Monthly Archives: July 2010

PS3 Review: Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4

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The first Lego video game I played was Star Wars, and I loved it. The ability of the Lego games to take a well-known franchise and tweak it into a cute, simple, and most importantly, FUN game is what makes them so good. I played quite a few of the Star Wars ones across various consoles, and enjoyed them all. However, when Indiana Jones and Batman came out, I could not get into them. I don’t know what the problem was, but I didn’t find them as enjoyable. It was with this notion that I approached Harry Potter with caution, but the fact that I love the books and movies made me have to do it. I’m happy to say that I do not regret my decision to rent it from Gamefly, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing through it.

As the name implies, the game roughly follows the storyline of the first four Harry Potter movies. I say “roughly” because, as Lego does, they add in humorous little things here and there to change it up. Also, to ensure that there can  be two people playing together anytime, there are always at least two characters on screen (which makes some of the levels where it should be just Harry weird, like the Basilisk from Chamber of Secrets and all the tournaments from Goblet of Fire.) Still, a lot of it is done very well, and the game maintains that level of “magical wonder” that the books and movies had.

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What Shell Said: 7/30/10

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I was in the bedroom reading. Shell was asleep on the couch. All of a sudden I heard her talking. At first I thought she was yelling at one of the cats, but she kept going, and I realized she was still partially asleep. I went out to see her.

“Are you ok babes?”

“Six golden…on me.”

“Golden what?”

“Not Goldmember like Austin Powers.”

“Then what?”

“There was a spider on me. I was one of the six people for the job.”

“Is the spider gone?”

“Yes.”

“Can I get you anything? Some water or something?”

“NOOOO!!!!!!”

Just Hit Level 13 with PS3 Trophies

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Yup, I’m moving up in the world as I reached level 13 in trophies, with a total of 1,161 as of right now. That’s pretty shibby, and it’s taken me almost two years to get there. That being said, I don’t see myself reaching level 14 anytime soon…at this stage in the game, it takes a crud more trophies to get to the next level.

Meet Promise: Our First Foster

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Shell has been big on supporting the local humane society up here, and we did a few charity things together. Tonight marks the first big step further, as we welcome Promise into our apartment. I’m not a fan of her name…if it was up to me she would have been named something Norse like Freya or Skadi. While I don’t necessarily approve of her name, I do approve of her cute little face.

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My First Venture into an Apple Store

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I may be a nerd, but I am not one of those Apple-loving dweebs, who go around and buy anything Apple puts out just because it’s Apple. I don’t want to be inconvenienced with learning how to use a Mac (plus having to worry about converting all my files to Mac ones), I think the iPhone is a piece of junk (all hail my Droid!), and I believe that the iPad is such a huge, unnecessary waste of $500. However, I do like my iPod Nano, and that’s as far as I go with Apple.

Today, that all changed. We went down to Shell’s dad’s house over the weekend, and found out his iPod was damaged. Knowing that there was an Apple Store here in Albany, I figured it would be faster and cheaper if I took it directly to the store rather than shipping it around. So this morning, at 10:00 am EST, I took my first step into the Apple Store, or as I like to call it, Dweebville. Read More »

Recent Gaming

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Well I don’t want to make a bunch of little posts about stuff I want to say about what I’m currently playing, so I figured I would pop it all together.

First and foremost, I have beaten Oblivion! It was extremely challenging in the end, especially when I had to go into a zombie-infested dungeon. However, I luckily had an invisibility spell so the remainder of the game was spent sneaking around from point to point. In the end there was only one boss, who wasn’t much of a challenge, so I was able to survive and complete the game. That being said, I already started a new thief/assassin character who is just starting out.

I have Lego Harry Potter in from Gamefly, and so far I am really enjoying it. I loved the Lego Star Wars games, but I wasn’t a fan of Batman or either Indiana Jones game. However, I find Harry Potter a lot more enjoyable. On the plus side, I played with Shell a little bit, and she enjoyed it. The beauty of the Lego games is that they take some great source material, and throw in some ridiculous humor along with a lot of fun environmental interactions and a really easy game difficulty, making the games accessible to anyone. I will definitely be holding on to it until I beat the game, and then I’ll probably go through on free mode to unlock other stuff. Read More »

Close to Completing Oblivion

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Yup, I’m doing it again. Only this time, I’m going to succeed.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was one of the first games I bought back when I bought my PS3 two years ago. I love the game, and I must have started up new games with at least six different characters, and I always had the intent to complete the main quest. However, shortly after firing up the game and getting a little bit of the main quest done, I would get sucked into the massive world. I spent so much time on all the side quests with the different factions, that after putting 30-40 hours into the game, I would be ready to move on to the next, and the main quest would go unfinished, and unattempted at that.

This time was different. I told myself from the beginning that I would focus on the main quest. I built myself a battle mage, and basically made a tank with plenty of magic capabilities. I did do the Shivering Isles main quest right away though, but only because there are plenty of good weapons, armors and other items to be had there. I also did the first stages of the Dark Brotherhood quests just to gain access to the sanctum, so that I could purchase lockpicks and the invisibility spell (makes the game sooo much easier, especially in those crazy Oblivion gate worlds). But once that was done, I went right to the main quest, and have been doing it since. I cheated a little, and looked at the Oblivion wiki to see how many other parts of the main quest there were to go, and I’m ridiculously close…only three more to go!

By this time next week, I hope that I will be able to climb to the tallest mountain and shout “It took me two years, but I have “beaten” Oblivion!!!”

PS3 Review: Trine

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The game received quite a bit of hype when it was released, but I was dissuaded due to the price sticker at the time. Now that this game can be purchased over PSN for $10, I decided to give it a whirl and see what all the fuss was about. I was quite pleased with the results.

Trine is a platformer at heart, with some RPG elements thrown in. The main gist of the game is that a warrior, thief, and wizard have to join forces to save the kingdom. Together, they venture across a variety of different platforming environments, overcoming puzzles and undead forces. Combat is only a small part of the game, and the puzzles (many of which are physics-based) and level navigation definitely take precedence. It is in this where you see the differences between the three characters.

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Now before I get into the individual characters I want to explain how the game works. You can play either by yourself or with up to two buddies locally only…there is no online play, sadly (it will be a shared screen, so no running off on your own.) All three characters are necessary to get through each level. That being said, if there is only one player playing the game, you can quickly swap between the characters with the touch of a button. So let’s say that you are the thief, and you are walking down a hall, and all of a sudden the ceiling collapses. If you are quick enough, you can swap to the knight and pop your shield up to protect yourself. If there are two players playing, a player can swap between their current character and the other unused character (so that no one is fighting back and forth for control of the knight or whatnot.) While you can swap out the characters, they each have their own health and energy bars, if someone is on the verge of dying, you can switch to another character with more health. Also, if a character dies, heading to the nearest checkpoint will resurrect all dead characters, as well as give them about 80% health and energy. Read More »

My Favorite Free Droid Apps

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So I’ve had my Motorola Droid for a few weeks now, and I have checked out the app market quite a bit to see what they had. I found a ton of apps, some that are great, some that are meh, and some that were downright awful. I just wanted to share some of my favorites, be they games or serve some other function.

Task Manager:

Only a few days into using my phone, I realized how quickly the battery died. I found out that a good chunk of it was caused by apps that continued to run in the background even though I closed them. So I found an app called Task Manager, and it basically just closes down these apps for you. It can do it on its own, but I tend to just go in there every now and then and manually do it. I have noticed a significant saving in my battery life now, and I’m glad I found this little wonder. This is a must-have!

c:geo:

This little beauty is a geocaching app that links directly to the official geocaching site. Instead of running the web browser and perusing the site, I can use this app to automatically find all nearby caches, and there are a couple of different navigation devices that will take you to the location (though they have proven to be inaccurate, so I would recommend still using a different GPS device.) I can also log my visit from the c:geo app, so it just saves a lot of time when you’re caching.

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Geocaching Adventure #8: Success and a Few Letdowns

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I went back to the East Greenbush Town Park this morning in the rain and finally found the cache that has eluded me on my past three visits there. I had e-mailed the owner of the cache and explained how I could not find it, so he went out himself last night to check on it. Apparently, he had hidden it attached to a tree from a short wire, but whoever found the cache last had hidden it a little too well, inside a hole in the tree with only the small wire barely sticking out. He fixed it and then messaged me, so I went out this morning to snag it. Sure enough, it was right where I was looking, so I my GPS was working correctly…it was just too well hidden.

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As you can see, it was a small film canister covered in cammo tape, with a wire attaching it to the tree. Below is the hole/tree hollow it was previously hidden in, when I could not find it (this hollow was actually above my eye level, which is probably why I didn’t notice anything…if only I was taller…) Read More »

PS3 Review: Just Cause 2

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The demo for this game blew me away. You had a grappling hook to move around swiftly, and endless supply of parachutes to float around in, and you blew up enemy fuel tanks and missile silos to cause “chaos”, all within a free-roam world. I loved the demo, and threw the game on my Gamefly queue. I got it in yesterday, and I’m sorry to report that the game is already repackaged and in the mailbox to be returned to Gamefly. The game simply did not live up to what the demo presented it to be.

In the game, you play an international superspy/spec ops guy. You are dropped onto a southeast Asian island nation and ordered to track down a rogue agent. In order to find him, you will need the help of the three island rebel armies, who are attempting to overthrow the newly empowered dictator. Thus, the game has a lot of you running around to the three armies and doing missions for them, which eventually unlocks the next story mission from your agency. Most of the missions are basically “go to this government outpost, blow up everything that is destructible, and kill everyone who gets in your way.” I only did a handful of missions, but they got old fast.

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Movie Review: Toy Story 3

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It wasn’t until Toy Story 3 came out that I realized that I had never seen Toy Story 2. I don’t know how that happened, but it did, and I wasn’t happy. I quickly rented Toy Story 2 from Netflix so that I would be ready for the new one when it hit theaters. I had been hearing a lot of good things from reviews and friends alike, and being the big kid at heart that I am, I couldn’t wait to see this film. What everyone was saying is true…the movie lives up to the others, and delivers a funny and emotional film that is enjoyable to people of all ages.

The movie basically starts off with the toys’ owner Andy getting ready to go away to college. With him leaving, his mom wants him to clean his room up and get all his old stuff either in the attic or thrown out to the curb. A series of events finds the toys arriving at a daycare center, where they dream of being played with all the time (since the now seventeen year-old Andy has not sat in his room and played with his toys in years.)

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Killer Bunnies Invade my House…Shell Approves

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As I mentioned earlier, I recently picked up the game Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot. I broke it out last night, and after making some frozen drinks and fresh blueberry buckle, Shell and I settled down for a round of the game. What it turned into was a three-game session that lasted over two hours, as we battled for carrots while keeping the cats away from stray dice and rubberbands!

The game is fast, simple, and fun, and for these reasons I felt that Shell would enjoy it also. And I was right. During the first game, I asked her if she was enjoying it, and she said that she would want to play it again. What I didn’t realize is that she meant she wanted to play it again right after our current game was over. After the first game, she insisted that we play a second game. I was surprised, yet pleased, and we started up a second game. After the second game was over, I jokingly said, “hey, want to play again?” Shell looked at the clock, then said “yeah if you want to” and thus game three of the night was on. Read More »

Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot

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Last week I met up with Steve for the day, and we ended up playing a round of a card game he had bought called Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot. I am always down for a new board/card game, so I was excited to check it out. Turns out, the game was easy to learn and a heck of a lot of fun to play. That said, I ended up snagging my own copy in the end. We both bought the Remix Addition, since it had a bunch of great cards from the main set as well as from a bunch of the expansions, to really develop the game further without having to purchase each individual expansion.

Killer Bunnies is a card game, revolving around maintaining an army of bunnies, killing off your opponent’s bunnies, and collecting carrots. You can play one card each turn from your hand, but what makes the game difficult to master is that you have to plan out which card you will play two moves in advance. In other words, when it is not your turn, there will be two cards in front of you face down…one that you will play on your next turn, and one that will be played on your next-next turn. So you can have something planned, but by the time that card’s turn comes up, you may not be able to play it anymore, based on how the game has changed. Read More »

Book Review: A Game of Thrones

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For a long time, I was looking for a new fantasy series to get into. I was plugging through the Wheel of Time series for awhile, but after 10+ books I kind of lost interest. A few weeks ago,  I stumbled across the internet book database, and it mentioned that the top books and series were from “A Song of Ice and Fire” by George R.R. Martin. I researched it some more, and found many rave reviews on the book series, so I decided to give it a shot and ordered it from amazon. I just finished the first book, A Game of Thrones, today, and will be starting the next book in the series, A Clash of Kings, tonight.

A Game of Thrones takes place in a fantasy world, but there are no elves or dwarves or orcs (though there is a midget that people refer to as a dwarf.) The mainland is called the Seven Kingdoms, and one king rules over all. However, there is a second land off the coast that is ruled by a nomadic “wild” people, and a good portion of the book takes place among them as well. The book deals with the family of Stark, and the adventures of the father, mother, sons and daughters as the father is summoned to be the king’s top adviser. The book eventually concludes in a civil war which engulfs the Starks’ and several other families throughout the Seven Kingdoms. The book is a heck of a lot more complicated than this, and there is a lot more going on, but I don’t want to say too much to spoil anything. Read More »

PS3 Review: Transformers: War for Cybertron

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First off, yes, I know the above image is for the 360. Oddly enough, it was the best picture I could find for the game’s cover art, so I had to make due. But enough of that…onto the review!

When I first heard about the game, I was nervous. There had been a few Transformers games previously, and they all sucked. I assumed that this one would also. Then I heard that it was an original story, independent of the films, and set before the Transformers ever set foot on Earth. That was interesting, and got my attention. Then I heard that there was going to be co-op and other multiplayer modes, and I made sure that my Gamefly queue was totally empty so that I could have it shipped out release date. In the end, Transformers: War for Cybertron totally lives up as a great, engaging game and also removes the stain left by previous movie-based games. I can only hope this is the start of a whole new series of games!

War for Cybertron is a third-person shooter which takes place exclusively on Cybertron, thus there are no humans to be seen…only awesome robots. The game’s campaign mode is short but very, very sweet. There are ten chapters, and each chapter has a several sub-chapters, and each chapter ends with a boss battle. The first five levels are Decepticon levels, where you control Megatron and his minions as they strive to develop the ultimate weapon, kicking Autobot butt along the way. The fifth chapter ends with Megatron acquiring his weapon, and it appearing that all is lost…until a new hero emerges. Chapters six through ten of the game are played from the Autobot point of view, as Optimus Prime and his allies fight to stop Megatron’s plans by staging a series of counter-attacks. It is done very well, in that there are two totally different campaigns (not just different versions of the same stage for each side.)

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Our Independence Day in Boston

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I wanted to do something really fun and huge this year for Independence Day. I thought it would be cool to go to one of the old colonial cities for the weekend, and since we had already been to Philadelphia last year, I decided that we should go to Boston. While I was just there in March for PAX, we didn’t really do too much outside the convention, so I was looking forward to seeing more of the city. Once I told Shell, she was excited, and we made our plans to go. Our three day trip to Boston was a lot of fun, and definitely a perfect place in which to celebrate Independence Day.

Saturday:

We left early Saturday morning to head out to Boston, and our hotel. We had decided to get a hotel on the outskirts of Boston so it would be cheaper for the room as well as parking. We hit a little traffic going there, and were pleasantly surprised with the hotel. We stayed at the Doubletree Bayside hotel, and it was great. It was in an awesome location (four minute walk to the subway station), the room was very pleasant, and they give you a delicious chocolate chip cookie when you check in! It was definitely one of the best hotels I ever stayed in (not counting the Rockafella Suite, of course) and I highly recommend it if you’re staying in Boston and want to save a lot of cash for room and car parking. Read More »

Geocaching Adventure #7: Return to Schodack Town Park

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I had previously discussed how, at my last visit to the East Greenbush Town Park, I was unable to find one of the caches. I had contacted the person who hid it, and he wrote back to me giving me more detailed information. I decided to spend my first morning back from Boston geocaching, and uncovering this elusive cache. I left the apartment around 7:45am, and it was already in the high 80′s, so I knew that it would be an uncomfortably hot and bug-filled cache day.

Unfortunately, I was still unable to find it. Also, I noticed that the cache has not been found since May (according to the online logs), so I am beginning to think that it might have been tampered with. I sent him another e-mail, and I think he is going to go there himself and check on the condition of the cache find out if it is missing, or if I am just a fool.

After my disappointment at EG, I did not want to go home empty handed. I popped on the Droid and used it to locate a new cache at the Schodack Town Park, where I had been once before. This one was very easy, and is probably the easiest one I have ever found. I parked my car at the park, and headed into the woods via a trail right in front of my car. Less than 1/4 mile down the trail I came upon the “pond” in question, and knew I was close (based on the title of the cache and the creator’s description of it.

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Geocaching Adventure #6: Middletown

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I was down visiting Steve for some computer repairs, and he directed me towards a cache that was located right off Dolson Ave in Middetown. I was intrigued, as it is a very busy urbanish part of town, and one of the last places I would think to look for a geocache.

Once we reached the approximate area (a Dunkin Donuts parking lot), I switched to my handheld GPS to pinpoint the location. It brought me up to a telephone pole. I searched the ground looking for something small like an old 35mil film container, but saw nothing. Then I looked up at the pole and saw a “lost dog” sign. As I quickly scanned it, I noticed the word “cache” in large letters, so I read through the ad again.

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