Friday, December 16, 2011

Club Nintendo - Order Complete

Club Nintendo started offering digital downloads for coins, and says they will be changing them out monthly according to the website.


Club Nintendo - Order Complete

Club Nintendo - Order Complete

Monday, December 05, 2011

Tap, tap.... Is this thing on??

Hey what's up? I'm going to assume a lot since August 10th, since that was just shy of 4 months ago. :)

Let's see probably the biggest thing was the indoor wading pool in my basement, #!$*%@! sump pump. You never realize how much furniture and stuff you have until you have to move it all somewhere else.

I went to watch the K.C. Chiefs lose to Miami back in early November. I joked with one of my friends that I need to quit going to games, because every time I go they lose. I can't remember the last game I was at when they won, it had to be sometime before that 2009 Colts playoff game...

The people I worked for at the Haunted Island (Watson Park 2008/2009) opened again this year at a new location (Kellogg & Tyler) with a new name Moudre (you can probably google some news stories about it). I was there every weekend in October and found that an indoor "haunt" is really different from an outside location, but it was pretty cool and we didn't have to worry about the weather.

I actually did some black Friday shopping this year hitting Toy's R Us at 9pm, and then shuffling over to Wal-mart just after 10pm. We got to TRU ~30 minutes before 9pm and the line was down to Famous Footwear. I began thinking this may have been a bad idea, especially after hearing 'horror' stories from people in line about a couple years prior. I was impressed though with their setup and we were in and out (with everything we wanted) in just over 15 minutes. Since we got to Wal-mart a little after 10pm (10:20ish) I think we lucked out and missed most of the crazies. It took longer to check out at Wal-mart, but we found almost everything we wanted. I got lucky and picked up a few other items early from Amazon.com, and BestBuy.com before Thanksgiving.

I finally picked up the Gears of War 360 bundle (look back in June's post) after finding a good deal. If you've talked to me you probably know I'm not a fan of the Gears series, but it is one sweet looking 360. It has the added bonuses of more storage (320GB vs. 120GB), and N based wireless (of course the next thing on the agenda will be a new router). Not to mention I can ditch the kinect power cord, added USB ports, and custom sounds (!). Not being a fan of the series I'm not even sure what the eject sound is(?), and it seems really quiet (I don't think I ever heard the Halo Reach custom sounds so I have nothing to compare it to). I was really looking to upgrade my PS3 also (my 60GB is cramped) with the 160GB slim holiday bundle everyone had for $200, but just couldn't swing it after getting the 360.

Speaking of consoles Oct-Nov were nuts with big name game releases this year. Right now I'm playing a lot of Modern Warfare 3, and Skylanders (shock!). I'm pretty sure I snickered at the Skylanders exhibit at E3 this year, and here I am playing the heck out of it. If you like old school Spyro (PS1 era) games you'll enjoy this. I was assuming it was just a cash grab from Activision putting out a $70.00 game with $8-$20 add-ons, which it sort of is, but if you go in knowing you can finish the game with what's included in the box it's not as bad. Now if you want to 100% the game/achievements you'll need at least 5 other characters (to cover all 8 elemental types seeing as you only get 3 in the box), but look at it this way your buying 'dlc' but getting something tangible to show for it. The other positive is I think this stuff has been on sale more than it's been regular price the starter pack has been $50, and the figures have been $5 or B1G1 free a lot. Now let's not talk about Batman Arkham City, Rage, Elder Scrolls:Skyrim, or Saints Row 3 that I haven't even opened yet...

I think that about does it, except for movies and TV updates. Movies I'd have go back and look at foursquare to see what I've seen, and TV right now (at least until last week...damn split seasons) was The Walking Dead season 2.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

I'm back, back again...

Okay so I picked up a 3DS (Cosmo Black) yesterday (Thanks Wal-Mart for the early price drop!) which allows me to get the new MSRP $169.99, plus the "Nintendo Ambassador" goodies (10 NES/10 GBA free Virtual Console games) for the early adopters. :) Now I'm in a quandary though.

Nintendo announced today that the Flame Red is coming alongside the September 9th Star Fox release in the U.S. Is 20 free games better than the snazzy new red color? Decisions, decisions.


Went to the drive-in a couple weeks back and saw Captain America, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Super 8 (that trifecta ran until a little after 4am). The stand out was Captain America I went in with low expectations (Thor didn't really WOW me), but was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I'm now really stoked for Josh Whedon's Avengers movie next year. ***1/2
Last up was Super 8 which I had high hopes for. A period (1979) monster movie that fell into the same rut as Cloverfield these are monster movies without monsters. At least in Super 8 we have something that resembles a 'story', but the monster is covered by quick glimpse shots until the end of the movie. I liked it more than Cloverfield, but not as much as I hoped. **1/2

Transformers was okay, not a fan of the girlfriend change out and 'Witwicky' saves the day is getting tired. The action though was top notch giant explosions, and giant robots what more could you want? ***

I caught both The Change-Up, and 30 Minutes or Less at sneaks last week. Out of the two Change Up was definitely better, while at it's raunchy core it may not be politically correct, but gag inducing it made me laugh. A lot. It's a simple Freaky Friday, 18 Again!, and Hot Chick body switch movie. Married family guy with job, 3 kids, and mortgage wishes he had his slacker friend's carefree, sleep around, no job, pot smoking lifestyle, and vice versa. Boom! Pee in a magic fountain and halarity ensues. ****

On the other hand, 30 Minutes just never got going. I had seen the previews and thought it looked pretty good, pizza delivery guy gets jacked by to costumed 'criminal masterminds' who force him to rob a bank and halarity ensues. Ummm, no. While I didn't mind the pizza guy (Jessie Eisenberg) and his friend (Aziz Ansari) the 'criminal masterminds' (Danny McBride, Nick Swardson) never clicked. It seemed like the setup took forever, then bank robbery/conclusion/done. It's only 83 minutes long and 5 of that is probably the opening/closing credits so there wasn't a lot of story added in. Underwhelming. **1/2

A friend wants to see Cowboys & Aliens or Rise of Planet of the Apes today. I'm leaning towards Rise because the word-of-mouth for Cowboys is pretty lackluster.

I've been watching quite a few summer TV series including Falling Skies, Nine Lives of Chloe King, Switched at Birth, Alphas, Teen Wolf and Necessary Roughness as well as returning shows like The Closer, Rizzoli & Isles, The Glades, Covert Affairs, and Haven most of which are ending the season soon (or already Falling Skies). Those were the ones that I stayed with all the way, but there were some that didn't make it very far. Wilfred, Outcasts, Suits, 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show, The Hot Zone, and Sand Masters got anywhere from a single viewing up to three episodes and then fizzled out.

I've also become somewhat addicted to Auction Hunters, and Storage Wars even though I know they're 'staged' I enjoy them enough that I've caught most all of the episodes (thanks A&E, and Spike for re-airing the crap out of them!) of both shows, and watch the new ones now when they air.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

First day of E3...

It was a long day yesterday, got up early to go to the Nintendo Press Conference at the Nokia Center. Overall not a bad presentation. I was not thrilled with the name "Wii U" of the new console, but I didn't like "Wii" either to begin with. It seems like an HD console with an iPad for a controller, and the fact that you can only have one connected to the system and the rest are normal Wiimotes is kinda weird.

The line to see it on the show floor was huge, and the fact that most of the stuff is just tech demos doesn't thrill me. I stuck around Nintendo's booth since the line was so long, amazingly the line for the 3DS stuff was almost non-existent this year. I tried a lot of 3DS titles including Luigi's Mansion 2, Super Mario, Star Fox 64 (multiplayer), Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D, Mario Kart, Kid Icarus Uprising (multiplayer), and Resident Evil Revelations. Luigi and Resident Evil were both awesome and looked really good in 3D, Mario Kart and Super Mario were both fun although I found it a little difficult to make some of the jumps in Super Mario playing in 3D, but maybe that was just me.

The rest of the day was mainly spent walking around checking out what was there, I did watch presentations on Saints Row the Third, as well as Metro Last Light which both look really good, Saints was just amazing and Metro just reminded me that I still need to play the first one Metro 2033. I noticed during the Metro presentation that Joshua Gomez (Morgan Grimes on Chuck) was sitting a couple rows ahead of me, and after it was over and the lights came up noticed that Zachary Levi (Chuck Bartowski on Chuck) was sitting in front too, so I asked for a picture. :)

I also played Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City co-op on the 360 that was pretty neat, the whole campaign can be played single player or 4 player online co-op. Microsoft again has all of the Summer of Arcade titles set up, along with some other XBLA titles that I'm going to try out today.

Monday, June 06, 2011

E3 baby! Craig Ferguson, and more...

Well 2 of the big 3 press briefings are already over, with just Nintendo left tomorrow morning (check-in @ 7:15am, I really should be going to bed....). Starting with Microsoft, I felt a little underwhelmed by the whole thing. I loved the CoD:MW3 play at the beginning and Tomb Raider, and the new dash control looks neat. Some of the Kinect intergration was neat (game wise), but unecessary as far as I could tell, and I wasn't really excited about anything else. I'm not a fan of the Gears series, but tonight I found that MS was releasing a new console for the launch, this 320GB 2 controller system will be out September 20th for $399.99 and looks sweet!
Sweet ass Gears box!

I only caught Sony's conference after it started, but read up on what I missed. What's up with Sony getting all the 'extra' content included with games now? Bioshock Infinite nets you Bioshock on the same blu-ray, and with Battlefield 3 you get Battlefield 1943. I was not inclined to get a NGP (oh wait Vita) but then Irrational Games goes and says they're working on a Bioshock for Vita probably the one thing that could get me to buy one.

I went to a taping of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson this afternoon at CBS Television Studios, and have come to the conclusion that it's a lot of effort to be an audience member. It's not a very big set at all, but it was fun.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

World of Keflings, Source Code, and more...

It seems like "Wow, it's been a while" is starting to be the first thing in all of these post. I started a post back at the end of February after the Academy Shorts Festival and for some reason never got back to it...

I picked up World of Keflings, and Costume Quest from the XBLA sale(s) going on right now. There are some one day deals (April 1st) to check out tomorrow, including a couple add-ons (for Fallout New Vegas, and Fable 3) as well as a couple discounted games.

So far I've only put some time into WoK which is kinda like a avatar based RTS lite. You use your avatar and have control of the little Keflings helping them build buildings, giving them jobs, and more. A very "Sim" like game. I was happy when I got the first achievement...





Best Achievement Ever! I'm enjoying it, and on sale at 400MS points ($5) it's really neat. I would also recommend getting Dorito's Crash Course which is free (it was one of the finalist in last years Doritos promotion) another avatar based game that plays like the Wipeout tv show.



I went to the Source Code sneak last night at the Warren. I enjoy most time travel/alternate reality movie settings so I was intrigued by the previews. The simple premise is they can send someone into the body of someone else 8 minutes before they died. There was a terrorist attack on a commuter train which they believe is a "warm-up" for something much bigger, so Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is being sent back to find out who the terrorist is (think Groundhog Day with a little Quantum Leap). I really liked it, it wasn't until afterwords that some of the time logic seemed questionable, but overall a fun action ride.