Category Archives: Miscellany
Weekend Anime Review Update
Just a quick note that I have finished my transition of decade-old anime reviews from my 2003 AngelFire (!) website that was, inexplicably, still online – people weren’t kidding when they say there is only one internet. While some of reviews are cringe-inducing, I am nevertheless impressed by the exhaustive thoroughness of some of the others written in my youth. If you want to read a nearly 2000-word treatise on Evangelion or 1500 words on Now & Then, Here & There, well, now you can.
I (un)fortunately stopped writing anime reviews halfway through college, and thus none exist for some of the other popular works like Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and the like; it is unlikely that I will go back and write some up, just like I have little interest in importing the 60+ RPG reviews I wrote back in the day when I freelanced.
Anyway, I have pretty much decided to not feature anime reviews in the post feed proper (i.e. here), and instead periodically mention when several go up at once. So, well, several additional anime micro-reviews are also up, including Sword Art Online, Elfen Lied, and so on. Just click on the Review button along the top bar and navigate your way down to the Anime section.
My goal with these is simply to give you a quick overview of what to expect with the show, and to perhaps help decide if it’s worth watching. At this point, I am basically choosing shows at random as I am too far removed from the culture to know what to look for. If you happen to have some suggestions, perhaps in the form of a website or podcast you follow, by all means let me know.
Happy Dead News Day
God, I hate April Fools. I hate it so much, in fact, I took the day off of work, so I would not be so bored out of my mind with the gaming site (and Reddit too, apparently) nonsense. The celebration of insipid deception is so pervasively perverse, I do not even bother believing any news for a full 24 hours. New PTR notes? A release date for X game? Nope, can’t hear you, lalalalalalala~.
Anyway, I beat Bioshock Infinite over the weekend. Were the 14 hours worth the $45? You will have to wait for the review; a review I most certainly will not write on April Fools, lest it not be believed.
Of course, if you have been around here for any length of time, you will probably believe it.
Bugs
As you may have noted along the sidebar, I am “playing” the original Crysis on and off. The scare-quotes are there because the game itself is borderline unplayable with all the bugs and crashes I have been experiencing. For as much as I love Steam and try to get 100% of my PC gaming through it, I am finding it increasingly asinine how little support Steam offers for the very games it sells. Generally speaking, if the game is more than 5 years old, I don’t even bother trying to install it before checking out the forums first; luckily, most of the first page is usually filled with similar customers in dire need of tech support as all of us stumble in the dark together.
I give games like the original Borderlands a pass – despite needing to download a swath of mods to make it less of a brain-dead console port – because that was how the game was designed. With Crysis though? The goddamn game crashes 100% of the time when you try and change any of the settings. If I alt-tab out of the game, it automatically switches to windowed mode, with no way to go back to full-screen without crashing the game. And it’s buggy even inside the game too; I was stuck for over an hour before I realized that the Objectives not updating was a bug and not me missing some sort of programming trigger (which would still be stupid).
I get that computers are hard, what with all the potential variations in hardware and software. But, seriously, some of this shit needs to be bundled with the download of the game itself.
New Year
Welcome to a new year of In An Age.
I am going to skip armchair prognosticating and instead focus on some goals/long-term plans. You may or may not have noticed that in my “Currently” sidebar, I have been listing more things than simply videogames. Since I have a website and write game reviews already, I figure that I may as well belt out a few words about what I thought about the books and anime I have been consuming too. There are plenty of more dedicated anime/book review websites out there though, so I am sticking to a “Micro-Review” format that is basically 1-3 paragraphs to give you the gist of what I thought about the series and whether you might like it.
I have not yet decided whether these “off-topic” Micro-Reviews will hit the front page, so to speak. On the one hand, you folks are here because you see some redeeming feature in my various pontifications, so why not have some more? On the other hand, this started out as a gaming blog and I wouldn’t want to… you know, fuck it. This shit will hit the Front Page when I feel like it, and won’t when I don’t. Nobody paints Baby into a corner.
Other than that nonsense, I expect to continue playing WoW and PlanetSide2 for the next several months, along with possibly checking into Dust 514 (now that have a PS3). I have Steam games coming out the ass, so there will be plenty of those sort of reviews/impressions coming too. And, of course, there will be plenty what I enjoy best: arguing with people over the internet.
If you liked what you read in 2012, you ain’t seen nothing yet basically will get more of the same in 2013.
Of Station Cash and Shift Codes
If you were not already aware, SoE is running a Triple Station Cash day this Friday, the 21st of December. The normal exchange rate is basically 500 SC = $5, so this is a pretty outstanding deal… provided you are into SoE games like, I dunno, PlanetSide 2. I already picked up two $15 prepaid cards at Walmart, which comes with a bonus 500 SC on top of the book value of 1500 SC. On Triple Station Cash days, each $15 card gives 6000 SC. With 23 hours already invested in the game, I figure $30 to unlock (nearly) ALL the things is fair play. If I hold out until another weapon promotion (e.g. they bundle 4-6 weapons together at a discount), those dollars stretch even farther.
In other news, if you have been playing Borderlands 2 lately (or stopped and plan on picking it back up), you should know that they dropped a Shift Code on their Twitter feed that awards 5 Golden Keys. Additionally, there is another Shift code as part of their Claptrap video promotion, bringing the total Golden Key haul to 6. If you have Borderlands 2 on PC, I’ll go ahead and save you some clicks:
- 5 Keys: WT5TB-XC5ZC-CX3T3-BBT3B-B35WB
- 1 Key: KJ5BT-FBKSK-KXJ3T-3BTJT-FJX5C
I haven’t played Borderlands 2 in a few weeks, but plan on booting it back up when the next DLC rolls around (I have the Season Pass); this amount of free uber-gear was enough to get me to log back in to at least redeem the codes. To be honest, I have been increasingly amazed that Gearbox hasn’t been selling Golden Keys for $1 apiece or whatever, as there was definitely a time period in which I would have bought some. On the other hand, I sort through their Twitter feed on a daily basis on the hunt for Shift Codes, so I guess that comes out as a bigger win for them.
Late to the Party
This question may be be moot by the time anyone can read/respond to it, but…
If you had zero next-gen consoles or games, which one (1) console would you purchase?
- Xbox 360 250GB w/ Halo anniversary and Forza 4 ($199)
- PS3 Slim 250GB Console with Uncharted 1 & 2 and Infamous 1 & 2 ($219)
- Nintendo Wii Console with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort ($119)
- None (see below)
I have zero interest in the Wii U or any of the handhelds – I’d be using the console as a Netflix box for a 32″ TV at a minimum. I am heavily leaning towards PS3 right now between the number of exclusive titles that I have some interest in, but I am also aware of how many times PS3 owners have been screwed over in terms of updates, game ports, etc. My PC will still be my primary gaming rig, but if I wait until 2013 and the next-next-gen, then my 32″ TV will be quite out of place attached to my PS2.
Then again, I haven’t actually bought the 32″ TV yet ($180), so technically I could just do nothing at all and wait all this shit out like I have been for the last 6-8 years. Sigh.
#firstworldproblems
New Hours
In non-game related news, I received a promotion and am thusly working different hours than I did previously. Which is good news, of course, aside from the fact that I went from 12-8pm to 8-5pm. Between “losing” an hour of my day to lunch at work and the additional time lost due to a heavier commute both ways, my gaming/blogging time is getting pretty constricted. Hopefully an upcoming move will alleviate some of this issue. Rest assured that I feel all of the pain in your heart when you open your browser and do not see my smiling prose greeting you.
In game-related news, I just started Borderland 2 and I think it is pretty keen.
Oh, you.
Uninstalling is Hard
Although it shouldn’t be, I found it somewhat emotionally difficult to uninstall Mass Effect 3 this weekend. I haven’t played the game in more than five months, and I had not planned to start again either. All the extra DLC feels moot to me after the endings, and while the multiplayer was surprisingly good, I got my fill of it after a few weeks.
There is no particular reason for me to feel this way.
And yet… uninstalling may as well be the kiss of death. I can always reinstall later, of course, but the mere knowledge of a 5-6 hour download is enough to send my thoughts elsewhere. For a while, I had entertained a fantasy that I would replay the entire series again, start to finish, this time as Renegade FemShep. The whole ending debacle stymied that fantasy, but there always seemed to be a spark of hope that I would come back around and just do it.
But… not anymore. I need the hard drive space. And I probably need to move on for real, like I thought I already had. No reason to keep holding onto those old pictures of your exes.
In other news, I uninstalled Diablo 3 this weekend and felt relief. Of course, I did so after cashing out my gold, although the exchange rate is a whopping $0.52 per million gold right now. I did not talk about it, but I booted D3 up two weeks ago and went ahead and beat Diablo on Inferno, just to say I did so. The gear inflation/power creep/nerfs made it feel like a completely different game.
But then again, I am not sure I enjoyed the game that it had been all that much anyway.
Comparison Shopping
During my daily Dealzon (PC) browsing ritual, I came across this rather unfortunate side-by-side apples vs oranges comparison:
1 apple vs 36 oranges, most likely.
I already own GW2 and have no compunction about skipping TSW, both MMOs are going after very different sorts of players, etc etc, yes I know. But… just look at that picture for a second.
Dunno about you, but it gave me pause to consider the relative value of money and how in the world the average person chooses which product to buy when they see two things on a (virtual) shelf. Has $2.12 ever bought a bigger difference?
Just idle thoughts. Carry on.
In An Age 