? It probably doesn't. This is probably one of the most disappointing games I have played that I wanted to play. I still enjoyed parts, but it is dragging to the point I just don't want to play it anymore. Fire Emblem, The Sacred Stones (GBA): As I continue to play it, I didn't realize how rediculous the dialog is in this game. It has lots of odd characters in it and I just don't really like. I like the original GBA Fire Emblem in just about every way above this game other than this one has an overworld map you can move around on and fight between the fights... and and tower to grind in / earn levels weapons. Tiger Woods '12: So I have won the masters, have been ranked #1 for some time now. But I have a ton of courses on it and the game is actually pretty good for a golf game. This is what I play at least every week or so to do another course and get my golf fix. Doors (iPad): This game is lame. Take old school puzzle game like the Univited, make them one room affairs with the majority of the game is you trying to figure out what you can do in the game in the first place - and the developers make it up as they go - and there is your puzzle game. The fact this was a popular game of sorts makes me sad for the game space the is drawn to these things U.N. Squadron (SNES): This game draws me often. The game is a side scrolling shooter, where I now have to make up my own meta-game otherwise it is just too easy. This time around I had to beat it without ever dying. That is right, I set this game to 'Hardcore' mode and played it. Still beat it on my first playthrough. I never even got near death. I did take some bullets though. Maybe next time I'll play with my favorite meta-game in that you have to beat it without dying and without beating the 2nd two moving levels (sub and mercs).. Portal (PC): Every so often I get in the mood to crank through Portal. It only takes a few hours (2 in this case) so it makes it a very easy game to get into and finish. Maybe I'll replay Portal 2 sometime. Scoregasm (PC): A twin stick shooter that has branching paths depending on how good you do. I really like the game, hate the name. I actually kind of wish the Wii edition of Geometry wars was on the PC because I really like that game. I have tried a couple other twin stick shooters but they always seem to focus on bullet hell more than just shooting and such. Regardless, I like this game. It has a normal and an expert mode, the later every enemy that blows up throws bullets out from it. You eventually get really good pulsing through all the bullets. Still a good game to play with some silly rewards for finishing it. There is a boss for each difficulty, and that is doubled due to expert mode being in the game. I am annoyed though with games like this and their attempts to complicate the combo system. This game you not only have to kill stuff without dying, you have to do it in a short time frame between kills. It makes you wander around the level as much as possible avoiding stuff until you get ready to go postal on everything to keep your combo up. I really like Geometry wars you shoot it you collect the multiplier, you score lots of points. Still this is my favorite PC shooter right now - I'm hoping to find something to replace it though. iFighter 2.0 (iPad): A free game that is a vertical scrolling bullet hell shooter. It suffers from all the same problems bullet hell games have had since they have only targeted the hardcore players. Every level has a pattern and you better memorize it because you can't shoot it fast enough to prevent the bullets. This is no U.N. Squadron, but it is okay I suppose. The goal of the game is to grind on it forever and eventually buy 'stars' so you can buy all the stuff in the game that are 'unlockables'. As it is a 'free game' you get some nice ads on the opening screen and of course you could always just pay money and buy everything and win. You can start on easy and work your way all the way through the hardest mode. I have done everything but one level on the hardest mode. Like most games like this though if you die you are a lot worse off seeming it just respawns you with no equipment right in the middle of the fight you weren't good enough to beat with ALL your equipment. It baffles me people haven't seen what a dumb design choice this is in this day and age.

Ys Origin (PC): I saved the best for last. Having beat it twice, once with each of the first two playable characters I wanted to come back and finish it off with the last character. I had played this and Ys III's PC remake all at the same time and tired of the mechanics which is why there was a nice break in the middle. Well I came back to finish out the game with the last character. Ys Origin is a great game because each character you play with twists the story a little bit and reveals more of the back story. It makes it feel like a new game each time through. The last character actually gives you the 'true' ending and true final boss.

Definitely worth every dollar I spent on it. Upon seeing the true ending there are a ton of other grindy type things I could do in it, but I see little reason to grind up longer with it. I will end up coming back to it at some point though. I absolutely love what they did with the story between the 3 characters, the artwork, the music, and the gameplay is fast paced and fun.

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The interesting things I noticed by tracking what I played is I play a lot of games. A lot of them are bite sized affairs due to time and all of them are older games. It will be interesting to see how many 'new' games I pick up as I move forward. Am I sick of the high prices and wait for them to drop or am I just sick of everything new that is coming out? What have you played? What was your favorite hit? what was your biggest disappointment?

So here is what I have been placing over the last 14 days. Minecraft, PC - Finished out the achievements, well sort of. https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MC-2097 prevented me from finishing it 'officially', but I have killed the Ender Dragon and warped back, watched the 'ending' and that was that. Good thing too. I needed a break from this game. Trauma Center, Wii - I'm replaying the game. Already to Chapter 3 again with all 'S' ranks. The game is moving a lot faster than the first time I played it. Still really like it though. Faster Than Light, PC - Having beat the game once I figured I should give it one more shot. I got to the second phase of the boss with little to no damage... then was horribly smoked. It is a 2 hour slog fest with a cheap 60 second 'sorry, you lose' tossed in at the end. How does dross like this ever get so many awards? Because people like pain and they like to inflict it upon themselves repeatedly until they "beat it" and claim dominance. Unfortunately, sometimes the joke is on you. This game blows. Left 4 Dead 2, PC - Having received this as a gift during the Steam Christmas sale I gave it a shot. I played online once, but realized I don't even know what I was doing... so I started going through the campaign in single player. I don't get to play it much due to content and the fact most of my gaming is done in front of my kids... This isn't a game I can play in front of my kids. Metro 2033, PC - This one also gets played very infrequently due to content. I like the game... but I don't really like the save system. Eventually I will finish this one out. Star Wars: KOTOR, PC - I'm already through the first two planets and pushing onward. I forgot how well Bioware use to make games. For some reason I wanted to play evil, which is a first for me picking up games like this. Usually I always play as a good guy, then on the replay be evil... I guess technically this is a replay.

TrackMania United, PC - which is funny, I still play the free edition (TrackMania Forever) more than the paid edition. I have little reason to ever upgrade this game to the latest edition. Still provides the time trial racing in me something to do. It is great because it isn't a simulation and yet doesn't have rubber banding either (see below for more about this) Kingdom Builder, iPad - The winner of the German board game of the year award, now on iPad. Plays pretty good too, but doesn't have the expansion with it yet. I can usually beat the AI. Stone Age, iPad - One of my favorite worker placement board games, now on iPad. Works great and it replaced my other board games and card games on the device. I usually beat the AI. The World Ends With You, iPad - Yep, basically the same game as on the DS only without the dual screen stupid that the DS edition had. I'm yet to finish this game as it is another long pushing RPG of sorts. I will have to say it is 100% better on the iPad than the DS. Jetpack, iPad - Super casual grinding collect'em all game. Good in 60 second intervals or less. No real point, but for some reason still interesting enough to pick up and play every so often. VS Racing 2, iPad - It has the look of Super Sprint, yeah the classic top down racer. It is an okay game though because of how poor the rubber banding is in the game. Why does every racer have rubber banding except high end simulator types? Because racing games are mostly lame and programming the AI is hard or something. So instead, rubber band it. So much potential, so wasted. Fire Emblem, The Sacred Stones - Getting my Fire Emblem fix in. The more I hear about the 3DS game coming out soon, the more I want it. I'll try and burn out on Fire Emblem before I end up buying a $240 edition of Awakening (3DS + the Game).

So for the year

Games Played: 13 Games Enjoyed: 11 out of 13 Favorite Game so far: Minecraft. I don't know how much I have put into this game... oh yeah I do, statistics say 5.60 days! wow. that's a lot of time.

Least Favorite: VS Racing 2. So much potential, so lame.

So having to get over my Minecraft addiction I turned to a game I got from GOG.com for $5, Faster Than Light, or FTL. I really want to like it - it is a rogue like strategy game so dying is part of the fun right? Well I agreed until just recently, my most recent attempt at beating it actually caused me to rage quit. It took time to get good at the game, making sure I could maximize my playthrough and get to the final boss. This last playthrough I was golden. I didn't even take damage the last few sectors, I had max power, shields, guns, etc. The work. Everyone on my ship was a gold expert at something. I had a boarding party, extra scrap - I mean this was the time I was going to win. As I got to the final boss and beat him - unscathed - I laughed at the game little bit, I knew I would get good at it, but I didn't expect a slaughtering like I dished out... then the game said F*ck You and bent me over so hard that there was nothing I could do. I mean, it is okay for games to be hard, but cheap? Yeah.

For a game that gets so much press at being good, I'm sorry the game doesn't want you to have fun. It is 7 sectors of pure annoying to maximize your ship (I thought it was fun to do this at the time) but to get to sector 8 and watch it all go up in smoke. wow. So much potential for a game... instead it turns into a simple game of chance. Now mind you... difficult games are not the deterrent here. I have beat Battletoads, Zelda 2, Contra, F-Zero GX, and more for crying out loud in the past. I don't mind spending time to "beat" a game... Time to switch back to Minecraft. EDIT: By the way... I finally beat the bugger. I just got a lucky enough run and finished it out. I have very little desire to ever play it again. But now add that to the list of hard games I have beat. Maybe I should not complain much anymore, but really, I just don't see a reason to subject myself to this sort of broken design anymore.

So I bounced over to penny arcade today at lunch and found the comic about a new 'Humble' bundle from THQ. Really this is nothing more than a fancy way to have a Steam sale. There is no indie in it, you have to play on Windows, and you have to have Steam. The good news, it had Metro 2033, which I have been wanting to buy anyhow. The catch, they only give you steam keys if you pay $1 - (wait a minute so for .01 they give me what again? soundtracks? pffft) So... $1 it is. I guess it still is a "humble" bundle though THQ is dead pretty soon and they need any cent they can get. Luckily all mine went to charity. Suck that publisher "re-seller" guy. I might have given some to the dev's but I'm pretty sure at this point none of them still work there - or very few. Anyhow, if there happens to be one game in there you might like, feel free to look into it.

Two things I want to talk about:
1. Penny-Arcades reaction to the Wii U 'gaming community' 2. More Minecraft stuff 3. The Wii and lack of GC support

Gaming Communities

If you didn't see the comic, go to it here The summary is the Wii U community is clean. It isn't full of trolls (yet), douches (yet), or crazy's (yet) and yet this is how 'gaming communities' are viewed. It is abnormal that someone can play games online and not be bombarded with dickheads. This is the very reason online gaming has never been my thing. It is hard to get a group of people you can actually talk to and not have to deal with it. It was the reason I bailed on Xbox Live. I finally found a group of people to play rockband with and it was going alright - but voice chat didn't exist and it took me a good 2 months to find a group of 3 people that weren't crazy - unless they were drunk that weekend. I bailed and never looked back. However, the Wii U looks like it won't be complete crap and that is intriguing to me. But what are your thoughts on gaming communities?

Minecraft

So my kids are huge into it. I will mention they are 9 and 7. The 7 year old doesn't get the crafting bit, so the X360 edition is perfect for him because it is an old build and does all the recipes for you. My 9 year old though is now PC or nothing. I want him to play with his friends and such, but... as I mentioned in my first topic, online is a horrible place. Until he understands that concept I definitely want to help him along... this is called parenting. Yeah, I'm trying to do it. Regardless, I looked at the fact I wanted to setup a server in the cloud for some time to do some websites, Java programs, and other hobby type things I have wanted to do for some time. What better excuse to do it other than also setting up a minecraft server on it? So I did. I now run a minecraft server - it is still vanilla and all but I was going to put on some mods today that I feel are necessary - like redstone not sucking, a map utility to give real-time mapping from the web, that sort of stuff. The interesting thing is right now it is just my son and I playing. We will probably have some family join in as well as his friends (if they aren't jerks - there is already one kid out for sure) and play.

If you have ever thought of playing Minecraft online, but wasn't quite sure - or if you just didn't want to do it online because of 'griefers' or the like let me know and maybe I'll open it up to someone. Right now it is white-listed, so no one gets in without me explicitly saying they can. Might be fun - if nothing else, maybe I'll just make the world viewer more 'public' or share some screen shots eventually.

The Wii and GC support

I also found out the Wii doesn't support GC compatibility anymore... looks like I can't buy a new Wii to replace my old one after-all. This sucks, because I'm sure that the VC is where they are going to put them for the Wii U, probably at $20 each game, and then slowly bleed them out over time instead of just putting them there. I'm not going to fall for that trash again like I did for the Wii. So I looks like my old Wii is going to get repaired instead of replaced. Too bad too because I bought one of those cheap $89 ones during Black Friday and now it looks like it will become my kids Netflix player instead. Lame... I knew they were planning this with the Europe edition and the Black Wii, but it appears I totally missed the announcement that they did it to every Wii, everywhere. Sucks to be me.

With the removal of most of the conditions on this site I can see it has quickly become IGN only worse. I can barely comment on the news anymore without being torn apart by people that would rather insult me than actually post something valid in return. The language is off the charts now... this site really sucks now. It has degraded to the lowest of the low in terms of respect of each other. It use to be limited to system wars, you go there you deserve what you get. Now this whole site is like that. Just trash at every corner. I come here mainly due to habit at this point anyhow. I mean they rarely report anything of value that I want to hear. It is always ME3, Assassin's Creed, or other AAA barf that has been reported better and in a less biased way elsewhere anyhow. I did like the comments sections so I could feel like I was part of a dialog (being able to talk about gaming keeps you close to it), but as I mentioned that is pretty shot right now. Meh. Anyhow, on to Minecraft. I knew this game was a problem out of the gate. That is why I avoided it like the plague. I knew it would consume my life as I built and dug and did stuff. Well my kids came home after playing it. I downloaded the Xbox demo of it and played a little bit. It didn't take long to purchase it (don't buy it for Xbox for other reasons. I'll explain). It had local multiplayer, split screen support, this was awesome. My kids and I were playing games again together.

After sinking the next few nights into it. and I mean ALL night (all of us) - I ended up with a pretty nice house with a huge hole in the ground that I was mining. I had branched out to animals and trying to craft everything in the game I could. The animals did it for me though - the Wiki was telling me Minecraft did all sorts of awesome to help me out but the Xbox animals were not cooperating. Turns out the Xbox edition is a garbage port and should be avoided at all costs. It still sold a bazzilion copies. So I turned to the PC. And what a difference. There are still some things that drive me nuts - like when I get lost in caves and such because there is no map (and if you craft one it is complete garbage). I wish I didn't have to put all the crap in the right slot to craft it - it doesn't really provide much value there that the Minecraft Wiki doesn't tell me faster. Never-the-less, probably the most fun I have had in a game in a long time. Yeah the graphics suck, they kind of had to so the whole block thing makes sense. Yeah there are still some bugs and a complete lack of polish here and there. But until I finish making my village the way I want with these 'legos' I'm going to be mining. If you haven't tried it, you probably should, unless of course you haven't tried it because of the fear it will eat away your life... then stay away from it.

So, I got on a Fire Emblem kick again this last weekend. I'm working my way through the GC one, as well as the first one for the GBA. It got me thinking of the Fire Emblem that will be on the 3DS. See Fire Emblem to me is in the category of "system seller" so I figured I would take a look around in the 3DS library and see what was out there... here's what I came up with: Nano Assault - I like shooters. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon - Turn based - looks interesting Sin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor - I like these games too. Maybe it is worth having Ace Combat - I like the AC games. Maybe it is a go. Pilotwings Resort - I do like Pilotwings, everyone says this is really short, probably not worth it. Maybe I'll gamble it. and... that's pretty much it. I guess I could tack on: New Super Mario Bros. 2 - More platforming with lots of coins... There are the 3D iterations too, but I never even finished SMG2 - I don't think 3D mario is really my thing. The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of time - I've already played this... twice. If I wanted a 3rd playthough, I would play it on my Wii. Neither of these are reasons to buy the system. Only because the system has little else on it would I buy them. There are the classic games that I could download, but those are more of a convenience than a reason to buy one.

Anyhow, long story short. Can I justify spending $200 just to play a Fire Emblem game? $200 for FE and these other games? Um, no... sorry 3DS you still suck.