Posted by Rob on June 30, 2011 – 8:15 pm
Filed under Video Games
Tagged as 1776, 360, archon, big bad bob, bigbadbob, champions of norrath, co-op, dungeon crawler, dungeon hunter: alliance, dungeon siege 3, dungeon siege III, game review, hack and slash, katrina, lucas, online, platinum, PlayStation 3, PS3, RPG, Sacred 2, trophies, trophy, untold legends, x-men legends, xbox
I love a great hack-and-slash/ dungeon crawler RPG grindfest, but the current generation has been lacking in this department…until this year, when a large amount of these games are coming out. Dungeon Siege III is the first full retail game (Dungeon Hunter: Alliance was a downloadable title), and while the developers made some bad decisions as far as co-op goes, the general game is pretty sweet.
The Characters:
One of the main things that make a hack-and-slash RPG is the characters and/or classes. Dungeon Siege III focuses around a group called “The Legion”, and the four playable characters are all descendants of this order that was pretty much decimated thirty years prior. The four characters are all different and do, generally speaking, have varying play styles. The “rogue” is a female human who uses guns as weapons, and also has access to some curses for good measure. There is a human knight who deals heavy melee combat, making him a fine tank. There is a female archon (aka “fire demon”) who has two different forms; as a human she can deal melee damage with her staff/spear, but when in her fire demon form she gains access to some crazy fire magic. This makes her an ideal character as she can switch between melee and magic combat fairly quickly. The last character is a dwarven…something. I’m not entirely sure what he does since I haven’t played as him yet, but he claims that using mathematical calculations and his mind he can rip an enemy in two once he’s trained to do so, so that’s something to look forward to I suppose.
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Posted by Rob on June 27, 2011 – 8:57 pm
Filed under My Personal Life
Tagged as bathing suit, beach, big bad bob, bigbadbob, burger, cherry limeade, ice cream, ribs, sonic, south carolina, storage, u-haul, wal-mart, wally world
Today was our first full day down in South Carolina, since we had just gotten in last night. It was a busy day, but ended up being quite relaxing.
The first thing on the agenda was to pack up the contents of the moving truck into a storage unit. We had originally selected one, but then realized that it did not have climate control. I didn’t want to risk damaging our stuff in a unit that would reach over 120F on a hot summer day, so we went to another nearby unit that had climate controlled units. It took about two hours, but Shell, her dad and I managed to miraculously squeeze all our stuff into a 10×15 unit…and it was one hell of a close fit!
After turning in the U-Haul truck, we decided to relax after all that work by heading to the beach. Unfortunately, I have no idea what box my bathing suits were packed in so it’s probably lost in the storage unit somewhere. That meant we had to head to Wal-Mart to grab a new suit for me, as well as some other beach-goer gear. Read More »
Posted by Rob on June 27, 2011 – 5:59 am
Filed under My Personal Life
Tagged as aaa, albany, big bad bob, bigbadbob, cats, cheerwine, delaware, donut, flat tire, hotel, middletown, moving, myrtle beach, new york, oneonta, rest stop, south carolina, tire lube express, tle, truck, u-haul, virginia, wal-mart, wally world
This is my first blog post from down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, meaning the move was a success. This was not my first move, but was definitely the biggest of my life so far. I grew up on Long Island, and in the middle of 7th grade we moved up to Middletown and rented a home that was, shockingly, on almost the same road as Shell’s parents house. Then we moved to my parents current house, and they’ve been there ever since. Though I did move to Oneonta twice, but they weren’t as big of moves since it was only to my college apartments. After I graduated Oneonta, Shell and I moved in together in an apartment in Albany, and that was a pretty big move. And now here we are, moved down to South Carolina.
It was a big move not only in distance, but also in terms of how much stuff we had. Living at our apartment for three years, we had accumulated a lot of furniture and other stuff. We ended up renting a 17 foot U-Haul truck, but by the time I drove it back to the apartment to start loading it up, I was concerned that it wouldn’t be big enough. When our parents arrived they had the same thoughts, but U-Haul did not have any bigger trucks in stock then, so we had to work with what we had. We spent several hours cramming the contents of our apartment into the truck and our cars, and by 4pm we were ready to hit the road. Read More »
Posted by Rob on June 22, 2011 – 6:43 pm
Filed under Food & Drink
Tagged as BBQ, bbq fried rice, big bad bob, chinese, corn bread, dinner, dinosaur bbq, Food & Drink, grill, macaroni-n-cheese, ny, pork, restaurants, ribs, sausage, smoker, south
When people think of New York food, they think of things like pizza and hot dogs. Point is, I doubt any really associates the Empire State with BBQ. That doesn’t stop a few restaurants that want to try their hand at it, and one of the best NY BBQ I have ever had came from Dinosaur BBQ. Shell came home from work tonight bearing the gift of Dinosaur, and I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth in.
I went for one of their great combination platters, after my sister highly recommend I try their sausage. So my dinner consisted of:
- Four Pork Ribs
- One Sausage Link
- Macaroni & Cheese
- BBQ Fried Rice
- Corn Bread
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Posted by Rob on June 21, 2011 – 4:50 pm
Filed under Video Games
Tagged as big bad bob, bigbadbob, cole, empire city, evil, good, infamous, platinum, PlayStation 3, PS3, PSN, rockhound, shard, stunt master, stunts, trophies, trophy
I am only a few trophies away from “Platinum Paradise” in inFAMOUS. I had a little time to kill today so I dedicated it to finishing up the stunt list, which was a pain in the arse. I had some trouble with the “Have a Nice Fall” and “Right Back at Ya” stunts, but with a lot of patience I finished them all up and got the “Stunt Master” trophy.
The only trophies I have left are:
- Good Finish
- Hard Finish
- True Hero (just one upgrade away now)
- Good Sphere
- Rockhound
The top four trophies are all story-related, and I’ll be snagging them shortly, once I finish up my current campaign (I’m currently playing a good guy on hard difficulty.) Once I finish up the campaign, I’ll head back into the city and finish cleaning up the shard collections, which I’m sure will be a time-consuming process. I can’t that having to collect 350 shards is only worth a bronze trophy! You can count on me cheating a bit with an online guide for all those shards for sure! Once that’s done, I’ll be sitting pretty with my 12th platinum.
Posted by Rob on June 20, 2011 – 1:38 pm
Filed under Video Games
Tagged as 360, alice, alice in wonderland, alice: madness returns, american mcgee, big bad bob, bigbadbob, carpenter, collectible, game review, mad hatter, march hare, pc, PlayStation 3, PS3, queen, third-person, trophies, trophy, walrus, wonderland, xbox
Alice: Madness Returns is a sequel to American McGee’s Alice, which was released on the PC in 2000. I had never played it before (since I don’t play PC games) but I am a sucker for anything Wonderland, and had heard nothing but good things about the American McGee game. So when a new game was released on the PS3, I jumped at the chance to check out this twisted version of Wonderland, and came away from it with some mixed thoughts.
For starters, forget the blonde Alice persona you think you know…this Alice is a black-haired emo/goth chick and can definitely hold her own, whether it be the streets of London or an altered horrific Wonderland. The game is divided into chapters, and each chapter starts out in London where Alice is trying to discover the truth about her past. Eventually she stumbles into Wonderland, and that’s where the meat of the game takes place. Each chapter is set in a different area of Wonderland, ranging from the Mad Hatter’s steel works to the Queen of Hearts castle to a demented doll house area. Basically Alice navigates these areas in an attempt to discover how to stop a rampaging train that is in the process of destroying Wonderland.
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Posted by Rob on June 19, 2011 – 11:17 am
Filed under My Personal Life
Tagged as alice in wonderland, alice: madness returns, big bad bob, bigbadbob, dungeon siege III, gamefly, moving, myrtle beach, new york, PlayStation 3, PS3, south carolina, work
It’s finally come…next weekend is the big move. Shell and I will be heading down to South Carolina and start the next stage of our adventure through life together. It also means that the next week will be close to chaotic as we rush to get last minute things figured out. We did take a day of rest yesterday and headed down to my parents house, where family and friends were gathered to wish us off. It was nice to be able to see my grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins one last time before we head south, since I don’t know when we’ll together again. I also got to see my high school buddy Pete one last time before the move, and it was good to sit back and shoot the shit with him again.
As for the rest of the week, it’s probably going to go by in a blur. Tomorrow I need to meet my dad again to get some last minute stuff done, so that will eat up most of my Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be home by myself getting stuff together here. Shell’s last day of work is Wednesday, but she will be saying goodbye to friends on Thursday. So that leaves Friday as pretty much the last day we have to get every last thing done. On Saturday morning our parents are coming up, we’ll load up the truck, and then we’ll be off for the long, long drive down to Myrtle Beach. Read More »
Posted by Rob on June 17, 2011 – 9:07 am
Filed under Video Games
Tagged as 360, amazon, big bad bob, bigbadbob, controller, cooptimus, drums, furniture, Gamestop, guitar, instruments, levelup, mic, microphone, moving, Nintendo, ottoman, plastic, PlayStation 3, PS3, rock band, rock band 2, storage, Wii, xbox
Like many gamers, I gave in to the addictive fun that is the music game genre. As a result, I have a few plastic instruments lying around the living room. It was a cluttered mess, and didn’t exactly look all that great in the open. I was also wondering how to safely pack the instruments (the drum set in particular) for the upcoming move.
I then remembered reading about ottomans that were specifically designed for Rock Band storage. I first went to Amazon, but didn’t like the one they had on there. Then I remembered reading an article on co-optimus about them, and went to see which brand was mentioned. It was an ottoman from LevelUp, and I believe the model I purchased is the “Rock Band Double Ottoman”. I searched online for it, and was surprised to find quite the deal for it at Gamestop of all places. It’s available on their website for the price of $89.99, with $20 or more S&H, depending on the speed you choose. The lesser quality ottoman on Amazon was $119 with free shipping, but I wanted this beautiful piece from LevelUp, so I was sold. I placed the order online on Sunday night and when I came home last night there was a huge box waiting for me.
I was super excited so I grabbed the nearest knife and started opening up the package. I couldn’t wait to see this wonderful piece of black furniture that would be solving my plastic peripheral woes.
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Posted by Rob on June 16, 2011 – 2:16 am
Filed under Sports
Tagged as 2010 stanley cup, big bad bob, boston, bruins, canucks, cnn, fans, hockey, riots, stanley cup, vancouver
Everyone knows how seriously and passionately Canadians take their hockey, so it came as to surprise to me to hear that Canucks’ fans took to rioting last night following the game. Read about it here on CNN.
Posted by Rob on June 15, 2011 – 10:20 pm
Filed under Sports
Tagged as bacon, bigbadbob, boston, bruins, canucks, champions, champs, chara, finals, game 7, hockey, luongo, nhl, stanley cup, thomas, vancouver
If you want to know what team I’m rooting for in the Stanley Cup Finals, there are three steps to take:
- If the Rangers are in the finals, I’ll root for them
- If the Penguins are in the finals, I’ll root against them
- I’ll root for whatever Eastern Conference team is in
That being said, this year I was rooting for Boston to pull a victory from Vancouver, and they eventually did in what ended up being a blowout Game 7. If you looked at the past games of the series, it was easy to say that the Canucks should have had this one, and even I assumed that Luongo would lead them to victory. But it was not to be as Tim Thomas blanked Vancouver and proved to be unstoppable tonight, allowing the Bruins to win Game 7 with a score of 4-0. Thomas was also awarded the Conn Smythe trophy, making him the series MVP.
My biggest complaint of the night of course had to deal with unruly Canadian fans. As has happened before, once the Cup was presented to Chara the trash started flying from the stands. Real classy…
And with this being said, it’s off to bed. I have to be up in about three hours for work.
Posted by Rob on June 15, 2011 – 1:12 pm
Filed under Geocaching
Tagged as big bad bob, bigbadbob, black belt, c:geo, droid, east greenbush, geocache, Geocaching, gps, guys weekend in, hannaford, hiking, hobo, hobophobia, price chopper, tae kwon do
There’s a little spot behind the Hannafords up here that is the home to a bunch of geocaches, and the area is known as “Ranger Land.” I had visited this area last September in an attempt to snag a bunch of the caches, but was only able to find one. With Steve up here for “Guys Weekend In”, I decided to take advantage of the extra set of eyes (and the extra Droid) and return to Ranger Land to find those elusive caches.
After lunch on Saturday, Steve and I jumped in the car and made the three-minute drive to Hannafords. After parking in the lot, we climbed over the guardrail and entered Ranger Land. Luckily it wasn’t too hot, and was maybe in the 70s. This was a good thing because it made wearing pants (a must when hiking through dense woods in my opinion) bearable. While it was a tad too warm for pants, what was unbearable was the bugs. I’ve noticed four different mosquito bites so far, and I don’t know if another will surface soon. I was prepared with some bug spray that I keep in my cache pack, but of course I didn’t remember it until an hour of being feasted on my blood-sucking insects.
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Posted by Rob on June 13, 2011 – 2:41 pm
Filed under My Personal Life
Tagged as 360, big bad bob, bigbadbob, blog, controller, geocache, Geocaching, guys weekend in, moving, Nintendo, PlayStation 3, PS3, south, south carolina, Wii, work, xbox
There is now officially less than two weeks before I hop in the car and make the grueling drive down to Myrtle Beach, SC to begin the next phase of my life. There is much to do around here and we just started packing up stuff yesterday. It was sad to begin boxing up my video games, particularly the Wii. To conserve space I popped all my PS3 and 360 discs into a binder, and that will go in a attache case with my controllers and other accessories for those systems so that I will still be able to play down south. I just didn’t see the point in doing the same with the Wii since it gets limited play time compared to the other systems, plus there are just sooo many accessories for it!
Also, this is my last week of work, with Thursday being my last day! Man, I will not missing being up at 2:45am…at least until Shell starts popping out some kids. She will be working into next week so I’ll be home doing a lot of the packing and other stuff that needs to get done before we leave.
That being said, I’m already backed up on here as it is. I have a draft about “Guys Weekend In” that was the weekend of June 4th as well as a geocaching adventure that is about 80% complete. I hope to have those finished by the end of the week, but don’t be expecting much else from me until the move is completed. Not that I have a hardcore following of fans who will say “hey, Rob’s been slacking off lately”…
Posted by Rob on June 13, 2011 – 6:34 am
Filed under Books
Tagged as abraham lincoln, abraham lincoln: vampire hunter, America, big bad bob, bigbadbob, book, civil war, History, lincoln, seth grahme-smith, United States, vampire hunter, vampires
Here’s are some of the facts that I knew about Abraham Lincoln prior to reading Abraham Lincon: Vampire Hunter:
Here’s a list of facts that I didn’t know about Abraham Lincoln until I read the book:
- His grandfather was ripped apart by a vampire
- His mother was poisoned by a vampire
- At the age of sixteen he killed his first vampire
- He kept a journal which details his battles against vampires
- He invented a “martyr” that would light up and burn the eyes of nearby vampires
- He wanted to abolish slavery not for the rights of African Americans, nor to cripple the economy of the South during the Civil War. Instead, he wanted to stop Southern plantation owners from selling their elderly or otherwise useless slaves to vampires as a food source
Is what I said above true? Every dang word of it is! It all comes straight from the horse’s mouth as the book is based on Lincoln’s personal journal, in which he chronicled his entire vampire killer career. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter not only has direct quotes taken from Lincoln’s journal, as well as newspaper articles and other records from the time, but also uses a variety of illustrations from historical texts that further tell the tale of America’s foremost vampire hunter. Forget everything you thought you knew about “Honest Abe” as you get a fresh new look at his biography, as well as an eye-opening view of how America really was in the 1800s.
But now let’s get a bit more serious.
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Posted by Rob on June 11, 2011 – 12:54 pm
Filed under Video Games
Tagged as big bad bob, bigbadbob, cole, dead nation, empire city, evil, good, karma, lbp, littlebigplanet, platinum, PlayStation 3, PS3, PSN, Sony, trophies, trophy, welcome back
When the PSN got revived a couple of weeks ago, Sony decided to put forth some positive PR by offering PS3 owners two free games. The two games could be chosen from a list of five, which included two PS3 titles (that were downloadable) and three PSN games. The choices were:
- inFAMOUS
- LittleBigPlanet
- Dead Nation
- Super Stardust HD
- Wipeout HD
Seeing how I already owned LBP and Dead Nation, and I’m not a huge fan of racing games, I went with inFAMOUS and Super Stardust HD. Even though I had played through inFAMOUS a couple of years ago when it first came out, I realized that with one more playthrough I could get the Platinum trophy, so that’s what I’m currently working on.
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Posted by Rob on June 9, 2011 – 9:22 pm
I had just finished up playing Mortal Kombat and I was ready to lay down and read some more of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Shell likes to get up from the couch and take a second nap in bed if I’m reading so I woke her up to move her to the bedroom.
“Come on babes, let’s get up. You can take a nap on the bed.”
“Did you fix it?”
“Fix what?”
“The thing.”
“What thing?”
“The clock.”
“Oh yeah. I sure did.”
“Mmmmmm”
Posted by Rob on June 9, 2011 – 1:54 pm
Filed under Pets
Tagged as big bad bob, bigbadbob, cats, foster, head tilt, humane society, Loki, mimi, odin, Pets, shelter
With the move only a few weeks away now, Shell wanted to take in one last foster since the shelter was getting into it’s busy season and was running out of room. Shell brought Mimi home yesterday, and she is quite the cute cat. She’s not sick, but recovering from “head tilt” which may be a temporary side effect of her recent surgery. The good thing about her not being sick is we don’t have to worry about changing clothes constantly when we go in to visit her. Even though she isn’t sick we won’t be introducing her to Loki and Odin since she needs rest, not a bunch of stress from meeting new cats.
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Posted by Rob on June 7, 2011 – 3:01 pm
Filed under Video Games
Tagged as 360, big bad bob, bigbadbob, chat, co-op, cooptimus, gamefly, gears of war, headset, hunted: demons forge, PlayStation 3, PS3, RPG, skype, voice chat, xbox
On paper, Hunted: Demon’s Forge seems to be the perfect co-op game. There are two characters to choose from, a male human who is best suited for melee combat and a female elf who plays best from a distance with ranged weapons. These two characters have the ability to cast spells on each other to buff them up and can also toss potions to each other for health and reviving. There are also plenty of puzzles that you and your partner will need to work together on in order to advance through the game’s levels. This fantasy RPG actually plays more like Gears of War, from the third person view to the need to duck and cover to take out ranged opponents to the ability to crawl to your partner when you are down for a quicker revival. All of these facts lead to appears to be, in essence, the perfect two-player game.
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Posted by Rob on June 6, 2011 – 12:59 pm
For my birthday Steve gave me a book simply titled Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. As you can see from the front of the book, you have The Great Emancipator standing there looking pleased with himself, and you can also make out a bloody axe behind his back. The back cover of the book gives you a better look at what he’s holding behind his back, and also gives you a sense of what this book is about (as if you couldn’t guess from the title.)
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